Tucker Carlson Show: Matt Gaetz on ADL, Israel Policy, and Identity Politics (Transcript)

The appointment is a game changer. And it’s not about history. It’s about education. And how do we educate? Indonesia has 350 million Muslims living in the country. How do we change their textbooks? How do we hold the people in Gaza accountable? That if America is paying for UN textbooks and supposedly the changes are made, why are those textbooks not being used and why are they using their old textbooks? We have to teach people it’s not okay to educate your kids to be a martyr. And we have to hold those countries accountable. How do we battle anti-semitism on the Internet? How are we doing better on algorithms? What companies can we work with? We are going to have a whole division within the office of the Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism that is going to work on technology and working with the greatest leaders in technology, many of whom are Jewish and have offered their assistance. The office is going to be revamped entirely to be one of the highest profile offices in the State Department.”

VIDEO CLIP ENDS

Redefining Anti-Semitism

MATT GAETZ: Nothing will convince Indonesia to come our way like sending Rabbi Yehuda is probably my…

TUCKER CARLSON: How do we hold the people of Gaza accountable?

MATT GAETZ: So there is truth to the claim that in the pedagogy that is administered in a lot of places, there’s incitement. “Maya the Martyr” is a character, no doubt. And that is awful. And U.S. taxpayers shouldn’t fund it. And we ought to hold anyone accountable who does.

At the same time, the definition of anti-semitism in recent times, according to some of the Israel-first crowd in the United States has really migrated. This isn’t my line, but I certainly associate it with: anti-semitism used to mean somebody who didn’t like Jews. Now it just means somebody Jews don’t like.

TUCKER CARLSON: And that’s not a standard that we can live with. Because… because the reason anti-semitism is terrible, it’s against my religion. I’m totally opposed to it. And by the way, it does result in violence. I think we just saw that, and I hate it.

But anti-semitism is wrong because hating anyone on the basis of their DNA is always wrong. It’s a universal principle. It does not apply to one group, my group, or your group. It applies to all groups. And if it doesn’t apply to all groups, then it’s not a principle and I can just ignore it. Right? That’s the problem I have here.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, but the U.S. Ambassador to France, Jared Kushner’s father, says that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism. And I don’t believe that. I think that you can be critical of foreign policy choices that a country makes without the assumption that you hate the religion or the ethnic group associated with that country.

When I was critical of Joe Biden, that didn’t make me anti-Catholic. And when I’m critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, that doesn’t make me anti-semitic.

The ADL and Universal Principles

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I agree with that. And I do think there has been a rise, just… I just notice it in people hating Jews, disliking Jews, anti-semitism. I think that’s real in the United States. But I think you could probably fix that in a week. How?

By getting Jewish groups like the ADL, like the American Jewish Congress, like whatever group Yehuda Kaplan runs, to come out against anti-white hate, which is institutionalized in the United States. And if you had the ADL and the SPLC and these groups that have fought against anti-semitism for all these years, make the obvious and true point that hatred of anybody on the basis of how they’re born is immoral and we won’t stand for it.

And in the United States, the institutionalized hate is anti-white, of course. Prevented from getting jobs, prevented from getting federal grants, prevented from getting admitted to college. That’s still in place.

MATT GAETZ: But you know why that hasn’t happened?

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t understand. You know what I don’t understand?

MATT GAETZ: Well, there isn’t a sufficient monetization path there. The way it is when the ADL and similarly aligned groups try to make the American people think that anti-semitism is hiding behind other people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, but then… so then I know it’s not real. Okay? So if I get up… look, if I get up and say it’s only wrong when people attack people like me, then everyone knows that I’m not defending a principle, I’m defending a group interest. Right. And I can ignore your group’s interests. I cannot ignore a universal principle.

And the universal principle is that kind of hatred is always wrong, no matter who it’s aimed at. So why doesn’t the ADL stand up and do that? I would send money to the ADL if they did that. I would send money to the ADL. I would. And I despise the ADL, but because that would be a defense of what’s true and so needed. Why won’t they do that?

MATT GAETZ: Well, when you’re a witch hunter, you have to first convince people of the existence of witches. And so I think that for the broad goals of the ADL, they have to make the country believe that we are somehow aligned against the Jewish faith and against…

TUCKER CARLSON: But what they’re saying is it’s okay to discriminate against white Christians, but it’s immoral to discriminate against Jews. No, it’s immoral to discriminate against Jews and white Christians and black people and Indonesians and every group on the basis of their DNA, period.

MATT GAETZ: Well, there has to be a villain. And that’s what white people have become in this really threat-constructed environment around identity.

DEI and Institutional Discrimination

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I’ve actually reached out to those groups and said, I will make common cause with you, I’ll support you, I’ll send you money if you will just defend the principle. And that would include…

MATT GAETZ: No, you never heard these people during the DEI crisis.

TUCKER CARLSON: They didn’t say one word. They were for it. They were for discriminating against whites. Because those kids who’ve been shafted by anti-white hate as institutionalized in every big company and every government agency in the whole United States and Western Europe, those people are mad.

And where was Yehuda Levin during that? Where was Bill Ackman during that? And my point is, come over to the side of universal principles of light and truth and let’s make common cause against all forms of hate. And if you won’t do that, then I’m not taking you seriously.

MATT GAETZ: And no one should take them seriously because they are an advocacy group for a particular ethnic group. And that is fine.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, how’s that different from Ilhan Omar and the Somalis?

MATT GAETZ: Well, I think that in a lot of ways there are similarities. When ethno-nationalism is the objective, and obviously ethno-nationalism is the objective in Israel. It’s the organizing principle of…

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s fine, that’s not our country.

MATT GAETZ: But oftentimes, people are pursuing the policies here in the United States that benefit Israel and our own interests and the interests of our people. And the plight you described that so many young people have endured is not a priority.

The Attack on Western Culture

TUCKER CARLSON: White young people, that’s why they’re mad. Why do you think they’re mad? Because they’ve been told that the country they were born in officially discriminates against them. That’s ongoing.

MATT GAETZ: I don’t think it’s just even white people. I think it’s also non-white people who see the attack on white culture not as an attack on colonialism, but as an attack on success and progress and order.

I know a lot of non-white people that are like, actually, this anti-white activity that’s going on is going to make me less prosperous and more safe. And I’m kind of here, like, for all the criticisms we as whites have taken, we did an okay job setting up an orderly world, and we made some mistakes along the way, and you’ve got to reconcile.

But at the end, what society would you replace with what we’ve set up in the Western world? Is there some vision of the way civilizations were built in Africa or the Far East that we would gleefully adopt?

TUCKER CARLSON: So imagine moving here because it’s a white country founded by white people and getting here and being like, yeah, I want to be part of that. And which I get 100%. And then you get here and the first thing you learn is white people are bad. Right. I mean, that must be weird.

The Pushback Against Identity Politics

MATT GAETZ: I think that this is shifting the other way. I really think during the excesses of the post-George Floyd era, people attached so strongly to identity. And, you know, I sense a real pushback against that.

And you talk about learning it, right? The main place people learn still is in the school system. Right now, public education is essentially a failing enterprise. And all of the innovation is to take people out of that system and then people will self-select what they learn, and that may be more productive.

TUCKER CARLSON: This is one of my closest friends. This is Brookie. She’s not our only dog, but she’s our head dog. I hunt with her. She sleeps next to me in bed every night. She’s four and a half and smarter than any executive at Fox News. This is a really impressive dog, but I think we all think our dogs are impressive and great, and we love them.

And I know that if anything ever happened to this dog, there would be no limit to what I would do to help her. And so vet bills can really stack up. Thank heaven she’s been healthy, but for a lot of people, including close friends of mine, it can be crushing.

And so when we started talks with the company we’re now in partnership with, Dutch Pet, about how they’re approaching veterinary care, $82 a year for unlimited care, I just thought, that can’t be real. But it is real. Dutch Pet, if you’re watching this right now, use the code Tucker from this show. If you care about your dogs, you care about your animals. If you know if it’s real to you, check it out. Eighty-two bucks a year for unlimited veterinary care. You’d pay anything, but you shouldn’t have to. Dutch Pet.

I think you’re right. So I think what you’re saying… so I’m… I was… well, I want to get to the thing that really bothered me about the statement from Yehuda Kaplan, whoever, who apparently now runs the State Department. He just told us, I did not vote for this, just to be clear. Period.

MATT GAETZ: The…

TUCKER CARLSON: Any of what I just saw. Yeah, that guy. But you’re saying maybe I should calm down a little bit because, like, who cares? History’s passing this whole conversation by.

MATT GAETZ: I’m not saying who cares, because that was a disgusting display of, I think, parochial interest that you just saw.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, that’s correct.

The Weaponization of Antisemitism

MATT GAETZ: But we see that often, so I don’t get too worked up about it. The bigger issue is that Rabbi Yehuda would probably classify you and I as anti-Semitic because we’ve been critical of some of the policy choices of the Israeli government. And that broad application of antisemitism, to say anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, to say that even some things in the Bible may be deemed anti-Semitic if they’re critical of Jews at any point, it has created such a curiosity among young people to test those mores and challenge those dogmas.

I think there are a lot of, like, the Mark Levin Israel first crowd who look at us and say like, we’re the problem. Tucker and Matt are the problem. Actually, we’re not the problem. The problem is you lost us.

They show these old videos of you being very complimentary of Israel and critical of Israel’s critics. You could easily find a lot of my library speaking on the floor to Congress, supporting a strong and robust US-Israel relationship. So two people who in our 30s were incredibly supportive of this relationship completely have come untethered. And it is because the relationship has become too burdensome, and friends should be able to tell that to each other. And when you do, that doesn’t make you a bad friend.

I still consider myself pro-Israel. I think that what the Netanyahu government is doing to Israel is bad for Israel, much in the way the United States created more terrorists than we killed during the wars in the Middle East that have consumed most of my life. I think that is what, that is the chapter of the book they’re in right now, this expansionism and the adventurism. And it ends badly. It ended badly for us.

Remember, Syria’s in the news now because tragically, we’ve lost Americans in uniform in Syria and a translator there as well. And reasonable people are asking, why are we still in Syria?

TUCKER CARLSON: What are we doing? Being so we can lose troops. That’s why.

MATT GAETZ: That is so sick.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I believe that’s true.

MATT GAETZ: You believe that those people are there so that they can die and trigger a war.

TUCKER CARLSON: That is correct. And a deeper commitment and an emotional commitment. You’ve lost people here. I do think that when we lost…

MATT GAETZ: Someone in Mogadishu, did that create a deeper emotional connection to Somalia, or did that cause Americans to say, what are we doing patrolling around Mogadishu?

The Immigration-Intervention Connection

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it allowed the State Department and the rest of the federal government and its constellation of NGOs to import tens of thousands of Somalis into the United States because all of a sudden…

MATT GAETZ: Well, that had been happening under Clinton for some time.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Well, that, right. But that, I believe Black Hawk Down was at the, during the Clinton administration. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, we now have had military action in this country. So there’s a deep and important connection between our country and whatever country we’re killing people in. And so we need to import, whoever it is, the Somalis, the Montagnards from Vietnam, whatever.

And by the way, some of those groups have done well here. Others have not done well at all. But the pretext is exactly the same. We occupy Haiti repeatedly. All of a sudden, we have a ton of Haitians. Like, this is how it works. We’re fooling with Venezuela policy. Got a ton of Venezuela.

MATT GAETZ: Is that the next chapter here? You know, you’re welcoming a good chunk of Syria into the United States. I mean, a lot of them are already living in Europe.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And, but let me just say I’ve known a lot of Syrians in my life. A lot of Syrian Christians and Alawites and moderate Muslims. It’s never been a hotbed of religious extremism, not a secular government.

MATT GAETZ: Until last year, Damascus was a great secular center of enlightenment and architecture.

TUCKER CARLSON: A lot of the New Testament was written from what’s now Syria. So it had a, you know, it’s had an ancient Christian presence. Of course, Paul was on his way to Damascus when he met Jesus. So, like, this is the Levant. This is not some far away. This is on the Mediterranean. Okay. This is, and so I know some amazing Syrians also.

A lot of, like, war traumatized, unemployed and unemployable, dangerous Syrians. And they happen to be living in Berlin right now. So, like, whatever, it’s a mixed bag. The only point is as soon as you intervene in another country, all of a sudden, you know, invade the world, import the world becomes real.

Why We’re Still in Syria

MATT GAETZ: I introduced the legislation in Congress to take all of our troops out of Syria. It was defeated overwhelmingly. And when was that? Was in 2024, last year. And Anna Paulina Luna, others and I took to the floor to explain that this would result in American deaths, that those deaths would not be worth whatever gain is attempting to be realized in Syria.

In Syria, we had troops funded by the Pentagon, fighting forces funded by the CIA. And Syria’s even an example on the limits of Russia’s interventionism. I took note of the fact that them propping up a government and trying to keep it loyal was not something that was ultimately sustainable for Russia.

And so now, you know, we ought to get our troops out. There’s no thing that we are fighting for there that is an achievable win. And what were these guys doing? You hear it on the news now. Key leader engagement. You know what that means? That means we’ve got troops wandering around Syria figuring out which Bedouin leaders to go bribe as a part of some coalition we can represent.

And that is everything Donald Trump is against. Donald Trump doesn’t want to import a bunch of Syrians. He doesn’t want to control Syria. And I think that there is a lot of the military industrial complex that just needs us to be in a state of kind of constant latent war everywhere.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, there’s no question. And I want to ask you…

How Congressional Committees Really Work

MATT GAETZ: And by the way, just while I’m on the rant, the reason that happens is because in Congress, there’s this great sense of deference. Like, if you’re not on the Agriculture Committee, you defer to those people. If you’re not on the Intelligence Committee, you defer to those people or the Armed Services Committee. And under a system where people’s specializations were being represented in that way, that might work, but it’s just a function of which special interests are controlling which committees and which members of Congress.

The way you get on the war committee is to be for the wars. The way to get on the intelligence committee is to be for the intelligence apparatus. The way to get on the agriculture committee is to be for big food. The way to get on the natural resources committee is to be against natural resources.

And then when you do all of that, you end up with this highly deferential system to people who were elected by no one, who buy off your leaders. And those leaders justify it by saying, well, at least I’m moving up in the system. And thus, whatever I do to surrender my agency is justified and worth it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because I can have a seat at the table and maybe I can. The moral justification for the person who makes moral compromises is, well, at least now I’m here and I could potentially make things better.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, but you’re not even really there because you’ve sold all the shares of yourself. You know who else was there? Kevin McCarthy. Like, he was there until he wasn’t. But the problem is, the man had no agency because over such a period of time, he had sold shares of himself to the highest bidder.

The El Salvador Model

TUCKER CARLSON: Are there any sovereign leaders in the world that you’re aware of? Like, does any leader have the ability to say, this is the right thing or the wrong thing, and I’m just going to act according to how I feel with, like, the authority vested in me? Yes. Really?

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. El Salvador. Nayib Bukele.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: I think he has total agency to just do things as he says.

TUCKER CARLSON: Huh. How’s the country doing?

MATT GAETZ: It’s doing well. People are safe. Investment is coming. You and I have spent time there.

TUCKER CARLSON: A lot of time there.

MATT GAETZ: I think that it is a great case study in what happens when, you know, when you exercise the type of executive power that benefits the people in a way. If it’s a dictatorship, it’s a very benevolent dictatorship, and people get to vote for or against him. And they vote for him.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. They also get to leave. I mean, a third of Salvadorans have left over the past 40 years come to the United States, and now a bunch of them are returning.

MATT GAETZ: So they are. Yeah. I mean, and by the way, like, I know out there among your supporters and mine, there’s a lot of angst over, like, well, you know, has Donald Trump done every single thing I ever wanted him to do in this first year in office?

Like, if you would have told me back when we were staring at polls showing us that Kamala Harris was going to be the next president, United States, that here we would be at the conclusion of 2025 with negative net migration in this country. And some of that indeed is the great work of DHS. But a lot of it is the self-deportation where Trump has set the ethic in this country, where if you are not here legally, you are not welcome and a bunch of those people are going home. And I think that is a great credit to the work they’ve done. It is.

TUCKER CARLSON: And in the case of El Salvador, it’s a great credit to the job the president of El Salvador has done in like improving his country. Yeah. Like why not live there?

State Department Censorship

TUCKER CARLSON: So I just want to get back to one more question about the State Department’s new office on anti-Semitism. And just say again, I’m opposed to anti-Semitism every bit as much as I’m opposed to anti-white hate, which is much more prevalent. And all of it, anti-black, anti-Mexican, everything anti-people. But in there he says we need to control what people say on the Internet.

MATT GAETZ: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And we’re going to talk to Jews in the mean. Just said that.

MATT GAETZ: So funny. It’s like, do they really think that’s going to work? Does anyone…

TUCKER CARLSON: But that’s, why should the US Government be trying to censor its own citizens? Like, I thought that was first of all illegal.

MATT GAETZ: I thought we ran against that. That was the Biden administration.

TUCKER CARLSON: But isn’t that like, how is that different from slavery if you can’t say what the bondage. Yeah, well, I don’t know. It’s a form of bondage. It’s like, I’m not treating you as a human being, as a free man, if I won’t allow you to say what you, what you think.

MATT GAETZ: Well, and I thought that’s what America was.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was the place where you could say what you think.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. The opportunity to do that apparently would be constrained worldwide as Rabbi Yehuda is serving you your kosher…

TUCKER CARLSON: But why should the U.S. State Department. I thought we were against censorship.

MATT GAETZ: Wait a second. You thought the U.S. State Department was against censorship? That’s not true.

TUCKER CARLSON: This guy’s standing up at some event with a bunch of lunatics saying, the U.S. State Department, I’m censoring Americans and I work for the US Government. How about you get fired today?

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, I think he was pointing globally. And the U.S. State Department has a long history of trying to control what people see and hear and how they react to that.

TUCKER CARLSON: So we need to change the textbooks in Indonesia. Should we really be changing other people’s textbooks? Whatever.

MATT GAETZ: No, I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made that we should not be funding the textbooks.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, we should not be funding anybody’s textbooks. Like there are people living on the street. But whatever. Leaving that aside, you’re not allowed to censor our social media, period. Because we’re Americans, we can say and think whatever we want. That’s the point of being American. How can a US official say that?

MATT GAETZ: I think we have crossed that Rubicon long ago, when you had people in the Biden administration censoring true information about vaccine side effects and no accountability for that, no action against those officials. It has blown the door open to use powers in government to try to advance the viewpoints that you find comforting and to silence the ideas that you find uncomfortable.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never heard anybody say we should censor anti-white hate on the Internet. Not one person has ever. I don’t. By the way, I don’t think we should censor it or any expression of what people believe should ever be.

MATT GAETZ: Do you think censorship, like digitally, is ultimately sustainable with the fragmented digital environment?

TUCKER CARLSON: So that’s the point I’m coming to.

MATT GAETZ: I’m not as worked up over it as you are because I just think that, you know, you’ve got—we have so many different opportunities to communicate now, more so than in the 2010s and the censorship regime is only going to backfire on these folks and it’s sad.

TUCKER CARLSON: Honestly.

MATT GAETZ: I wish people like, you know, Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL and this particular rabbi would see that what they are doing is ultimately to their detriment. Because more and more people are going to wonder why there is this like one group that seems to have primacy in speech and discourse.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re 100% right and you’re able to control your emotions sufficient to see that, which is why I’m glad you’re here.

MATT GAETZ: Controlling emotions really is what I’m known for.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it is actually because you’re seeing, at least compared to me, with no self-control at all, you’re seeing the big picture, which is that this is a conversation that can only be counterproductive. They don’t understand the nature of human discourse and of the Internet. And like you can’t censor it.

The 2028 Presidential Debate and Israel

MATT GAETZ: And how are you going to censor the presidential debate stage in 2028? Because let me walk through what you’re going to see. You are going to see candidates on the Republican debate stage and on the Democrat debate stage that are going to say “I’m going to cut off all aid to Israel. I believe the U.S.-Israel relationship is toxic. I think it is an abusive relationship and the United States is the abused partner and we need to leave.”

And those people are automatically going to surge to a prominent position in the polling in their parties. So then how are you ultimately going to censor a viewpoint that is a rising viewpoint on the left and the right among the bases of those parties?

This isn’t a viewpoint percolating among the elites that maybe the U.S.-Israel relationship is something we have to question in its current iteration and its current form. But this is coming to a head and like I saw the deal where—have you looked at the FARA filings with the Israeli government is paying to geofence US churches so that they can propagandize evangelical Christians?

I’m watching this like saying it’s not going to work. People are still going to ask questions and I still can’t find any of Israel’s strongest defenders who will defend that conduct. They’ve also, I guess, hired Brad Parscale to spoof the AI bots. I saw that. And I thought, at least it’s like them getting grifted this time.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s pathetic, but yes. No, I mean, literally pathetic. But it’s still so dishonorable what he’s doing. But you’re absolutely right. I should have a lighter heart about this kind of stuff. I guess what concerns me is these are people who are totally committed to violence, who—I mean, for Rabbi Whatever his name is to say we need to hold the people of Gaza accountable when they already, the Israelis and the US have murdered tens of thousands of women and children. Murdered them. It’s like, that’s not accountable.

MATT GAETZ: Like, what? Is there anyone who believes that Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more terrorists than it’s created? Is there a single serious person who believes that?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s a crime. It’s a crime. And when—the more you know about it, the more shocking it is that it’s happened. A first world country doing something, murdering all those kids. Murdering them, which they have. And all these people like Rabbi whatever and Mark Levin defending it, they’re just pro-violence. They believe in violence.

Mark Levin, when Charlie was murdered three months ago, said, you know, he was murdered because people called him a Nazi, and that’s an invitation to shoot somebody. Next thing you know, he’s running around calling everyone who disagrees with the next aid package a Nazi. He’s espousing violence. Mark Levin’s totally for violence. A lot of these stronger voices are for violence.

So if censorship doesn’t work, it makes me uncomfortable when people who believe in violence and murdering the innocents as they do, if they’re—if they can’t achieve their goals by peaceful means, like, what’s the next step? Violence.

MATT GAETZ: I think that they come from a viewpoint of, like, every 400 years, people round up the Jews and kill them on the planet Earth. And they think that their struggle is existential. And if they do not become violent in certain places, in certain iterations, that they become the victim of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, I think that’s—look, I get that. And actually, one thing that I grieve over because I hear about it all the time from friends of mine, is that people are panicked or panicked, and then you have a shooting. This massacre in Australia is like the worst thing I’ve ever—I couldn’t even watch the video, it was so horrible.

And it’s like that adds to people’s sense that there’s something like that is going to happen here. And I totally sympathize with that, all of that. But violence is not the answer. That’s the point. Yeah. It’s why you can’t defend the murder of kids in Gaza. You can’t call for your enemies to be killed like Mark Levin in effect does. Don’t do that. Right.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. And it probably is, you know, the next chapter of all of this is that more of that type of violence is visited here in the United States. And we’re against that, by the way. That’s why the speech and the dialogue and the discourse is so important, which is what Charlie Kirk understood. I know and said so all the time.

And I mean, when you and I know what few others do, and that is the operational competence of Charlie Kirk in doing everything he could to support the Trump administration, to make the best possible decisions on the information that existed.

Trump, Twitter, and Charlie Kirk

And Charlie told me something once about President Trump and Twitter and he said, you know, man, how many times back in 2016, 2017 did we have someone come up to us and say, “We love Trump, but can we get him off Twitter? Can we just get him to stop tweeting every impulse?” And by the way, I always loved the posts.

TUCKER CARLSON: Still do.

MATT GAETZ: But so many people were focused on the information flow from Trump out into the Twitter sphere when what we, I think discounted was when Trump was scrolling Twitter regularly, he was getting bidirectional feedback that does not exist right now. That avenue is not open the way it was in those years.

And I think it was really special and awesome about Trump that he was able to understand the zeitgeist and what the temperature and mood of the country was. And I would love to see Trump back on Twitter posting regularly and seeing the feedback from users.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think it’s a really smart point and true. We did an interview with a woman called Casey Means. She’s a Stanford educated surgeon and really one of the most remarkable people I have ever met. In the interview she explained how the food that we eat, produced by huge food companies, big food, in conjunction with pharma, is destroying our health, making this a weak and sick country. The levels of chronic disease are beyond belief.

What Casey Means, who we’ve not stopped thinking about ever since, is the co-founder of a healthcare technology company called Levels. And we are proud to announce today that we are partnering with Levels. And by proud I mean sincerely proud. Levels is a really interesting company and a great product. It gives you insight into what’s going on inside your body, your metabolic health. It helps you understand how the food that you’re eating, the things that you’re doing every single day, are affecting your body in real time.

And you don’t think about it. You have no idea what you’re putting in your mouth, and you have no idea what it’s doing to your body. But over time, you feel weak and tired and spacey, and over an even longer period of time, you can get really sick. So it’s worth knowing what the food you eat is doing to you.

The Levels app works with something called a continuous glucose monitor, a CGM. You can get one as part of the plan or you can bring your own, it doesn’t matter. But the bottom line is big tech, big pharma, and big food combine together to form an incredibly malevolent force, pumping you full of garbage, unhealthy food with artificial sugars and hurting you and hurting the entire country.

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The Role of Twitter in National Discourse

What role does Twitter X play in the discourse of the nation?

MATT GAETZ: It’s the global news wire. It’s where news is made. And, you know, I think that people discount the significance of the platform when they say it doesn’t have the same user base that you see on Meta or TikTok. But the reality is the news that is made on X Twitter really pollinates to those other platforms extensively and I think drives all the action.

TUCKER CARLSON: So Twitter is real life is what you’re saying?

MATT GAETZ: I think that it is, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Could you understand what’s happening in the country without reading it?

MATT GAETZ: I don’t think so. Because you would be limited in the inputs.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: To your system. Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: What are your—well, you host a show, but even long before you hosted the show, you’re in the middle of the national conversation. You were the subject of the national conversation for a while. Where do you get your information? How do you know what reality is?

MATT GAETZ: I try to read a lot. I try to watch cable news as little as possible. Even though I’m the host of a cable show on One America News. You know, I think we’ve lost an appreciation for like the 10,000 word piece in society today. I miss the long investigative reporting pieces we used to get at places like the National Pulse and you know, places like Revolver News.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: And more and more the attention span of the country is limited. And so you’ve got to be able to convey messages sharply, crisply, so that they’re absorbed and people can act on the information.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you read Twitter a lot?

Following the Money and Middle Eastern Capital Markets

MATT GAETZ: I do, yeah. I’m on Twitter a good bit. Citizen Free Press is one of my daily check-ins for the news as well. And also more and more since I’ve left government life, seeing how the movement of money impacts policy decisions. I was so into what was on the next committee agenda, what the next witness would be in the chair. And oftentimes it’s the way money moves in global marketplaces influencing events.

And I also think this is informative on our discussion on the Middle East because for most of your and my life, the principal capital markets that mattered in the world were New York and London. And I think a lot of people were really comfortable with that. And then as capital has really flown out of these Gulf monarchies out of the Middle East, you’re seeing places like Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Muscat, Oman, Riyadh emerge as these very significant capital marketplaces.

And I think Netanyahu is trying to wash that region in blood and chaos and war migrants so that there is a return to New York and London being the principal capital markets.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I mean I saw an Israeli cabinet minister the other day describe, was talking about the Saudis and, you know, go back to whatever your camels and sleeping with your cousin or whatever, eating lamb in a tent. And, you know, it was dismissive. Of course, I’m not even taking sides in it, but it was more than dismissive. It was idiotic. It’s like, have you been there recently? You know, there are not a lot of camels in downtown Riyadh, which has like 8 million people in it. It’s like the most modern city, the side of China. I think people don’t fully understand how quickly that region has changed.

MATT GAETZ: And, you know, that change is frightening to people who are losing power.

TUCKER CARLSON: I get it.

MATT GAETZ: And I think a lot of those people are the constituency that Netanyahu is serving. He is trying to advance an agenda that will create more war and create more violence. And nobody’s going to want to do business deals in Doha or Abu Dhabi or Dubai if there are 30 million Iranians that are on the move because they are war migrants.

The Syria Withdrawal Bill

TUCKER CARLSON: No, that’s really, really smart. So I want to get to something. So you sponsored this bill in the Congress in 2024 last year that would have pulled the United States finally out of Syria. And of course, it didn’t pass. Did it even get to a vote?

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, I was able to force a vote on it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

MATT GAETZ: Under our rules? Yeah. I mean, it lost by a margin of 2 to 1. I didn’t even have a majority.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, of course. But the fact that you did that, which, by the way, for people who aren’t from Washington, that’s a radical act. That’s Tea Party level, you know, it’s throwing the tea in Boston Harbor. That’s a—

MATT GAETZ: No one would do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Poor Tulsi Gabbard once said, why do we have to be in Syria? And they spied on her and kept her off commercial airplanes for saying that. So it was a ballsy thing to say, but you’ve always had this kind of independent cast to your thinking. It’s been very obvious for a long time.

The Extortion Scheme and Israeli Involvement

Several years ago, your life got completely blown up. It sounded like you were going to jail. People started calling you a child molester. You’re a child molester. I was attacked for talking to you, which is kind of funny. Normally people were attacked for talking to me, but I was attacked for talking to you. But at the heart of that story was foreign influence. And I’ve never heard you describe what exactly happened there. So, in one sentence, news broke in the New York Times that the House Ethics Committee—

MATT GAETZ: No, this was, I got news that the Department of Justice—

TUCKER CARLSON: Sorry, it was DOJ.

MATT GAETZ: Was investigating me. And obviously I knew that the allegations were false.

TUCKER CARLSON: Someone’s in jail right now. If they were true, obviously. And the fact you and Andrew Tate would both be in jail. So stop with the bullshit.

MATT GAETZ: And by the way, no one has ever even made an accusation against me in any forum in which I can depose witnesses, do cross examination, review records. So that’s how you know the allegations against me are false. No one is ever willing to make them in any forum where I’m allowed to fight back, where I have any of the tools that you have.

TUCKER CARLSON: You haven’t been charged and brought to process.

MATT GAETZ: Charged, sued, anything? And so I sued on the basis of this? No, of course not. And if anyone were to sue me, a human being would have to stand up and make an accusation against me and have their name behind it. That’s never happened.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who is—

MATT GAETZ: Who is the person who has publicly accused me of misconduct regarding women? It doesn’t exist. It is just an op. And it was an op to silence me, and Israel was involved. And I hate to say that I was shocked to learn it, but there was a consulate official.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, this is amazing. So this is the charge that you were trafficking underage girls.

MATT GAETZ: Absurd.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I don’t even know what the charge was, but that was the headline. Matt Gaetz traffics underage women. It’s like, oh, my gosh, can’t talk to Matt Gaetz anymore.

MATT GAETZ: For us, the shocking moment was when my father, who’s a prominent person in our community, got outreach from someone he had never met that said that there were pictures and images of me with underage prostitutes. And my dad needed to meet with these people right away. So my dad, somewhat surprised and concerned, goes and talks to these people and says, what in the world are you talking about?

And they said, “Well, Mr. Gaetz, we need $25 million from you to go and rescue a spy that is being held in Iran. And if you do that, we can make these things about your son go away,” which was crazy and wild. We did what any reasonable people would do. We went to the FBI and said that we were being extorted by these folks with their false claims.

And we later learned that this consulate official working for the Israeli government was sending text messages to Scott Adams, of all people, the Dilbert cartoonist, saying they were expecting my father to furnish this $25 million payment, and that that would be evidence of my consciousness of guilt.

TUCKER CARLSON: For the American FBI agent grabbed on an Iranian island maybe 18 or 19 years ago.

MATT GAETZ: And I don’t know anything about this person. I don’t know if the person’s dead or alive, but it was troubling and concerning to me that someone who was getting paid by the Israeli government was involved in a criminal shakedown of a U.S. congressman. And someone went to jail for this. The person who conveyed this message to my father pled guilty to the attempted fraud. And surprisingly, there was never really an effort to figure out what the government of Israel’s involvement was in this matter.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you know that the government of Israel was involved because this was an Israeli government official who was involved in this?

MATT GAETZ: Yes, yes, a person who—his name’s Jake Novak. I think he currently works for Real America’s Voice. And he sent texts—

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, what?

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, yeah, that’s the name of the official. And he sent messages to Scott Adams saying that he was involved in this scheme that was later deemed a criminal scheme to shake down my family.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what happened to these false allegations?

MATT GAETZ: He got a television show.

TUCKER CARLSON: Come on now. I didn’t know any of this. I’m not playing dumb. I really didn’t know that. Have you ever talked to him about it?

MATT GAETZ: I have attempted to figure out, because obviously I still have a lot of unanswered questions about why he was working for a foreign government and trying to shake down my family.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s the answer, do you think?

MATT GAETZ: Well, some have shared with me their concern that this was a consequence of some of the votes and positions I took in the Congress. I represented one of the most military heavy districts in the entire country, number one.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, right. Right up there.

MATT GAETZ: And I saw these wars in the Middle East that my neighbors and friends had fought in as unworthy of our best. Unworthy of the disruptions in parenting and the divorces and the injuries.

TUCKER CARLSON: Suicides.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. And so I took the position that we should be less entangled in these things. And I think that really shocked a number of people who thought I would be more of a neocon coming from the district I came from. And I think that with the Israel influence operation, it’s always fire and ice. It’s always outreach followed by consequence, and then outreach and then consequence.

Even to this day, there was someone who just appeared and offered to pay me a bunch of money to go to Israel and give a bunch of speeches. And, you know, you decline those offers when you don’t feel they’re appropriate. And then lo and behold, it’s Greenblatt on the other side of the operation calling you an anti-Semite.

TUCKER CARLSON: This just happened to you.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah.

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You’ve got such a—maybe you’ve just been around. You’re younger than I am, but been around a lot. You have such a blasé attitude, like, yeah, that happens. People try to pay you off, then they threaten you. Pay you off, then they threaten you.

The Carrots and Sticks of Congressional Life

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, this is the parlance of government. It’s a series of carrots and sticks. And, you know, I was the only Republican in the entire Congress during my time there who refused all PAC and lobbyist donations because it was a game I just didn’t want to win.

What you have to realize is what most of your Congress is doing most of the time is trying to move up in this system. And sometimes moving up means a better committee. Sometimes it’s getting invited to better dinner parties. You lived in Washington for many years. You know that there’s this hidden dinner party circuit that is reflective of your influence and your acceptance.

And people who are probably good people when they get elected go there and morally compromise for that. And I just reached a point one time when I just thought, I don’t even care. It’s like, oh, well, if you do enough favors for the chief deputy whip, they’ll invite you to their fundraiser, and then you could move up and the whip could invite you to his foreign trip. And if you say the right things on the foreign trip and kiss the ring, well, then maybe the majority leader will want you on a task force.

And at the end of the day, I thought, I’m not here to do any of this stuff, and I don’t really care about any of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Those are prizes not worth winning, too.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, it’s sort of like the Homecoming court. Nobody really cares except the people doing it. The problem is in Congress, the people who are not the brightest and not the most service-oriented often prevail in that system.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s all so low bar, so just pathetic. But—

MATT GAETZ: And it’s even more pathetic when really smart, accomplished people do it. That’s always what amazed me. If you’re a country lawyer from north Florida, been in the legislature, got elected to Congress, I’d never done anything in my life that rendered me a war hero or some tycoon of industry. But those people do get elected at times. And then you just go watch them debase themselves and they become actors. And the scripts are written by the lobby corps and produced and directed by the leadership.

TUCKER CARLSON: You never took APAC money.

MATT GAETZ: I did not. I refused those funds.

TUCKER CARLSON: How did that go for you?

MATT GAETZ: I just, you know.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I guess you ultimately got blackmailed.

MATT GAETZ: I didn’t become Attorney General, but I forgot about that. But that wasn’t precisely about AIPAC for me. That was just about all of it. I even had groups like NRA or Right to Life that I was largely aligned with. Say, “Well, will you take our PAC money?” And I just, the whole thing seemed untoward.

Like, how do you take money from people who have a specific interest, at times hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars, and then go stand at the fish house in Pensacola, Florida and tell people you’re not influenced by it? I just, I couldn’t perform the act anymore.

Now there are, you know, there are other, throughout my time in Congress, there are other kind of accommodations you have to make. Like I had to be there willing, able, anytime your bookers or anybody else’s bookers would call and say, “Come be on television.” Because my theory was if I wasn’t going to have the resources to buy ads, just go be on TV a lot. And you know that comes with its own compromise to your life and your overall operation, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, life is a series of traps, right? And sometimes you don’t know you’re falling into them. It seems like a good trade, but it never is. So, but just to go back to what happened to you.

So this guy or a series of people approached your dad and said, “We have documentary evidence that your son, like photos, slept with underage girls. Will you give us 25 million to go find the FBI agent Bob Levinson?” Levinson, right. Also working for CIA, who was grabbed on this island in Iran. Still in custody, dead or alive.

Your dad says no, contacts you, you call the FBI. The person who reached out gets convicted of that, goes to jail for it, but this other guy is never punished for it, the one who’s working for the Israeli government. And then the story winds up in the New York Times. How does it wind up in the New York Times?

Bill Barr and the New York Times Leak

MATT GAETZ: Well, I think that Bill Barr told them. Bill Barr was a very well known source for the New York Times. Bill Barr was the Attorney General and he hated me. And he hated, we were in a big dispute about his unwillingness to enforce some of the election integrity laws.

There was a case in Florida where a Democrat Supervisor of Elections brought to the U.S. attorney a clear instance of fraud, where a Soros aligned organization was fraudulently creating voter registrations so that they could request absentee ballots that were ghost votes. And the U.S. attorney asked for resources to pursue that investigation.

And Bill Barr refused and said, “I refuse to investigate any of this stuff because it will decrease confidence in the elections.” This was before the 2020 election. And so I was constantly pestering President Trump and members of his administration. Bill Barr had to be dealt with on this. You can’t just say that you’re not going to investigate something because the investigation itself will impact people’s confidence.

And so he and I were in that big struggle and I believe he was angry with me and, you know, wanted to leak things that would hurt me.

TUCKER CARLSON: This is the guy who covered up the murder of an American citizen in federal detention in New York City. I mean, the person who was murdered is called Jeffrey Epstein. So I understand that. I’m not defending Jeffrey Epstein. But no American should be murdered extrajudicially in federal lockup. Bill Barr covered up that murder.

MATT GAETZ: Well, also, I mean, we’re the United States of America. You can’t even go in and out of a casino without people knowing that you’re there and without it being on every camera. And you’re telling me that we don’t have the video of Epstein killing himself and that we’re all just supposed to expect this guy who, we know, we know all those people who are in the admin now, my friends, they know Epstein was intel.

They know he was tied to our intel. They know he was tied to Mossad. They knew he was tied to Saudi. He was a free agent. He was willing to go intelligence.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: And he was willing to go and get this kompromat at a time when the British and the Israelis and the United States government needed to get people aligned with the Iraq war. And there was a worry that people would drift off and start opposing an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.

And so they got together, a bunch of people in academia, politics, media, business, and tried to get them in a compromising situation so that then everyone would stay on board no matter what.

TUCKER CARLSON: That does not sound unlikely, but when he died, Barr, by his own admission, he said, “Our job is to convince the American public he killed himself and prevent dangerous conspiracy theories from threatening.” The guy was murdered. And so Barr is by definition corrupt. Like, you can’t, Attorney generals can’t do that. That is totally over the top, so. And he was fighting with you, but you think he’s the one who leaked.

MATT GAETZ: I do. This stuff which happened, I mean, I’m not going to sit here and pearl clutch over some leak. When I, you know, when the FBI took my phone away, I assumed this was all, you know, when they first came.

TUCKER CARLSON: On what grounds do they take your phone?

MATT GAETZ: They came with a subpoena and said, “We want your phone.” And at the time, I was somewhat relieved because I thought, perfect. If what you think’s in my phone is some sort of untoward issue with underage people, have a look. There’s, you know, and obviously, if I’d committed any crimes, they kept my phone for years.

TUCKER CARLSON: They did.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, they did.

Living Under Investigation

TUCKER CARLSON: And you’ve never been charged with anything?

MATT GAETZ: No.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s it like? Because we have a justice system, you know, it’s still in place, I think. Got courts and stuff and police and all that. But what’s it like to be accused of a real crime, child sex trafficking, and then sort of wait for all these years to get indicted for it, have someone prove it, and that never happens.

MATT GAETZ: Well, I mean, I know who I am. The people around me know who I am. I would, during these investigations, repeatedly run back to my district. And despite Kevin McCarthy spending millions of dollars to try to defeat me, I was always overwhelmingly reelected. And so I took comfort in knowing how.

TUCKER CARLSON: Reelected in the middle of this.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. Despite, you know, a lot of folks not wanting me to return to Washington. But there is, there is comfort in knowing that the people will be there for you, your family, the folks you care about. And so I’m not a tragic case by any sense. I wish I would have had the chance to be Attorney General. I said a lot of bad things about senators over the years that made that impossible for me to achieve.

TUCKER CARLSON: So walk us through that. So Trump announces you’re going to be AG.

The Attorney General Nomination

MATT GAETZ: And I campaigned for that position to be clear. You know, I love President Trump and was there to support his transition. As a friend, a confidant, someone who had been there during the tough times in his first term.

I mean, the real reason I was hanging around the transition is because I remembered what it was like when you had a good amount of the Cabinet, hoping that Donald Trump was a criminal and wanting to install Mike Pence and just the nightmare that that was. So I was there to be a trusted friend, and Charlie Kirk and Stephen Miller and I had talked to a number of people who wanted to be Attorney general, and we were presenting some of those ideas to the president.

I was advocating for a different person to be the Attorney General on a plane ride with the president, and he just sort of, as he has a tendency to do, said that that wasn’t who he wanted and he wanted me to do the job.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you had no idea this was coming?

MATT GAETZ: No, none. And it was.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you’re telling Trump, “Actually, I think you should pick so and so.”

MATT GAETZ: Right, right. And I did tell him if he wanted me to do it, I would do my best job. I would work hard to be confirmed, and that I thought I could lead the department out of some of its darkest days and towards something better.

I think Pam Bondi has done a very good job. I know she has her critics, by the way. I would have, too. Like, if I’d have been the Attorney General, there probably would be a whole ecosystem saying I wasn’t doing enough. But I actually think Pam Bondi’s done a good job, and I’m here to be her supporter and advocate.

TUCKER CARLSON: Clearly, you are here to be your supporter and advocate. I disagree, but whatever. I think.

MATT GAETZ: Let’s get into that, Tucker.

TUCKER CARLSON: But hold on. I’m not here to attack Pam Bondi, who I know well, and I have always liked Pam Bondi. But you were willing, as a sitting member of the Congress in the House, to go after your own party when you thought that they were wrong.

MATT GAETZ: And I think Trump also believed that someone who had been unfairly accused of something and who had endured the grind of that would care about justice. Yeah. Would be really interested in fixing it. I mean, I think that’s why President Trump asked me to do the job, is because he saw that I could empathize with those who had been treated unfairly and that I would approach the position with a true sense of justice.

TUCKER CARLSON: I love that. No, I share that view. And I do think the only quality that matters in a leader is strength. Strength. Not so we can oppress people. Weak people oppress others. Strong people have no need to oppress others or rule over others. They can serve others because they’re not compensating for the void within them.

And I think you would have been the best person I can think of because you’ve been through it. You didn’t collapse. You married a great girl right in the middle of it. You got reelected. Your life shows that you were not destroyed by what happened to you. So you are strong by definition. That’s what we need.

And all of America’s problems are downstream from weak men, obviously. That’s why the women are crazy, because the men are weak. So, like, let’s find a strong one to lead a critical agency. That’s my, like, primitive view of it, but I think I’m right. What happened? Why did you not get that gig?

Senate Opposition

MATT GAETZ: There were a lot of great people I interacted with in the Senate, but at the end of the day, there was a core block of about half dozen of them who’d said they would never vote for me. And, you know, I could have endeavored to grind that down, maybe win, you know, one or two of them, possibly over an extended period of time.

But you saw the way courts started enjoining the actions of this administration right off the bat. Pam Bondi did defeat nationwide injunctions as a ruling legal theory.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

MATT GAETZ: And had we not had her and her team lined up to do that, I actually think that we’d be in a very different position today with the deportation agenda.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, how can.

MATT GAETZ: But, but I, I mean, there, look, you know, a lot of my conversations went, I’d be like, “Yeah, Senator, so and so, this is Matt Gaetz. I’m calling about my confirmation for attorney.” “What was tweeted about you? Now, that was a staffer years ago, and they were fired immediately.”

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, they were that petty?

MATT GAETZ: Oh, yeah, yeah. Several, you know, would bring, like, things I tweeted about them to the media.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is that really, so the point of your Attorney general is not to say mean things about an individual senator? Like what? Talk about making it about you?

MATT GAETZ: Well, yeah, that cares. And then I had, I had Senator, I had one senator, you know, from Oklahoma really grill me about, like, my vote against the anti Semitism bill. So, you know, “How can I vote for someone who voted against the anti Semitism bill?” And I’m thinking, like, is this some, like, driving issue in Oklahoma that I’m.

TUCKER CARLSON: Ms. Lankford unaware of just.

MATT GAETZ: Just mentioning it?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Lankford is such a, is a weak, such a weak man. It’s sad and is a tool for evil, in my opinion. So sorry. That’s what I think. But despite, you know, having good qualities, but, so who are the senators who are against you? Do you care to name any of them?

MATT GAETZ: You know, I don’t know that that’s productive, but I think that it would not be difficult to look at the college of senators who have been otherwise problematic for some of Trump’s appointees. And that’s where I had problems.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you decided to bow out.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. I didn’t think that me obtaining, me doing some multi-week, multi-month fight to try to grind down the last of Mitch McConnell was somehow going to help the administration in the end.

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I ask, do you think, just since you know the system so well, because you serve within it most of your life, do you think there’s anything you could have traded in exchange for their support?

MATT GAETZ: I don’t know. I don’t know. I oftentimes couldn’t get a meeting, you know, with people like Senator Murkowski and Senator Collins. They were not interested in even having a discussion with me. So it would have been hard to execute a trade.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I think part of the problem is you’re not the kind of guy who makes those trades and that’s why they opposed you in the first place.

MATT GAETZ: Well, and I think also there’s something unsettling about my unpredictability. You know, people read. Yeah, people who read the script are easy to predict and manage.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you wind up with a government and business, you wind up with a whole society run by weak people not at the top.

MATT GAETZ: Trump’s pretty strong, and I think Vance is strong and I think Suzy Wiles is strong.

TUCKER CARLSON: But there’s no doubt about what you just said. But no, I mean, beneath the very, you know, you’re talking the pinnacle of the pyramid. I mean, like all the way down, there’s everyone’s so weak, and that’s where evil thrives.

Risk Aversion and the Russia Hoax

MATT GAETZ: It thrives in weakness, weakness and risk aversion. And yeah, same thing. Risk aversion is fundamentally anti-American. We are a nation of risk takers and our best moments, that’s who we are. But in government, it’s often, you know, how do I avoid any attention or ire?

I do think that, you know, probably the riskiest thing we’ve seen is what Obama got everybody together to do on December 9th of 2016 when he ordered the Russia hoax. I think that is really the original sin of a lot of this that has happened. And, you know, I certainly would have brought a RICO charge against the people who were involved in that decision making process and participating in the various predicate criminal acts.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s precisely what Pam Bondi does when the Biden FBI raided Trump’s house. They engaged in a predicate criminal act to try to get information back that was exculpatory as to Trump. From my standpoint, that would properly venue a RICO charge against the major players in the deep state in the Southern District of Florida, rather than in Washington, D.C. where they have an administrative and judicial advantage.

TUCKER CARLSON: So the Russia hoax was predicated on something that I’m pretty sure was a lie, which is that the Russian government stole a tranche of emails from the DNC earlier that year, do you think?

MATT GAETZ: But it got reinvigorated after, of course, all of that got dispensed with. Then Trump won, which people weren’t expecting. And Obama on December 9 calls in Clapper, Brennan, Comey and says, “You guys have got to go out and reignite this Russia thing.”

And in that effort, you see all of this offense against George Papadopoulos, you see the activation of foreign intelligence networks to try to create some predicate for spying on the Trump campaign. And, you know, where does that leave us? I think in like almost a post-coup country.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, we’re literally at war with Russia today as a result of this hysteria, which was all the kind of predicate for that war. And you know, it’s like there was…

MATT GAETZ: There was a real discussion in the 90s going on about extending NATO membership to Russia, which is what we should have done.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you mean? Putin in his first meeting with George W. Bush was like right at the beginning of 2001, said, “I want to join NATO.”

MATT GAETZ: Imagine where we would be right now if the United States and Russia had created peace and a security infrastructure around Europe. I think appropriately position NATO as an alliance against the excesses of Sino expansion. It would be a safer world, it would be more prosperous all the way.

TUCKER CARLSON: To Asia because Russia extends into Asia and right. So you would have a Western bloc, not identical countries. Russia’s got a different system, different culture, different language, different history.

MATT GAETZ: But so many aligned interests with NATO when it comes to countering extremism, having strong borders, all of the things.

TUCKER CARLSON: That trade, trade, one of the most mineral dense countries in the world. Right. It’s basically a Western country produced Dostoevsky. Don’t tell me otherwise. Anyway, yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

The Seth Rich Question

But I just want to get to something I’ve never gotten past, which is the question of whether the Russian government stole those emails from the DNC during the Democratic primary. And then this DNC staffer called Seth Rich is murdered in Washington, D.C. in a robbery in which his wallet is not taken.

And a number of conservative, conservative people who call themselves conservatives went on TV and said, “I think Seth Rich was murdered because he knew too much.” And then those people were either sued or threatened with lawsuits from Seth Rich’s family. So everybody shut up about it.

And then Julian Assange is asked repeatedly who runs WikiLeaks at the time before they send him to prison for talking like this, “Did the Russians send you that information?” And he goes, “No.” “Did Seth Rich?” And he says, “We’re not going to talk about that.”

So the heavy implication is that Seth, and I don’t know the answer despite knowing Julian Assange, but the heavy implication was that Seth Rich sent this information because he was offended by how the DNC was taking Bernie Sanders out, was basically all behind Hillary Clinton. It was a rigged election and they were crushing Bernie Sanders and he was offended.

So he leaked these emails and they killed him for it. And no one was allowed to talk about that. Now, I don’t know if that’s what happened, but I knew someone at very high level, the DNC, who thought that, thought that’s what happened. And no one’s ever talked about it again.

MATT GAETZ: We in Congress had people that were doing various roles within the D.C. Police Department come and say, “We want to be whistleblowers and we want to talk about the way in which this investigation was truncated.” And we didn’t get to really do the…

TUCKER CARLSON: No, the FBI trailer.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. Do the shoe leather work. But there’s a way that the FBI can involve themselves in these investigations that doesn’t strip the agency completely away from their partners to also participate. And so these whistleblowers were concerned about that. And then ultimately they weren’t really given much of a platform.

TUCKER CARLSON: And, well, we never saw Seth Rich’s laptop. And that story just ended. And I’m not alleging anything.

MATT GAETZ: Isn’t the tell in that how it kept shifting? Like, first it was the emails, and then it was Vladimir Putin had taken over Facebook with $120,000. And then it was actually like George Papadopoulos in a London bar, then it was Don Jr. at Trump Tower. It was an effort to obscure the lack of quality in any of these theories by just having a sufficient quantity of them.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s always, that’s called flooding the zone. And that’s what happened. I’m watching that happen right now. That’s what always, that is the most classic move of anyone involved in a psyop. The intel community. Yeah, you just flood. You see this with UAPs. Pretty obvious what they are actually, in my view. But no, it’s this, it’s Men from Mars, it’s Advanced Technology Program, it’s like, whatever. Yeah. They flood it with too many theories. And you think that’s what happened there?

Foreign Intelligence Operations Against Trump

MATT GAETZ: Of course, because none of the theories could individually hold water. And I had a recent conversation with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and I like John, but I chastised him for not answering some of these fundamental questions.

Joseph Mifsud was this professor who was drawn into an intelligence operation against the United States. He was drawn into that operation either by the United States or one of our allies. How do we not know the answer to that question? This was the key thing that we said we were going to uncover when we got power.

And I know they got a lot of work to do to keep the country safe, but I would encourage the director of the CIA to really tell us the CIA’s role.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s the answer, do you think?

MATT GAETZ: Well, I believe that some of this crowd in the Obama administration knew that their direct management of an asset against the Trump administration would create paperwork, payments, you know, complicating things that could be found out.

And so they went to other European countries and said, “You know, you do us a favor, we do you a favor, but the favor we want from you is actually to go against our country, our presidential candidate, Donald Trump.”

And that is treasonous. That is straight treason to ask another country to attack your country. And I think that occurred. And I think that if we knew who had authorized that, we would have a person to be at the center of this broader RICO conspiracy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And traditionally, it’s been Britain and France who play that role.

MATT GAETZ: Huge intel presence in Italy as well.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

MATT GAETZ: It’s one of the biggest.

TUCKER CARLSON: And now with the growth of NATO under this war, it’s Romania, it’s Eastern Europe, it’s wherever you have a NATO base, you have, there are a lot of other things that come with it, of course. So you’ve seen this a lot where American political actors, or IC members in the United States use foreign governments to do their work for them.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. And I am concerned that that doesn’t just happen abroad, that that happens even within the eight square miles of Washington, D.C.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you feel when you worked there that there was a lot of intrigue?

MATT GAETZ: There’s always intrigue. But I think that a lot of the decisions that get made in Washington are detached from the elected leaders, and there probably should be more intrigue. Actually, our lawmakers should be more curious and inquisitive and skeptical.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you mean? A lot of the decisions that are made are detached from elected leaders.

MATT GAETZ: Well, look, take these bills that get written, right? Like, do you think that anyone who voted for the one big beautiful bill act was trying to outlaw hemp? It just was stuck in the bill and then they voted for it.

And however you feel about hemp, I think it’s kind of crazy that an issue wouldn’t even get its own dignity. Like the lashing together of disparate issues for just an up or down vote that kind of becomes a shirts and skins exercise is a way to detach from the realities of the decision making.

And those decisions are made by staff, by interest groups, by foreign countries at times.

Looking Ahead to the Midterms

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s going to happen in the next two election cycles?

MATT GAETZ: I think we are headed for a bloodbath in the midterms for a few reasons, primarily history. The president’s party loses seats during the midterms. I don’t think I’m breaking any news there.

And I think that the other side has just really worked up and they have an organizing principle. The organizing principle of the left in America today is we hate Trump, and they don’t really need any more than that. And there’s something elegant politically about using that to activate voters.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, totally.

MATT GAETZ: Whereas we’re trying to tell people to reward us for securing the border. And voting is rarely an exercise in rewarding prior conduct. It is always about new promises. What are the new promises you’re making?

And right now, a lot of people have economic anxiety around the cost of living. I think the Democrats, again, have an elegant presentation to make, which is, “We’re going to take the things that cost you a lot of money and have the government provide those to you, and then those things won’t cost you a lot of money.”

And we try to make an argument about economic theory that doesn’t always land with the same poignancy.

TUCKER CARLSON: So midterms in a year, very tough.

The 2028 Presidential Race

Yeah, I think Hakeem Jeffries becomes the speaker. I think that they will then, because the problem is the candy becomes the poison for them. Because when they do this big “elect us so that we can use all these tools to fight Trump,” then once they get that power, they’re going to be pressed to continually use the silliest ones.

And think about what they’ve already used. They’ve already used the attempted application of criminal law that backfired. They already used the impeachment process. That backfired. And so what I think Democrats believe, or what they’ve recently been conditioned to believe, is that shutdowns are good for them under Trump, that that’s good politics.

So my prediction is Democrats win the midterms, they execute a series of ransom-like shutdowns on Trump. The country gets weary of that and probably elects J.D. Vance president in 2028.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s the field look like in 2028 on our side?

MATT GAETZ: I mean, I’m just assuming that there will be, you know, Ted Cruz. I mean, Ted Cruz is running, I guess, against you, apparently, which is—I’ve never seen that. It’s odd to have someone running for president where the organizing principle of their campaign is to attack someone else who is not running for president. It’s a novelty, or ever will for Ted.

But, you know, Ted and Ron DeSantis both want to be president really bad, but they just suffer from a likability problem and they’re not really having a good time.

TUCKER CARLSON: I can tell.

MATT GAETZ: And when you run for president, Ted looks miserable. When you run for president, there’s an element of it where the people have to feel like they’re a part of something fun. And that’s something Trump understood, that’s something Charlie Kirk understood. And, you know, for Ron and Ted, it is the campaign is sort of something they have to do in order to get the power that they seek.

DeSantis and Cruz: The Likability Problem

TUCKER CARLSON: So what is that? I mean, I could see, you know, Ron DeSantis has been really successful in a lot of ways.

MATT GAETZ: I would vote for him again for governor if he could run again for governor.

TUCKER CARLSON: Florida, I would, too, despite the fact he signed a hate speech law in Israel, which is so offensive to me as an American, not because I’m against Israel, but we don’t have hate speech laws in the United States, and when we do, we don’t sign them in foreign countries. So I, you know—

MATT GAETZ: But you’d still vote for him again.

TUCKER CARLSON: For governor of Florida? Yeah. Oh, without thinking about it for sure. I think he’s been a great governor. You could whatever quibble about it, but generally, no, he’s been great. I totally agree.

But Ted Cruz is not going to be president, obviously. Nobody thinks that. I’m sure Mrs. Cruz doesn’t think that. She probably wants to get him out of the house. Who knows what’s going on. But why doesn’t Ted, who’s famously obviously the smartest person in America, why can’t he see that?

MATT GAETZ: Well, I think that, as we were discussing earlier, running for president is an itch that doesn’t go away with one scratch. I think that, you know, he believed he should have defeated Trump in the 2016 election, and he’s toiling in the Senate until he gets a next bite at the apple.

I think on the other side, I would have believed before Kamala Harris that the Democrats had nominated their last straight white guy.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I would think so, too.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, they’re just not. I mean, it is a movement that stands against straightness and white people.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is Gavin straight?

MATT GAETZ: He seems to be pretty enthusiastic heterosexual based on some of his personal conduct. Again, you never know.

TUCKER CARLSON: It could be an omnivore. There’s some of those.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, we’re not the bedroom police.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, no. I don’t even want to think about it, honestly.

Gavin Newsom’s Path to Power

MATT GAETZ: But Newsom has at least demonstrated power, and I think that is what Democrats have lacked in this time in the wilderness, in the Trump era, is that no one steps up and says, “I’m ready to use power effectively.”

And when Gavin Newsom stole those congressional seats with Prop 50 in California, it was an effective exercise of power, and I think voters may reward him for that. You know, someone else in the Democratic Party who wants to be president told me that it was actually Kamala Harris who has reignited the prospects of Gavin Newsom.

If they had just run Biden and lost, they would have never gone back to another straight white guy. But rolling out Harris and the embarrassment that that was has people thinking, “Well, you know, maybe we don’t want to try this again.”

TUCKER CARLSON: No, that’s—I believe that just knowing what they’re like, they’re just transactional. They just want power. That’s it. They don’t have any beliefs. They just want to be in charge. And I get it. I find it terrifying, but that’s who they are.

And I also think that when Gavin started going on conservative podcasts, that’s when I was like, oh, you are formidable. I mean, he didn’t, you know, defend his own policies very effectively. It didn’t matter. He went on other people’s podcasts and took questions. Ballsy.

MATT GAETZ: Well, that in essence is an indictment of Harris, because Harris could not have an extended, intelligent conversation about anything. And so just getting over the most basic of hurdles to be able to string sentences together was this great display of talent in the Democratic Party.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he’ll say anything. He just doesn’t—

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, but look at what they’ve been through, right? Joe Biden never did extended discussions. Harris never did extended discussions. So he was giving the base at least some viewpoint into his thinking on things.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you think Gavin will be the nominee right now?

MATT GAETZ: I would say so. I think that AOC is going to make a compelling run and I think she will be formidable as well.

TUCKER CARLSON: I really do.

Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party

MATT GAETZ: If Bernie really does the handoff like you and I—Bernie has this kind of goofy professor persona, but in reality, Bernie’s a deeply selfish person. He’s selfish and a coward.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s a total coward.

MATT GAETZ: And he believes he is the leader of the Democratic Party.

TUCKER CARLSON: Does he really?

MATT GAETZ: Well, but he’s won every argument in it. Maybe he is the leader of the Democratic Party. If you look on policy, Bernie has won the argument on this shift towards socialism. But, you know, the party structurally did things twice to stop him from becoming the nominee.

TUCKER CARLSON: They stole the election from him. Twice.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he sat back and is like, “Oh, I’ve been kind of a sexist. I’m sorry.” I mean, he’s such a f*ing coward. I can’t deal with it. If he was real, at least I would respect it. AOC, same thing.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah. AOC is a very different person today than when she got to Congress. You know, corrupted, co-opted completely.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, the Gaza war is fine.

MATT GAETZ: It’s like, when we were ousting McCarthy, she came up to me and was like, “You know, I really respect this because I’ll be honest, we don’t have the guts to do this on our side.”

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s she like?

MATT GAETZ: Before January 6th, she was incredibly chummy with Republicans in Congress, would regularly come over to our side, sit down, hang out, talk about her day.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you ever date her?

MATT GAETZ: I did not. No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you try?

MATT GAETZ: No. Not my cup of tea. But she, after January 6th, treated us all like, you know, we had horns or something.

AOC and the Politics of Grievance

TUCKER CARLSON: So she gave this kind of famous statement after January 6th and said, you know, “As a trauma survivor, I was traumatized. I was almost killed that day.” Do you think that was real?

MATT GAETZ: No, but it is reflective of the performance art of Congress. And it was just bad performance.

TUCKER CARLSON: But how could you get points from anyone for being like, “Yeah, I’m a terrified little girl?”

MATT GAETZ: I find that contemptuous.

TUCKER CARLSON: You can’t be in charge of anything if you’re a terrified little girl.

MATT GAETZ: Sorry, but we are a society that is increasingly built on grievance identity. You are the grievance that you can access. Right. And so if you are a woman, that can be a source of grievance. If you’re a minority, and then you have people who are just odd and say, “Well, maybe if I’m trans, then that can be the source of grievance.”

And then you have a bunch of men, white men, looking around saying, “Well, I guess I’ll be a drug addict. Because then that can be my source of grievance.” And you know that she was leaning into that. She wanted to show that she had been aggrieved by this act and should be owed some unique empathy.

TUCKER CARLSON: But she revealed that she’s afraid, that she’s a coward. How is that—the only thing people respect on a gut level is strength and courage. That’s it. So I just don’t get, what’s the sincerity work?

MATT GAETZ: I mean, yeah, strength, courage.

TUCKER CARLSON: And sincerity grows from strength and courage. I’m brave enough to tell you what I really think.

MATT GAETZ: And I got to a point where I was confident enough with my district where I could say the things I believed that I knew they didn’t, because even if they disagreed with me on a subject, they knew I came to that view sincerely, that I wasn’t holding—

Marijuana legalization is something you and I disagree on. I disagreed with a majority of my constituents on that point. I authored Florida’s marijuana law. I support President Trump rescheduling marijuana. And when people at my First Baptist Church in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, came up to me to say they really disagreed with me on that, they did not vote against me as a consequence, because they knew that these were views that I sincerely hold.

The Magic of Authenticity

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I could be one of those congregants at the—if I were Baptist in the Baptist Church, because I agree with that. You know, I don’t expect people to agree with all of my eccentric views or my heartfelt views. It’s okay, we’re different people, but can’t deal with falseness at all.

MATT GAETZ: And that, I think, was the magic of Trump, and I think that’s a magic that he knows he needs to reignite on the campaign trail going into these midterms, the connection directly with the American voter. That no matter who you are, if you’re the president and behind the Resolute desk and in the Rose Garden, it’s a different experience than being out on the trail in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

TUCKER CARLSON: So what’s AOC’s lane? Is it the—

MATT GAETZ: The Bernie lane.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, but the Bernie lane was an economic lane, which I always had respect for. I didn’t agree with all of it. But “we’ve got too many billionaires and not a big enough middle class”—that’s true. That’s factually true. And anyone who says it I will agree with. And he used to say that in—

MATT GAETZ: The open borders line.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean they’re related. I mean we have always been open borders.

MATT GAETZ: They were always—I mean Bernie at one point, as part of his pro-American worker agenda was actually for restricted immigration.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, I’m saying they’re related in that—

MATT GAETZ: But it’s the AOC corollary. It’s to take the Bernie social issue, like economic socialism, and lash it to unchecked borders.

The Economic Impact of Immigration and Labor

TUCKER CARLSON: If you care about the lopsided economy where all the wealth is concentrated in too few hands and the country’s becoming unstable as a result, becoming pre-Chavez Venezuela. We’re going to get a revolution if this continues. I wrote a book about this. If you care about that, you have to ask how did that happen?

And the main way it happened was by unchecked immigration, which devalued labor. That’s people have less economic power because there are more people willing to work for less. It’s really simple. It’s why organized labor always supported immigration restrictions. They’re the ones who got him in 1924. They closed the borders for that reason.

And Bernie was from that tradition and I always respected it. And then he became this kind of neoliberal hybrid where he’s like, “oh, we got to fight Russia and it’s racist to be against borders.” And like what? You know what I mean? We have to send money to Israel. What? Like, so I don’t think that’s a real lane. I don’t think it’s sustainable lane, do you?

MATT GAETZ: It is a sufficient cohort of voters to virtue signal kind of a reignition of Bernie’s economic policies alongside. Like she will stand up and say no more money for Israel, no more money for ICE and universal basic income for Americans and open borders. That would be the core of the—

TUCKER CARLSON: Open borders with universal basic income and—

MATT GAETZ: Print more by the way. Like, I mean, did you see what we just did in the economy in this past week? We are printing money to buy our own debt right now.

TUCKER CARLSON: The self-licking ice cream cone, the electric windmill.

MATT GAETZ: I know there’s right. How much of it is real when we’re printing money to buy our own debt.

Wealth Concentration and Housing Crisis

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And the explosion of personal wealth among people I know is just unbelievable. Not me, but at all. But all of a sudden, you know, people who are just like, you know, worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Whereas I never—and I grew up in rich people world. I never really knew anyone with hundreds and hundreds of millions.

MATT GAETZ: One in every ten Americans is a millionaire now.

TUCKER CARLSON: Actually.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re including assets. Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, homeowners are millionaires now, so.

MATT GAETZ: Well, and that, you know, if you talk about the revolution coming, I mean, housing is as likely to be a part of that as anything else because the way housing is indexed to what people make and what they can afford is insane in this country.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And I’m totally opposed to revolutions. However, if there was ever a reason to have one, it’s that. That’s a real grievance. I think that’s totally—

MATT GAETZ: Isn’t it kind of what all revolutions are about? Like, where am I going to live? What’s going to—

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And how do my kids have kids? You know, how does this continue? How do my genes thrive when I’m gone? I mean, yeah.

The Modern Dating Crisis

MATT GAETZ: Have you noticed this trend online where all these lonely women in their 30s are making car selfie videos about their personal anguish that they can’t find men? I post one recently, got millions of views and it—what’s—I feel compassion. I feel sad.

My wife has so many friends who are beautiful, accomplished, wonderful people, but they cannot find men. They cannot find men to marry them. And they start to feel the clock ticking and it’s really a lonely world out there.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I think it’s important to identify how we got here. And certain bad ideas played a huge role. Feminism, which is just a total lie on every level. But also the way the economy is structured where businesses decided to be ignorant. Good idea to bring women into the workforce. A better idea than say, supporting families or allowing people to have children. Like was more important to have female workers than it was to have American families.

MATT GAETZ: This is a constant discussion we have on my One America News program is like, can you have both? Because I do see women who excel in the workplace.

TUCKER CARLSON: Rich people can have both. Sure. Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: Build businesses who have great ideas and are the center of their family.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I certainly know a lot of women in the workplace who are amazing. And if women left the workforce, you know, my business would fall apart. I mean, and they’re the best. And anyone who’s an employer, I’m a small bore employer, will tell you female employees, man, there’s some jobs—

MATT GAETZ: Type A women.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, that’s—

MATT GAETZ: Crush it.

TUCKER CARLSON: That is a hundred percent right, of course. And they’re also just the greatest people to work with if you’re a man, because there’s no competition. They’re so nice. They’re always nice. I’ve—I’m 56. I’ve never had a dispute with a woman at work, ever. Not one.

I’ve seen them mistreat each other in a way that North Koreans could learn from. It’s truly cruel the way they behave to each other. But if you’re a male employer having female employees, it is a hundred percent upside. They will never stop thinking about their job. They will never stop being nice to you. They’re great at their job. Certain jobs, they’re the only ones who can do it because they—

Women, Work, and Marriage

MATT GAETZ: But do you think men are out there looking for jobless women? Because I certainly wasn’t when I was single and trying to find a wife. I was not out there seeking someone who had nothing else going on but to serve me in a marriage. I think it’s people’s passions, and women—

TUCKER CARLSON: Will choose their family if given their choice, and some won’t. I mean, there’s anomalies in every cohort. But—

MATT GAETZ: But what do you say to the ones who are like, I want to make that choice? Millions of women out there that are like, please present me the guy who isn’t spending all this day playing Fortnite and hanging out at the tattoo part of the—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, look, the first thing to know is men and women need each other. They can’t exist separately, or they’re destroyed. They destroy themselves a hundred percent. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and they can’t live alone. Again, there are exceptions to all of these rules, but overpopulations. These are hard and fast rules that have existed since Adam and Eve. So it’s just a fact. And if you ignore that fact, you’ll be destroyed. And we are, because we’ve ignored it.

So most women, if given the choice between going to work at J.P. Morgan or staying home and raising their small children, will, of course, choose staying home and raising their small children if they’re given the choice. They’re not given the choice, because feminism, total f*ing lie. There are no choices. Get to work.

MATT GAETZ: Well, oftentimes, it’s people’s economic conditions that take the choice away. If you’re saying—that’s what I’m saying. If you’re sitting on $130,000 in student loans because you were told that you had this great—

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the point I’m making. Great future. They don’t have a choice. That’s why they do it. And it’s a Hobson’s choice.

MATT GAETZ: But it’s not marital bondage as much as it’s economic bondage to debt.

TUCKER CARLSON: Marriage isn’t bondage for women. Marriage, family is the context in which women have the most power. Women have no power outside of their relationships. Women are relational. So if you want to empower women—

MATT GAETZ: They can have power in business, they can have wealth, they can have money.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s not power. That’s not power. Who has more power over you? Your employee or your mom? Your employee or your wife? Your employer? Your employer or your daughter? Real power is the power to influence other people. And women outside the family have very little within the family. They have huge power. There’s no man—

MATT GAETZ: Almost all of it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Almost all of it. There’s no man who ignores his wife. There’s no son who ignores his mother. There’s no father who ignores his daughter. And so, I mean, there may be, but they’re freaks. The average man is influenced by women in the family more than any other place.

So if you want to empower women, put them at the center of a family. If you want to disempower them, put them at the center of Citibank. It’s super simple. And liars and dumb people, like a f*ing feminist, like, “no real power comes from money and job title.” And it’s like, that’s a lie. And anyone who believes that is—

MATT GAETZ: They think—idiot, but they think it’s their power to get a man. Like, there was this theory that the way you prepare yourself to get the husband you want is to showcase your LinkedIn resume and your—

TUCKER CARLSON: And your—who told them that?

MATT GAETZ: You don’t think there are a lot of women who are going to watch this program that have tuned up by now to say, and say, “yeah, I actually thought if I had the big job and had the house, that a man would want to be—”

TUCKER CARLSON: Serious. I mean, look, I shouldn’t be surprised because people believe dumb things, because look around. But that’s the dumbest of all.

MATT GAETZ: Look, imagine believing that and now being caught—

The Marriage Economics Problem

TUCKER CARLSON: How much social science do we need? First of all, we don’t need any because we just know our lived experiences. But there’s a lot of study on this, if you’re interested. I happen to be. Women do not want to marry men who make less than they do, period.

In any society in which that becomes the case, you find marriage dropping off a cliff. That’s what happened to black America. Black people used to be married like everybody else. Then black women started making more than black men. The marriage rate declined.

Rural America, rural whites. I live in a place like this. The women, on average, make more than men because they work at the hospitals and the schools. The men have only seasonal work. Guess what? No marriage.

So if you want to discourage marriage, set up a system where the women make more, which is the system that we have. That’s why people don’t get married, because women make more. And the women are making a decision, they don’t want it. They may want to sleep with them. They want to have his babies. They don’t want to marry him.

MATT GAETZ: It’s just a fact.

TUCKER CARLSON: Ask them. Ask a woman, do you want to marry a man who’s shorter than you or makes less than you? And the answer is no. But nobody asks women, because nobody cares. Because the idea is to destroy the country, its people, and its most basic structure of the family.

So it’s just like, we’re going to do this in your name and tell you what you want, but they don’t want that. And if you ask, ask 15 women, do you want to marry a man who’s shorter than you or makes less than you?

MATT GAETZ: No, I’ve asked. Yeah, you’re right. It’s—I’m so lonely. I need to find someone. I have so much love to give. I’ve built a great life. I want to share it with someone. And then it’s like, okay, a woman says that. No, women say this. And then I say, are you—

TUCKER CARLSON: The dumbest thing I’ve ever heard?

MATT GAETZ: Are you cool with a guy who makes less than $100,000? “Well, you know, that shows that he doesn’t have ambition.” Oh, what about someone who’s a little shorter? “Well, I want to feel, you know, I want to feel feminine. And if someone’s shorter, that I don’t think I’ll be able to—”

TUCKER CARLSON: Things are more f*ed up than I really—if people actually believe that. What? Look, a man’s job is to protect and provide, period. Those are his jobs. Protect and provide, period.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, but when that class of men is shrinking because testosterone is falling—

TUCKER CARLSON: Got it.

MATT GAETZ: Because of kind of the war on masculinity that we’ve endured for the last 40 years. When that resource isn’t available, then women start to say, “well, I’ve got to put a roof over my own head. I’ve got to protect and provide for myself.” And there are a lot of them who would say, where is my protector and provider?

TUCKER CARLSON: I get it. I’m not attacking women. I’m just—at all. I feel so—I’ve got three daughters. I feel so sorry for women. I do. And I, as a man, I always blame the man first. Always. A hundred percent. It’s your job. You’re the man. Your wife’s unhappy. Whose fault is that? Yours.

MATT GAETZ: Kids are out of control. It is the job of a husband to keep your wife—

TUCKER CARLSON: A hundred percent. That’s your job.

MATT GAETZ: Yes.

The Foundation of Marriage and Happiness

TUCKER CARLSON: I literally couldn’t agree more. And if she’s a drunk or something, it’s not going to work. It’s out of your control. But in a normal marriage with two sober people who are kind of trying, it is up to you. By the way, her happiness is not contingent on yours. Your happiness is contingent on hers. That’s the great equalizer, designed by God to keep balance in a relationship.

MATT GAETZ: I don’t know a single man who’s truly happy, whose wife hates him. Of course, I don’t know one.

TUCKER CARLSON: And the reason our system, our biology is set up that way is because men are physically dominant. So you could just beat up your wife and rape her and make her do whatever you wanted, but it’s terrible. Exactly. It sounds terrible. Exactly. That’s exactly the point. It sounds terrible. Men don’t want that.

They want a woman to be sexually attracted, to be happy, to have real orgasms, to be. They want it to be genuine. And that’s the equalizer. You’re totally focused on your wife’s happiness. That keeps it equal. That gives her power. That’s where her power comes from.

MATT GAETZ: How do we fix it?

TUCKER CARLSON: By letting people observe the laws of nature, which they ignore at their peril. You can’t ignore the laws of nature around you or you get killed.

MATT GAETZ: Nature is sending us the message. When we see the declining birth rate, when we see the societal impact, nature is sending us the message that this isn’t working.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And you’re not allowed. You’re considered some sort of weird religious freak when you’re like, “I don’t know. Unnatural sex acts gives rise to disease.” People are like, “Shut up. Shut up.” Well, they do. I mean, I don’t know. Have you. I’ve been alive for 56 years. I’ve watched this. That’s just a fact.

I’m not saying I want it to be that way. I’m not in charge of nature, actually. And I’m not in charge of human nature above all. None of us is.

Modern Dating and Marriage Economics

MATT GAETZ: Do you really know women who think if they get a big salary in a house, some guy will want to marry them?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh yeah, would you? There are many who will watch this discussion and say, “I am, that I am perfectly suited for marriage. I have everything, I’ve done everything society has asked of me. I got an advanced degree, I got a six figure job, my LinkedIn is fire. I do five spinning classes a week. I look good.”

And every man that I find either is on the dating apps. And they have so much optionality that there’s not really an incentive to anchor your life with someone. Or they’re losers. And they can be losers who’ve inherited money and just have no desire to build something beyond that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I’m sorry to sound like a liberal. I do blame society. I blame what people are taught and the lies that they get through propaganda for convincing them that something so obviously absurd could be true. I mean, of course men find that emasculating, unappealing. No man wants to marry a woman with her own house and a higher income than him. No way. And she doesn’t want to marry him.

MATT GAETZ: You know, if you had marriage as this thing that gave people financial security. Right. And you know, 40s and 50s people were getting married and then that you’re bound to someone economically. And built a life together. You got married in your 20s and did your thing.

And then when we did no fault divorce, then marriage really became a contract, more than anything else. And just like any other contract, when you’re out of the contract, there are certain obligations that you still have to fill financially and otherwise.

And then, you know, the obvious next step is, well, if marriage is a contract, kind of so is dating in a weird way on what you will provide and what I’ll provide. And if, you know, at the end of it, you know, there are women who say, “Yeah, if I’m going to spend my time to go on a date, I want you to pay for it.”

I think that’s where we are. And I don’t mind. When I hear women say that they go out and the guy wants to split the check. To me, there’s nothing, there’s nothing chivalrous or interesting about that. I think that’s awful.

TUCKER CARLSON: Look again, men and women need each other. They complement each other.

MATT GAETZ: Tame each other. Men are necessary to tame women and women must tame men 100%.

TUCKER CARLSON: And without each other, they become just industrial components who can be manipulated by global capital or whatever, whatever force you’re afraid of. The only real protection is your family. And that includes the one not just you were born into, but the one that you start yourself. That’s your bulwark. That’s your fortress.

And if people are making it impossible for you to build that fortress, I respect the whole man. It’s not just what you say you believe. It’s, how do you live? If I had a camera in your house, would your kids respect you? Does your wife respect you? If not, why would I respect you?

Childless Leadership and Its Consequences

MATT GAETZ: I feel that, do you think that the notion of the barren life is what motivates people like Lindsey Graham to go to conflict 100%?

TUCKER CARLSON: A normal person goes home, you go home. I don’t know if you and I are normal, but just like a conventional person goes home. And it’s like, I’ve got all kinds of views, but continuity matters to me because I’ve got descendants. If you have no descendants, it ends with you.

And you don’t believe. Clearly, these people, none of these people believe in God. So it’s like, I don’t know. I got 15, 20 years, five, three years, whatever I have. We don’t know. And it doesn’t matter what happens after that. That’s scary. That’s day trading with the world, right?

MATT GAETZ: With your life.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, but with everyone else’s life. You think, why would Lindsey Graham care? 70 years old. He’s not. He has no kids. Why does it matter if there’s a nuclear war? I mean, he’s looking just at. He’s not the back nine. It’s like the back three at this point. His options are heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. That’s it. There’s no tomorrow.

MATT GAETZ: Sad, don’t you think? I do think. I mean, you know, having children vests you in the future in a way that not having children just doesn’t.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, hasn’t it changed your attitudes?

MATT GAETZ: Of course.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course.

MATT GAETZ: And, you know, the way you care about what comes after you shifts dramatically.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it was like maybe 10 years ago. Some smart friend of mine sent me this list of European leaders. I’m interested in Europe. So I felt like I knew a lot. I didn’t know that none of them had kids. And I remember thinking, that’s not. First of all, you can’t say anything about that because you want to seem like you’re attacking people without kids, which I’m not. I’m feeling sorry for them.

I’m attacking the idea of childless leadership. You can’t have leaders with no kids because they’re not thinking longer term because why would they?

MATT GAETZ: And look what happened to Europe in the Harris campaign.

TUCKER CARLSON: And the Harris campaign.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, whatever.

TUCKER CARLSON: What’s going to happen to her?

MATT GAETZ: She’s running again. You haven’t seen the news. She’s assembling her team.

TUCKER CARLSON: And for what? President. Yeah. Come on now.

MATT GAETZ: As we’ve said, it’s an ambition that resurfaces often.

Democratic Party Leadership and Control

TUCKER CARLSON: So what? I mean, you know a lot more about this, but let’s say you decide you’re going to run for president. How does your party exert influence on you to stop? That’s such a bad idea. You would think somewhere in the Democratic Party be able to say, “No.”

MATT GAETZ: I don’t know. Again, who’s. You assume the Obamas are in charge of that party, so potentially they could move her to another path. But you know, they’ll have a crowded field and may be the case that having ancillary people around soaking up votes is good for the ultimate objective. I can’t imagine the Obamas and the Gavin Newsom world would mix. Well, that’s not really the same vein of the Democratic Party.

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you know anyone who’s friends with her or knows her well?

MATT GAETZ: Harris?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: No, I don’t think I do.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s kind of strange considering, you know, everybody.

MATT GAETZ: I know a lot of people, but I can’t say that there was a single member of Congress I ever interacted with that could talk about any private moment or in depth conversation they’d ever had with Kamala Harris.

TUCKER CARLSON: So there was really no constituency for her. It wasn’t. I mean, that was. Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: I think that Democrats believed that there is this vast part of the population whose dream candidate is some combination of Michelle Obama and Oprah. And the closest they could get was bargain basement Kamala Harris to go and attempt to achieve that archetype and just didn’t work out.

TUCKER CARLSON: So it was all about race and gender.

MATT GAETZ: I think that that was a huge part of it. And we saw the limits of playing into those impulses with Harris.

The Future: Automation and Economic Shifts

TUCKER CARLSON: Last question. Where do you think the country goes in the next, say, three years? What are the big trends?

MATT GAETZ: Obviously, you know, we’re going to see automation in the next three years in a level that you and I have never seen in our lives.

TUCKER CARLSON: You really believe we’ll see that in the next three years?

MATT GAETZ: I do. I believe that automation in transportation, in agriculture, in manufacturing will be the new dominant force in our lives. And I don’t think that’s going to be entirely good. I think that it’s inevitable because the capabilities when you think automation will be a dominant force in our lives.

TUCKER CARLSON: For years?

MATT GAETZ: Yes. I think that I will tell my grandkids what it was like to order food from a person. That will not be, that will go the way of the pay phone. There are 7 million American men who make their living driving today in one form or another. Those jobs are gone in the next half decade.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where do those people go?

MATT GAETZ: I think that’s when you start to see these calls for universal basic income. Because we will say that there’s such wealth being created on a lot of these tech platforms that doesn’t get shared broadly. And I worry that that draw politically is something that will zap the motivation of the country in a bad way.

Just look at this health care debate that’s happening right now as a microcosm of this trend. Republicans are trying to cobble together something that they think is a free market approach to health care. As if anything in health care is a free market. And Democrats are just saying we’re going to give you free stuff for longer.

And I think that Republicans in swing districts have seen that. And so we can’t beat that. So we have to have our own version of we’ll give you free stuff longer. And you may see these Obamacare credits extended via a discharge petition that does just that. And that brings the right in America in line with where the right has moved in Europe, which is toward economic liberalism, which I’m not for.

Wealth Redistribution and the Middle Class

TUCKER CARLSON: I think you’ll see what also has happened in Europe where the richest people, the Bill Ackmans, the bottom feeders like Bill Ackman, non productive elements of the economy. You just made billions of dollars shorting stocks. Those people are totally fine. They offshore their money, they find ways around tax compliance. But it’s the level down. It’s the 65 year old Florida retirees who own some insurance company in Indiana.

MATT GAETZ: They spent their whole life building it. They sold it for 5 million bucks.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. Exactly Right. Yeah.

MATT GAETZ: They have just enough money.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly right. To live on a golf course outside Sarasota. Love Ron DeSantis, love Trump. And those people are going to see everything stolen from them.

MATT GAETZ: And the method of theft will be the devaluation of their existing assets.

TUCKER CARLSON: It will be the devaluation. That’s it. Especially real estate. I totally agree with that. And I think in taxation, just like the.

MATT GAETZ: And I love Steve Bannon. So I don’t want our last discussion to come across as a criticism of Steve, but I mean, he’s going to run for president on just a straight Elizabeth Warren wealth tax, economic agenda.

TUCKER CARLSON: Actually.

MATT GAETZ: Yeah, he’s going to run for president and say take the money from those people who have way too much of it, the Bill Ackmans of the world. And I want to give it to you.

TUCKER CARLSON: I wonder if that has that ever. It always seems like those people flee the country. I mean, Miami is filled.

MATT GAETZ: People who fled other countries.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. That’s exactly right. And they live in splendor. Not attacking them, but like they didn’t give up their money, they just left. And then the middle class, upper middle, upper middle class especially, just get hammered. And that is the core of your society. Right.

MATT GAETZ: It won’t last that way. And you know, Trump’s elections have been, I think, a reaction to that broader trend we’ve experienced for decades.

And you know, what I hope doesn’t happen is that it just becomes a policy race to the bottom to try to, you know, throw insufficient solutions at that. You know, things like, well, we’ll just give them free houses, we’ll just give them free health care.

TUCKER CARLSON: The robots will just build the houses in national parks.

MATT GAETZ: Right, Right. Wouldn’t that be awful?

TUCKER CARLSON: Matt Gaetz, thank you for spending all this time.

MATT GAETZ: It’s always good to see you, man.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I’m just glad that you survived everything and you’re thriving.

MATT GAETZ: Likewise.

TUCKER CARLSON: Are you running for president?

MATT GAETZ: No, not of this country.

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