Tucker Carlson HAMMERS Mike Pence. It Was Like Beating a 5-year-old In Ping Pong - 07-16-2023

Most basic level, the news you consume is a lie. And that's what the news media are doing in every story that matters, every day of the week, every week of the year. You know the outline of right and wrong. You're born knowing that when honest people say what's true, they become powerful. The liars who can try to silence them.

Frank the second you decide to tell the truth about something, you are filled with this power from somewhere else. The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become.

Thank you. Oh, my gosh. Thank you for having me.

Yes, thank you. The smoke machines are so affirming. Wow, this thank you for having me.

Thank you. It's funny, I was just standing first of all, may I say go, Megan Kelly.

That was awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't think most unemployed people get a reception like that. And in a recession like this, to find yourself without a job and people still being nice to you is, like, unbelievable. I was standing on those stairs. No, I have a job. I'm just kidding.

Well, I love you, too. Thank you. I was standing on those stairs, and I saw that in Toronto. It's like, that's the most TV I've watched in three months. And I have to say it feels absolutely great.

Thank you very much for having me. I don't.

Roger Stone, ladies and gentlemen. All the cool people are here. It's like, unbelievable. Wow. Yeah.

I haven't been around a ton of people in a while, but I never miss this event ever. And I meet the nicest people, really, that I ever meet at these. So thank you for having me. I just flew in from Iowa thank you.

Which is a wonderful state. And if you ever traveled domestically, remember, the worse the weather, the nicer the people, and the more fattening of food. And so that state, worst weather in the world. Nicest people. And I met, basically, your Republican field.

They're minus one.

Yeah, exactly. So I got a chance to interview the Republican presidential field again, minus the front runner. And it was completely fascinating. And as it always is to be around politicians, politicians are a group that I despise on principle because they tend to be soulless and have kind of barren and sad personal lives. And so they spend their days trying to win affirmation from people they've never met.

It's pathetic. But in real life, no, it's true. They all have alcoholic or abusive fathers to whom they're trying to prove something. But in practice, in person, I mean, they're all super charming. I mean, there's not a politician in the world who's not charming.

That's why they went into this business. It was either that or selling cars, and this was more lucrative, so they went into it. So I like almost all of them when I meet them. I mean, you can't not they can talk about anything. They've mastered the sort of shallow small talk over coffee, which I definitely appreciate.

That's an acquired skill, and they've worked hard at it. But I have to say, after spending all day with them, I learned a couple of things which I think may be relevant to you and to the country and a couple of things, and I don't want to attack anyone on personal grounds or by name. It's tempting. I will say it's tempting. Whoever said, do it, you're the devil on my shoulder.

Do it.

I've spent my whole no, but if I could make some general observations, which I think are more edifying than just, like, savaging Mike Pence, which I'm not going to do, because that would be wrong, and it would be wrong because it's too easy. And the easy things are not rewarding, are they? You don't feel good when you beat your five year old in soccer or ping pong. Like what? But I did learn a couple of things.

It was super, super interesting. The first thing, I guess I already knew it, and you know it already. That's why you're here, which is the spread between the things that Republicans in Washington, the people you vote for and put there care about, like actually care about, pretend to care about a lot of things, but the things that really touch them off, that matter to them, very different from the things that matter to the people who vote for them. And you kind of thought that would know because we did have an event several years ago where Republicans elected a guy basically on the promise to blow up the Republican Party. And you thought that would get their attention.

If your wife runs off with the pool boy, it's like, time to reassess her skills as a husband. Like, you got to pause just for a moment and be like, yeah, it's bad, but maybe I contributed to her behavior. Most self aware people I'm being serious ask themselves that question, like, how was I responsible for this bad thing that happened? But there's been literally none of that. It's been all blaming the pool boy in Washington.

So I don't see that changing at all. Maybe it'll take a next election cycle to do that. But the second more interesting thing I learned is that almost everybody, not everybody, but almost everybody in elected office in the Republican Party has internalized the other side's rules for debate. And if you think about that, there's no really more self defeating way to go into politics or life than to accept the terms that your enemies offer before the conversation's even begun, because there's really no winning. In other words, if you and I are arguing about something, but I've already decided you're right, probably not going to get very far right.

And you see this on the big issues, in fact, the biggest issues without variation. It's always the same. The Republican goes in knowing in his heart he's wrong. And I feel like there are probably a substantial percentage of Republican voters who do the same without knowing it because they don't have any idea it's happening. So, for example, during COVID there were people who didn't kind of play along.

We knew what the rules were. And every organization in American life, every large group of people in American life, really, from your government to the entire media, in some cases your church, we're all telling the same thing here are the rules. If you are a good person, you will follow these rules. You will mask, you will separate. You will stay at home.

You'll take our shot. No, we have no idea what's in it. We don't know its long term effects, but shut up. This is a moral test, and if you want to pass, you will obey. And there will be people who decide to opt out, but they are and everyone agreed on this moral criminals.

They're outlaws. And it's I mean, given there's a certain sort of outlaw who's proud of it. They're sitting over there. They're standing right here. I mean, there are always some people there are always some people who are going to be or gifted with whatever that weird gene is.

It's like 8% of the population who are proud to stand apart and be like, no, but most people, including most good people and most sensible people don't want to be in that 8%. You know what I mean? They just don't they don't want to be cast out of the tribe. Actually.

I don't know what you said, but I agree with you. I'm the only speaker likes being shattered at anyway. But the problem is nobody pushed back on the fundamental terms. Like, wait a second. Is there evidence for this?

Do you know this to be true? Don't Americans have an inherent, which is to say, a right they were born with an inherent right to make their own decisions about how they live on the most basic level, what medicine they put in their body, where they travel. Nobody said that. And of course, the media never presented that as an option. You saw this in the war in Ukraine.

It began, and the first thing you knew, I mean, you could have, like, diversion opinions, I guess, about which weapon systems to send. But you were told at the very beginning know, Russia was enemy. One thing we know about this is that one side is bad, and one side is, you know, I think a lot of decent people would reach that conclusion independently. I'm not contesting that. I think it's completely fair to think Russia's bad and Ukraine's good, but it's also within bounds to not agree with that, because if you're an American, you have the right to who you hate, okay?

That is a fundamental right. No one is allowed to force you to be mad at somebody else. If you're an adult, you get to decide. And you get to decide on the basis of whatever criteria you want. And it's totally fair to say, well, I don't know.

I'm not mad at that person. You're not a criminal for thinking that. It's not a criminal act not to hate somebody. So it's totally fair to say, well, wait a know it's not an expression of love for Russia to say they haven't killed any Americans. Why is that crazy?

That's true. I said to one of the candidates yesterday, I mean, look, I've never been to Russia. I'm not that interested in ever going. I don't speak Russian. I born in this country.

Kind of probably plan to die here. Hope to, but let's just do the body count. So what's the total number of Americans murdered by Russia in the last three years? I'm thinking I'm not great at math. I think it's around zero in that range.

I don't know any I do know two people well, personally, who've died from fentanyl that was manufactured in Mexico and allowed by the Mexican government to come here. Now, I'm not against Mexico. I grew up right next to it. I kind of like Mexico, actually. But the Mexican government allows that.

And over a hundred thousand Americans die every year from that poison, not because they were drug addicts who took too much, but because they were poisoned, because they were taking a pill they thought was something else, and it turned out to be fentanyl manufactured in Mexico and allowed by the Mexican government to come here. And so that's 100,000 a year. That's hundreds of thousands of Americans dead, mostly young people. Well, or sure, or more or more. So if you had a country that allowed hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens to die at, say, age 23, and I'm sure every person in this room knows someone or knows someone who knows someone who's died, it's not some abstract epidemic.

It's so big that everybody knows somebody. It was like the height of the pandemic. An outlaw. I know. Possibly.

My wife said to somebody, how many people do you know who've died? Of COVID And I was like, well, a lot. Well, who are they? Well, like a friend of mine, her grandparents died. What was her name?

I don't know. It was Grandparent. How old was she? Well, late 80s. Okay.

How many people do you know who've been injured by the vaccine? Well, a ton. So I don't know. At a certain point, you can draw conclusions from that scientific assessment. No, but it's not irrelevant.

So on the question of Russia, if you begin the conversation with, this is an evil country that has hurt America and we have to go to war with them, well, then there's kind of no debate about it, is there? No one would defend Nazi Germany. They killed many tens of thousands of Americans. You can't defend them. No decent person would defend that.

But in the case of modern russia. You're not even allowed to think that. And once you're prevented from thinking something, you are completely controlled by the person who's convinced you of that. And the effects of this, to me, just as an observer in my life, I just try to stay unaffected by the propaganda that's like the main goal of my life every morning, just to stay unaffected, just to look around and try to assess things cold. What are we looking at here?

You don't have to be a genius to do that at all. I'm not a genius, that's for sure. Just look out. Like, what does this look like? Drive across America for 3 hours.

Is this what you remember from five years ago? Does it look better or worse? Are there more people sleeping on the street? Is it dirtier? Is there graffiti?

Graffiti? Oh, graffiti. What is graffiti? That's not art, it's vandalism. And when it's allowed to stand, what does it say?

We've given up, we don't care. We're allowing people who create nothing to destroy what we've built, and we're not fighting back. Graffiti is like one step from total society collapse, period. What you're saying when you allow graffiti is we have no self respect at all. We don't care enough about our civilization to keep it clean, to keep it pretty.

Previous generations worked their whole lives, gave everything they had just to put in sidewalks, just to put in gas lines, just to build concrete buildings. And we're letting someone who's never done anything of value for our society destroy it with vandalism. And we don't have a problem with that. Well, no, it's not a big deal. It's just graffiti.

They're graffiti artists. No, this is a sign of the collapse of civilization, period. But you're not allowed to think that. So if you allow propagandists to set the terms, if you're playing soccer against somebody and he's like, here, totally fair match. We're evenly matched.

The thing is that when I score a goal, it counts, and when you do, it doesn't. Totally fair. Let's just agree to that. Probably not going to win. But yesterday I sat and watched, I kept my temper the entire time because it's not up to me who the Republican nominee is at all.

I'm just an unemployed talk show host. So I thought, I'm going to try to keep myself out of it. But I raised the question. It was a completely fair question. There are clergy in Ukraine who are being thrown in prison, convents raided, nuns kicked out, priests handcuffed thrown in jail.

So, I mean, on one level you think, well, it's not my know, they do all kinds of barbaric things around the world. Can't be upset about all of them. Much more interested in what's happening in El Paso than I am in Kiev. On the other hand, if I'm paying for it, and if I'm sitting here listening to moral lectures about how I have to pay for it, or else I'm a tool of Putin. I think it's fair to ask, like, what is that, throwing priests in jail?

And so I asked a self appointed Christian leader about that, and I said, what do you think as someone who's spent his life advocating for religious freedom, about raiding nunneries and throwing priests in jail? And he said with a straight face, well, they had the wrong views.

Okay? I'm sorry. I didn't realize what the boundaries were. So you have religious freedom or freedom of speech or freedom of assembly, as long as you stay within the lines. But if you express an unimproved view, then you go to jail.

But that's freedom, isn't it? You do exactly what I tell you to do, or else I imprison you. Is that the freedom that you recognize? No, that's insane. And so that irritated me, and I said, well, but don't you think as a Christian leader, you should say something when Christian clergy are imprisoned for their views?

No. And how dare you say that? And this person was joined by a chorus of people on the right. Yeah, shut up. Shut up.

Natural Review wrote a piece this morning. Sharp it's bigoted to notice that Christian clergy are being imprisoned in Ukraine. And my view would know. Maybe you care, maybe you don't. But if you're a Christian leader and Christians are going to jail for their views, you are required to say something.

And if you don't, you're not much of a Christian leader. And by the way, the person I was speaking to is a person, I think, of real faith and of decency. Like, I would let him babysit my kids, not for long, but for dinner. I mean, I don't think he's, like, an evil person. He's not a secret serial killer in Long Island or something that I know of, but he with a straight face told me this, and he said, but what Ukraine really needs, and I say this as a Christian leader, is more cluster bombs.

And I thought, well, you know who it was. And I thought to myself, More cluster bombs. Now, I am not a Bible scholar, but I'm pretty sure, having read four out of four gospels, that like Luke 17 doesn't call for shower cluster bombs on the children. In fact, I'm just going to go out on a limb as a non theologian and say the overriding message of the New Testament is bring peace. And this person because that's what it says.

And this person with a straight face got almost weepy at the prospect that the government that's imprisoning Christians doesn't have enough missiles and tanks, which is maybe it's fair position. It's not a legitimate position for a self described Christian leader to have. It's just not I'm sorry. That's disgusting. And this person said to me, we need to do this, because that's what leadership looks like.

And I thought, you know, I've never been a diplomat. I'm the father of many children, and I don't have a PhD in leadership, but I know what parental leadership looks like, paternal leadership looks like. And if two of your kids are in a brawl, maybe you think one's right and the other's wrong, but it doesn't matter. What do you say? Beat the crap out of him.

He's wrong. No. You say, Dad's home. Knock it off. And the first thing you do because you are in charge, not the children.

You're in charge. Your dad. The first thing you do is you stop the fighting. And then you take them into separate rooms, and you administer whatever lesson or justice you think necessary, but they're not allowed to fight with each other because you're home, because you're leading your family. And there may be a way in which international leadership is totally different than managing a house of four kids and four dogs, but I don't know what that way is.

If you're the leader, the last thing you do is sow more chaos. You stop the chaos. Leadership is bringing order and regularity and predictability to a chaotic scene. Wait till your dad gets home. What dad shows up drunk and is like, Keep handing them bad dad.

A man, in fact, unworthy of the name dad. That's not leadership. It's an abdication of leadership. It's a perversion of leadership, and it's disgusting. And that is exactly what in the name of American leadership, this administration, with the full participation of the Republican Party, is foisting on the world, and it's insane.

Yeah, well, I have to know. Whatever you think of Trump, he's pretty clear on this. And they hate him for it, actually. They hate him for it. And if I can just say the foreign policy stuff, which if you grew up in this country once again, as I did, you're not really used to thinking about, because it's literally oceans away, and they're like all these primitive people out there doing primitive things, tattooing their faces and being you know what I mean?

They're foreigners. Who knows what they do? I get it. I grew up like that. I was proud to be an ugly American, and to some extent, I still am.

I'll have the pizza, please.

Amen. Amen, baby. I'll have the pizza, please. I'm an American, and by the way, I'm proud to order pizza in Paris and often.

But if you're an American, like, you don't think about it. And there is this sense in which foreign policy is like the one big thing that government does that's not subject to democratic, which is to say voter control, it really is about as patronizing as you can get. It really is. Men are talking. That's really what they're saying.

I'm sorry. Are you a foreign policy expert? What do you know? How many years did you spend in a diplomatic or did you go to Fletcher School? I don't think you did.

Well, it's my country, actually, and you're doing this in my name, with my money and potentially my children.

So whether you want my input or not, you're going to get it. But that truth that democracy requires the public to sign off on wars is totally alien in Washington. And that's exactly why they like it. It's exactly why they like it. If you were to try to get some trans rights bill through the Congress, you couldn't get it through because people are watching, and they should be and amen, and the democratic process works that way.

Probably not going to pass a bill in the United States Congress even if Democrats control it. That know, basically no more men's and women's bathrooms. We're all going to be in one latrine together, and we're going to like it. That's probably not going to happen because nobody wants to defend that. But sending cluster bombs to a government that's imprisoning Christians and stealing the money, that's kind of not your business, America.

And so they can collude and do it together, that's the truth. And the fact that Republicans have allowed this and that even now and again, even if you think we should be supporting Ukraine militarily, which is, I think, a legitimate I don't share that view, but I think it's entirely legitimate, and I think there are a lot of awfully nice people who feel really bad for the Ukrainians. I actually feel really bad for the Ukrainians myself and think Russia shouldn't invade it. I agree with that. But it almost doesn't matter where you are on this question if you can't have an adult conversation about it, which begins with the very obvious question, why should I be mad at Russia?

Like, why shut up if the answer is shut up? Or if the answer is to accuse you, an American citizen who loves your country, whose ancestors fought to defend it, of disloyalty to your country by people who care not at all about the United States.

It's too much. It's just too much. It's too outrageous to stand. But what I will tell you, if you want to know what really, really matters to them and to you and to the future of the country, consider the things that you were not allowed to say. I noticed this right after January 6.

I'll never forget it as long as I live. As a very literal, not super quick, not highly clever person, I was completely content to believe January 6 was what it looked like to me on TV, which is a bunch of angry people who thought the election was stolen from them, who appropriately went to confront the people they thought stole it. So like, George Floyd gets killed and all of a sudden they loot Foot Locker. What did Footlocker have to do with it? I will say in Republican primary voters defense, they're mad at the Congress.

They went to the congress. They didn't loot any liquor stores. They just went right to the source that's true.

It wasn't like, oh, they stole the election from us. Let's loot macy's all right.

But anyway, so I saw this and I was like, yeah, okay. It was people super mad. They thought the election I mean, this was January 6, so it took a long time for me to figure out what happened. Just being honest, I think I'm just too old. And so it's like, hard to notice when things change.

Like certain assumptions you have. Like, of course it's on the level they wouldn't actually subvert an election. And then someone very smart said to me, really? People kill each other over insurance claims.

This is running the world. Like, what wouldn't they do? Oh, right. Good point. Anyway, but I just kind of didn't think too much about it.

Like, I'm definitely opposed to vandalism. Anyone who breaks windows is not my friend. I hate that. Have you ever glazed a window? You ever put in a window?

It's really hard. I mean it if you don't think it's hard, try it. You get the size wrong, it doesn't fit pins in. It's ridiculous. It's like an all day affair to replace a divided glass door.

Anyway, so I don't like that at all. And I said that I don't like it. And within like about an hour, I heard people say, well, that was a racist insurrection. And I was like, really? I didn't know race had anything to do with it.

I didn't heard one person say a word about race and an insurrection. Call me literal is when armed people try to open for the government. That didn't seem to happen either, so I just pretty innocently said bad, probably not a racist insurrection. What? Shut up.

Racist insurrectionist.

And I remember thinking, well, obviously people are feeling heated, but like, in a week or so, when the emotional devastation of this 2nd 911, Pearl Harbor wears off, people calm down and come to their senses. And you can have, like, a rational conversation. Trip west, I see you in the front row. Sorry. Just so a friend of mine, we can have, like a rational conversation about what this actually was and why.

And at a certain point, because I really believe in cause and effect, someone will say, well, why were these people so mad that none of them had criminal records? They were like grandmams with diabetes and, like, a lot of debt. They're the least powerful people in our society, like, legit the least powerful. And why were they so mad? Like, why do they take the bus from Tennessee to go jump up and down in front of the Capitol?

Like, something probably had better things to do. And then maybe if they think that the election wasn't fair, we will sit them down in a very calm rational and be like, I get it. We said that Biden won by 81 million votes. There's 15 million more than Barack Obama. It seems like a lot, considering he didn't campaign and he can't talk, but there was just something about him.

It was that magic, and maybe you didn't feel it. It's like pistachio ice cream. It's not a flavor for everybody, but the people who like it really like it. 81 million, so settle down. And by the way, we have the source code in the voting machine software, and we've looked at it, and it's totally on the level.

We've double checked. We wouldn't let, like, an electronic voting machine hide their software from us. Like, never do that. And the dropbox is, like, totally monitored by law enforcement, and every person who voted had to prove he was who he said he was with a government issued ID. Like, settle down.

And I would have said, fair enough, because I want to believe in our elections. Who doesn't? And in fact, the people at the Capitol on January 6 are exactly the ones who most want to believe in our elections. They're the ones who carried the pocket constitution.

How many CNN anchors, like, deeply believe in the American political process? They put you in a camp if they could. Shut up. They have no interest in the process at all. But the people who really believed in it were naturally the most shocked and the most upset to believe it wasn't real.

But anyway, I thought we would have that conversation at some point. I never supported, and I will never support vandalism, period. But I did think, well, maybe the upside this Ashley Babbitt's killing, clearly, in retrospect, to know it'll amount to something. We can have a national conversation about this. And I'm completely for national conversations, but every year, they promise us a national conversation.

Well, on race, we need a conversation. Okay? Shut up. National conversation means no one's allowed to talk except the people who called for the national conversation, and they never stopped talking anyway. We never had any conversation about that.

In fact, anyone who tried was deplatformed. debanked? Basically hounded out of public life in America, bankrupted a lot of cases, put in jail. They were fired. Oh, pretty funny.

Anyway, I was so into it, i, like, lost all self awareness for a minute. Sorry. But not only do we not have that conversation, that conversation was literally banned. Now it's in the guidelines of most of the big social media companies. You can't have that conversation.

So I would make a couple of points, and the most obvious one is any country that doesn't allow a free discussion of the process by which its leaders are elected is not a democracy. By definition. A country without free speech is not a democracy. Free speech is a prerequisite to democracy. You can't have it without it.

You can't have a dinner party without dinner. You can't have a democracy without free speech, period. So there's that. So whatever you tell me, by the way, isn't it? It's so interesting and narcissists are.

This way, the projection involved, it's like whatever it is they're doing, and I mean at a precise level, is exactly what they accuse you of doing. You're attacking democracy. Really? I like democracy. Democracy would give people without money and without a TV show some voice in how they are governed.

Therefore, I'm for it. And they want exactly the opposite.

So the middle class in America, which has been not the majority since 2015, an anniversary that nobody noticed, has less economic power than it's ever had. That's why Trump got elected, in my view, and now it has less political power than it's ever had. So if you are taking power away from large segments of your population, you are, by definition, attacking democracy. That's exactly what you're doing. There's no other name for it.

That's the first thing I noticed. In the name of defending democracy, we took away the things we need to have democracy, which is our core freedoms, guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Just as in our war for democracy, we are supporting a government, paying for the entire government, that has banned opposition parties, put opposition leaders in jail, shutting down free speech, now shutting down an election and putting dissident priests in prison. It's such a democracy, they don't have elections anymore. That's how pure a democracy it is.

But the second thing, and what's I think more applicable to this conversation, I learned, is that their response was the tell. If you want to know what they care about, if you want to know what's important, listen to how they respond when you say something unapproved about it. So if you were to, I don't know, write a post on Facebook tonight and say, I think Papua New Guinea is the most powerful nation in the world, you would get not a single response other than, someone's been smoking weed again, no one would care. It's like demonstrably untrue. That's why the flat earth people have been able to cruise beneath the radar for so long, because they're and by the way, I'm not discounting that possibility, for the record, in case any are here, because I am an open minded man, present me the evidence of its flatness and I will amplify it.

But the point is, when something is clearly or very likely untrue, it poses no threat to anyone. What's scary and what will elicit a response are true things. No one is punished for lying. People are only punished for telling the truth.

You could literally wake up tomorrow, move to the Bahamas, start a fake cryptocurrency, defraud a million investors around the world of billions of dollars. I'm just saying you could do and I'm not recommending it. Note to the FBC not recommending it, but you could do that and you can get caught. People might have, like, a balanced view of you. He's really smart.

Good guy, got a little over his skis, as we say. But, like, I'm not going to hate on him, right? We all make mistakes. Like who here? Raise your hand if you haven't defrauded a million investors with a fake cryptocurrency.

Okay, there are some. There are some. You cast the first stone. Then those kinds of crimes, which is to say actual crimes, like burning down buildings, impoverishing people, starting totally counterproductive wars we can't win that kill a lot of our citizens, leaving the border open so 7 million people can walk across. Those are not small things.

That's not all. Like forgetting to fold your napkin correctly at Thanksgiving. Those are like, actually kind of world historic crimes never punished. What are the crimes that are punished? Thought crimes.

Thinking the wrong thing, having the wrong beliefs, saying unapproved words. And those words are always true. They are always true. So when you hear somebody and by the way, it's so hard to know what's true. I mean, often to the extent I ever talk to people, which is fairly rarely, no, but, like, you go into an airport, I hate the news.

It's all so dishonest where you get your news. And I always try to be honest and say, I don't get any news. I don't read any news. Are you joking? I haven't had TV in, like, decades.

I wouldn't read The New York Times at gunpoint. I don't want that in my head. Do you know what I mean? It's like, worse than porn. It's horrible, and it's just bad for you.

You don't put untrue things in your head on purpose. So how do you know what's true? Well, that's a great question. And in fact, it's like the only question really in life. And the honest answer is you can't really know because you're not God.

I think it's super important to approach everything with the requisite humility, acknowledging that these things are very complicated and you can't really know. And at some point, probably the second you die, you will know. And that's definitely the upside of dying, in my opinion. But in this life, you can't, and you're never going to. And you're a lunatic if you think you can imagine the future or divine the precise truth about anything, because you can.

And by the way, anyone who thinks he can is likely to become Mussolini. Like, that's a bad path. If you wake up in morning and think, I'm the only person who possesses the truth, you are clinically insane. So seek help, but within the bounds of our abilities as people. You can get pointed in the direction where's the North Star, you can get there.

And how do you know? And it's really simple. Who are the thought criminals and what are they saying? What are they saying? They're saying crazy things like the waters turning the frogs gay.

What a crazy person. Let's make them pay a billion dollars. Water is actually turning the frogs gay. That's true. Turns out, years later, they tell us.

Turns out it's true. Yeah. It's actually true. I'm not endorsing any specific person's theories about anything, but I am telling you that the people who censor your words and thoughts have a this is one thing I'll say about them. They have a very precise and well calibrated sense of what's important.

They know these are not frivolous people. They can smell like your dog, can smell like your parents could smell in high school if you smoked a Marlborough. They know what's important. They don't waste any time in the unimportant stuff. And so I would honestly say a lot of the debates we have and certainly a lot of the ones that I've engaged in, probably diversions from the things that really matter, honestly.

And that may account for why every time I was out of the country last week and I came back and I feel like I've got a duty to be up on the news, read all these texts, and everything I read is like a new height of insanity. I'm like that is the Mount Everest of lunacy. It can't get any crazier than that at all. Breastfeeding men are know, we're gonna give back Nebraska to an Indian tribe that no longer exists. We're not doing that, by the way.

Omaha's safe. But I'm just saying every one of these stories enraged me. And of course, that was probably the point.

I really believe that the exponential growth of totally irrational claims by the other side things that no sane person could I mean, beginning with men, can give birth. But there are a million of them that these claims are actually designed to take people like me and send us off into a screaming fit so we don't notice that actually they're looting the country. I think that I don't think there is a single member of Congress except, like, maybe the dumbest, maybe Ocasio Cortez or something, but the normal ones or semi normal ones. I mean, grading on a curve, I don't think there's a single Democratic member of Congress who cares at all about trans rights. I don't think there's a single one who thinks men can breastfeed, because, like, not one in history ever has quite a bit of evidence to the contrary on that claim.

I don't think they believe it. I really don't. By the way, it's super important to push back against them and to call them crazy, because they are. I'm not saying a retreat from these things at all. I'm merely saying if they throw a story in your face that's so nuts that you can only growl like a dog in response, they're probably doing that on purpose.

And you should probably look around and ask yourself, what are the topics that no one's even pushing back on? What are the topics that their response is so ferocious that people are like, I don't want to deal with it. One of them is the war in Ukraine, another's COVID. And of course, the third is January 6 and you have to ask? Why is that?

Well, it's not by accident. Trust me, there is a reason.

What did you say?

I don't know what you know what? The thing about that story is just a mystery to me.

No one was more shocked than I was. Are you serious? In the Biden White House, somebody left an eight ball of cocaine in a public. I was like I said to my wife, that just doesn't it's just not in character, you know? I just don't believe it.

It's clearly a setup. I went right back to Marion Barry, and I was like, somebody set you up. I'm serious.

It was you know what I mean? It was I'll stop with this. That was my favorite story of all time.

Because it just explains all the behavior. It really does. I mean, I worked in the media business for my whole life, so I know what the behavior looks like. But it's like crazed and grandiose. I've got a plan.

You're not going to believe it. It's unbelievable. It's going to totally work. What we're going to do is we're going to totally rearrange everything. Okay?

We've been doing things a certain way for a long time, okay? And it's worked. I've got a better plan.

And that's their entire approach.

You. So if I could just give you one piece of advice after 27 years in the television business, don't. Don't trust a man with numb gums. Thank you.