Tucker Carlson answers audience questions on politics, war, and American decline
Tucker Carlson responds to member-submitted questions on a wide range of topics in a solo Q&A format.
Summary
Tucker Carlson hosts a member Q&A segment called "Ask Tucker," fielding questions from subscribers across the United States. He covers the state of the Republican Party, the Iran war, the donor class, the murder of Charlie Kirk, Trump's betrayal of his voter base, and the threat posed by AI and data centers. Carlson argues that both major parties serve a narrow donor class rather than the American majority, that Trump was effectively captured by neocons and is now a "puppet," and that the Iran war — which he says began on February 28th — is the most unpopular war in American history. He names Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Kent, and Thomas Massie as the three best politicians in America, and says all three have been exiled from the political system for telling the truth. He also reveals that Fox News recovered its pharmaceutical advertising immediately after firing him, and that he personally attempted to dissuade Trump from going to war with Iran through multiple conversations and a trip to Tel Aviv.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: The "Ask Tucker" format
Tucker Carlson: One of the problems with running a podcast is it's all transmit and no receive. You yap yap yap yap yap under the microphone, but you never hear what the people listening think about what you're saying. So we have a segment called Ask Tucker, in which our members — people who have joined TCN, which is our movement slash network — get to ask questions and we answer them. And some of the questions are really smart and make you think maybe we should listen more and talk less. In any case, Ask Tucker is at tuckercarlson.com. It's for members.
On the Republican Party and the DSA
Tucker Carlson: Jeremy G from Lake Ariel, Pennsylvania writes: "Tucker, like you, I'm fed up with the Republicans. I'm reluctant to support them, but I also don't want to give the DSA a win. I may regret it, but I'm going to give the Republicans one last chance. What do you think?"
I get it. There are so many things about the DSA that offend me — the anti-white stuff especially, and the whole revolutionary posture. I like this country. I grew up here. I've lived here my entire life. I don't want to tear it down. I want to save it. And I also don't like the aesthetics of the DSA — unhappy, weird, gender-transitioning rich kids. No thanks.
On the other hand, you have to keep two things in mind. One, there are certain things you can't support, and getting pushed by Israel into a war with Iran that destroys the American Empire is high on that list. So no, I'm not rewarding that. Second, is the DSA actually an alternative to what we have, to the uniparty? Where are they on the Iran war? They're not saying much. Where are they on the tax code? They're not saying much. Where are they on improving the life of the average person — not people who are here illegally, but the average American whose ancestors fought in the Civil War? I don't think they have anything to say about that.
So you have to wonder: is the DSA real, actually? Or is it just another fake alternative that we're being fed in order to disguise the truth of the system — which is that a tiny percentage of the population is getting its way to our detriment? What I'm saying is, yes, the DSA is different from the Republican Party for sure, but how different are they on the core issues? I don't know. You tell me.
On James Tericco running for Senate in Texas
Tucker Carlson: Gan R from Houston, Texas asks: "Tucker, any thoughts on that freak James Tericco running for Senate in my home state of Texas? The guy gives me the creeps."
Go with your gut. I tell my kids this all the time. If someone smells creepy, he is. If you get a weird vibe off someone, it's real. If you think someone is lying to you, you're right. That guy gives some of the creepiest vibes of any person in the public sphere. I don't care what you think of Ken Paxton. I don't care what you think of the Republican Party.
What offends me about James Tericco is the blasphemy. Running around telling everyone he's a Christian when he's not — when he has full contempt for biblical Christianity and hates people who adhere to it, and whose program is totally anti-Christian. Running around lecturing the rest of us: "I'm a Christian." There's something infuriating about that. I will take a lecture from an atheist. We just disagree. I think you're tragically wrong, but there's a kind of honor in the honesty of it. There is no honor at all in taking someone else's religion and using it as a cloak for subverting that same religion. So there's really no one more repulsive to me in the public sphere than James Tericco. And like the questioner, a lot of that revulsion begins on a visceral level. I look at that guy and I'm like, "No. You're not having dinner at my house, weirdo."
On the possibility of a third party
Tucker Carlson: Jeff from Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri asks: "What are the chances of forming a third party called the America Party that truly represents the majority of our country? The current political machine would fight it every step of the way. But I think we live in a unique time where a third party would be taken seriously."
I meditate on this every single day. This is the substance of my time in the sauna every day — thinking about this exact question. Clearly, the way you framed it is the truth. Our current system doesn't represent the majority. Most people are opposed to the priorities of the Republican and Democratic parties. It's that simple. And the promise of democracy is that minority rights will be protected, of course, according to the Constitution — but the majority will get its way because it owns the country. And that hasn't happened in decades.
So we need an alternative that does exactly that. What's the majority view on things? It's not hard to find out. We have the Gallup poll every single day. I'm not saying we should govern by polling. I'm merely saying that if what the government does over decades bears no resemblance to what the majority wants, it's not a democracy. And I would like democracy, because I grew up believing that we had one and that was my birthright.
So yes, there will be a third party. Will it be the next cycle? I don't know. Politics is not my area, believe it or not. Even though I've talked about it my entire life, I don't have a gut-level understanding of it — partly because I find it disgusting. It's utterly transactional. It's not rooted in any belief at all. It's just a way of grabbing power. They used to say politics was a way to settle disputes peacefully. People die because of our politics. A lot, actually. So I'm not sure any of this is what I thought it was.
But I do know that over time you can't have peace in your country unless its leaders pay attention to the desires of the majority. You're just not going to have peace. So you're at the point where you can either suppress people and surveil them with flock cameras, or you can prepare to be overthrown. That's where we're moving. So yes, I am praying for a third party, and I think we'll get one.
On the wars in Ukraine and Iran
Tucker Carlson: Timothy F from Charleston, South Carolina asks: "If the Democrats win next month, does it have any effect on the wars in Ukraine and Iran?"
That is a great question, and "I'm not sure" is the answer. The Democratic leadership is fully on board with the war against Russia. We are waging a war against Russia — the Trump administration, like the Biden administration, is at war with Russia, the largest nuclear-armed power in the world. That's crazy. And we've been sort of lulled into not noticing that. But it is happening. And it's happening because the Democrats pushed it. They started the war by telling Russia, "We're going to bring Ukraine into NATO." That happened in February of 2022.
Make no mistake, this is their priority, and Republicans have signed on to it. The Iran war — same thing. Both parties have been talking for 40 years about how we need to overthrow the Iranian government for some reason. Well, because they're paid to say that by Israel. That will not change unless the Democratic leadership is under extreme pressure from its own voters. And I hope that happens. I pray that happens — that sincere Democratic voters, and a lot of people who've never voted Democrat who are about to vote Democrat in this midterm because of the betrayal of the current administration, say, "Wait a second. We're not going to be betrayed again. Stop the wars."
People look back on the '80s and '90s as a halcyon period in American history. Like, that was so nice. It must have been so great to grow up in the '80s and '90s. Well, I did, and I can confirm it was. But why was it so great? Because we weren't at war. That's why. War kills your economy. It makes your society chaotic. And it causes people to become callous and desensitized and brutal toward each other. You can't kill innocents in a foreign country without changing as a country.
I pray that number one on my list is that we will stop these wars. They're wars of choice with no reason to wage them other than a small group of people who somehow think they own Russia because their ancestors lived there or something. That is totally irrelevant. My ancestors are from somewhere too, and I'm sure they were mistreated too. But I'm not hijacking America's foreign policy to settle a hundred-year-old score or a three-hundred-year-old score. Stop. That's not hate. That's love. It's love for America, for your nation. We're not going to use the United States military — the $1.5 trillion a year United States military — to settle your ancient blood feud, because this is a new country. This is the promised land. This is a country that left all that behind, that is not hostage to ancient rivalries. So anyone who can restore our foreign policy to an America-centric, pro-America posture will have my support. But I don't see any candidates right now who are promising that.
The three best and worst politicians in America
Tucker Carlson: Mary Kate C from New Paltz, New York asks: "Off the top of your head, who are the three best politicians in America right now? Who are the three worst?"
I would say the three best are Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Kent, and Thomas Massie. You'll notice none of them holds office right now. Joe Kent was defeated twice in his effort to get elected to Congress from Washington State. He was defeated in one of the most extraordinary disinformation campaigns — run by Nick Fuentes on behalf of the neocons. Nick Fuentes is a fed and is working for the side he claims to oppose. That's not obvious to a lot of people because he denies the Holocaust, so he must be whatever. No. Nick Fuentes is working for the neocons and always has. And so he was part of a bipartisan effort to keep Joe Kent out of Congress, because Joe Kent's wife was killed in Syria in a neocon war. He had credibility. He's reasonable. He's not a hater. He's a Christian. And they had to keep him out.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was driven out of a movement she helped create because she said, "Hey, why don't we release the Epstein files?" Done. And Thomas Massie just noticed that AIPAC controls 90% of members of Congress and asked, "What is this?" — and that was enough to have his primary in the Commonwealth of Kentucky flooded with tens of millions of dollars from people who don't even live in the district or the country.
So all three of them have been exiled from the American political system for telling the truth. And to me, the willingness to tell the truth — the bravery to tell the truth in the face of opposition — is the hallmark of integrity. It's what I want.
Who's the worst? Everyone else. I mean, how do you even scale them? James Tericco is the creepiest — he's the one where if he ever entered the sauna when you were there, you would jump through the window. But that doesn't mean he's the worst, because they're all kind of the same. They're all fake. They're all totally unwilling to sacrifice themselves for the people they lead. And that is the definition of leadership — the willingness to die for the people you lead. That's a father's duty. That's an officer's duty. That's a president's duty. It's a member of Congress's duty. And none of them are willing to accept that. So they're all disgusting as far as I'm concerned.
On Ted Cruz
Tucker Carlson: I can't believe Ted Cruz didn't get an honorable mention.
Ted Cruz is the saddest member of Congress. His personal life is a true disaster — no respect at all at home. And there's nothing worse than that. I'd rather get beaten in a hundred elections than have my wife and kids not respect me. I'd rather be dead than that. And I mean it.
Ted is just this sad, greasy guy who's been told his entire life that he's a genius because he has a high verbal IQ. Well, I have a higher verbal IQ than Ted Cruz, and I can promise you I'm not a genius. And this is the problem with having a high verbal IQ — it's like a party trick. I have it, so I can say this. Everyone's like, "Oh, you're so smart, you're so smart." But you're not, actually. You're like a trained dog. You can identify which cup the ball is under, but it doesn't mean you're building a power grid or making wise decisions in your personal life. There's a huge difference between facility with words and wisdom.
I know a ton of these people — people who are super fluent in language tend to know everyone else who has the skill. And a lot of them are so angry, because they've been told their whole lives, "I got an 800 on the verbal SAT, I'm a genius." And their lives haven't turned out at all like what they had hoped. They've fallen so far short of their own expectations and they're just filled with self-hatred and disappointment. "No one appreciates how smart I am." The smartest people, the wisest people, know how absurd they are. And Ted Cruz doesn't know how absurd he is. Everyone else knows, however. So I just feel sorry for him.
On the donor class and how it controls politicians
Tucker Carlson: Tom F from Floral Park, New York asks: "Tucker, whenever I hear you talk about the donors pulling the strings behind the scenes, I wonder how sleazy the whole process is. Can you pull back the curtain and tell us about the donor class and how they control these candidates?"
At the root of it is the belief that every politician has — that money equals power. They all feel this way. Even the good ones. I have known some decent people in politics, and a tiny percentage — the outliers — are decent people. But even they are captive to the lie that the amount of money you raise determines whether or not you succeed. So they all believe that. And once you believe that, you leave yourself open to manipulation, because as Paul the Apostle told us, the worship of money is the root of all evil. And that is true in every context.
Because they believe that, they're totally vulnerable to people rolling in the donors. Miriam Adelson — who's not even from this country, who's living off money she inherited from her deceased husband that he got from exploiting human weakness in the gambling industry — she's got an agenda. Her agenda is the state of Israel and the Likud party in Israel. I'm not mad about that. We all have our agendas. It's not her fault that our politicians are willing to sell out their own country because she gives them money — starting with Trump, but not just Trump, all of them.
By the way, Miriam Adelson is also a James Tericco donor. So why would Miriam Adelson — who's Trump's biggest or second biggest donor — give money to Trump's opponent? Because she's agnostic. She doesn't care. She doesn't care about the United States at all. She's not even American. Maybe in name, but she's not from here. She's using the United States to help another country.
But that's true of all donors, even the ones who don't care about Israel. They're using the United States — our country, our government, our tax dollars, our military — to affect some private end. They basically privatize the U.S. government. They use it to help their company, their family, another nation they're more loyal to.
And you have to ask: whose fault is that? We spend a lot of time attacking Miriam Adelson. I actually don't even dislike her. I know her. I'm not mad at her. There are other donors I'm mad at — Paul Singer, for instance. But that's kind of misplaced anger, really. What people would allow this? Where's our self-respect? Where's our love of our own children? I don't understand why we put up with it.
I'm a father of four, so my role is to be the "no" guy. That's my job. I don't say it with glee. I say it because I have no choice and someone has to say it. And we're the "no" guys in our country. "How about no, you can't do that." Just say it unequivocally — not with hate, not by implying violence, but firmly rooted in principle and in love of country and love of your own family. How are your kids going to do in this system? I don't think very well.
I really blame us. I blame myself for going along with this for all these years that I was in Washington. I always felt it was kind of wrong. And again, it's not just the Israel lobby — which is the most powerful and the most ruthless by far — but it's hardly alone. It's the pharma lobby. The week after I got fired from Fox, Fox got all its pharma ads back. That's a fact. My staff who were still there told me that, and they were told it in a meeting: the network is getting its pharma ads back.
I was not even a particularly obsessed opponent of pharma. I'm not an expert on pharma. I was just like, "I don't think the COVID vaccine works, and it seems like it's giving people I know heart attacks. Maybe we should slow down." I was very moderate on pharma. Maybe we shouldn't be giving everybody SSRIs and Adderall and benzodiazepines — maybe that's not helping. My criticisms were very mild. But even those were just too much.
So you have a system in which the donor class sincerely feels like they have a monopoly on speech and on action. They won't tolerate any opposition at all. They're entitled. Why are they entitled? Because they've been allowed to control the system for so long that of course they feel that way. That's how you spoil a child. And by the time the kid's 14, they're completely unreasonable because you've catered to every whim. Their expectation, understandably, is that every desire will be met instantaneously. You created this child. I blame the parents — and in this case I blame our leaders for putting up with this. Where's Ted Cruz's self-respect? "I was elected to Congress to serve Israel." Can you hear yourself? I don't think you can.
On Republican hubris and the rise of socialism
Tucker Carlson: Austin from Youngstown, Ohio asks: "It seems self-reflection won't be on the ballot if the Republicans lose in November. Do you think because of Republican hubris, socialism will gain traction before 2028 as a middle finger to the right? Like it or not, it could become a movement just like Trump had in 2016."
That is such a deep and wonderful question. Will self-reflection be on the ballot? No — self-reflection is not in us. You know people who've been divorced six times who are like, "Yeah, I had six bad wives." It's like, maybe you played a role in that. None of us ever wants to take responsibility for our own crappiness. And the root of wisdom is: "I suck." Let's just start there. Not obsessive self-hatred — that's obviously pointless and a kind of narcissism — but just an honest comparison of yourself to who you want to be, to God. We suck. That is the one truth that no one ever tells. And parties are just a collection of people. So yeah, they will not learn. No one ever learns. It's like Seinfeld — no learning, no growing. But they'll be taught.
You always hope for a world where people take subtle cues — like, "We just got wiped out in a midterm election, maybe we should pivot and change." But unfortunately, the history of people suggests it takes more than that. You don't pull your hand back from the stove until your fingers start to melt.
Are we moving towards socialism? Obviously. Will it be good? Probably not. If the socialism we're getting is 1985 Stockholm or Denmark in the '70s, it's fine — it's not what I would create, but it's fine. If it's Poland in the '70s, then that's the worst possible thing we could have.
Look, voters are responding to something real, which is that it's no longer a middle-class country — and hasn't been since Obama's second term, 2015. The majority is no longer middle class. That's a huge, massive change that almost no one even noticed when it happened. I wrote a book about it, which no one seemed to read. People didn't know it happened because the New York Times didn't put it on the front page, but they felt it. This is a very lopsided country all of a sudden. People who fly first class are flying in a really comfortable way, and the rest of us are traveling like animals. It didn't used to be that way. There wasn't as big a difference between the way the rich lived and everybody else lived. It's become like Mexico. We used to make fun of Mexico for that — not as an attack on the Mexican people, but as an attack on their system, which was pyramid-shaped and unstable as a result. That's how they got drug cartels. That's how Venezuela collapsed and Hugo Chávez got elected. He was elected. That's how Hitler was elected. He was also elected. A wildly unequal economic system has political consequences every single time. And unfortunately, those consequences tend to make things worse.
Which is to say, someone may be voting for a DSA member, a socialist, in the hope that this country will become more equal and less volatile — but what they're almost certain to get is a system in which the connected and the already-rich have much more power. Or we just eat the rich. I'm not too upset about the destruction of the billionaire class, actually. I secretly favor it. But I don't lie to myself and think that their money will somehow make everybody happier and calmer and better off. You're just going to get a new billionaire class — the technocrats who administer the new system — and they're going to have guns, unlike the current billionaires. So no, I'm not hopeful at all.
But can I say one last thing, because that's so grim? I do think that people's relationships have gotten better and more real in the past ten years. I notice it in my own life and I see it all around me. People are much clearer about what matters. There's much less frivolous talk. In the world I live in, people are deep and honest and loyal to each other, and families are closer. Every conversation I have, it's like, "Yeah, my kids are moving in next to me." That was not the America I grew up in at all. It's a much better version of it. So I think that as all these terrible things are happening on a macro level, there are beautiful things happening on a personal level. I want to be grateful for that and say it out loud.
On the murder of Charlie Kirk and the destruction of Turning Point USA
Tucker Carlson: Elizabeth K from Seattle asks: "Tucker, do you think the murder of Charlie Kirk will help or hurt the GOP in the midterms and in the 2028 general election, and why?"
Well, it's been a disaster — for Charlie, his children, and his widow, number one. For those of us who knew him well and loved him, number two. For the country, number three. And for the Republican Party.
Charlie was the single most important organizer in the Republican Party by far. There used to be this thing called the RNC — the Republican National Committee — and it had power. Haley Barbour ran the RNC. It was a big deal. People sent money to the RNC. That's all gone. No normal person would ever send money to a party organization now. The parties are totally corrupt — like sending money to Scientology. Charlie filled that void. It was Turning Point. You want to get voters out, you send money to Turning Point. And that's all done. They destroyed Turning Point. It was completely on purpose. They destroyed MAGA. They destroyed the Republican Party. And the same people — the neocons — did it on purpose.
Trump was elected for the second time in 2024 with the broadest coalition the Republican Party has ever had. You had hippie natural food moms from Napa. You had a lot of Black guys, a lot of Hispanic guys — and they were guys, because the promise was masculine leadership, which is what we need, by the way. It turned out to be very feminized leadership, very passive-aggressive. The last thing we need. But anyway, you had this huge coalition of people, and in that coalition, a tiny percentage — the smallest part — were the neocons, who were like, "No, we need to use the U.S. military to fight wars for Israel." No one agrees with that. And they took over the party completely, because of Trump — however they threatened Trump, clearly they threatened him, and he allowed it. And now they completely run the party. Anyone who's not for that is not a real Republican. Really? I'm 57. I'm the son of a Republican official. I've been a Republican my whole life. I interned in the Senate 40 years ago for a Republican. You are lecturing me about what it is to be a Republican? I don't think so. By the way, I've been carrying the Republican line on television for 35 years. And all of a sudden I'm a thought criminal.
It's also amazing how quickly people can speak reality into existence. If you start saying something again and again, no matter how ludicrous — "men can become women, no really they can" — after a while people accept it as true. And you're seeing Trump do this with nuclear war right now. "No, it's okay to use nukes." Well, we're going to have a nuclear exchange then, because that's the nature of life. Words have holy power and also dark power. There's a reason we call them incantations or spells. That's totally real. And they're talking into existence this new Republican Party which has no popular support whatsoever and shouldn't, because it's deranged.
Yeah, they wrecked it. And one of the key things that happened was the murder of Charlie Kirk. I mean, you look at the Turning Point event this week and it's all speakers who Charlie Kirk didn't like. I'm not guessing — I knew Charlie Kirk really well. He sat at this table with me more than once and we talked about it. I'm not beating up on Ben Shapiro, who I feel sorry for — I don't think Ben Shapiro has a bright future at all. But Charlie Kirk despised Ben Shapiro. And how do I know that? Because he told me. And now Ben Shapiro is speaking twice. All the people Charlie asked to speak are not speaking.
I'm not attacking anyone in particular. The people around Turning Point are nice people. I know Andrew Kovvette — really nice guy, trying his best. He is. I know people will hate me for saying that, but I know the guy and I like him. We don't even disagree on that much. But I don't think any one person is making decisions. As usual, the donors are making the decisions, and their views are fringe views. Most people disagree with them, but they're having their way. Pretty sad.
On Tucker's abandonment of Trump and loyalty
Tucker Carlson: Lynette K from Landolakes, Florida asks: "Tucker, will you have any guilt if there's a blue wave of Islamists and Marxists in Congress due to your abandonment of Trump for hurting your feelings?"
I would have a lot of sadness if that happens, for sure. Trump never hurt my feelings. I was in television my whole life — it's very hard to hurt my feelings. When you've been as humiliated as I have been, serially, over decades, there aren't a lot of feelings left to hurt. Trump abandoned me and his voters. Trump ran on a pretty specific slate of issues and beliefs and betrayed them all.
I believe in loyalty. I married my high school girlfriend. I'm surrounded by people I've known my whole life. I really do believe in loyalty and I think I display it. But I think it's got to be reciprocated. It's not a one-way thing. Trump isn't God. I don't worship men. And if Trump makes a mistake, I'm not anxious to point it out. Trump's made a lot of mistakes that I haven't mentioned — that I know a lot about — because I feel sad. I've always loved Trump personally, and I still feel that. I'm not mad at Trump, actually. He's not in charge. He's not running the country. I feel sorry for him. He's a puppet and a slave of larger forces. And that's very distressing to me as an American who believes in the democratic system — that you can elect a guy to affect the change that you voted for. That's not how it works, clearly.
He's 80. Does it end well for him? The whole thing is a tragedy. But my commitment is to what I think is true. And I always say that with the caveat that I sometimes don't know what's true, and I've certainly been wrong a lot before. But that doesn't shake my belief that there is truth and that we should pursue it. Even if I see it through a glass darkly, it's still there.
If somebody lies to you and you pretend it didn't happen, you're implicated in the lie. And I don't want to be implicated in that. Also, you have no self-respect. Get some self-respect. Is this what you voted for? I don't think it is. It's not what was promised. So why are you making excuses for that? It's human — I get it. We're so implicated in stuff that we don't want to admit we've been burned. The gypsy takes a hundred euros from you in three-card monte and you're like, "Oh, that didn't happen," because you're an idiot for playing three-card monte with a gypsy — you're going to lose. I get it. I feel it. I introduced Trump at the Republican National Convention on stage. If anyone's implicated in this, it's me. But I think our commitment to the truth and our self-respect require us to admit that the gypsy just took a hundred euros from us.
On whether Carlson could have done more to prevent the Iran war
Tucker Carlson: JK from Norton Shores, Michigan asks: "Looking back, do you feel there was more you could have done to persuade Trump from getting us into this mess of a war with Iran? What would these midterms look like without the war?"
No — I spoke to Trump, it's all on my calendar, but I talked to him dozens of times last winter — meaning December, January, and February — about Iran and about Venezuela at great length. I knew people in Venezuela, and I knew a lot of people in the Middle East. I was in and out of the Middle East. I was in every country involved in this war in the weeks before the war — Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Jordan. I was in all those countries like two weeks before the war. I know people in all those countries, and I love those countries. I was there talking about the war. So I did everything I felt I could do.
What I didn't do was admit to myself that the war was actually coming. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't accept it. I never thought he would do this. He didn't want to do it — I know that because I talked to him about it at length. He had no enthusiasm for this at all. And I continued to believe, against all evidence, up until I woke up the morning the war started — February 28th — I continued to believe he wouldn't do it. And I'm an idiot for that.
There were other people around him who had the same view. They were like, "He's not really going to do this. It's brinksmanship. He's not really going to launch a regime change war against Iran. We just had a war in June — the 12-day war, before we took out their nuclear program. This whole thing is so nuts, it can't happen." I felt that way about the Iraq war in March of 2003. I knew Bush. I talked to Bush about it at the time. I was like, "He's not really going to do this, because Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. So why are we doing this?" Because Israel wanted it. That's why. But I didn't get any of that.
Anyway, my sin — at least my conception of my sin — is not being honest with myself about what was actually happening. And I think if I had known for certain he was going to do this, I would have sounded the alarm publicly more than I did. I mean, I tried. I flew to Tel Aviv, which I didn't want to do, to talk to Huckabee about it and all these other people.
Yeah, they're going to get crushed. This is the most unpopular war in American history and was from the first day. So why would voters reward that? They're not going to.
It's not just this war. The Epstein stuff hurt a lot. Yelling at his own voters because they wanted to see the Epstein files — which he does not own. The U.S. government doesn't own those files. We own them. We're the citizenry of this country. You're just passing through, dude. You're some federal employee or some politician. But those files belong to us. All of them. Every single one of them. They have no right to keep those from us. And when Trump whipped around in that cabinet meeting and said, "Anyone who wants to see the files isn't MAGA" — that was the moment where I was like, whoa, this is getting dark. What are you even talking about? And I talked to him about it. I was like, "What are you doing?" "Oh, it's a Democrat plot." But of course it wasn't a Democrat plot. There are other reasons he's hidden those files. Millions of them remain unreleased. Millions. And we have a right to see every single one of them. And the Department of Justice has a moral obligation to track down anyone who might have molested kids.
Pizza and grape soda. Billionaires don't drink grape soda. No white billionaire has ever had a sip of grape soda ever in history. So don't tell me pizza. And by the way, Jeffrey Epstein ate a lot of pizza? I don't think so. I eat a lot of pizza — that's why I get fat every year. Jeffrey Epstein didn't have a single slice of pizza in his entire life. Do you see the guy? He's Mr. Narcissist fitness dude. So when you've got dozens of emails talking about pizza and grape soda, it's fair for the DOJ to call the people in those emails in and be like, "Pizza and grape soda? Tell me more." And they haven't. Why haven't they? Because they're protecting the criminals in the Epstein files. If you do that, I guess it's a trade — you're getting something out of it. I have no idea what they're getting out of it. But what they're not going to get is voter support, because nobody's for that.
On Tucker's brother running for president
Tucker Carlson: Michelle from Sacramento asks: "Tucker, I've heard you say you're not interested in running for president. It's disappointing, but I understand. Can you at least persuade your brother, Uncle Buck, to run?"
The Uncle Buck presidency would be the greatest presidency probably since George Washington, because Uncle Buck has a gut-level understanding and feel for American culture that I've never seen in anybody else — real American culture — and a love of people. I think leadership begins with love. I've always thought that. That's the core requirement of being a good dad. Not that you have any clue what you're doing — I had kids at 25, I had no idea what I was doing — but I always liked my kids, and so it turned out okay. And that's true at every level of leadership. If you love the people you're leading, of course you're going to make mistakes and say ludicrous things and mislead them unintentionally, but you're not going to hurt them irreparably because you love them.
Our leaders don't love us. They have total contempt for us. We're just cattle to them, a tax farm clearly. Having a leader — and Uncle Buck, it'd be hilarious, but I think he'd be a great president actually, because he loves people. All people. Uncle Buck, I don't think, has met anybody he hasn't sniffed. He'll sniff anybody of any race or income level or gender. He just loves people. Not in a creepy way, but just — he just likes people. And the more time he spends with people, the happier he is. He just rolls around in other people.
When was the last time we had a leader like that? I can't remember. They're all kind of weirdly antiseptic, germaphobic. They'll put on the hard hat or eat at the fast food restaurant, but ultimately you think they care about you? Not at all. Uncle Buck really does. So yeah, I'd vote for Uncle Buck in a second.
On Trump, data centers, and the AI agenda
Tucker Carlson: Nick O from Georgetown, Ohio asks: "Why does President Trump continue to push hyperscale data centers in rural areas, which make up the strongest areas of his MAGA base?" And he wonders why he's losing support.
Trump hates himself, and therefore hates anyone who loves him. Let me restate: Trump hates himself, therefore he despises anyone who loves him. And I think his personal life and marriage history attest to that, but his public behavior attests to it too. The more loyalty you show to Trump, the more contempt he has for you. Loyalty is not rewarded — it's penalized. Trump the other day does a podcast with Michael Cohen, his former lawyer who went to jail, who denounces Trump as a profession. That's what he does for a living — denounces Trump in the most personal, bitter ways. And Trump rewards that. Just know that the people Trump dislikes most are the ones who voted for him and remain loyal to him. He has contempt for that. He hates weakness and he hates people who love him. Fact. He's not the only one who feels this way. People who hate themselves are uniformly like this. You've known people like this — they're much nicer to the valet parker and the waitress than they are to their own kids and wife. They're rewarding loyalty and love with hate.
Anyway, the thing I love about data centers is how undisguised the whole project is. No one is even pretending data centers are going to improve your life. They're like, "Oh, we're building a new prison and we're going to put you in it. And by the way, you're going to pay for it, because humiliating you is part of our worldview." They're not pretending otherwise. They're not like, "We're going to build a data center in your county in Utah and your life is going to go from crappy to awesome." They're like, "No, we're building a data center, and you're going to pay for it, and that money is going to go to people who are already richer than anyone's ever been in history — to the billionaire class — and then your life is going to get way suckier. You won't have a job or any human autonomy. You get to make zero decisions, and the best you can hope for is a check from the government."
So you become another welfare case. How does that work? How do inherited money people do? If I cut you a check for a billion dollars at 23, would your life be happy? If I strung you along generationally on welfare, would your life be happy? We don't have to guess. We know. We see the results. Paying people money for not doing anything is the fastest way to destroy them — whether at the rich end or the poor end. Doesn't matter. It's the same principle. And that's the promise of data centers. That's the best-case scenario. And they're just saying that out loud.
How about I overthrow the government now? Are you kidding? That's what you're promising me? I know you're going to fall short of the promise — that's the best you can offer? So yeah, I think the whole thing is amazing in that they're not bothering to disguise it. And maybe the technology gives them the confidence they don't have to disguise it. Maybe it's like: if we have enough flock cameras, when AI becomes as powerful as we think it's becoming, your consent won't be necessary. Shut up and eat your gruel. That's kind of where I feel like we are.
I've never seen a product rollout this perverse. When Apple rolls out a new phone, they all lie to you about how great you're going to feel when you buy their product — of course, it's not a transcendent experience to buy something, the whole thing is fake — but at least they make the effort. We were just talking off-camera about Newport Cigarettes' advertising campaign in the '80s and '90s. The line was "Get some." The pitch was: buy a pack of Newports and you're going to get the ladies — they won't be able to keep off you. I think that's not true. Or maybe it is true. I never smoked a Newport. But at least they were appealing to some desire you had, even if it was a base desire.
The data center AI thing is: "We're going to take all of your money and make your life way worse." I've never seen anything like it. Of course Trump's for it. That's where the money is.