Transcript: Tucker Carlson on Shawn Ryan Show (SRS #256)

No, I completely agree with you. It’s expensive to do that, so that’s why most people don’t.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, but what else am I going to spend it on?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I completely agree.

SHAWN RYAN: F*ing gay new watch or something.

TUCKER CARLSON: Some dumb vacation. I totally agree. I totally agree.

SHAWN RYAN: But, well, I mean.

TUCKER CARLSON: Holy shit, dude. Yeah, I know.

The Spiritual War Underway

SHAWN RYAN: What the f* is going on in the world?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there’s a spiritual war underway, which I didn’t take seriously enough. And you can’t understand anything that’s happening unless you understand that.

SHAWN RYAN: I leaned out. I had to. I just had to lean out. I can’t tell what’s real anymore. We talked about that on your podcast. It just keeps getting f*ing worse. And, you know, I’m just looking for something that I can have an impact on. And it’s getting hard to find.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you know, it’s hard to gauge the impact of really anything because our timeline is totally distorted. And at least I’ll speak for myself. I always think that if I say something that’s true, it will have an immediate effect. And there is a kind of vanity to that.

Can’t anyone hear what I’m saying? Why aren’t you adjusting your behavior? And it’s like, well, because I’m not God, actually. I’m not in charge of anything. I’m a podcaster, which is important to remember if you’re me. Because there is so much vanity. People are always like, oh, it’s so important what you’re doing. And it’s like, really, if I was doing something useful, I guess we wouldn’t be here, would we?

And that is so frustrating that I opted as we had a conversation this morning, which I wish was on tape because it was so deep.

SHAWN RYAN: Don’t worry, everything on breakfast is recorded.

Retreating from Duty

TUCKER CARLSON: But no, I mean, I know the feeling so well. And you were saying, I can’t even deal with this. I don’t want to deal with it. I said, oh man. In June, after the United States government bombed the nuclear facilities to really no effect, let’s be honest, I was so frustrated and disappointed and mad that people aren’t listening to me, kind of retreated.

And I live in a place where you can retreat to our fishing camp, which I sincerely love. But really its signature quality is its remoteness. It’s not near anything at all. And we did have Starlink put in a couple of years ago so you could text from there. So why wouldn’t you go there on all your off hours with your dogs and just live alone in the woods? So I literally did that.

And then in September, you know, Charlie Kirk was my friend, was murdered. And with the encouragement of another friend of mine, I began to realize that what I was doing was totally self-indulgent. And that’s not why we’re here. We’re not here to enjoy solitude in the woods or enjoy our fishing camp, the fruits of our labors. Very cheap fishing camp. But still it’s so close to my heart. And what I really love about this country and my life is being in the woods.

But that’s not why we’re here. That’s totally self-indulgent. Just because my deepest desire is not hookers and blow anymore. No, but I can tell myself, and I have literally said out loud to people around me, really, my darkest sin is I like to sit far away in the woods up near Canada with my dogs and fish and maybe have an occasional cigarette or whatever. But that’s as naughty as I get. I’ve got nothing to apologize for.

SHAWN RYAN: Why do you say that’s a big sin? That’s your biggest sin.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why is that a sin? I would be joking. I would say, look, you know, okay, yes, I do. I mean, we had family drama over Starlink. I don’t want Starlink. But it was like, well, then no one knows where you are. And I’m like, well, right. Well, I did give in, which is a mixed blessing.

But anyway, the point is, I would always say the worst thing I want to do is retreat from the world into the woods and fish or hunt. I mean, those are truly my deepest desires. And I just always would joke and be like, you know, you could have someone else in your family who’s in Vegas getting chlamydia, or there’s me who just wants to go fishing for the week, you know, or whatever.

But what I realized was, yes, of course fishing alone with your dogs is better than getting chlamydia at the Spearmint Rhino. But both of them are retreating from your duty. Especially if you’re a middle-aged man who has, you know, whatever. There’s no reason for me not to do my best at this point. There’s nothing in my path that prevents me from telling the truth, that I have an obligation to do that.

That’s why you’re here. There’s a mission. There is a mission for every man. And your job is to find out what it is and dutifully do it or attempt to do it. And do you see the fruits? Of course not. You don’t. And maybe there aren’t any fruits. And maybe you’re wrong because you don’t freaking know. You’re just a man. You’re totally on the wrong path sometimes and don’t even know it. It’s happened to me a million times, but you have to try.

And it can’t just be, as I always would say to people close to me, it’s not all blowjobs and French toast, man. There’s a part where you have to work. No, that’s the dream, right? Blowjobs and French toast, you know?

The Internal Battle

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, man. I mean, I don’t know, Tucker. I’m like this huge internal battle going on right now.

TUCKER CARLSON: I get it.

SHAWN RYAN: Again, we talked about, we should probably stop having breakfast from now on and just do the actual interview here. But I, you know, I’m not going to quit, but, you know, I go back and forth. I mean, there’s so much. Yes, there’s a lot of positives and you talk to a lot of cool people and I get, you know, got to know you and I’m very thankful for everything.

But, you know, I think about, I got a f*ing large property about 40, 45 minutes south of here, and lots of acreage, middle of nowhere. Very, very inexpensive property that I’ve owned since I moved here.

TUCKER CARLSON: Those are the best, inexpensive rural properties.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a little bitty hunt cabin that’s like, you wouldn’t want to bring a woman there unless my wife.

TUCKER CARLSON: Those are the best guys.

SHAWN RYAN: But we used to go before all this shit happened. We used to go down there and just escape. Well, we wanted to escape all the way back then, and we don’t have time to do that anymore. And I went down there last weekend to actually just get out of here. Even though I live in the woods, that’s farther in the woods.

I just got down there, man, and I was like, it made me sad. I was like, Katie and I used to come down here all the time, not talk to anybody.

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

SHAWN RYAN: No cell reception, no Internet, no nothing. No jets flying over, no chemtrails, no noise, nothing. Just solitude, nature and a couple people cooking meth across the street. But it just made me sad, man. And I think about it now and I’m like, those were better times.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and now, you know, I built this business and famous set in and it’s, you know, when you’re building this, you sure as hell don’t think you’re going to look back on the times that you were before you even thought about building it and go, those were simpler, better times. It makes me f*ing sad.

The Weight of Blessing and Obligation

TUCKER CARLSON: You can always be sure you look backward and consider time that has passed simpler and better. That’s just the nature of life. You always look back. I look back on the 80s and I’m like, damn, I correspond with my girlfriend by letter. You know how great that was? I just think that’s the way people are.

But I also, I think of it this way. And I think that’s not just of myself, but of everyone around me. The more blessed you are, the deeper your obligation. That’s just true. The point of leadership is to protect the people you lead. I don’t believe in a flat society. I’m not a populist in any way. I believe that no structure beginning with the family works without leadership.

And so I think a lot about what is leadership and leadership is sacrifice. And so the more you’ve been given, the deeper your responsibility to sacrifice for others. I really believe that, and that’s obvious when you’re working hard toward a goal. You know, I’m putting everything into what I’m striving to achieve. You know, I’m fighting my way up the problem for men.

And so few men actually achieve this that it’s almost never talked about. Problem for men is getting what you want. The problem is winning. That’s what destroys you. The fight doesn’t. I mean, you’ve been in real fights, obviously, but real fights I happen to know, not with just with others, but with yourself. And you prevailed. That’s way easier than winning. Winning is what destroys you.

David was not intimidated when he picked up the stone against Goliath and then ran up and beheaded him. The problem set in when he sees this girl. He’s like, I can bang her, I’m king. He destroys himself. That is the template for the way that men are. And no one tells you that because again, there are so few people who actually get what they want.

And there’s no support group for people who won. But I know a lot of them. I know that you do too. And a consistent theme in every story is the second I got what I wanted, I could feel myself starting to self destruct and lose confidence and faith in myself and my mission and all that stuff.

And that’s one of the gifts that we get, I think, as people if we pay attention, is the humility that comes from failing. Every time I’ve thought I’ve won and I’m cynical and decadent and yeah, I’m in charge now, then I get fired, humiliated again. And then I look back and I’m like, oh, thank you, God, for humiliating me. Because it restores a sense of purpose and takes me down from hubris to reality.

But underneath it all is the fact that the more you’ve been given, the greater your obligation to others. And as I said, as I told you in great detail at breakfast, I’m not going to bore your listeners, but I just went through this. I was like, f this, f this. Go wreck your society, I’m out. I’m going to do my interviews, but I’m not getting involved in this process because it’s hopelessly broken. I can only be frustrated by it. I can have no material effect. And I’m just out.

And I’ve got a million interests. I have a huge family who I am very engaged with. And I’m just going to tend to their needs and I’m not going to participate in anything beyond my world.

A Letter That Changed Everything

And then a really close and honest friend of mine wrote me this very long letter the day Charlie was killed. And it’s very nice. It wasn’t scolding, but it was actually corrective in that he said, you are self indulgent, which I am. I am totally self indulgent. I know that about myself, of course, and it’s obvious.

But you are being self indulgent and you have a moral obligation to do everything you can with the ever present knowledge. It mostly won’t work, but it doesn’t matter whether you live to see its fruits. You are obligated to try to help. Help in some way.

And I, of course I showed it to my wife. I was like, God is speaking through him. You need to pay attention. I was like, you’re right. You’re totally right. So that actually that conversation, which was, well, September 11th, I happened to know when I called him to thank him for this letter, that totally changed my attitude.

And I’m just so grateful to have friends who are willing to take the time to be honest with me about my faults. I really try. I’m not, you know, take a lot of criticism. I don’t give a. But for the 30 people whose opinions I care about, some of them are really willing to take the time to be honest with me. And I needed to hear that.

And I’ve been in a good mood ever since, despite, you know, we’ve had a lot of drama in my life and my family since September 11th. It’s only been a little over two months, but it’s like a different world. And since Charlie was murdered. But I’ve never stopped being cheerful and hopeful because I know that there’s a mission way beyond me and I don’t know its outlines. I don’t know everything about the mission. I have no secret knowledge.

But I can feel very strongly that my job is to tell the truth to the extent that I can and that I’m able to see it, which is imperfectly. But I know it’s outlined sometimes and I have an obligation to say what they are, no matter what the cost to me. And that is such a liberating feeling.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s hard to. I don’t know, man, I just look at all the. We were talking about this earlier too, but you know, you think that what you’ve become and what you’ve built that you have an impact. But do you. We’ve called. Do any of us. I mean, you know, and I hate.

TUCKER CARLSON: To quote Conan O’Brien, but one of my favorite observations comes from him. In the end, every grave goes unvisited. I try to. I live directly across from. I see my parents’ graves from my kitchen. And so I visit my parents’ graves a lot and think about them and really love them, blessed to have them as parents.

But I will be buried next to them. But I think a lot, I’m like, in the end, this will be a subdivision or whatever. Who knows what it’ll be, nuclear wasteland. I mean it doesn’t. We don’t know the future and we can be certain that we will be forgotten and that all of our efforts will be unrecognized by other people.

But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have an obligation in the present to try our best, to do our best. And I think that everyone has different callings. Of course everyone has different callings. But I feel strongly that my calling is to tell the truth with the knowledge that most of the time it’s fruitless or if it bears fruit, I won’t see it.

It’s planting an oak tree. You’re not going to see it become an oak, but you plant it anyway because that’s your duty. And I didn’t serve in the military and I didn’t grow up in a duty oriented society. I grew up in rich person world where, you know. But so this is something that I have come to believe more than I used to believe. But you do have a duty. You are here for a reason.

The Spiritual Battle

All of us, and we’re all acting in concert either for good or for evil. And I think the lines are really, really clear. And as I said at the outset, I think the battle is a spiritual one, which is not to say there aren’t material consequences or it’s not flesh and blood people, they are. But all of us are being acted on at all times by forces that we can’t see. It’s a fact. I know that. I’ve seen it a lot.

And how do we know the difference. Well, it’s hard to tell sometimes. And I have been lured by evil a million times that it will happen again. But one of the ways we know is by the way people behave. And good God is characterized by love and acceptance and concern and empathy, period. And his opponents are characterized by hate.

And so when we allow ourselves to get lured into hating, we are serving the people we oppose. Evil becomes stronger with hate. And I have learned this from watching really carefully and been involved in a lot of battles, rhetorical battles, in my life. And I have noticed that the goal of people serving evil is to make you a hater.

They call you what they want you to be. And as someone who has been called many names over many years and been confused by. Because I’m very literal. I’m actually not a racist. Actually, I’m not. And if I was, I would just admit it, but I’m not. I said that a thousand times. Nobody cares. They keep calling it. So why do they call you that? Because they think you are kind of obvious that I’m actually not. And they know that.

No, because they want you to become that. That’s what they want you to be. You’re a Nazi. And I’m like a Nazi. No, very anti Nazi, actually. Why are they saying that about me? Why not just note the obvious about me? You’re well, self indulgent or overweight or whatever the things I really am. Why not criticize me on the basis of my obvious faults? Reality, that’s what I do.

And you’re trying to needle someone. You’re like, oh, you’re. And it’s true. And that makes you. You call the fat girl fat. Why are they calling me something I’m not, and I’m obviously not, because they want me to become that. Now why would people who claim to hate Nazis want you to become a Nazi? That doesn’t make any sense.

Because it’s spiritual principle. Hate makes evil stronger. They want to destroy you by turning your heart dark. That is the truth. And they feed on that. It makes them strong when you hate them. This is not a political principle. This is a spiritual principle. And I have seen it in action so many times that I’ve become totally convicted of it. I mean, I’ve lived this.

Refusing to Give Evil What It Wants

And so I have resolved. I don’t care what people who disagree with me do to me. I don’t care. I’m not going to hate them. Partly because I despise them so much. I refuse to hate them. No, I’m half joking, but no, it’s like I disagree so much that I’m not going to give you what you want, which is for me to make you the center of my world by hating you. I’m not going to do that.

And I’m not going to give you the spiritual power that comes from hate, because I see what happens. I have seen it. I have literally been. The only thing I’ve done in my life is watch things. I’ve watched a lot of things in a lot of different places around the world and I haven’t learned that much, but a few things I’ve learned.

And one is when evil convinces you to hate it, evil becomes stronger. And the only kryptonite, the only thing you can employ to make it less strong is love and its many cousins. Amusement, cheerfulness, laughing in the face of evil diminishes evil.

So you’re never going to get me to play that game, Nazi. No, you’re that Nazi. F* you. Never doing that. I’m never going to do that. Both for my own sake and because that’s the path to defeat. Does that make sense?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it does make sense. I mean, it does makes a lot of sense. It’s been a very weird journey for me.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, you think? Don’t you love that though? Would a teenage you have guessed where you’d be now?

SHAWN RYAN: Five years ago, I would have wanted a podcast.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, but.

SHAWN RYAN: But you know, I don’t. You know, I’ve been. Thankful. I’m also sad. And I’ve never been this close to government ever. I mean, I worked in government, but, you know, it was very, it was very compartmentalized. And very focused on, you know, certain aspects. I didn’t have time to or access. Everybody thinks, oh, you got all this access. You don’t have any f*ing access.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course not.

SHAWN RYAN: But after doing this and a lot of these interviews. Dude, it’s just so dark, man. It’s. I don’t know, it makes me wonder, are we here for a bigger purpose or is our purpose just to, you know, you said lead by sacrifice. I think lead by example. Just set the good example, you know, and just be a good person. And what is it? Attraction works a lot better than promotion. And that’s what my wife tells me. But.

The Cost of Truth-Telling

TUCKER CARLSON: But there’s a cost to that. That’s what I would say. The main thing that I have learned, having been around the same world that I’m around now, I’ve been around since I was a child. And it slowly dawned on me how rotten it was.

And so the main pitfall for me is being shocked by everything. I’m like, “I can’t believe how bad this is. I can’t believe how corrupt this institution is. These people are. I can’t believe how dark it is.” I must say that a hundred times. I can’t believe it.

And then occasionally I’ll hear myself and I’ll be like, you become the “I can’t believe it” guy. Really? Are you shocked again? Like, how many times? This is Lucy in the football. Like, how often are you going to be shocked by what you already know? By what you’ve stated out loud a thousand times?

So if I keep being… if you keep doing the same thing to me and I keep refusing to believe you’re going to do it, and if I find myself shocked every time when you do do it, who’s the asshole? I don’t know.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I think when you say it, you know what I mean, that you… like when you say, “I can’t believe,” I think that… I think the reason that that happens is there’s still a glimmer of hope in your mind that it actually is not as f*ing bad as it appears to be.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it is.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and then every time you go down the rabbit hole and more…

Confronting Historical Truths

TUCKER CARLSON: Dropped atom bombs on civilians and celebrated it. “Oh, it was so important we do that.” Really? To incinerate a bunch of kids? Like, if you say it’s important to beat the Imperial Japanese army or replace the government with a friendly government, of course. Of course.

But if you’re celebrating the incineration of children, then you’re evil. And all of us were, including me. So it’s just important to recognize that and just be like, “Wow, we made a huge mistake.” But people who refuse to acknowledge the mistake and continue to behave like that was a virtue are serving evil. That’s just what it is. Like, that’s what a project is.

And they’ll employ any lie to get you not to. “You hate the United States.” I hate the United States? I don’t think I do. No. Give my life for the country in a second. I feel like we’re actually in the process of doing that. Giving over things that we love because we care about this land and its people, because this is where we’re from.

You’re not going to get me off the track, but you’re also not going to get me to lie. So what happens if you decide I’m just going to tell the truth? You have to tell the whole truth about everything all the time? You don’t. You’re not required to do that. But I’m not going to lie. I’m just going to tell the truth.

We are definitely going to get killed if you keep doing that, because whether it’s physically or in some way, you are going to suffer. And that’s the whole story. That’s a story of Jesus. That’s the story of his disciples. Almost every one of… maybe every one of whom was murdered in the end. Why? Because they were hurting people or stealing from the poor? No, because they were telling the truth.

So we already know that. So I don’t know why I… every single time, you know, I get attacked or I see people unfairly attacked for doing the right thing and telling the truth. And every single time, I’m like, “I can’t… this is shocking.” It’s like, really? I guess I didn’t really believe anything I said because there’s nothing shocking about it. It’s the most predictable.

I remember going on Fox and writing this script and something I can’t remember could be anything, but I was like, “It’s kind of weird that all the people who lied are getting presidential Medals of Freedom and consulting contracts at BlackRock, and all the people who told the truth are headed to jail. We’re punishing the honest.” I remember being totally out. I mean, this was like 10 years ago I said this.

And yet every single time I’ve seen it in the subsequent decade, I’ve been every bit as shocked. And I just think, no, it’s time to acknowledge what’s totally real.

Charlie Kirk got murdered. No one was more shocked than I was. We had… he and I had just talked about the possibility of me getting murdered. “I’m not worried about that,” I said. And if he gets murdered… and I was so shocked and of course, upset. Upset because of him specifically dying, but shocked that someone could get killed who didn’t do anything wrong. He just told the truth.

And he was increasingly telling more of the truth, which is exactly why he was murdered, obviously. But I remember being shocked at him. I was like, “No, no.” And I talked to our staff about it, and we’ve had some real drama in our lives. They were totally shocked by it. And similar, you know, people trying to kill you. “What? What?”

And I remember finally concluding and saying to them, and they agreed. It’s like, what did you think this was? That’s what this is. That’s what our lives are. That’s what everyone’s life is. And we’ve gotten to the point where you can’t opt out. You can’t just say, “I’m going to my fishing camp with the spaniels.” I tried. There is no opting out.

And anyway, and people can reach different conclusions about what their role is. And I think everyone has a different role. Not everyone has the same role at all. Not everyone has the same destiny or mission. But we’re all going to have to face that choice because it’s not up to us. That’s the nature of life.

So I’m never… I don’t care what happens. I am resolving. I’m not going to be shocked by it. And the extent to which you’re shocked is the extent to which you didn’t really believe what you were saying before. And now finally, after all these years at 56, I really believe that what we’re seeing is what we always thought we would see. Does that make sense? It does.

SHAWN RYAN: It does make sense.

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t shirk.

SHAWN RYAN: You’ve been in it for a lot longer. You’ve been in it for a long time. You’ve been close.

The Capacity for Self-Deception

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, but I didn’t see it. I mean, and I’ve been so attacked. Like, “How could you have not known that this was… this person was doing this?” Or my own family even. Especially. “You’re lying.” It’s like, I don’t know what to tell you.

The human mind is amazing. The number of things… I mean, I’ve smoked a lot of cigarettes and thought to myself, “This is bad for you.” That’s, you know, and like… like we have the capacity for self-deception that really is without parallel. Like, it’s incredible what we can ignore.

And I’ve done my share for sure, but, and I’m not being defensive about it. I just think that’s how people are. It’s certainly how I am. I’m very good at lying to myself, but especially about people I like and about myself. And you know, we’re just good at deceiving ourselves.

But once I’d be… it’s only been in the last 10 years. I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe that all this stuff was… I can’t believe that all this stuff was going on.” And then I’m transitioning into the next phase, which is, it’s okay, we’re promised this, we’re getting it.

I’m so grateful really to be living in a time where I think there’s less self-deception. I think people are being forced to acknowledge. Not hysterical, but being forced to think about, you know, like, why am I here? And what is this? And what do I care about? What do I actually believe as distinct from what do I profess? They’re not the same.

And I think there’s like, amazing clarity and there’s, of course, a great sorting going on, which you and I have talked about. Off camera, for sure, maybe on camera. But the beauty of, you know, you lose so many friends. I’ve lost, you know, most of my friends, but the ones I’ve kept are real friends, and they’re just people I respect immensely.

And then I’ve made all these new relationships. Like, I pride myself on having no new friendships. Like, I have no new friendships. You know, I married my high school girlfriend. Like, I’m very much old school that way the most.

But it’s also true that in the past five or 10 years, I’ve met all these people I trust, care about, listen to, whose opinions I really listen to, and that affect me. I allow their opinions to affect me, which is the sign of a real friendship. You know, I let you critique me and I’ll hear it, and I have a bunch of people I feel that way about.

How great is that? So I lost a lot of, you know, acquaintanceships, and I gained some real friendships. How’s that? Not a massive win. It is a massive win.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s awesome.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you feel that? No. You will. I think you will. Your problem is you’re… this is so fast.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m extremely guarded. I’ve been fed over a lot and lied to a lot, and it’s really, really, really fing hard to gain my trust.

Radical Life Transitions

TUCKER CARLSON: I get it. I am. I get it, I get it. But the trajectory of your life has been so radical and abrupt. Like, go from, you know, the height of one world, you know, like military, you got to the height, obviously, the most famous part of the military. Succeed in that, and then you completely change careers. Like, it couldn’t be more different from what you did before.

And then out of nowhere, you become really successful in that. So that’s like… that’s a big, very abrupt change. And I… no matter how resilient you are, there are going to be some bumps on that road because that’s just… it’s just too different. Right?

Like, if I became like a super successful business guy or figure skater tomorrow, that would kind of be like, you know what I mean? All of a sudden I’m competing in the Olympics for figure skating and I win the gold medal. Like, that would be very hard for me.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, I would actually love to see that. We might have to… we might have to create an AI.

TUCKER CARLSON: Video view division, but… yeah, but that is kind of like your life. You can’t see it clearly because you’re living it, but from the outside, it’s obvious, like what you actually succeeded in this new business. What are the odds of that?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. Slim to none.

TUCKER CARLSON: In more… closer to none, I would say. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, what really bothers me is just… before I dug into this, it’s like, there’s some things that are fed up. We’re going to expose it, we’re going to make some changes. And then the deeper you get in and the more you look around, everything’s fed up.

It’s like… it’s like… it’s like what we were talking about on your show. Everything is a lie. And I mean, I mean, we manufacture fake f*ing heroes in the military that even I believed went through what they said went through. You know what I mean?

And I’m only to find out if, like, 20 years later, like, holy… this entire story is a lie. This is a lie. And that is running around in a… I mean, I can’t even imagine the prison that people live in living a lot. Like, everything that you’re known for is a lie. Everything that people come up to you for and praise you about is a lie.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

Living a Lie

SHAWN RYAN: Your awards are lies. Everything is a lie. You were…

TUCKER CARLSON: You are a…

SHAWN RYAN: And this is a lot. There’s a lot of these people walking around and I just know a handful of them. And then you look at the politics and you… I mean, look at… look at this… the Epstein files.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a hoax.

The Nature of Corruption and Control

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a hoax. It’s a national security threat. They’re fake. This is like, what the f, man? The American people are fing screaming at you, screaming that they want this s* released. Congress. What? I don’t even know the number. What is it like?

TUCKER CARLSON: I can’t remember.

SHAWN RYAN: How many people are in Congress?

TUCKER CARLSON: 535, Senate plus House. 435 in the House.

SHAWN RYAN: Everybody except one person.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep. I don’t know.

SHAWN RYAN: Who is the one person?

TUCKER CARLSON: Some guy. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: But back, you know, back to earlier, like, we want to make an impact. We want to tell the truth. We want to, you know, do these. We had a big influence in the last election. Was that a great thing? Didn’t matter at the time. At the time it felt great. Did it? Was that a good thing?

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, you can’t.

SHAWN RYAN: Now we got a guy who’s all America First. All this other fing bulls. And everybody, everybody is screaming, release these f*ing files. We want to know what is going on. We want to know what will we find out if they were all released. Anything we didn’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve honestly, I have no idea. Is it the end of the f*ing country? Like, is it really that bad?

Truth and Human Nature

TUCKER CARLSON: C.S. Lewis has this, well, I have tons of opinions on the subject. I don’t have, you know, concrete proof, of course. I think I know because C.S. Lewis has this, I think it was C.S. Lewis has this essay in which he says people debate, you know, was Jesus really God or whatever. If Jesus came back to earth tomorrow and held a press conference like a week later, people would be talking about something else.

It’s like we actually know what’s true. We know what’s true. And the way that dogs know what’s true. You can’t reason with the dog. The dog can smell it. And he sticks with his opinion because he has no other input. If you hate a dog, you can’t talk your way out of it. The dog knows you hate the dog because dogs have unerring instincts and so do we.

And so, of course, we know exactly what the Epstein story is about. It’s about the deep corruption of global leadership, of course. And you can say it’s about Israel, it’s about the CIA. Well, it’s about, is there a distinction really, not just between Israel and Mossad and CIA, but about the British government or really kind of any government or any, you know, Bill Gates or Leon Black. It’s all kind of varieties of the same thing.

It’s corrupt leadership that is acting on its own behalf against the interests of the people they lead. It’s the oldest story there is, the Pharisees. And if we’re honest, we already know that. So, I mean, of course, I’m completely for disclosure of everything, but I don’t lie to myself and say that disclosure would change human nature, because it won’t.

And people have an opportunity to exploit others, generally will. And the rest of us need to fight daily against that. Not because we’re going to win in the short term, but because it is our duty and to serve what’s good and true, period. Even if we’re killed doing it.

So, I don’t know. I mean, I won’t stop pushing for disclosure. I really believe that trust is built on honesty. It’s not built on lies, ever.

SHAWN RYAN: You say, you know, does it change? I can’t remember your exact verbiage, but, you know, we were talking about, you know, when this gets exposed, does it change anything? No. This is the nature of man. This is what happens.

TUCKER CARLSON: But we already know the answer.

SHAWN RYAN: Men need to be reset. And men have not been f*ing reset, not in this country for a long time.

The Coming Reset

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that long time, that’s coming whether we want it or not. We don’t want it, but it’s coming. And all this s* about women don’t need men. You’ve obviously seen chaos in a society, right? Like actual chaos. People shoot into buildings and no one arrests them. You spent your life around that stuff.

Those societies don’t ask questions like, what are men for? You know? Right. And we’re, of course, moving closer to that. And all of this, all of our silliest manifestations, you know, the trans craziness or feminism or other just revolts against nature, are only possible because we live in this nerf world of affluence.

But as that starts to change, and it is changing, then we, the upside of that, we’re going to get poorer and society will become more dangerous, but we’ll also be a little more rooted in reality. In the same way that rich people are insufferable. Not all, but a lot of rich people are insufferable because they’re detached from reality, from nature, from God, from like the things that are real.

And they convince themselves because they can fly from point to point without going through TSA, that they have infinite power and they don’t. And that’s why they’re so hard to have dinner with. But a normal society doesn’t have these problems, has all kinds of other problems, but doesn’t have the American problems of like, you know, I’ll just, you know, I’m a 40-year-old unmarried Citibank executive. I’ll just get a surrogate. It’s like, okay for the suicide rate.

There’s not a lot of suicide in, you know, impoverished countries because like, the mission is really clear. Eat. You know, there’s not a lot of crisis of meaning in Burundi.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, it’s a fight for the day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it’s a fight for the day. Well, it’s a trade off. I mean, I would much rather live in a DoorDash society because I like comfort and ease and everything. But it is a trade off. And you trade comfort for meaning. That’s just kind of what we’ve done and we shouldn’t be, again, we shouldn’t be surprised by it.

The Epstein Files and Government Secrets

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think happens, honestly, if this one. Do you think this is actually going to come out or has it all been shredded when you know?

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know, of course. I mean, we don’t have the JFK files. And so then you ask like, why don’t we? Who is being protected here? There are no living stakeholders in that story. There’s no living participant in that murder conspiracy. It was a conspiracy. We know that.

So who were the participants in that conspiracy? Well, no one’s still alive. So who could we possibly be protecting by not releasing all those files? And that’s a pretty short list of suspects. So I think we kind of know what that is, at least in part. I don’t know the details. I know some, but that’s, I think it’s pretty obvious.

Same with Epstein. It’s pretty clear who some of the players were. They were governments. The US government involved, British government involved, Israeli government involved at various levels. The guy lived a fairly long life. He died in his mid-60s. He was pretty active in government work, arms trading, for example, from a young age, from his late 20s, I think, when he left Bear Stearns, he got into that business with Robert Maxwell.

You don’t trade arms by yourself. You do it on behalf of governments and with the assistance of governments. Obviously you’ve been around this, you know, so from that age, from say 30 to what, 65ish when he died. So 35 years. He’s intersecting with governments. And it’s not just the Israelis. I mean the Israelis were definitely involved. Ehud Barak is living at his house. Okay. And we have a lot of his emails that prove that.

But, and I’m not defending the Israeli government, which is hard to defend, but I’m just trying to tell the truth, which is it’s not just the Israelis, okay? It’s us, it’s the British, the French, it’s the usual players, the intel services that matter in the west and probably others. So that’s who’s being protected, of course, and then all kinds of other pawns.

And so I think one of the main takeaways from that story, about which I know a lot but not everything, is that the leaders that we believe are leaders and people are starting to get this. Like our elected officials, oh, they have so much power. Senator so and so, President, what’s his name? You know, like these are the people running our society are not the people running our society.

Of course they themselves are subject to enormous pressures from, you know, other people and coalitions of people and forces and interests and like that’s what they’re. And the closer you get to them, the more time you spend with the people who are in charge, the more you realize they’re not really in charge or they’re only semi in charge.

How Compromise Happens

SHAWN RYAN: How does it happen? I am very, I mean, you know, how does it happen? We talked about this a little bit at breakfast. I don’t think everything is transactional as it may seem. Oh no, I think that this is from my own experience and I don’t believe I’ve fallen into any yet, but I think I have come close.

I think they set traps. And that doesn’t mean there’s a hooker in the hotel room that you walk into.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, you know what I mean.

SHAWN RYAN: For somebody that f*ing weak, you’d have to, you know, that would be stupid by the way.

TUCKER CARLSON: But, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people out there that are that f*ing stupid.

SHAWN RYAN: The porn sites. Look up tranny porn on you. Porn. Well, that’s not controlled by a foreign intel service.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, it is, it is. That actually is true. So yeah, I mean there are a million ways that your weaknesses expose you to influence for sure.

SHAWN RYAN: I think they can be very giving and it appears that you’re being led into a group.

TUCKER CARLSON: And then, oh, I’m watching that right now with someone. Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: And then you’re done, of course, but not even realizing it until you’re in.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yes.

SHAWN RYAN: And I think I’ve come close and I always like, if I even get an inkling of that happening, I’m like, nope, done, not going, not getting on the deal.

TUCKER CARLSON: True to that.

SHAWN RYAN: Going there, not going there, not doing it. Like I’m my own person and I don’t. What are you going to give me?

TUCKER CARLSON: Money?

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve got that.

The Subtle Nature of Manipulation

TUCKER CARLSON: How about when you’re not all that’s cracked up to be? You don’t even know what’s happening. I mean, how many plots have I been involved in? Unwittingly, I don’t even know the answer, but a lot, a lot. I can think of a bunch of them where you have someone like, who you work for, being like, “You know, we should really take a look at this. This guy’s bad. Let’s, you know, okay.”

You know, when I was young, living in Washington, I was used all the time and had no idea. I literally had no, it never even occurred to me. And a lot of my resentment as a middle-aged man comes from that. And I think a lot about it. And I’m not going to blame the people who did it because that’s who they are. But I definitely participated in a lot of stuff without my knowledge. That was much more strategic than I ever guessed.

You’re sitting in a meeting, “You know, we should really do this.” “Okay, I’ll do it.” And you wind up doing it. And then ultimately became inconsistent with my instincts and my conscience. And I was like, “This is bad.” I’m not quite sure how, but then you look back and you’re like, “Oh my gosh.”

And now, of course, my whole life is, you know, I don’t understand anything really. But you see glimpses of a lot of different things every single day. “Well, you should go here and talk to so and so.” And like, what is this exactly? And if you’re busy, you don’t ask yourself enough, what is this? I mean, I think that happens to me every single day because my text is public. So everyone has my text. Everybody has my text.

I’ve had the same number for 30 years. I’m not changing it. I just refuse. I’m not afraid of people and I’m not going to change my number. And so I get hundreds and hundreds of texts every day. Some people I know, most people I do know, and, you know, some of them are totally straightforward and people I trust, and a lot of them aren’t.

And sometimes I don’t care what plot you’re hatching. I want to do this thing because I have my own agenda, which is to shed light on something that isn’t well known enough, that this is my perspective and I’m going to do it. I don’t care whether it fits into your plans or not. I’m doing it. I’ve done a lot of interviews, like a lot of interviews, and traveled to a lot of countries with that in mind.

But, yeah, there are tons of people trying to suborn you and make you part of their agenda. And mostly it’s not blackmail. I’ve never been blackmailed in my life. No one’s ever suggested that. I’m not, I’m, you know, I’m not banging the hooker in my room. Sorry. I don’t drink. I mean, it’s like kind of hard to blackmail me. I like to think it’s impossible. Maybe they could find a way, but that’s not how it happens for most people.

The Supernatural Element of Influence

And then there’s another element which I’m thinking a lot about, which I don’t really understand, but I know is real, where people fall under a kind of spell and people, you know to be rational. Mike Huckabee is one of them. We’re talking this at breakfast because I’m obsessed with it, because I know Mike Huckabee so well. I was at the newspaper in Arkansas over 30 years ago, and I knew him then. I went up at Fox News with him decades later. I worked with him. I knew him then. I always liked Mark Huckabee. I like him now.

Mike Huckabee is not a bad person. He’s very money oriented, which is a weakness for anybody, of course. So there’s that. But that’s not unusual. He’s not a bad person at all. Mike Huckabee’s a nice man. But Mike Huckabee has participated in things that are just objectively evil, in my opinion. And how did that happen? Because Mike Huckabee woke up and decided he wanted to do something evil? No, I know Mike Huckabee. He doesn’t feel that way at all. He’s a decent man.

I watch Huckabee, and because I do know him, I marvel at it. He has fallen under some sort of spell. I do think it’s supernatural. I know a number of people like that. I’m calling him out by name because he’s been involved in something recently that’s like so shocking to me that I can’t even believe he participated in something.

SHAWN RYAN: Like that, but said we wouldn’t be shocked anymore.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly, exactly. We wouldn’t be shocked anymore. So everything that I have learned comes from like sitting in my sauna trying to figure out obvious things. Complex things are very easy to understand. Simple things right in front of your face are the great mysteries.

And when you know people and you have a fairly good sense of their character and their, you know what, you know what their, the kind of things they’d be willing to do, what their goals are. I think Mike Huckabee’s goal is to spread the gospel of Jesus. And I think that about him. I do, I think a lot of Mike Huckabee.

How could a man like that wind up doing the things that he’s been doing? Not creepy personal things, nothing, nothing like that. But like promoting things that are like, obviously evil, like the murder of kids, like, how could you do that? Well, he couldn’t do that. He would never do that. He’s doing it because he is under some kind of spell. He has no idea he’s doing it.

Personal Reflections on Being Used

And I just explained a time in my life where I was under a kind of spell and never even occurred to me. I worked for Bill Kristol at the time that Bill Kristol, my editor, my boss, who gave me this job, was hilarious in meetings that he could really be working tirelessly on an agenda that was like totally anti-Christian. How could that ever be? That what Bill Kristol really hates is Christianity? That never occurred to me. And he wanted to stamp out nationalism and, you know, public displays of loyalty to Jesus. Like he hated that. I did not get that at all. It never occurred, never entered my brain one time.

So I was under a spell myself. So I’m not even judging. I’m just saying people fall into this way of thinking that is so clear to me, influenced by supernatural forces where they are blinded. And the entire Bible from beginning to end is the story of people who can’t see things right in front of them. They just can’t. It’s happening right there. So all this evidence, it’s overwhelming. They can touch it, smell it, feel it, but they cannot acknowledge its reality.

And so anyway, that’s part of it. People are engaged in these projects that are just like totally anti-human and they think they’re on the right side. They really believe it. So I would just say like the analysis of that I read on the Internet. Try to not read the Internet, but you know, you read it and you’re like, people of good faith are like, “Wow, that person’s clearly getting a payoff.” Or you know, “They’ve got videotape of him banging a dog or whatever.” They come up with these ideas, you know what I mean? “They’re compromised.”

And I think because I know so many of the people they’re talking about, I’m like, yeah. And some, in some Lindsey Graham, like, okay, I believe that. Like, what is that? But there are a million other people who I’m like, I don’t think there’s videotape of them doing anything wrong. I don’t think they’re taking money for this. I think they really believe they’re doing the right thing. And that’s more upsetting to me because it’s more subtle and it’s more profound than just blackmail. Does that make sense?

SHAWN RYAN: It does make sense.

TUCKER CARLSON: Looking back on your life, I mean, it’s hard for any of us to look back on our lives without feeling very complicated feelings. But do you detect any moments where like you were involved in something and you, you never even paused to ask, like, what is this? Why am I participating in this? Never even dawned on you? I mean, I just, I think.

SHAWN RYAN: You just have to. I mean, when I started doing this, I just, there’s all kinds of, I’ve got all kinds of incriminating out.

TUCKER CARLSON: There.

SHAWN RYAN: Tons of it, you know, but I did and, and I’m aware of it and I know it was up that what I did.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, I’m not.

TUCKER CARLSON: But did you know it at the time?

The Power of Reconciliation

SHAWN RYAN: Reconciliation? Yeah, I knew it was up at the time. Not all of it, but yeah, the majority of it. Like, I mean, it didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t fall into any honey pots. I didn’t need a honey.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the point. It’s great to do it again. It’s too obvious. They’re never going to get you with the Russian hooker because everyone’s on guard against the Russian hooker.

SHAWN RYAN: They didn’t need to do anything to get me to fall into anything because I was already doing it all. And there’s this thing, you know, called reconciliation, confession, whatever you want to call it, you know, you come clean and you fing own it. You know. Jocko calls it extreme ownership. Right. But I mean, it’s just, it’s taking ownership of your f ups and like, you cannot be afraid of that.

And I tend to think that people are very forgiving. And so, I don’t know, you know, when we talk about shit like the Epstein and all of this stuff, right? Like, when we talk about all of these things and all of the blackmail and stuff, it’s like, just come clean, man. Just.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve made this argument. Just get ahead of it. Everyone wants to believe in our institutions. I certainly feel that way. As disappointed and angry as I am about the failure of every institution, I really want to believe in the institutions, you know, I really, really do. I mean that.

And all it takes to restore a relationship with a person or an institution is honesty and repentance. That’s it. It’s like, not hard. People are so forgiving. I totally agree with that. All of us want to forgive. There’s nothing better than the prodigal son. Like, he’s gone. F* that guy. He took all the money and left. He’s, you know, in whorehouses, in Babylon. And then, but now he’s here. It’s all forgiven. We’re so excited for you. We’re throwing a huge party for you.

All of us feel that way. And so I don’t think it’s hard or it’s hard, but it’s not complicated. And it’s so worth it to say I was completely wrong. I’ll be wrong again. I’m going to try my best. Maybe sometimes I won’t try my best, but just be honest. I think that’s liberation. That’s the only liberation, actually.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s freeing.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, yeah. What, I mean, what other liberation is there?

Does Voting Matter Anymore?

SHAWN RYAN: I just, does voting matter anymore?

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know this.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m just, I don’t know whether voting matters so much. Like, looking back. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. I mean, we didn’t really have much of an option here, but, I mean, at least, so we thought. Nothing I voted for happened.

TUCKER CARLSON: What about you?

SHAWN RYAN: Are you happy with anything? Oh, I’m happy with so much it’s going on. It’s going.

The Power of Truth and the Spoken Word

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course not. No. It’s just a nightmare of depravity and corruption in general, in the world. But you expect. I am so struck by, you know, I’m not a TV watcher, but there’s the only really famous Seinfeld episode is Opposite Day. You’re probably in the jungle or doing something bad somewhere. You missed this.

But there’s this famous episode of the sitcom Seinfeld where one of the characters decides to do everything the opposite that day and gets results he didn’t expect. It works. And I just feel like that is the lesson of everything. That’s the lesson of life. That’s the Beatitudes. The first will be last. The meek shall inherit the earth. What’s that? It’s the opposite of what you think.

Jesus says, “I’m going to build my church on this rock.” Peter, who’s just betrayed him three times to a girl. Rock, that’s like Jello. It’s the opposite. If you’re going to build a church, you build it on the strongest man. He builds it on the weakest man. And everything in our life points to the same truth. It’s the opposite of what you expect every freaking time.

And so again, back to the same theme. No, I’m not shocked, but it really makes me happy to know the only thing that matters is the words you speak and that they’re true. That’s the only thing that changes history. Ever think about the number of wars, some of which you’ve participated in directly over the past 25 years? How many have made things better or changed anything? Do the math. Zero.

How many wars actually do it to the biggest war in human history, 1914-1918, set the stage for the even bigger war in history. So it’s like, but what does make things better? Telling the truth. In the end, when everything is gone, when your civilization has been leveled and archaeologists trying to piece together what it was all about, the only things that remain are the words that you spoke, and they’re the things that change people.

And this is an ancient concept. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Ancient cultures understood that an idea articulated, emerges from the mouth of the speaker and becomes a separate living thing and lives there forever.

And anyone who’s argued with his wife knows that that’s true. The second you say something harsh, especially if it’s true, it can’t be taken back and it hangs there in the kitchen over you, overshadowing everything.

Or this last argument I’ll make, the way that I understand the world is in reverse, almost like an X-ray. So I look at the people who I don’t respect, who I believe have totalitarian impulses, and I try to assess what’s true by what their priorities are. So your enemies are the people who want to control you and crush you and destroy your family and your nation, obviously.

What do they want above all? They want to control what you say. They want to control what you say. What’s the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights? The freedom of speech. What you say matters more than anything. Your words articulated out loud are living things and they’re more powerful than you are, and they live beyond you.

Your grave will go unvisited. Your words will continue to reverberate through the universe. I really believe that. I know that that’s true. And that’s the whole story of history. There are no living ancient Hebrews. We know a lot about what they thought because they wrote it down. Their words have lived for 3,000 years.

So what we say is the most important thing about us. And if we can force ourselves to tell the truth, we will change things. And by things, I mean people. Their attitudes, their beliefs, their hearts. And that’s all we can do. That’s all we can do.

And I would say if we make a little extra money on the side, we should build a fishing camp in the woods. Because I think that’s really important. But it’s not as important as, I mean, I do think that I have all kinds of sentimental attachments. I don’t really care about things that much, but I care about nature. So that is important, but it’s not important in an ultimate sense. My fishing camp will be a strip mall someday, or it’ll be a lunar landscape someday. But your words will outlive you.

SHAWN RYAN: I love that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I just think that’s true. And no one has convinced me of that. I’ve been convinced of that by watching. And really I’ve been convinced of it by watching what the opponents of people and of civilization really care about. And the number one thing they care about is getting you to shut up.

As long as you’ll shut up, you can have whatever you want. And that really is the trade off that our leaders make. It’s not by doing things, it’s by not saying certain things. And the ones who refuse to be told what to say are destroyed or face the threat of destruction.

And you know exactly who they are now. What have they done exactly? Does anyone care what the two or three truth tellers in our political system have done? What they voted for? No one even knows. No one cares. All they care about is what they say out loud. And the reason they care is because that’s the most important thing.

They know what’s important. We don’t. We’re totally sidetracked by baubles and fast moving flashy objects. But they know what’s important. The spoken word is the most important. Anyway, so that makes me feel good. That makes me feel really, really good. Because I know what my mission is.

And I feel like if you know what your mission is and you know what the stakes are and you’re willing to accept them, and I should just say I’m in such an unusual position because all my kids are grown and they’re all thriving, and I don’t have any investors or debt. No one can control me. I’m kind of happy with less. I’m not a money person. I’ve never been a money person. I’m not bragging, but I never have been. Ask anyone who knows me.

And so the cost to me is so much lower than to a man with four kids in private school. You’re 35, and your wife’s barely making it. You are subject to, and I have been earlier in my life, subject to all kinds of control mechanisms you don’t even perceive. But you’re so afraid of losing what you have, and you’re really afraid of it because you have children at home and having small children at home who are totally dependent on you, who you love more than your own life, that is a really, really scary time for every man.

And I know that you’re living it now. And I’ve lived it. My oldest is 31 years old next week. I’ve lived it for 31 years. But you get to a point where it’s not such an imminent threat because your children have their own lives. And if you’re blessed as I’ve been, they’re doing great. You love them and you want to see your grandchildren. There’s so many things you want, but you don’t need any of it, and your responsibility is gone.

I’m not responsible for educating someone and telling him the facts of life at dinner. You know what I mean? That’s all done. So I’m just in this incredibly privileged position where the stakes are just a lot lower for me. So I can see with greater clarity what am I doing for the back nine.

And I just have such a simple, simple understanding of that. Just tell the truth. Don’t be moved from the truth. You don’t have to tell the whole truth. You don’t have to say everything. I know a lot of sht, or I think I know a lot of sht, because that’s my job. And a lot of it, I’m not sure it’s true. I don’t know. I don’t say everything. You don’t have to.

You don’t have to tell people you’re fat. You don’t have that. Okay. It’s probably true. You don’t have to say that. You’re under no obligation to say that. Your only obligation, don’t ever lie. Don’t allow people to make you lie. Resolve. I’ll die first. Just telling you, die for not going to do that. And I think that’s your duty.

Finding Your Impact

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. Throughout this journey and kids, especially kids, man, it’s made me really try to start honing in on things that I can actually make an impact in.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and we were talking about, there are things that you can make an impact in. And we have little nuggets here and there. But, you know, I don’t think politics is for me. And I don’t think it’s…

TUCKER CARLSON: Not just me either. It’s not for me. I don’t know what I mean. I don’t even understand it. And I mean, you were off fighting wars. I was covering the Congress and the White House and a million elections all around the. I’ve been to every state, you know, every. I know all the politicians personally. I still don’t even understand the process, and I’m not interested in it. I really am not.

Some consultant called me yesterday to get me to interview someone and he’s like, “Oh, this is congressional district 13. This is…” I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I just have so little interest in it. You know, it’s not interesting. And people who are really, really interested in it are damaged, I think, in general. But, you know, overall, not a group I want to have dinner with.

SHAWN RYAN: Right now. What are you passionate about now? I mean I’m looking for things that I can make an impact in.

TUCKER CARLSON: What issues? I mean I’m super passionate about my family. My family is so big that it’s literally, I could spend all day, every day involved in family stuff. There’s just so many people and you know, I’m the oldest male and so it’s just, you know, really involved, really very close, super close, cohesive family. Everyone’s best friend. It’s just so interesting.

And you can just get involved and try to help in marginal ways or whatever. Just talk to people. So I’m very interested in that. I’m interested. I have more hobbies than any person’s ever had. Way too many. My son’s like, “You should take a bow hunting?” Yeah, I don’t think so. I need more obsessions. I don’t think so. Too many rabbit holes already in my life. But what am I interested in? My job. And I mean, what…

SHAWN RYAN: When you’re talking about telling truth, when you’re talking about in the way I take that as exposing, you know, shining the light in the darkness.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m interested in the elimination of white people.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you mean by that?

The Targeting of White Populations

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, white people have been targeted for disappearance and no one wants to say that because they’ve been bullied into not noticing or talking about it. Because you’re like a white supremacist. Well, I’m not a white supremacist. I don’t think whites are inherently superior to any other group. I don’t judge how I feel about someone by his race. I never have and I’m never going to. It’s against my religion and it’s against my instinct. I believe in what people are like, but I travel a lot around the world and I’m not an expert on the world, but I know more about it than people who don’t travel a lot. And I’m leaving this week again.

And one thing that I have noticed, because it’s impossible not to notice, is that majority white countries are becoming non-majority white. And that’s a result of policies that are deliberate, that are not popular with the populations of those countries, and that people are discouraged from noticing in it. In some places they’re arrested, like in Great Britain, where I’m going on Friday. So what is that? And it’s not happening in one or two, but in every single one.

And what’s so interesting is because no one’s been allowed to talk about it, the only people who talk about it are crazy race theorists or prison inmates who were caught up in being white or something. By the way, you didn’t choose to be white, okay? It’s nothing you did. You didn’t choose to have your eye color, your height, none of these things you can brag about because you didn’t do them. They’re an accident of your birth. So I’ve never agreed with any of that crap.

But because normal people have been bullied into not noticing, the only people ever say anything about it are people who are obsessed with it. But it is an incredible thing that every white country on the planet except Russia, the one everyone hates, is on the road in very short order to become completely different from what it was 50 years ago in its population. Demographically different. Is that an accident? Well, of course it’s not an accident.

A Multi-Pronged Strategy

It’s the result of a bunch of different things. It’s a multi-pronged strategy, clearly to make the populations of those countries hate themselves for how they were born and accept these changes. It’s been systematic. What is that? I’m not, as I said, I’m not a white supremacist. By the way, I would just admit it at this point. Why do I care? I’m a white supremacist. Okay. I’m actually not. I disagree with that. Don’t think that you should be obsessed with people’s appearance or the accident of their birth or their genetics. I just am opposed to all of that.

Again, for the eighth time, Paul, the chief prosecutor, murderer of Christians, became the most important Christian once he met Jesus. So if you need more examples, I don’t know what they could be. That people can totally change has nothing to do with how you’re born. It’s what you become. And that’s my deepest belief.

So if I sound defensive, it’s because we have all been trained to ignore this amazing thing that’s never happened before in history where one group of people is being destroyed and of course have internalized that and are now enthusiastically participating in their own destruction and the death of an entire group of people.

Canada’s MAID Program

And it really is like if you go to Great Britain, it’s the whites who can’t wait to kill themselves. It’s in Canada, same thing. They have the MAID program which is state-sponsored killing of its own citizens. Physician-assisted suicide. No, it’s the state encouraging people to kill themselves. And it’s one of the leading causes of death in Canada. Is this MAID program.

SHAWN RYAN: These machines that these…

TUCKER CARLSON: It could be machines. It’s, you know, the state is licensed to kill its citizens. The citizen just goes in and said, “I want to be killed.” And they kill you. And basically, for any reason: mental health problems, financial problems. A lot of poor people are just like, “I feel like I’m a burden to the country. I want to go die.” And the state will kill you. It’s one of the leading causes of death in Canada. So the numbers came out yesterday.

Well, who’s doing this? So Canada is about 65% white, something like that. It’s completely changed. Heavily, heavily South Asian and Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and lots of other peoples. You know, it’s massive immigration. Massive, massive immigration to Canada. But who’s being killed by the state in Canada? It’s like 97% legacy whites, literally. And what the hell is that?

And of course, these are people who have been told and now believe that they’re a burden to society. It’s selfish to have children. They’ve been totally brainwashed into mass suicide. And of course, none of this is affecting my family. We have the opposite views. We’re not proud to be white. We’re not white because we chose to be white. We just happen to be born white. So there’s nothing to be proud of. It’s just a fact.

A Global Pattern

On the other hand, targeting people on the basis of their race for destruction is the reason we say we hate the Nazis. And yet that’s absolutely happening globally in every white country: Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, United States and Canada. That’s an accident? It’s not an accident at all. And no one will say anything about it.

And why wouldn’t you say something? If that were happening in India, like, “We got too many Indians here. A billion Indians. That’s too many Indians. We need more Africans here. So anyone Indian, here’s that. We can kill you because you’re a burden. Just not have kids or take some SSRIs and just benzos and zone out until you die or whatever. But you’re bad.” I would be like, “That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever seen. Why do we hate Indians? I kind of like Indians, or whatever.” You would just be like, “Why would we want to do that to them? What did they do wrong?” You know what I mean? I would just think that.

And that’s happening to whites globally at such a speed, and no one is saying anything about it. That I’ve decided, because I just want to tell the truth about what I noticed, that I’m going to say something about it. I think it’s totally wrong. I think it’s totally evil. Again, it’s exactly what we said we hated about the Nazis, and we’re participating in it. And I’m going to keep saying that no matter what they say. And they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re a white supremacist.” I’m not. I have a lot of theories about what this is and why.

SHAWN RYAN: What is it? Why would they do it? Who is “they”?

The Institutionalization of Anti-White Racism

TUCKER CARLSON: Every global United Nations, the United States government, State Department, all of our politicians, the motive, Joe Biden standing up and being like, “the main problem in America is white racism from white men.” Said that on tape many times. And “I can’t wait till this is a non-white majority country.” What? Why would you? Okay, you could argue about whether it’s better or worse as non-white, okay, you could argue the effects of it. But why would you want that? Why would you look around the country and say there are too many white people?

And that’s the official position of every institution in the United States. All of our schools, we give preference to non-whites, non-white males. Every single school, every single big business, every single federal contract. Institutionally, we are opposed to whites and white men. And we’re so marinating in it that no one stops and says, “wait, what the hell is that?”

Again, that’s why we hated the Nazis, because they did s* like that. That’s why we say segregation was wrong, which it was. That’s why we hate Bull Connor. That’s why we venerate Martin Luther King, because that’s wrong. That way of thinking is wrong. And by the way, it doesn’t matter what group is being targeted. It is wrong in an absolute sense. It’s a universal principle. It’s always wrong, whether you’re Pakistani or Malaysian or Indian or from Myanmar or from Minnesota.

It’s always wrong to hurt people or help others, to elevate some and suppress others on the basis of their race. I thought that was the basis of our common culture. And they told me it was. They put a monument on the Mall to that which I totally believe in. “Judge a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin.” I grew up with that. I believe it. I believe it now. And we’re doing exactly the opposite.

And it’s so totally pervasive, all pervasive, and nothing has been done to reverse it at all. We’re mad about anti-Semitism at Harvard, which I am. I’m against anti-Semitism completely for the same reasons. But no one’s lifted a finger to address the actual problem, which is normal middle class white kids have no shot of going to Harvard. They’re hated. The curriculum hates them. Officially. “Here’s a book saying whiteness is evil. Let’s assign that.” It’s like if there was a book that says Jewishness is evil, we’d be like, no. Or blackness is evil. No.

Post-World War II Consensus Against White Christian Nations

So this has gone on for really since the Second World War. And I think, so many things that are bad, and if you say that, they’re like, “oh, you’re for Hitler.” No, I’m very anti-Hitler. Hitler was anti-Christian and a murderer, destroyed his own people and lots of other peoples, including Jews. And I’m totally opposed to all of that.

But it’s just a fact that since the Second World War, these trends which are now flowering and we can see that it’s the end of something, they began then, they began in 1945. What is that? And I have a lot of thoughts about that. But one is that our leaders globally, in the west, took away from World War II one big lesson, and that’s that any white majority Christian country is a threat to world peace, to the order.

You can’t have a majority white Christian country because Germany under the Nazis was majority white Christian. Now, of course, the Nazis were not a Christian government. They were an anti-Christian government that killed a lot of priests. But whatever. That has somehow become a kind of unspoken consensus among many of our leaders. In fact, I would say almost all of our leaders, they’re embarrassed of tons of white people in the same place. “Look at that picture. That doesn’t look like America.”

And none of us have ever said anything like, “whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re attacking people on the basis of their race. Isn’t that what you say? You hate that we’re all against, but you’re doing it. Why don’t you stop that immediately?” No one has ever had the balls to say that. And so it’s kind of proceeded apace and it’s become not just a consensus, but the reason for everything. And the result of that is the total destruction of the white world.

Appreciating Cultural Diversity Without Destroying Your Own

And there was a white world, there was a Chinese world, an Indian world and an Arab world. There are lots of different worlds or different peoples in the country and I know them all. And I like them all actually because I’ve been to all their countries. I’ve never been to a country I didn’t like. I’ve never marinated in a culture I didn’t think was interesting and kind of cool, even though it’s not mine.

I am not, I’m the opposite of a small-minded person. I’m really for diversity. Actually, I’ve really enjoyed it a lot. If I went, I always spend a lot of time in the Middle East and I enjoy it because it’s Middle Eastern, it’s not American. So you can love different cultures. And I sincerely ask anyone who travels with me, I sincerely do, without wanting to destroy the one you grew up in.

And if other people are trying to destroy it on the basis of race, which they are, it’s totally within bounds to be like, “what are you doing and why?” And that’s what immigration is. Of course, it’s not an effort to make our economy better. And you see these people say, well, which is true, this is true. But you’ll hear people say of mass migration, “well, it’s an effort for the ownership class to access cheaper labor by globalizing everything.” And that, of course, as a matter of economics, is absolutely true. But it’s not the whole story.

The Real Motive Behind Mass Immigration

When you start importing people from countries that are badly educated and socially dysfunctional and totally incompatible culturally with yours, are you really doing that so you can reap their cheap labor? Are we importing Somalis so we can set them to work in factories for half the rate that Native Americans? No, we’re not. They’re not working in factories, not working at all. In a lot of cases, they’re on state and federal aid.

I’m not attacking them, I’m just saying I’m attacking the motives of the people who imported them against the will of the American population. There was never a groundswell, “let’s bring in 50 million people illegally and put them on welfare.” No one ever asked for that. No one ever wanted that. So why did they do it? Well, they did it not to make the country richer. They didn’t. They did it to make it non-majority white.

So that is an act by definition of racial hostility, of racism. And they’ve never been called out on it because somehow they, the first thing they did was take the moral high ground and occupy it and start yelling at everybody about how they’re bad. “You’re racist. Shut up, racist. Shut up, Nazi.” And they so thoroughly intimidated the population into not saying anything that they just destroyed it.

Self-Hatred Among the White Elite

And then a lot of the whites who are really always the ones that I blame since I am white, and you just sort of instinctively blame people who look like you, just a fact, they’re always telling you you hate the other. That’s the opposite of what I’ve noticed about people. I feel like people are much more open-minded about the other. I’ve been in every country in the world and people do something outrageous and I’ll be like, “oh, that’s kind of interesting.” I’m much less judgmental.

But when someone who looks like me, who grew up in the same country I did, does something wrong, I have no grace for that person, I judge them. And it was the whites who did this. Sorry, it’s just a fact. And they’re the ones who get hysterical when you point it out.

When I go to the UK, which is a lot, because I have family there, as I said, I’m going in two days, I never have been in an argument with any Pakistani or Bangladeshi or Indian, ever. Or Arab in London, ever. They’re always like, “yeah, okay, you’ve got views.” And they actually agree with a lot of my views. Honestly, just I just have noticed this. Okay.

It’s always the rich whites who get way up in your face about it. In fact, I had a speech at a very, very famous school, one of the most famous schools in England. I had a speech on Sunday night. Someone at the school asked me to do it. Of course I will do it for free. I’m just, I was there and so I would do it. And I just got a text saying, “no, you’ve been canceled because they don’t want you on campus because you’re too dangerous.” This is a very famous white school. They’re the ones who were mad. They’re the ones who are touchy about it.

And the reason they’re mad and they’re touchy is because, and this is such a familiar phenomenon, they’ve turned the hate against them inward, on themselves. And people who hate themselves are the least trustworthy and most dangerous people in the world. If someone hates himself, he’ll definitely hate you. There’s just no doubt. There’s no doubt. I’ve watched people carefully for many years, and that is the group that I fear. The people who’ve internalized the hate and turned it inward.

And we have whole countries like that and whole leadership classes, like the very familiar image of the angry, menopausal liberal politician screaming at people about their sexism and racism. What are we really looking at? We’re looking at someone who hates herself, who’s had no leadership in her life. No security, no love, no real relationships. She’s miserable. And she’s turning that misery outward and projecting it on the population. And that’s a lot of our leadership classes like that. Sorry for such a long answer, but I really feel it.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. I mean, where does it derive from?

The Spiritual Dimension

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s a really interesting question. And the short answer is, I don’t know. I mean, as I think I’ve made clear in our conversation, I’m much more likely now in the past couple of years to think about the spiritual dimension.

SHAWN RYAN: Who wins?

TUCKER CARLSON: Humanity.

SHAWN RYAN: What’s the motive?

The Shift from Political Debate to Spiritual Struggle

TUCKER CARLSON: Nobody wins. That’s kind of what I’ve arrived at. And that actually is what made me think more deeply about Christianity and about the spiritual realm and read the Bible. And it’s really changed my life, was not because I noticed how decent Christians were to each other. I wish I could say that was true.

But what changed my life was watching how American politics had changed from an argument about how best to serve the population. You had two sides having this debate. Well, I think we should raise taxes. No, I think we should lower them. But the goal was at least purportedly the same on both sides. Like, how do we do the best job we can for the people we represent, that we lead for our people?

And that was always the conversation. You had these kind of amazing, interesting arguments. And I literally did it for a living. I was on a show called Crossfire. It was right and left, and we would debate what was best for the country. And the debates were dumb and whatever was cable news. So of course, it was at a pretty low level. But I never one time questioned. The goal was like, what’s good for America?

And then about 10 years ago, the nature of the debate changed. All of a sudden I had these issues that, like, immigration was one, the trans thing, the gay thing was another. I was like, how in the world could that possibly be good for anybody? It’s not good for the people you say you’re for. It’s not good for everyone else. Like, I see only destruction.

The Defund the Police Movement

Abolish the police or defund the police. That’s one of the things that convinced me. It’s like, okay, if you believe that George Floyd was beaten to death by a racist cop—he OD’d on fentanyl—but even if you believed he was beaten to death by a racist cop, and the biggest problem that black people have in America is racist cops. Racist white cops making $47,000 a year, they’re the problem. It’s not the billionaires that are the problem. It’s the union cop is the problem. Okay, okay. All right. Maybe you believe that.

Let’s say you really believe that. And let’s say you really, your life’s goal was to help black people, which I’m not against. It’s a fine goal. Help black people. How long would it take you, if you really wanted to help black people, to get to the solution, “Defund the police”? You would never arrive at that solution, because obviously, defunding the police is not going to help black people or white people or Asian people or any people. It’s not going to help people.

Make the police better, maybe, but get rid of the police? Like, how does that work? How is that possibly going to wind up improving anybody’s life? And of course, the answer was, it can’t. And it didn’t, but it was never going to.

So I watched that, and of course I’m opposed to it for the normal conservative reasons. We need police. But even the fact that we were having that conversation was a signal to me that this is a very different thing than I’m used to. This is people advocating, and not just like the underclass, by the way. Black people played no role in that conversation at all. No one ever asked black people what they thought.

It was just like eight of their designated representatives on MSNBC were like, “I’m a black person. Here’s what…” But no one actually asked black people what they thought, because no one cared. The point was never to make anyone’s life better. It was to destroy the country and the people who live in it. It was purely destructive.

Creation Versus Destruction

I really brooded on this because I had to write the script every night. So I was constantly in my head thinking, what are we watching? Don’t be distracted by the bullshit. Like, what is this? And I concluded, because there was no other conclusion, that the point was destruction. That was the point.

So I have always thought, since I was a child, that it’s a binary. There are creators and destroyers. A synonym for this is good and evil. God creates, his opponents destroy. God created the earth and the heavens. His opponents destroy them. It’s that simple. I mean, it’s complex in many ways, but fundamentally, it’s that simple. It’s creation, destruction.

And I’ve always been for creation. Always. I believe in procreation. I believe in impregnating women. It’s awesome. I believe in building cabins. Awesome. I like to create. I like when my dog has puppies. So I saw this right away, and I was like, this is not a political debate. This is a spiritual struggle. Creation versus destruction.

And that totally changed my life in every way. That really set off a chain reaction in me that changed me and changed my understanding of the world, changed my sense of my own purpose in the world.

SHAWN RYAN: How long have you been thinking this?

TUCKER CARLSON: Since Memorial Day, 2020.

SHAWN RYAN: What happened on Memorial Day in 2020?

The George Floyd Riots and the Reality of Chaos

TUCKER CARLSON: George Floyd riots. And I’d covered a lot of stuff and been a lot of places and seen chaos and stuff. And one thing that I have concluded that I just noticed as a kid watching Katrina or in Iraq or in Pakistan, where you see things fall apart, is that everyone was so scared of war and violence and all that stuff, but that the scariest thing, I was always an Orwell fan, so I was like, Big Brother’s the scariest thing. No, the scariest thing is chaos. Chaos is the scariest thing. Chaos.

And then later in life, when I read the Old Testament, I was like, God brought order out of chaos. Of course, I didn’t even know. I mean, I’m Episcopalian, so I didn’t really know anything but chaos. I just noticed it because I was in a couple, several times in the middle of what was chaos. No one in charge. Kids with rifles are in charge. They have no goals, they have no program. There’s no ideology.

My whole life I’ve been understanding history through the lens of ideology. There are these revolutionary peasants in Peru, and they’re Sendero Luminoso, and they’re revolutionary peasants in Vietnam, and they’re the Viet Cong. And everything was about the idea. And what I didn’t realize until I saw it in person was, no, it’s not that. It’s much, it’s atavistic. It’s much deeper than that. It’s more primitive. It’s more fundamental than that.

The struggle in the universe is between order and chaos. And I’m on the side of order, not on the side of oppression. Order is now a synonym for repression, which I hate, because I believe in the human soul and the dignity of every person. But chaos is the worst thing.

And I saw people in my country fomenting chaos for its own sake. I don’t know if they’re intentionally evil. Probably not. Most of us aren’t. But they were tools of spiritual forces doing that. And I instantly recognized this was totally different from everything I’d been covering and thinking about, writing about, talking about on TV for 30 years. This was a new thing.

And that just changed it when that chaos broke out in Minneapolis. I’m not from Minneapolis. I have no attachment to Minneapolis. Yes, there are a lot of Swedes in Minneapolis, or were. I think they’ve left. But I saw this for what it was, and I was so bothered by it that I actually went to the convenience store where George Floyd tried to pass the phony $20 bill and went to the site where he was killed.

Witnessing the Aftermath

Wandering around by myself, I literally landed there. Went by myself, didn’t do a story on it or anything. I just wanted to see it. And what I saw was what I expected to see a year later. It was a year after it happened in 2021. I went and I saw a place that had never recovered and never would recover.

And that to me was proof of what I suspected, which was the point was destruction. The point was not rebirth. They always tell you it’s rebirth. “We need to tear it down in order to rebuild it.” They never rebuild it because they don’t want to, because that’s not the point.

And people who want to build, just go ahead and build. And people want to destroy, go ahead and destroy. And they’re in totally different camps. They’re on opposing sides. It’s literally that simple. Anyone who tells you “we need to knock it down in order to build it again” is lying to you and probably to himself. He may think that, that’s not his goal. His goal is to destroy.

Because Satan’s job is to destroy you and everything around you. Everything good, everything beautiful, everything orderly, everything warm and loving and fraternal. Everything honest is to destroy, destroy loyalty, destroy beauty. All the things that are virtues will be destroyed in that all-consuming fire of destruction.

And I just didn’t know that. I was thinking in totally different terms, political terms, stupid terms, childish terms. And I didn’t even know it. I didn’t even know how dumb I was. Because you never do.

The Freedom to Think Clearly

So that was a moment for me and I was—the beauty of my job then and now is there’s a lot of, not a lot, not enough, but there’s some contemplative time where if you have to talk about stuff or present an opinion, part of the process is thinking about what is my opinion.

And now that I have no pressure on me from anywhere, I have zero pressure on me at all. I don’t have a boss. I don’t care about what people who hate me think necessarily. And if they have a good point, I try to listen to it. But their purpose is not to instruct, it’s to destroy.

But anyway, now that I have no pressure on me, I have more contemplative time and I have a freer mind and I think I can see things more clearly. I hope I can. Always with the knowledge that we go really off track and don’t know it, including me. But I think everything I’ve said is true. I believe it’s true anyway.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think that this agenda that you’re talking about, do you think this comes from nations, governments, humans or do you think that this is…

The Spiritual Nature of Current Events

TUCKER CARLSON: Spiritual? Well, it’s clearly spiritual. I mean, really, every big thing that we do is. I mean, if you believe what every culture has ever left, any record of what it believes, has believed, there is an ongoing unseen struggle between light and darkness, order and chaos, destruction and creation, good and evil, God and Satan. Like every. There’s no culture that hasn’t believed that ever, ever. Except Western culture since the end of the Second World War.

Absurd delusion about God is dead, but God’s not dead. And everyone has thought that, and everyone’s thought that because it’s obviously true and the signs are all around us. So if you believe that, and I didn’t believe this five or six years ago, I may have told you I believed it, but I definitely didn’t really believe it at all. I didn’t live like I believed it. I didn’t think like I believed it, but now I do because I’ve seen a lot.

I’ve seen more than most people, and that’s my conclusion. And if you believe that, then you know, you know that in the end, the good guys win. There’s a lot of drama between here and there. Probably won’t live to see it, but it doesn’t matter. You do your part, but it definitely. It makes a lot of the details not unimportant, but it sets them in context.

And it definitely gets you out of this kind of pointless loop in your head of shock outrage. I can’t, you know, into the kind of social media dialogue that goes on inside your own skull where you’re, you know, it’s like, point, counterpoint. Well, this person did this. I used to believe in that person. I can’t believe he’s betrayed me. It’s like, again, for the fifth time, what did you think it was? What did you think it was?

Did you find yourself believing that a human being was going to save your soul and fix human sin? Who’s the ahole? You. You believe that. And I no longer do believe that at all. And I know how flawed I am. I mean, I have a keen sense of that. I’m reminded of it every day. And so how can I expect someone else to be good and true and pure and never bend the knee and always do the right thing?

Like, no, we’re all imperfect, but we’re, you know, some of us are at least trying with the knowledge that we’re going to fail and, you know, humiliate ourselves from time to time. But I just am not shocked at all anymore.

The Great Replacement

But what is it? The destruction of whites? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But tell me how that’s not real. It is real. And what’s so hilarious is they’re like, one of the reasons are thinking about this was I, you know, I hosted this TV show. I still host a version of something like that, I guess. And so in that process, as you well know, you get a lot of numbers.

You’re an American, so you’re trained to make decisions based on the data, have your perceptions shaped by science. You know, all these things you grew up with. And so it’s always like, hey, can you pull the numbers for me on this? Who lives here? Do we know? This is such a big country, and I’ve been all around it and feel like I know it pretty well, but I don’t really know it that well. No one knows America. It’s like the CIA. No one person in CIA knows what everybody is doing in CIA because it’s compartmentalized America. Same thing.

So I would pull these numbers and I never was interested really in demographics. I’m still not that interested. But I would start these numbers. It’s like, holy shit, this country’s changing fast. On the most basic level, who lives here like this? This town was 90% white. Now it’s 60% Hispanic. And that took 20 years. Has there ever been anything that moved that fast?

Human populations change very slowly. You do blood tests in the people who live 20 miles from Stonehenge, and then you do excavations at Stonehenge and you find that they’re related.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think?

TUCKER CARLSON: So, but I would see this, and I’d be like, wow, this country’s really changing. And then I would see. But I still wasn’t hyped up about it or anything. But I was like, wow, that’s really kind of crazy. This is happening so fast. And then I would see people like Chuck Schumer stand up and be like, the one thing you’re allowed to say is that the Great Replacement Theory is real. You’re an anti-Semite.

And my first thought was, what? What are the anti-Semite? What does that have to do with it? I guess I’m too literal or slow or something. And I’m like, it’s nothing to do with Jews. Not anti-Semitic, but how is that a conspiracy theory? That’s here are the numbers, dude, and there’s you on the floor of the Senate saying, “I can’t wait till this country’s minority white.”

Okay, so you’re telling me you can’t wait for something to happen, and when I say, what are you talking about? You scream at me and call me a bigot and tell me that I’m a conspiracy theorist for noticing what you just bragged about. You don’t have to be a genius, and I’m definitely not a genius to say, what the hell was that?

And that’s when I. And then, of course, I travel so many in Australia and oh, my gosh, New Zealand or Canada. What is. And again, to answer your question, in one sense, I don’t know exactly. But this is the biggest thing, just biggest fact, biggest change to happen to global population ever in recorded history that we know of. And nobody mentions it because they’re too intimidated that they’ll be, called David Duke or something.

SHAWN RYAN: So, I mean, what you’re saying basically is the white race is destroying itself from the inside, just like the country is destroying itself from the inside.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I mean, look, again, I hope I’m being honest about my lack of understanding. I don’t understand the full outline of this, but you.

SHAWN RYAN: What does it look like if the white race is destroyed?

Historical Context and Intent

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know. Why would you ever want to destroy any race on purpose? I mean, we had, you know, Europeans in the United States had a lot to do with the destruction of the American Indian. It wasn’t all intentional. Disease played the primary role, but there was also a sense that we can’t have the whole continent if people are still occupying it. We got to move them and keep them from roaming around and pen them up in Oklahoma or whatever.

And that was intentional. And what was not all intentional? Again, disease played the primary role, but there was intent there. And why did my ancestors do that? Europeans do that because they wanted the continent. There were people there. And that story is pretty familiar. That’s the story of the Mongols sweeping across the steppe. That’s the story of the Normans showing up in England. That’s the story of every invasion and rape. And, you know, that’s the story. Replace your genetics with mine. Rape your wife. My Viking ancestors participated in that. Sorry.

Okay, so we know that that’s just a feature of history because it’s a feature of human nature. Is that what this is? I don’t know. But it’s never been more effective than what’s happening now. And it’s, as far as I know, never happened with the active, enthusiastic complicity of the people being replaced. I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s incredible.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because people do commit suicide and they are convinced that they have to kill themselves. But the pure hate it shows is what still stuns me. How could leaders hate their own people so much? And as a father, I don’t understand that. And I’m really bothered by that. If you have people in your care, your only real job is to love them. And we can argue about what love looks like and how it manifests itself, but you can’t hate them. You cannot hate them.

And our leaders have hated us with homicidal hatred. Homicidal hatred. It’s not just, I want to get rich and steal all your shit. It’s like, no, I want you to die. And they couldn’t have been clearer about it. I don’t know how I didn’t see it. But the results make it irrefutable. Irrefutable.

The country I grew up in. I was born in May of 1969. Tell me the differences between America in May of ’69, months before we landed on the moon or whatever, and now. And the main difference is a completely different group of people live here. What happened to the old people? How did that happen? It was intentional. Of course it was. They said it out loud. The President of the United States. And I can’t wait to listen. He’s just like.

Again, going back to the first part of this conversation. How is it that you see things right in front of you and yet don’t see them? I don’t know. It’s a spell. But I want to break free from it. Do you ever feel that in your life? Like somebody’s just right there and you couldn’t see it?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, yeah, all the time. All the time. And then I get pissed at myself, of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: Me too. Or just bewildered. Gosh, I flatter myself. I’m such a keen observer, really.

The Good Ones in Congress

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, you know, you say that these, the politicians hate us. I believe you. I think the same thing. I don’t think any of them. Can’t say any of them. We talked about Eli Crane earlier, for sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know.

SHAWN RYAN: So you had Tim Burchett on. I like him.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s a good guy. I love. I love a couple of them. I don’t want to wreck their lives by telling you who they are, but there are a couple I talk to and love and think are really decent people caught in a maelstrom. Caught.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, though, I mean.

TUCKER CARLSON: I thought.

SHAWN RYAN: About running in 2020 or not 2020, last election. And I really thought about it. I was like, f*, man, I’m here. Yeah, I thought about. I thought about running for Congress or. I didn’t even. I was just like, somebody’s got to get involved.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and I called that. You know, the two people just named that. The only people I trust in there. And I called some other people, too, but the general consensus was you’re not good. You’re not going to have any impact. No, they know they don’t have any impact.

TUCKER CARLSON: And they’re so frustrated and unhappy. So unhappy. So unhappy. No, it’s a nightmare. I’ve known people at all positions of leadership, and the best ones are the most frustrated.

SHAWN RYAN: They leave.

TUCKER CARLSON: They leave. They leave. Yeah, they leave or they’re making accommodations that destroy them in real battles within us. Right. So don’t be destroyed. Don’t make the trade. Power for your integrity. Never do that. It’s never worth it. I know people who’ve done that.

SHAWN RYAN: I know that’s the trap that we were talking about earlier.

The Devil’s Bargain

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s the right. Fall down, worship me, and all this will be yours. I mean, that’s the bargain. That’s the bargain. And every person faces that. Every person faces that. But usually a lot and. But I know a million people who’ve taken the deal, and I know a few of them really well, intimately well.

And I know it sounds like moral, and I’ve certainly done that a million times in my life. You make accommodations because you think it’s worth it or whatever. You know, I’m not being judgmental, but I know a couple people intimately well who’ve done it in a big way. You know, big accommodation, big reward. All this will be yours.

And I can say from firsthand knowledge that that is not a good trade at all. And those people are tormented. They’re in hell on earth, and I’m not guessing at all about that. And it’s really sad. They’re captives. They’re absolutely captives. And you can tell who’s free. You can.

SHAWN RYAN: You feel bad for them?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, my gosh, yes. Why?

SHAWN RYAN: They sold us out.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’re living in hell because they’re in bondage.

SHAWN RYAN: They sold you out. They sold you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I sold you a million times.

SHAWN RYAN: Your wife out. They sold all your friends out. They sold the whole f*ing country.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course.

SHAWN RYAN: Why do you feel bad for them?

The Cost of Betrayal

TUCKER CARLSON: Because imagine being that man. You know, the person you feel sorriest for in the whole New Testament is Peter. Jesus is like, “You’re going to…” Imagine, okay, so the family that I grew up in, which was not conventional at all, but we had a very simple moral code in my family. Very simple. The most simple was the Mafia code.

You know, some things were discouraged but allowed. You wind up banging your assistant? Don’t do that. But, you know, some things happen. You cheat on your tax? Okay, don’t get caught. Betray people you love who love you? That’s it. That is not acceptable in any way. Betrayal of someone you love is the worst thing you could ever do. True betrayal, denial of a person you love.

And that was just beaten into us. I mean, we never even questioned that. That was the center of our family, that belief. My father would say, “You know, don’t commit a triple murder, but if you ever do, call me. We’ll get you to Bolivia,” or whatever. And that was just like, it couldn’t have been clearer.

So then you read the New Testament. It’s like Jesus, to Peter, his guy, who loves him more than anyone loves him, Jesus loves Peter most. And he’s like, “You’re going to betray me three times?” “Betray you?” “Yes.” And then Peter does it to a girl. This little girl is like, “Don’t you know him?” And Peter’s like, “I never seen the guy before.”

And I remember the first time I read that, I was like, you are disgusting. You are just… you betrayed your friend. I just… in my mind, I think whenever I see someone do something bad, I’m like, “Yeah, I’m so glad I didn’t do that.” But I know I could do anything. I’m just being honest. I don’t trust myself. I would never betray someone I love. I’ve never done it. I never would do it. And then you see that, and you’re just like, imagine living with that. Imagine betraying somebody.

I mean, I’ve been denounced this week by like 20 people I’ve helped. And you sort of toggle, in a couple cases, really helped. And you toggle back and forth in your head between being outraged, like, “How could you? You know, all the things I did for you. I had you on my show. I helped you in your divorce or whatever it is.” In the case of one guy, I sold your schlocky books because I felt sorry for you. And now you’re calling me a Nazi.

And you’re like, I’m so mad. And then, really, I mean this, I’m not just saying it. I really ended up feeling like, oh, how’d you like to be that guy? How would you like to be that guy? Your wife knows. She’s never going to enjoy sex with you again. You know, a woman can’t respect a man like that.

The Foundation of a Family

Losing the respect of your wife. Oh, man. Your wife’s pissed at you? Whatever. Your wife doesn’t respect you? Rather be dead. I mean that in my heart. I mean, I’d rather be dead because a wife’s respect for her husband is the basis of a family. If you could distill it to one thing that makes a happy family, happy children, it’s a wife’s respect for her husband. Period.

Lots of elements in the stew, but the stock, the base of it is a wife’s respect for her husband. Now, of course, it’s not given, it’s earned, but it’s the basis of everything. And if a man… weakness is very hard for women to forgive. Real weakness, not physical, moral weakness. Being a worm.

They know. They’re like animals. So they know and they don’t lie to themselves. A woman knows what a woman knows, and you can’t dissuade her from it because she could smell it. She doesn’t doubt her own instincts on anything. Woman’s intuition is the realest thing there is.

And the number one thing they don’t like and have every reason not to like is a man who is weak. And she will not respect that man. Period. Can’t make her. Actually can’t really make women do anything. We learn, which is great. That’s what I like about them.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I like about them.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, you have to really lead if you want them to respect you. You have to be better. Actually, no one wants to hear that, but it’s just true. You can’t make them respect you. You can’t beat them into respecting you. “Shut up. Respect me.” No, it doesn’t work that way.

So that’s why the relationship with men and women is so compelling. It’s like the movie that never ends. It’s like a cliffhanger at every turn. It’s so complex and interesting and rewarding, and it’s the main source of joy and fascination in life.

But this one person I’m thinking of, I’m not going to name him, but specifically, I literally was blown away that this guy called me a Nazi. And then, of course, made a career of calling me a Nazi. And then I was like, oh, at what cost to you? I mean, in three months, no one will remember. “Why were they calling him a Nazi? He doesn’t seem like a Nazi.” No one will care. No one ever cares about this stuff.

Over time, we can’t remember. You hear people’s names and you’re like, “Weren’t you in some kind of sex scandal 10 years ago?” No one can remember. But a man who loses, who behaves that way in a dishonorable, degraded way in front of his wife, who betrays someone for advantage, she’ll never forget that ever. And he has to live with that.

And I don’t have all the sins I’ve committed and there are many. I could write books about them. That’s just not one of them. I’m never going to do that. And I’m not being pious or self-righteous, but it’s just true. And so I do feel sorry for people who’ve taken that deal. It is not worth it.

The Emptiness of Material Success

And the other thing that you have learned and that I’ve learned, if you’re ever successful in any way, and all of a sudden the things that you wanted, you can have. “I really want this thing.” And then you get the thing and it’s like Christmas morning, the second you open the present, it’s like, ah, kind of a letdown.

You know, the best part of Christmas morning is before you open the presents. What’s beneath the wrapping? Holy sh*t, I can’t… is it a bike? You don’t know. It’s totally compelling. And the second you know, it’s a lot like an orgasm. It’s like, “Oh, man, I worked hard to get here.” But it’s why the French call it “Le Petit Mort,” the little death. Because it’s a letdown.

And everything in life is that. Everything material is that. And so you get this thing that you thought you wanted, whether it’s the new bike or control over a nation, or adulation or vindication or billions of dollars. And then you sit there alone in your living room and you’re like, “Kind of wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.” That is true.

And the one good thing about being successful is you learn that. That’s the first thing you learn. “This is what I got. People kissing my a or a summer house.” It’s like, okay, I mean, I’m not against any of that. It’s great to be respected. Great for some else. But it’s not worth having your wife not respect you. Nothing is worth that ever.

Everyone needs to know that. People happily go die to win the respect of their wives, and they should. They should. It’s worth it.

Nick Fuentes

SHAWN RYAN: Why did you decide to have Nick Fuentes on? I thought you guys…

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I hated Nick Fuentes. And he… well, going back to what I was just saying, he criticized my dad, also criticized my wife and my son, but…

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know much about him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I was super pissed at him. He’s 27 and he criticized my dad.

SHAWN RYAN: Why were you pissed at him? Because he criticized you?

TUCKER CARLSON: Not a lot of criticisms, but I’m his oldest son. Those are just the rules. Can’t stand that. My father was a flawed man.

SHAWN RYAN: What did he…

The Nick Fuentes Interview

TUCKER CARLSON: But a great man? Oh, CIA guy. He did all this bad. He was involved in Iran Contra. Some of it was true. You know, sort of true or something. True enough, I guess. So that made it worse. It didn’t matter whatever he said about my dad, but I just… My father just died. And I was like, I can’t. That just drives me absolutely insane.

So, and I feel an obligation to be mad about it because it’s my dad. Those are the rules. So I attacked him. And then I called him and I was like, look, I don’t know you, but I want you to know why. I always want to tell people why I don’t like them, and I want to do it right to their face. And I always call people and just say, I’m going to attack you. Or I did attack you, and I want you to hear why from me. I just did that yesterday to somebody.

Anyway, I always do that. And so I called Nick Fuentes and I said, I want you to know why I attacked you. Attacked you because you criticized my father. And I just never going to accept that. My father was a great man. And flawed, but a great man. Like a literally a great man. And I’m never going to accept that.

And he, to his credit, was like, I get that. I get that. So, but I still didn’t like him. Not friends with him now, but I… Because of that, I got a lot of input from people. Like, I don’t know that much about Nick Fuentes. I’m 56. I don’t like the Internet, so I don’t really know that much. I’ve seen clips. He’s very talented. I know that, but I’m not an expert on that at all.

And I got calls from a lot of people, including some very influential people who knew a lot about Nick Fuentes. And they’re like, this kid is the single most influential figure among young white men. And not just white, actually.

SHAWN RYAN: Is that true?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, it’s definitely true. I mean, it was true last month. I don’t know if it’s true. I mean, everything changes. Who knows? But that was definitely my impression, and I think it’s right. In the subsequent weeks, I’ve asked a million different people, Nick Fuentes, and like, yes, he’s extremely influential among young men.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. How young?

TUCKER CARLSON: 20s, teens and 20s. College students, high school students, college students just out of college, can’t find a job. They can’t find jobs. Right. A lot of this, by the way, a lot of the frustration is economic, which no one wants to talk about or seems invited to talk about. It’s not about the Jews. It’s about the economy.

And it’s about the betrayal that young men feel when they go through all these hoops and get all these stupid degrees and find out they’re worth nothing and they’re in $300,000 in debt. And like, I did what you told me to do, and I’m f*ed. So I’m mad at you. And why wouldn’t they be? They have every right to be. That’s my personal opinion, but it’s just true anyway. And a lot of those men watch Nick Fuentes.

The Right to Tell Your Own Story

So it was like, Nick Fuentes is one of those figures that everybody… like Putin. That’s why I interviewed Putin. Everyone talks about this person, but nobody… I believe one of my missions, this is not everyone’s mission, just happens to be mine at this stage of my life, is I want to hear what people think, and I want to give people a chance to speak for themselves.

Because I think every person from Idi Amin to Mother Teresa has an inherent right to tell their own story. You can disagree with the story and you can doubt the story and you can do whatever you want, but to say they don’t have a right to tell their story, I just reject that. I disagree. I disagree.

And I feel like it’s not my only mission in life, but that’s one of my beliefs, and I’ve done what I can with my limited attention and means to give people a place to tell their story. Why should people on the Internet have a right to define anybody with two minute clips and that person doesn’t have a right to tell his own story. I just reject that. I don’t care. I reject that.

Whether it’s Hillary Clinton or Nick Fuentes or anyone in between, people have a right to say what they think. And if you want to watch it, don’t. So I just believe that and I’ll never stop believing that. And if they don’t have that right, what you’re really saying is other people have a right to speak for someone else and they don’t. They don’t because we’re all created by God and we all have the right to say what we think. So I believe that.

So I was like, yeah, if I have Nick Fuentes on, obviously the… probably, some people will criticize me just as they do with Putin. You know, you love Nick Fuentes. You agree with everything he says. Nope. I’ve interviewed war criminals in Liberia. I’ve interviewed cannibals. I kind of liked them. Just being honest. I kind of like everybody I interview.

SHAWN RYAN: You guys, break bread together. Me and the cannibals?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, and by the way, I… This was in Africa and I did not lecture them about cannibals, which I’m totally opposed to. But anyway, so I did, and it was really interesting. And I try not to lecture people just in general because I don’t think it’s… I don’t like being lectured at all and I don’t think most people do.

And I think the purpose of lecturing people usually is self aggrandizing. The point of lecturing, you know, Sean Ryan, you’re a bad person. Unlike me, I’m a great person. I don’t have the need to convince people I’m a great person at all. I just don’t feel that need. They can decide for themselves.

And I feel like that’s a really dishonest way to interview people. You’re using them as a man uses a prostitute for his own pleasure. So I’m using you to make a statement about myself. I’m not doing that. I don’t need to do it. I don’t want to do it and I’m not doing it.

So I’m not going to lecture Putin about his war crimes. You can read about Putin all you want. I want to hear what Putin says. And I took that exact same approach with Nick Fuentes and I knew there would be an outcry or whatever. Probably understated it a little bit, but, you know, not up to me. But my conscience is clear.

The Stalin Comment

One of the only parts that kind of bothered me, but now it amuses me is there was a point in the interview where Nick Fuentes said, really, out of nowhere, “I love Stalin.” It’s like Joseph Stalin. And he’s like, yeah, I love Stalin. I mean, this was not relevant to what we were talking about at all. It just was out of… out of the blue.

SHAWN RYAN: So I said, had to get it in there, huh?

TUCKER CARLSON: I guess he had a need to tell me he loves Stalin. So I made a snap decision. I said something like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’ll get back to that. And then, of course, I got completely sidetracked and forgotten. Didn’t get back to it. And I was criticized taking it back to it. That’s fair.

I guess my instinct really was he’s just saying that. He probably doesn’t know much about Stalin. Actually do know a lot about Stalin. It’s the only thing I studied in college, and I’m interested in the topic. Maybe he does not. I don’t know. But I do actually have a lot of thoughts on Stalin. It’s a very interesting topic.

And people flipped out about that and accused me of loving Stalin. And what I found now find amusing about that is those exact same people were also getting mad at me for questioning the course of the Second World War and the conclusions that were drawing from it.

America’s Alliance with Stalin

Now, my main problem with America’s involvement in the Second World War was the fact that we sided with Stalin and armed Stalin and made it possible for Stalin to fight that war through a program called Lend Lease, which was passed, I think, in the fall of 1941, with a unanimous vote among Democrats in the Congress.

And Stalin was the greatest murderer in history by some counts. Stalin, Mao, you know, pick one. But Stalin has a good… has a right to be called that. And was definitely unchallenged. The most prolific murderer of Christians in history. Genocider of Christians. Of Christians and murderer of priests and the destroyer of churches. And like a true enemy of Christianity, kill tens of millions of Christians.

And the US Government sent him billions and billions, adjusted for inflation, but billions of dollars in cash and clothing and war material and airplanes and tanks and jeeps. I mean, we armed the Red Army. We armed Stalin. To which people say, well, are you for Hitler? No, I’m totally opposed to Hitler, but I’m never going to accept arming Stalin. I’m just not. Why would I?

And these same people were like, well, you had to choose. Well, no. How about… Let’s start here? We’re not arming Stalin. We’re also not going to arm Hitler. Why would we do that? You lose all moral authority. You’re sending billions to Joseph Stalin of the Ukrainian famine and the purge trials and all the rest. I don’t take you seriously. If you armed Stalin. Why would I?

It was those exact same people who jumped my s* for being pro Stalin in this interview with Nick Fuentes. And I’m like, I don’t take you seriously. I’m starting to think you’ll say anything to get me to be quiet. And that just made me laugh to myself. I had no one to talk to about this, of course, but I was amused by it.

No, I’m very anti Stalin. That’s actually one of the reasons I’m mad at Churchill, because he was closely allied with Stalin. I’m at Roosevelt for the same reason. I’m sad about my country’s involvement in a war where we sided with Stalin. And I’m bewildered that no one will say that and that anyone who does say that is anti American.

My family’s been here 400 years. I’m hardly anti American. I couldn’t be more pro America. And I’m pro America because in general, we don’t arm Stalin. And I don’t think we should ever arm Stalin again or back Al Qaeda or have the Al Qaeda guy to the White House like the other day. I’m just not for that.

So I guess, long story short, I have concluded through much experience that some of the people screaming at me don’t have the moral authority to get my attention.

SHAWN RYAN: Good.

TUCKER CARLSON: Fair for you.

SHAWN RYAN: What did you learn from that interview?

TUCKER CARLSON: I learned that he’s popular for the same reason most people are popular in unmediated media. Because he’s got a really compelling message. Which is 90% true or pretty true.

SHAWN RYAN: What is his message?

Fuentes’ Message and Foreign Influence

TUCKER CARLSON: His message is we’ve been betrayed by the people who thought we’re on our side. We thought these people were for us. They actually sold us out. Well, that’s certainly true. Israel has way too much influence over our Congress. Obviously, 95% of members of Congress take money from a foreign lobby. AIPAC. How is that defensible? You can, by the way, you could be for Israel but still be like, what is that? Why is that allowed?

SHAWN RYAN: Are there bigger lobbying firms than…

Israel, Foreign Policy, and American Leadership

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, there are a million lobbies, and not all of them have organizations. You know, I don’t think Israel’s America’s biggest problem. I’ve never thought that. But it’s certainly America’s most insulting problem. So insulting to be ordered around by a country of 9 million people when you’re in the United States. Like, what? It’s a totally irrelevant country. Its only relevance is we promise to protect them, therefore we’re involved in all this crap. You fought some of the wars, but if you take that out and you’re just like, “Hey, you know, good luck, you’re great. Wish you well. Can’t wait to go to Jerusalem next summer on vacation,” which I have done and hope to do again.

But we’ve imbued the country with all the significance that is not deserved. There are no resources. It’s the size of Maryland. It’s got 9 million people. This is a big world, very complicated. And somehow our Congress and successive White Houses have decided that the only thing that matters is this tiny, irrelevant country. It’s not an attack on the country. I do wish Israel well. I always have and I still do.

But I am pretty offended by that behavior because they’re supposed to be representing me and my fentanyl addicted neighbors, and they’re not. And they don’t care at all about Americans. Our leadership, not attacking Israel. I’m talking about our leadership. So that’s a totally fair position. And that is basically his position, or he’s describing the frustration that normal people feel when they see that and I’m good for him.

The Jew hate stuff I’m totally opposed to on every level, moral and practical. And I told him that, whatever. So I’m not going to whine about how people are misrepresenting my views because that’s who they are. But I personally think big picture, it’s always good to get clarity about what people really believe, about what they really care about. We should know. We should know. And maybe you’re more for them or more against them, but it’s the lying that bothers me.

The Value of Clarity and Transparency

So I’d much rather have people just be totally straightforward about what their goals are. I’d love to see what’s really in your heart. And I think we’re seeing that much more than we did last month. And so for that reason, I’m glad we had the conversation, despite the fact they’re attacking my family, for real. Attacking my family, for real. But we’ll be fine. Pretty strong family.

So I feel okay about that, and I feel bad for anyone around me who’s been hurt by it. It certainly wasn’t my intent, but I do think there’s been a real upside, which is clarity. It’s better. By the way, the dumbness of these people. That’s the other thing that, you know, what I really learned is how dumb.

One of the reasons that the status quo was bad was because a lot of decisions were being made in true secrecy. Not only did you not know who made the decision, you couldn’t know why. And you were discouraged from talking about unformed policy questions. You just couldn’t know. Shut up. Shut up, Nazi. Okay, the debate that we’ve had over the last month has risen to the surface. A lot of things that were subterranean. And I think, as I said, I think that’s good.

The Mediocrity of Power Brokers

But one of the things we’ve learned is that the people who are really running America’s foreign policy was Lindsey Graham or whomever. These people are not geniuses at all. They’re dumb. They’re just mediocre. Jeffrey Epstein is my favorite example, because Jeffrey Epstein lived his life basically in the shadows. You couldn’t really know where the money, you still don’t know where the money came from. Or what’s the goal of this? What is this? You can’t know because it’s all secret, classified. National security.

You start to assume that Jeffrey Epstein is this Svengali and he’s a genius and he’s controlling everything. And then you read his emails. He’s a f*ing moron from Staten Island who can barely speak English. He’s dumb. He’s totally impressed by Harvard. He went to Cooper Union. He’s impressed by Harvard because the brand name impresses him. It’s like wearing a polo shirt with a horse on. He thinks that’s cool. He’s totally unsophisticated, actually, and not smart at all. He’s crafty. He’s got high canine and animal intelligence, but he’s not a genius at all. He’s a dummy. He’s a thug.

And that has been kind of amazing to see. His only real advantage is that he’s evil. He’ll do anything. He’s got no limits at all. Need to kill someone? We’ll do that. If we have to, we’ll do that. And that person, the unscrupulous person, does have an advantage because there are no boundaries, right? So if your goal is to get rich or powerful, you can get there faster if you’ll do anything to get there. Doesn’t end well ever. Didn’t end well with him.

But that’s really what I learned. Is that the people who are mad at me call me names, because that’s literally all they can do. Shut up. You can’t speak at that event. We don’t want you on stage. We’re deplatforming you. Okay, I don’t care, really.

SHAWN RYAN: But who’s saying that to you?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I mean, every…

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, no, I mean, what do I do?

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t even want to go through. I don’t want to make it about me. I’m certainly not oppressed. And you haven’t impressed my spirit. You could shoot me. I’m not going to impress my spirit.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I’m just asking because I still see all over the place.

TUCKER CARLSON: I saw you, of course, but I guess…

SHAWN RYAN: I think you were just with Megyn Kelly and her tour and…

Megyn Kelly and Standing on Principle

TUCKER CARLSON: Megyn Kelly is a tough woman, man. She’s for real. And I mean, she’s more for real than people know. I’m not saying she agrees to be on everything. She doesn’t. And by the way, she doesn’t agree with it. She’s like, “I don’t agree with you.” You know, she’s that tough. She’ll just tell you, but you can’t make Megyn Kelly take a position. You just can’t. Just won’t. Megyn Kelly just absolutely will not. If she agrees, of course she’ll agree. But if she doesn’t agree, you’re not going to scare her into agreeing.

There aren’t a ton of people like that. There are some. They’re all my friends. Even if I disagree with them, I just love people like that and I want to be around them. She’s one of them. No, but what’s interesting is not that they’ve inconvenienced me. They haven’t. It’s that they’ve revealed who they are.

The Nick Fuentes Situation

So Fuentes, I didn’t know. I didn’t know much about him, to be honest. Just too old for this shit. I just, it’s not my generation, so I just didn’t know. But Nick Fuentes first became known freshman year of college, first month of college. He’s a student at BU and he put something on the Internet, Twitter or something, and basically, “Why does Israel control our Congress?” Something like that. He’s a college freshman.

And Ben Shapiro sitting at command center somewhere. It’s like, “What? A college student is not on board with the program. Destroy him.” And Ben Shapiro tries to, quote, cancel this kid. He’s a f*ing college student. He’s a freshman from Chicago. Rather than just call the guy and be like, “Hey, actually, I saw what you said. I don’t like it. But there are reasons that we’re allied with Israel and it really helps us, or whatever.” Make your case, whatever your case is.

His first instinct was, “This man must be destroyed. He can never have a job. No one can hire him.” And how’d that work for you, Ben Shapiro? Well, of course, it didn’t work at all. Nick Fuentes is way bigger than Ben Shapiro has ever been. Way more influential than Ben Shapiro has ever been. You can’t cancel an idea. It just does not work. Let’s kill Jesus. Okay, how’d that work? World’s biggest religion just doesn’t work. And any wise person knows that.

Truth vs. Censorship

So the only way, liberals used to say this, they don’t believe it apparently anymore. But the only way to stop bad ideas is by countering them with good ideas. You want to defeat lies? Tell the truth. It’s literally that simple. And as if I needed to be reminded of that the last month. I don’t think a single person has ever made the case that I’m wrong. That Nick Fuentes is, the Jew hatred stuff is wrong. Period. And I said that the white hatred, black hatred, Jew hatred, Malaysian hatred, Bedouin hatred, it’s all wrong. I believe that as much as I believe anything. Okay?

But the rest of it, his analysis, which is actually smart and in a lot of cases, true. No one’s even attempted to rebut it, 95% or whatever the number is. If members of Congress take AIPAC money, how is that good? “Shut up, Nazi.” So if that’s your only defense, you’ve lost. You’ve lost. You didn’t even enter the game.

We’re playing different games. I’m trying to tell the truth, convince people that what I think is true is actually true. And you’re trying to make me be quiet because you don’t like it. You can shoot me or you can shoot everybody, but it won’t, it doesn’t go away because the truth is an immovable object. It just exists and you conform to it or you don’t, but it doesn’t change because it’s nature.

SHAWN RYAN: Why do you think you got so much for having him on? He’s been on other stuff. He’s been on…

Why the Backlash Was So Intense

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I got, precisely because I’m not an anti-Semite. That’s, that was the whole point. I mean, if David Duke or whatever, pick an anti, I don’t know. Even though there are many. I’m sure there are famous anti-Semites. I can’t think of them. But David Duke is a famous anti-Semite. If David Duke interviewed Nick Fuentes, they’d be like, you know, they wouldn’t say anything, whatever. Who cares? They’re talking to each other.

But if someone who is openly opposed and sincerely opposed to hating people on the basis of their bloodline, which I definitely am, interviews Nick Fuentes and is like, “Hey, Nick Fuentes, stop with the Jew hatred. But let’s talk about your views on the betrayal of Republican voters by conservative institutions and the undue influence a foreign country has over our government.” Those are entirely reasonable conversations. And they’re scary because they are reasonable. They’re very difficult to refute.

You have to, what is, what’s the counter argument? The country should be controlled by a country of 9 million people. What are you even saying? No one agrees with that. So if a reasonable person says it, that is an actual threat. And they were like, “Well, must destroy him and his son and his brother.” And it’s like, I’m not afraid of you, man. I’m just not. And not because I’m so tough or brave or whatever, but because why would I be?

You call me names and I’m going to, you’re not telling the truth, and you know you’re not. You know, you start saying things about me that are true that I’m trying to hide, whatever those might be, you know, I’ll get in fetal position, hide in the corner. But you throw lies at me. I’m totally unintimidated. And anyone who believes that, I’m sorry, I’ll just say it again. Here’s the truth. Don’t believe I can’t control that.

So, yeah, that’s why they don’t like me. Not because I’m extraordinarily brave. I’m not. Definitely not. Because I’m extraordinarily smart. I’m not. But because they don’t have an actual argument. So all they can do is destroy. And I think they’ve reached kind of the limit. What’s the next stage? That does concern me. Not that much, really.

A Turning Point for the Republican Party

But we’re moving into a new time for sure after the last month, and there are a number of fairly influential people on the right who’ve just basically said out loud, “I’m for censorship and identity politics.” We just had an election a year ago this month in which Republicans won because they were opposed to, let’s say it, censorship and identity politics. And then their voters find out that a lot of the leaders of the party are totally for censorship and identity politics. How does this continue?

Well, I’m out. I mean, I know that, but so are a lot of other people. I’m not, would never vote, I don’t care what you call yourself if you’re for censorship and identity politics, two things that I truly, on principle, as a Christian, oppose. I’m not voting for you, period. Ever. So that’s a big, big change. The veil is dropped. We can see, you’re walking back from the shower and your towel slipped and I saw what you look like naked. I can’t unsee that. Right?

Has that ever happened to you? You see what someone looks like naked and you’re like, “I want this out of my head. I don’t want to. I saw your appendix scar.”

SHAWN RYAN: It’s like, oh, man.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. So I don’t, I mean, I don’t know. I never know anything that’s coming. You know, I can’t. You can’t. It’s always something different from what you thought. But as of right now, I think it’s November, probably. It’s before Thanksgiving. Right now I know for certain that we’re in for big, big, big, big changes. Because just like fighting with your wife and you say something awful, but true, things are never the same.

SHAWN RYAN: What is it about him that, what are, what is the, what is Gen Z? Or what is the younger generation? What are the, what’s the draw? What’s the draw to…

The Nick Fuentes Interview and Young Men’s Disillusionment

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, he’s Fuentes. Unusually articulate, self-confident, clear. He’s a clear talker. I don’t agree. I mean, he’s 27, so, you know, not to be arrogant or be like, young man, you don’t know. But, you know, hanging around a long time gives you, I think, a fuller perspective. And he hasn’t.

So, like, there are things I disagree with, conclusions he draws that I think are not true. But in general, the guy is highly articulate, totally fearless, doesn’t care at all. That’s always a draw. Like the man who just doesn’t care. He’s just going to say it. Always has a big audience because people are attracted to strength, period. Every time.

What’s strength? It’s fearlessness. I’m not afraid. That’s how, you know, that’s how the Vikings pick their leaders. Who’s the least afraid? Of course, human beings are like that. They’ll never stop being like that. So only in our world are there other. Do you put like terrified menopausal women in charge? Normal societies don’t do that. We’re not going to do that in 20 years.

But Nick Fuentes is just a reminder that people follow fearlessness because they read it as strength. We should not be surprised. Why are they open to it? Why are they not watching the approved. Why are they not watching Fox News and some Sean Hannity? What does Sean Hannity think? They don’t know who Sean Hannity is.

Why are they open to this? Well, change, technology is one of the things, one of the reasons they don’t watch TV, they don’t have cable subs. But the main reason is because they’ve been completely betrayed. Nick Fuentes is absolutely right. They’ve been screwed. They can’t find jobs. The average age of a first time home buyer in the United States is almost 40, 40 years old. It’s a disaster. That’s like collapse.

And they’ve been blamed for it. And people have been hating on them their whole lives for being white and being male. Toxic masculinity and white racism are the twin perils we face. That’s passive aggression, that’s hate posing as concern. If you tell white men that the biggest problems are toxic masculinity and white racism, what you’re really saying is you’re the biggest problem. We hate you.

And everything our leaders have done has proven that they hate young white men. Everything from the drugs they prescribe to the fake conditions like ADHD that they make up out of thin air in order to anesthetize boys. Everything about it. It is an organized conspiracy. Conscious or not, it’s effectively a conspiracy. I don’t need to know whether you planned it to know it was a conspiracy. You did this and you achieved this result. That’s all I need to know.

And they did it. And young men know it. They know it. And why wouldn’t they be mad? I’m mad just thinking about it. And I’m 50. How f*ing old? I am 56. So I’m like, I’m 30 years older than Nick Fuentes. And I, because I care about America and care about people in general and hate to see mistreatment and cruelty of the weak. I’m outraged by that. Just on principle. I hate that. That’s exactly what I hate. Pissing on weak people.

That’s why I hated using fire hoses on protesters in Birmingham in 1956 is why I hate the toxic masculinity white racism lie of 2021, it’s all the same. And so I am sympathetic to that because it’s true. It’s provably true. And so my feeling was I’m going to immediately say I’m totally against Jew hatred. It’s anti-Christian. And I said that. And he’s like, you’re right. Okay, now tell me what you think. Again, my conscience is clear. I’m glad I did that interview.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you guys spoke at since then?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, no, no. And he, someone, a reporter just texted me from some New York Times or Politico and said that he’s starting a PAC, a political action committee in the next political cycle, 2026, to hold politicians accountable. I’ve never. That’s the first I’ve heard of it. I know nothing about it. Not involved in politics on that level.

But. And I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but in general I think it’s very good, in fact necessary to force leaders to do what they say they’re going to do. Otherwise. Come on, dude. We’re moving toward one of two endpoints. One is a totalitarian society where you just don’t have the option of disagreeing. You have to obey because you’ve got programmable digital currency and universal surveillance and you just have to do what they say or they’ll starve you to death.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s not going to work here.

TUCKER CARLSON: I hope it, I pray it doesn’t. Or we’re going to have a revolution. It’s one of the two we’re getting. Totalitarian government or revolution.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s going to work for a little bit and then it’s not going to work.

The Path Forward: Totalitarianism or Revolution

TUCKER CARLSON: I pray you’re right. I’m a gold buyer on that basis, an ammo buyer. But again, I have no track record of seeing the future. But I’m convinced that the current course won’t work because it’s a lie. If you tell people they own the government, they’re in charge, they rule through the representatives in this democratic republic. Like that’s what we’ve told. That’s our system. Has been for 250 years.

If you tell them that’s the system and you don’t deliver on it, they go crazy. They go totally crazy if you tell it. And by the way, I’ve spent a lot of time.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think happens?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: When a government takes everybody’s currency in a country that has more guns and ammunition than anywhere else in the entire world.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean I’m, as I’ve said a million times, works for a little bit.

SHAWN RYAN: And then when the desperation kicks in, that doesn’t work well.

TUCKER CARLSON: So that’s exactly. We’re saying the same thing. It’s. We’re moving toward totalitarianism or revolution, violent revolution. If, by the way, if you tell people they can’t say what they think and their vote doesn’t matter. How many options have you left for them? Just one.

SHAWN RYAN: There are f*ing many.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right. So don’t do that. Don’t do that. It’s much better to give a little. And you do this with your kids, you know, especially when they become teenagers, you reach a point where it’s like you can smell the defiance on them. How do I handle this? Just punch them in the face, cut them off, starve them out? No.

You know, you listen, you make it clear that you’re in charge. You’ll be deciding, but you take their position into consideration because you have to, because they’re becoming adults. You have to be a little flexible. No, you can’t smoke weed at the breakfast table. Like, there’s some things you will never accept, but you can’t ignore every single signal you’re getting from your children while your population’s very similar.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m getting really angry right now.

TUCKER CARLSON: Why?

SHAWN RYAN: I think we should go. I think we should go out back and blow some shit.

TUCKER CARLSON: Sorry.

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Tucker, we’re back from the break. Nice shot, by the way, but. And we figured out how to run an excavator about you figured 50.

TUCKER CARLSON: I was. I was standing back about. You guys start that without a key. Look dead.

SHAWN RYAN: But.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, man. Where. I. I don’t. Where were we Got pretty deep there. Well, I was musing, as is my habit, and you said, this is so dark, I have to get out of here and shoot a firearm. That’s where we were.

SHAWN RYAN: The hair on the back of my neck was starting to. I just wanted to. Yeah, I had. I just wanted to restate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Restate. I feel totally cheerful because once you see things in their full perspective, it’s not scary. It’s exactly what we were told. We just didn’t believe it. And now that we do believe it, it’s great. It’s fine, actually.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, that’s. That’s. I’m not there yet, but maybe one day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, for sure.

SHAWN RYAN: Where do we go from here? So.

Democracy and the End of an Era

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s always darkest before it’s completely black, as you know. Sorry I’m stealing someone else’s line, but I do like that line. I don’t know. I mean, just in political terms, we’re at the end of something, in the beginning of something new. And no one wants change. I don’t. But we’re not in control. And the current system clearly doesn’t match the moment at all. And so it’s changing.

And it’ll change along probably predictable lines, but also in some unpredictable ways. But I’m for democracy. Most people are not. The overall majority of people don’t want democracy. They just don’t want it. They don’t like it. It’s tedious and annoying and too imperfect. And they want results. And so we’re moving towards something that is not what we had before.

And, you know, I’m not in favor of that. I wish we could return to 1985, but we can’t. So. But you. You have to just reduce the amount of lying. Like, lying is bad. Lying is bad. It alienates you from other people. It alienates. Or leaders from their people. They lead. Everything about it is bad. Just no more. Let’s just stop lying.

SHAWN RYAN: That’d be great. I don’t know. How the, you’re going to get anybody to.

TUCKER CARLSON: Stop lying by calling out the liars.

SHAWN RYAN: But, well, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, we were.

Sex Trafficking and Online Predators

SHAWN RYAN: Talking about impact earlier, and, you know, one of the things that I want to chat with you about, I don’t know how to bring it up organically, so I’m just bringing it up. This is something that it’s just, it’s the most important issue to me, and that is sex trafficking, sex exploitation and all that that is going on in this country.

And, and, you know, I, I, I was, I think it was, I can’t remember if I was telling, about telling you about my, my really good friend Ryan Montgomery on camera, off camera, whatever, but that, you know, I talked about all the impact that we thought we would have that we didn’t do anything on. But that is one, that is one that it’s like, it seems to be the forbidden topic that everybody’s scared to talk about, legitimately scared to talk about, except for a few.

And that, that’s, you know, the problem with sex trafficking and sex exploitation in this country. And as far as an impact, I think, I think that is the biggest impact that I’ve ever made and probably ever will make. Because, you know, what we did with Ryan was, I mean, he made it. You hear about this stuff all the time, right? And it’s hard to believe, you know, how prevalent it actually is. And he proved it, you know, on the show.

I had him open his laptop and I said, just get in any. I don’t care what it is. I just want to see how long this takes. I’ll sit here for two days if I have to. Five seconds. And I have them screen recorded so that we can prove it. And so I just had him anyways, the impact that was made, I think I know for a fact we scared the s* out of a lot of pedophiles.

We educated a ton of, I mean, the interview has 10 million views, and then with the clips and everything else, it’s hundreds of millions of views. And we educated on parents on how, how predators are targeting their kids. We educated kids on how predators are targeting them. And so anyways, I think it was a, it was a huge win and for kids.

And so I brought him back on last, last week. He’s releasing this week. But he came on to talk about this satanic cult. 764. Have you heard of this?

TUCKER CARLSON: No.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy s*, dude. Like, so this is, this is an online cult. And they hang out, and they hang out in, you know, online. They hang out in this. There’s a game that all the kids are playing nowadays called Roblox.

TUCKER CARLSON: Ro.

The Exploitation of Children Online

SHAWN RYAN: Roblox sounds like Roblox, but people know what I’m talking about. Roblox and Minecraft and they’re everywhere. They’re on Xbox, they’re on PlayStation, they’re on computer games, they’re on chat rooms, they’re on social media, they’re on everything.

And what they do is they target primarily young women, you know, teenage women and below, the girls. And, you know, they might have them do something sexually, exploit them for a Louis Vuitton purse or something like that. And then, you know, then they have the photos and then they keep in touch and they call them back with these groups of people with the photos and say they’re going to release this and they’re having these girls carve “slut” into their arms with razor blades.

They’ve had people, they have gone so far now and this is spreading like wildfire. They had one girl swallow the razor blades after she carved “slut” into her flesh and they had another girl kill herself. And you know, that’s what I want to go after now because that’s an impact that you can have where you don’t have to wait on some political prostitute to introduce a bill into Congress or the Senate and you’re actually going to save somebody’s life or save somebody from being sexually exploited or trafficked or, you know, all of the above.

But damn, that stuff’s like, it’s just so alarming and so disgusting. Are you tracking any of this?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, yeah, I mean, yes. And I just had an interview which hasn’t aired yet, but with your friend John Rich about this topic. This week we went pheasant hunting together in South Dakota and did it there and talked a lot about it for three days.

I would just say two things. One, I don’t think, and what you just told me confirms, gives further evidence to what I believe, which is sex trafficking is not primarily about sex. It’s about defiling innocence. Sex is hot girl, want to sleep with her. This is not that. This is, and child molestation and all these, carving “slut,” having a girl carve “slut” into her arm. What’s the benefit to you? Well, there’s none.

What you’re doing is defiling innocence. It’s destroying beauty. It’s making ugly something pure. It’s pissing on an image of God is actually what it is. So it’s by its nature demonic. That’s what demonic is. So this is a spiritual phenomenon. I think that, I’ve always thought that, like what is that? Someone who likes sex and thinks women are beautiful and everything. What is this?

SHAWN RYAN: It’s not about that.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s about destroying something innocent. So that makes it the most evil thing that there is. And I couldn’t agree with you more.

I also think it’s way more widespread even than you described. It’s called OnlyFans. And I don’t know why the guy who runs OnlyFans is not in prison like right now because he’s a massive contributor to all kinds of different left wing causes. But, so there’s that. But you know, if you’re turning like a huge percentage of America’s young women into prostitutes, you’re a criminal.

And punishing you and stopping that is like top of our priority list. Because you can’t degrade my country and turn my women into prostitutes. Like they cannot be allowed. It’s not, there’s no human right that says you can pimp a nation’s women, young women. No. Take advantage of their misery and confusion and desperation and poverty to turn them into prostitutes. That’s like, that’s what an invading army does.

So I, I’m of course I couldn’t be more opposed to all of it. Pornography, all of it. Like I’m violently opposed to it. I guess I would just, my only concern is that we imagine a self-described satanic cult. I’m actually way less bothered by satanic cults than I am by OnlyFans, which is also a satanic cult. Because at least the official satanic cults call themselves what they are. It’s like nice to have the opponent identify himself.

But like what does YouPorn call itself? Adult entertainment. No, I mean, it’s the same thing and the point is the same. It’s to destroy our civilization and it’s working. So, and people, because that’s what a civilization is. It’s a collection of people.

So yeah, I’m really upset about it and I think we should, and by the way, a lot of our leaders, institutions take money from these groups. Like the ones that are legitimate. There’s nothing more legitimate about OnlyFans than there is about a satanic cult that lures girls online into carving “slut” into their arms or swallowing razor blades. It’s the same thing.

America’s Dark Statistics

SHAWN RYAN: Do you know that we’re the number one consumer of kiddie porn? Of course. Why? Why do you think that law enforcement agencies and trafficking too, if I remember correctly, we’re the number one consumer. Why do you think that?

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, what?

SHAWN RYAN: What is more precious than our…

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they’ve got real criminals. Like people who march on the Capitol with pocket constitutions in their hands and stuff. Like the January 6th prisoners, you know, they’ve got, like, white supremacy is a bigger problem. They don’t care, obviously. So here’s…

SHAWN RYAN: Here’s an example. Like, it’s because everybody I talk to is trying to do something. I can’t find somebody that’s not. But I just had lunch, very involved with my local sheriff. F*ing love him and what he’s trying to do. His name’s Jeff Hughes.

I was talking to him. We had a meeting yesterday about this with a lot of his deputies and a musician who’s trying to bring awareness to this whole thing. And we were chatting and I was telling him about the 764 cult, which is gaining, you know, it’s getting a lot of, it’s starting to get exposure. But they hadn’t heard of it yet.

So I’m educating him and he started getting frustrated and, you know, I was like, why don’t you have more resources? And he’s like, Sean, I’m trying to get more fing resources. He said, we live in the wealthiest county in fing Tennessee, one of the wealthiest counties in the country, and my fing police officers are not even in the 75th percentile of what the f they should be making.

He said, on top of that, I can’t get any of these county commissioners to approve funding so that I can pay my police officers what they deserve, his deputy sheriffs what they deserve. And he can’t get any fing money to build a new sheriff’s office to get the new tech like that Skydio company that I’m talking to you about earlier that we have one right here that patrols our fing property. He can’t get them because of his f*ing commissioners. And this is like every county in the country. Why is nobody allocating money to police?

The Purpose of Government

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, because, top of the priority list. I mean, if you think about, like, what’s the point of having a civilization?

SHAWN RYAN: Who’s got the priority?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s an employment agency. Look, government at all levels is primarily designed to employ people because that’s what the votes are. I’ve seen this my whole life. And that’s why we don’t get reform, is because these agencies and services are existing not for the benefit of the people who pay for them, but for the benefit of the people who are employed by them.

SHAWN RYAN: I just want to say this is Williamson County, Tennessee, and those fing commissioners are going to get labeled by name on this fing show if he doesn’t get that goddamn funding.

TUCKER CARLSON: So, well, this is how you change stuff.

SHAWN RYAN: I fing hate these people. I fing hate these people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s holy rage. I love that. But like, what’s the point of any of this? It’s to keep the Visigoths from raping your wife. It’s to keep order. That’s it. That’s the whole reason that, like, hunter gatherers banded together so they don’t get eaten by the neighboring tribe or the saber tooth tiger or whatever. Right?

That’s the core function of any government, is to protect its citizens. Period. Always. Everywhere. Always.

SHAWN RYAN: When did it stop? When did it stop?

TUCKER CARLSON: It just got, I mean, just like things corrupt over time. You know, you see a ship get launched and someone breaks champagne over the bow and it slides into the ocean, and then in 20 years it’s got a rusty hull and it’s scuttled. I mean, it’s just the nature of things. They age and they corrupt. Our bodies are the same way.

So I don’t, again, I don’t think we should be surprised, but you constantly have to scrape the barnacles off and make it work towards its design, its purpose of design. Like, why do we have this? Well, it’s to protect us first. Protect us first. To enforce the laws that we agreed on and passed by popular consent.

If you can’t do that, then you’re just not legitimate. Then you’re here for some other reason, mostly your own enrichment, and we’re going to try to overthrow you. I think that’s fair. I mean, what a dereliction of duty. That’s why only a private equity wife could support, only someone totally insulated from reality, physical reality, could ever support defunding the police.

Making the police better, sure, of course. Always defunding them. Then what are we here for? To pay teachers pensions, their full dental? It’s just insane. We’ve just gotten so far from what, you know, the core purpose of everything is that people are just at sea.

But can I say one thing again? I do think under pressure, a lot of people greatly improve. They get clarity under pressure. It’s kind of like when you’re on vacation for too long. If you’ve ever done the pina colada for breakfast thing for a week, you just kind of lose track of what you’re doing. Right. But when you’ve got a job to do and you’re getting up with the sun and you’re on it, there’s no question about what you’re doing. Do your freaking job.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s just the nature of people. If they’re not under some kind of stress, they lose track of their purpose and you wind up not having police. I think, isn’t that right? Yeah, I just…

SHAWN RYAN: I just don’t understand how this can keep getting swept under the rug over and over and over.

Local Corruption and Development

TUCKER CARLSON: Because there’s a lot of corruption, especially at the local level. I mean, everyone thinks the corruption’s in Congress. Actually no, it’s in the county supervisors, the code enforcement people. Like, that’s the kind of corruption that affects your life.

I lived in a corrupt city most of my life, Washington, D.C., and we just ended up participating in it. And if we ever needed something from government, just bribe somebody. And D.C. was great because there were no pretenses at all. No one would ever lecture you about good government. They were just like, okay, and you just get whatever you want. You know, you just live a normal life there. If you paid for it, it wasn’t even that expensive. You just had to pay the bribe.

But places like this are not like, the corruption is way more subtle and hard to uproot.

SHAWN RYAN: I think that’s developers.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s always developers. And can I just say a word about that? Is there anyone who makes your life worse than a developer? For a smaller benefit to a tinier group of people. Like, who actually benefits from more dollar stores? The people who built the dollar stores. That’s who benefits.

And I don’t know why they get to wreck our landscape and destroy our country, build shitty buildings, make everything ugly, desecrate God’s creation, and no one says anything about it. And in the Republican Party, which is almost to the point where it’s just useless, and I’m going to have to oppose it because I hate them too much, because they’re such betrayers.

But anyway, in the Republican Party, it’s like, you a socialist? Are you from Mao’s China? No, not really a socialist. Just, I don’t want any more dollar stores. I don’t want high density housing in my neighborhood. I don’t want any more f*ing strip malls that nobody goes to. No more karate studios and vape shops. Like, how about no?

Oh, socialist. You don’t believe in the free market because you bribed a f*ing county commissioner to build more garbage. You don’t even live here. In a normal society, we’d burn your strip mall down. You can’t do that here. You can’t turn my women into prostitutes. Sorry, OnlyFans. And you can’t destroy the landscape that I live in. No. How about no? That’s not crazy, is it?

SHAWN RYAN: No, it’s not.

The Republican Party’s Purpose

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, no. And you can’t take all my tax dollars and then stop, refuse to do anything about child molestation. Like, the whole reason we, you exist, county commissioners, is to protect my daughters from getting molested. But you won’t because, like, why?

SHAWN RYAN: What do you think the Republican Party is going to turn into after this?

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know. I mean, of course, you know, it’s the party. Well, it’s the party in power right now. It’s an amazing amount of power and amount of money and there’s a lot at stake. I mean, we shouldn’t underestimate just how powerful a political party is. You can be against political parties, but they run America. So, okay, there’s that. So maybe you shouldn’t ignore them. Maybe you should engage.

I don’t want to because I dislike them too much and I dislike the people. But I’m glad that there are some people fighting for the soul of the party, whatever that means. Well, I know what it means. It means restating out loud why we’re here. And we’re here to make the country better for the people who live in it. Not for a foreign country, whatever that country is, and not for your donors, but for most people or everybody kind of try, at least a little bit.

And that is the argument right now. Does the Republican Party exist to help its voters, every voter, actually every citizen, or does it exist for some other boutique corrupt reason like serving a foreign government, serving your donors? And I do think that’s the argument. I think that’s the argument that Trump started when he ran in 2015.

America First

It was not about “Make America Great Again,” which everyone is for. Who wouldn’t be for that? It’s about “America First,” which is the idea behind MAGA. America first. Just put your country first. If you’re its leader, you don’t put America first. You’re just a citizen. But if you’re running the country, you have a moral obligation to put its citizens before all others. It’s not a controversial idea. It’s the only idea.

But there are an awful lot of Republican leaders. Every Republican voter pretty much agrees with that. But Republican leaders are, and not just elected leaders, but though certainly them. But like the whole constellation of nonprofits and publications and “we’re conservative” and like, okay, you can call yourself whatever you want, but what do you, what does that mean?

And now we’re getting to the definitional part of the argument. What are you talking about? “Make America great again.” How? What are your priorities? Shut up. And they’re screaming because they’ve been exposed as liars. And everybody knows they’re liars.

The Fuentes Message

And by the way, that’s the Fuentes, that’s the actual Fuentes message. I’m not an expert on Fuentes, okay? I interviewed him. But from what I could tell, he is angry because he feels that the conservative establishment, you know, Ben Shapiro, all the way up to some idiot Republican senator, all of them are telling the same lie. “We’re on your side,” but they’re not.

That is, there’s nothing more legitimate than that. That is true. I would know. I’ve been involved for 40 years. I know every single person. That’s true. They’re corrupt. They don’t care that much or enough or at all about you. And they have an obligation to.

So that’s the debate underway. And everyone on the other side would love to make it about, “Why do you hate the Jews?” Well, I don’t hate the Jews. It’s not about the Jews, whatever that is. It’s about the country. And so I’m fervently hoping that the America First people win. I fervently, I’m hoping. I think they will.

Have you been around Republican donors?

SHAWN RYAN: Have I been around Republican donors?

TUCKER CARLSON: We probably never met a Republican donor.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, I’m sure I have. But I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, not all bad. Some nice people, but in general, if Trump voters knew who was paying for everything, they’d be like, “Wait, I have nothing in common with you at all.” And now I think they’re starting to figure that out.

Gen Z and the Future

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, it sure seems like that. I mean, what do you, what do you think? You know, the Gen Zers are definitely not responding to the traditional. I mean, you had mentioned that they’re, you know, that Nick Fuentes is, they are gravitating towards that. Then you got, you know, the other side. Mamdani. You know, just one mayor of New York. I mean, what, what in your mind, what do you think they’re branches 10, 20 years now from now? What does it look like?

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean…

SHAWN RYAN: Look, does it look the same?

TUCKER CARLSON: I feel weird speaking for people 30 years younger than me or more, what do I know? But I have actually made an intensive longitudinal, good faith effort to find out, because I matter. Plus I’ve got a ton of kids in that age range.

And my impression right now is that of course they’re enraged. Both sides are enraged by people serving Israel. “What? Stop with the Israelis. Be quiet. Nobody cares about Israel. Just shut up about Israel.” But I don’t think it’s primarily about Israel. I really don’t. I don’t think it, I don’t think people care that much. I know I don’t care at all about Israel.

The Real Issue: Economics and Debt

I really think it’s about economics. I really do. I think that’s what Mamdani and Fuentes have in common. And there are a bunch of people who want to pretend it’s about ethnic hate or even about foreign policy. I don’t believe that. I don’t think the evidence shows that. I think what they’re really mad about is the lack of opportunity, economic opportunity they know they’re facing.

And then if you look at the debt loads, that’s what I look at. Like how in debt, who, how much debt does the average 30-year-old have and who does he owe it to? And it’s overwhelming. It’s like unbelievable. I had 10 grand on a credit card once. I mean, I literally couldn’t sleep over it because that was weird, you know, 25 years ago, 10 grand. I just didn’t make enough money. I had to get another job. It was fine.

But debt is a huge, debt is the problem for young people. And what’s so infuriating and alienating is that both parties are completely on the side of the lenders and not the debtors. And in fact, it’s a symbiotic relationship. There is no borrowing without lending and vice versa. They are engaged in this dance and ultimately one is basically exploiting the other. That’s just a fact and no one will acknowledge that.

So the Democratic Party’s like, “Well, everyone has too much student loan debt.” Who’s benefiting from student loan debt? Well, the student loan lenders are benefiting, of course, but so are the colleges. They’re being subsidized for garbage. It’s garbage, right? They’re getting rich from these student loans. The colleges are. And their administrators and then so are the lenders.

But the Democrats like, “Well, so because of this, we’re going to get rid of student loan debt, but taxpayers are going to pay for it.” Really? So you spend your life trying to pay your kids college tuition. It gets super expensive because the lenders and the colleges are getting rich. And then you have to pay for other people’s costs. Like, what?

And the Republicans are just like, “Shut up. Pay your debts. It’s your fault.” Which is partly true. You accrue a lot of debt. You shouldn’t have. On the other hand, it’s not just you at fault.

The Drug Dealer Analogy

So here’s the analogy that always occurs to me that I never hear anyone use, which is drug addiction. So you got the drug addicts. And we disapprove of drug addiction. Of course we do. F*ing drug addicts. But ultimately we don’t punish the drug addict as harshly as we punish the person who sells in the drugs, do we?

Who’s worse, the addict or the dealer? Obviously the dealer. Look at the penalties, look at the moral outrage. We matter at Pablo Escobar or some guy dying of a drug OD in Central Park. It’s not even close. Pablo Escobar is the root of the problem. He’s the one getting rich from the addict’s misery.

Well, I have no idea why we don’t assume the same posture toward debt. Yeah, the kid shouldn’t have be, you know, 50 grand in hawk to a credit card company. But what about the credit card company? They have no role in this. They sent this kid a credit card offer in college when he’s 23. They’re letting him buy DoorDash on credit, which is very common now. “Buy now, pay later.” That’s debt. It’s disguised. No interest, but there are late fees. It’s debt and it’s debt slavery.

And they’re enslaved by it. But the slave master never gets blamed, only the slave. Tell me how that works. That is totally illegitimate. It’s immoral, and it’s on us as adults. I mean, I have no debt. That’s rule one. No debt. I won’t buy, I can’t afford. I’m not buying that. Not because I’m a virtuous person, because I’m so afraid of debt, because I know that it means no freedom. I’m indebted. I’m literally indebted. I’m not free.

The Conspiracy of Silence

And no one ever says that. Anyone who says it is like, “Shut up, socialist.” But even the socialists aren’t saying it. That’s what blows my freaking mind. That’s when you know it is a real conspiracy. You talk to the DSA kids. “Oh, I’m so radical. I’m DSA. Whites are bad. I’m pro trans.” That’s not radical, dude. That’s just stupid.

You want to challenge power? Why don’t you criticize the banks once in a while? What? All they want to talk about is race and gender. Where’s the real power in white supremacy when whites are dying off? It’s not a white supremacy, son. It’s at Citibank and JP Morgan. You didn’t know that?

They themselves are tools of actual power, left and right. The right is way off into libertarian economics. “Just the free market.” There isn’t a free market in this country, period. Hasn’t been in my lifetime. For sure. There definitely isn’t now. It’s a monopoly economy, obviously.

And then the left is way up and all this other garbage meant to divide the population against, against itself to keep them from challenging actual power in my, and I’m not for revolution, but we’re going to get a revolution if we don’t readjust a little bit soon.

Holding Lenders Accountable

So I would say let’s hold lenders at least as accountable as we hold debtors, because that’s fair and obvious. And in fact, I think lenders are way more culpable than borrowers. And let’s take a good look at the interest rates. No society has ever allowed usury at the scale that we do.

“Oh, shut up. You can’t talk about usury.” Why? Because you’re benefiting from it. F* you. I’m not afraid of you. Like, are you? No.

What’s the top rate for a payday loan in the United States? I’ll tell you. It’s 600% annually. 600%? That’s legal? Yes. Holy. And why don’t we care? Because it’s just black people. It’s the ghetto or, you know, it’s poor people. Stop. Black people, of course it’s literally not. But that the, in your mind, you’re like, “Oh, that’s pathetic. A payday loan,” okay?

But that’s a human being. That’s a fellow citizen. And we don’t care at all. 600%.

SHAWN RYAN: A desperate human being.

The Threat of Debt and Finance

TUCKER CARLSON: Why is that allowed? Why is it so hard to say? How about no? The same reason you can’t make my daughter into a prostitute. Only fans. Because it’s disgusting. And if we can’t say it’s disgusting, at the very least, before we even say it’s illegal, how about it’s just bad? Then we’ve lost the most basic defense mechanism that allows any society to continue.

You have to be able to say no, that’s too big a threat to us. No, Satanism is not the same as Christianity. You can’t have a Satanist crash in the state capitol or whatever they call it, shrine to Satan. We’re not doing that because that’s self-destruction. That’s suicide disguised as freedom.

So anyway, we just lost the ability to recognize the true threats to ourselves and our children and our grandchildren and our nation. And one of the greatest threats, maybe you could argue it, but definitely one of the greatest threats is debt. And people are getting rich from debt. I know them personally and so do you. We call it finance. That’s the name of it. Finance. What does finance mean? Loaning money to people at interest.

There’s a place for that. I don’t think that it’s inherently evil to loan money to people. I’ve loaned money to a million people personally. I never get it back, but whatever. Anyway, the point is it’s not inherently evil, but the details matter. At what rate? Who are you loaning it to? What are the terms? There has to be some boundary or else it’s just pure exploitation of your fellow human beings, your fellow citizens.

And rather than rein it in, we celebrate the people who do it and we wind up with the entire economy based on what? Finance and real estate. And neither one is a productive industry. One is loaning money at interest and the other is just reselling dirt. Okay, that is not going to last.

And then tech. I complain about tech a lot. I’m worried about the implications of emerging technologies that I’ve talked about a lot. But the idea of tech building something new, creating something, of course that’s what we’re supposed to do as people, make something new. So that’s inherently more legitimate.

Real estate and finance are components of a healthy economy. If you find that they are the economy, you’re going to get what you deserve. And nobody is saying that. I don’t know why. Well, I do know why. Because the real estate and finance lobbies are way more powerful than the normal person lobby, which doesn’t exist.

But young people, anyway, I’m far afield. But the point is young people are being destroyed economically and they have no opportunity. They’re being disrespected and lectured and given a whole pharmacopoeia of every kind of drug to keep them passive so they don’t foment a revolution. So they stay in their little cages, which is sinister, it’s lethal, it’s homicidal, actually kills the spirit at very least.

But not just that, they can’t own anything. And the idea that you’re going to roll out with a straight face a 50-year mortgage, which is literally the opposite of what we need. Who benefits from a 50-year mortgage? Well, the guy collecting 50 years of interest. Who loses in that deal? The guy who doesn’t own his house. He’s a renter for 50 years.

The 50-Year Mortgage Debate

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know, man. I’m probably way off because everybody I respect thinks that that is a f*ing horrible idea.

TUCKER CARLSON: 50-year mortgage.

SHAWN RYAN: I think it’s a good idea.

TUCKER CARLSON: How?

SHAWN RYAN: Because I don’t know anybody that has held onto their home for 30 years and paid it all down. This county, for example, real estate prices have gone through the f*ing roof. A lot of people can’t afford to live here anymore. I think that you can build wealth through real estate. I think you could use the 50-year mortgage to get yourself into a market that’s appreciating at a rapid pace. Start to build your wealth, sell that, take the equity with you and build it that way.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s no question you could do that.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s just how I think. I think it’s a good thing that 50-year mortgages are here because it gets the payment down. It gets people to be able to afford a home. Yeah, if they pay it for 50 years, they’re going to lose their fing ass. But if they play their cards right and they actually study, if they play their cards right, then they can get in, they can gain the equity, they’ll gain a lot more equity in certain markets than they will pay in interest and then they can get the f out and roll that into something else.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s absolutely no question that people can parlay credit into real money. There’s no doubt about that. And I know a million people who’ve done it. And every real estate investor does that. That’s what they do. And they’re good at it.

I would just say two things that make me concerned, very concerned about it. One is that’s a very sophisticated game actually. To take leverage and turn it into actual wealth, you got to know what you’re doing. It’s beyond my reach mentally. I’m not smart enough to do that. I’d be afraid to play with that.

B, I think the value of a home is the ownership of it. That’s why it’s better than renting, because of the psychological rewards and because it reorients your thinking toward permanence. Owning a piece of dirt is just psychologically a completely different experience than not owning. Vests you in the country, you have something to defend. This is mine. It’s not much, but I own it. You can’t take it away from me. And I will take a stand on its behalf.

The Psychology of Home Ownership

And I know in my own life, I didn’t own a home, actually own a home. I bought a house at like 24, 23, 24, because it was a different world. Bought a super cheap house on credit with a mortgage. And I’ve owned houses ever since then. So like a long time, over 35, 30, 35 years. But I didn’t actually own a house until I was in my late 40s and I signed a new deal with Fox and I was like, I’m going to pay off the mortgage.

And I called my smartest friend who’s like, “That’s so stupid. The tax advantages in mortgage interest.” Of course I knew that because I had a mortgage my whole life. And I was like, I don’t care. “So you’re going to lose $50,000 a year just by owning it.” And I was like, so that means the system is set up to penalize me for not being in debt. I have to pay for the privilege of not being in debt to a bank. Who’s writing these laws? The banks.

But I did it anyway because I’m a lunatic. And I’m like, I don’t care. All I care about is the psychological benefit. And the psychological benefit was so much more profound than I ever anticipated to owning the house, even though I still had steep property taxes. You don’t own anything in this country because you always owe somebody something and if you stop paying them, they take it away from you. So that’s not actual ownership, but it was a lot closer to ownership.

And oh my gosh, I was just like, that’s when I really went crazy when I owned it. It’s like, come and take it.

SHAWN RYAN: I’d pay 50 grand just for the peace of mind.

TUCKER CARLSON: 100%. And not just the peace of mind, but the swelling of power. I felt like this, not even an impressive house really, but I was like, this is my house. I don’t take any, I don’t pay anybody. Of course, I was paying a billion in property taxes to the stupid, corrupt D.C. government. So it was kind of a fake, it was a facade, but it was still real to me.

I just felt like getting out of debt was the biggest psychological change that ever happened to me. Really, it’s like I’m my own man. I own my house. Maybe I think small. That’s why I’m not in business. But it made a big difference. That’s when I started telling the truth so much, they fired me. I paid off my mortgage. It’s like, yeah, I have no mortgage. What are you going to do about it? Fire me? Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know. I just, I don’t think it’s the best answer, the 50-year mortgage. I would rather them just lower the interest rates.

TUCKER CARLSON: But what if the bottom drops out? The real estate markets, I mean, I think long term real estate, obviously that’s all I do. I like real estate, so I buy real estate. But it’s cyclical. So there are times when, what you thought, it just happened to me actually on something. But anyway, in the last year, yeah, the value goes down sometimes. It’s not just up. So if you’ve got a 50-year note, I don’t know, you could be more underwater than we already are.

SHAWN RYAN: Definitely could be.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I mean, that’s happened. I didn’t have to sell, but I mean, I’ve definitely owned houses where I owed more than the house is worth. Not a great feeling. You don’t really feel like this is an ownership society when you couldn’t sell the house for the amount that you owe on it.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Feels a little precarious. Though I will say, it does drive you to work harder.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s for damn sure. What do you got coming up, Tucker? I know we got to wrap it up soon because you got a dinner.

Upcoming Documentary Projects

TUCKER CARLSON: Man, I talk too much. Coming up? I don’t know. Some kind of, how’s your new documentary, Meeting with Destiny? Well, we just did a documentary on Thomas Crooks, which I thought was really, really interesting and very unsatisfactory in the responses we got from the FBI. So I’m really concerned about the FBI. I’ll just say that. Very concerned. I don’t understand exactly what’s going on, but I don’t think anybody understands. It’s concerning.

And I know people who work there and I’ve spoken to them and I’m not against them, but what is this? And I can’t get an answer. I feel that way about a number of FBI investigations in progress. I don’t know what this is. And I’m definitely unsettled by it a lot. I hope I find out and hope everything’s okay, but I’m worried about that. And we’re doing it. We just commissioned another documentary.

SHAWN RYAN: I had…

TUCKER CARLSON: We did documentaries at Fox and so I worked with documentary guys who specialize in making documentaries. One of whom lives here in Nashville, who worked for me for years and we just hired him again to make documentaries. So I know a lot of people in that world. They made a million documentaries and I love the form. I thought it was going away. I thought no one would ever watch another documentary.

Dude, are you serious? I know, I know. Well, what do I know? I mean, I’ve not been good at calling changes in media. I thought the podcast was the dumbest thing I ever heard. I told Joe Rogan to his face. I was like, I did not think this would work. Four hours of talking, who would watch that? The whole world.

So anyway, I personally thought the documentaries were a dying art. My father made a million documentaries. I have them on film cans in my barn. So they’ve been around a long time. And I love making them and writing them and voicing them and I just love the whole experience. So we are doing a ton of documentaries and we’re doing a multi-part documentary on the FBI and some…

SHAWN RYAN: Is that the next one coming out?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, a bunch of different parts. I mean I just commissioned it really yesterday. So I think it’s going to be good. If not to brag, but the documentaries are the product of, I decided what we’re doing documentaries about. Obviously I’m involved in documentaries, but if I’m being honest, and the Crooks thing I brought, I got that material on Crooks myself and brought that to our guys.

But really we have a couple people, guy called Charles Cougar, Scooter Downey. I mean these guys are, I could never do what they do. They’re so freaking good. It’s incredible. And Charlie Cougar especially is one of the most talented people I’ve ever, who I’ve worked with for 10 years at least, is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Way smarter than I am. So it’s such a thrill to watch that.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you pick the subject matter?

The Documentary Process and Team

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I picked. Of course. Yeah, of course I picked the subject. And I used to write the documentaries. Like when I was at Fox, I always wrote the documentary. I’m a writer, so I wrote all the documentaries.

But he’s so good that the crooks documentary, which we just did, and I voiced it, you know, I do the voiceover and sit in my barn. We have a family library in our barn. I sit in the library and voice it. And he brought it to me. We had talked a lot about it and I brought him the material and then he followed up on it.

But he basically did the whole thing and he wrote the whole thing and it was like better than I could have done. And I ad-libbed like eight words that I changed. But I mean I read it cold. That’s how good he is.

So I just want to say that out loud, man. This guy, I said kid. He’s not a kid anymore, he’s a father. But it’s just incredible to watch people. I always thought he was smart, obviously, but he’s just become a true force. I don’t think his name is done by anybody. Probably doesn’t want it known. I probably shouldn’t have said his name. But he’s an amazing person. And so is Scooter Downing, this other guy. And a wonderful guy too.

Finding the Good People

So yeah, I’m super psyched. It’s nice. I will say one thing about getting older, the bad parts taking a leak in the middle of night. But the good part is you end up knowing who the good people are.

Like I’ve worked at every network, you show up at these networks and it’s like you have this big staff, you have no idea who’s honest, who’s a liar, who’s talented, who’s not, who cares, who doesn’t like you just don’t know anything.

And then after a while, over years and move from this place to that place, like you really identify some of the most impressive people in the world. It’s just absolutely crazy. Like the people we have working for us now, every single person I would have stay at my house and most of them have.

And every single person I would trust with my checking account. I mean there’s every single person. I believe every single person is a good person. It’s just incredible. I hope this moment for our company, companies, I hope it never changes because I just love everyone. And we’ve had so much drama over all these years, and now we’re at a place where everyone is great.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I’m happy for him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, dude, it’s the best for you.

SHAWN RYAN: Good for you.

The .357 Lever Gun

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, thank you for having me. Sorry I talked. Thank you for your guns. Can we just say one last thing? As a coda, the .357 lever gun is the greatest gun ever. I mean, probably not if you’re fighting in Afghanistan, but if you’re shooting steel or bowling pins in your backyard, there is no more fun gun than a .357.

Or I shoot .38 out of mine because I’m cheap. That is just the greatest gun. No recoil, dead nuts, accurate. Cheap ammo. It’s real. It’s not a .22. It’s like a thump. Like everything about it.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you agree with that?

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I love it. I love it, I love it.

Closing Thoughts

SHAWN RYAN: Next time you come off some fly rods and hopefully some fish in that pond.

TUCKER CARLSON: Catch a largemouth on a fly rod. And if you think that fly fishing is like some sport with your little hatches in your number 18 midges, I love fly fish. Oh, dude. Throw a popper across a farm pond and a largemouth hits it. Or even better, or a smallmouth, it’s like—

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Well, Tucker, thanks again, man. It’s always good to see you. God bless.

TUCKER CARLSON: God bless.

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