Curt Mills: Trump Can Save America or Wage Another War, but He Can’t Do Both. Here’s Why.

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tucker Carlson Show Episode: Curt Mills: Trump Can Save America or Wage Another War, but He Can’t Do Both. Here’s Why
Release Date: January 25, 2025
Host: Tucker Carlson
Guest: Kurt Mills

---

Introduction

In this episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, host Tucker Carlson engages in a deep and provocative conversation with Kurt Mills about the current state of America's foreign policy, the lingering influence of neoconservatives, and the potential paths forward under President Donald Trump's administration. The discussion navigates through the complexities of Pentagon leadership changes, media influence, and the looming threats of war with Iran and Russia.

Pentagon Leadership and Neoconservative Influence

Carlson opens the discussion by highlighting the persistent yet waning influence of neoconservatives in shaping U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the aftermath of the Iraq War. He remarks on the surprising resilience of neocons attempting to sabotage Trump's nominations, despite Trump's victory being a repudiation of their ideologies.

Key Quote:

Carlson (00:00): "It's amazing to me that over 20 years after the Iraq war, its architects and supporters are still not fully in control of America's foreign policy, but certainly influential in it."

Kurt Mills elaborates on the recent confirmation of Mr. Hegseth as Defense Secretary, noting his apparent shift away from traditional neoconservative stances. Mills observes that Hegseth's appointments signal a departure from the Pentagon's established norms, suggesting a realignment with Trump's more pragmatic foreign policy approach.

Key Quote:

Mills (01:09): "He appears to have done a bit of a conversion on his foreign policy beliefs... the people that he's picked so far are stark departures from the man from 10 years ago."
(01:34)

Media's Role in Shaping Foreign Policy Narratives

Carlson criticizes the media for their aggressive tactics in discrediting individuals like Michael Dimino and Steve Wyckoff, portraying them as anti-American or agents of foreign adversaries without substantial evidence. He argues that this approach stifles honest debate and undermines national interests.

Key Quote:

Carlson (07:04): "They are trying to make the reader jump to the conclusion that he is anti Israeli, that he is pro Iranian."
(07:11)

Mills agrees, describing the media's actions as disinformation aimed at sabotaging the new Pentagon leadership. He points out that these attacks lack substantive evidence and are instead based on sensationalism and character assassination.

Key Quote:

Mills (05:20): "They are very, very willing to destroy this person with absolutely no compunction."
(08:04)

Potential for War with Iran vs. Russia

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the potential for future conflicts. Mills posits that a Democratic administration poses a higher risk of war with Russia, while a Republican one increases the likelihood of conflict with Iran. Carlson concurs but expresses a strong preference for avoiding both scenarios, emphasizing the dire domestic consequences of military engagements.

Key Quote:

Mills (27:02): "The biggest risk of a Democratic administration is a war with Russia. And the biggest risk of a Republican administration is a war with Iran."
(27:45)

Key Quote:

Carlson (26:31): "How do you afford that? We don't have any functioning community hospitals left."
(26:34)

Steve Wyckoff and Foreign Influence Allegations

Carlson brings up allegations against Steve Wyckoff, asserting that he is being unfairly branded as an agent of the Islamic Republic of Qatar. He challenges these claims, arguing that Wyckoff's actions align more with pragmatic diplomacy than with any foreign agenda.

Key Quote:

Carlson (11:12): "I think it's really significant that he's not a professional foreign policy figure... he's just a smart, tough, competent person who was charged with a task by the President and he got it done."
(23:26)

Trump's Foreign Policy Approach

The conversation delves into Trump's unique foreign policy style, characterized by unconventional methods and a departure from traditional diplomatic protocols. Mills suggests that Trump's approach might be breaking the hold of neoconservatives, allowing for a more sovereign and less interventionist U.S. strategy.

Key Quote:

Mills (75:00): "If he sees this through... you can just shut up."
(75:13)

Carlson praises Trump's ability to deliver tangible results, such as negotiating ceasefires, and contrasts this with the often ineffectual and bureaucratic methods of career diplomats.

Key Quote:

Carlson (24:15): "Could anyone from the State Department have done what Steve Wyckoff did?"
(24:21)

Mills (45:13): "Trump should complete the work of his first term... he should do a Trump Iran deal."
(45:23)

Media's Hindrance to Honest Debate

Both hosts express frustration with the media's reluctance to engage in honest debates about foreign policy. They argue that instead of fostering meaningful discussions, the media often resorts to ad hominem attacks and unfounded accusations, hindering the public's understanding of critical issues.

Key Quote:

Carlson (33:26): "But no, they're preventing discussion."
(33:31)

Mills (15:32): "This may seem obvious."
(74:43)

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a mutual agreement on the necessity of reorienting U.S. foreign policy to better serve national interests without succumbing to endless wars that drain resources and destabilize the nation. Carlson emphasizes the importance of honesty and prioritizing American needs over foreign entanglements.

Key Quote:

Carlson (73:00): "It's an actual choice."
(73:04)

Mills (85:02): "Let's just stop lying."
(85:18)

Final Thoughts: Carlson and Mills warn of the dangers posed by entrenched foreign policy agendas and the media's role in perpetuating them. They advocate for a pragmatic and honest approach to foreign policy that prioritizes America's well-being and avoids unnecessary conflicts.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Carlson (00:00): "It's amazing to me that over 20 years after the Iraq war, its architects and supporters are still not fully in control of America's foreign policy, but certainly influential in it."
• Mills (01:09): "He appears to have done a bit of a conversion on his foreign policy beliefs... the people that he's picked so far are stark departures from the man from 10 years ago."
• Carlson (07:04): "They are trying to make the reader jump to the conclusion that he is anti Israeli, that he is pro Iranian."
• Mills (05:20): "They are very, very willing to destroy this person with absolutely no compunction."
• Mills (27:02): "The biggest risk of a Democratic administration is a war with Russia. And the biggest risk of a Republican administration is a war with Iran."
• Carlson (26:31): "How do you afford that? We don't have any functioning community hospitals left."
• Carlson (11:12): "I think it's really significant that he's not a professional foreign policy figure... he's just a smart, tough, competent person who was charged with a task by the President and he got it done."
• Mills (75:00): "If he sees this through... you can just shut up."
• Carlson (24:15): "Could anyone from the State Department have done what Steve Wyckoff did?"
• Mills (45:13): "Trump should complete the work of his first term... he should do a Trump Iran deal."
• Carlson (33:26): "But no, they're preventing discussion."
• Mills (15:32): "This may seem obvious."
• Carlson (73:00): "It's an actual choice."
• Mills (85:02): "Let's just stop lying."

---

Final Remarks

This episode presents a critical examination of the interplay between political power, media influence, and foreign policy decision-making in the United States. Carlson and Mills advocate for transparency, honesty, and a renewed focus on national interests to steer America away from perpetual wars and towards sustainable prosperity.

Transcript

[Tucker Carlson]

So it's amazing to me that over 20 years after the Iraq war, its architects and supporters are still not fully in control of America's foreign policy, but certainly influential in it. And it's shocking to me that two months after Trump's landslide victory, a race in which he ran against the neocons, the neocons are still brazen enough to try and influence and sabotage his nominations. Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show. We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else and they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers. We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly. Check out all of our [e-mail] here's the episode. We are days, but less than a week, before Tulsi Gabbard's hearings. Where are we in the below the radar war between permanent Washington's national security establishment, the neocons, and the incoming Trump administration?

[Kurt Mills]

I think it's unclear. So as of this recording 10 minutes ago, Mr. Hegseth, the defense secretary, was just confirmed on a 5050 vote. Hegseth is an interesting character, I believe, a former colleague of yours.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

He appears to have done a bit of a conversion on his foreign policy beliefs. And the best evidence of that is the people that he's picked so far. So his cadres, the people that will service.

[Tucker Carlson]

I ask you to pause right there. So what you're. This is relevant to people who know Pete Hegseth from clips on X of him from eight years ago saying things that would lead you to believe he's a pretty stout neocon. Yeah, but. Okay, so that's what you're referring to in.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, I think the available evidence is that he is like a circa 10 years ago, was a pretty conventional Republican. Yes. Changed his life in more ways than one. And so he is a question mark. But the early evidence is the people that he has chosen to surround himself are stark departures from the man from 10 years ago. And so that's a big deal. And especially. It is a big deal, especially in a place like the Pentagon.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

Which is hard to control.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes. And wants no change under any circumstances except an annual increase in the number of four star generals.

[Kurt Mills]

It's the largest bureaucracy on earth.

[Tucker Carlson]

It is. And it exists to serve itself. It's got a pretty abysmal record of winning wars, a pretty great record of spending money. It desperately needs reform. And you're saying that based on the personnel choices you think he's making he's now the Defense Secretary, by the way, as of right now, that he is sincerely on board with Trump's foreign policy.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, he did not need to make these picks. I don't think he needed to make these picks to get confirmed. I don't think he needed these traits to win any senators. He is courting, I think, minor controversy now, which is why we're having this meeting. He did not need to do this. It was a move of conviction and belief and principle in his early days in office, before he even.

[Tucker Carlson]

So give us an example. Just give us what you're talking about.

[Kurt Mills]

Sure. There's going to be this Michael Dimino figure who will have the Middle east portfolio. He has been advised throughout the process by another figure named Daniel Caldwell. These are both people in their 40s or 30s, basically millennials, who are veterans of the global war on terror. They're very much in the.

[Tucker Carlson]

So they fought in that.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, Dan did, and Michael was a CIA agent. So, yeah, I mean, these are the guys that were hunting down irgc, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, core people, and the forever wars that TR Trump and Vance ran on, reforming and ending, et cetera, et cetera. And so they're very much in the Vance mold of we went there not really sure what the point was. And we want to roll back from that somewhat. I think you might have heard this message from Mr. Trump at least once or twice in the last 10 years.

[Tucker Carlson]

So I don't know. Domino, I know Caldwell, who I think of as a man of genuine integrity, high intelligence and principle committed to his country. I think he's proven that. I honestly think he's like a wonderful person, but he's being attacked by people who never served with a long, unbroken track record of destroying America as somehow anti American.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

How does this work?

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, I think that the tactics are pretty clear. So no one reads anything. Everybody's fair, everybody's cynical, confused.

[Tucker Carlson]

Says the magazine. Nobody reads anything.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Tucker Carlson]

You're right.

[Kurt Mills]

Get a headline out there, call someone a naughty word, say they're anti a country or they are radical. You know, if anyone sues this publication, it will take years and years and years and hope that some club member at Mar A Lago hands this to President Trump.

[Tucker Carlson]

Exactly.

[Kurt Mills]

And tries to trick him and thinks that Mr. Trump is a stupid man. And this is the approach and this is what they are trying to do. That's exactly. Cyclone. I mean, the word has been abused by the.

[Tucker Carlson]

They've done that to me.

[Kurt Mills]

Yes, but it is. This is actual Disinformation.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

I hate to use the word, but.

[Tucker Carlson]

Like, what are the publications? Who were the people involved in this campaign of lies?

[Kurt Mills]

Okay. I mean, I'm not familiar and I don't know any of the people over there personally, but the big story that's going around on both Domino and I believe Caldwell is from Jewish Insider. And again, no one really wants to be attacked by something called Jewish Insider. It doesn't sound very fun. And so they are running headlines against people and they are attacking them. And what they do is they don't say anything that is per se inaccurate, but they totally strip the context for everything.

[Tucker Carlson]

So what? Let's go one by one.

[Kurt Mills]

Gino Dimino, just by correspondence.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, and what's yours? Is this a radical figure, anti American figure?

[Kurt Mills]

No, this is somebody who wants to pull back, I would say moderately from the Middle east, which I think at this point is basically bipartisan, outside of the radicals within Washington, D.C. and the Beltway.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay. I think that's a fair assessment. So the people who want to continue what we're doing at unsustainable cost, being a bankrupt country, by the way, sending aid to countries that are not bankrupt, those are the radicals, I think it's fair to say. So what are they saying about Dimino in this hit piece?

[Kurt Mills]

They are trying to make the reader jump to the conclusion that he is anti Israeli, that he is pro Iranian.

[Tucker Carlson]

He's pro Iranian.

[Kurt Mills]

Pro Iranian. He is somehow pro radical Islam. You know, he's. He's pro all the scary people in the world.

[Tucker Carlson]

Radical Islam, sure.

[Kurt Mills]

Whatever. It doesn't really matter.

[Tucker Carlson]

I don't know. The guy sounds kind of Catholic to me. They think, you know, a lot of Shiites called Domino, or is that a common name for Persians?

[Kurt Mills]

Not to my information.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay.

[Kurt Mills]

And again, I think it bears repeating that this person, like, was responsible for the tracking of Revolutionary Guard Corps members in Iran, potentially sent some of them to their death. So the whole thing has an opera buffet flavor to it that he's being attacked as.

[Tucker Carlson]

So what you're saying is these are people who will say anything. It doesn't. Doesn't matter. They're kind of from the Barry Weiss School of Journalism, just like you have an objective, something you want to achieve, and whatever it takes to get there is fine. You will say it. It doesn't matter. You'll call anybody anything if it serves your purpose.

[Kurt Mills]

They are very, very willing to destroy this person with absolutely no compunction.

[Tucker Carlson]

Is there any evidence that he's, quote, anti Israel?

[Kurt Mills]

None.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Kurt Mills]

None. And in fact, there's evidence to the contrary which he praises the country.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

So, okay, he is critical of aspects of the war as it's okay to.

[Tucker Carlson]

Be critical of other people's wars or your own wars. It's okay to offer analysis of war.

[Kurt Mills]

Or to even state that it's not, in fact, our war, as the President of the United States just did on his inauguration day, emphasizing from behind the Resolute desk that it's their war, not our war.

[Tucker Carlson]

So I read something from a guy called David Wormser who was one of the architects of. Of. Of Iraq. We're not from this country. Not really concerned with this country at all. And also, I think it's fair to say, someone who should hang his head in shame given a lifetime of destruction that he's helped bring to our country, but describe these policies as anti American. So I have to say it takes a lot of balls for someone who has no interest in the United States to accuse someone whose whole orientation is helping the United States of being anti American. But I've noticed this a lot. If you raise the question, like, what are we getting out of this? You know, the endless war cycle. We're getting bankruptcy, obviously, but, like, is this good for us? They'll accuse you, you know, the Constantine kiss. And also not an American will accuse. That wing will accuse you of being somehow woke and you're like left wing for asking these questions. Have you noticed this?

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you raised some of these figures we go into all night. I'd like to there.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, they're hoping there's no more repulsive group in American life than the people who continue to push death and bankruptcy on the United States. I think that's fair.

[Kurt Mills]

Can't recover from death.

[Tucker Carlson]

No, you can't.

[Kurt Mills]

So, I mean, I think that they're hoping that Americans don't do the reading. Hoping. They're hoping that. They're hoping that Americans read X posts. Yeah, they're hoping that Americans watch random cable news hosts, that they're zoned out and they have, you know, let's say they have a positive view of, you know, certain aspects of America's role in the Middle east and they start tar and feathering people on the Internet and that there's no pushback on it at the same time.

[Tucker Carlson]

But it's just. I guess the only reason I have noticed this is because it's so over the top rather than. Look, I think a lot of these positions are legitimate. I disagree with them. You know, a ton of these people are smart people. I know almost all of them, and they could make, like, a straightforward case for their position, like, here's why we should affect regime change in Iran, or here's why we should kill Putin. I mean, maybe there's a case to be made for that, but they never make the case. They attack anyone who stands in their way in the most brutal and dishonest ways. They have no limits at all in their behavior at all. And I just find that repugnant and corrosive. Even if I agreed with them, I'd be against that. What is that?

[Kurt Mills]

It's guerrilla warfare. They'll win at any costs.

[Tucker Carlson]

Win at any cost. I know I'm jumping around, but I'm exercised. I just watched what's happening to a man called Steve Witkoff. Do you know Steve Wyckoff? Do you know who that is? Okay, so he's a friend of Trump's. He's a real estate guy from New York. I happen to know him just for other reasons.

[Kurt Mills]

How well do you know him?

[Tucker Carlson]

Pretty well. Just personally, I don't know a ton about his views. I don't sense that. We probably don't agree on foreign policy in some ways, but he was tasked by Trump, as you know, to go over and affect some kind of ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and he did. And I doubt he's anti Israel. In fact, I know he's not, whatever that means. And he is being attacked, is somehow an agent of the Islamic Republic of Qatar and, like, anti Israel. Steve Wyckoff.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

And I happen to really like Steve Wyckoff. I think he's a just. I just like him. He's just a great guy, actually, and he's really tough, and he's just a good guy. If you had dinner with him, you'd like him, trust me. But I'm just blown away by the dishonesty. Rather than say, hey, Steve Wyckoff, like, I disagree with you, or whatever, it's. He's working for Qatar.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

What? He's from, like, Long Island. What are you talking about?

[Kurt Mills]

This is the higher profile. I mean, they're hoping again that Trump has learned nothing. They insult the President, but these people are disgusting.

[Tucker Carlson]

They're liars. And if there's one thing the country said too much of, it's lying. Let's just stop lying. Let's just be honest about things. I agree. Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

I agree. We've been corroded by lies completely.

[Tucker Carlson]

The country's about to collapse because of lies. And the people pushing endless war are one of the main Vectors for that lying like, because there's just no reference point in reality at all. If Steve Wyckoff is an agent of Islamic Republic, then I just give up. Do you know what I mean?

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. No.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, sorry, lecture over.

[Kurt Mills]

No, no, no, no. I mean the Wyckoff thing in some ways is what set the whole thing up.

[Tucker Carlson]

Witkoff, he's the most reasonable moderate person in the world. No, he's not anti Israel. He's just tough.

[Kurt Mills]

I think the Wyckoff thing surprised both sides though, I would note so I think so obviously you knew him before, within recent years. Okay. So I think in general the open source intelligence, to use a lame term, but like I would say is that the hawks, people who want to say go all the way on Iran did not expect Wyckoff to be so pragmatic. And then additionally the realist and restraint camp also did not expect it did not all the, all the reporting from say, Israeli media, say Haaretz or sides of Israel, that Wyckoff went in there and sort of with both the incoming Trump administration and the remnants of the Biden administration force Prime Minister Netanyahu into some sort of deal, a deal that he had turned down six months ago in May of 2024, basically identical deal that threw most everybody in the loop for a loop. And that has set off, as far as I can infer, a climate of hysteria within Israel itself, at least among the. I'm not sure, sir, Netanyahu himself, but at least within the factions of his cabinet that are hardline as hell.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, so they disagree. You know, they've had to give a little.

[Kurt Mills]

Everyone does in a negotiation, not a disagreement. I mean, like this will not stop unless there's pushback.

[Tucker Carlson]

All I'm saying is when you reach an agreement, everyone gets pinched. Okay, that's just the nature of it.

[Kurt Mills]

Right?

[Tucker Carlson]

And no one likes it, but like tough. That's what it is. And my read on Wyckoff is that he's just not super ideological. I think he's pro Israel. I wouldn't even question that. But I don't think he's an ideologue. He's a self made real estate guy who, who started with a single apartment building in Washington Heights. He's a tough human being and I think you need someone who's practical and tough to affect a negotiation. You don't want someone who's captive to all kinds of theories. Trump says, hey, Wyckoff, get a peace deal or get a ceasefire, an intermediate peace deal, a first step toward one and W's like, okay. And he just shows up and he's like, hey, you, you. Yeah, like, that's.

[Kurt Mills]

But is that what you want? I think, I think a lot of Israel was surprised by this. I mean, I mean, I mean, this, this was lost in the absolute cacophony of 20, 20, 24, really. But yes, like, if you, if you read, I, I read the Israeli Press daily, and, you know, there were members of Netanyahu's coalition, so these are members of the Prime Minister Netanyahu, people who are not in his party, who are more hardline than him. And they were saying, Trump's really talking about this endless war stuff. This might be a problem. And this was back in October and September and August, and no one was paying attention because it was Brad Summer and other things were going on. But this was coming. And the fact that they got it done not even before, not even during the transition itself also surprised people.

[Tucker Carlson]

And so I'm sensing inflated expectations here. This is a foreign country, obviously an ally, a close ally, the. Our closest ally, I think it's fair to say, but a separate country. And so, you know, I think realistic expectations would be we get some of what we want, we don't get everything we want because, you know, we're not in charge of the United States.

[Kurt Mills]

But, okay, there's, but there's, there's a tension here. I mean, so first, the relationship between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel is extremely unclear. Yes, Yes. I, I don't think maybe only the two of them know they have disagreed since at least 2020 over the election, but they probably disagreed beforehand over strikes in Iran. The last time you and I spoke publicly was over the Soleimani strike in January of 2020. And since then, reporting in the last five years has come out that the two of them disagreed over that Trump felt that the Israelis didn't do their part, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So for years, for at least half a decade, the well has been poisoned between Trump and Netanyahu. Doesn't mean the relationship is done, but there's been an atmosphere of mistrust.

[Tucker Carlson]

And, well, he's had that I've watched closely and, you know, interviewed him more than once and, you know, for. Yeah, for, you know, while moving on 30 years, because he's been in and out of office and he's had complicated relations with every president, you know.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, I think the key thing to understand for your listeners, anyone who's not turning this off because we're getting into the depths of Israeli politics here. But Netanyahu's situation is unstable. Yes, A super majority of Israelis want him out. They want him to resign. He does not want to resign because if he resigns, he may go to prison.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Kurt Mills]

And also he's been a power achiever for 30 years. And yes, I've noticed that people who do that often don't like to quit, I think. So.

[Tucker Carlson]

That's fair.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. Okay, so he doesn't want to quit for both reasons of his freedom and, you know, the way of his life.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, so recognizable syndrome, I would say.

[Kurt Mills]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

Not confined to Bibi.

[Kurt Mills]

It's international.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes, it is international.

[Kurt Mills]

Okay, so how does he not quit? It's pretty clear that spectacular circumstances justify his presence. It's very similar, actually. I mean, there's been comparisons between him and Churchill. It's actually fair. Only in wartime can someone like Netanyahu at this point get a position.

[Tucker Carlson]

I get it.

[Kurt Mills]

The war has to go on. So what war? So they have basically a deal with Hezbollah, I think. It's not like. I think that is the by far the least likely that they're going to go back in there. There are basically two options. One, once all the hostages are exchanged, then they go back into Gaza. Okay. Or I guess 1B is to do the west bank, which is already going on right now.

[Tucker Carlson]

Or two, what do you mean? Do the west bank invade it and exit? What about the people who live there? Like, what happens to them?

[Kurt Mills]

Not Israel's problem.

[Tucker Carlson]

What do you do while you're in the West Bank? I mean, what are you doing there? What is the point of the operation.

[Kurt Mills]

Do you know, to annex the territory and build developments. I mean, this is, I mean, and you know, the unstated thing is that they'll either export these people or eliminate them. And so it's pretty terrifying stuff. It's not light stuff. This is not a light interview. And so the problem is the US is the military underwriter of this. The Israelis probably can't do this without us selling them weapons. And so while Americans are tuned out and not thinking about this kind of thing, our reputation overseas is one of arms dealer. And over time that affects your children. Being able to travel abroad, that affects America's reputation overseas. It's dicey stuff.

[Tucker Carlson]

Clause 9, 11, among other things. Right. So yeah, it has effects for sure.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Kurt Mills]

Option two.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

Is Iran.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yep.

[Kurt Mills]

Which is, which is as. I'll just quote them, I'll quote the. The hardline perspective itself. It's the head of the snake in the conception of the Israeli hardline and also the neoconservative right in the United States for sure. And so Israel also can't do Iran, in my view and also in general assessments without the help of the United States. It's usually joint US Israeli airstrikes or even a solo invasion of Iran by the United States is the ultimate sort of fantasy.

[Tucker Carlson]

I'm going to need more coffee to proceed because you're blowing my mind. Kurt Mills I was in a restaurant the other night, in fact this weekend, and I had a little trouble hearing what people were saying and I thought to myself, I'm a little young to go deaf. Why? Well, because I grew up shooting. Bird hunting, target shooting. And I remember my father saying, just stick a Marlboro filter in your opposite ear and you'll be fine. I wish we'd had suppressors, but we didn't. You can now check out Silencer Central. Silencers play a crucial role in improving accuracy, maximizing your experience and protecting your hearing. They're not dangerous or scary. It's just the opposite. Not using them them can be dangerous. Have dinner with me in a restaurant and you'll know what I mean. Silencer Central can fix your problems immediately. They will find the perfect silencer for you and make it very easy to buy one. It's not the hassle you thought it was. I know because I just went through it. So you get approved and then Silencer Central ships your order straight to your door. No hassle whatsoever. It is easy. It doesn't get any better in fact. So if you thought it was impossible to shoot suppressed, you were wrong. Go to silencercentral.com right now. Start browsing. Use the code TUCKER10 for 10% off your first purchase of Banish Suppressors. Highly recommended.

[Kurt Mills]

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[Tucker Carlson]

Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18/terms and conditions apply. Just one quick digression about Steve Witkoff. Sure. I think it's really significant that he's not a professional foreign policy figure. He hasn't spent a career at the State Department or, you know, doing bilaterals for his career. You know, he's just a smart, tough, competent person who was charged with a task by the President and he got it done. And maybe we need more of that. I mean, I do. You know, there are certain parts of statecraft that, you know, probably it's helpful to have experience in statecraft, but. But some of it's just pretty straightforward. Yeah. They get a ceasefire. Okay.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, no, no, I know. I mean, I think there has.

[Tucker Carlson]

Could anyone from the State Department have done what Steve Wyckoff did, do you think?

[Kurt Mills]

No, especially without the. Without the President's not.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, but even if Trump had, like, called someone in and been like, okay, Mr. Career Diplomat, can you affect a ceasefire? He'd be like, well, it's very complicated. Wyckoff's just like, hey, ceasefire, stop.

[Kurt Mills]

No, it's the same. I mean. I mean, like, they. International relations has been made into. They have to make it into, like, a pseudoscience.

[Tucker Carlson]

Exactly. Smart. Exactly. Just like everything else.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, just like everything else.

[Tucker Carlson]

Just like journalism or. Yeah, even education. Like, you can't teach third grade without a master's degree. Are you kidding?

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. So it's just needlessly complicated when the.

[Tucker Carlson]

First requirement is, do you like third graders? There's nothing to do with your master's degree. The whole thing isn't. It's absurd.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. And then, you know, it's the same thing of all of academia, which is like, people's theses are increasingly more baroque and nobody actually knows large things like the Israeli Palestinian conflict, or at least know it in a way that is applicable in power in real life. And, I mean, maybe things are changing now, but, like, also a lot of the foreign policy establishment, it's different now in the second term, but wouldn't work with the first Trump term, wouldn't work with their team. And I think that was a discredit of the country. I think that was. I think that did not serve the country.

[Tucker Carlson]

Of course it didn't serve the country. Well, we know the country hasn't been served because look at the country. And so I think we can say of all players, they didn't serve the country. That would include the media. And there have been times when I didn't serve the country, like when I advocated for the Iraq war. I mean, we're all culpable to some extent, but it's just remarkable to me that people are continuing it. So now instead of telling us that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or that Osama bin Laden attacked us for our freedoms or whatever the lie of the day was, the new idea is that Iran is, quote, the head of the snake. How many Americans have been killed by Iranian proxies in the United States over the last 20 years, do you think?

[Kurt Mills]

How many Americans in the United States.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. Have been killed by Iran sponsored terrorism?

[Kurt Mills]

Zero.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right around zero. How many have died of fentanyl ODs drugs whose precursors come from China?

[Kurt Mills]

Millions.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, more than a million. More than a million?

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay.

[Kurt Mills]

I think, I mean, look, what are you talking about? The Iranians backed proxies that killed U.S. troops in the Iraq war. Yeah, of course, but we shouldn't have done the Iraq war.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, Iran took over Iraq because we took out Saddam Hussein in a majority Shiite country. I happened to be there for that. And even I, as a 33 year old moron was like, wait a second, just a basic interest in demographics. Isn't this going to go to Iran now?

[Kurt Mills]

Yep.

[Tucker Carlson]

Anyway, yes.

[Kurt Mills]

Right, right.

[Tucker Carlson]

But I just find it amazing that there's been no public conversation about whether or not the United States should go to war with Iran. There's been no case laid out. At least in 2002, they had the decency to lie to us in a pretty complicated, sophisticated way about weapons of mass destruction. Now it's just like, shut up. You're anti American if you ask questions. And it feels like we're moving toward a conflict with Iran. Is that a fair.

[Kurt Mills]

I think we have been moving towards one. And you know, I think basically the biggest risk of a Democratic administration is a war with Russia.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

And the biggest risk of a Republican administration is a war with Iran.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

So my rule is always, that's why it's more ethical to be a Republican, because at least the Iranians don't have nukes yet. So that's actually like pretty close to my first principle. Like just outright.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, you've simplified it, haven't you, Kurt?

[Kurt Mills]

But the Iran war would be still like the worst and not something that we should pursue. And look, foreign policy experts at this point will chime in on this conversation being like, oh, well, that's just so unrealistic. That's not actually what we want. This is actually just ridiculous externality. But I think it is worth noting that we have done wars toppling governments throughout the region over the last 25 years. So, number one, it's happened very recently. Number two, it is kind of the explicit goal of the hardliners, and the hardliners keep moving the overage window in their direction. And so while this is perhaps not 100% certain, but hardly there is a hard drive towards doing this and picking off Pentagon deputies and allowing leaders like Trump and Vance to be surrounded by hawks and no dissenting voices whatsoever.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

Is absolutely essential towards any road to war.

[Tucker Carlson]

And I have to say, the amount of calculated deception on the right. So all of a sudden, Bari Weiss, who's a leftist, becomes a conservative because she's against trannyism or something. Every normal person is against that. But it's pretty obvious that the whole purpose of her organization, the free press, and her career in journalism is to kind of soften up the right for war with Iran and to attack anybody. And she's got this whole constellation of people, Neil Ferguson and all these kind of people who had weight to the project, but who really are all kind of paid to flack for war with Iran and attack anyone who's not with the program. I felt the sting of this, so I didn't really understand how this worked. But then, as someone with thoroughly moderate foreign policy views, I don't really want war with anybody. I'm not against anybody. And all of a sudden you're like, wow, people are calling you anti American.

[Kurt Mills]

Well, there's precedent for this. So what you're describing, I don't know any of the people you described personally.

[Tucker Carlson]

But I'm just saying, you said the problem with voting Republican is you're more likely to wind up with a war with Iran. And I agree with you. I'd much rather war with Iran than war with Russia, but kind of don't want either one. And it's just interesting how the groundwork. I just know because I've been in conservative media my whole life, all of a sudden, all these new people, and you're like, oh, Barry Weiss, are you really conservative? Not at all. Then what are you doing here? Oh, you're trying to convince me that I'm not allowed to oppose a war with Iran or I'm going to be written out of the conservative movement or something.

[Kurt Mills]

Okay, so if a lot of people are comparing Trump to Reagan these days.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

And I think it is an inaccurate comparison, but there obviously are comparisons that are. They're very different human beings, based on my position. So if you accept that Trump is the biggest cheese since Reagan on the Republican side, what happened in the Reagan years? So the neoconservatives, that is, people who came from the left and moved to the right, were very, very savvy, effective and reasonable at domestic policy. They were very, very good on the crime issues of the, of the day. And their periodic periodicals got gained currency because, hey, actually, we should clean up the streets of New York, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[Tucker Carlson]

And some of them were. I knew a lot of them. And some of them were really smart, decent people, too.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

And by the way, some of their foreign policy viewers were not crazy at all. They were. They recognized the Soviet Union was evil, like the first generation of neocons. Midge Dector. I mean, I kind of love Mitch Dector. I don't know. You know what I mean? I don't think that they were all nuts at all.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. But by the 90s and 2000s, you know, if you believed in, you know, some crime enforcement in New York, you also had to believe towards the march, towards regime change in Iraq. And so, again, again, don't want to.

[Tucker Carlson]

I'm skipping that part of the buffet line.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. You know what I mean?

[Tucker Carlson]

I will take the safe city and the thriving economy. I'm going to leave out the forever war. Is that okay?

[Kurt Mills]

But I think that is the essential pitch of this new generation of neoconservatism, which of course does not call itself that, but it is moderation on the social issues. Let's turn down the volume.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

And at the same time, over here in the column space over here, a little, little news item about what's going on in the Red Sea and why the US Needs to care. And it's a drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. And it can go on for months and years and years and years. And all of a sudden, we super care about the Houthis in Yemen, we super care about Iran, and we have to underwrite a war in Israel until every single member of Hamas is dead. And it's just not clear that the US national interest is there to put it lightly.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. And I guess what I object to is, I mean, I'm never offended by people with different ideas. I'm never offended by someone who makes a sincere case, affirmative case, or something that I disagree with. Okay. And by the way, maybe he's right and I'm wrong. I've certainly been wrong a lot. The part where I get enraged is the bad faith.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

And so you ask questions like, well, is this in our interest? Well, you hate so and so. I don't hate anybody. And I certainly don't hate that. Certainly don't hate that country. I like it a lot, actually.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

But there's no room for. They don't. They're preventing discussion.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

And a lot of these people have the gall to describe themselves as warriors for free speech, when, of course, free speech is the last thing they want, and they've gone out of their way to prevent any kind of open conversation about the most important topics in our collective life. So I'm just bothered by the lying. There's too much lying, don't you think? Absolutely, I would say. And by the way, I'll even go farther and say, having worked for Bill Kristol for five and a half years.

[Kurt Mills]

When Crystal, the editor of the Weekly Standard, that correct was. Was the absolute launching point magazine of the Iraq war, for sure.

[Tucker Carlson]

And I was there. I mean, I started the very first day of the Weekly Standard, August 1, 1995, 30 years ago. And I thought Bill, Crystal, I still would say, was a great boss. You know, interesting, fun to talk to, funny as hell. Obviously, I think he's taken a really dark turn and his life has been kind of a disaster, and I feel bad for him. But one thing I'll say about Bill Kristol circa 2000, is that he would make an actual case for his views. He would say, we have to go in and take out Saddam for the following eight reasons. And he would write.

[Kurt Mills]

You say, this is 95, 96, 97.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean, I was there for all of that. And I wasn't paying super close attention because I was dumb and I was focused on other things. And I was like, oh, yeah, it's his foreign policy, hobby horse. He's into that stuff. I'm not that into it. I didn't understand the stakes. I didn't really understand anything, actually, when I was, like, a kid. But I always admired and still admire his willingness and that generation's willingness to make their case, to write some paper. Here's what we're for. That is gone. And now it's just like, can we censor the people? Can we call them names to the point where they get kicked off social media? So there's no counterargument.

[Kurt Mills]

Well, even Crystal himself has stopped writing.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, he could never write. You know, not a genius I will say, but, you know, an affable, amusing person in meetings, you know, I mean.

[Kurt Mills]

I mean, probably the most successful political organizer of the last 20, 30 years.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. And tireless, you know, and there are good things to be said about Bill Kristol, obviously. I mean, he's called me a Nazi like 100 times, but that's kind of the point. I'm not a Nazi. I'm not for the Nazis. I just don't. And I've got different views. And that's the turn that I'm really bothered by is just the pure ad hominem attempts at. That. It's an attempt at censorship. And Barry Weiss engages in that relentlessly behind the scenes, using all kinds of proxies, some of whom I know. And I just want to say it out loud. I just want to say it out. This is deception here, okay? So I hope people know that.

[Kurt Mills]

I think it makes it impossible for the new president to do what he's promised to do if he doesn't solve this conundrum.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, tell me what you mean.

[Kurt Mills]

So, I mean, if the President wants to send troops to the US Border and the President wants to rebuild the American economy, and the President wants to focus on China.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

And the President wants the moral credibility to end the Russia, Ukraine war at some point.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

Expanding the war in the Middle east, even with prolonged arms sales, corrodes his political capital.

[Tucker Carlson]

Who's going to pay for that?

[Kurt Mills]

The United States?

[Tucker Carlson]

No, but I mean, we literally are operating in the red to the tune of trillions of dollars. Like, how, in what world can we afford that?

[Kurt Mills]

Well, it's a very complex topic.

[Tucker Carlson]

We don't have any functioning community hospitals left.

[Kurt Mills]

We have the reserve currency, and we can keep writing debt until it causes an inflation crisis, which a lot of people thought would happen earlier and did not. And even our inflation Crisis in the 2000s was mild by global standards. So accordingly, we've got plenty of room for the big enchilada, which is an Iran war.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. So this, it just feels like a big deal. It's a big deal to me, and it feels like it's worth. I mean, certainly if you comment on this, you do ask yourself, is it really worth it? You know, do I want to get into this? By the way, a lot of people I really like and I'm friends with violently disagree. So you run the risk, which I really don't want, of rupturing friendships over it. That's the last thing I want, ever. And. And you think I, maybe I should be Quiet. But it does seem like that's a huge step. And at the very least, the public ought to understand that there are highly motivated people pushing us toward that. Do you think that we will participate in a military action against Iran?

[Kurt Mills]

Well, the big question is right now. So there's a new Iranian president. So the previous running president died along with his foreign minister in a helicopter accident over the summer. A little mysterious.

[Tucker Carlson]

Are you going to use air quotes around accident or.

[Kurt Mills]

I mean, a lot of things happened last year. It's very possible. I mean, I don't think everyone got killed last year.

[Tucker Carlson]

So many accidents.

[Kurt Mills]

The Iranians. The Iranians. Iranians. Equipment. Helicopter equipment is, to my understanding, is old, and it is a rough part of the world. And it's possible that it. It's likely that it just went down. Yeah. And again, I would say I would.

[Tucker Carlson]

Not fly in a helicopter with Iranian officials. I'm just telling you that.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. And again, if you think it was Israel, the Israelis pretty much. Pretty much took credit or didn't deny all the other assassinations that occurred last year. I don't think of Hamas leadership, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[Tucker Carlson]

Just for the record, I try to suspend judgment because I know a lot about what countries do, and I do think this one thing I'll say in support of Israel, I do think that it is, you know, it isn't fair to just single out Israel and say they're doing naughty stuff. Like lots of people are doing naughty stuff. That's just a fact. My only, you know, the only part point where I would feel like I want to say something is if the United States gets sucked into it.

[Kurt Mills]

Sure.

[Tucker Carlson]

That now. Now we're talking about our interests, my country, where my family's from, and I think it's fair to speak up then.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. So the. So I guess maybe the 2025 zoom out, you would say there was an election in Iran right afterwards.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

Okay. A lot of people disagree with our perspective. Will disagree with this term. But the more moderate candidate. People think there are no moderates within the regime. But the less hardcore candidate won. It's the first time this has happened since Trump left the Iran deal. And this person, it is not clear how much power he has within the system. The Supreme Leader is old. It's not clear how old. And there will be a succession crisis to succeed the Supreme Leader, should he die.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

So it is this weird situation where every time Iran is in a crisis and they're crisis right now, they're in electricity crisis. By all Reporting again, don't know if we can trust all the reporting, but they can't keep the lights on in Tehran fully. And what will they do? And so every time Iran is at a decision point, there is a fracas between what I will call the moderates and the hardliners within their government. The hardliners want to go for the bomb. They think we can't trust anybody. We need to get the bomb. They also recently signed a mutual. A defense pact, just short of mutual defense pact, but a security arrangement with the Russians. So they seem to have a bunker mentality right now. If US Intelligence or Israeli intelligence or Western intelligence assesses that they are going for the bomb in a real way. So they can either be true or false. But if they assess it, then there will be severe pressure on the new administration to do airstrikes on Iran.

[Tucker Carlson]

I get it. Look, I don't want Iran to get the bomb. I don't want anyone to get the bomb. I'm against the bomb, okay? But I was around when Pakistan got the bomb. And Pakistan is a country with a lot of wonderful people in it. Kind of a great country in a lot of ways. Spent fair amount of time there. However, the government of Pakistan is arguably scarier than rise. Yeah, you think harbor Osama bin Laden, et cetera. ISI has been really a source of disorder in South Asia for a long time. And they've exported nuclear technology, including to North Korea. So no one's ever said anything about that. That's not a crisis that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has the bomb. I don't really get it. I mean, why was that not a crisis? Why do we do nothing to do nothing to stop that?

[Kurt Mills]

I guess it occurred basically when the US Was still quasi pro Pakistan over India. And it was.

[Tucker Carlson]

That was a bad bet, by the way.

[Kurt Mills]

It was a Nixonian bet, actually. He really didn't like Indira Gandhi. It was basically. Okay, well, I think we can say.

[Tucker Carlson]

Longitudinally that was a bad bet.

[Kurt Mills]

He just didn't like one person and it didn't really matter.

[Tucker Carlson]

That was like betting on Wang computers over Apple. Like, it just kind of didn't turn out.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I'm not holding a Wang in my.

[Tucker Carlson]

But the point is, I might want to cut that.

[Kurt Mills]

This is a bit of a we're.

[Tucker Carlson]

Keeping the Wang in Look, all I'm.

[Kurt Mills]

Saying is my father sold Wang computers. Did he really? I'm so sorry.

[Tucker Carlson]

I didn't mean to make it personal.

[Kurt Mills]

No, no. Well, no, it's just at one point, the top salesman in the country Are Wang computers. Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Your father sold some Wangs.

[Kurt Mills]

Yes. Are we. Is this actually going? Of course it's actually going in.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Rip.

[Tucker Carlson]

This is where I'm hitting. We first did a deal with Black Rifle Coffee. Evan, the CEO sent us like a case of coffee beans. And honestly, I have not had any coffee since then in the past eight months. It's not made by Black Rifle. We are obsessed. And it's not just coffee. They've got high performance energy drinks, tons of merch. That's very cool. It is the best. And we can say that as daily obsessive users of the product. Black Rifle Coffee is awesome. And by the way, Black Rifle itself is awesome. The company is filled with special forces veterans working there, bringing you the best products on the market. Black Rifle has always been more than just about must have offerings. They're committed to supporting veterans, first responders, law enforcement. Every purchase provides funding to those groups and gear the people who are protecting us, who are the heart of this country. From premium coffee roast ready to drink cans to American gear, every item designed to give you a sense of this country. Black Rifle Coffee. Blackrifflecoffee.com Use the code TUCKER for 30% off on your first order or simply grab one of their items off your grocery shelves in your town. We drink it. We recommend it. Look, all I'm saying is it's important to maybe dial back a little bit on the moral outrage and assess the world as it is. Assess what you can do. You know, create a hierarchy of priorities. Like, we don't want other countries to get nuclear weapons. I think that's. I'm with the neocons 100 on that. But, you know, in a complicated world that we don't actually control.

[Kurt Mills]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

What will, you know, what can we do? What are the limits of our power? Given a lot of other factors like our domestics, our economy, the needs of our people. Like, you can't do everything. That's all I'm saying.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, no, I mean, so I think Trump should complete the work of his first term, which is he revoked the jcpoa, the Obama Iran deal, and he should do a Trump Iran deal.

[Tucker Carlson]

He's sending Wyckoff over to do that.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, so. So Wyckoff, the aforementioned, not only did what he did with the Israelis, he was promoted for it, per reporting. It has not been confirmed, to my understanding, by the transition or the White House, but per the ft and I believe another outlet, Witkoff, is getting, quote, the Iran file within the Trump universe. That's as much power as the president wants to give it. But as of filming, his role is expanding. And if Trump wants a lasting legacy of peace and prosperity, there needs to be an accommodation with the de facto government of Iran.

[Tucker Carlson]

So if. Of course there does. This is just. This is totally insane. It's counter to our interests, I guess, is what I would say. If you were Trump and you say to Steve Wyckoff, hey, Steve Wyckoff, go get a ceasefire in place. And he comes back like 20 minutes later with a ceasefire, wouldn't you say?

[Kurt Mills]

Okay, we like that pace.

[Tucker Carlson]

I like that pace. Wouldn't you send him to Iran? I would, yes. Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, I think I. Yeah, I mean. And this is actually something both Trump and Obama, who apparently get along now, at least perfunctorily agreed on.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, they both dislike Michelle, I think, so.

[Kurt Mills]

They remember Obama on the debate stage in 08, and he was howled down for this. Whatever you think of, Barack Obama said we should meet with the Iranian leaders face to face. And Trump did similar maneuvers first term.

[Tucker Carlson]

Why wouldn't he?

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, with Kim Jong Un, et cetera, et cetera. And again, we sucking up the dictators. Oh, shut up. I mean, was North Korea policy more stable from 2017 to 2021 or 2021 to 2025?

[Tucker Carlson]

I don't think after 25 years of this nonsense, killing dictators and watching their countries become more chaotic and more dangerous to the United States and the world, that we have any obligation to listen to people who chirp like that.

[Kurt Mills]

No sucking up to dictators.

[Tucker Carlson]

Shut up. To link it all, to know anything, actually.

[Kurt Mills]

So we started this conversation with sort of the campaign against the cadres that are now serving Secretary Hexseth. The people that are leading it, as far as I can infer, are oftentimes many of the people that were behind the original Iraq war. And so. Well, yeah, yeah. This may seem obvious.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, I'm 55, so this is driving me completely insane. I thought after we discovered that the pretext of the war was a lie, that those people would, I don't know, don Ash's sackcloth and go, like, sit on a pillar for 10 years.

[Kurt Mills]

I think a lot of Americans assume that they did. So we do this for a little bit.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, no, they didn't. They went along the World bank and they still run the State Department. And Toria Nuland, who was an architect of the Iraq War, was an architect of the Ukraine war. This just doesn't end.

[Kurt Mills]

But most Americans have real jobs and don't know this and so these people are disguised or shrouded from public view, and they are still quite effective at driving home an agenda. In fact, I would assume they will win absent pushback.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, they'll definitely win absent pushback. Oh, 100%.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. So they are. They're still.

[Tucker Carlson]

That's why I wanted to interview you.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. They're still hegemonic. And even if, Even if they're a minority government, so to speak.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. And I, And I, I'm put. Because I'm. I've spent my life in the media. I'm very kind of fixated on their enablers, their agents in the American news media. And one of them who's working, has been working for years on their behalf, on behalf of permanent Washington, the foreign policy establishment. Every bad idea. Is Jennifer Griffin at Fox, the Pentagon reporter who is now, you know, basically texting Dimino.

[Kurt Mills]

Is that the Michael Dimino?

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. Is, you know, running around on behalf of, you know, her sources at the Pentagon, doing their bidding, trying to torpedo these guys because the permanent staff doesn't want to be challenged on anything. And. Okay, there's a role for that kind of behavior. It's called lobbying. But it's a little crazy that a supposed news reporter would be acting like that. I'm not guessing. This is a fact. She's doing that right now and has been doing that kind of thing for as long as I've been paying attention, like couple decades. How does that continue? Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

I don't know her personally, but what I will say is the role of most Pentagon reporters has always struck me, since I've. I've done this, as extremely hierarchical. I mean.

[Tucker Carlson]

What do you mean by hierarchical?

[Kurt Mills]

It almost felt like the reporters worked for the Pentagon.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, of course they.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. So, I mean, in any place that I've worked that had a Pentagon correspondent, and that was the only way you stayed in the room.

[Tucker Carlson]

And isn't this a democracy where we have civilian command of the armed forces and the entire federal government works for the population of the country, its voters, its citizens, its constituents, shareholders? No, there's no sense of that whatsoever in Washington at all. Yeah, it's like, what are you doing here?

[Kurt Mills]

I think it's fast moving. I mean, I mean, you didn't see criticisms or skepticisms of the military from the right until the very last few years, including from the new president, including from organs of conservative media. I think it started with, with Mark Milley, but also all the sort of.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, some of us were at it before that.

[Kurt Mills]

I know, but. But in the in the, in public.

[Tucker Carlson]

Opinion, it was considered a fringe position.

[Kurt Mills]

It's not French. Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

You know, I just refer you back to the pivot point in American politics in my lifetime, which was the 2016 debate in Greenville, South Carolina, where Donald Trump, home of the highest percentage of military veterans of any state, famously. And Donald Trump came out against the Iraq war and all the dumbos at the channel I work for in Washington, like, oh, he's lost it now. He'll never get the nomination. He's offended all the veterans and of course, all the guys whose lives were destroyed fighting these wars, not on behalf of the United States, not to the benefit of the United States. They were filled with many emotions, frustration, shame, rage, sadness. And they immediately knew what he was talking about. And no one in D.C. knew what he was saying.

[Kurt Mills]

I think he overperformed his polling. So, like, he was pulling a certain. He was ahead. And the Bush family came in. That's when it was the Last stand for Mr. Jeb in February of 2016. And George W. Bush campaigned finally for Jeb. And it was like, we got to keep him in the race. We're going to make our stand. And he did the big fat mistake that is Iraq debate. And I think Trump is up 10 or 15. I think he won by over 20 in that debate. Don't quote me on that. But it was something like that.

[Tucker Carlson]

It was right before the primary. I was there.

[Kurt Mills]

It was over the polling. So not only did he not go down and still won, he went up and then clearly triumphed.

[Tucker Carlson]

That was the moment when I was just, you know, whatever his flaws, I was for Trump, because here was a guy telling a real truth, a hard truth that no one wanted him to tell and was rewarded for it. And I just felt like that was, that's consistent with my principles and beliefs, which is you ought to tell the truth. And a healthy country rewards people who tell the truth, not people who lie.

[Kurt Mills]

There's a cynical bet, though. I would say that. And it's a cynical bet on Trump, and it's a cynical bet on Americans, and it's a cynical bet on Republicans and Independents, which is. I'll just, I'll just. Let's use the actual language of center left or left wing media. It's a cult. And once the cult leader leaves, we can just go back to 2005 and implant the same old free trade, open borders, maybe endless neoconservatism. And actually, the people that are driving the opposition to these selections in the Pentagon agree with President Trump's critics in Spirit.

[Tucker Carlson]

And in practice, you know, that's an interesting analysis. I mean, it's like MSNBC level dumb person analysis, but it's also like a real analysis. And there is a sense in which devotion to Trump has a religious quality to it. I mean, that's undeniable. I was just in D.C. for the inauguration. I can confirm that. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I think a lot of voters feel like Trump is the only person who cares about them. He's their only option. And so they're on board regardless, because where else are they going? And I think that's true. A, and B, I think that's a reflection of how badly the leadership of the country has failed. People will take anything other than that. But I also think saying true things out loud changes history. I think that's the lesson of history. The only people who actually change history are not the ones who marshal the biggest armies, but the ones who speak the truth out loud. I think it's a holy act. I think it's a transformative act. And all of history is the story of that act, actually. And sometimes it takes centuries for the consequences to unfold, but they do. It's inevitable. It changes everything. Once you. That's why there's such a. Almost a crazed attempt to shut down people from speaking. Why speaking? They don't care about violence, they care about talking because they understand correctly that that's what matters over time. Right. So once Trump has said all this stuff, there's kind of no going back.

[Kurt Mills]

No.

[Tucker Carlson]

Do you think? I mean, that's my view. I don't know.

[Kurt Mills]

I don't agree with the cynical bet. I think it's a bad bet, which is why the tactics are increasingly hysterical and marginal.

[Tucker Carlson]

But we're robbed of a real debate. I mean, I don't know if you think it's so important to kill the leaders of Iran and get into a full scale war with a real country, which Iran is, which is part of a real coalition.

[Kurt Mills]

They won't say full scale. They'll say. They'll say that the Ayatollah has to go. It's very important to use as scary words as possible. Ayazollah, the mullahs, the Islamic Republic, emphasize you. And again, basically the bin Laden who's dead runs a country, even though he's a different ethnicity and a different religion. And so it doesn't really matter. You're stupid. And we need to do this again. And they won't say an invasion, but again, some of the people pushing this stuff didn't say an invasion in 1996. They softened the ground for it.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, there was a debate on it. I guess that's the point.

[Kurt Mills]

There wasn't a debate.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean, it's a little harder here, too, because on the question of Russia. Russia, it's been surprisingly effective for them to just dismiss all criticism as sponsored by Putin. Like, you don't think it's a good idea to prop up speed is very important. The Zelensky government, You're a Putin puppet or whatever.

[Kurt Mills]

You want someone to do so many.

[Tucker Carlson]

Can you really call, like, a white American Christian guy a puppet of the mullahs? Probably not. It's like, I don't think that works. Right. Does it? I guess they're trying it with Steve Wyckoff. You're a tool of cutter.

[Kurt Mills]

Oh, so you're referring to the Shiites.

[Tucker Carlson]

I just don't think, as a rhetorical matter, it's quite as easy.

[Kurt Mills]

Should we address the actual allegations? I mean. So Wyckoff, I believe, took his real estate firm, took some sort of investment from Qatar. So, first of all, I would say throughout the Trump entourage, a lot of them have worked with Gulf states. And as far as I can tell, the real estate business is rife with investments from Gulf states. And then additionally, as far as I'm aware, this is hardly that man's law.

[Tucker Carlson]

You can't buy an apartment in New York because there's so much Chinese money in the residential real estate market. So the argument is, what? You're only allowed to invest in your own company's country's real estate. Okay, let's start here. Let's ban foreign investment in our real estate markets. Oh, no, that's anti capitalism. Just the whole thing doesn't make sense. What are they saying? What?

[Kurt Mills]

Well, with the Katsar argument specifically, I mean, I think it's an unusual place. It was supposed to be the eighth emirate, so it is separate from the uae. It is the most conservative of those emirates, I would say, at least in terms of the government. They have a perspective. They spend money on media, they spend money on press junkets. They have an influence operation, no question. But the idea that this small jetting, you know, lng dependent, you know, Peninsula controls US Foreign policy hook line and sinker, top to bottom. If you think that. I don't think you're extremely.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean, I do think it's curious. It's worth having an honest. I've never seen one. There never has been one. But an honest conversation about foreign influence on foreign policy, that's a totally legitimate topic. And we've kind of done a lot of lying and pretending, for example, that Russia has undue influence over American foreign policy. It's absurd. But why not have that conversation? So are there foreign countries that exert influence on American policy whose interests supersede those of American citizens? When. In the minds of policymakers, and there may be some of those. How would we rank Qatar in terms of its influence? Maybe not in the top three.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, no.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right. So just having lived in D.C. this whole conversation is so infuriatingly false and just silly. I mean, are they running intel operations against us? There's a lot of Qatar surveillance in Washington. A lot of Qatar agents running around the Willard Hotel? I don't think so.

[Kurt Mills]

Maybe very well disguised.

[Tucker Carlson]

Like, what are you talking about? I mean, are countries doing that? Are they hacking the Pentagon's mainframes? I don't think. Oh, China's doing that.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, right.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay. So.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, but making the allegation, though, is a kind of armor, though. It makes you seem informed. It makes you seem like sort of a spymaster. I know something you don't. I'm more serious about Traffics and that nonsense. Yeah, yeah. Let's not have a conversation. And it's very anti democratic, small D. Of course. It is not agree and disagree. It is not saying we have different values than shaking each other hand and walking out of the room. It is shutting down the spirit of the system.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, so that's exactly the complaint that I have. And that's the problem that I have with Barry Weiss. It's a problem I have with Jen Griffin. It's the problem I have with the Washington Post. And just so much of the media coverage of foreign policy is based on insinuation and the cruelest sort of character destroying insinuations that you're not loyal to your own country. And they reach for the biggest sword, man. They go right for the face. And I just think that that's beneath a great nation like ours. I think it's beneath any decent person to behave like, if you have evidence that someone's selling out his country, tell me what it is. But to start with that, to accuse Steve Wyckoff of being a tool of Qatar, it's like so over the top. I just feel like it's important to call out the people doing it and say, you're disgusting. We're not listening to you anymore. You have no influence except that. That you project through aggression and threats. And like, we're not. We're not playing along.

[Kurt Mills]

I Think a lot of it is effective in Republican politics.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Kurt Mills]

Because, you know. So you were there for the inauguration. I observed a week ago. And, you know, I've always observed that is usually when I meet someone from a red state, like a deep red state, Oklahoma or Alabama, it's often their first time in Washington, D.C. yes. It's very like Roman province, visiting Rome for the first time.

[Tucker Carlson]

Totally. I'm here from Gaul. Show me around.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. Versus, I would say, blue state. America actually has a lot. The coasts have a lot more familiarity with D.C. back and forth, airport access, et cetera, et cetera. So when they hear the argument going on in the Capitol, there's actually a de facto trust there that might be not as much there on the Democratic side. There's actually a more jaundiced cynicism on the Democratic side. So it was less effective. They assume that the. Despite it all, despite all of the failures that you've announced that you've reported on fairly tirelessly, they assume that the people in D.C. know what they're doing. And I'm not sure that's the greatest default assumption.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, I mean, I think the track record is pretty. Speaks conclusively.

[Kurt Mills]

I mean, look respectfully to the president. I mean, Donald Trump, again, is the only US President who was not a general or a former statewide official or federal official to get the presidency. And with all due respect to the new president, a healthy country doesn't elect someone like that. It had that level of outsider. That level of outsider could only exist within a polity that was deeply sick. And I think he knows that. I think he recognizes that. And the fact that the Capitol doesn't imbibe that lesson, I think they're imbibing a little bit more. But it's like, I mean, it's still bizarre 10 years on. I mean, Trump, June 2015. So it'll be June this year. 10 years of Trump, longer than Obama. At this point. The Trump era in spirit, in length, it's like, well, maybe there's something wrong with this country, but it's like a 5% recognition. It's not a 95% recognition.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think national. I mean, first of all, I agree completely, and I wrote a piece at the very beginning of this whole saga almost 10 years ago.

[Kurt Mills]

Trump is shocking, vulgar, and right.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. He's winning because you failed. Simple. You know, obvious. It was five years ago this month that people started to drop dead in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Five years since the beginning of COVID And yet, for some reason, we still don't know answers to the most basic questions. And one man knows those answers. His name is Dr. Tony Fauci. And now a documentary filmmaker called Jenner first is out with a new film explaining exactly what happened. The film is called thank you, Dr. Fauci. We'll see it exclusively here on TCN. Anyway, I don't think DC gets it, but I also think at this point, Trump is the most powerful president, certainly since Roosevelt.

[Kurt Mills]

Interesting.

[Tucker Carlson]

And the potential for achieving his promises is really high. America has greater problems than its head since the Great Depression, may be even bigger than it had then. And we have a chance to address them. Probably not solve all of them, but make some headway on things that could help Americans. Sealing the border, stopping the chaos, just taking a breather so we can figure out how to fix the country. And the only thing that could derail that is another foreign war.

[Kurt Mills]

We can't do it with this stuff. It is an actual choice.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's an actual choice.

[Kurt Mills]

We cannot do the border if we do the Middle East.

[Tucker Carlson]

So you have, what, 200,000 people a year dying of drug ODs and no one said anything about it? And endless lectures about Ukraine. And it's no disrespect to the Ukrainians, who I really feel sorry for, but that's so unbelievable that that happened. It's like a bad dream. And now we've woken up from the dream and we have this chance. And I'm sorry, I just. With respect to Bari Weiss and Jen Griffin, you can't do that to us again. It's not going to go without a fight this time. We have to reorient toward our own interests. That's no disrespect to any other country, to our allies, who we wish well and will help to the extent we can. But, like the idea that we're responsible for all these other countries when we're dying here. No mas. Is. Is that. Is that a radical position? That's my actual position. In my heart, that's my actual position.

[Kurt Mills]

I agree. But it's very upsetting not only to leaders of some foreign countries. And this is not just the Middle East. We didn't even talk about Russia, Ukraine. But, like, I mean, that perspective is obviously very, very relevant for extricating the United States out of the Russia, Ukraine war. And almost every European capital is unhappy with that. And you can have a conversation with a nice Danish person and you might agree on immigration or trade or wine. But you mentioned, hey, I'm not really sure the United States should be underwriting Quagmire in Ukraine and the conversation shuts down. It is stunning.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, they're hell bent on suicide. The Western Europeans, and not the Eastern Europeans or Central Europeans, but the Western Europeans are. Have decided to kill themselves. And it's almost like if someone's standing on a bridge or in a window of a skyscraper and you're trying to talk them back in. It's hard. And who knows why that happens. I think there's a supernatural element at work. It's my personal view. But whatever you think the cause is, that's what it is. You blow up Nordstrom, destroy the German economy, and you're not allowed to say anything about it in Germany. I don't know that we can help you at that point. You know what I mean? Like, if you're that intent on self harm, that anxious to destroy your own civilization, make it impossible for your children to live there, then you're killing yourself. You can't help someone who doesn't want to help himself. Go ahead and jump then. Kind of. That's how I feel. But just from an American perspective, all of this has been bad for us. There's no way to pretend otherwise except to launch into some airy moral lecture about dictatorships and Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain or something. Just shut up. Okay.

[Kurt Mills]

The Churchill thing's really.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's just played out. It's played out. I mean, it's played out in.

[Kurt Mills]

But there's a gamble that some of this stuff isn't played out, though. I mean, there's a gamble that I think people have. This country has a generational problem. Right. Generations don't get along. I think that's fair for good reason. Yeah. And I think there's just a bet that a lot of the voters that made the decisions in the 90s and 2000s are dumb and don't care about their kids future and will vote for the exact same thing.

[Tucker Carlson]

Clearly they don't.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, sorry. And will exert pressure on the new administration to do the same thing. And I think there's a bet that the President is a desperate, cynical man who will do whatever it takes when he's pressured. And I think the early evidence is that it's untrue. I mean, I don't. I mean, the evidence is that Trump.

[Tucker Carlson]

Is less cynical than even his supporters thought he was. I think that's the truth.

[Kurt Mills]

I mean, there's. Do you want to discuss the Pompeo Brian Hook stuff?

[Tucker Carlson]

I would. I was just reading the. The Barry Weiss editorial about how pulling Pompeos.

[Kurt Mills]

What Did. What did she say? I didn't read it.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's outrageous. It's a betrayal of Trump's promises. Mike Pompeo.

[Kurt Mills]

Is that what the free press argued?

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. That you can't, you're not allowed, you are required to pay for Mike Pompeo's security detail. And I will just say point blank, as someone who has faced greater physical threats than Mike Pompeo, I can promise you that if I have security, I pay for it myself. Like, why does Mike Pompeo, as a private citizen, get to stick me with the bill for his security detail? How does that work? Barry Weiss. And the point is that Mike Pompeo is a faithful servant of the kind of ideas that she is here to push on the rest of us, and therefore he will be defended at all costs. But let's just be honest about what's going on anyway. Sorry.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, details roll off. The government doesn't usually advertise it.

[Tucker Carlson]

No, everyone's got a detail. Fauci has a detail.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. Because he's in my dog park in Washington and I hear about it.

[Kurt Mills]

I think the interesting thing. So it's very easy to just glaze over Trump fighting with officials, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, in the sort of. The example of this is Trump versus Bolton, and we talk about that and it's fun, but it's kind of over. Right. Bolton's not in the mix and release of Trump and, like, but he's still.

[Tucker Carlson]

Got bits of egg in his mustache. And I don't have his cell anymore, so I can't tell him, but he needs to fix that.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I. So Pompeo and Hook, I mean, look.

[Tucker Carlson]

Tell us who they are. Mike Pompeo.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. So Mike Pompeo was the former Secretary of State, former CIA director, former Kansas congressman, former West Point valedictorian, Harvard graduate, Harvard law graduate, Ozempic user.

[Tucker Carlson]

Sorry, I'm just. I'm doing the whole CV here. Okay, Right. So.

[Kurt Mills]

And he was.

[Tucker Carlson]

I'm so bitchy. I'm so sorry that I said that. It's beneath me. I shouldn't have said that.

[Kurt Mills]

The Bolton Trump feud is old. The disagreement with Pompeo is potentially quite new. And so, by all available information, Pompeo was in the mix for Secretary of Defense, most likely in the days after the election. So much so that his son, Donald Trump Jr. Intervened in a sort of online campaign and other allies within that, that Milou stopped both Pompeo and the former UN Ambassador and South Carolinian Governor Nikki Haley from getting Administration posts.

[Tucker Carlson]

I had heard about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

Pompeo.

[Tucker Carlson]

Patriotic Americans rallied, as they did in Boston in the 18th century, to act on behalf of their nation at some personal risk. But they did it anyway. Unsung heroes.

[Kurt Mills]

One of Pompeo's former deputies, Brian Hook, who ran something called the Iran Study Group and had various other portfolios and titles at the State Department. He's actually someone Pompeo inherited from Rex Tillerson, his predecessor. He kept him on Brian Hook at various points throughout the transition in the last 100 days. Was reported to be running the State Department's transition at some point, then was rumored. Again, rumors. It's rumored. I don't post about it, I don't tweet it out, I don't write about it. But it was rumored to have been fired. Very unclear. Trump, in the days leading up to him taking the Oval Office oath, issued essentially an enormous denunciation, a fatwa against Mr. Hook. Extraordinary to say, not only like, is this guy not in the mix? I hate him. And he said that. So that. That occurred. And then additionally, both Hook and Pompeo's security detail was removed in the last few days.

[Tucker Carlson]

But I don't know that Brian Hook has served in government in four years. Why would he.

[Kurt Mills]

Definitely has not.

[Tucker Carlson]

Why would he. Security detail paid for by taxpayers.

[Kurt Mills]

Not an expert on who gets Secret Service details.

[Tucker Carlson]

But can I just. I just want to say.

[Kurt Mills]

Actually, I can. I can actually directly answer that.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

So the. The key thing here is that there is an allegation, a belief, many in the intelligence community believes this, that there were serious, credible plans by the Iranians to assassinate members of the Trump high command, as it were.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

So Trump, huck, John Bolton, etc. Etc. In revenge, principally for the Soleimani, because.

[Tucker Carlson]

He'S committing a lot of terror attacks in the United States. You've noticed. Oh, no, no. That was intimidating.

[Kurt Mills]

And so.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Kurt Mills]

And so that is the essential. That is the causes.

[Tucker Carlson]

I'm just gonna have to scoff at all of it. I've heard a lot, all the time.

[Kurt Mills]

I think the key thing here is the critique on Trump always was he fired Bolton, but he didn't really understand why. So he just. He. He soured on the guy, but he didn't change any policy. He didn't learn. This is the sort of pedantic way of looking at the president. But with the Hook and Pompeo removal from his inner circle, there is, I think, very credible evidence that Trump's personal grudges are now blending quite heavily with Policy. He doesn't trust the Iran hawk old guard. A lot of the Iran hawk old guard think tanks struck out in getting transition officials and officials in this government. And again, circled around this very unlikely Pentagon, helmed by a guy who has changed his life, it appears in pretty severe ways over the last five years, both ideologically and morally, is this very new Pentagon that is now being targeted by all the usual suspects. And it is the biggest story in American politics that people aren't talking about.

[Tucker Carlson]

So if I could sum up what I think you're saying it is that Donald Trump may have actually broken the grip of the neocons on Washington.

[Kurt Mills]

I mean, you control the Pentagon, you control the, the military. I mean, it's. I mean, it's the.

[Tucker Carlson]

It just seems like this is because there was always this question about Trump. Like, you get up and you give these speeches where you say, we don't want more pointless wars. I believe in peace through strength, not a worse. It's not Jimmy Carter, but like, you know, you assert American power, but you don't embroil a country in wars that you can't win for no reason. It's a very moderate, sensible, common sense, I would say, viewers. So you say those things, but then you hire John Bolton, and the question is why? And Trump would say, I've heard him say, well, I hired Bolton. I beg your pardon? I hired Bolton because he's a lunatic and he's a warmonger freak. He's obviously watching war porn late at night, and people can smell that on him. And so when he goes into a negotiation, he scares the crap out of everybody. And then I show up, he's the heavy and I. He's the backup. I mean, I've heard Trump say that, and I didn't know if I believe that or not, but I'm starting to think that I should have just believed him, because it sounds like Trump's actual instincts are what he says they are.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I mean, the Bolton firing itself is, again, ancient history, but it's circled around an issue of policy.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, I remember.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah. So I mean, Trump had invited the Taliban, which was then the outlaw, not government of Afghanistan as it is today, to camp David on 9 11.

[Tucker Carlson]

I just love which sound of it. I mean, so Trump invited the Taliban to camp.

[Kurt Mills]

He did. He literally did that. I mean, I don't. I mean, I'm just reporting the facts here. So.

[Tucker Carlson]

So it's a great sentence.

[Kurt Mills]

So.

[Tucker Carlson]

So Donald Trump invited the Taliban. So tonight, who. Who's coming for dinner tonight at Camp David? Or the Taliban will be here.

[Kurt Mills]

Bolton. Bolton was wiped out, uh, before this meeting. Never happened, but it was the instigating incident for the final breakdown of their relationship.

[Tucker Carlson]

I do think it's important, Kurt, to just recognize the inherent hilarity of a lot of, you know, just. It is in addition to being grave and, you know, historically significant. It's very funny.

[Kurt Mills]

It is very funny.

[Tucker Carlson]

A lot of this stuff is very funny.

[Kurt Mills]

It's sort of funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's pretty great.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

So you're very restrained and businesslike and precise, as a reporter should be, as an editor should be. But the story that you're telling, I think I don't want to words in your mouth is a story of real change. Finally, we actually appear to be getting to a foreign policy that puts America close to the center of the action.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Is that what you're seeing?

[Kurt Mills]

No. I mean, if he sees this through. This is the biggest presidency certainly since Reagan. You alluded to fdr. I mean, it is moving the ship of state and people are gonna try to stop him from doing it. Yes, but they're not gonna say that he's bad, though. They're gonna go after. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, I just want to counter signal by saying I think what you're saying is true. I think it's real. And I've never admired Trump more. I don't think I'm an ask kisser on the Trump question. But this is like, America really needs this. It's just super important and it's not radical at all. It's not attacking anyone or canceling our allyship with any country at all. It's just, it's, you know, readjusting expectations for what we can achieve.

[Kurt Mills]

The reason that I started covering war and foreign policy principally is that the reality is that US Domestic policy is a morass. It's impossible to get anything done.

[Tucker Carlson]

Exactly.

[Kurt Mills]

Obama tried to do a health care plan. They, you know, six years in, they couldn't even get the website working. You know, the country's hard to govern.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

But externally, the president is imperial.

[Tucker Carlson]

He's God.

[Kurt Mills]

Quite literally the most powerful person on earth. And if you want to burnish a legacy real quick, you do big things in foreign policy. Well, that's shocking.

[Tucker Carlson]

That's what all the Republican senators have figured out.

[Kurt Mills]

You do surprising things.

[Tucker Carlson]

You're John McCain, like, you're, you know, whatever. You've got a lot of problems in your personal and public life, but you can bomb around Eastern Europe and get treated like an emperor.

[Kurt Mills]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

And feel like you're doing something. You're, you know, Jim Risch or Mike Rounds or some like, US Senator nobody's ever heard of, even in his home state. But when you travel to Romania to tour a NATO base, people are like, oh, you know, Senator Rish is here.

[Kurt Mills]

You know, it's like the form relations chair. Yeah, so.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, yeah. And they.

[Tucker Carlson]

So that's a, That's a big, That's a big motivator for our lawmakers, isn't it?

[Kurt Mills]

Sure. For sure. I mean, yeah. I mean, you go to Idaho Falls.

[Tucker Carlson]

And no one's like, oh, I can't believe you're here.

[Kurt Mills]

But, you know, Chairman Rush.

[Tucker Carlson]

It'S like such an absurd. It's. Anyway, excuse me. Interesting. So. And I interrupted you because I, I can't control myself. 0 self control and get on the topic of pizza or neocons, and I'm just out of control. Tell me your analysis of Trump canceling the security details for Ryan Hook and Mike Pompeo.

[Kurt Mills]

Well, he seems to have the authentic view that these people can afford it, especially, Especially with Fauci and especially with Bolton. He specifically flagged them.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. And Pompeo, like, who's now running around being like, I'm actually my businessman.

[Kurt Mills]

He's on a board of a Ukrainian company as well. And.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, he's on, I think, more than one board, but he's certainly running around, including with people I know saying, I'm a really kind of a business guy.

[Kurt Mills]

Look, I mean, so the Pompeo things, I mean, is like, I mean, supremely interesting because I, you know, I think it's somebody who probably would have positioned himself to run in a major way had Trump lost. I think it's somebody who's not gonna quit being president. This is not an unintelligent man.

[Tucker Carlson]

Pompeo is smart.

[Kurt Mills]

This is. Yeah, this is a real fight.

[Tucker Carlson]

He's not dumb.

[Kurt Mills]

This is a real fighter. And I don't wanna say he's part of the cynical bet crowd, but he's making a bet that the Trump thing will pass and I will be able to steamroll people like Vance and even Rubio in the future because I'm more vicious. And in the meantime, you know, maybe make some money, influence the debate, etc. Etc. And he's very impressive, if you don't know. I mean, like, I mean, if you don't come in with huge foreign policy convictions, as I think you and I do, he can be very persuasive.

[Tucker Carlson]

Just for the record, I had no foreign policy convictions. I Don't think I'm ideological on the question at all. I just think in general, our foreign policy should serve the nation.

[Kurt Mills]

I am. I mean, I mean, like, I like. I mean. So I think that's what's very interesting about some of these Pentagon picks, not to keep linking it back. Also the Vice President, a lot of these people, my generation, the millennials, fought in these wars.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, yeah.

[Kurt Mills]

And although the baby boomers forget it, we're now old, you know, and we grew up, and we're quite mad about it. And it's a. It's a bipartisan thing. It's not just like a Democrat, you know, anti Iraq war, indie music thing. It's like young Republican people hate it, too. And they might hate it more, actually, which is actually the interesting thing. And the Republican Party, frankly, under Trump, might be a vessel of anti war sentiment far more effectively than the Democrats. I mean, I didn't see a lot of protests for the Ukraine war. The Israel stuff was pretty interesting. That was probably was number one threat to Biden circa April.

[Tucker Carlson]

Remember that for sure.

[Kurt Mills]

But if you look at the conversation online, if you look at the sentiments of younger conservatives, young Republicans, the anti war stuff is big, and it is not going anywhere. And I think that also drives a sense of a timetable, which is we've got these older people in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. They have a certain belief set. They're the people that voted for the stuff in the 90s and 2000s. And we get this stuff done now before the United States turns on both parties on this stuff. And this was always. This was.

[Tucker Carlson]

So we can't afford it anymore. And our allies pivot to China and sell even more defense technology to China. Yeah, I do think they're okay. So the backbone of support for these wars has been evangelicals. Let's just be blunt about it. Everyone beats up on the neocons or whatever, these fervent intellectuals in Washington. But really, the foot soldiers of this have been Fox News viewers who are not ideological, they're not intellectuals. They're just normal American, patriotic, heavily evangelical people. And the truth is, I think a lot of them are beginning to recognize that their religion does not support this at all. It's really clear. Genesis 6. Why do we have the flood? Why does God kill everything on earth? All the people except Noah and his family. All the animals except the ones in the ark. Why does he do that? He spells it right out. Because they're committing violence, that's why. So it's like the idea that, I mean, The Iraq war breaks out and all these preachers are like, no, no, no, really, we have to fight Islam and kill all these people. And that's what God wants. That's not what it says at all. And there's no mention of any specific secular government in the New Testament. Sorry, guys. And I think a lot of Christians are beginning to realize this. It doesn't. Because you're a Christian doesn't mean you have a specific political agenda at all, I don't think. But if your political agenda is like violence, that's prohibited. Sorry. And it could not be clear. It's on every freaking page. So I don't know, the deception involved in this was just like mind boggling that these preachers could get up on Fox News and tell you that, like, yeah, killing people is what Jesus wants. No, that's not true. And I just feel among people, I know a growing recognition of that. And I think it's a huge problem for the war lobby, which has used these people as its supporters. And you see it in the Congress. I'm an evangelical and I'm for another war with somebody. No, you can't do that anymore.

[Kurt Mills]

I'm hoping people are zoned out.

[Tucker Carlson]

You do think that.

[Kurt Mills]

Yeah, I think they're hoping the country's old, tired, zoned out, can't oppose it, and they're hoping that these initiatives can be achieved piecemeal. Start by bombing Iran here, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe the government will collapse, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[Tucker Carlson]

To be replaced by what? The same people who replaced Assad and Gaddafi and Saddam and the Taliban?

[Kurt Mills]

I mean, I think, okay, I mean, to take the other side. I mean, I mean, the Assad thing is that's like pretty close to the best case scenario of how that could have gone. I think in Iran it would go way, way, way worse. It's a much bigger country.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's hard to know you're rolling the dice. You know, you start killing people and things go sideways. Like, you think it's, it's pretty close.

[Kurt Mills]

To Iraq and Afghanistan combined, right?

[Tucker Carlson]

You have, it feels that way to me.

[Kurt Mills]

You have urban, you have, you have the, you have the capacity for major urban violence a la Iraq. You have huge cities. Not the Kabul's small, but, you know, you have that. And then additionally, you have the mountain element, so any, any outlaw contingent can just flee there. I mean, and we learned this with our southern neighbor. Why is Mexico ungovernable? The mountains you just fleet. I mean, the entire coastline is.

[Tucker Carlson]

Why is Kentucky ungovernable. Same reason.

[Kurt Mills]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean. So.

[Tucker Carlson]

Just kidding.

[Kurt Mills]

No, no. I mean, it's, I mean, it's hard to. It would be very, very, very difficult. And ask Saddam Hussein, who tried to invade Iran and didn't work out for Mr. Hussein. A lot of things didn't. So.

[Tucker Carlson]

No, I agree completely. Well, you have actually given me. I asked you to come for this conversation. It's late at night. I was very exercised about it. You were nice enough to come and we're in a hotel room in some city. But I thought I was going to be more depressed by the end. But actually I feel really heartened by what you said.

[Kurt Mills]

Well, thank you for having me.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, thank you for making me feel a lot better. Kurt Mills, Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson Show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made The Complete Library tuckerCarlson.com.