Transcript: Tucker Carlson’s Interview on Part of the Problem Podcast

I think they’re actually kind of moderate, honestly. They’re different from the way things are operating now.

And of course, I mean, I disagree with the direction the US Government’s taking in a whole bunch of different ways, but I don’t think we should burn the US Government down. My view, which I know is yours as well, is the US Government should act on behalf of American citizens. America First doesn’t mean a bellicose posture, doesn’t mean you attack people. In fact, it probably means you attack fewer people and you shed less blood. You act on behalf of your citizens. They own the government, they pay for the government. It’s in their name that all this is being conducted.

So that’s a really simple concept. It’s the most powerful resonant concept in American politics. It brought Trump the majority of the popular vote. And I believe it. I sincerely believe that most people do. They don’t. So that’s what this really is about.

Why Interview Nick Fuentes?

TUCKER CARLSON: As for Fuentes himself, I thought a lot about it for many reasons. And for one, Nick had attacked my family, my father, my wife, one of my children by name, a lot. And so it’s hard, it was hard for me to get over that. For another, as I’ve said a million times, I thought he was a fed, and I thought this was part of an op designed to tar sane, anti-neocon, pro-realist foreign policy people like you and me and Glenn Greenwald and Sachs and normal people. Tar us as Nazis. I did suspect that. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I raised that with him.

But basically, in the end, I decided Nick Fuentes can’t be canceled. They’ve been trying since he was a freshman in college. Doesn’t work. In fact, he’s gotten bigger. He is enormously talented. Anyone who denies that is lying. And he has not fully coherent, but a semi-coherent kind of position. And I would like to hear what it is, because that’s kind of my job.

And I’m also interested because he’s the most influential voice for men under 30 in the United States. More influential than me. More influential than you. I don’t think there’s any question about that. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and talking to a lot of people about it, and I think that that is true. So it’s not like I made Nick Fuentes—hardly. I just want to know what this is about.

The Foundation of Western Civilization: Individual Responsibility

TUCKER CARLSON: And I wanted to make the point that I often make and now seems even more important than it ever has, which is that virtue and sin are not transmitted genetically. There is no such thing as blood guilt. Therefore, collective punishment is always immoral. God created each person individually. He did not create communities at once. He created people. And all of us will die and in the end face God alone. So it’s about the person.

And people can be changed by God, by the way. And the New Testament is that story of people who were—in the case of the whole hero of the New Testament, the human hero is a guy called Paul, was murdering Christians as a Pharisee, and then becomes the greatest proselytizer in the history of Christianity and my personal hero. So don’t tell me that people can’t be changed because of their blood.

Now, that is the basis. That position is the basis of Western civilization. We often talk about Western civilization and we’re all defending Western civilization. “Israel’s defending Western civilization.” Israel does not have a Western position on this question. The Israeli position, not of all Israelis, by the way, and certainly not of all Jews. But I’m saying of the Israeli government and of a couple of its ministers, which they say this out loud all the time, is that everybody who’s related to a terrorist shares in his guilt. That’s collective punishment. It is blood guilt, and it’s antithetical to Christianity and to the West.

And so for me, and by the way, Israel’s not the only country that does this. Most countries do this. Literally most countries do this. All of Asia, India. This is an intuitive response that people have. “We’re good. Russia, we’re going to punish the family too, because they’re related.” Of course, only the West, and I mean specifically the Anglosphere, Western Europe, because their foundation is Christian, reject that explicitly.

Our justice system is based on the individual. People who do good things are rewarded. People who do bad things are punished. It’s about the individual because that’s our religion. And so I just wanted to make that point not because of Israel or Fuentes or anything, but because that is that idea right there. That specific idea is the Western civilization we are struggling to defend. And its opponents are domestic.

Rejecting Identity Politics and Blood Guilt

TUCKER CARLSON: The neocons do not believe that at all, clearly. Well, they’re attacking my family, just like Nick Fuentes attacked my family. So I just wanted to say that. I want to say that in every venue because it’s a feature of my religious faith, but it’s also my inheritance as a Western man, as the product of Western civilization. And that’s what I want to defend. Randy Fine does not believe that. Of course. Lindsey Graham does not believe that, of course.

So the idea that I hate Jews, obviously, I don’t hate Jews at all. Of course, obviously. It almost feels beneath me to say that, but it’s just a fact. But I’m not allowed to hate any person because of the group he’s attached to. I reject—that’s what identity politics is. It’s the belief that people are either better or worse based on how they were born. And that is not a Western understanding of people or of God.

And that’s why identity politics doesn’t sit right with most Americans. Even though you could make a case for it—”We need to redress this past injustice or whatever”—but most people sort of know that’s unfair. Why is it unfair? It’s unfair because it treats people as components of a larger whole, as part of a group whose individual choices make no difference. It’s like “You’re black, therefore you’re a criminal,” or “You’re Jewish, therefore you’re bad.” That whole way of thinking is evil. It’s anti-Christian.

And it is—that is the true attack on the West and on Western civilization. And so I hear people like Randy Fine, “We’re defending Western civilization.” Oh, are you really? No. No. You’re its main enemy. And Black Lives Matter, its main enemy. And not because they’re black or Jewish or nothing to do with that, because the idea is wrong.

So that’s—I just wanted to say that. I’m going to say that every day for the rest of my life. I will die for that belief. I mean it. Because it’s my religious belief. And it’s also true.

The Wellness Company and Cable News Evolution

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, yeah. And you know, for somebody, as somebody who’s watched you religiously, no pun intended, over the years, I always watched your show on Fox News. It was in fact, I used to talk about on the show, it was at the end, the only cable news show I watched. I couldn’t even hate watch the other ones anymore. They just got too boring.

But I used to hate watch. There was a good time where you could hate watch MSNBC and it was fun, but after a while it just wasn’t even fun anymore. You’re just like, oh, Joe Scarborough’s sad like this. But this was as you covered the entire really rise and fall of insane wokeism over those years.

TUCKER CARLSON: This was always your view.

DAVE SMITH: You were consistent about this throughout the entire thing. And look, one of the things, and this is what I thought was kind of interesting about Nick Fuentes and why I had him on the show and I assume part of the reason you did too, right? Is like you just said, look, the kid is enormous. He is humongous.

By the way, when I say kid, I don’t mean that to be condescending. I’m just, that’s how 40 year olds talk about 20 year olds. But so he first, he’s enormously talented. He’s enormously huge at this point. And then I had planned the episode with him before this, but after the murder of Charlie Kirk, he really went out of his way to hit all the right notes and to really be kind and Christian and to condemn violence and to try and, I appreciated that.

We were at kind of a, we’re still at a dangerous moment in American history. Tensions are very high. We just witnessed the biggest political assassination of my lifetime. And also this is somebody, I mean, you knew him better than me, but I was friends with the guy. It’s very jarring thing when this happens, and it’s a very jarring thing.

First off, you watch your friend get publicly executed. Second of all, he’s kind of in the same line of work as you. This is a time that’s kind of scary. I have very little children. I’m not prepared to get killed yet. And so for somebody who’s supposed to be the biggest voice in the most radical right wing pocket of America, for him to be calling for Christianity and peace and condemning violence, I was like, hey, that’s awesome.

And okay, so there’s a lot of other things he said where he’s really intentionally saying the most provocative, outlandish thing, and there’s a whole lot of humor and trolling that’s kind of involved in it. Sometimes it’s not exactly clear to say, wait, do you really mean that? Do you really mean the craziest thing you just said?

And look, also, I remember being in my 20s, there weren’t smartphones and social media and podcasts back then, thank God. So I said a lot of wild shit in my 20s, too. And so you almost go, okay, well, now you found yourself in this situation where you’re bigger than you’ve ever been. And now you just watched your big political opponent get publicly executed in this horrible way.

And now you’re sitting down for conversations with me or conversations with Tucker, and we’re kind of going, hey, what do you really believe here, though? What do you really mean by this or that? And I am sorry, but anyone, anyone who objectively watched either one of those or both of those podcasts, it is just undeniably clear that me and you, this is just objectively true. Me and you did not move one inch on our views on what we’ve been saying the whole time.

And in fact, look, when you said the thing to Fuentes about, hey, we’re both Christians, I went at it from more of a libertarian perspective and you from more of a Christian perspective, which makes sense. But I basically said to him at one point, you’re telling me I say it’s the Israel lobby and the Israeli government, but I’m not saying it’s the Jews. Well, what do you mean? Let’s talk about this.

And he kind of conceded that, oh, yeah, this doesn’t apply to all Jews. And then when you said it to him, he kind of conceded, yes, I’m also a Christian who has that same worldview. And okay, so look, I’m not even saying, is Nick Fuentes moderating? I don’t know exactly. Maybe he’s just clarifying, but if there’s anyone who is moderating, it was him.

And if he is moderating at all, I think that’s great. I think that’d be him doing the right thing. I would rather him come a little bit in that direction. And again, what’s kind of interesting to me about it, right, is that, look, I kind of tried a couple times during my podcast with him, as I think you saw it.

And there were a couple times where I’d be like, hey, okay, well, we agree on this. Let’s talk about this now. Let’s talk about something where we don’t agree. Let’s get into this. At one point, I just brought up the Holocaust. Are you saying, do you really think the Holocaust didn’t happen? Because we could talk about that. Let’s get into it.

And not in a, I’m offended way, but no, let’s actually talk about the history of it or whatever. And he didn’t really want to argue about it. He was kind of like, yeah, no, I get your point. It probably did happen.

TUCKER CARLSON: You know.

Selective Outrage and Media Narratives

DAVE SMITH: Now those clips aren’t circulating, all of these. Now think about it, right? Think about the fact that the people who say they want to fight anti-Semitism so much, they aren’t circulating the clips where Nick on my podcast explicitly rejected racial hatred, on your podcast when he agreed with you that Christians can’t believe in collective guilt.

People don’t want, Ben Shapiro is not clipping that for his show today. For the greatest. No, they’re going back to all the worst things he said. And I think this should tell all of us something. They actually prefer that. They prefer that he be a neo-Nazi so that they can attach him to you, so that they can argue to cancel you and argue that you’re not a part of this GOP coalition, rather than saying, it’d be better if we at least left the door open for this guy to maybe reflect on some of this stuff and maybe reject some of the things that we find a little bit.

Look, Nick Fuentes is never going to be a bitch. He’s never going to go out here and beg for Ben Shapiro’s forgiveness, which he never should, because who the hell is Ben Shapiro? But if he is maturing and he is clarifying or moderating, isn’t it something that they all are allergic to that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. And in general, they’re, you know, what they fear and not all, but let me just kind of say one thing. The thing that bothers me maybe most about torquing up the rhetoric to the point where you’re calling people Nazis who aren’t Nazis, you know, very anti-Nazi, always have been, will continue to be. I will never become what they call me.

That’s part of the game. Make you into the hater they say you are. And I’m not going to do that. I pray about it every single day. And that’s not going to happen to me. I will be cheerful until I die, no matter how I die. So there’s that.

But what’s so interesting is they do not want just a straightforward conversation about what they believe. They do not. And so it’s often, I have heard, I’m being totally honest about a bird hunting trip for the last two days, off grid. But I’m getting a lot of this all at once that people are mad at me.

And apparently one of the criticisms is that I went in and spoke to Ted Cruz and I was so tough on Ted Cruz, but I was so nice to Fuentes. And it’s like I’m trying to think of the Ted Cruz interviews. I was actually very polite to Cruz and I just wanted him to explain what he thought and what is AIPAC and why is it okay to take all this money from them and they’re not a foreign lobby.

He immediately, and I mean immediately called me an anti-Semite and I really wasn’t expecting. I’ve known Ted since long before he was a senator. I’ve very mixed feelings about him and his life. But I never thought he would call me an anti-Semite because I asked him about campaign contributions. But he did immediately, and he did because he didn’t want to have that conversation rather than just saying, yeah, I mean, they’re being for the Israeli government, maybe they should be registered. I would still accept their money if they’re registered. Who cares?

He wouldn’t say that. He was like, shut up. He tried to end the conversation through a verbal attack. And Fuentes, whatever you think of him, was just, I was, hey, Fuentes, what do you think? He would just tell you.

Now, number one, people are choosing not to believe what he said and it wasn’t a perfect interview. I’ve never conducted a perfect interview. I felt pretty good about it, to be honest. But all these people are like, oh, you should have this, should on that. Well, interview him yourself. You’re not my assignment. Or do it yourself.

There are a couple things I do regret. I’ll just say he said, “I love Stalin.” I was so shocked by that. As someone who spent his whole life studying Stalin, it’s actually one of my true areas of personal interest. Know a lot about the topic. How could you like Stalin? But I didn’t get even.

DAVE SMITH: Well, Tucker, I mean, at the very least, can’t we count on the Jew haters to be good on Joseph Stalin? I mean, I would think that it’s like meeting a commie who was for the war in Iraq or something like that. Come on, we could at least.

The Stalin Comparison and Christian Zionism

TUCKER CARLSON: Count on you for that to hear Ben Shapiro, because, you know, of course, all the neocons are very exercised because I have said, and I sincerely believe, very anti-Hitler, very anti-Nazi, but Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill supported Joseph Stalin, who created the, you know, was the author of the greatest genocide against Christians ever in history. And we sent huge amounts of money, billions and billions and billions, adjusted for inflation, to Joseph Stalin and war material. We were on Stalin’s side during the war.

And my view is I’m not for that. I’m against Hitler. I’m against the Nazis. But when you get to a place where you’re sending money to Stalin, I’m out. And they’re like, “Oh, you Holocaust denier.” What? I don’t want to send money to Stalin. But they demand that you be happy that we sent money to Stalin, but now they’re offended by Stalin. Whatever.

I guess I should have said something. I just was so overwhelmed with other things. I didn’t. But I just want to say at the outset, because this has been weighing on me. I did say something that I really regret saying that I didn’t fully mean. I said it because I was mad, which is always when I say things I don’t really mean. When I get pissed. My wife’s always telling me this. I was snippy and I didn’t explain it.

And I said something to the effect of “I despise Christian Zionists.” And I’m just sorry that I said that, because I don’t. I’m mad at a certain kind of thinking. Some of the nicest people I know are Christian Zionists. Actually, you know, if you’re in a car crash they would save you. If you need someone to watch your bank account, they wouldn’t steal from you. They’re like really good people and sweet people.

Churches Bombed in Gaza

I want to be very specific quickly about what I was talking about. In a couple, at least a couple of different occasions, the Israeli government bombed churches in Gaza and killed a bunch of Christians. And not an accident, of course. This is like a very high-tech military with precision. I mean, they gave pagers with bombs in them to Hezbollah. So like, this is a military, a national defense institution that understands what it’s doing. They didn’t accidentally bomb two churches and kill these Christians. And they never apologized for it.

And so I brought this up with a couple of Christian leaders, including the Speaker of the House, and said, “What is, you know, how can, what we’re paying to bomb churches because we’re paying for it?” And the response I got from every single one was “The Bible commands us to support.” And I said, “So Jesus is telling us that we need to get on board with murdering Christians? Is that what you’re saying?” And they basically were just like, “Shut up.”

And I found that extremely, as a Christian, extremely upsetting. And I’ve never kind of gotten over that. But I should have said that that’s what I was talking about specifically. We cannot support the murder of innocents. I don’t care what the pretext is. That is not allowed in our religion. And if it is, then it’s not my religion. That’s not what the New Testament says at all. It’s not even a close approximation of what it says. There’s no justification for that in the New Testament, period.

So I am distressed. I don’t hate. I shouldn’t have said despise, but I’m very distressed about that. And that’s specifically what I was talking about. So I just want to apologize, clearly, for not being clearer.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s reasonable. And look, we all kind of do this sometimes and these, you know, you’re having conversations that aren’t scripted. And I thought that, I know, I saw everyone jumping on that, but it’s like, well, look, clearly. And the thing that of course none of these guys will admit, but what was very obvious about what you were saying was that it was also at least partially in a defense of Jews.

Like you were going like, “Well, look, I mean, like you’re saying it’s the Jews, but then explain the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Mike Huckabee and like, oh, right,” and the whole thing.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, right. Death worshipers. I’m not for that. I don’t care what you claim your religion is. I’m not in favor of death worship.

Religious Principles and Foreign Policy

DAVE SMITH: Yes, at all. Look, and I would also just add this quickly because, and look, I’m no religious scholar and I’m probably not a very good Jew by the religious standards. I am a God-fearing man, but I don’t do all the things you’re supposed to do. But I do remember Chaim Weizmann who had a great quote about the Zionists, the pre-Israeli Zionists who had embraced terrorism in order to drive the British out in the years, the couple years preceding the creation of the state of Israel.

And his line was that “We cannot create a Jewish state by un-Jewish means.” And he was very simply, just even like, even by Judaism. I mean, I don’t know, like the Ten Commandments have a pretty clear one about murdering people. And those are the commandments that Jews are commanded to follow. And so I would personally say all of this stuff, this entire foreign policy is completely inconsistent with Christianity and it’s completely inconsistent with Judaism.

And then just to the other point, which is part of, look, obviously in all of these things and especially the dynamic like we all know, which was with the Fuentes interview with both you and me in different ways, more so I think with you because you guys had really been trading, you know, like insults right before the thing. But there’s a feeling-out process there. You both don’t know exactly, you know, like trust is not exactly very high and you go in and neither of you know completely what this is going to be like.

For example, Nick could have decided to make the show with me very contentious or I could have decided to make that show very contentious. And neither one of us knew whether the other one was going to necessarily do that at a certain point.

Comparing the Cruz and Fuentes Interviews

But, and so your point to Ted Cruz, he made it contentious when he was on with you. But then beyond that, the fact that people are even comparing the two things, you’re like, at the time we were launching a war and a sitting United States Senator was calling for regime change. This was the background of your conversation with Ted Cruz.

Whereas with Nick Fuentes, you’re talking to a 26-year-old streamer who’s said a lot of provocative, edgy and say f*ed up things in the past. Those are just kind of different dynamics, man. Like, it’s just a different thing. It’s a different thing when like, you know, we’re talking about a sitting senator who is advocating a policy that undoubtedly will result in mass murder versus, you know, a kid who you’re finding out again, I don’t mean to be condescending by saying kid, but a 26-year-old streamer.

They’re just different things. No matter what Nick has said in the past and no matter how big he is now, like, those are just very different situations. And to even compare the two is like you had a senator.

TUCKER CARLSON: Literally.

DAVE SMITH: We all watched it. It was one of the most humiliating things a senator’s ever been through. I would take a thousand fates of McCarthy being censured before one being Ted Cruz advocating for regime change on the biggest conservative show in the country and then getting the follow-up question of “How many people are in the country and what’s the ethnic makeup?” and not even being able to ballpark it, not even being able to tell you anything, just pause and then, and then to fall on the pathetic, “Oh, it’s all the Jews.”

The “Obsessed with Israel” Accusation

I mean, look, this seems to be another theme because let’s transition into some of the outrage here, but another theme that I just, it’s just so stupid. It’s like, I know you’re not this stupid to be saying this to me, but when Ted Cruz goes, “You’re obsessed with Israel,” and you go, “You said it was your reason for being in your first speech as a senator.”

There’s the idea that we’re all obsessed with Israel. Like, I’d say, at least for guys like me and you, we’ve been for a while now opposed to the foreign policy and opposed to the neocons, and we’ve always known what the neoconservatives’ relationship to Israel is. That’s never been a, nobody who was in D.C. as much as you were doesn’t know that, isn’t familiar with, like, the connection between, say, the Likud Party and the neoconservatives. And by the way, they all admit this in their own words. This isn’t a secret conspiracy.

But none of us were like, every day making it all about Israel as we were opposing all these wars. We would mention that sometimes. I certainly would mention that. I would mention the Clean Break strategy. I would mention Tel Aviv’s role in all of these wars and how they were encouraging us to fight them. And I wasn’t like, running away from it.

But it’s almost like, I guess my point is that when they say “You’re obsessed with Israel,” it’s almost like in 2005, someone telling me, “Oh, my God, you’re obsessed with Iraq.” I’m like, “No, I’m not obsessed with Iraq. George W. Bush invaded it. So now that’s the thing to talk about.”

Like, Israel has been destroying Gaza. The whole thing is destroyed. They’ve been doing it for the last two years with U.S. funding, support, intelligence sharing and defense and protection across the globe. So, like, no, it’s not that we’re obsessed about it. It’s that you put us in a situation where both political parties are backing this policy that we’re against that is greatly degrading our country. We have to talk about it now. We’d all rather never talk about this again.

The Condition of America and Israel’s Leadership

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, well, I’m obsessed with the condition of my own country. I don’t have another passport and I’m going to die here as I was born here. And I really care about the fact that it is by every measure a less nice country than it was even 10 years ago. So that is my upset. I mean, if you were to X-ray my brain, you’d find a lot of that.

I do think that Israel’s leadership under Netanyahu is destroying Israel. I do think that it’s not my primary concern in all this because I’m not Israeli, but I’ve always liked Israel. I certainly gone there on vacation a lot and always really enjoyed myself. I’m not embarrassed of that. I love Jerusalem. It’s an international city. Israelis don’t own Jerusalem. It’s the seat of, you know, right, okay. So that’s my opinion.

So I’m not obsessed with Israel. However, reckless and short-sighted political leadership has gotten that country into some very serious trouble. And very seriously, I don’t see quite how they get out of this. I feel sorry for them, being honest, but I reserve my rage for American leaders.

Israel hasn’t betrayed me. I’m not Israeli. They try to shut down free speech in the United States. Okay. They think that’s to their advantage. I get it. Their prime minister calls for censorship in the United States, fine. Our leaders go along with it. There’s my rage. It’s not the Israelis, it’s the Americans who are betraying their own country. That is quisling behavior. That’s far worse than Israel acting in what it misconceives as its own interest, if I’m being clear.

So it’s not Israel I’m obsessed with, it’s Ted Cruz I’m a little bit obsessed with. How could you be a senator from one of our most important states and say out loud, “My whole purpose for being here is to serve a foreign country”? That’s it.

And this is all so completely out of whack and has been for so long. And the only reason it hasn’t corrected is because of bullying and enforced silence. And once the bullying no longer intimidates people, and once you can’t enforce silence, thanks to the Internet, inevitably it was going to collapse.

People are going to be called on it. Why are you doing this? How does this help me? Aren’t you a senator, congressman, mayor, governor, president from our country? They’re going to get that at every turn and they should get it. Those are fair questions.

This was always going to happen. Fuentes didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. Certainly you didn’t do it. No individual did it. It was just inevitable because the consensus itself was fake. It was totally fake. And now we’re getting into what Ben Shapiro used to celebrate, that fabled marketplace of ideas. And he’s going to go bankrupt in that marketplace because there’s very little support for his position, which is fundamentally lobbying on behalf of a foreign country. And no one wants to do that anymore. Why would they?

The Decentralized Media Landscape

DAVE SMITH: One of the things, so I was watching a little bit, actually, of Ben Shapiro’s show today. Liam McCollum, who is a good friend of mine and super smart young kid. Again, not being condescending, but I’m 42 and he’s in his 20s. But he sent me the episode of Ben Shapiro today, so I’m pretty pissed at him for that. That’s not a cool thing to do to a friend.

But I did watch a little bit of it, and he’s sitting there going, “Tucker Carlson,” and then just completely in a demented way, representing your view. “Tucker Carlson, the platforming of Holocaust deniers and this and loving Nazis. The American people hate that. The American people reject that.”

And meanwhile, there’s just this amazing feature about the new decentralized media landscape where we can all look at the numbers and we can see who’s gaining in relevance and who’s losing it. And the fact is that Nick Fuentes is ascendant. Candace Owens is humongous. She’s been breaking records. You were the biggest show at cable news, got fired and got bigger after that. Again, you can just look at the numbers. They’re all right there.

And Ben Shapiro went from being the king of the online conservative guys to being very much a laughingstock and falling down in all these numbers. So they want to sit here and try to convince you that what you’re seeing in front of you isn’t really happening. But we all know that it is.

And as you said, this whole thing was always such an illusion. There’s so many, and this has been, I think, one of the major themes in your Fox News show, and it’s continued with you on X and YouTube, that the truth is that there was never a referendum amongst the American people. Hey, do you guys want to radically change the nature of this country through massive immigration? It’s not like there was ever a vote for that, because you never could have gotten that passed.

There’s never been a referendum on being a world empire. In fact, I like to make this point all the time, as Ron Paul used to always make this point. The peace candidate almost always wins the presidency. If you go through whenever the American people have a chance, all the way back to even when Woodrow Wilson won the presidency, “We’re going to keep you out of the war.” FDR, “We’re going to keep you out of the war.” Even Lyndon Johnson, when he was at the height of the Vietnam War, how did they beat Barry Goldwater? “He’s going to drop the bomb. He’s going to be the guy who comes in and drops the atom bomb.”

George W. Bush ran on a humble foreign policy. No nation building, no policing the world, he won on that. Barack Obama ran on ending the wars, he won on that. Donald Trump ran on ending the wars, he won on that. The only one you could even say was Joe Biden beating Donald Trump. But that wasn’t really about foreign policy. That was the year of 2020. The chaos in the streets, the lockdowns. People wanted to return to normalcy, or at least some people did, probably not as many as they say. But the peace candidate always wins.

And so you just have this, the idea that the consensus is that we must topple the secular dictator in Syria to install Al Qaeda because that will break up the Shiite crescent and therefore Iran can’t get weapons to Lebanon was the consensus of the American people. What the f* are you talking about? What planet do you people live on? It’s all fake.

Living in a Self-Referential World

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they do live in a, I mean, I’ve lived in this world most of my life, so I know the world that they live in, which is a world of self-reference. I mean, there are only 10,000 people in that world. They all know each other or of each other. They make all the decisions and so they definitely lose track of what everyone else thinks.

And one of the great life-changing events for me was moving out of that city and that world and just living a more normal place, a more normal life. And you realize, wait, that’s really crazy. You don’t really realize it quite to the extent when you’re right next to it, but you’re absolutely right. It’s totally divorced from what people want. And it hasn’t borne through. It hasn’t worked. That’s the other thing. It just doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked. Tell me how that’s worked.

And so this moment was always coming. Here’s my fear. And it’s not about, and I agree with your assessment of Ben, whom I don’t hate. I feel sorry for Ben, a man of limited talent who for whatever reason became big in a kind of artificial way or filled some vacuum that was later filled by talented people.

But Ben is very afraid. And I think a lot of people, a lot of the neocons and neocon-adjacent people believe this stuff. They believe that there’s a Fourth Reich on the rise. I know, because I know a lot of them and they text me. Alex Berenson, who’s a very fragile person, but a good, nice guy and very smart. And I’ve promoted Berenson for real.

DAVE SMITH: Oh, my gosh, me too.

Fear and Paranoia in the Conservative Movement

TUCKER CARLSON: For real, because I really agree. I thought he was brave, but at the same time, a very fearful person. Very fearful. And I know a lot of people like this who I really like and have always really liked. And they’re texting me, “I can’t believe you’re a Nazi. I’m going to have to flee the United States.”

Ben is like this. Ben fears that he’s going to get hurt. And I look at this and I’m like, I think Ben’s fine. Who’s more likely to get hurt, me or Ben? It’s not even really close, but that doesn’t matter. He feels that way.

And a lot of these people who are throwing this Nazi stuff around, they’re doing it for a reason. Of course. This is part of a strategy. We got to clear the skeptics out of the Republican Party by the time Trump leaves, or else we, the neocons, will lose their stranglehold on the party. That is the goal.

But I just want to say again, as they say these radical, really kind of crazy things, they convince themselves and they become dangerous. I’m just saying that. And also tormented. Really unhappy. Imagine, I mean, I talked to Mark Levin. I talked to him right after Charlie was killed. I called Mark Levin and I called Ben and I said, “I don’t want to fight at all with you. I’m actually not obsessed with Israel. You clearly are. But I do think we agree on a lot of things and let’s not fight.”

I called them both and I said that, and they were both nice to me about it, very nice. And then immediately started attacking me again. Whatever. They can’t help themselves.

But Levin did say something amazing to me. He’s like, “Everyone hates Jews. There are Jew haters everywhere. And I’m fighting the Jew haters.” And I’m like, I mean, I guess if you spend your life on Twitter, you run into a lot of Jew haters, but in real life America, no, that’s not true. Actually, most people are really nice. And there is no Nazi movement building in America. That’s just fake.

But I really think Levin believes that. And I think he had one of these kind of crazy childhoods with a screechy mother who just scared the s* out of him every day of his childhood or something like that. I mean, clearly this guy’s had a lot of trauma in his personal life, but it almost doesn’t matter the cause. He really believes it. He said it to me on the phone. Shapiro, too, and a lot of other good people who are not necessarily crazy are convinced that the Fourth Reich is rising.

And that’s bad for them as people because it torments them and makes them unhappy and alienates their wives and deforms their children. It’s all bad. But it’s also bad for America because panicked, hysterical people are capable of doing things they wouldn’t do if they weren’t panicked and hysterical.

So we do need to convince everybody the Fourth Reich is not rising. Settle down. I’m not a Nazi. I hate the Nazis. Let me tell you how I hate the Nazis and why. And I have real reasons for feeling that way. It’s not just because you’re supposed to hate the Nazis. I actually do hate the Nazis for real reasons.

But let’s just have that conversation. Let’s stop. When you stop the conversation, everyone gets completely paranoid and suspicious. That’s one of the reasons, main reason I interviewed Fuentes. It’s like, let’s just get it out there. If you disagree, tell me how that’s fine. What’s wrong with that?

The Gatekeepers of Conservative Thought

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, like 100%. And you know, I had a post on X the other day about this where I saw Dave Rubin talking to Brett Weinstein. I forget exactly what Brett was saying, but he was saying something about your episode with Fuentes that was reasonable. That was just like a reasonable take. Like, you know, let’s not go hysterical about people having conversations with people or something like that.

And then Dave Rubin said something like, you know, hey, you could try to be nice to them all you want, but with a last name like Weinstein, they’re still going to end up getting you or something. And I was saying, I was like, guys, this idea that we are on the precipice of another holocaust, like, this is not grounded in reality and it’s not healthy. It’s so destructive.

Because again, like you said, just get people to be at their most panicked. That’s what we want people to be making decisions at their absolute, absolute most panic, especially. It’s so far removed from reality.

TUCKER CARLSON: It makes it really, really hostile. And you feel that. I mean, there are a couple quotes from that Josh Hammer guy who’s like, “Europeans have hatred or anti-Semitism in their DNA.” What? First of all, nobody has hatred in their DNA. People are not sinful or virtuous by nature of their DNA, period. But he believes that.

So it does create hate. There’s a lot of anti-European, anti-white hostility that grows out of that. Like, if you think people are going to come kill you, you hate them. And I do blame whoever raised Josh Hammer or Dave Rubin, who probably doesn’t really. Dave doesn’t have much of a soul. I don’t know if he actually believes any of this, but there are a lot of actually good people.

I know Michael Savage, who’s, I’ve always really liked Michael Savage. He keeps texting me, like, “you’re a Nazi.” It’s like, Michael, it’s me, dude. We were friends. And that obviously makes me so sad because I really like Michael Savage. I always have.

But beyond just my feelings, which are not that relevant, that gets you to hate. That produces hate. Fear produces hate. If you’re panicked, like, if I felt my house was being broken into, I would hate the home invader enough to shoot him without feeling bad about it because I feel so threatened. It’s that principle, but they’re making it kind of nationwide and they’re really playing with fire.

DAVE SMITH: I think, yeah, man, do I agree with that. And you know, I got to say, there is something that’s kind of, okay, so I saw this clip. Actually, a mutual friend of ours, Scott Horton, the great Scott Horton, he sent me this clip of Dinesh D’Souza. And he was in an interview with, it was like something called like, the Jewish Channel or something like that on YouTube.

And he actually said that. I couldn’t believe it. So he was basically, you know, going at you and Candace and how you guys are out of control conspiracy theorists or whatever. And I just couldn’t believe it. He said the quiet part out loud.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he.

DAVE SMITH: And I really appreciated this in a way, but he goes, he goes, “Look, we used to have an Irving Kristol and a William F. Buckley, and they would decide who’s allowed in and who’s not. But now we don’t have an Irving Kristol and a William F. Buckley who could decide that Tucker and Candace are out, because this is like over the line or whatever.”

And I was just kind of like, well, hey, at least, I sort of, I messaged him after that and invited him on the podcast because I was like, hey, what a great starting point. Like, you’re admitting the part that half of them will deny. So, like, okay, let’s talk about this.

The Unpatriotic Conservatives

And one of the things that was interesting to me as Mark Levin is, you know, hysterically calling for your cancellation the other day from this Genocide Fest 2025. And he is, so he’s calling for your cancellation, and then he’s bragging about all the people that we canceled in the past.

And it’s kind of interesting because, of course, it does remind me of this famous piece that ran in National Review back in maybe 2004. I want to say it was called “Unpatriotic Conservatives” by David Frum.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ll never forget it, by the way.

DAVE SMITH: And this was a big story that I feel was very underreported. Also very personally vindicating for me, that was broken by Ryan Grimm just a few weeks ago that both Douglas Murray and David Frum, turns out not only has Douglas Murray been to Israel, but he’s also been speechwriting for their ambassadors, working for the Israeli government. And guess what? David Frum has too.

And I’m sorry, but, like, as soon as you’re coming over and arguing as if you were a journalist or an American, Canadian, American speechwriter for a president, and then you’re advocating on behalf of a foreign government and you do not disclose that you are working for that foreign government, I mean, that is.

And by the way, Douglas Murray, if you remember, was lecturing me about journalistic ethics when he’s saying you’ve never been. He said I have a journalistic practice, that if I talk about a place I’ve been there. But you don’t disclose that you’re actually a f*ing foreign spy. Okay, Mr. Journalist.

But anyway, I know. Look, I just, for people who don’t know this, and I’m sorry for rambling, but for people who don’t know this, the unpatriotic conservatives that David Frum, the speechwriter, the guy who coined the term “Axis of Evil,” helped launch us on this whole path that we’ve been on since then that’s wrecked the 21st century.

Who were the conservatives who were unpatriotic? It was all the best ones, the best right-wingers in America. It was Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell and Justin Raimondo and Sam Francis and all. It was all the best guys. None of them were Nazis, none of them were bigots. They just all had one thing in common. They opposed the war party. That was the whole crime that any of them committed.

Inverting the Truth

TUCKER CARLSON: You know what they were actually, they were the most patriotic conservatives. And that is the practice of, and I do think there’s a spiritual component to this, but of the slanderers now dominating our conversation, it’s to invert the truth, not to pull it three shades or 15 degrees off. It’s to flip it exactly around.

No, no. You’re an agent of a foreign country, a foreign power, and it’s like, or as Bill Kristol once said to me or said about me, “Tucker Carlson is advocating for an ethno-state.” I’m like, no, what? No, I think that’s what you’re doing.

But of course, but I always fall for it. It’s like, no, I don’t have any investors, I have no debt, I have never taken a grant, I’ve never taken a dollar from any foreign government. I literally am not controlled by anybody, which is of course what they hate me.

But you’re literally advocating on behalf, you’re lobbying for, you’re in some cases in the employ of taking talking points from a government. And you’re accusing me of being an agent of some Russia or Qatar, both great countries by the way, I should say. But I’ve never taken money from them, obviously. And I wouldn’t really focused on America.

But the point is they, this is such a well-trod point. But I just have to say it again. They accuse you of what they’re doing. Yeah, every single time. And what is that? That would never occur to me. I would never even think to do that. I’ve just embraced for me, I couldn’t do that, dude.

DAVE SMITH: Mark Levin literally says Tucker Carlson is engaging in conspiracy theories. And you’re like, what is it? Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Regularly. And it’s like, why? I mean, it’s silly. And he’s, thank heaven, not very talented or, yeah, yeah, trouble, you know, but whatever. But that, it’s so weird. Like, if you wanted to attack me, I could give you the template. I would list my actual faults, which I think are pretty obvious, and I would hit those, you know, I would go with the things that are kind of true.

It’s like kind of obvious that I’m whatever, can be pompous or I have a bad temper or I get kind of fat sometimes or whatever. That’s what I would do because people be like, yeah, that seems kind of right. I wouldn’t pick exactly what I was doing. You know, it’s like, what the hell is that?

The Death of the Old Guard

DAVE SMITH: Well, well, you know what I got to say, kind of on that theme, you know, because there is something interesting about, I mean, look, Mark Levin still commands an audience of dozens and dozens of 95-year-olds. And, you know, I mean, there’s still, I’m sure some people. But it is funny when you see, you know, so both Dinesh D’Souza, who says, “We used to have an Irving Kristol and a Bill Buckley who could, you know, kick people out.”

TUCKER CARLSON: And then Mark didn’t live in this country, you mean?

DAVE SMITH: Right, yes, that’s right.

TUCKER CARLSON: And then me about America.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, right, right, yes. And so then, and then you have Mark Levin saying, “What do you mean? We don’t cancel people. We canceled Pat Buchanan, we canceled all these guys and all this.” And it’s almost like you don’t realize, but, hey, guys. Yes, but the difference between now and then was like the war on terrorism and you guys being completely discredited. That’s why it’s no longer like that.

Like, it’s Mark Levin when he talks about, when he talks about the rise in anti-Semitism and the rise in anti-Israel rhetoric. And then it’s almost an implied thing where like, and everything else was totally normal. I guess Qatar is buying everybody off. But it’s like, wait, you’re skipping, you’re skipping the part where they committed a genocide in 4K and forced me to pay for it.

Like, that’s the whole, like, if you don’t grapple with that, then what are you going to talk about? And look, I just want to read this off because, by the way, meanwhile.

TUCKER CARLSON: As this was happening, the American middle class died, right? And your kids can’t buy a house and the people next door don’t speak English and everything kind. And everyone’s on drugs. And it, so it didn’t work.

And if you’re like, “How is this working? How, you know, there’s this, well, we need to fight for the soul of conservatism.” And I’ve been a conservative my whole life, like, long before Mark Levin was, I can promise you. And, but I’m not really sure what that means now. Like, what is the goal? Like, what kind of country do you want? That’s not something they seem to spend a lot of time thinking about at all. No.

The Cost of Endless Wars

DAVE SMITH: 100%. Look, during the war on terrorism and through the start of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then of course, overthrowing Gaddafi and overthrowing Bashar al-Assad and bombing the crap out of Somalia for 20 years and backing the Saudi invasion in Yemen and then backing the Ukraine war and now backing Israel’s destruction of Gaza, during that whole period of time, we’ve witnessed the largest transfer of wealth from the working and middle class to the elite.

Twice it happened twice. We set the record in ’08, and then we set it again in COVID. So yes, it’s destroyed this country. Now, that’s not the only thing that’s destroyed the country. There’s been lots of other things, but while you guys are fighting war after war, no one’s paying attention to the country falling apart.

And then I got to say this other point too, because specifically on the idea of counseling you, I wanted to, so at first I want to make this point and then I want to at the end talk about the kind of implied violence here. But I just wanted to, so Daryl Cooper posted this earlier today, and it was on your theme of they accuse you of what they’re guilty of.

The Hypocrisy of Ben Shapiro

So here’s just a few, just at random of this kind of cast of characters. And of course, we could talk about Ben Shapiro wrote when he was about the age that Nick Fuentes was, the age when he’s been accused of all the horrible things he said or said some horrible things. Ben Shapiro openly wrote a piece advocating for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. He also once posted on social media that “Jews like to build things and Arabs like to play in mud and blow things up.” I think he did apologize for that.

This is the reason I hate Ben Shapiro and have hated him for longer than anybody else that’s around today. I bet out of all the popular commentators on the Internet today, I bet I’ve hated him the longest. And it was over this. Ben Shapiro said back in 2011, “Ron Paul is manifestly evil. As in previous debates, he is now gripping the pen as he would the neck of a Jew.”

This is what Ben Shapiro said about Dr. Ron Paul, the kindest, gentlest Christian human being that’s ever been created, who was right about everything and has never in his life said “the Jews.” And look, Tucker, I got to tell you, there’s a little part of me that almost goes like, hey, you said that about Ron Paul, then you know what? Ben Shapiro, you get Nick Fuentes.

I got to say, there’s a part of me that just feels like, okay, now deal with this man. And now say the exact same thing and watch it fall on deaf ears as it’s completely empty. And by the way, never apologized for this. I’m sorry, Tucker. I’m going to let you go for a while.

Group Think and Hatred

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re so right. No, I just, it makes me sad. I mean, because what is that? What actually is that? And it’s, of course, hatred. It’s hatred, you know, to our group. And people like Ben Shapiro and Josh Hammer and Ted Cruz, all these people, they think in terms of groups.

And that’s what Levin said to me. It’s like, “My group, people are hurting my group.” And it’s like, if your group means your family, you know, people you love, I get it. But if you’re thinking purely in terms of your ethnic group, which is what he is saying, then you inevitably become very hateful toward other ethnic groups, actually. And in Ben’s line about Ron Paul, who’s completely committed to nonviolence, by the way, you see that hatred.

And so it does. I don’t like it. I’m not, I’ll just get right to it. I’m not afraid personally. I mean, I didn’t grow up in the world that, you know, Seth Dillon grew up in, where you were encouraged to talk about yourself all the time. Narcissism was a true sin. Yeah, I never talk about, I try not to talk about myself in general, but I mean, I know a lot about people trying to hurt me. Been there in a real way, which I’ve never talked about, not going to talk about now.

The Celebration of Violence

But I’ll just say I know what that is. And I know that people like Seth Dillon or Ben Shapiro, you know, they get a lot out of wearing bulletproof vests and like, “Oh, I’m so under attack,” and all that stuff. And it’s like, the truth is they are openly pro-violence. So how in the world could you justify killing tens of thousands of children? Or justify a pager attack, which is an act of terrorism, where you’re indiscriminately blowing people’s genitals off, you don’t know who’s holding the pager? And you’re celebrating it. What are you celebrating? You’re celebrating violence.

And they celebrate violence day after day. That’s where their foreign policy comes from. That’s what their worldview is. “Strangling the neck of a Jew.” Who even thinks that way? Someone thinks very often in violent terms and so, and hateful terms. That’s hate.

And so people like that when aroused to hysteria, and I feel sorry for them. And I just want to say that again. Lindsey Graham, another violence worshiper, like the idea that they’re promoting violence. Well, they’ve been promoting violence for decades because this whole project is about violence. It’s about the thrill that they feel killing their enemies, the godlike power they imagine they have when they extinguish human life. That’s the whole game for them.

And we shouldn’t like, so, “Oh, you’re not promoting violence.” Oh, you’re definitely promoting violence. And that’s why I oppose you, because I’m opposed to that. We don’t have a right to kill people. We do not have a right to kill the innocent, period, because we’re not God.

The Dividing Line

And that’s the dividing line between me and Ben Shapiro. And that’s why when I said, you know, Hiroshima, of course, I’m for forcing Imperial Japan to stop doing what it’s doing, make them apologize. I’m for beating them. I am. But I’m not for incinerating tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of their civilians because the civilians didn’t do anything wrong. And I don’t think we’re allowed to kill the innocent.

So I say that on Rogan and Ben Shapiro is like, “Holocaust denier” or whatever, something, one of these meaningless phrases that mean Nazi bad person. And it’s like, why would that bother you? Why are you so offended that I’m opposed to killing innocence? And of course, the answer is because your whole worldview and the whole purpose of your life is to justify killing innocence. And clearly the joy in your life derives from killing innocence. And so that’s who we’re dealing with here.

Like Lindsey Graham literally said the other night, he’s like, “We’re killing the right people, man.” Imagine what it’s going to be like standing at the end, you know, at the judgment, because there is a judgment period. And like you were celebrating killing, killing the right people. Like, oh, I wouldn’t want to be that man. And I mean it. I’m not trying to be self-righteous. I’ll have to answer for a lot. But I hope I’ll never have to answer for taking glee in the killing of human beings. We’re not. Check yourself.

The Libertarian Insight

DAVE SMITH: No, that’s right. You know, in some ways there’s a lot of overlap between, in my eyes at least, between kind of the fundamental Christian insight there and the fundamental libertarian insight, which I guess would come after that, you know, after God. But it’s almost like something you logically deduce after you have that morality.

But there’s the idea that, you know, you could almost say, yeah, it’s illegal to commit acts of violence or incite acts of violence unless the government’s doing it, in which case you can incite and advocate for all the violence you want to. But the fundamental libertarian insight would be that, morally speaking, that’s the same thing. Just because a government did it, it is no different than a private actor doing it.

And that you can, if you believe in morality, then obviously we can’t create another class and say, well, I call you senator. And so now if you kill people, it’s collateral damage. We wouldn’t accept that from a private person. And so we can’t accept that from a public person. But this is, I mean, I’m not.

TUCKER CARLSON: Look, what.

DAVE SMITH: As I’m saying in just Genocide Fest 2025 here that they had the other day.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not.

DAVE SMITH: I mean, the whole thing was genocidal in tone. There was, what’s that guy Brandon Tatum, who I debated once on Piers Morgan, who, look, again, I don’t hate him, but he might be the dumbest person who’s ever talked about politics in the history of the world. And he’s up there and he’s saying, “Turn Gaza into a parking lot. If I was prime minister, I’d have done it in 48 hours.”

I’m sorry, people aren’t allowed to leave Gaza. If you’re saying, turn it into a parking lot, you’re advocating murdering a million children. What, you just casually drop. Then Lindsey Graham is bragging that Trump ran out of bombs. All the people that were killing. Then, you know, all of them. It’s like, and then you think at the end of that, you still have the moral authority to say, cancel Nick Fuentes or cancel Tucker Carlson. No, screw you. Who do you think you are?

The Future of the Republican Party

TUCKER CARLSON: If you think, I mean, Randy Fine made his money in the gambling industry. Okay, why not porn, right? You know, the biggest donor to the party made money in the gambling industry. I mean, it’s all just so gross. And it cannot withstand sunlight for one moment. That’s right.

And if the idea is that the future of the Republican Party is Randy Fine and Ted Cruz, this kind of quivering weirdo. I feel sorry for Ted, but really, Ted Cruz? What kind of scrutiny could that withstand? Not much. And et cetera, et cetera, Lindsey Graham, the whole thing. And again, I don’t want to be mean. I’m trying not to be mean.

But if that’s the future of the Republican Party, okay, you know, good luck. But that’s not. Then there’ll be another party that will represent the majority of Americans who just want really simple things like sovereignty, a government that cares about them, that does something, however imperfectly, to improve their lives. These are not ideological questions. These are just human questions.

And if you have a party run by people who don’t care about that at all, it’s doomed to be a boutique party for real. So I actually think long term, it’s better to get this all out now. I do hope that they can slow down with the appeals to violence, neutralizing people, murdering people in this case. But I’m not whining about it, because I’m not Seth Dillon. “Oh, I’m under attack.” Obviously I’m under attack. I don’t need to prove that. And I’m not afraid at all. And I mean that. You can tell I’m not afraid.

But I hope we can tone that down because it’s clearly a sign of national decline when people start talking like that. But I just do think, ultimately, I don’t know who’s going to win. But it’s not going to be, though. It’s not going to be Lindsey Graham. It’s not going to be Randy Fine, that guy. Imagine being his psychiatrist, by the way. We should hold their mothers to account. Who raised Randy Fine? You know what I mean? What were their mothers like? I mean, I’m not to be Freud about it, but really.

But anyway, those people are not the future at all. That’s why they’re hysterical. So I’m just glad this is coming out now. The more we can just open it up and talk honestly about what we think. And the clash of worldviews. There’s a clash of worldviews, period. And those people don’t want to be in a coalition with people who care about America. That’s fine. You know, it was never meant to be. Then we should, you know, it’s a starter marriage. Let’s get divorced. Right?

The Collectivist Threat and Rhetorical Hypocrisy

DAVE SMITH: No, 100%. And I think that it’s important in this moment almost to, like you said. Look, I just want to say real quick on the Josh Hammer thing, because I’m never one of the people who goes like, oh, if you have some harsh rhetoric, then I’m saying you’re inciting violence or something. I’m very hyperbolic myself and I call people war criminals and blood-soaked monsters all the time.

But I’m sorry, almost everyone, including Josh Hammer, all of the people who are, by the way, one of their big arguments is that Candace is way out of line to be asking all of these questions about what really happened with Charlie Kirk or speculating about what was going on and that obviously what it was, we all know it was a leftist and nobody else can ask any questions like that. It was a leftist who did this.

And their whole argument is that it was the rhetoric over these years of calling him a Nazi over and over again that led to this. They’ve just been making that argument. And then in a piece that Josh Hammer is writing about Charlie Kirk and what he would think of you sitting down with Nick Fuentes, his final line is that “the fox is in the henhouse and it must be neutralized.”

Like, come on, I’m sorry, every single one of those guys on that stage. If Nick Fuentes had come on your show and the last thing he said about Jews before the episode cuts off was “the fox is in the henhouse and it must be neutralized,” are you telling me that all these guys wouldn’t call that out for what it obviously is? I mean, and so, but I think it doesn’t work.

TUCKER CARLSON: It doesn’t work. I mean, I’m again, I’m talking to myself for, making it up, because not about me, it’s about the future of the Trump movement after Trump. That’s what all this is about. I just happened to be in this place. I’m not trying to shirk responsibility for anything I did at all. But it’s not really about me. They’re mad at me because I’m basically sincerely a moderate guy. I’m against violence. I don’t change. That’s why they hate me.

But leaving aside me, that doesn’t work because at least with me, I’m not afraid of Josh Hammer. My soul is at peace. If Josh Hammer killed me right now, I’d be like, okay, so the ideas go away. Am I going to hell? No. I feel truly at peace. I’m not afraid at all. And I really mean that. I’m not challenging someone to try to make another assassination attempt against me. I’m just saying it doesn’t have its intended effect.

Bullying only works if the person being bullied is afraid of getting hit in the face. But you occasionally run into someone who’s not and we have now a bunch of people who aren’t afraid. So they’re going to have to do what all of us should be required to do, which is to make your case. Tell us why you think that, submit to some questions like, not hostile questions, but just sincere questions, like if AIPAC’s not a foreign lobby, what is it? “Shut up, anti-Semite.”

I mean their kind of rhetorical muscles are so flabby right now from underuse. They’ve never had to defend what they do. They’ve had a huge effect on the way the government works. I’ve seen it firsthand for decades. Anybody who doesn’t agree is just prevented from joining the conversation. There are 535 members of Congress, House and Senate. How many are openly skeptical of our relationship with Israel? A couple. Out of 535. How did that happen?

So all their effectiveness has all been subrosa, it’s all been hidden from public view. None of these people have had to make an affirmative case for what they believe. And now they do. Okay, welcome to my world. I have to defend what I say. That’s good for me. It makes me stronger, more confident, less hysterical, less fragile. I encourage my children to live the same way. Be open. And if you’re doing something wrong, people will tell you you can defend it. If you can’t defend it, you should probably agree with them and stop doing it. Right. This is just life.

But they’ve never had to live like that because it was always “shut up Nazi.” And it’s just, that doesn’t work anymore. That’s right.

The Inability to Self-Reflect

DAVE SMITH: And with what you were saying before, with the kind of paranoia also comes this inability to self-reflect because if things become so knee-jerk, I just can’t imagine a situation. I suppose I could try to imagine a situation where, let’s say I had to defend a policy that was going to kill about a hundred thousand innocent people. And maybe I could think of a scenario in my mind like I really believe that if we didn’t do this, 500,000 innocent people would die. And so, oh my God, this is horrible. But I think this thing where 100,000 people die is better than this thing where 500,000 die.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, okay.

DAVE SMITH: Let’s just say hypothetically I could ever get there in my mind. If people were furious at me for that, I wouldn’t be like, “you must be a hater and that’s why you’re furious at me.” I’d be like, okay, no, well, look, I get it. I get why you think this is so horrible that we have to do this, but let me at least explain to you why it’s absolutely, there’s not a shred of that.

And I do, look, in this time, I think you’ve really done a good job of laying this out and I want to firmly be clear that I’m in your camp with this too, where, look, if I’m full disclosure, I am a bit of a radical libertarian. I really genuinely believe we should have no income tax and no central bank and no economic policy and no, I mean, I abolish every department and every three-letter agency.

TUCKER CARLSON: I see your point. I just want to say, sure, I am not a libertarian, but I do like the sound of what you’re saying.

DAVE SMITH: I’m against the welfare state, I’m against the warfare state, and if you look at the actual federal government, that’s about 99% of it. So I’m just saying I am kind of radical in my libertarian, but I am totally willing to settle at this point for just the most, what I’m actually asking for, which I don’t think is very radical, is like, hey, let’s not have permanent militarism and forever wars of choice. Let’s not have an open border and let’s not destroy our currency and drive off a cliff with debt. There’s nothing radical about that.

And we’re also both saying, we are clearly in the camp here who is like, we don’t hate Jews, we don’t hate blacks, we don’t hate whites. We don’t. We reject wokeism and hating Jews and hating blacks all for the same reason, because it’s all collectivist nonsense. But we’re against wars that kill innocent people, that are wars of choice that hurt our country. And there is, they can try all they want to pretend that that camp doesn’t exist, but that is the dominant camp at this point on both the left and the right. But that’s the dominant one.

The Danger of Ethnic Collectivism

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, and but that way of thinking, which is increasingly common and I just want to say for the fifth time, is that is the threat to Western civilization is that kind of thinking that places ethnic interests above the individual and assigns guilt or virtue on the basis of blood, that leads to genocide. It led the Nazis to do it, it led the Israeli government to do it. It led the Hutus to do it in Rwanda, 1994. It always leads to the same place.

If you think that your opponents are not quite human, then you have less compunction about killing them. So I just think it’s so important to have that debate right there. If you think that you are somehow morally better, if God favors you more than he favors someone you dislike, then you don’t have a problem killing that person. Or less of a problem than the rest of us do who feel like God judges all people as people. Okay. That’s the first thing.

Second thing I would say it’s going to be hard to, why do people take sides in a debate like this, in this kind of beehive moment where all of a sudden there’s just a swarm of bees stinging you and it’s coming from every direction and all of a sudden you’re being denounced. It’s happened to me a hundred times in my life. This is the most intense I’ve ever seen.

But you do see this breakdown of some people are like, no, I’m not, I’m just going to stick to what I know is true. And then a whole other group of people, some of whom you know really well, who are joining in the new thing and denouncing the new monster, today’s Hitler happened to be me. But it could be, it’s been a lot of people. There are always a certain sort of person who joins in that.

And I’ve thought a lot about it because I know so many. I’ve been denounced by so many people I like and have helped over the years. They’re all weak. That is the truth. They are all weak. Either they’re in some impossible position politically or financially or sexually, or they’re just weak inside. And I feel so sorry for them because they know that they’re violating their principles.

Guys like Dinesh D’Souza or Eric Metaxas, who I really liked and helped. And by the way, Eric Metaxas just was calling me a Nazi for interviewing Nick Fuentes. Eric Metaxas wrote a book about one of my heroes, Martin Luther, the German monk. Martin Luther, not the civil rights, the fake Christian civil rights guy. But Martin Luther, 500 years ago created Protestantism, really one of my heroes in life.

But Martin Luther, man kind of went bonkers on the Jewish question, became an actual anti-Semite in the last few years of his life. And including, famously wrote a book called, and I’m quoting, “On the Jews and Their Lies.” I reject that. Just for the record.

DAVE SMITH: It’s a grabby title, I’ll give him that.

The Weakness of Unprincipled Denouncers

TUCKER CARLSON: Eric Metaxas wrote a whole book about how great Martin Luther was, which I agreed with. But Martin Luther also wrote an anti-Semitic treatise called “On the Jews and Their Lies.” But so that’s fine.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, Martin Luther was woke, right? He was.

TUCKER CARLSON: He was so great. For real. But Metaxas writes this whole book. But then I interview Nick Fuentes and tell Nick Fuentes I’m against anti-Semitism, which I sincerely am, and I’m the criminal. But you just wrote the book glazing a guy who wrote “On the Jews and Lies.” It’s like, what is that?

It’s nothing to do with principle. It’s that this is someone who’s weak in a precarious position, and he’s being used by the more powerful to do their bidding. And imagine being that guy. Imagine being the guy who does something you know is not right, violates his own principles because you’re under all that pressure. Basically, you’re Winston Smith at the end of 1984. You’ve been really shown your greatest fear. And then you’ve been forced to say that two plus two equals five.

Imagine the self-hatred, the hollowness, the lack, the total lack of dignity. I just, oh, I feel sorry for those guys. I would rather die than do that. And I mean that.

The Path Forward: Forgiveness and Coalition Building

DAVE SMITH: Yeah. Oh, I could not agree with you more on that. I mean, yeah, it’s kind of like, it’s almost. And you know, this is kind of my own experience. Like, I grew up without a father who was present in my life, and I had years of being angry at him, and now I got these beautiful little grandkids. And, you know, I just think to myself, I go, oh, my God, like, what could be a worse punishment than that. That he’s never met that. That he’s not in their life. You know, like, what a horrible, sad thing to be.

It’s like the appropriate reaction isn’t even to be angry about it. It’s to be like, geez, thank God I didn’t mess up that bad that I found myself in that situation in life. And, you know, I guess the real thing going forward, right, is that it does. Like I said, obviously this was like a weird, pathetic last gasp of this old guard who’s lost complete control of the conversation that they once really gatekept the parameters very effectively of. Like however we feel about it, David Frum in the short term won and Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul and Sam Francis and you know, Raimondo, they lost in the short term.

But now, like, hey, Dinesh, as you said, that’s right, you don’t have an Irving Kristol anymore. You don’t have a William F. Buckley anymore. Okay, you don’t have. Now there’s a different world. And they’re not going to be able to silence this conversation. It seems to me.

It’s like, look, it’s already been clear after everybody pretended that Daryl Cooper denied the holocaust on your show, even though he clearly didn’t and has explained a million times that he didn’t say if anyone wants to go back. By the way, this topic came up on my last interview on this channel with Daryl Cooper from a week or two ago. Anyway, it just obviously was all made up. Daryl Cooper said nothing like that. And he’s doing a World War II series right now. I highly recommend people check that out in the Martyr Made podcast.

But there is Substack after all that they weren’t dropping him. Elon Musk is not going to kick off the biggest conservative voice, Tucker Carlson in America. In fact, just think about how crazy the demand is here. Josh Hammer is demanding that the most popular conservative show host get neutralized. Who are you, dude? How are you going to do that?

You’re going to get Twitter and then you got to take care of Rumble because if they start doing it on YouTube and Facebook again, we’re all just going to go to Rumble. And there’s that. People are getting millions of views over there. You guys don’t get to control the conversation anymore. Like you said. I think you said it perfectly. You actually have to defend your position. And the problem with that is that if your whole thing is based off death and lies, that has a tendency of getting exposed.

And I’ll give the final words to you because I’ve kept you over the time.

America First: The Most Resonant Idea in American Politics

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I feel I’m really grateful for this. What is the future going forward? Clearly this is a huge change. Like nothing like this has ever happened in right wing, libertarian, conservative, whatever. This is on the right politically and this is a break.

And I would just say two things. One, clearly this coalition can’t hold together, obviously. But the core idea of MAGA, which is America First, it’s this really simple concept. The US Government should really make a good faith effort to put the interests of US Citizens first. That’s it. That’s the whole idea right there. It’s not a dangerous idea. It’s not a Nazi idea. It’s really the only idea in a democracy.

That idea is the most popular idea ever introduced into American politics. It died in 1941 with Pearl Harbor, and everyone who espoused it, starting with Lincoln, was slandered as a Nazi. And it laid dormant until 2015 when Donald Trump reintroduced it on his ride down the escalator. And he rode that idea to two wins, including the entire popular vote.

And he’s Donald Trump, so he’s like, working, as we say, in wrestling off his back, like with the deficit. Right. Because he’s alien people on other issues. So that is the most resonant idea ever in American politics. That idea can create a coalition that includes a lot of people. We can have a good faith argument over what is best for America. That should be the argument. But we should. Most people would not argue with the intent, which is to help American citizens.

So you could create a much bigger coalition with a ton of disaffected Democrats. Some are hardened and they’re vested in the system and they’re getting a lot out of identity politics and machine politics, and they’re never going to leave. But there are a ton of Democratic voters who will join you in that. And you saw glimpses of that in the last election where a lot of them wanted black voters. Traditionally, Democrats voted for Trump. Why? America First. That’s why.

And so you can make the coalition a dominant generational coalition very easily if you stick with that idea. That’s the first thing.

The Power of Forgiveness

The second thing is you should be forgiving always. Things are being said right now that almost seem like they can’t be forgiven. They’re so. They’re exhortations to violence, clearly. They are slander of a kind that’s so severe. Like, how do you get past that? That I think we should force ourselves.

I interviewed Nick Fuentes to attack my wife and my son, and my dad can attack my dad. And I interviewed him. Anyway, I choked it back. And I thought to myself, I’m just. I want to hear this. I’m just going to make. We. I try to make myself do that.

So if tomorrow John Podhoretz is like, or whomever I’m mad at. Right. People I used to know are calling me a Nazi is like, you know what? I don’t think he’s actually a Nazi. Like, let’s have a real conversation. Let’s do the best for America. They should all be accepted. I don’t think we should have permanent enemies who are American citizens. I don’t. Because I think the whole idea of it is we’re united by citizenship, our common Americanness. Everybody’s welcome. Even if we hated each other 20 minutes ago.

And Glenn Greenwald, I mean, I hated Glenn Greenwald now. I think he was one of my favorite people in the world. Not just personally, like, forgiveness is essential. People change, allow for that. That don’t draw permanent lines in the sand where it’s like, I hate you and I will hate your son too. Like, that’s non-Western thinking. We don’t allow that.

DAVE SMITH: Okay, I know I said that was. You would have the last word, but I just got to say, because that just actually really inspired me. That is like, really so important, so beautiful. And I’m going to actually try to do. Try to live that a little bit right now.

Because you had mentioned earlier in the show, and I was even thinking about it when you mentioned it, like Alex Berenson, who, like, I’ve been a bit upset about because I think he was, you know, pretty shitty to me. But, you know, even as you say it, Alex Berenson got one of the most important issues that ever faced this country completely right. And he got it right when it mattered, when it mattered the most and when it took the most courage to do it.

And I will say this about him, you’ll always have that. No one could ever take that away from you. Not everybody has. Not everybody has an example of a story like that. So I’ll show a little bit of grace there and then just one more quick thing before, and then we can wrap up.

TUCKER CARLSON: But I.

Who’s Really Breaking Up the Coalition?

DAVE SMITH: Because just thinking about this, you know, it does seem, and maybe this is even one area where I would almost agree a little bit with the spirit of what some of the people who are so upset with me and so upset with you, really upset with you, have been saying is that they say, hey, there’s a real danger here that this could crack up the coalition. And then the Democrats who seem to be, you know, just the most unpopular political party in many centuries right now, then this is the thing that could give them a path back.

And I will say, hey, we agree. I think there’s a real danger about that. You know, I saw what Joe Biden tried. Not Joe Biden, but, you know, I saw what the Progressive Democrats tried to do when they had Joe Biden in there. They tried to pass a Ministry of Truth, they tried to get that OSHA bill to regulate every mid-size and large company in the country and force them to get the jab. Luckily the court struck that down but all types of tech censorship. Yeah, who knows, if they come back the next time they might be really hunting for blood now after these rollbacks.

But then of course the question is like, but what is who’s breaking up the coalition here? And why do you just get to look at it as like we’re breaking up the coalition rather than you, when clearly our obvious demand here is just that we do what’s in the best interest of this country. But they accuse you of that.

Look, despite all the stuff with the 12 Day War, we’ll see what ends up happening with that. Despite your feelings on this posturing toward Venezuela, despite your feelings about US backing Israel in this war, you’ve never said I’m done with Donald Trump, I’m walking away from this whole thing. I mean I kind of did, but you know, I’m just saying it’s like who’s really breaking up the coalition here?

Because the truth is that you are in this battle of like the donor and powerful class versus all of the people. And if JD Vance wants to go forward, we still do have this pesky little democratic process here, Tucker, and he needs the people or whoever’s going to do it needs the people. And you’re going to. The only way to carry that is to like the non-interventionist right at this point is not some fringe group. It’s the overwhelming majority.

You know, like the rejection of the neocons and the forever wars and the America First thing, like you said, is that. So the only reasonable thing to keep the coalition together is to get on board with America First. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable demand. And that doesn’t mean get on board with any type of bigotry or Nazism or anything. Just all the stuff me and you have been talking about here today, this country comes first.

And I say this, I’m Jewish, but you know what, I’m an American. I have, my kids live in America and my kids are more important to me than any abstract idea. This is the country they’re going to grow up in. And so anyway, okay, I promise I won’t read other things.

Country Before Tribe

TUCKER CARLSON: Your country comes before your tribe, no matter what tribe it is, including mine. I’m not, you know, any tribe. Okay? Tribalism leads to genocide every single time. We can’t have that.

The only way to preserve the United States, this vast, you know, country in which there’s no working majority of anything is to emphasize citizenship, our common Americanness, country before tribe. And the overwhelming majority of Americans want that and can accept it. And anyone who can accept it can have their own political party, which will not get a majority of anything ever. It’s just kind of that simple.

And I’m just grateful that we can have this conversation openly for the first time.

DAVE SMITH: Yeah, me, too. Me, too. Well, Tucker, thank you so much for coming on this show to talk about this stuff. I just always really love talking about you, and I always love talking to you. I always love watching you. And so this was really great for me. And thank you to everybody else for watching. All right, we’ll catch you next time later.

TUCKER CARLSON: Thanks, Dave.

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