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- [00:02]
A
Get ready to take a flamethrower to the official narrative and learn what the elites don't want you to know. You're listening to the Tom Woods Show.
- [00:19]
B
Hey, everybody, Tom woods here, episode 2752. Buck Johnson's with us from the Counterflow podcast, which I highly recommend. And we just have to catch up on crazy things going on in the world, and I can't keep out in front of them because there are so darn many of them. And I would guess that it's accurate to say that Buck, whom many of you will know is, like me, somebody who wanted to see Trump succeed, you know, didn't agree with him on everything, but wanted to see him succeed and feels like the left is the true enemy of civilization. And so you gotta, gotta pick, you know, you gotta, gotta make a decision. And then it's like, I don't know what. It's one thing to say you shouldn't fall for what politicians tell you because they might do the opposite. I mean, okay, that says, like, any dumb guy can make that point. This Buck, I feel like, is on a whole different level from that. You know, it's one thing for George H.W. bush to campaign on no new taxes and then raise taxes, that you just roll your eyes and say, well, you
- [01:19]
A
know, I guess I should have known.
- [01:21]
B
But I feel like what we're seeing now is way, way in another dimension from that. Way, way, way beyond that. So do you mind if we start, even though you're orthodox? Okay. And I've. What have I written? 5 books on the Catholic Church? I think it's something like that. My books are all old at this point, as is my memory, so we can speak on these kinds of topics. But let me just start quickly with the stuff about the Pope. Is that okay?
- [01:48]
A
Yes, yes. Yeah, I'd like to hear your opinions on that.
- [01:50]
B
Okay. Now, at this point, you know, by the time people are hearing this, I mean, this is, this thing is a couple days old, but it's still, we still have to talk about it because it is going to influence some voters. There's no doubt about it. Like, this is a completely unforced error. And what do I mean by this? Well, I guess the President has this long wall of text truth, social post about Pope Leo XIV and that he's a wimp and this, that, and the other thing, and then he's got this image of himself as a Christ figure. So I'm going to start on that second. I'm sure you'll want to jump in on that. In a minute. But let me just get this off my chest. Yeah, that second part about him being portrayed as a Christ figure. There are some people in the, even loyalists, Trump loyalists, saying, all right, now that's too far. He really needs to delete that. And then you have other people saying, oh, come on, quit being offended, blah, blah, blah. I'm not, quote, offended because I think being offended is an effeminate thing to be. I'm not offended. I just think it's an unbelievably tone deaf thing to do. And I pointed out, if you look through the whole history of, let's say, leaders that the Church has, well, maybe even canonized, like King Louis IX of France. Are there any images of King Louis IX portraying himself as a Christ figure? Are there any images of any European kings whom the Church has gotten along well with, in which the King is portrayed as anything other than a supplicant, as anything other than someone showing adoration to Christ? Well, the question answers itself. Even somebody like King Henry viii, who we all know was self interested when he made his moves against the Church and cut it off from Rome, but he portrayed what he was doing as protecting the Church against the wiles of the Pope. So he would be, of all possible monarchs, somebody you would expect to portray himself in this manner. You know, he is the savior of the Church. And yet the thought would never have crossed his mind, not even Henry viii, who made the break with Rome. But now let me also state, some people say, well, the Popes have become political. I am going to let you talk, Buck, but this has just been on my mind. I got to get this off my chest.
- [04:04]
A
You got to get it off your chest?
- [04:05]
B
Yeah. Now, it's true that. And it's embarrassing, frankly, that certainly Popes Francis and Leo, it's embarrassing that they're just in the tank for the left. And I know people will say to me, but what about abortion? I would expect the absolute bare minimum for a Pope would be to be against abortion. That, that does not prove a thing. They're worried about climate change. You know, if you look at the state of the world from a Catholic perspective, and the thing that worries you is climate change, there's something wrong. Like there's something deeply, deeply wrong upstairs. So what I would say is the thing is that what, what this means is because the last two popes at least have been reliably in the political tank for the left, what that means is when they do say something of moral significance, that is actually traditional, every word out of Leo XIV's mouth, understood correctly, is in fact, perfectly in line with the Church's just war tradition. Nobody takes them seriously because they just think of him as the climate change guy, you know, so he's undermined his authority. It would have meant something if a Pope, Benedict xvi, had been around saying this war is unjust. And Benedict XVI was against the war in Iraq because he's not a neocon. He was not a neocon and he was not a left liberal either. But what people who are outside the Church should understand, and I think you would find this an interesting perspective, being orthodox, is that since the Second Vatican Council, that's 1962-65, the church has had the attitude that there needs to be an opening to the world. You know, we need to meet the world halfway. We need to speak the language of modern man. The implication is that the old, bad, old Church was too cut off from modernity. You know, it was too triumphalist. You know, it was. It was too much lecturing the world. Instead, we need to dialogue with the world, okay? And what that has led to is the kind of popes that you've been seeing is, well, not to say, look, the Church has the truth and you gotta listen. You know, I mean, I get that that's very aggressive, but sometimes you need to be aggressive to cut through the noise, to get people's attention. If you say, well, you know, you have an interesting perspective, and we have something we'd like to gently suggest to you. I mean, you know, you can talk that way if you want to, but anyway, if you were to read documents by popes before John xxiii, so Pius xii, Pius xi, Saint Pius X would absolutely. You would have an aneurysm, I think, if you read these documents compared to the way the modern popes speak. So I'll give everybody a homework assignment. Go find the document. Very easily found. Mortalium animos. It's phonetic. Mortalium animus by animos by Pius xi. And just look at the way he speaks. Look at the way he speaks. Look at the language he uses or his document on the family Costi canubii. Now, that's C A, S, T, I. And then the second word is C, O, N, U, B I, I CASTI konubii. Look at the way he speaks. And then just pick at random, you know, a document from Pope Francis and you notice a. It's like it's two different institutions, a radical difference. And I will say that even somebody like a Pope, John Paul ii, by modern standards, he seems Like a right wing pope. But by the standards of his time, he was considered by many to be a kind of mainline reformist pope. He was not like a rock ribbed traditionalist. He introduced numerous novelties into the liturgy and the praxis of the church. I mean, the image of him kissing the Quran was a little bit unedifying, we'll say. I mean, there are popes who would have gone to their martyrdom before doing that. So we need to understand that even the, quote, conservative popes since Vatican II would have been absolutely mystifying to the pre conciliar popes. So when you look at a Leo xiv, it is true that a lot of the things he says, yeah, they seem like just standard issue Jimmy Carter style Democratic party boilerplate. And unfortunately, that is what the church has been laboring under for a long time. What the church obviously needs today is a based pope.
- [08:22]
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Yes.
- [08:23]
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Who tells everybody what the real truth is and who isn't afraid. Leo XIV got in. And one of the things he said was, well, I don't want to be divisive. What? The man who represents the sign of contradiction doesn't want to be divisive in 2026. You don't want. When would you want to be divisive if not in 2026? So that's my attitude, is that it is not political good sense to level the kind of attack that Donald Trump did on Leo the 14th. At the same time, I understand that people say, I don't understand this pope. I mean, why does he speak the way he does? I understand that. But also when he speaks about this particular issue, he actually is on solid ground theologically and morally. Boy, that was a long monologue, Buck. I apologize. I really solemnly apologize.
- [09:11]
A
No, it's good to hear. You're a very knowledgeable and dedicated cast.
- [09:17]
B
And annoyed.
- [09:18]
A
And annoyed. And so it is kind of cool to hear this from you. And I think part of the problem with, with the sort of mealy mouthed sounding religious leaders is that right now, as the world seems to have gone to hell in a handbasket, no pun intended, that's sort of when people start looking for something that is serious and that is based, if you will, or hardcore. And when they're looking at, you know, I've had so many people come and say, my pastors not really doing it for me anymore and this church I'm part of is kind of leaning leftward. And then you get the LGBTQ stuff and I'm. And the women pastors not into that. They want something that is hardcore. So that's when a based Pope would actually be welcoming, I think, to a lot of people. I don't really think you're trying to attract the people that are sort of. Well, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings right now. And I still do care about the climate and global warming, so so many people have gone past that. You know, we're not looking for an Al Gore type guy to run a religious organization or institution, if you will. And so, yeah, I do think that's part of it. What did you think of Donald Trump's Christ, like, image of himself?
- [10:29]
B
Yeah, that's what I was driving at about that portrayal. Again, I'm not quote, I don't get offended, but I just look at it and I say that just shows a tone deafness. And for a Christian of any stripe.
- [10:42]
A
Yes.
- [10:43]
B
To just brush that off, it just shows a lack of seriousness because there is one thing on earth that is not to be joked about. Sometimes I see people who do make jokes about Christ or about other biblical figures, and that's one thing you just can't do because you have to be mature about something. And this is the one thing you have to be solemn about. Joke about anything else you want. You know, you can have Michael Malice's dark humor about literally every other topic. Yeah, just not this one.
- [11:15]
A
Right. I, I noticed right before we started recording this, the post was taken down from Truth, apparently, and there was a journalist or something outside the White House and asked Trump about it and he said, no, that's. I wasn't supposed to be mocking Christ or looking like Jesus. I meant to look like a doctor healing someone. That was his excuse. To which I thought, that's still Christ, like the touching, the laying on the hand and healing someone.
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B
He's sometimes called the great physician.
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Yes, Christ. Right.
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B
And not to mention, if that were what it was meant to be, we would all have known that.
- [11:49]
A
Yeah. Why weren't you wearing a doctor's robe or something like that? It would be silly boomer slop and we'd laugh at it. But I think, yeah, no, I think
- [11:58]
B
we all know what it was meant to be. So I think our criticism can stand. But. All right, so that's part of what's going on. But, but that, to me, what's also significant about that is that it's like he's overestimated the significance of his or the extent of his victory in 2024. I mean, yes, he won all the swing states. I mean, there's no taking that away. From he won the popular vote. There's no taking that away from him. But it was not like an, it wasn't like a Reagan style landslide by any means. And in order for him to have a good off year election this year, it's going to be important for him to hold what he had and try and build. But instead it's like every time you turn around, he's doing something to alienate a chunk of people. He has. Like, he can't. They can say all they want to that the podcasts don't matter, even though they themselves said that they did. And they used to laugh at the left that were saying, oh, gee, I guess we need to get some podcasts. And they're saying you can't manufacture spontaneity and, you know, genuineness. So they can never get that now suddenly we don't need that, you know, but they do. I mean, these are people with huge audiences. And at the very least, what you need going into the midterms is enthusiasm. And they certainly don't have enthusiasm.
- [13:15]
A
They almost have enthusiasm in the opposite realm. So many people are turning against it. And I suspect as much as they're laughing or they, you know, Trump and his team or and his sort of loyalists online or mocking Tucker and Candace and Megan Kelly, wait till they lose the midterms and then they're going to say that it's these people's fault.
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B
Yeah.
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A
No longer will they be third rate people that no one pays attention to or low IQ idiots that. Yeah, that no one all of a sudden when they lose the midterms, then it will be Tucker's fault, it will be Candace's fault, it'll be Megyn Kelly's. But meanwhile, let's endorse Lindsey Graham. That's just what the base wants.
- [13:54]
B
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A
Yeah, yeah. That didn't seem to bother him when he was going on the Alex Jones show.
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B
Exactly. Could have brought that up then.
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A
Yes. Yeah, yeah. And the low IQ stuff, now it looks so bad for Trump because first of all, Tucker and Candace had a very gracious, I thought. And appropriate response to it.
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B
Oh, yes.
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And Alex. And people are making sort of fun of it. And now it's being mocked back at Trump. And so people that are serious and follow. These people are just kind of laughing like, you know, this guy's lost his marbles or something like that. Serious thinkers are not taking Trump serious at this point, and I think that's extremely detrimental. And especially when your default is, well, watch Mark Levin. Mark, excuse me, Mark Levin, who. I think I said this before on your show, has neither a voice for radio nor a face for tv. And he's universally mocked, and Dan Bongino is universally mocked. And these are the guys that Trump's like, no, listen to them.
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B
Oh, and Douglas Murray. Douglas Murray was mocked because he then took a position on Iran, a place where. I'm not going to pronounce it his way. I refuse to. But a place he's never been to, you know, and that was his whole thing you can't speak about. And by the way, Tucker, my wife, discovered this immediately, is selling low iq.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Hats and merchandise.
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A
Yes, yes. Someone once said a brilliant mind once said to monetize your haters. And.
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B
Oh, yeah, no, that's true. And. And I. I mean, I have my Eric July T shirt where it's got Eric July, and it says monetize your haters on it. I wear that to the gym sometimes. And, boy, this is. That is exactly an example of that. You know, I want to interrupt and ask you a question, and maybe it's only of interest to me, but I doubt it. I want to ask you, and you might want to be guarded in the way you answer this question, but I want you to be radically honest with me. You are Orthodox, but a convert, right? Now, a lot of people from the west have been, as, you know, been going over to Orthodoxy because they perceive a seriousness, a level of seriousness that. That's just not present in the West. And you can see that even in just the typical parish Mass with the felt banners and the songs from the 1970s, like, that's when civilization peaked, the 1970s. And you got Eucharistic ministers, you know, shuffling around the sanctuary like it's a 7 11. You know, as one of my friends used to say, I mean, it's just not. Not serious.
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A
Right.
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B
You don't walk out of a typical parish Mass saying, wow, this is a really serious thing. You think, oh, all right, let's go have lunch. You know, it just doesn't. Doesn't move you, doesn't affect you that way. So people looking for seriousness either have to find the very beleaguered traditional Latin Mass in the Latin. Right. Which is not. It's not just that it's in Latin. The whole thing is different. The whole ethos of it is different. But anyway, they look to Orthodoxy and they say, well, Orthodoxy has held onto its ancient liturgies and that is something serious. But at the same time, I hear once in a while from people in Orthodoxy, well, yes, the grass is greener over here, but let's not go completely overboard. We have our problems, too. When you look at your problems compared to having a Pope Francis, are they of the same caliber or are they more like the problems you have are like chewing gum in school. And the problems we have is school shootings.
- [19:51]
A
I. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I would say the latter. There, there are some problems, but I think because we're so decentralized, when you have a, you know, I have to be careful how to answer this. When you have a bishop that may be trying to subvert the Orthodox Church, the other bishops don't have to go along with that. And so the jurisdiction that I'm in, the Rokor Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia, we don't have any allegiance to, let's say, a bad bishop somewhere else that is clearly trying to subvert certain things within the church. And I've noticed there's a group out of the names escaping me right now, University. Goodness, I'll think of it in a second. But they're very, let's say academic minded Orthodox people and they're clearly leaning left on many issues. And they sort of write these papers saying, oh, you got to be careful about the Russian Orthodox Church or these quote unquote ortho bros online. And they're, they're too aggressive and they're mean or they're too right wing. That is a very, very small percentage of the Orthodox world. And most, I would say 95% of the people within the church don't even pay attention to that stuff. And they, if they do, they'll sort of roll their eyes. There's been. BBC did a hit piece on us a little bit and these ladies, the journalists flew to my house from England and sat with me for hours. And then they, I could tell what they were getting at.
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B
They found you through your podcast.
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A
Yes. Yeah. And they, you know, they come at you with sort of how the. I was at the New York Times that came to Lou Rockwell and, and sort of tried to play friendly and stuff like that. And they try to come at you, but you can see what they're getting at. And then they had some priests involved in this piece and then they come out, you Read it and then, then listen to the piece online. And it's like, oh, right, right. But. So they were able to find a few of these voices that don't like people like me being in the church. But again, most of us that were hit in the hit piece looked at it and were happy, like, cool. This is going to attract a lot more people to the Orthodox Church. And I think most people can see through this sort of subversive message that only a very small fraction of the Orthodox world's trying to get out there.
- [22:08]
B
Well, I had to ask. Yeah, I've just been wondering and, and I've always wondered also about Orthodoxy because we'll get back to the main subject in a minute, guys, but this is really important stuff here about the future of the Western world here. And I know that Pope John Paul II used to speak about there being. And I'm sure it was. He's not the only one, but the Church being able to breathe with both of its lungs if it has the east and the west together. So there have been some moves toward ecumenical dialogue, let's say, but because you guys are so decentralized, I don't know if that would, even if there is some incredible theological formulation that is reached that is somehow satisfactory to both sides, if that would apply to the west, but it would only apply in a, you know, a spotty way in the east because of how decentralized it is.
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A
It could be. That's a good point. And I have heard rumblings of that when some of the ecumenical discussions were happening. Well, depending on, well, if the Orthodox bishop or metropolitan that was in charge of this, the patriarchate, if the rest of the Orthodox world was like, you made too many sacrifices, let's say, or things that we weren't comfortable with, then there's going to be another schism happen. Now, that's speculation and theoretical at this point because it hasn't happened. But there were rumblings of that. Yes.
- [23:29]
B
I was talking about, let's see, when I was on the Oren McIntyre show, and one of the things we talked about was what's, what's coming in 2028 in terms of the GOP, what happens after Trump? And so we threw out some possibilities because, you know, and some people may say, well, look, I am done with politics, forget it. I mean, if a guy who flat out told me, you vote for me and we're putting an end to all this crazy Middle Eastern war making, if even he goes in for it and then gaslights me and makes it sound like I'M the problem, you know, then forget. You know, I totally understand that. But I'm interested in politics, you know, I just, I'm interested, you know, Murray Rothbard was interested in politics, you know, so I'm interested in it. So I wonder, obviously everybody's been wondering, what does all this mean for J.D. vance, right, that does he have to go around and explain away or excuse things Trump did and said when it comes time for the primaries, which will be next year, by the way. And if he has to do that, he has to do it while Trump is still alive and in office. So I don't know that I would want to navigate that particular minefield.
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A
He has put J.D. vance, that's one of the things I've been watching and noticing, in an incredibly tough position because to represent the gop, in my opinion, from where we're at now, you are going to have to push back on a few things that Trump has done. I think obviously the control by Netanyahu, the state of Israel has, the control that they have clearly over our government is becoming extremely unpopular. JD Vance is going to have to push back against that to have any success at all. I don't think he stands a chance, to be honest with you, at this point. I saw a clip of Trump that sent JD to do these negotiations in the Middle east and I saw a clip of Trump saying, but prior to that, well, JD's going over there, so if the negotiations fail, it's going to be his fault and I'll throw him under the bus sort of thing. And if they that works out, I'll take all the credit. Now that seems like an off the cuff sort of silly, funny Trump moment, but I think he's being serious there. And so I, jd, I noticed he's been quiet on a lot of things and he's in a very tough spot. And you've got people that are so much bigger out there now, Tucker Carlson being one of them, of course, on the right, that I think Tucker is sort of a litmus, will, will provide the blessing or not for whoever wins. And if Tucker and these people, these podcasters, third rate podcasters, are against you, I'm not sure you stand a chance, especially if the people for you are going to be Lindsey Graham, Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro. I think the grassroots of the right, they're done with all of that stuff.
- [26:13]
B
Yeah, when I think about, like Theo Vaughn, all these people, people with big, big audiences were enthusiastic for precisely these reasons. But then you get these crazy, I'm about to talk to a Pollster. So I'll try and get to the bottom of the whole thing with all the crazy polls saying, no, everybody loves Trump's position like that. 11 came out days ago from CBS News saying that the fundamentals of where Trump stands on Iran are basically shared by the vast majority of Americans. But I wish I had taken the time to look at that in more detail before talking to you because I think there's a, you know, the fundamentals that's doing a lot of work there because I'm quite sure a lot of people would prefer Iran not have a nuclear weapon. And you could favor that because you just favor general non proliferation. You could favor that because you're concerned about the Iranian regime, but you could also favor that without favoring a war, you know, and that's the big difference, war or no war. But, you know, we now know about the ownership of CBS News, so I just, I'm sorry, I don't trust their polls. I'm not saying it's impossible. Maybe it's possible, you know, but maybe that, you know, they're, they're stretching to get that result because we know what the results are for independence. Right? They're totally against this, overwhelmingly against it.
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A
And you need the independent vote. That's what Trump won on by having the independent vote for the first time. You know, now I, I sort of feel silly or embarrassed or regretful, but I voted for a Republican and that was the first time I made a vote where someone won. And I thought, you know, going into it, I'm in the voting booth and it was still a bit of a shock for me. And I thought, no, I'm comfortable doing this. Here we are now, and it's like every time, you know, not that I would have voted for the Libertarian guy, I started thinking about that this morning. Like, look what the LP gave us. Oh, I'm not going there. Look what the Democrats gave us. Obviously not going there. And so, yeah, who else was I going to vote for? If you find that something that's fun to do or appealing to, dude, go vote for the president. Well, yeah, I had a Trump sign in my yard, Tom. Goodness. And now it's a bit embarrassing because unless you're so heavily involved in his camp that you're doing that well, he's playing 4D chess and you get into the QAnon stuff. Oh, it really means this thing over here. Those are all reactions. None of those people say anything. Why don't you tell us what he's going to do that looks bad on paper right now, what he's going to do six months from now, rather than just he does it and then you sort of connect a bunch of dots and go, well, here's what he's really doing. No, tell us what he's going to do in six months that could be bad on the surface, but why he's really going to do it instead of reacting to it once he does it.
- [28:57]
B
Of course, of course. Because it's non falsifiable. Everything he does is automatically brilliant because they can always think of some convoluted way to make it brilliant. Even though these are thoughts he himself never has. They're thoughts that these people have. So I would want to ask them what would have to happen for you to say he just made a bad move? What would have to happen? And if your answer is nothing could happen, that would make me say that that is profoundly disturbing. I don't think, I don't think Democrats. I think it would be a pretty small sliver of Democrats who would say there's nothing Joe Biden could do that would make me say he's made a bad move.
- [29:36]
A
Yes.
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B
You know, and I, geez, it's embarrassing if the Democrats have more common sense than you. You know, that's really bad. Right.
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A
They got exposed, you know, Joe Scarborough, these guys saying, oh no, it's, it's the sharpest Joe Biden I've ever seen in my life and I've known him forever. Then he gets up, does the debate. Even those guys had to pull back and go, ah, okay, yeah, yeah, we can't have this. But a lot of the hardcore Trumpers, I mean, that's a very small segment, I think, of the population. But again, he made that comment years ago. I could stand out in New York, New York City and shoot someone and my people would still vote for me. There is a very small segment that oddly enough, would be that way. And it's disheartening. I've never seen a man able to captivate people as largely as he did and then still hold a very small percentage of them no matter what he does. It's bizarre. You and I love Ron Paul. I can't imagine Ron Paul being in office and doing, doing things that we didn't like. But if he did flip the script, we'd all go, what's this? We'd say, what? Yeah, what is he doing?
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B
I mean, it would break my heart because it would be so, so bizarre and incomprehensible. But yeah, we'd have to do it. And the thing is the original Ron Paul would want us to do that.
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A
Correct.
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B
If somehow his brain got captured in a way that made him do terrible things, he would want us to do that.
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A
Yes. Well, because, like, I believe it's you that pointed out once is, was it you. You guys have the same middle name. His is Ernest and that.
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B
Yeah, Ernest, yeah, yeah.
- [31:07]
A
And that's so appropriate for his middle name because he is so humble and means what he says and would not flip the script like that. And so when someone does, I. The hardcore Trumpers, and I have a few in my life that are saying, no, Buck, you're. You're wrong. Tucker's paid off and bought and Candace has flipped and blah, blah, blah. But it's really. Trump's playing 4D chess here. It just makes you think, wouldn't you want. If you really love the man, wouldn't you want to speak out and go, this is not the man that I loved or that I voted for. Something, someone's controlling him. Something's off. We need to pray for him. We need to fix this situation. Someone good needs to get in his ear rather than go, oh, no, you guys are just crazy. This is the same guy. He's just doing all of these things. That's way over your head.
- [31:53]
B
Well, you know, you said just now about being paid off. I had, I had Clint Russell on recently, and I asked him about these people who on Twitter are saying the exact opposite of what they said in 2024 on Iran, exactly the opposite. And I said, what do you make of these people? And I, you know, I didn't expect him to give an answer because I, you know, what am I asking them to get into their heads? How's he going to answer that question? And he said, they're being paid to do it. There's no doubt about it. And he said that it's. He's been offered to tweet certain ways and he has no doubt at all. And he had some reasons for believing this. And I thought, well, okay, I'm willing to consider that. And then we find out that this, what is his name? Quote, when I want to mock somebody, I put their name in quotation marks. I don't know why, but there's something that diminishes a person. You do that. So this Gunther Eagleman, I don't know who this guy is, but I do know that he was saying literally the exact opposite. Literally the exact opposite. And now we. It just came out. There's a chat sequence in which he's selling his retweets he's literally selling them, you know?
- [33:05]
A
Yeah.
- [33:05]
B
And I got into that thread and somebody said, oh, like you wouldn't do the same thing if you were in his situation?
- [33:11]
A
No, no, that's the weird thing. Yes. No, I would not. Why is that so strange to people?
- [33:18]
B
Yes.
- [33:18]
A
But for someone to say that to you means, well, they would. Again, someone close to me the other day told me, tucker's captured. He's a puppet. And it's like you can look at Tucker Carlson and his spat with Donald Trump, and you come out of that going, tucker's bought and paid for. By who?
- [33:37]
B
Yeah, by who.
- [33:37]
A
He's his own. He's his own man. I. There's people in your life, in my life, that are close with him. I think they would whisper to us, hey, something is off with Tucker yet? No. They say, he's perfectly genuine. He's the same guy off air as he is on air. And then it's clear. In fact, in one of Donald Trump's tweets, I was the one, his long one about the podcasters, I noticed an interesting turn of phrase in there. He said, while these guys are out there being idiots or whatever, I'm running or taking care of the world and our country. Interesting that he put the world first, because I don't think that's what he was voted in office to do.
- [34:18]
B
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- [36:29]
A
Well, Tucker did.
- [36:30]
B
Yeah. His mind.
- [36:31]
A
Yeah. With new knowledge. Is that weird to someone? Yeah. Luckily I'm not the same Buck Johnson I was in 2012. Nor are you the same Tom woods that you were. Like, yes, we're presented with new information, we continue learning things and that exist and that happen in the world. And sometimes, I know, it's wild, we change our mind. And Tucker's been repentant of that for a decade or more. He talks. Yes, I have felt this way. Now I don't. Is that weird to people? I find that alarming.
- [37:02]
B
Yeah. And not to mention, think about this. He's basically burned the most valuable bridge a human being could have, which is, you know, access to the White House, friendship with the President. He's basically burned that bridge. Now, I guarantee you his bottom line is better when he has that bridge than when he doesn't. So the idea that he's in this for the money, are you out of your mind? I mean, are you absolutely out of your mind? None of these people would burn a bridge like that. But I think he did it because he felt compelled. I have to speak up.
- [37:35]
A
If he's in it for the money, he could have just changed his own heart or mind, let's say, and said no. I know a lot of My audience is upset with Trump for doing this. Here's why I back it. Here's why I'm pro intervention now. Here's why we should follow whatever Benjamin Netanyahu says that would have helped, I suppose, at least his access to the White House. I don't know how it would have helped his money situation, but it takes, let's say, a lot of balls, so to speak, to do what he did. And I know, I mean, according to Dave Smith spoke on this, he had to sit with this probably for a good while because it takes courage to come out and in the position he's in and push back against this. I assume he probably lost some sleep over it. And yet here he is. And that's why we like him, though, is because he's willing to do something like that. No one appreciates the kiss ass mouthpiece that's just going to go along to get along and whatever Donald Trump says is correct and. And I'm just going to go with the wind. No one likes that. The reason podcasting an alternative, quote unquote alternative, I think it's mainstream at this point. Media got so big is because when you listen to people like that, you understand they're telling you the truth, despite whatever friction they may come up against.
- [38:51]
B
And as I've said, his monologues are just out of this world. Great.
- [38:55]
A
Yes.
- [38:56]
B
I feel fairly certain he writes them.
- [38:59]
A
Yes.
- [38:59]
B
Or whoever writes them is just top notch. Top notch. And I, I keep saying I'm a pretty tough critic when it comes to prose writing and public speaking, but wow, he's good at it.
- [39:12]
A
Yeah.
- [39:12]
B
That is one of the reasons they're so unhappy with him is he's super effective. He really does. And, and also when somebody like a Tucker Carlson says things that you haven't thought before as a conservative and says you have to really think about this, can you really support A or B or C the way you thought you could? He, in effect, gives them permission to think differently. That's the problem. He gives them permission to think differently. They want to frame everything as well. For example, on the Israel subject, obviously, no point in dancing around it. They want to portray it as anybody has a criticism of Israel must be a left liberal. Well, that's been shot through a cannon. You know, nobody believes that anymore.
- [39:53]
A
Right. The irony in what you just said is that's why I liked Donald Trump, because in the first election he won, he gave people that have been in and around my life, boomer neocons, permission to go, you know what I'm With Trump on this, I'm against these interventions. And he came out doing it so brashly that it wasn't sort of mealy mouthed or like feminized leftism. It was like, no, this tough speaking right wing guy is against it. Sounds like Pat Buchanan, but, you know, less articulate, of course, and I'm against it now. But some of those same people, now he's doing this, and the same lessons they should have learned about their previous positions on foreign intervention, they've sort of discarded them because Trump's doing it. And I had someone once say they would typically be against, let's say the medical interventions of 2020, say, well, I like Trump and he's. It came out under him. So this is the Trump jab. So I, that's why I got it.
- [40:54]
B
Well, I think Oren says that Trump convinced him on stuff like this. So that, that's one reason it's particularly tough to ask him to just suddenly reject all that, because you're the guy who told me he was wrong, you know.
- [41:06]
A
Yes.
- [41:06]
B
And, you know, then they try to say, but if you go back to this newspaper clipping from 1980, you can see that Trump has always held this opinion. Like I'm supposed to flip through 1980s newspaper clippings, you know, on a, on a microfilm machine at the library to figure out what his position is, as opposed to hearing him say over and over and over again, we're not going to have any more of these Middle east wars. And those positions are compatible with each other. You really are obsessively concerned about an Iranian nuke. It seems pretty clear you could get that short of a war. I mean, I think a lot of people who have been following this issue closely and who care about it quite a bit would say that. So the things are not contradictory. So if I say I really am profoundly disappointed that he takes that position, it is no answer to me to say, well, what about this newspaper clipping from 1980 where he says, we have to be tough on Iran, you could be tough on Iran without being engaged in this fiasco.
- [42:02]
A
There was a clipping going around, these copy and paste sort of things that boomers were passing around that are in the pro Trump camp now, explaining to us what tough talk does and taking us back to this 1979 and Iran and the hostage crisis, and that's just the same thing that Trump's doing. No, not exactly. No, it's not. I wrote an entire substack piece taking this apart, and his tough talk's not working. That's part of the issue. Part of the historical issue is that it wasn't specifically the tough talk of Ronald Reagan that we got that stuff sorted, but that's another matter. But his tough talk was I demand full surrender and I'm going to, you know his ridiculous Easter tweet, what's going to happen? And then Iran goes, nope, nope, nope, nope. But here's our 10 point plan from two weeks ago. And he goes, yeah, this looks like a good framework to start with. It's like, that's not tough talk. He's pulling back what he said and then going with what they initially offered him. Now, of course that blew up, I suppose, no pun intended, but it wasn't tough talk that was getting anything done. That's a such a strange. I guess it's sort of an outdated mentality. But there's people with that, over 70 years old that still sort of have that. I want my guy to be tough. Yeah, he's over there saying he's gonna bomb the crap out of him. It's not working though.
- [43:21]
B
Let's end on, on a note of genuine hope if you can give us one for the future. If I were to ask you for that, how would you give it to me now? I know you could say, well, in the end Christ is victorious. I know that could be a long, long time from now. I'm thinking more medium term compared to that.
- [43:40]
A
Oh my goodness, was it Rothbard that used to say, I'm short term pessimistic and long term optimistic? I think one thing I've learned over the past few years is that when things look and get bad, people get good, if you will. And so I think over 2020 we saw a lot of people sort of the scales came off their eyes, including me to an extent. I found the church during that time. I think when things look so ridiculous and there's so much noise and static and ugliness out there, the human people, the human person still wants to head towards truth. So a lot of this stuff we get caught up in on X and it's ugly and it's mean and it's. And disastrous to an extent. There's still plenty of beauty and truth that people are finding in the midst of all of this. And I think when things are easy and great, I wasn't searching for truth. So now that there's been enough people that have woke up that you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, so to speak, and I think that will continue to happen as things get Worse and worse, which they seem like they could, I don't know politically, but I think spiritually and in the sort of beauty that we're able to find in communities and whatnot, that's continuing to be on the rise and get better, things look ugly, things look disastrous, people get black pilled. But I, in speaking to normal working class people that I'm a firefighter, I can't tell you which city for, but I want to get in trouble, but I am that. I've been in almost 28 years now. Every person on my crew is 32 years old. They're coming to me with things like what we would have called conspiracy theories 10 years ago. And they're looking up things, they're wanting to find truth. A couple of them have said, like, what's your church all about? So in the midst of the chaos, a lot of real people looking for truth and love and light and beauty sort of find it despite the darkness all around us. And I actually think because of the darkness all around us, more people search for the beauty and truth. And I think that's happening and that will continue to happen.
- [45:47]
B
Well, Buck Johnson, Counterflow Podcast, I appreciate your time today. Thanks so much.
- [45:52]
A
I appreciate yours too. And Tom, you have to give a plug really quick. You're humble, I'm going to do it for you. The reason this conversation started via direct messenger this morning, Tom's book, one of my favorite books that he wrote, is in Tucker Carlson's now online library. How cool is this?
- [46:08]
B
Oh, it's a bookstore. Even better than the library. You gotta buy it. But yeah, bookstore, even better.
- [46:12]
A
Yes. One that I think got you in trouble back in the day with a few neocons, but I'm.
- [46:16]
B
Oh, sure, yeah. The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. I don't know who told him to put it in there because there were very few books in the history section of the Tucker Carlson bookstore, but there it is. And that made me happy. Yeah, so the story, guys, is that Buck wrote to me because he's a kind gentleman, he wanted to let me know about this. And it so happened. You know, I have a really busy week this week. I'm running a workshop and I said, buck, I have to record an episode. You want to come on with me
- [46:43]
A
in like one hour? Yes.
- [46:45]
B
So the thing is, so I just want people to understand if you write to send me a friendly message, you might get roped onto the show as a guest. So, Buck, thanks for doing it.
- [46:53]
A
Yes, sir. Thank you, Tom, for having me.
- [46:55]
B
And thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
- [46:59]
A
Make yourself and those you love less vulnerable to the regime, both mentally and physically. Give get more forbidden information@tomsfreebooks.com and be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you listen. See you next time.
- [47:21]
B
Like the sound of the Tom Wood Show, My audio production is provided by Podsworth Media. Check them out@podsworth.com Enter code WOODS50 to get 50% off your first order. If your recording sounds rough, the Podsworth app can make it not only listenable, but professional. Remember, when you use code WOODS50, you'll get half off your first order and you'll also be supporting this show.
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