Here is the full transcript of the conversation with President Nayib Bukele titled “Seeking God’s Wisdom, Taking Down MS-13, and His Advice to Donald Trump” on the Tucker Carlson Network channel.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
TUCKER CARLSON: Mr. President, thank you for having us at your Camp David, which is beautiful. So you were inaugurated two days ago. This is a small country, and yet your inauguration was international news, was everywhere. Why? Why do you think that is?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, it was a shock for us, too. I mean, we knew that a lot of people were coming, and I mean, that will draw some attention, of course. We had big delegations from 110 countries. So, of course, that would draw news because, you know, if a chancellor comes from a country, then he brings his, you know, his media team and that, and that will create some news over there. And if a president comes or a king comes, that will create some news. You came, so, you know, that creates some news.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why were they coming?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, I don’t know, different reasons, of course. I could ask you, why did you come, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: I came because I think something remarkable is happening here. That’s why. But I’m interested in why you think people came.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, different reasons. There are definitely different reasons. For example, the U.S. government sent a big delegation, but then we had also a delegation from Congress.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: That started as a Republican delegation, but then the Democrats jumped in the wagon, and we had a bipartisan delegation from Congress. So, you know, it’s like, so that’s up. I don’t know at the end what happened, but I think that it’s like how stars are born.
They say that, you know, debris starts joining up, and they become an asteroid. But if more debris joins up, it becomes a planet because, you know, the gravitational pull. The more debris comes up, it becomes a star because then the gravitational pull is too big.
So, that’s called critical mass. So, I don’t know, sometimes just, you know, because, you know, God wants it like that or just the stroke of luck or whatever, you get some critical mass in something you’re doing, and then it becomes bigger than the sum of all of its parts. So, I don’t know, probably got some critical mass that we didn’t foresee.
El Salvador’s Challenges
TUCKER CARLSON: My guess is that of all the countries in the hemisphere, El Salvador seemed in the toughest shape or close to the bottom in the rankings for everything. Lacking abundant natural resources, etc. Is that true?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. I mean, the country has been poor since it was born. Lacking everything, basically.
TUCKER CARLSON: Lacking everything. With a dense population, a lot of people packed in.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, how did you change it? I guess, I’ll cut right to it. If you can fix El Salvador, what are the lessons for the rest of us? What did you do first?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, of course, you cannot do anything if you don’t have peace, right? And when I say peace, I include war, civil wars, invasion, crime. I mean, you need to have peace. You need to be able to move freely, to have your basic rights respected, starting with the right to live, the right to move, the right to have property.
So, you need your basic rights to be respected. So, you need peace. That’s the first thing a society will struggle to achieve. And once you achieve peace, then you can struggle for all the other things, like infrastructure, wealth, well-being, quality of life. But you have to start with peace.
So, we had to start with peace. And in the case of El Salvador, we were literally the murder capital of the world. And we turned it into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, safer than any other country in the Western Hemisphere.
If I would have said that five years ago, they would have said that I was crazy, right? Because this was literally the most dangerous country in the whole world.
TUCKER CARLSON: Your capital is now safer than our capital in Washington.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. And the country is safer than the United States as a whole. The US murder rate is around six murders per 100,000 inhabitants, and our murder rate is two. So, we’re safer than Canada, safer than Chile, safer than Uruguay, safer than the US, safer than any country in the Western Hemisphere.
There are countries in the other hemisphere that are safer than El Salvador, but not in the Western Hemisphere.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, you did that in just a couple of years?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, we did that basically in three years.
The Formula for Pacifying El Salvador
TUCKER CARLSON: So, bottom line for us, what’s the formula?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, I can tell you the official formula and the real formula.
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, the official formula is that we did a plan. I mean, we did a plan. When I say official, I don’t mean it’s a lie, it’s just the official one.
We did a plan that was comprised of phases. So, we roll up the first phase, then the next one, then the next one, and then gangs started attacking back. So, we had to roll up everything at once, like in a hurry, so, and it worked. It worked.
In a couple of weeks, the country was transformed because the gangs were not yet arrested, but they were on the run. So, we basically, in the roll up of phase six, we basically pacified the country in a couple of weeks.
TUCKER CARLSON: How do you do that? How do you pacify a country?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, the phases included building up of the police forces, the army. We doubled the army. We literally doubled the army to fight crime, to use the army to fight crime.
So, yeah, we roll up the phases and then we went after them.
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, so that’s the official.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, that’s the official.
TUCKER CARLSON: What’s the real?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It’s a miracle.
TUCKER CARLSON: I love that. What do you mean?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, it’s a miracle. When gangs started attacking us back, basically, they killed 87 people in three days, which for a country of six million people, it’s crazy. It would be the equivalent of having 5,000 murders in the US in three days.
TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah. So, we were in a meeting. Well, when it started, not when it ended, but when it started, we were in a meeting at my office, 3 a.m., 4 a.m., just watching what was happening and trying to figure out what to do because the problem with gangs is that they don’t only attack their objectives.
When they want to create terror, they can attack anyone. So, they can actually kill their grandma.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: And it’s your victim.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Because they don’t care about their grandma. You care about their grandma. So, it’s your victim. If they kill their grandma, you have one death and they achieved the terror that they want to create.
So, they can kill anybody, a woman walking by, a guy working in the street, a taxi driver. They can kill anybody. And if the state goes after them, the state has no intention of killing or harming anybody, but the gang members.
So, you have 70,000 objectives, which were the 70,000 gang members, but they have 6 million possible targets. So, it was almost an impossible task.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a guerrilla war, really.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. But it was an impossible task because you have to go after them. They were intertwined with the population. They were everywhere and they were killing randomly. So, you stop them.
So, we really tried to figure out what to do. And I basically said, I mean, we’re looking into an impossible mission here. So, we prayed.
TUCKER CARLSON: You prayed in the meeting?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. Yes, of course, several times.
TUCKER CARLSON: What did you pray for?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: To wisdom, to win the war, to have … I thought at the time that we will have civilian casualties. So, we said, we prayed that the civilian casualties will be as low as possible. And we didn’t have any civilian casualties.
TUCKER CARLSON: And was everyone in the meeting comfortable with that?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. Yes. All my security cabinet are believers. They all believe in God. We’re a secular country, of course, but we all believe in God.
The Satanic Nature of MS-13
TUCKER CARLSON: MS-13 is one of the major gangs.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: And they are satanic also.
TUCKER CARLSON: That was my question. So, very little … No, no, no. But I hope you will explain it because very little has been written in the West about this.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: They’re satanic, yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: But actually, literally, can you explain?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, they didn’t start as a satanic organization. MS-13 started in Los Angeles, in the US, because Salvadorans weren’t allowed to sell drugs by the Mexican gangs. So, they created a gang that was called the 18th Street Gang, because they basically wanted to sell drugs in a street that was 18th Street over there.
But then the division started to create … they started dividing themselves and started infighting. So, they created MS-13. And then MS-13 started outgrowing the other gangs. And they started exporting the organization to other parts of the US.
And when Bill Clinton decided to deport those guys, he didn’t tell our government, at the time, I’m deporting this criminal. They just, you know, send them here. And they came. There were a few, but unchecked.
At the same time, some laws were passed to protect minors from imprisonment. And of course, the gangs used that to recruit 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 17-year-old. So, at the beginning, it was some youth causing harm, assaulting, trying to control their territory, selling drugs, things that are bad, but probably not critical.
But they grew, they grew, they grew. And they started controlling territories. A few years later, they were actually a huge criminal, a huge international criminal organization that they have bases in Italy, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, the US. Basically, a lot of major cities in the US will have strongholds.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right outside Washington, DC.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, of course. And you have in Long Island and LA. It’s a huge criminal international organization. So, they grew and they started killing more people just to get territory or to fight against rival gangs or to collect debts or money or whatever.
But as the organization grew, they became satanic. They started doing satanic rituals. I don’t know exactly when that started, but it’s well-documented.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: And now we’re arresting, we’ve even found the authors and things like that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, I’ve seen them.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: And so, they became a satanic organization. And even when you, sometimes when you interview gang members that are in prison, they will say, I’m out of the gang. Of course, they’re in prison, but they will say, I’m not a member of the gang anymore.
And when you ask them why, I remember one — I remember the news outlet that made it this, but it’s a very well-known news outlet that made this interview with a gang member in person. We allowed them to go into prisons and do the interviews.
And the guy that, they asked him, how many people have you killed? And he said, I don’t remember. He didn’t remember how many, probably 10, 20. He didn’t remember. And then they asked him, what is your position in the gang? He explained how he went up in positions, but I left the gang. I said, why did you leave the gang? And he said, well, I was used to kill people, but I killed for territory. I killed to collect money. I killed for extortion.
But I came to this house and they were about to kill a baby. And he, the killer, that had killed tens of people, said, oh, wait, what are we doing? Why are we going to kill that baby? And they told him because the beast asked for a baby. So, we have to give him the baby. So, he said that he couldn’t resist that. So, he left the gang. He’s in prison because he’s a killer, but he left the gang because he couldn’t tolerate what he was seeing.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, human sacrifice was a part.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, in the United States, a couple of weeks ago or a couple of days ago, I don’t remember exactly, I saw the news that they were going to kill a young girl or they killed a young girl. I don’t exactly remember because it was a satanic ritual. It happened in the U.S. a couple of weeks ago.
The Real Battle
TUCKER CARLSON: You may have come to the obvious conclusion that the real debate is not between Republican and Democrat or socialist and capitalist, right, left. The real battle is between people who are lying on purpose and people who are trying to tell you the truth. It’s between good and evil. It’s between honesty and falsehood. And we hope we are on the former side. That’s why we created this network, the Tucker Carlson Network. And we invite you to subscribe to it. You go to tuckercarlson.com/podcast. Our entire archive is there. A lot of behind-the-scenes footage of what actually happens in this barn when only an iPhone is running. Tuckercarlson.com slash podcast. You will not regret it.
So that’s almost never described in English language press as clearly as you just described it.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: No. Which is weird, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, you sort of wonder why.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: If there’s a spiritual component that’s driving it, why not just say so?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: But I guess my point is you saw it as that.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. Yes, of course. There’s a spiritual war and there’s a physical war. And the physical war could be, that’s the unofficial version. If you win the spiritual war, it will reflect into the physical war. So, I think I don’t know what I would call it, our impressive victory was because we won the spiritual war very, very fast.
The Importance of Seeking God’s Wisdom
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that leads me.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Because you didn’t have competition. I mean, there were satanics. I think that made it easier.
TUCKER CARLSON: In your inaugural, and I was listening on headphones for the translation, so I just want to check this, you said, we have achieved this great victory and made this a safe country and that’s the predicate for everything that follows. And the next thing we’re going to do in this term is to work on the economy to make it better.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, grow the economy, yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And you said, I have a, correct me if I’m wrong, you said, I have a three-point plan. And I’m thinking, I wonder what that is. I don’t know, start a Federal Reserve Bank? And you said, the first point of my plan is seek God’s wisdom.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: That is what you said.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, I said that, yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why would that be the first point of that economic plan?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Why wouldn’t it?
TUCKER CARLSON: Why should it be the first part of the plan?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, I think it should be. Yeah. And most people would think that, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: I just, I’ve never heard any leader of any country say that.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Because probably they forgot to represent the people that elect them. It’s like you ask most of the people that elect the politicians, they’ll say, yeah, that’s fine, yeah, I believe that. But then you ask the politician, he’ll say, no, no, no, that’s not. So who is he trying to pander to?
I mean, it doesn’t make sense, right? It’s a common sense thing to seek God’s wisdom.
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. It’s a prerequisite for wise decision-making, I would say.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, exactly. So that’s the first part of our plan.
The World’s Reaction to El Salvador’s Success
TUCKER CARLSON: It makes me laugh. Do you think that that’s one of the reasons that your successes, which are just measurable, I’m not saying this for ideological reasons, just a fact that you’ve transformed the country in a good way, and that you’re literally the most popular elected leader in the world, again, not speculation, provable fact.
You’d think that would be greeted in the hemisphere as this amazing thing, like what’s going on in El Salvador? And instead, there’s been this, what’s going on in El Salvador?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. There’s been hostility. Do you think that’s why?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: I’m not sure. But one of the reasons is that we don’t pander to them. So probably they don’t like that. It’s probably a reason. I’m not going to go into conspiracy theory. I’m going to go into provable facts, right? Like you said.
So there’s worldwide agendas, right? These are provable facts, right? They have benchmarks that they need the countries to follow and they need the countries to do. This is out there, right?
But sometimes if you work on those things, you’re probably neglecting the important things for your people, the things that your people are really asking for. I’ll give you an example.
When we arrested the gang members that were killing so much people that we were the murder capital of the world, literally the most dangerous place in the whole world, more dangerous than Haiti, right? More dangerous than Iraq. This was literally the most dangerous country in the world. We have tripled the murder rate that Haiti has right now.
With all the mayhem that they have, we have tripled that here. So what do you have to do? You have to stop that, right? I mean, it’s a no-brainer. I mean, you don’t even need to have a big thought process. You just have to stop that. That’s the first thing you have to do.
When we did that, we got huge condemnations. You name it. Say an organization, we got a condemnation from them. And a lot of them were human rights organizations. And you would ask, what about the human right of a woman not to be raped? I mean, what about the human right of kids to play or to be free or to go to the park? And what about the human right to live or the human right to walk in the street, right? But no, they were worried about the human rights of the killers, which they have human rights. I don’t say they don’t. They’re humans.
But if you have to prioritize, what would you prioritize? The human rights of the honest, hardworking, decent people, not the human rights that they do have. But you won’t prioritize the human rights of the killers and rapists and murderers.
And so we secured the country. And we did it with no help from any other country and with huge, huge condemnation in everything that we were doing, everything. I mean, we changed the attorney general. We got so much condemnation because we changed the attorney general that we need to change the prosecutor, the murderers.
So basically, they tried to block every step of what we were doing. And now it’s that the results are there, that they’re tangible, measurable, undeniable. Now they don’t know what to do. Because a lot of other countries are saying, maybe a lot of other countries similar to ours, they have similar problems. They’re saying, maybe we should do that too. But they don’t want that because that’s not in their agenda.
TUCKER CARLSON: But I guess that’s why I came here, to be totally honest, is what your success says about the country that I live in or other countries in the hemisphere or in Europe, where people are killed by the thousands every year. And what you’ve proven with very little money and no help from anyone else is it’s not that hard to fix.
Therefore, all that killing must be a voluntary decision that my government and many other governments are making about their own citizens.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: You can make that logical.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I don’t know what other conclusion to reach. If El Salvador can do it, what’s going on here?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, you can make that logical conclusion. I think that’s probably what they are afraid of. Because, I mean, we don’t have weapons of mass destruction, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: No.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, why are they afraid? Why would they take so much time and make condemnations to El Salvador, right? It doesn’t make any sense.
TUCKER CARLSON: You didn’t send a man to the moon.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Exactly. So, I think they’re afraid of the example. Because a lot of people might say, hey, we want that too. If they can do it with no money, with very few resources and with a huge problem, because I heard some people say, oh, El Salvador could do it because the problem was not that big.
I mean, we’re literally the murder capital of the world. How bigger can it get, right? We’re literally the most dangerous place in the world, three times more dangerous than Haiti right now. So, I mean, how bigger can the problem get?
And at the same time, we had little, very few resources, and we were able to do it with no civilian casualties. After we started the war on gangs, we had no civilian casualties, and we lost eight between police officers and soldiers, and we basically eradicated all crime. And we arrested 70,000 gang members, which the number is not a number that just came up, that’s the official number that all the organizations said we had of gang members. And you can watch the World Bank reports, etc.
They said El Salvador has around 70,000 gang members and 500,000 collaborators. So, we spared the collaborators, basically, and we only got the gang members. Why? Because most of the collaborators were just family members, or the woman that sells tortillas, and she had to tell, oh, the police is coming, because if not, she would probably have been killed by the gang.
So, most of the collaborators were not really criminals, but just people living in a society that was controlled by gangs. The government was really, the real government was the gangs, just like in Haiti. You have a fake government, and you have the real government. The government in Haiti is the gangs. It was like that. You had a formal government, of course, with offices and everything, but you have the real government in the territory, which were the gangs.
The Decline of Western Civilization
TUCKER CARLSON: So, I mean, and I know you want to stick to the facts, but I mean, at some point, you do have to, I mean, this is a really important question, why would a government that has the means to end violent crime, not all, there’s only going to be crime, people breaking laws, but violent crime, people murdering and raping each other, is a voluntary decision that a government makes. Why would a government choose to have that?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: I don’t know. I don’t know. I can make up theories, but I really don’t know.
TUCKER CARLSON: But do you have a gut instinct about it?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: I think it’s a combination of factors, like everything.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: They might be evil people that are doing it on purpose, of course, and probably planning stuff, I don’t know.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, possible.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, possibly. At the same time, there’s a lot of people that are just being fed these ideologies, and they think they’re doing the right thing, like allowing shoplifting, for example. That’s the most stupid thing you can think of, but they do it.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, you don’t allow shoplifting here?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: No, of course not.
TUCKER CARLSON: But you would think, why would anybody think allowing shoplifting would be a good idea? I don’t know. Why? I mean, that’s the stupidest thing to think, right?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Or giving away drugs.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Or giving away drugs. Let’s give away drugs. It’s like very stupid things. And you would guess that some of the people doing and enacting these policies are not necessarily evil. They’re just being fed this ideology. They think they’re doing the right thing.
It’s like, I’ll give you an example. I think a month ago or something like that, yeah, like a month, the Spanish police arrested a gang member that had fled El Salvador. So, the gang member escaped. He flew, he went to Spain, and with an international operation between the Spanish and our police and the Spanish police in Interpol, they were able to arrest the guy.
So, in those cases, you need to do an extradition because it’s an automatic international operation. So, they just get the guy, process him, and send him to the original police where they filed the claim. So, the Spanish police was very proud of the arrest.
So, they put it up on Twitter. So, they said, we just arrested this gang member. So, I, you know, quoted the tweet, and I said, great, send him, we’ll take care of him, right? So, that was used in his court hearing in Spain as a proof that he wouldn’t get a fair trial here. So, he was protected by Spanish laws, and he stayed there in Spain.
TUCKER CARLSON: Maybe they don’t have enough gang members in Spain.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Exactly. So, I mean, I don’t care if they want to keep him. It’s a mouth that we don’t have to feed, right? So, they can keep him. But the thing is that you would think, why would the Spanish government want an extra gang member?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It’s not necessarily out of evil. It’s just that, you know, the laws, the system, the things that are being fed to the judge, to the prosecutor. So, they think that, you know, that my tweet was too mean. And, you know, this gang member, his rights were being, you know, not respected.
He wouldn’t get a fair trial in El Salvador. So, he had to stay in Spain to be protected. I mean, they know he’s a killer. They actually arrested him because of that. It was an international operation and everything. They know he probably murdered dozens of people, but they feel the need to protect them.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, what’s sad about that is that that’s a sign that your defense mechanism no longer works.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And that your society is dying.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And Spain is a wonder, in my opinion, a wonder.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Once a civilization is reaching a point into, it will start failing.
TUCKER CARLSON: I think that’s obvious to those of us with great sadness, to those of us who live here.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Unless things are done, of course, you can always do something.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, okay, two-part question. Why do you think that’s happening? Because it is recognizably happening in real time before us. And what can be done at this point to reverse it?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, you know, everything erodes and degrades. I mean, that’s, you know, just laws of nature.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. I mean, we do.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: That’s why we die. We age and we die.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: You can slow it, right? You can, you know, stay fit, diet. I mean, you’re eventually going to age and die. You cannot avoid that. Same happens with anything, infrastructure. You know, I had an argument with my, at the beginning of the government, I had an argument with my ministry of public works, my minister of public works, because there was this neighborhood that was built in an area that you shouldn’t build things there.
It was a mountain. The soil was basically flour. So, the mountain was falling and the houses were falling with the mountain. So, to save the people, the ministry of public works started building a huge wall to stop the houses from falling, right? So, they were building this huge wall and, of course, I can’t micromanage everything. So, when I saw the wall being built, I called my minister. I said, what are you doing? I mean, you won’t stop the mountain.
And I said, let’s build houses for the people somewhere else. It would be cheaper. And, you know, he said, no, no, the wall will be fine. We have, you know, engineers from, you know, international corporation and everything. It will be fine. So, they finished the wall. They now were able to think. It didn’t fall.
Don’t worry. Don’t wait for that. Don’t wait for that plot twist. But I was still angry because I thought that it was a huge waste of money and a lot of risk that if in the future the wall falls, it’ll be on us because we built it, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, I started pressuring him. Why do you build that wall? What do you build that wall? If the wall falls in the future, it will be our fault.
And I thought he grew tired of me pressuring. He said, well, everything that is made by humans needs maintenance. I mean, of course, if we just leave the wall there, it’ll fall in 10, 20, 30 years. But if we give maintenance to the wall, the wall won’t fall, right? So, that is talking to me, not because of the wall itself, but because everything is like that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: In a relationship.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, that’s right.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: At home. I mean, everything. I mean, your haircut. If you want to maintain it, you need to spend time and resources and effort in maintaining it. So, Western civilization, because civilization goes like this.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, Western civilization reached the peak. I cannot point exactly where the peak is. It’s like time in the market, right? I’m going to buy in the bottom and I’m going to sell at the top. Nobody can do that, right? And so, I don’t know exactly where was the peak, but we can all agree that we’re in the decline.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, that is happening because we’re not maintaining, we’re not giving the correct maintenance to the civilization. What made the West the leader in the world at the time we’re living right now? What caused that to happen?
A lot of things, like importing the scientific process, started developing science, focusing, putting a lot of money into art, into science, into trying to build the best things, the fastest and best and as great as possible, and importing wisdom and technology and trying to develop new technology. But suddenly, when you get wealthy, happens with families too.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, it does.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Then people probably get spoiled or they get, I want more things, I want that, I want this, you have to provide me that. And politicians, the problem, I mean, democracy is great, right?
The US has proven that democracy can work. But the problem with democracy, because everything has pros and cons, the problem with democracy is that politicians have a great incentive to offer, to give away the treasury.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, if I say, no, I’m going to keep the treasury because we might need it for an emergency or something, nobody would like that. People are like, oh, I’m going to give away the treasury. So, they will vote for him.
Then another politician, you know what, I’m going to give the treasury plus another treasury. So, we’re going to go into debt, right? Everybody will say, great, let’s receive more money from the treasury. And when I say treasury, I mean, anything, building stuff, giving free stuff, sending checks to people.
TUCKER CARLSON: COVID relief.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, exactly, getting the stimulus, whatever. So, the politicians have the incentives of just giving away the treasury and entering huge amounts of debt. And that doesn’t only destroy the structure of the government, but it also destroys the structure of society.
Because if you give, for example, money, okay, if you don’t work, I’ll give you money, right? Or if you can shoplift $1,000 a day and still get some money from the government for food, housing, why would you work in that store that we shoplifted and probably get in trouble, right?
So, the incentives are wrong, but it’s not only because, maybe they are, but I’m not going to go into the conspiracy theories. It’s not only because there are evil politicians or evil people planning everything, which might be the case, but I won’t go into that.
But just because things, the incentives are wrong. So, even a normal, not evil politician has the incentive to give away the treasury because he needs the votes. I mean, he needs to be elected. That’s what he needs, right? He needs to vote.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It’s the nature of the system.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, it’s the nature of the system.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, the problem is that democracy works. Nobody can say it doesn’t, because it worked in the United States, right? But if you don’t maintain, if you don’t give maintenance to the system, it will fall like the wall if you don’t give maintenance to it, because the same system will degrade itself.
So, what you’re having right now is a huge erosion of Western civilization. So, we have governments pandering to their basis, to their ideology, because they mobilize the vote or whatever, looking at what will happen in the election, what we can do to get more votes in the election.
I don’t want to get into US politics because it’s not my, but okay. So, we have this huge voter group. Let’s give them something to get their vote. Let’s give them, I don’t know, a hundred thousand dollars each. It makes sense, right? To get their votes, but it doesn’t make sense for a country. I mean, why would you give a hundred thousand dollars to each member of a voting group, right? It should be illegal, but it’s not, because who makes the laws, right? The government.
So, the system is eroding, and if the maintenance team doesn’t go in and fix all the things that have been degrading the last 50, 70 years, of course, it will eventually fall.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, if the West doesn’t continue to maintain its systems, which you have said, I think correctly, have worked really well for a couple hundred years, they will degrade just like anything else made by human hands. If you don’t maintain it, it will fall like your house.
The question is, does anyone in the West whose leaders have the will to fix the system that is clearly failing, do you think that will happen? And if it doesn’t, what is the message about democracy to the rest of the world?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, you know the fun thing about anything, about any concept like democracy, that it works until it doesn’t, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: Right, that’s right.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It happened with monarchies, it happened with anything, right? They say things like, oh, you know, we have to separate religion from state. It worked, it really worked, but it also worked with the state at their time.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, very well.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, very well, until it didn’t. So, the thing is that things work until they don’t, right? So, the problem is not democracy. I mean, it’s not the concept of democracy, the concept of democracy is great. I mean, imagine the power of the people.
Why would the people have the power to decide their own things? It’s like the most, I mean, I really like the concept, and it’s not only a theoretical concept like communism, right? It works. I mean, democracy has been proven to work. George Washington could have been a king if he wanted to.
He could have been King George I, right? But he decided, well, not he, but you know, the founding fathers decided that the U.S. and United States would be a democracy, right? And it worked. Nobody can say it didn’t. It worked. So, the fact that democracy appears to not be working, I don’t think it’s because the concept doesn’t work, like church separated from a state or church conjoined with the state.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It’s just that things work until they don’t. So, the problem, I think, is not the concept of democracy itself, but the state of democracy, of democracies in the world right now.
TUCKER CARLSON: Have we reached the end of the democratic period?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: I don’t know, but it’s maybe the beginning of the end, if not, if a huge maintenance team doesn’t come and fix things. It’s like, this is not about geopolitics or anything, I’m not going to even mention the countries, but I saw, somebody showed me the 600-meter railway that was built in California, and it cost like, I don’t know, $15 billion or something to build the 600-meter piece of railway that they were building.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a lot per meter.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. So, I mean, you cannot go on. I mean, it’s like obvious. It’s like somebody eats too much, right? I mean, you can be a little fat, right? It’s fine. But then, if somebody’s morbidly fat, somebody will come and say, okay, I mean, you have to stop, right? Because your heart can’t take it anymore, right? You have to stop. Or somebody drinks, I don’t drink, but if somebody drinks, doctor might say, you know, your liver, your liver can’t take that anymore.
Look at your liver, how it is right now, or the lungs for smoke or whatever. When you see things like that, 600-meter of railway, $15 billion, 10 years, I mean, there’s no other possible diagnosis. I mean, you have to stop that fast now, because if not, I mean, the decline is inevitable.
It’s inevitable. I mean, it’s already there. It’s not like, you know, I’m telling you, I foresee. No, no, I mean, it’s there. I mean, it’s $15 billion to make a 600-meter piece of railway that’s not even working in 10 years. The Empire State was built in a year, one year. They built the Empire State. Things were working, right? I don’t know how things were back then, but they built the Empire State in one year. What happened with the World Trade Center, Freedom Tower, that was changed the name later to World Trade Center. How long did it take?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Forever.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, and it was, you know, the whole country united to build it. There was no budgetary, I mean, I know it was private, but it was no, if it needed budgetary, it was not a problem of budget or investors willing to pour money on it or engineers.
I mean, why would it take over a decade to build something that was so significant for the whole country? I mean, you could build the tallest building in the world. You didn’t. You could have built the tallest building in the world and said, okay, we’re coming back bigger and stronger. We’re going to build, you know, yeah, we got ahead, but now we’re going to build back better and stronger, right, or whatever, and build it, you know, two mile high skyscraper.
I’m not a fan of two mile high skyscrapers, but you know, you could have done that. I mean, you have the money, you have the resources, you have the engineers, you have the market, because if I built a mile skyscraper, I can’t fill with offices because I don’t have enough for market to fill with residences and offices or whatever.
You do have the market in New York to build offices and you want hotel rooms. I mean, it would feel like this, but you didn’t. You took over a decade to build a very unimpressive building, and that was 23 years ago?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Now you’re building 600 meter railways with 15 billion dollars. So, how long did it take to rebuild the Baltimore Bridge? It should take a year.
TUCKER CARLSON: How long would it take here?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Here?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: A year, two years, and we’re a small poor country. I mean, we’re one of the poorest nations in the world, right?
TUCKER CARLSON: I know, that’s why this is so shameful and interesting.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, well, I mean, the U.S. they have still unlimited amounts of resources, because you can just bring money, right? That’s another topic, but you can just bring whatever. How much is it worth? I mean, would you want to do it, but we want to build it made of gold? I mean, you can do anything, right? You just, how much is it? Do it.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, that sounds like a systemic failure. It doesn’t sound like …
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It’s a systemic failure.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. So, what you’re describing maybe can’t be, you know, maybe that’s something that you, like, have to level and rebuild or something. Maybe that’s beyond maintenance. I don’t know. What is the answer to that?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: I don’t know, but you need leadership, but I’ll tell you something. If you see the mess that we were living here …
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It’s a bigger mess than what you have over there. Oh, yeah. I mean, so, well, just the fact that a third of our population fled the country and went to the United States … gives you an example that the mess we were living here, and that we still have in other areas that, you know, not safety. We’re the safest country in the Western Hemisphere, but we have problems in other areas, like the economy, for example.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, but our problems were bigger than your problems in relative sizes. So, if you can fix a mess like this with, in the US, with a limited amount of wealth, with, you know, scientists, innovation, like no other country in the world. Still, the innovation is coming from the US. It’s more than any other country still, right? Even not because of the government, but, you know, it still has the best innovators, AI.
I mean, anything. So, you still have the best innovators. You still have the biggest companies. You still have the world’s reserve currency, the biggest wealth, the biggest GDP, the availability to hire talent from anywhere. You can bring whatever talent you need to fix any gaps. You can, you know, pick any. You get it. You get what you want. You still can get what you want.
You can’t get attacked because you’re too far away from anyone that wants to attack you, because Mexico or Canada are not going to attack the US. So, your enemies are too far away and you still have the biggest army, the biggest armed forces.
TUCKER CARLSON: So … Biggest energy reserves?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, and the US, like Russia, they were built as superpowers. So, it’s not like, for example, if you see the economy in Spain, it’s very good. It’s a robust economy. It’s big. G7.
But they are like, how do you call, how do you say in English? Turron?
TUCKER CARLSON: Nugget?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: They sell nugget, right? Or they sell Iberic ham. So, it’s very good, expensive, but you don’t actually need that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right. Luxury goods.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Luxury goods. So, if you sanction Spain, you’ll break their economy. But if you sanction Russia, you can’t break Russia because they are built as a superpower.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, they have wheat, they have energy, they have natural gas, oil. Because they were built like that. Industrial capacity.
Factories, you know, workers. So, the US is like that too. It was built as a superpower. So, you have wheat, you have corn, you have workers, you have blue-collar workers, you have trained, skilled factory workers, you have colleges, you have universities, you have a school system, you have infrastructure, you have cities, tourism, the Mississippi River. I mean, you have everything. You have ships, you have warehouses, agriculture, fertile lands. What you didn’t have before, you got, right? You took from Mexico or whatever.
So, the US was built to be a superpower, right? Acquire land, acquire fertile lands. I mean, Texas was part of Mexico, but it’s part of the US and you have all the oil there. So, I mean, and then you have California.
I mean, the US is built as a superpower. So, the US has everything to go on for a thousand years. It’s not like it’s doomed to fail. But apparently, the leaders or most of them, you have probably very good leaders, but most of the leaders, they are not seeing. Either they are evil or, this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s just the options you have. Either they’re evil and they want to destroy the US because of some evil reason or they’re puppets and they are being handled by people that need the US to be destroyed for some reason.
Or they’re incompetent and they’re just doing wrong stuff because they’re not capable of doing the right stuff. Or, sorry I said three, but the incentives, right? I mean, changing a country and changing a lot of things that are badly done probably will anger some people, right?
Some groups, some lobbies, some interests. I mean, if you say, okay, we’re going to stop the railway that’s costing us $15 billion per 600 meters, a lot of companies will be angry, a lot of, I don’t know, mayors. I mean, you have a system that needs to be handled.
And that leads to leadership and it needs a clear mandate that is probably a little hard to get in the US because of the opposite views and the bipartisanship. But you need to do it.
The Importance of Fair Elections
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, ultimately, as you well know, since you’ve succeeded in it so thumpingly, the instrument for all of that is the ballot, is the election itself. How many votes do you get? That’s your mandate.
But I think there is a sense among a lot of non-conspiracy minded voters in the United States that that part of the system is itself corrupt. And that it is actually hard to affect change through voting because it’s rigged. And so with that in mind, do you think Trump, he’s ahead in the polls, do you think he can get elected?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, yes, yes, he can get elected. I’ll give you an example. We, in 2019, the system was totally rigged. I mean, they canceled our party. I mean, we were running with the party and they canceled it. I mean, they annulled our party. So I stayed, I was party-less. So we went to a small party and said, you don’t have any candidates, you’re very small, you want to win the election?
So we got that party registration and they canceled that party. And they canceled that party in the last day that you can file the candidacy. So we got a medium-sized party at 11 p.m. and we were able to file our candidacy. So it was not like it was easy or the system wasn’t rigged. It was just so fair that we just, you know, we put up our proposals and the people just voted. It was very hard to win. And then when we won, we even didn’t have a simultaneous parliamentary elections.
We actually went to the executive branch, totally opposed to the legislative branch and the judicial branch. So they control the Supreme Court and they control 90 percent of the legislative body. So I had to veto everything and they override my vetoes and they approved over 70 laws that I vetoed.
Yes, and everything that we do in the Supreme Court is unconstitutional, unconstitutional, unconstitutional. So we went to the people and said, you know, we cannot work like this. We need a majority in Congress. We need a huge majority in Congress because we not only need to approve laws, we need to get all these people out.
And the only way to get it out democratically and respecting the rules of the system is that we get a huge, immense majority in Congress, right? Because Congress can fire anybody, even the president.
So people gave us the huge majority. And it was hard because they controlled, they still control the electoral tribunal as of today. That’s why our election was recognized by all the countries in the world, because they know the electoral tribunal is controlled by the opposition still.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s the only thing that’s controlled.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: It’s the only thing. And we have, we have, we have, you know, that validates and legitimizes everything else. So they, but the thing is that in 2021, when we went to, when we went to congressional elections, we carried a supermajority that they say, they said it was impossible because the system was designed so you cannot get a supermajority.
But we got, we got it, we got more than that. And then we, with that supermajority, there is an article in the Constitution that allows the supermajority in Congress to fire the Supreme Court justices. So our party fired the Supreme Court justices when they got them, they got the majority. They fired the attorney general, which I couldn’t, I mean, the state and the president appoints the attorney general. Here is Congress. Congress elects attorney general, Congress fires the attorney general. But you need two thirds of Congress to fire an attorney general. So we got 75% of Congress.
TUCKER CARLSON: You stay within the rules the whole time.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: We have never not respected a single rule. That’s also a narrative that they want to, they cannot point out a single thing that was done by not respecting the rules that were written by them, because the rules are written by people.
It’s not like, oh, these rules were, you know, these rules are not given by God. These rules were written by people. But still, we respected all the rules that were written by them. And, yeah, we got it.
I just saw an interview that the president of Costa Rica gave in Costa Rica, because he came also, like many other world leaders, he came to the inauguration. So they asked him over there in Costa Rica, and they said, but do you think that Bukele is like, doing things that are not within the constitutional limits that he has?
And this interview was today, earlier, and president of Costa Rica said, well, in a soccer game, or in a football game, you have the rules, and you have the score, right? And the rules are made. So the score, you know, will be like that. But sometimes you get a super score in one side, right? So are you angry at the rules, or are you angry at the score? Because the president of El Salvador, the only thing he can be criticized for is to getting a huge score in his favor with the rules of the game that they lay out for him.
TUCKER CARLSON: But it was enormously disruptive to the people who ran the country before you, obviously.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Obviously, yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Did you ever worry they would try and put you in jail?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, they did, even when I was president. I mean, even being already in the presidency, they tried to impeach me. They say I wasn’t, there’s an article in the constitution that Congress can actually fire the president if he’s not fit to lead. So they say that I wasn’t fit to lead, and they were, they tried to impeach me because of that. But there was such a, I mean, the people were like, they feared that the people were like, you know.
TUCKER CARLSON: So what advice would you give?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Against them or something.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a fair concern, given your majority.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Exactly.
TUCKER CARLSON: What advice would you give to another former democratically elected leader seeking office who is facing jail time? Anyone, just if there was.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: I mean, if there was a way to stop the candidacy, then he’s probably in trouble. But if there’s no way to stop him from competing, competing in the election, all the things that they do to him will just give him more votes.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right. That seems to be happening.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. I mean, either you stop the candidacy or you let him be. But just, you know, hitting him with, you’re just getting him, you’re making the greatest campaign ever. I mean.
TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think they know that?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Some of them, they, yeah, they, I think they, some of them do. But of course, the ones that don’t or they think that, you know, that’s their problem with endogamous groups, right? Because they all, you know, yeah, so it’s so great. Yeah, let’s do it. And, you know, they’re making a huge mistake. Huge mistake. Huge mistake.
The Influence of the United States
TUCKER CARLSON: If you’re a country like El Salvador, or really any other country in the hemisphere, including Canada, your eyes are on the United States because it’s the dominant power.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes. Obviously.
TUCKER CARLSON: But it puts you in a weird position if you’re being criticized from the United States. So there’s a congressman from Massachusetts, a pro-communist congressman called Jim McGovern, literally pro-communist, not an attack, just an observation, who attacked you the other day for daring to move a painting of Oscar Romero, who was a Catholic priest who was murdered here more than 40 years ago, in your airport, I think.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: What did you make of that? It seemed like a pretty minute criticism, pretty small.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: And we actually moved it to a nicer place in front. It’s not like, you know, we moved it from a very nice place and we put it in some warehouse, you know, or whatever, some place that nobody…
TUCKER CARLSON: But what if you did? It’s your country now.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Oh, of course, of course. But you can make the case as an art connoisseur that he didn’t like, you know, the place we put the painting. But the fact that he protested or he expressed his deep concern on Twitter and not, you know, call, if he would have called here and said, hey, do you move the painting? No, no, it’s right here, Mr. Congressman. So, of course, he can even come and see it for himself. But, of course, he was doing an attack, right? So, but it backfired because first the painting was right in front.
So, yeah, just to move the camera, it was on the other side. So, this was, you know, he misfired. But also the fact that a U.S. congressman is trying to micromanage where art is being displayed in another country just, you know, gives you an example of how out of touch they are.
TUCKER CARLSON: Feels like colonialism to me a little bit.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, yes. And it comes from the Democratic Party, which you would guess.
TUCKER CARLSON: The anti-colonial party.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, yeah. But, you know, at the end it’s like, you know, sometimes the guy that’s called racist is not really the racist, right? The guy that is called, you know, the, you know, colonialist is not really the colonialist, right? Sometimes it’s weird how narratives work sometimes.
Salvadorans Returning Home
TUCKER CARLSON: Are you getting a lot of Americans moving here?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, yes. I mean, probably in numbers it won’t be significant to you, but yes, you can see it. I mean, you can see it everywhere.
And we’re also getting something that’s very meaningful to us, is that we’re getting a lot of our diaspora, a lot of our immigrants, the people that emigrate El Salvador because of the war, because of the gangs, or because of the economical issues that have always happened here, a lot of them are coming back. And there’s a study made by the IOM and USAID. I’ll send you the link.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: There’s a study made by the IOM and the USAID that says that 62% of Salvadorans living in the United States want to come back to live here.
TUCKER CARLSON: Amazing.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: 62%. And 18% are already making plans to come. That’s over half a million Salvadorans coming back. So, that’s super significant because, I mean, we expelled them from their homes, right, because of crime, because of the war, because of lack of opportunity.
And the fact that they’re coming back is the biggest proof that we’re doing things the right way. We have a long way to go, but we’re doing things the right way.
So, we have a lot of Americans, American-born Americans coming, but we have also a lot of Salvadoran Americans with American citizenship coming here.
TUCKER CARLSON: Do you have the space?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Well, it has created a housing bubble because, you know, we don’t produce as much houses that are being bought right now, but that would create a temporary problem, which is the housing bubble. But then, which is not actually a bubble, it’s just, you know, the offer and…
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, finding its own level, yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, now, of course, construction companies know that the amount of houses they will build, it will… they will sell them. So, construction has become 20% of our GDP and it’s growing. So, this is going to be a huge construction boom. And they have the clients, so it’s not built in a bubble or speculation, but it feels like a bubble, but it’s built on, you know, people coming back home.
Seeking God’s Wisdom in Leadership
TUCKER CARLSON: Has any other head of state called you for advice on how to improve this country?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, several. Some of them have said it in public, of course, and they have… we have meetings, mostly security issues.
We’re talking with a lot of Latin American leaders, they have come, they have sent their security ministers to meet here with our security ministers, they have sent people to see our jail system, because sometimes people see our jail system and they try to compare to the United States jail system and say, oh, a little bit mean, they don’t have gyms, they don’t have Netflix, you know, but you shouldn’t compare El Salvador’s jail system with the U.S. jail system.
You should compare El Salvador’s jail system with Latin American jail systems. So, if you go and see most of Latin American countries, the jails are run by the gangs.
TUCKER CARLSON: As they were here, I remember that.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, they were under, they had parties, prostitutes, strippers.
TUCKER CARLSON: They were autonomous here. I mean, you had to get their permission to go in.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, you have to get the permission to go in. They only had permission to get in food, medicine, but they controlled the jails, not only in El Salvador, they do it in most of Latin American countries. So, gangsters or narcos, they will control the jails, right? It’s their operation. They even go out in bed and get out.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: So, we totally control that and we have 100% control in our jail system. So, Latin American countries look to our jail system to see if they can fix their own. So, we do a lot of cooperation in security issues, jails, army, training, even more powerful in bigger countries, of course, in Latin America.
TUCKER CARLSON: Have you ever, you know a lot of heads of state because you are one, have you ever met a head of state who, when faced with a serious problem, a threat to his own country, would, in the middle of a cabinet meeting, pause and say a prayer?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: I don’t recall, but yeah, probably.
TUCKER CARLSON: Do you know anyone who would do that, do you think?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yes, probably, probably. I don’t recall right now, but…
TUCKER CARLSON: No, but that’s just so far from the mindset of any leader I’ve ever interviewed. Anyone who would admit, I’m not sure what to do, let’s ask God.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, probably not that common, but yeah, I would guess some leaders do it.
TUCKER CARLSON: How long do you plan to stay president?
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Yeah, five years.
TUCKER CARLSON: Five years.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: That’s as much as the constitution allows me to.
TUCKER CARLSON: Thank you for talking to us.
PRESIDENT NAYIB BUKELE: Thank you.
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