The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker on the Propaganda Pawns, Bibi’s Threat to Trump, and the Great American Betrayal

00:00:00.000 In just a minute, we're going to play you an interview we just completed with our friend

00:00:04.340 Brett Weinstein about the war in Iran, why it started, what it means, how it may end,

00:00:11.000 and when. And we should say at the outset why we did this interview. Brett Weinstein is not

00:00:15.400 an expert on military tactics or strategy. He's not a diplomat. He's not a Farsi speaker.

00:00:21.040 He is instead a biologist. He's a close observer of living things and of the systems they occupy

00:00:27.460 and create. But why speak to Brett Weinstein? Really, honestly, one reason, because he's honest.

00:00:32.940 He's an honest man. He's a scientist, and the first requirement of science is, of course,

00:00:37.000 honesty. Report what you know. But we know that he's honest because we've known him for almost

00:00:42.060 10 years now and watched him evolve in some ways from a liberal college professor at Evergreen

00:00:48.160 to a Trump voter and promoter during the last campaign of Donald Trump. And unlike a lot of

00:00:54.900 people you see in the political sphere evolve. Brett Weinstein kept the rest of a surprise of

00:00:59.860 his evolution as was in progress. He didn't pretend, I've always thought this. He told us

00:01:04.380 that he had changed his mind and why. So on the deepest level, he is an honest man, honest about

00:01:11.240 the things he sees around him, what he thinks are behind those things, and honest, most important,

00:01:16.280 and most telling of all about himself. So it's important to get an honest analysis of what's

00:01:22.020 happening now because the dishonesty is so overwhelming, it's hard to separate it

00:01:26.020 from the true. So if you're following this, attempting to follow it in this incredibly

00:01:31.580 censored moment we're living in online, you're seeing all kinds of things that seem true that

00:01:36.420 aren't. You're seeing true things suppressed, the most basic things. How many people have been killed

00:01:41.480 on all sides? How many have been injured? You keep reading that Israeli cabinet minister Ben

00:01:47.740 Gavir died again and again. He's dead. Well, he was in Jerusalem a couple hours ago issuing

00:01:53.440 decrees, so not dead, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Basic facts, like what's the physical

00:02:00.260 damage to all of these countries sucked into this conflict, you can't find because that information

00:02:06.040 has been censored by those countries, countries in which it took place, and by American social

00:02:10.880 media companies. So it's really hard to know what's true. Everybody involved in this conflict

00:02:16.140 has a strong incentive to lie and to spin. But at some point, all of that lying becomes

00:02:24.300 irrelevant. Rhetoric itself, propaganda itself becomes irrelevant in the face of war

00:02:31.760 because war changes physical things, not just words and minds, but physical realities like

00:02:39.740 borders and populations of countries and control over resources, those decisions are settled by

00:02:46.680 armed conflict a lot of the time. They certainly will be in the case of this war. And so in the

00:02:51.000 end, it kind of doesn't matter what you say. Somebody's going to win, and somebody's going

00:02:55.060 to lose, and the world's going to be very different, and the rest of us can assess those

00:02:58.080 differences unencumbered or impeded by your lying, by your propaganda. And that may be why,

00:03:05.000 actually for a war, there's been relatively little propaganda around this. The current

00:03:09.840 administration hasn't even really tried to explain why we're doing this. Not very hard anyway. And in

00:03:16.200 some ways, we should be grateful for that. It's a sign of respect not to lie to people too

00:03:20.560 aggressively. The president of the United States today said on camera, we're thinking about using

00:03:25.540 nukes against Iran. He said we could eliminate Iran, make it uninhabitable forever in an hour.

00:03:32.480 We have weapons that can do that.

00:03:33.740 Well, those are nuclear weapons.

00:03:34.660 The President of the United States is saying out loud,

00:03:36.160 if this gets more intense, we could nuke them.

00:03:39.600 Now, you can support that or disagree with that,

00:03:41.960 however you feel about that.

00:03:43.940 You know, it's not often that people are that blunt

00:03:46.680 about what could happen.

00:03:48.900 And again, there's been very little attempt

00:03:50.820 to convince you that we did this

00:03:54.160 in America's national interest.

00:03:55.700 The Secretary of State just came out and said,

00:03:57.140 we did it because Israel forced our hand. 0.64

00:03:59.360 So they've been pretty direct, actually, about what is going on here and what the stakes potentially are.

00:04:06.460 President of the United States threatening nuclear weapons.

00:04:08.060 Okay.

00:04:09.200 Well, that's on the table.

00:04:11.700 The propagandists for the war, the people who really more than anyone else in this country pushed us to where we are now, are weirdly, unaccountably, even angrier than ever.

00:04:20.860 You got what you wanted, but you're madder than ever.

00:04:23.520 That's been true since the very first hours.

00:04:25.800 The second, the first barrage was unleashed against Iran and then the counterattacks from Iran against the Gulf and American interests there.

00:04:32.840 These people have been enraged.

00:04:35.560 Very interesting.

00:04:37.340 A licensed psychiatrist should study that someday.

00:04:39.460 Why are they so mad since they got what they wanted?

00:04:41.920 But the nature of their propaganda hasn't really changed.

00:04:45.460 There's been no effort to convince you as an American citizen or a citizen of any country that it's good for you.

00:04:50.640 only that we must do this and if you're opposed to it in any way you are a bad person not incorrect 0.97

00:04:57.560 not wrong in your calculations not dumb but evil and you kind of got to wonder what this is other 0.97

00:05:06.080 than an obvious attempt to divide american society into neocons and non-neocons why would 0.97

00:05:12.300 you want to do that neocons are a tiny percentage of the american population but clearly they're

00:05:15.900 trying but it's interesting to watch it we haven't played a lot of this don't plan to

00:05:20.520 But there's one clip from Ben Shapiro, recent clip, that kind of sums up the arguments in favor of this war.

00:05:28.280 Here's Ben Shapiro.

00:05:30.040 Sadly, younger Republicans have become similarly prone to conspiratorial thinking.

00:05:34.720 According to Manhattan Institute, 54% of young Republicans, men under 50, believe the Holocaust didn't happen as historians describe.

00:05:42.080 53% of Republicans under 50 believe in 9-11 conspiracy theories.

00:05:45.720 51% believe the moon landing was faked.

00:05:48.500 These people, too, have bought into a grievance-based distrust of the system.

00:05:52.720 And it's showing in their embrace of psychotic figures and disconnected politics.

00:05:56.500 America is a force for good in the world. 1.00

00:05:58.680 Radical Islamists are evil. 1.00

00:06:00.760 American allies who demonstrate strength are an asset for us. 0.99

00:06:04.320 Terrorists are bad.

00:06:06.120 Members of the Grievance Party are losing their mind over this.

00:06:08.440 And now they've been relegated to basically rooting for Iran to win. 0.69

00:06:11.880 So members of the Grievance Party, meaning Democrats and members of that horseshoe right, 0.87

00:06:15.000 have decided that after paying lip service to the horrors of the mullahs, 0.93

00:06:17.680 the true horror is American interventionism and destruction.

00:06:21.140 America must be undermined.

00:06:22.760 So if you have questions about this war,

00:06:24.940 whether it's in your interest,

00:06:26.520 your country's interests or not,

00:06:28.020 and it's never a question that's occurred to Ben Shapiro,

00:06:30.680 is this good for America?

00:06:31.980 It's really not under consideration.

00:06:33.700 But if it's under your consideration,

00:06:35.420 if you've raised that question,

00:06:36.640 you are tantamount to a Holocaust denier. 1.00

00:06:39.060 You're insane. 1.00

00:06:40.840 You're a crazy person. 1.00

00:06:41.840 You probably think the moon landing was fake 1.00

00:06:43.340 and 9-11 was fake.

00:06:45.140 By the way, there's a pretty easy way

00:06:46.380 to settle any debate about 9-11, which is by declassifying the millions of pages

00:06:50.140 of classified documents that might explain what 9-11 was. But that's never under consideration.

00:06:55.940 We could end this debate right now. We won't, of course. But you're a bad person. And above all,

00:07:01.380 you are a disloyal person, disloyal to the United States. You are, quote, 0.77

00:07:05.700 rooting for Iran to win. You're part of the Grievance Party. How dare you complain? How 0.99

00:07:10.140 dare you have grievances it's pretty weak going for a guy who literally knows nothing about the

00:07:17.780 rest of the world at all so you know you can get annoyed by it at some point especially if

00:07:25.860 iran wins people like that will will double their calls to arrest anyone on the other side they're

00:07:32.300 already calling for it these people should be investigated anyone who's against this should

00:07:35.240 be investigated on a ferret charge. They should go to jail. Their ideological opponents should go

00:07:40.460 to jail. Who's the totalitarian here? And you'll hear a lot more of that, but you will not see

00:07:47.800 people pay a ton of attention to yelping, childish yelping like that, totally uninformed screaming

00:07:53.780 like that ever again, because again, this conflict has entered what the military refers to euphemistically

00:08:00.220 is the kinetic stage.

00:08:01.480 People are actually firing munitions at each other.

00:08:04.040 So it kind of doesn't matter

00:08:05.640 what people on the sidelines say at this point.

00:08:08.960 This is a hot war and it will be decided by force.

00:08:13.560 One of the reasons you don't want to get into a hot war.

00:08:15.360 In other words, we've exited the part of the exchange

00:08:18.600 where it's two guys in the parking lot.

00:08:20.080 What'd you say?

00:08:21.480 I'll mess you up.

00:08:23.160 And we've gotten to the part

00:08:24.100 where one guy just punches the other guy in the face

00:08:25.880 and keeps going unless he stopped.

00:08:27.960 So that's exactly where we are.

00:08:29.180 So it doesn't kind of matter what you said before the punching started.

00:08:32.540 Not that Ben Shapiro has any experience of that, but it's just true that once people

00:08:37.700 start hurting each other, words matter less, and the dominant party will emerge victorious.

00:08:43.000 That's exactly where we are.

00:08:44.680 So who is going to win this, and what does it mean to win?

00:08:47.500 Well, the most obvious and often repeated observation about this conflict is totally

00:08:51.800 true.

00:08:52.300 Iran's threshold for victory is very low.

00:08:54.500 It just needs to survive.

00:08:56.100 The regime has to remain intact.

00:08:58.560 Now, in order to change the regime, everyone pretty much agrees you would need ground forces.

00:09:04.200 You'd need troops, boots on the ground, American boots on the ground, in order to do that.

00:09:09.160 And there is zero appetite for that in this administration, much less in the country.

00:09:13.920 Israel would like us to commit ground troops, obviously, but it would take a lot to get us to do that.

00:09:18.540 It would take some sort of terror attack in the United States, probably, like 9-11, in order for us to do that.

00:09:24.040 But that hasn't happened yet.

00:09:26.120 We pray it never happens.

00:09:27.420 So at this point, we're not going to commit ground troops, which does sort of put the whole exercise in perspective.

00:09:33.720 If Iran's burgeoning nuclear program was really a threat to our core national security interests, then of course we would commit ground troops because any threat to our core national security interests merits committing ground troops. 0.75

00:09:45.760 But this one didn't.

00:09:47.000 and the people who decided this were told or believed somehow that we could affect regime

00:09:53.440 change from the air because iran was in a pre-revolutionary stage and all we needed to do

00:09:59.180 was like topple the head figure like dominoes cascading that would set off a chain reaction

00:10:04.760 that installed a pro-western government in tehran that was the argument these arguments always seem

00:10:09.120 ludicrous in retrospect you always laugh at them really did you really think that well apparently

00:10:13.760 we really did. But almost two weeks in, that has not happened. By the way, that would be a great

00:10:18.400 outcome, because it would end the war immediately, except like a pro-American government in Tehran.

00:10:24.100 Like, why is that so hard? Well, it is hard. And the U.S. has never really been able to do it,

00:10:30.060 despite trying a lot with these so-called regime change wars. So if we don't succeed in doing that,

00:10:38.240 if in the end the united states decides well we can't do this what happens then that is the

00:10:44.960 question in other words what does an iranian victory look like an iranian victory does not

00:10:49.080 look like iranian forces you know invading the gulf and controlling dubai or something or setting

00:10:56.620 up a new satellite capital in jerusalem that's not going to happen probably hope doesn't what

00:11:03.200 an iranian victory looks like is really simple it's control the straits of hummus it's exactly

00:11:07.740 what it looks like, which if you hadn't looked at a map recently, is only about 20 miles wide,

00:11:12.120 and it's the choke point through which 20% of the world's energy flows, 20% of oil and

00:11:18.580 liquefied natural gas, on which many countries, including American allies, are totally dependent.

00:11:25.260 Europe, South Korea, Japan, not to mention India, and China. They need it. They need energy.

00:11:32.720 As conservatives are often fond of pointing out, energy creates civilization. Without it,

00:11:36.740 things ground to a halt that's just true and renewables cannot take up the slack sorry

00:11:40.600 so if that straight that choke point and again if you haven't looked at on a map

00:11:48.000 it's on the eastern end of the persian gulf the arabian gulf whatever you want to call it

00:11:52.020 that body of water through which energy flows by ship whoever controls that has a lot of power now

00:11:59.640 as of today or as of two weeks ago anyway the united states effectively controlled it that was

00:12:04.640 the other reason we had all those military bases in the Persian Gulf. Another was to protect Israel,

00:12:09.460 our only real ally in the Gulf. But a competing reason, maybe the primary reason, hard to know,

00:12:17.020 certainly a big reason, was to protect the flow of energy through the Straits of Hormuz.

00:12:23.200 And now the U.S. has been unfortunately, tragically unable to guarantee the passage

00:12:29.180 of energy through that strait. Now, let's hope that changes. But if the Iranian regime is not 0.90

00:12:34.540 toppled in this conflict, there's a pretty good chance that they will have control. Who else

00:12:41.360 would? American bases have been degraded, in some cases destroyed. This war is so expensive, even

00:12:47.340 now, less than two weeks in, it's hard to see how we could afford to expand our presence there.

00:12:52.540 And then on a political level, how much will is there for that? We've got to send more troops

00:12:56.300 to the Persian Gulf.

00:12:58.400 So as noted,

00:12:59.460 right after this broke out,

00:13:00.440 one of the whole purposes,

00:13:02.740 one of the goals of this exercise

00:13:04.240 from the perspective of Israel

00:13:05.280 was to get the United States

00:13:06.260 out of the Middle East.

00:13:07.560 So Israel could be 0.99

00:13:08.520 the dominant regional power,

00:13:09.840 the hegemon.

00:13:10.480 So it could expand its territory

00:13:11.480 without getting hassled

00:13:12.320 by the U.S. State Department

00:13:13.380 without asking permission

00:13:14.420 from the U.S. President.

00:13:17.200 And so Israel could control it 1.00

00:13:18.360 because Israel sees itself

00:13:19.420 and is actually,

00:13:20.440 just factually,

00:13:21.180 an emerging power.

00:13:22.460 It's a nuclear armed power.

00:13:24.000 And from their perspective,

00:13:25.060 like why wouldn't we control

00:13:26.000 region and so that's their goal but one impediment to that is iran which is opposed to israel's

00:13:31.800 existence and has been funding proxies to fight against israel most notably hezbollah in lebanon

00:13:38.180 but also hamas the houthis in yemen etc etc so you got to get rid of the iranian leadership

00:13:44.420 probably just turn the country into a chaotic civil war because that suits israel's purposes 1.00

00:13:50.280 and you got to get the US out. So they've already done a lot to achieve the second goal, get the US

00:13:57.060 out. It's hard to see how the United States can guarantee safe passage of shipping through the

00:14:03.240 Straits of Hormuz after this. We can't now. And if the Iranian regime remains, they're the ones 1.00

00:14:11.500 the rest of the world is going to have to negotiate with. So just to be totally clear, Japan, South

00:14:17.420 korea china india the european nations 40 percent of the heat in british homes comes from lng from

00:14:24.060 qatar moved by boat so big countries some of them allies some of them rivals have a structural

00:14:31.300 interest in this region and it's not going away so in the end it seems possible if not likely

00:14:39.640 that a resolution to the core economic question here which is shipping will be resolved by those

00:14:46.800 countries, directly talking to Iran. So China, India come in and they negotiate with Iran to

00:14:55.460 open the straits. Think about that for a second. Does that diminish or enhance Iran's power? Well, 0.98

00:15:03.440 you're negotiating directly with China, India, South Korea, Japan, Europe. You're more powerful

00:15:10.000 than you were when this started. And that's a huge embarrassment to the United States. It's a

00:15:16.540 huge reduction in American power. We were not able to force our will on this critical part

00:15:25.020 of the world. We couldn't keep the peace. In fact, we shattered the peace. And we weren't

00:15:30.160 able to restore order once we did. And guess who did? Oh, our other global rivals. That seems very

00:15:35.560 likely. But from a regional perspective, this is a huge deal to the Gulf states, which have just

00:15:41.860 been bombed for 12 days and really damaged in some cases by Iran. But the biggest problem this poses 0.76

00:15:50.540 is for Israel, because Iran is a sincere opponent of Israel. At this point, more so than ever, it 1.00

00:15:59.440 has been for a long time. They say it openly. They're one of the few countries in the world

00:16:02.840 that opposes Israel's so-called right to exist. Israel has every reason to regard Iran as an 0.99

00:16:09.260 enemy. Iran is an enemy of Israel, and again, now more than ever. So if Iran emerges with its 1.00

00:16:16.260 leadership intact, with a leadership that might be even more anti-Israel than it was three weeks

00:16:20.980 ago, why wouldn't it be? We just killed their leader, their 86-year-old religious leader and

00:16:26.780 his family. How does Israel live with that? And if Israel doesn't live with that, what are its 0.73

00:16:35.160 options. If you start to think about this for about two minutes, it gets bracing. It gets a

00:16:41.600 little scary. It's hard to know exactly how much damage the IRGC, the Iranians, have done to Israel 1.00

00:16:49.120 because there's so much censorship. But we know, we can conclude fairly confidently from available

00:16:55.620 information, that the port of Haifa, which is the most important port in Israel, controlled by the

00:17:00.900 Chinese, I think, actually. Interesting. And Tel Aviv, the second biggest city in Israel,

00:17:05.600 have been hammered, hammered. And there has been widespread infrastructure destruction,

00:17:10.080 and there's been loss of life of some kind. We don't know, but the video that seems real,

00:17:16.580 they're hurting. And the Israelis have been dealing with this kind of stuff for a long time.

00:17:21.520 It's not the first time their cities have been shelled. They've been shelled a lot over the

00:17:25.580 years. And so their tolerance for this kind of stuff is much higher than it would be in the

00:17:28.600 United States. If you shelled Chicago, people here have no experience of that, and understandably,

00:17:33.740 they'd be completely freaked out by it. Israel, they've got a little stronger immune system,

00:17:39.060 this kind of stuff, because they're already fighting a seven-front war. On the other hand,

00:17:44.160 there's only so much that any country can take, particularly a small country that is riven by

00:17:48.600 all kinds of internal divisions. Israel is not a united country at all, and its leader, while he's 0.82

00:17:53.660 very popular with Ben Shapiro, is not universally loved in Israel at all. So Israel is not entirely

00:17:59.420 stable internally, and it's absorbing a lot of punishment for a small country. But let's say

00:18:05.260 that punishment accelerates. Let's say the Iranians decide we're going to really hurt Israel, and 0.95

00:18:11.680 we're not going to limit it to Haifa and Tel Aviv. We're going to hit Jerusalem, where the holy sites

00:18:16.120 are. Now, they're not apparently doing that right now, at least that we know of. And again, it's

00:18:21.400 hard to know exactly what's going on because of the censorship, but it doesn't seem like

00:18:23.980 they're pounding Jerusalem, but they could. And at that point, what? What happens? 0.93

00:18:31.800 What if Israel and its main protector in the world, the United States, starts running low

00:18:36.800 on advanced munitions and critically on missile defense? Well, that's entirely possible. There

00:18:41.840 have been widespread reports that the United States, as the backstop to Israel, its main

00:18:44.920 protector, is running low on those munitions. Now, why is that? Well, because we expended a lot of

00:18:51.320 both advanced munitions and missile defense in the last conflict that we backstopped israel in in

00:18:57.940 june and we already loathed then because we sent a lot of munitions to ukraine now why'd we do that

00:19:05.040 what was our critical interest in ukraine well at the time they told us we have to do this because

00:19:10.400 it is totally immoral and a violation of our sacred norms when a larger country just grabs 0.99

00:19:16.480 the territory of a smaller country. Post-Venezuela, it's kind of harder to make that case with a

00:19:23.660 straight face. So looking back, you've got to expect a lot of the cheerleaders for the war 0.99

00:19:30.000 against Russia might feel a little bit silly, might feel like the moral case they were standing

00:19:35.200 on was kicked out from underneath them because it was. But whatever, excuse me, whatever you think

00:19:41.640 about why we were there and the wisdom of it the truth is at the demand of the very same people

00:19:48.700 who told us we had to get into this iran war those very same people demanded you may recall

00:19:55.860 four years ago that we get into the war against russia and that we expend billions and billions

00:20:03.720 and billions hundreds of billions of dollars and critical munitions we could use to defend

00:20:07.280 ourselves in the fight against Vladimir Putin because he was Hitler. Again, things look very 0.82

00:20:12.860 different right now. But at the time, everybody in D.C. in both parties bought that story.

00:20:20.200 The Democrats were all for it. The Republicans were all for it. This isn't the first bipartisan

00:20:24.480 regime change war we've tried to fight. It's one of many. And in the course of that war,

00:20:29.300 we expended a lot of critical munitions that we might be able to guarantee Israel's safety with 0.91

00:20:33.780 now but it looks like from all available reports are running low in fact we're getting some

00:20:40.140 apparently anti-drone technology from ukraine savor that irony for a moment if you would

00:20:44.740 so whatever the cause and there'll be one hopes time enough for finger pointing and blame and

00:20:50.200 reverse engineering and attempt to understand what we just went through the fact remains it

00:20:55.380 seems unlikely that the united states will be able to guarantee the safety of israel we can't

00:21:00.980 guarantee it now, despite a real effort to. So what does that mean? Well, it means that at some

00:21:08.840 stage, it is possible that Israel will feel it has no choice. We hope they feel they have no 0.99

00:21:14.740 choice. They're not doing it for fun. But in any case, they might have to resort to a nuclear

00:21:18.440 strike on Iran, which would be a tragedy for the people of Iran, most of whom have nothing to do 0.99

00:21:23.360 with any of this, who would get vaporized. It would be a tragedy for the region, which would

00:21:26.160 be poisoned by radioactive fallout, and it would be a tragedy for the world because the last taboo

00:21:33.020 would be shattered, truly the last taboo. You can literally castrate yourself and call yourself a

00:21:39.340 woman. You get applauded. There are very few taboos left. Using nuclear weapons is the last

00:21:45.660 remaining big taboo, and once that is gone, we know from the elimination of other taboos that

00:21:51.460 things change really fast oh it already happened i think i'll try it and you can very easily see

00:21:56.680 either quickly or over time you know a series of nuclear exchanges that kill most people on earth

00:22:03.320 so that would be a huge deal for the first time in 80 years a nuclear weapon would be used and

00:22:09.140 it's it's by the way not an attack on israel to note this though they have been very eager to

00:22:14.860 threaten it in the past their threshold is much lower than most people's but still you can kind

00:22:18.540 of understand it. If Israel gets targeted for destruction by Iran and the United States isn't

00:22:23.080 there to reliably protect Israeli cities, they could use nukes. And then we could see truly the 0.98

00:22:31.840 destruction of a lot of the world. So you don't want that to happen. In fact, you have to stop

00:22:36.180 that from happening. You have to decelerate. But how do you do that? And again, without too much

00:22:42.680 gloating, because this is no time to gloat or say I told you so, this is actually one of the reasons

00:22:47.720 that some people argued against this conflict in the first place

00:22:50.480 because, like all wars, much easier to get in than to get out.

00:22:55.420 So there are reports today, which, again, could be lies, probably.

00:22:58.700 Again, everyone lies in war.

00:23:00.660 Everyone has incentive to.

00:23:01.640 But there are reports that don't seem totally crazy

00:23:03.600 that envoys from the United States have suggested

00:23:06.640 that our country might be open to some kind of ceasefire.

00:23:11.640 Like, hey, let's settle down for a second.

00:23:13.740 And the Iranians, whether they're telling the truth or not, 1.00

00:23:15.700 But the fact that even go to the trouble of lying about this tells you something have said, no, we're not doing that.

00:23:21.360 Why would we agree to a ceasefire when your previous diplomatic efforts were clearly dishonest and didn't work in any case?

00:23:29.120 We couldn't trust you.

00:23:31.240 Is diplomacy itself the search for a peaceful revolution to violent conflict?

00:23:37.440 Is that even a category anymore?

00:23:40.140 Who knows?

00:23:41.700 But apparently the Iranians have said, no, we're not interested in a ceasefire.

00:23:45.700 they're probably bluffing too of course you know everything's a bluff this is the middle east

00:23:50.380 but the fact that they're coming out and saying that does point to a fundamental problem

00:23:56.540 that propaganda aside is totally real and that is the united states is not wholly in charge of what

00:24:03.820 happens next we can of course influence it definitely but if you're a middle-aged american

00:24:08.440 speaking for myself and you've lived your entire life in a country that called the shots globally

00:24:12.820 a country that issued blue passports to you that were basically your amulet of protection no one

00:24:18.720 could really mess with you when you have an american passport because the united states

00:24:21.660 set the terms for global trade it had the greatest military in the end no one's really

00:24:27.960 going to mess with america and if we want to shut down a war or start a war we can

00:24:31.220 and there are no existential consequences to us we're not going to get blown off the map for

00:24:35.840 starting a war especially with like small primitive countries so we did it a lot 1.00

00:24:39.380 but this is the first conflict of our lifetimes where the united states is not fully in charge

00:24:48.660 of what happens next and that's because there are not not just one but two other players in

00:24:54.200 this calculation and as noted the first is iran and they fully understand that all they need to

00:25:01.900 do is survive and by surviving they become much more powerful than they were when this started

00:25:05.900 and they have all kinds of other reasons to want to continue the most obvious being you're not

00:25:11.160 allowed to say this but it's true is that unconditional surrender leaves you open to

00:25:16.220 who knows what and most non-degraded people most people with any self-respect of any religion in 0.56

00:25:23.480 any part of the country understand that you can never unconditionally surrender because in so

00:25:30.000 doing you've given up your humanity you can't do that would you unconditionally surrender

00:25:33.440 your family to someone else? No, of course you wouldn't. Who would do that? And if you would do

00:25:37.560 that, then you don't deserve to have a family or be the head of household because you're degraded.

00:25:41.500 You have no self-respect and you have no real love for those you're in charge of.

00:25:45.300 It's really that simple. This is not a question of Islam versus Christianity, the West versus East.

00:25:50.380 It's a question of the way people are. Unconditional surrender is a lot to ask of anybody.

00:25:56.980 It took a nuclear bomb to get the Japanese to do it. It took complete destruction for the 0.98

00:26:03.380 germans to agree to it so if we're asking for that unconditional surrender the iranians understand 0.81

00:26:10.640 perfectly well the stakes and they kind of can't give up so that's the problem there

00:26:17.180 but the other more unusual problem really without precedent is that we are fighting this war in

00:26:23.180 partnership with another country israel now to those who say well we've done this before you

00:26:29.060 know we had joint we had coalition ventures peacekeeping forces in yugoslavia and afghanistan

00:26:36.200 and iraq yeah true but none of those coalition partners had anything approaching decision-making

00:26:43.340 authority over the mission it was united states and its allies or satellite states or countries

00:26:49.540 we have troops in in a lot of cases and they were tagging along in the same way the south koreans

00:26:54.320 did in vietnam a lot of south korean troops in vietnam most people don't remember that why'd

00:26:58.220 they do that because we protected them from invasion by the Chinese and the North Koreans 0.98

00:27:01.940 in 1953. So they're grateful and they accompanied us to Vietnam for a brief period

00:27:08.300 as a gesture of gratitude. But they were never in charge of the plans in Vietnam. Westmoreland

00:27:14.900 was in charge. LBJ was in charge. Nixon was in charge. This country has not, at least since the

00:27:20.160 Second World War, handed any measure of operational control in a wartime theater to a foreign power

00:27:27.100 and why is that not because we don't have allies or people we like or people we you know share

00:27:33.140 common goals with we've got a lot of those or we had a lot of those but because no two countries

00:27:39.920 interests are identical even identical twins if you spend enough time around them

00:27:45.840 are different in ways you can perceive no two anything are exactly the same and nations which

00:27:52.400 are complicated, don't even have that many points of intersection in their interests.

00:27:58.940 There's a lot that separates the national interests of two separate countries. So if you

00:28:03.640 enter a war co-joined with another country, you're going to reach a point very soon where your

00:28:09.680 interests diverge from those of your partner. And in a war, the stakes are very, very high.

00:28:14.100 So you would never do that, ever. If you cared about your country, why would you do that?

00:28:20.040 and of all the things that historians will reveal in the aftermath of this war the one that some of

00:28:28.820 us should be paying the closest attention to is who made that decision who decided it was okay

00:28:33.420 for the united states to be yoked to a foreign nation in the middle of a war with a country

00:28:38.480 of 92 million people that is one of the craziest things this country's ever done and the people

00:28:43.860 who decided to do it should be exposed and they should be penalized because that single decision

00:28:49.300 will cost, unfortunately, this is likely to be true,

00:28:51.920 more American lives.

00:28:52.740 It may extend this far past a point

00:28:54.920 where the American interest is served.

00:28:57.800 And by the way, we are approaching the point

00:28:59.880 at which we get no more returns

00:29:01.900 from being engaged in this war.

00:29:03.560 If you know that you're gonna negotiate your way

00:29:05.780 out of something in the end,

00:29:07.940 in other words, if you're not gonna destroy each other

00:29:09.180 with nuclear weapons, demand total abject surrender,

00:29:13.060 but if you think there's even a possibility

00:29:14.760 you're gonna have to negotiate your way out of something,

00:29:17.680 you wanna do it at the apogee,

00:29:19.300 of your power at your most powerful point.

00:29:22.160 You don't want to do it

00:29:23.520 when your power is obviously decreasing.

00:29:25.360 Like say when you start to run out of weapons

00:29:26.900 because you sent them all to Ukraine 0.94

00:29:27.940 because Ben Shapiro demanded you do that.

00:29:31.840 And why wouldn't you want to negotiate

00:29:33.660 when your weakness is obvious?

00:29:34.720 Because you'll get worse terms.

00:29:36.940 The United States has a true national interest

00:29:39.500 in controlling or having a say in the flow of energy

00:29:44.040 out of the Persian Gulf through the Straits of Hormuz.

00:29:46.260 If you could narrow down our interest to just one,

00:29:49.080 We have many interests, but just one?

00:29:51.860 It's that.

00:29:53.460 It's very important for the United States to have some say in that.

00:29:58.700 And if we negotiate our way out when we're weaker rather than stronger, we will have less say.

00:30:04.360 And if we negotiate our way out in humiliation, God forbid that doesn't happen, we will have almost no say at all.

00:30:11.780 And so it is very important to begin those conversations.

00:30:15.460 Now, if you think there's a possibility we could negotiate our way out if we don't have to go to nukes.

00:30:19.080 and let's hope that we do believe that.

00:30:22.560 So what stands in the way?

00:30:24.260 Well, again, as noted, the Iranians, 0.99

00:30:26.080 they've got to be reasonable and willing to bend a little bit,

00:30:27.980 and that's not easy because they're not that reasonable,

00:30:29.680 and they're inflamed right now.

00:30:31.900 But it's not just the Iranians, it's Israel too.

00:30:35.380 And from the very first day,

00:30:38.120 Israeli priorities have taken precedent over American priorities,

00:30:42.200 American national interest has been pushed down,

00:30:45.980 and in its place has been elevated Israeli national interest.

00:30:49.380 And what specifically are we talking about here?

00:30:52.300 Think about the target list.

00:30:53.960 So the first big strike of the war killed, eliminated the Ayatollah,

00:31:01.300 who was 86 years old and not simply the head of state technically,

00:31:04.600 but the head of a religion, Shia Islam.

00:31:08.280 Apparently had prostate cancer and was totally willing to be martyred.

00:31:12.080 So that alone should tell you, wait a second, 0.93

00:31:14.560 why would we kill that guy he may be bad he may be the most evil person in the world mark levin 0.99

00:31:20.140 tells us he's hit or great or bad we're against that we're against hitler but killing him will 0.99

00:31:27.280 have what effect 60 seconds predict oh maybe it will unite the country on religious grounds 0.67

00:31:36.580 and make the opposition to the united states and israel stronger maybe it's also a kind of point

00:31:43.980 if no return, after which you can't really negotiate your way out. You killed our religious 1.00

00:31:49.040 leader. When was the last time America killed a religious leader? It's not a defense of the

00:31:53.500 Ayatollah. Sorry, Ben Shapiro. It's not a defense of Shia Islam. It's a defense of American national

00:31:58.420 interests. And if you're having trouble remembering the last time we killed a religious leader,

00:32:02.720 it's because we haven't killed any religious leaders, at least not openly, because we don't

00:32:07.600 want to start religious wars, because they're hard to fight and very hard to resolve. And how 0.94

00:32:12.080 was that good for us how was that good for our access to lng and oil from the gulf tell me ben

00:32:17.480 shapiro can you find the gulf on a map no so why did we do that now we don't know exactly why we

00:32:26.680 did that maybe there are american military planners who thought sincerely hey i've got an idea let's

00:32:30.600 kill the ayatollah then all the liberal elements in the country will rise up they won't actually 0.99

00:32:37.160 discover their latent shia islam and rally around an 86 year old man who was killed along with his 0.96

00:32:44.360 family maybe there are actually american military planners who thought that but more likely

00:32:48.000 there were israeli strategists who realized that once the united states kills the ayatollah

00:32:53.680 kind of can't get out we're all in and you also got to suspect that israeli priorities

00:33:00.080 may have informed our tragic decision to bomb and it was revealed today it was in fact tragically

00:33:06.540 the U.S. military by mistake bombing a girl's school attached to an Iranian naval base where

00:33:13.220 the daughters of naval officers went to school and over 100 of them were killed. Well, that's

00:33:17.480 just terrible, okay? America doesn't do stuff like that and actually doesn't. In the times that we

00:33:22.400 have done it, we've apologized and prosecuted the people who did it. When civilians are killed in

00:33:26.940 large numbers and it becomes public, the United States military going back hundreds of years

00:33:31.580 has felt a moral obligation being a Western, not an Eastern country to apologize for the death of 0.84

00:33:36.540 innocence and punish the people responsible. It's happened a lot. Because we don't do things like

00:33:42.140 that. Israel does do things like that. Israel sets off pagers in the pockets of people they

00:33:46.400 can't identify. They're just out there. They're going to go off and they'll kill some terrorists

00:33:49.460 and maybe some others, which they did. And that's the price they're willing to pay. That's not a 0.99

00:33:53.140 price we're willing to pay because we're not Israel. So you have to wonder, like, how did

00:33:57.120 this happen? So the U.S. government is saying this was a tragedy. It was a mistake. Totally

00:34:00.940 believable. It was a case of bad targeting. Where did the targeting come from? That's the question.

00:34:05.340 where do we get those targeting numbers oh we don't know of course but it's worth asking

00:34:15.340 where do we get those numbers and by the way where do we get the intel upon which we made

00:34:20.460 our assumptions that we should go into iran and that there was a huge and anxious group of liberal

00:34:28.400 minded iranians who wanted to throw off the shackles of theocracy and that just a few choice

00:34:34.660 bombs would unleash the desire for freedom within, and they would do the work for us

00:34:40.000 and affect regime change themselves, and that from among them would arise a pro-Western

00:34:43.940 leader.

00:34:44.220 Why did we think that was true?

00:34:45.540 It turned out not to be true, unfortunately.

00:34:48.520 Well, it may not surprise you to learn that almost all of our signals information, our

00:34:53.460 SIGINT out of Iran, is translated by our ally and partner in this war, Israel.

00:34:59.360 Now, that's not to suggest that the Israelis, who have a lot of Farsi speakers among them,

00:35:03.320 because there are a lot of iranians who moved to israel persian jews who moved to israel

00:35:06.640 it's not to suggest that the israeli government would in any way be tainting or withholding or

00:35:15.460 mistranslating or skewing this electronic intelligence to get us into a war that

00:35:21.020 doesn't serve our interests i mean really who would do that but it raises the question of

00:35:27.600 incentives so just to be clear israel has an incentive for the united states to stay

00:35:31.740 in this conflict and make sure that Iran doesn't win, because if Iran wins, that's a mass, that's 0.86

00:35:36.720 an actual existential threat to Israel, for real. Ben Shapiro's already running, existential threat

00:35:40.820 to Israel. Okay. Its nuclear program was not an existential threat to Israel. An Iran that emerges 1.00

00:35:46.660 intact after this conflict is an existential threat to Israel. That is true. That's not an

00:35:49.900 overstatement. So they have every incentive to keep us in and to tell us lies about the nature

00:35:58.320 of the threat in Iran, about what they think is going to happen next, about chatter they pick up

00:36:02.960 on the ground in Iran. They have every incentive to skew the SIGINT in their favor. Now, it's not 0.92

00:36:10.620 even an attack on Israel, by the way. The second you join in an enterprise like this with a foreign 0.99

00:36:15.760 country, you are certain to get problems like this. And by the way, to be fair, trying to be fair,

00:36:23.420 the Israelis apparently are a little bit frustrated too, because they look over,

00:36:27.580 they've got a whole set of priorities that are very important to them, and we don't share them

00:36:30.940 all. Ground troops would be a perfect example. They would like ground troops. Flat out, they

00:36:34.540 would like ground troops. Why wouldn't they? Our ground troops, not theirs. They're busy invading

00:36:39.180 southern Lebanon and cleansing Lebanon, including Christian villages in Lebanon, killing a priest.

00:36:46.080 Now, why would Israel be invading Lebanon right now? And they've lost people doing it,

00:36:51.280 by the way. It's been a slog for them. Well, strictly speaking, it's because Iran activated 0.95

00:36:56.820 hezbollah which is a proxy for iran in southern lebanon they started attacking northern israel

00:37:01.920 okay who could have seen that coming just because they killed the leader of hezbollah and israla

00:37:07.480 a year ago doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore of course it does but the effect of this is not

00:37:13.000 attacking anybody just noting it is the united states is all in trying to defeat iran push back

00:37:19.380 these attacks on all of our allies in the gulf and on israel and israel is taking this opportunity to

00:37:23.920 grab more land in southern Lebanon. So we're fighting Iran while they're taking over contiguous 0.99

00:37:31.240 land from one of their neighbors and cleansing it of Arabs. Huh, how is that in our interest? 1.00

00:37:39.320 Why would we want to take credit for that? Why would we be in favor of that? That's a problem

00:37:43.580 for Israel to deal with. But that's what they're doing. And of course, that's what always what 0.95

00:37:48.440 they were going to do because Israel is acting in what it claims is its own interest or would 0.54

00:37:53.260 Benjamin Netanyahu believes in his, is in his own interest because we don't have the same interests.

00:37:59.020 And that was very obvious in the first hours after this, when the prime minister of Israel

00:38:06.900 in his, I think, first remarks on the new war with Iran said two things. One, I've been waiting

00:38:14.740 for this for 40 years. This is part of a preexisting plan, totally disconnected from

00:38:18.640 Iran's modern nuclear program, which was not in the same condition 40 years ago.

00:38:23.260 If you've been thinking about something for 40 years, you're probably not describing an imminent threat.

00:38:27.620 Hard to be imminent for 40 years.

00:38:30.360 This is an effort to expand the territory and the influence of Israel in the Middle East.

00:38:36.260 Of course, again, not an attack on Israel, it's just a fact.

00:38:39.240 That's the first thing he said, revealing his motive, just saying it out loud.

00:38:43.160 One wonderful thing about Israelis is, unlike Americans, they're less circumspect. 1.00

00:38:47.240 Just kind of say it.

00:38:48.000 and the second thing he said and I'm paraphrasing but it's about right he said in today's Torah

00:38:54.320 portion we read about the Amalekites about Amalek and that would be a direct reference to 1 Samuel

00:39:00.840 15 in which God commands the Israelites to kill the Amalekites all of them every single one of 1.00

00:39:08.060 them to commit genocide against Amalek the men the women the children the infants is almost verbatim 0.84

00:39:16.640 unquote, and the animals, the camels and the sheep. All of them. Kill them all. Wipe them

00:39:25.580 off the face of the earth. In fact, God punishes the Israelites for not following his instructions 0.97

00:39:30.140 and sparing some. So whatever you think of that, whether it's your theology or not,

00:39:34.740 your religion or not, it almost doesn't matter. In a geopolitical context, no one has talked that

00:39:39.840 way in 80 years no national leader has stood on camera and said our goal is genocide and not like

00:39:48.380 semi-modern nerf genocide where you kill a lot of people make the rest of them leave but actual

00:39:53.580 genocide where you kill everybody and their children quote and their infants and their animals 0.91

00:39:58.300 you erase any evidence that ever existed period it's one samuel 15 in case you're interested in

00:40:06.360 reading it and it is interesting and it you know it's it's of course part of judaism it's part of

00:40:11.420 christianity it's the old testament so it's not an attack on the verse but to invoke that verse

00:40:17.880 in the middle of a hot war and respond to it by saying this is what we're doing today amalek is

00:40:26.880 Iran is to call for genocide against her opponent. Now, without even judging that,

00:40:35.980 it's worth noting that is not in the interest of the United States, despite what the president

00:40:42.380 said today about eliminating the country with nuclear weapons. That is not in the interest

00:40:45.640 of the United States. It's not the desire of the American people to commit genocide against the

00:40:51.060 Iranians. Without even considering what the downstream effects of that might be profound, 1.00

00:40:56.880 without even considering that.

00:40:59.520 Ask yourself, is that why we're in this war?

00:41:02.140 Because we think the Iranians are Amalek? 0.99

00:41:03.980 They seem kind of awful and scary, 0.99

00:41:05.480 and they're like bad Islamic people or whatever. 0.99

00:41:08.440 But are we really going to try to eliminate 1.00

00:41:10.700 every one of them, the men, the women,

00:41:13.020 the children, the infants, the camels and the sheep?

00:41:16.500 Nah, that's not in our purview

00:41:17.740 because it's not in our interest

00:41:18.800 because first of all, we don't do things like that

00:41:20.140 and never should.

00:41:21.380 And second, how does that make us stronger

00:41:23.080 and richer and more secure?

00:41:24.360 I don't think it does.

00:41:25.060 israel is a different view and so that's the point this can never work in america's national

00:41:33.000 interest as long as it is tethered to another country's national interest

00:41:37.240 and if that doesn't work if it doesn't work in the middle of a war it probably doesn't work in

00:41:41.880 peace time either it probably doesn't work to have a permanent israeli detachment at say the

00:41:46.460 pentagon where wars are planned or at cia where information is collated and analyzed it probably

00:41:54.180 doesn't work to have people in all branches of government who are dual citizens with israel and

00:42:01.120 other countries what because you're always going to wind up where we are now which is tethered to

00:42:07.240 another country which may be a good country or a bad country we can debate that but it's not america

00:42:12.120 and the purpose of the american government is to serve the american people not in some abstract

00:42:17.980 way in their war against radical islam but in a concrete way like nicer airports and no crime 0.92

00:42:22.960 and decent schools the things that any citizen should expect from his government

00:42:28.640 and if you're totally ignoring all of those on behalf of another country it's just not acceptable

00:42:33.940 and it's also not sustainable and so no matter where this goes and again we pray it is resolved

00:42:40.880 peacefully and soon our country needs to think through how this happened find out in specific

00:42:47.880 terms, not bury it like 9-11 and every other traumatic event over the last 50 years or 63

00:42:53.700 years. It's like, oh, we're not really sure. We need to be sure. How did this happen? How can we

00:42:59.320 prevent it from happening again? A sober assessment of what went wrong. That's what all functional

00:43:04.640 institutions do. They used to be called after action reports, and they were mandatory, so it

00:43:09.160 didn't happen again. That's what the NTSB does with plane crashes. How'd this happen? We're not

00:43:13.260 going to guess. We're not going to blame radical Islam. We're going to find out whether the

00:43:19.500 pitot tubes worked. We're going to find out the specifics that led to this tragedy because we

00:43:26.540 don't want more tragedies. And if we'd done that after the Iraq war, we probably wouldn't be here

00:43:29.860 because the Iraq war was started, which everyone knows went on for 20 years at great cost,

00:43:36.760 trillions of dollars, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands, millions of people,

00:43:40.500 all in was started under very similar circumstances pressure from israel bad intelligence in part not

00:43:50.320 exclusively but in part from israel a massive lobbying campaign by israel aligned pundits and

00:43:56.220 think tank people politicians and if it had gone well okay but it didn't and no one was ever

00:44:06.620 punished for it and more critically no one ever explained precisely what happened and 23 years

00:44:12.640 later that was 23 years ago this month we're still debating why it happened and there are

00:44:19.280 increasingly few people who are there and remember i'm one of them let's not let that happen this

00:44:24.980 time we can't afford more wars like this literally can't afford it and we shouldn't have to because

00:44:31.400 the purpose of the U.S. government is to serve Americans, period.

00:44:36.440 Ranchers built America, feeding our country for over 250 years through droughts and wars and 0.95

00:44:41.220 recessions and pandemics and anything else that happened didn't matter to them because they had

00:44:45.480 to come through and they did. That legacy is the one that our partners at Good Ranchers

00:44:50.380 continue and represent. Good Ranchers is a meat company that's 100% committed to this country,

00:44:55.600 not just in words, but in practice. Every cut they offer is raised

00:44:59.120 on United States farms and ranches.

00:45:02.080 Their entire packaging and fulfillment operations

00:45:04.340 are right here in the U.S.

00:45:05.980 Same with customer support.

00:45:07.540 Imagine Americans on the other end of the line.

00:45:10.220 Plus, Good Ranchers donates a portion of all profits

00:45:12.540 go to veteran organizations.

00:45:14.220 We use Good Ranchers ourselves.

00:45:15.700 We love it.

00:45:16.700 The subscriber experience is super easy.

00:45:18.700 Order requires just a few clicks.

00:45:20.800 Simple, flexible, and built around your schedule.

00:45:24.100 So you can support a company that sells an amazing product

00:45:26.720 that honors Americans past, present, and future.

00:45:29.120 Visit GoodRanchers.com today and when you start your plan, you'll get to pick a free meat that'll be included in every order for life where you get $25 off your first order by using the code Tucker. Tucker is the code for $25 off. GoodRanchers.com, American meat delivered.

00:45:45.580 When the weather cools down, Golden Nugget Online Casino turns up the heat.

00:45:51.120 This winter, make any moment golden and play thousands of games like our new slot, Wolf It Up, and all the fan-favorite Huff and Puff games.

00:46:00.420 Whether you're curled up on the couch or taking five between snow shovels, play winner's hottest collection of slots, from brand new games to the classics you know and love.

00:46:10.800 You can also pull up your favorite table games like blackjack, roulette, and craps.

00:46:15.600 Or go for even more excitement with our library of live dealer games.

00:46:20.380 Download the Golden Nugget Online Casino app and you've got everything you need to layer on the fun this winter.

00:46:27.420 In partnership with Golden Nugget Online Casino.

00:46:30.920 Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600.

00:46:36.920 19 and over. Physically present in Ontario.

00:46:39.820 Eligibility restrictions apply.

00:46:41.560 See GoldenNuggetCasino.com for details.

00:46:44.460 Please play responsibly.

00:46:46.160 So the new year is here, but that does not mean you've got to overhaul your whole life,

00:46:50.620 despite claims to the contrary.

00:46:51.720 You don't have to take drastic measures.

00:46:53.560 Make a few changes here and there, and you'll be a lot better off.

00:46:57.140 And you can start with the snacks in your pantry.

00:47:00.140 Now, products from standard American chip brands are, let's be honest,

00:47:03.720 pretty repulsive, filled with chemicals that make you feel heavy and bloated.

00:47:07.700 They don't even taste that good.

00:47:09.480 They're not good for you.

00:47:10.600 We recommend an upgrade with masa chips.

00:47:13.260 Masa is the easiest way to eat clean without feeling like you're on a diet.

00:47:16.940 The chips contain three ingredients.

00:47:18.740 That's it.

00:47:19.140 Organic corn, sea salt, 100% grass-fed beef towel, and that is it.

00:47:23.740 No seed oils, no mystery chemicals, just food, actual food.

00:47:27.280 And they're amazing, and you feel great after.

00:47:29.740 You don't feel weighed down.

00:47:31.960 We particularly enjoyed the cobonero flavor lately, but they're all great.

00:47:35.780 You want to give them a try?

00:47:37.340 Visit masachips.com, M-A-S-A, chips.com slash Tucker.

00:47:41.900 Use the code Tucker for 25% off your first order,

00:47:45.320 or you can click the link in the video description,

00:47:48.320 or you can scan the QR code to claim this outstanding offer.

00:47:52.780 And if you don't feel like ordering online,

00:47:54.400 you can buy them nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket.

00:47:57.900 Stop by and pick up a couple of bags before somebody else does.

00:48:02.740 And with that, ladies and gentlemen, an honest man,

00:48:05.280 dr. Brett Weinstein but thank you for doing this I'm always grateful to see

00:48:10.440 you in person glad to be here yeah this is one of those moments it's it's hard

00:48:14.880 to understand what's happening but here's what I believe to be true the

00:48:20.500 president had deep reservations about doing this he promised repeatedly as he

00:48:25.000 campaigned for this job that he wouldn't do this this war with Iran he made fun

00:48:29.020 of people who suggested he do it I don't think many of his actual employed

00:48:34.800 advisors were eager to do this that's my impression based on the reporting and

00:48:40.260 the only people who wanted to do it were a group of informal advisors on the

00:48:46.960 outside were calling and you've got to do it Mark Thiessen of the Washington

00:48:51.120 Post and other people whose opinions hard to imagine taking seriously but

00:48:55.380 whatever they wanted it and Benjamin Netanyahu wanted it the country did not

00:49:00.180 want it at all as expressed in polling but we did it anyway and it's turned out to be i think it will

00:49:07.140 turn out to be unfortunately a kind of a pivot in our history why did we do this what was the point

00:49:12.180 do you have any sense well i've spent a lot of time thinking about that question and i will say

00:49:19.060 i find trump himself a fascinating and mysterious character he's highly unusual and therefore it's

00:49:28.900 It's a little hard to understand.

00:49:30.260 Do you find him more mysterious now than you did 10 years ago when you first started watching, when we all first started watching?

00:49:35.700 Well, I understand him a lot better than I did because, of course, I now have so much evidence of how he behaves under different circumstances for both better and worse.

00:49:46.280 but in thinking about this move it's so it seems like such an obvious mistake both from the point

00:50:00.020 of view of the nation and the danger of a quagmire which i think is substantial and the

00:50:07.300 danger of a terrible outcome which i think will likely be avoided but i do worry about the role

00:50:14.320 that nuclear weapons could play here but the thing that really causes me to think there's

00:50:23.600 something i can't see is that the mistake that trump has made here is a political mistake

00:50:31.080 if you picked one realm where i would expect trump not to make an obvious mistake it would

00:50:39.600 be the political i literally think we are dealing with a political genius right if nothing else

00:50:46.880 this person has understood the way he is viewed the american electorate such that he could be

00:50:54.580 relied upon not to make a blunder of this scale especially as his presidency hangs in the balance

00:51:04.220 which it clearly does, because if the Democrats take the Senate in addition to the House,

00:51:11.200 then not only will he be impeached, which I think is highly likely with the House alone,

00:51:16.080 but he will be convicted, and that will be the end of his presidency. It will also be his legacy.

00:51:24.200 So why would a man who understands politics better than any of us, a guy who did what I

00:51:31.460 would have told you was impossible he beat the duopoly both sides of it took over the republican

00:51:37.460 party defeated the democratic party soundly that is a that is a person with insight making a move

00:51:43.980 that seems like a childish blunder

00:51:47.620 and it leaves me with a very unsettling hypothesis i don't have high confidence in it but

00:51:56.400 my concern is that this is evidence that he is not in control he is not in control as commander

00:52:09.180 in chief of his own armed forces and that he is in fact having to rationalize decisions that

00:52:16.200 he would not have made and promised not to make on the campaign trail

00:52:20.540 and i don't quite know what to do with that it's a very unsettling thought but i don't i don't see

00:52:31.860 i don't see the win here and i don't see a win in a short enough time period that this could

00:52:38.820 put him ahead in the midterms it's very hard for me to imagine that

00:52:42.180 well i you know i think that's the least bad outcome from the perspective of the trump

00:52:48.860 administration if republicans get stomped in the midterms um but then somehow recover a workable

00:52:56.480 majority of voters i think they'll be thrilled but i think the potential consequences unless the

00:53:03.040 party is to find a leader who represents its voters because it's really that simple over time

00:53:07.860 are you addressing the concerns of your voters if so you probably get elected and if you're not you

00:53:12.120 probably won't uh i mean i think it's like you know gavin newsom is going to be president

00:53:18.360 if this continues on its current course so the question is how do you like what do you need to

00:53:25.060 restore actually i mean leaving aside how do you get out of the war which i think is very complicated

00:53:29.180 but like how do you restore confidence in the government after the government just admitted

00:53:35.640 they got americans killed on behalf of another country which is what they've admitted and what

00:53:40.180 they did well i mean i will tell you um i i don't think i was naive going into the last election

00:53:48.400 i have long viewed the duopoly as unbeatable and trump is capable of a political feat in that realm

00:53:57.700 that others weren't but in terms of how compromised our our governmental structures are by by corruption

00:54:05.020 there was always the question as to whether or not there was enough power left in American

00:54:13.400 elections to actually change our trajectory as a country. And in the aftermath of the attack on

00:54:19.540 Iran, I'm shaken. I don't know. I think the answer I just got is it didn't matter who you 0.95

00:54:26.620 voted for. The neocons had moved over to the Democratic Party. I think Iran, we know it was 0.91

00:54:33.660 on their agenda for decades. I think an attack on Iran was coming. And I tweeted before this 0.82

00:54:38.620 happened, we're going to attack Iran and we're not going to be given a choice about it. And 1.00

00:54:42.780 that feels like what has occurred. But I do want to say the hypothesis that the president is not

00:54:49.800 in control is one of two. The alternative hypothesis, as far as I can see it, is that

00:54:58.540 he is being shown a very compelling false rendition of the world that has led him to

00:55:08.940 act in a way that would be politically advantageous and would be in the interests of the nation

00:55:16.600 if what he was seeing was true, but that it isn't. Now, that's also a very unsettling possibility

00:55:24.420 That he is surrounded by people who are wittingly or not showing him a picture that is unrealistic so that he would in fact put our military in harm's way and destabilize Iran, not understanding what the likely consequences were.

00:55:41.760 well i don't think there's any question about that and the people who are calling to influence 0.92

00:55:45.520 him you know are unwise but also ignorant and have a track record of bad calls and um but you 0.92

00:55:54.080 know possess maximum aggression so there's no question that his fact picture was totally 0.87

00:55:58.880 distorted and it still is i mean the overwhelming majority of iranian signal information signal

00:56:05.360 intelligence that we receive has been translated by israel so okay it's been filtered and maybe

00:56:12.800 honestly maybe not but yeah he's not seeing the whole picture of course no president does but

00:56:18.080 he's also as you just suggested at the outset which is the most interesting thing he overrode

00:56:21.760 his own instincts he's amazing political instincts people zig he zags he turns out to be right he

00:56:28.160 attacked the iraq war when that was totally verboten in the republican party in the primaries

00:56:33.120 in 2016 and it turned out to be the most resonant thing yes finally someone's saying it only he

00:56:37.640 knew that only he understood that so his instincts are like the highest level and he ignored them

00:56:43.440 so why you obviously want to sleep well and fashionably brooklyn bedding can help here tcn

00:56:50.920 we take sleep time seriously try to get eight hours and a lot of people here cannot help rave

00:56:56.660 about their brooklyn bedding mattress the first thing you'll notice about your mattress is how

00:57:01.980 stable they feel. That's because they're built to last for decades, not just years. It's American

00:57:06.840 durability. By the way, when we bring in a new advertiser, we have them send stuff to the whole

00:57:12.460 staff and people test it. And they love this. Brooklyn Bedding's founder built the company

00:57:16.500 here in the United States from the ground up. Craftsmanship, grit, no college degree. Their

00:57:21.300 factory is in Arizona. The prices are low despite the fact they're American-made. High-end comfort

00:57:26.520 without the high-end price. What makes these mattresses so great? Brooklyn Bedding uses

00:57:31.500 copper-infused foams and thermoregulation-coated foams to help keep you cool and comfortable all

00:57:37.100 night. Plus, they offer a 120-night sleep trial. That's plenty of time to make sure you love it

00:57:43.500 and we're confident you will. Visit brooklynbedding.com. Use the promo code Tucker at

00:57:49.000 checkout to get 30% off site-wide. It's not available anywhere else, only on this show.

00:57:54.540 So take advantage while you can. Visit brooklynbedding.com promo code.

00:57:58.020 This episode is brought to you by Spreaker, the platform responsible for a rapidly spreading

00:58:02.200 condition known as podcast brain. Symptoms include buying microphones you don't need,

00:58:07.640 explaining RSS feeds to confused relatives, and saying things like,

00:58:11.140 sorry, I can't talk right now, I'm editing audio. If this sounds familiar, you're probably already

00:58:16.720 a podcaster. The good news is Spreaker makes the whole process simple. You record your show,

00:58:22.000 upload it once, and Spreaker distributes it everywhere people listen. Apple Podcasts,

00:58:26.200 spotify and about a dozen apps your cousin swears are the next big thing even better

00:58:31.400 spreaker helps you monetize your show with ads meaning your podcast might someday pay for

00:58:35.880 well more microphones start your show today at spreaker.com spreaker because if you're going

00:58:43.200 to talk to yourself for an hour you might as well publish it tucker well i think we need to know the

00:58:49.200 answer to that question and the i think we americans have to have a conversation with ourself

00:58:55.900 about not only how broken our system is and what it is resulting in us doing but how does it

00:59:03.060 actually work what is it that is actually driving us to do what we do and you know we can see parts

00:59:10.820 of it we can see lobbying for example it's the loophole in our system where the system is pay

00:59:18.760 for play, that is used day in and day out by corporations to get us to do things that

00:59:26.100 are bad for our health, bad for our long-term financial well-being, bad in every regard.

00:59:35.020 But obviously, our adversaries abroad will have noticed that we have a pay-for-play system.

00:59:44.460 and if they aren't taking advantage of it that would be surprising i would like to know why

00:59:50.440 they would have missed the opportunity so presumably they are and that also applies to

00:59:56.960 our allies unfortunately that is to say anytime somebody has an interest that is in conflict with

01:00:04.440 the interest that we americans actually have they are in a position to nudge us in their direction

01:00:12.240 and we are undoubtedly being nudged.

01:00:17.060 On the other hand, I don't think that can be the sum total of it.

01:00:20.920 And I will tell you, I don't like saying any of this.

01:00:25.880 I don't want to be doing this.

01:00:27.260 Tell me about it.

01:00:28.480 The reason that the Epstein phenomenon, whatever it was, is so important is that it suggests

01:00:41.760 a hidden power structure that was there for leverage.

01:00:47.320 It is unfortunate that in the edit that we have been shown, we don't have conclusive

01:00:52.780 evidence of who, what they were after, or even how the leverage worked. All we can see is strong

01:01:01.720 evidence that there was something. Logically, it is implied that it was connected to intelligence

01:01:08.400 services, ours, likely Israel's, who knows who else. But when you see your government,

01:01:19.900 your president functioning in ways that do not add up it's like watching a planet behave oddly

01:01:30.900 because of the gravity of some object you haven't found yet right there's the implication that

01:01:36.660 there's something with power in this system that is undeclared as far as we know it's unnamed

01:01:41.640 and the central question is what is it, how does it work, and how much effect is it having on what

01:01:51.840 we do? And I tried in my own way to raise this issue publicly. I believe we are in the midst

01:02:01.520 not only of a constitutional crisis, which arguably has been ongoing since 2001, maybe

01:02:10.240 much longer maybe 1963 around november 22nd in that range um of 1963 yeah exactly well well

01:02:19.860 that's the question is was that was that a lone gun nut or was that a coup and if it was a coup

01:02:24.320 did the thing that took power ever relinquish it i don't know the answer to that question

01:02:28.500 i'll just put it this way if the u.s government ever goes bankrupt

01:02:31.340 and disability payments stop social security payments stop

01:02:35.060 all payments stop medical research the CIA will still be well funded well the CIA

01:02:42.580 I I used to say black budget because obviously there are black budgets but then I realized I

01:02:49.160 was using the wrong term a black budget is a budget that is opaque to the outside world but

01:02:56.600 it still comes from somewhere the real problem is the ability to fund your own agency of course

01:03:03.880 And if you have superior information about the world, you know what's going to happen because you're in part responsible or you're listening into things that are responsible, then you are in a perfect position to create a budget that is under no one's control.

01:03:20.200 And I'm afraid we have rogue agencies that are independent of any structure that was imagined by our founders.

01:03:31.200 They're their own countries.

01:03:32.020 and there's no one who's not afraid of them no one who's not afraid of them so there's literally

01:03:37.460 i've never met anyone the more knowledgeable someone is about the workings of government

01:03:41.400 the more afraid he is of cia well i'm not saying cia is running around killing people but they can 1.00

01:03:45.860 i mean to some extent they are but i don't think they're like murdering thousands of americans

01:03:50.660 every year but they'll trip you up hard if you mess with them right that's true everyone knows

01:03:55.920 that they'll gaslight you into functional insanity they'll eliminate you leak your text

01:04:01.360 to the new york times for sure yeah these things can happen so i guess my point is not only are we

01:04:08.220 in the ongoing constitutional crisis it's just clear that we are what the start date is can be

01:04:13.520 debated we are also in the midst of an acute national security crisis yes something has control

01:04:22.420 within our governmental structures that does not have our interests at heart and i don't know what

01:04:30.040 we do about that but i know now why do you say whatever this control mechanism is this force

01:04:38.480 doesn't have our interest at heart well i think that's evident from what we do most of our activity

01:04:48.880 is actually negative with respect to its impact on americans i mean in fact if we simply took

01:04:57.260 the resources at our disposal and pointed them at the problems that people care about

01:05:03.320 we could be vastly better off we wouldn't live in a country with huge numbers of fentanyl

01:05:11.140 zombies in every city with you know onerous taxation and cruddy services the point is we 0.83

01:05:18.760 are simultaneously being drained on the one hand of our resources and on the other hand receiving

01:05:27.300 the worst conceivable service for it what we get yeah i would be perfectly comfortable

01:05:34.560 paying high taxes if they were making society better oh yes definitely but i'm not comfortable

01:05:43.840 with paying high taxes that are used to punish me and surveil me and all of that it of course

01:05:50.700 who would be so all i'm saying is that if i look at the activity of government it is hostile to

01:05:59.580 the interests of the american people that's right almost always almost always it's like

01:06:03.920 point for point you know it's like during covid you know if you looked at what the cdc asked you

01:06:10.060 to do every single thing was the inverse of what you should have done just to maintain your own

01:06:15.000 health. It's like that. You are getting a program in which everything that you're being fed is

01:06:20.980 poison rather than nutrition. So when your government behaves like that, it is about

01:06:28.580 something. The fact that our founders understood the hazard of conflicts of interest was top of

01:06:37.580 mind for them and that they wrote about it extensively and they had tried to build a system

01:06:43.720 that was immune to it by virtue of the fact that as people detected that their government was not

01:06:51.880 acting in their interests, they had the ability to replace it bloodlessly. And what I think has

01:06:59.100 happened is something has overwhelmed the thinking of the founders. It's not surprising. They didn't

01:07:04.400 understand what a world you know the internet or ai or any of these other modern influences

01:07:10.980 would allow but somehow we exist under a form of government that has a kind of democratic theater

01:07:21.600 to it but that's not how it works and i guarantee you it works some way right it's it's a functional

01:07:29.820 system in a manner of speaking, the lights remain on, but it is not acting in our interest. It's

01:07:35.740 basically catering to our interests exactly enough to keep us from revolting. That's about what it

01:07:41.160 is. We've got a new partner. It's a company called Cowboy Colostrum. It's a brand that is serious

01:07:46.260 about actual health, and the product is designed to work with your body, not against your body.

01:07:51.960 It is a pure and simple product, all natural. Unlike other brands, Cowboy Colostrum is never

01:07:58.060 diluted. It always comes directly from American grass-fed cows. There's no filler. There's no

01:08:03.900 junk. It's all good. It tastes good, believe it or not. So before you reach for more pills for

01:08:10.620 every problem that pills can't solve, we recommend you give this product, Cowboy Colostrum, a try.

01:08:16.340 It's got everything your body needs to heal and thrive. It's like the original superfood,

01:08:20.700 loaded with nutrients, antibodies, proteins, help build a strong immune system, stronger hair,

01:08:26.260 skin and nails i threw my wig away and right back to my natural hair after using this product

01:08:31.180 you just take a scoop of it every morning in your beverage coffee or a smoothie and you will feel

01:08:36.000 the difference every time for a limited time people listen to our show get 25 off the entire

01:08:41.560 order so go to cowboy colostrum.com use the code tucker at checkout 25 off when you use that code

01:08:47.560 tucker at cowboy colostrum.com remember you mentioned you heard it here first by the way

01:08:54.020 you know that's a very depressing scenario that you've just sketched out however it's better than

01:08:58.980 civil war yep um and people don't appreciate how difficult violence is to control and just how

01:09:05.800 costly it is to people because they've never seen it because they don't know anything actually never

01:09:09.640 been anywhere but um anyone who's been around that is like oh i don't want that however i think that

01:09:17.180 the current system is going to be pretty hard to maintain with this level of transparency

01:09:21.640 by which i mean while a billion federal documents remain classified the deep architecture of power

01:09:28.640 as you just said is now sort of visible it's kind of peeking beneath the surface in certain places

01:09:33.280 and you're like well that clearly is what's running it i have no control over that that

01:09:39.160 whatever it is clearly hates me and my children it's tough when this much is disclosed all at

01:09:46.480 once and it makes society unstable and it makes people frankly revolutionary and radical well or

01:09:52.740 does it no it it it does which is another thing that's been worrying me so part of what i do

01:10:01.020 is i think about game theory which is a little understood quadrant of logic but a very important

01:10:08.140 one and there's a difference between an iterated game where each round is played with the knowledge

01:10:15.460 that you're going to have to play the next round and the last round of the game where you know you

01:10:22.100 don't have to play another round so you're willing to do all sorts of things that you wouldn't if you

01:10:26.920 knew you had to keep playing right you'll burn properties exactly you wouldn't have burned

01:10:31.760 otherwise and put it all in the last hand yeah so what i feel i i can't defend it as a matter of it

01:10:41.940 being an obvious logical conclusion,

01:10:43.780 but what I feel is that there has been a shift

01:10:47.500 into an end game dynamic

01:10:49.820 where something is going for broke.

01:10:53.000 It's not expecting to preserve the system.

01:10:55.460 It's not expecting to have to maintain it.

01:10:58.160 And therefore, how much does it matter

01:11:02.440 that we can see a lot in the Epstein files,

01:11:06.140 but prove nothing, right?

01:11:08.180 How much does that really matter if we know?

01:11:10.120 In fact, maybe it's even a feature, not a bug.

01:11:12.080 It kind of makes us feel like we're making some kind of progress, like we've scored a big win, when in fact, is it going to change how we are able to govern ourselves?

01:11:24.920 Did our power go up in knowing these things, or was it just simply a kind of catharsis that was delivered?

01:11:32.320 Fine, you can have it.

01:11:33.800 What are you going to do about it?

01:11:35.160 That's where I think we are.

01:11:37.140 I have that same sense, a strong sense.

01:11:39.340 just it doesn't matter shed the husk yep we're moving on and i i see it in a lot of different

01:11:46.420 ways well in our just the most obvious practical way in our use of anti-missile defense like we

01:11:54.200 burn through it and so there's no sort of backup in case like what if something else happened around

01:12:00.020 the world with a peer power like we're in trouble you wouldn't do that if you cared about the future

01:12:06.560 you wouldn't do any of this if you care about the future but i see it in the explicit efforts to 0.98

01:12:11.860 stoke religious conflict inside our borders and i see it with this all muslims are bad 1.00

01:12:18.260 i never thought in my wildest nightmares that i would be the guy defending muslims since i'm not 1.00

01:12:24.860 a muslim and i'm also on the record like attacking muslims a million times over the years 1.00

01:12:28.200 foolishly probably but i do know that american citizens have to be treated equally regardless

01:12:36.140 of their religion period and that attacking people on the basis of the religion of my country 0.63

01:12:41.500 is the recipe for like disaster it's a recipe for a country that i want my grandkids to grow up in

01:12:48.280 and i don't know why anyone would do that and i'm not going to stand by for it not because

01:12:53.560 i'm like a devotee of allah or whatever i'm a protestant christian well i do love a lot of

01:13:00.020 muslims but that's not why i don't want to live in a country with that why would someone try and 1.00

01:13:04.760 stoke that what is that what's the game here well i mean i this is again this this haunting sense

01:13:11.440 that this is about somebody's interest that has not been publicly shared and that we are being

01:13:16.420 steered as pawns on a on a chessboard how can a country this big and powerful get manipulated by

01:13:22.060 anybody well unfortunately the answer to that is in game theory also which is that the personal

01:13:30.360 incentives of those who are supposed to be doing our bidding in government are obviously wildly

01:13:36.160 perverse. And so you can get a lot of people who are either too cowardly to know to do what they

01:13:44.240 know is right or too corrupt to care about what's right. But I was on the beach in Clearwater a

01:13:54.880 couple nights ago, watching the sunset. Very diverse crowd of mostly Americans there on

01:14:04.220 the beach, families playing in the surf, people just enjoying the grandeur of the sun going

01:14:11.020 down. Nobody thinking about politics except me. But I was talking to people as I often

01:14:19.460 do i love to just strike up a conversation it's amazing how decent most people are how they want

01:14:27.120 the same things how they're willing to you know bond with you somebody they've never met just

01:14:32.160 because you're standing on the same beach in a country in which you're more or less free

01:14:37.340 and you know i was thinking about how it used to be you know 60s no 60s 70s 80s 90s

01:14:47.800 and the fact is this was never a fair country you know people start out with disadvantages

01:14:56.120 but we knew that it was supposed to be we knew that that was the better direction to go in 0.99

01:15:02.740 and frankly people liked it you know there's a reason as dumb as you know the colors of 0.96

01:15:08.960 benetton or whatever it was there's a reason that that ad campaign resonated with people 0.91

01:15:13.180 was that it is kind of cool to have friends from all sorts of different backgrounds

01:15:18.280 and to feel like we've put those animosities aside for something better.

01:15:24.700 And the better thing is the modern West.

01:15:27.460 It's the alternative to unthinkably bad systems

01:15:31.800 that have characterized all of history until the last couple hundred years.

01:15:36.300 So I texted while I was on the beach to Heather

01:15:44.220 A thought that she would understand

01:15:47.720 Because of every conversation we've had about our predicament

01:15:50.660 Something to the effect of

01:15:52.900 These people are very broken

01:15:57.460 But within two generations

01:16:02.040 They could be pretty okay

01:16:04.140 if we just stopped poisoning their bodies and their minds,

01:16:08.660 if we stopped lying to them and we started telling them,

01:16:12.080 hey, here's how you can live so that you'll be healthier and happier

01:16:17.400 and all of those things.

01:16:18.340 If we just simply confessed what we knew about how things actually work,

01:16:24.120 these people aren't so far from being able to go back

01:16:27.480 to not caring about what color your skin is

01:16:30.180 or what book your family worships, right?

01:16:34.140 We liked that. It was good. And frankly, it was so good that for a brief period, it was contagious.

01:16:42.060 Anybody who saw how dynamic this country was, that people could be simultaneously free and wildly productive at the same time and innovative like no other country ever.

01:16:55.120 Once you see that, the only answer is, well, how can I get in on it? Can I come to your country and participate in it?

01:17:01.600 Can I reproduce that magic in my country?

01:17:04.220 People wanted it.

01:17:05.640 And somebody upended it.

01:17:08.260 Somebody decided that our freedom didn't matter.

01:17:11.860 And they decided that they had plans.

01:17:15.460 They had plans to corral us so that more of our wealth could end up in their pockets.

01:17:21.960 And, you know, at first the corruption was mundane.

01:17:24.920 But it has now, it's totalizing.

01:17:26.760 It has taken over the entire country and it has left us with what looks like the theater of democracy and liberty and some kind of cryptic but omnipresent tyranny.

01:17:44.500 it's tragic and most people don't realize how tragic it is because they don't know what the

01:17:54.200 world looks like when you don't have the west functioning they don't understand what it is

01:18:00.260 like to live in a world where the question is how are we going to exterminate those people so that 0.89

01:18:05.260 they don't exterminate us that's not a world you want to live in and i'm afraid that we are being

01:18:10.100 dragged back into that world, which is, frankly, so much more fundamental that if the West breaks

01:18:17.320 down, that's where we naturally go, right? There's nothing, there's no other alternative.

01:18:22.520 Yeah. And the question is really, at what scale will you see that? Is it going to be at the scale

01:18:27.480 of your neighborhood or at the scale of nations? But either way, it is an intolerable loss compared

01:18:33.580 to repairing what we have as broken as we find it i mean if you just measure the well-being

01:18:41.260 of americans just by the obvious measures including life expectancy physical vigor and

01:18:47.180 health there's no question that the population the actual population down to the individual

01:18:53.020 has been degraded measurably over the past 40 years visibly visibly visibly and it's shocking

01:19:01.440 um this is so banal i'm not going to even repeat it but yes visibly that is exactly right and it's

01:19:07.800 super sad it's not an opportunity to keep scorn on people the weakest among us or you're fat or

01:19:13.040 whatever it's an invitation to empathy and uplift it's a it's an invitation for us to help and make

01:19:19.820 this better and also it's the question how did it go so wrong and it does seem like you couldn't get

01:19:25.620 this condition without leaders who really wanted to hurt you it doesn't seem accidental

01:19:30.500 Oh. Well, I mean, I will be one tick more generous. I think people do not intuit what

01:19:39.740 it would be like for someone to be completely indifferent to your well-being, right? When

01:19:44.800 we look at- That's right. You're right. What pharma has done to us.

01:19:48.120 Let me just say, I'm sorry that I said that. No.

01:19:50.400 Because it doesn't require malintent. It just requires indifference.

01:19:53.300 Yes. And I'm not saying there isn't a whole lot of malintent.

01:19:55.100 No, but you're right. You're absolutely right. And I shouldn't have said that.

01:19:57.420 But we all have to understand this, and I think the way to do it is to find it in yourself first, right?

01:20:04.780 The reality is, if you tapped into the suffering that is taking place at this instant around the globe, you'd melt down, right?

01:20:17.900 If you just had one instant of feeling it all, that'd be it.

01:20:21.380 So you don't. You're built not to.

01:20:23.360 You're built to care about things in some kind of proximity to you.

01:20:27.420 right? You care about your family. You might care about your neighbors. You might care about

01:20:32.460 Charlie Kirk. You may never have met him, but you saw him. You liked the way he sounded. He felt

01:20:38.260 like a kindred spirit. So we pay attention in some way that is biological, right? That is built

01:20:47.520 not to overwhelm us so that we have empathy where it has a utility. And then something breaks out

01:20:57.780 in Sudan and you may know about it, but you don't feel it in the same way. You are functionally 0.99

01:21:06.260 indifferent to it, right? You know something's going on and you go to Starbucks and you buy an

01:21:10.660 expensive coffee anyway, right? So we all have that capability and it's not that we are bad

01:21:16.700 people for it it's that we are functional people because of it but once you know that that exists

01:21:22.820 that you can be indifferent to somebody's profound suffering if it's far enough away from you all you

01:21:28.340 need to understand is there are people who seem close to you who feel that exact way about you

01:21:35.180 you might as well be an animal on a feedlot somewhere as far as they're concerned right you

01:21:40.100 are a source of wealth or meat or whatever and you know once you get that once you just make

01:21:48.760 eye contact with that thought it is not hard to understand how pharma works right it's totally

01:21:56.000 right yeah so you know okay would somebody really withhold the cure to some disease that worries us

01:22:04.480 all because if that cure comes out they're going to lose billions of dollars yeah there are people

01:22:10.140 who would do that and you'll never guess where you'll find them right so you know i guess the

01:22:16.520 point is look we need there aren't very many adults maybe there are none some of us are struggling

01:22:23.120 to be adult in a world that misinforms us and misleads us and tries to infantilize us but

01:22:29.140 we are trapped in a system in which other people's the slice of the pie that they have access to

01:22:41.740 is their full-time preoccupation they're trying to enlarge their slice of the pie

01:22:47.100 the way that's supposed to work if our system functioned really well you would increase your

01:22:54.420 slice of the pie by increasing the overall size of the pie. That's what it says effectively on

01:23:00.280 the brochure of free market democracy. If you create wealth, you get rich. Nothing wrong with

01:23:07.120 that. I want to live in that system. I want people who figure out how to make us all wealthier to

01:23:11.320 live in really good places and enjoy the finer things in life. That's something that makes us

01:23:16.920 all better off but there's this other way to do it you can increase your slice of the pie

01:23:24.520 by destroying wealth and if you don't find a way to systematically rule that out

01:23:31.620 then that's what you're going to see because it's vastly easier to do that it's vastly easier

01:23:37.640 to get wealthy at the expense of everyone else than it is to figure out how to make

01:23:42.740 the pie that we all enjoy bigger so we are suffering because a lot of people are behaving

01:23:50.360 in their narrow self-interest completely indifferent to our well-being and that now

01:23:56.060 extends deeply into the political it's almost the banality of evil you might say it is a decidedly

01:24:04.220 economic version of the banality of evil so i you hate to say it um because there's no

01:24:12.060 sense that i can see in which the current war benefits the united states i just don't see it

01:24:17.220 but you know theories are welcome no one's ever called me to tell me how um i hope someone will

01:24:23.660 but i see a ton of ways in which individuals are becoming enriched by this war

01:24:28.660 every time i mean it's ever present it's hard to believe that's real though

01:24:34.080 Well, you know, yes, it's hard to believe it's real because we depend.

01:24:40.220 In order to just live your daily life and interact with the people that you actually meet, you have to take that mindset off the table, right?

01:24:48.280 You can't work in your daily life with your coworkers and imagine that they're scheming behind your back in this way.

01:24:58.740 And in general, they're not.

01:24:59.960 It's just that there are enough people who are capable of this.

01:25:03.020 And the system selects for them and it tends to utilize them that our overall system does not – it's not a scaled-up version of your neighborhood.

01:25:13.960 It's the inverse of your neighborhood.

01:25:15.480 It's people behaving in exactly the opposite way that normal people do in regular interactions.

01:25:20.260 And it's something you have to learn it because your daily experience won't teach it to you.

01:25:29.880 Okay.

01:25:31.120 How is this resolved is the question.

01:25:33.020 Let's take the military engagement off the table because that's hard to know.

01:25:39.720 As noted earlier, it's difficult.

01:25:42.160 Politically, it's almost as difficult to see where this goes because I think there are so many people who voted for the current administration as a last resort.

01:25:52.600 Someone please listen to me.

01:25:53.800 Hear me.

01:25:54.360 I've got problems.

01:25:55.200 Pay attention.

01:25:56.680 And we wound up with this.

01:25:58.340 So, like, how is that fixed?

01:26:00.640 well all right here's where my naivete is going to come out

01:26:06.540 we need somebody who is in a position of real power and influence somebody who has

01:26:18.060 better information than we on the outside do right to step up and take the risk and it is

01:26:25.840 a profound risk of telling us exactly what they know now i will say i'm very upset with president

01:26:34.760 trump at the moment i feel personally burned as somebody who worked to get him elected yeah i did

01:26:42.380 it for a reason and frankly if given the same choice today i would have to make the same vote

01:26:48.300 Because I think what the Democratic Party offered was anti-constitutional, right?

01:26:57.400 We had a demented president who they pretended wasn't, and then we had somebody who hadn't

01:27:02.160 won a primary installed by the party.

01:27:04.940 This is not the consent of the governed.

01:27:07.700 So I would have to vote for Trump again, just because he's at least a qualified person who

01:27:13.960 was the nominee of his party through a lawful process.

01:27:17.060 but i'm angry at him because i voted for no new wars and when i voted for no new wars

01:27:24.380 iran was top of mind for me because i knew that it was on the agenda

01:27:28.900 of the neocons so i expected somebody to try to force this to happen

01:27:32.840 however whatever the explanation is for what president trump has done

01:27:40.680 one can imagine him coming to the podium and telling us what's really going on

01:27:50.100 across the board what happened to our country what happens when somebody who truly is independent of

01:27:56.340 the system gets to that top job now i assume there are reasons he can't do that and i can come up

01:28:05.740 with many reasons that it would not be his instinct to do that. But I think that we in

01:28:10.240 the public need to consider whether the right thing to do is to say, what are our actual

01:28:17.020 interests here? Our actual interests involve getting our country back and putting it on a

01:28:22.940 track that functions, right? Going back to being the West and ignoring race and religion and trying 0.93

01:28:29.900 to prosper through innovation, right? We are not going to get there if we continue to play

01:28:37.280 the same dumb political game. President Trump, I believe, was a true renegade who broke through 0.99

01:28:43.800 the system, even though it was built to prevent that at all costs. That is a major accomplishment.

01:28:49.680 Having done so, he now knows how the system works, what it's built to do, and how it functions.

01:28:57.640 And I would – I feel like the right deal to make is forgive him for whatever it is that he's participated in in exchange for giving us the information that we need to put the country back on track.

01:29:16.100 Now, maybe that's naive. 0.74

01:29:18.200 Maybe it's ridiculous. 0.91

01:29:18.460 I'd take that deal any day. 0.74

01:29:19.780 Yeah.

01:29:20.120 I'd take that deal any day.

01:29:21.280 um i think saying the truth out loud has a supernatural effect it's well it has an effect

01:29:29.060 whether it's supernatural or not um in that it clarifies but it also elevates like what you're

01:29:36.280 arguing about the right things because you're arguing the basis of truth rather than deception

01:29:40.200 and i think even if a leader trump or anyone else offered no prescription for improving things

01:29:47.880 telling the truth about what's actually happening, how things work, who's in charge,

01:29:51.620 why do we do that? What's the truth about that? Let's just start with the Kennedy assassination.

01:29:56.880 They won't even do that. So I think that would be a massive

01:29:59.960 improvement. It would be, but

01:30:03.840 the problem is we would have to live up to our side

01:30:08.100 of that bargain. We would have to protect him, and

01:30:12.020 nobody can protect him fully. But the point is that would be a very risky thing to do

01:30:15.900 because you're talking about forces powerful enough

01:30:20.520 to have effectively captured our government

01:30:23.600 and them facing an existential threat to their power.

01:30:29.820 So everything's on the table with respect to what might be done

01:30:34.000 to prevent someone like President Trump from telling us that.

01:30:37.880 But don't you think a prerequisite for leadership of anything,

01:30:40.860 the family included, is the willingness to die for the people you lead?

01:30:43.920 Yes. And in fact, that was one of the things that I think endeared President Trump to a lot of voters. They saw him stand up to an assassination attempt. And he's not a young man. And frankly, his entire legacy is at stake. I assume his fortune isn't. But his legacy is at stake here.

01:31:06.540 And so if there was ever a moment for a person to be looking at the sum total of what they've accomplished in life and to be saying, this is the last chapter.

01:31:21.020 What is the right thing to do?

01:31:23.940 I think this would be it.

01:31:25.340 You know, in his shoes, I think it's what I would do.

01:31:28.180 But it's a hard one to wrap your mind around.

01:31:33.100 And presumably, you know, if he were to entertain the thought, then all those around him that he might consult will have whatever reaction it is that prevents such things from ever unfolding.

01:31:47.500 So, you know, it would be a hell of a moment in American history if we finally got an answer to what's been going on since 1963 and what it has to do with our entanglements abroad and our dysfunctional policy at home.

01:32:05.600 But we're looking for – look, the thing about Trump was he was the surprising element that you couldn't have predicted, right?

01:32:13.120 So the question is maybe it's time for the surprising Trump to surprise us once more and to give us the insight that we won't be able to gain through any other mechanism.

01:32:29.380 And it would be the most worthy of accomplishments.

01:32:37.680 It would be the greatest thing.

01:32:39.160 It would be the greatest gift you could give the country.

01:32:40.740 Yeah.

01:32:41.120 Because the truth does set you free actually.

01:32:43.120 No matter what your religious views, I think every religion, I hope, is based on the idea

01:32:47.440 that there's an absolute truth, it's knowable, or at least it's approachable, and that telling

01:32:52.300 it is liberation.

01:32:53.560 Yep.

01:32:54.180 And that would be true for him, too.

01:32:55.960 I would think.

01:32:56.820 So you said you're gravely disappointed.

01:32:59.320 You circulate in a world full of people like you, a lot of liberals who voted for Trump,

01:33:05.620 who saw him as a way to fix longstanding problems.

01:33:10.920 How many of them feel disappointed now?

01:33:13.120 Well, you know, the funny thing is I have now several times said unforgivable things out loud on a series of different topics since 2017.

01:33:28.320 So you have no friends left?

01:33:29.680 No.

01:33:30.100 I have the greatest crop of friends ever.

01:33:33.460 But the way I came by them is an important piece of the puzzle.

01:33:40.420 So each time that I have stood up and said the right thing, I lose a whole group of people.

01:33:49.000 They turn on me.

01:33:50.840 They go silent.

01:33:52.400 All sorts of things happen.

01:33:54.040 And then I meet another group of people that I didn't know existed who replaced them as my friends.

01:34:00.440 And I call this the painful upgrade.

01:34:02.660 I'm constantly losing people.

01:34:04.840 But the quality of my friend group goes up and up each time this happens.

01:34:09.800 And I will tell you, I think our discussion today, this one and the one that we had on Dark Horse just before, which I hope people will go listen to because there's a lot in there that I don't think you're going to hear anywhere else.

01:34:23.840 But our discussions today, I expect, are going to be very costly to me.

01:34:32.380 I'm hoping that the painful upgrade works and that I discover new people who, you know, are capable of replacing the ones who aren't up to the challenge.

01:34:41.560 Costly in what way?

01:34:42.360 I don't think – I've been involved in both conversations.

01:34:45.380 I don't think you've said a single radical, irrational, hateful thing.

01:34:51.560 Yeah, I haven't.

01:34:53.840 but that's what causes the problem.

01:34:59.160 Really? Being reasonable?

01:35:01.540 Yeah, not to put too fine a point on it,

01:35:04.080 but let's put it this way.

01:35:06.960 If I'm frank about what the pattern really is,

01:35:11.820 there are lots of people who are perfectly decent

01:35:16.500 and reasonable across the board to a point,

01:35:21.540 and then you get to their issue and they will absolutely turn on you for doing the exact same

01:35:28.860 thing that they loved you for the last time and i don't know what to do about that but at some

01:35:35.520 level you know i'm going to keep doing this and i'm going to find the tiny number of people who

01:35:41.820 don't have an issue like that yeah right that's what i'm going to be left with um i never knew

01:35:47.520 anybody had issues like that up until covid trump really yeah trump and covid both do it um but you

01:35:55.680 know the woke stuff if you know if you were you know embedded in the liberal world as i was it

01:36:01.960 functioned the same way so what do you think you said um in the course of our conversations that

01:36:06.860 crosses some people's line i have broken i think that i am acting out of the very high quality

01:36:19.100 moral training that i got inside a jewish home i think i'm doing the job that i am supposed to be

01:36:26.880 doing yeah but many who are aligned with the israeli regime at this moment view what i am saying

01:36:38.500 as traitorous i've been accused of all kinds of vile things including ironically enough trying

01:36:46.460 to save my own hide by switching teams which is preposterous because someone said that to you out

01:36:52.740 loud people have said a lot of things that's a very low blow the lowest and it came from very

01:37:03.000 close quarters actually yes so that's the world i'm living in and i will tell you maybe i'm nuts

01:37:13.200 and the peril the actual peril to my life that i feel for speaking my mind on this topic is not

01:37:19.620 the result of an actual threat but i feel a threat i am speaking in spite of it because i

01:37:27.000 think it's the right thing really you do feel a threat yes you can feel threats that's a real

01:37:32.960 thing well let me just flesh that out because i think to a lot of people especially people who

01:37:37.620 don't follow me or know me well that may seem like oh come on brett you think anybody's paying

01:37:43.520 attention to you you really think you're that important i think it's not the size of my audience

01:37:49.920 i don't think the size of my audience is enough to create that problem size of your audience is

01:37:54.900 and here i am so there's that but it is the fact that i try very hard to be reasonable

01:38:05.740 that i am jewish and therefore trying to be reasonable coming out somewhere where

01:38:13.020 most jews are not at the moment is striking in other words maybe if i'm saying hey i don't think

01:38:22.280 what we're doing is in the interest of the israeli people i don't think it's in the interest

01:38:27.120 of diaspora jews i think it is creating the conditions that do result in pogroms and 0.99

01:38:33.600 genocides definitely if i say all those things and i you know i'm not hot-headed that counts

01:38:41.440 and it potentially gets people's attention who are otherwise not going to pay attention to it

01:38:47.020 so i think that that will be perceived as very threatening to some people i don't trust at all

01:38:52.100 and who are they well you know whatever the forces are that just pushed us into a war either

01:38:59.880 strange timing or pushed us into a war outright those people have interests of a scale i can't

01:39:06.680 even conceive of it's true so what what might they do to somebody who speaks out of turn

01:39:11.460 i don't know but it actually i'm just going to say it we don't have an fbi we know that because

01:39:18.980 things that need to be thoroughly investigated obviously aren't whether that's the assassination

01:39:23.140 attempt in Butler, whether it's the Zorro ranch that never got searched, that Epstein had,

01:39:31.520 or the Charlie Kirk assassination.

01:39:34.300 Yep.

01:39:34.800 Now, all I know about the Charlie Kirk assassination is that I've been handed a story that doesn't

01:39:39.700 add up.

01:39:40.600 I don't know why it doesn't add up, but the fact that we didn't get to the bottom of it

01:39:48.100 in some way that we got a compelling explanation to what happened worries me for the following

01:39:54.580 reason now i didn't know charlie well we were becoming friends and i feel confident that that

01:40:02.340 would have continued and progressed rapidly but i didn't know him all that well but we were

01:40:07.300 teamed up on a project to essentially compel the president of the danger of the mrna shots 0.63

01:40:18.100 but that meant that I had contact with him

01:40:22.620 and I knew something of what he thought.

01:40:27.640 I know you knew him well.

01:40:32.080 Even his public-facing side

01:40:35.040 was very clear about his concerns

01:40:38.980 about an attack on Iran.

01:40:40.900 He was not only very clear about his concerns,

01:40:45.060 but he was very knowledgeable about the hazards. He would have been a formidable voice at this

01:40:54.060 moment. I don't know how we ended up in this conflict in Iran. It's a head scratcher to me. 0.81

01:41:02.280 It seems, as I've said to you, like such a mind-blowing political error that it's hard to

01:41:10.300 imagine that President Trump would have made it. But if I try to rerun the tape of how we got here

01:41:18.040 and I imagine that not only did President Trump have you in his ear, but he had Charlie in his

01:41:23.380 ear and you were both saying, hey, this doesn't make any sense. It's not a political win. It's

01:41:28.540 terrible for the country. And here are a spectrum of downsides that could come from this that will

01:41:35.360 have impacts for generations. I don't know what effect that would have had. But I do know and

01:41:43.820 I've been concerned about it and I've been vocal about it for a very long time that we had a policy

01:41:51.500 unfolding under our collective banner as Americans where we were toppling regimes across the Middle

01:42:00.400 East, and Iran has been on that list from the beginning. We didn't get to Iran in the war on

01:42:06.940 terror. Why? Because the quagmire in Iraq caused an analog for what used to be called Vietnam

01:42:14.240 syndrome, right? Vietnam syndrome was the unwillingness of the American public to commit 0.69

01:42:21.040 troops in foreign engagements after they were traumatized by the quagmire in Vietnam.

01:42:25.380 george bush senior famously proclaimed with glee that during the first gulf war which was a very

01:42:35.360 easy war for us to win that we had finally broken vietnam syndrome i don't know if you remember that

01:42:42.160 very well so he said we had broken vietnam syndrome and what that meant was we've got

01:42:46.780 license to start making war again okay a very ominous chapter in american history the war on

01:42:52.680 Terror resulted in ill-conceived adventures in the Middle East that ended badly.

01:43:01.900 Iraq was so bad, and so publicly so, that the public again was traumatized by the idea of these engagements. 0.61

01:43:10.860 And what that did is it put Iran on hold.

01:43:14.860 The neocons didn't give it up, but it went on the back burner.

01:43:18.720 i feel and i cannot say for sure but i feel that something was watching and it felt the

01:43:27.980 clock ticking and its opportunity to finally bring about this war which i think netanyahu

01:43:32.560 said he's been dreaming of for 40 years he did say that so something wanted this war to happen

01:43:38.660 and there was the perception that the opportunity the window was closing so it had to be brought

01:43:43.540 about quickly. Given how public Charlie was on this topic, I can't help but wonder. Now,

01:43:53.240 obviously, that will sound crazy to many people that something would have even considered such

01:44:00.380 a thing. But I will say that after Charlie was killed, Benjamin Netanyahu very quickly

01:44:07.380 denied responsibility for it. I was shocked by this. It did not seem natural. Now, I'm not saying

01:44:14.800 that that means that anything in that quadrant was responsible for the murder. All I know is

01:44:21.500 that we didn't get a decent investigation. But I did feel, and I hope you will tell me that I'm

01:44:28.660 imagining this i did feel that that denial by netanyahu was effectively a rorschach test and

01:44:38.080 maybe designed to be one that i was supposed to feel alarmed by this and a normal person was

01:44:48.360 supposed to think that is batshit crazy he said they didn't do it obviously they didn't do it so

01:44:53.960 anyway, I'm not telling you that I see the evidence that somebody did it. But what I am

01:44:59.280 telling you is we've just found ourselves in a war that Charlie would have been opposed to. We

01:45:05.300 know that from his public and private statements and that he would have been a formidable force

01:45:10.660 in opposition. So what am I to think? Why? At least we should have an investigation that tells

01:45:19.920 us for sure that we know who committed the crime and that there wasn't something larger about it

01:45:25.300 but look now i've said unforgivable things it's done i don't know why that's unforgivable i mean

01:45:32.000 this is an american citizen someone you knew and i don't you're not accusing anyone of anything

01:45:36.140 and i do think leaving aside charlie's murder and you know the question of who did it for a foreign

01:45:43.900 leader to weigh in immediately and hog all the attention to make it all about himself and start

01:45:48.840 issuing all these statements about how Charlie lived and died for Israel

01:45:51.320 is totally unforgivable.

01:45:53.140 I say this as his friend.

01:45:54.240 I just think if someone did that to me after my death,

01:45:57.200 I think my family would be outraged.

01:45:59.120 It's not about you, baby.

01:46:01.880 So that was disgusting behavior from someone with a track record 0.99

01:46:06.040 of disgusting behavior. 0.74

01:46:06.920 But at the very least, we could say that's just wrong.

01:46:09.160 That's not how you behave in the wake of a young man's murder.

01:46:12.980 And I'm never alleged, I don't even talk about this topic,

01:46:16.320 and i'm not going to now other than to say i think everything you've said is entirely reasonable and

01:46:21.760 it's not an insult to the living well to want to know what happened to the dead yes of course and

01:46:27.540 you know let's put it this way if we had a healthy public discussion in which we could air

01:46:32.660 crazy ideas dismiss them because they don't stand up logically that would be fine but we don't have

01:46:37.760 that. Um, and well, you've been on a lonely mission to convince the president not to engage

01:46:52.380 in war in Iran and to get him to back out as quickly as possible, declare victory and go home.

01:47:00.480 It hasn't gone well. No, it's been a, it's been a abject failure.

01:47:04.900 what do you think charlie would have been doing if he had lived i think he'd be doing the same

01:47:14.080 of course i you know if there's one topic i talk to him a lot about is this

01:47:17.680 and uh no of course and his motive was pure um i sincerely believe that his only interest was in

01:47:25.200 in the united states and he certainly wasn't opposed to israel he loved israel he often said

01:47:29.740 that he didn't love bb that's for sure sorry that's a anyone who claims otherwise is lying

01:47:35.920 or doesn't know but he did love israel and um both as a biblical concept and as a current reality

01:47:42.580 went there and liked it but he was totally opposed to this work he said that many times and um but

01:47:49.620 it's i i do think his murder and all that has happened subsequently whether or not they're

01:47:57.580 connected i can't say but they've had the cumulative effect of intimidating the hell out of

01:48:02.060 everybody no one wants to pipe up and um i was already all in i've been against a war in iran

01:48:08.300 for 10 years and doing in whatever in my limited power to persuade decision makers not to do it

01:48:15.960 because i don't think it's good for america i'm not i'm not for iran okay like stop i just don't

01:48:20.240 think it's good for the united states and i've said that many many times and this time i found

01:48:24.500 that no one else wanted to say that in public

01:48:26.100 because the costs seem really high.

01:48:29.260 And I'm not whining,

01:48:30.880 I hope I don't come off as self-pitying,

01:48:32.060 but that's just a fact.

01:48:33.240 And so, I don't know.

01:48:35.400 I think we need to re-engineer this whole thing

01:48:37.300 when it's over, hopefully soon,

01:48:39.480 to see how it happened.

01:48:40.760 Like, how was a country of 350 million people

01:48:44.180 hijacked by a determined minority of ideologues

01:48:47.280 whose interest is not in that country?

01:48:48.840 Like, how did that happen?

01:48:50.460 And I don't think it's a matter of, like,

01:48:51.900 stoking conspiracy theories against the Jews

01:48:54.120 or anything like that in fact i don't want that at all in fact one of the reasons i want full

01:48:59.060 disclosure is so everyone can settle down and stop muttering darkly i don't like dark mutterings

01:49:05.140 at all i like sunlight to quote justice brandeis and so i i hope we can do that and i hope that

01:49:11.660 there's not more deception and obfuscation and hiding of the facts because like that just makes

01:49:17.400 people hate each other right that's it i i want to find out that my darkest concerns are wrong

01:49:25.520 in an open enough public conversation that it becomes or even if they're right let's just get

01:49:30.280 it over with like get it over with whatever it is i mean i went last week to an a meeting i don't go

01:49:35.720 to a meetings but i one of my i don't drink but i went with a really close friend of mine who does

01:49:40.260 go a lot and what if you've never been i know you're not an alcoholic you should play one for

01:49:45.500 a weekend and go because the the freedom that comes from admitting your deepest sins your most

01:49:52.980 profound weaknesses the true liberation that comes from that is like it's like nothing else

01:49:59.000 there's no liberation like that and the freedom of that yep yep i did it i did it well that's it

01:50:04.260 we we need there's so much burden from what we can't discuss yes and don't know that clearing

01:50:10.900 the decks and getting it all in the open and you know some kind of reset would be a wise thing for

01:50:18.640 us yes this is like christmas dinner at the episcopalian house where it's just like a lot

01:50:23.140 of silence and unspoken grudges and everyone's mad but no one will say so it's like what that's

01:50:28.580 not healthy i want to say one other thing about the uh the unforgivable things that i've now said

01:50:36.420 Charlie Kirk and my concerns. I don't think it's logical to regard those concerns as preposterous

01:50:45.880 if you also regard the stakes in Iran as existential for Israel. In other words,

01:50:56.500 what will people do if they think their interests are all bound up in a policy that has to happen

01:51:04.400 right now and that people are standing in the way and therefore putting them in jeopardy of

01:51:10.120 elimination them and their children right and their children's children and their nation 1.00

01:51:15.660 i mean put yourself in the position of other people try to see the world through their eyes

01:51:20.880 just for a second and you can understand dynamics people risk their lives to rob liquor stores

01:51:25.460 right right and you know people people will do anything to um protect themselves and their

01:51:33.960 children from a threat that they perceive of course and my concern is that we are not allowed

01:51:39.700 somehow as americans we have lost our right to challenge the policy on its merits it's you know

01:51:47.220 you you speak logically about the likely outcome of war in iran and the response that comes back

01:51:55.020 is about your morality right that's a non sequitur we're talking we can talk about two

01:52:01.200 different things? What are our moral obligations? And what is the logical context in which we are

01:52:06.060 being asked to participate in this? Those are both worthy conversations. But when you come back at me

01:52:11.520 for my logical point about this military engagement with an accusation about my character,

01:52:19.680 then something has gone awry. That's not how we behave, right? We have a right to air our

01:52:25.920 grievances. And, you know, the marketplace of ideas can sort out which ones are right. And

01:52:30.740 frankly, there's only one metric that really matters in the end. That's predictive power.

01:52:38.180 Who is it who has deployed their model and said what they think is going to happen

01:52:42.960 and has actually been insightful, right? In the end, in science, in politics, that's the way you

01:52:50.480 know who knows what's going on is somebody who says something that has some relationship to

01:52:54.760 what actually occurs. And I think the opposite is also true. People with a long track record

01:52:59.160 of failure shouldn't be consulted as experts right if you've been married eight times i'm not

01:53:06.000 going to marriage counseling with you a hundred percent if you have a record of failure then we

01:53:09.600 should ignore you and it doesn't matter what degree you have or what office you hold you're

01:53:13.500 not a credible source um i guess i would also i'm feeling a little defensive about this because

01:53:19.840 um about the charlie kirk thing or well yeah about all of it really about the fact that you

01:53:25.160 know my character is in question by virtue of uh beliefs that i i think i've arrived at honestly

01:53:30.900 but others will imagine something else but i will also point out there's there's something i'm

01:53:36.320 obviously too close to this i should say we're the same age from the same part of the country we grew

01:53:39.840 up in the same world despite differences your family was jewish and atheist mine was agnostic

01:53:44.860 and christian but whatever we grew up in the same world and so what you're saying to me is so

01:53:49.740 self-evidently true and reasonable and moderate and sensible and logical and impressive and like

01:53:56.420 this is how we should think that i can't even conceive of how you could be attacked for saying

01:54:01.980 anything you've said and that's not flattery i'm being sincere i agree with every word you've said

01:54:06.300 i get it in a normal world it would be fine but we don't live in a normal world and in fact we

01:54:12.340 live in a world in which you have been painted as a bigot in order that your opinion that what i

01:54:21.400 just said is normal doesn't register so that's what i'm concerned about but on the merits of it

01:54:27.560 how could anything you just said i'm not even defending myself i'm defending you like how could

01:54:32.220 that be construed as unreasonable crazy hateful like i just don't see anyone who listened to the

01:54:40.300 last hour could come away like man breb weinstein that guy nutcase hater oh well if you think that's

01:54:47.760 not coming back man you're watching a different movie um well that's an indictment on the people

01:54:52.280 who make those claims it certainly should be in a in a fair fight but let me also just point out

01:54:58.080 um we're dealing with what appears to me to be a holy war being waged by secularists

01:55:09.800 which is confusing um but there's an awful lot of symbolism some of it utterly deliberate in

01:55:19.060 the prosecution of this war in the whole context right the symbolism is important

01:55:26.140 and there's another feature that doesn't have to do with charlie that strikes me as in the same

01:55:34.180 vein. The golden pager that was given to President Trump strikes me as another Rorschach

01:55:43.800 test, just like Beebe's statement after Charlie Kirk's murder. I mean, obviously, the pager

01:55:54.600 operation is no joke. I understand the predicament that Israel is in, and I don't underrate the

01:56:07.340 danger of being in the neighborhood that Israel is in, the danger of the dynamics of the region

01:56:14.960 being about lineage versus lineage violence, and therefore I can have my, you know, high-minded

01:56:20.760 western view of their predicament but i don't understand what it is like to live under threat

01:56:25.700 from people who truly want it yeah hezbollah is you know determined to crush israel that's a fact 0.93

01:56:29.840 so i get it and yep i'm you know i don't think i'm uh i think i'm an adult when it comes to

01:56:36.380 understanding what one has to do to survive under such circumstances on the other hand

01:56:41.580 what am i to make of the fact that you have these exploding pagers used to

01:56:54.040 kill terrorists obviously that's not the only people who were killed but nonetheless that was

01:57:00.720 their purpose and then one is delivered to trump you can read it into totally different ways right

01:57:09.280 The normal way to read it is that this was maybe a tasteless celebration of a successful operation and yada, yada, yada.

01:57:21.780 On the other hand, it can obviously be read as a threat.

01:57:27.920 And it's hard for me to imagine.

01:57:32.880 i can imagine the meeting in which somebody says hey maybe we should send president trump a golden

01:57:38.540 pager after our successful operation somebody should immediately shoot that idea down and say

01:57:43.440 no we can't do that because it could be read in another way right so anyway as we are struggling

01:57:51.600 to understand what is taking place in our country why it was received that way too you do i do

01:57:57.720 well you're not making me feel better um i mean come on now come on right you know yeah what

01:58:08.380 was that i totally agree i thought that at the time and then to have netanyahu i broke my rule

01:58:16.340 incidentally i don't call him bb and i did earlier sorry netanyahu then later delivers a

01:58:23.360 speech in a totally separate context, of course, could mean nothing, where he's bragging that

01:58:28.400 every cell phone of everybody in the room has Israeli technology in it. Whoa. That makes you 0.92

01:58:35.260 think. And mind you, I'm not telling you that there's a threat there or technology to be carried

01:58:44.320 out. What I'm telling you is that feels like it is designed to divide us, where some of us will

01:58:50.200 hear that in one way and others will hear it in a different way and we will become

01:58:54.140 un-understandable to each other just let's just de-politicize it for a second and certainly

01:58:57.840 de-racialize it which you know that's like the that's the core sin is conflating global jury

01:59:03.620 with the state of israel or bb netanyahu it's like just insane i will never accept that it's

01:59:07.400 not true obviously you're living proof it's not true but just take all that away here you have a

01:59:12.220 guy who brags about fighting a seven front war so this i don't think it's ever happened in history

01:59:15.740 has any country fought a seven front war whatever that is it's one of the most violent people in

01:59:20.140 the world so any allusion to violence has to be taken seriously including gifts of pagers i don't

01:59:26.300 know it's like you need to experience the world on a literal level first before you start like

01:59:31.640 what is that yeah it how about a basket of olives or some dates which are some of the best in the

01:59:39.760 world israel produces amazing dates i can say firsthand and a lot of other things but why a

01:59:46.100 pager yeah well it reminds me of the uh i don't know who said it first but you know uh a gentleman

01:59:56.140 is someone who is never rude by accident right this strikes me as uh messages we are talking

02:00:06.000 about sophisticated people who are sending ambiguous messages of course with a dark

02:00:10.880 interpretation and you know the more generous interpretation is that okay there's some leverage

02:00:18.060 in people feeling uncertain and you know maybe that's what it was but in a world where people

02:00:23.080 are in their own minds fending off existential threats by shaping policy i don't know that

02:00:32.460 anything's off the table we're talking about people who day in and day out whether we're

02:00:38.140 talking about Netanyahu or the Mossad or the IDF. We're talking about people who think in terms of

02:00:44.340 who needs to die for us to persist. And the only question is, who's off the table for such

02:00:52.540 considerations? That's what I want to know. Some of us should be. I'm an American. I don't owe any

02:00:59.320 allegiance to Benjamin Netanyahu. He can think what he wants. He's perfectly free to say what

02:01:05.320 he wants but i have a right to speak my mind crazy or not as an american that is actually my right

02:01:12.540 and i don't want to have to feel jeopardy over doing it and i do feel jeopardy because i think

02:01:18.440 the world we live in is one where um people are removed who cannot be silenced i hope that when 1.00

02:01:29.160 our generation dies we're not the last generation to have the assumptions that you have which are

02:01:32.680 the most american of all assumptions and i hope that if you're attacked um for doing this interview

02:01:38.700 you will not call me to defend you because that'll just make it worse but i'm grateful you did it

02:01:43.560 thank you brett thank you very much all right can i ask a favor before we go anything okay we did a

02:01:49.080 discussion before this one for dark horse i wouldn't ordinarily deliver a plug but i actually

02:01:55.160 hope you will i'm proud of that conversation yeah i am too and i think i'm hoping that even people

02:02:00.040 maybe especially people who disagree with us will go listen to it with an open mind. I think it's a

02:02:07.740 good quality conversation and you will at least get insight into how honest brokers arrive at a

02:02:13.600 very different conclusion than maybe you have. I hope people inside of Israel will watch it.

02:02:18.800 And anyway, I think it's also probably protective if you'll watch it and sign up for the channel.

02:02:26.680 it makes it it makes it harder to ignore amen thank you i hope people will also thank you tucker

02:02:34.360 good to see you good to see you thanks for joining us we'll be back well next wednesday live see you

The Tucker Carlson Show - March 12, 2026

Tucker on the Propaganda Pawns, Bibi’s Threat to Trump, and the Great American Betrayal

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript