Tucker Carlson Show: w/ Buckley Carlson on Writing Trump’s Speeches (Transcript)

Mitt Romney.

TUCKER CARLSON: Mitt Romney.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Oh, yeah. Mitt Romney.

TUCKER CARLSON: Mitt Romney.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And of course, so Trump talked about actually focusing on America, repairing the problems that this entire class of people had brought upon us, the American citizen.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you were in that class of people and you literally worked for a polling— the most famous polling company, and you were in politics and you live in Northwest Washington, D.C. and like basically Trump is calling for the destruction of your world.

The Degradation of America and Trump’s Appeal

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I didn’t see it that way because I think these people had already destroyed our world, and I’d seen it up close and personally, not only in the education system but in the environment around me. We lived in a much dirtier country. We lived in a country that wouldn’t even embrace any of the things that were great about America that I had grown up embracing— not just freedom, not just individuality, but cleanliness and Christian principles.

We had such a wonderful country when I was growing up, and it had been transformed. You could see it in Washington probably better than you could see it even in border states, the disconnect between what people had voted for, what people wanted, what they continually expressed that they wanted from their Republican leaders. And they were denied it every time.

And Trump came in and said, look, there’s an end to that. This is unacceptable. We’ve failed over the past 30 years. I’ve seen it up close and personal. Aside from all of his obvious foibles and his disgusting elements of his personality, he was, it seemed, someone who had been steeped— he built things. And very few people built things by the time Trump came along. We were not a manufacturing society at that point.

And even if I didn’t like his gilded name on all sorts of properties, he had employed a ton of people. He had actually contributed to the economy. He had been saying a lot of these financial— I wasn’t really steeped in the financial world and didn’t understand our trade policies, but when Trump explained how beneficial it was to the rest of the world rather than America, our trade policies, I actually paid attention and read up and realized that he was telling the truth.

And then everything he said about the border, which you could see if you traveled around America, which I certainly did, the degradation of America was obscene. And the destruction of things that I had held dear my entire life, and I think most Americans did.

It was— Trump represented a return to normalcy. And then of course, I was totally enamored of his personal strength and his ability to— there’s no one who’s been more attacked than Donald Trump, obviously, over the last decade, but nothing more aggressively than when he first came down that escalator and announced for president. Like he was attacked by absolutely everybody in the world, not just the left, not just the media, but as you said, everybody on the right took him as a joke.

It’s like, actually, we’re not electing individuals, we’re electing the policies that they will defend and put forward when they’re in office. And Trump articulated a very small set of priorities that I really found attractive and did so with calm and repetitiveness that seemed legit and sincere. Especially the more he was attacked, because he never bended. And I’d never seen that in American politics, ever.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you’ve been around it a lot.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Been around a lot. And actually, jumping forward a decade, Trump had expanded the coalition so aggressively. Back when he started, the ideas in the Republican Party about expanding the coalition were not harnessing the things that were great about America. It was actually surrendering to— you know, speak Spanish if you want to appeal to new voters. Don’t talk about the cultural degradation of America because that will turn people off.

Well, Trump flipped that on its head completely and said, actually, there’s a lot about America we should and will be defending. And so that attracted me to him. I love that about him.

Writing Speeches for Trump in 2015

TUCKER CARLSON: When did you get involved?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: The end of 2015, I got hooked up with people in Trump’s orbit. It was still a very embryonic campaign. I mean, the entire campaign was mostly a media campaign even throughout the whole ’16 effort, but early on—

TUCKER CARLSON: It never stopped being a media campaign.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It never stopped being a media campaign. But there were a few people around him who were actually producing work. So I got in touch with them, or through— I got connected through a common friend of ours and ended up writing some early speeches for Trump and Stephen Miller. I was corresponding with Stephen Miller and writing some early speeches for Trump. That’s crazy.

Tucker Reflects on His Own Awakening to Trump

TUCKER CARLSON: I didn’t realize that at the time. I don’t think I took Trump seriously at all until the summer of ’15, probably, when our friend Patrick Feeney in Maine told me that he was thinking about voting for Trump or Bernie Sanders. They seemed very similar to him. And I was like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. They’re polar opposites. And my brain started to change. I started to see the obvious. But you were already on it. That’s so interesting.

I mean, it’s a lot to ask anybody to understand his own motives, but why do you think, to the extent you can analyze it, why do you think you living in a political world with a political job, being from a group of people who hated Trump, living in a neighborhood that hated Trump, why were you uniquely able to see the things that your neighbors couldn’t, like the degradation of America and connect that to the policies that produced it? And why could nobody else?

The Hollowness of the Republican Party

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Maybe it was because I had actually worked in Washington for so long. I hadn’t been born in Washington, but I moved there as a teenager and then had worked in politics, elected politics, and then corporate America, but very much adjacent to political world and worked with pollsters and people who message tested. And I had worked closely with the Republican coalition when they got back in power in ’94.

And I saw to the extent that people were phony. There was a huge disconnect between their personal lives and how they voted and how they campaigned. Gay and super gay, and very much in our party, which I was surprised by because the left was always crazy and they were always sort of attracted these people who at least they were open about it. The Bernie Franks of the world, at least.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, yeah, no, totally their weird lifestyles.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But the Republican Party was completely empty. And I had also lived through—

TUCKER CARLSON: Empty, what do you mean?

John McCain: Admiration and Betrayal

BUCKLEY CARLSON: They had no principles that they were willing to stand up for. And I had seen— probably the starkest example was John McCain, who I had grown up really respecting. Was at a time in America when people actually celebrated war heroes. I thought he was a war hero at that time. I subsequently learned differently. But it was when he attacked the tobacco industry early on when I was first working for corporate America, a big PR firm, and he had led the charge against big tobacco and had been a grandstander and a phony. And I had known him personally and really liked him as a person.

TUCKER CARLSON: I did too. I really liked him as a guy.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah, he was hilarious. It was hilarious and physically tough.

TUCKER CARLSON: I thought he was physically tough. And he was also— sorry to say it out loud— he was a WASP, and he had grown up in— he’d gone to Episcopal High School, and he just had excellent manners. He was funny in a way that I could relate to. He had a kind of heart to him, a kind of physical courage that I, of course, we grew up admiring that. And I was completely taken in by his persona or so, not even the war stuff, but just his sort of, I don’t know, his style. I understood it immediately and I liked it.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: He was totally approachable. Yeah, I remember early on in my political career, that I would come across him at fundraisers and cocktail parties, and he’s the guy I would gravitate to and stand next to the bar and chat with because he was so approachable and funny.

TUCKER CARLSON: So funny.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah. And he did— he seemed— that was representative of a really different time. I mean, that was the Lindsey Grahams of the world walk around with huge security details.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I wish someone would explain that to me. But John McCain didn’t. John McCain was a man’s man.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And he was— as I said, I thought physically tough. So—

TUCKER CARLSON: No, that is such a smart point. Men did not have security details. It’s just a show of rank. It’s also a display of cowardice, honestly. And McCain would never have a security detail because culturally, we don’t do that.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Plus, he seemed capable of beating him to death with his comb. I mean, if he had to.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree. I mean, all of this is lost on people now, but no— a security detail? What? Who do you think you are?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Absolutely shameful.

TUCKER CARLSON: No. And he had a kind of— again, not to make it an ethnic thing, but this is a cultural thing. He had like a kind of WASP egalitarianism to him that was completely real. Like, he would have a legit conversation with the waiter.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Was not a rank guy like these fraudulent new money insecure people. He was like a real guy. Yes. Is that fair?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Very much so. Plus hilarious in the sense of humorous, right? Demonstrates, one, obviously not only a high intellect, but a certain comfort with people. And if you can talk to your constituents— or I wasn’t really a constituent of his, but I was a 23-year-old and I was an American, and he made me feel like my opinion mattered. And he wasn’t self-conscious. He was not a big apologizer. He didn’t think about what he said. Exactly. And Trump was the same way. Trump was like—

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, so go back to the McCain thing. I knew McCain very, very intimately well and really liked him, as I said. But the tobacco thing, tell me what— why that was significant to you, because I agree with that.

The Tobacco Wars and Political Betrayal

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Well, tobacco represented, first of all, not only like one of the biggest commercial products that we have in America, I always thought it was sort of entwined with American freedom and history. 100%. We had all these tobacco-producing states all around D.C., of course, but in the South, that was the point of the colony. 100%. Absolutely. They fought. I mean, they threw the tobacco bales and coffee bales, but tobacco as well. Yeah. Tobacco was a great American heritage product. And as a consumer who enjoyed tobacco, I always sort of respected it.

But it tied in also with a sense of personal responsibility, which we never see now. There was a— you had the freedom to smoke. May it be bad for you? Yes. I think every smoker knew it was probably bad for you. You have the obvious— you cough, you get pneumonia every year. You smell bad, your teeth turn brown, whatever. No one, no one was surprised when the Attorney General came out and said smoking’s bad for you.

But the hypocrisy— first of all, the overreach of someone in the Republican Party, supposedly champion of free markets and freedom and personal freedom, would go after and grandstand about the tobacco companies and how they had lied about the addictive properties of tobacco when everybody knew they were addictive. The majority of countries smoked at that time. We had come from a smoking heritage. And not only that, the majority of governments, including state governments, were well invested in tobacco. They had taken a lot of public employees’ investment funds and invested in Philip Morris and RJR and Brown Williamson and the other big ones. I guess those are the—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, Lorillard.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Lorillard, forgive me. So, American tobacco was intertwined with the American experience as far as I understood it. And if you’re going to go after— it’s like going after the foundation of your company, it’s on your country. It’s wrong on so many levels.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Such a kick in the crotch, I think.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he did it in a grandstanding, fraudulent way.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, very much so. And also did it at the last minute. And he— I think he was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. I’m not sure why they had purview over it. And I worked intricately in this, in defense of the tobacco companies at the time when they came up with their huge settlement, which involved a lot of humiliation for them.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was disgusting.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: They paid for their own destruction, at the detriment of individual Americans, but also to the detriment of people who’d been invested in tobacco and to the enrichment of like the trial lawyers and like totally disgusting little 501(c)(3)s like Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Michael Myers.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s like the worst people in the world won, some of the best people lost, and the people making the deals sold their own dignity. And for what? Did public health get better? Did the life expectancy in this country rise? No, it went down.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I think John Cole got a really big boat out of it, right? And I think Dickie Scruggs also, brother-in-law to Trent Lott at the time, who was the majority leader. I mean, it seemed like a setup, and it was offensive, and it dominated political discourse for a couple of years. And the country actually hasn’t recovered from that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree, I agree. Did it make you quit smoking?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: No, I probably actually went from a 2-pack-a-day to 3-pack-a-day smoker. There were some benefits, actually, because Philip Morris and RJR would send— it was right around the time too that the R.J.R. Nabisco merger. So they used to send these huge packages to our office wrapped in a big faux cream cheese case, and you’d open it up and we’d have cartons of cigarettes and Nabisco crackers and all sorts of cookies and chocolates and the original non-smoking cigarette they had too, which tasted terrible.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was awful.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It was awful, but it was a neat concept.

TUCKER CARLSON: Where you heat the tobacco rather than burn it, right?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes. You get your nicotine, but it was disgusting.

TUCKER CARLSON: That was a Philip Morris?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I believe that was a Philip Morris product.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, they sent it to me, and I remember smoking in my office thinking, “Who would smoke that?” Yeah.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: No, it was like trying Brussels sprouts. Each time I did it, I was like, “I’m going to like this.”

TUCKER CARLSON: “I want people to like it.” I never tried it. No, it’s repulsive.

McCain’s Presidential Campaign and the Obama Question

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But that was a huge sense of betrayal early on. And then when he ran, I was wary of John McCain. And then when he ran for president, got the nomination, he totally fumbled it, and it seemed like it was an absolute surrender to this unknown but obviously Marxist-based, anti-American candidate. Anti-white, anti-American candidate. And he— that was not his to lose. That was ours to lose. And he did that on our behalf.

TUCKER CARLSON: And do you think he threw the fight?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: He refused to— I mean, on the heels of 9/11, he refused publicly and excoriated people for saying, pointing out Barack Obama’s real name, Barack Hussein Obama, or Barry Satoru, or talking about his early years in Indonesia, talking about his church that he went to in this anti-American, anti-white church, talking, refusing to talk about any of his heritage, which was obviously fabricated and dishonest.

It was the first time, I think, in American history that a presidential candidate was not only not vetted at all, but you were excluded from knowing anything about him of any relevance. And John McCain, who was the standard bearer of the Republican Party at the time, had an obligation actually to be the top watchdog about his opponent. That’s your job. Your job is to fight a battle, and he refused to fight it. So I never forgive him for that.

Eight Years of Obama and the Road to 2016

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s such a smart point. I was too close to it even to get that.

So then we have 8 years of Obama, and it becomes pretty clear in the second term that, like, he hates the country he’s leading. He really hates white people. Tons of whites voted for him. Tons of whites voted for him because he was saying, “We’re going to get rid of race consciousness in this country and treat people as citizens and human beings, and we can move past the division of the disgusting civil rights movement thinking and just anti-white zero-sum.”

And that Grant Park speech was like— I didn’t vote for him, obviously, but I was like, “I hope this is true.” It turned out to be the opposite of the truth. He just hated whites. And so by the time that ended in 2016, it was a different country.

The Obama Years and the Shift in Political Discourse

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I had never seen anybody be— I mean, it was a whole new time. My son was young. He was in a private school at the time that embraced all of those anti-white messages, separation. I mean, it was literally the new— they talked about Jim Crow while they’re instituting Jim Crow in the educational world and all throughout society. And people in D.C. embraced it heavily, people I had known.

All of a sudden, we came from a country that was happy, self-confident, really proud of America, suddenly questioning and apologizing for everything that had come before. And obviously Obama accelerated that to a degree that was disgusting. But it also meant you could no longer have an informed discussion.

I remember I had been in Washington for 20 years at that point, and I had Democratic friends. I had tons of Democratic friends. You could have a normal conversation, a normal meal. And it was during the Obama years I noticed that you couldn’t even have a conversation with these people. They would just cut you off, get instantly angry, obviously born of some sort of cowardice on their part or regret. But they were so vicious against open discourse. They couldn’t defend their candidate, or in that case, their president at that point, but they also couldn’t discuss it. And they hated you for it.

They hated you for pointing out— if you just said simply, as I did to several Democrats, “I’m not attacking Obama, just tell me why you support this man as our president. Tell me what he’s doing to strengthen our country.” And they would look blank or angry. And that was pervasive, I think, on the left.

Trump Enters the Race

TUCKER CARLSON: So then Trump starts making noises about running in 2015, and it’s not even on the radar of most people in DC that I remember. It’s like, Trump? I mean, I talked to Trump. He called me in 2015, said, “I’m going to run.” And I said, “I don’t believe you. I think you’re selling another book.” I’d seen him do this before, 15 years previous. You know, the campaign was a book tour.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And he said to me, “I think I’m going to surprise you this time.” But I still didn’t take him seriously, really. But you did. And you reached out to people. What did you think of the people around Trump then?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: There weren’t many. I was very impressed, actually, by Stephen Miller’s intellect and his writing ability.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And his commitment to immigration reform or closing the border. I thought he was a true believer on that.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I think he probably— well, he certainly was at the time. He was a great writer and easy to talk to, and I thought committed. I don’t know what his motivations were, but he seemed like he actually was on board for the long haul for this.

And I will say, my entire life I’d only been voting— barely missed the ’88 election, but I’ve been voting since ’92. And every 4 years they would say, “This is the existential election.” Like, “This is the election that really is going to determine the path we’re on.” And by the time ’16 came around, it really seemed, with the hangover and the depressing anti-American, anti-white— the Obama program was so dispiriting to witness. The wreckage I felt socially, that this was the existential election in ’16. I felt that strongly.

So Trump is the only one. Everybody else, I mean, Jeb Bush’s program, I couldn’t even tell you what it was. It was forgettable at the time, but it was the same talking points they’d been using for two decades, referencing Ronald Reagan, who I was personally impressed by, but it’s not really relevant. And during the Iraq Wars and the Afghan War and all that stuff. So and the degradation that America had experienced that was so overwhelming at that time. It seemed like an existential election, and Trump seemed fully committed.

And by the time it came around to the debates in the end, when he got the— when he finally got the nomination, this is a man who had withstood every single personal degradation you could possibly imagine and every attack from every quarter of the country. I was fully committed to his program and thought he was real.

Writing Speeches for Trump

TUCKER CARLSON: What kind of speeches did you write for Trump?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Mostly about immigration stuff. Rally speeches early on.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Or during the middle of the campaign, probably not. I’m trying to think when it was— late in ’15.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s amazing. I didn’t even know you were doing that.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I had a lot of freedom to do— that was the other thing, the stuff that I delivered. It was— I had a lot of freedom to— had a lot of license. I felt like I was writing from my own perspective, and that’s how aligned I was with what Trump had articulated. It was like some of the easiest speeches to write because they were honest and straightforward and pugnacious and unapologetic.

TUCKER CARLSON: So honest, straightforward, pugnacious, that came naturally to you?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And you don’t see a lot of that. I mean, normally when you’re writing for a candidate, you’ve got the lawyer, or their campaign manager or some dipshit consultant breathing over your shoulder. “You can’t say that. You need to soften that. You need to—” So you end up with something that’s not even distinguishable from the other side.

Trump was not just distinguishable from the left, he distinguished himself from the rest of the 19 subpar candidates who were running. But they were all representative of that time. And so I was— man, I never really— I didn’t spend time around Trump. I loved his sense of humor, but I loved his consistency, and I loved the fact that he never backed down, especially with these people barking in his face and claiming he was the worst man on the planet.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, racist.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It’s like, I was— someone, I think it may have been you, said “We’re not hiring the guy to babysit our children.” And that was just intuitive to me. It’s like, yeah, but he was an outsider too. And also he seemed like he had a pretty cohesive family at the time. I mean, that attracted me also. It seemed like he had a decent relationship with his children.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, son-in-law was running everything, right? It seemed like a good thing.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, very much so. And a huge departure from what you’d seen, because I’ve seen tons of candidates up close whose children were, you know, drunks or drug addicts or suicidal or hated their families, hated their parents, and were losers. And they seemed the opposite of that. They seemed like they also believed in the heritage America. They believed in building stuff, creating jobs, creating prosperity.

And even though he was supposedly a billionaire, he was a guy who understood the working man. He understood how the country worked. Sorry to go on so long, but I was going to say, when I did early research, I didn’t know a lot about our trade policies at the time. I just didn’t know the details. And he talked a lot about it, probably second only to immigration. And when I started doing research on it, I was shocked at the amount of stuff that we had given away, just gratuitously surrendered to the rest of the world in our trade policies, and how that had an effect on our manufacturing.

I’d always blamed the Clintons for, you know, the free trade and our agreements with Mexico and Canada cleaning out manufacturing. I was aware of that. I’d seen it happen, but I didn’t realize how deep the betrayal was until I started doing research. Yeah, it’s Trump’s individual policies. I just hadn’t been focused on that.

A Neighborhood Christmas Party and the Trump Divide

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s interesting. So the winter of 2015, you’re writing speeches for Trump. I’m just starting to realize this might be the answer, or I should at least be open-minded enough. I think it was January of ’16 that I decided I’m totally for Trump and wrote a piece about it.

But that winter, I remember being at a Christmas party. You may have been there in our neighborhood on Lowell Street, in Northwest, at a friend’s— really good friend’s house. And everyone’s there. Every family you know is there. All of our kids— it’s like December 23rd kind of potluck, right? Just great, great people, great friends, who we lived next to for so long.

And my wife, who’s totally apolitical— people, they’re all grousing about Trump. “I can’t believe it, he’s a racist.” My wife, totally non-political wife, goes, “I like Trump.” And I remember someone— and everyone of course likes my wife, so— but someone laughed like, “Oh yeah, I like Trump too.” And she goes, “No, no, I really do. Someone needs to stand up for, I don’t know, people who’ve been shafted. And none of them live here, but there are a lot of them in this country. I like Trump.”

People were enraged with her. The only time I’ve ever seen anyone mad at my wife. No one’s ever mad at her. But they were mad and embarrassed and like, “I can’t believe there’s someone in the room with me who could like Trump.” And she of course didn’t even notice that people did. She’s like, “Well, no, what’s wrong with that?” But that was the response that she got.

You were already kind of a more— I mean, you brought your son to Episcopal school on a Harley-Davidson, so obviously you were a more controversial figure in the neighborhood. What kind of response did you get?

Standing Apart from the Machine

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I had the benefit of working— I say for myself, but working from home with a couple of clients that I’d had since 2004. So I’d already— I really enjoyed— I have a good relationship with them personally, and I worked on issues that mean something to me that I could defend. And I had a lot of license to speak my mind if I had an opportunity to do so.

So I never— I just didn’t live in a world where I was subservient to the machine. I hadn’t been like that my entire life because we grew up in a different America where you could express yourself and people expected you to, and there was never any apology. You may be wrong, you may be dumb, but you can say what you think. And so I just never— I’m so fortunate that I was never forced to think that way. I guess I think that’s the reason.

And then I was just going to say, if you did— every 4 years they do the blind candidate thing where they describe the candidate without the name, without the history, it’s just literally a policy prescription, what this person stands for. And if you did that with Trump at any time during his campaigns and you just separated the man from the policy— his policy is more closely aligned with my worldview and my sense of what it means to be America and American, and to be a self-confident man who loves your country.

I’ve never— I’m sorry to jump ahead, but I have never, even knowing how Washington works, even seeing the vitriol that he encountered and the overwhelming opposition from not just political Washington, but the media and the corporate world and everybody else who takes themselves seriously— it was during Trump’s inauguration speech the first time. And if you read that speech, as I did, it’s like, “This is unimpeachable. This is not controversial. These things that he is saying is such a breath of fresh air that no man in American politics has ever had the balls to say.” Why is that? Like, how is it that we suddenly— we are in a country now where it’s embarrassing to say that the reason you have elected officials is so they can take care of America and Americans? To this day, I didn’t understand it then. I don’t understand it now. Maybe I’m simple-minded, but I think you do understand it. I do understand.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I think, you know, it’s how I pose it. Very angry about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. But this is one of those topics you’re like, I don’t understand what’s happening here.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It is unimpeachable to say that we’re here for America.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it is.

The Trump Bumper Sticker and Standing Out in a One-Party City

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Of course it is. So yeah, I actually, it was at that point that I really started to loathe the people who were against Donald Trump’s program. Yes, you could laugh at him. Yes, you could say, take issue with some of the moronic things that he says or the inconsistent things he would say, but he was very consistent about sticking up for America and Americans first and foremost and always.

TUCKER CARLSON: You put a Trump bumper sticker on your truck. I’ll never forget.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I did, and I’m not a bumper sticker guy at all. I did it a little bit as an act of rebellion because I was aware. I mean, I lived in a neighborhood that had a lot of rainbow flags, a lot of anti-war signs, which I’m totally anti-war, but the idea that you’re displaying your political views on your car or your lawn, I just find kind of reprehensible.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, when you live in a city that voted 4.1% for Trump, it kind of gives you license to — because you know everybody agrees with you. It’s a one-party state.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I mean, reflexive and easy to be one of those.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think Albania under Enver Hoxha had margins like that. I mean, that is just like — that’s truly just one-party state. So it doesn’t make people’s behavior better at all, but you decide when you know that 96% of the people in your city disagree with you to let them know what you think.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: That’s what it means to be an American man.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree. Amen. Nicely put. So what kind of response did you get to your — the bumper sticker said, as I recall, because I was in love with it and amazed by it and too cowardly to put it on my own car, it said, “Pro-God, Pro-Life, Pro-Gun, Pro-Trump.”

BUCKLEY CARLSON: No, it was actually — but it was during the Trump era, so it wasn’t explicitly pro-Trump, but it certainly captured — it was, and it had a picture of — it was “Pro-God, Pro-Gun, Pro-Life, Anti-Obama,” and it had the — oh, and the sunset thing.

And people reacted exactly as you would expect. Very few people would accost me in traffic, beep their horn, flick me off, yell at me. My car would get defaced often. I also had a small American flag in the back of my car that I had to keep replacing because people would steal it. But most people just avert with their eyes in disgust. And I don’t know, those are the kind of people that I just couldn’t care less about their opinion, even though they’re 96% of the population in the city you live in. Yes, I had a lot of friends in DC. I love DC. Oh, I love —

TUCKER CARLSON: Totally agree.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Couldn’t imagine living there now. But no, I also lived on kind of a — I lived on a cul-de-sac with a lot of like-minded people, just sort of by accident. And also the kind of people that would be averse to those messages, which again, I think are foundational to life and certainly life in this country, don’t have the courage to attack you for it because they’re spineless weenies anyway.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Whose wives hate them. I totally agree with that. We saw a lot of that.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: That’s exactly right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Those are the guys whose wives hate on you for sure.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Sorry to say that out loud, but it’s literally true. Is it not true?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, it is.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it is.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: That’s the root to adultery is a wife who’s unimpressed and doesn’t honor her husband, doesn’t respect him because he doesn’t have the spine. That’s exactly right.

Weak Men, Unhappy Women, and Defending Trump’s Policies

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Weak men make unhappy women. Why is there a rise in female cheating? Because there’s a rise in weak men. That’s just a fact. Sorry to say that. No, sorry to blame the victims, but it is absolutely right. So then the Trump reelect 2020, I remember you wearing a shirt. Now by this point, I’m defending Trump every single day on Fox News.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not always Trump the man, but certainly Trump’s policies and certainly attacking people who are attacking Trump because it became a kind of handy guide to who was against the country’s most basic interests. People were hysterical about Trump.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It was a political colander, I like to say. Yeah. You took those people and it just separated those who were pro-American and reasonable, right? Yeah, from the rest.

TUCKER CARLSON: And the anti-white stuff, which was always the foundation of it. It’s like, if you hate whites, you hate Trump, even though Trump was in no sense a, like, pro-white or anything, but whatever that even means.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But he was an equal opportunity lover, I got the sense. I mean, he’d had a very public life. I think he liked all kinds, and he was nice. Well, there’s everybody.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, which I never wanted to say in public, but it’s well known. It’s well known.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: That’s exactly —

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t even hesitate even to say it now, but like Trump could pretty easily prove he wasn’t a racist, if you know what I mean. Sorry, that’s just true.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t think it’s ever been written, but —

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But talk about demonstrable — talk about demonstrating your love for all. You don’t, right? I mean, you don’t —

TUCKER CARLSON: No, you’re right.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: If you can do that. That, then you could do anything. You would support someone if you could sleep with someone. You would support them if you’re colorblind in your sexual aspirations. You’re colorblind in everything else, right?

TUCKER CARLSON: I think that’s completely fair. Yeah, that’s completely fair. No, “Trump is a racist” was that I always felt like there are things wrong with Trump, have always been. I overlooked most of them or just tried to ignore them or whatever, and some of them I honestly enjoyed, his vulgarity or whatever.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But his sense of timing is amazing.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, there’s so much about Trump that’s amazing. I completely agree. But the idea that Trump was a racist, it was like, well, that’s actually the one thing he’s not. Why are you calling him a racist? Not even true, right? What are you talking about? Trump is a racist? I don’t — I know who came up with that. It’s because they were race obsessed. That’s why, right? Because they really hated the whites. Yes. And they wanted a way — and I still to this day don’t understand why they hated the whites so much.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Let’s give them equal opportunity and credit. The Democratic Party also was an incredibly racist party.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh my gosh.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Did not like Blacks. I mean, exactly. Didn’t like anybody.

TUCKER CARLSON: Whenever you’re race obsessed, you’re going to end up hating people on the basis of their race, just period.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: But yet Trump is racist. It’s like the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

The “Grab Them” Quote and What Everyone Got Wrong

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Can we go back a minute?

TUCKER CARLSON: One second.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Of course. The famous quote, the fact — I mean, there’s another thing that I just so admired about Trump, but it bothered me. It has bothered me now for almost 10 years how people got the quote, the “grab them by the p*y” quote, so wrong.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I agree.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah, because the full quote, if I’m not mistaken, was, “They let you when you’re famous, to grab them by the p*y.” So I thought that was worth some exploration, but no one else did.

TUCKER CARLSON: In what sense? I totally agree.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It was an indictment of American culture. It was an indictment of the kind of culture, actually, that Trump had perpetuated so aggressively over two decades. The “look at me” culture, the facade of success, the very shallow idea that you are, you know, that your worth is caught up in your bank account and your display of wealth. Yes. When that is such a total corrupting dead end, and it really has hurt the women in this country. It’s been to their detriment, obviously.

We could have a lot of long conversation about the failures of feminism, but one of them is that women tried to aspire to a male sexual voraciousness that isn’t conducive to them and also isn’t beneficial to them, because no man wants a woman who’s been with a bunch of men. That’s like — that’s a law that’s been around forever, a human law. And no celebration of supposed freedom is going to obscure that fact.

And so that — sorry, but that is exactly what Trump was talking about when he said, “When you’re famous, they will allow you to do that.” And I noticed that everybody cut that part of the quote out, even though I thought it was the most interesting part of the quote.

TUCKER CARLSON: He said that to a childhood friend of ours who was interviewing him and who was destroyed just for being there, which was kind of crazy.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Destroyed by his own employers. And there was the NBC and Washington Post colluding together to their detriment, but also to the detriment of their employee. It was the most disgusting demonstration of disloyalty. Yeah, subservient to political —

TUCKER CARLSON: Someone we’d grown up with and knew really well. And it was just — the whole thing was sad. But you’re absolutely right. At the core was Trump’s vulgar but unfortunately true claim that rich and famous men have a totally different standard of behavior that is allowed by women.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: And men should not act that way. Women shouldn’t put up with it. And that’s a fact. And anyone who’s been in rich and famous world, as I have been a lot of my life, knows that that’s true. Yes. And it’s a problem that has at least two authors, men and women. Yeah. Is that fair?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes. Oh, completely. And also it demonstrated how committed he was because he should have been — there was ever a time you should be overwhelmed by shame, it was that, saying that in public. I mean, it was pretty gross. And embarrassing and shocking. But the fact that he actually debated Hillary the next day and did a great job allowed me to believe that this was not about his personal ambition. This was a guy who actually cared about America. He’s willing to subject himself to that kind of attack and not like fold up and crawl off in shame.

Jeb Bush, the Debate Stage, and Dynasty Bashing

TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think Jeb could have withstood the pressure?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: “Apologize to my wife.” I think is what he’s — I think that was like his refrain. Wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning every night sweating and apologize to my wife. I think he — sorry, I think he said that to Trump during one of the debates. I think Jeb Bush turned to Trump and said, “Apologize to my wife.” It’s like, no man demands an apology from another man who offends his wife. You either — you’ll punch him in the face, or you take care of it on your own, don’t you think? I mean, if you’re going to defend your wife’s honor, it’s not on a debate stage with those kind of words.

TUCKER CARLSON: If Jeb had walked over and just smashed Trump in the face on the debate stage, perfectly appropriate.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I may have voted for him if he’d done something like that, if he’d been capable of doing something like that. Otherwise, he — actually, I hate — I don’t ever revel in other people’s misfortune, but one of the great things about Trump was his dynasty bashing, destroying the fact that he had destroyed the Bush hold on the political world on the right. Was one of his greatest accomplishments. Even more so, I think, than destroying the Clintons, because he’s never really followed through with that, and he’s never prosecuted these people who are so outside the law. But he did peel back the mask of these globalist p*ies who’ve had such an effect on our lives for so long.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, he really meant it with the Bushes. He hated them because they were WASPs. He hates WASPs, but he’s also obsessed with them. I’ve talked to him about it many times. And he’s obsessed with them. And he feels —

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I mean, the whole Mar-a-Lago was built when he was denied entry into the B&T.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. Which has totally been lost to history. They’re directly across the street from each other. And he built his club. I happened to be there. I was in Palm Beach. It was ’85 or ’86, something like that. We were staying with our friends there.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

Trump, WASPs, and the 2016 Victory Party

TUCKER CARLSON: You were there and we’re having lunch at the Bath Tennis Club and everyone’s like, “Oh, Donald Trump is building a club across the street for basically to give us the finger. And no, we’re not letting him or any of his friends in our club.” And I don’t think they have to this day, 40 years later. Anyway, none of that was ever reported by anybody.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I’m aware. Yeah. They focused on the flag, which was pretty cool.

TUCKER CARLSON: There were a lot of dynamics here. Yes. Going on that nobody ever wants to talk about. We just happen to have witnessed them firsthand, so I know exactly what this was. But Trump’s resentment toward the WASPs was the driving force there, really. And he was an outer boroughs guy, never felt accepted by them, always wanted to be— always bragging, “I went to Penn.” Like, okay, Penn, you know? And like, they never liked him, they never accepted him, and boy did he get them back.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, he did.

TUCKER CARLSON: And even to this day, I mean, 6 weeks ago I was talking to him about this, his resentment toward the Bushes and its ethnic and social.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: He acknowledges that literally upfront?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, of course not. But he’s very fixated on the WASP thing and does talk about it a lot.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I believe it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, with me anyway. It’s always like, what are you saying? But whatever, I don’t care.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Ignore it. But another group in America that’s kind of fixated on the WASPs too.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, well, yeah, I’ve noticed that too.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Equal fervor and hostility.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I don’t know, but you get what you put up with, and they put up with it and like, oh, it’s okay, you have a good point. Anyway, but yeah, no, he wanted to destroy the Bushes because, you know, he didn’t agree with their program, I guess. He said he didn’t agree with their program, but the real reason he wanted to destroy them was, you know, they go to the B&T and he doesn’t.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: You don’t think it was his anti-war position?

Status Anxiety and the Displacement of the American Ruling Class

TUCKER CARLSON: I thought it was. Okay, so let me say, it’s just like, one of the reasons I’m just so grateful to talk to you is because you were there and you saw a lot of this stuff, and these details just get lost. And you know, some details are not worth preserving because like, who cares? But some of them really are at the center of the question. Like, this is why things happened. Yes. And everyone lies about everything all the time. And you just want, like, somebody somewhere in the distant future to know what actually happened.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Preserve the truth. Preserve the truth. Let’s preserve the truth. So I just want this to be a record of the truth. And that, you know, status anxiety, which is a huge driver of human behavior. Is it not?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a huge driver of President Trump’s behavior. Huge driver of his behavior. Plays a role in all this stuff. These unannounced conflicts between groups for power and prestige and rank. These are big questions.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: What drives human behavior drives policy in the end.

TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. And so if you have the total displacement after over 200 years of the American ruling class by a new group, that’s a big thing. Yes. But nobody says a word about it. And I’m not even taking sides in it, though, you know, obviously I have a side to take, but I’m not taking sides in it. But like, that happened. It happened over 40 years. And now it’s complete. And like, no one can say that that happened? Are you kidding? It’s absurd. Yeah. But good or bad, like, by the way, that is the story of history. Like, groups displace other groups. And there’s reasons for that and survival of the fittest and all that.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Got it.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not even decrying it. I’m just saying the fact that no one will acknowledge that that happened and that it had massive effects on everything and that those resentments or aspirations drive behavior that has results that we see all around us and no one will say it, it’s really shocking.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It is.

The Bath and Tennis Club and the Desire to Destroy

TUCKER CARLSON: I remember I was seeing— there was a girl called Katherine Rampell. I think she worked at the Washington Post, but she was like a Fox contributor or something. Not impressive at all. But I was sitting on the set with her in a commercial break once. She was like a sort of liberal neocon type person, but not smart. Anyway, we’re talking and I’m trying to be nice and she’s like a younger person and I’m like, you know, where are you from? And I grew up in Palm Beach. You grew up in Palm Beach? That’s sort of interesting. I know Palm Beach. Don’t go there anymore, but I know it, you know, well.

And she goes, yeah, I grew up there. And something about this or that. And she’s like, “Yeah, we moved there and my dad sued the Bath and Tennis Club for discrimination because they wouldn’t let him in.” And I’m listening to this, I’m like, he sued a country club? Your dad? And if I’m getting this wrong, I just want to apologize, but I’m pretty sure I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. This is 10 years ago. Yeah, he sued because they wouldn’t let us in. And I’m like, not my job to tell you these are private associations. Like, I don’t know, what are you even talking about? Like, that’s repulsive to me. A club should have— you should have the right to hang out with whoever you want to hang out on whatever basis you want to make that decision.

But she was like bragging about it, and I was like, the hatred behind that, it’s like the desire to destroy something that you didn’t build, was like so evident. This girl’s a hater, actually. That’s what I realized talking to her.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Plus that she could be so unself-aware, right? Understand that that is the most repugnant thing. Of course, in American culture now, or was it acceptable when we were growing up?

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know. No, I’m aware. Anyway, okay, so I just want to establish for people who aren’t aware of all these dynamics, just that they do exist and they’re absolutely consequential and we’re seeing their effects, but no one will tell us that.

From Trump Supporter to Speechwriter

So in your specific case, 2020 comes around, Trump is running for reelection, and I go over to your house. We lived obviously in the same neighborhood, and you’re wearing a shirt that says “Trump Reelect.”

BUCKLEY CARLSON: “Reelect the MF-er.”

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re wearing this shirt. So I’m establishing all of this just so people understand that you are not a fair-weather Trump voter. Is that fair?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: That’s fair. Could I actually give thanks to Doug Davenport for that shirt?

TUCKER CARLSON: What a good man. Yeah.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Great man.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Doug Davenport’s a Washington figure who is like in the rare, the tiny group— yes— that you belong to of people who really were on the Trump program.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: Supportive. What was it? What was the experience of wearing that shirt like?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: At that time, actually, you would— you could get, you know, shot. It seemed like wearing that— I’m not a big hat guy, but I did occasionally wear my MAGA hat that I got signed from Trump and his, you know, not very well attended victory party in 2016.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you go to that?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I did.

TUCKER CARLSON: I did.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I was there till 4:30 in the morning.

TUCKER CARLSON: I walked out. You’re like an OG Trump man. You’re my only brother. I didn’t— I mean, I knew that. I saw you that night, I think, right?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah, I had dinner with you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes. No, I had dinner with you. You were on Fox. I remember.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. I was on Fox.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Right.

Election Night 2016

TUCKER CARLSON: I was like, what was I doing that night? I was sitting on a set with like grumpy Bret Baier and that guy from 60 Minutes, his son Wallace. And they were like, “I can’t believe this couldn’t happen.” I was like psyched and everyone hated me for being psyched. But we had dinner. I totally forgot that because you’re going to the Trump victory party. What was that like?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Really, really? Actually, it was one of the greatest things ever. We showed up. We went out to an additional dinner. I was with my wife. Went out to an additional dinner. Had a great dinner.

TUCKER CARLSON: Two dinners!

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Two dinners. Went to this wonderful French restaurant that no longer exists in New York. Showed up at this very sparsely attended victory party. And the best thing about it is it had a wall of televisions from floor to ceiling behind the stage, and it was an up-close picture of all of the assembled people in the Javits Center, which is where all the Democrats and the Victory Hillary party was taking place. No one seemed to think Trump was going to win until, of course, he flipped Florida. And then it was a raucous party. It was, it was actually—

TUCKER CARLSON: Who was there? Do you remember who you ran into?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Oh, I got— I almost got knocked over by the— I’m trying to remember her name now. She was the female governor of Arizona. Just plowed, just super hammered. Do you remember her? I can’t remember her name.

TUCKER CARLSON: I do remember her. She was a smoker.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: She was a smoker. She was a massive drinker. She was jubilant. People were jubilant.

TUCKER CARLSON: But like, to go to the Trump party in 2016— no one even bothered to go. I ran into Kellyanne Conway at that morning at like 5:00 AM on the set at Fox. She’s the campaign manager.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Oh, I remember.

TUCKER CARLSON: And I said, we’re in the hallway, I’ll never forget it, right off the set. And I said, “What do you think the numbers are tonight?” And she always asked the campaign manager that like election day. And she goes, “I’d say 45, 43, something like that.” There’s a campaign manager telling me— I’ve talked to a lot of campaign managers on election day. Like since 1992 or whatever. I’ve never met one who didn’t predict victory on Election Day. Ever. Ever. Doesn’t matter.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Plus, it’s bad juju. I mean, your job is to demonstrate the utmost optimism even in the face of—

TUCKER CARLSON: So if your campaign— and by the way, Trump thought he was going to lose, and I think he said that. He certainly said it to me. But I know that he believed he was going to lose. So if you’re going to the Trump party when the candidate and his campaign manager both believe they’re going to lose, but you’re at the victory party, we know it’s a snapshot in history.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: We did. I actually did think— I know because you polled our table. We had a table of about 8 people for dinner, and it was me and Kaitlan Collins, to her credit.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, wow.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Two of us, I think— I think you said— I think 3 of us out of 8 or 9 people said Trump was going to win.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s kind of crazy. This is going to, like, set off conspiracies. But you and I are having dinner with Kaitlan Collins on the eve of the 2016 election. I love Kaitlan Collins. I don’t even— I’ve never seen her on TV because I don’t have a TV, but I don’t watch her on TV either.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I’ll preserve my girl. I know you’re not allowed to say that, but thoughts of her and that dinner, because she was, she was riotous. She was a great girl. She’s a smart girl.

TUCKER CARLSON: She’s a great girl. I totally agree with that, despite whatever she says on TV. I’m not even aware of it, but I haven’t watched CNN in a decade. Hired her out of college and always thought so much of her. She’s one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met in my life, that girl. I don’t think she slept past 5 AM in her entire life. Like, she is a worker.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Super admirable.

TUCKER CARLSON: I respect that. Yes, I do. Almost above everything. Anyway, so you go to the party, it’s sparsely attended, and then he wins.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Then it transforms. Jeff Sessions was right next to us. I love Jeff Sessions.

TUCKER CARLSON: Me too. Good man.

Election Night 2016 and Hillary Clinton

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Great man. Not tons, but a few elected officials that I recognize from around the country. Not many. Mostly, mostly—

TUCKER CARLSON: Jan Brewer. That’s exactly—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Jan Brewer.

TUCKER CARLSON: Sorry, Governor.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I prevented Jan Brewer from falling down. She fell into me and had full momentum, and I remember pulling her back and she couldn’t have been cheerier.

TUCKER CARLSON: Saving governors.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Not a grumpy drunk.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re political Superman. Hold on, Governor!

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It was amazing. In fact, not only did they not think they were going to win, it was really hard to assemble the entire team and the entire family. I’m assuming some of them were asleep. I have no idea. But once it was clear that he had won, and the best part of this celebration was seeing in real time, floor to ceiling, all of the self-assured, really vindictive celebrities and other elected officials who had assembled to cheer on Hillary in tears. I mean, just inconsolable.

TUCKER CARLSON: So you went for the suffering?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I did. I don’t normally, but there it was really hard not to appreciate. I mean, it was in technicolor.

TUCKER CARLSON: The sense of entitlement that the Hillary story people had. It was crazy. It’s her turn. She never done anything.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Like, she’d flown a million miles when she was Secretary of State.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, flown a million miles.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: That was literally like her top talking point, remember?

TUCKER CARLSON: But I think she had a record of like zero achievement.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Zero achievement, but really high self-regard.

TUCKER CARLSON: But the most banal observations about the world. Like, I always thought that she had high feral intelligence, but I never thought there was any evidence that she had any abstract intelligence at all. Like, conceptual intelligence. Like, she couldn’t understand the world.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: She was too busy surviving. She was a survivor first and foremost. She was cockroach-like that way. Yeah, you couldn’t kill Hillary. I mean, we’ve been around since Hillary showed up on the scene.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, been there the whole time. I ran into her in Riyadh.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, I know, 2 months ago.

TUCKER CARLSON: You think you were there?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah, she’s still here with her beard humor. I almost ran into her.

TUCKER CARLSON: I walked in and, wow, Hillary Clinton! Right in front of me. She’s like 4 feet tall at this point.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Confirmation that she’s still with her girlfriend who’s married to George Soros’s son.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know, I know.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: What a sham that is. Most people don’t talk about that. They should.

TUCKER CARLSON: I know.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I’m sorry, she’s in public life. She doesn’t have a private life. It’s worthy of examination. Yeah, sorry, I’m going to—

On Outing Public Figures

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m going to stick to my no outing policy. The only person I’ve broken it for is Barack Obama. I just couldn’t. I’m sorry. Because you know why? I did that because I really don’t think that you should do that. I feel guilty every time I call Lindsey Graham gay. I shouldn’t be doing that. That is not the Christian way at all.

The only reason I did it for Obama was because there was a guy, an accuser, and they arrested him and like tormented him. And he like died in poverty and obscurity pretty recently. He was a very screwed up dude. He was kind of sad prison gay kind of guy.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: He was credible.

TUCKER CARLSON: He’s absolutely telling the truth. There’s no question about it in my mind. It’s he said, he said, but I don’t even know if Obama’s denied it. But Obama was on the down low for sure.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Big time.

TUCKER CARLSON: And everyone’s like, oh, how dare you say that? Well, his biographer said that. Obama himself in a letter to a distant cousin of ours. I’m embarrassed to say we have a relative who dated Obama, which is shocking. But anyway, I don’t marinate on that. I know you don’t either. But anyway, in a letter to a relative of ours said, “I’ve considered being gay, but it’s not challenging enough.” It’s like, did you ever write letters like that in college?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I don’t think I wrote letters to any men, actually. No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Did you write letters to your girlfriend being like, “I was thinking about being gay, just thinking about, this morning, thinking maybe I should be gay? That’s not enough of a challenge.”

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I would say about Lindsey Graham, it is fair game because that man holds somehow a lot of power over America’s future and America’s boys who fight in our wars.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And he is—

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I know. It’s just, I think we have to, in our business or just in life, fight against the tendency to judge everyone but ourselves. For sure. And I think if you’re going to tell the truth about other people, you should be required— you should require yourself to tell the truth about yourself first. So, because it’s just so easy to be like, oh, they’re bad, they’re secretly, sodomites. Okay, well, we’re all secretly something, so like, it’s just important to say that. Anyway, sorry.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Did you say we’re all secretly something? Not all secretly sodomites. Sorry, just to clarify.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, we’re not. I mean, speak for myself.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: There is a lot of that in the Republican Party. I don’t understand it.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s insane. It’s insane.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Can’t be accidental. Someone we had dinner with last night who’s very wise said demonic influences concentrate on those with power, and that is so clearly true.

TUCKER CARLSON: Believe that was my wife of 35 years who said that. No, she’s a wise chick. No, that is totally right. Demonic influence concentrates on those who have power. Beware of power. That’s why it’s—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And those who seek power.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. No, that is true. It’s a chicken and the egg thing. Do screwed up people go into politics and business, or does the reality of living near power, having power, does that destroy them?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I think clearly both. I mean, they’ve done studies that show an inordinate amount of sociopaths gravitate towards elective office and also corporate power.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah. This past year, actually, they— something like 60% or something were demonstrably sociopathic.

I mean, if you wake up every morning and say, “I am the wisest, I am the toughest, I’m the leader of all men, and I can make decisions for other people,” there’s something wrong with you.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve never thought that one time in my life. I’ve never looked in the mirror and said, “You’re a leader of men.”

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I’ve suffered some delusions, but not that one.

TUCKER CARLSON: Not that one.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I’m like, yeah.

On Humility and the Human Condition

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, this is why I think this to myself all the time. We should require every man to have a mirror outside his shower. Yes. As you emerge from the shower every day, you see this lumpy, furry primate staring back at you, and you’re like, weird fur in places. Can’t take yourself too seriously.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes. Amen. God bless our women tolerating and loving us despite that.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s this amazing exchange between Jesus and John, and Jesus and Peter, excuse me, at the end of the Gospel of John, when Jesus reappears and a couple of the disciples are fishing on the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus has prepared this like basically fish barbecue breakfast. He’s cooking fish over charcoal. And I don’t understand a lot of what it means, but there’s one point at which Jesus says, “When you’re young, you dress yourself.” I’m paraphrasing, but “when you’re young, you dress yourself and go wherever you want. But when you’re old, others dress you and take you where you don’t want to go.”

And I know that there are, of course, theological meanings that I’m probably not smart enough to fully— that means a lot. And I don’t understand everything that it means. But on the most literal level, it’s true that, there comes a time for all of us when we lose agency and autonomy and sovereignty, and we’re dependent on others, and we’re so reduced. I’m going to make you emotional thinking about it because it’s the nightmare. Jesus describes it as a nightmare, by the way. He doesn’t say it’s okay. He’s like, “This is bad. It’s going to happen to you.” And it’s going to happen to all of us. And I just think it’s important to keep that ever-present.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Well, it’s a really good reminder to respect and love those who are younger than you and those in your orbit, to really pay attention to your children and your extended family. I mean, these are the people you’ll be dependent upon when you’re older. And that is not a concept that you hear much in America. I mean, we move away from our family members, we move away from our parents, when in fact we should be embracing them, learning from them, but also tribe, taking care of them. Yes, absolutely.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, that is really smart.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It must be by design. It doesn’t happen by accident. Nowhere else has that happened. People leave.

On Community, Belonging, and Ben Shapiro

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I was watching Ben Shapiro the other day, and he said if you can’t find a job in the town you’re from where your parents are buried, where you spent your whole life, that’s on you.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah, move out.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, move out. Go somewhere else. Become a migrant. Like, who do you think you are? You think you deserve to live in the town you grew up in just because your parents are buried there and your grandparents built it? You think you have some right to that? Don’t you understand the rules of capital of the globalized economy? Like, who—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Honestly, the gall, the entitlement. You should reap the benefits of that which you’ve worked for your entire life and that what your ancestors have worked for.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, man, I don’t think there’s anything that’s upset me more than that clip. I mean, his many attacks on Jesus, his calls for slaughtering populations, it just is the bigotry, the cruelty of his program. I don’t think anything has made me more enraged than that. Just the kind of like, what? You think you have a right to a community, to a nation? Who do you think you are?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: This is a concept. Yeah, that’s an idea. Yeah, exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s a really evil idea.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, it is.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is the truth.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And not sustainable as we’re learning.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, no, not now. Of course it leads to collapse, which is of course the point.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because it’s animated by hatred.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And people who espouse ideas like that are lying. They’re not ideas. It’s not a philosophy. It’s not an ideology. It’s an expression of hatred toward a population. And that’s real. Like nothing’s more real than that. So anyway, sorry, getting afield. I beg your pardon.

Working for Trump

So, but to Trump, because I just think it’s so interesting what’s happened. So there are 3 elections for Trump. You vote for him in all 3.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And you do so not reluctantly, but enthusiastically. And in fact, you work for Trump. You write his speeches at the beginning. You know the people around him, including his son-in-law, and you’re kind of punished for it by your neighbors and by people you know. I’m sure you lose business for doing that, but you keep doing it. What’s the moment where you’re like, “Ah, I don’t know about this”?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I’d had a few reservations, probably during one. I thought, actually, early on, I was confused that he brought and first empowered his son-in-law, who I was kindly disposed to and thought was motivated by loyalty to Trump’s program and to Trump. And then early on—

TUCKER CARLSON: You knew Jared?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I did, yep. And corresponded with him quite a bit, met with him a number of times during the early administration. One of Trump’s obvious—

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I met Jared through you, so I know you know him. Yeah.

Trump’s First Term: Failures, Frustrations, and the Road to 2024

BUCKLEY CARLSON: One of Trump’s obvious deficits to anybody who was looking at him, even if you loved him for being an outsider, you knew that Washington was like a really complicated machinery, and you need people who are well-versed in navigating it and maybe making it work, because the federal government is just an enormous kind of out-of-control machine. And if you don’t have people who understand the levers of power and how to propel your program forward, you will fail. And especially Trump, who had a very adversarial Republican Party. Weasels like Paul Ryan, who had been elevated by Trump’s victory and was newly the Speaker of the House, hated Trump.

TUCKER CARLSON: And so why would Paul Ryan hate Trump?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It’s a really good question, especially because he should have been really grateful that Trump was in power and thereby his power derived from Trump’s success. But none of them, none of them seem to feel that way.

TUCKER CARLSON: But Paul Ryan especially hated Trump.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, yes, he did.

TUCKER CARLSON: What do you think that comes from?

Paul Ryan, Jared Kushner, and the Russia Hoax

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I think he was a weak man and a bitter man, and boy did he use his obstructionist power to the detriment of not just Donald Trump but the people who had voted for Donald Trump.

So early on, Trump didn’t take that seriously. One thing that made him super attractive was he was an outside candidate. He wasn’t a politician, he was a businessman. And he was there for a very specific purpose. And yet he came in and not only didn’t understand how Washington works, he didn’t take the appropriate measures to protect himself and his agenda.

Instead he reverted to type and hired a bunch of Goldman Sachs people and billionaires and empowered his son-in-law, who had been a Democrat until the day before. I think through the election he had been a Democrat, and a globalist. And so that was concerning and upsetting.

And then the country got completely overwhelmed by the faux controversy around the Russia stuff, which was on its face absurd. If you knew anything about Donald Trump or anything about the campaign, you knew that not only did they not rely upon Russia for help— they had a hard time coalescing their own power. I mean, they were not an organized machine, and they were not allied with any foreign power. And so that was insane, but it occupied the country.

I’m still quite bitter about it, actually, and people don’t talk about it. We’ve suffered so many humiliations on the national stage since that people don’t focus on it enough. But it paralyzed the country and paralyzed the administration, and I feel like Trump is responsible for that because leaders need to be able to delegate and they need to recognize where their weaknesses are and they need to account for those weaknesses. And he didn’t. And he empowered a lot of people he shouldn’t have empowered. So I was dispirited during the early administration.

It was clear to me and anybody else who was watching that he was going to win reelection despite all the COVID stuff. And at that time, we didn’t know the details— how complicit Trump was by empowering the pharmaceutical companies during COVID, how responsible he actually was for that offense, that biological war against the country that he’s supposed to lead. At that time, I think most people— and I was sympathetic to Trump, the position that he was in.

And then— so it was clear that he was going to win reelection. I thought it was clear that he won reelection on election eve. I mean, he was over the top. I mean, the numbers were there for him. He won until they stepped in and took it away from him. And then I thought he acted crazily.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, who is they?

The George Floyd Narrative and Trump’s Failure to Act

BUCKLEY CARLSON: The Summer of Love with George Floyd, which was obviously a complete scam. The man was killed, unfortunately, but he’d stuffed a bunch of fentanyl in his ass, and he was upright and forthright with the cops who showed up on the scene. The famous video started actually minutes before when he’d come out of the store and was sitting in his car with those two other people, and he tried to pass the counterfeit dollars, and he said to the cop, “I cannot breathe.” So it was clear that it was a manufactured crisis from the beginning. It was designed to divide America, and it was designed to get rid of white cops, preparatory to whatever’s coming next.

And the left’s Antifa hordes took over neighborhoods in America, destroyed statues, killed people, destroyed businesses, ran rampant all over the country, but also in Washington, D.C., where Trump was president. He didn’t have any natural allies in the media. Of course, they distorted it. They lied about it. That was clear. But Trump is the chief executive. Trump is the president of the United States. And yet he failed to exercise his power and to quell the riots. He failed to articulate what was going on. He failed to defend the law enforcement officer who’s still rotting in prison, by the way, who was wrongfully prosecuted. And obscured the original report that demonstrated that Floyd had died from a fentanyl overdose. But really, he failed to exercise his power. Trump did. He failed to—

TUCKER CARLSON: He allowed a riot outside his house. I called him at that time, like, dude, you cannot allow people to set things on fire across from your house. You’re the president.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Like the oldest Episcopal church in the country. St. John’s. Yeah.

Trump’s Abdication of Power and the January 6th Aftermath

BUCKLEY CARLSON: So he abetted that by weakness or indecision or whatever. It doesn’t matter. He failed in his job to reassert power and control, and he failed to articulate what was at stake, and he failed to protect himself and his countrymen and his physical country. So yes, I was upset about that.

And then he won reelection. He also— he won reelection and it was taken from him, but even his efforts to galvanize support throughout the country, to direct the FBI to investigate, to direct the Department of Homeland Security, to articulate clearly that it had been stolen— he just kept repeating silly talking points that weren’t that compelling and made him look crazy. But he failed to use the power at his hand.

And then of course it was taken away from him and he sulked off into ignominy. He was impeached but not convicted. And then he went off into the wilderness where he soon started raising an enormous amount of money. And my understanding is that he raised over a billion dollars during those wilderness years. And every time he spoke about it, it was all about Donald Trump’s personal woes, which were significant because these people were not only trying to crush him legally and abuse the judicial system against him in Florida and Georgia and New York, famously. But it was all about Donald Trump, it was all about the Donald Trump suffering.

It was never about the people that had gone there with legitimate license to protest against an election that was stolen from them, stolen from them in front of them. These people were exercising their First Amendment rights to speech and assembly. And they were crushed by their own government, and they were crushed by people within their own party and the other party. They were crushed by law enforcement. They were abetted by the military. They were abetted, of course, by the media and the corporate losers all over the country. So there was a major headwind.

But Trump has the strongest voice in the country. Even then, people listen to what Trump said. Trump could have an impromptu press conference wherever he went. Whatever Donald Trump said was worthy of listening. So he had the biggest microphone in the country, and he never once utilized that for the benefit of the Americans who’d supported him, not only in ’16, not only throughout the entire Russia nonsense, not only throughout the George Floyd nonsense, but through the election in 2020. That gave me a lot of pause. I was like, what kind of reprehensible human being would not— It’s the most basic thing to protect your friends, and in politics, your supporters, but anybody who’s on your side and your fellow Americans. And he had a lot of power to do so, and he didn’t exercise that power on behalf of anyone else. It was all about Donald Trump. So there was a period—

TUCKER CARLSON: This is making— you’re making my heartbeat fast.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Sorry, I was—

TUCKER CARLSON: No, you’re right.

Trump as the Last Hope in 2024

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Hadn’t tapped into this emotion in quite some time. A lot of people are having this discussion now in the context of Trump’s obvious betrayal of the American public, not just his voters, but the people who thought ’16, ’20, and certainly ’24 were absolutely existential elections, and that there was no other person on the planet who could come in and right the ship, return sanity to our great country, to save our country. It’s like the last opportunity on every front.

Like, we’re crumbling. We’ve got these enemies within. We’ve got these enemies all over the world who’d taken advantage of us during the Biden years because we had such a weak and incompetent and obviously joke of a presidency, and all these people around Biden who had wielded his power in his name to destroy this country. So Trump was legitimately the last hope in ’24.

But before that, in 2021 and ’22, when he was raising all this money and was the Donald Trump victimhood show— he had failed when it mattered to articulate what Americans were protesting during January 6th, to articulate that it was actually a conspiracy by the federal government abetted by all of these other big interests.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I’m the one who put those tapes out there.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Oh, I’m aware.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know how it fell to me, but yeah.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Like some stupid cable news employee.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Right? You’re just a truth seeker. Yeah, but you have no institutional power.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, it’s like a dumb cable news show. Who cares, right?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But what’s the point of having law enforcement? What’s the point of having a military? What’s the point of having an executive if you can’t rely upon them to protect the Constitution and protect the Americans who abide by it and pay their taxes and work hard and raise their families and love this country? And so Trump failed on a monumental level at that time.

The COVID Vaccine and Trump’s Refusal to Apologize

TUCKER CARLSON: That was after COVID. Now, you said something really interesting. You didn’t take the vax. Thank God. Literally, thank God.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Never once considered it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I didn’t either.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: So obviously, thank God.

TUCKER CARLSON: But Trump did and encouraged everyone else to take it and then never apologized, even when it became clear that the vax had killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world. And there’s never really been studied in this country, but we can extrapolate and assume it killed— I mean, it killed people I know.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Me too. I know young men now who took it who have myocarditis and other— for sure, it was weird cancer.

TUCKER CARLSON: It was poison. Look at the cancer rates. Look at the fertility rates. Like, everything about it was a bioweapon aimed at us.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And Trump didn’t apologize for that. I don’t know all the things that I’ve just ignored or forced myself to ignore. Whatever. My flaws come out as I remember all of this— and my shame emerges. Well-deserved shame. But anyway—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Trump is completely absent shame about it. He, to this day, will still talk about the success of Operation Warp Speed, which allowed these things to come to market, which allowed the—

TUCKER CARLSON: You know what he said to me? I actually raised it with him because I’m so upset about it. It’s just killed too many people and it made too many women infertile. And that’s just the most evil thing ever. And it’s still on the schedule. And it’s so immoral. It’s hard to believe this is even happening.

But he did exactly the same thing again. It’s my fault for not being like, whoa, that’s a red line, I can’t cross it. But he did the same thing he did on the Iran War. When I talked to him about the Iran War, you say, well, like, this is hurting all these people. He’s like, “You don’t believe in the polio vaccine? Like, that was a good vaccine, don’t you think?” It’s like, I guess I believe in the polio vaccine. I don’t know. I mean, but that’s not what we’re talking about. The polio vaccine is a totally different thing. I mean, I don’t even know enough about it, even though we grew up next to the Salk Institute. It’s like, what does it have to do with it? You mentioned Iran. He’s like, “Do you think they should have nuclear weapons?” No, I don’t think— I’m not for nuclear weapons in general. But it was a non-sequitur designed to shut down the conversation.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: And the same tactic that’s been employed by his political adversaries his entire political life. So it’s like, really? You’re going to misquote, you’re going to misdirect, you’re going to— yes, dishonor, construct a straw man.

Trump’s Failures and the Breaking Point

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes, there we go. Well, you’re an anti-Semite, you’re racist, you think Iran should have nuclear weapons, are you pro-Islam? No, I’m an Episcopalian, leave me alone.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I mean, what? I saw data yesterday that said 80% of Americans took the kill shot. 7 million babies have been compelled to have this shot this year alone. This year? This year alone. Alone. Yep. And every medical— every day— Are you being serious? I’m being totally serious. Every new med student who comes out of doctoring school has to— is compelled to take it. Hospitals are so—

TUCKER CARLSON: So you got to commit an abortion and take the mRNA shot before you can become a doctor? Wonder why doctors are like the worst people in America. Because they break them at the outset. They make them complicit in a true crime. And once you’re complicit, it’s like you can’t join MS-13 until you kill somebody. You can’t be an OB-GYN until you murder a baby. Then you’re in on it.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: You can’t wear the Hells Angels patch until you shot someone in the face and gotten gonorrhea. Okay. No, it’s so right.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, there’s almost too much. Sorry.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: You’re working me up into a frenzy. Sorry, me too. I’d shelved some of this for so long. Okay, so that’s kind of my question. So this all happens in COVID.

Trump and the COVID Shot

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re a COVID dissenter, you’re an honest man who believes in actual health. Yes. You’re not taking the shot. Your family’s not taking the shot. But Trump is encouraging the shot and then is still encouraging the shot, and they’re still giving it out under the Trump administration. Was this a red flag for you, or were you just like, “Oh, it’s too much. I can’t deal with this”?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It’s really so hard to keep track of it because at the same time, the entire world seems like it’s crumbling all the time. Seems like we live during the twilight zone during the Biden administration when everything was like a daily offense. Like, really? Could that be happening? And are there no adults around? Like, no one’s going to—

TUCKER CARLSON: Tearing down all statues to whites. Yes. Replace them with like—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: The judicial system has become totally corrupt and frightening. Exactly.

TUCKER CARLSON: Jury trial is like a nightmare scenario.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, you don’t have any peers left in America to try you.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: A jury of your peers. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Big. Oh man. No, you’re right.

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s just a cascade of tragedy. So it’s like hard to think—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Got to earn a living at the same time and protect your family and your children while all of these offenses are going on. It’s really hard to keep up.

But when you start thinking about the things that Trump had done, especially when you’re looking back now on the incredible, not just betrayal, but his sense of disdain for the people that had worked on his behalf, for the people who believed in him, for the people who had sacrificed so much.

And it really— it’s hard to know, hard to remember now, but it was only a couple years ago, if you said you were a Trump administration— if you were a Trump voter, Trump fan— people had license to like beat you up in public and take your stuff and smash you in the face, take your hat off your head. Like, that was the prevailing attitude in America, and it was allowed to continue. Like, law enforcement would never come to your rescue.

It’s like the age-old thing, oh, you wear slutty outfits, so you’re being raped. It’s like, oh, you wore Trump paraphernalia, therefore you know that you’re going out in public and someone’s going to assault you. Like, that was pretty much the law of the land during so many years. I think it’s my perspective about it. Literally true. Yeah, terrifying.

So I didn’t focus on it. And also, you know, it’s a binary choice. Who was going to run this country? Obviously Cackling Camel Toe was not going to be entrusted with power. Who is Cackling Camel Toe?

TUCKER CARLSON: She’s that— was that she on the ballot? I actually voted in this election, don’t normally do it. I didn’t see any Cackling Camel Toe on the roster.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: She was that Jamaican lady who was the AG of California.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, Kamala Harris.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, that one.

TUCKER CARLSON: And then the woman who couldn’t pronounce her own first name consistently?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Literally 3 or 4 different pronunciations. Hammered all the time, and not in a good way. Her husband’s like smacking women around. And also probably on the other team, I think. I mean, I never— but it was a joke, and it was an in-your-face offense daily.

I mean, these are the people who employed Karine Jean-Pierre at the White House podium, right? Totally forgot about her. I mean, we grew up at a time where serious people presumed to speak on behalf of the president of the United States. President of the United States was like— had some decorum. A ton. He was the daddy, you know. Even if you didn’t agree with the president of the United States, you kind of respected him. He’s got all this power invested in him on your behalf, and every word mattered. Every word was parsed. And the people who spoke on his behalf were serious people. And my entire life, they were serious people. It was like—

The Patriarchy, Trump, and Presidential Responsibility

TUCKER CARLSON: So maybe it’s inevitable that once the patriarchy has been overthrown, as it has been, you get a president like this, who’s emotional, all about himself, is perpetually the victim.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Remember they used to say the president’s most valuable commodity was his time? Yeah. That’s the most valuable thing the president has. What does he focus on? How does he spend his time? He’s got a finite amount of time. What does he focus on?

And with Trump, you’re like, “Oh, he’s focusing on the iTunes background music for his—” I’ve heard his thing. He’s focusing on the new Arc de Triomphe to Trump that he’s putting up at the end of Memorial Bridge. He’s focusing on the ballroom. It’s like, are you serious? Get real and get serious about your responsibilities.

And no one ever says anything about that. In fact, these days I find this is a new phenomenon I’ve never encountered. You attack Trump on the basis of substantive policy decisions that he’s made, betrayals that are obvious and quantifiable, and you will get people in your face saying, “How dare you attack the president?” Are you serious? That guy works for me. That guy works for you. Yeah, listen up, bitch. Yeah, your opinion matters. My opinion matters. Every American’s opinion matters. We should be heard. We should be respected.

And no way am I going to be kowtowed and not saying the obvious, which is this guy has failed in his responsibility. He is disdainful towards the American people. He’s disdainful towards the people who put him in office and the people who sacrificed a lot— real physical and economic injury— to get this man in office.

And to witness the vitriol and the moronics, the moronacy, and just the never-ending me, me, me, me, me, and you’re not with me. I’ll define what the program is now once I’m in office. It doesn’t work that way. You define the program before you run for president. People attach themselves not to you as a person, they attach themselves to your program for their benefit, and that’s the whole point. So yeah, I’m mad about it.

The Breaking Point

TUCKER CARLSON: So when— what was the breaking point for you as someone who had a Trump bumper sticker, wrote his speeches, voted for him 3 times, wore the Trump t-shirt, wore the MAGA hat in Northwest DC. What was the point at which you’d— and who also has acknowledged that for a decade attacking Trump, hating Trump, being mad at Trump were all kind of markers for attitudes that were anti-American, anti-white, anti-you. Absolutely. So for you to be criticizing Trump in public and to feel as vehemently as you do. You certainly have justification. I think you’ve shown that. But to say it is another question. Like, what was the point at which you decided, like, I can’t, I can’t be part of this?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Part of it is the rebirth he had in ’24. It was just the— I mean, you could discard as irrelevant a lot of the attacks on Trump because they became just like background noise. Oh, he said this. Oh, even early on when he— oh, he asked Hillary, he asked the Russians to steal Hillary’s emails when that clearly wasn’t what he said. That was clearly wrong. Oh, he is— and he’s a white supremacist and he’s never denounced these people. I mean, all of that stuff took on— it was such universal background noise that you’d be like, okay, you’re absurd. Anybody who says something like that, you’re just a liar, you’re dumb. It doesn’t even mean— he’s a racist— doesn’t mean anything.

But then legitimately upset about his failure to stand up for America and Americans during the George Floyd thing, his complete abnegation of responsibility with January 6 political prisoners.

TUCKER CARLSON: But he pardoned them.

The January 6 Prisoners

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Oh, he did pardon them. He did. And that represented the first time that he’d ever stuck up for them. And when it really mattered is when they were rotting in prison with no constitutional guarantees of a speedy trial or hygienic conditions or ability to eat real food or were not being assaulted by cockroaches or prison guards who used them as sport. And it was completely not only allowed, tolerated, but expected and even celebrated in the media and by Republican elected officials, many of whom are still in Congress, by the way.

So there was that. But he— yes, he pardoned them once he was in office. But my understanding from several people— I remember witnessing it at the time because I was upset that he said nothing on their behalf. And again, that’s the power he could have wielded when he was in the wilderness. He could have talked about them first and foremost. He could have informed people about the conditions they were in, and he could have supported them.

But he also could have supported them with the huge financial cash that had been flooding in to him personally, because he never stopped raising money. He raised an enormous amount of money in the wilderness years, and he spent not a dollar of it for the benefit of those people. Didn’t pay for their legal fees, didn’t take out advertisements on their behalf, didn’t do anything. Anything that he should have done that anybody with a lot less resources would have done. So I forgot your question. Forgive me. Given all of that—

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, but he pardoned them.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But he originally pardoned them, yes. But it took an enormous amount. There’s someone named Suzanne Monks who was a very active advocate on their behalf. I think she’s a wife of a fellow who was incarcerated. I may be getting that wrong, but she was dogged and persistent throughout all of it.

And she claims now, and I believe it, she’s reminding people at the moment that the Trump we have now that has betrayed his base and well beyond his base, every other American who relies upon him to steward this country with sobriety and concern for them first and foremost and only, that it wasn’t easy to get Trump to pardon them, that she had to personally rally people. And you were helpful in this to push his hand, to force his hand, to make it untenable for him not to pardon them. And so he did. I did do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: I talked to you about that.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I know you did.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’re just on principle.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I didn’t— whatever. But you say on principle. It’s principle that you have. It’s not principle that Donald Trump had.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’ve got to fight injustice. That’s the whole point of leadership.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, very much so.

TUCKER CARLSON: Is to help your people. And to the extent you can, like, we’re never going to defeat injustice. It’s the state of the world, but you have to keep trying.

The January 6th Pardons and Trump’s Failures

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah, you do what you can. And he had a lot in his arsenal to do that, and he did it. And it’s pretty easy, as he’s demonstrated, to sign documents. Pretty easy. Pretty easy to sign executive orders, whatever power they have. So it wasn’t a lot of skin off Donald Trump’s back to do that.

He did the right thing and I applaud him for it, just as I applaud him for closing the border. It’s like those two things— I can’t really think of many other things that he’s done. I can’t think of anything else really that he’s done since he’s been in office now for a year and a half.

So he did the right thing eventually under great pressure, and good for him for doing it, but he could have done it a lot earlier. He could have made a much greater impact for the benefit of those Americans who were not rich, who were not well known, who were motivated by completely reasonable and constitutionally protected outrage over what had been done to them.

I mean, they are representative of America, not just Trump voters, America and Americans, the best kind of people, I think. And to see them, by the way, in the background— I know it didn’t get a lot of news at the time, periodically it— no time in American history has the FBI been rallied with such vigor and focus and economic empowerment to go in and root out these supposed criminals. What had they done? They had walked on the grounds of the US Capitol, the People’s House. Exactly. And then they’d gone back home to their hometowns to take care of their children and their jobs. And they would have manhunts, like publicized manhunts, with 30 guys in SWAT gear and helicopters in their neighborhood. Arrest the unarmed whites.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, got it. Yeah.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Meanwhile, all of our cities are crumbling, and Washington, D.C. was like a free-for-all for gangs and carjackers and people walking around with guns in public. You know, it’s okay for the criminals to have guns, but God forbid there would be some hard-working taxpayer exercising his right in the Second Amendment and the First Amendment.

So the two foundational freedoms in our country, and Trump was unwilling to protect them in any meaningful manner until he signed their pardons. Again, good for him for doing so, but he still failed in that responsibility as far as I’m concerned.

The Breaking Point

TUCKER CARLSON: So what was the breaking point for you really?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Initially it was the attack on Iran last year when I guess we successfully eradicated all of their nuclear capability.

TUCKER CARLSON: Were you aware?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Because it was still on. I’d heard that. It may still be on the White House website because it was on there even when we engaged in this latest war with Iran, this unnecessary, what will be probably a forever war that will— has killed Americans and is going to degrade us as a country. Significantly already has.

It was that, and then it was his complete failure the first year to hold anybody to account for all of the crimes, the obvious crimes, all of the things that had been exposed, from Russia to COVID policy to the January 6th stuff. I mean, all of that has been demonstrably revealed— the Capitol Hill pipe bombers, all of the Biden-era corruption, the auto pen scandals, the preemptive pardons, the people who had abused their national security credentials and their positions of power to hurt Americans.

That is all laid out, even by his own intelligence officers. Tulsi Gabbard, a year ago, revealed that Barack Obama was directly guilty, I believe, of treason. I don’t know how you could say it any other way. A former president who advocated and financed and allowed his national security apparatus to survey and obstruct and take out a sitting U.S. president, who again is not a man. He is representative of the power that we invest in him as Americans. So it’s not an offense against Trump. It’s an offense against you and me and everybody we know.

So his complete failure to utilize the information that he had at his fingertips— and in the Justice Department, and by the way, U.S. Congress, U.S. Senate, three levers of power supposedly designed and at his disposal to enforce the law, to restore sanity, to hold people accountable for breaking the law to the detriment of our country and Americans. And he failed to do that. And then he attacked Iran.

The Failure Surrounding Charlie Kirk’s Death

Then— I guess there are many other things in between, but once Charlie Kirk was murdered, I feel like he failed on a tonal level. I don’t feel that he displayed enough real sympathy or focus on finding Charlie Kirk’s killers— forgive me— and on solving the crime, on using the entire apparatus of the U.S. government to solve this crime in a way that would allay people’s fears of a conspiracy or other things going on.

Donald Trump should have gotten up and given a press conference and said, “We are going to find out who’s responsible for this. It doesn’t matter what the end results show. We have a responsibility as a public figure who was publicly assassinated, and we’re not going to tolerate this, and whoever is responsible for it is going to be brought to justice.”

And he totally failed to do that. I think he failed to articulate that, and he failed to use, again, the apparatus that is entrusted to him to do that. And it’s a huge apparatus, by the way, which, while the rest of America is degrading and getting less effective, I think we have a very effective, very clued-in surveillance and technology and well-funded U.S. military and law enforcement apparatus that knows every detail about Americans at all times.

They can reconstruct— they could tell, if you were in the Capitol during January 6th, through a whole variety of means, but your cell phone primarily. They know who was there. They know who’s everywhere. They know where you are at all times. They can listen in on you, but they can certainly pinpoint where you’ve been and what you’ve done. So why wouldn’t you utilize that power to the benefit of justice?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I mean, the Director of National Intelligence, the head of the Counterterrorism Center— these are people who are appointed by you to root out corruption, to fight back against foreign threats, make America safer, but yeah, defend our—

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Defend our citizens against not just attack, but foreign attack, if there’s any element of foreign involvement here, which it seems early on there was.

Questions Surrounding the Investigation

And then the fact that— sorry, can I continue this answer only because it makes me so mad— the weird dynamics surrounding Charlie Kirk’s death, the investigation, the initial press conference held by the supposed head of the FBI, Kash Patel, who said a lot of nonsensical things behind that podium, and no one has ever explained it. What does it mean to say, “I’ll see you in Valhalla, Charlie”? What is the significance of the number 33? What does that mean? I don’t know. No one’s ever been compelled to answer that question.

But Kash Patel stood at the podium and made a very big point— I mean, he could have made a lot of points. First of all, they released video of the supposed killer, Tyler Robinson, jumping off like a 20-foot roof. It was a very bad quality video, even though they had high quality video on that entire campus. They released this ridiculous, absurd, 1973 quality VHS tape video of the supposed killer. They released all of his supposed text messages that detail all of— if you were looking to incriminate yourself, if you had gotten away with the perfect crime, then you inexplicably decided to write down every incriminating detail of your crime. We’re supposed to believe that he did that.

We’re supposed to believe that the guy in the crowd, George Zinn, who’d been in various other hotspots like the Boston Marathon bombing, and he’d been a witness at 9/11, that George Zinn is going to just immediately erupt out of his seat, take his trousers off, and run down screaming, waving his hands, saying, “I shot Charlie,” like within the first 30 seconds of it?

TUCKER CARLSON: Right?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Like, you wouldn’t— if you wanted people to believe—

TUCKER CARLSON: Feels a little Jack Ruby-y.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It does, very much so. I was expecting him, Tyler Robinson, to be visited in prison by Lewis Joyland West. Yes. Yes, exactly. “I pronounce you crazy.” And then you have an inexplicable, fast-acting cancer that kills you within 6 months. Oh, that’s normal.

But sorry, back to the Kash Patel thing. The fact that he gave this press conference that was devoid of any real detail that you would want in the aftermath of this public execution, but then to emphasize things that seem so random and inexplicable— Valhalla. Who the hell knows what Valhalla is? And why— how is it appropriate to this?

The Valhalla Comment and the Number 33

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, Scandinavians, we know what Valhalla is, which is the Norse heaven. It’s a pagan understanding of heaven. Yes. Right. So Charlie Kirk is a serious Orthodox, lowercase o, Christian. He’s like a real Bible-believing Christian. Yes. He does not believe in Valhalla. He rejects Valhalla. Yes. Like, that’s a fact. That’s ridiculous, actually, to say that about a Christian man. Valhalla.

“Yes.”

“No, we’re monotheists who believe in Jesus. There’s no Valhalla in my world.”

“Yes.”

“Why would you say that?”

And no one’s ever held him to account.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: He’s never been felt compelled to explain that. Or the emphasis on 33. It took 33 hours to bring this guy to justice. And then he repeated it several times.

TUCKER CARLSON: What? I don’t know. I literally have no idea.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: So everything surrounding it creates, obviously, unrest and disillusionment and anger.

The Lone Gunman

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I say my favorite line? We had dinner with Russell Brand at home last night. Obviously, you were there. And his line that, “You know, the thing about lone gunmen is they always seem to assassinate people who challenge institutional power. It’s kind of amazing. Your average lone gunman just goes out, who knows why, and kills people who are criticizing the people in charge. Maybe the people in charge should connect with the lone gunman community, kind of like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola got together. It’s just like a natural partnership. Have they ever thought of that?” Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing with the murder of a friend of mine, but the absurdity.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I’m not laughing with the murder, of course, but it’s—

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, the lone gunman. That’s incredible. The lone gunman never take out anyone who’s helping establish power. You ever notice that?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Oh, I have. You’d think they’d stop using the lone gunman. They’ve used him so often.

TUCKER CARLSON: But it was the war that finally scrambled your eggs.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, and yes, the war, Charlie, and then of course the Epstein files. Oh, the Epstein files. The Epstein files, the JFK files, the 9/11 files, all things that he had committed to showing to the American people who actually own it and have every right to know the details about that huge terrorist attack and the assassination of our president.

And obviously the Epstein network, which not only had a ton of victims but obviously represented hidden power over our elected leaders. So Trump had committed to doing all three of those things. He’s done none of them.

But beyond just abdicating his power, he was disdainful of those. This is when he first started defining MAGA, Make America Great Again, as Donald Trump the man, like investing within himself in almost biblical fashion. Like, no, MAGA is not what I articulated clearly and coherently for 10, 12 years in public life and as president of the United States, MAGA is what I say it is today, tomorrow morning, anytime during the day, because I’m Donald Trump. So I will determine what is MAGA.

And further, if you consider yourself to be allied with this political coalition that I created over a decade, then I don’t need you. If you’re insisting upon transparency and the things you’re insisting upon me making good on the promises that I made to you in this relationship that we have— I promise you something, you vote me into office so I can effectuate the change that you voted for— then, if you were insisting upon that, then you’re a flipping kook and I don’t need you.

So it was really at that moment when that was his response to the Epstein files, and then when he engaged in the most ham-handed PR stunt I’ve ever seen Epstein, which was great because it revealed how many fake, paid-for, supposed influencers there are on the right. Brought them to the Oval Office, gave them binders full of Epstein material that had already been in the public domain for a very long time, and said that was the entirety of it.

And then of course, because he’s Donald Trump, he contradicted himself 6 or 7 times. You know, this was Epstein wasn’t real. Epstein was a pedophile. He didn’t have any victims. He got his elected officials out there to say those things in front of Congress. It’s just laughable.

And then of course he turned on Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I think of all the elected members of Congress represents in sincere, hard-working fashion what it meant to be a not Trump fan, but a Trump lieutenant. I mean, this was someone who was inspired by Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s program to leave her successful business, run for Congress. And thank God for her, because she got there and discovered what a captured institution it is, how flawed the individuals there are, how hostile they are to the American people who put them there, and specifically the Republican voters who’d put them there.

And then to see Trump turn on her and treat her the way that he treated her was— she’s an individual and she’s tough and she can handle it. But that kind of repetitive, crazy disloyalty, and to treat someone who had actually put themselves to hard work to great effect was unforgivable. I thought that’s when I really started—

Trump’s Treatment of Marjorie Taylor Greene

TUCKER CARLSON: She texted Trump and she said, “My son is getting threats because I’ve disagreed with you on the Epstein files.” And Trump responded to her by text message and said, “He deserves it. It’s your fault.” People are threatening the kid’s life. And Trump says, no, no, you brought this on him.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It’s on you. It’s disgusting. It’s outrageous. I didn’t know that. That’s terrible. It’s terrifying, actually, to be so tone deaf, to be so evil, but to also be so tone deaf.

The Warner Run and Trump’s Broken Promises

TUCKER CARLSON: So what— and then the Warner run, which he clearly had no plan for, wasn’t enthusiastic about at all. He was fully aware of the risks. He was fully aware that it was a betrayal of his explicit promises for 10 years not to do this. He did it against his will. That’s my highly informed read. I mean, I could be wrong. You don’t know what people’s motives actually are. But from very close vantage, I can say I don’t think he was excited about it, but he did it. Clearly he felt he had no choice. And I think that’s widely understood.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah. But I have no sympathy for him for doing that. I don’t. Why?

TUCKER CARLSON: Sorry.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Because he— yes, he’s Donald Trump the man, but he’s just one man. And invested in him by all of us, and 72 million American voters, is an enormous responsibility. Here’s a guy who had had demonstrable success in his life, had done a lot of things, accumulated enormous power and money. And has a big family. He’s 80 years old. He’s got grandchildren.

I just don’t have any sympathy for someone who is— I do have sympathy for a regular person who is being threatened and pressured. So, physical threats, okay. Someone shoots you. They tried to shoot him. Someone tried to shoot him twice. That’s demonstrable. But his level of fear over that, to me— it’s not excusable. He is not just one man. He’s the president of the United States.

He, even if his power is limited, as he’s demonstrated it obviously is limited, he does have the power to stop and hold a press conference and say, I’m under incredible pressure from this outside force. Obviously Israel is exerting this pressure on him. He could be forthcoming and straightforward about it and rally the American people behind him.

A lot of people know it, a lot of people are aware of it, and they’re upset about it. And he should just acknowledge it and say, “I’m in this untenable position, but I’m no longer going to put up with it.” And even if our government is thoroughly corrupted in every single aspect, and there’s this outside foreign power that is generating all this fear, there are some elements of the US government he could be using to his benefit to root them out. It just requires him to have the fortitude to declare it. The other thing is— No, can I ask you a— Yes.

Good People Within Corrupt Agencies

TUCKER CARLSON: That is one thing you learn from growing up in DC and just being around it a lot, is that these agencies are totally corrupt and the structure of them is just rotten and it’s really hard for good people to have any effect on outcomes. Doesn’t mean there aren’t good patriotic intelligent people serving in every single one of these agencies. And you never want to say a nice word about CIA or DOD or DOW or whatever they’re calling it now, but any of these agencies. But it’s just a fact that there are really good people motivated by patriotism who work there.

They’re not the majority, clearly. They’re not in control of the levers, obviously. But they’re there. And some of them have migrated over to the White House. I mean, they work there right now. I know them. Really smart, like, wow, I can’t believe someone that smart works in the government, that patriotic, that pure of intent, like really good people. I can hardly believe it. I guess maybe it’s just a numbers game. You get 10 million people in a government, some of them are going to be outstanding, but they are.

And there’s been so little effort to find them, to empower them. And to the extent that they have been empowered, Joe Kent, for example, they get completely destroyed. And then you have people like Sebastian Gorka, who I don’t even know if he’s an American citizen, but he’s clearly a highly damaged person, not a smart person, not a loyal American in any sense. And he’s still there.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It’s such a daily offense to those people.

TUCKER CARLSON: I guess what I’m saying is, and you would just know this because of the life that you’ve led, you could make a good faith effort at identifying those people. Of course, you’d have to go through— it’d be a huge fight. It was very, very hard. But you could try to find those good people, right?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, I would think so. That’s my point. He could coalesce the true, legitimate, smart, dedicated Americans who were there, who must feel impotent rage over what’s going on. They text me.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, I bet they’re all on the verge of resigning.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yeah, no, I know. It’s been hugely dispiriting actually that Joe Kent seems to be the only one who’s come out publicly and on principle.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, they’re all making this calculation— the good people, and there are a ton of them left in the administration, including in the White House. There are good people. I can verify that there are. With good motives. I mean, they don’t all agree with me on everything, but that’s okay. But their motives are pure. They’re not there to get rich. They’re there to serve their nation.

And they’re all thinking— the ones I have spoken to, which is a lot of them— like, “Well, I’m here, I can do good on the margins. Something will pass my desk and maybe I can have an effect. God put me here for some reason. I should probably do my duty even if I hate it.”

The Case for the 25th Amendment

BUCKLEY CARLSON: They have to start thinking bigger picture. I’m sure they’re siloed or whatever. And I’m sure that’s some comfort to know that they’re being true to themselves and true to the country. But at some point, it’s going to take those people actually talking to each other and saying enough is enough.

I mean, I actually think we do have remedies for an out-of-control, megalomaniacal, destructive president. I think honest people who have that power should consider taking it. The 25th Amendment is there for a reason. It’s not crazy to talk about it in this context. If our country is suffering great and lasting damage, which it seems to be, then sober minds need to come in and exercise what power they have for the benefit of all of us. Easier said than done, I’m sure.

TUCKER CARLSON: Right. Easier said than done. But I mean, it’s certainly— I think saying the truth, whatever you think that it is, is the first step toward redemption of yourself and of your country. Tell the truth. That’s your number one duty.

Blackmail, Shame, and Obligation

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Can I say one other thing? Of course. I’m certain the fear of physical— the physical threat is real. Obviously demonstrated a lot. But also, if it’s shame, if there’s blackmail material, as there is on so much of our elected officials, if there isn’t Trump, it’s like, I’m sorry, you’ve demonstrated that you don’t have any personal shame. I mean, you’ve demonstrated that a lot. You persevered through all of these accusations of disgusting personal behavior. How shocking is it really if there are pictures of you doing compromising things? Not very.

And it doesn’t even matter. Like, actually, I hate the term, but sack up. Like, really, again, it comes back to the obligation that he has, not just to Donald Trump, to everybody else in the country, well beyond Donald Trump. Who cares?

Reckoning With Our Own Complicity

TUCKER CARLSON: He can survive. So looking back— because you and I and everyone else who supported him, you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him. We’re implicated in this for sure. It’s not enough to say, “Well, I changed my mind,” or “Oh, this is bad, I’m out.” It’s like, in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.

So I do think it’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional. That’s all I’ll say.

But anyway, the question does present itself immediately. Like, what is this? Was this always the plan? You don’t want to be a conspiracy nut, but clearly there were signs of low character. We knew that.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes. But it didn’t—

TUCKER CARLSON: There are tons of people of low character who outperform their character.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It doesn’t have to be sort of the norm, actually, these days. Right.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’ve outperformed my character a lot. I don’t have especially high character, right? But you try your best. But what was this? Was this always the plan?

Was It Always the Plan? Butler and the Assassination Attempts

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Looking back after the last year and a half, it seems like it kind of was. And it’s easy— Well, you could get really deep about it and say, “What was Butler?” Like, how was it that he— And Ryan Routh. I mean, he was subject to two legitimate assassination attempts. Have we ever gotten to the bottom? I know you’ve talked a lot about this, but have we ever gotten to the bottom?

TUCKER CARLSON: I haven’t talked a lot about it. I don’t know the answer, but I know that those investigations have been stymied.

Trump’s Loyalty, Foreign Influence, and the State of America

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Fact. Yeah, stymied from the very top, from people who actually would have the power to get to the bottom and the motive. Yes. Yeah, very much. The enormous amount of money he got from Miriam Adelson now seems suspect. A lot of people at the time, you know, there’s a lot of money in politics. To run for president requires an enormous— I mean, Kathleen Hamilton went through $2 billion in 4 months. Sure, there’s an argument to be made that you get money from those who will give it to you. It’s just the nature of that game.

But it’s still reprehensible, and it’s still a big question mark. Why would someone who has this obvious and demonstrated allegiance to a foreign power give Donald Trump $250 million while he’s running for president? I mean, how is that defensible? It’s really not. If Russia had given a PAC for Trump, if the mayor of Moscow had somehow assembled an enormous amount of money and put it in a 501(c)(3) for Trump’s benefit, would that have been acceptable? Of course it wouldn’t have been.

So what did someone— it comes back to the money. What did they get in return for that amount of investment? And it’s clear. I get it.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, I mean, of course I agree with every word that you’re saying. I just think, given his behavior and his demonstrated disloyalty and viciousness to previous supporters, why didn’t he display the same lack of loyalty to Miriam Adelson? I mean, that’s kind of the question. The only people he’s been loyal to are the neocons and his donors.

So he attacks Islam. Some of us stand up and say, probably shouldn’t be attacking a religion. “Oh, you’re a Muslim, secret Muslim. You love Muslims.” No, I like reverence, and I don’t think you should attack people on the basis of their religion.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: You don’t attack the religion. Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: And all these evangelicals are like, “Oh, you see, you’re a Muslim.” The next week he attacks Jesus. Wow. Okay, because it’s all connected, right?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Clearly. Of course. Well beyond money, obviously.

The Question of Religious Loyalty

TUCKER CARLSON: But the one person he’s never going to attack is Rabbi Schneerson. And the Chabad leader who’s passed, but who I’m not attacking, by the way. Who was regarded as the Messiah by many of his followers. I don’t think Trump should attack him, to be clear, but Trump would never attack him. That’s the one Messiah he will never attack. So, what is that?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Am I wrong?

TUCKER CARLSON: No, you’re not wrong. It’s totally cool to attack Jesus. “Oh, it’s a joke. I was saying I was a doctor. I heal people.” Well, that’s how Jesus described himself, by the way.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: You’re still attacking Jesus. Yes. No, demonstrably so. He did.

TUCKER CARLSON: Obviously on a Sunday. You’re attacking Jesus on a Sunday. It’s totally fine. But we all know, and again, I’m not asking that he attack Rabbi Schneerson. He should not. But he never would. He’d die first. So, you tell me what that is.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Gosh, I wish I knew. But he should be called to respond. I agree. Yeah, very much so. It makes no sense. Although it’s revealing, as you’re indicating.

Plus, Trump is a totally secular human being who never held a Bible, didn’t put his hand on the Bible. Obviously, that’s an offensive statement right there. That should have been— he’s the only person in the United States who’s never put his hand on the Bible during his inaugural. What the hell is that?

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know if that means he’s a secular person. I think it means he’s got a different religion.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: No, I’m saying he had been perceived as a secular individual. Clearly there’s—

TUCKER CARLSON: So where does this go?

The State of the Nation and Growing Unrest

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I wish I could answer that question. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like we’re getting out of Iran anytime soon. It doesn’t seem like the Strait of Hormuz is going to open anytime soon. It doesn’t seem like Bibi Netanyahu is going to allow us to achieve peace. Doesn’t seem like American power is getting any stronger. Doesn’t seem like the American people are going to stop suffering anytime soon.

I think at some point, I mean, there are mechanisms for dealing with a government that’s not responsive. I hope it doesn’t go there, but people are upset, man. I’ve never seen anything like it, actually. Is that true? Oh, people are outraged. And why wouldn’t they be?

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, you at this point, given your views and your name and your life, you’re not hanging out with liberals. You’ve never hung out with liberals ever. You’re the least liberal person, American liberal, that I ever— you literally carry a gun and smoke unfiltered cigarettes. And may I have one? No, of course you may. And sleep in bed with dogs and the whole thing. So you’re not coming at this from— you don’t have a lot of friends who are Starbucks baristas, right?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I do not, right. No, although I kind of wish I’d listened. The evidence was there that Trump was not— didn’t have a stable footing and wasn’t—

A Brief Interlude on Camel Straights

TUCKER CARLSON: What is that even still sold in this country?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: They’re very hard to find. They’re very expensive, especially in a world where tobacco is quite expensive. Those have been made continuously since 1913. I think every American military man up until Vietnam had these in his C-rations.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yep. General Blackjack Pershing cabled back from France to President Woodrow Wilson and said, “Send more Camels. We will win the war with these.”

BUCKLEY CARLSON: A friend of mine, right before this interview, great guy named Paul Leslie, sent me a rider from Frank Sinatra, one of Frank Sinatra’s concerts in the early ’80s, and it was a rider stipulating all of the various things he needed in the back room. It was like specific chocolates, specific booze, and it was 2 cartons of Camel Straights.

TUCKER CARLSON: Isn’t that great? You’ve been smoking those since you were a child. Mm-hmm. How do you feel?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Empowered. I really do. I feel so much better. I’ve been back on them. I let them aside. I never— I thought I was a quitter, and I left these behind for a decade and a half. Is that true? I did. I love nicotine, but actually having the physical— having this in your hand, being able to exhale, being able to— it’s an amazing taste. It’s unrivaled taste. It is.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s the brand I smoked my whole life, and it’s just a great cigarette. By the way, it’s a lot lighter than people believe.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Yes, Lucky Strike’s a lot tougher, actually.

TUCKER CARLSON: Which our father smoked. Yeah, is a strong cigarette. But no, that’s not a strong cigarette, especially— it’s a smooth— yeah, I totally agree. Flavor with chocolate, same formula pretty much.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I think we’d have to call RJR to find out, but it’s no different than the one I smoked in 1982. I think I was 11. And yeah, it’s a good cigarette.

Trump Supporters Feel Betrayed

TUCKER CARLSON: So anyway, sorry, but my only point was, and I think it’s obvious to people watching this, you’re probably not hanging around with a bunch of non-binary Kamala Harris voters. So most people you know voted for Trump and strongly supported him?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Very much so. How do they feel? I don’t know a single person who doesn’t feel betrayed, left behind, upset, hostile, freaked out about the consequence of this. I mean, it’s not a small thing what we’ve done.

If the president of the United States is not just— I don’t think of him as my protector, but he’s the protector of the country. He represents the country. That’s correct. And that’s his sole job, actually. One job, one job only is to husband the resources that you have, that you were given. And he’s failed on every level, but he’s also degraded what we have, what we had, and was already under attack for so long.

It’s unclear what’s going to happen. I’m 55. I’ve seen a lot of what could have become unrest. I’ve never seen more fertile ground for real unrest than what we have now, especially with the advent of AI, the current economy, our debt, and the prospect of more Americans dying in a country they can’t find on a map and fighting a fight that they can’t articulate, don’t understand, and don’t want.

TUCKER CARLSON: You got to wonder if that’s accidental. I mean, if you wanted to destroy the country, this is exactly what you’d do.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Well, the entire program for the latter half of my life has seemed designed to weaken this country, to divide people, to make them less happy and more enslaved.

A Conspiracy of Instinct?

TUCKER CARLSON: It does seem that way. I don’t know that there was like a meeting at Bilderberg or Bohemian Grove or whatever.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It’s so precise. And so overwhelming and so universal on every front that it could not have been accidental. These are not just—

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, you wonder if it was a conspiracy of instinct. I mean, when the George Floyd thing happened, I was confused as to what was going on because I’m literal. I mean, I’m against vandalism and rioting and “hate the whites.” It’s just a no-go for me immediately. But I didn’t understand its purpose. I didn’t understand its scale. I just didn’t get it.

I was mesmerized by what was happening in Minneapolis outside the convenience store. And The New York Times ran a piece, I’ll never forget it. And in it they quoted some art critic from New York, from the West Village or something. And he said, 2 days in, “This is the revolution.” It’s like certain people tuned into the frequency of destruction of evil. Like they recognized it immediately, just like they recognized Trump immediately as a threat to them. They’ve neutralized that threat somehow, but anyway, they could feel it. And this art critic, whose name I can’t even remember, was celebrating it.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I must say.

TUCKER CARLSON: He was celebrating. Oh, absolutely. He was absolutely celebrating it. Knew that this was more than simply about the death of some guy trying to pass a bad hundred at a convenience store. This was a reordering of American society. We’re going to get rid of all the white cops because we need to do that in order to something, whatever. I mean, there’s some reason why they wanted that. And you can effectuate peace. Yeah, no, probably not. Anyway, the women and the children, protect the women of the— no, to destroy. That’s the point. Of course. So I don’t know, maybe these are unknowable questions.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It can’t be a confluence of random events. It is clearly by design. It’s clearly been a long-term plan. That’s just obvious.

Do You Feel Personally Threatened?

TUCKER CARLSON: Last question. Do you, given the attitudes you’ve described, like total contempt for people who supported him, total reverence for— unwillingness ever to criticize people who are clearly opposed to the United States. Do you feel personally threatened?

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I think the backlash that we’re going to see, and whatever comes, the reaction from the lunatic left is going to be overwhelming. They may be disorganized now. That’s the other thing we didn’t talk about, is that Trump’s coalition that he put together— he had so demonstrably and definitively spanked, shamed, destroyed the left. I mean, the level of dispiritedness and disorganization among the left in November of ’24 and December of ’24. I mean, they didn’t engage in any kind of retrospective, or they didn’t try to figure out how they could represent the country or the party or fix the problems. Of course, they never do that.

TUCKER CARLSON: But we’re going to take this opportunity to help Black people since we love Black people so much. We’re going to spend our years in the wilderness trying to elevate Black people. They didn’t.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: That never occurred to them.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’ll never do that.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: But they never do that. What they did do was they recognized that their political fortunes were dashed for some time to come because it was obvious. It was obvious that Trump had a total mandate to do the things— which is obviously why people are so upset that he didn’t grasp the nettle and do what he said he was going to do, because he had such fertile ground to do it. And he had both houses of Congress, and he could have actually accomplished a lot more than just signing executive orders and closing the border. God bless him for closing the border. But why hasn’t he expelled the 50 million people who are here illegally?

The Republican Party’s Failure to Deliver

TUCKER CARLSON: Why are we still importing people? And they’re announcing now we’re going to import more people. We’re going to give citizenship to the illegals that we supposedly were going to deport. Now we’re giving them citizenship.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: It’s absolutely obscene. But people don’t talk about that enough, that the way forward was really rosy and it was a rebirth of America in November of ’24. People felt that and the left was crushed definitively.

And now we’re several months from the midterm elections. It seems very clear that the Republican Party hasn’t delivered anything. Trump delivered a war and delivered higher prices and delivered misery. That’s demonstrable. And unless it’s a corrupt election, which of course it will be, the Republicans are going to lose power. Trump’s agenda, if there is one, is going to come to a halt.

And the left has, if anything, a very long memory, and they are vindictive planners. They are not reactive, not effectively so. They’re effective planners, and they spend a lot of time thinking about this and the retribution. They will use retribution. Trump was accused of planning retribution. It would have been actually justice. He never made that point, though he should have. Restoring order and restoring justice to the system.

The left is going to be vicious, and it’s going to hurt a lot of people at a time when — probably not Trump, 80-year-old Trump, probably not Trump, probably not Trump’s family either. Which is something we haven’t talked about because the focus that he’s had — we talked about he’s focused on artists and music, but he’s really focused on business for Trump and the Trump family. And they’ve conducted a lot of it, and they’ve amassed a lot of wealth on paper, but also a lot of real assets and real cash. And they’re going to be inoculated, and none of his supporters —

So, Uncle Buck, thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: Buckley S. P.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: Carlson, thank you for having me. I love it. I love it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I will see you in Maine.

BUCKLEY CARLSON: I love it. Thank you.

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