Tucker’s Brother Buckley Carlson on Dogs, Childhood, Nicotine, Frank Luntz and America’s Future

Twitter phenomenon Buckley Carlson makes his on-camera debut. (00:00) Buckley Carlson’s Rise to Internet Stardom (10:40) Buckley’s War With the School Administrators (18:57) Buckley’s Love for Dogs (30:39) Buckley’s Childhood (1:10:27) What Happened to America’s Men? (1:40:00) Buckley’s Falling Asleep While Flying a Plane Story Paid partnerships with: Black Rifle Coffee: Promo code "Tucker" for 30% off at https://www.blackriflecoffee.com Cowboy Colostrum: Get 25% off your entire order with code TUCKER at https://cowboycolostrum.com Last Country Supply: Real prep starts with the basics. Here’s what we keep stocked: https://lastcountrysupply.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:29Tucker Carlson?

  Uncle Buck, I'm glad you're here.

• 0:33Tucker Carlson?

  So you're on Twi... I didn't even know you were on Twitter. And then the ghouls decided to, you know, destroy my son, who's got the same name as you. Because in our family, there are only like four names, and everyone's required to use one. And, uh, and I think they mistook your Twitter feed for his. I don't even know if he has a Twitter feed. And, um, and all of a sudden, you became really famous. And a couple of your nieces called me, "Uncle Buck's on Twitter." I had no idea. I was like, "I didn't know that." How long have you been on Twitter?

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Not very long, since 2010, but mostly as a reader.

• 1:05Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  And now that there's nowhere else you can get news except for Un's Review. Were you allowed to talk about Un's Review on this?

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Other than Un's Review, uh, or Revolver News, the only other place you can get information these days is on X. So if you're not on it, you're not getting information. I had never actually rendered many opinions on X.

• 1:27Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  But I started doing that recently.

• 1:29Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, did that change?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, it did. It did, and it's been so fun. Actually, you meet some interesting people on X. There's a lot of creativity on X.

• 1:39Tucker Carlson?

  I agree with that.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  There is a lot. Like, I wouldn't know how to make a meme if my life depended on it, but I sure appreciate them. Other than that, there are some seriously well-researched, smart people who've got a lot of interesting stuff to say. So, and it's addictive. I try not to spend a huge amount of time on it. I actually have work to do. So, but it will suck me in, but...

• 2:01Tucker Carlson?

  Wait, so you beat alcohol, you beat cigarettes. But Twitter's hard.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  It's much. Thankfully, I've got a lot of nicotine with me.

• 2:09Tucker Carlson?

  Good.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Um.

• 2:10Tucker Carlson?

  Are you armed? By the way, I always I always assume you normally have a gun right on the table, but I don't see it.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Sadly, I had to fly through. I had to be groped by TSA this morning at dawn. It was awesome. They, uh, yeah.

• 2:23Tucker Carlson?

  What's your strategy for that?

• 2:25Speaker 02

  My strategy used to be, hey, say please and thank you. Um, because you work for us.

• 2:33Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  They love that message.

• 2:34Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, they do. I've seen you try to enforce manners, Anglo manners at the TSA station. Doesn't work.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  No. And actually, recently, since they've instituted the Real ID and they have you stand and take your picture, I know they have your picture everywhere else and they have your biometrics. Um, I took a principled stand a few times and said, oh, no, I don't think I want a picture. Well, every time that's happened, they managed to discover that I have a duplicate ticket or no TSA badge. And I have to go back to the front of the line. So I don't do that. I'm captain compliant. I go through. I'm super courteous when I walk through.

• 3:14Tucker Carlson?

  Uh, so they broke you like Winston Smith at the end of 1984. They just broke into you. You're like, two plus two, I think that's five. Is it five?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  You just have to surrender at some point, exactly, if you want to fly anywhere these days. So, no, I'm not armed sadly, but, uh, I'm in the great state of Florida.

• 3:30Tucker Carlson?

  I don't think I've ever seen you unarmed, but you're, this is a safe place. Um, normally you have this little thing on the table and Uncle Buck, what's that?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Whoa, whoa. Backup planner.

• 3:39Tucker Carlson?

  But so you've actually been broken by TSA?

• 3:42Speaker 02

  I don't really think there's any other solution to it. I'm still angry about it.

• 3:46Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. Legitimately, I find it to be one of the most humiliating experiences in American life. And I do still say to everyone around me after I've gone through the groping, I say, do you feel safer?

• 4:00Tucker Carlson?

  You do say that?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 4:01Tucker Carlson?

  You offer a drill comment in the line?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  It's amazing how few people actually will take the bait.

• 4:07Tucker Carlson?

  They can smell the noncompliance on you and they get away quick.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Big time.

• 4:11Tucker Carlson?

  They're like, he should be deplatformed.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Boy, there's a lot of that on X. I had heard that you could say whatever you want. It turns out that's not true.

• 4:19Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, it's not true?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  No, and people have no sense of humor.

• 4:23Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, they don't, they don't like jokes anymore?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:25Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. Can I just give you my strategy for TSA when I get groped?

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Please. A little to the left?

• 4:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, no, totally. They're like, I'm gonna touch you around the belt area, sir. I'm like, bring it on, baby. And then just act like you love it. And it's so creepy that it'll abbreviate the experience.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Do you go through the X-ray machine so they can keep the file?

• 4:49Tucker Carlson?

  I try not to. I'm so paranoid about all of that stuff. I'm getting crazy and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get some weird, you know, lymphoma from the, from the magnetometer or something. I just don't, it can't be healthy, right?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  No, it can't. Although I figure once you've surrendered and you can't do anything in American life without surrendering to some extent, even emailing or texting, you know that other people have it. So at some point, you should just adopt an attitude.

• 5:12Tucker Carlson?

  No, I, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we've, we've both been tamed by the women in our lives and it's like, stop making a fuss. But I always think these are the people who ran the burn pits at Camp Lejeune.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:22Tucker Carlson?

  Where our father was stationed and in the Marine Corps and-

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Never joined the class action.

• 5:27Tucker Carlson?

  Never, he never joined the class action. That's right.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Not a litigious man.

• 5:31Tucker Carlson?

  Not a litigious man. I was saying this the other day. I'm 56. I've never sued anybody. So I said, people are slandering you. You gotta sue. And I was like, I'm committed to a higher principle that in my culture, we're not into lawsuits at all. And I'm never gonna, I wanna make it to death and I hope it's, you know, a while from now without ever suing anybody. That'll be a personal victory for me and my family. And really only our family will appreciate it because the culture we grew up in is just gone. Doesn't, like it never existed, but-

• 5:58Speaker 02

  I'm honest.

• 5:59Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. Oh, you've noticed?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have noticed.

• 6:03Tucker Carlson?

  Has it, has it been a net win or loss for the country, would you say?

• 6:07Speaker 02

  After we won World War II and we got to luxuriate in our freedoms and, and all the economic prosperity that has led us to be freer and able to speak our mind? No, no. It's actually tragic. And if you're having young children, as you do, I guess they're no longer young, but you really see it with the way our children have grown up and the restrictions they've had on thought and speech especially. I mean, we grew up at a time, as you know, where I don't think anybody's ever heard this question before in a, in a school setting. One, ask any question you want. In fact, you're encouraged to ask a question. I was always taught, "Ask any question, you'll never get in trouble." And then that silly little ditty, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will

• 6:52Speaker 02

  never hurt me." That was real. And none of our children were taught that. No American child goes through life thinking that they can deviate from the script, that they can offer some opinion that's counter to the authorities that are in front of them. And that's tragic. And it obviously has a huge effect. It stifles imagination and creativity.

• 7:15Tucker Carlson?

  Which are why they've died. I think, actually, that slogan, which if you're under 50, you may not be familiar with, but it was a staple of, well, England, by the way, and then the United States, it's child. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It's actually been inverted, where we've endorsed sticks and stones. Violence is no big deal. We're totally for violence. Just blow up the drug boats, whatever. Are they drug runners? Who cares? Kill them. And, by the way, Charlie Kirk got shot. Well, yeah, because he used bad words. Like, he deserved it. People believe that. So, sticks and stones are fine, but words are the threat. Like, what is that?

• 7:48Speaker 02

  It's terrifying, actually.

• 7:50Tucker Carlson?

  It's not a Western orientation.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  No. No, it's not. But it is prevalent here now in the West. It's everywhere.

• 7:59Tucker Carlson?

  So, you've, it looks like you've decided not to play along.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  I am not playing along, and I'm fortunate, because I've grown up in an atmosphere where, actually, I was encouraged to say what I believe. I don't have a lot of governors in my life. Especially now that my child is old enough not to be embarrassed by me daily, and I don't have to, I don't have to fight with his various academic institutions that charge me a lot of money and tried to wipe out the boy and wipe out the creativity from my son. And that was a, you know, 12, 14-year battle that I had to fight. And also, I, so I don't really care. There are very few people whose opinion matters to me. And at the end of the day, I have a constituency, basically, of one, and that's the woman I

• 8:45Speaker 02

  love and live with, and my son, and then the slightly expanding circle of you and other family members. Beyond that, and every one of those people is perfectly apprised of.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  My deep flaws and my history. So

• 9:04Tucker Carlson?

  And, and your amazing virtues. And as one of my children said to me, well, in fact, all of my many children said to me and my nephews, when you made your public versions on Twitter, the legend of Uncle Buck is this is now out there for the public to appreciate. And by the way, they loved it.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  That's so nice. I guess the key is just not thinking about it. I don't think about it. That's actually, I was thinking, I thought you might ask me about this only because it's a new thing in my life.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  I likened it to shooting rabbits on a sporting click course. The most accurate you'll ever be is if you're just instinctive. You just pull your gun up and you shoot.

• 9:45Tucker Carlson?

  That's totally right.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  And so I don't have a lot of time to think about what I write. I've managed not to write anything too embarrassing. I don't write things that are intentionally provocative. But I also have no trouble expressing myself. And there's so much absurdity out there that needs to be addressed, I think. So.

• 10:05Tucker Carlson?

  And I think that the most important act of defiance is not violence. I have come to believe in my age that violence actually doesn't, doesn't seem to solve. I don't really know when the last time violence solved a problem. It's also prohibited to us as Christians. So like, there's that. But you can't kill innocents. Sorry. But I do think they're right to worry about words.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:29Tucker Carlson?

  Actually, words do change the world. The New Testament changed the world, period. The Old Testament changed the world. I mean, truth changes everything. And you may not live to see it come to fruition, but it still is the most profound thing you can do to fight tyranny is to tell the truth about tyranny.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:45Tucker Carlson?

  Do you feel that?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Very much so. And I think, and there's a huge amount of people in this country and across the world who do. And it seems like they, aside from podcasts like yours, and there are very few, there are few opportunities for people to express themselves honestly, unfiltered.

• 11:01Tucker Carlson?

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• 14:12Tucker Carlson?

  Dark as coffee. You talked about growing up, obviously we grew up together. We're the only children in our family. We had the world's smallest family. It's like three of us for a while and, uh, and then we've lived next to each other our whole lives until pretty recently. And you talked about telling the truth at your kid's school. I should just say this because it's one of the things I admire so much about you. We sent our children to the same school, obviously lived. I forgive you. Well, my wife convinced you to send yours to the school that our kids went to. And of course it turned out to be a sub awesome school, very liberal, crazy school. But you know, it's our neighborhood school, whatever we did it, let's not regret it. But, um, you were the only person in this rich person's school that we sent our kids

• 14:53Tucker Carlson?

  to, to confront, you know, with politeness, but firmness, the administration of the school about what they were telling your child, which was like totally bonkers. Like men can become women and hate yourself if you're white and all this stuff. And boys are bad. Testosterone's bad, masculinity is bad. And everyone else was like, okay, well, it's a prestigious school. We'll just go along with it. And you were like, I know. And I remember all the moms kind of hated you, but were also sort of attracted to you, just to be honest about it. And they were like, oh, I can't believe your brother's always making a fuss. And you were like, yeah, I don't care. Why did you do that? You're the only person?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  My son is the greatest blessing in my life. And it's a sole purpose. It was my sole purpose for a long time. It seemed it's the only thing that that could be important. It's the only enduring thing. When people asked me when I was a kid, probably because we had such a happy, thoroughly fucked up childhood, but really happy thanks to our father, who was so extraordinary in every way, and made it very clear that we were the number one priority in his life. I mean, like the busiest guy I've ever known, involved in so many things. And yet, we were without a doubt his only focus and or his primary focus. And

• 16:15Tucker Carlson?

  He would do anything.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Would do absolutely anything. So

• 16:19Tucker Carlson?

  Literally.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  There are no boundaries. And, and so that seems normal to me. That was my reflexive attitude about my son. Well, I think the first thing I encountered when I took him to that school that pretended to be a nice Episcopalian school with its own chapel, I noticed. They were anything but Christian in their attitudes. And it was, it was the middle of the Obama administration when everybody got super empowered about, you know, indoctrinating children on a level that I don't think I'd ever seen. I don't think that America had ever seen it.

• 16:52Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And you pay all this money because there's really no chance that you would send your children to a public school in Washington. I thought, didn't, um, there's actually an argument probably for sending your children to something other than what we sent ours to. Anyway, I remember showing up, it was right after the election, and I'm not a big bumper sticker guy, but I had a bumper sticker, probably the only other, only bumper sticker I've ever owned. And it was a series of four memes. And it was pro God, pro life, pro gun. And then it had the Obama horizon with a cross through with a slash through it. And that was in the back of my Chevy Tahoe. And I pulled up and dropped my son off at school.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  And the visceral reaction from the entire teacher platoon that was outside was obvious. And so actually, I made a commitment right then and there. Again, I was kind of embarrassed to have a bumper sticker on my car. Like, who does that? But I kept it on there religiously for the next like eight years until the car died. Uh, yeah, until one of our friends actually took that car that I had tried to flip and destroy many times and unsuccessfully was unsuccessful. And he flipped it and broke his neck.

• 18:06Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, he did. He's okay.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  He's, he is okay, but he was, yeah, was.

• 18:11Tucker Carlson?

  Sober, too.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yes, he is.

• 18:13Tucker Carlson?

  In his defense, uh, he, he was dead sober. He was going hunting and it was in the morning. It was in Maine and he hit black ice.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes. Even having grown up in rural Maine, he somehow wasn't an expert at dealing with black ice.

• 18:27Tucker Carlson?

  Took the top of a pine tree off with the vehicle.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  I know.

• 18:30Tucker Carlson?

  It's, I drive by it all the time.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Say a quick prayer every time I go by it.

• 18:33Tucker Carlson?

  Me too.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  He's unbeatable in every way. So he's gonna outlive us both for sure.

• 18:39Tucker Carlson?

  What a wonderful man.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  So that set the tone. And then the other, and then the fact that they have your child captive. You pay all this money. They should have a classical education that in this case was billed as something that was rooted in the Christian church. And yet immediately they adopted and started all these clubs that were race based. They, my son went there in fifth grade, so he was 10. And they immediately started not only indoctrinating all the kids there, but making them feel horrible about themselves, segregating kids by race. This is school where, you know, all the entire, it's in the middle of the swamp. So it's like the richest zip code in all of DC. And so the diversity.

• 19:25Tucker Carlson?

  More the richest in the United States.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yes. And the diversity that they had, they talked endlessly about diversity. And the diversity they had there was color only. Everybody was in the same industry. Everybody was working. Everybody was driving a fucking Range Rover. I wasn't, but you know, they were. Um, and yet, anyway, so it was stifling and confusing for children. And I just wasn't gonna sit back and allow them to do that. And I tried to be reasonable. I was just persistent and they, boy, they didn't like it. They actually despised me. In fact, I guess I've encountered that a few times in my life. But boy, they they heartily dislike me.

• 20:05Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, they did.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  And these are the kind of people who probably do have voodoo dolls back home.

• 20:10Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, 100%. They're all wiccans. No, they were.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  My back pains were not from being overweight or from not having a tough core. It was someone sitting, some booger eater sitting at home, you know, stabbing me with a fucking dagger. I'm excuse my language.

• 20:25Tucker Carlson?

  Sorry. No, it's fine. No, you're right. It just, it was so interesting because I saw it. Obviously, you know, I'm your brother. My wife is your biggest fan, so it's like, of course, we supported you, but I just, and but I was not as brave as you, not even close. And I felt exposed because I had a public job, like I didn't want to get, you know, where I felt a little bit constrained, but you're just, you were braver than I. That's just a fact. And but the reaction from the other parents, all of whom liked you, because everyone likes you, but they were, they didn't want you, even the ones who agreed with you, to keep saying stuff like this, because I think they wanted to ignore it. They wanted to fit in more than they cared about their own children's moral and intellectual development. I mean, that's just a fact.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  That, and also, I think cowardice breeds self-loathing, and which turns into hostility, like extreme hostility. I saw this during COVID in the same place.

• 21:21Tucker Carlson?

  Can you repeat that cowardice?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  I think cowardice breeds self-loathing. I think people who were cowardly hate being cowardly. They know they're being cowardly and they hate themselves for it, especially men or people who claim to be men. And then that manifests itself in extreme hostility. I mean, I saw, everybody's had their experiences during COVID, but I encountered the most extreme hostility when it was if I'm, I never wore a mask. I mean, I was compelled to wear a mask on an airplane. Other than that, I never wore a mask. I just wouldn't. I refused. And I would travel a lot, so I would go through like Chicago Airport and be the only person that I ever encountered with no mask. And it wasn't the authorities who wanted to tackle me.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  It was the other people like going past me on the people mover on the escalator who looked like they wanted to fucking stab me in the face.

• 22:15Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Right? And then, and then when I would, I, I write for a living and I need to get out in the world and nature and, you know, it's a tough business. It's a solitary business. So.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  I take my dogs twice a day and run them in nature.

• 22:33Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, you have dogs?

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, I have a few dogs.

• 22:36Tucker Carlson?

  Five?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  I have five dogs, which is, I think, actually about the ideal number.

• 22:40Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, is that right?

• 22:41Speaker 02

  About the ideal number, yes. Of course, I said that every time, three, four, five is the ideal number.

• 22:46Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, it's the best.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  But I would encounter people outside on a windy day in the sun, walking, and I would, of course, didn't have a mask on, and they would all have their dutiful masks on. And it would inspire, the fact that I didn't have a mask would inspire in them this kind of hostility that I've never encountered anywhere else. And, yeah, it was obvious.

• 23:10Tucker Carlson?

  I think something like that was going on at the school.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Very much so.

• 23:14Tucker Carlson?

  At the Little Episcopal Day School, because the other parents knew that this was bad. And when their kids started to become trans or get into drugs or whatever, they sort of know, like, it's not all your fault, you know, you can't blame parents for everything, but it is partly your fault. And they sort of...

• 23:28Speaker 02

  You can kind of blame parents. I try not to judge people, but I do definitely judge them about their parenthood. That's about the one thing I judge people on.

• 23:34Tucker Carlson?

  Right, trying to be nice.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I know, I mean, you don't actually have total control. There are people who have aberrant children that they're, I believe, are not responsible for.

• 23:42Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  But I think the majority of the weird child behavior stems from shitty parents or parents who were occupied with other people's problems rather than their children's problems. Yeah.

• 23:55Tucker Carlson?

  What you're saying is true.

• 23:56Speaker 02

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• 24:23Tucker Carlson?

  So before you reach for more pills for every problem that pills can't solve, we recommend you give this product Cowboy Colostrum a try. It's got everything your body needs to heal and thrive. It's like the original superfood loaded with nutrients, antibodies, proteins, help build a strong immune system, stronger hair, skin and nails. I threw my wig away and right back to my natural hair after using this product. You just take a scoop of it every morning in your beverage, coffee or a smoothie, and you will feel the difference every time. For a limited time, people listen to our show get 25% off the entire order. So go to cowboycolostrum.com, use the code TUCKER at checkout. 25% off when you use that code, TUCKER at cowboycolostrum.com. Remember you mentioned, you heard it here.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  Now for a quick message from Anthropic, the team behind Claude, the AI built for businesses. Customers count on their bank and banks count on their most important systems. Now those systems count on Claude and nine of the Fortune 10 companies use it for critical work. See why leading companies trust Claude at claude.ai/span.

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman, Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 26:02Tucker Carlson?

  First, so I should just say for the record that you were scoffed at for having the pro-life, pro-God, pro-gun, anti-Obama bumper sticker.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  At a Christian school.

• 26:14Tucker Carlson?

  At a Christian school, right? No pro-God, no pro-life at a Christian school. But then you decided to take your defiance, another click up the ladder by driving your son to school on a big twin Harley in carpool line, which I personally saw.

• 26:31Tucker Carlson?

  He was like a little kid and there'd be all these Range Rovers and Volvos. I'd go, you look over, be like, there's Uncle Buck with the ape hangers.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  I had him strapped to my chest with a mungia cord. It was safe.

• 26:45Tucker Carlson?

  It was, it was, I mean, safe is a relative term. And our families, we know there's no such thing as safety. There's only destiny.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 26:54Tucker Carlson?

  We both believe that, but safe, okay, but it wasn't even a safety violation. It was like a cultural violation.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:03Tucker Carlson?

  And all the moms, you could, you could tell they were a little bit turned on, but also very kind of like, huh, what is this? Why did she, I saw that with my own eyes many times. What was the thinking there?

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Pure celebration of joy and freedom. That's it. That's how I try to live my life. You're called to be joyful. In fact, you're, you're commanded to be joyful.

• 27:27Tucker Carlson?

  Totally agree.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  You are, you are.

• 27:29Tucker Carlson?

  What is that? Suzy has that thing all over our house. First Thessalonians rejoice always never stop praying.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:37Tucker Carlson?

  It's my favorite. Right. No, you're absolutely right. And.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  And Philippians 44, which is always be full of joy in the Lord. I say again, rejoice.

• 27:48Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:49Tucker Carlson?

  I, that's just such a wonder. It's funny that that's triggering to people. Whatever it was, you were triggering people and I felt like it was such an act of bravery. Cause it's one thing to like, you know, stand up in the Congress and say something unpopular, or even like go into battle, but to stand apart from your neighbors at the $50,000 a year Episcopal school in Northwest Washington where there's just so much conformity.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:15Tucker Carlson?

  That ticks balls.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Well, I appreciate it. And I don't think I really thought of it that way. I'm so used to, I don't know. I've lived my life. We were, as you said, we grew up that way and.

• 28:24Tucker Carlson?

  What do you mean? Cause I did say, okay, so I haven't looked at a lot of your, I don't, I'm not on Twitter that much because it's, it's too upsetting to me, but um, I did go and check your Twitter feed, which I, I thought was amazing. And uh, but some of the responses are like, oh, of course you feel this way because you had such a horrible childhood. It's like, wait a second, what do you, people are very personal that way on that. Attacking your childhood? What did you think of your, without getting, you know, too specific, but like, you described it as happy.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  I actually had the best childhood. I'm really sorry for our children. They didn't have the childhood that we have.

• 29:03Tucker Carlson?

  I agree with that.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Had because it was a just a lesson and adventure all the time. You could define your own boundaries. As long as you were, as you went to school, you were respectful to your parents and you showed up for dinner. Uh, there were really no other boundaries.

• 29:21Tucker Carlson?

  Nope.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Nothing. That was it. So, and I loved you and I loved my father and I loved our mother. So, um, we had a happy home life and it was creative and interesting. It was in a beautiful part of the world that was at that time very well run in California. In fact, I think it was the cleanest, most efficient state, uh, in all 50. And it was obviously the, the center of creativity in, in the country and in the world. And it was fantastically beautiful everywhere. I mean, it has every single climate. We lived near the beach and we got to go swimming in the ocean and we had a bunch of dogs and

• 30:03Speaker 02

  we got to explore. We got to explore with our friends and experiment and we also went, I'm sure you recall, it was a much different time. We could actually walk across the border into Tijuana, Mexico and, uh,

• 30:20Speaker 02

  engage in all sorts of interesting.

• 30:21Tucker Carlson?

  It wasn't the most wholesome place.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  No, it really wasn't. I was suddenly thinking.

• 30:25Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Is Rivoli's young avenue still around?

• 30:28Tucker Carlson?

  I don't know.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Is it still accessible to American kids?

• 30:31Tucker Carlson?

  I think the whole thing is so different now, you know, and not in Tijuana a lot, but I think it's like a huge, I think it's like bigger than San Diego. It's controlled by the drug cartels. I don't know. I shouldn't say that. I've never been against Mexico. I've always liked Mexico. Obviously Mexico has done more harm to the United States than any other country, not even close, but I still like Mexicans and I still just have happy memories from Mexico. I'm like, will never be against it just for. I don't know, reasons of memory, but I wouldn't go there to Tijuana.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  No, and I wouldn't send my 12 year old child there either.

• 31:01Tucker Carlson?

  Uh, no, but we were, yeah, that's right. We were allowed to do basically whatever we wanted as long as we, you know, were polite and family loyalty was at the center of everything, of course.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Um, and it was interesting. Our father was involved in so many interesting pursuits. He had interesting friends.

• 31:22Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Our friends were interesting. He included us. He treated us like adults where it was appropriate. I guess all the time.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  He taught us invaluable things that no one teaches their children anymore.

• 31:35Tucker Carlson?

  That's for sure.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah.

• 31:37Tucker Carlson?

  And you, you've used the word creativity a couple of times. It felt to me, looking back, I never have thought about it until recently, as I see the decline in creativity and the awards given to people who are totally non-creative, which is almost everyone in our professional class, like zero creativity. And the creative people are penalized. And that's made me think that maybe the saddest change is the disappearance of creativity and the abundance of it in our childhood. Like that was, wait, I never heard anybody, certainly not our father, ever talk about how rich someone was. Who gives a shit?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Ever. Plus, no one noticed. Everybody was pretty much in the same boat. We lived in an expensive area. We had a nice house, but it was not absurd. No one had $5 million houses. No one had $50 million houses either.

• 32:21Tucker Carlson?

  There wasn't such a thing?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  No, there was literally not such a thing.

• 32:24Tucker Carlson?

  So the measure was, and there was much less economic anxiety, obviously. It was a different economy, but still the values were different. And creativity, the, the ability to create something out of nothing, that was like really prized.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yes. Especially if your father gave you the, what was the, the James Bond cookbook?

• 32:43Tucker Carlson?

  Oh.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  And what was the other one?

• 32:45Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I guess they're illegal now. They're illegal now, sorry.

• 32:48Tucker Carlson?

  Well, he had a library. He had, first of all, he had a real library, like almost a public library in our house, and he'd read every book in it. And he was very serious about it. And it was talk about Catholic tastes. I mean, Broad tastes, universal interests. He's just like, nothing he wasn't interested in. And there was a book about every possible thing. And there was a ton of extremist literature on all sides. He didn't buy any. He wasn't like, he was an extremist. He was not an extremist at all. But he was like, really interested in knowing what people thought and why. And this revolution happened. And he hated the Soviets, but he had tons of Soviet propaganda literature, which was interesting. Yes. He had tons of left wing and right wing, mostly left wing, actually. And he was not left wing, but. That was back when they were creative, when people on the left actually Right.

• 33:32Tucker Carlson?

  were artists and thinkers. And they were open minded. He would always defend people whose politics he hated. If they were creative, he would say, this guy's an asshole. I think these ideas are horrible. But man, look at the songs he wrote or the novels he produced. Or, do you remember that? Yes, very well. Clearly. Yes. Like, that counted in your favor? Yes. Huh. And that's, that's kind of gone. It seems like it. So, I didn't even know this until you, I can't believe we're actually doing this interview. I'm so glad. But, um. I'm so glad too. Thank you. Could we, could I ask you an alb question, by the way? Of course. It's the best nicotine product in the universe. Well, thank you, Buck. I'm glad you noticed.

• 34:15Tucker Carlson?

  And, uh, yes, I did. And I'm generally, this is the problem I have. When I'm talking, I'm generally double barreling, or sometimes triple barreling. And those are nines? Yes. I'm looking forward to the 12s. So, on the question of nicotine, would you say, and I know it's hard to assess yourself, but would you say you dick around?

• 34:34Tucker Carlson?

  If I like it, I like it. Yeah. I really like this a lot. Although it's, so this is the question I have. Where does one tuck it? I know where people tuck the zin. Yeah. I get that. They stuff it. Yes, they stuff it. By the way, they should be more upfront on the labeling, on the zin. I know. They should actually tell you that. That's why it tastes like shit. That's why it's like, dehydrated. They forget to tell you, it needs mucosa, but a particular type of mucosa to activate. Yeah, they got it wrong. I think they're expecting the Bangladeshi guy in the convenience store to tell you. To hand you the KY and the surgical glove and just be like, I think you know how this works. It's like when they have those little crack pipes at the counter with the flower in them. And they're like, no, it's not a crack pipe. I think they're.

• 35:20Tucker Carlson?

  It's an incense burner.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  It's a whistle.

• 35:24Tucker Carlson?

  So I think they're expecting like, if you're using Zin, you know how this works.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:29Tucker Carlson?

  You know what I mean?

• 35:30Speaker 02

  That's a good point. So that's why I actually feel like a bit of an amateur asking this, but I talk to people and all of a sudden I feel like my Biden, my upper palate is like coming out.

• 35:40Tucker Carlson?

  Your Biden?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  My Biden, you know, like the fake teeth I have up here.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Anyway, sorry.

• 35:47Tucker Carlson?

  I try to rotate them around because there are parts of my gums that get neglected.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:55Tucker Carlson?

  I believe in kind of sharing the wealth.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yes. Plus there are different taste buds throughout the entire topography of your tongue and cheek.

• 36:04Tucker Carlson?

  Well, it wasn't that long ago that many Americans thought they were inherently safe from the kinds of disasters you hear about all the time in third world countries, a total power loss, for example, or people freezing to death in their own homes. That could never happen here. Obviously, it's America.

• 36:19Tucker Carlson?

  People are recalculating, unfortunately, because they have no choice. The last few years have taught us that. Remember when the power grid in Texas failed in the dead of winter? Yeah, it happened and it could happen again. So the government is not actually as reliable as you hope they would be. And the truth is, the future is unforeseeable and things do seem to be getting a little squirrely. So if the grid does go down, you need power you can trust. Last Country Supply's newest product is designed for exactly that. The Grid Doctor is a 3,300 watt battery backup system that will power full-size appliances, medical devices, and tools with clean, reliable power. It's even EMP protected. That means

• 37:00Tucker Carlson?

  it's shielded from lightning, solar flares, or an actual electromagnetic pulse event. There's no gasoline, no noise, no emissions. You just plug it in, charge it from the wall from your vehicle, or from the included 200 watt solar panel and keep going day after day, taking care of yourself and the people you love is solely up to you. And the amazing thing is, with these new batteries, we use one at home, by the way, is they're super easy to use. There's no inverter you need to figure out on the front of it or anything like that. There's like three buttons. It's very easy and totally reliable. Highly recommended. We literally use one, as I said. Visit lastcountrysupply.com to shop the Grid Doctor for power you can trust this winter. LastCountrySupply.com.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Now for a quick message from Anthropic, the team behind Claude, the AI built for businesses. Customers count on their bank and banks count on their most important systems. Now those systems count on Claude and nine of the Fortune 10 companies use it for critical work. See why leading companies trust Claude at claude.ai/span.

• 38:13Speaker 06

  I started Ornate in 2013 and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non-technical people. We're able to admin everything on the backend, frontend and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on Shopify.com.

• 38:42Tucker Carlson?

  Are you surprised since we're only really a year apart? Um, so we grew up and our father always treated us the same. There was never like, listen to your brother. It was, it was a fully egalitarian household, like in a way that also doesn't exist anymore.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I'm sure that was frustrating as the oldest.

• 38:58Tucker Carlson?

  I never even questioned it. It was like, we had the same bedtime, same rules. There were never any difference at all in the way that he treated us.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Same buddies.

• 39:04Tucker Carlson?

  Which is one of the reasons we've always gotten along our whole lives because he treated us fairly.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:09Tucker Carlson?

  By the way, if you want to make people hate each other, treat them unfairly.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Oh, I've noticed.

• 39:13Tucker Carlson?

  Like institute affirmative action or DEI and you will have like serious race problems.

• 39:18Tucker Carlson?

  But we never had anything like that. It was a pure meritocracy in our house with equality at the center of it.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  The most intuitive accidental father there has ever been. I mean, this was a man who did not strive to be a dad.

• 39:30Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  And he ended up being pretty much the best father ever.

• 39:35Tucker Carlson?

  The details of my conception have always been a little bit hazy, but I did get the.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  I don't think they were legal.

• 39:41Tucker Carlson?

  I don't want to know.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And I'm sure they were creative.

• 39:43Tucker Carlson?

  Everyone's dead, so it doesn't matter. I know. I can't.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Sorry. I can't even think about it, but my strong impression just from like.

• 39:53Tucker Carlson?

  Comments picked up over the years is that was not intentional at all. Like the whole thing was not intentional.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  I got that sense. It was intentional by God.

• 40:00Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  It was God's plan.

• 40:01Tucker Carlson?

  I totally agree with that. The closest I ever got to asking Pop about it was, he obviously married like a complete lunatic and, and he was such a smart person and he really understood women and loved women and really paid close attention to women.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Boy, did they love him.

• 40:14Tucker Carlson?

  They loved him. He loved them, not just in carnal ways, but like he thought they were really interesting and listened to them all the time. And he had such deep wisdom about women. And so I once-

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Boy, isn't that true?

• 40:24Tucker Carlson?

  He was the deepest on women. And it was out of love, like true love. He thought they were amazing. But, uh, and he also loved them in other ways. But, but whatever. But anyway, I once said to him, like, given your deep knowledge of women, how could you have married a really crazy one? Like, how did you do that? And he goes, they're upside.

• 40:44Tucker Carlson?

  That's all he said. I was like, ah, I don't want to hear anymore.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  It was just clearly never boring.

• 40:48Tucker Carlson?

  Right. No, I guess that was it. You know, I go with, yeah. Well, they're never boring. Once you engage with them, they're like amazing.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  But she had a lot to say.

• 40:56Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Especially in public settings.

• 40:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I can't even.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't imagine.

• 41:00Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I can't even get it. I'm sorry. I don't even know where we were. So one thing I want to ask you was, when we were kids and like everyone in our family, I know this is like so forbidden, this is more forbidden than Israel, but like everyone in our family smoked cigarettes, like everybody. And everyone, they knew smoked cigarettes. And like, the question was filter or non-filter? And of course, our family was strongly on the non-filter side because like-

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Gay or straight?

• 41:24Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, come on.

• 41:26Tucker Carlson?

  They used to call them strays for a reason.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  I remember. Camel strays are the best cigarette ever made.

• 41:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, that's literally true. And Pop would always say, it's important not to have a filter in your cigarette because when you're behind enemy lines-

• 41:36Speaker 02

  You can field strip it.

• 41:37Tucker Carlson?

  You can field strip it. You can field strip it. You break the, the butt.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Done it many times.

• 41:42Tucker Carlson?

  Roll up the paper, flick it away, then the enemy will never know you were smoking American cigarettes.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  They might- They'd only know you were American if you died and they saw your dental work.

• 41:53Tucker Carlson?

  It didn't make a lot of sense, but anyway, but the, in our family, they were, you know, people were very strongly in favor of, of cigarettes and tobacco. It sounds so forbidden now, but, and then we were all convinced this is like so bad because America's killing itself. And if we can only get people off this, everyone's going to live forever. Is it a little weird? And I'm not, I don't smoke, I'm not endorsing smoking that strongly, but.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  I'm considering going back.

• 42:18Tucker Carlson?

  I am too, actually. But, but whatever. And for this, for this.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I reached yesterday, I literally stepped over a dog. I was talking to my girl, stepped over a dog to join her in a booth in a restaurant. And I reached in my pocket to grab my Zippo. It's been 12 years since I've had a Zippo in my pocket. Seriously, I was about to light a smoke. We'd had a pizza, it was fantastic. And it was like, I know what's gonna cap this off, a Camel straight.

• 42:45Tucker Carlson?

  Can you even buy them anymore?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  Even in South.

• 42:48Tucker Carlson?

  I'm lying, I actually know.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Even in tobacco states, do you know how much it costs? Oh, my gosh.

• 42:53Tucker Carlson?

  For a deck of cigarettes, how much?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  It's 12 bucks in South Carolina. It's $21 in the District of Columbia. Yeah, 21 bucks for a deck of smokes. I, I walked in a Circle K the other day, my girl still smokes, God bless her. And I walked in and I bought her some cigarettes and the guy said, "Iggy." And I laughed, I pulled out my wallet and I said, "It's funny." What's funny? And I said, "Yeah, that's what the guy said." I said, "Well, I've been buying cigarettes since I was 11 and they cost a dollar." "Do you think it's funny to make fun of people in the retail business?" Said, "Dude, I'm not making fun of you, I'm making fun of the stupid rules." Yeah. Yeah. He had no sense of humor.

• 43:37Tucker Carlson?

  But you can buy benzodiazepines cheap.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  You can buy weed in any store, you can buy it online, you're encouraged to smoke pot, you're encouraged to do mushrooms, you're encouraged to do mezcal or any other stuff. But you're the greatest pariah in America. You're probably encouraged, well, you are encouraged to like, have touchy feely love with the people in your gender. But if you're a cigarette smoker, you're the, literally the dirtiest pariah in, in America. Actually, that attitude is, is overwhelming now, but it was still around 12 years ago when I quit smoking. And if it hadn't been, I would have quit smoking probably 15 years ago.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  I would have, I mean, I got, I mean, the obvious.

• 44:20Tucker Carlson?

  So you smoked in defiance?

• 44:22Speaker 02

  I did. I smoked aggressively with joy. I did. I loved smoking and it made me smarter. It made me nicer.

• 44:29Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Made me a lot happier. Uh, not only your constant companion, but also like a self-defense weapon or an aggressive weapon. If you, you know, you've got a lit cigarette on you, you're a force to be reckoned with, I would say. Plus, are you ever alone when you have a cigarette?

• 44:47Tucker Carlson?

  No. You sound so much like our father, cause he, of course, he did once wield a cigarette uh, in self-defense.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  I had to do that too.

• 44:54Tucker Carlson?

  You did it too?

• 44:55Speaker 02

  I most certainly did.

• 44:56Tucker Carlson?

  Maybe.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Not on someone's cheek, but on their wrist, I held their hand. Cause he was holding my hand.

• 45:03Tucker Carlson?

  I remember.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  It was like my second job and he was a guy who had, a married guy, Christian, self-avowed, loudly, Christian, and he had cute kids and a nice wife and he like, put his hand on my knee. I said, can you move your hand, please? And he didn't.

• 45:21Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, he's hitting on you?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. At a company picnic, like the first week I was on the job and I said, please remove your hand from my knee. And he didn't. So I grabbed his hand, grabbed his wrist and put my cigarette out on his hand. It was a Saturday afternoon and I had had some cocktails, but I also felt completely justified in doing that. I did, and he pulled his hand away. And I remember, sorry to go down this rabbit hole, but I, uh, the, I thought about it soberly on Sunday and Monday morning as I was going into the office and that there could be real repercussions for doing this. He was like the chief of staff of the organization, was a political organization and he wielded a lot of power. And I went in, I remember I

• 46:04Speaker 02

  was doing some copying, some document and I was standing in the break room next to the Xerox machine and he came up to me and he said, I can't believe you put a cigarette out of my hand. I said, I can't believe you touched me and you wouldn't let go.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  That was it. And we had like a staring contest and then he like, you know, his lip curled and he looked down and walked out. I never heard anything about it. He never told anyone.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  So I think it is fair.

• 46:32Tucker Carlson?

  I think that's called gay bashing.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  No, I think you are recklessly or yeah, you're, you're, yeah, you're without proper defense when you don't have a cigarette. You should have a cigarette with you at all times, even if you don't smoke. That's my attitude. Seriously, I want to bring back smoking because actually smoking without the filter is probably pretty flipping good for you.

• 46:56Tucker Carlson?

  I have a lot of views on this. I don't want to articulate because I don't want to seem crazy, but I tend to, I mean, we were certainly raised thinking that. And our father considered filters like a really bad thing. And it's, you know, smoking does, you know, whatever. Our real mother died of lung cancer, you know, you can, and she smoked unfiltered Pal Mals.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  She engaged in some other activities that may have been responsible for her cancer. I think when you're in the dark side and you get cancer, it makes sense.

• 47:27Tucker Carlson?

  What do you mean?

• 47:29Speaker 02

  I think if you lead a life of extreme narcissism.

• 47:34Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  And you are completely self-focused and one, it's unhealthy. Two, it's, it's unhealthy outlook and the people around you suffer.

• 47:44Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  But I can't imagine you as an individual don't suffer. And now that I'm 54 and I'm old enough to actually witness people who've lived their lives this way. And I mean, self-focused all the time. Not one of them is healthy physically, mentally. It stifles, it kills something in someone. It's like, it's like, I'm not to attack people who aren't able to have children, but people who've chosen, men, who've chosen not to have children. They reach a certain age and they are intractable in ways that are damaging to them and those around them. She was not a man, but she had that same problem. And I think, I think she like.

• 48:29Tucker Carlson?

  Was drowning in like me.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, drowning in like me, exactly, totally asphyxiated on herself.

• 48:34Tucker Carlson?

  So you've made reference to dogs, you've conceded that you have five, you think five is the perfect number. You were describing your childhood and you pointed out the presence, the omnipresence of dogs. And as a highlight, why are dogs important?

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Well, dogs, I think I've thought a lot about this aspect, raising children with dogs. I think it's important because your children are the center of your universe, as they should be.

• 49:00Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  But the last thing you want to do is convey that to your children. So, I mean, that's a good way to fuck up your children. So, having dogs around and instills in them, they have their first, my first loving relationships were with my very small family, of which you're half, and dogs. We had a lot of dogs around all the time.

• 49:22Tucker Carlson?

  All the time.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  And there are people, I mean, have written endlessly and talked endlessly about how wonderful dogs are, but I don't think they talk enough about how wise dogs are, and how dogs are clued into like a communications channel that most people are not picking up. My dogs know what I'm going to do long before I do it. They know exactly my intentions. It's weird. If I, if I'm working in my office and I've got five, four dog beds in my office, underneath the bed, underneath the desk, and if I got up to go.

• 49:59Tucker Carlson?

  Where does the fifth dog go?

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Uh, three of them are shamefully small, so two, two of them, two of them, anybody else's brood, I'd say those are pseudo dogs, but actually, one of my small dogs is an incredible relentless, actually, you know her, she was a gift from you.

• 50:16Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  She is, um.

• 50:18Tucker Carlson?

  A hunting dog, that's my defense.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  She's a hunting dog, she's got autism.

• 50:22Tucker Carlson?

  Yep.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Bad.

• 50:23Tucker Carlson?

  Bad.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  She is the most well-meaning.

• 50:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, she is, she means well.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  100% good-natured.

• 50:29Tucker Carlson?

  Yep, pretty good in the quail field, I will say.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Yep. She also has unerring aim, she will hit you right in center mass every time she sees you. I have more scars from that dog on my face. In fact, in the morning when I. Wake up, I now have started putting lightning collars on three of the five before I even let them into the backyard, which is actually kind of impressive because it's dark. I've had no coffee, I'm usually naked, and I'm affixing lightning collars to three dogs, one of whom continually bounces up and slams me in the face with her snout.

• 51:04Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  It's amazing. Anyway, dogs are an endless, endless source of joy and affection.

• 51:09Tucker Carlson?

  Well, actually, even today, I was telling, because it's Christmas or everyone's at the house, or a lot of people at the house, your relatives are at the house, and Uncle Buck's coming. Oh, is he bringing, because I've never seen you travel, I don't think a single time ever in life without at least one dog. You always bring at least one dog. But your dog list today?

• 51:27Speaker 02

  She's kind of vocal, and she's not very respectful to expensive camera equipment or genitals.

• 51:35Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, no.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  So if I was a smoker, it'd be great, because then I could keep her at bay. But all she'd need is about 6,000 cigarette burns and then maybe a shower.

• 51:46Tucker Carlson?

  I know, I don't think that would work.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  No, I don't think it would either.

• 51:49Tucker Carlson?

  But you are surrounded by dogs, you work with dogs, as I just said, you travel with dogs, you are inseparable in the minds of everyone who knows you from dogs. They have great insight, you said. That's one of the main reasons they improve our lives?

• 52:05Speaker 02

  I think so. I mean, I talk to my dogs, and they understand me. My dogs have actually a very, a better understanding of the English language than I think most people I deal with outside of this room.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  They're so much smarter than people give them credit for, and wise, and kind. And of course, it does remind me of the great little joke, lock your dog and your wife in the trunk of the car, come back after three days and see who's grateful. The answer to that is always not your wife.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  So they're forgiving. They are actually the essence of purity, I think. They're, even though they're capable, they're not capable of artifice. A dog will never pretend to be happy when it's not. And they have no sense of vanity. They're perfectly willing to display their immediate and current emotion at all times, and their emotions are almost exclusively loving. Now, I have a predator. Have a three-legged predator.

• 53:14Tucker Carlson?

  What a wonderful, wonderful description. Boy, I couldn't have matched that.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Well, it's true, don't you think?

• 53:19Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, it's so true. I mean, I have five dogs at my house right now, too, I'll just admit. Um, so.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  You're winning, you're winning the grand dog competition, I would say. I'm not about to render an opinion about which is best, but.

• 53:31Tucker Carlson?

  And can I just say, not to make this into a cultural thing, but that, and I know that there are other, I'm sure that there are other cultures that feel the same way. I don't know what they might be, but the culture that we grew up in, which was a culture, was, I mean, none of these were even questioned, like dogs and, and other things, politeness, bravery, loyalty, but dogs were in that lit, like those, that was just unquestioned.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:55Tucker Carlson?

  The dogs were at the center of the culture, not just the family, but the culture we grew up in.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Very much so. Oh, very much. So I never saw our father cry, except when our dogs died and I.

• 54:06Tucker Carlson?

  That's correct.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Got a little more emotional as I've gotten older, so I've occasionally shed a tear about something other than a dog dying, but I've never been as affected by death as my various dogs' death. And I'm also convinced, convinced 100% that my capacity for joy is less than it was before my last dog died. But I'm also convinced 100% that we will see them all again.

• 54:37Tucker Carlson?

  I am convinced of that, too.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Be reunited. Um, I have a particular dog that you know, who was, what's the phrase you use? A lifetime dog or the, the special dog?

• 54:48Tucker Carlson?

  Yep. And you know. Now, you agree that everyone has one of those. If you have enough dogs, there's always a dog where you're like, ooh, I'm never gonna have a dog like this again.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Yes. And boy, do I love my dogs. And, and unlike raising children where you could never indicate which one of your children is your favorite, not that that ever exists.

• 55:05Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Um, with dogs, I think it's completely the opposite. My strategy is to convey to each and every one of my dogs privately that they, that they are my favorite. So every one of my dogs is going around being like, I'm dad's favorite.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know you engaged in a little bit of that. You've got to. Anyway.

• 55:30Tucker Carlson?

  I do that with my children, by the way. They all, I think they all have that impression. I hope so.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  They are.

• 55:36Tucker Carlson?

  But yeah, you had a dog. You had that lifetime dog. I have many pictures of that dog on my phone because I, not my dog, but I did, I felt real love for that dog. And my favorite picture of that dog is, was called Bella. Was in the dog park, in the rich lady dog park, directly across the street from our house in Washington. That we both used every day. And there are always a million ladies in the park. You know, they're all nice. I don't, I'm not, I don't mean to attack anybody, but they're all a little, little bit uptight.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:03Tucker Carlson?

  Went to HBS, but now they're staying home to raise their kids very methodically.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  Let me look it up.

• 56:09Tucker Carlson?

  Let me look it up. And your dogs have never kind of been with that program at all.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  They're off-leash dogs.

• 56:16Tucker Carlson?

  They are off-leash dogs and that one dog was an amazing hunter, Finnish Spitz.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:22Tucker Carlson?

  And this dog had killed a squirrel and has in her mouth, this squirrel is like, you know.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  This was a black squirrel.

• 56:29Tucker Carlson?

  A black squirrel.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  And she was this deep, beautiful red and just the contact, the contrast from a photographic perspective was powerful. I had, I had that on my screensaver for, for years until my son got old enough to notice that his picture wasn't on there.

• 56:47Tucker Carlson?

  Can I tell my one dog park story, which is like family lore, which is like my favorite story, which I've told at many dinner parties? About you.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Which one?

• 56:57Tucker Carlson?

  It's not a bad one. No. So you were at, so in DC, of course, our parks, it's a federal zone. So our parks are policed by park police, actual park police.

• 57:06Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, they are.

• 57:07Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. Sometimes on horseback.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:09Tucker Carlson?

  And this specific dog park was, I mean, when I say it was across the street from my house, like I could see it from my bed, it was right there. There was no.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  But it was extensive. It went miles, actually.

• 57:17Tucker Carlson?

  We have an amazing park system in Washington and this is called, this was called Battery Kimball.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:22Tucker Carlson?

  It was a Civil War battery, beautiful park, beautiful part of the city. And you would walk your dogs there every day and you had a million dogs as always, and you never leashed them because you're a free man and this is America.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  And they're well behaved. They don't bother other people.

• 57:36Tucker Carlson?

  Well.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Generally. Pretty responsive dogs.

• 57:40Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, they call the wildlife a little bit.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Oh, that's for sure. Well, that's, I don't know, that's sort of your responsibility when you're It is the food chain, isn't it?

• 57:48Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, if you can't handle it, get out of the park.

• 57:51Tucker Carlson?

  Dude, I'm with you. And I remember when this happened, but like every woman in the neighborhood is probably still talking about it.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Oh, this isn't a city rife with all sorts of other crime. So every time, I know it's not this story, but every time I was accosted by someone and the next door, that's silly, next door online thing.

• 58:10Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Pre-COVID, in a city that has overwhelming physical and property crimes, the number, the most prevalent complaint on that listserv. Oh, I saw someone walking without a leash and this is a terrible thing. And literally that would garner the most commentary from any next door post.

• 58:30Tucker Carlson?

  We need better rich people in this country.

• 58:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:32Tucker Carlson?

  That's the number one thing we need.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes. Well, they need some hardship because complaining about shit like that is not only picky, but like repulsive.

• 58:41Tucker Carlson?

  It is repulsive. I totally agree. And they have no self-awareness at all. And they're all like that. But anyway.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  My universal response, I'm sorry to interrupt you, my universal response to them and to authorities who would occasionally accost me would be, I'm so relieved. You've solved all the other problems in DC. All the other crimes are no rapes, are no armed robberies. CVS isn't being ransacked on a daily basis. Like, thank you. I really appreciate it. I'm so glad you solved that problem. Now we can deal with lesser crimes like leashes. My gosh.

• 59:11Tucker Carlson?

  They did not appreciate the lecture.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  No, they didn't.

• 59:13Tucker Carlson?

  And after many such lectures from you, they decided to arrest you and they told you that if we catch you again without a leash, you're going to jail. Sir, sir. And then you get approached by a couple of these officers, I think on horseback.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  I was walking through a beautiful meadow at about 10:30 in the morning, absolutely deserted. And I had four dogs with me. And we got all the way to the end of the meadow and I heard someone say, hey. Hey, someone clearly yelling, not in, not like they needed help, but like they were trying to get my attention. I'm sorry, I don't respond to that. And so I turned and I saw it was on a slope, this meadow, and I could see these blue helmets coming up the meadow. So they were, the horses weren't even visible. Helmet. Helmet. So I kept walking and then I was You weren't peacekeepers.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Exactly. So I kept walking and then I was in the middle of the forest on a, on a small, beautiful path. And I kept hearing this female male voice, hard to determine, was rather masculine. But, but also feminine. Flipping hysterical. So it could only have been a soy boy with a gun or a very masculine chick. And it was, it turned out to be three cops, three park policemen on beautiful, very expensive horses with tidy helmets on. And they yelled at me for a good half mile. They finally caught up to me. And when she, when they were about, when this trio was about You made them just like yell at you and chase you? Completely ignored them. I'm sorry, it's my park. I'm a federal taxpayer. I also

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  live in DC. This is right? Don't we fund that park? We fund their salaries? I'm sorry, I have a bit of a sense of entitlement about two things, nicotine and dogs. Yeah. And that's it. And this was, so I was minding my own business in our park. And so they were persistent and yelling. And when they got to be about 75 yards away, she lost her cool completely. And she yelled and said, stop, or I'll tase your dog.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  I'll tase your dog. So I'm sorry, that's just too much for me. So I said, yelled because they were still far away. I said, you're not going to fucking tase my dog. You do that, you know, the real problem. And so they were taken aback by it a little bit. And they finally came. They hadn't met a man in a while in DC, is that? I guess not. I mean, too busy solving all the other crimes. So they got, they finally got up to me and it was a very authoritative squat, muscular woman who was the authority figure, and then two men, men, and who were embarrassed. And I made them further embarrassed because I said, this is, first of all, don't speak to me like that. Don't ever speak to me like that. Don't threaten my child.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  And um, she didn't like that, but she backed down a little bit. I actually had the, I had the moral authority. I was in the right and they were absolutely in the wrong. And I did what you're supposed to do in a situation like that is I met and exceeded their aggression.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Significantly. And to the point where I asked their badge numbers, asked their full names, give it to me now, pulled out my phone. I was totally obnoxious, but also in the right. And I said to those men, how can you tolerate this? Well, she's your boss. She's telling you, oh, and these guys literally at the end of it, this is probably a three or four minute exchange. And they ended, they gave up. And they walked away. And I was on this beautiful ledge that had railroad ties every three or four feet going down into this stream into this valley. You'd have no idea you're in the middle of DC. It was such a It's an incredible hark. I agree with that.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  It's incredible. And they went ahead of me. She in the front steamed, literally coming off her. And then these two extremely embarrassed men, and they started going down. Well, their horses decided this would be a great opportunity to leave some indelible artwork on the path. And a horse, when a horse goes to the bathroom, it's not a subtle thing, especially when they're walking down a hill. So they deposited, I don't know, 26, 27 pounds of artwork right there on the path. So the, and they had to go slow because it was one of these winding paths with, with railroad ties. And they were stuck. So they were like slowly trying to go down. And I was yelling at

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  them the whole time. Hey, pick that up. What's wrong with you? I can't believe you're leaving that behind. Who's gonna clean up after you? Oh, I am so surprised. Actually, they did not shoot me. I was expecting it. Actually, I really was. It was worth it. It was so worth it. And actually, I was enraged. I was still enraged to the point where, excuse me. My Biden is coming out again. Um.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  I, uh, by the time I got back to my car, and that was probably 15 minutes later, I remember this clearly, I had gone to one of the best, uh, sandwich stops. I had a meeting downtown and I was running my dogs first and it was, I had stopped and I'd gotten some clam chowder from, uh, Beau Blair's place. I can't think-

• 1:04:36Tucker Carlson?

  Jetties.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  From Jetties and I had a container of clam chowder-

• 1:04:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, they had good chowder.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  So agitated. By the time I go, even by the time I get back to my car, which is like 15 or 20 minutes later, I opened up the top of the clam chowder and promptly launched it into the air where it came and landed on my dashboard directly in the air conditioning unit. In fact, that Chevy Tahoe smelled like clam chowder for literally the next three years. It was disgusting.

• 1:05:03Tucker Carlson?

  Until Patrick flipped it on an ice-

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Until Patrick flipped it and broke his neck. But I, uh, was, I don't normally hold on to anger for very long. I've got like a reasonably quick wick and I can get pretty hot, but it, it dissipates fast. This didn't, I was still mad 20, 25 minutes later and I drove, I think I pushed my meeting back. I had to drive downtown. I think I texted them and was like, I had a bit of an emergency. I'm going to be a half an hour late. And I drove around the entire perimeter, at least that western perimeter of that park, looking for the telltale sign of the, the horse carriage. Cause I actually really did want to record their names and make a formal complaint. Not that it would have gone anywhere, but or write a piece about it. I don't know. But it would have made me happier. I didn't find them. I looked for them.

• 1:05:47Tucker Carlson?

  So everyone, I should say for the fifth time in our tiny little, very cohesive neighborhood where we spent most of our lives, um, and know every single person, almost everybody disapproved of this kind of behavior from you because it was disruptive and like it wasn't, you weren't getting in line with everybody. I never of course felt that way because we grew up together with the same attitudes, but- Now I think that if like eight more people in our neighborhood and 800,000 more people in our country had taken that attitude, we'd be in much better shape than we are now.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Amen. Amen. I three more people would have been able to dominate that town with that dominate that neighborhood.

• 1:06:26Tucker Carlson?

  You're totally right.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Because people are looking, I'm not some great student of human behavior, but I do observe it. And I think that people, again, as we talked about earlier, I think people who are cowardly hate themselves for it.

• 1:06:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  And are hostile towards those who express themselves or embrace their freedom. In America, land of the free, home of the brave, like, I mean, not anymore, clearly. And but I think there are people are waiting to be galvanized by someone who's willing to say, not saying I'm that person, but they need someone to rally around, someone Trump was obviously that guy, that's obviously part of Trump's appeal, that he was that, you know, hey, fuck you, this is what I believe, and I'm not going to back down, kind of guy. And I think our country used to be full of people like that.

• 1:07:17Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, it did.

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  And and they were they were real heroes in this country. This country didn't have an easy, an easy time of it for the first couple hundred years. And the only people who exercised real power and authority were men who were courageous and willing to speak their mind and willing to follow through also. And kind of other people and but whatever leadership qualities that you just don't see in America that often. I don't, I mean,

• 1:07:47Tucker Carlson?

  I couldn't agree more. And one of the hallmarks of that kind of society is decency. One of the things you notice about brave men, our father being the bravest person I think either of us ever met, who was totally

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Eighty-four years old, never saw him one time express fear in any situation.

• 1:08:02Tucker Carlson?

  In any situation.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Physically, intellectually, nothing.

• 1:08:04Tucker Carlson?

  I saw a few where, you know, he could have, and he did, including when he died totally unafraid, totally uncomplaining, totally unmedicated.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Totally undiminished.

• 1:08:13Tucker Carlson?

  Totally undiminished. Both of us were there. So yes, no, I agree with that, but that was the twin to that was the flip side of his decency and kindness. He didn't hate himself. He had no reason to, and if he made a mistake or did something wrong, which he did, he'd be like, wow, I did something wrong. I'm really sorry.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  And he was genuine, genuinely inquisitive with other people and kind.

• 1:08:38Tucker Carlson?

  And interested always.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  And interested. Oh, his favorite thing was talking to, I mean, he loved to talk and he told the best stories around, but he loved people and.

• 1:08:49Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, he'd get back from dinner parties when we were kids. I'll never forget. He always was always a woman, of course, because you, as a man, you sit next to a woman at a dinner party.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  Thank God.

• 1:08:55Tucker Carlson?

  I met the most amazing woman. She grew up in some weird country and did this and her dad was in the OSS and you know, so that was a theme. It was always some intrigue, always, always. But, um, but he was so interested in other people, like, and so passionate about it, like, their stories were like as exciting to him as his story.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Yes, and he paid attention to the details.

• 1:09:15Tucker Carlson?

  Very close attention, very. He was an amazing listener. Because he was really interested. Anyway, I think his decency, his love of children, animals, his family, his wife, people he sat next to at dinner parties, like, that was all related to his total fearlessness.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:33Tucker Carlson?

  In a way.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:34Tucker Carlson?

  Do you know, I can't quite articulate it, but I know.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  You did, but you know, no, but he was so self-confident because he used all the talents that God gave him to the extent that he was able. I mean, he never passed up an opportunity, ever, anywhere, to do anything interesting or adventurous.

• 1:09:54Tucker Carlson?

  That is literally true.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  And that was like his law, and it's so attractive and it's.

• 1:10:01Tucker Carlson?

  That was his law.

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Tucker Carlson?

  That was his law. Have an interesting life. That's like the only instruction I got.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Me too, yeah.

• 1:10:08Tucker Carlson?

  And he constantly, I mean, I remember when you got thrown out of boarding school and the only family drama I ever remember was, would Pop be able to force you to join the French Foreign Legion? And he was dead set on forcing you to do that, in case you don't remember.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  I do remember, and I don't remember being resistant to it.

• 1:10:29Tucker Carlson?

  It wasn't you.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  No, I'm aware.

• 1:10:31Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, someone else who was very resistant to it. You can't do that to him.

• 1:10:37Tucker Carlson?

  You weren't against it, but like you were seventeen when you got tossed. How old were you? Seventeen, maybe?

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  I was seventeen. Yep.

• 1:10:46Tucker Carlson?

  And he checked at the head office in Marseille. I'll never forget this. And seventeen was old enough to join the French Foreign Legion. And I'll never forget coming home for Christmas or Easter or some vacation where we were all home in Georgetown. And he was like, well, your brother could have joined the French Foreign Legion. And I was like, is this real? You were like, yep, he fucked up at school. He got thrown out of boarding school. He's going to the French Foreign Legion and it's a six year commitment. But by the time he gets out, he'll only be twenty three. And imagine you'll be able to see all his friends. I spent six years in the French Foreign Legion. I've got a fake name and a new passport and I served in Djibouti. I was in these wars and isn't that great? And I was like, yeah, that sounds great. And you're like, yeah, I'm totally.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Thank God for female wisdom and strength, actually. I think I think it would have been great. I probably wouldn't have survived it, but no, thank God for mom.

• 1:11:36Tucker Carlson?

  He was so all in. I'll never forget. He knew people who who had done it.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 1:11:44Tucker Carlson?

  Speaking of, without even getting into it, but

• 1:11:48Tucker Carlson?

  I think both of us have taken an awful lot of shit about whatever he did for a living. And it's not even totally clear, but um, let me just ask a general question, not about him, but about sort of the world that you grew up in. You were what, like fourteen when we moved to Georgetown, maybe?

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Thirteen?

• 1:12:08Tucker Carlson?

  Thirteen. So you spent your entire life in Northwest DC. Like you never left, except to go to Maine, obviously, but but like full time, right? You're living there and um, in a world that, I mean, you literally lived in a house that our father purchased from CFO in cash.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:12:25Tucker Carlson?

  Right. And everybody in our world was involved in that kind of stuff. And and then you have had jobs where you rubbed up against people in the intel world. Like a lot of jobs, though.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  Common probably in DC, but yeah.

• 1:12:39Tucker Carlson?

  That's the point, actually, that I'm making.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, everybody.

• 1:12:42Tucker Carlson?

  I wouldn't be bringing this up if I thought you were. Well, by this point in the conversation, I think everyone knows you're not working for the CIA. You're not compliant enough.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Have you seen my tax returns?

• 1:12:51Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. No, but.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Who has?

• 1:12:53Tucker Carlson?

  Who has? Right, exactly. But I guess my question is, did you know until relatively recently, what a huge role intel agencies, foreign and domestic, played in the life of our country? Not just the political life, but the civic life, the cultural life? Did you know that?

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  No, and it reminds me of what you said a little earlier in this conversation about not being aware of what's going on around you.

• 1:13:18Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Because you're steeped in it, of course. And I worked for some, I worked for a corporate intelligence firm that was founded by all former spooks.

• 1:13:27Tucker Carlson?

  Who I knew personally.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:29Tucker Carlson?

  Good guys.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Great guys.

• 1:13:30Tucker Carlson?

  Excellent shots, too. We hunted with them.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Holy smokes, were they, yeah. And also, one of them died, like, the best death ever. Had grandchildren, his children were married, walked out of his, on K Street, walked out of his accountant's office, having received good news and had a massive heart, like, life-ending heart attack, right there on K Street.

• 1:13:50Tucker Carlson?

  Crossed to the prime rib.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, 76.

• 1:13:52Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:13:53Tucker Carlson?

  He was a great man.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  He was a great man.

• 1:13:55Tucker Carlson?

  But intel guy.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Intel guy. Sorry, I think it's also important to mention, my attitude has changed, like so many, because of COVID. But even a little bit before that, I just had taken it on faith that we had a good government that was well-meaning, that makes mistakes, but that was answerable to the people. I actually always thought that, growing up. I generally didn't think what I heard from the government was a lie. I didn't think it was a manipulative lie. I remember, I mean, the most important thing that went on in our lives as we were growing up, the most important enduring conflict was the Iron Curtain and communism. And I remember talking with you and others all the time about those poor people who live in the Soviet Union,

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  who have no access to real news. They have tasks and they have Zvestia.

• 1:14:46Tucker Carlson?

  Zvestia.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  Zvestia, Pravda. And they don't have the freedom to go to church. And they, obviously, their economy sucks because it's managed by a government, and that never works. But really, they didn't have access to accurate information.

• 1:15:02Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  They had no access to any real news. And further, they had been taught, as a society, terrible things about America.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  And Americans. And specifically, we used to also talk after the Iron Curtain came down, had the same attitude about North Korea. Like, here are these poor, emaciated captives who can't leave their own country, who don't, who think these terrible and untrue things about Americans. And it was only a couple of years ago that I suddenly realized I had this epiphany. We're fucking North Korea. We are North Koreans. And so much of what the government has told us throughout our lives about big events and small events are simply not true. Not just massaged, but like 180 degrees from truth and reality.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  Once you have that realization, it's very unsettling and dispiriting, I think, and scary. And obviously, the election of 2020 brought it into focus. All of the suppression of Twitter and the New York Post piece from Miranda Devine on Hunter Biden. And that's, and all the false news about masks and the vax and everything else. I mean, the list is endless and could go on and on. But no, to answer your question, I was not aware of it. I didn't pay attention to it. I didn't suspect it. And I really had no reason to suspect it, actually, because life was different even a decade ago in America and certainly in Washington.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  And now they've just, it seems a certain air of desperation or something that they're, they're clamping down to such an aggressive degree, even with Trump in the White House, which I wish someone would explain to me. I have my theories. But anyway. And the fact that they used to be good liars, this is the thing I find the scariest, is they used to tell compelling, thought-out...

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Well fashioned plausible lies and they no longer do that. Now it's just, hey, this is it and you either accept it or shut the fuck up and we'll put you in prison or we'll take all your liberties away. And I do think it's akin to finding, you know, the great debate, are you going to look under the bed and, or are you going to jump across the room and leave the door? It's like, once you look under the bed, you might actually find the monster. And now it's clear that our government is the monster and the intelligence agencies are the monster. And once you've seen it, you can't really not unsee it.

• 1:17:41Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  And that's really unsettling.

• 1:17:44Tucker Carlson?

  So nicely put. That's so nicely put. Yeah. That has been, I tried to talk about it too much because it's obviously way too personal, but that, but the realization about the intel agencies has been one of the really big things for me. I just, I can hardly even believe it. I can hardly believe, I know that sounds stupid, but.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  It doesn't.

• 1:18:05Tucker Carlson?

  But it grows out of a totally different understanding of the US government.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:18:09Tucker Carlson?

  And I always thought it was inefficient and the problem with the US government was there, you know, were a lot of lazy people with guaranteed jobs and like big bureaucracies don't function very well. They're just, they just don't work. But the spirit that animates them, which is the spirit to protect and improve the country is kind of unquestioned.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  They're patriots.

• 1:18:28Tucker Carlson?

  They're not trying to subvert the country.

• 1:18:29Speaker 02

  That's what I would think.

• 1:18:30Tucker Carlson?

  Or maybe at, at worst, they don't care.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:33Tucker Carlson?

  And occasionally you have a Soviet or Cuban spy, but that's like really far out. You know what I mean? Or some drunk FBI agent with, having an affair who sells secrets because he needs the money, but like.

• 1:18:44Speaker 02

  Human flaws.

• 1:18:45Tucker Carlson?

  Human flaws. Thank you, human flaws. But never that this whole, that there be huge parts of this whole enterprise that are working to destroy the society, like I'd never even occurred to me.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  No. No, me either. And, but it's clear that that's what's going on.

• 1:18:58Tucker Carlson?

  It's clear.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:00Tucker Carlson?

  It couldn't be clearer. And it's accelerating, it's not decelerating.

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:19:05Tucker Carlson?

  No. So, um, yeah.

• 1:19:08Speaker 02

  And it's demonic. It is. And I actually don't even understand why that obvious observation, that obvious conclusion makes people, I guess it's a religious question. I don't know why it makes people not just uncomfortable, it makes people super hostile if you mention that certain motivations are demonic and that there are demons among us. I think that's, I've always known that. I've just known that. It's just obvious. I've known it my whole life.

• 1:19:37Tucker Carlson?

  It is obvious.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  You don't have to be around, it's like being always, as our father always said, trust your dog sense. And you talk about it, everybody has it. All you have to do is pay attention to it. It's, it doesn't even need to be that finely calibrated. I mean, if you have a weird feeling about a situation or about a person, you know, you're probably right.

• 1:20:00Tucker Carlson?

  Yes. Trust it.

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, trust it.

• 1:20:02Tucker Carlson?

  It's not random.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  No, not at all. And every human has also had weird, out of the blue impulses to do things that go against their nature. And all the time, this happens to me, thank God. It happens to me a lot, especially when I'm out in nature with my dogs. It's where I can clear my head, it's where I can relax and think away from my phone. I get all sorts of unbidden, unsolicited thoughts, impulses that I follow, good things. Call this person, write this, do this.

• 1:20:41Tucker Carlson?

  Totally agree.

• 1:20:41Speaker 02

  And if I didn't have that in my life, I would be a mess. I would be more of a mess, whatever. It would.

• 1:20:50Tucker Carlson?

  So it's not just, so I think.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  It's not just demonic, it's not just dark stuff.

• 1:20:54Tucker Carlson?

  That acts on us. It's God acts on us.

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Yes, very much so.

• 1:20:58Tucker Carlson?

  So I, boy, if I had the same experience, I guess my whole life, but I didn't recognize it for what it was until pretty recently. And I certainly would never, you know, as a wasp, I would never mention it. Because you're not like, that's one thing you're not not supposed to talk about your spiritual views. Period. Fact, in fact, it's such a rarity. I remember exactly where I was when I first had this conversation. And it was with you and it was in the state of Maine, which is obviously wonderful, but also something about the state of Maine is very close to whatever's going on around us that we can't see. It's happening in Maine a lot more than anywhere else.

• 1:21:41Tucker Carlson?

  The membrane is thinner in Maine between this world and the next. There's no question about that. It's not. Very much so. It's not a light state. It's a heavy state.

• 1:21:52Tucker Carlson?

  There's a reason Stephen King, when he at one point had talent and one point had a God given talent. Yes, you can't read his early stuff. You can't read the sand without saying this guy is using God given talent. There's a reason why all those books actually take place in Maine. And it's not just because he's from Maine. It's because something going on in Maine. And that's been, I think, recognized for a long time. Yeah. And, um, and it exceeds my understanding. I can't even guess. I do know that the first transatlantic television signal was broadcast from Maine. Oh, yes. You know, in a town very close to us. Dish is still there. Dish is still there. I hunted next to it. I flew over it. Yeah. Patrick.

• 1:22:32Tucker Carlson?

  But, but the point is, it's like, there's something about its geographic location, its geography as well that, I don't know, there's something about it. Yes. But yeah, we grew up in a world and in a culture that did not welcome conversations about spiritual matters, the transcendent. No. Yeah. No. That was a huge weakness. Didn't talk about death. No. Didn't talk about illness. There were no support groups for illness. I remember in the eighties, there was this black, because Georgetown had been black or partly black, like 100 years ago or something. And so there were, there was a black church on our street. Do you remember that? Well, yeah. Like four blocks down on N Street in Georgetown. And of course, I didn't even know it was there, but our father knew it was there. It's actually the end of Dunbarton.

• 1:23:16Tucker Carlson?

  It was the end of Dunbarton. Sorry, one block up. And, um, he was like, he just loved black church. Do you remember getting dragged to black church with him? I loved it, actually. I was never resistant to it. You'll never find nicer people with better music, great food and a super welcoming attitude. No, I couldn't agree more. As I think church is supposed to be. It's such a departure from the.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  I won't mention the name of the church because I know family members of ours still go there, but I was baptized there and it was just too.

• 1:23:45Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  It was beautiful architecturally. And that's about what it had to recommend it.

• 1:23:50Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  The pews had a nice patina from, you know, hundreds of years.

• 1:23:54Tucker Carlson?

  For the frozen chosen. Yeah, no, there's no question, but he would drag us to the black church at least once or twice a year. Let's go, let's go to Easter at the black church. They were always a little confused by what we were doing there, but he was so into it.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  They're on board, though.

• 1:24:06Tucker Carlson?

  They were on, no, they were totally on board. No, to give them credit, they were, they couldn't have been nicer. And they were like old fashioned Washington black people, like the definition of like respectable, middle-class people and, um, but he liked it because they were just like all in, like they weren't beating around the bush, like they're for, they're for Jesus.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:24Tucker Carlson?

  And I think that's the only.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Just unabashed.

• 1:24:26Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. And I think those were the, that was the only contact I ever had in my young life with Jesus at all, were people talking about Jesus.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:34Tucker Carlson?

  Do you, do you feel it?

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  100%. No, no, no. I mean, I've had, I've had a lot of reasons to have an awakening in my life and was forced upon me. And in so many ways, God has come into my life and changed things that needed to be changed.

• 1:24:49Tucker Carlson?

  Yes.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  Excised certain patterns and behaviors that needed to be, that I never could have done on my own, ever. And yeah, I know, we both, I mean, I, so yes, no, I didn't think about it enough. I always had a reflexive faith. I always knew God existed. I never questioned, but I didn't know a lot about, I still don't necessarily know a lot about the history of religion or the intricacies of certain scripture, but I read the Bible, I commune with other people, I celebrate God, I celebrate fellowship and I celebrate Jesus unabashedly. I mean, yeah, other, yeah.

• 1:25:30Tucker Carlson?

  So how? Um, I would say the other thing, the feature of the world that we grew up in was, you know, alcohol is part of it.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:25:39Tucker Carlson?

  It's just cocktail culture.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:25:40Tucker Carlson?

  My favorite food growing up was tonic water and camembert. We did so many cocktail parties at our house. Swept tonic water and camembert.

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  True, that's where that came from.

• 1:25:51Tucker Carlson?

  I remember well. Tonic water, that's when you know your parents were throwing a few too many cocktail parties.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  Not many six-year-olds drink tonic water. I wonder if any six-year-olds drink tonic water.

• 1:26:01Tucker Carlson?

  I don't think people even drink gin and tonics anymore, but they did in our house growing up. Anyway.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  Boy, we come from a long line of ginaholics.

• 1:26:07Tucker Carlson?

  Of gin and tonic drinkers, but.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Tucker Carlson?

  Uh, so we both got caught up in it and I would see you a little more enthusiastically than me.

• 1:26:17Tucker Carlson?

  Like, um, you were epic, I think is the term people use now, but, uh, and then, you know, you know, as anyone who drinks overly enthusiastically, the people who love them start to worry. And then you just like quit, didn't go to rehab.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  No, I admire people who do. I think it's helpful.

• 1:26:36Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I'm not criticizing it.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I didn't think you were. I just, actually I've had heard some fascinating stories at those AA meetings. It's been years since I've been to one, but I did have some concerned friends who'd gone through this journey themselves and who pulled me in and I was receptive to listening. Um, not necessarily receptive to stopping, but receptive to learning more. And, um, and I was flirting with it, flirting with stopping because you take those tests that they have and like answer 10 of these questions. And if you answer even three of them, then you've got a drinking problem. And it was always like, I've answered yes on all 10. I could probably give you six more questions to ask.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  So, and I'd been, I'd had a few run-ins with the, with authorities, quite a few, actually. It had affected my life. If anybody asked you, oh, do you think alcohol is affecting your life? Oh gosh, I don't know. Let me contemplate that.

• 1:27:35Tucker Carlson?

  Oh.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  So, and I'd also reached, but principally what happened was my son was born. And that was a tough pregnancy, an early birth. And, um, the moment I saw that child be born.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  I'd had a lot of preparation from you because you'd already had a couple of children and from others, but I, and it was an aspiration for me for the entirety of my life to be a father. But the moment I saw that child be born and they're purple and unattractive, my son urinated all over the doctors. It was great. I'm still very proud of him. But I remember unbidden, speaking of unbidden thoughts and emotions, the first thing that I thought when that child was born was, I'd fucking kill for this child. Yes. And I would do it with relish. Like if someone ever, someone ever threatened this

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  child, I would, I mean, there's nothing I wouldn't do. So, um, anyway, so he was born and he was young as a baby. My son has never seen me intoxicated, I'm happy to say. He's 24. I had my last cocktail 23 years ago in March, coming up. Incredible. And talked about it and thought about it and had concerned people discuss it with me. Um, and had dialed back, but then had really an amazing, an epic weekend with my son's godfather, a great friend of both of ours, who came in from New Orleans, the, and

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  had like three day bacchanalia in Georgetown and got like physically ill and so did my wife. And she had a full-on divine intervention where God like spoke to her out loud and said enough. And, and she, that was it, removed it from her completely. It's incredible. Completely. And then I was sympathetic, on board with it because not only was I trying to convince myself that I should lay off it for a while, I was trying to convince her. And like most, she was resistant. And, um, so that day I made the commitment, you know, I'm going to join her. But then one of my great friends was having a bachelor party

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  like in two days. So I said, okay, well, let's just get through this weekend and then I'm committed. Been there. And I did. I had my last cocktail. Actually. Engagement party of.

• 1:30:06Speaker 02

  Great guy. I'm spacing his name. I'll think of him in a second. Oh, you know him. He's a wonderful guy. His marriage didn't last, but he's around. Um, and he had a great party and I had a couple of cocktails, didn't get hammered. And then I said, that's it. Not doing it again. And, but it was divine intervention for me too, because he removed not only the desire to drink, but he implanted like a revulsion for alcohol.

• 1:30:30Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, I feel that.

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Physical revulsion where I could, to this day, 22 and a half years later, summon the taste of a Grey Goose martini, or summon the taste of like a three inch glass of Maker's Mark. And I could make myself vomit in like 15 seconds. Um, and also for that first year, no one ever talks about this, at least I've never heard anybody talk about this, that for that first year, I couldn't sleep, sweating constantly, had horrible nightmares every night.

• 1:30:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yep.

• 1:30:59Speaker 02

  And the enduring nightmare that I still have occasionally, I would say once a month, I'll be somewhere socially in my dream and I'll be talking to someone and I'll just reach and have a cocktail. And I'll, as soon as it hits my mouth, I start sobbing in my dream and wake up really agitated and really upset with myself. Um, but anyway, I've, it, God removed the desire completely for me. And, and I've had a much better life since. And I've never run, interestingly, I've never run, I could give you hours of stories about stupid and dangerous and destructive things I did as

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  a drunk person, but I never have hooked up with an old friend that I haven't seen in like two decades. Have a meal and they like order a drink and, oh, do you want a drink? And I'll say, no, actually I quit drinking. I've never had someone say, what the fuck did you do that for?

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  Like, really? You quit drinking? Like you loser?

• 1:31:58Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:31:59Speaker 02

  Quitter? No, no one's ever had that, that emotion.

• 1:32:01Tucker Carlson?

  You're the only person I know who's crashed an airplane, a speedboat, a motorcycle and multiple cars. And that's literally true. That's just a fact. And you're here.

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  I think we differ on the, the definition of crashing. I did not crash the plane. It was a, well, it was a forced landing, they call it.

• 1:32:20Tucker Carlson?

  Okay, okay. Well, forced landing.

• 1:32:23Speaker 02

  I bear some responsibility for sure. But the plane survived.

• 1:32:27Tucker Carlson?

  Okay.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  Completely unscathed.

• 1:32:29Tucker Carlson?

  Well, okay. In a clearing in a national forest. I'm just saying, and by the way, I'm not blaming you for whatever mechanical error forced your plane. But again, we could just take the plane out of it and we still have the motorcycle, the boat and the cars.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. I also once fell asleep while flying an airplane.

• 1:32:47Tucker Carlson?

  From drinking?

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Passed out in, in a, in a really trafficked area. And I was aware that I was, you know, when you're really, really, really tired, you can't hide it from yourself. You can slap yourself in the face, you can pinch yourself. I was a smoker at the time and I, you know, was chain smoking while flying. Ah, and I was in a traffic pattern and I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Could not in an international airport, in someone else's airplane. Yeah. And I kept nodding off.

• 1:33:19Tucker Carlson?

  Was anyone else in the plane?

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  No, I was by myself. It was really terrifying. I wrote a piece about it actually for a friend of mine who also subsequently quit drinking and started like a webzine when those things were around. And um, yeah, it was pretty hilarious.

• 1:33:36Tucker Carlson?

  Fell asleep while flying an airplane, what?

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  Multiple times, multiple times. I, I was going on a local trip and I took off. I was tired, I was sleep deprived. I had a friend, you know, those friends who come and visit you?

• 1:33:49Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  And they never leave and they're great company.

• 1:33:53Tucker Carlson?

  Amazing, especially after like 5pm.

• 1:33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And well, he stayed for like two weeks. And so we developed this, this great um, strategy where we'd go out, we'd like drink all day on the beach and then go out to wildly hedonistic meal. And then we'd get back to my apartment at like 2:00 in the morning. And then he would stay up smoking and reading so he could make sure that I got up at 4:30 to go make it to the flight line. I was in flight school at the time. And so I did that for two weeks. He subsequently got food, alcohol poisoning. I think I did too. But I was just exhausted and, but I love flying. And it was actually the only academic experience I've ever had that I was.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Really passionate about. I love flying and I was in a great flight school. I took it seriously. Not too seriously, not seriously enough to quit drinking, but

• 1:34:46Tucker Carlson?

  Or to sleep.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  Or to sleep. But yeah, I showed up at dawn, flew, you know, places prone to massive fog minks everywhere. It's flat. It's actually in the state on the Atlantic Ocean. And the flight school itself shares an international airport with like six carriers, big carriers. So it's got like a 10,500 foot runway. It's got north and south and east and west. It's got a lot of traffic. And so I was wary. I'm feeling, you know, tired or exhausted, but it wasn't until I took off that I thought this is bad. Like this is dangerous. Like I really can't focus and I'm falling asleep. And so I went about 10 miles north and came

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  back because I didn't want it to be super suspicious. Just take off. You have to basically declare an emergency to get back in the pattern in an international airport like that. So I went north for like 10, 12 miles and then called approach and said I was coming back and have to identify why. And it was in the approach with like 737 flying around and other, it was a very high traffic airport. And I was on like a five mile downwind or crosswind, trying to think, whatever. I was on a long approach to this airport and communicating with the tower on the radio. And I would fall asleep in between communication, you know. Sessna November 678 Echo, are you there?

• 1:36:13Tucker Carlson?

  Sessna November 678 Echo, here.

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, it was. And I said a lot of prayers. And as I said, I smoked some cigarettes in that plane and I pinched myself. And I landed safely, excellent landing and got to the flight line and, and turned the engine off and promptly took a nap in the plane for like an hour. It was bad. And then I got, I had a motorcycle at that time too. And I hopped on my motorcycle and I went home and I was like, you gotta go back to your real life, man. It's like one of my oldest friends. Um, you gotta leave. I can't, can't sustain this.

• 1:36:51Tucker Carlson?

  So then you wind up, you're a blackjack dealer on a riverboat in Mississippi. You work for a couple of different political candidates, a presidential campaign. And all nice guys, I don't, you know, can I say one thing? Like, if you name, I'm not gonna name them, you can if you want, but like, people you thought were impressive 30 years ago in politics, they're also discredited now. I know it's sad.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  It is sad.

• 1:37:13Tucker Carlson?

  I don't wanna be mean.

• 1:37:15Speaker 02

  Not only discredited, but actually, there was a much better stable of real candidates, real people. For one, one example, I briefly was a communications director at the Maryland Republican Party for like, six months.

• 1:37:29Tucker Carlson?

  You were communications director?

• 1:37:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:37:31Tucker Carlson?

  Imagine a Maryland Republican Party, it's like a different country.

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  There were like, 16 Republicans even then, but they could still raise some money and they could make some noise, because there were no other Republicans. And, actually, it was great for me, because I was the communications director, which really means I was writing nasty press releases and trying to generate lots of news. And, you know, it's a fully corrupt state, and so there's a lot to talk about. And, no one's looking over your shoulder, because it's Maryland. Like, really?

• 1:37:58Tucker Carlson?

  Right, no, totally.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  So, I'd write the most incendiary stuff, and occasionally generate some news on it. But, I had license to do that, and it was actually a really good, it was a really good launchpad. It was a, was a nice, brief experience I had with some really good people. They did, they didn't have, you know, big aspirations, I don't think. I don't think you could stay at the Maryland Republican Party. It's kind of interesting, quickly, I've, I've, I started then, and I've written for now, for 25 years. I love writing speeches, and I write speeches for, I've written speeches for political candidates, and aspiring political candidates, and, and corporate heads. I love it. I think it's so fun, and interesting, and I'm sure no one will do it anymore with AI, but I hope that's not true.

• 1:38:44Speaker 02

  But, anyway, whatever, I could write good speeches. And, one of the guys who actually was impressive, in Maryland, in the mid 90s, was Michael Steele. Do you remember Michael Steele?

• 1:38:55Tucker Carlson?

  I knew Mike Steele, yeah. His sister married Mike Tyson.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  I did know that, I'd totally forgotten. He's such a chameleon. He's such an unimpressive person now. It's hard to believe that I once thought he was impressive. He was articulate. He was, you know, I wasn't going to use Biden's.

• 1:39:14Tucker Carlson?

  Was he clean too?

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was clean, didn't smell bad, and he was articulate. I think that was Biden's quote.

• 1:39:18Tucker Carlson?

  To quote Joe Biden, yes.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  Yes. And he was. He's impressive. He's a tall man and he's got a lot of, a lot of energy and he's like, and your face looks you in the eye.

• 1:39:27Tucker Carlson?

  No, that's totally right.

• 1:39:28Speaker 02

  A good handshaker. And he was going to be like the face of Republican success and he had a failed Senate campaign, whatever. 10, 12 years go by and in a much different iteration in my life, I was writing still, but like doing more interesting and more lucrative things than the Maryland Republican Party. And an old friend of mine named Lance Kopsi, who's no longer around, I don't know if you remember him.

• 1:39:53Tucker Carlson?

  Very well.

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  He's a great guy. He's been gone like 15 years. He called me and said, hey, I'm running Michael Steele's campaign for the RNC. Will you write some speeches for him? And I was like, hell yeah, love to do that. I got paid to do it. And I also believed in Michael Steele. And so I wrote Michael Steele's acceptance speech and when he became the RNC chair, not a huge deal, but like, kind of fun.

• 1:40:19Tucker Carlson?

  It was bigger then.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  It was bigger then. And, and then he immediately like became reverted to type and by which I mean corrupt politician and immediately blew like $800,000 on, you know, redecorating his personal office.

• 1:40:37Tucker Carlson?

  He demanded a private jet because he claimed that Obama was president. He claimed that he was Obama's counterpart on the Republican side and Obama had Air Force One and he needed to fly private.

• 1:40:50Speaker 02

  The incredible nuts on that guy. I mean.

• 1:40:53Tucker Carlson?

  He had balls.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  But no interesting opinions and no, you know, principles.

• 1:40:58Tucker Carlson?

  Zero.

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  No foundation.

• 1:41:00Tucker Carlson?

  And then he figured out, he figured out the white guilt lever.

• 1:41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:03Tucker Carlson?

  And he's like, I don't get a plane. Is that because I'm black? Are you saying that I'm lesser?

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  In his defense, wasn't Terry McAuliffe the DNC guy at the time?

• 1:41:14Tucker Carlson?

  Probably.

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  So he was probably looking at Terry McAuliffe's like,

• 1:41:17Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  Pretty good deal. Terry McAuliffe hadn't yet imported, you know, Chinese cars for, for visas yet, but he was living large.

• 1:41:26Tucker Carlson?

  Man, I didn't even understand how corrupt that world was when we lived in it. So then, speaking of, you wind up working at, you know, basically the number two for a guy called Frank Luntz. Frank Luntz, for those who haven't heard of Frank Luntz, he's still around.

• 1:41:45Speaker 02

  Oh, very much.

• 1:41:46Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah. It was the, the biggest pollster in the Republican Party. And more than just a pollster, he was like the message guy, like, how do we communicate that, you know, cutting capital gains taxes for donors is part of the American dream?

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00Tucker Carlson?

  Or whatever. It's in the Constitution.

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  Um, how do we soften all the environmental lunacy and make it palatable? Oh, let's call it climate change. You mean the fucking weather? No, climate change.

• 1:42:14Tucker Carlson?

  Did he come up with that?

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  Came up with climate change.

• 1:42:15Tucker Carlson?

  What?

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  Came up with death tax.

• 1:42:17Tucker Carlson?

  He came up with climate change?

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  Well, I say he, his team. I was part of his team for like six years. And yes, I helped run that show with a couple of other very competent people. He, as you know, he's very complicated. He's, he's like a walking dichotomy. He is occasionally brilliant. He's very smart, naturally. He's lazy. He's dirty. He's dishonest.

• 1:42:41Tucker Carlson?

  Dirty? What do you mean dirty?

• 1:42:44Speaker 02

  His favorite food group is Thousand Island dressing.

• 1:42:47Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  And you just can't eat Thousand Island dressing without getting it all over yourself. And the biologicals, which are supposed to be unmentionable, but with Frank are ever evident everywhere.

• 1:43:01Speaker 02

  It was disgusting. No, no, no, no, no. The personal hygiene is like nonexistent. Are you serious? Much more graphic. I can't even tell you what his nickname around the office was. This is a guy who's walking around with literally a dead raccoon in his head. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. So many people said it. Don't skimp on the hairpiece. That's like rule one. I know, I know. But he was brilliant in his business because, or at least the business preposition that he had, which was he understood. I'm not sure if you remember, there was a time. Yeah, you really have to actually think back. There was a time in America where there was something called, uh, cable news. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah, people took it seriously. Yeah. And no one took it more seriously than Frank Luntz. So Frank Luntz aspired not only to hang out with famous people,

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  like in really close proximity, but to be on TV. And he's very articulate and he's very aggressive. Like, people say, people occasionally say, "Oh, that guy's shameless." No, no, no. You've never seen shameless until you've met Frank Luntz, because he literally has no shame gene. Like, there's nothing you could do to Frank Luntz in public to shame him. He's unshamable. But then again, part of the dichotomy is like also super socially awkward and socially aspirant. Like, he wants to hang around people, but he, and he's autistic in his eruptions, which are usually pretty funny.

• 1:44:25Speaker 02

  So he's very verbal, he's energetic, he's got limitless aspiration to make dough and be on TV. And he recognizes, actually, that's a pretty common thing in corporate America and on the Hill. So he's very close with Newt Gingrich in 94, and he got a lot of credit for coming up with The Contract with America. I think he was... Maybe a little bit. He was definitely very much involved. I don't think it was his entire baby. I think it was more Newt's and the people around Newt. But whatever, Frank weaseled in there, got a lot of credit for being part of the Contract with America. And then, of course, the Republicans come in and they're in power for the first time in my lifetime.

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  And first time in like, I don't know, 32 years or something, maybe 36 years, the first, I can't remember, the 94 election when Republicans got back into the House. It was the first time in three decades at least. And so Frank was there and his business model was, I will come up with language and words and speeches for members on the Republican Caucus. I'll do it for free. Then I'll promote those messages in corporate world and make a ton of money with people who also want to be on television, corporate heads, excuse me, Fortune 500, Fortune 100, Fortune 50 companies. And I'll go pitch them on some research product, project

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  that will allow them to understand their customers better. And I'll incorporate the language that I'm devising and using for the benefit of Republicans. So he ingratiated himself with the Republicans at the same time he's ingratiating himself with corporate America, all around this old antiquated, now defunct medium cable news. And it was brilliant. So he made it. And he had no oret, because his entire business model relied upon getting people, even though he was incredibly label conscious, like he went to UPenn, he went to Oxford, he had an honorific doctorate that he insisted people call him Doctor.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  People call him Doctor? Oh, Dr. Frank Luntz. Yes, Dr. Luntz. I didn't call him Dr. Luntz. I called him, I won't tell you what I called him. Called him Frank, mostly. But this is so. Frank was rolling in the dough and didn't know what to do with it. And he's indefatigable in his entire life. And there are things about him that I hugely admire, for sure. His relentless nature, his shamelessness. You've never seen a pitch, ever seen a pitch. People talk about, oh, he's such a great pitch man and he knows how to go and speak to these prospective clients. No one does it like Frank Luntz and with literally no preparation because his entire,

• 1:47:23Speaker 02

  his entire strategy, I would call humiliate the executive. What? Yeah, humiliate the executive, generally in front of his underlings or a sub, like not a CEO, but like the guys who are angling for the CEO spot, the various vice presidents and stuff who are sycophantic towards the CEO. He would gather all the, all the executives in one room, either a conference room or sometimes bigger, like a, like a, an auditorium inside a Coca-Cola's headquarters or Dow's headquarters. And he would go and he would give a presentation and like five minutes into the presentation, he would identify one of the sub executives by name.

• 1:48:06Speaker 02

  And he would do everything he could to humiliate that person in front of all of his peers and his boss. Come on. Yeah. So this is a guy who actually understands the worst part of human nature because that does actually excite the sadist in certain people, right? And so who gravitates to those jobs except people who, a lot of them, not all of them, but some of them have that gene. Like, oh, public humiliation, love to publicly humiliate you. And every single person, like if you could see the, if you could see the thought bubble above everybody's head, they're all saying, holy fuck, I'm so glad that's not me, right? So everybody, so at the end of his- Like, well, how would he humiliate?

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  When he finds, oh, the most personal stuff, their clothing, their, the asymmetry of their face.

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  You know, big earlobes. No, no. I mean, like, I know, he was predatory, relentless, ruthless, and entertaining as hell. Like, he's really facile with the English language. He's like, fast. He's super fast. I'll give him that. And very articulate. And man, he would go after them. And so at the end, he'd like softened up the entire.

• 1:49:24Speaker 02

  I mean, he would humiliate these. Actually? At Coke headquarters in Atlanta? Yes, I saw him do it at Pfizer. I saw him do it at Coke. I saw him do it. I mean, we were, he did work for some impressive people, uh, some huge companies. He worked for the Sacklers at Purdue Pharma. I'm ashamed to say that I was involved in that. And that's actually something I think about often, actually. I bought into the whole line. It's like, you were telling me before, did you, did you know that the intelligence agencies played such an aggressive role in American life and elections? No, I didn't. I also really didn't know. It turns out I should have listened to a lot of the blue haired vagina hat wearing I know.

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  crazy women. Cause a lot of the shit they said about the Iraq war, obviously true, about Bush administration, obviously true. Only in hindsight, for me at least. And I dismissed them. And I dismissed in a lot of the jobs I had because I did end up in a position defending some of the worst corporate interests in America. And I believed that when people attack

• 1:50:32Speaker 02

  Big Pharma, for instance, or the Sacklers, or they're really just against, you know, corporate world. They're really against capitalism. They're really, they're just communists. They're against America. Right. They're against America. So I grew up thinking that. And it dovetailed well with my job. Cause I ended up, I mean, they're not all evil, of course. And a lot of them employ tons of people and do good things. And we couldn't survive without them. So I'm not attacking all of them. Gladly attacked the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma, though, because that not only, you know, more about this topic than most, but.

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  You know, it also dovetailed with an entire societal effort that they had, which I was very much a part of, to convince Americans that there is no such thing as acceptable pain. You cannot be in pain. You shouldn't be in pain. Someone needs to be responsible for your pain and you need to eradicate your pain. That was, that was what they were talking about in 2000, in 1999, 2001, two and three, they engaged in a society-wide campaign to convince Americans that pain was unacceptable. Not just for chronic cancer sufferers, or people who'd been injured in war, or people who'd had, you know, back injury 20 years

• 1:51:48Speaker 02

  ago. You should not be feeling in pain ever at all. And there's a solution for that. And they obviously had this solution. Further, they're the ones, as you know, who pioneered, or maybe didn't pioneer it, but they took it to the next level, attacking the people that they'd hooked on OxyContin when they said, and I said, engaged in a ton of research projects and jury messaging with that company where we'd go in and test messages and arguments, but really sort of like a push-pull design to not just gauge public opinion, but to very much influence public opinion. And then we would-

• 1:52:31Tucker Carlson?

  To implant messages.

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  Yes, very much so. And then, of course, because of his business model, he would use those messages and it would be incorporated in thought leaders and elected officials around the country that would use that same language. And that, that was, in its essence, you're not responsible for your pain. You shouldn't have pain. But further, you, this is a non-addict, is not an addictive product. And if you are addicted to it, it's because you've been abusing it. It's because you have some latent, some long dormant addictive thing within you that's now been released. And you also probably have been abusing the product. Like, have you been hitting it with a hammer and smashing it into dust and snorting it? Well, that's on you. So, that shit's evil.

• 1:53:15Tucker Carlson?

  It is evil. And I never, you're thinking about it much more broadly than I ever have. So I have always been focused on the addict, you know, the physical addiction, the societal destruction. You know, you and I both spend a lot of the year in a place that's been really, really-

• 1:53:29Speaker 02

  Hauled it out.

• 1:53:30Tucker Carlson?

  Hauled it out by it. And we know people, a very good friend of ours is now in prison because of drug addiction. So anyway, whatever. We have seen it, both of us. But I have never really thought about what you just said, which is they were making a broader pitch about pain and how pain is always bad. And I think if you, any, any man, especially in middle age, looking back, has to recognize that the painful moments are the, are the best, some of the best moments, the most, the most important.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely necessary.

• 1:53:58Tucker Carlson?

  Absolutely necessary.

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Failure is necessary. Pain is necessary.

• 1:54:01Tucker Carlson?

  Including physical pain.

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, very much.

• 1:54:04Tucker Carlson?

  So to say that our goal is to eliminate all pain, that's evil.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  Yes, I agree. And I wish I had recognized it as such. I totally, I don't think I was, I think I was probably smarter back then, because I was still smoking cigarettes. So,

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  and I was younger. But anyway, I was, I still didn't recognize it.

• 1:54:25Tucker Carlson?

  Lacking wisdom at that age, right?

• 1:54:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, lacking wisdom.

• 1:54:27Tucker Carlson?

  Men in their 30s don't have the perspective that a man in his 50s has.

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  Yes, very much.

• 1:54:31Tucker Carlson?

  Assuming he makes it.

• 1:54:33Speaker 02

  Could I say one more thing about the Luntz thing? It was, it was actually, well, the business model was amazing in terms of, it was very profitable. It was effective. He came up with some effective language. So it's a, it's a quasi, it's a dual track research thing where you do quantitative research, you know, actual polling, calling, polling is a long way before online polling, and then qualitative research with people in a group, a focus group. But he expanded it to like, six times the normal size. So your normal focus group has like eight to 10 or 12 people in it. And obviously, it depends who you recruit to be in that focus group. But then he expanded that to like 60

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  people, and then he had an electronic dial, which was actually a dial, but he called it dial testing, where you could gauge individual words and sentences in real time. So every single person in the audience is reacting to a speech, a speech which is littered with messages that you're testing, and they could react in real time to each word and phrase. They could, you know, it's a visceral reaction.

• 1:55:42Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 1:55:43Speaker 02

  Do you like it or are you repelled by it? And it's pretty effective, actually. And I think a lot of the language that he came up with was great. But because of his total inability, because of his manic behavior and his dishonesty and his

• 1:55:59Speaker 02

  Pension for yelling and screaming and treating people horribly. Didn't actually treat me horribly. He lied to me a number of times and I got into some big arguments with him. And I was too young and unwise to understand you're not supposed to confront your boss and the way you would confront anybody else.

• 1:56:16Tucker Carlson?

  Right. He's not a park ranger.

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  He's not a park ranger. I was more respectful of the park rangers, probably, the two men I felt bad for. Um, but anyway, no, but sorry, I was trying to compliment him, which is all he cared about was the product and which was the written word. And he never gave you enough time. There was no schedule. He was deluged with clients, with high paying clients. And he was disorganized. And so he would rely upon, there was a period where we were handling like 12 huge clients and it was like three writers or two writers and client handholders, you know, interfacing with the client because Frank wasn't good at that.

• 1:56:59Speaker 02

  He was very good at humiliating them and coming, and coming to the crux, understanding human nature to the extent that he could get someone to say, yes, I'm going to pay you a ridiculous amount of money for a research project that will take six weeks. And then allow me to understand my customer better. That he was great at. He was not great at allocating. He was not great at planning. And so the end result was a total beautiful meritocracy. Like you could only survive in that situation unless you produced. It was like, campaigns are like that too. I'm sure you know.

• 1:57:36Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:57:36Speaker 02

  It's like, doesn't matter where you came from, doesn't matter what you did yesterday or tomorrow, it matters that you fucking produce now, on time. You can't, it's like in that old medium cable news. You didn't have an opportunity to be like, I'm not done with my script. It's seven o'clock and you're going on the air regardless, right?

• 1:57:54Tucker Carlson?

  It's the greatest part about it.

• 1:57:56Speaker 02

  It was the greatest part, that was, that's what I'm saying. It was the greatest part about it because of that job, because you just had no.

• 1:58:05Speaker 02

  Room for failure. And every day was an opportunity to prove that you were up to the challenge. And then further, silly cliche, but true that, you know, oh, he's got an inch wide, mile long knowledge. I feel like that a little bit because I was compelled, as were the other guys I worked with, to absorb the details of something that's very complex, a particular business that I had never been involved in, or a policy, or some capability of a future product, or, you know, something, initiative. And you had to be able to speak about it, write about it articulately and compellingly on no notice at all.

• 1:58:49Tucker Carlson?

  So I think that sounds like the best training.

• 1:58:51Speaker 02

  I am, that's exactly how I think about it. And despite the weird, and I wasn't trying to gratuitously attack.

• 1:58:58Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:58:59Speaker 02

  I wrote him a letter, actually, like, six years ago, and, and just contemplative letter, saying, despite all of our differences, despite the various tensions we've had, despite the fact you fired me three times and then hired me back the next day and paid me more money, still not fairly, but despite all of those things, I thank you, because it was the best, most satisfying job I've ever had.

• 1:59:25Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:59:26Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  Well, he, I, I know. He had a stroke and it changed him, actually.

• 1:59:30Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, well, that's.

• 1:59:31Speaker 02

  No, no, it actually, he, at his own admission, he had a stroke that he survived, like all of us at a certain age, you know, has a terrible diet, and leads an unhealthy life, and had a stroke, and it changed him. It actually made him more compassionate from.

• 1:59:46Tucker Carlson?

  Good.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  Yes. No, he had that attitude.

• 1:59:49Tucker Carlson?

  So Frank, listen, I remember, and I don't want to, I mean, I feel sorry for Frank, and I love the fact that he's improved after his stroke, both that he's okay, and that he's, that it's made him a better person. I do think that's common. I mean, as we were saying about pain, it actually can, it certainly improved me.

• 2:00:05Speaker 02

  And he was aware of it, by the way. Can I tell you how I knew?

• 2:00:07Tucker Carlson?

  No.

• 2:00:08Speaker 02

  I called him, uh, five or six years ago about some common interest that we had, and, uh, I shot him a text and said, gee, I have two minutes. I just want to tell you something interesting. Maybe, let me tell you something interesting. So he texted me back, said, yeah, call me. So I called him. First words, hey, how are you? I was like, I'm doing great, man. Let me tell you, and he goes, no. How are you?

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  I was like, no, I said,

• 2:00:35Tucker Carlson?

  You might have to put a cigarette out on his wrist.

• 2:00:37Speaker 02

  No, I said, I beg your pardon, Frank? He said, no, I just, I'm genuinely interested. Like, how are you? How is your wife? How is your son? Do you still have dogs? I was like, someone take over your body? Like, are you fucking serious? I've known you for like 26, 30, maybe 28 years at that point. You've never once asked me a personal question, and that's just fine. But you're asking me how I'm doing? Are you okay? And that's when he told me, he said, actually, I had a stroke. And I said, oh, I'm so sorry. I was genuinely sorry to hear that. But yes, it had a good effect on him. And as I said, I am eternally grateful, as I have expressed to him.

• 2:01:18Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, of course. No, of course. I feel that way about all my bosses, some of whom, you know, regularly denounce me. But I'm always grateful for every experience. And especially when you're young and you're learning a lot. I mean, it's amazing. I know, of course, I know Frank also. He's a fixture in Republican world in DC. He's at the center of Republican world in DC.

• 2:01:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:01:36Tucker Carlson?

  I always feel like he had weird, he kind of hated the WASPs. Did you get that from him ever?

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  I did. It was, it was, I've encountered it before, but with him, it was very pronounced.

• 2:01:45Tucker Carlson?

  A lot, actually.

• 2:01:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:01:46Tucker Carlson?

  To say it.

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  But not just a hate, but an attraction also. Yeah, it was a, yeah, it was like, let me saddle up next to you. And then let me stick a fucking dagger in your kidney. That, that was the attitude.

• 2:02:00Tucker Carlson?

  But there was something about that. The fact that you were a WASP triggered him, right?

• 2:02:04Speaker 02

  He would talk about it.

• 2:02:05Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, actually?

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  Are you joking? Oh, he would talk about it all the time? Well, he'd make, you know, derogatory comments or, or derogatory complimentary comments. Some thing. It was, it was an attraction and a revulsion or something. I don't, it was bizarre.

• 2:02:22Tucker Carlson?

  What did he say?

• 2:02:24Speaker 02

  Oh, that's go. Well, he would just say nothing, nothing hugely creative, but he would say, oh, that's what the WASP. So you do that, or you've got such an attack my name occasionally or my dress.

• 2:02:37Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, that's a big one.

• 2:02:38Speaker 02

  Man, I didn't wear a dress in the office very often, but only on.

• 2:02:42Tucker Carlson?

  Only when you were going out with Frank.

• 2:02:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:02:45Tucker Carlson?

  But he was fixated on that.

• 2:02:46Speaker 02

  Very, no, evidently, yes. Unquestionably.

• 2:02:50Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, Bill Kristol was the same way with me.

• 2:02:52Speaker 02

  I remember when Bill Kristol, if we may take a moment.

• 2:02:55Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  Bill Kristol was a smart guy.

• 2:02:59Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, yeah. Not that smart, but clever.

• 2:03:02Speaker 02

  Not that smart. He came across as a smart guy.

• 2:03:04Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:04Speaker 02

  A thoughtful guy, a compelling guy. It was weird. I used to respect him.

• 2:03:09Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:10Speaker 02

  He's like a puddle.

• 2:03:12Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, but you know, it's I've I've learned so much. Like, yes, he was he's clever.

• 2:03:21Tucker Carlson?

  He did a fair amount of reading back in the seventies, you know, in school.

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:03:27Tucker Carlson?

  He went to collegiate in New York, which is, you know, was a really good school, a rigorous school. And then went to Harvard, got his PhD, forced to do a ton of reading. So he had read, you know, Escholus and, you know, he had read a lot and Rousseau and and he could kind of remember parts of it and sort of half quote it sort of. But what you realize, which was impressive, and I'm not against that. He had like three lines of poetry he could probably do. But you realized over time that that was more a party trick than a reflection of his like actual erudition and that on the wisdom scale like there was none. And he was really mission driven.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:04:07Tucker Carlson?

  And.

• 2:04:08Speaker 02

  Apparent now and.

• 2:04:09Tucker Carlson?

  Apparent now, but he was it was not obvious to me because I was an idiot and he was smart for sure, but he was not that smart at all. And and the mission was, you know, hated Christianity.

• 2:04:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:04:24Tucker Carlson?

  And it really, really hated it. And.

• 2:04:27Speaker 02

  The mask is off now.

• 2:04:28Tucker Carlson?

  Well, the mask is off now, but if I look back on this. You know, he was opposed to American sovereignty. He was opposed basically to the population of America. He just really was hostile, a lot, very hostile. And there were glimpses of it, but I just wasn't, I wasn't wise enough to understand what was going on. Plus, I was like, you know, young and he was employing me. And so there were lots of incentives not to notice, but he was very fixated on the WASP thing with me. And it would bubble up sometimes. I'd be like, what the hell was that? You know, it wouldn't occur to me to be like, well, I never really thought about him being Jewish, to be honest. I really didn't. He is Jewish, but I didn't think about it that much. He thought a lot about me being a WASP, though. There's no question. And it would come out. Anyway, it's just interesting.

• 2:05:10Tucker Carlson?

  I never have heard anybody mention that dynamic before, but, um, but I noticed that in Luntz's too, because he would say stuff to me, too. Yes, very much. WASPs. It's like, well, there's no like, meeting. Probably should be. Probably would have disappeared if there was, but. He would have turned that a little differently. Right. Get off the golf course. Yeah, get off the golf course. Get some self-awareness. Get a defense mechanism. But, you know, none of those are visible. Respect yourself. Exactly. Don't hate yourself. What your ancestors built. A hundred percent. And I do think that one, I mean, I don't deal with many WASPs anymore because they really, really hate me. Um, and I'm sure you probably have the same experience, but. Don't you think it's the same dynamic? Yes. Self-loathing from cowardice?

• 2:05:55Tucker Carlson?

  Cowardice leads to self-loathing, which leads to hatred of others. I totally agree. If someone will hate himself, he's probably not going to treat me well. Yeah, exactly. That's what I think. And they have a lot to be ashamed of in the cowardice department. I mean, these are the bravest people in the world, who went over the top of the trenches, the WASPs. Yes. And there's a lot of lying about that, but their numbers are there. And the first war was all WASPs, including our ancestors. So, um, a lot of them. So, yeah, they had a lot of bravery. They seem to have lost that probably through comfort. And booze. And booze. Booze, sorry. Yeah. And booze. And they kind of know that. And they're shrinking little islands. Well, now they've almost shrunk to nothing, but, um, and they're mad. Do you take any shit

• 2:06:40Tucker Carlson?

  from them when you run into them?

• 2:06:43Speaker 02

  It's funny, I took some shit actually from Neil Bush, who was in an unimpressive family, probably the least impressive of that family. Right. Because the rest of them are charming, mostly. There are a couple of them I like a lot. I'm not gonna shame them by naming them, but I know them. Me too. Well, I don't mind shaming Neil Bush, because Neil Bush... This is George W.'s brother. Yes. Attacked me in the most passive-aggressive way. At a fraternity party that my son's fraternity put on, which was like a formal cocktail. And I accidentally bumped into him. And I, backwards, and I turned around, I said, "Oh my gosh, forgive me, I'm so sorry." And then I said, "Oh, Neil Bush, hi, Buckley Carlson, nice to see you. Met you in Washington years ago."

• 2:07:28Speaker 02

  And then he did something, he has this affectation about, he's not very smart, first of all. He has this affectation about him that you encounter occasionally, and it's... He said something really nasty about you. And the content of your show, you were on that, I forgot what it's called. One of those channels. One of those channels, it was named after a animal that I really admire, but back when that medium actually mattered. And he made some offhand comment, and I said, "I beg your pardon." And this went back and forth a couple times, and I was trying to be a gentleman, I had my son next to me, and Neil Bush's son, who was a fraternity brother of my son.

• 2:08:12Speaker 02

  And so, for a cocktail party, I'm not gonna get in some argument with this guy. But I wasn't gonna back down either, and so I said, "Here's something about the content of your show and what you'd said." But he wouldn't be specific about it. And I said, and he said, "Oh, I'm not judging, I just call it like it is." He must have said that six times. "I'm not judging, I just call it like it is." And I said, "Well..." Neil Bush. "Really? You call it like it is, huh? So what exactly, specifically, did my brother say that you don't agree with?"

• 2:08:43Speaker 02

  Well, I haven't actually seen his show. I read about it in the New York Times.

• 2:08:48Tucker Carlson?

  He said that?

• 2:08:49Speaker 02

  This, who's part of a family that, I mean, I actually, exactly, specific people in the family are quality and nice and deserve kindness. But the policies and the administration of George Bush was disastrous and we're still feeling the effects of it today. I think about it often. And I lived in Texas for a while and I can tell you the people in Texas think about it all the time. They feel completely betrayed by that family and George Bush specifically.

• 2:09:19Tucker Carlson?

  Every reason to feel that way.

• 2:09:20Speaker 02

  Yes, they do. And so I share that revulsion. But anyway, I'm sympathetic to the fact that he is a sibling, a non-public person, and a sibling of people and the son of a man who was attacked relentlessly by people who didn't have specificity in their attacks, didn't even know what they were talking about, and had no trouble attacking family members to him personally. And yet, he's going to engage in the same thing with me?

• 2:09:51Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 2:09:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I thought this is...

• 2:09:52Tucker Carlson?

  Exactly.

• 2:09:53Speaker 02

  That's actually when it really came home to me that the WASPs have not just lost, but that they've lost will. And they've surrendered.

• 2:10:01Tucker Carlson?

  Totally.

• 2:10:02Speaker 02

  And they're unwilling to make a stand. And the fact that he had adopted that leftist attitude without being smart.

• 2:10:09Tucker Carlson?

  Well, it's part, you know, one of the things that, there are a lot of good things about the WASPs, obviously there's some bad things about the WASPs. But one of the good things was, they were totally committed to fairness. And at the heart of fairness is the understanding that we're born and will die and will be judged as individuals, not as groups. And therefore, we do not believe in collective punishment. The country was founded on that premise by WASPs. And, you know, to abandon that is to abandon everything.

• 2:10:39Speaker 02

  Especially when it's the last country on earth that still believes that.

• 2:10:42Tucker Carlson?

  Yeah, that's exactly right.

• 2:10:43Speaker 02

  It's important to defend.

• 2:10:44Tucker Carlson?

  To attack a man for one of his relatives. I mean, everyone in our family's been attacked for some other member of the family. So it's like, we're all very familiar with that, but...

• 2:10:55Tucker Carlson?

  You know, I'm proud to say, one thing I'm proud about our family is that no one would ever do that.

• 2:10:59Speaker 02

  No, not a chance.

• 2:11:00Tucker Carlson?

  No, I'd be happy to have dinner with Yamin's brother and never, you know, attack him for cannibalism because he's not the one who committed it.

• 2:11:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:11:08Tucker Carlson?

  That I know of.

• 2:11:09Speaker 02

  (laughing)

• 2:11:12Tucker Carlson?

  Well, Uncle Buck, um, I just gotta ask you one final question. You've spent your life, I haven't even, I'm not, I'm not gonna violate your privacy by explaining some of the things you've done, or places you've been, or people you've worked with, or whatever, because it's nobody's business and you'll divulge it if you want to, but you've had a really interesting life, but it's been, very interesting life, but it's been, um, like our father, but it's all been very private, haven't been in public at all.

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:11:36Tucker Carlson?

  Right.

• 2:11:36Speaker 02

  By design.

• 2:11:37Tucker Carlson?

  I know. Oh, I'm aware.

• 2:11:39Speaker 02

  So, yes.

• 2:11:39Tucker Carlson?

  I'm aware, and, um, but now, all of a sudden, you've, like, just entered full-blown into the public debate online after, you know, 54 years of avoiding it, and you certainly have seen stuff you could have added to the public conversation, but you didn't, and you've reserved it for a Christmas dinner at our house, so thank you for that. But now that you're in the, you know, public, what's that like?

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  I hadn't anticipated it, shockingly. Calling Neil Bush dumb, I feel pretty dumb that I didn't anticipate that. But it's because I haven't had a governor, I've had the freedom to say what I wanna say in the venues that I operate. Um, I must say, I've had a lot of fortune in my life, a lot of blessings, but principally in the business world, I've been able to work with some people, I have some longtime clients who've, who are aligned, um, who are Christian, who are very smart and very loyal, and they've allowed me to operate, and my job doesn't demand, I write primarily,

• 2:12:44Speaker 02

  I come up with strategic stuff, but, uh, strategy, uh, but I've been allowed to lead an independent and private life, and I've enjoyed it. Um, I don't have any young children who I can embarrass or undermine at the moment, so that's great. Uh, but again, I didn't anticipate it. And, but the other thing I would say is...

• 2:13:09Speaker 02

  I'm not a coward. I love this country and I really don't appreciate what's happening to it, what's been happening to it. And it feels like there's a lot afoot. There's a lot going on that I don't necessarily understand, but I feel like there...

• 2:13:23Tucker Carlson?

  I'm with you.

• 2:13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a battle. There's a massive battle. And it does remind me, um, simple thing ever, someone said the other day, I don't mind saying who it was, it was great, Rick Warren, who wrote Purpose Driven Life, started listening to his podcasts. And boy, is he wise. And boy, is he using the tools that God gave him to communicate sometimes complicated things in a very simple way. And he said, "At the end, you know, we're gonna have a final exam. And there are exactly two questions on that exam, and you can't avoid it. And it's what did you do with my son, Jesus? And what did you do with the

• 2:14:06Speaker 02

  purpose God gave you?" Wow. That's a pretty sobering thought.

• 2:14:11Tucker Carlson?

  Yes, it is.

• 2:14:12Speaker 02

  And once you have...

• 2:14:13Tucker Carlson?

  But it's true.

• 2:14:13Speaker 02

  It's true. And so I've... So I'm not, I guess I'm middle, middle, young, middle-aged, something like that. Um, little weathered, but I have...

• 2:14:25Tucker Carlson?

  Our father was more weathered than both of us put together. He made it a long time.

• 2:14:28Speaker 02

  Yes, he did. Uh, but I don't know. Every man has an obligation to defend what he loves and to practice that. So I love this country and I'm, and there's something going on. And I want to play a role. I want to, I want to do battle. I want to do battle. That's that clear. Seriously. Seriously.

• 2:14:51Tucker Carlson?

  There's no one better.

• 2:14:52Speaker 02

  Well, you're the best.

• 2:14:53Tucker Carlson?

  If I could just end with one vignette that's been in our family all this time, but it's, I don't know, almost 10 years ago, I was at work, because my job, the time I was at work was public. So when I was at work, Antifa came to our house. And of course, as I've said, we've always lived next to each other our whole lives. So... Uh, my wife was home alone and all these people came and tried to bang through the front door and spray painted her house and, you know, Antifa mob came to her house, whatever. I was not even aware this was happening. So my wife is in the pantry of the house, like people are trying to bark, you know, break down the door, dogs are barking. She does not call the police. She calls you first because everyone in our family would always call you first if there's a problem. And, and then she calls the cops. Well, the

• 2:15:36Tucker Carlson?

  cops for some reason got there before you and then you showed up as the cops were just pulling up, which meant that you couldn't shoot anybody and that you were mad for weeks after. I'll never forget the next day when I saw you for lunch, like, I just feel bad. I couldn't shoot anybody. And they were terrifying Suzie and I, but the police were right there. So I couldn't shoot them. And I'm just, I just feel bad about it. And I was like, it's okay.

• 2:15:58Speaker 02

  It was, it was a justifiable sanction culling. It would have been, society would have been much improved. I would have declared a tax credit that year. Don't you think?

• 2:16:09Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I can't talk about this, but that was so good. It was so, it was so good. And everyone in our family was like, yeah, Uncle Buck out there after the police. Antifa was lucky. It was hilarious.

• 2:16:21Speaker 02

  I don't think I've ever experienced such frustration, actually.

• 2:16:24Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, I know.

• 2:16:25Speaker 02

  Mandated restraint.

• 2:16:26Tucker Carlson?

  Oh, Uncle Buck, thank you.

• 2:16:28Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 2:16:30Tucker Carlson?

  That was awesome.

• 2:16:30Speaker 02

  Appreciate it.