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Home » Tucker Carlson Show: w/ Peter Brimelow (Transcript)

Tucker Carlson Show: w/ Peter Brimelow (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of VDARE founder Peter Brimelow’s interview on The Tucker Carlson Show: “Immigration, National Review, and the Battle for America’s Future”, January 20, 2026.  

Brief Notes: In this extensive interview, Tucker Carlson sits down with veteran journalist and VDARE founder Peter Brimelow to discuss the history and future of the immigration debate in America. Brimelow reflects on his decades-long career, including his “purge” from the conservative establishment at National Review and the aggressive legal battles his organization has faced against New York’s Attorney General. The conversation dives into provocative territory, examining the role of political donors, the concept of national identity, and the demographic shifts Brimelow argues are leading the West toward a total collapse. Together, they provide a sobering look at the intersection of “lawfare,” media influence, and the struggle over the future of the American state. 

The Changing Landscape of Immigration Debate

Tucker Carlson: Peter Brimelow, thank you so much for doing this. I thought of you last week when I read this. I don’t know how much you follow X, but there are a couple exchanges that suggested to me that things are changing very, very fast.

Okay, so here’s one. This is a tweet from last week, less than a week ago, from basically an anonymous account, and I’m quoting: “If white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non-whites openly hate white men while white men hold a collective majority, then they will be a thousand times more hostile and cruel when they’re a majority over whites. White solidarity is the only way to survive.”

Okay, that’s on the Internet. Elon Musk retweets it and says, “100%.” And then Elon Musk writes this: “If current trends continue, whites will go from being a small minority of the world population today to virtually extinct!”

All of that, in my opinion, is obviously true, and I think most people know it. But I read that, I thought, here’s the world’s richest man who owns this platform and a lot of other things saying this, and Peter Brimelow, who I know, who’s a thoroughly decent person, has had his life turned upside down and basically been destroyed in some ways, professionally anyway, for saying things that are way more restrained than that. So I have to ask you what it feels like to see that.

Peter Brimelow: It feels kind of tingly on the one hand.

Tucker Carlson: Tingly.

Peter Brimelow: I’m happy that the debate has moved in that direction. And the things that we were talking about 25 years ago on vdare.com, which was my website, like birthright citizenship and so on, are now in the public debate.

On the other hand, you know, we’ve been ruined, and we’re facing personal ruin, of course, because of this attack on us by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James. As nobody knows who I am, Tucker, I should say that, you know, I’m a longtime, despite my accent, I’ve been here for 55 years, and I’m a longtime financial journalist. I worked for Forbes and Fortune and Barron’s and so on. And I worked for National Review. I wrote for National Review a lot.

And I wrote a piece on immigration in 1992 saying, “Time to rethink immigration.” That sometimes occurred with kicking off the modern debate. And there was a brief civil war within the conservative movement at that point, which we lost. And Buckley bit the staggers in the back and purged the magazine of immigration patriots.

And for the next while, the Wall Street Journal editorial page was absolutely dominant and they were going on about the need for amnesty and there was no way to combat it. So I set up a website, which I named vdare.com after Virginia Dare, the first English child, not white child, as they always say, born in the New World.

And over a period of about 25 years, we built up into quite a force until about two years ago, it was destroyed by the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, who just basically subpoenaed us to death and has in fact now sued us personally, as in the foundation, through the foundation. So we’re a bit like General Flynn. You know, no middle class family can stand up to this. General Flynn had to sell his house and we’re going to face, we’re driven into personal bankruptcy, I guess.

The National Review Purge

Tucker Carlson: It’s a horrifying story. I’ve kept abreast of it through your wife, who texts me, a wonderful person. And I know that you’re a man of great personal decency and restraint and basically a great citizen and the kind of immigrant we need and I’m grateful to have. So the whole thing is shocking and so revealing.

But I’d like, if you don’t mind, to start closer to the beginning of this story with your experience at National Review. 1992, you said you wrote this piece saying “Time to rethink immigration,” which I remember well. At the time, National Review really was a forum for conservatives to think through what it meant to be conservative. So that was a significant piece at the time. And then you said Bill Buckley, the then editor, William F. Buckley Jr., stabbed you in the back. Can you tell the story of what happened exactly?

Peter Brimelow: Oh, sure. I was never on staff at National Review, but I was what they called a senior editor. And I wrote for it a lot. And in 1992, I wrote this very long cover story. It’s about 14,000 words. Bill had retired as the editor then. He was just circling around in the background. But the then editor, John O’Sullivan, went with this story.

And for about five years we basically directly challenged the official conservative line, which was that immigration is good, more immigration is better, illegal immigration is very good. That’s what the Wall Street Journal said, and still saying, as far as I can tell.

And then at the end of five years, in 1997, Bill just abruptly, without any warning at all, fired O’Sullivan and purged the magazine of immigration patriots and basically told us to shut up.