The Tucker Carlson Show - February 13, 2024


World Government Summit


Episode Stats

Length

29 minutes

Words per Minute

170.23079

Word Count

5,023

Sentence Count

381

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary

In this episode, Alex Blumberg talks about his recent interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, why he felt compelled to do so, and why he decided to do it in the first place. He also talks about why he chose to go to Russia and why it was so important to him to have a face-to-face interview with the world's most powerful man. Alex also discusses why he thought it would be a good idea to travel to Russia to have an interview with Putin, and what it was like being in the country for the eight days he spent there. Alex also shares his thoughts on the current state of the U.S. government and its relationship with Russia, and how it affects the way Americans think about their own country and the world. Alex's full interview with Vladimir Putin is a must-listen, and you won't want to miss it! His full interview can be heard on CNN's "State of the Union" on Friday, November 9th at 8 PM Eastern Standard Time, available wherever you get your news and information from the internet, including the New York Times, CNN, CBS, NPR, and other major news outlets. You can also listen to Alex's interview on his podcast "The Situation Room" wherever he gets his news and analysis wherever he goes on air, including on social media, and wherever else he goes in the world, including his social media accounts, and get a free copy of his book, "Vladimir Putin: The Most Powerful Man in the World" on Amazon Prime, wherever he's at. and wherever he is listening to the most powerful people are listening to his most authentic voice is listening the most authentic and most authenticest, most authentic in the most authentically, the most effective most authentic, the truth is most authentic. Thank you for listening to this podcast? Alex talks about how he got to Russia, what it's going to be the most impressive leader in the greatest country on the most important country in the best of all of all, and his views on what he's doing the most of it, and he explains why he went to Moscow, and where he's going next, and who he's most excited to be in the next few days in Moscow, Russia, Russia's most important place, and the best place to do the most amazing place in the biggest and most important, the best, the place he's getting the most, the biggest, the least important, and so much more.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I'll start in reverse order. Why now? Well, I've been trying for three years to do this interview.
00:00:16.920 The U.S. government prevented me from doing it by spying on my text messages and leaking them
00:00:22.100 to the New York Times, and that spooked the Russian government into canceling the interview.
00:00:27.140 So I've been trying to do this, but my country's intel services were working against me illegally,
00:00:34.380 and that enraged me because I'm an American citizen. I'm 54. I pay my taxes. I obey the law.
00:00:40.000 And there was no expectation in the America that I grew up in that my government and its intel services, NSA and CIA,
00:00:47.320 which were always outwardly focused on our foreign enemies, would be turned inward against American citizens.
00:00:53.880 And I'm shocked by that, and I'm infuriated by that. And so once I discovered that that was happening,
00:00:59.980 and I confirmed it was happening, and they admitted that they did it, then I was totally determined,
00:01:04.300 monomaniacally dedicated to doing this interview, not simply because I want to know what Vladimir Putin is like
00:01:11.420 and what he thinks about a war that is resetting the world and really gravely damaging my country's economy,
00:01:17.620 but also because they told me I couldn't on the basis of illegitimate means and for no really clearly stated justification.
00:01:26.820 And I thought, that can't stand. I want to live in a free country. I was born in one.
00:01:30.680 And I'm going to do whatever small thing I can do to maintain, you know, this society that I love.
00:01:40.120 You are known to be pro-Republican Party, right wing of the Republican Party. This is what they claim.
00:01:49.700 They said, first, you've been a Democrat and became a Republican. Okay.
00:01:53.700 Okay. Or you are known to be pro-Trump, anti-Biden. What is truthful in this? And you went to Putin
00:02:04.340 because you are pro-Trump and anti-Biden? I mean, my views are not very interesting.
00:02:12.540 I'm not sure how I would characterize them. They're changing as quickly as the world itself is changing.
00:02:17.780 And I, as a matter of principle, I think that, you know, that your views should change when the
00:02:22.020 evidence changes and assumptions that you had in the past are proven wrong. That has happened to me
00:02:26.880 virtually every month of my life. If you pay close enough attention, you can rate your own
00:02:31.420 performance, just as if you're betting on sports. You know, I lost that one. And when you do,
00:02:36.780 when it turns out that the things you thought were true were lies, you should admit it. So what are my
00:02:41.680 views? I'm not certain. Tell the truth is my main view. And I plan to do that to the best of my
00:02:46.300 ability. So Trump played no role in this whatsoever. There's obviously an election in my country.
00:02:52.020 coming to fruition in November. I have no idea what's going to happen. I think that the current
00:02:57.900 administration is very obviously incompetent and the president is senile. That's not an attack.
00:03:04.300 Everyone knows it. It has now been confirmed, I would say, this week in the report that you're
00:03:12.260 all familiar with. And that's very sad. But it had sort of nothing to do with the interview. I wanted to
00:03:17.180 interview Putin because he's the leader of a country that the U.S. government is sort of at war
00:03:22.260 with, though not in a declared way. Sir, you know your president, President Biden, well. Yes, I do.
00:03:30.640 You've been working in several media organizations from PBS, CNBC, NBC, Fox News, CNN. And you've been
00:03:42.940 covering this field well. And you know the American politicians. And now you've been following Putin.
00:03:49.420 And you did a very lengthy interview with this gentleman. And for sure, to interview him, you did your homework
00:03:56.640 and you did your research. Comparing the culture, the competence between Vladimir Putin and Biden, how do you see
00:04:07.140 the two men now running the world? I mean, if this were boxing, the fight would be called by the medic.
00:04:15.380 So, and I say that as an American, and I don't have another passport. I don't plan to ever leave my country.
00:04:20.660 My family's been there hundreds of years, and I love it. I am a patriotic American. And I grieve when I see that the
00:04:26.580 president is non-compass menace. And that in my country, it is considered very rude to say that.
00:04:33.260 And you sort of wonder, how did you get to a place where you have an incompetent president who's driven
00:04:37.860 not simply the standard of living, but life expectancy downward, and no one feels free to say
00:04:44.020 that? That's not a political observation. It's a statement of fact, which is provable empirically.
00:04:49.740 And the most radicalizing thing I would just say for me in the eight days I spent in Moscow was not
00:04:54.260 simply the leader of the country, who of course is impressive. It's the largest land mass in the
00:04:57.680 world. And it's wildly diverse, linguistically, culturally, religiously. It's hard to run a
00:05:03.520 country like that for 24 years, whether you like it or not. So an incapable person couldn't do that.
00:05:08.640 He is very capable. And many of you know him, and you know that. What was radicalizing, very shocking,
00:05:12.840 and very disturbing for me was the city of Moscow, where I'd never been, the biggest city in Europe,
00:05:16.940 13 million people. And it is so much nicer than any city in my country. I had no idea. My father spent a lot
00:05:23.400 of time there. In the 80s, when he worked for the U.S. government, it barely had electricity.
00:05:27.060 And now it is so much cleaner, and safer, and prettier, aesthetically, it's architecture,
00:05:32.900 it's food, it's service, than any country, city in the United States that you have to,
00:05:36.920 and this is non-ideological, how did that happen? How did that happen? And at a certain point,
00:05:42.040 I don't think the average person cares as much about abstractions as about the concrete reality
00:05:46.560 of his life. And if you can't use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York
00:05:52.240 City because it's too dangerous, you have to sort of wonder, like, isn't that the ultimate measure
00:05:56.300 of leadership? And that's true. By the way, it's radicalizing for an American to go to Moscow. I
00:06:01.120 didn't know that. I've learned it this week. To Singapore, to Tokyo, to Dubai, and Abu Dhabi.
00:06:06.820 Because these cities, no matter how we're told they're run, and on what principles they're run,
00:06:12.200 are wonderful places to live. They don't have rampant inflation. We're not going to get raped.
00:06:16.980 Sir, excuse me. What is that? Excuse me. Are you anti-American model?
00:06:24.140 No. I am the most pro-American. So I'm 54. I was born in 1969. I grew up in a country that had cities
00:06:30.740 like Moscow, and Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, and Singapore, and Tokyo. And we no longer have them. And what I
00:06:36.880 have discovered is that's a voluntary choice. As inflation is, as you heard in that fascinating
00:06:41.800 last panel, inflation is the product of choices made mostly by the central bank, not exclusively,
00:06:47.440 but by policymakers. Crime, same. You don't have to have crime, actually. If you don't put,
00:06:53.020 my children don't smoke marijuana at the breakfast table. Why? Because I won't allow them. It's very
00:06:57.480 simple. It's a short conversation. No. And you can run your country the same way. We're not going to
00:07:03.360 put up with that. So don't do it. And people understand that. Filth, graffiti, Paris, one of my
00:07:08.780 favorite cities. New York, one of my favorite cities, are filthy. And part of the reason they're
00:07:13.600 filthy is because people spray paint obscenities on buildings, and no one cleans it up. So that
00:07:17.980 encourages more people to do the same. And our policymakers, for some reason, don't notice this.
00:07:21.860 London, another one of my favorite cities. You see English girls begging for drugs on the sidewalk.
00:07:27.100 And I thought to myself, if I'm Boris Johnson, who briefly and very badly ran that country,
00:07:31.920 I would ask myself, like, wait a second. My countrymen are begging for drugs on the street. Maybe I
00:07:36.120 should do something about that. But no, he'll show up and give some speech about Ukraine and how we
00:07:40.220 need to send, you know, more cluster bombs to the brave Ukrainians. What are you doing?
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00:09:14.280 You mentioned Ukraine
00:09:26.240 By talking to this gentleman, President Putin, for this lengthy interview, my question is, did you had coffee with him?
00:09:38.120 Did you have any off-the-record discussion before the interview?
00:09:42.300 After.
00:09:43.020 Did you feel during the interview or before or after that this man can make or is willing to do a historical compromise,
00:09:54.240 number one on the status of the world with the West, and number two about Ukraine?
00:10:00.960 Is he a compromiser? Yes or no?
00:10:03.440 Of course. Right? I mean, leaders of every country on the planet, other than maybe the United States during the unipolar period,
00:10:10.580 are forced by the nature of their jobs to compromise.
00:10:13.480 Compromise is part of, that's what diplomacy is.
00:10:16.400 And he's among those.
00:10:17.800 His position is clearly hardening.
00:10:20.240 Russia has been rebuffed by the West.
00:10:22.440 I mean, Vladimir Putin, this is not, I'm not flacking for Putin.
00:10:25.100 I'm an American. I'm not going to live in Russia.
00:10:26.720 I don't love Vladimir Putin.
00:10:27.840 I'm stating the facts.
00:10:30.020 He asked Bill Clinton to join NATO.
00:10:32.900 He tried to make a missile deal.
00:10:34.320 He mentioned this in the interview.
00:10:35.660 He did. That's correct.
00:10:36.700 And he's mentioned it in other forums as well.
00:10:38.980 And NATO said, no, we don't want you.
00:10:41.060 Now, if the point of NATO, not if, the point of NATO, originally, of course, the post-war goal of NATO was to keep the Russians, the Soviets, from coming into Western Europe.
00:10:49.260 It was a bulwark against the Russians.
00:10:51.240 So if the Russians asked you to join the alliance, that would suggest you have solved the problem and you can move on to do something constructive with your life.
00:10:57.340 But we refused.
00:11:01.640 And so, I mean, just meditate on that.
00:11:04.080 Go sit in the sauna for an hour and think about what that means.
00:11:06.420 Before sitting in the sauna, a question, a question now.
00:11:11.480 Final conclusion.
00:11:12.680 You think that Vladimir Putin is eager for a compromise, a compromise like Yalta, Sykes-Bico, the Ottoman Empire, several agreements, any international agreement to share power and to share influence in the world with the West, if there is somebody who is willing.
00:11:35.300 And Biden administration wants tension, wants war, wants to exert pressure on him so that they can weaken his economy and weaken his alliance with China.
00:11:50.860 Is this is what you are reaching from your conclusions?
00:11:54.360 My conclusions are in co-ed.
00:11:56.020 I mean, I've been thinking about this for a couple of years.
00:11:57.800 I have a whole new set of data to mull over, and I'm not a genius, so it's going to take me a while to figure out what I think.
00:12:02.600 But at this stage, four days later, I would say, first of all, Yalta and Sykes-Pico are two of the worst agreements ever struck.
00:12:09.800 So I hope whatever comes out of this is nothing like those.
00:12:13.180 But first things first, Putin wants to get out of this war.
00:12:19.220 He's not going to become more open to negotiation the longer this goes on.
00:12:25.300 One of the things we've learned in the course of the last two years is that Russia's industrial capacity is a lot more profound than we thought it was.
00:12:32.600 I mean, Russia's having Russia, this country we were assured was a gas station with nuclear weapons, has a pretty easy time making missiles, rockets, and artillery shells, whereas NATO doesn't.
00:12:45.020 So we should think about what that means, one.
00:12:47.600 Two, the West doesn't spend any time, or our policymakers in Washington spend no time thinking about, like, what are the achievable goals here?
00:12:55.600 I have heard, personally, U.S. government officials say, well, we're just going to have to return Crimea to Ukraine.
00:13:03.040 Well, you don't need to be a Russia scholar, so that's not going to happen short of a nuclear war.
00:13:07.180 That's insane, actually.
00:13:08.880 So even to say something like that reveals that you are a child, you don't understand the area at all, and you have no real sense of what's possible.
00:13:15.360 And so as long as our leaders, and not simply in the U.S., but NATO, and I really mean Germany, don't, like, take the time to learn about what's possible, like, we're not going to get anywhere.
00:13:26.340 Do you think there is a big gap between the depths of understanding the philosophy of history, between Biden and between Putin?
00:13:37.140 You see Putin who have studied history and who is very deep in history, and he looks like he gave you a lecture for 30 minutes concerning the history of Ukraine and its relationship with the mother Russia.
00:13:53.840 Does Biden understand the law of action and reaction which moves a country like Russia?
00:14:00.920 I can't overstate how incapacitated Joe Biden is.
00:14:04.060 That's not an attack.
00:14:05.460 That is a fact.
00:14:07.080 And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
00:14:09.120 So these are not decisions Joe Biden is making.
00:14:11.340 But there are capable people around Biden, and I know them.
00:14:14.180 What they lack is any perspective at all.
00:14:16.480 So a conversation with a U.S. policymaker about the history of the region would begin and end with a conversation about, of course, Chamberlain and Churchill and Hitler, period.
00:14:28.300 So the American policymaker historical template is tiny.
00:14:32.460 In fact, there's only one.
00:14:33.980 And it's a two-year period in the late 1930s.
00:14:36.940 And everything is based on that understanding of history and human nature.
00:14:40.740 And that's insane.
00:14:42.340 And so, actually, American policymakers have convinced themselves that Vladimir Putin is going to take over Poland.
00:14:48.780 And it is not a defense of Putin.
00:14:50.480 I don't mean to defend Putin.
00:14:51.780 I'm not a fan of Putin's, and I'm not a subject of Putin's.
00:14:53.860 I'm an American.
00:14:54.640 However, there's no evidence that Putin has any interest in expanding his borders.
00:14:58.700 He is the largest country in the world, and it's very hard to run.
00:15:01.200 They don't need natural resources.
00:15:02.880 There's nothing in Poland he wants.
00:15:04.700 There's nothing he will gain by taking Poland other than more trouble.
00:15:07.180 If you're saying that he's going to invade Poland, you don't know what you're talking about.
00:15:11.100 Here is a point, a point in the interview.
00:15:14.620 When you asked him, are you ready to invade Poland?
00:15:21.200 Are you an expansionist power?
00:15:22.340 Expansion, yes.
00:15:23.680 In Poland, he said, only if Poland launched a war on Russia.
00:15:31.220 Okay?
00:15:32.640 Ukraine did not launch a war on Russia, and he invaded Ukraine.
00:15:36.180 Ukraine, why you didn't follow up on this question?
00:15:39.100 I started with that question, actually.
00:15:41.640 But he treated me to 35 minutes of Catherine the Great and the Russe.
00:15:46.520 But no, the core question is, why did he move his forces into eastern Ukraine?
00:15:52.580 And I watched this from a distant vantage in the United States, and I watched the vice president
00:15:57.020 of the United States, Kamala Harris, go to the Munich Security Conference, just days before
00:16:01.160 that, in February of 2022, and say in a public forum at a press conference to Zelensky, the
00:16:07.360 president of Ukraine, we want you to join NATO, which is another way of saying, it's a synonym
00:16:11.480 for, we plan to put nuclear weapons on Russia's border.
00:16:14.040 You think they threw a bait for him?
00:16:15.700 Are you joking?
00:16:16.260 Of course they did.
00:16:17.000 They threw a bait.
00:16:17.620 And it just tells you how constipated and restricted and censored the U.S. media landscape
00:16:23.060 is, that I was the only one who said that.
00:16:25.180 Well, wait a second.
00:16:25.980 The purpose of diplomacy is to reach a peaceful, mutually one hopes beneficial conclusion to
00:16:31.940 a crisis.
00:16:32.880 So if you're showing up voluntarily at the Munich Security Conference and saying, hey,
00:16:36.460 Zelensky, why don't you allow us to put nuclear weapons on Russia's border?
00:16:39.320 You're cruising for a war because you know that's the red line.
00:16:41.420 Because Putin has said that, and any close observer of the Aryan already knows that.
00:16:46.540 Now, do you have an explanation, a reasonable explanation, why there is this anti-war and
00:16:55.300 this very negative remarks about this interview from a lot of your colleagues and a lot of
00:17:01.240 politicians in the world?
00:17:02.960 One of the ways that I think I'm different is I don't like the internet, and I haven't
00:17:07.480 seen any of the reaction, and I would imagine, you know, I'm not the most popular person among
00:17:13.700 my colleagues in the United States.
00:17:15.160 I wouldn't have dinner with them anyway, so it's no great loss.
00:17:17.960 But, you know, I can't imagine what their motives would be.
00:17:21.260 I didn't go to Russia, of course, to promote Vladimir Putin.
00:17:25.520 And if that was my purpose, I'd say so, because I'm not embarrassed.
00:17:28.880 I went because I felt that most Americans, in whose name all of this is being done, don't
00:17:34.160 really know what's happening.
00:17:35.000 And they know nothing about the guy they're supposedly at war with, unofficially.
00:17:39.000 And I just felt that my job, if I have a job in this world, is to bring information to people
00:17:42.660 so they can decide.
00:17:43.760 And so I wanted to do the longest interview I could with Vladimir Putin that contained
00:17:47.300 the most amount of Vladimir Putin talking, not me grandstanding about what a great person
00:17:51.580 I am.
00:17:52.180 When an American journalist interviews someone like Vladimir Putin, the whole point of the
00:17:55.060 interview was to say, I'm a good person and you're not.
00:17:57.240 And that interview was aimed at his colleagues in the newsrooms in the United States.
00:18:00.880 I'm a good person.
00:18:01.860 Why are you such a bad person?
00:18:02.960 You're committing genocide.
00:18:03.740 Okay, that's not fruitful and that's certainly not my role.
00:18:07.740 I care what God thinks of me, what my wife thinks of me, and what my four children think
00:18:10.860 of me, and that's all I care about.
00:18:11.920 So I don't need to prove that I'm a good person.
00:18:13.640 I want to hear Vladimir Putin talk so people in my country can assess what's happening.
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00:19:11.320 I'll use the devil's advocate.
00:19:17.400 Advocate away.
00:19:18.440 Yes.
00:19:18.940 Okay.
00:19:19.480 I'll tell you.
00:19:20.680 You should challenge in the rules of an interview, and you're a master in your business.
00:19:27.760 It's not for me to give you a lecture about that, but you should challenge some ideas.
00:19:33.120 For instance, you didn't talk about freedom of speech in Russia.
00:19:41.320 You did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about the restrictions on opposition in the
00:19:49.820 coming elections.
00:19:52.520 I didn't talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about exclusively.
00:19:56.160 Why?
00:19:56.180 Yes, this is my question.
00:19:57.200 Because those are covered, and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries
00:20:01.700 in various countries and have concluded the following, that every leader kills people,
00:20:06.520 including my leader.
00:20:07.360 Every leader kills people.
00:20:08.200 Some kill more than others.
00:20:09.160 Leadership requires killing people.
00:20:10.400 Sorry.
00:20:11.120 That's why I wouldn't want to be a leader.
00:20:13.660 That press restriction is universal in the United States.
00:20:17.020 I know because I've lived it.
00:20:18.160 I've, you know, asked my former, you know, I've had a lot of jobs, and I've done this for
00:20:22.560 34 years, and I know how it works.
00:20:25.080 And there's more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States, but there's a great
00:20:28.220 deal in the United States.
00:20:28.940 And so, you know, at a certain point, it's like people can decide whether they think,
00:20:33.860 you know, what countries they think are better, what systems they think are better.
00:20:36.880 I just want to know what he thinks.
00:20:38.280 That was the whole point.
00:20:39.060 Yes.
00:20:39.440 I was very surprised about an inappropriate remark.
00:20:44.760 I don't think it contains any of the, what you can call, John T.S. or nice things from
00:20:52.100 Mrs. Clinton when she mentioned a phrase about you.
00:20:57.480 I don't want to repeat it.
00:20:58.560 Oh, you're not going to hurt my feelings.
00:20:59.900 Don't worry.
00:21:00.820 Well, well, gentleman, she, she called this gentleman, just honorable gentleman that he
00:21:06.360 is playing the role of a, you say it.
00:21:10.640 I didn't see it.
00:21:11.660 You didn't see it.
00:21:12.200 She's a child.
00:21:12.760 I don't listen to her.
00:21:13.840 How's Libya doing?
00:21:14.860 No, no, no, no, no.
00:21:16.340 Okay.
00:21:16.740 She said, uh, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the useful idiot.
00:21:22.080 And, and, and if you see the interview, that has nothing to do with this at all.
00:21:28.460 He was trying to get, uh, uh, uh, testimony about the world as Putin sees it.
00:21:38.040 And this is exactly what we need to know.
00:21:41.200 How this man thinks either you consider him an enemy or you consider him, uh, a friend
00:21:49.660 or you consider him, uh, a dictator, but you, you shouldn't understand how the man thinks.
00:21:57.540 Now.
00:21:58.100 You put it better than I could.
00:21:59.760 That's a, you just described my motive right there.
00:22:01.920 Okay, sir.
00:22:02.940 Now, now, now, now the, the, the, the, the question is if this is the, that is that, as
00:22:10.820 they say in the United States, and this is the, the, the, uh, the power of media and the
00:22:18.800 way the media is becoming very biased in a deep state like America, where are we going
00:22:25.420 in the model of democracy in the world?
00:22:29.160 Media information in a free country is a counterbalance against entrenched power, not just
00:22:34.300 government power, but the economic power, business.
00:22:37.420 It was, in my country, constitutionally, it is, it is designed to be, serve as a counterbalance
00:22:43.460 to that.
00:22:44.300 So if sources of information, media outlets align with entrenched power, then you have a powerless
00:22:50.520 population and it's totalitarian.
00:22:52.600 And that is very quickly the direction the United States is headed.
00:22:55.420 And, and I do think that technology abets this progression and machine learning, especially.
00:23:01.400 And so it's a perilous moment.
00:23:03.300 If, if it, you know, we're a democracy purportedly and a prerequisite for democracy is information
00:23:08.920 so that the electric can make up its mind and decide who to choose.
00:23:12.340 And so if you don't have access to information, you don't have democracy.
00:23:15.180 And we're in this sort of weird spiral where our leaders lecture us ever more about democracy
00:23:20.540 and how sacred it is, even as they choke it off, choke it to death.
00:23:25.640 And so I think the people who provide information, who bring the facts to the public, have a critical
00:23:29.840 role to play.
00:23:30.860 And right now it's difficult.
00:23:31.960 I'm not facing any great, I don't mean to cast myself as a hero.
00:23:35.140 I'm certainly not a hero at all.
00:23:36.540 But I do think it's tougher and tougher to do that.
00:23:40.500 And that means we have a greater obligation to do it.
00:23:42.900 Sir, do you have an explanation?
00:23:45.320 Till this moment, since the Gaza events took place, till now, nobody came out and said,
00:23:52.820 how on earth, the United States of America is vetoing the stoppage of fire, how a country
00:24:04.840 would veto not to continue war, how somebody is against stopping a war?
00:24:13.580 The United States is, for this moment, is the most powerful country in the history of
00:24:19.700 the world.
00:24:20.640 So if you were to frame this in terms we're all familiar with, which are the most basic
00:24:24.180 terms, the terms of the family, the United States would be dad, it would be the father.
00:24:28.420 And the father's sacred obligation is to protect his family and to restore peace within his
00:24:34.720 walls.
00:24:35.620 So if I come home, I have four children, if I come home from work and two of my kids are
00:24:38.480 fighting, what's the first thing I do?
00:24:40.360 Even before I assess why they're fighting, before I gather the facts and know what's happening.
00:24:43.500 I stop the fight.
00:24:44.000 I stop fighting.
00:24:44.680 Yes.
00:24:45.180 So if I come home and I have two kids fighting and I say, go, go, beat the crap out of them.
00:24:50.040 I am evil because I violated the most basic duty of fatherhood, which is to bring peace
00:24:56.540 because I have the power.
00:24:57.460 I'm the only one who can bring peace.
00:24:59.760 And so if you see a nation with awesome power abetting war for its own sake, you have a leadership
00:25:06.320 that has no moral authority, that is illegitimate.
00:25:08.420 And I mean that too.
00:25:10.400 And I'm not even referring to any specific region or conflict.
00:25:13.840 I mean generally.
00:25:15.560 And I'm deeply offended by that.
00:25:18.340 Deeply.
00:25:19.280 And it's something that I try to express.
00:25:21.360 And I'm often called a traitor for saying that.
00:25:23.720 It's the opposite.
00:25:24.600 I say that because I believe in the United States.
00:25:26.940 I think it's a moral.
00:25:27.720 It has been a morally superior country.
00:25:29.740 And if we allow our leaders to use our power to spread destruction for its own sake, that
00:25:36.600 is shameful.
00:25:37.540 It's a binary.
00:25:38.740 Okay.
00:25:39.180 It's a black and white.
00:25:40.600 It's a zero and a one.
00:25:41.880 You are either creating or you're destroying.
00:25:44.040 You're improving or you're degrading.
00:25:46.200 And that's how you know whether something is good or bad, whether it's virtuous or evil.
00:25:50.460 If you just judge the fruits, by its fruits, you will know it.
00:25:54.580 Well, and I'm very distressed and concerned that we are entering an era where this awesome
00:26:00.880 force for good is instead being used for evil.
00:26:04.000 Two quick questions because I ran out of time.
00:26:07.300 First question is now in the American elections, we have probabilities.
00:26:14.300 Either it's Biden and Trump or Biden and somebody else not Trump or no Biden and no Trump
00:26:23.760 and circumstances or fate get us two different people representing a Republican or Democrats.
00:26:32.800 What do you think?
00:26:33.720 Where are we going to reach the coming 19th of November?
00:26:38.200 Who will be running the show?
00:26:40.960 I haven't.
00:26:41.360 Honestly, I haven't the faintest idea.
00:26:43.960 But I think there's volatility ahead in our political sphere.
00:26:47.480 I mean, clearly there is because...
00:26:48.960 I like you when you said I don't have an idea.
00:26:52.800 You have this courage to say that you don't know.
00:26:56.560 You were telling me this morning that one of the things which you like very much about
00:27:02.720 here, our President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, God bless him.
00:27:09.420 When you ask him a question, if he doesn't have an answer, he tell me, actually, I don't
00:27:14.640 know the answer of this question.
00:27:16.220 I've never heard a leader of anything, whether it's a country or a company or a soccer team
00:27:21.320 ever in my life, in a lifespan interviewing people.
00:27:25.060 I've never heard a single one of them say, you know, I don't know the answer.
00:27:27.660 It's very complicated.
00:27:28.280 I haven't figured it out.
00:27:29.100 I've never heard anybody say that.
00:27:31.480 And to me, that is the purest sign of wisdom because wisdom grows from humility.
00:27:36.780 Wisdom grows from the recognition that you are not God.
00:27:41.800 And in the United States, we had a period where we were sort of, you know, having this debate
00:27:45.880 about are some religions good and some religions bad?
00:27:48.200 I'll tell you my view on it.
00:27:49.280 And it's a hardened view.
00:27:50.400 It's a sincere view.
00:27:51.660 I divide the world not between Muslim, Jew, and Christian or Buddhist.
00:27:55.180 I divide the world between people who believe they're God and people who know they're not.
00:27:59.600 And the only people I trust are in the second category because that is the beginning of wisdom.
00:28:05.080 When you know you are not God, that you cannot affect every change that you want, that you can't foresee the future,
00:28:09.460 that you're not omnipotent, then you are much more likely to make good decisions, wise, humane decisions.
00:28:16.560 By contrast, when you believe you have the power to shape the world and other people,
00:28:21.720 as we were hearing this morning through, you know, biohacking,
00:28:26.560 when you think you can create a better human being through technology, you're very dangerous
00:28:31.480 because you don't understand your own limits.
00:28:34.200 You will get a lot of people killed when you have those false beliefs, in my opinion.
00:28:39.000 By this note, Mr. Carlson, thank you very much for giving us this chance to come for the first time
00:28:48.400 after your great interview to talk to the world through this podium and this country and my humble self.
00:28:59.020 Thank you, sir.
00:28:59.600 Thank you for having me.
00:29:00.440 Thank you.