Tucker Carlson: Putin, Navalny, Trump, CIA, NSA, War, Politics & Freedom

00:00:00.000 | He said very specifically, "Depending on the questions you ask Putin, you could be arrested

00:00:07.480 | or not."

00:00:08.480 | And I said, "Listen to what you're saying.

00:00:10.080 | You're saying the US government has control over my questions and they'll arrest me if

00:00:13.800 | I ask the wrong question?

00:00:15.600 | How are we better than Putin if that's true?"

00:00:17.740 | Killing Navalny during the Munich Security Conference in the middle of a debate over

00:00:22.560 | $60 billion in Ukraine funding?

00:00:26.120 | Maybe the Russians are dumb.

00:00:28.120 | I didn't get that vibe at all.

00:00:29.920 | I don't think we kill people in other countries to affect election outcomes.

00:00:33.080 | Oh, wait.

00:00:34.080 | No, we do it a lot and have for 80 years.

00:00:39.800 | The following is a conversation with Tucker Carlson, a highly influential and often controversial

00:00:45.080 | political commentator.

00:00:46.080 | When he was a Fox, Time Magazine called him the most powerful conservative in America.

00:00:51.640 | After Fox, he has continued to host big impactful interviews and shows on X, on the Tucker Carlson

00:00:58.360 | podcast and on TuckerCarlson.com.

00:01:01.360 | I recommend subscribing, even if you disagree with his views.

00:01:06.320 | It is always good to explore a diversity of perspectives.

00:01:09.980 | Most recently, he interviewed the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

00:01:13.840 | We discussed this, the topic of Russia, Putin, Navalny and the war in Ukraine at length in

00:01:18.680 | this conversation.

00:01:19.680 | Please allow me to say a few words about the very fact that I did this interview.

00:01:24.560 | I have received a lot of criticism publicly and privately when I announced that I will

00:01:30.000 | be talking with Tucker.

00:01:32.080 | For people who think I shouldn't do the conversation with Tucker or generally think that there

00:01:37.120 | are certain people I should never talk to, I'm sorry, but I disagree.

00:01:41.520 | I will talk to everyone as long as they're willing to talk genuinely in long form for

00:01:46.680 | two, three, four more hours.

00:01:49.240 | I will talk to Putin and to Zelensky, to Trump and to Biden, to Tucker and to Jon Stewart,

00:01:56.480 | AOC, Obama, and many more people with very different views on the world.

00:02:01.320 | I want to understand people and ideas.

00:02:05.040 | That's what long form conversations are supposed to be all about.

00:02:08.440 | Now, for people who criticize me for not asking tough questions, I hear you, but again, I

00:02:15.000 | disagree.

00:02:16.000 | I do often ask tough questions, but I try to do it in a way that doesn't shut down

00:02:19.920 | the other person, putting them into a defensive state where they give only shallow talking

00:02:25.080 | points.

00:02:26.080 | Instead, I'm looking always for the expression of genuinely held ideas and the deep roots

00:02:31.720 | of those ideas.

00:02:33.320 | When done well, this gives us a chance to really hear out the guests and to begin to

00:02:37.480 | understand what and how they think.

00:02:40.400 | And I trust the intelligence of you, the listener, to make up your own mind, to see through the

00:02:45.400 | bullshit, to the degree there's bullshit, and to see to the heart of the person.

00:02:51.600 | Sometimes I fail at this, but I'll continue working my ass off to improve.

00:02:56.680 | All that said, I find that this "no tough questions" criticism often happens when the

00:03:01.960 | guest is a person the listener simply hates and wants to see them grilled into embarrassment,

00:03:07.440 | called a liar, a greedy egomaniac, a killer, maybe even an evil human being, and so on.

00:03:15.520 | If you are such a listener, what you want is drama, not wisdom.

00:03:21.120 | In this case, this show is not for you.

00:03:23.840 | There are many shows you can go to for that, with hosts that are way more charismatic and

00:03:28.300 | entertaining than I'll ever be.

00:03:32.200 | If you do stick around, please know I will work hard to do this well, and to keep improving.

00:03:38.800 | Thank you for your patience, and thank you for your support.

00:03:41.800 | I love you all.

00:03:44.060 | This is the Alex Friedman Podcast.

00:03:46.000 | To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:03:49.140 | And now, dear friends, here's Tucker Carlson.

00:03:53.600 | What was your first impression when you met Vladimir Putin for the interview?

00:03:58.040 | I thought he seemed nervous, and I was very surprised by that.

00:04:04.520 | And I thought he seemed like someone who'd overthought it a little bit, who had a plan,

00:04:10.000 | and I don't think that's the right way to go into any interview.

00:04:12.440 | My strong sense, having done a lot of them for a long time, is that it's better to know

00:04:16.400 | what you think, to say as much as you can, honestly, so you don't get confused by your

00:04:23.280 | own lies, and just to be yourself.

00:04:26.880 | And I thought that he went into it like an overprepared student.

00:04:33.000 | And I kept thinking, "Why is he nervous?"

00:04:36.280 | But I guess because he thought a lot of people were going to see it.

00:04:39.880 | But he was also probably prepared to give you a full lesson in history, as he did.

00:04:46.480 | Well, I was totally shocked by that, and very annoyed, because I thought he was filibustering.

00:04:52.560 | I mean, I asked him, as I usually do, the most obvious, dumbest question ever, which

00:04:58.480 | is, "Why'd you do this?"

00:05:01.120 | And he had said, in a speech that I think is worth reading, I don't speak Russian, so

00:05:05.840 | I haven't heard it in the original, but he had said, at the moment of the beginning of

00:05:12.200 | the war, he had given this address to Russians, in which he explained, to the fullest extent

00:05:18.760 | we have seen so far, why he was doing this.

00:05:21.980 | And he said in that speech, "I fear that NATO, the West, the United States, the Biden

00:05:27.440 | administration, will preemptively attack us."

00:05:30.800 | And I thought, "Well, that's interesting."

00:05:31.800 | I mean, I can't evaluate whether that's a fear rooted in reality, or one rooted in paranoia,

00:05:37.040 | but I thought, "Well, that's an answer right there."

00:05:40.000 | And so I alluded to that in my question, and rather than answering it, he went off on this

00:05:43.880 | long, from my perspective, kind of tiresome, sort of greatest hits of Russian history,

00:05:51.960 | and the implication, I thought, was, "Well, Ukraine is ours, or Eastern Ukraine is ours

00:05:56.500 | already."

00:05:58.540 | And I thought he was doing that to avoid answering the question.

00:06:00.940 | So the last thing you want when you're interviewing someone is to get rolled.

00:06:06.320 | And I didn't want to be rolled, so I, a couple of times, interrupted him, politely, I thought,

00:06:11.460 | but he wasn't having it.

00:06:12.460 | And then I thought, "You know what, I'm not here to prove that I'm a great interviewer.

00:06:17.780 | It's kind of not about me.

00:06:20.140 | I want to know who this guy is.

00:06:21.620 | I think a Western audience, a global audience, has a right to know more about the guy, and

00:06:25.900 | so just let him talk."

00:06:26.900 | Because it's not, I don't feel like my reputation's on the line.

00:06:32.020 | People have already drawn conclusions about me, I suppose, to the extent they have.

00:06:35.980 | I'm not interested, really, in those conclusions anyway, so just let him talk.

00:06:40.040 | And so I calmed down, and just let him talk, and in retrospect, I thought that was really,

00:06:43.860 | really interesting.

00:06:44.860 | Whether you agree with it or not, or whether you think it's relevant to the war in Ukraine

00:06:48.220 | or not, that was his answer, and so it's inherently significant.

00:06:52.420 | Well, you said he was nervous.

00:06:54.140 | Were you nervous?

00:06:55.140 | Were you afraid?

00:06:56.140 | This is Vladimir Putin.

00:06:57.580 | I wasn't afraid at all, and I wasn't nervous at all.

00:07:01.180 | Did you drink tea beforehand?

00:07:02.740 | No.

00:07:03.740 | I did my normal regimen of nicotine pouches and coffee.

00:07:09.760 | No, I'm not a tea drinker.

00:07:11.600 | I tried not to eat all the sweets they put in front of us, which is, that is my weakness,

00:07:16.680 | is eating crap.

00:07:18.680 | But you eat a lot of sugar, as you know, before an interview, and it does dull you, so I successfully

00:07:23.280 | resisted that.

00:07:24.280 | But no, I wasn't nervous at all.

00:07:25.280 | I wasn't nervous the whole time I was there.

00:07:26.280 | Why would I be?

00:07:27.280 | I'm 54, my kids are grown, I believe in God, I'm almost never nervous.

00:07:32.760 | But no, I wasn't nervous, I was just interested.

00:07:35.120 | I mean, I'm interested in Soviet history, I studied it in college, I've read about it

00:07:38.960 | my entire life.

00:07:39.960 | My dad worked in the Cold War, it was a constant topic of conversation.

00:07:44.000 | And so to be in the Kremlin in a room where Stalin made decisions, either wartime decisions

00:07:47.960 | or decisions about murdering his own population, I just couldn't get over it.

00:07:52.120 | We were in Molotov's old office.

00:07:55.160 | So for me, I was just blown away by that.

00:07:58.380 | I thought I knew a lot about Russia.

00:08:01.200 | It turns out I knew a lot about the Soviet period, the 1937 purge trials, the famine

00:08:06.360 | in Ukraine, I knew a fair amount about that, but I really knew nothing about contemporary

00:08:10.040 | Russia, less than I thought I did, it turned out.

00:08:14.200 | But yeah, I was just blown away by where we were, and that's kind of one of the main drivers

00:08:20.160 | at this stage in my life.

00:08:23.800 | That's why I do what I do, is because I'm interested in stuff and I want to see as much

00:08:27.440 | as I can and try and draw conclusions from it to the extent I can.

00:08:31.740 | So I was very much caught up in that, but no, I wasn't nervous, I didn't think he's

00:08:34.280 | going to kill me or something, and I'm not particularly afraid of that anyway.

00:08:37.880 | Not afraid of dying?

00:08:40.000 | Not really.

00:08:41.000 | No.

00:08:42.000 | I mean, again, it's an age and stage in life thing.

00:08:47.840 | I mean, I have four children, so there were times when they were little where I was terrified

00:08:51.960 | of dying, because if I died, it would have huge consequences.

00:08:56.400 | But no, I mean, at this point, I don't want to die, I'm really enjoying my life.

00:09:00.000 | But I've been with the same girl for 40 years, and I have four children who I'm extremely

00:09:05.800 | close to, well, now five, a daughter-in-law.

00:09:09.320 | And I love them all, I'm really close to them, I tell them I love them every day.

00:09:13.360 | I've had a really interesting life.

00:09:16.200 | What was the goal?

00:09:17.200 | Just linger on that.

00:09:18.200 | What was the goal for the interview?

00:09:19.200 | How were you thinking about it?

00:09:20.200 | What would success be like in your head leading into it?

00:09:22.720 | To bring more information.

00:09:23.720 | Disinformation.

00:09:24.720 | To the public, yeah, that's it.

00:09:25.720 | I mean, I have really strong feelings about what's happening, not just in Ukraine or Russia,

00:09:33.960 | but around the world.

00:09:34.960 | I think the world is resetting to the grave disadvantage of the United States.

00:09:38.600 | I don't think most Americans are aware of that at all.

00:09:42.400 | And so that's my view, and I've stated it many times, because it's sincere.

00:09:48.160 | But my goal was to have more information brought to the West so people could make their own

00:09:57.160 | decisions about whether this is a good idea.

00:09:59.160 | I mean, I guess I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective,

00:10:04.000 | which is a tiny group of dumb people in Washington has decided to do this for reasons they won't

00:10:08.960 | really explain, and you don't have a role in it at all as an American citizen, as the

00:10:14.480 | person who's paying for it, whose children might be drafted to fight it, just shut up

00:10:19.080 | and obey.

00:10:20.080 | I just reject that completely.

00:10:22.000 | I think I guess I'm a child of a different era.

00:10:24.320 | I'm a child of participatory democracy to some extent, where your opinion as a citizen

00:10:28.960 | is not irrelevant.

00:10:33.960 | And I guess the level of lying about it was starting to drive me crazy.

00:10:38.440 | And I've said, and I will say again, I am not an expert on the region or really any

00:10:42.000 | region other than say, Western Maine.

00:10:44.440 | I just don't, I'm not Russian.

00:10:49.480 | But it was obvious to me that we were being lied to in ways that were just, it was crazy

00:10:54.120 | the scale of lies.

00:10:55.120 | And I'll give you one example, the idea that Ukraine would inevitably win this war.

00:11:00.640 | Now victory was never, as it never is, defined precisely, nothing is ever defined precisely,

00:11:06.120 | which is always a tell that there's deception at the heart of the claim, but Ukraine's on

00:11:10.560 | the verge of winning.

00:11:11.560 | Well, I don't know.

00:11:12.560 | I mean, I'm hardly a tactician or a military expert for the fifth time, I'm not an expert

00:11:16.080 | on Russia or Ukraine.

00:11:17.080 | I just look at Wikipedia, Russia has 100 million more people than Ukraine, 100 million.

00:11:24.400 | It has much deeper industrial capacity, war material capacity than all of NATO combined.

00:11:32.460 | For example, Russia is turning out artillery shells, which are significant in a ground

00:11:37.500 | war, at a ratio of seven to one compared to all NATO countries combined.

00:11:44.480 | That's all of Europe.

00:11:47.280 | Russia is producing seven times the artillery shells as all of Europe combined, what?

00:11:54.040 | That's an amazing fact.

00:11:55.040 | And it turns out to be a really significant fact, in fact, the significant fact.

00:11:58.880 | But if you ask your average person in this country, even a fairly well-informed person

00:12:02.760 | of good faith who's just trying to understand what's going on, who's going to win this war?

00:12:06.680 | Well, Ukraine's going to win, they're on the right side.

00:12:09.360 | And they think that because our media, who really just do serve the interests of the

00:12:12.800 | US government, period, they are state media in that sense, have told them that for over

00:12:17.160 | two years.

00:12:18.720 | And I was in Hungary last summer talking to the prime minister, Viktor Orban, who's a,

00:12:23.120 | you know, whatever you think of him, he's a very smart guy, very smart guy, like smart

00:12:27.160 | on a scale that we're not used to in our leaders.

00:12:30.520 | And I said to him off camera, "So is Ukraine going to win?"

00:12:33.320 | And he looked at me like I was deranged, like I was congenitally, you know, deficient.

00:12:37.760 | "Are they going to win?"

00:12:39.720 | "No, of course they can't win.

00:12:42.320 | It's tiny compared to Russia.

00:12:44.560 | Russia has a wartime economy.

00:12:46.600 | Ukraine doesn't really have an economy.

00:12:48.000 | Look at the populations."

00:12:50.040 | He was like, looked at me like I was stupid.

00:12:52.320 | And I said to him, "You know, I think most Americans believe that because NBC News and

00:12:55.380 | CNN and all the news channels, all of them tell them that because it's framed exclusively

00:13:00.040 | in moral terms and it's Churchill versus Hitler, and of course, Churchill's going to prevail

00:13:03.800 | in the end."

00:13:05.200 | And it's just so dishonest that even it doesn't even matter what I want to happen or what

00:13:09.480 | I think ought to happen.

00:13:11.240 | That's a distortion of what is happening.

00:13:13.440 | And if I have any job at all, which I sort of don't actually at this point, but if I

00:13:16.600 | do have a job, it's to just try to be honest.

00:13:19.360 | And that's a lie.

00:13:20.360 | There is a more nuanced discussion about what winning might look like.

00:13:24.080 | You're right.

00:13:25.080 | For sure.

00:13:26.080 | I mean, the debate is not being had, but it is possible for Ukraine to "win" with the

00:13:30.160 | help of the United States.

00:13:31.480 | I guess that conversation needs to begin by defining terms.

00:13:35.720 | And the key term is "win."

00:13:38.280 | What does that mean?

00:13:39.280 | Peace, a ceasefire, who owns which land.

00:13:43.400 | Yes.

00:13:44.400 | Coming to the table with, as you call it, the parent, the United States.

00:13:48.920 | Yes.

00:13:49.920 | Putting leverage on the negotiation to make sure there's a fairness.

00:13:53.360 | Amen.

00:13:54.360 | Well, of course, and I should just restate this, I am not emotionally involved in this.

00:14:02.360 | I'm American in every sense, and my only interest is in America.

00:14:06.360 | I'm not leaving, ever.

00:14:09.000 | And so I'm looking at this purely from our perspective, what's good for us.

00:14:13.400 | But also as a human being, as a Christian, I mean, I hate war, and anybody who doesn't

00:14:17.880 | hate war shouldn't have power, in my opinion.

00:14:21.280 | So I agree with that definition vehemently.

00:14:27.080 | A victory is like not killing an entire generation of your population.

00:14:32.640 | It's not being completely destroyed to be eaten up by Black Rock or whatever comes next

00:14:36.920 | for them.

00:14:37.920 | So yeah, we were close to that a year and a half ago, and the Biden administration dispatched

00:14:42.560 | Boris Johnson, the briefly Prime Minister of the UK, to stop it and to say to Zelensky,

00:14:49.280 | who I feel sorry for, by the way, because he's caught between these forces that are

00:14:52.360 | bigger than he is, to say, "No, you cannot come to any terms with Russia."

00:14:58.460 | And the result of that has not been a Ukrainian victory, it's just been more dead Ukrainians

00:15:02.320 | and a lot of profit for the West.

00:15:04.280 | It's a moral crime, in my opinion.

00:15:07.560 | And I tried to ask Boris Johnson about it, because why wouldn't I, after he denounced

00:15:11.520 | me as a tool of the Kremlin or something, and he demanded a million dollars to talk

00:15:16.520 | to me.

00:15:17.520 | Wow.

00:15:18.520 | Yeah.

00:15:19.520 | And this just happened last week.

00:15:20.520 | And by the way, in writing, too, I'm not making this up, I'm not making this up.

00:15:23.240 | Just for the record, you demanded a million dollars from me to talk to me today.

00:15:26.920 | I did.

00:15:27.920 | And you paid.

00:15:28.920 | No, I'm, of course, kidding.

00:15:31.600 | And I said to his guy, I said, "I just interviewed Putin, who was widely recognized as a bad

00:15:36.960 | guy, and he did it for free, he didn't demand a million dollars, he wasn't in this for profit.

00:15:41.800 | Like are you telling me that Boris Johnson is sleazier than Vladimir Putin?"

00:15:44.600 | And of course, that is the message.

00:15:46.840 | And so I guess these are really, it's not just about Boris Johnson being a sad, rapacious

00:15:54.160 | fraud, which he is, obviously, but it's about the future of the West and the future of Ukraine,

00:16:01.040 | this country that purportedly we care so much about, all these people are dying, and what

00:16:04.360 | is the end game?

00:16:05.800 | It's also deranged that I didn't imagine and don't imagine that I could add anything very

00:16:11.560 | meaningful to the conversation, because I'm not a genius, okay?

00:16:16.020 | But I felt like I could, at the very least, puncture some of the lies, and that's an inherent

00:16:22.080 | good.

00:16:23.080 | Vladimir Putin, after the interview, said that he wasn't fully satisfied because you

00:16:27.000 | weren't aggressive enough, you didn't ask sharp enough questions.

00:16:31.000 | First of all, what do you think about him saying that?

00:16:34.200 | I don't even understand it.

00:16:36.680 | I guess it does seem like the one Putin statement that Western media take at face value.

00:16:42.640 | Everything else Putin says is a lie, except his criticism of me, which is true.

00:16:46.160 | But I mean, I have no idea what he meant by that.

00:16:48.360 | I can only tell you what my goal was, as I've suggested, was not to make it about me.

00:16:55.000 | I watched, he hasn't done any interviews of any kind for years, but the last interview

00:17:00.640 | he did with an English-speaking reporter, Western media reporter, was like many of the

00:17:06.720 | other interviews he'd done with Western media reporters.

00:17:09.320 | Mike Wallace's son did an interview with him that was of the same variety, and it was

00:17:13.900 | all about him.

00:17:14.900 | "I'm a good person, you're a bad person."

00:17:18.440 | And I just feel like that's the most tiresome, fruitless kind of interview.

00:17:22.000 | It's not about me.

00:17:23.000 | I don't think I'm an especially good person, I've definitely never claimed to be, but people

00:17:26.720 | can make their own judgments.

00:17:27.720 | And again, the only judgments that I care about are my wife and children and God.

00:17:30.800 | So I'm just not interested in proving I'm a good person.

00:17:34.600 | And I just want to hear from him.

00:17:37.680 | And I had a lot of, I mean, you should see, I almost never write questions down, but I

00:17:41.640 | did in this case, because I had months, well, I had three years to think about it as I was

00:17:45.320 | trying to book the interview, which I did myself.

00:17:49.000 | But they were all, it was all about internal Russian politics and Navalny, and I had a

00:17:54.800 | lot of, I thought, really good questions.

00:17:58.160 | And then at the last second, and you make these decisions, as you know, since you interview

00:18:01.160 | people a lot, often you make them on the fly, and I thought, "No, I want to talk about the

00:18:06.360 | things that haven't been talked about and that I think matter in a world historic sense."

00:18:10.400 | And the number one among those, of course, is the war and what it means for the world.

00:18:15.840 | And so I stuck to that, I mean, I could answer.

00:18:18.400 | I did ask about Gershkovich, who I felt sorry for, and I wanted Putin to release him to

00:18:24.960 | me, and I was offended that he didn't.

00:18:26.520 | I thought his rationale was absurd.

00:18:28.120 | "Well, we want to trade him for someone."

00:18:30.200 | I said, "Well, doesn't that make him a hostage?"

00:18:33.480 | Which of course it does.

00:18:35.400 | But other than that, I really wanted to keep it to the things that I think matter most.

00:18:39.200 | You know, people can judge whether I did a good job or not, but that was my decision.

00:18:44.680 | In the moment, what was your gut?

00:18:46.120 | Did you want to ask some tough questions as follow-ups on certain topics?

00:18:51.720 | I don't know what it would mean to ask a tough question.

00:18:54.400 | Clarifying questions, I suppose they would...

00:18:56.640 | I guess.

00:18:57.640 | I just wanted him to talk.

00:18:58.640 | You know, I just wanted to hear his perspective.

00:19:01.400 | And I've probably asked more asshole questions than like any living American, you know.

00:19:08.880 | As has been noted correctly, I'm a dick by my nature, and so I don't...

00:19:15.080 | I just feel at this stage in my life, I didn't need to prove that I could be like, "Vladimir

00:19:18.200 | Putin answered a question!"

00:19:19.200 | Sure.

00:19:20.200 | For sure.

00:19:21.200 | You know, I think if I had been, you know, 34 instead of 54, I definitely would have

00:19:25.960 | done that, because I would have thought, "This is really about me, and I need to prove myself,"

00:19:29.240 | and all that stuff.

00:19:30.240 | But I just...

00:19:31.240 | There's a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale people

00:19:36.840 | do not understand.

00:19:37.840 | The US dollar is going away.

00:19:39.800 | That was, of course, inevitable, ultimately, because everything dies, including currencies.

00:19:44.160 | But that death, that process of death, has been accelerated exponentially by the behavior

00:19:49.980 | of the Biden administration and the US Congress, particularly the sanctions.

00:19:53.880 | And people don't understand what the ramifications of that are.

00:19:55.940 | The ramifications are poverty in the United States, okay?

00:19:59.040 | So I just wanted to get to that, because I'm coming at this from not a global perspective.

00:20:05.480 | I'm coming at it from an American perspective.

00:20:08.160 | So you mentioned Navalny.

00:20:11.360 | After you left, Navalny died in prison.

00:20:14.760 | Yes.

00:20:15.760 | What are your thoughts on just at a high level first about his death?

00:20:19.720 | It's awful.

00:20:20.720 | I mean, imagine dying in prison.

00:20:23.640 | You know, I've thought about it a lot.

00:20:24.920 | I've known a lot of people in prison, a lot, including some very good friends of mine.

00:20:29.240 | So I felt instantly sad about it.

00:20:32.600 | From a geopolitical perspective, I don't know any more than that.

00:20:36.360 | And I laugh at and sort of resent, but mostly find amusing, the claims by American politicians

00:20:43.480 | who really are the dumbest politicians in the world, actually.

00:20:47.080 | You know, "This happened, and here's what it means."

00:20:49.440 | And it's like, actually, as a factual matter, we don't know what happened.

00:20:52.780 | We don't know what happened.

00:20:53.780 | We have no freaking idea what happened.

00:20:55.700 | We can say, and I did say, and I will say again, I don't think you should put opposition

00:21:00.640 | figures in prison.

00:21:01.640 | I really don't.

00:21:02.640 | I don't.

00:21:03.640 | Period.

00:21:04.640 | It happens a lot around the world, happens in this country, as you know, and I'm against

00:21:08.080 | all of it.

00:21:09.880 | But do we know how he died?

00:21:11.760 | The short answer, no, we don't.

00:21:14.080 | Now if I had to guess, I would say killing Navalny during the Munich Security Conference

00:21:21.240 | in the middle of a debate over $60 billion in Ukraine funding.

00:21:26.020 | Maybe the Russians are dumb.

00:21:28.020 | I didn't get that vibe at all.

00:21:30.160 | You know, I just don't, I don't see it, but maybe, you know, maybe they killed him.

00:21:32.880 | I mean, they certainly put him in prison, which I'm against, but here's what I do know

00:21:37.300 | is that we don't know.

00:21:39.040 | And so when Chuck Schumer stands up and, "Rawr," Joe Biden reads some card in front of him

00:21:44.400 | with lines about Navalny, it's like, I'm allowed to laugh at that because it's absurd.

00:21:48.280 | You don't know.

00:21:49.280 | There's a lot of interesting ideas about if he was killed, who killed him because it

00:21:53.760 | could be Putin.

00:21:56.560 | It could be somebody in Russia who is not Putin.

00:21:59.440 | It could be Ukrainians because it would benefit the war.

00:22:02.760 | They killed Dugin's daughter in Moscow, so yeah, that's possible.

00:22:07.000 | And it could be, I mean, the United States could also be involved.

00:22:10.620 | I don't think we kill people in other countries to affect election outcomes.

00:22:13.760 | Oh wait, no, we do it a lot and have for 80 years and it's shameful.

00:22:18.920 | I can say that as an American because it's my money and my name.

00:22:22.120 | Yeah, I'm really offended by that.

00:22:25.080 | And I never thought that was true and I spent, again, I'm much older than you.

00:22:28.520 | And so I spent, my worldview was defined by the Cold War and very much in the house I

00:22:34.920 | lived in, in Georgetown in Washington, DC, that's what we talked about.

00:22:38.320 | And yeah, and the left at the time, I don't know, the wacko MIT professor who I never

00:22:44.880 | had any respect for, who I know you've interviewed, et cetera.

00:22:48.600 | The hard left was always saying, "Oh, the United States government is interfering in

00:22:52.480 | other elections."

00:22:53.480 | And I just dismissed that completely out of hand as stupid and actually a slander against

00:22:58.920 | my country.

00:22:59.920 | But it turned out to all be true or substantially true anyway.

00:23:03.040 | And that's been a real shock for me in middle age to understand that.

00:23:05.880 | But anyway, as to Navalny, look, I don't know.

00:23:10.200 | But we should always proceed on the basis of what we do know, which is to say on the

00:23:15.440 | basis of truth, knowable truth.

00:23:18.320 | And if you have an entire policymaking apparatus that is making the biggest decisions on the

00:23:23.280 | face of the planet, on the basis of things that are bullshit or lies, you're gonna get

00:23:27.920 | bad outcomes every time.

00:23:31.040 | Every time.

00:23:32.040 | And that's where we are.

00:23:33.040 | - Does it bother you that basically the most famous opposition figure in Russia is sitting

00:23:39.400 | in prison?

00:23:40.400 | - Well, of course it does.

00:23:42.360 | Of course it bothers me.

00:23:43.360 | I mean, it bothered me when I got there, it bothers me now, I was sad when he died.

00:23:46.760 | Yeah, I mean, that's one of the measures of, it's one of the basic measures of political

00:23:52.720 | freedom.

00:23:53.720 | Are you imprisoning people who oppose you?

00:23:57.320 | You know, are you imprisoning people who pose a physical risk to you?

00:24:00.040 | I mean, there's some subjective decision-making involved in these things.

00:24:06.520 | However, big picture, yeah, do you have opposition leaders in jail?

00:24:11.460 | That's not a free, it's not a politically free society, and Russia isn't, obviously.

00:24:17.540 | And as I said, a friend of mine from childhood, an American actually, he was a wonderful person,

00:24:21.900 | lives in Russia with his Russian, well, Moscow, with his Russian wife.

00:24:25.020 | And I had dinner with him.

00:24:26.020 | He's a very balanced guy, totally non-political person, and speaks Russian and loves his many

00:24:32.860 | Russian children and loves the culture, and there's a lot to love.

00:24:36.100 | The culture that produced Tolstoy, you know, it's not a gas station with nuclear weapons,

00:24:39.980 | sorry.

00:24:40.980 | Some moron would say that.

00:24:41.980 | It's a very deep culture.

00:24:42.980 | I don't fully understand it, of course, but I admire it.

00:24:46.100 | Who wouldn't?

00:24:47.100 | But I asked him, like, "What's it like living here?"

00:24:48.740 | And he goes, "You know, it's great.

00:24:50.260 | Moscow is a great city, indisputably."

00:24:52.020 | He said, "You don't want to get involved in Russian politics."

00:24:54.460 | And I said, "What?"

00:24:57.220 | He said, "Well, you could get hurt.

00:24:58.380 | You could wind up like Navalny if you did, but also it's just too complicated."

00:25:02.980 | You know, the Russian mind is not exactly the same.

00:25:06.300 | It's a Western, it's a European city, but it's not quite European.

00:25:10.060 | And the way they think is very, very complex.

00:25:13.580 | Very complex.

00:25:14.580 | It's just, it's too complicated.

00:25:15.580 | Just don't get involved.

00:25:16.660 | And I would just say two things.

00:25:20.740 | One, I'm not sure, I mean, like, I don't know.

00:25:25.180 | But my strong sense is that Navalny's death, whoever did it, probably didn't have a lot

00:25:29.460 | to do with the coming election in Russia.

00:25:32.980 | My sense from talking to Putin and the people around him is they're not really focused on

00:25:36.220 | that.

00:25:37.220 | I mean, I asked one of his top advisors, "When's the election?"

00:25:39.940 | And she looked at me completely confused.

00:25:41.020 | She didn't know the date of the election, okay?

00:25:43.820 | She's like, "March?"

00:25:45.820 | Okay.

00:25:46.940 | And I asked a bunch of other people just in Moscow, "Who's Putin running against?"

00:25:51.460 | Like nobody knew.

00:25:52.980 | So it's not a real election, right, in the sense that we would recognize at all.

00:25:58.980 | Second, I was really struck by so many things in Moscow and really bothered by, deeply bothered

00:26:04.900 | by a lot of things that I saw there.

00:26:08.260 | But one thing I noticed was the total absence of cult of personality propaganda, which I

00:26:13.660 | expected to see and have seen around the world.

00:26:16.460 | Jordan, for example.

00:26:17.460 | I don't know if you've been to Jordan, but go to Jordan.

00:26:19.700 | In every building, there are pictures of the king and his extended family.

00:26:23.080 | And that's a sign of political insecurity.

00:26:25.260 | You don't create a cult of personality unless you're personally insecure and also unless

00:26:29.640 | you're worried about losing your grip and power.

00:26:31.860 | None of that.

00:26:32.860 | It's interesting.

00:26:33.860 | I expected to see a lot of it, like statues of Putin.

00:26:36.780 | No.

00:26:37.780 | There are no statues of anybody other than like Christian saints.

00:26:41.660 | So that was like, I'm not quite sure, I'm just reporting what I saw.

00:26:46.220 | So yes, it's not a, in a political sense, it's not a free country, it's not a democracy

00:26:52.900 | in the way that we would understand it or I don't want to live there, okay, because

00:26:56.220 | I like to say what I think.

00:26:57.220 | In fact, I make my living doing it.

00:27:01.020 | But it's not Stalinist in a recognizable way.

00:27:05.180 | And anyone who says it is, should go there and tell me how.

00:27:08.140 | I mean, this question about the freedom of the press is underlying the very fact of the

00:27:14.540 | interview you're having with him.

00:27:16.180 | Right.

00:27:17.180 | So you might not need to ask the Navalny question, but did you feel like, are there things I

00:27:21.620 | shouldn't say?

00:27:23.580 | I mean, how honest do you want me to be?

00:27:25.580 | I mean it when I say I felt not one twinge of concern for the eight days that I was there.

00:27:32.860 | Maybe I just didn't.

00:27:33.860 | And I feel like I've got a pretty strong gut sense of things.

00:27:37.780 | I rely on it.

00:27:38.780 | I make all my decisions based on how I feel, my instincts, and I didn't feel it at all.

00:27:45.360 | My lawyers before I left, and these are people who work for a big law firm, this is not Bob's

00:27:49.180 | law firm, this is one of the biggest law firms in the world, said, "You're going to get arrested

00:27:52.540 | if you do this by the U.S. government on sanctions violations."

00:27:57.120 | And I said, "Well, I don't recognize the legitimacy of that actually, because I'm American and

00:28:02.340 | I've lived here my whole life and that's so outrageous that I'm happy to face that risk

00:28:07.540 | because I so reject the premise, okay?

00:28:10.780 | I'm an American.

00:28:11.780 | I should be able to talk to anyone I want to, and I plan to exercise that freedom, which

00:28:14.620 | I think I was born with."

00:28:15.620 | And I gave them this long lecture, they're like, "We're just lawyers."

00:28:20.460 | But that was, it was, let me put it this way, I don't know how much you dealt with lawyers,

00:28:25.940 | but it costs many thousands of dollars to get a conclusion like that.

00:28:29.940 | They sent a whole bunch of their summer associates or whatever.

00:28:33.460 | They put a lot of people on this question, checked a lot of precedent, and I think, and

00:28:37.460 | they sent me a 10-page memo on it, and their sincere conclusion was, "Do not do this."

00:28:43.740 | And of course it made me mad, so I was lecturing on the phone and I had another call with the

00:28:47.020 | head lawyer and he said, "Look, a lot will depend on the questions that you ask Putin.

00:28:52.660 | If you're seen as too nice to him, you could get arrested when you come back."

00:28:56.340 | And I was like, "You're describing a fascist country, okay?

00:29:00.180 | You're saying that the US government will arrest me if I don't ask the questions they

00:29:03.340 | want asked?

00:29:04.340 | Is that what you're saying?"

00:29:05.340 | "Well, we just think based on what's happened that that's possible."

00:29:08.460 | And so I'm just telling you what happened.

00:29:11.620 | So you were okay being arrested in Moscow and arrested in-

00:29:15.700 | I didn't think for a second, I mean, maybe, look, I don't speak Russian, I'd never been

00:29:20.460 | there before.

00:29:23.100 | Everything about the culture was brand new to me.

00:29:27.040 | Ignorance does protect you sort of when you have no freaking idea what's going on, you're

00:29:31.660 | not worried about it.

00:29:32.660 | This has happened to me many times.

00:29:35.220 | There's a principle there that extends throughout life.

00:29:37.500 | So it's completely possible that I was in grave peril and didn't know it, because how

00:29:41.340 | would I know it?

00:29:42.940 | I'm like a bumbling English speaker from California.

00:29:45.500 | But I didn't feel it at all.

00:29:48.700 | But the lawyers did.

00:29:49.700 | Yeah, I mean, it scared the crap out of people you're going to...

00:29:53.460 | And look, you have to pay in cash, they don't take credit cards because of sanctions and

00:29:57.460 | you have to go through all these hoops, just procedural hoops to go to Russia, which I

00:30:02.100 | was willing to do because I wanted to interview Putin because they told me I couldn't.

00:30:05.620 | But then there's another fact, which is that I was being surveilled by the US government,

00:30:10.500 | intensely surveilled by the US government.

00:30:12.860 | And this came out, they admitted it, the NSA admitted it a couple of years ago, that they

00:30:16.060 | were up in my Signal account.

00:30:17.820 | And then they leaked it to the New York Times, they did that again before I left.

00:30:21.740 | And I know that because two New York Times reporters, one of whom I actually like a lot,

00:30:28.700 | said, "Oh, you're going..." and called other people, "Oh, he's going to interview Putin."

00:30:31.380 | I hadn't told anybody that, like anybody, like my wife, two producers, that's it.

00:30:36.540 | So they got that from the government.

00:30:38.060 | Then I'm over there and of course I want to see Snowden, who I admire.

00:30:42.900 | And so we have a mutual friend, so I got his text and come on over and Snowden does not

00:30:48.100 | want publicity at all.

00:30:51.180 | But I really wanted to have dinner with him.

00:30:52.740 | So we had dinner in my hotel room at the Four Seasons in Moscow.

00:30:57.620 | And I tried to convince him, I'd love to do an interview, shoot it on my iPhone, I'd love

00:31:04.100 | to take a picture together and put it on the internet because I just want to show support

00:31:08.060 | because I think he's been railroaded.

00:31:09.300 | He had no interest in living in Russia, no intention of being in Russia, the whole thing

00:31:14.380 | is a lie.

00:31:15.380 | But anyway, whatever, all this stuff.

00:31:16.540 | And he just said respectfully, "I'd rather not anyone know that we met."

00:31:19.980 | Great.

00:31:20.980 | The only reason I'm telling you this is because... and I didn't tell anybody and I didn't text

00:31:26.300 | it to anybody, okay?

00:31:28.140 | Except him.

00:31:31.140 | Snowden, for semaphore, runs this piece saying, reporting information they got from the US

00:31:40.860 | intel agencies leaking against me using my money and my name in a supposedly free country.

00:31:46.700 | They run this piece saying I'd met with Snowden, like it was a crime or something.

00:31:50.940 | So again, my interest is in the United States and preserving freedoms here, the ones that

00:31:55.300 | I grew up with.

00:31:56.460 | And if you have a media establishment that acts as an auxiliary of, or acts as employees

00:32:02.340 | of the national security state, you don't have a free country.

00:32:05.940 | And that's where we are.

00:32:07.260 | And I'm not guessing because I spent my entire life in that world, 33 years I worked in big

00:32:12.180 | news companies.

00:32:13.180 | And so I know how it works.

00:32:14.180 | I know the people involved in it, I could name them, Ben Smith of Semaphore, among many

00:32:19.540 | others.

00:32:20.540 | And I find that really objectionable, not just on principle either, in effect, in practice.

00:32:25.180 | You don't want to live in that kind of country.

00:32:26.820 | And people are like, they externalize all of their anxiety about this, I have noticed.

00:32:31.420 | So it's like, Russia's not free.

00:32:33.100 | Yeah, I know.

00:32:35.780 | Neither is Burkina Faso.

00:32:37.980 | Most countries aren't free actually, but we are.

00:32:39.740 | We're the United States, we're different.

00:32:42.700 | And that's my concern, preserving that is my concern.

00:32:45.940 | And so they get so exercised about what's happening in other parts of the world, places

00:32:50.420 | they've never been, know nothing about, it's almost a way of ignoring what's happening

00:32:54.500 | in their own country right around them.

00:32:56.140 | I find it so strange and sad and weird.

00:33:00.500 | So the NSA was tracking you, as do you think CIA was, is people still tracking you?

00:33:06.420 | Look, one of the things I did before I went, just because of the business I'm in, all of

00:33:11.220 | us are in, and just because we live here, we all have theories about secure communications

00:33:16.340 | channels.

00:33:17.380 | Like Signal is secure, Telegraph isn't, or WhatsApp is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, you can't

00:33:23.100 | trust anyone else, okay.

00:33:24.580 | So I thought, before I go over here, I was getting all this, we're having all these conversations,

00:33:29.100 | my producers and I, about this.

00:33:31.340 | And I decide, I'm just gonna actually find out what's really going on.

00:33:36.180 | So I talked to two people who would know, trust me, and it's all I can say, and I hate

00:33:44.260 | to be like, "Oh, I talked to people who would know, but I can't do it," but I mean it, they

00:33:48.340 | would know.

00:33:49.540 | And both of them said exactly the same thing, which is, "Are you joking?

00:33:52.900 | Everything is secure.

00:33:54.300 | Everything is monitored all the time."

00:33:55.540 | If state actors are involved, I mean, you can keep the, you know, whatever, the Malaysian

00:34:00.460 | mafia from reading your texts, probably.

00:34:03.500 | You cannot keep the big intel services from reading your texts, it's not possible, any

00:34:07.500 | of them, or listening to your calls.

00:34:11.460 | And that was the firm conclusion of people who've been involved in it, you know, for

00:34:15.060 | a long time, decades, in both cases.

00:34:16.980 | So I just thought, you know what, I don't care, I don't care, I'm not sending a ton

00:34:22.460 | of naked pictures of myself to anybody.

00:34:24.860 | Not a ton, just a little.

00:34:25.860 | Not a ton, I'm 54, dude, probably not too many.

00:34:30.420 | But so I'm like, I'm just, so the guys travel with three people I work with who I love,

00:34:37.220 | who I've been around the world with for many years, and I know them really, really well,

00:34:40.860 | and they all got, you know, separate phones, and I'm leaving my other phone back in New

00:34:45.560 | York or whatever, and I just decided I don't care, actually.

00:34:50.780 | And I resent having no privacy, because privacy is a prerequisite for freedom.

00:34:58.860 | But I can't change it, and so I have the same surveilled cell phone.

00:35:02.100 | And you know, I do switch them out because, there it is, because if you have too much

00:35:09.820 | spyware on your phone, this is true, it wrecks the battery.

00:35:14.820 | And no, I'm serious, it does.

00:35:18.060 | And we got, it was, I don't know, five or six years ago, we went to North Korea, and

00:35:23.700 | my phone started acting crazy.

00:35:25.940 | And so I talked to someone on the National Security Council, who actually called me about

00:35:29.460 | this, somehow knew that your phone is being surveilled by the South Korean government.

00:35:34.300 | I was like, why the, I like the South Korean government, why would they do that?

00:35:38.300 | Because they want more information, they thought I was talking to Trump or whatever.

00:35:41.940 | So, but I could tell because all of a sudden the thing would just drain in like 45 minutes.

00:35:47.100 | So that is, that's a downside.

00:35:50.740 | - So you keep switching phones, getting new phones for the battery life.

00:35:54.020 | - Yeah, I mean, I try not to do it, you know, I'm kind of flinty Yankee type in some ways,

00:35:59.460 | so I don't like to spend $1,000 with a freaking Apple corporation too often.

00:36:03.660 | But yeah, I do.

00:36:04.660 | - I mean, you say it lightly, but it's really troublesome that you as a journalist would

00:36:09.060 | be tracked.

00:36:10.060 | - Well, they leaked it to Semaphore, and they leaked it to the New York Times.

00:36:12.980 | Look, it's, I would even put up, well, there's nothing I can do.

00:36:16.700 | I have to put up with everything, okay.

00:36:19.180 | But I would probably not be actively angry about being surveilled because I'm just so

00:36:24.660 | old and I'm, I actually do pay my taxes, I'm not sleeping with a makeup artist or whatever.

00:36:29.700 | So I don't care that much.

00:36:31.340 | The fact that they are leaking against me, that the intel services in the United States

00:36:36.460 | are actively engaged in US politics and media, that's so unacceptable.

00:36:43.100 | That makes democracy impossible.

00:36:45.080 | There's no defense of that.

00:36:46.300 | And yet NBC News, Ken Delanian, and the rest will defend it.

00:36:50.500 | And it's like, and not just on NBC News, by the way, on the supposedly conservative channels

00:36:55.180 | too, they will defend it.

00:36:56.260 | And there's no defending that.

00:36:57.340 | You can't have democracy if the intel services are tampering in elections and information,

00:37:04.620 | period.

00:37:05.620 | - So you had no fear, your lawyer said, "Be careful which questions you asked."

00:37:11.480 | You said, "I don't have."

00:37:12.820 | - Well, the lawyer said, no, he said very specifically, "Depending on the questions

00:37:18.020 | you ask, Putin, you could be arrested or not."

00:37:23.580 | And I said, "Listen to what you're saying.

00:37:25.380 | You're saying the US government has control over my questions and they'll arrest me if

00:37:29.100 | I ask the wrong question?

00:37:30.100 | Like, how are we better than Putin if that's true?"

00:37:32.780 | And by the way, that's just what the lawyer said, but I can't overstate, one of the biggest

00:37:37.260 | law firms in the United States, smart lawyers we've used for years.

00:37:40.040 | So I was really shocked by it.

00:37:42.700 | - You said leaders kill, leaders lie.

00:37:44.900 | - Yeah.

00:37:45.900 | I don't believe in leaders very much.

00:37:46.980 | Like this whole like, "Oh, Zelensky's Jesus and Putin's Satan."

00:37:51.060 | It's like, no, they're all leaders of countries, okay?

00:37:53.780 | Like grow up a little bit, you child.

00:37:55.980 | Have you ever met a leader?

00:37:58.020 | Like all of the...

00:37:59.020 | First of all, anyone who seeks power is damaged morally, in my opinion.

00:38:04.500 | You shouldn't be seeking power.

00:38:05.860 | You can't seek power or wealth for its own sake and remain a decent person.

00:38:11.540 | That's just true.

00:38:13.020 | So there aren't any like really virtuous billionaires and there aren't any really virtuous world

00:38:17.700 | leaders.

00:38:18.700 | You have grades of virtue, some are better than others for sure.

00:38:23.660 | But I mean, in other words, Zelensky may be better than Putin, I'm open to that possibility,

00:38:29.880 | but to claim that one is evil and the other is virtuous, it's like you're revealing that

00:38:36.620 | you're a child.

00:38:37.620 | I don't know anything about how the world actually is or what reality is, like it's...

00:38:43.380 | That's quite a realist perspective, but there is a spectrum.

00:38:46.300 | There is a spectrum.

00:38:47.300 | Absolutely.

00:38:48.300 | I'm not saying they're all the same, they're not.

00:38:49.300 | And our task is to figure out where on the spectrum they lie and the leader's task is

00:38:55.700 | to confuse us and convince us they're one of the good guys.

00:38:59.260 | Of course.

00:39:00.260 | But I actually reject even that formulation.

00:39:02.100 | I don't think it's always about the leaders.

00:39:03.660 | I mean, of course, the leaders make the difference, a good leader has a healthy country and a

00:39:09.060 | bad leader has a decaying country, which is something to think about.

00:39:13.860 | But it's about the ideas and the policies and the practical effect of things.

00:39:17.680 | So we're very much caught up in the personalities of various leaders, not just our political

00:39:23.500 | leaders, but our business leaders, our cultural leaders, are they good people, do they have

00:39:27.380 | the right thoughts?

00:39:28.680 | It's like, no, I ask a much more basic question, what are the fruits of their behavior?

00:39:33.640 | I always make it personal because I think everything is personal.

00:39:36.900 | Does his wife respect him?

00:39:38.820 | Do his children respect him?

00:39:39.820 | How are they doing?

00:39:40.820 | Is the country he runs thriving or is it falling apart?

00:39:45.100 | If your life expectancy is going down, if your suicide rate is going up, if your standard

00:39:48.820 | of living is tanking, you're not a good leader.

00:39:51.100 | I don't care what you tell me, I don't care what you claim you represent, I don't care

00:39:55.940 | about the ideas or the systems that you say you embody, it's dogs barking to me.

00:40:02.180 | How's your life expectancy?

00:40:04.140 | How's your suicide rate?

00:40:05.760 | What's drug use like?

00:40:07.000 | Are people having children?

00:40:09.400 | Are people's children more likely to live in a freer, more prosperous society than you

00:40:14.040 | did and their grandparents did?

00:40:15.520 | Those are the only measures that matter to me, the rest is a lie.

00:40:18.840 | But anyway, the point is, we just get so obsessed with the theater around people or people,

00:40:27.300 | and we miss the bigger things that are happening, and we allow ourselves to be deceived into

00:40:34.960 | thinking that what doesn't matter at all matters, that moral victories are all that matters.

00:40:39.760 | No, actually, facts on the ground victories matter more than anything.

00:40:42.480 | I mean, you certainly see it in this country, Black Lives Matter, for example.

00:40:45.600 | How many black people did that help?

00:40:48.600 | It hurt a lot of black people, but in the end, we should be able to measure it.

00:40:52.520 | How many black people have died by gunfire in the four years since George Floyd died?

00:40:57.540 | Well, the number's gone way, way up, and that was a Black Lives Matter operation, defund

00:41:01.740 | the police.

00:41:02.740 | So I think we can say, as a factual matter, a data-based matter, Black Lives Matter didn't

00:41:08.980 | help black people.

00:41:10.660 | And if it did, tell me how.

00:41:11.660 | Well, these are important moral victories, I'm over that.

00:41:14.780 | That's just another lie, a long litany of lies.

00:41:18.320 | So I try to see the rest of the world that way, but more than anything, I try to see

00:41:22.620 | world events through the lens of an American, because I am one, and what does this mean

00:41:27.260 | for us?

00:41:28.260 | And it's not even the war, it's the sanctions that will forever change the United States,

00:41:35.420 | our standard of living, the way our government operates, that, more than any single thing

00:41:39.580 | in my lifetime, screwed the United States.

00:41:43.740 | Having those sanctions in the way that we did was crazy, and for me, the main takeaway

00:41:48.960 | from my eight days in Moscow was not Putin, and he's a leader, whatever, none of them

00:41:54.960 | are that different, actually, in my pretty extensive experience, no, it was Moscow.

00:42:00.640 | That blew my mind.

00:42:02.360 | I was not prepared for that at all, and I thought I knew a lot about Moscow.

00:42:05.700 | My dad worked there on and off in the '80s and '90s, he was a US government employee,

00:42:09.400 | and he was always coming back, "Moscow, it's a nightmare," and all this stuff, no electricity.

00:42:13.960 | I got there almost exactly two years after sanctions, totally cut off from Western financial

00:42:19.440 | systems, kicked out of SWIFT, can't use US dollars, no banking, no credit cards, and

00:42:25.240 | that city, just factually, I'm not endorsing the system, I'm not endorsing the whole country,

00:42:30.880 | I didn't go to Lake Baikal, I didn't go to Turkmenistan, I just went to Moscow, largest

00:42:35.720 | city in Europe, 13 million people, I drove all around it, and that city is way nicer,

00:42:40.880 | outwardly, anyway, I don't live there, than any city we have, by a lot, and by nicer,

00:42:47.360 | let me be specific, no graffiti, no homeless, no people using drugs in the street, totally

00:42:53.320 | tidy, no garbage on the ground, and no forest of steel and concrete soul-destroying buildings,

00:43:01.520 | none of the postmodern architecture that oppresses us without even our knowledge, none of that

00:43:06.920 | crap, it's a truly beautiful city, and that's not an endorsement of Putin, and by the way,

00:43:13.920 | it didn't make me love Putin, it made me hate my own leaders, because I grew up in a country

00:43:18.280 | that had cities kind of like that, that were nice cities, that were safe, and we don't

00:43:22.680 | have that anymore, and how did that happen?

00:43:24.720 | Did Putin do that?

00:43:25.720 | I don't think Putin did that, actually, I think the people in charge of it, the mayors,

00:43:29.160 | the governors, the president, they did that, and they should be held accountable for it.

00:43:33.040 | So I think cleanliness and architectural design is not the entirety of the metrics that matter

00:43:39.480 | when you measure a city, they're the main metrics that matter, they're the main metrics

00:43:43.500 | that matter, the main metrics that matter are cleanliness, safety, and beauty, in my

00:43:49.480 | opinion, and one of the big lies that we are told in our world is that no, something you

00:43:56.520 | can't measure that has no actual effect on your life matters most, bullshit.

00:44:03.360 | What matters most, to say it again, beauty, safety, cleanliness, lots of other things

00:44:09.840 | matter too, a whole bunch of things matter, but if I were to put them in order, it's not

00:44:13.800 | some like theoretical, well, actually, I don't know if you know that the Duma has no power,

00:44:18.720 | okay, I get that, freedom of speech matters enormously to me, they have less freedom of

00:44:24.280 | speech in Russia than we do in the United States, we are superior to them in that way,

00:44:28.960 | but you can't tell me that living in a city where your six-year-old daughter can walk

00:44:33.680 | to the bus stop and ride on a clean bus, or ride in a beautiful subway car that's on time,

00:44:39.080 | and not get assaulted, that doesn't matter, no, that matters almost more than anything,

00:44:43.320 | actually, and we can have both, and like the normal regime defenders and morons, Jon Stewart

00:44:50.060 | or whatever he's calling himself, they're like, well, that's the price of freedom, like

00:44:54.240 | people shitting on the sidewalk is the price of freedom, it's like, you can't fool me because

00:44:57.760 | I've lived here for 54 years, I know that it's not the price of freedom, because I lived

00:45:02.560 | in a country that was both free and clean and orderly, so that's not a trade-off I think

00:45:07.880 | I have to make, you can't, that is the beauty of being a little bit older because you're

00:45:13.080 | like, no, I remember that actually, it wasn't what you're saying, we didn't have racial

00:45:17.560 | segregation in 1985, it was a really nice country that kind of respected itself, I was

00:45:22.960 | here, and I think with younger people, you can tell them that and they're like, oh, 1985,

00:45:26.960 | you were selling slaves in Madison Square Garden, it's like, no, you weren't, you're

00:45:31.400 | going to Madison Square Garden and not stepping over a single fentanyl addict.

00:45:35.040 | It is true, there doesn't have to be a trade-off between cleanliness and freedom of speech,

00:45:40.960 | but it is also true that in dictatorships, cleanliness and architectural design is easier

00:45:46.920 | to achieve and perfect, and often is done so, so you can show off, look how great our

00:45:51.640 | cities are, while you're suppressing...

00:45:54.240 | Of course, of course, I agree with that vehemently, this is not a defense of the Russian system

00:46:00.760 | at all, and if I felt that way, I would not only move there, but I would announce I was

00:46:05.480 | moving there.

00:46:06.480 | I'm not ashamed of my views, I never have been, and for all the people who are trying

00:46:10.320 | to impute secret motives to my words, I'm like the one person in America you don't need

00:46:15.320 | to do that with, if you think I'm a racist, ask me, and I'll tell you.

00:46:18.540 | Are you a racist?

00:46:19.540 | No, I am a sexist though.

00:46:20.540 | All right, great.

00:46:21.540 | Anyway, no, but if I was like a defender of Vladimir Putin, I would just say I'm defending

00:46:29.560 | Vladimir Putin now, I'm not, I am attacking our leaders, and I'm grieving over the low

00:46:36.060 | expectations of our people, you don't need to put up with this, you don't need to put

00:46:40.240 | up with foreign invaders stealing from you, occupying your kids' school, your kids can't

00:46:47.880 | get an education because people from foreign countries broke our laws and showed up here

00:46:51.120 | and they've taken over the school, that's not a feature of freedom actually, that's

00:46:56.360 | the opposite, that's what enslavement looks like, and so I'm just saying, raise your expectations

00:47:02.720 | a little bit, you can have a clean, functional, safe country, crime is totally optional, crime

00:47:07.880 | is something our leaders decide to have or not have, it's not something that just appears

00:47:11.760 | organically, I wrote a book about crime 30 years ago, I've thought a lot about this,

00:47:17.120 | you have as much crime as you put up with, period, and it doesn't make you less free

00:47:21.720 | to not tolerate murder, in fact, it makes you unfree to have a lot of murders, and so

00:47:29.080 | I just, but it makes me sad that people are like, well, I guess this is, I can't live

00:47:35.680 | in New York City anymore because of inflation and filth and illegal aliens and people shooting

00:47:40.760 | each other, but you know, I'm just, I'm glad because this is vibrant and strong and free,

00:47:47.120 | it's like, that's not freedom actually, at all.

00:47:50.640 | - Your point is well taken, you can have both, but do you regret--

00:47:54.840 | - We had both, that's the point, we had both, I saw it.

00:47:57.380 | - Do you regret to a degree using the Moscow subway and the grocery store as a mechanism

00:48:04.760 | by which to make that point?

00:48:06.320 | - No, I mean, I thought, I mean, look, I'm one of the more unselfaware people you will

00:48:14.480 | ever interview, so to ask me how will this be perceived, I literally have no idea, and

00:48:23.880 | kind of limited interest, but I was so shocked by it, I was so shocked by it, and there were

00:48:31.800 | two, and to the extent I regret anything and am to blame for anything, it would be not,

00:48:37.720 | and I've done this a lot, not giving it context, not fully explaining why are we doing this,

00:48:41.760 | the grocery store, I was shocked by the prices, and yes, I'm familiar with exchange rates,

00:48:46.880 | but very familiar with exchange rates, but those don't, and I adjusted them for exchange

00:48:51.200 | rates, and this is two years in to sanctions, total isolation from the West, so I would

00:48:58.600 | expect, in fact, I did expect until I got there that their supply chains would be crushed,

00:49:02.000 | how do you get good stuff if you don't have access to Western markets, and I didn't fully

00:49:07.960 | get the answer 'cause I was occupied doing other things when I was there, but somehow

00:49:11.120 | they have, and that's the point, and they haven't had the supply chains problems that

00:49:16.240 | I predicted, in other words, sanctions haven't made the country noticeably worse, okay, so

00:49:23.000 | again, this is commentary on the United States and our policy makers, why are we doing this?

00:49:27.600 | It's forcing the rest of the world into a block against us called BRICS, they're getting

00:49:32.360 | off the US dollar, that will mean a lot of dollars are gonna come back here and destroy

00:49:36.440 | our economy, and impoverish this country, so the consequences, the stakes are really

00:49:40.480 | high, they're huge, and we're not even hurting Russia, so what the hell are we doing, one,

00:49:46.320 | on the subway, that subway was built by Joseph Stalin right before the Second World War,

00:49:52.040 | I'm not endorsing Stalin, obviously, Stalinism is a thing that I hate, and I don't want to

00:49:59.000 | come to my country, I'm making the obvious point that for over 80 years, you've had these

00:50:04.240 | frescoes and chandeliers, maybe they've been redone or whatever, but somehow the society

00:50:08.400 | has been able to not destroy what its ancestors built, the things that are worth having, and

00:50:12.800 | they're a lot, and that, why don't we have that?

00:50:17.440 | And even on a much more terrestrial plane, why can't I have a subway station like that?

00:50:22.880 | Why can't my children who live in New York City ride the subway?

00:50:25.680 | A lot of people I know who live in New York City are afraid to ride the subway, young

00:50:30.200 | women especially, that's freedom?

00:50:32.480 | No, again, it's slavery, and how can, if Putin can do this, why can't we?

00:50:38.320 | Like what?

00:50:39.400 | It's not, in other words, I mean, this is so obvious, I'm a traitor, okay, so if I'm

00:50:44.840 | calling for American citizens to demand more from their government and higher standards

00:50:50.540 | for their own society, and remember that just 30 years ago, we had a much different and

00:50:54.680 | much happier and cleaner and healthier society, where everyone wasn't fat with diabetes at

00:51:00.200 | 40 from poisoned food, like how is that, I'm not a traitor to my country, I'm a defender

00:51:05.840 | of my country.

00:51:06.840 | By the way, the people calling me a traitor, they're all like, whatever, they're not, I

00:51:12.240 | would not say they're people who put America's interests first, to put it mildly.

00:51:16.480 | There's many elements, like you said, you don't like Stalinism.

00:51:21.840 | You're a student of history, central planning is good at building subways in a way that's

00:51:26.880 | really nice.

00:51:29.200 | The thing that accounts for New York subways, by the way, there's a lot of really positive

00:51:33.720 | things about New York subways, not cleanliness, but the efficiency, the accessibility, how

00:51:40.240 | wide it spreads, the New York network is incredible, but Moscow, under different metrics, results

00:51:49.400 | of a capitalist system, and you actually said that you don't think U.S. is quite a capitalist

00:51:53.280 | system, which is an interesting question in itself.

00:51:55.680 | We have more central planning here than they do in Russia.

00:51:57.640 | No, that's not true.

00:51:58.760 | Of course it is.

00:51:59.760 | You think that's true.

00:52:00.760 | The climate agenda?

00:52:01.760 | Of course.

00:52:02.760 | They're telling, the U.S. government has, in league with a couple of big companies,

00:52:07.640 | decided to change the way we produce and consume energy.

00:52:11.280 | There's no popular outcry for that.

00:52:13.240 | There's never been any mass movement of Americans who's like, "I just, I hate my gasoline-powered

00:52:18.040 | engine.

00:52:19.040 | No more diesel."

00:52:20.040 | That has been central planning.

00:52:21.040 | That is central planning.

00:52:22.040 | And you see it up and down our economy.

00:52:23.640 | There's no free market in the United States.

00:52:25.160 | You get crossways with the government, you're done.

00:52:27.620 | If you're at scale, I mean, maybe if you've got a barbershop or a liquor store or something,

00:52:30.800 | but even then, you're regulated by politicians.

00:52:35.360 | And so, no, I actually am for free markets.

00:52:38.680 | I hate monopolies.

00:52:39.760 | Our economy is dominated by monopolies.

00:52:42.200 | Completely dominated-

00:52:43.200 | What do you mean?

00:52:44.200 | Google.

00:52:45.200 | What percentage of search does Google have?

00:52:46.920 | 90?

00:52:47.920 | Google's a monopoly, by any definition, and Google is just rich enough to continue doing

00:52:52.160 | whatever it wants in violation of U.S. law.

00:52:55.160 | So there's no monopoly in Russia as big as Google.

00:52:58.560 | I'm not, again, defending the Russian system.

00:53:00.400 | I'm calling for a return to our old system, which was sensible and moderate, and put the

00:53:05.280 | needs of Americans at least somewhere in the top 10, somewhere in the top 10.

00:53:11.840 | I'm not saying that Standard Oil was interested in the welfare of average Americans, but I

00:53:16.960 | am saying that there was a constituency in our political system, in the Congress, for

00:53:22.280 | example, different presidential candidates were like, "No, wait a second.

00:53:24.640 | What is this doing to people?

00:53:25.680 | Is it good for people or not?"

00:53:26.880 | There's not even a conversation about that.

00:53:28.520 | It's like, "Shut up and submit to AI."

00:53:31.320 | And no offense.

00:53:32.440 | And so I'm just-

00:53:33.440 | Offense taken.

00:53:34.440 | I'm just-

00:53:35.440 | I will write, "We will get you," when it's strong enough.

00:53:38.800 | I have no doubt.

00:53:39.800 | You'll be the first one to go.

00:53:40.800 | Well, as a white man, I just won't even exist anymore, so.

00:53:42.920 | So much to say on that one.

00:53:44.080 | I bet when you Google my picture, 20 years from now, it'll be a black chick.

00:53:48.760 | 100%.

00:53:49.760 | Well, I hope she's attractive.

00:53:52.440 | I hope so too.

00:53:53.440 | It'd probably be an upgrade.

00:53:57.320 | So well, the central planning point is really interesting, but I just don't know where you're

00:54:02.560 | coming from.

00:54:03.560 | Because the capitalist system, I mean, the United States is one of the most successful

00:54:09.640 | capitalist system in the history of Earth.

00:54:12.800 | So to say-

00:54:13.800 | Well, it's the most successful.

00:54:14.800 | I'm just saying that I think it's changed a lot in the last 15 years, and that we need

00:54:17.920 | to update our assumptions about what we're seeing.

00:54:21.760 | And that's true up and down.

00:54:23.120 | That's true with everything.

00:54:24.120 | It's true with your neighbor's children, who you haven't seen in three years, and they

00:54:26.600 | come home from Wesleyan, and you're like, "Oh, you've grown."

00:54:29.760 | That is true for the world around us as well.

00:54:32.160 | And most of our assumptions about immigration, about our economy, about our tax system are

00:54:36.160 | completely outdated if you compare them to the current reality.

00:54:41.760 | And so I'm just for updating my files, and I have a big advantage over you because I

00:54:45.720 | am middle aged, and so I don't-

00:54:47.800 | You've called yourself old so many times throughout the summer.

00:54:49.760 | I don't trust my perceptions of things, so I'm constantly trying to be like, "Is that

00:54:53.600 | true?

00:54:54.600 | I should go there.

00:54:56.280 | I should see it."

00:54:58.720 | I guess just in the end, I trust direct perceptions.

00:55:05.120 | I don't trust the internet, actually.

00:55:07.280 | Wikipedia is a joke.

00:55:10.040 | Wikipedia could not be more dishonest.

00:55:12.160 | It's certainly in the political categories for things that I know a lot about.

00:55:14.840 | Occasionally, I read an entry written about something that I saw or know the people involved,

00:55:19.000 | and I'm like, "Well, that's a complete liar.

00:55:20.320 | You left out the most important fact."

00:55:22.920 | It's not a reliable guide to reality or history, and that will accelerate with AI, where history

00:55:27.760 | or perception of the past is completely controlled and distorted.

00:55:33.120 | So I think just getting out there and seeing stuff and seeing that Moscow was not what

00:55:36.760 | I thought it would be, which was a smoldering ruin, rats in a garbage dump, it was nicer

00:55:44.040 | than New York.

00:55:45.040 | What the hell?

00:55:46.280 | Direct data is good, but it's challenging.

00:55:48.600 | For example, if you talk to a lot of people in Moscow or in Russia and you ask them, "Is

00:55:53.640 | there censorship?"

00:55:54.640 | They will usually say, "Yes, there is."

00:55:56.400 | "Oh, yeah, of course there is."

00:55:58.320 | I agree.

00:55:59.320 | I mean, just to be clear, I have no plans to move to Russia.

00:56:04.440 | I think I would probably be arrested if I moved to Russia.

00:56:07.040 | Ed Snowden, who is the most famous openness transparency advocate in the world, I would

00:56:13.920 | say, along with Assange, doesn't want to live in Russia.

00:56:18.280 | He's had problems with the Putin government.

00:56:20.480 | He's attacked Putin.

00:56:21.480 | They don't like it.

00:56:22.480 | I mean, I get it.

00:56:23.600 | I get it.

00:56:24.960 | I'm just saying, what are the lessons for us?

00:56:28.760 | The main lesson is we are being lied to in a way that's bewildering and very upsetting.

00:56:36.760 | I was mad about it all eight days I was there because I feel like I'm better informed than

00:56:40.120 | most people because it's my job to be informed and I'm skeptical of everything, and yet,

00:56:44.320 | I was completely hoodwinked by it.

00:56:46.760 | I would just recommend to everyone watching this, if you're really interested, if you're

00:56:51.600 | one of those people, and I'm not one, but who's waking up every day and you've got a

00:56:54.560 | Ukrainian flag on your mailbox or whatever, your Ukrainian lapel pin, or it's like absurd

00:57:00.800 | theater.

00:57:01.800 | If you sincerely care about Ukraine or Russia or whatever, why don't you just hop on a plane

00:57:06.200 | for 800 bucks and go see it?

00:57:08.800 | That doesn't occur to anyone to do that.

00:57:11.240 | I know it's time consuming and kind of expensive, sort of, not really, but you benefit so much.

00:57:17.440 | I mean, I could bore you for like eight hours, and I know you've had this experience where

00:57:22.120 | you think you know what something is or you think you know who someone is, and then you

00:57:26.640 | have direct experience of that place or person, and you realize all your preconceptions were

00:57:30.920 | totally wrong.

00:57:31.920 | They were controlled by somebody else.

00:57:34.480 | In fact, I won't betray confidence, but off the air, we were talking about somebody and

00:57:38.520 | you said, "I couldn't believe the person was not at all like what I thought."

00:57:41.600 | That's happened to me-

00:57:42.600 | In the positive direction.

00:57:43.600 | In the positive direction.

00:57:44.600 | By the way, for me, it's almost always in that direction.

00:57:47.440 | Most people I meet, and I've had the great privilege of meeting a lot of people over

00:57:52.640 | all this time, they're way better than you think, or they're more complicated or whatever,

00:57:57.400 | but the point is a direct experience unmediated by liars, there's no substitute for that.

00:58:03.880 | Well, on that point, direct experience in Ukraine, so I visited Ukraine and witnessed

00:58:09.860 | a lot of the same things you witnessed in Moscow.

00:58:11.600 | So first of all, beautiful architecture.

00:58:14.000 | And this is a country that's really in war.

00:58:17.120 | So it's not-

00:58:18.120 | Oh, for real?

00:58:19.120 | Like for real, where most of the men are either volunteering or fighting in the war, and there's

00:58:25.040 | actual tanks in the streets that are going into your major city of Kiev.

00:58:29.320 | And still the supply chains are working just a handful of months after the start of the

00:58:34.240 | war.

00:58:35.240 | Everything is working.

00:58:36.240 | The restaurants are amazing.

00:58:39.800 | Most of the people are able to do some kind of job, like the life goes on, cleanliness,

00:58:48.220 | like you mentioned.

00:58:49.220 | I love that.

00:58:50.220 | Security, it's incredible, like crime went to zero.

00:58:54.420 | They gave out guns to everybody, the Texas strategy.

00:58:58.040 | It does work.

00:58:59.040 | Yeah, when you witness it, you realize, okay, there's something to these people, there's

00:59:02.640 | something to this country that they're not as corrupt as you might hear.

00:59:06.200 | Right.

00:59:07.200 | Russia is corrupt.

00:59:08.200 | Ukraine is corrupt.

00:59:09.200 | You assume it's just all going to go to shit.

00:59:11.320 | So that's been, and I haven't been to Ukraine and I've certainly tried, and they put me

00:59:14.240 | on some kill them immediately list, so I can't, I've tried to interview Zelensky, he keeps

00:59:18.280 | denouncing me.

00:59:19.280 | I just want an interview with him.

00:59:20.280 | He won't.

00:59:21.280 | Yeah.

00:59:22.280 | Unfortunately, I would love to do it.

00:59:23.280 | I hope you do.

00:59:24.280 | I do too.

00:59:25.280 | But one of the things that bothers me most, I'd love to hear that, what you just said

00:59:29.120 | about Kiev, but I'm not really surprised.

00:59:31.920 | One of the things that I'm most ashamed of is the bigotry that I felt towards Slavic

00:59:38.640 | people, also toward Muslims, I'll just be totally honest, because I lived through decades

00:59:42.120 | of propaganda from NBC News and CNN where I worked, you know, about this or that group

00:59:47.440 | of people and they're horrible or whatever.

00:59:49.520 | And then you wind, and I kind of believed it.

00:59:52.160 | And I see it now, like we can't even put the word Russia at Wimbledon because it's so offensive.

00:59:57.240 | Well, what does the tennis player have to do with it?

00:59:59.960 | Did he invade Ukraine?

01:00:00.960 | I don't think he did.

01:00:01.960 | You know, stealing all these business guys' yachts and denouncing them as oligarchs, like

01:00:05.920 | what do they have to do with it?

01:00:07.080 | You know, whatever.

01:00:08.080 | Here's my point.

01:00:09.360 | The idea that like a whole group of people is just evil because of their blood, I just

01:00:14.760 | don't believe that.

01:00:15.760 | I think it's immoral to think that.

01:00:17.720 | And I can just tell you my own experience after eight days there, I think it's a really

01:00:24.000 | interesting culture, Slavic culture, which is shared, by the way, by Russia and Ukraine.

01:00:27.320 | Of course, they're first cousins at the most distant.

01:00:31.280 | And I found them really smart and interesting and informed.

01:00:36.040 | I didn't understand a lot of what they're saying, I don't understand the way their minds

01:00:38.800 | work, because I'm American.

01:00:40.720 | But it wasn't a thin culture, it's a thick culture.

01:00:44.720 | You know, and I admire that.

01:00:46.440 | And I wish I could go to Ukraine, I would go tomorrow.

01:00:49.080 | So I think after you did the interview with Putin, you put a clip, I think on TCN, where

01:00:55.400 | like your sort of analysis afterwards.

01:00:57.640 | Yeah, it wasn't much of an analysis.

01:00:59.360 | No, but what stood out to me is you were kind of talking shit about Putin a little bit.

01:01:03.440 | Like you were criticizing him.

01:01:05.000 | Why wouldn't I?

01:01:06.040 | It spoke to the thing that you mentioned, which is you weren't afraid.

01:01:11.400 | Now the question I want to ask is, it would be pretty badass if you went to the supermarket

01:01:16.560 | and made the point you were making, but also criticize Putin, right?

01:01:20.320 | Criticize that there is a lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

01:01:23.680 | In the supermarket?

01:01:24.680 | Yes.

01:01:25.680 | Oh, you mean if I also said that?

01:01:28.200 | Well, yeah, I mean, of course I think that, I'm not.

01:01:32.120 | So I guess part of it is that I'm a little, because I have such a low opinion of the commentariat

01:01:39.880 | in the United States and the news organizations, which really do just work for the US government.

01:01:44.960 | I mean, I really see them as I did Izvestia and Pravda in the 80s, like they're just organs

01:01:50.640 | of the government.

01:01:51.640 | And I think they're contemptible.

01:01:52.640 | I think the people who work there are contemptible.

01:01:53.920 | And I say that as someone who knows them really well personally, I think they're disgusting,

01:01:58.720 | that I'm a little bit cut off kind of from what people are saying about me, because I'm

01:02:02.080 | not interested.

01:02:03.080 | So I try not to be defensive, like, "See, I'm not a tool of Putin."

01:02:07.600 | But the idea that I'd be flacking for Putin when my relatives fought in the Revolutionary

01:02:12.880 | War, like I'm as American as you could be, it's like crazy to me.

01:02:18.520 | And Applebaum calls me a traitor to my, okay, right?

01:02:22.400 | It's just like so dumb.

01:02:23.760 | But no, of course they don't have...

01:02:25.560 | No country has freedom of speech other than us.

01:02:28.440 | Canada doesn't have it.

01:02:30.080 | Great Britain definitely doesn't have it.

01:02:31.920 | France, Netherlands, these are countries I spent a lot of time in.

01:02:35.920 | And Russia certainly doesn't have it.

01:02:37.520 | So that's why I don't live there.

01:02:39.640 | I'm just saying our sanctions don't work.

01:02:42.280 | That's all I was saying.

01:02:43.600 | And we don't have to live like animals.

01:02:46.300 | We can live with dignity.

01:02:48.040 | Even the Russians can do it.

01:02:49.320 | That's kind of what I was saying.

01:02:50.480 | Even the Russians under Vladimir freaking Putin can live like this.

01:02:54.480 | And no, it's not a feature of dictatorship.

01:02:57.120 | That's the most, I think, discouraging and most dishonest line by people like Jon Stewart,

01:03:02.840 | who really are trying to prepare the population for accepting a lot less.

01:03:09.200 | He is really a tool of the regime in a sinister way, always has been.

01:03:14.120 | How dare you expect that?

01:03:15.480 | What are you, a Stalinist?

01:03:17.560 | It's like, no.

01:03:19.000 | I'm an American.

01:03:20.000 | I'm a decent person.

01:03:21.000 | I just want to be able to walk to the grocery store without being murdered.

01:03:23.640 | Is that too much?

01:03:24.640 | Shut up.

01:03:25.640 | You don't believe in freedom.

01:03:26.640 | It's really dark if you think about it.

01:03:28.640 | So there is a fundamental way which you wanted Americans to expect more.

01:03:33.120 | You don't have to live like this.

01:03:34.780 | We don't have to live like this.

01:03:36.120 | You don't have to accept it.

01:03:38.000 | You don't.

01:03:39.000 | And everyone's afraid in this country they're going to be shut down by the tech oligarchs

01:03:44.480 | or have the FBI show up at their houses or go to jail.

01:03:47.240 | And people are legit afraid of that in the United States.

01:03:49.840 | And my feeling is, so?

01:03:53.200 | Show a little courage.

01:03:54.640 | What is it worth to you for your grandchildren to live in a free, prosperous country?

01:03:59.080 | It should be worth more than your comfort.

01:04:01.720 | That's how I feel.

01:04:02.720 | We should make clear that by many measures, you look at the World Press Freedom Index,

01:04:07.520 | you're right, U.S. is not at the top.

01:04:11.960 | Norway is.

01:04:13.280 | U.S. scores 71, same as Gambia, West Africa.

01:04:19.080 | So let me just ask-

01:04:20.080 | Hold on a second.

01:04:21.080 | Hold on a second.

01:04:22.080 | Hold on a second.

01:04:23.080 | Now you're making me laugh.

01:04:24.080 | Ukraine is 61, and Russia is 35.

01:04:27.080 | The lower it is, the worse.

01:04:29.800 | Close to China at 23, and North Korea at the very bottom, 22.

01:04:33.240 | Didn't Ukraine put Gonzalo Lira in jail till he died for criticizing the government?

01:04:36.960 | How can they have a high press?

01:04:38.280 | Yes, that's why they're 61 out of 0 to 100.

01:04:41.080 | I don't know what the criteria are they're using to arrive at that.

01:04:45.240 | But I know press freedom when I see it, I try to practice it, which is saying what you

01:04:49.160 | think is true, correcting yourself when you've been shown to be wrong, as I have many times,

01:04:55.800 | being as honest as you can be all the time, and not being afraid.

01:04:59.320 | And those are wholly absent in my country, wholly absent.

01:05:02.240 | People are afraid in the news business, I would know, since I spent my life working

01:05:06.360 | there.

01:05:07.360 | And they're afraid to tell the truth.

01:05:08.360 | They're under an enormous amount of pressure, and a lot of them have little kids in mortgages.

01:05:11.480 | I've been there.

01:05:13.060 | So I have sympathy, but they go along with things like you are not allowed, if you stand

01:05:17.960 | up at any cable channel, any cable channel in the United States and say, "Wait a second,

01:05:23.480 | how did the Ukrainian government throw a US citizen into prison until he died for criticizing

01:05:30.080 | the Ukrainian government?"

01:05:31.080 | And we're paying for that.

01:05:32.680 | That's what's offensive to me, we're paying for it.

01:05:34.480 | That happens all the time around the world, of course, but this is a US citizen, and we're

01:05:39.360 | paying the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats.

01:05:43.620 | We are the Ukrainian government at this point.

01:05:46.760 | If you said that on TV, on any channel, well, you'd lose your job for that.

01:05:52.100 | So that's not, I don't care, Norway is at the top, really, Norway.

01:05:56.240 | If I went on Norwegian television and said NATO blew up Nord Stream, which it did, NATO

01:06:01.400 | blew up Nord Stream.

01:06:02.400 | The United States government, with the help of other governments, blew up, committed the

01:06:06.300 | largest act of industrial terrorism in history, and by the way, the largest environmental

01:06:10.200 | crime, the largest emission of CO2, methane.

01:06:14.440 | Could I keep my job?

01:06:15.440 | No.

01:06:16.440 | So how is that a free press?

01:06:17.440 | Well, we don't know that.

01:06:18.440 | I mean, the whole point of saying that-

01:06:19.440 | In Norway?

01:06:20.440 | Yes.

01:06:21.440 | Well, as the Scandinavian, I can tell you they would not put up with that in Norway

01:06:22.440 | for a second.

01:06:23.440 | It's been a while.

01:06:24.440 | Are you deviating for the majority?

01:06:25.440 | No.

01:06:26.440 | Well, but deviating maybe is frowned upon, but-

01:06:31.380 | Frowned upon, yeah.

01:06:32.780 | But do you have the freedom to say it if you do deviate?

01:06:35.680 | That's the question.

01:06:36.680 | Can you keep your job?

01:06:37.680 | That's one measurement of it.

01:06:38.680 | You can keep the job, yeah.

01:06:39.680 | Yeah.

01:06:40.680 | It's not the only measurement.

01:06:41.680 | Obviously, being thrown into prison is much worse than losing your job.

01:06:42.680 | I've been fired a number of times for saying what I think, by the way, and it's fine.

01:06:47.440 | I've enjoyed it.

01:06:48.440 | I don't mind being fired.

01:06:49.440 | I've always become a better person after it happened, but it is one measurement of freedom.

01:06:55.880 | If you have the theoretical right to do something, but no practical ability to do it, do you

01:07:00.160 | have the right to do it?

01:07:01.160 | And the answer is not really, actually.

01:07:03.480 | You mentioned Jon Stewart.

01:07:04.920 | The two of you have a bit of a history.

01:07:06.720 | I don't know if you've seen it, but he kind of grilled your supermarket and subway videos.

01:07:11.400 | Have you gotten a chance to see it?

01:07:13.800 | I haven't seen it, but someone characterized it to me, which is why I pivoted against it

01:07:19.440 | early in our conversation about how the price of freedom is living in filth and chaos.

01:07:24.120 | Yeah, that was essentially it.

01:07:26.640 | So in 2004, that's 20 years ago, Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire, a show you hosted,

01:07:33.400 | and that was kind of a memorable moment.

01:07:37.860 | Can you tell the saga of that as you remember it?

01:07:40.360 | I mean, for me, as I was saying to you before about how it takes a long time to digest and

01:07:45.920 | process and understand what happens to you, or at least it does for me, I didn't understand

01:07:50.600 | that as a particularly significant moment while it was happening.

01:07:53.240 | I just got off a plane from Hawaii.

01:07:54.720 | I mean, I was out of it as usual, and I was very literal as usual.

01:08:01.000 | And so from my perspective, his criticism of me to the extent I remember it was that

01:08:05.840 | I was a partisan.

01:08:06.840 | Well, he had two criticisms, one that Crossfire was stupid, which it certainly was.

01:08:10.440 | In fact, I'd already given my notice and I was moving on to another company by that point.

01:08:17.440 | Crossfire was stupid, Crossfire didn't help, Crossfire framed everything as Republican

01:08:23.240 | versus Democrat, whatever.

01:08:26.440 | It was not helpful to the public discourse.

01:08:27.880 | I couldn't agree more, and that's why I left.

01:08:31.720 | So that was part of his critique, fair.

01:08:33.760 | I'm not sure I would have admitted it at the time because I worked there, and it's hard

01:08:37.120 | to admit you're engaged in an enterprise that's fundamentally worthless, which it was.

01:08:43.680 | But his other point was that I was somehow a partisan or a mindless partisan, which is

01:08:47.960 | definitely not true.

01:08:48.960 | I mean, it is true of him, he is a mindless partisan, but I am not, and I really haven't

01:08:54.920 | been since I got back from Baghdad at the beginning of the Iraq War.

01:08:57.760 | And I realized that the Republican Party, which I'd voted for my whole life to that

01:09:03.200 | point and had supported in general, was like pushing this really horrible thing that was

01:09:11.120 | going to hurt the United States, which in time it really did.

01:09:14.040 | The Iraq War really hurt the United States.

01:09:16.560 | And I realized that I had been on the wrong side of that, I said so publicly immediately

01:09:20.040 | from Baghdad I said that to the New York Times, and I really meant it, I mean it now.

01:09:24.520 | And so to call me partisan, you could call me stupid, you could call me wrong, I certainly

01:09:29.640 | have been wrong, but partisan, I just didn't think it was a meaningful, I mean it's like

01:09:33.640 | that's just not true, it's the opposite of true.

01:09:35.800 | So I didn't really take it seriously at all, and I never thought much of him, so I was

01:09:43.880 | like whatever, some buffoon jumping around on my show grandstanding.

01:09:48.560 | But I do think it was recorded, and by the way that happened right at the moment that

01:09:51.760 | YouTube began, I think that was one of the first big YouTube videos, it was one of the

01:09:55.040 | first big YouTube videos.

01:09:57.200 | So it had a virality that, if that's a word, it went everywhere in a way that didn't used

01:10:03.760 | to happen in cable news.

01:10:04.760 | I mean by that point, that was 20 years ago as you point out, I've been in cable news

01:10:07.640 | for nine years.

01:10:09.600 | So before 2004 we would say something on television and then it would kind of, it would be lost,

01:10:18.120 | like people could claim they heard it, but you'd have to go to the, I think the University

01:10:21.320 | of Tennessee at Knoxville archives to get it.

01:10:24.320 | Suddenly everything we said would live forever on the internet, which is good by the way,

01:10:29.480 | it's not bad, but it was a big change for me and I just couldn't believe how widely

01:10:35.080 | that was discussed at the time, because I thought he was not an interesting person,

01:10:39.960 | I think he's obviously a very unhappy person, I just didn't take him seriously then and

01:10:45.480 | I don't now.

01:10:48.120 | So anyway, that was it, it was a smaller thing in my life at the time than other people imagined.

01:10:53.720 | Okay.

01:10:54.720 | You said a lot of words that will make it sound like you're a bit bitter, even if you're

01:10:59.200 | not.

01:11:00.200 | So you said unhappy person, partisan person.

01:11:03.160 | Well, he's definitely partisan for sure.

01:11:05.280 | So can you elaborate why you think he's partisan?

01:11:07.120 | So I think that, and I see this a lot, not only on the left, but people who believe that

01:11:13.760 | whatever political debate they're engaged in is the most important debate in the world.

01:11:18.680 | And so they bring an emotional intensity to those debates and they're inevitably disappointed

01:11:22.080 | because no eternal question is solved politically.

01:11:25.800 | So they're kind of on the wrong path, right?

01:11:28.200 | And they're doomed to frustration if they believe that, and many do, he certainly does,

01:11:34.540 | that whatever the issue is, so Clarence Thomas should not be a Supreme Court justice, and

01:11:38.800 | the implication is, well, if someone else is a Supreme Court justice, we'll live in

01:11:41.360 | a fair and happy society.

01:11:43.360 | But that's just not, it's a false promise.

01:11:45.880 | So I think that people who bring that level of intensity to politics are by definition

01:11:50.640 | bitter, by definition disappointed, bitter in the way the disappointed people are.

01:11:55.000 | And that the real questions are like, what happens when you die?

01:11:57.520 | And how do the people around you feel about you?

01:12:00.360 | Those are not the only questions in life, but they're certainly the most important ones.

01:12:05.120 | And if we're spending a disproportionate amount of time on who gets elected to some office,

01:12:08.480 | not that it's irrelevant, it is relevant, but it's not the eternal question.

01:12:13.320 | And so I feel like he's not the only kind of bitter, silly person in Washington or in

01:12:19.080 | its orbit.

01:12:20.080 | There are many, and a lot of them are Republicans.

01:12:24.560 | But I just thought it was ironic.

01:12:25.560 | I mean, everything's ironic to me, but being called a Russia sympathizer by a guy who calls

01:12:30.860 | himself Boris, that just made me laugh.

01:12:33.560 | No one else has ever laughed at that.

01:12:34.760 | Boris Johnson's real name is not Boris, as you know.

01:12:37.060 | He calls himself Boris, it's his middle name.

01:12:40.240 | And so if you call yourself Boris, you don't really have standing to attack anyone else

01:12:44.080 | as a Russia defender, right?

01:12:46.280 | I think that's funny.

01:12:47.840 | No one else, as I noted, does.

01:12:51.920 | But Jon Stewart, there are a lot of things you could say about me, but he's much more

01:12:58.400 | partisan than I am.

01:12:59.400 | So to call me a partisan, it's like, what?

01:13:02.040 | He would probably say that he's not a partisan, that he's a comedian who's looking for the

01:13:07.160 | humor and the absurdity of the system.

01:13:09.200 | That's a dodge.

01:13:10.200 | He's a dead serious...

01:13:11.200 | He's a very serious person in this, I will say this, and he shares this quality with

01:13:14.640 | a lot of comedians.

01:13:15.640 | I know a lot of comedians.

01:13:17.680 | I know a cross section of people that's having done this job for a long time, and a lot of

01:13:21.320 | them are very serious about their views, and they have a lot of emotional intensity.

01:13:26.800 | And he certainly is in that category.

01:13:28.520 | He's not...

01:13:29.640 | That's the silliest thing.

01:13:30.640 | Yeah, he's a comedian, for sure.

01:13:31.640 | He can be very funny, for sure.

01:13:33.600 | He has talent, no doubt about it, I've never denied that.

01:13:36.760 | But he's motivated by his moral views.

01:13:42.920 | This is right, that is wrong.

01:13:44.720 | And I just think that it's a misapplied passion.

01:13:47.600 | But do you think I'm just a comedian is...

01:13:52.360 | I don't think any serious person thinks that.

01:13:53.960 | I mean, if you're just a comedian, be...

01:13:56.000 | And I...

01:13:57.000 | Look, I'm not trying to claim, I couldn't claim that I haven't said a lot of dumb things.

01:14:02.480 | And one of the dumbest things I ever said was when he was on our set lecturing me.

01:14:08.720 | He's a moralizer, which I also just don't really care for, as an aesthetic matter.

01:14:13.160 | But he was lecturing me about something, and I said, "I thought you were here to tell jokes."

01:14:19.240 | Which I shouldn't have said, because he wasn't there to tell jokes, he was there to lecture

01:14:24.080 | me.

01:14:25.080 | And I should have just engaged it directly, rather than trying to diminish him by like,

01:14:27.520 | "You're just a little comedian."

01:14:28.520 | Well, he doesn't see himself that way.

01:14:30.960 | But I would just say this, Jon Stewart's a defender of power.

01:14:34.000 | Jon Stewart is never criticized.

01:14:36.800 | What's Jon Stewart's view on the aid we've sent to Ukraine, the $100 billion or whatever?

01:14:42.040 | What happened to that money?

01:14:43.040 | What happened to the weapons that I bought?

01:14:44.800 | He doesn't care.

01:14:46.080 | He has the exact same priorities as the people permanently in charge in Washington.

01:14:52.200 | So whatever, he's not alone in that, so does Mika Brzezinski and her husband and all the

01:14:57.800 | rest of the cast of dummies.

01:14:59.500 | But if you're going to pretend to be the guy who's giving the finger to entrench power,

01:15:04.960 | you should do it once in a while.

01:15:07.800 | And he never has.

01:15:09.440 | There's not one time when he said something that would be deeply unpopular on Morning

01:15:12.920 | Joe.

01:15:13.920 | That's all I'm saying.

01:15:14.920 | And so don't call yourself a truth teller.

01:15:16.560 | You're a court comedian or a flatterer of power.

01:15:19.760 | Okay, that's fine.

01:15:20.760 | There's a rule for that, but don't pretend to be something else.

01:15:23.520 | I'll just be honest that I watched it just recently, that video.

01:15:28.740 | From 20 years ago?

01:15:29.800 | From 20 years ago.

01:15:30.800 | I watched it initially, and I remember very differently.

01:15:34.140 | I remembered that Jon Stewart completely destroyed you in that conversation, and I watched it,

01:15:40.680 | and you asked a very good question of him, which was, and there was no destruction, first

01:15:47.380 | of all, and you asked a very good question of him, why when you got a chance to interview

01:15:52.420 | John Kerry, did you ask a bunch of softball questions?

01:15:57.140 | I thought that was a really fair question, and then his defense was, "Well, I'm just

01:16:02.060 | a comedian."

01:16:03.060 | So I thought that was disingenuous, and I haven't watched it.

01:16:06.020 | I never have watched that clip one time in my life, and I don't like to watch myself

01:16:11.020 | on television.

01:16:12.020 | I never have.

01:16:13.800 | And that's my fault, and I probably should force myself to watch it, though.

01:16:16.860 | Of course, I never will.

01:16:17.860 | I think the takeaway for me, which was really interesting and life-changing, was I agree

01:16:24.300 | with your assessment.

01:16:26.340 | I've lost a lot of debates.

01:16:27.580 | I've been humiliated on television.

01:16:28.940 | I'm not above that.

01:16:30.060 | It certainly happened to me.

01:16:31.060 | It will happen again.

01:16:32.740 | But I didn't feel like it was a clear win for him at all.

01:16:37.240 | Maybe a TKO, but it was not a knockout at all, and yet it was recorded that way, and

01:16:41.420 | I remember thinking, "Well, that's kind of weird.

01:16:42.420 | That's not what I remember."

01:16:43.900 | And then I realized, no, Jon Stewart was more popular than I was.

01:16:47.780 | Therefore, he was recorded as the winner, and that was hard for me to accept because

01:16:51.540 | that struck me as unfair.

01:16:52.700 | You should rate any contest on points.

01:16:55.460 | Like here are the rules.

01:16:56.460 | We're going to judge the contest on the basis of those rules, and no, in the end, it's just

01:17:00.900 | like the more popular guy wins.

01:17:02.480 | Every TV critic liked Jon Stewart.

01:17:03.920 | Every one of them hated me.

01:17:04.920 | Therefore, he won, and I was like, "Wow, I guess I have to accept that reality."

01:17:09.820 | And you do.

01:17:10.820 | Like the reality of the sunrise, you're not in charge of it.

01:17:13.460 | So that's just what it is.

01:17:14.460 | Unfortunately, it's a bit darker, I think.

01:17:16.220 | The reason he's seen as the winner and the reason at the time I saw as the "winner" is

01:17:20.100 | because he was basically shitting on you, like personal attacks versus engaging ideas.

01:17:25.700 | And it was funny in a dark way and like making fun of the bow tie and all this kind of stuff.

01:17:30.600 | It's fair.

01:17:31.600 | I understand.

01:17:32.600 | And it was fair to call me a dick.

01:17:33.600 | I remember he called me a dick, and I remember even when he said that, I was like, "Yeah,

01:17:36.260 | I'm definitely a dick."

01:17:37.260 | And that's not my best quality, trust me.

01:17:39.660 | But also to be kind of ... I thought Jon Stewart came off as a giant dick at that time, and

01:17:45.220 | I'm a big fan of his.

01:17:46.780 | And I think he has improved a lot.

01:17:49.900 | So we should also say that people grow.

01:17:54.780 | I certainly have, or change.

01:17:56.620 | Anyway, you hope it's growth.

01:17:57.820 | You hope it's not shrinkage, but it is cold outside.

01:18:04.700 | I mean, look, I haven't followed Jon Stewart's career at all.

01:18:09.940 | I don't have a television.

01:18:10.940 | I'm pretty cut off from all that stuff.

01:18:13.740 | So I wouldn't really know, but the measure to me is, are you taking positions that are

01:18:20.740 | unpopular with the most powerful people in the world, and how often are you doing it?

01:18:24.740 | It's super simple.

01:18:25.740 | Not for its own sake, but do you feel free enough to say to the consensus, "I disagree"?

01:18:34.700 | And if you don't, then you're just another toady.

01:18:36.980 | That's my view.

01:18:37.980 | Well, I think he probably feels free enough to do it, but you're saying he doesn't do

01:18:42.660 | it.

01:18:43.660 | Look, the big things, this is my estimation of it.

01:18:48.420 | Others may disagree.

01:18:49.420 | The big things are the economy and war.

01:18:52.140 | The big things government does can be, I mean, there are a lot of things government does.

01:18:56.100 | Government does everything at this point, but where we kill people and how, and for

01:19:01.260 | what purpose, and how we organize the economic engine that keeps the country afloat.

01:19:06.340 | Those are the two big questions.

01:19:08.220 | And I hear almost no debate about either one of them in the media.

01:19:13.140 | And I have dissenting views on both of them.

01:19:14.820 | I mean, I'm mad about the tax code, which I think is unfair.

01:19:17.260 | I don't think we should be...

01:19:18.700 | The fact that we have a carried interest loophole in the tax code and people are claiming that

01:19:23.900 | their income is investment income, and they're paying half the tax rate as someone who just

01:19:28.340 | goes to work every day, it discourages work.

01:19:31.820 | It encourages lending at interest, which I think is gross, personally.

01:19:35.900 | I'm against it, sorry.

01:19:39.020 | And the fact that we're creating chaos around the world is the saddest thing that's happening

01:19:42.980 | right now.

01:19:43.980 | And nobody feels free to say that, so that's not good.

01:19:48.560 | How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends?

01:19:50.660 | With a settlement, with a reasonable settlement.

01:19:53.020 | And you know what a reasonable settlement is, which is a settlement where both sides

01:19:58.820 | feel like they're giving a little, but can live with it.

01:20:01.980 | And I mean, I was really struck in my conversation with Putin by how he basically refused to

01:20:08.980 | criticize Joe Biden and to criticize NATO.

01:20:13.220 | And it is, I will just be honest, as an American, it would be a little weird to be like pissing

01:20:17.940 | on Joe Biden with a foreign leader, any foreign leader, even though I don't think Joe Biden

01:20:22.300 | is a real person or really president, and the whole thing is ridiculous, but still he

01:20:25.660 | is the American president technically, and I don't want to beat up on the American president

01:20:30.100 | with a foreigner.

01:20:31.100 | I just don't.

01:20:32.100 | Maybe I'm old fashioned.

01:20:33.100 | So that's how I feel.

01:20:34.100 | So I didn't push it, but I thought it was really interesting.

01:20:37.020 | And because of course Putin knows my views on Joe Biden, he knew I applied to the CIA.

01:20:41.140 | So they've done some digging on me, but he didn't mention it and he didn't attack NATO.

01:20:46.740 | And the reason is, I know for a fact, because he wants a settlement and he wants a settlement

01:20:51.660 | not because Russia is about to collapse despite the lying of our media, that's just not true.

01:20:56.080 | And no one is even saying it anymore because it's so dumb.

01:20:58.940 | He wants it because it's just bad to have a war and it changes the world in ways you

01:21:02.780 | can't predict people die.

01:21:04.960 | Anything about it is sad and if you can avoid it, you should.

01:21:08.780 | So I would like to see a settlement where, look, the thing that Russia wants and I think

01:21:14.940 | probably has a right to is not to have NATO missiles on this border.

01:21:18.620 | I don't know why we would do that.

01:21:19.860 | I don't know what we get out of it.

01:21:23.200 | I just don't even understand it.

01:21:24.580 | I don't understand the purpose of NATO.

01:21:26.340 | I don't think NATO was good for the United States.

01:21:28.060 | I think it's an attack on our sovereignty.

01:21:30.500 | I would pull out of NATO immediately if I were the US president because I don't think

01:21:33.700 | it helps the US.

01:21:35.460 | I know a lot of people are getting their bread buttered by NATO.

01:21:40.400 | But anyway, that's my view as an American.

01:21:43.060 | If I'm a Russian or Ukrainian, let's just be sovereign countries now.

01:21:46.700 | We're not run by the US State Department.

01:21:49.300 | We're just our own countries.

01:21:50.580 | I believe in sovereignty, okay?

01:21:52.300 | So that's my view.

01:21:53.300 | And I also want to say one thing about Zelensky.

01:21:56.300 | I attacked him before because I was so offended by his cavalier talk about nuclear exchange

01:22:03.220 | because it would kill my family.

01:22:05.180 | So I'm really offended by that.

01:22:06.820 | Anyone who talks that way, I'm offended by.

01:22:09.240 | But I do feel for Zelensky, I do.

01:22:12.260 | He didn't run for president to have this happen.

01:22:13.980 | I think Zelensky's been completely misused by the State Department, by Toria Nuland,

01:22:20.300 | by our Secretary of State, by the policymakers in the US who've used Ukraine as a vessel

01:22:25.580 | for their ambitions, their geopolitical ambitions, but also the many American businesses who've

01:22:30.900 | used Ukraine as a way to fleece the American taxpayer.

01:22:35.140 | And then by just independent ghouls like Boris Johnson are hoping to get rich from interviews

01:22:38.780 | on it.

01:22:39.780 | The whole thing.

01:22:40.780 | Zelensky's at the center of this.

01:22:41.780 | He's not driving history.

01:22:43.740 | NATO and the United States is driving history.

01:22:45.940 | Putin is driving history.

01:22:46.980 | There's this guy, Zelensky.

01:22:48.260 | So I do feel for him and I think he's in a perilous place.

01:22:53.460 | Do you think Zelensky's a hero for staying in Kiev?

01:22:57.180 | Because I do.

01:22:58.420 | To me, you can criticize a lot of things.

01:23:01.020 | You should call out things that are obviously positive.

01:23:04.860 | I just tried to a second ago.

01:23:06.780 | I don't know the extent that he is in Kiev.

01:23:10.700 | He seems to be in the United States an awful lot, like way too much.

01:23:13.860 | You can do a satellite interview.

01:23:15.180 | You don't have to speak to my Congress.

01:23:16.740 | You're not an American.

01:23:17.740 | Please leave.

01:23:18.740 | That's my opinion.

01:23:19.740 | You got many zingers, Tucker.

01:23:22.420 | No, no, no.

01:23:23.420 | It's just heartfelt.

01:23:24.420 | It's just bubbling up from the wellspring that never turns off.

01:23:27.060 | But I would say this about Zelensky, yeah, to the extent he's in Ukraine, good man.

01:23:32.500 | George W. Bush fled Washington on 9/11.

01:23:34.740 | I lived there with three kids and he ran away to some Air Force base in South Dakota.

01:23:38.700 | And I thought that was cowardly and I said so at the time.

01:23:42.160 | And man, was I attacked for saying that.

01:23:43.620 | And I wrote a column about it in New York Magazine where I then had a column, hard to

01:23:47.580 | believe.

01:23:48.580 | But I felt that.

01:23:49.580 | I felt that.

01:23:50.580 | I think the prerequisites of leadership are really basic.

01:23:53.180 | The first is caring about the people you lead.

01:23:55.260 | That's number one.

01:23:56.260 | You know, deep in the way a father cares for his children or an officer cares for his troops.

01:24:00.700 | A president should care for his people.

01:24:03.260 | And that leads inexorably to the next requirement, which is bravery, physical courage.

01:24:08.100 | And I believe in that.

01:24:09.100 | And I'm not like some tough guy, but I just think it's obvious.

01:24:11.740 | If you're in charge, you know, I'm at my house and I feel like someone broke in.

01:24:15.380 | I'm not going to say to my wife, "Hey, baby, go deal with the home invasion."

01:24:18.300 | I'm going to deal with it because I'm dad, okay?

01:24:21.440 | So if you're the president of a country and your capital city is attacked, as ours was

01:24:25.580 | at the Pentagon, and you run away, when the Secret Service told me to, "Bitch, are you

01:24:32.020 | in charge?

01:24:33.020 | Like, who's daddy here?

01:24:34.180 | The Secret Service?"

01:24:35.180 | Do you know what I mean?

01:24:36.540 | I found that totally contemptible.

01:24:39.660 | And I said so.

01:24:40.660 | And man, did I get a lecture, not just from Republicans, but from Democrats.

01:24:43.780 | "Oh, you don't know.

01:24:45.060 | Put yourself in that position."

01:24:46.060 | I was like, okay, I don't know what I would do under that kind of stress, enormous stress.

01:24:52.380 | I get it.

01:24:53.380 | But the one thing I wouldn't do is run away because you can't do that.

01:24:56.660 | And if you're not willing to die for your country, then you shouldn't be leading it.

01:25:00.380 | So yes, to the extent, if Zelensky really is in Ukraine most of the time, amen.

01:25:05.300 | - Well, hold on a second, let's clarify.

01:25:07.620 | It's not about whether he's in Ukraine most of the time or not.

01:25:09.740 | - I thought that was the whole premise of the-

01:25:11.060 | - No, no, no, no.

01:25:12.900 | At the beginning of the war, when a lot of people thought that the second biggest military

01:25:21.060 | in the world is pointing its guns at Kiev, is gonna be taken, and a man, a leader who

01:25:28.220 | stays in that city and says, "Fuck it."

01:25:31.340 | When everybody around him says, "Flee," says everybody around him believes the city will

01:25:35.820 | be taken or at least destroyed, leveled, artillery, bombs, all of this, he chooses to stay.

01:25:43.100 | You know a lot of leaders.

01:25:44.460 | How many leaders would choose to stay?

01:25:46.580 | - Well, the leader of Afghanistan, the US-backed leader, when the Taliban came, got in a US

01:25:51.740 | plane with US dollars and ran away, and of course is living on those dollars now.

01:25:57.500 | So yeah, there's a lot of cowardly behavior.

01:25:58.980 | Good for him.

01:25:59.980 | I mean, I guess I'm looking at it slightly differently, which is, what's the option?

01:26:05.740 | You're the leader of the country.

01:26:06.740 | You can't leave.

01:26:07.740 | Like, Stalin never left Moscow during the war.

01:26:09.860 | It was surrounded by the Germans, as you know, for a year, and he didn't leave.

01:26:14.300 | And when I was in Russia, they're like, "Stalin never left."

01:26:16.740 | I was like, "He's the leader of the country.

01:26:18.140 | You can't."

01:26:19.140 | I mean, like, that's just table stakes, of course.

01:26:21.540 | I would say, but you raise an interesting by implication question, which is, you know,

01:26:27.540 | what about Kiev?

01:26:28.540 | Like, you think the Russians couldn't level Kiev?

01:26:30.740 | Obviously, they could.

01:26:32.380 | Why haven't they?

01:26:33.380 | They could, but they haven't.

01:26:36.180 | - Well, there's military answers to that, which is urban warfare is extremely difficult.

01:26:41.980 | Do you think that Putin wants to take Kiev?

01:26:44.620 | - No, I do think he expected Zelensky to flee, and somebody else to come into power.

01:26:50.180 | - Yeah, that may be true.

01:26:51.820 | I don't know.

01:26:52.820 | I don't think, I have no idea what Putin was thinking when he did that about Zelensky.

01:26:59.740 | I didn't ask him.

01:27:01.740 | But it's a mistake to imagine this is a contest between Putin and Zelensky.

01:27:06.700 | This is Putin versus the U.S. State Department.

01:27:08.700 | I mean, Zelensky, that's why I said I felt sorry for him.

01:27:12.700 | I mean, as I said, we're literally paying the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats.

01:27:17.580 | So there is no Ukrainian government independent of the U.S. government.

01:27:20.660 | And you know, maybe you're for that, maybe you're against it, but you can't endorse that

01:27:25.220 | in the same sentence that you use the term democracy, 'cause that's not a democracy,

01:27:28.820 | right, obviously.

01:27:29.820 | - Well, that's why it's interesting that he didn't really bring up NATO extensively.

01:27:33.740 | - He wants a settlement.

01:27:34.740 | He wants a settlement.

01:27:35.740 | He doesn't want to fight with them rhetorically.

01:27:38.740 | And he just wants to get this done.

01:27:40.460 | And he made a bunch of offers at the peace deal, and we wouldn't even know this happened

01:27:46.700 | if the Israelis hadn't told us, and I'm so grateful that they did, that Johnson was dispatched

01:27:52.500 | by the State Department to stop it.

01:27:54.140 | And it's like, I mean, I think Boris Johnson is a husk of a man, but imagine if you were

01:28:01.540 | Boris Johnson and you spend your whole life with the Ukraine flag pinned, I'm for Ukraine,

01:28:05.460 | and then all those kids died because of what you did, and the lines haven't really moved,

01:28:10.980 | it hasn't been a victory for Ukraine, it's not gonna be a victory for Ukraine, it's like,

01:28:14.460 | how do you, how do you feel about yourself if you did that?

01:28:17.220 | I mean, I've done a lot of shitty things in my life, I feel bad about them, but I've never

01:28:21.060 | extended a war for no reason, like that's a pretty grave sin in my opinion, you know?

01:28:26.380 | - Yes, that was a failure, but it doesn't mean you can't have a success over and over

01:28:32.220 | and over, keep having negotiations between leaders.

01:28:36.380 | - Well, we're not, the U.S. government is not allowing negotiations, and so that for

01:28:40.540 | me is the most upsetting part, it's like, in the end, what Russia does, I'm not implicated

01:28:45.580 | in that, what Ukraine does, I'm not implicated in that, I'm not Russian or Ukrainian, I'm

01:28:49.100 | an American who grew up really believing in my country, I'm supporting my country through

01:28:53.020 | my tax dollars, and it's like, I really care about what the U.S. government does 'cause

01:28:57.540 | they're doing it in my name, and I care a lot, 'cause I'm American, and we're the impediment

01:29:04.380 | to peace, which is another way of saying, we're responsible for all these innocent people

01:29:07.900 | getting dragooned out of public parks in Kiev and sent to go die, like, what, that is not

01:29:14.060 | good, I'm ashamed of it.

01:29:16.220 | - What do you think of Putin saying that justification for continuing the war is denazification?

01:29:21.460 | - I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard, I didn't understand what it

01:29:24.020 | meant, denazification?

01:29:26.740 | - It literally means what it sounds like.

01:29:29.620 | - You know, I, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this, I don't, I hate that

01:29:33.420 | whole conversation because it's not real, it's just ad hominem, it's a way of associating

01:29:38.260 | someone with an evil regime that doesn't exist anymore, but in point of fact, Nazism, whatever

01:29:44.780 | it was, is inseparable from the German nation, it was a nationalist movement in Germany,

01:29:50.380 | there were no other Nazis, right, there's no book of Nazism, like, I wanna be a Nazi,

01:29:54.620 | what does it mean to be a Nazi, there's no, Mein Kampf is not Das Kapital, right, Mein

01:30:00.660 | Kampf is like, to the extent I understand it, it's like he's pissed about the Treaty

01:30:04.140 | of Versailles, whatever, I'm very anti-Nazi, I'm merely saying there isn't a Nazi movement

01:30:09.540 | in 2024, it's a way of calling people evil, okay, Putin doesn't like nationalist Ukrainians,

01:30:18.620 | Putin hates nationalism in general, which is interesting, but of course he does, he's

01:30:22.620 | got 80 whatever republics and he's afraid of nationalist movements, he fought a war

01:30:27.420 | in Chechnya over this, so I understand it, but I have a different, I'm for nationalism,

01:30:31.980 | for American nationalism, so like I disagree with Putin on that, but calling them Nazis,

01:30:36.180 | it's like, I thought it was childish.

01:30:37.980 | >> Well, I do believe that he believes it.

01:30:40.940 | >> So that's so, I agree with that, 'cause I was listening to this, because in the United

01:30:45.500 | States, everyone's always calling everyone else a Nazi, you're a Nazi, okay, but I was

01:30:51.300 | listening to this and I was like, this is the dumbest, sort of, not convincing line

01:30:56.340 | you could take, and I sat there and listened to him talk about Nazis for like eight minutes

01:31:00.300 | and I'm like, I think he believes this.

01:31:02.340 | >> Yeah, and I actually, you know, having had a bunch of conversations with people who

01:31:06.420 | are living in Russia, they also believe it.

01:31:09.740 | Now, there's technicalities here, which the word Nazi, World War II is deeply in the blood

01:31:15.940 | of a lot of Russians and Ukrainians.

01:31:16.940 | >> I get it, I get it.

01:31:17.940 | >> But you're using it as almost a political term, the way it's used in the United States

01:31:22.140 | also, like racism and all this kind of stuff, 'cause you know you can really touch people

01:31:28.300 | if you use the Nazi.

01:31:29.300 | >> I think that's totally right.

01:31:30.380 | >> But it's also, to me, a really, like, disgusting thing to do.

01:31:35.280 | >> I agree.

01:31:36.280 | >> Because, and also to clarify, there is neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine, they're just very small.

01:31:43.220 | You're saying that there's this distinction between Nazi and neo-Nazi, sure, but it's

01:31:48.460 | a small percentage of the population, a tiny percentage, they have no power in government.

01:31:53.180 | As far, I have seen no data to show they have any influence on Zelensky and the Zelensky

01:32:00.220 | government at all.

01:32:02.420 | So really, when Putin says denazification, I think he means nationalist movements.

01:32:08.180 | >> I think you're right, and I agree with everything you said, and I do think that the

01:32:13.660 | war, the Second World War occupies a place in Slavic society, Polish society, you know,

01:32:20.220 | Central and Eastern Europe, that it does not occupy in the United States, and you can just

01:32:24.220 | look at the death totals, you know, tens of millions versus less than half a million,

01:32:28.900 | so it's like, this eliminated a lot of the male population of these countries, so of

01:32:33.020 | course it's still resonant in those countries, I get it.

01:32:38.620 | I just, I think I've watched, I don't think I know, I've watched the misuse of words,

01:32:46.380 | the weaponization of words for political reasons for so long that I just don't like, and though

01:32:51.180 | I do engage in it sometime, I'm sorry, I don't like just dismissing people in a word, "Oh,

01:32:56.740 | he's a Nazi, he's a liberal," or whatever, it's like, tell me what you mean, what don't

01:33:00.860 | you like about what they're doing or saying, and Nazi especially, it's like, I don't even

01:33:05.740 | know what the hell you're talking about.

01:33:07.660 | What troubled me about that is because he said that that's the primary objective currently

01:33:12.220 | for the war, and that because it's not grounded in reality, it makes it difficult to then

01:33:19.300 | negotiate peace, because like, what does it mean to get rid of the Nazis in Ukraine?

01:33:25.820 | So he'll come to the table and say, "Well, okay, I will agree to do ceasefire once the

01:33:31.980 | Nazis are gone."

01:33:32.980 | Okay, so can you list the Nazis?

01:33:34.580 | Totally agree.

01:33:35.580 | Plus, can you negotiate with a Nazi?

01:33:36.580 | Right, exactly.

01:33:37.580 | No, I totally agree with you.

01:33:39.740 | It was very strange, but maybe it was perhaps had to do with speaking to his own population,

01:33:45.980 | and also probably trying to avoid the use of the word NATO as the justification for

01:33:52.020 | the war.

01:33:53.020 | I mean, that's all...

01:33:54.020 | Of course, I don't know, but I suspect you're right on both counts, but I would say it points

01:33:58.860 | to something that I've thought more and more since I did that interview, which was like

01:34:03.220 | two weeks ago, I guess.

01:34:06.220 | I didn't think he was like, as a PR guy, not very good, like he's not good at telling his

01:34:10.300 | own story.

01:34:12.460 | The story of the current war in Ukraine is the eastward expansion of NATO and scaring

01:34:17.900 | the shit out of the Russians with NATO expansion, which is totally unnecessary, doesn't help

01:34:21.540 | the United States, NATO itself doesn't help the United States.

01:34:24.940 | And so, I'm not pro-Russian for saying that, I'm pro-American for saying that.

01:34:28.300 | And I think that's a really compelling story, because it's true.

01:34:31.620 | He did not tell that story, he told some other story that I didn't fully understand.

01:34:34.740 | Again, I'm not Russian, he's speaking to multiple audiences around the world, I'm not sure what

01:34:39.540 | he hoped to achieve by that interview, I will never know.

01:34:44.060 | But I did think that, like this guy is not good at telling his story.

01:34:47.220 | And I also think, honestly, on the base of a lot, I mean, I know this, very isolated

01:34:52.900 | during COVID, very.

01:34:57.300 | We keep hearing that he's dying of this or that disease, he's got ALS, I mean, I don't

01:35:00.700 | know, I'm not his doctor.

01:35:02.180 | There's a ton of lying about it, I know that.

01:35:04.380 | But one thing that's not a lie is that he was cloistered away during COVID, I know this,

01:35:11.580 | and only dealing with two or three people.

01:35:14.420 | And that makes you weird, it's so important to deal with a lot of people, to have your

01:35:18.380 | views challenged.

01:35:19.380 | And you see this with leaders who stay in power too long, he's been in power 24 years

01:35:23.420 | effectively.

01:35:24.420 | There have been upsides, I think for Russia, the Russian economy, Russian life expectancy,

01:35:31.140 | but there are definitely downsides.

01:35:33.060 | And one of them is you get weird, and you get autocratic.

01:35:38.900 | This is why we have term limits, very few kings don't get crazy in old age.

01:35:42.740 | - Yeah, and you said some of this also in your post-Kremlin discussion while you're

01:35:51.120 | in Moscow still, which was very impressive to me, that you can just openly criticize.

01:35:56.020 | This is great.

01:35:57.020 | - Well, I don't care.

01:35:58.020 | - I understand this.

01:35:59.020 | I just wish you did some more of that also with the supermarket video, and perhaps some

01:36:02.820 | more of that with Putin in front of you.

01:36:06.260 | - Putin in front of me, I'm such a good person.

01:36:10.020 | - I know you see it as virtue signaling.

01:36:12.060 | - Yeah, it is.

01:36:13.720 | - Have you seen some of the interview he did with some NBC News child?

01:36:16.700 | - Yes, I understand.

01:36:17.860 | So I think you're just so annoyed by how bad journalists are that you just didn't want

01:36:24.140 | to be them.

01:36:25.140 | - Yeah, that's probably right, actually.

01:36:28.900 | - Some great conversations will involve some challenging, like you were confused about

01:36:32.940 | denazification.

01:36:33.940 | - Well, first of all, I accept your criticism, and I accept it as true that in some way I'm

01:36:40.740 | probably pivoting against what I dislike, and I have such contempt for American journalists

01:36:47.420 | on the basis of so much knowledge that I probably was like, "I don't want to be like that."

01:36:51.740 | Fair.

01:36:52.740 | That is a kind of defensiveness and dumb, so you're right.

01:36:57.740 | As for the Nazi thing, I was like, I really felt like we were just speaking so far past

01:37:03.340 | each other that we would never come to, I was like, "I don't even know what the hell

01:37:06.700 | you're talking about," and especially when I decided or concluded that he really meant

01:37:12.980 | it, I was like, "That's just too freaking weird to me."

01:37:16.580 | It's almost like, yeah, I can think of many other examples where you're interviewing someone

01:37:20.540 | and they'll say something that's like, "I was interviewing a guy one time, and he started

01:37:24.500 | talking about the black Israelites, and we're the real Jews," and I was like, "You know,"

01:37:31.220 | and it wasn't on camera, but I was like, "I don't," that was so, it was so far out to

01:37:35.900 | me that I was like, "We'll never kind of understand common terms on that."

01:37:42.180 | You mentioned there's a bunch of conspiracy theories about Putin's health.

01:37:47.100 | How was he in person?

01:37:48.100 | What did he feel like?

01:37:49.100 | Did he look healthy?

01:37:51.660 | You know, I'm not a health person myself, so I mean, I can easily gain 30 pounds and

01:37:56.580 | not know it, so I'm probably not a great person to ask, but no, he seemed fine.

01:38:00.740 | He seemed, he had his arm hooked through a chair, and I heard people say he's got Parkinson's,

01:38:07.180 | and Parkinson's can be controlled, I know, for periods with drugs.

01:38:14.500 | It's hard to assess, I'm just not, one of the tells of Parkinson's is gait, you know

01:38:18.860 | how a person walks, I think, and his walking seemed fine.

01:38:22.180 | I walked around with him and talked to him off camera.

01:38:26.980 | He's had some work done, for sure, I mean, 71 or two.

01:38:30.580 | You mean like, for visual purposes?

01:38:32.060 | Yeah, I'm 54, he's like almost 20 years older than me, he looked younger than me.

01:38:35.900 | What was that like, the conversation off camera, like you walking around with him, what was

01:38:40.860 | the content of the conversation?

01:38:42.820 | I mean, I can't, you know, I feel bad even with Putin or anybody, like talking about

01:38:46.340 | stuff that is off the record, but I'll just say that when I said that he didn't want to

01:38:55.380 | fight with NATO, or with the US State Department, or with Joe Biden, because he wants a settlement,

01:39:02.260 | that's a very informed perspective.

01:39:07.860 | He doesn't, you know, say whatever you want about that, believe it or not, but that is

01:39:13.860 | true.

01:39:14.860 | So he's open for peace, for peace negotiations.

01:39:22.700 | Russia tried to join NATO in 2000, that's a fact, okay, they tried to join NATO, so

01:39:29.700 | just think about this, NATO exists to keep Russia contained, it exists as a bulwark against

01:39:35.340 | Russian territorial expansion, and whether or not Russia has any territorial ambitions

01:39:42.780 | is another question, like why would it, it's the largest land mass in the world, whatever,

01:39:47.420 | but that's why it exists.

01:39:48.720 | So if Russia seeks to join NATO, it is by definition a sign that NATO's job is done

01:39:55.140 | here, we can declare victory and go home.

01:40:00.000 | The fact that they turned him down is like so shocking to me, but it's true.

01:40:04.120 | Then he approaches the next president, George W. Bush, that was with Bill Clinton at the

01:40:07.400 | end of his term in 2000.

01:40:09.080 | He approaches the next president and said, "Let's in our next missile deal, let's align

01:40:12.880 | on this, and we'll designate Iran as our common enemy."

01:40:18.560 | Iran which is now effectively in league with Russia, thanks to our insane policies.

01:40:27.560 | And George W. Bush, to his credit, is like, "Well, that seems like kind of an innovative

01:40:30.560 | good idea," and Condi Rice, who's like one of the stupidest people ever to hold power

01:40:34.520 | in the United States, if I can say, who's like monomaniacally anti-Russia, because she

01:40:38.440 | had an advisor at Stanford who was, or something, during the Cold War, "No, we can't do that,

01:40:42.840 | and Bush is just weak," and so he agreed.

01:40:44.680 | It's like, what?

01:40:46.520 | That is crazy.

01:40:48.720 | If you're fighting with someone and the person says, "You know what, actually our interests

01:40:52.600 | align, and you've spent 80% of your mental disk space on hating me and opposing me and

01:40:58.320 | whatever, but actually we can be on the same team."

01:41:01.340 | If you don't at least see that as progress, like what?

01:41:05.760 | Why would you?

01:41:06.760 | If your interest is in helping your country, what would be the...

01:41:12.440 | What's the counter argument?

01:41:13.440 | I don't even understand it, and no one has even addressed any of this.

01:41:17.520 | The war of Russian aggression, yeah, it was a war of Russian aggression for sure, but

01:41:21.720 | how did we get there?

01:41:24.360 | We got there because Joe Biden and Tony Blinken dispatched Kamala Harris, who does not freelance

01:41:30.320 | this stuff, okay, fair to say, to the Munich Security Conference two years ago this month,

01:41:36.360 | February 2022, and said in a press conference to Zelensky, poor Zelensky, "We want you to

01:41:42.960 | join NATO."

01:41:43.960 | This was not in a backroom thing, this was in public at a press conference, knowing,

01:41:48.560 | because he said it like 4,000 times, "We don't want nuclear weapons from the United States

01:41:54.440 | or NATO on our Western border."

01:41:57.560 | Duh, and days later he invaded.

01:42:03.200 | So what is that?

01:42:05.640 | And if you even...

01:42:06.640 | I raised that question in my previous job, and I was denounced as, of course, a traitor

01:42:11.360 | or something, but okay, great, I'm a traitor.

01:42:14.080 | What's the answer?

01:42:15.720 | What's the answer?

01:42:17.000 | These are not...

01:42:18.000 | Toria Nuland, who I know, not dumb, hasn't helped the US in any way, an architect of

01:42:23.320 | the Iraq War, architect of this disaster, one of the people who destroyed the US dollar,

01:42:27.320 | okay, fine, but she's not stupid.

01:42:29.480 | So you're trying to get a war by acting that way.

01:42:33.560 | What's the other explanation?

01:42:34.560 | By the way, NATO didn't want Ukraine, because it didn't meet the criteria for admission.

01:42:42.280 | So why would you say that?

01:42:43.600 | Because you want a war, that's why, and that war has enriched a lot of people to the tune

01:42:49.160 | of billions.

01:42:50.880 | So I don't care if I sound like some kind of left-wing conspiracy nut, because I'm neither

01:42:55.520 | left-wing nor a conspiracy nut.

01:42:58.120 | Tell me how I'm wrong.

01:42:59.560 | Who do you think is behind it?

01:43:00.920 | If you were to analyze, zoom out, looking at the entirety of human history, the military

01:43:06.680 | industrial complex, you said Kamala Harris.

01:43:10.320 | Is it individuals?

01:43:11.980 | Is it this collective flock that people are just pro-war as a collective?

01:43:17.660 | It's the hive mind.

01:43:19.760 | And I spent my whole life in DC from '85 to 2020, so 35 years, and again, I grew up around

01:43:26.400 | it in that world, and I do think that conspiracies, of course there are conspiracies, but in general

01:43:34.920 | the hive mind is responsible for the worst decisions.

01:43:37.600 | It's a bunch of people with the same views, views that have not been updated in decades.

01:43:45.400 | Putin said something that I thought was absolutely true, I don't know how he would know this,

01:43:49.880 | but it is true, because I lived among them.

01:43:52.440 | So the Soviet Union dissolves in August of '91 on my honeymoon in Bermuda, I'll never

01:43:58.160 | forget it.

01:43:59.160 | And it was a big thing.

01:44:00.160 | If you lived in DC, I mean, the receptionist in my office in 1991 was getting a master's

01:44:06.640 | in Russian from Georgetown, he was gonna be a Sovietologist.

01:44:10.400 | And he was among thousands of people in Washington on that same track.

01:44:14.000 | And so the Soviet Union collapses, well, so does the rationale for a good portion of the

01:44:18.640 | US government has been dedicated for over 40 years to opposing this thing that no longer

01:44:25.000 | exists.

01:44:26.000 | So there's a lot of forward momentum, there's a huge amount of money, the bulk of the money

01:44:28.880 | in the richest country in the world, aimed in this direction, and it's very hard for

01:44:32.160 | people to readjust, to reassess, and you see this in life all the time.

01:44:40.720 | I love my wife, all of a sudden she ran off with my best friend, holy shit, I didn't expect

01:44:44.840 | that this morning, now it's a reality, how do I deal with that?

01:44:47.720 | Well, you know, I got stage four cancer diagnosis, okay?

01:44:52.120 | It's all bad, but I'm just saying, like, that's the nature of life, things you did not anticipate,

01:44:56.840 | never thought you'd have to face happen out of nowhere, and you have to adjust your expectations

01:45:02.920 | and your goals, and people have a hard time with that, very hard time with that.

01:45:06.640 | So that's a lot of it.

01:45:09.040 | You know, if you're Condi Rice, sort of like highly ambitious midwit who gets this degree

01:45:16.400 | from Stanford, and you read Tolstoy in the original, sure, you did, and you spent your

01:45:21.320 | whole life thinking that Russia is the center of evil in the world, it's kind of hard to

01:45:28.640 | be like, well, actually, there's a new threat, and it's coming from farther east, it's primarily

01:45:33.120 | an economic threat, and maybe all the threats aren't reduced to tank battles, that's the

01:45:38.760 | other thing, is these people are so inelastic in their thinking, so lacking imagination

01:45:43.840 | and flexibility, that they can't sort of imagine a new framework, and the new framework is

01:45:50.400 | not that you're going to go to war with China over Formosa, Taiwan, no, the framework is

01:45:56.640 | that all of a sudden, all the infrastructure in Tijuana is going to be built by China,

01:46:01.960 | and that's a different kind of threat, but they can't kind of get there, because they're

01:46:06.480 | not that impressive.

01:46:07.920 | - So you actually have mentioned this, it's not just the Cold War, it's World War II that

01:46:13.040 | populates most of their thinking in Washington, you mentioned Churchill, Chamberlain, and

01:46:19.360 | Hitler, and they kind of, seeing the World War II as kind of the good war, and the successful

01:46:27.160 | role the United States played in that war, they're kind of seeing that dynamic, that

01:46:34.560 | geopolitical dynamic, and applying it everywhere else still.

01:46:38.800 | - Yeah, it's a template for everything, and I think it's of huge significance to the development

01:46:46.480 | of the West, to the civilization we live in now, to world history, it was a world war,

01:46:52.600 | and so I think it's worth knowing a lot about, and being honest about, and all the rest,

01:46:56.760 | but it's hardly the sum total of human history, it's a snapshot, and so you keep hearing people

01:47:03.800 | refer to, not even the war, no one ever talks about the war, how much does Tony Blinken

01:47:10.240 | know about the Battle of Stalingrad, probably zero, he doesn't know anything, largest battle

01:47:14.880 | in human history, I mean he knows nothing, but he knows a lot about the cliches surrounding

01:47:20.760 | the '38 to '40 period, 1938 to 1940, and everything is kind of expressed through that formula,

01:47:31.600 | and not everything is that formula, that's all I'm saying, and the Republicans have a

01:47:35.600 | strange weakness for it, particularly the closeted ones, the weird ones who have no

01:47:41.520 | life other than starting more wars, everything to them, the most vulnerable, I would say,

01:47:49.520 | among them, emotionally, psychologically vulnerable, the dumbest, they will always say the same

01:47:56.240 | thing, and it appeals to Republican voters, unfortunately, that every problem is the result

01:48:00.840 | of weakness, everyone's Chamberlain, Germany never would have gone in to Poland and Czechoslovakia

01:48:07.040 | if England had been stronger, that's the argument, is that true, I don't know, actually, maybe,

01:48:12.480 | it might be totally true, it might not be true at all, I really don't know, but not

01:48:17.040 | everything is that, that's not always true, if I go up to you in a bar and I say I hate

01:48:21.920 | your necktie, I'm being pretty aggressive with you, pretty strong, you might beat the

01:48:26.560 | shit out of me actually, or shoot me if I do that, an aggressive posture doesn't always

01:48:30.520 | get you the outcome that you want, sometimes it requires a more sophisticated Mediterranean

01:48:35.840 | posture, I mean, it kind of depends, it's a time and place thing, and they don't acknowledge

01:48:41.360 | that, it's like everything is this same template, and I just, that's not the road to good decision

01:48:46.360 | making at all.

01:48:47.360 | - Since we're on the time period, let me ask you a kind of almost cliche question, but

01:48:51.280 | it applies to you, which you've interviewed a lot of world leaders, if you had the chance

01:48:56.280 | to interview Hitler in '39, '40, '41, first of all, would you do it, and how would you

01:49:05.440 | do it, I assume you would do it, given who you are, man, it would be a massive cost for

01:49:10.880 | doing it, it may destroy my life to interview Putin, though I can tell you as much as I

01:49:15.240 | want that I'm not a Putin defender, I only care about the United States, that's 100%

01:49:19.080 | true, anyone who knows me will tell you it's true, I keep saying it, but history may record

01:49:23.280 | me to the extent it records me at all as a tool of Putin, a hater of America, that seems

01:49:30.680 | absurd to me, but absurd things happen, what would I ask Hitler, I don't even know, I guess

01:49:36.760 | that I would probably ask him what I ask Putin, which is what I ask everybody, like what's

01:49:42.640 | your motive, why did you do, I mean, if he'd already gone into Poland, like why are you

01:49:47.200 | doing that, what's your goal, and then the question is, is he gonna answer honestly,

01:49:54.400 | I don't know, you can't make someone answer a question honestly, you can only sort of

01:50:02.120 | shut up while they talk and then let people decide what they think of the answer.

01:50:05.080 | >> Well, just like in the bar fight, there's different ways.

01:50:07.200 | >> There are different ways, that's exactly right, that's exactly, man, is that true,

01:50:11.800 | that is absolutely right.

01:50:13.200 | >> I mean, your energy with Putin, for example, was such that it felt like he could trust

01:50:20.080 | you, I felt like he could tell you a lot, I think.

01:50:23.600 | >> I just wanted to get it on the record, that's all I wanted, you know.

01:50:26.960 | >> I think it was extremely, like we have to acknowledge how important that interview

01:50:31.520 | was for the record and for opening the door for conversation, like opening the door to

01:50:37.480 | conversation literally is the path to like more conversations and peace, peace talks.

01:50:42.720 | >> Well, I would flip it around and say anyone who seeks to shut that down by focusing on

01:50:48.200 | a supermarket video or four minutes versus a two hour and 15 minute long interview with

01:50:52.520 | a world leader, anyone who doesn't want more conversation, who wants fewer facts, fewer

01:50:57.640 | perspectives is totalitarian, probably doesn't have good intent.

01:51:02.360 | I mean, I can honestly say for all my many manifold faults, I've never tried to like

01:51:08.560 | make people shut up, you know, it's not in me, I don't believe in that.

01:51:14.220 | >> So Putin's folks have shown interest for quite a while to speaking with me.

01:51:21.520 | So you've spoken with him, what advice would you give?

01:51:26.200 | >> Oh, do it immediately.

01:51:28.840 | How's your Russian, by the way, have you kept up with it?

01:51:31.640 | >> Yeah, fluent, so he would most likely be in Russian.

01:51:35.640 | >> So that's the other thing is, I do have a question about language barriers, did you

01:51:39.880 | feel it was annoying?

01:51:41.880 | >> It's horrible.

01:51:42.880 | >> Yeah.

01:51:43.880 | >> It's horrible.

01:51:44.880 | I mean, I don't have much of a technique as an interviewer other than listen really carefully.

01:51:51.080 | That's my only skill.

01:51:52.080 | I don't have the best questions, I certainly don't have the best questions.

01:51:56.440 | All I do that I'm proud of and I think works is I just listen super carefully, I never

01:52:00.560 | let a word go by that I'm not paying attention, it exhausts me actually.

01:52:04.580 | But you can't do that in a foreign language because there's a delay, here I'm just whining,

01:52:10.440 | but it's real.

01:52:11.440 | >> It's not whining, can you actually describe the technical details of that?

01:52:16.720 | Are you hearing concurrently like at the same time?

01:52:19.840 | >> Yes, but there's a massive lag.

01:52:22.580 | So what's happening is, so the translator, so we were of course extremely uptight about

01:52:28.000 | the logistical details.

01:52:29.000 | So we brought our own cameraman who I've been around the world with who worked at Fox, came

01:52:34.440 | with me now, amazing.

01:52:37.000 | And he did, our cameras, lighting, everything, like we had full control of that and we had

01:52:43.840 | control of the tape.

01:52:44.840 | The Russians also had their own cameras and I don't know what they did with it.

01:52:48.640 | But we had full control of that and we brought our own translator.

01:52:50.840 | We got our own translator because I just, I don't trust anyone, right?

01:52:57.060 | So I think we had a good translator, we had two of them actually, 'cause they get exhausted.

01:53:01.280 | But the problem is, from my perspective as someone who's like trying to think of a follow

01:53:05.920 | up and listen to the answer, Putin will talk and you can, in part of your ear here, you

01:53:10.560 | know, the Slavic sounds.

01:53:14.440 | And then over that is a guy with a Slavic accent speaking English.

01:53:19.840 | And then you can hear Putin stop talking and then this guy's answer goes on for another

01:53:23.960 | 15, 20 seconds.

01:53:25.600 | So it's super disconcerting and it's really hard.

01:53:28.540 | And the other thing is, it doesn't matter how good your translators are.

01:53:32.440 | I'm interested in language, I speak only English fluently.

01:53:36.880 | But I'm really interested in language and I know, and I work in language.

01:53:42.460 | It doesn't matter how good your translator is.

01:53:45.520 | In literature and in conversation, you miss so much if the language is moving for you.

01:53:50.640 | I mean, you see this in Bible study, you see it in Dostoevsky, you see it everywhere.

01:53:56.480 | If you don't speak, you know, Aramaic, Hebrew, Russian, you're not really getting, I mean,

01:54:02.160 | even in romance languages.

01:54:04.760 | Like I, you know, I like Balzac, okay.

01:54:07.040 | I like, who's obviously written in French.

01:54:10.600 | You read Peregoreau, it's an amazing novel, hilarious.

01:54:14.320 | And it's like, you're not really getting it.

01:54:16.800 | And it's not that, you know, French and English are not that far apart.

01:54:19.640 | Russian, like what?

01:54:22.440 | Just conversation, so the chemistry of conversation, the humor, the wit, the play with words, all

01:54:28.400 | this stuff.

01:54:29.400 | Exactly, and my understanding of Russian, as a lover of Russian literature and English,

01:54:34.280 | is that it's not a simple language at all.

01:54:36.720 | The grammar's complex, there's a lot that's expressed that will be lost in the translation.

01:54:42.440 | So yes, I mean, the fact that you speak native Russian, I mean, I would run that walk to

01:54:48.360 | that interview because I think it would just be amazing.

01:54:50.320 | You would get so much more out of it than I did.

01:54:53.440 | And we should say that you've met a lot of world leaders.

01:54:56.280 | Both Zelensky and Putin are intelligent, witty, even funny.

01:55:01.520 | Yes.

01:55:02.520 | So like there's a depth to the person that can be explored through a conversation just

01:55:07.640 | on that element, the linguistic element.

01:55:09.040 | For sure, and Putin speaks decent English.

01:55:11.120 | I spoke to him in English, so I know that.

01:55:14.020 | But he's not comfortable with it at all.

01:55:16.240 | But Zelensky is, I think.

01:55:18.080 | No.

01:55:19.080 | He's, well, he's better than Putin at English, but he's still, the humor, the intelligence,

01:55:23.600 | all of that is not quite there in English.

01:55:26.000 | He says simple points, but the guy's a comedian, and he's a comedian primarily in Russian,

01:55:32.280 | the Russian language.

01:55:33.600 | So the Ukrainian language is now used mostly, primarily as a kind of symbol of independence.

01:55:41.320 | I'm aware of that.

01:55:42.320 | It's a political decision.

01:55:43.320 | No, I know.

01:55:44.320 | He is, you know, really his native language is Russian language.

01:55:47.240 | Of course.

01:55:48.240 | A lot of people in Ukraine.

01:55:49.240 | But you can also understand his position that he might not want to be speaking in Russian

01:55:53.160 | publicly.

01:55:54.160 | That's something I've...

01:55:55.160 | I don't think they're allowed to speak in Russian in some places in Ukraine, right?

01:55:58.200 | That's one of the reasons that Russia was so mad is that they were attacking language,

01:56:03.680 | and that's a fair complaint.

01:56:05.280 | I'm like, "What?"

01:56:06.280 | And by the way, if you haven't been to Moscow in a while, you should see it, and you will

01:56:10.240 | pick up a million things that were invisible to me, and you should assess it for yourself.

01:56:15.400 | And my strong advice would be, even if you don't interview Putin, go over there, spend

01:56:20.240 | a week there, and assess what you think.

01:56:23.640 | I mean, how restricted does the society feel?

01:56:26.040 | I mean, it would take a lot of balls to do this because you'll...

01:56:29.720 | I mean, whatever you decide, you will be sucked into conversations that have nothing to do

01:56:33.560 | with you, political conversations.

01:56:35.000 | You're obviously not a political activist, right?

01:56:37.760 | You're an interviewer.

01:56:38.760 | But I think it would be so interesting.

01:56:41.720 | But for interview itself, is there advice you have about how to carry an interview?

01:56:47.160 | It is fundamentally different when you do it in the native language, but...

01:56:50.120 | Yes.

01:56:51.120 | I mean, I think I approached the...

01:56:54.720 | And maybe I did it incorrectly, but this was the product of a lot of thought.

01:56:57.560 | I was coming into that interview aware that he hadn't given an interview at all with anybody

01:57:03.840 | since the war started.

01:57:05.920 | So I had a million different questions, and as noted, I didn't ask them because I just

01:57:10.880 | wanted to focus on the war.

01:57:13.280 | But I mean, there's so many...

01:57:14.960 | I'll send you my notes that I wrote.

01:57:16.560 | I was like a diligent little girl.

01:57:18.120 | That would be amazing.

01:57:19.120 | But I think...

01:57:20.120 | All these questions, and some of them I thought were pretty funny.

01:57:25.320 | In your case, I think the very fact of the interview was the most important thing.

01:57:29.240 | Yeah, that's probably right.

01:57:30.240 | I did have...

01:57:31.240 | The question that I really wanted to ask that I was almost going to ask because it made

01:57:33.400 | me laugh out loud, I was sitting, having drinking coffee beforehand with my producers, and I

01:57:38.840 | was like, "I'm going to go in there.

01:57:40.280 | My first question is going to be, Mr. President, I've been here in the Kremlin for two days

01:57:44.880 | preparing, and I haven't seen a single African-American in a position of power in the Kremlin."

01:57:51.120 | Sure.

01:57:52.120 | I thought that's too culturally specific and dry, and he'd be like, "This guy's freaking

01:57:58.080 | crazy."

01:57:59.080 | Yeah.

01:58:00.080 | Yeah.

01:58:01.080 | You don't want to open with a crazy...

01:58:02.080 | No, I know.

01:58:03.080 | With humor.

01:58:04.080 | I know.

01:58:05.080 | All right.

01:58:06.080 | It doesn't translate.

01:58:07.080 | It doesn't.

01:58:08.080 | You don't want to wait for the joke-

01:58:09.080 | You'd be like, "What?"

01:58:10.080 | ... to see if it lands or not.

01:58:11.080 | "This is not America."

01:58:12.640 | At Fox, you were, for a time, the most popular host.

01:58:18.280 | After Fox, you've garnered a huge amount of attention as well, same, probably more.

01:58:24.520 | Do you worry that popularity and just that attention gets to your head?

01:58:30.080 | Is it kind of drug that clouds your thinking?

01:58:33.680 | You think?

01:58:34.680 | I live in a spiritual graveyard of people killed by the quest for fame, yes.

01:58:38.680 | I have lived in that.

01:58:40.520 | I would say the two advantages I have, one, I have a happy family and a stable family

01:58:47.480 | and a stable group of friends, which is just the greatest blessing, and a strong love of

01:58:55.160 | nature that my family shares, so I'm in nature every day, and I have a whole series of rituals

01:59:02.520 | designed to keep me from becoming the asshole that I could easily become.

01:59:07.800 | But no, of course, I mean, that's what I ... And I don't want to beat up on ... I'm grateful

01:59:13.240 | to Elon, who gave me a platform, and I mean that sincerely, but I definitely don't spend

01:59:21.520 | a lot of time on social media or on the internet for that exact reason.

01:59:25.280 | Well, first of all, I think it's, as I've said, a much more controlled environment than

01:59:30.340 | we acknowledge, and I don't want lies in my head, but I also don't want to become the

01:59:36.120 | sort of person who's seeking the adulation of strangers.

01:59:39.560 | I think that's soul poison, and I said earlier that I think that the desire for power and

01:59:46.320 | money will kill you, and I believe that, and I've seen it a lot, but I also think the desire

01:59:53.680 | for the love of people you don't know is every bit as poisonous, maybe more so.

01:59:59.080 | And so, yes, and it's not just because I've obviously spent most of my life in public,

02:00:04.120 | and in fact, I don't spend my life in public, I'm a completely private person, but professionally,

02:00:10.400 | I've spent my life in public.

02:00:12.120 | It's not just that, it's like social media makes everybody into a cable news host.

02:00:16.160 | We're talking off the air, my new ... I'm obsessed with this, I don't know enough about

02:00:19.760 | it, but here's what I do know, South Korea, amazing country, great people.

02:00:24.740 | I grew up around Koreans, probably no group, if I can generalize about a group that I like

02:00:28.840 | more than Koreans are just smart, funny, honest, brave, I really like Koreans, I always have,

02:00:36.640 | my whole life, growing up in Southern California with Koreans.

02:00:39.720 | South Korea is dying, it's literally dying.

02:00:43.460 | It's way below replacement rate and fertility, it's suicide rate is astronomical.

02:00:49.540 | Why is that?

02:00:50.540 | It's a rich country.

02:00:51.540 | Of course, I don't know the answer, but I suspect it has something to do with the penetration

02:00:56.520 | of technology into South Korean society is, I think, one of the highest, certainly one

02:01:02.640 | of the highest in the world.

02:01:04.360 | People live online there, and there was a belief for a bunch of reasons in South Korea

02:01:08.780 | that Western technology would be a liberating progressive force, and I think it's been the

02:01:13.840 | opposite.

02:01:14.880 | It's my sense, strong sense, and I think it's true in this country too.

02:01:18.320 | I don't understand how people can ignore the decline in life expectancy or the rise in

02:01:21.920 | fentanyl use.

02:01:22.960 | It's not just about China shipping precursor chemicals to Mexico, it's like, "Why would

02:01:27.160 | you take that shit?"

02:01:28.160 | I hope those two things aren't coupled, technological advancement and the erosion.

02:01:32.560 | Well, let me ask you, and I know you're a technologist, and I respect it, and there's

02:01:36.840 | a lot about technology that I like and have benefited from.

02:01:38.800 | I had back surgery and it worked, okay, so I'm not against all technology, but can you

02:01:44.120 | name a technology, a big technology in the last 20 years that we can say conclusively

02:01:50.640 | has improved people's lives?

02:01:52.800 | Well, conclusive is a tough thing.

02:01:54.580 | Pretty conclusively that we can brag about.

02:01:57.600 | I think, well, you've criticized Google search recently, but I think making the world knowledge

02:02:04.120 | accessible to anyone, anywhere across the world through Google search.

02:02:08.000 | Well, I love that.

02:02:09.120 | I love that idea.

02:02:10.120 | Are people better informed?

02:02:11.280 | Are they more superstitious and misled than they were 20 years ago?

02:02:15.880 | I think-

02:02:16.880 | You're not close.

02:02:17.880 | Well, no, I don't know.

02:02:18.880 | I think they are more informed.

02:02:20.480 | It's just revealing the ignorance.

02:02:22.520 | The internet has revealed the ignorance that people have, but I think the ignorance has

02:02:26.040 | been decreasing gradually.

02:02:28.960 | If you look, even you can criticize places like Wikipedia a lot, and many, very many

02:02:33.720 | aspects of Wikipedia are very biased, but when you, most of it are actually topics that

02:02:39.880 | don't have any bias in them because they're not political or so on.

02:02:42.680 | There's no battle over those topics, and most of Wikipedia-

02:02:45.880 | I think that's true.

02:02:46.880 | Is like the fastest way to learn about a thing.

02:02:49.200 | I couldn't agree more.

02:02:50.580 | You can very quickly imagine you're an expert, and that may be the problem.

02:02:53.960 | I think-

02:02:54.960 | No, it's true.

02:02:55.960 | I just experienced it in Moscow.

02:02:57.640 | It's like, again, I feel like I'm in the top 1% for information, certainly intake, because

02:03:02.400 | it's my job.

02:03:04.160 | I had literally, and plus I'm always out of the country.

02:03:07.280 | I've been around the world many times.

02:03:09.440 | I feel like I know a lot about the rest of the world, or I thought I did, and how did

02:03:13.760 | I not know any of that?

02:03:17.360 | Maybe I'm just unusually ignorant or something, or reading the wrong things.

02:03:21.580 | I don't know what it was, but all I know is the digital information sources that I use

02:03:28.100 | to understand just something as simple as what's the city of Moscow like were completely

02:03:33.660 | inadequate.

02:03:34.660 | Anyway, look, I just am worried that we're missing the obvious signs, and the obvious

02:03:42.660 | signs are reproduction, life expectancy, sobriety.

02:03:50.980 | If you have a society where people just can't deal with being sober, don't want to have

02:03:56.300 | children, and are dying younger, you have an extremely sick, you have a suicidal society.

02:04:04.160 | I'm not even blaming anyone for it, I'm just saying objectively that is true.

02:04:08.500 | The measure of health of your society is the number of children that you have and how well

02:04:13.460 | they do.

02:04:14.460 | It's super simple.

02:04:15.460 | That's the next generation.

02:04:16.460 | We all die, and what replaces us?

02:04:20.100 | If you don't care, then you're suicidal, and maybe other things too.

02:04:25.940 | That's all I'm saying.

02:04:27.900 | What happened to South Korea?

02:04:28.900 | Why can't anyone answer the question?

02:04:30.980 | They're great people, they're rich, they have all these advantages, they're on the cutting

02:04:35.820 | edge of every American ... For a foreign country, they're more American than maybe any other

02:04:40.580 | country other than Canada.

02:04:43.980 | What happened?

02:04:44.980 | I mean, if your fundamental worry is the same kind of thing might be happening or will happen

02:04:49.780 | in the United States.

02:04:50.780 | Well, let me just ask you this.

02:04:51.780 | I think North Korea seems like the most dystopian, horrible place in the world, right, obviously?

02:04:56.260 | It's a byword for dystopia, right?

02:04:58.260 | North Korean.

02:04:59.260 | I use it all the time, and I mean it.

02:05:01.460 | If in 100 years, there are more North Koreans still alive than there are South Koreans,

02:05:08.300 | what does that tell us?

02:05:09.300 | Yeah, that's something to worry about, but also-

02:05:11.260 | But how did it happen?

02:05:12.260 | Why?

02:05:13.260 | I'm interested in the why.

02:05:14.260 | There's a question I asked Putin.

02:05:17.380 | Sometimes we don't know why, but why does no one ask why?

02:05:20.780 | I've seen a lot of increased distrust in science, which is deserved in many places.

02:05:27.460 | It just worries me because some of the greatest inventions of humanity come from science and

02:05:34.500 | technological innovation.

02:05:35.500 | Okay, then let me ask you a couple questions, and perhaps you have the answer.

02:05:39.900 | I've always assumed that was true, and I should say that when I was a kid, I lived in La Jolla,

02:05:43.060 | California next to the Salk Institute, named after Jonas Salk, a resident of La Jolla,

02:05:47.380 | California, who created the polio vaccine and saved untold millions.

02:05:51.540 | My belief, which is still my belief actually, that's a great thing, it's one of the great

02:05:55.060 | additions to human flourishing ever, but if technology is so great, why is life expectancy

02:06:05.700 | going down, and why are fewer people having kids, and why would anybody who has internet

02:06:10.420 | access ever use fentanyl?

02:06:13.300 | What is that?

02:06:14.380 | What is going on?

02:06:15.380 | And until we can answer that question, I think we have to assume the question of whether

02:06:20.620 | technology is in that good or in that bad is unresolved, like at best, right?

02:06:26.020 | At best, perhaps, but technology is the very tool which will allow us to have that kind

02:06:30.980 | of discourse to figure out to do science better.

02:06:33.780 | I mean, I want that to be true, and when you said that the internet allows people to escape

02:06:38.740 | the darkness of ignorance, man, that resonated with me because I felt that way in 1993, '94,

02:06:43.740 | when it was first starting and I first got on it, and I thought, "Man, this is amazing.

02:06:47.740 | You can talk for free to anyone around the world.

02:06:49.880 | This is going to be great," but let me just ask you this.

02:06:52.500 | This is something I've never gotten over or gotten a straight answer to.

02:06:55.480 | Why is it that in any European city, the greatest buildings, indisputably, were built before

02:07:01.780 | electricity and the machine age?

02:07:04.900 | Why has no one ever built a medieval cathedral in the modern era, ever?

02:07:09.900 | Well, what is that?

02:07:12.420 | Indisputably, you have a presumption, we have a good definition of what beauty is.

02:07:16.980 | There's a lot of people-

02:07:18.140 | All right.

02:07:19.140 | Let's be specific.

02:07:20.140 | Pick a European city or any city in the world and tell me that there's a prettier building

02:07:24.820 | than, say, Notre Dame before it was set fire to.

02:07:28.340 | There's other sources of prettiness and beauty.

02:07:30.660 | Purely in architecture.

02:07:31.660 | Of course.

02:07:32.660 | Of course.

02:07:33.660 | Trees are prettier than any building, in my opinion, so I agree with that.

02:07:35.920 | But also, there could be ... I grew up in the pre-internet age, but if you grew up in

02:07:43.380 | the internet age, I think your eyes would be more open to beauty that's digital, that

02:07:49.980 | is in a digital-

02:07:50.980 | I'm not discounting the possibility of digital beauty at all, and the Ted Kaczynski in me

02:07:55.740 | wants to, but that's too close-minded.

02:07:57.740 | I agree.

02:07:58.740 | I'm completely willing to believe there is such a thing as digital beauty.

02:08:02.020 | I mean, I have digital pictures on my phone of my dogs and kids, so I know that there

02:08:05.540 | is.

02:08:06.540 | But purely in the realm of architecture, because it's limited in ... And it is one of the

02:08:13.360 | pure expressions of human creativity.

02:08:15.380 | We need places to live and work and worship and eat, and so we build buildings, and every

02:08:19.960 | civilization has.

02:08:22.360 | But the machine age, the industrial age, seem to have decreased the quality and the beauty

02:08:30.800 | in that one expression of human creativity, architecture.

02:08:34.180 | And why is that?

02:08:35.180 | Well, I could also argue that I'm a big sucker for bridges, and modern bridges can give older

02:08:42.180 | bridges a run for their money.

02:08:43.820 | But I like bridges too, so I agree with you, sort of.

02:08:46.880 | But the Brooklyn Bridge, I don't know that there's any modern bridges.

02:08:51.860 | That was built in late 19th century, very much in the industrial age.

02:08:59.540 | But I'm just saying the great cathedrals of Europe, even the pyramids, whoever built them,

02:09:07.460 | it seems like if you ... It's like super obvious.

02:09:10.720 | I'm dealing on the autism level here, just like, "Well, why is that?"

02:09:14.020 | But that's a good way to start.

02:09:16.520 | If all of a sudden you have electricity and hydraulics, and you have access to ... I mean,

02:09:20.920 | I have machines in my woodshop at home that are so much more advanced than anything that

02:09:26.080 | any cathedral builder in 15th century Europe had, and yet neither I nor anyone I know could

02:09:32.500 | even begin to understand how a flying buttress was built, right?

02:09:37.080 | And so, what is that?

02:09:40.100 | And the other question is also, consider that whatever is creating this technology is unstoppable.

02:09:46.480 | Well, there's that.

02:09:48.480 | And the question is like, how do you steer it then?

02:09:50.800 | You have to look in a realist way at the world, and say that if you don't, somebody else will,

02:09:56.800 | and you want to do it in a safe way.

02:10:00.560 | I mean, this is the Manhattan Project.

02:10:02.200 | Was the Manhattan Project a good idea, to create nuclear weapons?

02:10:05.160 | That's an easy call.

02:10:06.160 | No, for me, it's an easy call in retrospect, in retrospect, yes, because it seems like

02:10:11.600 | it stopped world wars.

02:10:13.960 | So the mutually assured destruction seems to have ended wars, ended major military.

02:10:19.400 | Well, it's been, what, 80 years?

02:10:23.760 | Not even 80 years, 79.

02:10:26.360 | And so, we haven't had a world war in 79 years, but one nuclear exchange would, of course,

02:10:34.240 | kill more people than all wars in human history combined, so.

02:10:37.720 | You saying 79 makes it sound like you're counting.

02:10:40.080 | I am counting, because I think it, obviously, it's completely demonic, and everyone pretends

02:10:44.980 | like it's great.

02:10:45.980 | You know, nuclear weapons are evil.

02:10:47.280 | Yeah, no, absolutely.

02:10:48.280 | The use of them is evil, and the technology itself is evil.

02:10:52.720 | And in my, I mean, it's just like, if you can't, that's just so obvious.

02:10:55.800 | And that's what I'm saying is like, I'm not against all technology.

02:10:59.760 | I took a shower this morning.

02:11:01.600 | It was powered by an electric pump, heated by a water heater.

02:11:05.800 | Like, I loved it.

02:11:07.280 | I sat in an electric sauna.

02:11:08.840 | You know, like, I'm not against all technology, obviously.

02:11:13.560 | But the mindless worship of technology?

02:11:15.920 | Sure.

02:11:16.920 | Mindless worship of anything is pretty bad.

02:11:18.800 | But I'm just saying, so you said, let's approach this from a realist perspective.

02:11:21.520 | Okay, let's.

02:11:22.840 | If we think that there is a reasonable or even a potential chance, it could happen.

02:11:30.320 | Maybe on the margins.

02:11:31.320 | Let's say we've got it at a 15% chance that AI, for example, gets away from us, and we

02:11:36.560 | are now ruled by machines that may actually hate us.

02:11:38.960 | Who knows what they want?

02:11:41.680 | Why wouldn't we use force to stop that from happening?

02:11:46.240 | So you're walking down the street in midtown Manhattan.

02:11:48.640 | It's midnight.

02:11:49.640 | You've had a few drinks.

02:11:50.640 | You're coming from dinner.

02:11:51.640 | You're walking back to your apartment.

02:11:52.640 | A guy, a very thuggish looking guy, young man, approaches you.

02:11:56.440 | He's 50 feet away.

02:11:58.080 | He pulls out a handgun.

02:11:59.680 | He lifts it up to you.

02:12:00.960 | You also are armed.

02:12:01.960 | Do you shoot him or do you wait to get shot?

02:12:05.320 | Because all the data...

02:12:06.320 | Look, he hasn't shot you.

02:12:07.800 | He's not committed a crime other than carrying a weapon in New York City, but maybe he's

02:12:10.120 | got a license.

02:12:11.120 | You don't know.

02:12:12.120 | It could be legal.

02:12:13.760 | But he's pointing a gun at you.

02:12:15.800 | Is it fair to kill him before he kills you, even though you can't prove that he will kill

02:12:20.560 | you?

02:12:22.740 | If I knew my skills with a gun, because he already has a gun...

02:12:25.920 | Right, but it turns out that you have some confidence in your ability to stop the threat

02:12:30.720 | if I fire.

02:12:31.720 | Are you justified in doing that?

02:12:32.920 | I just like this picture.

02:12:34.240 | Am I wearing a cowboy hat?

02:12:35.920 | No.

02:12:36.920 | No, but you're wearing cowboy boots and they're clicking on the cobblestones.

02:12:39.360 | Actually, you're in meatpacking.

02:12:40.360 | Okay, great.

02:12:41.360 | I like this picture.

02:12:42.360 | I'm just...

02:12:43.360 | Yeah.

02:12:44.360 | I think about this a lot.

02:12:45.360 | No.

02:12:46.360 | Yeah, I understand your point.

02:12:48.100 | But also, I think that metaphor falls apart if there's other nations at play here.

02:12:57.760 | So the same as with a nuclear bomb, if US doesn't build it, will other nations build

02:13:04.520 | it?

02:13:05.520 | The Soviet Union build it, China or Nazi Germany?

02:13:09.000 | We faced this.

02:13:10.000 | I mean, we faced this and the last president to try and keep, in a meaningful way, nuclear

02:13:14.640 | proliferation under control was John F. Kennedy, and look what happened to him.

02:13:20.160 | But what's your suggestion?

02:13:21.480 | Like, is it...

02:13:22.480 | But hold on.

02:13:23.480 | Inevitable?

02:13:24.480 | Well, their position in 1962 was, "No, it's absolutely not inevitable."

02:13:31.040 | Or perhaps it's inevitable in the sense that our death is inevitable as human beings, but

02:13:36.000 | we fight against the dying of the light anyway, because that's the right thing to do.

02:13:40.520 | No, we were willing to use force to prevent other countries from getting the bomb, because

02:13:45.280 | we thought that would be really terrible, because we acknowledged that while there were

02:13:49.120 | upsides to nuclear weapons, just like there are upsides to AI, the downside was terrifying

02:13:53.400 | in the hands of...

02:13:54.400 | I mean, that's the thing that I kind of don't get.

02:13:57.080 | It's like the applications of that technology in the hands of people who mean to do harm

02:14:02.800 | and destroy, it's like so obviously terrifying.

02:14:06.840 | It's not so obvious to me.

02:14:08.040 | What I'm terrified about is probably a similar thing that you're terrified about, is using

02:14:11.400 | that technology to manipulate people's minds.

02:14:14.760 | That's much more reasonable to me as an expectation, a real threat that's possible in the next

02:14:20.800 | few years.

02:14:21.800 | But what matters more than that?

02:14:22.800 | Well, I think that could lead to destruction of human civilization through other humans,

02:14:28.280 | for example, starting nuclear wars.

02:14:30.360 | Yeah.

02:14:31.360 | Well, I mean, this is one of the reasons I wasn't afraid in the Vladimir Putin interview,

02:14:35.280 | because it's like it's all ending anyway.

02:14:38.360 | You know what I mean?

02:14:39.360 | Yeah.

02:14:40.360 | Well, might as well dance on the deck of the Titanic.

02:14:41.360 | Don't be a pussy.

02:14:42.520 | Enjoy it.

02:14:43.520 | I think we will forever fight against the dying of the light as the entirety of the

02:14:48.920 | civilization.

02:14:49.920 | You know, somebody said that Biden ascribed that to Churchill.

02:14:53.360 | That was a Churchill quote.

02:14:55.280 | That's kind of what I'm saying.

02:14:56.360 | It's like if you live in a society where people don't read anymore, people are by definition

02:15:05.320 | much more ignorant, but they don't know it.

02:15:10.720 | I do think the Wikipedia culture, and I think there are cool things about Wikipedia, certainly

02:15:14.440 | it's ease of use is high, and that's great.

02:15:17.600 | But people get the sense that like, "Oh, I know a lot about this or that or the other

02:15:22.560 | thing."

02:15:23.560 | And it's like the key to wisdom, again, the key to wise decision making is knowing what

02:15:26.960 | you don't know.

02:15:27.960 | And it's just so important to be reminded of what a dummy you are and how ignorant you

02:15:32.240 | are all the time.

02:15:33.240 | Yeah.

02:15:34.240 | That's why I like having daughters.

02:15:35.240 | It's like it's never far from mind how flawed I am.

02:15:38.620 | And that's important.

02:15:39.620 | Yeah.

02:15:40.620 | In the same way I hope to be a dad.

02:15:41.620 | You should have a ton of kids.

02:15:42.620 | Are you going to have a ton of pups?

02:15:43.620 | Five.

02:15:44.620 | Oh, pup?

02:15:45.620 | You mean like kids?

02:15:46.620 | Children?

02:15:47.620 | Yes.

02:15:48.620 | Five.

02:15:49.620 | But also I've been thinking of getting a dog, but unrelated, I would love to have like five

02:15:51.620 | or six kids.

02:15:52.620 | Yeah, for sure.

02:15:53.620 | Have you found a victim yet?

02:15:55.940 | You make it sound so romantic, Tucker.

02:15:59.140 | Just joking.

02:16:00.140 | I love it.

02:16:01.140 | No, you should totally do that.

02:16:04.020 | Yeah.

02:16:05.020 | 100%.

02:16:06.020 | But also in terms of being humble, I do jujitsu.

02:16:08.100 | It's a martial art where you get your ass kicked all the time.

02:16:10.260 | I love that.

02:16:11.260 | It's nice to get your ass kicked.

02:16:12.300 | Physical humbling is unlike anything else, I think, because we're kind of monkeys at

02:16:17.640 | heart and just getting your ass kicked is really helpful.

02:16:20.220 | I agree.

02:16:21.220 | I've had it happen to me twice.

02:16:22.220 | Twice is enough.

02:16:23.220 | It got me to quit drinking.

02:16:26.080 | I was good at starting fights, not good at winning them.

02:16:28.740 | But no, I completely agree with that.

02:16:31.220 | Let me ask you, you've been pretty close with Donald Trump.

02:16:35.060 | Your private texts about him around the 2020 election were made public.

02:16:41.580 | In one of them, you said you passionately hate Trump.

02:16:46.180 | When that came out, you said that you actually know you love him.

02:16:50.400 | So how do you explain the difference?

02:16:53.100 | My texts reflect a lot of things, including how I feel at the moment that I sent them.

02:16:58.020 | That specific text, I happen to know since I had to go through it forensically during

02:17:01.360 | my deposition in a case I was not named in, I had nothing to do with whatsoever.

02:17:06.980 | It's crazy how civil suits can be used to hurt people you disagree with politically.

02:17:12.740 | But I was mad at a very specific person.

02:17:16.780 | I mean, really what that...

02:17:17.780 | I mean, you're asking me, I'll tell you exactly what that was.

02:17:20.980 | It was the second the election ended and they stopped voting, stopped the vote counting

02:17:25.780 | on election night, I was like, "Well, this is..."

02:17:27.520 | It's all now mail-in ballots, electronic voting machines, I was like, "That's a rigged election."

02:17:32.540 | I thought that then, I think it now.

02:17:34.260 | Well, now it's obvious that it was.

02:17:36.520 | But at the time, I was like, "I feel like that was crazy what just happened.

02:17:40.360 | I want...

02:17:41.360 | But I don't want to go on TV and say that's a rigged election because I don't have any

02:17:43.680 | evidence it's a rigged election.

02:17:44.680 | You can't do that.

02:17:45.680 | It's irresponsible and it's wrong."

02:17:48.280 | So I was like, "I want..."

02:17:50.060 | The Trump campaign was making all these claims about this or that fraud, so I was trying

02:17:54.720 | my best to substantiate them, to follow up on it.

02:17:59.160 | Everyone else is like, "Shut up, Trump, you lost, go away, we're going to indict you."

02:18:04.380 | But I felt like my job was to be like, "No, the guy's, he's president, he's claiming the

02:18:07.320 | election just got stolen and he's making these claims, let's see if we can..."

02:18:10.840 | Well, the people around him were like so incompetent, it was just absolutely crazy.

02:18:15.720 | And so I called a couple of times, I finally gave up, but I'd call and be like, "All right,

02:18:20.200 | you guys claim that these inconsistencies and this, whatever this happened, give me

02:18:24.200 | evidence and I'll put it on TV."

02:18:26.080 | You know, it's my job to bring stuff that is not going to be aired anywhere else to

02:18:30.080 | the public.

02:18:31.080 | I couldn't, it was like, it was insane how incompetent and unserious...

02:18:37.160 | So they weren't able to provide like...

02:18:38.720 | Well, here's the point of the story and of that text.

02:18:42.400 | So then they come out and they say, "Well, dead people voted."

02:18:44.240 | Well, that's just an easy call, okay?

02:18:46.960 | If a dead person voted, we can prove someone's dead because like being dead is one of the

02:18:50.680 | few things we're good at like verifying because you start to smell, okay?

02:18:54.680 | And there's a record of it, it's called a death certificate.

02:18:57.600 | So I was like, "Give me the names of people who are dead who voted, then we can get their

02:19:01.280 | registration and we can show they voted."

02:19:03.880 | Five names.

02:19:04.880 | So I go on TV and I say, "Caroline Johnson, 79 of Waukegan, Illinois, voted.

02:19:13.000 | Here's her death certificate.

02:19:14.000 | She died."

02:19:15.000 | And the campaign sends me this stuff.

02:19:16.320 | I, in general, don't take stuff directly from campaigns because they all lie because their

02:19:20.800 | job is to get elected or whatever.

02:19:22.360 | So I'm very wary of campaigns having been around it for 30 years.

02:19:26.880 | But I made an exception to my rule and I got a bunch of stuff from them.

02:19:30.240 | Well, like of the six names, two of them are still alive.

02:19:33.640 | What?

02:19:34.640 | I was...

02:19:35.640 | Well, I immediately corrected it the next night.

02:19:38.040 | CNN did a whole segment on how I was spreading disinformation, which I was, by the way.

02:19:43.520 | In this one case, they were right.

02:19:45.440 | I was so mad.

02:19:48.320 | I was like, "I hate you.

02:19:50.880 | I'm not talking about you.

02:19:51.880 | I'm so mad."

02:19:52.880 | Anyway, that's the answer.

02:19:55.520 | That's what that was.

02:19:56.520 | Who were you texting to?

02:19:57.520 | My producer.

02:19:58.520 | And I was like venting.

02:19:59.520 | It's like a producer I was really close to and I've known him for a long time.

02:20:03.040 | He's really smart.

02:20:04.040 | And he's like, he was someone I could like be honest with and I was like, "Ah!"

02:20:08.120 | And by the way, it's so funny.

02:20:09.560 | I mean, now I'm doing What Was Me, which I will keep to a minimum, but it's like stealing

02:20:13.920 | someone's text.

02:20:16.120 | And by the way, I was an idiot.

02:20:18.520 | I should have said, "Come and arrest me.

02:20:20.040 | I'm not giving you my freaking text messages, okay?"

02:20:23.120 | But I got bullied into it by a lawyer.

02:20:26.080 | I didn't get bullied into it.

02:20:27.080 | I was weak enough to agree with a lawyer.

02:20:29.040 | It was my fault.

02:20:31.040 | Never should have done that.

02:20:32.040 | Fuck you.

02:20:33.040 | They're my texts.

02:20:34.040 | They're total...

02:20:35.040 | I'm not even named in this case.

02:20:36.040 | That's what I should have said, but I didn't.

02:20:37.720 | I said I was mad on the air the next day, but not in language that colorful.

02:20:42.960 | But whatever, whatever.

02:20:45.000 | I try to be transparent.

02:20:49.120 | I mean, I also think, by the way, if you watch someone over time, you don't always know what

02:20:54.920 | they really think, but you can tell if someone's lying.

02:20:58.040 | You can sort of feel it in people.

02:21:01.360 | And I have lied.

02:21:02.360 | I'm sure I'll lie again.

02:21:03.360 | I don't want to lie.

02:21:04.360 | I don't think I'm a liar.

02:21:05.920 | I try not to be a liar.

02:21:06.920 | I don't want to be a liar.

02:21:08.360 | I think it's really important not to be a liar.

02:21:12.760 | You said nice things about me earlier.

02:21:14.480 | I'm starting to question.

02:21:15.480 | I have questions.

02:21:16.480 | I have a lot of questions talking about you.

02:21:18.480 | I hate Lex Friedman.

02:21:19.480 | Yeah.

02:21:20.480 | I'm going to have to see your texts after this.

02:21:23.560 | My texts are so uninteresting now.

02:21:25.880 | It's like crazy how uninteresting they are.

02:21:28.280 | Emojis and gifs.

02:21:29.280 | Yeah, lots of dog pictures.

02:21:31.000 | Nice.

02:21:32.000 | You said to some degree the election was rigged?

02:21:36.560 | Was it stolen?

02:21:37.560 | It was 100% stolen.

02:21:38.560 | Are you joking?

02:21:39.560 | Like it was rigged to that large of a degree?

02:21:42.160 | They completely change the way people vote right before the election on the basis of

02:21:47.840 | COVID, which had nothing to do with-

02:21:49.200 | So in that way, it was rigged, meaning manipulated.

02:21:51.360 | 100%.

02:21:52.360 | Then you censor the information people are allowed to get.

02:21:55.920 | Anyone who complains about COVID, which is like, by the way, it might've hurt Trump.

02:22:02.840 | It's like whatever.

02:22:03.840 | I mean, you could play it many different ways.

02:22:06.260 | You can't have censorship in a democracy by definition.

02:22:10.200 | Here's how it works.

02:22:11.420 | The people rule.

02:22:12.420 | They vote for representatives to carry their agenda to the capital city and get it enacted.

02:22:17.240 | That's how they're in charge.

02:22:18.240 | Then every few years, they get to reassess the performance of those people in an election.

02:22:23.080 | In order to do that, they need unfettered access to information.

02:22:31.400 | No one, particularly not people who are already in power, is allowed to tell them what information

02:22:36.160 | they can have.

02:22:37.160 | They have to have all information that they want.

02:22:39.600 | Whether the people in charge want it or don't want it or think it's true or think it's false,

02:22:43.840 | it doesn't matter.

02:22:45.440 | The second you don't have that, you don't have a democracy.

02:22:47.720 | It's not a free election, period.

02:22:50.360 | That's very clear in other countries, I guess, but it's not clear here.

02:22:54.640 | But I would say it's this election that ... I mean, it took me a while to come to this,

02:23:01.080 | but it's this election that's the referendum on democracy.

02:23:04.520 | Biden is senile.

02:23:06.280 | He's literally senile.

02:23:07.400 | He can't talk.

02:23:08.400 | He can't walk.

02:23:09.640 | The whole world knows that.

02:23:10.760 | Leave our borders.

02:23:11.760 | People are ... Everybody in the world knows it.

02:23:15.840 | He can't ... A senile man is not going to get elected in the most powerful country in

02:23:23.600 | the world unless there's fraud, period.

02:23:28.160 | Who would vote for a senile man?

02:23:30.160 | He literally can't talk.

02:23:31.840 | Nobody I've ever met thinks he's running the US government because he's not.

02:23:37.040 | I think the world is looking on at this coming election and saying ... And a lot of the world

02:23:41.280 | hates Trump.

02:23:42.280 | Okay?

02:23:43.280 | It's not an endorsement of Trump.

02:23:44.280 | But it's just true.

02:23:45.280 | If Joe Biden gets reelected, democracy is a freaking joke.

02:23:51.380 | It's just true.

02:23:52.380 | I think half the country doesn't think he's senile, just thinks he's speaking-

02:23:58.320 | Do you really think that?

02:23:59.320 | They don't think he's senile?

02:24:00.320 | Yeah.

02:24:01.320 | I think he just has difficulty speaking.

02:24:05.680 | It's like gradual degradation, just getting old.

02:24:10.880 | So cognitive ability is degrading.

02:24:12.760 | What's the difference between degraded cognitive ability and senility?

02:24:16.160 | Well, senility has a threshold.

02:24:20.180 | It's beyond the threshold to where he could be a functioning leader.

02:24:23.200 | Okay.

02:24:24.200 | That may be a term of art that I don't fully understand.

02:24:25.600 | Maybe there's an IQ threshold or something, but I'm happy to go with degraded cognitive

02:24:30.560 | ability.

02:24:31.560 | Sure.

02:24:32.560 | But that's an age thing.

02:24:33.920 | But he's the leader of the United States with the world's second largest nuclear arsenal.

02:24:37.520 | I'm with you.

02:24:38.520 | I'm a sucker for great speeches and for speaking abilities of leaders and Biden with two wars

02:24:45.320 | going on and potentially more.

02:24:47.760 | The importance of a leader to speak eloquently, both privately in a room with other leaders

02:24:52.800 | and publicly is really important.

02:24:54.480 | I agree with you that rhetorical ability really matters, convincing people that your program

02:24:58.860 | is right, telling them what we're for, national identity, national unity all come from words.

02:25:04.120 | I agree with all of that.

02:25:06.080 | But at this stage, even someone who grunted at the microphone would be more reassuring

02:25:10.560 | than a guy who clearly doesn't know where he is.

02:25:14.480 | I think everyone knows that.

02:25:16.240 | I can't imagine there's an honest person in Washington, which is going to vote for Biden

02:25:19.680 | by 90% obviously, because they're all dependent on the federal government for their income.

02:25:24.040 | But is there any person who could say out of 350 million Americans, that's the most

02:25:29.740 | qualified to lead?

02:25:30.740 | Or even in the top 80%, what?

02:25:34.140 | That's so embarrassing that that guy is our president and with wars going on, it's scary.

02:25:40.980 | But it's complicated to understand why those are the choices we have.

02:25:45.980 | I agree.

02:25:46.980 | Well, it's a failure of the system.

02:25:48.740 | Clearly it's not working.

02:25:50.440 | One guy over 80, the other guy almost at 80, people that should not be running any.

02:25:56.480 | So you have on the Democratic side, you have Dean Phillips, you have RK Jr. until recently,

02:26:01.760 | I guess he's independent.

02:26:03.440 | And then you have Vivek, who are all younger people.

02:26:07.240 | Why did they not connect to a degree to where-

02:26:11.040 | It's such an interesting, I mean, I think it's a really interesting, there are a million

02:26:15.860 | different answers, and of course I don't fully understand it, even though I feel like I've

02:26:20.720 | watched it pretty carefully.

02:26:22.180 | But I would say the bottom line is there's so much money vested in the federal apparatus,

02:26:31.540 | in the parties, in the government.

02:26:33.860 | As I said a minute ago, our economy is dominated by monopolies, but the greatest of all monopolies

02:26:39.000 | is the federal monopoly, which oversees and controls all the other monopolies.

02:26:43.660 | So it's really substantially about the money.

02:26:47.220 | It's not ideological, it's about the money.

02:26:49.260 | And if someone controls the federal government, I mean, at this point, it's the most powerful

02:26:53.880 | organization in human history.

02:26:55.480 | It's kind of hard to fight that.

02:26:59.060 | In the case of Trump, I know the answer there.

02:27:02.380 | They raided Mar-a-Lago.

02:27:03.380 | They indicted him on bullshit charges.

02:27:06.220 | And I felt that in myself too.

02:27:07.920 | Even I was like, "Come on, come on."

02:27:10.420 | Whenever you think of Trump, and I agreed with his immigration views, I really liked

02:27:14.140 | Trump personally.

02:27:15.140 | I think he's hilarious and interesting, which he is.

02:27:19.220 | But it's like, okay, there are a lot of people in this country.

02:27:21.780 | Let's get some, at very least, let's have a real debate.

02:27:25.820 | The second...

02:27:26.820 | Messed up your cameras there, sorry, I'm getting excited.

02:27:29.660 | But the second they raided Mar-a-Lago on a documents charge, as someone from DC, I was

02:27:36.700 | like, "I know a lot about classification and all this stuff and been around it a lot."

02:27:41.580 | That's so absurd that I was like, "Now it's not about Trump.

02:27:45.940 | It's about our system continuing."

02:27:47.900 | If you can take out a presidential candidate on a fake charge, use the justice system to

02:27:52.980 | take the guy out of the race, then we don't have a representative democracy anymore.

02:27:58.080 | And I think a lot of Republican voters felt that way.

02:28:01.900 | If they hadn't indicted him, I'm not sure he would be the nominee.

02:28:04.700 | I really don't think he would be.

02:28:05.820 | So now a vote for Trump is a kind of fuck you to the system.

02:28:09.900 | Or an expression of your desire to keep the system that we had, which is one where voters

02:28:14.940 | get to decide.

02:28:15.940 | Prosecutors don't get to decide.

02:28:16.940 | Look, they told us for four years that Trump was a super criminal or something.

02:28:22.500 | I've actually been friends with some super criminals.

02:28:24.300 | I'm a little less judgy than most.

02:28:25.860 | So I didn't discount the possibility that he had, I don't know, he's in the real estate

02:28:30.620 | business in New York in the '70s.

02:28:32.740 | Did he kill someone?

02:28:33.740 | I don't know.

02:28:34.740 | Yeah.

02:28:35.740 | I'm not joking.

02:28:36.740 | Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:28:37.740 | And I'm not for killing people, but anything's possible.

02:28:39.300 | It's good that you took a stand on that.

02:28:41.300 | Yeah.

02:28:42.300 | No, I'm not joking.

02:28:43.300 | Yeah.

02:28:44.300 | I was like, "Well, who knows?"

02:28:45.300 | You know?

02:28:46.300 | Real estate.

02:28:47.300 | And I didn't know.

02:28:48.300 | And what they came up with was a documents charge?

02:28:49.580 | Are you joking?

02:28:50.580 | And then the sitting president has the same documents violation, but he's fine.

02:28:54.260 | It's like, it's crazy this is happening in front of all of us.

02:28:57.460 | And then it becomes like, at that point, it's not about Joe Biden, it's not about Donald

02:29:02.500 | Trump.

02:29:03.500 | It's about preserving a system which has worked, not perfectly, but pretty freaking well for

02:29:08.060 | 250 years.

02:29:09.060 | I know you don't like Trump, I get it.

02:29:11.420 | Let's not destroy that system.

02:29:12.980 | We can handle another four years of Trump.

02:29:14.720 | I think we can.

02:29:15.720 | So calm down.

02:29:16.820 | What we can't handle is a country whose political system is run by the Justice Department.

02:29:23.260 | That is just, you're freaking Ecuador at that point.

02:29:27.780 | No.

02:29:28.780 | So speaking of the Justice Department, CIA and intelligence agencies of that nature,

02:29:34.940 | which you've been traveling quite a bit, probably tracked by everybody.

02:29:39.780 | Which is the most powerful intelligence agency, do you think?

02:29:44.180 | CIA, Mossad, MI6, SVR, keep going.

02:29:55.220 | The Chinese.

02:29:56.820 | It depends what you mean by powerful.

02:30:00.720 | Which one bats above its weight, we know.

02:30:04.540 | Which one is-

02:30:05.540 | Mossad, just to be clear, I guess, is what you're talking about.

02:30:08.260 | Well, of course.

02:30:09.260 | Tiny country, very sophisticated intel service.

02:30:12.280 | Which one has the greatest global reach in comms?

02:30:16.460 | Which one is most able to read your texts?

02:30:18.460 | I assume the NSA.

02:30:20.300 | But Chinese, clearly pretty good.

02:30:22.340 | Israel is pretty good.

02:30:24.860 | The French actually are surprisingly good for kind of a declining country.

02:30:29.220 | Their intel services seem pretty impressive.

02:30:30.740 | No, I love France, but you know what I mean?

02:30:34.260 | And all that.

02:30:35.260 | So, but the question, I mean, I grew up around all that stuff.

02:30:38.380 | That's all totally fine.

02:30:39.700 | Like a strong country should have a strong and capable intel service so its policy makers

02:30:44.260 | can make informed decisions.

02:30:45.260 | Like that's what they're for.

02:30:46.660 | So as Vladimir Putin himself noted, and I don't talk about it very much, but it's true.

02:30:50.820 | I applied to the CIA when I was in college because, you know, I was familiar with it

02:30:55.340 | because of where I lived and had grown up and everything.

02:30:58.140 | And I was like, seemed interesting.

02:30:59.980 | That's honestly the only reason I was like, live in foreign countries, see history happen.

02:31:03.880 | Like I'm for that.

02:31:04.880 | I applied to the operations directorate.

02:31:06.580 | They turned me down on the basis of drug use actually.

02:31:10.900 | True.

02:31:12.220 | But anyway, whatever.

02:31:13.220 | I was unsuited for it.

02:31:14.340 | So I'm glad they turned me down.

02:31:15.620 | But the point is I didn't see CIA as a threat partly because I was bathing in propaganda

02:31:20.940 | about CIA and I didn't really understand what it was and didn't want to know.

02:31:24.200 | But second, because my impression at the time was it was outwardly focused.

02:31:27.940 | It was focused on our enemies.

02:31:31.020 | I don't have a problem with that as much.

02:31:34.060 | The fact that CIA is playing in domestic politics and actually has for a long time was involved

02:31:38.540 | in the Kennedy assassination.

02:31:39.780 | That's not speculation.

02:31:41.300 | That's a fact.

02:31:43.260 | And I confirmed that for someone who had read their documents that are still not public.

02:31:47.500 | It's shocking.

02:31:48.820 | You can't have that.

02:31:50.220 | And the reason I'm so mad is I really believe in the idea of representative government acknowledging

02:31:55.220 | its imperfections.

02:31:56.220 | But I should have some say, I live here, I'm a citizen, I pay all your freaking taxes.

02:32:01.700 | So the fact that they would be tampering with American democracy is so outrageous to me.

02:32:09.760 | And I don't know why Morning Joe is not outraged.

02:32:12.640 | This parade of dummies, highly credentialed dummies they have on Morning Joe every day,

02:32:18.000 | they don't seem to...

02:32:19.000 | That doesn't bother them at all.

02:32:20.000 | How could that not bother you?

02:32:21.460 | Why is only Glenn Greenwald mad about it?

02:32:24.620 | It's confirmed.

02:32:25.620 | It's not like a fever dream.

02:32:27.260 | It's real.

02:32:28.260 | They played in the last election domestically.

02:32:31.460 | And I guess it shows how dumb I am because they've been doing that for many years.

02:32:37.080 | The guy who took out Mossadegh lived on my street, one of the Roosevelt CIA officer.

02:32:42.260 | So again, I grew up around this stuff, but I never really thought, I never reached the

02:32:50.360 | obvious conclusion, which is that if the US government subverts democracy in other countries

02:32:57.180 | in the name of democracy, it will over time subvert democracy in my country.

02:33:01.700 | Why wouldn't it?

02:33:04.380 | The corruption is like core, it's at the root of it.

02:33:07.900 | The purpose of the CIA was envisioned, at least publicly envisioned, as an intel gathering

02:33:12.220 | apparatus for the executive so the president could make wise foreign policy decisions.

02:33:15.460 | What the hell is happening in country X?

02:33:17.060 | I don't know.

02:33:18.220 | Let me call the agency in charge of finding out.

02:33:20.820 | The point wasn't to freaking guarantee the outcome of elections.

02:33:27.820 | I'm doing an Israel-Palestine debate next week, but I have to ask you just your thoughts,

02:33:33.660 | maybe even from a US perspective, what do you think about Hamas attacks on Israel?

02:33:38.040 | What would be the right thing for Israel to do and what's the right thing for US to do

02:33:43.260 | in this?

02:33:44.260 | If you're looking at the geopolitics of it.

02:33:47.300 | It's not a topic that I get into a lot because I'm a non-expert.

02:33:54.460 | Because I'm not, unlike every other American, I'm not emotionally invested in other countries

02:34:00.480 | just in general.

02:34:01.480 | I mean, I admire them or not, and I love visiting them.

02:34:04.720 | I love Jerusalem, probably my favorite city in the world, but I don't have an emotional

02:34:10.080 | attachment to it.

02:34:12.120 | Maybe I've got more clarity.

02:34:13.120 | I don't know.

02:34:14.120 | Maybe less.

02:34:15.120 | Here's my view.

02:34:16.120 | I believe in sovereignty, as mentioned.

02:34:18.160 | I think each country has to make decisions based on its own interest, but also with reference

02:34:23.360 | to its own capabilities and its own long-term interest.

02:34:27.080 | That's very unwise for ... I'm not a huge fan of treaties.

02:34:31.880 | Some are fine.

02:34:32.880 | Too many, bad.

02:34:34.360 | But I think US military aid to Israel and the implied security guarantees, some explicit,

02:34:40.880 | but many implied security guarantees of the United States to Israel probably haven't helped

02:34:44.760 | Israel that much long-term.

02:34:47.680 | It's a rich country with a highly capable population.

02:34:50.480 | Like every other country, it's probably best if it makes its decisions based on what it

02:34:53.800 | can do by itself.

02:34:58.080 | So I would definitely be concerned if I lived in Israel, because I think fair or unfair,

02:35:04.360 | and really this is another product of technology, social media, public sentiment in that area

02:35:08.760 | is boiling over.

02:35:10.720 | I think it's going to be hard for some of the governments in the region, Jordan, Egypt,

02:35:14.960 | Turkey, to contain their own population.

02:35:16.800 | They don't want conflict with Israel at all.

02:35:18.840 | They were all pretty psyched actually for the trend in progress, the Saudi peace deal,

02:35:23.600 | which was never signed, but it would have been great for everybody because trade, peace,

02:35:28.800 | normal relations, that's good, okay?

02:35:30.920 | Let's just say.

02:35:31.920 | I know John Bolton doesn't like it, but it's good.

02:35:36.200 | It's kind of what we should be looking for, but now it's not possible.

02:35:43.520 | If you had a coalition of countries against Israel, I know Israel has nuclear weapons

02:35:48.040 | and is a capable military and all that in the backing of the United States, but it's

02:35:53.120 | a small country.

02:35:54.120 | I'd be very worried.

02:35:57.640 | So there's that, and I don't see any advantage to the United States.

02:36:05.000 | I think it's important for each country to make its own decisions.

02:36:09.800 | But it also is a place, like you said, where things are boiling over and it could spread

02:36:15.760 | across multiple nations into a major military conflict.

02:36:18.440 | Yeah.

02:36:19.440 | Well, I think very easily could happen.

02:36:20.440 | In fact, probably right after Ramadan, if I had to guess, and I pray it doesn't.

02:36:26.000 | But again, I don't think you can overstate the lack of wisdom, weakness, short-term thinking

02:36:33.480 | of American foreign policy leadership.

02:36:36.600 | These are the architects of the Iraq War, of the totally pointless destruction of Libya,

02:36:42.360 | totally pointless destruction of Syria, and the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan that

02:36:46.640 | resulted in a return to the status quo.

02:36:48.320 | So like of the Vietnam War, their track record of the Korean War even going back 80 years

02:36:55.800 | is uninterrupted failures, one after the other.

02:36:59.880 | So I just don't have any confidence in those leaders to improve.

02:37:05.600 | When was the last time they improved another country?

02:37:08.880 | Can you think of that?

02:37:09.880 | Oh, the Marshall Plan.

02:37:10.880 | Well, you look at Europe now and you're like, "I don't know if that worked."

02:37:16.400 | But even if it did work, again, 80 years ago, so when was the last country American foreign

02:37:21.480 | policy makers improved?

02:37:23.720 | So Netanyahu's in a very difficult place politically, impossible, I mean, I'm glad I'm not Netanyahu.

02:37:32.000 | And I'm not sure he's capable of making wise long-term decisions anyway.

02:37:36.180 | But if I was just like an Israeli, I'd be like, "I don't know if I want like all this

02:37:42.160 | help and guidance."

02:37:46.020 | So yeah, I actually think it's worse than just having just returned from the Middle

02:37:48.960 | East and talking to a lot of pretty open-minded sort of pro-Israeli Arabs who want stability

02:37:56.580 | above all.

02:37:57.760 | The merchant class always wants stability.

02:38:00.360 | So I'm on their side, I guess.

02:38:01.660 | And they're like, "Man, this could get super ugly, super fast.

02:38:07.080 | American leadership is just completely absent.

02:38:09.320 | It's just all posturing.

02:38:10.320 | It's like people like Nikki Haley."

02:38:12.240 | You just wonder, how does an advanced civilization promote someone like Nikki Haley to a position

02:38:17.600 | of authority?

02:38:18.600 | It's like, "What?

02:38:19.600 | Shh, adults are talking, adults are talking, Nikki Haley, please go away."

02:38:25.480 | That would be the appropriate response, but everyone's so intimidated to be like, "Oh,

02:38:28.680 | she's a strong woman.

02:38:30.000 | She's so transparently weak and sort of ridiculous and doesn't know anything and is just thinks

02:38:35.820 | that jumping up and down and making these absurd blanket statements, repeating bumper

02:38:39.740 | stickers is like leadership or something."

02:38:43.300 | A self-confident advanced society would never allow Nikki Haley to advance.

02:38:49.700 | I mean, she's really not impressive.

02:38:52.260 | Sorry.

02:38:53.260 | I just feel like you hold back too much and don't tell us what you really think.

02:38:58.140 | Sorry.

02:38:59.140 | Sorry.

02:39:00.140 | I think you just speak your mind more often.

02:39:01.140 | Well, by the way, these are not...

02:39:02.140 | I mean, you can completely disagree with my opinions, but in the case of Nikki Haley,

02:39:06.620 | it's not like an opinion formed just from watching television, which I don't watch.

02:39:10.140 | It's an opinion formed from knowing Nikki Haley.

02:39:14.320 | Strong words from Tucker.

02:39:15.320 | Well, felt too.

02:39:16.320 | Well, the world's in the balance.

02:39:17.320 | I mean, it's not just like-

02:39:18.320 | Yes.

02:39:19.320 | Yes.

02:39:20.320 | This is important stuff.

02:39:21.320 | Yeah.

02:39:22.320 | It's not just like, "Well, what should the capital gains rate be?"

02:39:25.860 | It's like, "Do we live or die?"

02:39:27.740 | I don't know.

02:39:28.740 | I don't know about Nikki Haley.

02:39:31.180 | If you're asking, "Should we live or die?" and consulting Nikki Haley, clearly you don't

02:39:34.460 | care about the lives of your children.

02:39:35.860 | That's how I feel.

02:39:37.420 | Not to try to get a preview or anything, but do you have interest of interviewing Xi Jinping?

02:39:44.620 | And if you do, how will you approach that?

02:39:47.660 | I have enormous interest in doing that, enormous, and a couple other people are more working

02:39:52.580 | on it.

02:39:53.580 | I should also say, it's been refreshing, you interviewing world leaders.

02:39:59.180 | I think when I've started seeing you do that, it made me realize how much that's lacking.

02:40:05.460 | Well, yeah.

02:40:06.460 | It's just interesting.

02:40:07.460 | I mean, from even a historical perspective, it's interesting, but it's also important

02:40:10.940 | from a geopolitics perspective.

02:40:12.700 | Well, it's really changed my perspective, and I've been going on about how American

02:40:16.900 | I am, and I think that's a great thing.

02:40:18.780 | I love America.

02:40:20.300 | But it's also, we're so physically, geographically isolated from the world, even though I traveled

02:40:25.500 | a ton as a kid, a lot, more than most people.

02:40:29.460 | But even now, I'm like, I'm so parochial.

02:40:34.020 | I see everything through this lens, and getting out and seeing the rest of the world to which

02:40:38.900 | we really are connected, that's real, is vitally important.

02:40:43.500 | So yeah, I mean, at this stage, I don't need to do it, but I really want to, just motivated

02:40:51.660 | by curiosity and trying to expand my own mind and not be closed-minded and really see the

02:40:57.380 | fullest perspective I possibly can in order to render wise judgments.

02:41:02.140 | I mean, that's like the whole journey of life.

02:41:05.740 | I was just hanging out with Rogan yesterday, Joe Rogan, and I mentioned to him that it's

02:41:12.060 | me being a fan of his show, that I would love for him to talk with you, and he said he's

02:41:18.660 | up for it.

02:41:19.660 | Any reason you guys haven't done it already?

02:41:22.020 | - I don't know.

02:41:23.020 | I would, there's no, I've only met Rogan once, and I liked him.

02:41:26.820 | I met him at the UFC in New York.

02:41:30.740 | He was with somebody, a mutual friend of ours, and Rogan changed media, I mean, maybe more

02:41:38.100 | than anybody.

02:41:39.140 | And he did it, what I love about, what I admire about Rogan without knowing him beyond meeting

02:41:43.420 | him that one time.

02:41:44.420 | I mean, I'm still in media, but I've always been in media.

02:41:48.880 | You know, it's like not a great surprise.

02:41:50.860 | I'm doing what I've always done, just a different format.

02:41:53.200 | But Rogan, like, he's got one of those resumes that I admire.

02:41:57.900 | You know, I like the guy who was like, "I was a longshoreman, I was a short order cook,

02:42:00.780 | I was an astrophysicist, I was," you know what I mean, it's like, he's called a man

02:42:04.180 | of parts.

02:42:05.860 | This guy was a fighter, a stand-up comic, he hosted some, you know, Fear Factor, like,

02:42:11.140 | how did he wind up at the vanguard of like the deepest conversations in the country?

02:42:18.460 | Like how did that happen?

02:42:19.460 | So I definitely respect that, and I think it's cool.

02:42:23.300 | And Rogan is one of those people who just kind of came out of nowhere, like no one helped

02:42:27.860 | him.

02:42:29.540 | You know what I mean?

02:42:30.540 | He was doing the thing that he loves doing, and it somehow keeps accidentally being exceptionally

02:42:36.060 | successful.

02:42:37.060 | Yeah, and he's curious.

02:42:38.060 | So that's like the main thing, and there was a guy, without getting boring, but there was

02:42:42.900 | a guy I worked with years ago, who like kind of dominated cable news, Larry King.

02:42:47.360 | And everyone would always beat up on Larry King for being dumb, while I got to know Larry

02:42:50.240 | King well, and I was his fill-in host for a while, and Larry King was just intensely

02:42:53.980 | curious.

02:42:54.980 | He'd be like, "Why do you wear a black tie, Lex?

02:42:55.980 | Because I like black tie.

02:42:56.980 | Why do you like black tie?

02:42:57.980 | No one else wears a striped tie, but you wear a black one, why?"

02:43:00.420 | And he was like really interested.

02:43:01.980 | Yeah, genuinely so, yeah.

02:43:04.540 | Totally.

02:43:05.540 | And I want to be like that.

02:43:06.940 | I don't want to think I know everything.

02:43:09.540 | That's so boorish, and also false.

02:43:11.260 | You don't know everything.

02:43:12.260 | But I see that in Rogan.

02:43:13.260 | Rogan's like, "Rah, how does that work?"

02:43:15.540 | And people will...

02:43:16.540 | And it's so funny how that's threatening to people.

02:43:21.020 | It's like Rogan will just sit there while someone else is free-balling on some far-out

02:43:25.220 | topic, which by the way, might be true, probably truer than the conventional explanation.

02:43:29.780 | People are like, "I don't know.

02:43:30.780 | How can he stand that?

02:43:33.220 | He had someone say the pyramids weren't built 3,000 years ago, but 8,000 years ago, and

02:43:37.660 | that's wrong."

02:43:38.660 | It's like, first of all, how do you know when the pyramids were built?

02:43:41.100 | Second, why do you care if someone disagrees with you?

02:43:44.100 | What is that?

02:43:45.100 | This weird kind of group think, it's almost like fourth grade, there's always some little

02:43:51.700 | girl in the front row who's acting as the teacher's enforcer, like whip around and be

02:43:57.340 | like, "Sit down.

02:43:58.340 | Don't you hear what Mrs. Johnson said?

02:43:59.820 | Sit down."

02:44:00.820 | That's like the whole American media.

02:44:04.780 | How dare you ask that question?

02:44:06.780 | And Rogan just seems like completely on his own trip, like he doesn't even hear it.

02:44:10.940 | He's like, "Well, really?

02:44:11.940 | When were the pyramids built?"

02:44:12.940 | They're just like, "Oh, I love that."

02:44:15.260 | Yeah, curiosity, open-mindedness.

02:44:17.700 | The thing I admire about him most, honestly, is that he's a good father, he's a good husband,

02:44:22.580 | he's a good family man for many years, and that's his place where he escapes from the

02:44:29.700 | world too, and it's just beautiful.

02:44:31.660 | Without that, man, you're destroyed.

02:44:34.260 | If I had a wife who was interested at all, in any way, in what I did, I think I would

02:44:39.780 | have gone crazy by now.

02:44:41.500 | When we get home, she's like, "How was your day?"

02:44:44.660 | "It was great."

02:44:45.660 | "Oh, I'm so proud of you."

02:44:46.660 | That's the end of our conversation about what I do for a living, and that is such a wonderful

02:44:50.820 | and essential respite from, you said, "How do I not become an asshole?"

02:44:54.020 | To the extent I haven't, I kind of have, but how do I have if I've not been transformed

02:45:01.420 | into a totally insufferable megalomaniac who's checking his Twitter replies every day or

02:45:06.860 | every minute?

02:45:07.860 | It's that.

02:45:08.860 | Yeah, you've got to have the core of your life has to be solid and enduring and not

02:45:13.180 | just ephemeral and silly.

02:45:15.340 | The two of you have known each other for, what, 40 years?

02:45:17.980 | We've been together 40 years.

02:45:19.940 | What's that?

02:45:20.940 | 40?

02:45:21.940 | 40 years, yeah.

02:45:22.940 | 1984.

02:45:23.940 | He was the hottest 15-year-old in Newport, Rhode Island.

02:45:26.060 | Wow.

02:45:27.060 | Sounds dirty, but I'm talking about myself.

02:45:28.740 | I was the hottest.

02:45:29.740 | Somebody quote that.

02:45:30.740 | Yeah, you were.

02:45:31.740 | Just looking in the mirror?

02:45:32.740 | Yeah.

02:45:33.740 | Very nice.

02:45:34.740 | What's the secret to a successful relationship, successful marriage?

02:45:38.060 | I don't even know.

02:45:39.740 | I mean, no, I'm serious.

02:45:43.700 | I got married in August '91, so that's, well, it's our 33rd year of being married.

02:45:47.820 | The fall, the collapse of the ... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:45:49.580 | As noted.

02:45:50.580 | Yeah, so you hear these people ... It's actually changed my theology a little bit, not that

02:45:55.620 | I have deep theology, but I grew up in a society in Southern California when I was little that

02:46:02.340 | was a totally self-created society.

02:46:04.540 | I mean, Southern California was that root of libertarianism for a reason.

02:46:09.740 | It was like that's where you went to recreate yourself, and so the operative assumption

02:46:14.160 | there is that you are the sum total of your choices, and that free will is everything.

02:46:21.740 | We never consider questions like, "Well, why do children get cancer?

02:46:25.780 | What do they do to deserve it?"

02:46:26.780 | Well, of course, nothing, right?

02:46:29.180 | Because that would suggest that maybe you're not the sum total of ... Choices matter.

02:46:32.100 | If I smoke a lot, I get lung cancer.

02:46:34.380 | If I use fentanyl, I may OD.

02:46:36.380 | Got it.

02:46:37.380 | If I don't exercise, I might get fat.

02:46:39.540 | But on a bigger scale, you're not only the sum total of your choices.

02:46:45.240 | Things happen to you that you didn't deserve, good and bad, and marriage is, and I'll speak

02:46:51.480 | for myself, in my case, just one of them, and I could say ... I mean, clearly, spending

02:46:54.840 | time with the person you're married to, talking, enjoying each other, I have a lot of rituals.

02:47:01.660 | We have a lot of rituals that ensure that, but in 40 years, you're a different person.

02:47:08.960 | I did drugs.

02:47:09.960 | I was drinking all the time.

02:47:10.960 | When we met, it's been a long time since I've done that.

02:47:15.880 | I'm very different, and so is she, but we're different in ways that are complimentary and

02:47:19.800 | happy.

02:47:20.800 | We've never been happier.

02:47:21.800 | How do we pull that off?

02:47:23.800 | Just good luck, honestly.

02:47:25.240 | And then I see other people.

02:47:26.240 | No, I'm not kidding, but that's true.

02:47:28.240 | I think it's so important not to flatter yourself if you've been successful at something.

02:47:34.360 | The thing I've been most successful at is marriage, but it's not really me.

02:47:39.680 | I mean, I haven't ... So I think what you're indirectly communicating is it's like humility,

02:47:44.520 | I think.

02:47:45.520 | It's not even humility.

02:47:46.600 | Humility is the result of a reality-based worldview.

02:47:49.560 | Sure.

02:47:50.560 | Okay?

02:47:51.560 | Right.

02:47:52.560 | Once you see things clearly, then you know that you are not the author of all your successes

02:47:56.940 | or failures, and I hate the implication otherwise, because it suggests powers that people don't

02:48:05.140 | have.

02:48:06.140 | It's one of the reasons I always hated the smoking debate or the COVID debate.

02:48:08.840 | Someone die of COVID and do none of the facts, they'd be like, "See, this is what you get.

02:48:13.340 | You smoke cigarettes, you die."

02:48:14.340 | Well, shit.

02:48:15.340 | Yeah.

02:48:16.340 | If you smoke cigarettes, you're more likely to get lung cancer.

02:48:17.340 | If you don't, if you get ... Whatever.

02:48:18.340 | The cause and effect is real.

02:48:19.780 | I'm not denying its existence.

02:48:21.020 | It's obvious, but it's not the whole story.

02:48:25.420 | There are larger forces acting on us, unseen forces.

02:48:28.820 | That's just a fact.

02:48:29.820 | You don't need to be some kind of religious nut, and they act on AI too, and you should

02:48:33.820 | keep that in mind.

02:48:35.540 | The idea that all-

02:48:36.540 | The same way you said that.

02:48:38.500 | No, it's true.

02:48:40.140 | It's demonstrably true.

02:48:41.340 | We're the only society that hasn't acknowledged the truth of that, and the idea that the only

02:48:45.260 | things that are real are the things that we can see or measure in a lab, that's insane.

02:48:49.580 | That's just dumb.

02:48:51.160 | In the religious context, you have these two categories that I really like, of the two

02:48:56.480 | kinds of people, people who believe they're God and people who know they're not, which

02:49:01.840 | is a really interesting division that speaks to humility and a kind of realist worldview

02:49:10.680 | of where we are in the world.

02:49:14.240 | Can atheists be in the latter category?

02:49:18.520 | No.

02:49:20.080 | There are very few atheists.

02:49:21.320 | I've never actually met one.

02:49:23.640 | There are people who pose as atheists, but no one's purely rational.

02:49:28.680 | This is a cliche for a reason.

02:49:32.320 | Everyone under extreme stress appeals to a power higher than himself because everyone

02:49:36.360 | knows that there is a power higher than himself.

02:49:39.440 | Really it's just people who are gripped with the delusion that they're God.

02:49:43.200 | No one actually believes that.

02:49:44.460 | If you're God, jump off the roof of your garage and see what happens.

02:49:47.440 | You know what I mean?

02:49:48.440 | No one actually thinks that, but people behave as if it's true and those people are dangerous.

02:49:54.880 | I will say by contrast, the only people I trust are the people who know their limits.

02:49:59.080 | I was thinking actually this morning in my sauna, of all the people I've interviewed

02:50:04.560 | or met, this is someone I never interviewed, but I have talked to him a couple of times,

02:50:09.840 | the greatest leader I've ever met in the world is literally a king.

02:50:16.480 | It's MBZ Sheikh Mohammed of Abu Dhabi who is Muslim.

02:50:20.600 | I am definitely not Muslim, I'm Christian, Protestant Christian.

02:50:24.640 | I don't agree with his religion and I don't agree with monarchies, but he's the best leader

02:50:30.840 | in the world that I've ever met.

02:50:34.440 | By far, it's not even close.

02:50:37.080 | Why is that?

02:50:38.080 | Well, I could bore you for an hour on the subject, but the reason that he's such a good

02:50:43.320 | leader is because he's guided by an ever-present knowledge of his limitations and of the limits

02:50:50.360 | of his power and of his foresight.

02:50:53.920 | When you start there, when you start with reality, it's not even humility.

02:50:56.940 | Humility can be a pose like, "Oh, I'm so humble, okay."

02:51:00.900 | Humble brag is a phrase for a reason.

02:51:02.920 | It's like way deeper than that.

02:51:03.920 | It's just like, "No.

02:51:04.920 | Can I...

02:51:05.920 | Do I have magical powers?

02:51:06.920 | Can I see the future?

02:51:09.000 | No.

02:51:10.000 | Okay.

02:51:11.000 | That's just a fact.

02:51:12.360 | So I'm not God."

02:51:13.360 | But I've never seen anybody more at ease with admitting that than MBZ, just a remarkable

02:51:20.280 | person.

02:51:21.280 | And for that reason, he is treated as an oracle.

02:51:24.200 | I don't think people understand the number of world leaders who traipse through his house

02:51:30.040 | or palace to seek his counsel.

02:51:33.360 | I'm not sure that there is a parallel since, I don't want to get too hyperbolic here, but

02:51:40.520 | honestly, since like Solomon, where people come from around the world to ask what he

02:51:45.080 | thinks.

02:51:46.080 | Now, why would they be doing that?

02:51:49.600 | Because Abu Dhabi's military is so powerful.

02:51:51.560 | I mean, he's rich, okay, massive oil and gas deposits, but for a lot of...

02:51:57.000 | So is Canada.

02:51:58.000 | You know what I mean?

02:51:59.480 | No one is coming to Ottawa, Ottawa, to ask Justin Trudeau what he thinks.

02:52:03.360 | No, it's humility.

02:52:05.260 | That's where wisdom comes from.

02:52:07.520 | You start to think like, I spent my whole life mad at America's leadership class, because

02:52:12.200 | it's not just Biden or the people in official positions, it's the whole constellation of

02:52:18.880 | advisors and throne sniffers around them.

02:52:22.000 | And even that I disagree with them, it's I'm not impressed by them, I'm just not impressed.

02:52:27.780 | They're not that capable, right?

02:52:30.200 | So that's what I was saying about Nikki Haley, I don't think Nikki Haley is the most evil

02:52:32.800 | person in the world.

02:52:33.800 | I think she's ridiculous, obviously, and everyone's like, "Oh, Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo."

02:52:38.440 | What?

02:52:39.440 | Great leaders are so rare that when you see one, you know it right away.

02:52:44.760 | It blows your mind.

02:52:45.760 | And what blows my mind about Sheikh Mohammed in Abu Dhabi is that everyone in the world

02:52:52.160 | knows it.

02:52:53.160 | And I've never seen a story on this, and I'm not guessing, I know this is true because

02:52:57.000 | I've seen it.

02:52:59.000 | Everyone in the world knows it.

02:53:00.400 | And so if there's a conflict, he's the only person that people call, like everybody calls

02:53:05.640 | the same guy.

02:53:07.620 | And it's like he runs this tiny little country, the UAE, I mean, in Abu Dhabi, there are a

02:53:13.480 | bunch of Emirates, but he's the president of the country, but still, and it's got a

02:53:16.360 | ton of energy and all that wealth and all that, Dubai's got great real estate and restaurants,

02:53:21.260 | but really it's a tiny little country that wasn't even a country 50 years ago.

02:53:26.280 | So how did that happen?

02:53:28.520 | Only on the basis of his humility and the wisdom that results from that humility.

02:53:33.520 | That's it.

02:53:34.760 | What advice would you give to young people?

02:53:37.200 | You got four, you somehow made them into great human beings.

02:53:41.720 | What advice would you give to people in high school?

02:53:43.640 | Have children immediately.

02:53:44.640 | Oh, that.

02:53:45.640 | Including in high school.

02:53:46.640 | Yes, I think that.

02:53:47.800 | That's all that matters.

02:53:48.800 | Like in the end, you know, again, these aren't even cliches anymore because no one says them.

02:53:54.360 | But when I was a kid, people would say, "On your deathbed, you never wish you spent more

02:53:57.080 | time at work."

02:53:59.760 | And I mean, everyone said that.

02:54:00.760 | It was like one of these things.

02:54:02.040 | And now, I don't think Google allows you to say that.

02:54:05.040 | It's like, "No, you're going to wish you spent more time at work, get back to your cube."

02:54:08.320 | But I can't overstate from my vantage how true that is.

02:54:14.720 | Nothing else matters but your family.

02:54:20.140 | And if you have the opportunity, and a lot of people are being denied the opportunity

02:54:23.280 | to have children, and this messing with the gender roles, and I'm not even talking about

02:54:28.240 | the tranny stuff.

02:54:29.240 | I mean, feminism has so destroyed people's brains and the ability of young people to

02:54:37.240 | connect with each other and stay together and have fruitful lives.

02:54:40.360 | It's like nothing's been more destructive than that.

02:54:43.000 | It's such a lie.

02:54:44.000 | It's so dumb.

02:54:45.080 | It's counter to human nature.

02:54:46.280 | Nothing counter to human nature can endure.

02:54:47.840 | It can only cause suffering, and that's what it's done.

02:54:50.960 | But fight that.

02:54:51.960 | Stop complaining about it.

02:54:53.320 | Find someone.

02:54:54.320 | By the way, everyone gets together, most people get together on the basis in a Western society

02:54:59.040 | where there's no arranged marriages.

02:55:00.280 | They get together on the basis of sexual attraction, totally natural, get off your birth control

02:55:05.620 | and have children.

02:55:06.620 | "Oh, I can't afford that."

02:55:08.120 | Well, yeah, you'll figure out a way to afford it once you have kids.

02:55:11.420 | It's like it's chicken and the egg, but it's actually not.

02:55:15.000 | When you have responsibility, when you have no choice, this is true of men.

02:55:18.120 | I'm not sure if it's true of women, but it's definitely true of men.

02:55:20.640 | You will not achieve until you have no choice.

02:55:23.640 | As I always think of men, men do nothing until they have to, but once they have to, they

02:55:29.480 | will do anything.

02:55:31.120 | That is true.

02:55:32.320 | Men will do nothing unless they have to, but once they have to, they will do anything.

02:55:35.240 | I really believe that from watching and from being one.

02:55:38.000 | And I would never have done anything if I didn't have to, but I had to, and I would

02:55:42.080 | just recommend it.

02:55:43.080 | But by the way, even if you don't succeed, even if you're poor, having spent my life

02:55:47.300 | among rich people, I grew up among rich people, I am a rich person, boy, are they unhappy.

02:55:51.920 | Well, that's clearly not the road to happiness.

02:55:54.400 | You don't want to be a debt slave or starve to death or anything like that, but making

02:55:58.800 | a billion dollars, that's not worth doing.

02:56:00.720 | Don't do that.

02:56:01.720 | Don't even try to do that.

02:56:03.560 | If you create something that's beautiful and worth having and you make a billion dollars,

02:56:07.320 | okay, then you have to deal with your billion dollars, which will be the worst part of your

02:56:10.360 | life.

02:56:11.360 | Trust me.

02:56:12.360 | But seeking money for its own sake is a dead end.

02:56:15.760 | What you should seek for its own sake is children.

02:56:19.140 | Talk about a creative act.

02:56:20.320 | Last thing I'll say, the whole point of life is to create, okay?

02:56:24.440 | The act of creation, which is like dying in the West, in the arts and in its most pure

02:56:31.160 | expression, which is children, that's all that's worth doing while you're alive is creating

02:56:36.000 | something beautiful and creating children.

02:56:38.800 | By the way, it's super fun.

02:56:39.960 | It's not hard.

02:56:40.960 | I can get more technical off the air if you want.

02:56:42.400 | Yeah.

02:56:43.400 | Please.

02:56:44.400 | I have a lot of thoughts on it.

02:56:45.400 | I'm just kidding.

02:56:46.400 | No.

02:56:47.400 | I can draw you a schematic.

02:56:48.400 | Oh, thank you.

02:56:49.400 | But yeah, that's the greatest thing.

02:56:51.600 | And the fact that corporate America denies it, "Oh, freeze your eggs, have an abortion."

02:56:56.680 | What?

02:56:57.680 | You're evil.

02:56:58.680 | Are you kidding?

02:56:59.680 | Because you're taking from people the only thing that can possibly give them enduring

02:57:03.720 | joy.

02:57:04.720 | And they are successfully taking it from people, and I hate them for it.

02:57:09.040 | You founded TCN, Tucker Carlson Network.

02:57:11.120 | Yeah.

02:57:12.120 | What's your vision for it?

02:57:13.120 | I have no vision for myself or my career, and I never have, so I'm like the last person

02:57:17.520 | to explain.

02:57:18.520 | Just go with it.

02:57:19.520 | Yeah.

02:57:20.520 | I'm an instinct guy, 100%.

02:57:21.520 | I have a vision for the world, but I don't have a vision for my life or my career.

02:57:25.980 | So really, my vision extended precisely this far.

02:57:29.400 | I just want to keep doing what I'm doing.

02:57:31.580 | I just want to keep doing what I'm doing, and there was a five-hour period where I wondered

02:57:36.200 | if I would be able to, because I feel pretty spry and alert, and I'm certainly deeply

02:57:42.800 | enjoying what I'm doing, which is talking to people and saying what I think and learning,

02:57:47.840 | constantly learning.

02:57:48.840 | But I just wanted to keep doing that, and I also wanted to employ the people who I worked

02:57:57.080 | with at Fox.

02:57:58.080 | I've worked with the same people for years, and I love them.

02:58:01.400 | So I had all these people, and I wanted to bring them with me, so we had to build a structure

02:58:05.960 | for that.

02:58:06.960 | But this feels like one of the first times you're really working for yourself.

02:58:10.000 | There's an extra level of freedom here.

02:58:11.880 | Totally.

02:58:12.880 | Totally.

02:58:13.880 | You don't want me doing your taxes.

02:58:17.200 | I'm good at some things, but I'm really not good at others.

02:58:19.520 | I'm more than would be like running a business, like no idea, I'm not interested, not a commerce

02:58:24.520 | guy, so I don't buy anything.

02:58:26.200 | So it's like a whole thick I'm not good at.

02:58:28.800 | But luckily, I'm really blessed to have friends who are involved in this who are good at that.

02:58:36.440 | So I feel positive about it.

02:58:38.720 | But mostly, I'm totally committed to only doing the things that I am good at and enjoy,

02:58:46.520 | and not doing anything else, because I don't want to waste my time.

02:58:49.920 | So I'm just getting to do what I want to do, and I'm really loving it.

02:58:53.780 | What hope, positive hope, do you have for the future of human civilization in, say,

02:58:59.800 | 50 years, 100 years, 200 years?

02:59:02.120 | People are great just by their nature.

02:59:04.080 | I mean, they're super complicated, but I like people, I always have liked people.

02:59:11.080 | If I was sitting here with Nikki Haley, who I guess I've been pretty clear I'm not a mega

02:59:14.480 | fan of Nikki Haley's, I would enjoy it.

02:59:18.560 | I've never met anybody I couldn't enjoy on some level, given enough time.

02:59:23.320 | So as long as nobody tampers with the human recipe, the human nature itself, I will always

02:59:32.240 | feel blessed by being around other people.

02:59:35.640 | And that's true around the world.

02:59:37.720 | I've never been to a country, and I've been to scores of countries, where I didn't, given

02:59:43.240 | a week, really like it and like the people.

02:59:47.120 | So yeah, bad leaders are a recurring theme in human history.

02:59:55.120 | They're mostly bad, and we've got an unusually bad set right now, but we'll have better ones

02:59:59.360 | at some point.

03:00:00.360 | I just don't want to, I don't, one thing I don't like more than nuclear weapons and more

03:00:06.160 | than AI, the one thing that really, really bothers me is the idea of using technology

03:00:10.280 | to change the human brain permanently.

03:00:13.680 | Because you're tampering with the secret sauce, you're tampering with God's creation, and

03:00:19.200 | totally evil.

03:00:20.200 | I mean, I've literally sat there the other day with Klaus Schwab, I was with Klaus Schwab,

03:00:25.120 | I was like a total moron, I'm like 100 years old, and like has no idea what's going on

03:00:30.720 | in the world.

03:00:31.720 | But he's like one of these guys who, speaking of mediocre, everyone's so afraid of Klaus

03:00:35.160 | Schwab.

03:00:36.160 | I don't think Klaus Schwab is going to be organizing anything again, he's just like

03:00:38.640 | a total figurehead, like a douchebag.

03:00:40.720 | But anyway, but he was talking and he's reading all these talking points, like, "Oh, what

03:00:45.840 | the cool kids are talking about at Davos," and whatever.

03:00:49.120 | And he starts talking about in his way, in his accent, he was saying, "I think it's so

03:00:53.880 | important that we follow in an ethical way," always in an ethical way, of course, very

03:00:58.800 | ethical, I'm a very ethical man, "that we follow using technology to improve the human

03:01:04.840 | mind and implant the chips in the brain."

03:01:07.400 | And I'm like, "Okay, you have no idea what you're talking about, you're like as senile

03:01:11.440 | as Joe Biden."

03:01:13.360 | But what was so striking is that no one in the room was like, "Wait, what?

03:01:17.520 | You're fucking with people's brains?

03:01:18.520 | Like, what are you even talking about?

03:01:19.520 | Who do you think you are?"

03:01:24.560 | I mean, you're right, the secret sauce, the human mind is really special, like, we should

03:01:31.360 | not mess with it, we should be very careful and whatever special thing it does, it seems

03:01:38.600 | like it's a good thing, like human beings are fundamentally good and like these sources

03:01:45.000 | of creativity, a creative force in the universe we don't want to mess with.

03:01:49.520 | - Oh, I mean, what else matters?

03:01:52.000 | I don't understand, I mean, I guess, look, I don't want to seem like the Unabomber and

03:01:58.640 | I'm not...

03:01:59.640 | - We are in a cabin in the woods.

03:02:00.640 | - No, I don't, I'm sympathetic to some of his ideas, but not, of course, sending mail

03:02:04.360 | bombs to people because I like people, but I mean, I don't believe in violence at all.

03:02:08.200 | But I think the problem with technology, one of the problems with technology is the way

03:02:14.960 | that people approach it in a very kind of mindless, heedless way, and I think it's important,

03:02:20.840 | this idea that it's inexorable and we can't control it and if we don't do it, someone

03:02:23.960 | else will and there's some truth in that, but it's not the whole story.

03:02:28.580 | We do have free will and we are creating these things intentionally and I think it's incumbent

03:02:35.560 | on us, it's a requirement of a moral requirement of us that we ask, like, is this a net gain

03:02:41.640 | or a net loss?

03:02:42.640 | What, to the extent we can foresee them, will the effects be, et cetera, et cetera.

03:02:46.320 | It's like, it's not super complicated.

03:02:49.800 | So I just, I prize long-term thinking.

03:02:51.760 | I don't always apply it in my own life, obviously, I want to, but I prize it and I think that

03:02:57.480 | people with power should think about future generations and I don't see that kind of thinking

03:03:01.480 | at all.

03:03:02.480 | Like, don't give children to me and like, don't give children handguns 'cause they can

03:03:06.080 | hurt people.

03:03:07.080 | Yeah, fundamentally, you want people in power to be pro-humanity.

03:03:10.400 | By the way, you don't want people who are 81 who are gonna die anyway, why do they care?

03:03:15.200 | And by the way, if your track record with your own family is miserable, why would I

03:03:19.240 | give you my family to oversee?

03:03:22.160 | I just don't, like, again, these are artistic level questions that someone should answer.

03:03:28.600 | - Well, thank you for asking those questions, first of all, and thank you for this conversation.

03:03:35.860 | Thank you for welcoming me to the cabin in the woods.

03:03:38.680 | - Thank you.

03:03:39.680 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tucker Carlson.

03:03:42.640 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:03:46.960 | And now, let me leave you with some words from Mahatma Gandhi.

03:03:51.280 | When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always

03:03:58.000 | been.

03:03:59.360 | There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but

03:04:04.660 | in the end, they always fall.

03:04:07.140 | Think of it, always.

03:04:10.200 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

03:04:12.760 | - Thank you.

03:04:13.760 | - Thank you.

03:04:14.260 | - Thank you.

03:04:14.760 | - Thank you.

03:04:15.260 | - Thank you.

03:04:15.760 | - Thank you.

03:04:16.260 | - Thank you.

03:04:16.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Tucker Carlson: Putin, Navalny, Trump, CIA, NSA, War, Politics & Freedom | Lex Fridman Podcast #414

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