The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker Carlson and Michael Shellenberger Break Down the California Fires

00:00:00.000 So I guess the first question is, thank you for doing this.

00:00:02.940 Are we rolling?

00:00:04.300 We're rolling.

00:00:04.920 Okay.

00:00:05.520 Let's roll, shall we?

00:00:07.580 Good to be with you, Chuck.

00:00:08.560 Nice to see you.

00:00:09.940 Great to be with you.

00:00:10.060 No, I, as I've said to you privately, and I mean it, I think you're maybe the best reporter working.

00:00:15.520 I know you don't even think of yourself as a reporter, but a gatherer of facts and an explainer of what they mean, I think you're the best.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.

00:00:34.540 We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else, and they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.

00:00:41.740 We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly.

00:00:46.920 Check out all of our content at tuckercarlson.com.

00:00:50.180 Here's the episode.

00:00:52.240 So where do these fires, first of all, how many fires are there and where do they come from?

00:00:56.280 I believe there's five active fires right now, and these are ignition-driven fires, meaning that this is all chaparral or, you know, scrubland, you know, brush area.

00:01:07.380 So this is different than the Sierra forests.

00:01:09.920 Right. These are not forest fires.

00:01:11.400 Yeah, these are not forest fires.

00:01:12.780 And that doesn't mean that you're doomed to them, but it's not the same problem that we get in the Sierras.

00:01:18.540 So they're ignition-driven, and they're obviously wind-driven, but there's nothing unusual.

00:01:23.640 You know, I just interviewed a climate scientist about this, or rather an environmental forest scientist about this.

00:01:30.100 There's nothing unusual about this.

00:01:31.360 I mean, it is somewhat unusual to get, you know, you have a dry period, and then the Santa Ana winds in January, but it's not like that never happens.

00:01:40.240 They – I'm working my way there.

00:01:42.840 Of course.

00:01:43.340 I mean, the important thing to know is that the National Weather Service put out a fire warning on January 2nd, and a local weatherman actually forecasted on January 1st.

00:01:55.980 They said, we're headed towards a super dangerous moment.

00:01:59.760 The next day, the National Weather Service Los Angeles held a briefing to underscore that point.

00:02:04.960 The day after that, the mayor flew to Ghana.

00:02:07.940 I mean, it's crazy.

00:02:09.320 So these were public press conferences?

00:02:12.480 Yeah, these were – oh, I mean, it's absolutely public, and it goes to the politicians first, but it's all said public.

00:02:16.960 It's the National Weather Service.

00:02:18.380 So that was like literally on the first or second, the governor should have called out the National Guard.

00:02:25.140 He should have called all of our neighboring states.

00:02:27.300 He should have called Canada and Mexico, asked for all their backup help.

00:02:30.820 They should have started circling C-130s that are especially retrofitted that can dump the fire retardant or water.

00:02:38.180 They should have had helicopters circling to see where the fires were.

00:02:41.400 It should have been immediate mobilization.

00:02:44.260 Pardon my ignorance.

00:02:44.920 I didn't – first of all, I didn't see that news when it happened, but I didn't know that.

00:02:49.760 So it was really clear to the people who run the city and the state that you had this combination of dry conditions and heavy winds, high winds.

00:02:57.420 Yeah, and because there's so many ignitions, because of really these two factors, mostly the electrical wires, brushing up against vegetation and triggering a fire, that's kind of one of the main ones.

00:03:11.720 The other one is homeless people starting fires all over L.A.

00:03:16.980 Half of all fires put out by the L.A. Fire Department are started by homeless people.

00:03:21.700 It's been that way for years.

00:03:23.420 Why do homeless people start fires?

00:03:24.680 Well, you know, it turns out meth heads love to start fires.

00:03:30.500 You know, there's just – every drug has its kind of weird element to it.

00:03:35.120 But meth heads love starting fires.

00:03:36.940 They love destroying things.

00:03:38.020 Like meth is like the drug of nihilism.

00:03:40.200 So it's like perfect drug for L.A. and California at the moment.

00:03:43.780 So it's not – these are not cooking fires.

00:03:46.160 They could be cooking fires.

00:03:48.100 But starting fires to destroy things is a methodic.

00:03:51.140 Oh, yeah, for sure.

00:03:52.140 But it's not evil or anything.

00:03:53.880 No, totally fine.

00:03:55.280 Yeah, what could go wrong?

00:03:56.400 But isn't classically starting fires and torturing animals, aren't those like signs of sociopathic behavior?

00:04:02.320 Psychopathy, yeah.

00:04:02.840 I mean, for sure.

00:04:03.320 I mean, look, meth makes you – it makes you psychopathic.

00:04:06.100 It makes you psychotic.

00:04:06.960 It's meth-induced psychosis.

00:04:08.240 But, I mean, yeah, and all the crazy – I mean, people behave – I mean, things that people do on meth, I mean, it is like – it's like they behave with like superhuman crazy powers, the levels of violence, the assaults, the – I mean, you just – when you interview people, particularly people in recovery that describe being on meth.

00:04:28.040 I mean, they're just awake for like weeks at a time.

00:04:31.240 Like it's not even clear how they get any sleep at all.

00:04:34.340 So that's just – that madness has continued.

00:04:37.780 And, you know, and Mayor Bass, who's the –

00:04:39.880 Wait, so just to isolate what you're saying and just to pause to – I think it's a really important point.

00:04:46.380 Fires, at least half of fires in L.A. County are started by homeless people.

00:04:50.020 Yeah.

00:04:50.180 And you believe that's driven by their use of a specific drug, meth.

00:04:55.240 Not totally.

00:04:56.200 I mean, I think homeless people are going to often start fires for a lot of different reasons.

00:04:59.720 I mean, drugs can start fires.

00:05:01.160 But the meth heads are like into fire.

00:05:03.620 Like it's a big part of meth culture.

00:05:06.600 It's just starting things on fire.

00:05:08.080 No one sees this in theological terms.

00:05:09.760 It's like this is –

00:05:10.440 I know.

00:05:10.520 It's amazing.

00:05:11.280 Well, it is amazing.

00:05:12.340 Yeah.

00:05:13.020 No, it's satanic.

00:05:13.900 I mean, you kind of go –

00:05:14.600 Well, it seems that way.

00:05:15.280 It seems about as obvious as it could be.

00:05:17.340 Yeah.

00:05:18.220 It's awful.

00:05:20.180 So – but, you know, you kind of go – I mean, so first of all, that problem should have been dealt with obviously years ago.

00:05:25.900 It should never have been allowed.

00:05:27.740 So – but that – they knew on January 1st, January 2nd that the fires were coming.

00:05:33.280 Like it was inevitable that there would be fires.

00:05:35.780 Like there was like zero doubt among anybody that knows anything about fire in Los Angeles that the fires were coming.

00:05:41.700 The fires were coming.

00:05:43.020 So then like the governor should have been there.

00:05:44.760 The mayor should have been there.

00:05:46.020 You should just like – literally you should – it's all about – and it's all about prevention.

00:05:49.440 In part because by the time the fire trucks are having to weave their way up those little hills of the Pacific Palisades, it's over.

00:05:57.780 I mean – so the other thing to keep in mind is that – okay, well, so that's the first thing is that they just have to mobilize in advance.

00:06:03.300 So that's a feature for people who aren't aware of the geography of L.A.

00:06:06.040 Oh, it's just incredible.

00:06:07.780 I mean it's why it's so beautiful.

00:06:09.280 Beautiful places are dangerous.

00:06:10.300 That's exactly right.

00:06:11.140 So that was – so that's like the main event.

00:06:14.660 So the – I mean because I knew I did – my first thing I did is I was like, look, they're going to come out and say it was inevitable and that's just a total lie.

00:06:21.580 Because of global warming.

00:06:22.820 Yeah, because of global warming and – I mean anyway, we can get so – there's so many places to go here.

00:06:28.200 But just on the most practical sense, they knew the fires were coming and they didn't do anything.

00:06:34.260 The mayor leaves the country.

00:06:36.000 She flies to Ghana after having promised not to leave the country, by the way, as mayor.

00:06:40.940 She's traveled at least six times out of the country and she promised not to travel.

00:06:46.100 Why is it important the mayor be there?

00:06:47.400 Because you're saying, hey, well, aren't there other people in charge?

00:06:48.600 Because it's a command – it's an emergency command situation.

00:06:51.760 She has to be able to issue orders and to waive regulations and make things happen.

00:06:57.880 The governor has to be doing that.

00:06:59.960 They didn't do that.

00:07:01.120 They should have had – by the way, they should get the fire trucks up into the fiery areas right away.

00:07:06.080 They can also start – they can start clearing brush.

00:07:09.260 They can start – but literally they could just be in those neighborhoods just sitting there for days at a time waiting for the fires to happen, put them out as soon as they happen.

00:07:17.920 I'm not saying that they would have been able to prevent all the fires from happening.

00:07:22.640 But you remember like the big fire in 1993, I think it was Laguna Beach or maybe it was Malibu as well.

00:07:30.300 But it was like 700 homes.

00:07:31.720 We're at 10,000 structures at this point, homes and buildings gone.

00:07:36.740 You know, 200,000 people evacuated.

00:07:38.740 I mean, it's like – it's madness.

00:07:41.400 It never needed to get to that level.

00:07:44.380 Okay, so that's the first thing.

00:07:45.740 They just needed to have been there before the fire started and they didn't do that because the politicians are just – they're focused on themselves.

00:07:54.440 They're focused on the next political office they want to get.

00:07:57.600 So that was the first thing.

00:07:58.600 The second thing is the water runs out, right?

00:08:01.340 So that was – and you hear people go, oh, well, there's nothing you can do because like once the homes are burned down, like the water lines, you can see the pictures, you know, the water like will be spilling out, you know, of the homes.

00:08:11.020 And so that lowered the water pressure.

00:08:13.260 That was a total lie.

00:08:14.620 There is something called the Santa Inés Water Reservoir, which is the potable water, meaning the drinking water that also goes into the fire hydrant system because the fire hydrant – you know, the fire hydrant system is the drinking water system.

00:08:27.060 It's the same thing.

00:08:27.780 It's the exact same system.

00:08:29.940 That reservoir was empty and it was the second largest of the 10 potable water reservoirs that serve L.A. County.

00:08:39.200 Let me make one distinction here because there's actually two kinds of reservoirs.

00:08:43.580 There's the reservoir with the snowmelt water, these really big lakes basically, and then there's – and that's the unpurified water.

00:08:53.060 And then those – and then they purify it and then they feed into these reservoirs where they store the water for all sorts of reasons for emergencies.

00:08:59.820 So that is an absolute crime that that Santa Inés Reservoir – why?

00:09:05.080 Because, first of all, it's right next to the Pacific Palisades.

00:09:08.440 So for people that don't know, Pacific Palisades, of course, is like right near – it's on your way to Malibu.

00:09:13.220 It's like the last big neighborhood before you get to the –

00:09:15.520 And they're palisades.

00:09:16.300 They're over the water.

00:09:17.440 That's right.

00:09:18.060 And so they have a reservoir.

00:09:18.840 You look at the Google Maps and you look at where the Santa Inés Reservoir is.

00:09:22.500 It's right next to like a few thousand feet from Pacific Palisades and it's above – it's really high up.

00:09:28.920 And so if you had had water coming from that, the firefighters would have had plenty of water.

00:09:33.840 It would not have – they would have had the water pressure even if you had lost some homes and had those – the water out.

00:09:39.780 So I mean – so two major failures.

00:09:44.060 The first was the failure to aggressively respond days in advance even though they had very clear warnings.

00:09:49.280 The second was the reservoir was empty.

00:09:52.240 One reporter has reported that the firefighters had not been warned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power that that reservoir was empty.

00:10:03.420 If that's true, that's just additionally scandalous.

00:10:06.500 But one of the things that we think probably happened is that they had been required to build – have a cover for the clean – for the Santa Inés Reservoir, which is the potable water, the cover to prevent the water from being contaminated.

00:10:22.640 In the old days, like the 50s and 60s, you know, birds would poop in those reservoirs and they would just put a bunch of chlorine in them.

00:10:30.220 And then we decided, well, the water was still – had a lot of – you know, it still was not particularly clean, so we wanted to be cleaner.

00:10:36.680 So you can just put a cover over it, which is a kind of plastic or rubber lining.

00:10:42.000 It appears that there was a tear in that.

00:10:44.240 They had to repair it.

00:10:46.060 They should not have removed that water ever during a fire season.

00:10:51.140 If you need to make that repair, you do need to drain right before you do the repair.

00:10:55.300 But you would make that drain, and the people that I interviewed said, look, it would take, you know, days if not a couple of weeks to repair it.

00:11:03.600 It was empty for at least a year.

00:11:05.940 So it was sitting there for a year.

00:11:07.240 And the person I interviewed who works as a senior executive at a different water utility in California said if we had any of our reservoirs empty, we would be, like, super nervous the entire time.

00:11:20.640 And you would also then have backup water systems.

00:11:22.920 So it's like any catastrophe.

00:11:25.380 You know, you just have multiple errors occurring in advance and at the moment.

00:11:31.540 And then the fires.

00:11:32.700 And then the actual ignitions.

00:11:34.080 You can't completely prevent ignitions, but you can significantly reduce them.

00:11:38.840 One would be to not allow people to camp outside all over Los Angeles, Los Angeles County with somewhere around, I think it's 40,000 to 60,000 homeless people in the whole county.

00:11:52.400 Madness.

00:11:52.880 And then the other is the electrical wires that brush up against the vegetation and create fire.

00:11:58.600 With that, you want to clear the vegetation from around the wires.

00:12:02.120 That's obvious.

00:12:03.400 And then you can also just stop.

00:12:05.740 I mean, this is a not great solution, but you could certainly do it in a pinch if you need to.

00:12:10.480 You just stop the electricity from going into those homes for some period.

00:12:13.780 I mean, it's a drag.

00:12:14.580 I live in the Berkeley Hills, which is also a dangerous fire zone.

00:12:19.800 And when the winds are really strong, they'll just cut off power as a precaution so that to prevent an ignition.

00:12:26.180 So I think the thing that the reason I wanted to come on your show, even though I'm in the midst of a huge book deadline, is because I'm really concerned about this nihilistic discourse that there's literally nothing that could be done.

00:12:41.080 I mean, that is exactly where the politicians want to go.

00:12:43.460 I worry that, you know, ordinary people have that idea.

00:12:46.660 The problem is, I mean, it's absurd.

00:12:48.980 I mean, this idea that you couldn't live in Los Angeles, right?

00:12:52.100 And it's like, you can say it about anywhere.

00:12:54.900 You'd be like, oh, there's snowfalls in this place during winter, you know, or hurricanes.

00:12:59.700 I mean, we're in an area that's Hurricane Valley, right?

00:13:01.720 Like huge amounts of hurricanes.

00:13:03.600 That's not how humans roll.

00:13:06.180 Like, we're capable of living in many different environments, including with extreme weather conditions.

00:13:10.940 What's like saying, I can't stop my kids from dying of tetanus?

00:13:13.960 Right.

00:13:14.380 Or starving to death?

00:13:15.320 Right.

00:13:15.680 I mean, what?

00:13:16.240 Yes.

00:13:16.800 It's so nihilistic.

00:13:17.580 There's no way to become an agency.

00:13:19.120 No, that's totally not.

00:13:19.540 It's so nihilistic.

00:13:20.300 And you trace it back.

00:13:21.480 I mean, the best, the most articulate advocate of that view is a Marxist named Mike Davis,

00:13:30.540 who wrote this book called City of Courts.

00:13:33.160 It's a crazy nihilistic book, but he had an essay and also it's a chapter in that book called

00:13:38.460 Let Malibu Burn.

00:13:40.460 I mean, it's classic kind of radical left politics.

00:13:45.460 It's classic sort of envy or sour grapes.

00:13:48.840 I mean, sour grapes goes, I can't remember the parable, but basically it's like some

00:13:52.980 animal wants to eat these grapes, but they're up too high.

00:13:56.040 And then he says, oh, well, those grapes were sour anyway.

00:13:59.000 It's a consolation for your own personal weakness and failure.

00:14:02.760 That's just, you know, let Malibu burn.

00:14:04.680 I mean, you know, you have an ideology of Marxism that is based on resentment and envy.

00:14:10.600 And so then you go, well, yeah, all those rich houses should go up in flames.

00:14:14.320 It's a fantasy.

00:14:15.240 I mean, it's a left-wing fantasy.

00:14:16.720 I should know.

00:14:17.320 I was on the radical left, like the fantasy.

00:14:20.580 You hate the rich people because you want their wealth and you admire them in some level,

00:14:26.340 but you know you can't get it.

00:14:27.480 So, I mean, this is how envy works.

00:14:29.200 So you end up constructing this whole political ideology.

00:14:32.300 I mean, this is what Marx has done.

00:14:34.160 And it's infected like the citizenry.

00:14:37.040 I mean, it's infected the politicians.

00:14:38.440 And so there's this, I think that even though it's not consciously, the politicians aren't consciously saying, oh, let's let Malibu burn.

00:14:47.660 That is the behaviors they have taken have had that impact.

00:14:53.180 So I think that what you're seeing in real time in these fires in Los Angeles, these destructive fires, is the manifestation of a nihilistic ideology.

00:15:04.140 It's an emergent quality.

00:15:05.860 It happens through a million small steps.

00:15:07.460 But this heavy focus on left-wing ideology, whether it's DEI or ESG or climate apocalypse or just class resentment manifests itself in like the most spectacular, beautiful neighborhoods just being turned into ashes and cinders.

00:15:22.280 It's also on a more prosaic level of violation of like the most basic agreement there is between citizens and their government, which is I send you more than half of what I own, but you keep my house from burning down and methods from scaring my children or whatever.

00:15:38.560 Like you provide public safety, fire protection, you know, water, sewer, electricity, like just the basic stuff seems to be totally ignored.

00:15:48.500 Absolutely.

00:15:49.340 So why is anyone paying taxes?

00:15:50.780 Why isn't there a revolution?

00:15:51.900 There should be.

00:15:52.780 Well, because, of course, they're all trapped by this ideology.

00:15:55.080 I mean, these are the neighborhoods that voted overwhelmingly for Kamala, that voted overwhelmingly for Gavin Newsom, that voted overwhelmingly for Karen Bass.

00:16:03.220 I mean, Tucker, I watched – I saw focus groups in 2022 with two – Latinos, men and women separated, Latino group and a white group.

00:16:16.240 And the Latinos were great.

00:16:18.080 I mean, they were just like – when they started talking about the mayoral race, they were like, well, what are their positions and like what are their policies and what do they want to do and whatever.

00:16:24.440 And they were very rational about it.

00:16:25.780 They're very – as you would hope, they were self-interested.

00:16:28.520 Yeah, what do I get out of this?

00:16:29.600 What do I get out of these candidates?

00:16:30.580 Fair question.

00:16:31.260 The whites – I mean, it was amazing.

00:16:35.180 First of all, every focus group, when the moderator would just be like, oh, hey, how's it going around here?

00:16:39.840 They don't even try to lead the conversation anywhere.

00:16:42.360 And everybody just starts talking about the homeless situation and the crime, which is basically continuous with homelessness.

00:16:49.060 And then they would be like, oh, yeah, okay, well, about the remedies.

00:16:51.220 Oh, there's a mayoral race coming up.

00:16:52.420 I think it was in the – it was like in the summer, you know, that these focus groups were held in 2022.

00:16:56.240 Caruso versus Bass.

00:16:57.340 Caruso versus Bass.

00:16:58.540 And they hadn't really been thinking a ton about it.

00:17:00.600 But there's a moment there where you see it dawns on the white focus group participants.

00:17:06.840 And they were not like recruiting like leftists or Democrats or anything.

00:17:09.700 It was just supposed to be a mixed group of swing voters.

00:17:11.900 And they just – as soon as it dawned on them that there was a black woman running, they were like, oh, well, I mean, that's – I mean, got to vote for the black woman.

00:17:22.940 Like it was the most racist – like you would think like in the most racist moments in American history, you know, the stereotypes that we would have, you know, about the South or whatever, you know, reconstruction or something.

00:17:36.200 Like people would not be as open and honest about it.

00:17:39.400 But they were just like openly like, well, we have to vote for the black woman.

00:17:43.900 And then in the rest of the focus group, when they – a lot of them knew who Caruso was because, you know, he's famous for these really spectacular, you know, housing developments.

00:17:54.280 And also they're – like kind of calling them malls is a kind of – well, so I just described it.

00:17:58.720 It was beautiful like outdoor shopping centers with like lawns and you can get like a – you know, fantastic restaurants and you can like – the kids can play freely on these lawns.

00:18:07.720 I mean, it's sort of tragic because, of course, it's all private.

00:18:10.580 It's not public spaces.

00:18:12.300 But nonetheless, you feel safe.

00:18:13.520 You go in there.

00:18:14.040 It's an amazing place.

00:18:14.680 So they knew him for that.

00:18:15.980 I – these white participants, I was watching them through basically over like the next hour, hour and a half, explaining why Caruso was a bad guy for just running against this black woman.

00:18:28.580 Like it was just outrageous.

00:18:30.200 And what is he trying to do?

00:18:30.980 He's trying to make money.

00:18:32.100 I mean, which is just crazy because, of course, he's just, you know, like – I think he's like a billionaire.

00:18:36.560 I mean, he's self-made and extraordinarily successful person and clearly running for mayor is an altruistic act.

00:18:44.280 So it was just appalling.

00:18:45.880 So, of course, I mean, I have to say –

00:18:47.440 What is that?

00:18:48.740 I mean, I've been to every big white country in the last year.

00:18:52.260 Australia, Canada, UK, US, obviously.

00:18:55.620 And that very specific brand of self-hatred, nihilism, that brain disease is everywhere.

00:19:04.140 It's not just here.

00:19:05.100 It's throughout the Anglosphere.

00:19:07.940 And it's history changing and it's effects.

00:19:10.300 Like what is that?

00:19:11.480 Why is the white world determined to kill itself?

00:19:15.260 Do you have any idea?

00:19:16.520 It's really noticeable.

00:19:17.820 Yeah.

00:19:18.080 I mean, there's so much in that.

00:19:19.120 I mean, it seems like there's like multiple levels.

00:19:21.120 I mean, at one superficial level or at least a kind of psychological, sociological level, they're all competing with each other to show who's a better person.

00:19:28.920 The more I – the more hatred I express towards white people, the better I am as a human being.

00:19:35.200 Like destroying your own kids is like the measure of virtue.

00:19:37.960 Oh, yeah.

00:19:39.140 The nihilism.

00:19:39.820 Obviously, this is a very old story about decadence and of, you know, comfort and you start to kind of believe – I mean, there's something really checked out from reality about the whole thing.

00:19:52.300 I mean, first of all, it's – the stories that get told are just, you know, like absurd.

00:19:58.880 Like 1619 being the founding of America.

00:20:02.160 That's just obviously wrong.

00:20:04.200 The country was founded – you know, our Constitution is 1789, Declaration of Independence is 1776.

00:20:10.140 And not only that, but like slavery was never at the heart of the United States.

00:20:13.500 It was always – it was a whole place committed to – it was English Americans or the American English as they were referred to wanting to create a country the first time that was just founded on the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and of free expression.

00:20:27.640 I mean, it's so important.

00:20:28.260 They put it as the First Amendment.

00:20:29.280 They insist on the Bill of Rights.

00:20:30.280 It's – so you just get this completely twisted, you know, disinformation story about the United States that gets embraced.

00:20:39.340 But, yeah, it's nihilism.

00:20:40.520 I mean –

00:20:40.760 But embraced by whites at when it's aimed.

00:20:43.940 So it is a – I mean, leaving us at the fact that it's false.

00:20:46.860 But, you know, a lot of creation myths are false.

00:20:48.760 But this one is false in a specific way, which is like you suck and you should die and all the way.

00:20:53.760 It's like, yeah, you're right.

00:20:54.360 I should.

00:20:55.040 Right.

00:20:55.380 What – it's –

00:20:56.220 I mean, it's end of civilization sort of ideology, isn't it?

00:20:59.460 That's it.

00:20:59.780 It's like what – I don't – I've never seen anything like it.

00:21:02.820 No, I mean, when you read the old –

00:21:04.060 And it is the whites, too.

00:21:05.420 Oh, yeah.

00:21:06.300 No, because the Latinos – I mean, they're –

00:21:07.580 Oh, they don't – they're like, what?

00:21:08.840 Yeah, they're – for sure.

00:21:10.580 They're like working – they're like more working class.

00:21:12.640 They're more Christian.

00:21:13.920 They're more – they love America more.

00:21:15.600 They remember where they came from more.

00:21:18.360 So, yeah.

00:21:19.320 I mean, it's also – yeah.

00:21:20.880 So, it's just – in some ways, it's an old story of a civilization just at its end.

00:21:26.000 I mean, including all the transgenderism.

00:21:28.320 I mean, that's –

00:21:28.660 Of course.

00:21:28.880 You know, that's the – Camille Paglia's famous writing about how that shows up at the end of civilizations.

00:21:34.420 And so, you know, if you read Toynbee, it's like one of the characteristics is when the elites stop – the creative class of elites, which is, I mean, Los Angeles, they stop identifying with their own working class.

00:21:48.820 And they start to identify with, you know, with outsiders, basically, with people from – foreigners from outside the country.

00:21:55.780 That's another sign of a civilization at its end.

00:21:58.780 So, we were in a meeting here at TCN the other day, and I looked around the room, and every other person had a kind of ruddy vitality, sort of pink cheeks, alertness, bright eyes, full mental acuity, and a cheerfulness you could almost smell.

00:22:16.720 And I asked, why does everyone look so good?

00:22:20.160 And part of the answer, of course, is they like what we do for a living.

00:22:23.560 It's really interesting.

00:22:24.520 We think it's important.

00:22:25.280 But another reason everyone looks so good is because they'd all had a great night sleep.

00:22:32.900 I'm not making this up.

00:22:34.760 Almost everybody here uses a new sleep technology from a company called 8Sleep.

00:22:41.240 They sent it to us, and everyone here loves it.

00:22:44.280 It's called The Pod.

00:22:45.660 It's a high-tech mattress cover, effectively, that you add to your existing bed.

00:22:49.500 You don't need a new bed or anything like that.

00:22:51.220 You just throw this over what you have.

00:22:52.640 What it does is adjusts the temperature of your bed, warmer or cooler, depending on what you want.

00:23:00.380 And it maintains an ideal sleeping environment all night long.

00:23:04.040 So I didn't know this, but as you progress through different phases of sleep, your body's needs change.

00:23:10.080 And 8Sleep automatically keeps things exactly where they should be in the sweet spot through the entire night.

00:23:16.480 It's been proven to increase the quality of your sleep, the amount you sleep, every night.

00:23:23.140 It improves your recovery time from physical exertion, and it may even improve your cognitive performance and enhance your overall health.

00:23:31.040 It seems to be doing that in our office.

00:23:33.000 So it learns and adapts to your sleep patterns over time and automatically adjusts the temperatures throughout the night through each phase of sleep.

00:23:40.860 And it does this independently for each sleeper on either side of the bed.

00:23:46.480 That's pretty cool.

00:23:47.720 So you can sleep well and feel much better and be more effective the next morning as we are here.

00:23:55.320 Try it for yourself.

00:23:56.440 Go to 8sleep.com slash Tucker.

00:23:59.300 Use the promo code Tucker to get an extra $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.

00:24:05.020 You can try it with zero obligation for a month, and if you don't like it, just send it back.

00:24:09.120 Again, that's 8sleep.com slash Tucker.

00:24:12.140 Better sleep today and look great in your morning meetings, as our guys do.

00:24:18.780 Hillsdale College offers many great free online courses, including a recent one on Marxism, Socialism, and Communism.

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00:24:49.920 That's tuckerforhillsdale.com.

00:24:55.740 Don Jr. here, guys.

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00:25:49.700 You alluded a minute ago to its cause being affluence.

00:26:00.640 Just generational affluence makes people—

00:26:02.340 Seems like it.

00:26:02.820 It feels that way to me, too.

00:26:04.340 I'm not an expert.

00:26:05.140 I mean, it's a cliche, but like a lot of cliches, it's got a lot of truth to it,

00:26:09.080 is the good times make soft men, and soft men make bad times.

00:26:14.400 So, I mean, there's obviously been a huge correction in the United States,

00:26:19.520 which is, you know, welcome, which is a sort of re-embrace of the ideals of the United States.

00:26:27.760 I mean, let's hope that this has been a wake-up call for the people of Los Angeles.

00:26:32.920 I mean, it's—they are reaping what they sowed,

00:26:36.420 and the people of California are reaping what we sowed.

00:26:39.080 And, you know, that is—you know, I mean, it's really quite symbolic.

00:26:45.200 You know, it's like the neighborhoods of the elites in Los Angeles

00:26:48.840 that are really—that really got the most effective, that are having to flee.

00:26:52.460 And—but again, I mean, part of the reason I wanted to come on,

00:26:55.060 I've been writing about it every day and trying to surface the stories of the utility—

00:26:59.240 the water utility executives, and I've got a story coming out later today from a firefighter

00:27:02.720 who, you know, like, basically just described—I mean, the firefighters, of course,

00:27:09.860 the men and women on the ground doing the hard work, they're blameless.

00:27:13.580 But, I mean, the destruction—there's 29 fire departments in Los Angeles,

00:27:18.360 including L.A. County Fire Department.

00:27:21.580 You know, there's 88 cities.

00:27:23.460 And people don't realize, like, Los Angeles is a city,

00:27:25.580 but then there's a much larger county around it with 88 cities in it.

00:27:29.120 And there's—and not all of them have fire departments.

00:27:32.280 In fact, most of them don't, right?

00:27:33.220 So the ones that don't have their own fire departments,

00:27:35.640 they depend on L.A. County Fire Department.

00:27:38.380 But, you know, and it's been this way for a long time,

00:27:40.780 so it's not like it can't work, but it definitely introduces a level of complexity into it.

00:27:45.300 I mean, the priorities of these fire departments,

00:27:47.100 it's not just like a social media meme.

00:27:49.220 I mean, the—it really has been DEI.

00:27:52.100 Like, it really has been the priority of these fire departments.

00:27:55.580 The first priority of the fire departments should be to put out fires

00:27:58.440 and keep people safe and save lives.

00:28:00.380 But the first priority has been DEI.

00:28:02.700 I mean, that is clearly—

00:28:03.880 Is there evidence?

00:28:04.860 Do we have social science that shows that lesbians are better firemen than non-lesbians?

00:28:09.940 I mean, I mean, the—I mean, what are the chances, right?

00:28:13.080 That, like, all three of these executives are—

00:28:15.800 I mean, you know, it's like—it's also sort of like—

00:28:19.780 I mean, it's funny because the way that the defenders of it sort of talk about it

00:28:24.360 is as though they're imposing equality.

00:28:27.120 Actually, they're demanding that it not be based on merit.

00:28:31.280 I mean, first of all, there was never any evidence that the fire departments

00:28:34.200 were, like, systematically or structurally excluding qualified people.

00:28:38.720 I mean, it's not to say that never happened.

00:28:41.360 There wasn't some racism.

00:28:42.520 I mean, of course there is.

00:28:43.480 But it's like you're getting—they got into a situation where, like,

00:28:46.440 people are getting promoted who were not as qualified as other people on basis of race.

00:28:50.780 I mean, that is anathema to the American system.

00:28:53.800 And by the way, the people of California have now twice rejected racial preferences.

00:28:58.040 One of them in 1996, I believe, and then the other again in 20—was it 2018, I believe?

00:29:04.600 They also rejected gay marriage, but they're not allowed to get what they want, actually, it turns out.

00:29:08.940 Because whenever you think of gay marriage or racial preferences or whatever,

00:29:12.040 if you believe in democracy and you have a referendum system, you have to abide by the results.

00:29:15.520 Well, yeah, and they haven't.

00:29:16.740 No, they haven't.

00:29:17.460 I mean, the spirit of California—I mean, there's a true spirit of California that I do think is very American,

00:29:23.160 which is really egalitarianism.

00:29:25.080 I mean, the American creed, if you believe Daniel Bell's analysis of it, you know, it's liberty, it's laissez-faire,

00:29:32.220 it's individualism, and it's egalitarianism.

00:29:34.320 It's the state I grew up in.

00:29:35.400 It was the most American of all states.

00:29:36.960 That's right.

00:29:37.560 It's not equity.

00:29:39.320 It's equality of opportunity.

00:29:40.940 That's what egalitarianism is.

00:29:41.920 It doesn't matter who your family was.

00:29:44.160 We used to say when I was a kid, no one in California used his last name.

00:29:47.480 Now, why would that be?

00:29:48.560 You know, you go back east, as we called it.

00:29:50.420 We'd go in the summertime.

00:29:51.580 I'd be like, hi, I'm Michael Schellenberger in California.

00:29:54.720 He's like, I'm Mike.

00:29:55.380 Well, my father would always say, that's because in California, it's not about the legacy of your family.

00:30:00.440 It's not about caste.

00:30:01.580 It's about you.

00:30:02.860 Can you do it or not?

00:30:03.840 Right.

00:30:04.380 That seemed like a great system to me.

00:30:05.860 It's great.

00:30:06.800 I mean, that's what I love.

00:30:07.560 I mean, it's the part I love about California.

00:30:09.000 It's like, I lived on the east coast for like a year.

00:30:10.760 It was a traumatic experience.

00:30:12.100 You'd go to parties and someone would be like, oh, what school did you go to?

00:30:15.320 Oh, totally.

00:30:15.900 And then they'd be kind of looking over your shoulder.

00:30:17.580 And you're like, well, what, like, who cares what school I went to?

00:30:20.340 Like, you know, who am I?

00:30:22.000 Exactly.

00:30:22.220 What are my passions?

00:30:23.540 Exactly.

00:30:24.160 So that was like, I was like, wow, that is weird.

00:30:27.280 You know, in California, it's like, what's your jam, dude?

00:30:29.180 You know, it's like really like, what are you into?

00:30:30.880 You know, it's that's like the best of it.

00:30:32.520 Who are you as a person?

00:30:33.520 Yeah.

00:30:33.660 Who are you as a person?

00:30:34.480 It's the human, you know, it's like, obviously there you can get culty and whatever, but I mean,

00:30:38.540 it is the best of that human potential.

00:30:40.520 Well, you're not held responsible for the sins of people you're related to.

00:30:45.760 Well, I, and you know, I come from a complicated family, so I always love that idea.

00:30:50.000 You know what I was like?

00:30:50.960 Yeah.

00:30:51.240 You're judged on you.

00:30:52.380 Yes.

00:30:52.580 The choices that you make and the character that you have.

00:30:54.840 Right.

00:30:55.420 Your decency.

00:30:56.360 Which is actually radical individual responsibility.

00:30:59.200 That's what I always thought.

00:31:00.280 Yeah.

00:31:00.840 I mean, that was always for me, it was like, you know, Victor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search

00:31:04.520 for Meaning.

00:31:04.960 Yes.

00:31:05.160 He was just incredibly a Holocaust survivor.

00:31:06.860 The whole thing was, was like, you know, being in a death camp shouldn't control how

00:31:11.440 I think about the world.

00:31:12.740 I mean, that's about as radical of a, of an individual mentality point of view.

00:31:18.940 And now, of course, that's viewed as very right wing and very unsympathetic and whatever.

00:31:23.620 But Victor Frankl was just loved by the existentialist California left in the sixties.

00:31:28.540 I mean, he would sell out these huge auditorium in Berkeley and they would, you know, they'd go

00:31:32.800 to Esalen.

00:31:33.340 And so, I mean, you go from that to basically nobody taking responsibility.

00:31:39.780 I mean, it's incredible.

00:31:40.860 And everyone living under the crushing burden of history, most of it misconstrued in a lie

00:31:45.540 anyway.

00:31:46.000 But still, the idea that the past is determining the present and the future, that's like the

00:31:51.000 least Californian, least American idea ever.

00:31:53.880 That's so well-spoken.

00:31:54.940 No, no, it's totally brilliantly well-spoken.

00:31:56.560 Absolutely.

00:31:57.440 Yeah.

00:31:57.600 I mean, it's like we, in our next book, we're doing, we were working on this idea of these

00:32:01.540 singularities, meaning like these just awful events in the past, the Holocaust, slavery,

00:32:07.460 indigenous genocide.

00:32:09.280 And they become like gods for secular people.

00:32:12.920 They become like super present.

00:32:15.140 Like, you know, there's, it's just everything that we do is affected by slavery and, you know,

00:32:20.160 everything that, this is indigenous land.

00:32:21.900 I mean, I was going through the, I was just going through the, all of like the various

00:32:25.740 documents over the years of like water and fire and disaster in Los Angeles.

00:32:29.260 And they, they like all open with land acknowledgements, you know, you're just like, well, yeah,

00:32:33.140 be like, literally you think that white people don't belong here.

00:32:37.120 Like that is literally what you're saying in those land acknowledgements.

00:32:39.300 You're saying we don't belong here.

00:32:41.980 And you may have seen, there's a very, there's a clip that went viral on social media with the

00:32:46.880 deputy police, the deputy fire chief of Los Angeles, where she's sort of saying,

00:32:51.900 oh yeah, people will ask me, you know, can you carry my husband out of a house, you know,

00:32:56.800 in danger?

00:32:57.580 And she's like, well, you know, your husband got himself in a place that he shouldn't have been.

00:33:01.860 That was her response.

00:33:03.280 It was like, I saw that video and my first thought was that can't be, was that real?

00:33:08.040 I know.

00:33:08.540 It looks like a parody.

00:33:09.740 It's crazy.

00:33:10.720 You're like, yeah, that's literally your job is to be able to carry someone.

00:33:14.260 Can you imagine like someone being like, oh yeah, your father, your elderly father,

00:33:18.240 you know, we couldn't carry him out of the house and he shouldn't have been in that house

00:33:22.420 when it was.

00:33:22.780 Or your daughter gets raped walking to school.

00:33:24.960 Well, she shouldn't have been wearing a skirt.

00:33:26.160 Right.

00:33:26.620 Yeah.

00:33:27.220 Which was all.

00:33:28.840 That's like the left campaign.

00:33:30.200 Like when I was in college, like that was the whole, don't blame the victim.

00:33:32.980 That was the whole thing.

00:33:33.900 Of course they're all.

00:33:35.280 Which I would kind of agree with, by the way.

00:33:37.080 I mean, you should be able to look attractive and not get raped.

00:33:39.720 Of course.

00:33:40.200 You should be allowed to be old and immobile and not die in a fire.

00:33:42.860 Right.

00:33:43.080 What are we even saying?

00:33:44.240 That's civilization.

00:33:45.380 It's civilization.

00:33:46.220 Yeah.

00:33:46.660 Exactly.

00:33:47.220 Yeah.

00:33:47.560 What's the point of civilization?

00:33:49.080 The point of civilization is to protect the vulnerable.

00:33:51.260 Right.

00:33:51.420 To make it possible for people to reproduce and continue.

00:33:54.700 Right.

00:33:55.080 To make it possible for you to have kids and your kids to have kids.

00:33:57.680 Like there's no reason to have it other than that.

00:33:59.720 At the most basic level.

00:34:00.800 Yes.

00:34:01.220 And so I don't understand, like, how could she say something like that and not get fired

00:34:05.140 or arrested?

00:34:05.820 She should have been fired as soon as that came out.

00:34:08.260 I mean, and Gavin Newsom should have called for her to be fired.

00:34:10.320 The mayor should have called for her to be fired.

00:34:11.740 She's still in that job.

00:34:12.760 I mean, she's that that's dangerous.

00:34:15.880 Like it's a violation of firefighter ethics.

00:34:18.620 It's that person is a danger.

00:34:21.060 In other words, she's going around suggesting to all of her people that work for her that

00:34:25.360 they're not responsible for saving.

00:34:27.460 But I think it reflects the mentality, which is a nihilistic mentality, which is that we

00:34:32.020 don't belong here.

00:34:33.080 You know, we stole we stole this land.

00:34:36.420 And so you so and this is this, you know, Mal, let Malibu burn.

00:34:40.720 I mean, it is definitely definitionally nihilism.

00:34:44.720 I mean, it's anti-civilization nihilism.

00:34:47.180 You know, there's sort of two forms of nihilism.

00:34:49.200 One of them is basically anti-civilization, anti-human, anti-modern life.

00:34:55.040 And it stems from this earlier nihilism, which is that life has no meaning.

00:35:00.180 We're just like animals in the famous Russian novel, Fathers and Sons by Turgarev.

00:35:05.200 You know, the nihilistic character dissects a frog and says, we're just like this frog.

00:35:10.640 You know, we're just matter, you know, we're just dead matter, just disassembled.

00:35:16.000 So it's a very dark nihilistic story that then leads to this just, yeah, nihilistic anti-civilization

00:35:24.720 ideology, which became very fashionable.

00:35:26.700 I mean, City of Courts, the Mike Davis book, I mean, it was a very fashionable book to read

00:35:32.260 in places like Pacific Palisades and Hollywood and Santa Monica and Venice.

00:35:37.840 So, yeah, I think it's, you know, I hope it's a wake-up call.

00:35:42.180 I don't know if it will be, but it is a completely preventable disaster.

00:35:48.420 Fires are definitely not completely preventable, but that level of destruction absolutely is.

00:35:54.460 And anybody who says that it is not preventable should be as far away from power as possible.

00:36:00.740 Like anybody who believes that it was inevitable to lose 10,000 homes and buildings in Los Angeles

00:36:07.640 over a week, they should not be in political, they should be very far away from political

00:36:12.220 power.

00:36:12.860 They should not be in charge of any fire department because it ends up becoming a self-fulfilling

00:36:17.820 prophecy.

00:36:18.700 So I've taken you right to 50,000 feet, the future of the whites and all this stuff, which

00:36:23.320 I'm grateful that you addressed.

00:36:25.200 But just back to the, and I'm sorry for digressing so much, back to the first question, how did

00:36:31.220 this start?

00:36:31.960 You gave a great explanation.

00:36:33.640 Did climate change play a role?

00:36:35.520 Was this caused by climate change?

00:36:37.060 No, it's not caused by climate change.

00:36:39.600 I mean, certainly warmer weathers, all else being equal, makes the wood, you know, drier.

00:36:45.600 But there is no change in precipitation over, since 1877, they've kept very good records

00:36:51.820 of rainfall, annual rainfall in the Los Angeles basin, and it's unchanged.

00:36:57.220 Really?

00:36:57.620 There are, I know, it's incredible.

00:36:58.840 There's wet years and dry years.

00:37:00.640 You know, you look at it, I just posted on X, it's just, people can go look at it, it's

00:37:03.760 from the Almanac.

00:37:05.920 No change in precipitation at all in Los Angeles.

00:37:10.000 There have been Santa Ana winds in January, many times in the past.

00:37:14.440 There have been, you know, and by the way, like we, this is a dry year now, but the last

00:37:20.380 two years were very heavy rains.

00:37:22.740 Too heavy.

00:37:23.480 Yeah.

00:37:24.020 Mudslide heavy.

00:37:24.880 Yeah.

00:37:25.660 And so, you know, it's extremes.

00:37:28.220 I mean, it's what, you know, that's why California is so beautiful.

00:37:30.340 It's a place of extremes.

00:37:31.500 And so we, you know, we adapt to that.

00:37:34.060 I mean, you know, like.

00:37:35.880 But there's been no, in the aggregate, change in rainfall in 140 years.

00:37:40.240 No.

00:37:40.900 Absolutely not.

00:37:42.320 Not, not.

00:37:43.020 It's crazy.

00:37:43.340 Yeah.

00:37:44.340 No.

00:37:44.520 So why are they.

00:37:45.220 It's actually a remarkably stable climate.

00:37:47.160 Well, it is, I mean, anyone who's lived there can tell you that's, that's its appeal.

00:37:52.340 Yeah.

00:37:52.760 It is a pretty stable climate, actually.

00:37:55.100 Yeah.

00:37:55.460 I mean, it's stable climate with these amazing extremes.

00:37:58.080 So like, you know, you just get these, I mean, the best, I mean, for my favorite weather

00:38:01.400 is like after like, you know, three days of just intense rains and you're just like trying

00:38:05.980 to make sure that your house isn't flooded and, you know, the mud's everywhere.

00:38:09.280 It's just, the dogs are bringing in mud.

00:38:11.660 And then the sun comes out and it's just heaven on earth.

00:38:14.840 I mean, that's why we're in California, right?

00:38:16.540 You're just like, ah, so we love those.

00:38:19.000 We love those extremes.

00:38:21.740 Yeah.

00:38:22.240 I mean, I think that's part of the, I mean, it's so funny because it's like you, the reversion

00:38:26.760 back to these, you know, people are cursing the weather, you know, they're blaming the

00:38:31.160 weather.

00:38:32.520 That's why we do human sacrifice.

00:38:34.320 Yeah.

00:38:35.180 Yeah, exactly.

00:38:36.480 Well, another one was literally just before I got here, the legislature got to its very

00:38:40.920 important work of passing a bill just now that sets aside $50 million for California to sue

00:38:48.680 Trump.

00:38:49.480 Like literally, and they were in a special session that they kept going.

00:38:54.720 They were in a special session to figure out how to sue Trump while LA is burning.

00:39:00.620 And meanwhile, Gavin's going out there all the time being like, oh, well, boy, it'd be

00:39:03.600 really terrible if, you know, if Trump, you know, withheld disaster aid or heaven forbid,

00:39:08.980 you know, required that we, you know, get our shit together.

00:39:13.800 I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say in your podcast, get our things together.

00:39:17.480 And then like literally he's like, we're going to sue him for implementing the agenda he was

00:39:21.620 elected on by a majority of the American people.

00:39:23.960 So it's just an MSNBC agenda.

00:39:25.420 It's just a silly rich white liberal agenda.

00:39:27.440 And I will say, I've thought for 20 years that California will only be saved by like

00:39:31.900 naive Bukele type figure.

00:39:33.860 Some authoritarian Latino in a cape is going to show up and just impose order on the state.

00:39:39.680 And I'm not, I'm not being, I am white.

00:39:41.300 I'm not against whites.

00:39:42.080 I love whites.

00:39:42.680 My children are white.

00:39:43.440 But that the fact is they can't do it in that state.

00:39:46.620 Gavin Newsom can't do it.

00:39:47.740 The burden of guilt and self-hatred is too heavy.

00:39:50.640 And you're going to get some guy from Oaxaca who's smart is going to be like, we're not

00:39:55.080 putting up any of this bullshit at all.

00:39:56.680 And no, you can't camp in LA.

00:39:58.420 No, you can't do meth in LA.

00:40:00.060 And yes, we are going to have like full reservoir.

00:40:01.760 I mean, do you know what I mean?

00:40:02.580 It would be amazing.

00:40:03.860 It would be amazing if we had that.

00:40:05.400 I mean, there was sort of an idea that Karen Bass, because she was black and because she

00:40:10.040 came from the left, would be able to do things that a white guy wouldn't be able to do.

00:40:13.820 That was part of the reasoning for her.

00:40:16.900 She didn't do it.

00:40:17.540 I mean, she's just, I mean, look, she's very, people have to remember, she's very radical.

00:40:21.240 I mean, and I get it.

00:40:22.160 I mean, I was like, I was there, but I left it.

00:40:24.300 But, you know, she went to Cuba a bunch of times.

00:40:26.680 Oh, for sure.

00:40:27.200 And, you know, like admired Castro.

00:40:29.180 And you kind of thought, well, maybe that was behind her, but it's not.

00:40:32.680 You know, it really isn't.

00:40:33.620 I mean, the thing where like, you're like literally get a warning that the whole city's

00:40:37.200 going to go up in flames.

00:40:37.940 And you're like, oh, I really got to be in Ghana for the inauguration of the new president.

00:40:41.760 I mean, look at where your head's at.

00:40:43.820 I mean, she talks about, she just loves going to Africa all the time.

00:40:45.960 I love going to Africa.

00:40:47.000 But I do too.

00:40:47.500 You're like, you're like the mayor of like.

00:40:50.160 It's just silly and selfish, really.

00:40:51.820 It's really narcissistic.

00:40:53.340 It's really vapid.

00:40:55.580 It's not good to have people kiss your ass your whole life and tell you.

00:40:58.680 I mean, that is just bad.

00:40:59.920 If it ever, when it happens to me, it's bad for me.

00:41:02.020 Yeah.

00:41:02.220 It's bad for anybody.

00:41:03.140 And if some people are always being like, you've got black girl magic, like after a

00:41:06.440 while, it, no, I'm serious.

00:41:08.000 Cause it's, there is no black girl magic.

00:41:09.500 There's no white man magic.

00:41:10.560 It's all bullshit actually.

00:41:12.480 But if, if you start to believe it, having people kiss your ass, having had many people

00:41:16.620 kiss my ass, I know corrodes your soul and makes you into a bad leader.

00:41:21.000 And I really think that's part of, we're seeing it not just in LA, but like the black

00:41:24.500 girl magic thing has been bad for a lot of people.

00:41:26.640 You know what I mean?

00:41:27.440 Oh yeah.

00:41:28.000 As the white man magic would be too.

00:41:29.840 Yeah, of course.

00:41:30.780 Yeah.

00:41:31.200 I mean, she gets, I mean, they, they, they, so they, they, they,

00:41:33.140 the other thing was she did cut the fire department budget.

00:41:36.240 Okay.

00:41:36.500 She just cut it.

00:41:37.660 I mean, she just, it just happened.

00:41:39.700 And then literally, I know she literally goes up at a press conference and it was word

00:41:44.900 salad.

00:41:45.360 I mean, it was quite impressive.

00:41:46.380 I mean, she was just sort of like, like you were like, what did she just say?

00:41:50.440 I mean, she's kind of, she goes, she goes, well, that was, you know, it would kind of

00:41:53.680 be like, well, that was different because we just approved this other money.

00:41:56.920 And she would basically just was a non sequitur.

00:41:59.220 I mean, she's describing a totally different salary negotiation.

00:42:02.400 They cut $17.5 million from the budget.

00:42:05.540 And not only that, but then they had this internal memo that leaked that said that they

00:42:09.060 were looking to cut another $48.8 million, another $49 million.

00:42:13.680 From the fire department.

00:42:14.520 From the fire, from the fire department, which had already, was already decimated.

00:42:19.340 I mean, there's a whole story on this.

00:42:20.620 It's like famous for fires.

00:42:22.000 No, it's crazy.

00:42:22.620 So, so then like, so they do that.

00:42:24.380 And of course the LA times and Politico and I can't remember other people, they all come

00:42:31.080 out and they go, they go, did she cut the budget?

00:42:33.180 You know, it's complicated, you know?

00:42:37.580 I mean, it's amazing.

00:42:38.640 You know, it's complicated, which is like, yeah, yeah.

00:42:40.660 She did cut, she did cut the budget, but nobody, the media was not being honest with

00:42:45.140 people about what was really going on until the fire chief, the lesbians, LA County fire

00:42:51.060 chief, to her credit.

00:42:53.400 She was being, actually, she was being grilled by a local Fox television reporter who was

00:42:58.740 just doing a great job, actually.

00:43:00.060 I mean, just to be handed to the local TV, actually, some of the best reporting still.

00:43:04.300 And only in LA.

00:43:05.400 LA has always had great local television.

00:43:09.120 I don't know why.

00:43:10.440 No, I think I agree with you.

00:43:11.800 Yeah.

00:43:12.600 It's fallen off in the Bay Area.

00:43:13.920 They did a little bit better on Oakland when things get really crazy, but she just kept

00:43:17.980 going after her.

00:43:18.780 She just kept asking her over and over again about the, about the budget cuts.

00:43:22.180 And she was kind of having a hot, finally, she was just like, yeah, yeah, she did.

00:43:25.360 She cut that money.

00:43:26.280 And she's like, and did it matter?

00:43:27.580 Yeah.

00:43:27.940 Yeah.

00:43:28.120 It mattered.

00:43:28.700 You know, she had sent on, she had sent a letter.

00:43:30.940 I mean, there was a letter from, I think it was December 4th that the chief, the fire chief

00:43:34.720 had sent, which said specifically, this is going to reduce our ability to deal with wildfires.

00:43:40.200 She said it twice.

00:43:41.320 Yes.

00:43:41.540 She said it twice in the letter.

00:43:42.900 So it was a little bit like, okay, you were on the record saying it was going to hurt

00:43:45.600 your ability.

00:43:46.060 So, but then she was like, yes, yes, it did hurt our ability to deal with it.

00:43:51.080 Then she just was like, I think at that point, the fire chief, she was just like, all right,

00:43:55.100 you know, like the gloves are off.

00:43:57.800 So she goes on CBS and on CNN and reiterates it.

00:44:01.640 And with a very strong language, I was able to get into this piece that will come out shortly.

00:44:08.340 I was able to get into the weeds a little bit on it, but basically there's a hundred

00:44:12.740 fire trucks that are currently in the maintenance shop that are just need to be fixed.

00:44:18.980 There's a hundred fire trucks missing.

00:44:20.460 And the person I interviewed was like, we could go bought, we could have bought for a hundred

00:44:25.720 million dollars.

00:44:26.560 We could have bought, you know, like a hundred or 200, you know, kind of used fire trucks

00:44:35.600 or whatever.

00:44:36.060 Just get fire trucks from wherever, maintain them and just put them in different points

00:44:40.220 all around the city.

00:44:41.320 You wouldn't necessarily have the staff to deal with them, but you could then, as soon

00:44:46.760 as you get that fire warning again, on January 1st, January 2nd, you can just fly in firefighters

00:44:51.540 from around the country, from around the world.

00:44:53.420 You'd just be like, look, we're just going to bring everybody in.

00:44:55.780 We don't know what's going to happen.

00:44:57.380 And then they can just go, he was, this person was like, you know, we could put like 30 of

00:45:00.580 them at Dodger stadium.

00:45:01.420 You know, you could just like put these fire trucks that are well-maintained, you know, but

00:45:05.440 so she was like, cause I didn't quite understand it either.

00:45:07.520 Cause she was like, we didn't have the money for the mechanics.

00:45:09.480 And you're like, well, why do you like, what do you need the mechanics for?

00:45:12.560 Well, you need the mechanics to maintain the fire engines.

00:45:15.880 So, I mean, this is what, you know, it's like when civilization breaks down, it breaks

00:45:19.180 down in like just a million small ways, you know?

00:45:23.480 So, you know, is it, is there some DEI part of it?

00:45:25.740 Yeah, there was, they were promoting people not based on merit.

00:45:29.040 Is there budget cuts?

00:45:30.720 Absolutely.

00:45:31.360 I mean, they didn't, you know, and what, what goes wrong when you don't have those budget

00:45:34.320 cuts, everything, you know?

00:45:35.540 I mean, the other complaint I've heard, you know, is just that it's just the, the, the

00:45:40.760 advanced thinking.

00:45:41.560 It's just getting people that can kind of be thinking in advance.

00:45:44.320 That's where their focus is.

00:45:45.420 That's where their priority is.

00:45:46.240 So the D the problem with the DEI is that when you're just orienting an entire organizational

00:45:50.560 culture towards racial and sex quotas, rather than towards, okay, you know, what about the

00:45:56.260 Santa Ana winds and the fire risk and whatever?

00:45:58.320 It's just, we all know that like, it's, it's not just time in the day.

00:46:02.700 It's also mind time.

00:46:03.760 It's like, what do you think about when you take a shower?

00:46:05.440 What do you think about when you're putting on your shoes?

00:46:07.140 Like, where is your head at?

00:46:08.740 Their head has been in the clouds around, you know, DEI, the larger society, ESG, climate,

00:46:15.860 homelessness.

00:46:16.840 I mean, I mean, the list goes on and on, but the, the, you know, it was on homelessness.

00:46:21.900 We now know, cause the state audit came out $24 billion on homelessness since, since Gavin

00:46:28.100 took office in 2019, Tucker homelessness in California increased by 40% under Gavin for,

00:46:35.880 can you believe that?

00:46:36.580 I mean, 40%.

00:46:37.480 So, cause everyone goes, it's such a curious, it's such a curious mystery as to, we spent

00:46:44.300 all this money on homelessness and yet it just increased.

00:46:49.160 It's like, well, yeah, because you spent money incentivizing and subsidizing homelessness.

00:46:54.260 You spent all this money to attract people from all over the United States.

00:46:57.960 I mean, I interview people in California that are on the streets and it's like, nobody's

00:47:02.060 from California.

00:47:02.720 I mean, they come in.

00:47:04.180 The only reason I feel like I have any understanding of what homelessness is, is because the interviews

00:47:08.240 that you did several years ago, which are the most unbelievable, I'd never heard of you

00:47:11.080 before I saw these interviews and you did, and I would recommend to our listeners to go

00:47:15.100 find them cause they're on YouTube.

00:47:16.120 Um, you did the thing that nobody, I've never seen anybody do it before.

00:47:19.480 Others have followed since you did it, but you just went and you interviewed the homeless

00:47:22.380 and like, what are you doing here?

00:47:23.920 Tell me your story.

00:47:24.720 And they were remarkably honest.

00:47:26.780 Oh, they're, they want to be, they see the thing is like homeless people, they're always

00:47:30.040 lonely, you know?

00:47:30.880 And so they, they're, um, obviously these are people in a really bad way and they're eager

00:47:35.020 to tell their story.

00:47:35.780 They have a lot to say.

00:47:36.980 They're not, most of them are not dumb.

00:47:39.380 Some of them were not dumb at all.

00:47:40.880 I was shocked by it.

00:47:41.960 Oh no.

00:47:42.660 And they do lie like at the beginning.

00:47:44.780 So, I mean, you have to, um, the secret to all great interviews, as you know, more than

00:47:49.220 anybody is, is you need to have a long time because people tell the, they lie at first

00:47:54.580 and then the truth comes out.

00:47:55.680 So like you'll interview people and you'll be like, you're like, where are you from

00:47:58.060 brother?

00:47:58.440 And they'll be like, oh, I was raised here.

00:48:00.660 And then you get like 30 minutes in the interview.

00:48:01.900 They're like, oh, I'm from Arkansas, you know, I'm from Texas or whatever.

00:48:05.760 So yeah, I mean, um, so yeah, they're from all over.

00:48:08.780 They, they came here, they come, you know, the most famous one I did with it was with

00:48:12.560 James Church.

00:48:13.820 He had tattoos on his face and he was just an incredible, I just love that interview so

00:48:18.160 much.

00:48:18.380 I think it was like, it's not like an hour, hour and a half with him, just holding my

00:48:21.020 iPhone up to him while he's talking.

00:48:23.360 But he was the one who was like, um, you know, if I'm being honest, you know, they pay

00:48:29.060 people to be homeless here.

00:48:30.660 And I was like, I was like, what do you, what do you mean by that?

00:48:32.980 You know, and he's like, well, he's like, I get 650 bucks a month, you know, um, in

00:48:37.020 cash welfare to be homeless here.

00:48:39.260 Plus a couple of hundred bucks more in food stamps.

00:48:42.080 It's a great deal.

00:48:42.980 And he was like, I got Netflix on my phone.

00:48:44.700 I watch Amazon, you know, I watch Amazon Prime TV on my phone.

00:48:47.960 You know, I still electric city from the, from the, the, the light pole right here.

00:48:52.880 Um, that video, I will say it's very satisfying.

00:48:55.780 I do think that played a pretty big role in the voters of San Francisco voting to get

00:48:59.820 rid of cash welfare, um, for homeless people.

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00:51:34.380 But why did it, I know I've asked you this before, but why did it fall to you to do that?

00:51:40.120 It's, well, it's because, well, we know why.

00:51:42.040 I mean, because it's.

00:51:42.720 Because you weren't a reporter.

00:51:43.480 You weren't working for a newspaper or a TV station.

00:51:45.800 No.

00:51:46.040 I mean, look, it's, I, for me, this is the golden age of journalism.

00:51:49.380 It is so much fun.

00:51:50.500 Like, I'm, because, like, basically, I can go into every story and you discover that people

00:51:57.400 aren't really doing reporting.

00:51:59.040 You know, I showed up at the guy, I showed up at the house that the guy lived in, the

00:52:02.360 guy that assaulted Nancy Pelosi's husband.

00:52:04.540 Yes.

00:52:04.840 Just to give you a sense of where journalism is at.

00:52:07.140 And I show up and I'm like, I'm just happy to be there.

00:52:09.840 And there's all these journalists there.

00:52:11.600 There's like a bunch of, like, local TV news and, like, the local print paper or whatever.

00:52:14.840 And I was like, I just kind of was like, oh, hey, what's the call?

00:52:16.460 He lived out in Berkeley, right?

00:52:17.420 Yeah, he's in Berkeley.

00:52:18.080 Yeah.

00:52:18.220 But Black Lives Matter flag in front, you know, abandoned school bus.

00:52:25.280 They were really, it was a really terrible environment.

00:52:27.980 But, and I was like, oh, I was like, so I was like, have you guys already, I was kind

00:52:30.780 of like worried.

00:52:31.320 I was like, oh, I got here late.

00:52:32.200 And I was like, so you guys already, like, knocked on all the doors of the neighbors.

00:52:35.380 And they were just, like, looked at me and they were like, no, we're like, not, we're,

00:52:39.960 I can't remember what one of them said.

00:52:40.880 He was like, oh, we don't want to be, like, rude or something.

00:52:43.100 Or that would be, like, inappropriate.

00:52:44.180 I was like, I was like, and at that moment I was like, oh, God, this is going to be

00:52:47.900 great.

00:52:49.560 And I just, like, went and knocked on all the doors and, like, you had all the information.

00:52:52.600 Like, oh, yeah, they would run naked out there and they would be on drugs all the time.

00:52:55.760 And, yeah, they were, like, all left-wing.

00:52:57.940 And it was like, you know, I was like, oh, this is amazing.

00:53:00.500 Like, there's no competition.

00:53:02.100 Like, it's, you know, I got on the, I got on the White House briefing just recently, the

00:53:07.140 White House briefing on UAPs, which you and I are both interested in, on the drones.

00:53:11.880 Um, and it was just like, you can kind of go into these stories, you just start talking

00:53:16.040 to people and you just realize journalists aren't really, they're not really journalists.

00:53:20.320 They're more like kind of the people that would run for, like, class president or something.

00:53:25.440 They're kind of goody two-shoes types.

00:53:26.800 They're ass kissers, yes.

00:53:27.680 Yeah, they're actually very authoritarian.

00:53:29.140 I mean, they're the ones that wanted all the censorship.

00:53:30.860 Of course.

00:53:31.300 So they're not, that old picture of journalists is like this kind of cantankerous and, like,

00:53:35.960 you know, crabby.

00:53:37.120 And they got rid of all those people.

00:53:38.840 Anti-authoritarian.

00:53:39.640 Anti-authoritarian.

00:53:40.680 Anti-authoritarian, um, yeah, difficult people.

00:53:43.900 I'm the son of one of those.

00:53:45.000 Yeah.

00:53:45.280 Yeah, I grew up around this.

00:53:46.260 Classic, right.

00:53:46.980 That's like the greatest.

00:53:47.900 I mean, there's like, and you realize it's essential to the functioning of civilization

00:53:51.540 to have a bunch of disagreeable people running around asking impertinent questions.

00:53:57.120 So with this one, it was like, yeah, so I mean, you basically get, like, when you just

00:54:00.880 look at the coverage of the fires, I mean, it was like the reporters that are going out

00:54:05.240 and doing it, it's like their whole thing is like, oh, we've got to make sure that

00:54:07.920 the right wing doesn't take advantage of this situation to push their, like, literally, that's

00:54:12.540 how they think about it.

00:54:13.600 So they're out there running cover for the, I mean, it's amazing, you know, somebody did

00:54:18.800 like a little meme on it, but it's like that thing where it's like, yeah, it used to be

00:54:22.440 that the reporter would like be holding the microphone up to the politicians and being

00:54:25.920 like, answer my questions.

00:54:26.980 And now they're like demanding that the people defend themselves for their terrible votes,

00:54:32.020 you know?

00:54:32.360 So it's like a complete reversal.

00:54:34.700 It's so true.

00:54:35.180 Well, they're the Praetorian guard for the powerful, of course.

00:54:37.760 Yeah, yeah.

00:54:38.200 Sue, but one of the things I learned from your interviews with the homeless, which I just

00:54:42.220 cannot recommend strongly enough as a primary source of information, actual information,

00:54:47.520 is the degree to which the narcotics fuel homelessness.

00:54:51.460 So you can't really disaggregate homelessness from drug addiction.

00:54:53.880 No, of course.

00:54:55.560 I mean, it's really-

00:54:56.300 I mean, you say of course, but like-

00:54:57.360 No, I know.

00:54:58.040 Well, no, I know.

00:54:58.620 I wrote San Francisco because it was literally like, because I knew drugs, like I, you know.

00:55:03.260 Me too.

00:55:03.640 I know drugs.

00:55:04.680 You know, I made three friends from high school that became homeless addicts.

00:55:07.740 Two are dead.

00:55:08.720 It's like, you know, I'm, you know, I happily avoided personally all the hard ones, but you

00:55:14.900 saw your friends, like, you know, you'd leave, you know, wow, you guys are doing meth, you

00:55:18.300 know?

00:55:18.580 It's like, meth's bad, guys.

00:55:19.680 What town did you go to high school in?

00:55:21.240 Greeley, Colorado.

00:55:22.680 Yep.

00:55:23.120 You know?

00:55:25.400 So, you know, my parents were psychologists.

00:55:27.860 Just, I remember just being around, my aunt had schizophrenia, you know, I've told this

00:55:32.540 story a long time, so I don't want to bore you.

00:55:33.920 But basically, it was like, it was just kind of like, so wait, everyone just thinks that

00:55:37.880 there's like a housing problem.

00:55:39.180 Like, that's just crazy.

00:55:41.080 So, you know, you sort of needed to, I needed to go do all those interviews.

00:55:44.420 But I mean, really, the first homelessness epidemic, the first time that we're at modern

00:55:48.160 homelessness was in the early 80s.

00:55:50.460 And it was just, it was basically all it was, was a combination of the emptying, the

00:55:57.000 final closure of all the mental hospitals, where they literally, literally dumped people

00:56:01.260 on the streets.

00:56:01.840 Like, I thought that that was, that sounded like an exaggeration when I first started.

00:56:04.660 They literally were putting, you know, schizophrenics and stuff on the streets.

00:56:07.860 And then the crack epidemic.

00:56:09.640 Like, that's all it was.

00:56:10.400 It was just those two things.

00:56:12.160 And then, of course, then, you know, left-wing mayor of San Francisco and others are like,

00:56:15.940 oh, well, we can't like, we can't like require that people not camp outside.

00:56:19.920 They're poor.

00:56:20.920 The left, in reaction to Reagan, then took up homelessness as a, as something that they

00:56:26.780 claimed was caused by Reagan.

00:56:28.800 Like, I mean, he'd been in office for like, whatever, two or three years, and they would

00:56:31.240 just make ridiculous claims, you know, the Reagan budget, you know, that's why it

00:56:34.440 was on the street.

00:56:35.300 So, it really gets used, so it becomes viewed by the left early on as a political propaganda

00:56:42.340 tool.

00:56:43.120 I also blame the comics, by the way.

00:56:45.080 I mean, and just I'll name them.

00:56:46.220 Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg.

00:56:49.120 They did this whole thing, you may remember, Comic Relief.

00:56:51.640 Where they framed the whole thing as a, as a problem of poverty, which is just, you know,

00:56:55.960 it's just, it's just such a disservice to the people on the street who need an intervention.

00:57:00.900 Right.

00:57:01.000 There's a natural, like when, for addicts, there's a, there's a natural progression where

00:57:07.080 you, you, you know, whether from trauma or just because you enjoyed getting high, your

00:57:12.980 addiction gets in the way of your job and you stop going to work and you often, you

00:57:18.240 know, live at home with your parents or with friends.

00:57:20.600 You lie, steal, and cheat from them repeatedly.

00:57:23.180 They give you multiple warnings.

00:57:25.360 They finally kick you out.

00:57:26.880 That's often the route to homelessness.

00:57:29.140 You end up on the street.

00:57:30.880 That's the moment where the society, the parent, the family and friends were not able to impose

00:57:35.480 an intervention.

00:57:36.660 So the way it should work is that you end up, you go out camp on the street and the cop

00:57:40.680 goes, hey, you can't camp here.

00:57:41.880 It's illegal to camp here.

00:57:43.160 And they go, what am I supposed to do?

00:57:44.380 And they're like, well, we're going to take you to jail or you can go to rehab.

00:57:48.220 Like those are your two choices, two choices.

00:57:51.160 A natural intervention is imposed in that situation.

00:57:54.600 What progressives and Democrats did for 40 years is they just removed the intervention

00:58:00.180 in the name of compassion.

00:58:02.420 The most compassionate thing is to impose the intervention.

00:58:04.220 I mean, the thing that's most common, I'll even find this with like harm reduction workers.

00:58:08.040 I was just with some harm reduction workers in Skid Row and one of them was telling me the

00:58:13.040 whole usual thing.

00:58:14.120 Oh, you can't make somebody get clean.

00:58:16.780 They have to hit their own bottom, like whatever.

00:58:18.640 And I was like, and they were like, I used to run around here, you know, on, on meth.

00:58:23.280 It was a, um, uh, an Asian American woman, um, who was doing this.

00:58:27.180 And I was like, I was like, oh, wow.

00:58:28.620 I was like, what did it finally take you for you to get clean?

00:58:30.440 She's like, well, I went to prison.

00:58:31.940 Yeah.

00:58:32.160 You know, it's like, well, right.

00:58:33.300 So I have a really close friend you had who's lived that same trajectory.

00:58:36.800 I have a couple of friends, but a very, I have a legit close friend who's totally out

00:58:40.360 of control on drugs and lost kids and all the things that happen when you're addicted

00:58:44.500 and got sober in prison and rebuilt a life, um, a wonderful life.

00:58:50.120 Yes.

00:58:50.500 But yeah.

00:58:51.920 And they're like the, by the way, the recovering addicts are like the greatest people.

00:58:55.700 I mean, they're the, they're my favorite people.

00:58:57.180 They're the funniest, most honest, um, people.

00:59:00.840 They have an equanimity about them.

00:59:02.420 I go to AA meetings when I can, not because I'm in danger of partying again, I'm not after

00:59:07.200 22 years, but because I like the people because they're so honest and they, they're honest

00:59:11.800 about the one thing no one's ever honest about, which is themselves.

00:59:14.560 It's super easy to be honest about you.

00:59:16.620 I don't like your sweater, Mike.

00:59:17.840 That's disgusting.

00:59:18.480 Like, that's not hard.

00:59:19.100 You've gained weight.

00:59:19.780 That's not hard.

00:59:20.740 Yeah.

00:59:21.140 I've gained weight.

00:59:21.940 I'm wearing an ugly sweater.

00:59:23.220 Those are hard.

00:59:24.160 Yeah.

00:59:24.420 And you find among those people, the recovered people, like a true honesty about themselves.

00:59:30.740 Right.

00:59:30.920 Like, it's like the greatest church service there is.

00:59:33.280 Right.

00:59:33.620 Because they're all born again in an important sense.

00:59:35.680 A hundred percent.

00:59:36.380 They've all died in some way.

00:59:37.760 Yeah.

00:59:38.600 No, I, so that's the, I mean.

00:59:40.340 But to deprive people of that.

00:59:42.140 Yes.

00:59:42.240 Yes.

00:59:42.320 To encourage them to continue to use drugs and alcohol is like, I mean, don't even, I

00:59:48.440 mean, whatever, it's an interview of you, not me, but I just feel like sobriety has

00:59:52.020 to be the goal, not just for the individual, but for the society.

00:59:55.700 Yeah.

00:59:55.940 I really believe that.

00:59:56.940 So sobriety is the greatest gift.

00:59:58.720 A, B, use of drugs and alcohol causes mental illness, which nobody ever says out loud.

01:00:04.480 I've seen it, to some extent experienced it.

01:00:07.460 I know you can cause severe mental illness.

01:00:10.680 Oh, sure.

01:00:11.080 By using drugs and alcohol.

01:00:12.320 Like, right?

01:00:12.860 Is that even controversial?

01:00:14.140 It shouldn't be.

01:00:15.260 No.

01:00:15.440 But that's, I mean, you've done more on this than I have, much more, but.

01:00:18.280 It's sort of coming back a little bit.

01:00:19.980 People talk about meth-induced psychosis now.

01:00:21.900 Yes.

01:00:22.060 More, but, yeah, it's, it's really.

01:00:25.620 And weed-induced psychosis.

01:00:26.720 Oh, yeah.

01:00:27.040 And the weed now, it's just so potent and dangerous.

01:00:30.640 And, yeah.

01:00:31.460 Ugh.

01:00:31.800 So, but you, as someone who still lives in California, does anybody, do you ever hear

01:00:35.740 people say that?

01:00:36.440 Like, why are we paying people to use drugs?

01:00:38.740 Like, should it surprise us that things are falling apart?

01:00:40.740 I mean, I do think, I do think that the, the conversation has changed a bit.

01:00:45.200 I'll take some credit for it with San Francisco and the videos in particular.

01:00:50.180 But, yeah, it's just still that thing where it's like, they kind of go, but, yeah, but

01:00:53.480 there's a black woman running for mayor.

01:00:55.300 And it just, it's like the singularity.

01:00:56.980 It's like, when I always say that, it's like this, just, it's just hovering over people.

01:01:01.500 And, of course.

01:01:01.720 The race thing.

01:01:02.440 Yeah.

01:01:02.760 It's really, it's really about race in a, in a, in a really important sense.

01:01:07.100 I know.

01:01:08.080 And then the guilt.

01:01:09.040 It's like the dealers are all immigrants from Central America.

01:01:11.500 We can't do anything about it.

01:01:12.680 Right.

01:01:13.140 Oh, sanctuary state, sanctuary city.

01:01:15.020 That's part of what they're going to sue on.

01:01:18.540 Yeah.

01:01:18.940 I mean, I think that it's just, yeah, it's a big trap.

01:01:21.820 I mean, I think that it's funny because, you know, we're a guilt culture.

01:01:25.260 And so, you know, like, you know, Japan's a shame culture.

01:01:28.100 Yes.

01:01:28.420 And, you know, guilt is this incredibly important part of the Christian tradition.

01:01:33.460 Yes.

01:01:34.020 Well, you stop believing in original sin and you stop believing in Christianity.

01:01:38.360 You still, apparently there's still this deep desire to feel that guilt and to sort of show it as well.

01:01:45.640 In other words, it is a social part of it.

01:01:47.880 People wanted to see in that focus.

01:01:49.600 They wanted other people to see in that focus group that they, they felt guilty.

01:01:52.820 You know, it was very important.

01:01:53.760 But what's interesting is, so in, you know, traditional Christianity and other religions, you know, the guilty person repents, atones, dons ashes, sackcloth, and covers himself in ashes as a way of saying, you know, I am worthy of the degradation.

01:02:10.660 Yes.

01:02:11.000 But we've kind of transferred that.

01:02:13.700 It's almost like the homeless are in sackcloth and ashes.

01:02:17.220 Do you know what I mean?

01:02:17.780 Like, I live in the Palisades.

01:02:19.140 I produce music videos.

01:02:20.960 I'm doing pretty well, but I still feel guilt.

01:02:22.980 So, but like seeing somebody like, you know, writhing on the sidewalk, I'm like displacing my atonement on him.

01:02:28.680 Wow, that's really interesting.

01:02:29.580 Yeah.

01:02:30.240 He's, well, then they talk about it that way.

01:02:32.400 You know, when you talk to the activists that justify it, they're like, well, that's a, you know, those people are suffering because of capitalism.

01:02:39.040 Exactly.

01:02:39.640 And, you know, slavery and white supremacy.

01:02:41.660 But the whole point of Christianity is, no, no, no, you suffer.

01:02:44.220 You.

01:02:45.020 Right.

01:02:46.000 Like confess your sin.

01:02:47.700 You don't like put it off on some junkie.

01:02:49.660 Right.

01:02:49.880 Well, it's the part of it that's just really satanic.

01:02:52.060 I mean, not to be theological about it, but it's just a complete reversal of the traditional Christian process.

01:02:58.560 It's just, yeah, it's exactly, it's making other people.

01:03:02.040 Atone for your sins.

01:03:02.840 Yeah, it's crazy.

01:03:05.180 It's unbelievable.

01:03:06.120 It's so bad.

01:03:07.000 And they're sort of on display, you know, it's the, it's the, it's really, if you kind of read it, I mean, it's like, it's like, it's like, they want to, they want it to be on display.

01:03:16.580 They want to sort of show it.

01:03:18.320 And that's why they insist that they not be arrested or mandated treatment.

01:03:24.420 It's wild.

01:03:25.320 It is like, you know, like you go to Skid Row and it's still like a Hieronymus Bosch, you know, it's just like, you just can't, you still can't believe it.

01:03:33.280 I mean, you still can't believe there's a person lying there, you know, sweating profusely, passed out.

01:03:39.100 You can't tell if they're alive or dead.

01:03:40.380 You don't know, like, do I do an intervention?

01:03:43.360 And it's just, it's, it's really breaking down.

01:03:46.060 These are human beings.

01:03:47.200 I don't know, that's, and I'm not a particularly compassionate or kind person.

01:03:50.320 I'm kind of a dick, actually.

01:03:51.500 But even I, like, whenever I see that, I feel such deep sadness for the person.

01:03:56.840 It's like, heartbreaking, like, don't allow, if that was my child, would I allow it?

01:04:01.120 Not for one second.

01:04:03.000 I would take that child and chain him to the fucking radiator until he got better.

01:04:06.000 I would not allow that.

01:04:07.320 My child.

01:04:08.440 It's a healthy response, by the way.

01:04:10.580 Absolutely it is.

01:04:11.900 Absolutely it is.

01:04:12.540 Those are the people that end up getting off the street.

01:04:15.060 You raise the bottom instead of lowering the bottom.

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01:05:22.940 We're so far afield from there.

01:05:24.420 Okay, so there are in L.A. County 78, how many fire departments?

01:05:27.920 Well, there's 88 cities and there's 29 fire departments and counting the county.

01:05:31.740 No, no, no, that's fine.

01:05:32.460 But yeah, so like literally, like once the fire starts, I didn't even understand this until I started investigating it.

01:05:40.220 The county fire chief has to call all these cities and be like, hey, can you send a couple of trucks?

01:05:45.540 We're putting together a strike team.

01:05:47.600 Can you send some engines or whatever?

01:05:48.960 And they have to call around and they're like, okay, we're all going to meet.

01:05:51.480 The fire's like blazing away.

01:05:53.720 And they're like, okay, well, we're all going to meet, you know, wherever, you know, Sepulveda or whatever the streets are in L.A.

01:05:59.560 You know, we'll meet in this place and we'll all get together and we'll sync the radios and we'll develop a plan.

01:06:06.140 I mean, this is all happening like while the city's burning.

01:06:08.700 I mean, it's madness, right?

01:06:10.820 The other thing is that it's, I mean, there's like.

01:06:12.780 Like, so they didn't have any preparation for this.

01:06:15.320 There's nothing, man.

01:06:16.280 I mean, there might have been something that we, but obviously if there was, it wasn't enough.

01:06:20.880 Right.

01:06:20.960 I mean, it's a little bit like when they go, when the people that are like, when the nihilists are defending what happened, they're like, well, there was nothing else we could have done or we did everything we could have.

01:06:30.220 It's like, well, no, obviously you didn't.

01:06:31.960 Like, it doesn't matter what it is.

01:06:34.420 It obviously was, there's only one right answer, which is that you didn't do enough, you know, the, the, the fatalism, you know, it's a, it's a way to disavow responsibility on the one hand.

01:06:49.060 Again, I think it expresses that nihilism, but I think it's like people just have been out of practice, but you have to, this is part of the journalism too.

01:06:56.400 You know, it's that you kind of, it has to be like, no, no, we're, we're not accepting that as an answer.

01:07:01.100 Like the right attitude for the journalist is to basically be no excuses.

01:07:06.220 Of course.

01:07:06.700 It makes for like, I mean, maybe the journalists are being too much of a hard ass and too much of a dick about it.

01:07:11.520 And maybe they need to be a little bit, whatever.

01:07:12.860 That's fine.

01:07:13.480 That's their role.

01:07:14.700 It's like your role is to be the prosecutor against the, the, on the case of the failure.

01:07:20.580 Of course.

01:07:20.780 Your role is to be the investigator.

01:07:22.100 You're the public defender.

01:07:22.900 Yeah.

01:07:23.180 The public, the public defender, the prosecutor, the policy, you know.

01:07:25.480 But your point is to be like, oh, no, that, that can't be right.

01:07:28.040 So, because when they go, well, we ran out of water.

01:07:29.960 Well, why'd you run out of water?

01:07:31.480 Well, there wasn't enough water.

01:07:32.620 No.

01:07:32.820 Well, why wasn't it?

01:07:33.620 Well, because actually it turned out one of the reservoirs didn't have any water.

01:07:35.860 It's your job to make sure there's enough water.

01:07:37.680 You know, I mean, and this is what they do when they go after Trump and stuff.

01:07:41.540 Is that like, because Trump will often be like directionally correct.

01:07:44.800 Right.

01:07:45.140 You know, like, oh, but Trump was referring to the wrong kind of reservoir.

01:07:49.280 You know, the other reservoirs were full.

01:07:52.020 It's like, okay, fine.

01:07:53.220 But the reservoir right next to the Pacific Palisades was empty.

01:07:57.760 So, you know, his basic, the basic intuition, which is, I think, I often talk about the

01:08:02.460 importance of, you know, like if you're defending civilization, it's a physical thing.

01:08:06.300 Right.

01:08:06.520 So, I'm always thinking to myself as like, like there's a physicalism in my worldview.

01:08:11.780 I totally agree.

01:08:11.940 It's like, okay, that's a, that's a person.

01:08:14.760 That's a body.

01:08:16.120 You need to, they need to, they're in somewhere they shouldn't be.

01:08:19.900 They need to be somewhere else.

01:08:21.060 So, we can have a debate about how to move them somewhere else.

01:08:23.400 That's a totally reasonable debate to have.

01:08:24.960 But they can't be there.

01:08:26.360 They can't be there because they're creating fires.

01:08:28.260 They're breaking the law.

01:08:29.200 They're hurting themselves and others.

01:08:31.300 Similarly, there's, there wasn't water there.

01:08:34.560 There needed to be more water.

01:08:35.460 And if you go, okay, well, we actually, let's say, let's say that they had all the reservoirs,

01:08:40.020 the, the potable water reservoirs, let's say they had all been full and they'd still

01:08:42.900 run out of water.

01:08:43.720 Well, then there was some other problem you needed to solve.

01:08:46.280 You maybe needed more reservoirs or maybe you needed, you know, you needed the preparation

01:08:50.100 there.

01:08:50.460 So, you just have to have, I mean, you know, the Bukele type that we, that you'd want to

01:08:54.920 see or somebody, you just have to have somebody that's just like literally you can, no excuses

01:08:58.520 all the way down the line.

01:08:59.380 But when you say there's a, I, I feel like you're on something super important.

01:09:03.240 And if you could flesh it out, you say there's a physicalism to your worldview.

01:09:07.640 Contrast that with the worldview currently in power.

01:09:10.320 Oh, well, this is, yeah, this is exactly, it's like, it's this, first of all, it's

01:09:14.360 like, I mean, it's just so symbolic.

01:09:16.020 It's the city of angels, you know?

01:09:18.180 So, it's like, we're up here and you want to, like the wealthier you get in LA and I

01:09:22.180 guess with some exceptions, like Venice Beach, but mostly you're getting up higher.

01:09:25.380 Oh, yeah.

01:09:25.680 You're getting up, up, up, up, up.

01:09:27.340 You're trying to get away from.

01:09:28.480 To the cliffs of Malibu.

01:09:29.680 Yeah.

01:09:30.080 And you end up in the heavens and people talk about, I live in a little treehouse.

01:09:33.360 I mean, I get it.

01:09:34.000 I love it.

01:09:34.460 It's like, I live in the Berkeley Hills.

01:09:35.620 I'm not like, you know, but it's like, I'm, you know, I'm above all that.

01:09:38.740 I'm away from all that.

01:09:40.020 Like, I'm connected to nature up here, but also, you know, away from all the, you know,

01:09:44.820 the plebs.

01:09:45.740 And so, you actually, I think they do, it's that whole thing.

01:09:48.120 We talk about people being in a bubble, you know?

01:09:49.980 I mean, it's like the most bubbly place in the world, except for that it's not.

01:09:54.240 And you're in a massive fire zone that must be constantly managed.

01:09:59.380 There's consequences of living in these spectacular places.

01:10:02.300 But you've got people that are, it's there, it's the, the whole industry is a fantasy

01:10:07.380 industry.

01:10:08.000 I mean, it's just exists to construct a fantasy reality.

01:10:11.620 And yeah, you would hope that, that people would be able to compartmentalize.

01:10:16.460 Yeah.

01:10:16.820 My day job is constructing fantasies that we charge, you know, $20 to stream.

01:10:22.160 But I know that when I go home, that like all the brush has to be cleared around my house

01:10:26.100 and I have to vote for candidates that are physicalists.

01:10:30.520 I mean, look at physicalists.

01:10:32.000 Yeah.

01:10:32.120 I mean, I don't, I mean, I don't know if that's the right word.

01:10:33.540 I just feel like there's something there.

01:10:35.180 You're onto something so important.

01:10:38.660 They're fantasists.

01:10:40.000 I mean, the other people, I mean, I don't want to use the word idealist because there's

01:10:42.920 too many other connotations to it, but there's just, it's just a difference between being

01:10:46.560 your heads, your heads up in the clouds.

01:10:49.040 And also, and then as opposed to just being really, you need the firefighter view of the

01:10:54.060 world.

01:10:54.520 You need the cop view of the world.

01:10:56.540 Frankly, you need the homeless guys.

01:10:57.840 The homeless people like live in a, I mean, they're high a lot, so they're switching in

01:11:02.280 and out, but they have to get their physical needs met.

01:11:05.600 You know, there's just a, yeah.

01:11:06.860 So it's, um.

01:11:07.680 When we first had kids, I remember my wife being, and I had much lower standards, but

01:11:12.340 insistent on the house being clean and orderly.

01:11:14.900 Mm-hmm.

01:11:15.760 And I remember saying like, it doesn't, you know, the point of having kids is to instill

01:11:19.780 values in them.

01:11:20.620 She goes, yeah, but one of the values is like ordering cleanliness and like, they will feel

01:11:24.940 like things are out of control if the house isn't clean and orderly.

01:11:30.180 And she's really insistent on that.

01:11:31.920 And we've lived that way our whole lives.

01:11:33.380 And I, it's a version of what you're saying.

01:11:36.580 It's like, you can tell your kids about honesty and decency and compassion and high achievement

01:11:41.920 or whatever, but like someone has to make the bed and vacuum the floor.

01:11:45.360 And if there's dog shit in the kitchen, like it has to be cleaned up.

01:11:48.240 Like that's, she understood that.

01:11:50.320 Right.

01:11:50.500 And has imposed it to great effect, I would say.

01:11:52.980 I'm sure.

01:11:53.800 No, I think that's right.

01:11:54.680 And also like parents, we all, I did it too, so I'm not like judging, but like we talk

01:11:58.400 too much to the kids.

01:11:59.400 Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

01:12:00.720 And you see like new parents doing that, talking to their kid and the kid's like, what?

01:12:04.300 It's like the peanuts is right.

01:12:05.720 Like the whole, what they hear is the wah, wah, wah, wah.

01:12:08.060 It's so true.

01:12:09.060 As opposed to like, could you, could you set the table?

01:12:12.320 Right.

01:12:12.560 You know?

01:12:14.180 Could you, you know, like the kids like, I mean, the kids like to have a job.

01:12:18.860 They want to have a chore.

01:12:20.180 Chores are super, like kids love that, you know?

01:12:23.480 And, um, so you, you know, and you're, you're teaching the kids to clean the classroom

01:12:27.380 every morning.

01:12:28.060 Yes.

01:12:28.340 I mean, the problem is the specialization and the wealth.

01:12:30.780 They sort of get disconnected from it.

01:12:32.100 We talk too much to the kids.

01:12:33.700 Do you know what I mean though?

01:12:34.760 Yeah.

01:12:34.900 That's why I'm laughing.

01:12:35.680 And dogs too.

01:12:36.700 People deal with their dogs.

01:12:37.800 You ever see people with like, they're like, you know, whatever.

01:12:40.260 I live in the Berkeley Hills.

01:12:41.000 It's like, you know, older ladies and their dogs and the, you know, and they're just like

01:12:43.760 saying blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:12:44.720 The dogs.

01:12:45.260 It's like, well, you're not holding the leash tight enough lady.

01:12:48.660 You know, you rewarded the dog when he did something bad.

01:12:52.420 You should have rewarded it when it came to you.

01:12:54.340 Anyway.

01:12:55.680 So all these things break down.

01:12:57.400 All these norms.

01:12:58.240 So deep and true.

01:12:59.200 Yeah.

01:12:59.420 You just said you're a physicalist.

01:13:02.360 I, I want that to become a, I want intercommon usage because I think it's, that is like really,

01:13:07.180 really important.

01:13:08.180 Yeah.

01:13:08.400 I think it is because it's like people will say things like practical, which is good and

01:13:12.340 pragmatic, but some pragmatic got started to mean things like making shitty political

01:13:16.620 compromises, do you know what I mean?

01:13:19.240 Or it's an American linguistic tradition or philosophical tradition, but yeah, physicalist,

01:13:23.620 it's like, yeah, somebody's got to clean up all the, you know, if you have all the homeless

01:13:26.700 people, you're going to have to spend millions of dollars on cleaning up crap.

01:13:30.040 Right.

01:13:30.460 All the time.

01:13:31.520 And you know, the, the homeless, one of the things you probably have observed is that

01:13:35.820 I think it's a, like probably a compensating mechanism, but they're just, they're obsessed

01:13:39.660 with collecting tons and tons of garbage.

01:13:42.180 Yes.

01:13:42.660 Yes.

01:13:43.040 So they'll, you know, you'll clean up these homeless encampments and you'll be like, oh, wow.

01:13:46.080 Yeah, they're not minimalists.

01:13:47.520 No, no.

01:13:48.200 They're not living the Zen lifestyle.

01:13:50.280 No, it's not banging Olfsen life.

01:13:52.060 Right.

01:13:52.200 It's like very much.

01:13:53.520 No, no.

01:13:53.920 It's very cluttered.

01:13:54.880 Yes.

01:13:55.120 You know?

01:13:55.900 And so they're probably over, but so, yeah, I mean, they need, you need to, we need to

01:13:59.500 reimpose some limits.

01:14:01.700 You know, there's a, I'm also, I just became really obsessed with the scholar I just discovered

01:14:05.740 who wrote a trilogy on nationalism named Leah Greenfeld.

01:14:09.800 Highly recommend her books.

01:14:11.180 Her first book is called Nationalism.

01:14:12.640 Second book is called Spirit of Capitalism.

01:14:14.400 And the third book is called Mind, Madness, and Modernity.

01:14:18.560 And these books are just incredible.

01:14:20.700 But basically, it's actually L-I-A-H and then Greenfeld.

01:14:27.220 Common spelling.

01:14:28.640 Yeah.

01:14:28.940 L-I-A-H.

01:14:30.580 L-I-A-H.

01:14:31.440 Yeah.

01:14:31.560 She's a Russian, I think she's a Russian Jew who went to Israel, lived in Israel for a long

01:14:36.080 time.

01:14:36.380 And then her, and then her, and then her mentor was Edward Schills, the sociologist.

01:14:42.680 So she's a sociologist.

01:14:44.140 But the nationalism book is beautiful.

01:14:46.040 I mean, it's like, the famous book on nationalism is a guy by, it's called Imaginary Communities

01:14:51.020 by Benedict Anderson.

01:14:51.780 And it's, he's a Marxist.

01:14:53.340 And so it's all the whole thing is like him trying to explain how nationalism, why it's

01:14:56.820 so powerful when Marx thought it should wither away.

01:15:00.560 And, but she describes, so she defines nationalism, the picture that people have of nationalism

01:15:05.440 is completely wrong.

01:15:06.880 She describes nationalism as a sovereign community of fundamentally equal individuals who have

01:15:13.380 a shared identity.

01:15:14.400 And so she's like, nationalism is fundamentally democratic.

01:15:18.820 Now you might have some systems that are nationalist, but they don't have proper democracy.

01:15:23.520 But really the basic idea is that egalitarian idea that we're Americans, we live here, we

01:15:27.800 have the same solidarity.

01:15:29.660 I've also was, I've also become, I'll come back to the Greenfield, but I've also been obsessed

01:15:34.040 with Hannah Arendt, who I had never read until recently.

01:15:37.460 And she points out-

01:15:38.380 I don't think you're allowed to read her anymore.

01:15:39.580 And well, I know, well, she was canceled.

01:15:41.120 I know, I discovered she was canceled.

01:15:42.960 I love Hannah Arendt, so I, but I didn't realize just like Freud, who was also a huge

01:15:47.960 figure in my childhood, everyone talked about Freud, alluded to Freud, and then he just

01:15:52.760 kind of disappeared one day.

01:15:53.740 And Hannah Arendt, same thing.

01:15:55.580 Oh yeah, totally canceled, but it's brilliant.

01:15:58.540 She's too honest.

01:15:59.720 Well, yeah, yeah.

01:16:00.300 She was very, well, it's really in, there's, I read her two books.

01:16:04.400 One is the Ontataltarianism book, and the other one is Eichmann in Jerusalem.

01:16:07.800 Eichmann in Jerusalem, it's rough because she describes how the Jewish councils-

01:16:11.520 It is rough.

01:16:12.160 Participated with the Nazis.

01:16:13.160 Oh, I know.

01:16:13.780 I mean, that was what was really controversial.

01:16:16.460 But what really blew me away from reading Hannah Arendt, because I was coming to the

01:16:22.000 nationalism conversation, I mean, I should, self-confession, because I should have been

01:16:26.020 reading nationalism starting in 2016.

01:16:28.000 Oh, I know.

01:16:28.400 But, you know, I finally was reading on it, and it was like, she was like, nationalism

01:16:32.640 is a barrier to totalitarianism, because totalitarianism is attempting to destroy all relationships

01:16:39.440 between people other than the relationship with the state.

01:16:41.560 Exactly.

01:16:41.960 And so, religion, nationalism, you know, the classic de Tocqueville associative ties.

01:16:49.440 You know, all of that is a threat to totalitarianism.

01:16:51.840 Yeah.

01:16:52.020 And so, that really struck me, and Leah Greenfield kind of, she has a, I just interviewed her,

01:16:58.940 so she has like a difference of opinion with Arendt on this issue.

01:17:04.680 But, nonetheless, I was just struck by how, I don't know what the right, I must like,

01:17:11.300 like, for me, like nationalism, because I come from the left, you know, from the radical

01:17:14.760 left, and we would code our socialist yearnings as the public interest.

01:17:20.220 Yes, of course.

01:17:20.520 You know, Ralph Nader kind of took all of the Chomskyan left-wing views of the early 60s

01:17:25.280 and packaged them for moderate, he kind of made it all seem very reasonable, you know,

01:17:29.800 and the environmentalists did the same thing.

01:17:31.820 So, the brilliance of the left in general, but the radical left in particular, was of

01:17:38.200 just cross-dressing as mainstream issues.

01:17:41.220 So, it became, so really what is a socialist movement became a consumer rights public interest,

01:17:48.840 the women's rights movement.

01:17:50.420 Yep.

01:17:51.100 And you get these really radical ideologies.

01:17:53.640 I mean, I'm just obsessed with this, the ways in which, like, so Marxism, look back on

01:17:59.880 it, I was like, wow, I can't believe the things I believed in.

01:18:01.280 Marxism has this idea that the capitalists, like, what's distinct about them is that they're

01:18:07.440 just super greedy, and they're thieves, and that they're stealing from their workers, and

01:18:13.540 there's really no difference between the entrepreneur, the capitalist entrepreneur, like Elon Musk or

01:18:18.000 Thomas Edison or Henry Ford, and their workers.

01:18:20.720 They're just meaner, and they steal from them.

01:18:23.180 And it's like, it's just an amazingly audacious lie, because whenever you go and actually

01:18:27.740 study an entrepreneur, what's incredible is that it's not just that they are doing, it's

01:18:32.940 not like they're the best at what they're doing.

01:18:34.820 They're the best at, like, 12 different things.

01:18:37.560 You may remember when Trump and Elon were beginning their bromance, Trump goes, he goes,

01:18:43.340 you know, I asked Elon, I was like, what is that you're really good at?

01:18:45.920 You know, you can see it was like probably a question that Trump is used to asking people

01:18:48.380 that he interviews for a job or something, and he goes, turned out it was a lot of different

01:18:51.960 things, you know?

01:18:53.600 And it's like, well, yeah, like, I mean, because of course, like, with Thomas Edison,

01:18:57.360 people go, oh, we invent the light bulb.

01:18:58.300 He didn't invent the light bulb.

01:18:59.480 He improved it.

01:19:00.800 He invented a viable economic model for electricity production.

01:19:05.640 I mean, he invented the electrical grid.

01:19:07.580 He found the customers.

01:19:09.700 I mean, one of the things that impresses me so much with Elon is, like, I'll see him,

01:19:14.320 you'll see him out there, and he'll be selling, you know, which is kind of, I mean,

01:19:18.280 selling is sort of the worst part of our jobs in some ways.

01:19:20.900 I mean, you can do it with pleasure, and you can do it with Verve and stuff, but, you know,

01:19:24.420 you're kind of like, and I do it.

01:19:25.560 I mean, I'm always like, subscribe now, you know?

01:19:27.300 And you're like, you have to do it.

01:19:28.640 Like, it's part of the work.

01:19:29.580 But I'm always like, wow, Elon, he's the richest man in the world.

01:19:32.860 He's probably, he may be the greatest innovator in American history, certainly top three.

01:19:39.380 And he's still out there having to hawk his products, and he does it great.

01:19:43.980 He's an amazing job of it.

01:19:45.080 Like, one of the innovations was, you know, he'd just become the biggest user of Twitter

01:19:49.280 rather than buying paid ads.

01:19:51.480 But so this gigantic lie from Marx, which is that the, first of all, the entrepreneur,

01:19:57.780 the capitalist, is just a meaner version of the worker as opposed to this, you know,

01:20:02.920 this Schumpeterian genius.

01:20:06.120 And Schumpeter comes along, and then his, the other thing, the big lie, and then Schumpeter

01:20:09.580 points it out, is that the owner of the company and the workers have the same fundamental interest.

01:20:16.080 In other words, Elon Musk's employees and Elon have the same interest.

01:20:20.380 They want to expand their markets.

01:20:22.040 They want to expand their products.

01:20:23.440 So to put them opposed is just so, it's just, it's so dishonest.

01:20:29.000 And it's so reminiscent of what, you can say feminism or radical feminism.

01:20:33.280 But this idea that the interests of women are opposed by men, that women and men have different

01:20:41.100 interests.

01:20:41.460 And of course, you trace it back, it all goes back to Simone de Beauvoir, who's a Marxist

01:20:47.180 writing in the post-war period.

01:20:48.900 I guess it was like the 40s, her book came out, The Second Sex.

01:20:51.540 But she's just taking this totally idiotic Marxist framework and applying it to women and men.

01:20:57.300 That's the biggest lie, because, I mean, it ignores the very obvious symbiosis.

01:21:00.680 It's just, it's not possible for them to exist apart, and it's not possible to continue the

01:21:05.260 species.

01:21:05.720 It's like so dumb that they need each other, that actually power is exerted in very subtle

01:21:11.640 but powerful ways within a relationship between a man and a woman that are not at all described

01:21:16.800 or even acknowledged, right?

01:21:18.760 It's the basis of life itself.

01:21:20.980 Of course!

01:21:21.620 So it is like really, you trace back like the emergence of nihilism, it really is in

01:21:26.620 Marxism, it's in feminism, and then they successfully cross-dress for decades, and they get so good

01:21:33.360 at it.

01:21:33.620 This is the famous Long March through institutions, or what they call cultural Marxism.

01:21:39.200 But they basically dress themselves up as, I mean, civil, you know, basically civil rights,

01:21:43.460 I mean, because once you get equal rights, the work is done.

01:21:46.540 Same thing with gays and lesbians.

01:21:47.680 But then the radical left activists then go and grab all those trappings, because we

01:21:52.200 started the conversation, this may seem like a digression, but it's important, I think,

01:21:56.580 for normies and everybody to understand that, I mean, it took a long time for me to get it,

01:22:02.260 but it was like, oh, right, like the people that call themselves environmentalists are actually

01:22:06.220 just radical leftists, slightly different from Marx because they're actually into Malthus,

01:22:12.180 this totally dystopian, anti-human view.

01:22:14.560 But the genius of the left is that they are so successful at masking their real agenda behind

01:22:22.700 something else.

01:22:23.760 You know, we just want equality for people of color, we just want to create equal opportunity

01:22:28.340 for migrants.

01:22:29.400 No, their agenda is the destruction of civilization.

01:22:32.840 I know.

01:22:33.140 And you see, on the environmental-

01:22:34.680 And it's working in LA.

01:22:36.120 Well, it is working, and I always thought on the environmental movement, there was a woman

01:22:41.500 called Julia Butterfly Hill who spent more than a year in a redwood.

01:22:45.820 And, you know, I always thought, you know, if you were sincere about environmentalism,

01:22:50.580 like, she would be, like, whatever happened to her, nobody knows.

01:22:53.440 And that was, to your point about physicalism, like, I like redwoods, and like, if there's

01:22:58.740 a reason to cut them out, okay.

01:23:00.020 But, like, maybe don't, because they're just so beautiful.

01:23:02.860 That's my personal view.

01:23:04.060 I always have felt that way.

01:23:05.280 So, like, here was someone who was, she saved a tree.

01:23:08.080 That's got to be the highest level of what they claim they're trying to do, but they

01:23:12.460 totally ignored her.

01:23:13.420 They don't give a shit about her at all.

01:23:14.680 She died in a tree.

01:23:15.620 Probably better for them.

01:23:16.920 What they really wanted to do was disconnect people from nature.

01:23:21.400 It was the opposite.

01:23:22.520 Right.

01:23:23.480 So, why is it that every single person I know who really spends a lot of time outdoors,

01:23:27.640 who's into, you know, the sporting life or whatever, lives in a rural area?

01:23:31.780 Man, their goals are the opposite of those of the Environmental Defense Fund and the

01:23:37.400 Sierra Club.

01:23:38.060 Right.

01:23:38.460 Do you know what I mean?

01:23:39.140 Well, and also, I think the physicalist distinction works on that as well.

01:23:43.480 I mean, here you have, I did an interview with a terrific, the scientist I mentioned,

01:23:48.500 and he's just like, you know, when you're like dealing with fires, the main event is what

01:23:53.040 is happening on the ground.

01:23:54.460 Exactly.

01:23:54.820 And the climate extremists are out there basically saying, no, no, no, ignore this

01:24:01.060 whole physical reality.

01:24:02.300 Yes.

01:24:02.400 We just need to reorganize the entire global economy.

01:24:05.320 Exactly.

01:24:05.700 Exactly.

01:24:06.140 Like, we can't stop these fires, let Malibu burn, but give us control over the driver of

01:24:12.640 the economy.

01:24:13.440 I mean, it's such madness.

01:24:15.340 Exactly.

01:24:16.040 And it's the opposite, and they don't care.

01:24:18.300 I mean, what's the pollution generated by these fires?

01:24:21.140 Oh, it's so much, I mean, I can't, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but

01:24:24.820 it's massive.

01:24:25.840 Now, I mean, I will say-

01:24:27.060 And dangerous, right?

01:24:27.460 Well, yeah.

01:24:27.980 I mean, oh my gosh, the air in LA now.

01:24:30.280 I mean, it is, my daughter's in college there.

01:24:32.520 I'm worried about her.

01:24:33.580 I mean, it is absolutely toxic air.

01:24:36.160 I mean, of course it is, you know, and you have a lot of electric cars, and you have a

01:24:39.340 lot of batteries going up.

01:24:41.440 We don't know what that stuff is putting out in terms of particulate matter.

01:24:44.760 So, no, it's awful.

01:24:45.860 I mean, you know, ostensibly, you'll get, you know, tree growth, and the carbon will

01:24:50.880 be, you know, reabsorbed, and those plants will be reabsorbed.

01:24:53.400 But yeah, no, I mean-

01:24:54.100 I'm not talking about carbon.

01:24:54.940 I mean, like, poison in the air and water.

01:24:57.580 Oh, for sure.

01:24:58.060 I mean, I think of all the houses with all the plastic and electricity burning.

01:25:02.560 It's terrible.

01:25:03.940 No, for sure.

01:25:04.860 I mean, yeah, it's a chance to get regrounded, I think.

01:25:08.760 A chance to, I mean, you know, it is also an interesting moment, right?

01:25:11.880 Because Hollywood, it's just producing garbage.

01:25:14.440 It is just, it is incredible how bad the cultural production is.

01:25:18.500 Just at a straight, like, you know, if you're someone that just loves pop culture, like,

01:25:21.720 you just love Steven Spielberg, we're not getting that level of quality.

01:25:26.660 I mean, we tried to watch something on Netflix, it's just awful, and it's because they're all

01:25:32.380 trying to fit it in.

01:25:34.360 Artistry and creativity is transgressive.

01:25:36.920 It's supposed to be-

01:25:37.840 Oh, of course.

01:25:38.320 It's supposed to be breaking.

01:25:39.440 I mean, that's actually where you want your-

01:25:40.700 I want my transgression in my art, not in my civilization.

01:25:45.020 I want a really boring civilization and really transgressive art, but it's become the opposite.

01:25:51.280 The art has become boring and conformist and authoritarian, and the civilization has gotten

01:25:57.980 completely transgressive.

01:25:59.880 So people are not where they need to be.

01:26:01.380 The laws are not being enforced.

01:26:02.900 So, I mean, part of you go, God, I do hope it is a wake-up call.

01:26:05.760 It was five years ago this month that people started to drop dead in the central Chinese

01:26:10.140 city of Wuhan.

01:26:11.760 Five years since the beginning of COVID.

01:26:14.020 Tens of millions dead.

01:26:15.720 Societies reordered completely.

01:26:18.140 Economies destroyed.

01:26:19.360 And yet, for some reason, we still don't know answers to the most basic questions.

01:26:23.820 Where did this virus come from?

01:26:25.220 How did it get here?

01:26:26.660 Why did the government tell us to do things they knew wouldn't work?

01:26:30.000 None of those questions have been adequately answered.

01:26:32.280 And one man knows those answers.

01:26:33.920 His name is Dr. Tony Fauci.

01:26:35.960 Until now, nobody has really pressed.

01:26:39.020 And now, a documentary filmmaker called Jenner First is out with a new film explaining exactly

01:26:45.360 what happened.

01:26:46.040 The film was called Thank You, Dr. Fauci.

01:26:48.380 Jenner First spent years trying to get answers.

01:26:50.580 And in that time, as he awaited Dr. Fauci's response, he went through tens of thousands of

01:26:55.180 pages of documents and pieced together the story, which is shocking.

01:26:58.760 We are proud to host that documentary here on TCN from December 20th to January 19th.

01:27:04.240 You will see it exclusively here on TCN.

01:27:06.560 Again, it's called Thank You, Dr. Fauci.

01:27:09.140 And it's worth it.

01:27:10.080 So what, speaking of the laws not being enforced, tell us what you know about looting.

01:27:29.400 Oh, I mean, it's, that's kind of the standard.

01:27:34.900 That's, that's like the norm in Los Angeles, isn't it?

01:27:38.020 I mean, um.

01:27:39.940 Even when there's not a fire burning.

01:27:41.340 No, of course.

01:27:42.220 It's terrible.

01:27:42.820 I mean, I don't know if you saw that.

01:27:43.520 They just arrested.

01:27:44.200 I guess they had a couple of guys.

01:27:45.580 They found a couple of guys looting Kamala's house and then they let them go.

01:27:50.860 Of course.

01:27:51.660 Of course.

01:27:51.980 They got the guy, they found the guy that set one of the fires, a homeless guy that set

01:27:55.400 one of the fires and they let him go.

01:27:57.480 I mean, it is, uh, it's amazing.

01:28:03.100 I mean, the comedians, like all their best materials just, you know, in the news already.

01:28:07.380 So.

01:28:07.660 How could they let your, you're stealing from people in the middle of a, of a profound

01:28:12.560 disaster, the city's burning down and you're stealing, people are dying and you're stealing.

01:28:16.840 Aren't you, you're like a true villain.

01:28:18.640 Oh yeah, for sure.

01:28:19.800 Or, and then, and then they let them go and then that became widely publicized.

01:28:24.120 Well, guess what?

01:28:24.820 You know, this is the thing that people have to understand, you know, criminals, you know,

01:28:27.580 they read the news.

01:28:28.960 Like criminals are very online.

01:28:30.820 It's not like criminals don't know what's going on.

01:28:33.520 And we have these amazing, there's these amazing, like, I think it was like phone calls

01:28:37.380 between people in the Oakland jails and their friends.

01:28:39.380 And they're like, basically, um, Auntie Pam, the name of the DA, they're like the Auntie

01:28:44.820 Pam's going to make sure we, you know, get off, you know, they all know where the,

01:28:49.540 the laws are not being enforced.

01:28:51.360 What's their job?

01:28:51.820 Of course.

01:28:52.640 Yeah.

01:28:53.220 They're rational actors.

01:28:55.040 You know, the irrational ones are the rest of us.

01:28:57.260 They're the ones trying to, you know, live there.

01:28:59.960 So if you're Gavin Newsom or Karen Bass, like you're all in on the climate change explanation,

01:29:05.340 right?

01:29:05.560 That's, that's all you've got at this point.

01:29:06.940 I mean, they did, I think they are backing off a little bit from it.

01:29:10.080 Um, I think that they're in a, they're a little trapped, which is great, which is that on the

01:29:15.540 one hand, they, they, they can't accept responsibility because they know that if they accept responsibility,

01:29:22.060 then it's just, then, then their, their political futures are doomed.

01:29:26.400 Um, on the other hand, by not accepting responsibility and passing the buck, that also becomes obvious

01:29:31.700 to people.

01:29:32.520 So, you know, they should all go.

01:29:34.300 I mean, remember like, you know, New Orleans, like that mayor was out of there.

01:29:38.340 I mean, like.

01:29:38.760 Ray Nagin.

01:29:39.400 Yeah.

01:29:39.640 Was there for that.

01:29:40.400 Yeah.

01:29:40.980 So that should be what happens.

01:29:43.660 But New Orleans has, that just accelerated the decline of the city.

01:29:47.260 Yeah.

01:29:47.480 I mean, it's, I was there for Katrina.

01:29:49.700 I covered that.

01:29:50.600 And I thought at the time, 20 years, I guess it was 20 years ago.

01:29:54.640 Incredibly.

01:29:55.300 Um, 2005.

01:29:56.200 I thought, well, you know, it's obviously tragic, but Bush is sending over a billion

01:30:00.760 dollars to rebuild it.

01:30:01.800 I'm sure the city will be better.

01:30:02.860 And it's been much worse ever since.

01:30:04.400 Uh-huh.

01:30:04.740 Oof.

01:30:05.400 That's depressing.

01:30:06.460 But LA is not New Orleans.

01:30:08.040 It's our second biggest city.

01:30:09.220 It's the, in a lot of ways, the greatest city we've ever built.

01:30:11.800 And in my opinion, and like, so what happens to it now?

01:30:15.900 Well, there's no vision for it at all, you know, and, and we don't have anybody visionary

01:30:19.660 in there, you know, and they do, I mean, I think we had this guy, Rick Caruso, as you

01:30:23.280 were mentioning, who ran for mayor.

01:30:24.820 I mean, someone found, you know, there is a video of him calling for increasing the

01:30:28.840 fire department budget.

01:30:29.820 I mean, kind of like that.

01:30:31.360 What else do you need to know at this point?

01:30:33.420 Can that overcome the, I do think that the woke trance was broken.

01:30:39.200 I mean, Trump broke it.

01:30:40.280 I do for sure.

01:30:41.080 And look at that.

01:30:41.580 I mean, look at the catastrophe that the news media is in and the success that people

01:30:45.300 like you and I are having and Joe Rogan being the most influential.

01:30:48.600 Yeah.

01:30:48.900 I mean, he's like the new Walter Cronkite.

01:30:50.400 Yeah.

01:30:50.600 He's where, somebody was observing, he's where Mark Zuckerberg goes to confess his

01:30:55.000 sins.

01:30:56.300 So it's a different world.

01:30:57.960 I do have some hope for it.

01:30:59.260 I mean, the, the thing about the United States that's so different from Europe is just that

01:31:03.780 literally they, I'm becoming like an old man because I'm talking about how great the founding

01:31:07.180 fathers were, but, but it's like literally they created this incredible system that if

01:31:12.800 you have free speech, if you can, if you, if you can protect your free speech, which

01:31:17.860 we've, I think, succeeded in doing, you bake it in, you remind people of its importance.

01:31:22.860 You then are, I think, going to be able to self-correct in ways that places that allow

01:31:27.940 higher levels of censorship are simply not going to be able to do.

01:31:30.940 I mean, just look at this impact that Elon is having right now.

01:31:34.000 It's incredible.

01:31:34.760 I was on some social media chat group and somebody was like, how come we're all talking

01:31:38.880 about the British grooming gangs?

01:31:41.000 It's like, cause Elon decided that that was an issue.

01:31:44.560 The AFD in Germany may end up, you know, be, I mean, I think they're, they're going to

01:31:48.560 come in at least second in the elections next month because Elon has mainstreamed them.

01:31:53.980 Of course.

01:31:54.600 So I, that gives me a lot of hope.

01:31:56.680 You've got a platform now that is still just the, I mean, we always knew that the media

01:32:02.680 had that agenda setting power, but it's amazing to sort of see it so dramatically.

01:32:09.360 You only can really see it when it shifts from the mainstream news media.

01:32:13.640 We were, we were writing last summer about how the sovereign in the United States, meaning

01:32:18.800 like the true power center in the United States was the news media.

01:32:22.100 Um, that is now, in my view, clearly shifted to, to acts.

01:32:26.740 It's just, I think you said something recently.

01:32:28.160 I thought, I think I saw a clip of you saying the same thing.

01:32:29.860 I mean, it's just clear, like that is where it dominates everything.

01:32:32.660 It's just everything, you know, and like blue sky gave it a, they gave it a shot, but nobody

01:32:37.100 can go on there.

01:32:38.000 It's too mad.

01:32:38.780 It's too insane.

01:32:40.160 So I think it can be very, very positive.

01:32:42.440 You know, I always compare acts to, you know, it's like when the printing press was first

01:32:48.300 shows up in the end of the 15th century for like about a hundred years, the Catholic church

01:32:52.880 was like, the printing press is great.

01:32:54.860 You know, we can print Bibles and give them out to all the priests.

01:32:57.700 It's very cheap.

01:32:58.600 The Catholic church loved the printing press.

01:33:00.620 And then Martin Luther got ahold of the printing press and it was just for the next, you know,

01:33:06.760 five centuries, it was game over.

01:33:08.300 I mean, the best history of the printing press, she goes back, I think it's a Oxford history.

01:33:14.600 She goes back and just looks at its impact and she comes back and she's just like, you

01:33:18.180 know, a few years of study or whatever.

01:33:19.200 And she's like, oh, we knew it was a big deal, but it was a much bigger deal than we

01:33:23.260 thought.

01:33:23.640 It's not just the Protestant Reformation.

01:33:25.460 It is that it's also the scientific revolution.

01:33:28.200 It's the industrial revolution.

01:33:30.160 It's nationalism and it's democracy.

01:33:32.540 I mean, so you get a huge epical change with this shift of communication technologies

01:33:36.660 and social media.

01:33:38.180 We knew it, I mean, we, you know, Martin Gurry famously wrote this book, revolt to the

01:33:41.900 public about the game changing aspects of social media just on the Arab spring, you know,

01:33:47.200 which is now 14 years ago.

01:33:49.480 But in some senses, it really just didn't get its power until Elon came in, bought it

01:33:54.060 and held strong against people calling him a racist anti-Semite for two years.

01:33:59.620 I mean, it was just crazy.

01:34:01.320 It was like two years of the media just making him out to be the devil incarnate.

01:34:06.180 And he held strong and he ended up breaking the news media.

01:34:10.300 I mean, they're just not getting the traffic.

01:34:12.700 They're done.

01:34:13.040 They're, it's over.

01:34:14.440 Yeah.

01:34:14.700 It's over.

01:34:15.660 So where does it, I mean, so if I-

01:34:17.940 And it couldn't have happened to a worse group of people.

01:34:19.880 They, I spent my whole life among them.

01:34:21.680 I can tell you that's absolutely true.

01:34:23.320 And they're, you know, they're terrified.

01:34:25.940 I was, I was watching John Carl who I, on CBS, who I've known, someone sent me a clip

01:34:30.880 this morning.

01:34:31.920 John Carl, I've known him for over 30 years.

01:34:33.460 Nice guy, you know, reasonable guy.

01:34:36.340 And, and then Trump comes, the business starts to collapse and he realizes, I'm speaking

01:34:40.620 for him, but he realizes, oh shit, you know, I'm a middle-aged white guy.

01:34:43.780 I better go along.

01:34:44.800 And he becomes just this cheerleader for every stupid, woke idea ever.

01:34:49.180 It was, you feel sorry for him.

01:34:50.700 He's a nice guy, actually.

01:34:51.520 And not a stupid guy.

01:34:53.120 Someone just sent me a clip of John Carl, like basically defending Trump.

01:34:57.480 Wow.

01:34:57.840 And, and it's just like, I'm again, I'm not, I'm not, the weather, the wind moved, the

01:35:03.060 wind moved.

01:35:03.920 Then you realize that most people just kind of, you know, they, they're easy to, easy

01:35:10.160 to control.

01:35:11.020 You just tell them what the program is and they go along with it.

01:35:14.020 Well, yeah, it's Kent Brockman.

01:35:15.540 No, you're totally right.

01:35:16.940 I welcome our new alien overlords.

01:35:19.380 You know what I mean?

01:35:20.620 They're the first, they're the first ones to shift.

01:35:23.240 No, you're right.

01:35:23.860 Right.

01:35:24.200 You're right.

01:35:24.840 Yeah.

01:35:25.000 Cause they're covering the news.

01:35:26.240 Like they know, they, they, they're the first ones that know when the winds are coming.

01:35:29.400 The principle plays no role.

01:35:30.560 Most people just kind of go along with what they think the marching orders are.

01:35:33.180 It's amazing.

01:35:33.580 It really reveals, doesn't it?

01:35:35.340 The herd animals.

01:35:36.740 So.

01:35:36.820 Yeah.

01:35:37.060 And did I say CBS?

01:35:37.780 I think he's at ABC, whatever.

01:35:39.020 They're all the same and they're all going away.

01:35:40.800 Yeah.

01:35:40.980 But if your true entrenched power, which does exist, particularly in the intel agencies, I mean,

01:35:45.600 that's where it really resides as far as I can tell.

01:35:49.240 I don't know.

01:35:50.240 It's like pretty threat.

01:35:51.200 You've just lost, there's been a massive movement in power from.

01:35:55.140 The news media, which you control.

01:35:57.080 That's a fact.

01:35:58.160 I would say in effect, control news media is controlled by the intel agencies fact to something

01:36:03.220 you can't control.

01:36:03.980 So that's a huge loss of power for you.

01:36:05.400 So like, how can you let this continue?

01:36:07.480 Well, yeah.

01:36:08.140 I mean, how can they stop it though?

01:36:10.180 I mean, the, I don't know.

01:36:11.660 I'm just feeling a little paranoid right now.

01:36:12.900 No, no, I am too.

01:36:13.380 This is too much freedom.

01:36:14.360 No, I know.

01:36:16.340 No, I totally do too.

01:36:17.400 You're like, where's the, like, when's the penny going to drop?

01:36:19.400 Yeah, kind of.

01:36:20.760 Well, yeah.

01:36:21.240 And I also kind of go, are they really going to disclose all the stuff that they have?

01:36:24.200 I mean, we were going down, we just did a, actually, I don't know if we published it

01:36:26.640 yet, but we were just going down the list of all the, all the files that we want.

01:36:29.480 Exactly.

01:36:29.700 Because, you know, people are like, oh, can we have a Twitter files for the government?

01:36:31.760 And you're like, yes.

01:36:33.920 So what?

01:36:34.460 I mean, there's so much in there, right?

01:36:36.000 So Russiagate, you know, the Russia collusion hoax, COVID origins, COVID vaccines, Hunter

01:36:43.360 Biden laptop.

01:36:44.500 Yeah.

01:36:44.980 I mean, I'm assuming there's just a bunch of stuff on Russia, Ukraine that's there.

01:36:48.480 I mean, remember, because they keep leaking, they'd go, they go, there's no bio labs in

01:36:53.280 Ukraine.

01:36:54.080 They'd be like, well, there were some, we were doing some help with the bio.

01:36:56.620 Well, not only are there bio labs in Ukraine, there are a lot of bio labs in Ukraine, which

01:37:00.020 are working on biological weapons.

01:37:01.740 That's what they're not there for livestock vaccines.

01:37:04.740 Sorry.

01:37:06.000 And, you know, the thing that people don't in this country understand is that the Ukrainian

01:37:10.520 military is selling about half of the arms they get from the United States into international

01:37:14.720 black markets.

01:37:15.420 And they're winding up in some case with the drug cartels in Latin America.

01:37:18.620 That's a fact.

01:37:19.260 Okay.

01:37:19.420 It's a fact.

01:37:20.640 And you can, you can buy them.

01:37:22.320 And I spoke to someone who did buy some actually.

01:37:24.320 So I know, I know this is a fact and they're bragging about it.

01:37:27.440 So they're selling conventional weapons, including weapon systems that are very dangerous and

01:37:31.280 very destabilizing that would make commercial air travel impossible, for example.

01:37:35.240 Right.

01:37:35.740 And so what are they doing with the pathogens in those bio labs?

01:37:38.540 And does the Biden administration have a manifest?

01:37:42.800 Do they know exactly what's in those labs?

01:37:44.300 And will they turn it over to the Trump administration so we can keep track of these things?

01:37:48.080 And the answer is no, actually.

01:37:49.840 The answer is no.

01:37:50.440 I know this.

01:37:51.100 Wow.

01:37:51.360 So that's like the scariest thing that's ever happened.

01:37:55.300 And, and so like what, you know, like I think the Ukraine war has the potential to destabilize

01:38:02.420 the world more than anything that's happened in my lifetime, just because of the scale of

01:38:07.240 the weapon systems and biological agents involved in the most corrupt country in the West, which

01:38:14.440 is Ukraine.

01:38:14.780 I'm not attacking Ukraine.

01:38:15.540 I feel sorry for Ukraine, but what the hell?

01:38:18.400 Yeah.

01:38:19.500 And so we could use some, we could use, that's why I'm saying this right now, because I hope

01:38:22.860 this is widely disseminated, because I think it's like the scariest thing I've heard in

01:38:26.660 a long, long time.

01:38:28.040 That is scary.

01:38:28.940 But it's all flowered in secrecy.

01:38:31.600 That's the point.

01:38:32.240 Yeah.

01:38:32.680 The only reason this stuff has happened, like this end of the world stuff has happened is

01:38:37.100 because there's no disclosure at all.

01:38:38.780 Everything is.

01:38:39.220 Right.

01:38:39.980 Oh, it's so much pent up stuff.

01:38:42.020 So much.

01:38:43.120 I mean, we're, yeah, we have the JFK files, the UFO files, UAP files, I was just to say.

01:38:48.400 Yeah.

01:38:48.800 So I spoke to someone about the UAP thing.

01:38:51.040 Now we're so far afield, but do you think it's all connected?

01:38:53.160 No, it is all connected though.

01:38:54.380 It's like, none of this stuff happens except in secrecy.

01:38:57.300 And this, I said, let's stop playing.

01:38:59.700 Like you've been, I've been talking to these people for years now.

01:39:03.120 And the answer was the public is not ready for this information because it's, you know,

01:39:10.260 it's just too, it's too much.

01:39:12.160 And what's your view of that?

01:39:14.840 And this is someone who's pushing disclosure, by the way, this is not.

01:39:17.240 I know.

01:39:18.300 I don't know.

01:39:19.040 Yeah.

01:39:19.160 I'm worried that it's bad news.

01:39:20.880 Well, that's the point.

01:39:21.940 It's bad news.

01:39:22.500 Yeah.

01:39:22.520 I'm worried it's bad news.

01:39:23.200 Really bad news.

01:39:24.040 Yeah.

01:39:24.540 Do you think that's true?

01:39:25.740 Well, I don't know.

01:39:27.020 No, so I'm not even saying it because I don't know if it's true and it is bad.

01:39:29.660 It's super bad.

01:39:30.400 I mean, it seems like the dominant two theories are now that it's non-human intelligence or that

01:39:36.800 we or our adversaries have mastered anti-gravity technology.

01:39:41.040 The other scenarios of, you know, some kind of new plasma or, you know, it's just kind

01:39:49.380 of the phenomenon doesn't seem to be showing up in that way.

01:39:52.540 Well, the core idea seems to be that it's that there is non-human intelligence, whether

01:39:56.200 all these manifestations of it are that or whether they're government programs or Chinese

01:39:59.660 or whatever.

01:40:00.260 It was probably a pastiche of all of them.

01:40:02.600 But the core idea seems to be that there is non-human intelligence, which is plausible

01:40:06.960 and that it's been in interaction with the U.S. government for quite some time and that

01:40:12.560 it plays a role in our...

01:40:14.780 What role is it playing?

01:40:15.900 I mean, well, there are all these things that I don't know what is true or what's not true.

01:40:20.360 Do you think any of that is true?

01:40:22.140 I know you've done work on this.

01:40:24.180 Yeah.

01:40:24.460 I mean, you know, and it's hard.

01:40:26.560 I mean, you know, I covered the New Jersey drone situation.

01:40:31.560 I went to Jersey and interviewed a bunch of people.

01:40:33.900 I mean, the weirdest, for me, the weirdest moment is where you have John Kirby, the Defense

01:40:38.420 Department spokesperson at Mayorkas, basically on the same day or the same 48

01:40:42.520 hours, just when they were asked about it, they just came out affirmatively and they

01:40:45.960 were like, well, we're definitely not getting any drones over the military bases or other

01:40:50.320 sensitive sites.

01:40:51.060 And you're like, I was like, why would you lie about that?

01:40:53.680 I couldn't.

01:40:54.480 I couldn't because, of course, you know, all else being equal, I think that they don't

01:40:58.620 people don't want to lie.

01:40:59.740 Politicians don't want to lie because it just creates more work or hassle for them.

01:41:02.880 It complicates your life.

01:41:03.320 It complicates your life.

01:41:04.160 Honesty is the best policy.

01:41:05.800 So why would they lie about that?

01:41:07.560 Especially because the Wall Street Journal had like, they did this huge piece about all of the

01:41:12.340 drone, so-called, by the way, unidentified anomalous drone flyovers over the military bases and

01:41:19.380 sensitive sites, which includes nuclear plants.

01:41:21.180 I mean, I, part of my interest in this was always, you know, I was trying to save Diablo

01:41:25.080 Canyon in California.

01:41:26.100 They kept getting drone flyovers.

01:41:27.940 Also Palo Verde, which is our biggest nuclear plant.

01:41:31.060 Three beautiful reactors there in Arizona.

01:41:33.320 Like a lot of drone flyovers.

01:41:36.140 I'm also from Northeast Colorado, which is where, you know, the ICBMs are.

01:41:39.740 A lot of the whole, they had this exact same drone situation.

01:41:44.060 I believe it was December, I want to say December 2019.

01:41:47.900 And they had this whole interagency task force and they were like, they were like, oh, we're

01:41:51.100 going to put a plane up and they kind of put a plane up and you're watching and you're

01:41:53.500 like, you're like, well, why are they not scrambling jets?

01:41:56.740 Like, what are we like, what are we doing here?

01:41:58.440 Like, this is really bizarre.

01:41:59.980 It doesn't make any sense.

01:42:01.180 It doesn't, I can't figure it out because I think the other issue is that they may not

01:42:04.700 know.

01:42:05.260 I mean, okay, well, so to finish that story, so then drone and my aircraft do that.

01:42:09.140 I go out and I'm just like, like, that's the weirdest lie because like it was just,

01:42:14.260 it's been heavily reported.

01:42:15.960 I mean, the drones, I mean, the drones over sensitive military bases is really well reported.

01:42:20.420 And some of the best reporting was by a publication called The War Zone, which I highly recommend.

01:42:26.920 Very good, serious investigative reporting.

01:42:28.720 They don't believe it's aliens at all.

01:42:30.480 Like they're just openly like anti-alien.

01:42:32.700 They're like, this is, and I think it's, well, anyway, for whatever reason, they're

01:42:37.620 just like, this is Chinese or Russian or whatever.

01:42:39.720 They're not taking it seriously, but they do some of the best reporting because they're

01:42:42.100 kind of, because they can't figure out why the military is being so weird about it.

01:42:46.080 So then Trump comes out and he goes, they know what it is.

01:42:50.580 I don't know why they're not telling anybody.

01:42:53.560 And I'm going to tell everybody on the, on the 20th.

01:42:55.760 I mean, I, first of all, I'm really happy that they're going to disclose and I want

01:43:00.820 to raise expectations about what the Trump administration is going to do.

01:43:03.900 We want the data.

01:43:05.080 And I mean, someone was criticizing me because they were like, oh, oh, because I came out

01:43:08.360 and I said, oh, I'm confident the Trump administration is going to share the data.

01:43:10.600 And they're like, that just shows that Schellenberger is, you know, it's like pro-Trump

01:43:14.120 and whatever.

01:43:14.680 And I was like, no, I'm just like pro-disclosure.

01:43:16.260 I want the expectations to be high because they should be high.

01:43:19.180 There is so much information they're not releasing.

01:43:21.520 So, you know, they were over Bedminster and he's talked about it twice now, by the way.

01:43:26.760 So look, we're distressed about it.

01:43:28.520 He's worried about it.

01:43:29.600 So we're either headed for a pretty epic moment of disclosure.

01:43:33.500 There's another part of me that worries.

01:43:35.680 So I, okay.

01:43:36.240 So it seems like, yeah, they could do disclosure and we can find out what it is.

01:43:40.540 You know, is it, if it's, there's could be aliens.

01:43:42.900 If it's aliens, that's just a whole can of worms.

01:43:45.400 And then you have to be like, is there like, do we talk to them?

01:43:49.000 And if so, who, who's doing that?

01:43:51.860 Do you think we have?

01:43:52.900 I genuinely don't know.

01:43:55.020 I genuinely don't know.

01:43:56.500 I mean, there's, there's this guy named, I can't remember his first name, Stringfield.

01:44:02.260 He wrote this incredible thick book of UAP crashes, crash retrievals.

01:44:09.640 And it's, and he started doing it, I want to say 50s or 60s.

01:44:13.920 And I think he went for like multiple decades.

01:44:15.400 And you just sit down with that book and it is like, it's impressive.

01:44:20.240 I mean, if it's a hoax, it's just one of the greatest hoaxes of all times, you know,

01:44:25.380 like other hoaxes, you know, like the protocols of the elders of Zion or whatever.

01:44:30.260 They're, they're really bad.

01:44:31.640 Like they're really, you're just like, this is like the dumbest hoax ever.

01:44:35.680 Like most hoaxes are not that sophisticated with all these details.

01:44:39.420 And as people interviewed, of course, Roswell is the big case, but it's only apparently one

01:44:42.820 of them, there's others.

01:44:44.320 So there is this incredible, you know, gray literature, never published by any academic

01:44:49.960 press, by any really a little bit of commercial non, nonfiction.

01:44:55.020 Obviously you have David Grush and Lou Elizondo.

01:44:57.040 I testified in front of Congress on this in, I guess I was in December or November.

01:45:02.220 And, you know, two people, the two guys from the military, when we, when we were asked,

01:45:06.700 what are they?

01:45:07.260 Two guys said non-human intelligence.

01:45:09.080 And then me and the NASA guy said, we don't know because I just don't.

01:45:13.940 I mean, I just, what do you think the drones who were in Jersey were?

01:45:18.620 I mean, look here, let me tell, let's just, let's just, let's just, let's just look at

01:45:22.820 the possibility that they're human.

01:45:26.440 They didn't get a single one of them.

01:45:28.080 They didn't down a single one of them, not a single one of them crashed.

01:45:31.180 And there was a lot of them and there was a lot of, look, there's a lot of mistaken

01:45:34.800 sightings, you know, it is easy to mistake things.

01:45:38.940 It's totally natural.

01:45:40.220 But, but there was also, I mean, I interviewed mayors, two mayors were like, one of them

01:45:46.260 that was like, I had an SUV sized drone flying over my house.

01:45:49.020 Another one said he was going to a Fox news interview in New York.

01:45:51.840 The car came from, he walks out his door and there's one hovering right over him.

01:45:54.700 And he said that, you know, it felt like it was watching him.

01:45:57.840 Like it was there monitoring him.

01:45:59.140 I mean, that's weird stuff.

01:46:00.640 Um, so we can't get a single drone down there over military bases.

01:46:04.880 They can't seem to get any of them.

01:46:07.160 Um, you know, do I think the Chinese could be behind or the, the, those are the Chinese.

01:46:13.780 I mean, when the Chinese decide to like encroach and you in like in the South China Sea, when

01:46:18.880 they decide to, you know how they'll like, they'll like warn the United States occasionally

01:46:21.860 like, oh, you're flying over our airspace.

01:46:23.380 It's all super calculated and like, you know, like they're make, they're, they're, it's

01:46:28.940 like our performance, the Chinese are like, we're messing with you.

01:46:32.380 Like you all kind of know, and they're doing it in ways where they don't want it to escalate,

01:46:35.760 but they want to get a little bit more of that space.

01:46:37.380 It's all super calculated.

01:46:39.080 Now there was the balloon, you know, are there Chinese balloons?

01:46:42.720 Yeah.

01:46:43.500 But I mean, to be buzzing air, our military bases, it's just so aggressive.

01:46:49.340 Now I've, when I've said that before, I've had other people point out, they go, well,

01:46:51.940 they're aggressive with the cyber attacks.

01:46:53.960 That's, I guess that's true.

01:46:56.560 As a physicalist, I guess I kind of go flying your drones over U.S. military bases and nuclear

01:47:02.480 plants, that is just a level of aggression that just doesn't seem characteristic of the

01:47:06.020 Chinese.

01:47:06.140 Unless you were, well, of course I agree with you.

01:47:08.800 An Intel person told me that this person believed that they were in fact Chinese and

01:47:17.160 that a Chinese satellite went down, was visible to the naked eye.

01:47:21.400 There were news stories about it, it evaporated, it burned up, and that this person told me

01:47:28.220 that was taken down by the U.S. government.

01:47:29.580 That was a command and control satellite for these drones.

01:47:32.260 And the belief was the Chinese government was sending the following message, we're moving

01:47:37.240 on Taiwan and maybe other things.

01:47:38.680 You can't do anything about it.

01:47:40.300 Okay.

01:47:41.220 So, you know, I have no idea if that's true or not.

01:47:43.880 Zero.

01:47:45.640 Yeah.

01:47:45.960 I mean, I don't know.

01:47:47.860 That just doesn't, it just, I just got to say, it's just, it's so aggressive.

01:47:52.660 And, and also, but the other thing is that like, you know.

01:47:55.180 It seems reckless, actually.

01:47:55.960 It seems really reckless.

01:47:57.600 And I mean, the Chinese have not been seeking confrontations like that for the most part.

01:48:02.780 Now, Jesse Michaels, who is doing some of the best reporting on this issue of UAPs,

01:48:07.740 he's doing YouTube videos.

01:48:09.440 He just did a documentary that was incredible.

01:48:11.380 Like, I think it's like an hour, a couple of hours, highly recommended that goes through

01:48:15.380 the very long history of unidentified anomalous phenomena over U.S. military bases, including

01:48:22.400 all these cases of, you know, several cases of them shutting down missile systems.

01:48:29.500 Like a 65 year long history.

01:48:31.160 Yeah.

01:48:31.600 Yeah.

01:48:31.860 And there was this famous press conference with like missileers and others from military

01:48:37.240 bases in, in Washington, D.C., I want to say in the 90s, maybe, maybe 80s.

01:48:43.660 So, you know, like that predates any of the Chinese stuff by far.

01:48:48.800 It predates all the drones.

01:48:49.960 So that was going on for a really long time.

01:48:52.740 I mean, if you just kind of, if you step back and you look at it, it looks like a very,

01:48:57.580 like, what is it communicating on a very basic level?

01:48:59.700 It's definitely communicating dominance.

01:49:01.560 It's, you know, it's, it's, you can read in a lot of different ways and that's similar

01:49:05.500 to what the, the Navy pilots said around the tic-tac interactions off both coasts is

01:49:12.600 that these were phenomena or, you know, or objects, whatever you're going to call them

01:49:18.100 or, or craft that were just demonstrating dominance over our craft.

01:49:22.300 They were able to do things that our craft weren't doing.

01:49:24.020 So, yeah, I mean.

01:49:27.180 And that was from their perspective, the point of the behavior was to say, we can do things

01:49:32.000 that you can't.

01:49:32.840 Yeah.

01:49:33.360 And so then, then, then, then the question would be, so if it is NHI, then the question

01:49:37.840 is, are they communicating something?

01:49:40.280 And if they are communicating something, why would they only be doing it in that way?

01:49:44.360 Like you would, you would like, if you're like, if you're trying to demonstrate your

01:49:48.360 strength on adversary or something, you're trying to send some message, why would you just

01:49:52.180 do that?

01:49:52.560 Because there's nothing that we can do with that information.

01:49:55.100 So then you have to wonder, okay, if it is NHI and it's behaving in that way.

01:49:59.620 Non-human intelligence.

01:50:00.300 Yeah.

01:50:00.440 Non-human intelligence.

01:50:01.340 Then is there some, is there actually some other communication going on that we don't know

01:50:07.400 about?

01:50:07.900 And of course, there's just a long history and there's all these crazy stories of, you

01:50:13.060 know, presidents.

01:50:13.680 I mean, going back to Eisenhower.

01:50:16.420 So just to, just to bottom line your view after reporting on the lights over New

01:50:22.160 Jersey, uh, in Pennsylvania, New York, uh, mid Atlantic drone hysteria, do you think

01:50:29.720 they were human-made drones?

01:50:32.080 I genuinely don't know.

01:50:33.660 I mean, I will be, I'll be, I might be more shocked if they were human-made because of

01:50:37.660 their behaviors and they never were able to get one.

01:50:39.940 I did have somebody tell me recently that they had heard, I mean, again, it's always

01:50:43.940 secondhand.

01:50:44.720 It's so untrustworthy, but somebody told me that, that the military got one of the, the

01:50:49.180 orbs, the famous orbs and opened it up and it was Chinese.

01:50:53.400 I mean, if that's the case, then somebody has mastered anti-gravity and that's almost

01:50:59.080 harder for me to believe than that it's NHI because I mean, it's just, I mean, I don't

01:51:05.560 know.

01:51:05.740 I mean, look, we have a, I mean, here's the, I, I, I literally, I go back and forth.

01:51:08.740 You can see me doing it in the same conversation, but we have these huge black budgets in the

01:51:12.480 military.

01:51:12.920 I mean, just gigantic and they've been there for decades.

01:51:16.020 So is it possible to cover up something like that?

01:51:19.020 I think it might be.

01:51:20.320 I mean, I'm much more after having covered the Hunter Biden laptop and I mean, Russia

01:51:25.380 Gay too, but really the Hunter Biden laptop, I was just impressed by how many people were

01:51:29.620 involved in the conspiracy to cover it up.

01:51:32.220 I mean, you had the FBI getting it, covering it up, basically working with, working with

01:51:38.300 Aspen Institute to run a disinformation campaign.

01:51:42.100 By the way, this is Vivian Schiller and Garrett Graff run the disinformation campaign aimed

01:51:50.020 at persuading journalists in advance of the release of the Hunter Biden laptop that it was

01:51:55.120 a Russian information operation.

01:51:59.100 Garrett Graff is the guy that goes and does the big UFO book.

01:52:04.920 So these things all, I mean, this was very weird.

01:52:07.000 So he comes out with a big book on UFOs.

01:52:09.040 I think it was last year.

01:52:09.900 It's called UFO, Garrett Graff.

01:52:12.080 This is somebody that is famously close with the intelligence community.

01:52:15.860 His other books were on Watergate and on 9-11.

01:52:19.500 The book-

01:52:20.340 And both of which were totally legitimate.

01:52:21.960 No, for sure.

01:52:22.620 And I'm sure the official story is everything we need to know.

01:52:26.080 So, you know, you sort of go-

01:52:27.820 And what was his conclusion on UFOs?

01:52:29.280 Well, it was very, it's the, the narrative is that they don't know what they are.

01:52:34.680 So he doesn't fully, he's not like a debunker, like these guys who are like all, oh, we can

01:52:38.880 explain everything.

01:52:39.940 So he's much more sophisticated than that.

01:52:42.340 But it's basically a debunking.

01:52:44.020 It's basically that, it's basically that it's, it's just all the, you know, typical explanations.

01:52:52.180 And then maybe some U.S. military programs.

01:52:55.240 But he also just says that, he just argues that the U.S. military doesn't know what it is.

01:52:59.440 Because I don't believe Garrett Graff.

01:53:02.840 And the reason I don't believe Garrett Graff is because I saw him participate in a disinformation

01:53:07.440 campaign on Hunter Biden laptop.

01:53:09.340 And I know for a fact that there's something else going on at that Aspen Institute program.

01:53:14.400 And Aspen Institute, of course, is a massive U.S. government funded NGO that cosplays as

01:53:19.680 a kind of, you know, bourgeois gab fest.

01:53:23.480 So there, I mean, so I'm like, that was, for me, that was all came out on the Twitter

01:53:27.140 files.

01:53:27.500 I discovered that in the Twitter files.

01:53:29.260 And for me, it was like pulling back the curtain.

01:53:31.340 And you actually have, as a journalist, like you, we have the emails, you know, like you

01:53:35.960 have the documents, you have the tabletop exercise where they're brainwashing journalists

01:53:40.200 into believing a lie about the Hunter Biden laptop.

01:53:44.120 That was so sophisticated of that, because they basically go and brainwash journalists before

01:53:50.100 the story comes out, because they know they're listening to Giuliani, you know, their FBI tap

01:53:54.220 on Giuliani.

01:53:54.780 They're listening to Giuliani.

01:53:56.180 They knew we had to go brainwash the journalists.

01:53:58.440 They go get all the journalists from all the major outlets, plus the social media platforms

01:54:02.520 in these seminars where they program them.

01:54:07.080 I mean, that was like, for me, it was like, wow, there's like a secret government.

01:54:10.320 Like, it was like, there's some, there's like a whole, there's like a whole, it's a very,

01:54:13.920 and it was very just sophisticated.

01:54:15.580 I don't know what else to describe it.

01:54:16.460 Like, it was very, everything seemed very careful.

01:54:18.220 Also, with all the censorship stuff, you see these limited hangouts, right?

01:54:22.740 Where limited hangouts are kind of like the public relations of a covert operation, of

01:54:29.400 like a covert propaganda operation, where like, after they get caught, they can be like,

01:54:33.140 oh, no, we were totally honest about what we were doing.

01:54:34.940 We were talking about it.

01:54:35.760 But they do these weird limited hangouts.

01:54:38.040 You'll see these people that clearly look like either directly intelligence community

01:54:42.140 or their intermediaries having these conversations they put on YouTube and like, they're like,

01:54:46.860 but it's like, you know, a couple hundred views.

01:54:50.340 Like, they're not promoting them in any way.

01:54:53.260 And so, you just kind of go, wow, there's like a whole creepy, like, world of disinformation.

01:54:57.720 And what you realize is that the covert operations are really not covert.

01:55:01.060 Like, all the information's out there, actually.

01:55:04.460 Right.

01:55:04.960 But it's just discredited or unnoticed or no one collates it.

01:55:09.300 Have you noticed that?

01:55:10.620 Yeah.

01:55:11.020 No, I know.

01:55:11.620 And you only can understand it when you see the whole big picture,

01:55:16.820 because there's no smoking guns ever.

01:55:18.880 So, there's never something you can, I mean, a hundred by and a laptop got about as close

01:55:21.820 to a hundred as a smoking gun as you can get.

01:55:23.800 And it helped because it was, what helped to expose it was that it was partisan.

01:55:29.320 And so, it was a particular partisan weaponization.

01:55:32.020 My concern with the UAPs, I mean, it's now, I guess, a strength and a weakness is that it's

01:55:37.360 become bipartisan in terms of the desire.

01:55:40.280 I mean, it was really, I mean, Tucker, the weirdest experience I've had, I've testified

01:55:43.540 now like 12 times or 13 times in front of Congress in the last few years.

01:55:47.340 The weirdest experience I've had was on UAPs, seeing the Democrats and Republicans basically

01:55:52.480 being aligned in wanting to get to the bottom of the UAP thing.

01:55:56.160 I mean, it's beautiful.

01:55:56.980 Like, I've never seen it.

01:55:57.560 I was like, this is, I've never, I've heard of bipartisanship.

01:56:00.180 Never thought I would see it in, you know, in the wild.

01:56:03.980 So, that is exciting.

01:56:05.380 On the other hand, I suspect that there is also some bipartisan group that's trying to

01:56:09.300 prevent that information from getting up for some reason.

01:56:11.440 So, I mean, look, I mean, it is, I mean, what is going to happen?

01:56:16.800 I mean, part of me is, you know, maybe it's my defensive pessimism on it, because like everybody

01:56:21.820 else, I want the information.

01:56:23.840 Part of me is like, there's just no way they're going to let that information out.

01:56:26.700 It's just something is too, there's something about the UAP thing, like the JFK thing, where

01:56:32.380 there's some secret there that they are really, there is some group of people that really don't

01:56:37.640 want us to know.

01:56:39.460 So, you know.

01:56:40.060 Well, that's a fact.

01:56:41.660 Yes.

01:56:42.060 I bumped up against that personally several times on both of those issues, which appear

01:56:46.940 to be related.

01:56:47.880 Yes.

01:56:48.980 But I don't know the answer.

01:56:51.180 It's almost like seeing something in photographic negative.

01:56:54.300 All I know for a fact confirmed is that they are willing to go to extreme lengths to keep

01:57:00.380 it secret.

01:57:01.400 And so, that's just to tell that it's, there's something profound there.

01:57:04.380 It's not just a bureaucracy covering its own ass.

01:57:06.460 It's more than that.

01:57:07.120 I mean, how about the clip where Pompeo is being interviewed about the JFK files, and

01:57:12.040 then he like literally mid-sentence goes, but I mean, I've also seen the UFO files.

01:57:15.980 And it was like, well, why, why did you just switch from like, what made you think of the

01:57:21.000 UFO files on the JFK files?

01:57:25.280 I don't know.

01:57:26.440 I mean, so anyway, is there a secret, has there, have we developed anti-gravity?

01:57:32.000 Have we developed, I mean, we know that in the 50s, there were like, there was a, there's

01:57:37.100 a whole book on it, it's very fascinating, but there was like, there was an anti-gravity

01:57:40.080 program in the U.S. military with our defense contractors.

01:57:43.220 It made the cover of one of the aerospace magazines.

01:57:46.660 It was like, there's like a cover of it.

01:57:48.140 And then it just disappeared.

01:57:49.980 And so, you can kind of go, I mean, the official experience goes, yeah, we tried that and it

01:57:54.260 didn't work.

01:57:54.820 It's like, well, how would, that's never stopped you before.

01:57:58.180 Right.

01:57:59.560 Like, it not working, like, that's like, you know, like, like you would keep working on

01:58:05.320 it if you can do anti-gravity.

01:58:06.420 So, the other possibility is that it just went dark and they just, they kept doing it.

01:58:10.200 Well, I wonder though about the, like the possibility that there is a, or has been technology transfer

01:58:16.500 from some other realm to this realm.

01:58:19.400 Um, cause there are, you know, just in the study of history, there are, it's like, there's

01:58:24.800 really no understanding at a bunch of different points of in human societal evolution.

01:58:29.540 Like, where did that technology come from?

01:58:31.960 And you see that on a bunch of different technologies.

01:58:35.740 So, but nuclear anti-gravity, that kind of stuff, like, are you open to the possibility

01:58:41.580 that, that there's been like a transfer of that technology from some other?

01:58:47.000 I mean, that is definitely, there's definitely, that is, that is what a lot of people talk

01:58:50.260 about.

01:58:51.240 Yeah.

01:58:51.880 I mean, the problem with this issue is just, it's very frustrating because it's just all

01:58:56.600 secondhand.

01:58:57.300 Of course it is.

01:58:58.140 And so, like the hundred-biting laptop is not secondhand, like it's firsthand and I have

01:59:03.040 the documents.

01:59:04.380 Now, there are a bunch of really fascinating, you know, alleged US, secret US government documents

01:59:11.800 on UFOs, on, on alleged alien spacecraft crashes.

01:59:17.720 They're called the, you know, majestic documents or the MJ-12 documents.

01:59:22.580 And so, the story is that, you know, that, that one or two of these craft crashed in 1947

01:59:29.340 near Roswell, New Mexico.

01:59:31.420 And that sort of begins in, you know, and there's a whole cast of characters that allegedly,

01:59:36.000 you know, including Oppenheimer, were involved in that program.

01:59:40.260 Um, you know, the-

01:59:41.880 Why would Oppenheimer be involved?

01:59:43.340 Well, why, I mean, because he was the man, you know, like he was, like, he was our greatest

01:59:47.600 scientist, obviously the father of the atomic bomb.

01:59:50.980 And, you know, Roswell is where the, um, where we launched the, the flights to bomb, um, Hiroshima

01:59:57.500 and Nagasaki.

01:59:58.340 So, it's very symbolic in that sense.

02:00:00.620 Maybe more than symbolic.

02:00:02.020 Yeah, maybe more than symbolic.

02:00:03.460 I mean, they keep flying over nuclear, like, as my wife says, she's like, they, your aliens

02:00:06.740 really, they don't like the nuclear, you know, because I love nuclear.

02:00:09.580 So, and I'm kind of like, I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, like, and also the most ridiculous

02:00:14.220 thing is when people are like, oh, yeah, they want us to give, give up our, you know, the

02:00:18.260 people that believe in them, they go, the aliens are here and they want us to give up

02:00:21.080 our nuclear weapons.

02:00:21.960 It's like, doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

02:00:25.180 Um, the foreign space invaders would like you to give up your most powerful weapons.

02:00:28.640 Um, but those documents, I spent a bunch of time on them and I couldn't figure out how

02:00:32.380 to report anything on it because of course, of course, FBI was like, these are all debunked.

02:00:36.520 They're all frauds.

02:00:37.280 But there are, first of all, there's a lot more of them.

02:00:39.860 You go to MajesticDocuments.com and you can look at them.

02:00:42.540 They're amazing.

02:00:43.540 I mean, if they are, and I've also had the other, and they're, by the way, in those,

02:00:48.580 in the Garrett Graff book, they're in that book.

02:00:50.140 They're also in another debunking book called, um, by Mark Pilkington, um, I'm blanking on

02:00:55.820 the name right now.

02:00:56.360 Um, but they, they, they all, all the people that are the debunkers deal with these documents

02:01:01.060 and their story is not that they were all hoaxes.

02:01:04.860 Their story is that they were what's called counterintelligence passage material, documents

02:01:10.260 that were created by the U S government, but leaked to people to ostensibly be able to

02:01:15.100 smoke out double agents or people like you would see them, I guess it would trace these

02:01:19.240 documents.

02:01:19.880 Right.

02:01:19.920 Like putting dye in the water to find the leak.

02:01:22.340 Yeah.

02:01:22.460 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

02:01:23.540 So, I mean, but the thing is, I mean, it is like, there's like one of them is a handbook

02:01:28.540 of crash retrieval, like for like to like that, that the, that the soldiers would ostensibly

02:01:34.000 read to retrieve these crash.

02:01:35.480 I mean, it's the, the, if they're hoaxes, they're incredible.

02:01:39.920 I mean, like they have like, they have like, they have like the people like they have, I forgot

02:01:43.320 what it's called, but like basically like a manifest where they show who's checked it out

02:01:46.860 and read it and they have all these different names and they've checked those names and those

02:01:49.520 were like real people at those air bases that had these documents.

02:01:54.000 So, um, and then, you know, there was one document in particular where it was a memo

02:01:59.020 from JFK to the CIA director Dulles, where he says, I want to see you on this particular

02:02:03.440 day.

02:02:03.700 It was like July 62 or 63.

02:02:06.220 I can't remember which.

02:02:07.380 And now again, everyone's like, oh, that's a forgery.

02:02:09.160 It's part of the MJ-12 documents or whatever.

02:02:10.660 It's not real.

02:02:11.480 But then they released the JFK files.

02:02:13.380 And then sure enough, we see the Dulles calendar and he had met with JFK twice that day.

02:02:16.860 Nobody had known that they had had those meetings until we had that JFK mem and until we had

02:02:23.100 the confirmation of the memo.

02:02:24.440 So that would suggest that at least either that document is real, that JFK memo to Dulles

02:02:30.980 or whoever forged it knew that he had met with Dulles that day and nobody else had known

02:02:37.780 that.

02:02:38.460 So, you know, you'd be sort of like, I guess, I guess you could still put it in the, this

02:02:42.160 is why, this is the problem with this issue is you can still, there's, there's still plausible

02:02:46.240 deniability for a lot of, for all of these things.

02:02:48.920 You know, you can make up a reason for why these documents are all counterintelligent

02:02:53.220 passage material.

02:02:56.900 I don't know.

02:02:57.580 That's why I just have to kind of go, I don't know.

02:02:59.560 I mean, I talked to a lot of people and yeah, it's just a lot of secondhand information and

02:03:05.480 the documents are secondhand.

02:03:06.520 So you kind of go, there's like my world of like the Hunter Biden laptop, which still

02:03:10.440 a bunch of my progressive and Democrat friends and family don't believe.

02:03:13.560 You know, they still, they still think the Russians were somehow involved.

02:03:17.580 But like, I actually have the documents and we can prove what happened there.

02:03:20.980 On the UAP stuff, it's just still just surrounded in history.

02:03:25.420 But the incoming president has said, he just said, I'm going to tell you what those drones

02:03:29.880 were about.

02:03:31.780 He was very relaxed about it too.

02:03:33.940 I mean, I was struck that when they, when he did, she said it twice, he said it again

02:03:36.740 recently, like last week, right?

02:03:38.340 And, but then he said it in December, he goes, I don't know why they're buying, like, I don't

02:03:42.000 know why they're not telling people what they are.

02:03:43.520 They know what they are.

02:03:44.580 And I was like, I was like, I mean, it was a really, he made it sound like it's no big

02:03:49.400 deal.

02:03:49.860 Like we should just tell people what it is.

02:03:51.620 But if Trump knew what it is and if he, if it's NHI and Trump knows that he seemed very

02:03:56.440 relaxed about that because of course the, I mean, the, the main, the dominant, the conventional

02:04:02.800 wisdom among people that follow this, who think it's NHI is that it's bad news, but it's not

02:04:10.860 a great, that it's not a great story that if it were good news and that they were just

02:04:14.900 friendly space brothers, you know, offering us, you know, advanced tech then, and they'd

02:04:20.040 be like, and there's no strings attached or whatever, that would be a much easier story

02:04:24.160 to sell.

02:04:24.600 But if there's some bad news in that story, then that might explain why they're so

02:04:28.060 secret.

02:04:28.460 Clearly there's some bad news.

02:04:29.580 My theory is that the reason that permanent Washington or deep state or whatever, people

02:04:35.360 who administer the system hate Trump is not because of any of his policies, which

02:04:39.560 they're probably agnostic on, but because they fear that he will disclose information.

02:04:45.820 I think it's, everything's about disclosure.

02:04:47.520 If you look at the federal government, what's it's defining quality is secrecy, right?

02:04:50.800 Yes.

02:04:51.180 Billion classified documents.

02:04:52.380 Why is that?

02:04:53.120 Right.

02:04:53.460 It's not good.

02:04:54.200 It's never good.

02:04:54.880 Your kids behave like that.

02:04:55.780 It's not good.

02:04:56.420 No.

02:04:56.900 They're using drugs or whatever.

02:04:58.340 You know what I mean?

02:04:59.000 Right.

02:04:59.440 They're having sex.

02:05:00.120 They shouldn't be having.

02:05:00.740 There's never a good reason for that kind of secrecy.

02:05:03.300 It's not privacy.

02:05:04.100 It's secrecy.

02:05:04.580 So.

02:05:04.740 Right.

02:05:05.140 Yes.

02:05:05.480 And there's something about Trump that makes everybody nervous that he might say more of

02:05:10.880 what he knows than he should.

02:05:11.940 Well, they don't control him.

02:05:13.240 That's right.

02:05:14.300 So that's, that's very nerve wracking.

02:05:16.000 I mean, how much do you think that they're just worried that he's going to pull out of

02:05:18.880 NATO?

02:05:20.100 How much of it is that?

02:05:21.520 That's, I mean, I, of course, that's, that's in my daily prayers that he would do that.

02:05:25.760 I don't think he's in danger of doing that.

02:05:28.800 I hope, certainly hope so.

02:05:30.140 But I think it's even more fundamental.

02:05:32.180 It's like this guy could say the truth.

02:05:34.120 Because Trump is not much of a liar, actually, by Washington standards.

02:05:39.840 He's an exaggerator, of course, but actually his defining quality is like saying the truth.

02:05:44.980 He's being honest about kind of big issues.

02:05:46.760 The big issues.

02:05:47.460 Exactly.

02:05:47.520 So what do you, so you think he knows what it is?

02:05:52.280 The OAP stuff?

02:05:53.180 Yeah.

02:05:53.460 I do think that, yes.

02:05:54.500 And, and you think it's an NHI?

02:05:57.740 You know, I, he hasn't told me, but yeah, I do think he knows.

02:06:02.020 I'm pretty sure, pretty sure he knows.

02:06:03.720 And I'm pretty sure that everybody I've ever spoken to, who I think knows a lot more than

02:06:08.240 I do, I mean, what does it mean to know?

02:06:10.160 Like, do we really know anything?

02:06:11.740 I don't know.

02:06:12.600 I'm, I'm not sure anybody fully understands this or even partially understands it, but

02:06:16.460 the people who, who I'm confident have a lot more information than I have to a person

02:06:23.040 are very, very uncomfortable about it.

02:06:25.180 Yeah.

02:06:25.760 Since not in public and private, which is another tell.

02:06:29.740 That I'm just not, I mean, you've talked to a lot of people.

02:06:31.820 I mean, yeah, no, I mean, it's there, it's very, um, yeah.

02:06:35.800 I mean, I say my prayers.

02:06:37.240 I'm still Christian.

02:06:38.040 And I mean, um, you know, it's interesting, Joe, when I was on Joe Rogan's podcast last

02:06:43.660 time, I mean, here, you know, Joe was like, I think that they're extraterrestrials, you

02:06:48.040 know, he's openly saying that.

02:06:49.080 Yeah, it's not, that's not the case.

02:06:50.760 Well, okay.

02:06:51.240 Or NHI, I guess NHI.

02:06:52.680 Yeah.

02:06:52.780 Um, but I mean, here, you and Joe are like the two big, most influential podcasters in

02:06:58.580 the country.

02:06:59.020 And you both think that it's not just a government secret tech or that it's not just plasmas.

02:07:04.840 And Joe's very close with Elon, loves Elon, you know, like me.

02:07:10.640 And I think probably like you believes that Elon deserves a huge amount of credit for saving

02:07:14.580 free speech in this country.

02:07:17.000 Um, Elon says there's nothing there, never sees anything.

02:07:21.220 And they've got an amazing rocket system that sees a lot of things.

02:07:24.760 I'm not sure.

02:07:24.980 I've talked to Elon about this a number of times.

02:07:27.240 And I'm not sure he said that.

02:07:28.560 Okay.

02:07:28.840 I thought he did say that.

02:07:29.600 No.

02:07:29.920 I thought he said, if I see, if there's any aliens.

02:07:31.860 He jokes about it, which is a tell.

02:07:33.800 Um, Trump does too.

02:07:36.020 Uh, and they all, they joke in the same way.

02:07:38.600 I mean, I, of course I love them both, obviously.

02:07:41.360 And I feel like, you know, I'm, um, I feel like they both have really been great for this

02:07:46.740 country, you know, net, net, as they say.

02:07:49.220 But, um, no, they joke about it in the same way that a lot of people joke about it.

02:07:53.620 They're like, no, there are no flying saucers from Mars.

02:07:56.400 Right.

02:07:56.480 Of course, they're not from Mars.

02:07:57.800 They're not from another planet.

02:07:59.500 They're from here.

02:08:00.480 They've always been here.

02:08:01.520 These are spiritual entities.

02:08:02.500 This is my view.

02:08:03.200 And I sincerely believe it.

02:08:04.560 Can't prove it.

02:08:05.860 But since you asked, so he is, I've never heard Elon say that's not true.

02:08:10.540 Be dismissive.

02:08:11.220 That there's nothing there.

02:08:12.460 He just said, look, we monitor space.

02:08:14.740 That's what they do.

02:08:15.440 Right.

02:08:15.660 And this is self-evident.

02:08:17.620 If there were, there have been so many sightings in this country and around the world that if

02:08:22.440 they were from another galaxy far, far away, there would be some satellite evidence of

02:08:29.180 that.

02:08:29.460 They'd be picked up coming into our atmosphere.

02:08:31.680 And of course, that's not, as far as I know.

02:08:34.120 Well, we do have some photos.

02:08:35.560 I mean, there's that one photo of the one, um, I can't remember.

02:08:38.360 It's like, it's in the James Fox documentary.

02:08:40.180 So there are some of those apparently coming through space in here.

02:08:43.860 And it's only, I've been told there's a lot more of those photos and images, but yeah,

02:08:47.240 I mean, there's also surprise me though.

02:08:48.940 I mean, it's clear that these things reside, you know, deep in the earth, under the water

02:08:53.840 and in the, in the atmosphere.

02:08:56.420 So, um, I mean, why the elusiveness then why the secrecy?

02:09:00.440 Well, that's the question.

02:09:01.360 That is the question.

02:09:02.320 I mean, why is everybody who, again, I don't know what anybody really knows.

02:09:06.200 I don't know anything.

02:09:07.100 I just want to start every sentence by admitting, I don't know anything.

02:09:10.560 I don't know what happens when you die.

02:09:12.180 I don't know how the brain works.

02:09:13.960 I don't know anything.

02:09:14.620 I don't know what sleep is for.

02:09:16.680 None of us do.

02:09:17.760 That's a really interesting one.

02:09:19.100 That's a surprisingly interesting one, actually.

02:09:21.320 But it's such a, it's so revealing of the limits of human knowledge.

02:09:24.540 It's like, oh, science has solved this.

02:09:26.380 Really?

02:09:26.700 What's sleep for?

02:09:28.080 Tell me how that benefits us.

02:09:29.740 Sleep, really?

02:09:31.320 But anyway, so I just always want to say and remind myself of the limits of my knowledge,

02:09:35.880 which are profound.

02:09:36.460 So I don't know anything.

02:09:37.860 But once again, every person I've talked to who I believe has deeper knowledge on this

02:09:43.740 question than I have, has seemed burdened by it.

02:09:47.860 Have you noticed this?

02:09:49.020 Yeah.

02:09:49.860 Yeah.

02:09:50.260 It's not fun anymore.

02:09:51.160 And these are not people who are making money from it.

02:09:52.560 No.

02:09:52.940 These are not people trying to get famous from it.

02:09:54.740 These are people who just seem to have this knowledge and they're bothered by it.

02:09:57.980 So that's, to me.

02:09:58.520 And I don't think it's, I don't think it's to cover up a secret weapons program.

02:10:01.760 I mean, in other words, like, I don't think that's how you would do it.

02:10:03.860 It's so like, yeah, I don't believe it.

02:10:06.620 A secret weapons program.

02:10:08.120 Yeah.

02:10:08.940 Sorry.

02:10:09.480 It's much deeper.

02:10:10.320 Like, weapons programs come and go.

02:10:12.060 Right.

02:10:12.900 Weapons that we thought were fearsome when I was a child are a joke now.

02:10:16.220 We're watching weapons technology change so fast in the Ukraine war that people can't

02:10:20.260 even get their brains around it.

02:10:21.080 And you wouldn't need this elaborate.

02:10:22.880 And also, like, if you're doing passage material, like, just to go back to those cases, like,

02:10:26.380 why would it be that?

02:10:27.520 And why would there be so much of it?

02:10:28.900 Why would it, why wouldn't it be something?

02:10:31.740 Anyway, it's a very curiously large body of passage material.

02:10:36.740 Yes.

02:10:37.280 On this particular topic.

02:10:38.760 Well, that's right.

02:10:39.840 Well, that's, that's what I was saying.

02:10:40.980 Like, I do think all the puzzle pieces are sort of in plain sight.

02:10:44.980 Did you ask Putin about it?

02:10:49.920 I, I did not ask Putin about it.

02:10:52.940 I would never have done it on air because I did ask him a bunch of questions off, off

02:10:58.780 camera about, you know, he has access to, of course, he controls the Soviet archives,

02:11:03.940 which, and the Soviets are great archivists.

02:11:06.480 And we know that from the, you know, couple of, I'm interested in Soviet leadership and

02:11:11.280 government and all that stuff.

02:11:12.060 There have been a couple of amazing books written, The Court of the Red Zar being, I

02:11:16.300 think, the greatest of them, about Stalin, for example.

02:11:18.320 And one thing you learn from reading the book is they kept records on everything, almost

02:11:21.720 like the Nazis, like crazy level records.

02:11:24.960 And, you know, most of them have never been this close.

02:11:26.740 So I had, I did have some questions for Putin about that, about Rudolf Hess specifically.

02:11:30.960 It's one of the great stories in history that doesn't make any sense at all.

02:11:34.640 The number two guy in Nazi Germany flying into Scotland in a plane by himself and bailing

02:11:38.520 out, you know, right before the U.S. entry into the war and had all these things to say

02:11:44.620 that were wild.

02:11:46.240 And one of the things he apparently said in his debriefs was he believed that Hitler was

02:11:51.200 being influenced by demonic spirits that he had summoned through the occult.

02:11:55.820 Huh?

02:11:57.080 That's not worth knowing more about.

02:11:58.580 There's a lot of stuff on that.

02:11:59.340 There's a lot.

02:12:00.120 There's a lot.

02:12:00.460 But Hess said that.

02:12:01.780 So I immediately asked Putin about that off camera.

02:12:03.940 I didn't want to seem like a wacko having unauthorized questions, but I did ask him

02:12:08.360 about that.

02:12:08.660 He did not get a satisfactory answer, but I did not ask him about UFOs.

02:12:13.180 Well, I thought also the, you know, you may have seen Mark Andreessen recently said that

02:12:16.160 when he met with the White House officials who said that they wanted to take all the, they

02:12:20.100 wanted to take control over all AI, that they said to him something like, we've, we've

02:12:26.420 declassified whole areas of science since the 1950s.

02:12:31.920 And I was like, that just seemed like a reference to this stuff, at least, at least to the, at

02:12:39.380 least to the anti-gravity, if not to some of the UAP stuff.

02:12:43.520 I think the modern Western mind, the post-1945 Western mind is incapable of understanding some

02:12:48.400 of the stuff because we lack the language of, you know, metaphysics.

02:12:52.400 And I think that's, you know, just been a feature of human thinking from the cave period.

02:12:59.360 Right.

02:12:59.780 Until we dropped the atom bomb, in which case it just like turned off and we're like, oh,

02:13:03.280 only the material world is real.

02:13:04.700 But no one else has ever thought that because that's not true.

02:13:06.720 Well, like for a hundred years, right?

02:13:08.120 Really from Darwin, nearly 150 years.

02:13:10.540 Yeah.

02:13:10.780 But I don't think, I mean, even before, before the war, before dropping those bombs, which

02:13:17.840 really were, I mean, I do think that's like the pivot point in history more than anything

02:13:20.980 else, but yeah, there've been secular movements, you know, rich people always think they're

02:13:24.680 God and so they want to eliminate any rivals from the public from the conversation.

02:13:29.100 But those bombs, man, everything changed, you don't think.

02:13:33.060 Well, it sure seemed like it.

02:13:35.400 I mean, there's a really positive side of it though, which is that we haven't had these

02:13:39.500 awful wars.

02:13:40.800 Yes.

02:13:41.340 Brutal.

02:13:41.840 I mean, when you look at the death toll that was going up from up and up and up from wars

02:13:45.160 all throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, it's awful.

02:13:49.140 So they've spared us that, but it took something apocalyptic.

02:13:54.380 Well, it's been 80 years.

02:13:55.440 We'll see.

02:13:56.160 Yeah.

02:13:57.100 So last question.

02:13:58.180 Sorry, I've got it.

02:13:59.800 Can you imagine sitting next to me at dinner?

02:14:01.300 Like, can you imagine sitting next to me at dinner?

02:14:02.340 I never get anything done.

02:14:04.200 And you're, I think, one of the most knowledgeable people in the country on like all the most

02:14:08.820 interesting topics, so.

02:14:10.120 You're too kind.

02:14:10.820 No, it's just a fact.

02:14:12.660 In fact, if there's anything in this conversation, I think, is like provoked in people, it's a desire

02:14:15.920 to hear more Michael Schellenberger.

02:14:17.860 Oh, thank you.

02:14:19.640 Do you think it's possible that what we're seeing in LA, which does feel like the destruction

02:14:24.480 of our second biggest city, from which maybe there's no recovery?

02:14:29.060 I don't know.

02:14:29.400 I hope.

02:14:30.200 But do you think it's an act of war in some sense?

02:14:34.020 You mean from a foreign power or?

02:14:39.000 I do.

02:14:39.940 Oh.

02:14:40.980 Like, what's the evidence for that?

02:14:43.040 It happened.

02:14:44.620 And it happened between Trump's election and his inauguration.

02:14:49.040 And it's just crazy.

02:14:50.600 The second Trump got elected, I had this instinct like, oh, man, I bet a lot there's going to

02:14:54.760 be bad stuff that happens.

02:14:56.320 I mean, I was more struck by that on the UAP, on the drone UAP.

02:14:59.720 Yeah.

02:14:59.740 Well, exactly.

02:15:00.400 It's of a piece.

02:15:01.400 Yeah.

02:15:01.760 It's of a bizarre Tesla explosion in Las Vegas.

02:15:05.400 Very weird.

02:15:05.980 Mass shooting.

02:15:06.760 Like, there's just...

02:15:07.320 Yeah.

02:15:08.120 If there's a two-month period in my whole life, 55 years, where more weird shit's been

02:15:12.680 packed into two months, I can't think of it.

02:15:14.340 Yeah.

02:15:14.900 Can you?

02:15:16.600 No, it's freaking me out a little bit.

02:15:18.380 Me too.

02:15:18.660 Honestly.

02:15:19.280 Me too.

02:15:19.460 I mean, I spent a bunch of time on the Livell's Burger.

02:15:22.800 That's the guy that killed himself in the Tesla in Las Vegas.

02:15:26.000 I mean, you definitely have cases of PTSD causing people to do things, and people are surprised

02:15:32.540 by suicides.

02:15:34.360 But yeah, it was a weird one.

02:15:35.920 You know, and I was skeptical of his emails, because, you know, he sent these emails to

02:15:39.220 Sean Ryan.

02:15:40.180 He's another excellent podcaster now.

02:15:41.840 I think you've had him on, or you've been on there.

02:15:43.560 He's a friend of mine.

02:15:44.360 And I can, just for the record, I consider him an honest...

02:15:48.340 Oh, no, I did too.

02:15:49.120 I think Ryan is an honest man.

02:15:50.300 No, no, for sure.

02:15:51.000 Oh, he's a CIA operative.

02:15:51.900 Oh, shut up.

02:15:52.720 No.

02:15:53.260 No, no.

02:15:53.560 I was like, I was like, enjoyed because I believe in Sean, and I'm sure he did not fake that.

02:16:00.560 So, you know, and then the FBI did confirm that those emails were real.

02:16:04.700 On the other hand, you know, that was a weird one, too, because it felt like he was like,

02:16:07.840 oh, those were Chinese drones.

02:16:10.700 They've mastered Gravetic.

02:16:12.140 It just felt like he didn't really know what he was talking about, either.

02:16:15.060 So, there's just a lot of people talking.

02:16:17.720 Have you ever heard the word Gravetic before?

02:16:19.520 I mean, I thought it was anti-gravity is what I've heard.

02:16:22.920 But I'd never...

02:16:23.780 Well, you're a writer.

02:16:24.740 You're a word person.

02:16:25.900 I'd never heard that word or seen that word.

02:16:27.860 I felt like he was using it wrong.

02:16:29.180 That was my instinct.

02:16:30.580 That was my thought, too.

02:16:30.960 I looked it up.

02:16:31.500 Yeah.

02:16:32.440 No, I mean, I guess I look at it...

02:16:34.320 I just think Nietzsche really nailed it, which is that when people, you know, when people

02:16:41.240 stop believing in traditional religions, they unconsciously, you know, develop a new sense

02:16:50.380 of guilt, a new vision of the apocalypse.

02:16:53.140 They invent a new soul.

02:16:54.640 I mean, people think that there's this thing called gender, which is separate from your

02:16:57.300 body.

02:16:57.760 It's kind of like a soul.

02:16:58.540 My friend Abigail Schreier pointed that out.

02:17:01.360 And so, we just end up recreating Christianity, but in a deformed and deranged way.

02:17:09.440 And the emergent quality of it is this destructive fire.

02:17:13.640 Like, you don't...

02:17:15.020 It's actually more powerful because nobody got out there and said, you know, let's let...

02:17:18.980 I mean, somebody did say, let's let Malibu burn.

02:17:21.880 But that was never like the explicit policy of the government of LA.

02:17:24.840 It's just something that emerges after years of budget cuts, after years of self-hating

02:17:30.460 ideologies like DEI, like climate apocalypse, like the homeless apocalypse.

02:17:36.060 It's just emerges kind of deep from deep within us, from some self-destructive part of us.

02:17:43.920 So, for me, if there's a foreign invasion, it came through the human psyche, not from outside

02:17:48.180 of it.

02:17:49.480 Michael Schellenberger, how can people find you?

02:17:53.360 Uh, public.news and at Schellenberger on X.

02:17:59.340 The best.

02:18:00.320 Thanks for having me, Tucker.

02:18:01.100 Thank you.

02:18:01.380 Really appreciate you.

02:18:01.780 Thank you very much.

02:18:02.500 Yeah.

02:18:04.620 Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Show.

02:18:06.600 If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made.

02:18:11.240 The complete library.

02:18:13.420 tuckercarlson.com.

The Tucker Carlson Show - January 14, 2025

Tucker Carlson and Michael Shellenberger Break Down the California Fires

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