Tucker Carlson On Iran @ Piers Morgan Uncensored (Transcript)

Why would I be the most dangerous? In fact, I’m not a demagogue. I don’t seek to divide people. It pains me to see people divided against my religion, and it’s bad for my country.

He’s mad at me. Well, yeah, because his interview didn’t go well, as you said. That’s true, I think. But he’s actually most mad at me because I’m criticizing our alliance with Israel. And I’m not doing that because I’m getting anything out of it — I’m certainly not — or because I hate Israel. I don’t and never have. But because I don’t think it helps the United States. And I’ve been saying that for the last year, to increasing irritation from agents of Israel like Ted Cruz.

And now this war kind of proves the point, unfortunately. I wish we hadn’t come to this, but this is so destructive to American national interests that it’s hard to believe destroying American national interests, weakening the United States, wasn’t part of the point. How could it not have been?

The Strait of Hormuz: A Strategic Catastrophe

TUCKER CARLSON: And the last point I would make about relevant knowledge of a country you seek to overthrow is that looking at maps doesn’t tell you the whole story, but it tells you part of the story. At the eastern end of the Persian Gulf is a strait called Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s energy flows, and a huge percentage of its fertilizer and sulfur and petrochemicals and things that we need for civilization. And if you shut that down, the world economy tanks.

And by the way, if you take out the government that controls one half of that strait, and that government is replaced by warring tribes in civil war, then you open it up to piracy, and anybody with a $400 drone can prevent an oil tanker from getting through the strait. So chaos is actually the enemy of commerce. Chaos is actually even more of a threat because you cannot meaningfully negotiate with pirates, even with the Houthis.

So what was the plan? What was the plan to overthrow the government of Iran, or even attack it in a meaningful way, without jeopardizing core American interests? And the answer is, there never was a plan, because the people who thought this up don’t care about core American interests.

Handing the Middle East to China

TUCKER CARLSON: The net effect is to hand the Middle East to the Chinese, which is what is in the process of happening. And I hope for the sake of the United States and the world that we can stop that.

But the truth is our real allies in the region are the six Gulf monarchies that control a lot of the world’s energy. And by the way, they’re pro-American and decent people, as you know, because you and I had lunch there. This is a nice part of the world. It’s being destroyed. These are our allies. We have bases in these countries for a reason — not to protect Israel, but to protect the Strait of Hormuz.

We haven’t been able to defend these countries to the extent that I think they thought we would be able to. We’ve moved a lot of the anti-missile defense that might have protected them to Israel. And so for them, at the end of all of this, the question is going to be: do we allow the Americans to come back and occupy bases on the Persian Gulf? What’s in it for us? We just got bombed for it. No one protected us. Our energy infrastructure is damaged. Our economy’s offline for months as we rebuild it. In the case of Dubai, it’s a branding disaster. There’s no upside.

And so at that point, the Chinese — the world’s largest economy, which kind of sat this out on the sidelines, said basically nothing, and may be called on to negotiate some kind of peaceful resolution to this — the Chinese, not the US, the Chinese — it naturally follows that China, which is the largest trading partner of every country on both sides of the Persian Gulf, would become the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. It would become Chinese.

So if you thought about this for two minutes before advocating for it, you might arrive at that conclusion, or at least conclude that’s possible. That could happen. If killing an 86-year-old religious leader didn’t cause a spontaneous creation of a pro-Western government — which was apparently Ted Cruz’s plan — if that didn’t work, what would happen? Well, China would take over.

And so anyone who didn’t think that through is either not qualified to lead anything, including one half of the state of Texas, or that person is probably actively working against America’s core long-term interests. I mean, I don’t know what other conclusion to reach.

“Evil and Disgusting”: Tucker’s Initial Reaction to the War

PIERS MORGAN: It’s been reported that you described the attacks when they first happened as “evil and dangerous.” Is that true? And is that a reflection of how you felt in that moment when you heard it had finally happened?

TUCKER CARLSON: I got a text from someone I’d known for many years, right when I woke up, and said, “What do you think of this?” And I said, “Evil and disgusting,” actually, is what I said. And I wrote it to John Carl, who’s a reporter at ABC News, who I’ve known since the early 90s. I had no idea this was some kind of on-the-record thing. It immediately went on breaking news and was reported. I had no desire to get that out there. I want to present my views in a more cogent, thoughtful way than just growling right when I wake up in response to the news on my phone.

But yes, I’m not running away from what I said. That was my initial reaction. I thought this was a disaster for American interests. I’ve thought that for many years. I’ve advocated against this — I advocated against a war in Iran with Trump in the first Trump administration. So this is not a new position for me.

I don’t want to be vindicated in my fears, but unfortunately, I think the very few people who publicly opposed this are being vindicated, because I don’t know what the case is that this is good for the United States. No one’s even attempting to make that case. So instead they say, “Well, you hate Jews.” To which I always say, “Well, not only do I not hate Jews, I think anti-Semitism is immoral. It’s against my religion.” “Shut up. You hate Jews.”

And that is designed to do a bunch of different things: create more loyalty to Israel — there’s so much anti-Semitism, you must be loyal to Israel — that’s definitely one of the aims of this. Another is to imperil the person you’re calling a Nazi, because Nazis get shot. Everyone knows that. And the third is to make people who disagree with you, or who platform those who might disagree with you or Bibi Netanyahu, censor them, take them off the air, shut them up, silence them. Those are the points of it.

But at no juncture have I ever met anybody who has laid out a reasonable — even slightly fantastical, but just logical — case for how this war will benefit the United States, make us stronger, safer, richer. I’ve never heard that case. I’m waiting for it. I would love to hear it. I’d love to believe it.

Tucker’s Meetings with President Trump

PIERS MORGAN: You were in the Oval Office with President Trump. You were photographed with him. You met him, I think, maybe three times in the months leading up to this war. And I presume you discussed the potential for war in Iran with him. Did you try and persuade him that this would be a terrible idea?

Tucker’s Efforts to Prevent the War

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. That’s why I went three times in a month, five weeks maybe. Yeah, that’s why I went. And I’ve known him a long time, as you have, and always gotten along with him, still get along with him. I still like him. I’ll always like him no matter what happens, just because I like him as a guy and I think he’s trying his best.

But in this case, I couldn’t have an effect. I tried sincerely. I wasn’t getting paid for it. It’s coming, of course, at some reputational cost. No one wants to deal with being called a Nazi, screamed at or threatened, or having your kids threatened, which has happened to me a lot. And no one wants to deal with that.

But I just felt that this was so serious that it was worth doing whatever I could because, my gosh, people could die. The balance of power globally could change. I’ve never supported the idea of an American empire, but we have one and it’s in retreat. But there’s a way to manage that that’s not damaging or profoundly damaging to the United States, the country that I actually live in, that I was born in. And this is not the way.

Wars accelerate trends in progress. They bring massive and unexpected change. Every war does this. It’s the nature of war. The second people start dying, all kinds of things you never anticipated will happen and you can’t control them, you lose control of the process. I’ve covered wars, I certainly watched a lot, read about a lot. I’m not an expert, but I try to apply obvious lessons through history to present day realities.

And that was the first thing I said to the President and anyone else who would listen. Once this starts, the world is going to find out exactly how strong we are, which is not something you necessarily want to reveal. An implied threat is much more effective.

In other words, if we’re squaring off for a fight and you look huge, you’ve been lifting a lot, I’m afraid of you, but I don’t really know what you’re capable of until I hit you or you hit me and then we find out — and maybe it turns out you have no heart, and you lose. I mean it. War is kind of the great reveal and you don’t necessarily want to go there, especially if you’ve ruled the world without question for 80 years and your capabilities have never really been tested. You haven’t fought a big country, really, since 1953, when the Chinese entered the Korean War. So you don’t really know what you’re capable of and you don’t really want to find out. Let’s not find out. How’s that? But I lost.

Was Trump Persuadable?

PIERS MORGAN: When you were talking to him, Tucker, did you get a sense that he was on the fence about it, that he was potentially persuadable, or did you feel that he was minded to do it, notwithstanding what you were trying to persuade him to the otherwise?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, this was over the course of a month, and that included — so I went there three times. But I also talked by phone a bunch, with him about this, and a lot of other people did, too, to advocate for it.

I don’t think many people within the White House were advocating for it, is my sense. Not that I would really know. I don’t work there. But my sense is there weren’t a lot of Cabinet secretaries saying, “Oh, gosh, we’ve got to have a war with Iran.” But there were a number of people from the outside who were all sort of visible. You kind of know who they are — donors and advocates for Israel who were advocating for it.

And my sense is his view started to change. Well, obviously it did, because he did it. But at no point did I detect an enthusiasm for it. He didn’t seem eager to do it. He didn’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons. That sounds fair. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t want anyone to have nuclear weapons. I want Israel to have nuclear weapons. I don’t want France to have nuclear weapons. I mean, that’s a pretty reasonable position.

But the idea that you would go into some kind of conflict that could very easily become a ground invasion, or who knows what it becomes — a nuclear exchange, who knows? He was not eager to do that, from what I could tell.

And again, people tailor their positions to the audience. But I talked to him a lot — a lot, a lot, a lot. And I never, one time, got the feeling he can’t wait to do it. But I also felt — and it turned out to be correct — that there was an enormous amount of pressure on him. Enormous.

Where exactly did it come from? It wasn’t just from Mark Thiessen of the Washington Post, who was calling a lot to demand more killing. Mark has a lifelong track record of doing that. But no one cares what Thiessen thinks. I felt strongly, and I feel strongly now, that there were forces that were forcing him in this direction. And in fact, the Secretary of State, as you said in your intro, admitted as much out loud and said Netanyahu said, “We’re going to go first and you can either watch your assets get destroyed and your people get killed in the Middle East, or you can join us.”

Netanyahu’s Pressure Tactics

PIERS MORGAN: The question, though, is — I thought that was really a fascinating moment when Marco Rubio said that, because it prompted Antony Blinken, the former Secretary of State — he’d obviously done his job — to then reveal that Netanyahu had tried to pressurize both Biden and Obama into doing the same thing using the same pretext of, “We’re going to go and do this anyway. Are you with us or not?” And of course, in both those eventualities, the answer was no and Israel didn’t attack.

I mean, do you think knowing that now, knowing that from Blinken, do you think Trump may have got played here by Netanyahu?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I already knew that, that the Israelis had done that in the previous administration. I knew they did it in 1973 with the Nixon administration where they threatened to use nuclear weapons against the Arabs and forced Henry Kissinger to okay arms sales to Israel. So there’s a long pattern of this.

And I think anyone who knows anything about the Israelis knows that they’re capable of this. They’re capable of great violence. They take their threats very seriously, maybe too seriously, to the point where they become self-fulfilling. I mean, you could argue about it, but they don’t mess around.

And of course, this had already happened in this administration. In June, our bombing — the 12-day war in Iran — began when the Prime Minister of Israel announced to the administration, “I’m doing this this week.” And my question then, and I raised it, was: How about no? How about no? You’re a client state, you’ve got 9 million people, you’re the size of New Jersey, you don’t make operational decisions and you certainly don’t tell the world’s dominant superpower what we’re doing next. That’s like getting a lecture from your children. No.

And that was my position because that seems consistent with the laws of nature. The weaker partner doesn’t get to dictate terms. What world are we living in? And whatever — I’m not in charge. But that was my position. I think that’d be the position of most rational people.

But Israel was in charge of that war. They started it. And they were in charge of this war. They started it.

So this is a difficult thing for the people who advocated for the war to deal with, because their whole purpose is not to help the United States — and not even to help Israel — it’s to help the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. If you’re loyal to Israel, if you love the state of Israel, what do you think about what’s happening in Tel Aviv and Haifa right now? They just had apparently an Iranian rocket land right next to the Church of the Nativity. Luckily it didn’t do much damage. But this isn’t helping Israel. There’s no real end game for Israel here that’s going to result in its long-term stability and peace. Of course not. This is a disaster for Israel, actually. Not that I really care because I’m not Israeli, but I don’t want to see any country harmed.

And these people are in a very tough spot because now we’ve left the rhetoric stage and we’re in the kinetic action stage where the rest of us can just assess outcomes without mediation. Like, who controls the Straits of Hormuz in three years? Is there an American military base in Bahrain? What happened to the Fifth Fleet? It used to be there. Where is it now? Who’s controlling the energy flows out of the Middle East? These are measurable phenomena. They’re not susceptible to Ben Shapiro wagging his eyebrows at you and telling you you’re an anti-Semite. It doesn’t matter what he says. And so it puts them in a very tough spot.

How do they respond? Well, we know from the Iraq war not a single person is ever going to admit he was wrong. Ever. One of the most liberating things I’ve ever done in my life was admit that I was wrong about the Iraq war and I was ashamed of it. I remain ashamed of it. But once you say, “I was wrong and I’m sorry,” this tremendous weight lifts off your shoulders, you don’t have to lie anymore. And that is what liberation actually is.

None of these people will do that. None. They feel no compunction and they won’t. So instead what they’re doing is they’re just going bonkers on the attack — because this is a precept that Israel lives by — the best defense is a strong offense. So rather than debating you on the terms or admitting that they were wrong in their forecasts, and that there was no popular uprising in Iran, and we’ve lost control of the world’s energy, they’re going to say, “Piers Morgan, you’re a Nazi. Megyn Kelly, you’re a Nazi.” And you’re just like, what?

That is a kind of insulation that they’re constructing around themselves to prevent any kind of soul searching about how did I get it so wrong, and all these people died because I was wrong. They don’t want to deal with that. But it also allows them to just keep going onto the next war of conquest or the next satanic disaster that they’ll back, which they will.

Tucker’s Relationship with Trump After the War

PIERS MORGAN: Have you spoken to President Trump since the war began?

TUCKER CARLSON: Just through proxies. He called me names or said I was too dumb to understand MAGA or something. It wasn’t, from my perspective, a real attack. I just admit my weaknesses up front. Okay, I like pizza, which is wrong. I like Donald Trump, which is increasingly hard to defend. But I do, and I don’t anticipate any kind of personal tiff with Trump.

I think he was in an impossible spot. I think it’s very obvious now that the US President, under our current system — which I pray changes soon — doesn’t have the latitude that people thought he had. Presidents can’t just make whatever decision they want in the interest of their country. There are other forces hemming them in. We don’t have sovereignty in a real way. Clearly we don’t. If we’re following a country of 9 million people into a war that could displace us as the dominant superpower, we don’t have sovereignty. By definition.

And I think every president has felt that since John F. Kennedy was murdered. And clearly they all have. And they’ve acted within it, with wisdom or not, but they’re still acting within boundaries that they didn’t set, that no American did. And it’s just time to change that system. Not because you hate Israel or you’re anti-Semitic. I’m not anti-Semitic. I don’t hate Israel at all. I’m never going to. But that’s not the way a sovereign country behaves or should have to behave. And Americans have earned the right to live under a government that makes decisions on their behalf, for their benefit. I mean, it’s that simple.

Trump’s Criticism and the MAGA Identity

PIERS MORGAN: What Trump said about you was quite revealing, actually, because he said, “Tucker’s lost his way. He’s not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of these things. And Tucker’s really not smart enough to understand that.”

Now, I, having been on the receiving end of Trump’s savage rhetoric from time to time, that is pretty low base for him. But it was an interesting point about what constitutes MAGA, because of course, there are many people with pretty short to midterm memories who can remember Trump campaigning so vociferously to his MAGA base before the last election on saying, “Look, we’re going to be America first. We’re not going to go marching into Middle Eastern countries anymore, we’re not going to wage foreign wars, we’re not going to interfere in other countries, and we’re going to fix the economy in the United States, we’re going to get the cost of living prices down, we’re going to end inflation.”

And it seems to me that it might be that President Trump has either forgotten what he said or wants to try and reframe what MAGA really means. Because if you’re a MAGA voter, you must be slightly mystified. You may not want to admit it publicly because you think it betrays Trump, but you must be mystified that within a year of winning back the White House, the guy that campaigned on not going into the Middle East again, not waging foreign wars, focusing on America first and the US economy, has now launched the biggest war in the Middle East in my lifetime that America has waged. And that has inevitably sparked the biggest economic meltdown we’ve seen as a consequence of a war. Not least because, as you said about the Strait of Hormuz and the damage that is inflicting and the simultaneous attacks on the Gulf States and all the fallout from that.

So it seems to me that he may want to come after you for not really understanding MAGA. But I’m not sure that many in the MAGA movement, if they’re really honest, can be comfortable with what is happening here.

America First — Or America Second?

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, look, I’ve never claimed to be a genius because I’m not a genius. And so it’s entirely possible there are motives I don’t understand. I certainly tried to understand in many conversations with him, but maybe I didn’t. I’ll keep that possibility open. And as for what MAGA is, it’s a slippery definition. I mean, I think George Orwell wrote a bunch of books about this, including Animal Farm. Definitions change. I remember someone pointing to a picture of 100% black people once and telling me, “That’s diversity thinking.” Looks like uniformity, actually. What do these words mean?

PIERS MORGAN: I don’t know.

TUCKER CARLSON: I do know what America first means, because it’s a much more precise description. And it means you put America first in every decision that you make as an American leader. And this, by that definition, falls far short. In fact, it is by definition not America first, because the administration has already said we followed the lead of a foreign country in doing this. We put their interest first.

And I think most people, no matter how they feel about Israel, whether they love it or hate it — it doesn’t matter, it’s nothing to do with this specific country — it has to do with any country that might be leading us around, particularly to our destruction, and putting its interests before ours. Our leaders can never agree to that, period, because it is the opposite of America first.

So whatever Trump said about me, I didn’t take it personally. I suspect he doesn’t really mean it because I’ve always gotten along with him for 30 years. I expect I always will. But on this one specific question — America first — we can say this was not America first. This was at least America second.

I do think it’s obvious that Israel understood, because they’re not stupid, that the effect of this war would be to get the United States out of the Middle East. And unfortunately, I think that will be the effect. And they want that, because why would you want a dominant power in your region telling you what to do and hemming you in, as the US has to Israel?

PIERS MORGAN: No, you can’t do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: We may not mean it, but we still hassle them over — or used to hassle them over, say, the West Bank settlements. They want the US out, and they’re moving to India. Okay, that’s their calculation. But how is that good for me as an American? It’s not. So America first — yeah, this was not America first, whatever it was.

A War Without Public Support

PIERS MORGAN: Well, what is very interesting is that I can’t remember a war that once it started, where American forces have been committed by an American president, where there hasn’t been majority support for that war in the United States. In the polling, this is the first time where there isn’t. There’s a majority lack of support for it. Americans are not buying this war. They don’t want it. They don’t really understand it, and they’re very concerned about the consequences.

TUCKER CARLSON: The only people who support this war are those born between 1946 and 1964 who watch a lot of Fox News. That’s it. I’m not attacking them, by the way. They’re Americans. They’re my equals as Americans. I love a lot of them, but their perspective on the US and the world is very different from everyone else’s. Very, very different.

And so they’re not the ones who got Donald Trump elected. Actually, the people who got Donald Trump elected are the people who hadn’t voted for Republicans before or even voted at all before. They’re like Joe Rogan listeners. People who use nicotine pouches. They’re Hispanic voters, they’re young black men, they’re non-traditional Republican voters who voted for Trump because he promised not to keep doing the same thing. And one of the things he promised not to do again was to hand operational authority over to Benjamin Netanyahu, as other presidents have. We don’t want any more of that. Why would we?

And we’re not going to make Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro — who have almost no organic support in the media world, no one really watches them — we’re not going to hand control of our foreign policy over to people like that who don’t know anything and who don’t have America’s interests at heart or even in mind.

So breaking faith with those people, those voters, the ones who actually got Trump elected and whose coalition promised a new day in American politics — that’s a big deal. It’s a betrayal on the level that I don’t think people who aren’t in those groups can understand. This is heartbreak. This is heartbreaking.

And by the way, a lot of people really like Trump. They like his style. They think he’s hilarious, he’s brave. They just like him. And to see this — oh, it’s so wounding. It just hurts. I’ve got a bunch who work for me, I’m related to some, they’re all Trump voters, and I talked to them in the last 24 hours. Boy, they’re upset. They’re not just mad like, “I hate Israel.” That’s not the impulse. They’re definitely starting to hate Israel — why wouldn’t they? Our relationship with Israel is hurting us gravely. It’s getting Americans killed. So they’re mad. But it’s more than mad. It’s, “I can’t believe he did this to us. I feel just so depressed about it.”

Political Fallout and the Midterms

PIERS MORGAN: How politically damaging could it be? We’ve got the midterms coming up in November. There were already a lot of reports that it was likely the Republicans would lose control of the House. Now I’m reading more reports that they may even lose the Senate, which would render Trump — and notwithstanding all these kind of mystical powers to avoid the normal norms of politics in America — if you don’t have control of the House and the Senate, you are a lame duck president, period. There’s pretty much nothing more you can do.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s true now. I mean, I think the conversation has moved on from the President. It’s not an attack on him. He still, of course, is commander in chief. He threatened some kind of mass destruction of Iran yesterday. It sounded like a nuclear strike to me. So he has the capacity to make decisions. He’s the elected president.

However, as a political matter, that era is over, for the reasons I just described. I didn’t want that to be true. But the coalition is permanently fractured. He was not elected because of Ben Shapiro. Ben Shapiro did not get Donald Trump elected. A lot of the people Trump is now attacking got Donald Trump elected — Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc. So that coalition is done.

The Republican Party as currently constituted will not continue because it doesn’t represent its voters. It doesn’t even try to represent its voters. In fact, it shows open hostility to its voters. So nothing like that can continue for very long because it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a bicycle with square wheels. It’s ludicrous.

So the question is, what comes next? And I do think it’s possible to recreate some version of the 2020 Trump coalition or the 2024 Trump coalition on the basis of his core promise, which is just put the country first. And like, you’re going to make mistakes and we’re not exactly sure how to fix certain things, but let’s all try, and by the way, let’s be united as we do it.

Tribalism, the ADL, and the Fracturing of America

The ugliest thing to come out of the Mark Levin-controlled Republican Party — which I find repulsive, and I just want to say I’ll do everything I can to stop that party from becoming any more powerful than it is — is the attempt to stoke religious conflict in the United States, attacking people for being a different religion. “We hate the Muslims.” Really? How is that different from “we hate the Jews”? It’s not different in any sense at all.

And I would say, just thinking long term about the United States, the greatest threat is not even the loss of the US dollar as the reserve currency globally. The greatest threat is tribalism, where the country fractures into warring tribes. And people like Levin are doing their best to create that. And it’s totally immoral and dangerous. It will result in violence.

Their endless harping on this anti-Semitism question — anti-Semitism is immoral. It’s every bit as immoral as anti-white bias, which is encoded in the federal government, by the way. Every elite institution in the United States discriminates against whites. That is every bit as immoral as anti-Semitism. That’s every bit as immoral as hating anybody else on the basis of their bloodline. Because it’s a universal principle. It applies to every human being. It’s a human right to be treated as an individual and not be held responsible for the sins of your parents. That is a human right in the West.

And people like Levin and Shapiro don’t recognize that because they are not Western in their orientation. They think that rights only apply to the groups they favor. And that idea — that evil idea, which was the basis of Nazism, by the way — that is the thing that will destroy the United States.

The next leadership of this country, whoever it is, has to articulate: we’re all American citizens, we must be treated equally under the law. Bias against one group is no better or worse than bias against another group, period. Anti-Semitism — where were you when the ADL was openly promoting anti-white hate? So now the ADL is an authority on bias crimes? They’ve abetted bias crimes. They are currently abetting bias crimes.

The ADL and every single one of these groups has an absolute moral obligation to treat anti-white hate — which is the only kind encoded in US law right now — as every bit the threat of anti-Semitic hate. How are they different? They’re not. And no one will say that. Until someone says that, you will not reunite this country. And if this continues, the country will fracture.

Ben Shapiro Responds

PIERS MORGAN: As we’re talking, with glorious coincidence, Ben Shapiro has been releasing various clips on his social media platforms. One of them goes after me and Megyn Kelly — me because he blew his gasket about Dave Smith appearing on my show, launched into my show, said it was just Jerry Springer. I like Jerry Springer. I knew him very well, worked with him on America’s Got Talent. He was actually a very smart guy, used to be a news anchor, mayor of Cincinnati. Really interesting guy. Much smarter than Ben Shapiro. So I took that as a compliment.

But he and I responded. He didn’t like the response. He’s come back. He’s called me Jerry Springer again. He’s called me a click whore. He says I’m a pussy bitch. And he goes on and on and on.

I don’t actually want to play the clip about me because he’s trying to basically suggest that if you platform anybody that he hasn’t approved as a person that can speak about Israel — in other words, someone who’s a propagandist for Israel, who will not criticize Israel — then you yourself are promoting anti-Semitism, therefore you’re an anti-Semite, therefore you’re basically borderline Nazi.

But I do want to play what he said about you, because he’s been railing the same stuff against you, which I don’t think anyone who has watched this interview so far will have concluded. “Oh yeah, Tucker sounds like a raging anti-Semite. He sounds like a Nazi.” You couldn’t sound less like either of those things. And yet he’s just posted this. Let’s take a look.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

The Ben Shapiro Critique and Free Speech

TUCKER CARLSON: I started originally criticizing Tucker Carlson for his economic programs back in 2018. And then in the more modern post Fox iteration of Tucker, I started criticizing Tucker over his going to Russia to sniff the bread and kiss Vladimir Putin’s ass.

My generalized critique of Tucker in the last few months has been one he hosted and glossed a Nazi Nick Fuentes, which doesn’t have to do with Israel. It has to do with glazing a Nazi Nick Fuentes. And then I did a speech at Heritage in which I went through the fact that Tucker Carlson is in no way, shape or form a traditional conservative, that he’s a conspiratorial near anarchist at this point seeking to tear down the fundamental ideas and institutions of the United States.

Go watch the Heritage speech. I believe Israel is mentioned once in a 35 minute speech that is all about Tucker’s general view of the world and how it does not represent traditional conservatism in any way. I think that Tucker Carlson has fostered anti-Semitism by having on some of the worst anti-Semites in America over and over and over, and then essentially laundering their views.

Criticizing Governments vs. Anti-Semitism

PIERS MORGAN: So it’s the same attack line essentially about the antisemitism, which is if you or I or Megyn Kelly, whoever it may be, dares to platform anybody who is critical of Israel. Let’s be clear. I mean, in my case, I’ve always made it crystal clear, as you have in his interview. I have absolutely no problem with Israel, the state of Israel, with Israelis, with Jewish people, many Jewish friends. It’s nothing to do with that.

I reserve the right as a journalist to criticize any government and I particularly reserve the right to criticize the Israeli government given what it’s been doing in the last few years, as any decent journalist should, not least because in Gaza, for example, the Israeli government continues to ban international journalists from operating there or even going into Gaza to verify what they’ve been up to. That alone should be a warning sign to everybody that the Israeli government has probably been doing things in Gaza it doesn’t want people to know.

But I took the same view. I oppose the Iraq war. We’ve talked about this before, but I led the media campaign in the UK against the Iraq war, even though my own brother ended up fighting in it. But I opposed it and I think was vindicated by what happened afterwards, sadly. But I opposed it and took on Tony Blair, who was the then British Prime Minister, even though my newspaper was the Labour sympathetic newspaper, the Daily Mirror, to the Labour government. But I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. It didn’t mean that I hated British people or my country. In fact, quite the opposite. It meant that I wanted to help the British people and help my country from stumbling into a disaster.

And I sense from you that your position about Iran is not driven by a hatred of Jews or Israelis or Israel. It is driven by a sense that you feel this is bad for America and Americans and probably bad for Israelis and Jewish people as well.

The Danger of Criminalizing Criticism

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I mean, I care about the United States again. I was born here. My family’s been here hundreds of years. I care about it. I don’t expect I’ll be able to save it, but I want to do whatever I can to make it better and to avoid obvious disasters like this one.

I don’t want to attack Ben Shapiro other than to say, that guy went to Harvard and so did Bill Ackman. At some point you need to reassess. No, I’m serious, though. These are two of the most famous, richest people in our world. They both went to Harvard. I know them both. Not geniuses. Not even close to geniuses. And so our system itself is not producing wise people or even very knowledgeable people. Like Ben Shapiro had no idea there was a strait at the end of the Persian Gulf and why it was important. You need a system that produces superior people. The British Empire did a pretty good job of this. The United States before the Second World War did a pretty good job of this. We need to reassess our system. That’s the first thing I would say.

Second, you’re right. This is absurd. I think I’ve actually even argued with you about Israel. I was taking a tougher position than you. You’ve been a defender of Israel. That’s why this is so crazy. He wants to talk about this in order to get — this is projection. You’re all about clicks. No, actually, Ben Shapiro is all about the money and about the clicks.

But here’s the part that I think that we should be concerned about. It is now a crime in a lot of the west to criticize Israel. People were arrested yesterday in Australia for criticizing Israel outside publicly, not attacking Jews, not attacking physically. Anybody saying “I’m against the state of Israel,” they’re arrested for it. They’re in jail tonight. That’s also true in the UK, as you know. It’s true in Canada, it’s true throughout Europe. And Ben Shapiro and people in the administration would like to make that the law here.

This is the last holdout of free speech on planet Earth, the United States. It’s encoded in our Constitution. Also, I would say, in the American DNA. We have a right to say whatever we believe is true, period. And that very much includes criticism of a foreign country. You’ll never hear me saying “from the river to the sea” because I’m not exactly sure what that means. However, if I want to say “from the river to the sea,” I certainly will. And I’ll do that until I die, because that’s my birthright. That’s a right given to me by God, not the US Government and Ben Shapiro.

And a lot of these people are saying it out loud. “We need to penalize anti-Semites with the law.” What does that even mean? You can never in the United States prosecute or even persecute someone for his beliefs. For your beliefs. You have the right of conscience in this country. The UK used to have it. Australia used to have it, New Zealand used to have it. Now they’re going to jail for saying things that Ben Shapiro doesn’t like. So we should be wary of this because it’s all preparatory to legislative and regulatory changes that will ban free speech in the United States. They’re saying it out loud. That’s happening.

Branding Critics as Anti-Semites

PIERS MORGAN: I also think that the really insidious part of it, and there were many insidious parts of it, one is to silence people and to threaten them and to get them canceled and so on. Which is very hypocritical coming from someone like Ben Shapiro, who pretends to be the great king of free speech. But also there are feelings. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I ended my own monologue response to him by saying those exact words, which probably triggered his little pussy bitch outburst today, as he’s called.

But I think the other thing that I find insidious, Tucker, is that there are genuine anti-Semitic people. There are people that hate Jews because they’re Jewish. There are people that wish harm to Jews. There are people who still have Nazi sympathies, who think the Holocaust was a good thing. These people exist. And if you start branding everybody that’s critical of this current, very hardline Israeli government, with people like Smotrich and Ben Gvir who have extremely hardline views, if you criticize a government and you get branded anti-Semitic for criticizing the government for policies that many people think are wrong, then what you’re doing, you’re allowing the genuine anti-Semites, the genuine Nazi sympathizers to just ride under the radar.

Because if you go on social media now, everyone’s an anti-Semite according to Ben Shapiro and these guys. Once everyone becomes something, even though the vast majority are not that thing, then the ones who really are that thing get to operate much more freely.

Universal Principles of Justice

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that may be true. That’s not my first concern. My first concern is the innocent falsely accused. Always it is better to let people get away with crimes than it is to punish a single innocent man. That’s always been a bedrock assumption of American justice and of justice itself. You can’t punish the innocent. Of course, Israel specializes in punishing the innocent, killing the families of people they don’t like. So it’s not a concept that people like Ben Shapiro understand or care about, but it’s the basis of Western civilization. So you do not accuse or penalize innocent people, much less kill them.

This is a universal principle. It is not specific to one ethnic group or one bloodline. The principle is you cannot attack or penalize people, punish them for the sins, real or perceived, of their ancestors, period. And in the United States right now, and this has been true for 60 years, the only group that is routinely denied jobs, promotions, federal grants, college admission to Harvard is Christian whites. And it’s embedded in the law. In the United States, we call it affirmative action, DEI, diversity imperatives, whatever. That’s the law in the United States.

And so if we’re going to tackle bias, and I think we should through moral suasion, we need to attack it equally, evenly, as a universal principle. Because if these protections apply only to your group, they’re not valid. That’s just tribalism. And then we’re in a system where we only care about our own groups. No law or principle has meaning or validity unless it’s universal, unless it applies to all human beings, all American citizens.

And so I would just remind Ben Shapiro of that. You need to push back. If you’re pushing against anti-Semitism, you need to push back against the only kind of hate and bias embedded in US law. It’s the US law. And this administration has done not so much to change that. I don’t understand why. I hope they will. But as long as we’re doing this, let’s just apply it to every human being, because human rights are a real thing. Those rights were endowed by God. I just want to — I know Ben Shapiro went to Harvard, but he should meditate on that for a minute.

Shapiro’s Hypocrisy on Free Speech

PIERS MORGAN: Well, also he should meditate on the fact that when I — to a lot of outrage from people on the pro-Palestinian side, when I was very vociferous in my belief, when the war on Hamas started, that Israel didn’t just have a right to defend itself, it had a fundamental duty to defend itself after what was an appalling terrorist attack, with 1,200 people killed and nearly 7,000 wounded and 250 kidnapped, including a baby and Holocaust survivors and so on. Of course they had to defend themselves. By taking such a strong position, as I did for a long time, and you and I did argue about this as it went on, yes, I took a lot of heat coming from the other side about that.

And I made the point to Shapiro this week. Yeah, I’ve taken heat from both sides and I’m fine with that. I actually think journalists should take heat from both sides of almost any issue because it probably means you’re doing the right thing, you’re asking the right questions at the right time. But he was very keen to come on my show and enjoy the clicks that came from the interviews that we did when he perceived me to be somebody on his side. But what he didn’t understand was I never saw it as taking a side. I just saw it as they had a right to defend themselves, as America did after 9/11, as Britain did when we had the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. You have a right to defend your country, whoever you are, if you’re under attack.

But he mistook that for me taking a tribal position with him, that I was on his side. And the moment I began to deviate from that, I began to get more critical of Israel. Certainly from the start of last year onwards, I became much more critical. He couldn’t handle it. And then he didn’t just refuse to come on the show, he refused to reply to my text. We’d always had a very cordial relationship. And then he started attacking me in public and I was watching all this going, “Really? You’re the free speech guy. You’re the guy that tells the world how important free speech is. You’re the one that says repeatedly, ‘facts don’t care about your feelings.’ And yet here you’re letting your feelings override any changing facts on the ground in Gaza, for example.”

And I felt that was just so rankly hypocritical and also embarrassing.

On Emotions, Fears, and Group Cohesion

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, he’s ruled by his emotions. Which is, lots of us are. I am sometimes, for sure, try not to be. But here’s a guy whose whole brand, carefully constructed brand, with his carefully constructed deal with Facebook, is based on his cool analysis, right? “Facts don’t care about your feelings. I’m a facts guy.” And here he is allowing his one overriding love in life, which is for the Benjamin Netanyahu government, to determine who he’s friends with.

And by the way, you see a lot of this. I mean, I called Mark Levin right after Charlie Kirk was killed to say, geez, this is horrible. And let’s stop fighting, because we probably have a lot in common. And let’s just not fight. When you see someone killed who you love, it’s like you want to fight less. So that’s why I called him. And he was nice, by the way. He was, yeah, I think it’s a good idea. And then he starts getting this whole thing about, “My mother told me there was going to be another Holocaust in the United States.” He goes, “They’re coming for the Jews.”

And I don’t want to make fun of other people’s fears because we all have fears that may or may not be reasonable. But it was so real to him. And I almost said, “Geez, Mark, of course I’m totally opposed to hurting anybody, period. I’m a Christian. But I don’t think we’re on the cusp of that, in Connecticut right now.” But it was so real to him. His fear of that dominated everything.

And I guess what I would say is I don’t think Shapiro and Levin and Ackman and some of these people get the credit they deserve for sincerity. I think that they really think we’re on the verge of something horrible domestically. And the sad thing is their neuroses and their inability to control their emotions divides Americans and scares the crap out of a lot of really decent people who I know who are Jewish. They’re like, “Oh, my gosh, we’re on the verge of a pogrom.” And you want to say, first of all, I don’t think we are. Second, I’ll do whatever I can to stop that, because I hate that kind of thing. And let’s calm down.

But no, I think they believe it. And I think the net effect is to inspire group cohesion, which, again, may be part of the point. I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s bad, it’s corrosive, it destroys friendships, it will destroy the country. Everyone needs to calm down a little bit, I guess.

On “Unconditional Surrender” and Iran

PIERS MORGAN: There was an interesting response to something you said about when Trump said he wouldn’t accept anything less than unconditional surrender from Iran. You discussed that and what unconditional surrender means. Let’s take a listen to what you said.

VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:

TUCKER CARLSON: Unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter if they want. And everyone knows that. And that has been — if there’s one consistent lesson of history — it means unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter. Everyone can feel that. That’s like the most atavistic instinct there is. And so to avoid that, people will do anything.

VIDEO CLIP ENDS:

PIERS MORGAN: Now, as you know, a lot of people jumped on that and who don’t like you and said that what you were inferring was that the US Military in this eventuality would be capable of raping women if Trump went through with his aim of achieving unconditional surrender. Do you want to clarify what you said? Do you want to respond to what those people have been saying?

TUCKER CARLSON: Sure. Let me just say, I almost never infer anything because I’m not a woman. I just say what I think. I don’t play chess. I play checkers. Pretty straightforward person. Ask my wife. And so if I thought that US Troops would rape Iranians, which I don’t, I would just say so. I don’t think that. And when the US Military admitted that it bombed the girls school attached to the Iranian naval base at the beginning of the conflict, my immediate assumption was that was a mistake. And I still believe that. Now, where did the targeting come from? That’s a real question, and we should find out. But no, of course, I give American troops the benefit of the doubt always. As I give Americans the benefit of the doubt always.

Unlike Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin, who are telling their viewers that Americans are going to rise up in a pogrom or holocaust, I don’t think Americans are like that. I don’t think they’re capable of that. And so I have a very high opinion of Americans, period. And so I was not saying that.

What I’m saying is a very obvious thing that any wise person understands, which is unconditional surrender is a lot to ask, and it’s a lot to ask of anybody, because it throws open any possibility. And the fact is — again, this is not something historically illiterate people would know — unconditional surrenders historically have always been followed by mass killing and rape and looting, because there’s no defense. You have said, “What I have is now yours.” That’s what an unconditional surrender is. And so it’s a very, very high bar to set for anybody. And it takes off the table any real possibility of diplomacy.

And diplomacy is, by the way, one of our great powers. The United States has had the ability to negotiate out of situations that would hurt us and others without violence. That’s a power. That’s why the State Department and a Secretary of State — my father worked there — I know how this works. And it doesn’t always work well, of course, but when you don’t have it at all, all you have left are weapons, and our weapons are proving inadequate. So then you have to escalate to what? Weapons of mass destruction. Do you really want to go there? I don’t think you do. No normal person wants to go there.

So anyway, that’s the only point I was making. Would you unconditionally surrender your home and your family to anyone? Of course you wouldn’t, because you’re a man with self respect who’s head of household. You would die before you allowed your wife and children to fall into the hands of someone who meant them harm. Of course. That’s the standard, dumbo. It’s not about attacking American troops. It’s about assessing whether that kind of threat is going to get you what you want, which is advantage to your country with as few dead as possible.

I don’t even know what world we’re living in where the people in charge are this stupid, that you would have to explain something so obvious, and that children on the sidelines — like the kid with the eyebrows — would be barking, “You hate America, troops.” No, no, no. All I care about is the United States, in contrast to you. And so it’s almost like insulting to play along with these lies. But I guess you have to.

On Ted Cruz, Christian Zionists, and Franklin Graham

PIERS MORGAN: There was something else that Ted Cruz said in his little rant about you. He said, “Tucker says there’s no one on planet Earth he hates more than Christian Zionists.” And he blamed, in particular, me and Mike Huckabee as objects of his ire. And I wear that as a badge of honor. I mean, is that true? Are these the two people you hate most on planet Earth, and is it because they’re Christian Zionists?

TUCKER CARLSON: I wouldn’t say — well, first of all, I think Christian Zionist would be an upgrade for Ted Cruz, who couldn’t name the book of the Bible he said his theology came from. So I don’t think Christianity, even in its perverted Zionist form, informs any opinion that Ted Cruz has, assuming he has authentic opinions. So that would be a compliment to call him a Christian Zionist. He’s beneath that, I would say.

I criticize Shapiro and Levin for losing control of their emotions. I lost control of mine when I said that. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve apologized for it repeatedly. I’ll do so again. I’m sorry that I said that, because I don’t hate Christian Zionists. I’m deeply frustrated with some evangelical leaders who are not preaching Christianity, but some sick, weird, culty version of it that puts Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of Jesus. And that’s not Christianity. It’s totally wrong. And some of them are quite ruthless, I’ve learned personally.

Franklin Graham, for example. I went in to see Trump, and Trump says, “I just got a letter from Franklin Graham calling you an anti-Semite.” Franklin Graham? An anti-Semite? Really? “Yes, and it’s right here.” He showed it to me. So I leave the meeting, and I immediately call Franklin Graham. “What? Why would you call me an anti-Semite? And why didn’t you call me first? If you think I’m an anti-Semite, wouldn’t you want to persuade me not to be? Because that’s a pretty ugly thing to be. And as a Christian, as a fellow Christian, you want to—” He wouldn’t take my call. I went back and forth texting with his assistant all day. “Well, when can I speak to him?” “Maybe next week. He’s learning to be a private pilot.” I’m like, he’s 74. He doesn’t have time to at least account for a letter that he sent to Trump calling me an anti-Semite and telling Trump never to talk to me again?

I’m like, that behavior is so unchristian and so low, so sneaky, so dishonest, that it offends me as a Christian to see it conducted in the name of Jesus. I just think that’s really wrong. I don’t think I have a monopoly on the truth. I don’t think I’m a very good Christian. I’m not. But I don’t think that’s Christianity. I just don’t. And I’m sorry that it makes Ted Cruz mad.

As for Ted Cruz, he says he’s running against me for president. I almost want to run for president just to debate Ted Cruz, because I think it would go about the way it went last time. And for my part, I deeply enjoyed it, which is why I’ve never tweeted about it, because I just keep that little spark of joy inside me for rainy days. And I think about that conversation and smile.

On Running for President in 2028

PIERS MORGAN: Polymarket is running a “who should be the Republican presidential nominee in 2028?” J.D. Vance is at 39%, Marco Rubio at 28%, as you may expect. And then comes Ron DeSantis. But you’re fifth, albeit at 2% at the moment. Ted Cruz is only 1%. So you’re twice as popular as Ted Cruz already to be the Republican nominee.

My question for you — I know you said you’ll never do this, but I would ask the question and throw it back to you. Why wouldn’t you? Given there’s this huge ideological battle going on for the conservative right of America, and it’s a real split like we’ve never seen before, and it’s over so many issues now. And given that you’re clearly on one side of this and clearly spearheading one part of this, why wouldn’t you actually run to preserve the heart and soul of the conservative party as you see it?

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s not what I do. I have no love of politics. I actually think it’s disgusting. I don’t understand it very well. It doesn’t come naturally to me. Coalition building — where you kind of pretend you believe something, or de-emphasize another belief, in order to get people together to vote for the same person — that’s not my default position. I just kind of say what I think. And so I don’t know that I’d be good at it.

And B, I think it’s very tough to be the president. I’ve learned that by watching over many years. Because you are constrained in ways that you should not be constrained, but you are. And it’s not just because of Israel and its proxies, though that’s the number one reason. But there are other reasons, and one is the size of the agencies. They’re autonomous. They’re countries. How do you get them under control? Some of them are dangerous. And so that’s hard. It’s really hard. I don’t know that I’d be great at that. And there’s a risk involved, and mostly because it’s just not what I’ve done. And I hate egomania, I hate hubris, and the idea, “I’ve been a successful cable news host, I should be president” — that whole way of thinking is disgusting to me.

However, if I got to run against Ted Cruz and debate him again on camera, I would run for emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. I’d run for Pope. I’d run for head of the library board. I would run for anything for the opportunity to do that and watch Ted Cruz. And it appeals to the mean part of me.

I think all you need to do with Ted Cruz — another Harvard graduate, all the dumbest people went to Harvard, that’s a talking point but it’s actually real, Ted Cruz went to Harvard, Bill Ackman, who’s like a moron, went to Harvard, and Ben Shapiro went to Harvard — anyway, if he’s this famously brilliant guy, this silver-tongued Ted Cruz who’s going to be on the Supreme Court, you ask him the simplest question possible. I’m only capable of dumb questions because I’m not a genius. Like, “What’s the population of Iran?” “What Bible verse are you talking about?” Dumb stuff. He can’t answer any of it. Like nothing. And that to me was amazing. It wasn’t like I went in there with hyper-complicated questions, like, “I’m a really well-experienced interviewer, I’m going to trip you up with my sophistry.” It was like, “Hey, Ted, who lives in Iran?”

PIERS MORGAN: No clue.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he’s calling for an overthrow. So I imagine we’d have more fun like that. And I would stop anything I was doing to have more of that because I just loved it.

A Book About Tucker Carlson

PIERS MORGAN: There’s just finally there’s a book out about you called Hated by All the Right People, which is a brilliant title, something you should be very proud of. Have you read this book?

TUCKER CARLSON: No. It’s the second book about me I have not cracked. I hope by the time I die, hopefully many years from now, I will have a whole shelf of books about me I’ve never read or even opened. No, I haven’t. But I sort of know who I am. I know my faults, I have some sense of my strengths.

But most important, I’ve been married to the same girl for 35 years. Been with her for 42. I’ve got a bunch of kids. They know me well. My college roommate, freshman year college roommate, is my business partner. So I’m surrounded by people I’ve known all my life, and I care about their opinions. I don’t care so much about what some book author who I never even talked to thinks of me. I bet it’s not flattering. It’s my guess.

PIERS MORGAN: Well, there were a couple of — well, no, actually, there were just some funny things. Well, I mean, you may not find them funny, but there were some certain things in there which my team assembled, which you’re under no obligation to answer, by the way, but they’re just quiet.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I don’t care. I’m happy to always.

Claims From the Book

PIERS MORGAN: Well, it claims that you were a brilliantly gifted but wayward youth who lost his virginity at 14 in a visit to a Nevada brothel arranged by your father. Is that true?

TUCKER CARLSON: Not true. Not true.

PIERS MORGAN: Not true.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not true. I mean, not true in the potato — I can say not true. No, my father — no, I just — here’s the part that I want to say is definitely not true.

PIERS MORGAN: Your father wasn’t there.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course not. That’s gross. Come on, now. No, you can’t bring your son to a bordello. No, of course. No, no, my father would — I promise. My father’s passed away. He’s not here to hear this, but in his memory, I just want to be really, really clear. No, my father would never do that. And I would never accompany —

PIERS MORGAN: But just to be clear, that is a qualified denial of one aspect of the sentence.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t even know what he’s talking about. But I will say, yeah, there were some wayward elements in my youth, for sure. I was not successful in school and all that entails. And that’s why I’ve never been a huge proponent of college. I certainly got very little out of it. I harmed myself a lot during it, and so I’ve been pretty transparent about that.

I’ve never claimed to be impressive. I couldn’t get into college and I couldn’t get a job. That’s why I wound up in journalism, by the way. I tried to have a real job — as a teacher, operations officer at CIA. They turned me down. They actually did turn me down. By the way, it’s not an op. And yeah, I was not impressive at all.

PIERS MORGAN: Well, that was actually my second — that’s actually in the book, because apparently the agency preferred not to hire people who they viewed as gabby and insubordinate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, is that true? I didn’t even — you know, I took all these personality assessments. I was under family pressure to do this, so I did. And I thought it’d be interesting, by the way, to live abroad. And it was. 1990 was a different world.

And I’m not a CIA officer now, nor am I working for them in any capacity at all. In fact, they hassled me yesterday. But I did apply and I was told I had used forbidden substances within the last year, and that’s why I didn’t get it. But I am gabby and insubordinate. There’s no question about that. I am both gabby and insubordinate.

They gave me these personality tests which lasted all day long. Anyone who’s applied to a federal, national security type job knows what I’m talking about. And they find out who you really are. And I am totally unsuited for a job like that — completely. But you don’t know yourself when you’re 20, right?

Dancing With the Stars vs. Hezbollah

PIERS MORGAN: No. God, if I had a book like this, all hell would break loose. The final one I liked was that it charted your experience on Dancing with the Stars in 2006. You were voted off first, and the book quotes you as saying the experience rattled you more than Hezbollah. Is that true? Rattled you more than Hezbollah?

TUCKER CARLSON: Actually, I have spent time with Hezbollah. I know Ben Shapiro is going to want to send me a pager after I say this. I was just covering them as a journalist. But it was during the 2006 war with Israel under the Olmert government.

No, it didn’t — I mean, I was humiliated. But you know, I think it’s good for a man to be humiliated. It is. Especially if you’re on television. It’s good because everyone just kisses your butt and the makeup artists are fawning over you and you can convince yourself of the great lie, which is: I’m very impressive. I’m so important because I’ve got some dumb cable TV show. And so getting up there and being revealed as ungainly was good for me, I have to say.

I have never gained weight so fast as when I did Dancing with the Stars, because all I did was eat crème brûlée and chain smoke cigarettes all day long. And by the end, I was on the verge of type 2 diabetes and emphysema. Everyone else got fit and they were like, “Oh, I’m getting in shape for Dancing with the Stars.” I was sitting by the pool burning camels, stress eating. It was not a high point for me, I would say.

A Shared Connection to Donald Trump

PIERS MORGAN: Well, while you were doing that, I was almost at exactly the same time competing in a show called Celebrity Apprentice, where I met the host. I remember Donald J. Trump and I — and he voted me his Apprentice.

TUCKER CARLSON: That was 20 years ago. I remember that so well.

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.

PIERS MORGAN: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: So we were both in —

PIERS MORGAN: You were pirouetting and I was in the boardroom. Yeah. Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Hilarious.

PIERS MORGAN: It’s been a long journey where we —

TUCKER CARLSON: — wound up, Piers Morgan. It has been a long journey. Yes, it has.

Closing Thoughts: On Criticism, Israel, and Free Speech

PIERS MORGAN: Yes, it has. Tucker, I love talking to you. I don’t agree, actually, as you said, with many things you say. I’ve got to say, I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed you where I’ve agreed with more of what you said than I have today. And so I’m grateful to you for doing another interview with me.

I just want to say that I’ve found myself nodding along to almost everything you said. I think there’s been so much crap talked about anti-Semitism — weaponizing it as a way to censor people, to threaten, to bully people — led by people like Ben Shapiro who’ve exposed themselves as shameless little hypocrites and propagandists. Actually, for a government which is thoroughly worthy, through its actions, of being scrutinized properly and criticized properly.

It doesn’t mean I disagree with everything the Israeli government does. I don’t. But there are some things I inherently don’t like about what they’re doing. And I don’t think they’re accountable. I don’t think they allow freedom of the press, and therefore it’s incumbent on all of us to properly scrutinize them. And if you don’t like what they’re doing, you should be allowed to say so loudly and proudly in a free, democratic society like America or the UK or anywhere else. Because otherwise, what’s the point of democracy if you can’t criticize a government? It’s absurd.

And the idea that you extrapolate that to mean, well, if you criticize a government, then you must hate the country and hate the people — is ridiculous and actually offensive. And on that fundamental point, you and I could not be more rock solid.

TUCKER CARLSON: So nicely put. Thank you. And thank you for having me.

PIERS MORGAN: Great to talk to you, Tucker. Take care. All the best.

TUCKER CARLSON: Thanks, Piers.

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