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The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Greenwald: The Truth About Epstein, Jake Tapper's Humiliation, & Insane New Push to Nuke Gaza
02:13:35
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- [00:00]
Tucker Carlson
Trip planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand. We were made to help you and your friends find a place on the.
- [00:09]
Glenn Greenwald
Beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia made to travel.
- [00:15]
Tucker Carlson
Must be a little weird to get scooped by CNN on Joe Biden's dementia. Like you had no idea.
- [00:21]
Glenn Greenwald
None of us knew, you know? But no, that now Jake Tapper has uncovered the truth. Like, it turns out Joe Biden was incognito decline. Did you know that?
- [00:29]
Tucker Carlson
How did he find out?
- [00:30]
Glenn Greenwald
Just hardcore shoe leather. Invent investigators working his sources. Working his sources, like calling all the people in Washington digging up like FOIA documents. I just find the Epstein file so fascinating because the two biggest issues are are there people to whom he trafficked minors? But nobody has been charged with being the recipient of that sex trafficking. But the much more interesting question for me is was he working with or for any foreign intelligence agencies? Israel is the number one recipient of. Of NSA technology and NSA intelligence. But at the same time, the documents that describe who are our greatest intelligence threats? Who are our greatest intelligence adversaries? Who spies on us the most? Who is capable of spying out the most? Number one on the list is Israel as.
- [01:36]
Tucker Carlson
All right, Glenn, I think last time you're here, I ambushed you just by rolling the cameras. Not doing that. We are on camera right now.
- [01:42]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. It was. It was funny because every show you ever go on, it always begins in some sort of way to indicate that you're actually starting. Like, Glenn Greenwald, welcome to the program. Thank you, Tucker, for having me. But the last time I was on, we were just sitting here chatting, and it turned out 10 minutes in, I was like, oh, we're rolling. Yeah, we've been rolling since we started.
- [01:56]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, but you are one of those people, and this is the highest compliment I can give who's exactly the same off camera. Exactly the same as you are on camera.
- [02:04]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. That's why I. That's why there's no difference at all. Our conversation was just the conversation that we always have. And it turned out it was just the show, which made no difference. I. We went. They. Your staff courtesy. Let me see the first 10 minutes, I was like, yeah, that's what I think. That's how I. How I speak. And that's all fine.
- [02:19]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, there is. If you like Glenn Greenwald, you'll like him at dinner. Trust me that. That's what I can say about you. So you are, I think, the dean of alternative media. You've been Doing this longer than anybody that I know personally. So it must be a little weird to get scooped by CNN on Joe Biden's dementia. Like, you had no idea.
- [02:38]
Glenn Greenwald
None of us knew, you know, I mean, there was that debate and we were all shocked, but we were like, but we were told he had a cold. So I was like, okay, he's on some cold medication. Like, who hasn't been there before? He makes you a little draggy, a little groggy, a little just like dragged. But no, that now Jake Tapper has uncovered the truth. Like, it turns out Joe Biden was in cognitive decline. Did you know that?
- [02:59]
Tucker Carlson
How did he find out?
- [03:01]
Glenn Greenwald
Just hardcore shoe leather investors working his sources. Working his sources, like calling all the people in Washington, digging up, like, FOIA documents. No, it really, you know, it's one of those things where you kind of can't believe what you're witnessing because Jake Tapper is pretending to have uncovered a scandal that he himself led the way in the media or one of the leaders in the media in covering up to the point where if somebody would go on his show and say, Joe Biden is obviously in cognitive decline, he can't get a sentence out. He would say, how dare you bully kids who stutter? Like, what do you. Are you at all ashamed of what you're doing? That's what he told Laura Trump when she was like, yeah, I just, I feel bad for Joe Biden. I wish he could get a sentence out. And he's like, do you ever think about what you're doing to kids who stutter and the kind of world you're creating for them? And she's like, what? And like everyone else, I never even knew Joe Biden had a stutter. I've been watching him for decades. I never saw him stutter before. The whole stuttering thing was just.
- [04:02]
Tucker Carlson
Did he say that?
- [04:03]
Glenn Greenwald
Yes. He told Laura Trump that she was not going to event. And she, it was a very, like, you know, benign remark. She was just saying, yeah, you watch Joe Biden? Because we've talked about this before when, you know, I was on your show. It wasn't even when he was president. It was in the run up to the 2020 campaign. And we were talking about this and we always talked about everybody I know did. No one takes joy in it. Like, we've all had that experience of watching an older person in our family, you know, go through cognitive decline. It's actually quite sad. So the way she was saying it was like, yeah, you know, honestly, as a human being, I watched Joe Biden. And he's in the middle of a sentence that he can't finish. I'm like, come on, Joe, get that out. And then when he went on. She went on Jake Tapper show, he played that tape, and he said, do you understand the world of bullying that you're creating for kids who stutter? And she was like, what?
- [04:53]
Tucker Carlson
I'm expecting stuttering kids.
- [04:55]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. And she's like, I didn't even know he had a stutter. And she. He said, and we all know he has a stutter, and I know that you are mocking his stutter. And so this was not just a person who didn't speak about Joe Biden's cognitive decline who's now uncovering this shocking truth that 85% of the public has known for years, according to polls. He was. He would go on, I heard him this week, saying, one of the very few people, because he was asked, why didn't people in the Democratic Party speak up and say this, since they all knew it? And he said, well, Dean Phillips tried, and he got mauled and maligned, and his character was attacked by the Democratic Party. I was like, by the Democratic Party?
- [05:33]
Tucker Carlson
Go watch.
- [05:34]
Glenn Greenwald
What happened when Dean Phillips went on Jake Tapper show and said that one of the reasons he was running for president, he was concerned about Joe Biden's age and his infirmities and how he couldn't win and couldn't govern. And Jake Tapper said to him, do you know that your Democratic colleagues despise you? And they've been telling me the worst possible thing. That's what he did to everybody who went on his show in order to say, hey, I think Joe Biden's in cognitive decline.
- [06:00]
Tucker Carlson
He was.
- [06:00]
Glenn Greenwald
He was. I mean, obviously he wanted Biden to win desperately and would not tolerate anyone going on the show and saying that Biden was in cognitive decline. And now he's making millions of dollars off a book. But the only good thing is that his credibility is so in tatters from it that he had to hire a PR crisis firm, like the kind that Anthony Weiner had to hire that, like, Puffy Combs hired. Like, imagine being a journalist and being exposed as such a fraud that you have to hire a. Are a crisis team of the kind that, like, public figures hire when they're involved in some, like, big, you know, sex scandal or, like, bribery scandal. That's who's managing Jake Tapper's behavior in his compartment. They've tried to place, like, hit pieces on me and succeed in, like, you know, shitty Places like the Delhi Beast. But every and everything he says now is scripted. You know, like every interview he does now, at first it was like, I did, what are you talking about? This is outrageous. And now every time he's in an interview, he says, I look back on my coverage with humility. You know that phrase they feed you to make it seem like you're accepting accountability even though you're really not? Yeah. Yeah.
- [07:04]
Tucker Carlson
What's interesting, though, is to. That it wasn't just, you know, I disagree with you. Biden seems fine to me. What's interesting is that he used the kind of most vulgar moral blackmail you can. Like, you're attacking children who stutter. You're attacking disabled kids. When you criticize the President of the United States, like, that is so low. It's hard to believe that happened. I haven't seen the clip, but yeah, yeah.
- [07:28]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, he claims he called or Lara Trump to apologize. Maybe he should do that on his show since that's where he told his audience she was attacking kids who stutter. Like, that's a pretty. That's like one of the worst things pretty much that you could do is, like, bully kids with disabilities.
- [07:43]
Tucker Carlson
Right?
- [07:43]
Glenn Greenwald
Like, if my kids ever did that, I would punish them for three months. You know? So, like, accusing her of having done that, like, probably doesn't warrant a private apology. Or maybe it does, too. But also, you know, you go on air and you were like, hey, I did something really despicable. You know what's so amazing, too, is they're trying to rewrite history. Obviously, one of the ways they're trying to rewrite history is to say, we were the victims of the fraud. We in the media were the victims of the fraud. And we're so angry at this inner team of Joe Biden's White House advisors who kept this from us, who hid this even though the entire public knew forever. But I know I've written about this so many times, it drives me crazy how easily history is rewritten. The first time I ever heard concerns about Joe Biden's cognitive decline was back in 2018, when the Democratic field was coalescing of people who were going to run against Donald Trump. And they were really worried Joe Biden was going to get the nomination solely by virtue of name recognition, because he was the vice president to Barack Obama for eight years, was viewed as loyal, has been around forever, and they all knew there was no way he could sustain the rigors of an election because he was in cognitive decline. And so it was like these Democratic operatives Like Andrea Mitchell talked about it, Cory Booker and Julian Castro in that 2019 debate all made fun of Biden for not being able to remember what he had said Three, three seconds ago. This. It was the Democrats who were raising it, trying to alert everybody that you shouldn't vote for Joe Biden because he's not the same Joe Biden he was. I'm not talking about 2023. I'm talking about 2018 and 2019. Remember the minute it was down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in, in the 2020 primary, that's when all of a sudden the media narrative shifted and it became the only people who are talking about Biden's supposed cognitive decline are Bernie Bros and MAGA people. And it's absolutely immoral and disgusting. And that's when I wrote an article saying, what do you mean? You were the ones who first raised it? I heard it from you, you know, those D.C. insiders. So it's not. And the only reason why, you know, what saved Joe Biden from that was that Covid happened and he got to run the campaign from his basement where he only talked to, like, Nicole Wallace, who spoke to him like some, you know, alien grandpa. You know, that voice that you use for, like, your ailing Grandpa, like Mr. President or Mr. Biden, hello. Oh, and then you do that fake laugh. They get even close to a joke because those were the kind of interviews he was doing. And he was in that basement in Delaware. That's the only reason why he could sustain that campaign.
- [10:12]
Tucker Carlson
But it was so widely known. I mean, his sister Valerie told a good friend of mine that she didn't want him to run in 2020 because he had dementia. My former makeup artist, A makeup artist was there in the room when he was injected with amphetamines before an event more than once during that campaign. And like I said all that on TV and everyone I knew in D.C. who knew Biden, I knew Biden said, yeah, no, he's got dementia. Like, every. Everybody knew. Everybody knew. It wasn't just like some right wing Twitter thing where people were being cruel. It was like the people who knew Biden knew that. So, like, how could you not?
- [10:49]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, I think the. The reason this media fraud, of all the other media frauds that have been perpetrated, is probably the most damaging. In 2016, they pushed this whole deranged, demented conspiracy theory that Vladimir Putin had sex tapes on Donald Trump where he was being urinated on by a prostitute. And of course, if you know, Don, that's pretty much the Last thing. That of all the people on the.
- [11:12]
Tucker Carlson
Planet, it's one thing he didn't commit. Yeah, no, yeah.
- [11:14]
Glenn Greenwald
But. But, you know, it was. It was that sort of thing. Like, they always accuse people, independent media or, you know, whoever, of being conspiracy theorists. Like, think about that conspiracy. Like, Donald Trump was being blackmailed by the Russian government into sacrificing the interests of the United States to serve the interests of the Kremlin. That really was the predominant media narrative from 2016 to 2018. So that's what they did to try and stop Trump the first time in 2020. You know, weeks before the election, the New York Post had very serious reporting about the Biden family unethically exploiting Joe Biden's influence in Ukraine and China to profit not for themselves only, but also for Joe Biden. And we were told by the media over and over the lie that this is Russian disinformation, that this laptop should be. The contents of it should be ignored because it's inauthentic. That, of course, was when I left the Intercept because they wouldn't let me write about it, claiming that there were doubts about his authenticity when I knew there weren't, but that was. And then Twitter and Facebook censored it. But on those kind of questions, like Russia Gate, the authenticity of these emails, like, for most Americans, they don't have the competence to judge that because they do other things. But when it comes to seeing older people in cognitive decline, most of them have had that experience with, like, a grandparent or a parent or a sibling or a neighbor or whatever, and don't need to be told by, quote, unquote experts that is happening because they can see it with their own eyes. And for the media to have sat there for a year and a half and told everybody, as Joe Scarborough said, this version of Joe Biden is the best Biden we've ever seen. I mean, imagine being such a state propagandist that you do that and then keep your job. I think that's why this scandal is so devastating to them. And why, like, when Jake Tapper stands up to write a book saying, I've uncovered the truth with investigative reporting, you know, everybody is reacting with justifiable, justifiable nausea.
- [12:59]
Tucker Carlson
You gotta admit, it takes some balls to do that, though. I mean, I famously advocated for the Iraq war, realized in 2023 that it was a bad idea and said I was wrong. What I didn't do was write a book saying, like, it was wrong. And I always thought it was wrong.
- [13:15]
Glenn Greenwald
Or like, hey, I'M here to write a book saying why the Iraq war was based on falsehoods. It's like we, we already know. Tucker. Thank you. Right, like you didn't go and write that book because you were the one helping to perpetuate that. Exactly. I totally agree.
- [13:28]
Tucker Carlson
So I guess without repentance, without the acknowledgment of wrongdoing, of dishonesty, without saying I screwed up and making that the headline, nothing that follows is credible at all. It's like, all fake. Unless you admit your role in the lie.
- [13:42]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. Which, which, and, and if that happened, if you said, like, look, I was really swept up in the media bubble I was in.
- [13:48]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [13:49]
Glenn Greenwald
And I want to tell the story of why I did this or how I got. I convinced myself of this lie, then there would be some nobility to it. There would be some value in work. Yes, but this is what I mean. Like, you know, I was, There were several people, but myself was included. Who was. I was bashing the table every day. You know, we were compiling tapes of Jake Dapper doing all the things that I had just referenced. And I remember at the time, Jake Tapper always serving the Democratic Party in these ways. And his initial response was to send out, like, publicists to try and, you know, plant stories that I was lying, that I was manipulating media. There was one in the Delhi Beast, one in the Humpington Post.
- [14:24]
Tucker Carlson
We actually attacking you?
- [14:26]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh, yeah. They were pitching stories like. Yeah, and there's, you know, they were in, like, shitty liberal sites that no one, like Huffington Post and the Delhi Beast. There was a couple others, but they had pitched them, like, to the New York Post at the Wall Street Journal, I think, as well, like New York Post got in contact with me. They didn't, they didn't run it because it was so easy to prove that. What was the allegation that all of these incidents that I just described, and there were others as well, of things he did on his show were, like, taken out of context or the video was manipulated. Just like they did when people saw Joe Biden wandering around on that D day and had to be, you know, redirected by Georgia Maloney or having been taken off the stage by this. That's the other thing. They didn't just deny it. They attacked anyone who said it. People in 2024 who were saying, oh, look, Biden clearly doesn't know where he is, including at that event with Obama, that big George Clooney fundraiser, the Washington Post were an article saying they were using. It was a new phrase Cheap fakes. Like, they weren't exactly fake, but the narrative was fake. And it was anyone who said, Joe Biden clearly is in cognitive decline. If you look at him at these events, they were called right wing disinformation agents. And as it turns out, George Clooney ended up saying, the reason why I wanted Biden not to run was because the Joe Biden I saw at that event was completely unrecognizable. He was like a. He was. He has dementia. And at the time when people were saying, like, clearly he doesn't know where he is, being let off the stage by Barack Obama, none of this was new. We. This is what we had been seeing for so long. The media affirmatively used that disinformation term that has become their weapon of deception and, and propaganda and smearing people who tell the truth to label all of that disinformation. And so they were the ones who perpetrated the fraud, and now they're pretending like they're the ones uncovering it. It is so I think the reason they don't get it is because of that insulated bubble that they exist in. They all do believe that they're truthful, they're good, they're benevolent, they're nonpartisan. And that unfortunately, there was no way for them to have told the story because Mike Donilon was lying about it or Jill Biden was keeping the truth from them. And so what can they do?
- [16:40]
Tucker Carlson
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- [18:21]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh yeah. Which is what every person who has ever done anything evil has said to justify it. I'm not an evil person. I'm not a sociopath. I'm doing something that seems evil, but it's for a greater cause. The end is justify the means. I mean, that's the most basic. Yes, basically a moral statement you can have. And that's. Since the emergence of Trump, that is all that journalism has become. Not just journalism, but so many academia, so many different institutions have renounced their core function, whatever that might be. Science.
- [18:48]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.
- [18:49]
Glenn Greenwald
In order to devote themselves to this monomaniacal mission of stopping Donald Trump and his movement.
- [18:56]
Tucker Carlson
That's right.
- [18:57]
Glenn Greenwald
And you know, Sam Harris just, whether through stupidity or just like inadvisable candor, you know, was the first one who came out when the Hunter Biden laptop stuff, after he realized it was a lie and said like, yeah, I guess this laptop was true, but at the end of the day, I really don't care if they have to lie about it. Fine. The evil of electing Donald Trump is so much greater. And he was the first one to really candidly acknowledge what they are all thinking, which is we'll lie, we'll spread disinformation, will, you know, hide things. Because the destruction and fear that we have of Donald Trump in power is so great that anything we do to try and impede it, it's not just justifiable but almost like morally imperative. That is how most of these institutions ended up reasoning and that's why they've lost their credit.
- [19:46]
Tucker Carlson
We're all Dietrich Bonhoeffer at this point.
- [19:47]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, well, it's very self glorifying too. Like we're on the front line of fighting fascism.
- [19:52]
Tucker Carlson
What I mean, this is such a tired question, but I've never really gotten an answer that satisfies me. What is. I mean, I look at Trump and I'm like, you know, this is not a radical person in most ways. Why? And a lot of the things that he says are things that the Democratic Party was like, officially for 10 years ago. You know, less wars. Pay attention to the forgotten man.
- [20:15]
Glenn Greenwald
Free trade is kind of bad, right? Exactly.
- [20:17]
Tucker Carlson
You're right.
- [20:18]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, this.
- [20:18]
Tucker Carlson
These are not. He is not a radical right winger as I would have conceived of a radical right winger in 1998 or 2018. So why, why? But the hive, like, reacted to him like the devil does holy water. Just like, I can't be near you. What. What is that? I still don't fully understand it.
- [20:39]
Glenn Greenwald
I think it's two things. One less important, though still not trivial, which is comport. Mentally. He's just such a radical departure from the way anybody who has ever close to the presidency has conducted themselves. And I remember so well the time.
- [20:55]
Tucker Carlson
I realized, that's fair.
- [20:56]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, it's true. But like, but once you understand what that is, you can put it in your proper, in the proper context and not go insane about it. I remember the time that I realized just how far gone the media was when it came to this. And like, the political establishment generally, which was during the 2016 campaign, when they kept asking about a collusion with Russia and. Collusion with Russia and all that. And he said, I don't know anything about that. I have nothing to do with the Russians. But hey, Russians, if you're listening, they were asking him, did you participate in the hacking?
- [21:28]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah.
- [21:28]
Glenn Greenwald
And he was like, I didn't have anything to do with that. But hey, like, Russia, if you're listening, maybe you could find Hillary Clinton's like, 87,000 deleted emails, which was obviously like a joke. Just like, just a joke. Like, I have nothing to do with Russia. But if they're such great hackers, maybe they can find the media. Took that. And they, for over a year, earnestly pretended that this was proof that he was in cahoots with Russia because he submits hacking requests to Russia. Like, if you have some, like, back channel secret relationship with Russia, the way you're going to, like, submit your request is by standing in front of 130 cameras and be like, hey, Putin, this is my latest hacking request. Go find those emails. Instead of, like, me having a, you know, Don Jr meet in a parking lot with some, like, Russian agent or whatever. I mean, but the fact that they, they, they were willing to. They really thought that that was a smoking gun and could not understand how Trump jokes, how he uses irony, how he like purposely trolls was, you know, the time that I realized just how far gone they were. But I think the bigger reason why they were, I think we've talked about this before is I would say since the end of World War II, maybe before that, but certainly since the end of World War II. What we have more or less is a continuity of core Washington dogma on foreign and economic policy.
- [22:51]
Tucker Carlson
Correct.
- [22:51]
Glenn Greenwald
You have on the margins things that make it appear like the parties are so different. They fight about abortion, they do discriminate abortion or culture war issues, all that. But on the question of how power is distributed, on how the US maintains global hegemony, on feeding the war machine, on how our economic system functions and who it serves, there is complete continuity between Republicans and Democrats, like those permanent power factions in Washington. The corporatism, militarism, don't care at all who wins because their policies prevail no matter what. You can vote for whoever you want, you can vote against it, you can vote for it doesn't matter. It continues Trump by necessity, because the Republicans had already chosen Jeb Bush as their candidate. We all expected it was going to be another Bush Clinton race. It was going to be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. That was the assumption that everyone had.
- [23:44]
Tucker Carlson
It.
- [23:44]
Glenn Greenwald
Hillary would have lost had the DNC not cheated for her, but they did cheat for her, so she was the nominee. But the only way Trump could break through. How do you break through against all the Republican money behind Joe Bush? You have to run against the Bush family. You have to run against conservative Republican dogma on both fin economics and foreign policy. He ran against the Iraq war, He ran against permanent war. He ran against serving corporatism at the expense of the working people, against free trade at the expense of, you know, like having an industrial base. And he became a kind of threat. And Steve Bannon was the architect at the time. And Steve Bannon's vision very much was that like the Republican establishment is at least as bad as the Democratic establishment. And he was a threat to disrupt this bipartisan continuity on which power factions in Washington depend. And I think that's what made him so anathema to so many different factions.
- [24:36]
Tucker Carlson
He was a challenge to the post.
- [24:39]
Glenn Greenwald
War order, basically like questioning the viability of NATO.
- [24:43]
Tucker Carlson
I know which.
- [24:45]
Glenn Greenwald
It's like walking into a church and saying, like, we sure Jesus is divine. You know, like that alone.
- [24:51]
Tucker Carlson
That. That actually changed my life. When he Said that I grew up around NATO, grew up supporting NATO unthinkingly, never thought about the good guys. NATO keeps the Soviets from rolling into Belgium, and that's good. Why is that bad? Of course we love NATO.
- [25:07]
Glenn Greenwald
Then he was like, hey, but the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.
- [25:11]
Tucker Carlson
No one had ever, in a lifetime in D.C. no one had ever mentioned NATO in a way that challenged me to think about what it was or its role until that. And he just said it offhandedly and I was like, NATO? Really? He's against NATO? How could you be against NATO? And that began a chain of thinking that totally changed my view of everything. So I think you're right. It's dangerous to have people saying stuff like that. I mean, you just, you.
- [25:35]
Glenn Greenwald
What you want is per. Continuity with the status quo. And like, who was a more reliable maven of the status quo than Hillary Clinton.
- [25:45]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [25:45]
Glenn Greenwald
Or Joe Biden. And so that's why they were so desperate, including all, you know, all the neocons and conservatives that you knew. So many of them openly supported Clinton and Biden and many of them, like, to this day, like half the Republican Senate caucus at least hates Trump, hates his ideology.
- [26:04]
Tucker Carlson
Oh, yeah. You really think Mike Rounds voted for Trump? I don't think so. I don't know. But I'm just saying, like.
- [26:10]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. Those types. Yeah.
- [26:11]
Tucker Carlson
So can I just go back? I want to ask you more about that in, like, the place of neoconservatives, and I guess we're not even to use that term, so think of a new term as I asked. All right, but before we get to that, like, you mentioned Russiagate a couple of times and the hacking and the subsequent leaking of those emails from the DNC who did that.
- [26:34]
Glenn Greenwald
It's possible, of course, that the Russians did it. Like, sometimes you get the official story and it's possible. You know, I know Julian Assange a long time. I know him very well.
- [26:48]
Tucker Carlson
And what a good man.
- [26:50]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh, he's. I think he's like one of the heroes of our life. And not just a hero, but like.
- [26:55]
Tucker Carlson
Incredibly consequential and just a decent person, too.
- [26:58]
Glenn Greenwald
And like brilliant and courageous. I agree, not without his personality flaws, but oftentimes that kind of courage. I. Whenever people used to complain about Julian's difficult personality. Let's use the generous term, difficult personality. I would always say, like, who do you think is going to go and, like, spill the secrets of the world's most powerful government? You think it's going to be some, like, mild mannered, like, gentle, congenial Person. No, it takes a certain personality type. Yes, and. But in any event, he had insinuated several times that it came from within the dnc. He had raised the possibility that Seth Rich was murdered because he was the leaker and it was Julian, it was.
- [27:38]
Tucker Carlson
WikiLeaks who ran those docs.
- [27:41]
Glenn Greenwald
It was WikiLeaks who received them.
- [27:43]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, but who, who shared them with.
- [27:44]
Glenn Greenwald
The world, who then published them all. Exactly.
- [27:47]
Tucker Carlson
So it's not a small thing when the guy who runs WikiLeaks suggests something.
- [27:50]
Glenn Greenwald
Correct. That said, if you are the recipient of leaks, as I've been many times, you don't actually know who the kind of. You're not sure if the person bringing you the leaks is the person who actually engineered it. That could be a cut, you know, go between and. But at the same time, you know, Julian is extremely smart. You know, I talked to him this day. He's, I think, not fully recovered. He'll never be. I mean, after what he went through, but his brain is, you know, just like a font of insight. And I trust his judgment so much. You can go back and look at stuff he said and it proved to be so prescient.
- [28:29]
Tucker Carlson
I know.
- [28:30]
Glenn Greenwald
And so when he says that, I do think Julian sees himself for good reason as an enemy of the intelligence agencies in the West. I mean, that he is that. So undoubtedly we did like seven and.
- [28:42]
Tucker Carlson
A half years in confinement because of it.
- [28:44]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, like eight years in the Ecuadorian Embassy and then four and a half years in the prison that the BBC calls Gwan, the British Guantanamo.
- [28:52]
Tucker Carlson
Mike Pompeo, the head of CIA, plotted his assassination.
- [28:55]
Glenn Greenwald
So I think plotted his assassination, badgered the Ecuadorians into lifting the asylum they had given him and promised him and allowed the London police to go in and, you know, coerced, threatened, bribed the Ecuadorians to lift that asylum, that grant of asylum, so that they could then go in. And Mike Pompeo, on his, like, first month as CIA director, gave a speech saying, we're going to destroy WikiLeaks. It's time that they stopped fighting. Hiding behind the First Amendment. So he was very serious about that.
- [29:23]
Tucker Carlson
He, Mike Pompeo, should be charged with plotting someone's assassination. That's a crime. You can't do that in the United States.
- [29:29]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, there's so many things Mike Pompeo should be charged with. But we know for certain that he was wanting. I mean, he was the CIA director thinking, oh, now I get to murder people who I want.
- [29:38]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah. Who embarrassed me, who've never been, who committed crimes. He'd never been charged with a crime in the United States when that until.
- [29:45]
Glenn Greenwald
Like until 2018, right? When, when, when they engineered this, you know, obscenely baseless indictment that they knew, they never wanted to bring him to the United States to stand trial. He would never have been convicted. They wanted to break him psychologically and physically and they came very close to doing that. But in any event, so when Julian Assan says something like that, part of me knows that he views himself as an enemy of the intelligence agencies and wants to use the same methods they use, which is sometimes you spread disinformation for confusion. But I also believe that he believes there's something to it. And so we never had a real investigation into to anything relating to Russiagate at all. Because in the first term Trump was, you know, that whole administration was commandeered. It was run by people who were opposed to Trump's agenda for the most part. And part of the, this new administration is constructed to avoid that from happening. And I think they are now going back and looking at a lot of these things.
- [30:50]
Tucker Carlson
So we're not positive if cryptocurrency is the future of finance, but we do know that what we have now is broken and dangerous. Debt has never been higher in this country. Many of our so called leaders are getting rich serving you. It's a scam. So where does it go? Well, thankfully there are options. Donald Trump has said repeatedly he wants the United States to be the crypto capital of the world. He's already created the Crypto Advisory Council and recently signed an executive order to establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve. This could give normal people an alternative to the government's failing system and frankly to the US dollar. I'm not saying put all your money outside the US dollar, but like, don't be crazy, don't be stupid, here you can see where it's going. So the people at iTrust Capital can help you get in to this. It's complicated for people who aren't following it. They make it easy. They're based 100% in the United States of America. We looked into this. They service only American investors and they operate the only platform that allows you to buy and sell crypto24.7 both inside and outside of your tax advantaged IRA. And it all happens on one easy to use dashboard. They also operate a closed loop system, meaning that bad actors can't access your account and steal your money. So if you're considering adding Bitcoin if you want to, or some other cryptocurrency portfolio. ITrust can be trusted and it's easy to understand. ITrustCapital.com or click the link below. What do you think the chances are that those emails came from a DNC employee?
- [32:19]
Glenn Greenwald
Honestly, I don't know. I just. I don't like to. I'm open to it. I'm definitely open to it, but I'm not going to affirm it.
- [32:26]
Tucker Carlson
I think it's very strange, probable. I got from an MPD Metropolitan Police Department officer who is a friend of mine, the fact which I've checked, which is that the FBI immediately took over the murder investigation. Now, why would the FBI have a.
- [32:38]
Glenn Greenwald
Routine, supposedly routine random attempted robbery. Attempted robbery.
- [32:42]
Tucker Carlson
Why would the FBI take that away? Like, is there a good reason for that? That's bizarre.
- [32:47]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I know. That's why I say I'm open to it. Even though, you know, that's been something that is immediately branded like such an OB conspiracy theory that the second you suggest that you're receptive to it. But that's exactly when conspiracy theories are often ones that deserve attention.
- [33:05]
Tucker Carlson
I don't know. An American citizen got murdered in my city. And so I feel like I have an absolute right to ask, why the FBI take that over and what did they learn? And like, what is that? That's a totally fair question. They don't. You know, it's so funny. They set themselves up as the arbiters of everything, as the moral arbiters, for sure. And you're like, not allowed to ask that question. It's like, I live. I spent my life in D.C. i know the street he was shot on. He's an American, just like me. I have absolutely a fundamental right to ask, like. And same with Epstein. Why wasn't there a real investigation into this? And like, this seems anomalous. Like, what's the answer?
- [33:37]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, shut up. And then the topic is by like the bench peers of the world and the people who are the, like the. The people who have anointed themselves to be the guardians of official versions or, you know, no challenging any sorts of, like, why did the USS Liberty happen? Those kind of things. Like, what happened.
- [33:53]
Tucker Carlson
Why was JF My favorite was. Was JFK murder. I don't care. It was a long time ago.
- [33:56]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, it was so long ago. Yeah, it was a long time ago and the President got murdered that now is just asking questions. They'll be, oh, it's like, I don't know. I feel like my job is like a. Not just a journalist, but a human being and a Citizen is like, I kind of want to be asking questions. I don't want to just be ingesting what I'm told because what we've been told has been proven to be deliberate lies so often.
- [34:22]
Tucker Carlson
Also, I like people who ask questions. I'm uncomfortable with people who make declarative statements exclusively because you actually don't know the answer to most things. Like I said, where do you think those emails came from? Podesta's emails, DNC emails. And you're like, I don't really know, but here are the questions that I have. That's the honest answer.
- [34:40]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, also, you know, how many times not just in politics where deliberate lives happen, but in every field of discipline like physics and chemistry and biology, everything. Linguistics, where a certain time arrives and people believe they've discovered an absolute proven truth, and by the next generation it's completely debunked. Like, if you don't have. And that's why I believe in the absolute necessity of preserving the right to question everything.
- [35:06]
Tucker Carlson
That's the scientific method.
- [35:08]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. And it's just basic humility. It's like to think that human beings have discovered unchallenged truths that can never be disproven and that from here henceforth, you're not allowed to question. No, I'm not accepting that from anybody.
- [35:22]
Tucker Carlson
Oh, I want to print that and put it on my fridge.
- [35:25]
Glenn Greenwald
I'll give you. I'll sign it for you. Good.
- [35:27]
Tucker Carlson
Thank you. Yeah.
- [35:30]
Glenn Greenwald
Okay, so let me. Let me do the Epstein. You want to talk about the Epstein files in relation to that as well?
- [35:34]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, sure.
- [35:35]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, just because I just want to. I just find the Epstein files so fascinating because all the people who are now in charge of the government under Donald Trump, particularly Cash Patel and Dan Bungino at the FBI, but others as well throughout the government were over the last four years, everywhere in the media, on their shows, on every other show, banging on the table, demanding the immediate release of all the Epstein files. We're now five months into the Trump administration. We haven't gotten a single document that wasn't previously published of the Epstein files. The they made a humiliating showing of pretending to release it when they called those conservative influence and they all waved around the binder Epstein files. Oh my God, what was in them? And then it turns out like nothing. You know, just every document that was in this binder was already previously released as part of the litigation or journalism that was done. And the Pam Bondi's new excuse because, I mean, I'm glad that there are a Lot of people in the Trump movement and the mock movement who are not contrary to how they're depicted in some sort of cult. Like, they, they hold these people accountable. Like, they want to understand, like we were promised these things, like, why isn't this happening? And so Pam Bondi's excuse now is we have thousands and thousands of sex videos of Jeffrey Epstein having sex with minors, implying that it's obviously going to take a lot of time to go through these videos, and therefore we have to be patient before we get them. It's like, I don't care about sex videos of Jeffrey Epstein having sex with children, because we already know that Jeffrey Epstein had sex with children. That's kind of the reason we know who he is. He's been twice charged with that, once convicted, and then was ready to be charged again. For me, the two biggest issues are, are there people to whom he trafficked minors because he was charged with sex trafficking, but nobody has been charged with being the recipient of that sex trafficking. But the much more interesting question for me is, and there's a lot of reason to believe it's true, is was he working with or for any foreign intelligence agencies? There is no way they don't already have that answer. Maybe the answer is no. Maybe he wasn't working with any. It's. It would be. It would shock me. But maybe that's their answer. Maybe their answer is he was. Why don't we have those answers? Like, have FBI agents, for whatever reason, go through those sex tapes for the next three years? That's fine. What stops them from releasing that question?
- [38:05]
Tucker Carlson
Now, for people who may not be as familiar with the details, what leads you to raise that question? Is there evidence that suggests he might have been working with a foreign intel agency?
- [38:15]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, first of all, the source of his wealth has always been mysterious. I mean, he wasn't just very rich. He was living the life of a multi, multi billionaire. He had, you know, $50 million properties in Manhattan and what was Palm beach and New Mexico, bought that island, New Mexico, flying around on a 747. This is not just like somebody who's very wealthy. This is somebody with essentially unlimited resources. Right. Like Bill Gates type wealth. And one of the ways, one of the. His primary benefactors is Les Wexner, who is a multi billionaire, somebody with whom he worked closely. And I guess the argument or the, the claim is he was a brilliant strategist for how to save taxes, how to save money on taxes.
- [39:01]
Tucker Carlson
He was like a highly competent accountant, basically, as well.
- [39:04]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, like a tax Accountant, that's a tax accountant. They tell you what strategies to use to save money. So maybe Les Wexner valued him so much that he gave him, I don't know, $3 billion. In general, billionaires don't like to give money away that they don't have to. Maybe Les Wexner is like super generous, like oh so grateful. You Jeffrey Epstein, here's like $2 billion. But Les Wexner has all sorts of ties to like his main non money making endeavor in life is supporting Israel and donating to is to pro Israel groups and working closely with the Israeli government. Giselaine Maxwell, who's now in prison as having been essentially his right hand man. Her father, Robert Maxwell, who died in a very mysterious way, he slipped off his yacht, was a known Mossad agent, He worked with the Mossad. He had very close ties to Israel. We all know these.
- [39:56]
Tucker Carlson
Given a state funeral.
- [39:58]
Glenn Greenwald
Yes. In Israel.
- [39:59]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [39:59]
Glenn Greenwald
And you know, when I did the Snowden reporting people, there's a lot of documents that we released that. And just because there were so many there, not, not, not all of them got the attention they deserved. One of the set of files we released described the intelligence relationship that we have with Israel that the NSA has with Israel. Israel is the number one recipient of NSA technology and NSA intelligence. We share more with Israel even more than we do with the five eyes partners who develop this technology. We give more to Israel, more intelligence, raw intelligence about Americans as well, and more intelligence know how. But at the same time, the documents that describe who are our greatest intelligence threats, who are our greatest outcome intelligence adversaries, who spies on us the most, who is capable of spying out the most number one on the list is Israel as well. Obviously the Israelis use, you know, some, I mean the, the most dangerous spying programs like Pegasus and others come from Israel, are developed by Israel, are controlled by the Israelis, by which I simply mean to say that Israel uses every weapon at its disposal, including gathering incriminating information about his enemies. Some people have suggested that, oh no, it's not Israel, it's probably the Qatari intelligence agencies with whom he worked. Maybe, I don't. Maybe it was like, maybe it was Peru, maybe it was like Indonesia.
- [41:21]
Tucker Carlson
People said that Epstein was working with the Qataris.
- [41:24]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, that. Like what, like there's, I want to.
- [41:27]
Tucker Carlson
Keep a list of people who make that claim. Do you know anyone?
- [41:30]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean it's kind of funny, you know how like Israeli, like supporters of like loyalists of Israel in the United States are now constantly trying to convince people that the Real foreign government that is exerting extreme amounts of influence over our politicians and our institutions is Cotter.
- [41:48]
Tucker Carlson
I find it hilarious.
- [41:49]
Glenn Greenwald
And I'm always like, you know what? Let me know when Congress starts passing on a weekly basis pro katar resolutions or when like students are being expelled and deported because they've criticized Qatar. Let me know when like we start sending billions of dollars a year to Qatar. Let me know when all that starts to happen. And I'll be receptive to the fact that maybe Qatar. But anyway, all I'm saying, I'm not saying it's Israel, I'm just saying the nature of what Jeffrey Epstein was doing, the amount of wealth that it required, the number of the most powerful elites on the planet who were with him, who were involved with him, who were at his island too. Despite knowing that he had been convicted in 2010 of having sex with minors, hiring prostitutes, who were underage, who continued to consort with him in the most, you know, proximate ways. Something was going on there. It would be incredibly valuable. He kept, you know, he had, he had cameras in every part of his house. He had tapes of everything. Obviously that would be of immense value to any foreign intelligence agents.
- [42:56]
Tucker Carlson
And American, I mean, he was, he was close friends with Bill Burns, right?
- [42:59]
Glenn Greenwald
Maybe domestic intelligence agencies as well. But how? Like it really is starting to inflame my suspicions a great deal every day that goes by when we're not getting that information, particularly because the people who have it are the people who spent years demanding its release and promising to facilitate it if they got into power.
- [43:18]
Tucker Carlson
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- [44:55]
Glenn Greenwald
How is this not talked about every day? Okay, so in Florida, in the United States, generally, having sex with minors, hiring, you know, using minors as. As prostitutes is considered like, a pretty terrible crime.
- [45:10]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, it's.
- [45:10]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. You know, most people agree on that. Yeah. You don't really have to debate that. That's considered like, something that deserves huge amounts of jail time and typically results in huge amounts of jail time. Jeffrey Epstein barely went to jail for that. As part of a plea bargain. They had enormous amounts of evidence. It wasn't a question of could they prove his guilt. They gave him a plea deal, a plea deal where he spent like, six seconds in jail and then like, most of the time at home doing community service. And Alex Acosta, who was the U. S. Attorney for, for the southern district of Florida at the time, which was. Was in charge of the case, that's where Epstein was ultimately ended up in the justice department and other roles inside the government. And so he was constantly asked, why would you give Jeffrey Epstein such a, like, generous plea deal that nobody would ever get for those crimes? And he ended up saying, I was told that he's intelligence and therefore leave him alone. That's what Alex Acosta, the prosecutor, says that he was told about what he should do with the Jeffrey, like, leave him alone because he's intelligent.
- [46:14]
Tucker Carlson
Well, there were. We're just kind of. The conversation just like, ended like we know now. I mean, if the prosecutor says, the federal prosecutor in Florida says that, then I think we can assume that that's true.
- [46:25]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. So why do we know what that means? That's what you know, like, what would be the reason that people inside the Trump administration who have long expressed vehemently, vocally at the top of their agenda, demands that the Epstein files be released? Why are they not telling us that information?
- [46:46]
Tucker Carlson
I. I think the net effect of this is to drive everyone insane and to make everyone, like, angry and suspicious and paranoid and conspiracy minded. I do think that it's like, you expect that we're going to hear the truth and then it's like, oh, by the way, no, everyone assumes the worst. I mean, why wouldn't you assume the worst? Well, you know, that improves American society.
- [47:08]
Glenn Greenwald
The thing is, like, you know, I, whenever I talk about independent media, including from people who are supporters of it, believe it's a positive development, they all say, oh, but you know, there's so many conspiracy theories that end up being cultivated and spread that people embrace. And that's true.
- [47:24]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, of course it is.
- [47:25]
Glenn Greenwald
There's been a lot of conspiracy theories embraced by the credible legacy media as well. I mean, it wasn't like Reddit that convinced Americans Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program or that Joe Biden.
- [47:35]
Tucker Carlson
Was the best version ever.
- [47:36]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. Or that, like, the North Vietnamese were the aggressors in the Gulf of punk. Right. That came from, like, CBS and Walter Cronkite in the New York Times. But in any event, of course there's going to be Americans who are now amenable to every conspiracy theory because what have we lived through? The Iraq war, the 2008 financial crisis, all of the lies, 9 11. 911 itself. And then if you go back further, like the Vietnam War, but then also Covid and like one after the next, at best, massive fundamental systemic failure on the part of all the institutions we were taught to trust. And probably, at worst, and probably more accurately, overwhelming deceit and lies and falsehoods and propaganda continuously disseminated by them in order to facilitate what they wanted. What is going to happen to a society where people lose faith and trust in institutions? Not because, you know, charlatans are on the sidelines encouraging them to make that happen, but because rationally, those institutions no longer merit trust or faith.
- [48:43]
Tucker Carlson
If you lie too much, I don't believe you.
- [48:45]
Glenn Greenwald
Kind of basic.
- [48:46]
Tucker Carlson
So the only antidote to that is, is transparency is revealing the truth. And I, I really worry right now especially that this is hardening people's cynicism and rage and really, at some point, nihilism, like, nothing is true. That is the conclusion. A lot of people are going, nothing is true. I don't believe anything. It's all fake.
- [49:07]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, and also, you know, Cash Patel and Dan Mocgino are people who were among the most popular among the MAGA base. I mean, these were the people among the most respected. I mean, Dan Bongino's show on Rumble, a platform that still maybe like 30, 40, maybe even 50% of the people in the United States. I've never even heard of was getting bigger audiences than almost every daytime cable show. Cash Patel, you know, the surge of support for him when he was nominated to lead the FBI was massive because people thought, no, that's who we need to like, get in and root this out and clean it out. And I believe that they there. I believe there is something to that. I. I think they are authentic and genuine in that way, but at the same time, something is constraining them. And so I asked myself, what kinds of truce would people be determined to hide who are more powerful than they are? And when it comes to the Epstein files, I continuously zero in on that question of who was he working with or for whom? And I can see people in government not wanting that answer to be disclosed. Just like the same reason we didn't have the JFK files. And still don't. We still don't for 65 years.
- [50:29]
Tucker Carlson
I know Bongino well. I think of him as a friend. I think he is a man of integrity. And. And I think his integrity remains pure because of his rage. Like, Dan's mad.
- [50:40]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. Yeah.
- [50:40]
Tucker Carlson
At lying.
- [50:41]
Glenn Greenwald
Huh.
- [50:41]
Tucker Carlson
And so I do. I don't know what's going on at all.
- [50:46]
Glenn Greenwald
He.
- [50:46]
Tucker Carlson
And to be clear, he said, I know that Epstein killed himself because I've seen the evidence. So I'm pretty confident in the, in the case of Dan Bongino, I don't even mind that.
- [50:54]
Glenn Greenwald
But then the question still becomes, like, they said they know how their. Their supporters are going to react to that.
- [51:00]
Tucker Carlson
Right.
- [51:00]
Glenn Greenwald
And they were among the people raising doubts about whether Epstein killed himself. I'm not that I'm not. I wouldn't shock me if Epstein killed himself. Like, you live a life of great wealth and then suddenly you know you're going to spend the prison. You spend the rest of your life in prison. It seems odd to me that you can go to a federal prison and kill yourself. Like there's not safeguards against that. But whatever. Think gov. Think things that are run by the government failed. I'm not suggesting that they're lying about that, but even there, they're saying, like, look, I promise you, we read the files, he killed himself. So then my question is, well, why can't we read those files?
- [51:32]
Tucker Carlson
Well, that is my. That is my question too. And I would just say, in the case of Bongino, I know Cash Patel, but I'm not like a friend of Cash Patel's. I'm a friend of Bongino's. And I do think that will come out. But I think big picture, doj is making a huge mistake, huge mistake in promising to reveal things and then not revealing them. And that gives the whole country a kind of moral blue balls at that point. And it's bad, it's really bad. Like it's going to, it's going to cause a lot of hate. And second, I think that we underestimate the physical threat that people in Washington face. It's always like blackmail or ideological affinity that gets. No, people are afraid of getting hurt. I do think that's a comp. I mean, I know that's a component here.
- [52:14]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean political assassination, political murder has been going on for as long as politics have. And the JFK case is an example of the President, United States having his head blown off.
- [52:24]
Tucker Carlson
Exactly, exactly. And you think that that's not ever present or constantly present in the minds of people in Washington. They killed the President, got away with it for over 60 years. So like, clearly there are forces that are above justice.
- [52:39]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh no, don't worry. Lee Harvey Oswald was killed and Jack Ruby went to prison. Jack Ruby.
- [52:44]
Tucker Carlson
The whole story is Jack Ruby, by the way. The whole story is Jack Ruby.
- [52:47]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, he just walked up to the person they had 100, shot him in the stomach and there's no evidence.
- [52:54]
Tucker Carlson
He even liked the Kennedys. There's zero evidence. He never campaigned for them, never gave them money. There's not one person who's ever come forward to say, you know, Jack Ruby was passionately attached to jfk. Not one person.
- [53:05]
Glenn Greenwald
Right.
- [53:05]
Tucker Carlson
So like, what was the motive there? He was clearly sent there to silence Lee Harvey Oswald. So by whom is the obvious question. There are very serious indications by whom, but whatever. I don't know. But I don't know why everyone spends all this time on Lee Harvey Oswald when the key to the story is so clearly Jack Ruby.
- [53:26]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I mean this is, I think we are so indoctrinated to believe that this sort of thing happens in other countries. Like how much. Think about how much we've heard, for example, about Putin and Albani.
- [53:37]
Tucker Carlson
Right.
- [53:38]
Glenn Greenwald
And we're all supposed to like obsess on the idea that in Russia, you know, if you get too much influence, you become too much of a threat to somebody, you get killed or imprisoned.
- [53:46]
Tucker Carlson
The funny thing is Putin didn't even kill Navalny.
- [53:49]
Glenn Greenwald
I think everybody, the CIA says that. So like, exactly. There's no. Yeah, exactly. After months, of course, an obvious thing.
- [53:57]
Tucker Carlson
I got blamed for his murder. I was in Russia when he died.
- [53:59]
Glenn Greenwald
It was, I remember that timing. You were going to go, you had your big Putin interview And then, like, two days earlier, Putin. Putin killed Navani. And you were, like, there with Putin. No, but that's a big part of how that propaganda works. You know, I grew up thinking that, like, these kind of bad things happen. They just don't happen in our country.
- [54:17]
Tucker Carlson
It must be cool to live. You live outside the country, famously, where, you know, you're a foreigner living in a country. You've been a long time. You speak the language, you're engaged in the politics, so you're, like, part of it, but you're also from the United States, so you're not coming at it with that baggage. You can see. You're just, like. You don't lie to yourself about what it is.
- [54:36]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I do think. I think one of the great. One of the things which. For which I'm most grateful is that I was never embedded in the D.C. political and media scene. And obviously, you removed yourself from it, which is why we're here and not in Georgetown.
- [54:51]
Tucker Carlson
It didn't help me being a part of that at all.
- [54:55]
Glenn Greenwald
I'll tell you, there's a. I've had a friendly relationship with Alex Thompson for a while. I've been, you know, joke. Jake Tapper's co author in that book.
- [55:05]
Tucker Carlson
Former political reporter.
- [55:07]
Glenn Greenwald
Yes. Who now works at Axios.
- [55:08]
Tucker Carlson
Yep.
- [55:09]
Glenn Greenwald
And I've been very aggressive about praising him, like, going back two years when he was one of the only ones working for these news outlets who was on the story of Biden's cognitive decline, getting mauled and attacked by the entire Democratic Party. I was often praising him and defending him. You know, I mean, I wouldn't say we're great friends, but, you know, he, like, sent me a copy of the book with very nice words. And so when I go to attack Jake Tapper, which is essentially attacking that book, of course, there's a part of my brain that, like, you know, thinks about, like, wait, what is that going to do to my relationship with Alex Thompson? And then you have to be like, I don't care. But if that is your light, you know, because, I mean, Alex Thompson is not, like, an important close friend of mine. But, like, if you live in Washington and your whole social scene is integrated into that is why there's no adversarial relationship between the media, you know? Funny. So funny. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson were on that shitty PBS show that is now hosted by Jeffrey Goldberg. So can you imagine?
- [56:09]
Tucker Carlson
Jeffrey Goldberg is a PBS show.
- [56:10]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. It's like the Week in Washington.
- [56:12]
Tucker Carlson
Jeffrey Goldberg hosts a TV show.
- [56:14]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. A pbs, like, the week in Washington.
- [56:16]
Tucker Carlson
Just like, it's the most.
- [56:17]
Glenn Greenwald
I know, I know. You can't find anyone less telegenic. But anyway, he is the. The person sits there like, anyway, Jeffrey Goldberg was defending the media, saying, like, I think it's outrageous that we're being blamed for this whole thing with Biden and cognitive decline when there was nothing we could do. And so at the end, he said to Jake Tapper, like, what is the lesson that we have to take from all this? And Jake Tapper was cut very serious. He, like, furred his brow, but he only, like, looked down at the table because he just.
- [56:43]
Tucker Carlson
Just.
- [56:43]
Glenn Greenwald
It was a very weird thing. Like, he's just kind of, you know, he's on television every day. You know, you look up, you talk to people, you engage. He was, like, looking down. He had his head bowed like the face of somebody who has a PR crisis firm. And he said, what I have realized is that you cannot trust what people in power tell you. People in power lie. And when they tell you things, you have to take it with skepticism. You cannot take it on face value. So Jake Tapper, at 56 years old, after 30 years of working in journalism, has discovered, what if I were to teach college freshmen a class on journalism would be the thing that I would say on the first day about what the job is, right? Like, why it's important to have journalism. Because people in power lie to keep their power. And this is something that. That now that Trump's in office, they've suddenly discovered as an important thing to do, to be adversarial to people in power. And I think that is in their mind, like, there is an element of truth to their revisionist history that makes them the victim. Like, they are friends with Mike Donnellin and, like, Anita Dunn. Their kids go to school, their same schools. They live in the same neighborhoods. They intermarry. You know, like, half these couples are like, one media, one in politics. And then the robbing door, they constantly switch, and they're at lobbyist firms together. Washington is like, you know, Versailles. And so it's impossible to be adversarial.
- [58:12]
Tucker Carlson
Man, we had dinner without naming names, but with a journalist last night, you and I did here, who I don't. I never met before. Nice guy, actually, but from D.C. grew up two blocks from me. Mother went to the same school that I did. He went to the same schools as everyone I know. I mean, it's like, if you're from there, you are connected to every other person who's from there. Of course, it's but like to a much greater extent than people understand just physically.
- [58:39]
Glenn Greenwald
Yes, it's like the British court, like totally incestuous.
- [58:42]
Tucker Carlson
It's unbelievable.
- [58:42]
Glenn Greenwald
But you know, this is what I think, I think a lot of times, you know, because I've been a very harsh critic of media corporations and the like, people, you know, ask me like, when did this change or whatever. And I like, there's always been a lot of closeness between the, the, the media and it's supposed heyday in the 50s with like, with Murrow and Cronkite and all that. But, but you know, they were, you look at Time magazine and New York Times, they were outposts for US propaganda on foreign policy during the Cold War. But I think, you know, there was a long time when journalism was considered this like working class, you know, outsider profession. And the people who went into it didn't want to be like wearing Armani suits and you know, going to dinner at the White House and with like B list celebrities. They were just like, you know, working class guys who just wanted to like throw rocks at power. That was their personality. That's why they went into journalism. And of course going back even further, like the First Amendment says, you know, all Americans enjoy freedom of the press. It's. There was no such thing as like this secret priesthood of called journalists, like professional. The press was literally the printing press that everybody could use and everybody did use. You'd not to be a journalist to use it. It was just a means of expressing and disrupting and informing and organizing and that's what they protected. And as huge corporations started buying media outlets, you know, like Westinghouse buys CBS and it's owned by Biocom or Disney now owns abc, that sort of thing. The corporatization of mainstream media, if you think about the kind of attributes that are required to succeed in large corporations, it's never being disruptive to anybody who has authority. It's conformity. It's you know, just sort of being a good soldier for people in power, which is the exact opposite attributes that make a good journalist. And the incentive schemes that journalists are now encouraged to follow to rise within media are the kind of people who worship power, who are, who are obedient to it.
- [60:50]
Tucker Carlson
Exactly.
- [60:50]
Glenn Greenwald
And that to me has become the most fundamentally wrought apart. And that's why, you know, what inspired me to get in journalism like the blogosphere of like the early 2000s, which are like just all these angry people on the right and left, like hating the media, no credentials, but like seeing things that they weren't seeing, you know, hating the Bush administration, but either from the right or from the left hating the mainstream media, same thing. And it like, you start realizing like, wow, like this mainstream media and politics is like a tiny little like Obama once described it as, you know, like, well, like John Boehner is supposed to call me a communist, but you know, everyone knows the reality is we just fight within the 40 yard line. It's like we're basically on the same team. We just. 40 yard line. And you realize there's this whole other space and way of looking at things. And it was really the Internet that gave rise to it, which is why the Internet is. And controlling it and censoring it is the thing that is on the top of their agenda because it's the biggest threat to them.
- [61:40]
Tucker Carlson
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- [62:11]
Glenn Greenwald
People buy it because it works.
- [62:13]
Tucker Carlson
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- [63:08]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, I think it's just like I think.
- [63:11]
Tucker Carlson
Which wouldn't be shocking if you were in any other business. But I don't think I know a single other person. I don't think I know a single other person in our generation in media who can say that.
- [63:21]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I think like I do. I mean, Richard Nixon had this as well. This. You know, I think Trump has It to an extent, too, even though, like, Trump grew up very wealthy, but it was like, outer borough, outer borough wealth, which is not looked upon kindly by, like, old money in Manhattan at all. And then he comes into Manhattan and started building gigantic buildings and being all, like, flashy about it, you know, and so he understood that he was looked down upon by those people. Same with Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon always knew that, like, the intelligentsia on the east coast hated him, thought he was disgusting. And I think if you grow up feeling excluded from certain kind of power centers, there's always going to be a kind of resentment that you have toward it. And I suppose in some way that could lead to, like, a desperation to be integrated into it. But I think more often than not, and certainly in my case, it made me want to, like, deconstruct it and show, like, the facade that they use to glorify themselves, but the dirt and filth that really lay underneath. And I think that kind of distance really helps with clarity of vision.
- [64:22]
Tucker Carlson
I totally agree. And traveling, you were saying last night that you think that traveling is one of the most expanding things you can do.
- [64:31]
Glenn Greenwald
I had this. I did that interview with Alexander Dugan, and I know you've interviewed him, too, and I know we're all supposed to hate him and he's a fascist, whatever, but one of the reasons I really loved him is he's a philosopher. When I say I loved him, I mean I love talking to him. He's a philosopher. And I, like, that was. I know I sometimes I studied philosophy in college. It was my obsession. I wanted to teach philosophy. I ended up being more practical in law school, but thinking about, you know, things in, like, terms of their first principles and, like, always needing a, like, rationale or a logical train that gets you from the start of your question to the end of whatever answer you think you've embraced is very important to me. And just thinking about, you know, like, not being reflexive. So one of the things he said to me was, he said, you know, I'm always accused of being, like, a racist or a white supremacist because I'm so devoted to preserving Russian culture and Russian civilization. And he said, actually, the biggest racist by far are Western liberals because they believe that their way of being is so superior that every single other culture should give way to adapting itself to their way of life. Like, the whole world should be homogenized in their vision because they're inherently superior. Like, they find a tribe, some ancient tribe, and they want to immediately, like, mold it into, like, Washington, neoliberals. And what he was saying was, like, what makes the world valuable and interesting and ultimately, like, the way you advance and think about things is that you have all these different traditions, all these different civilizations, like Russian civilization and Chinese civilization and Muslim civilization and, you know, Western civilization. And preserving those is what ensures that we have this diversity of thought and everything.
- [66:15]
Tucker Carlson
It's like a seed bank.
- [66:16]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. Everything contributes something.
- [66:17]
Tucker Carlson
Exactly.
- [66:18]
Glenn Greenwald
And so you are constantly told, and maybe this is universal when you grow up in a society that your way of life is. You know, we're always told, like, the United States is the greatest country ever to exist in the whole history of the world. Like, what a great coincidence for me that I was born in, like, the objectively greatest country to ever be on the planet. Not just now, but all of human history. And there are some parts of the United States that I know, I love and I think are very uniquely valuable. For sure. But the more you get to know other types of ways of thinking and you have this experience, like some neighbor has a politics different than yours, and you think they're crazy, and then you go and talk to them and you understand them better.
- [66:55]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [66:56]
Glenn Greenwald
And then that makes you be more open to ways of looking at things that. That, to me is what, you know, like intellectual vibrancy is, is going to places that you don't understand, hearing ideas that you were taught to believe are crazy or evil or wrong. And then, you know, when you talk to the human beings who believe them, you understand that they actually have as much conviction about it or as much rationale for it as you do for yours.
- [67:21]
Tucker Carlson
I just think that's a beautiful sentiment, and thank you for saying it. So what you're really arguing for is diversity.
- [67:27]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, like diversity. Like, not the kind that, you know, we've been told is diversity, where everyone thinks the same thing, but, like, they have surface level diversity. The.
- [67:35]
Tucker Carlson
The Indian guy, the guy and the white lady all went to Princeton, and they're diverse.
- [67:39]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I remember this initiative where we wanted to diversify our newsroom at the Intercept. And so we hired, like, a black Harvard student whose parents were partners at Goldman Sachs, and then like, a Latino person who went to Yale and their partners were at JP Morgan. And then like, you know, and that was like, diversity. Like everything, but like working class diversity or experiential diversity. You know, the most, like, superficial kind, the most easily accommodated kind.
- [68:03]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, yeah, I do know. Very much. So what did you think? So you interviewed Dugan in Russia, in Moscow. What did you think of it? When was the last time you were there?
- [68:13]
Glenn Greenwald
I had been several times because I visited Snowden and, you know, we. In Citizen 4, the. One of the last scene of Citizen 4, the film that was made about the Snowden. Our. Our work with Snowden that won the Oscar that Laura Po just directed, was her and myself going to. To Russia to interview Snowden about like, a next sort of story.
- [68:34]
Tucker Carlson
Imagine. Pardon? Interrupt. Imagine a Snowden film winning an Oscar.
- [68:38]
Glenn Greenwald
Now, I mean, at the time, it was. We were. We. When we started winning the all the awards and we did the whole, like, award circuit and we started winning, we were very shocked. And at the time, I remember after they announced Citizen 4 is the winner of the Oscars, it was Neil Patrick Harris who was the host of the Oscars. We'd gone on stage and got an award. And he then said Edward Snowden wanted to be here, but he was unable to. For some sort of treason, you know, like playing. Doing a word play on reason, but like, with the word treason. And it's like, you idiots, like you're Hollywood, you went through, like, the McCarthy era. You went through all these things that you claim.
- [69:23]
Tucker Carlson
Well, he was told to say that was.
- [69:25]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, of course, it was part of the script. Script. But it was a very. You know, war is a brilliant filmmaker. And I think the. It won because of the quality of the film, like in the drama inherent in the story, not because the politics of it were that we were exposing spying programs developed under President Obama, largely, almost entirely. But as you're so right, this was before Russiagate. This was before, you know, where anything connected to Russia was considered.
- [69:49]
Tucker Carlson
Like, no chance. You wouldn't even get it here. I don't think it would even. Yeah, they wouldn't even consider it right at this point. So you'd been to Moscow before, but you were just there this winter, this spring?
- [69:59]
Glenn Greenwald
Just. Yeah, a few months ago, two, three months ago.
- [70:00]
Tucker Carlson
What'd you think?
- [70:02]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, I mean, you know, we talked about this before, but, like, I remember the first time I ever went to Russia, I was so shocked by the immense disparity between what I had been taught to think was what Russia was like and what I was seeing in front of my own eyes. And, you know, you can go anywhere. And like, you know, people come to Brazil, to Rio de Janeiro, and they only go to the richest neighborhoods and they're like, oh, it's. But, you know, there's a whole undergirding of misery and suffering that you don't see because you don't go there. So I'M very cognizant of that. Right. You can't go to a country and spend like two days there and be shown the best parts and think like, oh, wow. Nonetheless, it's not only beautiful, it's extremely well run. It's clean. But the thing that, you know, that I felt like, think was most present was the, the richness of Russian history and culture and tradition. I mean, this is a civilization that has been around for, you know, thousands of years and that has produced the highest in like literature and music and dance and architecture and I mean, it. And has been through like, wars of, of like, like the most difficult kind. And, and you just feel the heaviness of all of that. Like the, the, the, the. The great it. And obviously I understand that there's political repression there. I understand that there's a huge, all kinds of social problems. I'm not denying any of that. That's true everywhere, right? Pretty much. But you understand why Russians have this immense pride in their country and in their civilization. And so it didn't feel like a.
- [71:40]
Tucker Carlson
Gas station with nuclear weapons, as McCain said.
- [71:43]
Glenn Greenwald
Exactly. Right, right.
- [71:44]
Tucker Carlson
I mean, has there ever been an uglier thing that any politician? Just a dumber. I mean, and McCain was dumb. I knew him very well. Low IQ, totally WASP. Hate to say that, but it's true. With good qualities. He had good qualities, but he was an idiot. But to say something like that out loud is like, there's just, I don't know, like, if you're an idiot, keep it to yourself. A gas station with nuclear weapons. I was just.
- [72:11]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, whatever. Yeah, I mean, that's what I mean. Like you, you know, you're taught in college even like the greatest literature is like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who are the greatest novelists ever. And, you know.
- [72:21]
Tucker Carlson
Which is true.
- [72:22]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh, I mean, undoubtedly. And also just the history, like the role they played in World War II and like the Bolshevik Revolution and the, you know, the wars of the 17th and 18th centuries and the, and you know, the, like Moscow itself and St. Petersburg even more so, are so, you know, beautiful and striking, overwhelming. Like in a way that, like the best Western European cities are, you know, like the history of it, the, the grandness of it. And so, yeah, I mean, that you have to go see things for yourself and you start realizing how much you're con. How much, you know, that this, this, like when I started writing about politics. I'll just tell you this quick story. I never intended to be a journalist. I didn't go to School for journalism. That was not part of my, my life plan in any way. It was just after 9 11, you know, as I saw these radical changes like to our civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism, but also just the climate became so oppressive in terms of what you could question, what you could say. That's when I started feeling a need to want to say things that I felt like weren't being said. And when I started doing that more or less full time, it gave me the luxury of going and looking at things so that I wasn't being told by the New York Times what a document said. I was able to go spend the three hours to read the document. And when you go and do that, you have the like luxury of that time, which most people don't have. They're taking care of their kids, they're working, et cetera. You can't fight propaganda if you don't, you know, have the resources to do it. Especially time I started realizing how many things I had believed. And I like a, you know, high opinion of my intellect. I thought I was like a high end political consumer. You know, I like lived in New York. I like went to good schools. In many ways that makes it worse, not better.
- [74:11]
Tucker Carlson
I have learned that. Yeah.
- [74:12]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah. And so, you know, just going back and I basically decided I had to dismantle almost everything because so much of it was just ingested through no critical faculty.
- [74:24]
Tucker Carlson
Why would you want to dismantle your assumptions? I mean, that's such a painful process.
- [74:28]
Glenn Greenwald
It sucks.
- [74:30]
Tucker Carlson
But why would you want that? Why wouldn't you just say, you know, I believe what I believe and that's it.
- [74:33]
Glenn Greenwald
Like I decided in college this is right. Right. This is like right after 911 and the war in terror, like the Iraq war, which everybody was kind of like, wait, what just happened? We like just went and did this massive land war, this invasion on the other side of the country. A country that had nothing to do with 911 because we were told they were somehow responsible based on nuclear weapons and chemical weapons they actually didn't have. Like everybody at that point point more or less was starting to question. And you know, you feel angry and betrayed when inside your brain you're led to believe things that are just false.
- [75:09]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [75:10]
Glenn Greenwald
And you want to expunge it from yourself. You want to cleanse yourself of that.
- [75:15]
Tucker Carlson
I, I think that's a virtuous response.
- [75:19]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, I think you've done that. That has been.
- [75:20]
Tucker Carlson
I have. It took a little longer, but yeah. And it was because you were so.
- [75:24]
Glenn Greenwald
Much more immersive a little more painful.
- [75:26]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, it was right in the middle of it. But. But a lot of people, you know, didn't do. I just want to call to the attention of listeners how rare what you did was. And that process of a self examination which is the root of wisdom is. Is unusual. People just don't want to deal with it.
- [75:41]
Glenn Greenwald
Like Jake Tapper saying, I look upon my. Some of my coverage with humility. Like that fake kind of like.
- [75:48]
Tucker Carlson
Well, there's really nothing more galling than fake humility. I mean that's the.
- [75:51]
Glenn Greenwald
That's like metaphysical, scripted, scripted, fake humility.
- [75:55]
Tucker Carlson
Because like the one thing you hope is real is humility, but it's not. So I got to ask you about something. So because of AI, I'm a little suspicious of things I see on the Internet because is it. Could that really be real? So someone sent this to me the other day. This is a person who I confirmed is a real person. I didn't believe it at first. Congressman Randy Fine of Florida. And he said this the other day on Fox News last week, quote, in World War II, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis. We did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese. We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here in Gaza. There is something deeply wrong with this culture and it needs to be defeated. So we're going to nuke Gaza because of its culture. We're going to kill everybody because we don't like the culture. Which by the way, lots of Christians in Gaza, Muslims in Gaza, just innocent.
- [76:50]
Glenn Greenwald
People in Gaza of all kinds, of course.
- [76:52]
Tucker Carlson
But like to say there's some like Gazan culture that's cohesive. It's like, what? But we're gonna kill them all because we don't like their culture. And so I didn't believe that was real. I didn't really think he was a member of Congress. I texted him.
- [77:06]
Glenn Greenwald
He's newly elected. Like in the last he filled. Matt, I think Mike. It was Mike Walter. Matt Gage's seat. One or the other.
- [77:12]
Tucker Carlson
It was waltz.
- [77:13]
Glenn Greenwald
Waltz.
- [77:13]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah. So I texted a friend of mine in Congress. Is this really a member of Congress? Yes. It's like, I don't even know what to say to that. But that first of all, it's evil. But how can you say something like that and not get expelled from Congress or the Republican. How can that person be a member of the Republican Party? I don't understand.
- [77:28]
Glenn Greenwald
So let me say two things about that. And yes, Randy Fine is very real. I've been watching him for a while now, ever since Trump endorsed him as this America first candidate. He had served in the Florida. The Senate, in the Florida legislature, maybe the Florida House, but one of those two bodies, he was. So he was a member of the Florida. Hates DeSantis. Hates him. He hates DeSantis. He, like, has a feud with DeSantis. And his entire political existence is centered around a foreign country, which is Israel, not the United States. He barely ever talks about the United States.
- [78:03]
Tucker Carlson
So that's America first, right?
- [78:04]
Glenn Greenwald
America first. So. So let me just say two things. One is this broader point, and then I want to get the more point, more important one. I started noticing this in like 2006, 2007. And I know you hear this all the time. World War II was one of the worst things that has ever happened to humanity. And the reason it happened was because you had these massive military powers with these new technologies that had never previously been used in war, engaged in mass destruction, and a madman who was leading and had started the war for all kinds of reasons. And you had the world's most powerful factions throughout the world destroying each other in the most inhumane way, to the point where we not only use nuclear weapons, but after the war was over, we decided we never wanted to have a war like that again. We, we imposed by convention, we agreed to all sorts of limits through the Geneva Convention and all these other treaties and conventions, ways to make sure that what happened World War II never happens again. The people who got blamed for it, it was a form of Victor's justice at Nuremberg, were put to death. But at the same time the Nuremberg trial, the judges and prosecutors said the only way the principles that we're pronouncing here at the Nuremberg trials will have any value as anything other than Victor's justice is if the principles we're enunciating apply to all countries in the future, including the country's presiding over the tribunal. It was meant to enunciate universal principles that all countries agreed to on Earth because it was so inhumane. Like, it just stripped everybody of their humanity. And yet. So every time we have a new war, where someone wants to sell a new war in the United States, the only historical framework that they'll use, as if they only studied one thing in, in high school and college, like, the only thing they know is World War II. And either you're on the side, nothing about World War II, no, but they know all they. The Wikipedia version, Churchill is good because he went and fought, and Chamberlain is Bad because he tried to use diplomacy. I wrote an article about this when like 6 months after I started writing about politics in 2006, how everything was had like superimposed on it was the. The framework of World War II. And you are either Churchill or Chamberlain and you choose one or the other. And neocons to this very day, by which I mean people who always want the United States to go to war in the Middle east and elsewhere. The minute you say you're not interested in war, you're Chamberlain. And the minute that you want to go to war, you're heroic Churchill. And so the idea that because we use nuclear weapons against Japan, Imperial Japan, filled with enormous amounts of skill and money and know how, and a massive military force allied with Nazi Germany, one of the most industrialized military forces ever, that because we ended the war with nuclear weapons, then we're supposed to now use it on a completely defenseless population of 2 million people, half of whom are children, who have no army of any kind, can't even break out of Gaza, let alone threaten any other country in the world, is absolutely demented. But that is one of the core war propaganda themes that are always used is everything is World War II. And that's the only word that we can reference. Even though at the time the idea was we have to prevent all this from ever happening again, then they want to replicate it eternally.
- [81:27]
Tucker Carlson
But I don't know that I can support a party with someone like Randy. I don't understand. Like, how could someone. Randy Fine, I mean, that's so disgusting.
- [81:36]
Glenn Greenwald
It's demented. It's, it's. That is, that is. That is psychotic to say that.
- [81:40]
Tucker Carlson
Does anyone say that? But about Randy Fine.
- [81:43]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, here's. I think, I think Randy Fine is such an important. Despite his. How repulsive he is ethically, morally and physically, despite that, I think he's a very important instrument for looking at this radical contradiction within the Republican Party and especially the. The America first movement. So Donald Trump, and obviously there were a lot of Republicans who wanted to run for that Mike Walt seat and for the Matt Gates seat, and whoever Trump endorses is essentially guaranteed to be the winner. And he endorsed Randy Fine and said, Randy Fine is all America First. And I remember the day that that happened, thinking, Randy Fine actually is not even concerned about America, let alone placing it first. His entire political existence is driven by loyalty to a foreign country. Everything for him is Israel. Everything. And to, to like, even to an extent that is very severe for a Congress that in general prioritizes Israel to a shocking amount. I can't think of a foreign country that is as important to as Israel is to the United States, that has any other kind of foreign country placing its interest on par with, if not above it. And so here you have a member of the Republican Party who identifies as America first, who Donald Trump endorses, a member of America first and whose loyalty is to a foreign country who wants to have the American worker fund that foreign country, wants the American worker to pay for their military, give $4 billion automatically every year in a deal negotiated by Obama and Netanyahu and when Obama was on his way out. And every time Israel wants to have a new war, we send them whatever they want, billions more. We feed them all these weapons paid for by the American taxpayer. We isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. We block every UN resolution that the entire world supports in order to tie ourselves to Israel. We lose our own standing, our own soft power, our own imagery in the world. We lose massive amounts of money. All sorts of people have said that the reason we have. There's so much anti American hatred in the Middle east, the reason why people want to attack our country, the reason why we can't get things done in the Middle East, a region where we have a lot of interest, is because of the hatred for the United States driven primarily by our standing behind and doing everything well.
- [84:04]
Tucker Carlson
Said that in his manifesto. He spelled it out.
- [84:07]
Glenn Greenwald
I just. Can we just talk one second about the fact that bin Laden wrote a note to the American people explaining why Al Qaeda was driven to attack the United States. And there were some religious references, obviously, because Al Qaeda is a nominally religious organization. But overwhelmingly, he listed very specific grievances with American foreign policy, all having to do with the fact that we. We constantly interfere in that region. We place military bases on sacred Saudi soil. We impose a sanctions regime on Iraq for years that killed 500,000 Iraqi children that Madeline Albright said was worth it. We overthrow their leaders and impose the ones that we want that then serve the interests of the United States and Israel and we fund and arm Israel to repress and kill Palestinians. And he said that it's not that you're some country that's just sitting there peacefully and that never bothers us. And we decided, hey, look over there. They let their women wear bikinis, so we better go and attack them right? Like we were attacked for our freedom. So he writes this letter. I remember the letter at the time. He was interviewed by Al Jazeera and previously by. By the New Yorker. So we Got to hear from Osama bin Laden. Although right after 9 11, the US government told media outlets, do not broadcast any speeches or interviews with Osama bin Laden. And their reasoning was, we're concerned that he may have embedded within his speech some sort of secret code that will activate sleeper cells inside the United States. Like he was going to blink Morse code or like, like have secret phrases and then people inside the United States would hear it. So they told abc, cbs, NBC, fox, cnn, do not air any interviews with bin Laden. When of course it was because they didn't want Americans to hear from bin Laden why there was so much anti American sentiment. It was because of our interference in the Middle east in general and our support for Israel in particular. They were selling this lie that it was because we're free and they hate our freedom. There are a lot of countries that are free, like Brazil. Women walk around in bikinis, they have elections. Al Qaeda has never attacked Brazil or Japan or South Korea or Norway. And bin Laden was explaining why there's so many Muslims in that region who hate the United States. But the United States government didn't want anyone to hear it 20 years later, while October 7th happened and we're supporting this ethnic cleansing and I would call it now a genocide as well, in Gaza. That's what moves genocidal experts, including Israelis and Jewish ones, call it. It's hard to say anything else, but whatever. In the middle of all that, a bunch of young people who were told the history of 911 that the US government wanted everyone to believe discovered the bin Laden letter because it was on the Guardian's website. Because the Guardian's a British newspaper. It was not, no, no, no American news outlet, despite its historical importance. And they started passing it around on TikTok and saying, oh, wow, I never knew any of this. I never understood that one of the reasons why these people attacked us was because we are so monomaniacally devoted to Israel and why that we're constantly interfering in that region, bombing them, sanctions, overthrowing their government, overthrowing their leaders. What? Of course people are going to get angry at us and want to attack back. And the minute that letter started to become well read by the American people who were, you know, primarily younger, the US Government went ballistic and demanded that TikTok ban it. The Guardian, a news outlet, immediately took the letter off their website so nobody could read it any longer. All those links that people were posting on Tick Tock to Go read that letter would no longer work. And then Tick Tock immediately, under pressure from the US government, which was obviously already threatened to close TikTok and ban it from the United States anyway, started banning all the hashtags. Bin Laden letter you could not anymore read or find. I mean, this is like the stuff we're taught that the Soviets did, right? Like hiding letters, hiding documents, erasing history. And I continued to be shocked by that, by that event that everybody thought that that was fine. To take a letter that is of great historical importance.
- [88:30]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [88:30]
Glenn Greenwald
Ex. From the person that, that is alleged to have been responsible for the single worst attack on American soil, maybe on par with Pearl harbor, but in terms of like a single day casualty count. Explaining from his perspective why he did it. Like you want to hear from your enemy, right? Like you want to understand like what they're.
- [88:47]
Tucker Carlson
I want all relevant information and I'll decide for you.
- [88:50]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, yeah. You don't want people deciding for you what you can and can't read. Yeah. They were petrified that young Americans were going to hear the reasons proffered and they made that letter disappear.
- [89:03]
Tucker Carlson
Why would the Guardian, which is supposedly like this left wing British publication, like, why would they go along with that?
- [89:09]
Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian is very, you know, supportive of the Western establishment. The UK is aggressively supportive of Israel, always has been. Funds it with arms, does a lot of reconnaissance, fights over Gaza to feed the Israelis intelligence. And when that kind of pressure comes to bear, TikTok, a gigantic multi, multi billion dollar corporation, the Guardian, one of the oldest newspapers in the west, they fold in a second. Like they're no match for that kind of pressure. A pressure that said, we want that letter censored so Americans don't know about it, have never read it, don't hear from it. So they only hear from us. But. So, okay, so that was just a. I'm still amazed every time. I didn't mean to go into that because.
- [89:54]
Tucker Carlson
So why do you love Osama bin Laden so much?
- [89:57]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, of course that's. And then that I, I remember being shocked by it and saying like, how can, how can it possibly be the case that we're watching this? And it, it wasn't, there was no pretext to it, it was explicit. Like, we can't have people reading this, this is terrorist propaganda. And then. Exactly. If you stand up and say, no, I actually think people should be able to read that. And then they'll say like, oh, you're pro Al Qaeda, you want, want terrorist propaganda to be, to spread. I'm like, no, I just think adults should have all information that they want to have available to them and I don't think the government should be prohibiting certain information from. From being accessible.
- [90:35]
Tucker Carlson
Also, 3,000Americans were murdered that day. And I'm an American. I have an absolute right to know every. All available information about that. I don't understand by what. What's the justification for keeping that information from me, an American citizen who faithfully pays his taxes and obeys the laws that was born here?
- [90:51]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, you know, but that's it. But this is.
- [90:52]
Tucker Carlson
You can't do that.
- [90:53]
Glenn Greenwald
You. The 2022 invasion by the Russians into Ukraine. One of the first things the EU Parliament did is made it a crime to platform Russian state media. So if you wanted to say, you know what I want to hear from Russia, I want to understand, like, what Russia's argument is for doing this. You couldn't get it. I mean, you could. If you looked hard enough, you could. If you went to rumble, you could. That's why they're banned in France because they refused to remove RT and Sputnik. Think about what that says. Like, we want to make sure that we monopolize the flow of information that our citizenry gets, and nothing that disputes what we want them to believe can even be heard or available.
- [91:32]
Tucker Carlson
I went to Russia because it drove me. I had no interest really, in going to Russia, but it, It. I'm so grateful that I did, but it drove me so crazy that I wasn't allowed and that Americans were not allowed relevant information about what their government was doing.
- [91:45]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, Like, I want to hear from them what their perspective is. Like, maybe I'll walk away and think like. Like, oh, they're, they're, they're murderous, you know, imperialists who just want to consume their neighbor. Or, or maybe there's some other way of looking at things that I'm not permitted in the west to do.
- [92:00]
Tucker Carlson
You want to know what the truth is? And that's the whole point of living here, is I get to know what the truth is. I get to decide for myself what's true. And if you take that away, then why.
- [92:08]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, speaking of that, let me just finish this thing about Randy. Fine. If I could. Okay, so, yeah, so I, I, like in 2022 and 2023, there were a bunch of MAGA people who were opposed to the funding of the war in Ukraine and some non MAGA people too, like RFK Jr and I was obviously very opposed to it from the start. You were, too. I went on a show many times to talk about that, and I had a bunch of them on, like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And RFK Jr. A lot of them. And I, I always had this same plan. I would ask them, like, why are you opposed to having the US fund the war in Ukraine? Like, don't you want the US to stand up for Ukraine against Russia? And they would all say, this isn't our business. This is on the other side of the world. It doesn't affect my constituents. Our communities are falling apart. We have fentanyl addiction sweeping our communities. Nobody has jobs, nobody has healthcare. Our country is falling apart. We don't have the money to keep sending to foreign countries. And it's outrageous that we keep doing it. And they would be very passionate and very adamant. I would encourage them to keep developing that idea. And they would. And they would say all those things with which I completely agreed. And then my next question was always, do you apply the same rationale to the United States funding the Israeli military and Israeli society and Israeli wars? And they would all stutter to try and distinguish why it was that they had one view for Ukraine and a very compelling rationale, but then had to say, oh, no, Israel is different. To the point that RFK Jr. And I actually really appreciated this about him. When I kept pressing him about it, I said, you're saying we don't have money to put to fund foreign wars, that our country is falling apart. Why are we sending billions of dollars to Israel when Israelis have a higher standard of living than millions of American workers, than millions of American citizens? Why is the American worker forced to subsidize Israel? You said, we can't be doing that. We can't afford it. When you came to Ukraine, why doesn't it come? Why isn't the same applicable to isra? And he then finally said, you know what? I'm going to think about that. Maybe it is time for Israel to stand on its own. I was like, oh, you think so? This is the utterly irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of the America first movement, which is America first means we use our resources for ourselves. We build our military to defend our borders, to defend the American people. We use our resources to improve their lives materially, to build better roads and better schools and better communities, to offer the them addiction services and whatever else they need health care access. And we do not anymore use it for this globalist agenda of going around the world, giving it to other countries and funding other countries. That is the America first philosophy as Trump has articulated it and many people have articulated it for years. And the foreign policy of America first as well. Excellent. And then on the one the other hand, those same people, many are, are adamant that we have to fund Israel, we have to fund its military, we have to fund its wars, we have to subsidize society. We have to sacrifice our own interest to protect theirs. We have to put the lives of our service members in risk, have American citizens die in order to protect Israel and the wars that it starts with its neighbors. And there is no reconciling this. There is no way to take an America first ideology and make it consistent with this constant prioritization of Israeli interests, let alone what is now happening, which is the aggressive erosion of our free speech rights and core civil liberties guaranteed to us by the Constitution, not to protect our own government from criticism, but to protect this foreign country from criticism. And I do think there are people now starting to finally to understand that these two things cannot be maintained simultaneously.
- [95:58]
Tucker Carlson
It's going to blow up the Trump movement, I think. I don't think it needs to. I think there's a, you know, you could, you could pivot. But I agree just conceptually that those are irreconcilable goals.
- [96:11]
Glenn Greenwald
They're so blatantly irreconcilable. And of course, the proof in the pudding is going to be what happens with Iran. You know, I woke up today, I'm here, and I saw the New York Times. And the lead story on the front page of the New York Times is, Israel may attack Iran despite Trump's desire to reach a deal. And it's like, how can that even be possible? What do you mean? Israel might attack Iran despite Trump's desire to reach a deal. Their weapons came from the United States. We pay for the operation of those weapons. They can't attack Iran without some kind of military and logistical support from the United States. And who is Israel? That depends on the United States. That is a vassal state of the United States, supposedly. To say, we don't care what the President of the United States wants in his foreign policy, we're going to subvert it and undermine and blow it up and destroy it if we want to.
- [97:03]
Tucker Carlson
That's not the behavior of an ally. And I think that, you know, someone who's really tried to avoid this topic and bears no animus toward Israel, actually, like, a lot of Israelis talked to them the other day. But I think the idea that we're getting a lot out of this, our interests are being served is. Is not. Is clearly not true.
- [97:23]
Glenn Greenwald
It's the opposite.
- [97:25]
Tucker Carlson
Well, you know, there's. The Israeli government has had a relationship, a close relationship. With the Chinese Communist government for over 40 years. And there have been a lot of transfers of military technology from Israel to China, including transfers of American military technology to China. It's a fact. People lie about it, and it's not true. Well, it is true, actually, and I don't think that's widely known. I mean, the Chinese help operate the port of Haifa, one of the most beautiful ports in the world. Wonderful place, but, yeah, they're in the port of Haifa. So how is it that the main recipient of American support, both financial and moral and legal, and all the things that we have done for our closest allies by how is it that that country is materially supporting our main global adversary, a country really described by the Trump administration as an enemy? Okay. That's their posture toward, you know, China's an enemy and our military technology is going to Israel and then winding up in China. That's a fact. Like how? I don't think, again, I don't think most people know that. And I don't. I don't know even if people in the administration know that. I mean, some do. How can that. What is, what's the answer to that?
- [98:37]
Glenn Greenwald
MARK levine? Well, also, you know, there's this fascinating history, but because it's 30 years ago, a lot of people didn't live through it. People did, forgot about it. It's been whitewashed. But the last two presidents that tried to exert independence with respect to Israel and that told Israel, you cannot do this if you want to continue to receive our largesse, were Ronald Reagan and George. George H.W. bush. Ronald Reagan called the Israeli bombing of Lebanon a holocaust.
- [99:07]
Tucker Carlson
I know.
- [99:07]
Glenn Greenwald
And picked up the phone and ordered them to stop, and they did. And then withdrew the military barracks.
- [99:12]
Tucker Carlson
1982.
- [99:13]
Glenn Greenwald
Exactly. George H.W. bush.
- [99:16]
Tucker Carlson
And then our Marine barracks were bombed a year later.
- [99:19]
Glenn Greenwald
But then he didn't go to war, as they were demanding he did with Iran. Whoever they, he said, why are we even there?
- [99:25]
Tucker Carlson
But how did our American, I mean, whatever, without getting into this, but, like, did anyone know that the bombing was coming? Is it possible that information, intel about that bombing was withheld from the United States?
- [99:35]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, the Israelis do have a lot of their neighbors under extremely heavy surveillance, as you imagine they would. But the other interesting thing was in the George H.W. bush administration, which was run by these kind of realists like that, of the kind, you know, that they didn't call it South America first, but the idea was we do foreign policy, not for benevolence to other countries. We don't rebuild Other countries, we prioritize American interests. People like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who were the key foreign policy figures in the Bush 41 administration, he was in the CIA, had a very similar foreign policy. And their argument was what American presidents have always said, which is that one of the worst threats to American national interests in the Middle east is the ongoing Palestinian Israeli conflict. And the expansion of Israeli settlements in the west bank was a direct threat to American interests. And James Baker said, as part of the State Department policy, if you continue to expand west bank settlements which prevent an Israeli Palestinian two state solution that harm our interests, we're going to cease giving you the loan guarantees that you desperately need. Why are we going to give you loan guarantees if you're directly harming one? What we keep telling you are our interest. And, and what happened was there was this massive smear campaign. You can go read it in any newspaper. Remember, it was led by Bill Clinton, who was preparing to run against George H.W. bush, calling the Bush administration anti Semite calling, suggesting that they were inflaming anti Semitism by disagreeing with Israel in public. And since then there has been President James Baker. I mean, I mean, this is like one of the most respected, you know, foreign policy operatives in the world. And I hated James Baker for a lot of what he believed at the time. I would have to probably go back and revise some of that and think.
- [101:24]
Tucker Carlson
About why, if only we had that now.
- [101:27]
Glenn Greenwald
But there was like 0, 0, 00 evidence that he harbored any animosity.
- [101:32]
Tucker Carlson
Well, there's also evidence that there are plans to commit violence against George H.W. bush, the president. Actually, that's been incredibly alleged. So whatever. No, of course, you're absolutely, what you're saying is absolutely right. And no one wants to deal with, with being slandered. And, and it is slander. It's not true. It's unfair. It's. It's a. Actually pretty over the top.
- [101:54]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, the irony of it, Tucker, you're.
- [101:56]
Tucker Carlson
Transferring American military technology, China, if they're operating, at least in part the port of Haifa, we're supporting you. You, you have to explain that right away or else we're going to stop all aid because why would we want to be supporting. Why would we want to be helping the transfer of American military technology to China? Okay, so what the hell is going on?
- [102:14]
Glenn Greenwald
So what's the, what is the answer to why the Trump administration, given their.
- [102:19]
Tucker Carlson
Views of China, doesn't I think that the first step. Well, I'll just say my position is probably different from yours. But, like, I'm not against Israel.
- [102:28]
Glenn Greenwald
Israel.
- [102:28]
Tucker Carlson
I like Israel. Like, going there like the Israelis, nice people. I'm not, you know, don't seek any kind of argument. I'm not anti Israel. But I think what America lacks, desperately lacks, and it's gotten to a point where it's dangerous for the country, is, like, an honest conversation about any of this stuff. And that's because certain ruthless actors, and it's coordinated online, like Attack everyone, is like a, you know, call them really hurtful names that affect your personal relationships when you raise these questions. But, like, someone needs to be brave enough to just say, let's have a rational conversation about our national interest. I don't think it's harder than that.
- [103:04]
Glenn Greenwald
But you know what the irony of it, the core irony of it is, the conservative critique or grievance about the American left over the past 20 years has been the minute you try and have an honest conversation about any kind of policy, you instantly get smeared as a racist, a misogynist.
- [103:22]
Tucker Carlson
Because of identity politics.
- [103:23]
Glenn Greenwald
Because of identity politics. I don't know.
- [103:26]
Tucker Carlson
And you may be suggesting that something like that's going on.
- [103:29]
Glenn Greenwald
It might be a little bit similar that the minute you, like, suggest a question or that or even a peep of criticism about Israel, you instantly are branded an anti Semite. It seems pretty similar to me to the tactics long used by the American left that the conservatives have been vocally complaining about for a long time.
- [103:45]
Tucker Carlson
That's. You know, Glenn, I would love to shout you down and say that's unfair, but it's not. That is true.
- [103:50]
Glenn Greenwald
Fair.
- [103:51]
Tucker Carlson
It's true. What you're saying is true. And it's. I agree. And it's, you know, shameful. So. But, you know, the choice is not between, like, being a Nazi or being Randy. Fine. The ch. You know, there is, like, a reasonable, sensible, rational course forward where our country, like every other country, makes its foreign policy decisions on the basis of what's best for its own citizens. That's like.
- [104:18]
Glenn Greenwald
Like, you can say, I don't think it serves our interest to keep the war in Ukraine going and paying for it without being a Kremlin agent.
- [104:24]
Tucker Carlson
Exactly. Or saying, I don't know, you know, how is it good that American military technology winds up in China or Pakistani fighters that they receive from China through Israel? Like, if that's true, and I think. I think there's a lot of evidence that it is true, like, how is that a good arrangement? And why is our greatest ally doing that to us? I don't Understand? I'm, like, really confused. Like, why don't you answer the question? And it's not enough to call me names. You should have to have an honest conversation about this. And I do think when that begins, like, healing begins. Things get better when people can be honest. I think.
- [105:01]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, but there's so many mechanisms. Like, we just. I. I just. I'm still every. I know I've talked about it so many times, but my mind always gets so blown when we talk about it again, talking about honesty and discourse. They ban the bin Laden letter. There's so many mechanisms designed to prevent, of course, any honest conversation from being held about all sorts of policies that people in power want to keep immune from questioning or challenge. Like, hey, why are we still in NATO? That's, to me, the thing that turned. That turned people against Trump and turned people in the establishment against Trump more than anything. We already talked about that. But, like, that's not supposed to be a questionable topic. Like, why are we still in NATO? And, like, oh, it's a defensive alliance, except, like, we bombed Serbia and, like, Yugoslavia with it, even though they weren't actually posing a threat to Western Europe and had nothing to do with the Soviet Union. Or, like, it went to war in Libya to remove Muammar Gaddafi because he wanted to start using Libyan oil more for, like, the benefit of Libya, people.
- [106:03]
Tucker Carlson
Okay, Glenn, if I could just say it's a defensive alliance. Okay.
- [106:06]
Glenn Greenwald
It was. Those were preemptive.
- [106:07]
Tucker Carlson
It's a defensive alliance. It's a defensive alliance. Not to be defensive.
- [106:12]
Glenn Greenwald
No, it's. Yeah.
- [106:13]
Tucker Carlson
No, I.
- [106:14]
Glenn Greenwald
Look, so there are all those mechanisms, including, like, calling people racist for a long time who wanted to raise issues about whatever.
- [106:21]
Tucker Carlson
Well, sure. I mean, I remember this in 1991 when I got into this business doing a story on Head Start. I've never been against Head Start as an idea. The original idea was, like, we're going to literally raise children's IQs through better nutrition and early childhood education. That is not a crazy idea. It didn't strike me as crazy at the time. And you start asking questions, well, does it work? I don't know. I'm supposed to help these kids. Is it helping them.
- [106:44]
Glenn Greenwald
Shut up. Racist.
- [106:45]
Tucker Carlson
Just, like, how was that? I was so confused, and I realized no one even remembers what Head Start is, but it was a very promising program in the minds of many that didn't work. But the point of calling you names was to continue doing things the way they'd always been done, because some people are benefiting from that.
- [107:02]
Glenn Greenwald
Exactly.
- [107:02]
Tucker Carlson
It had nothing to do with race. Just as I don't think this argument has anything necessarily to do with ethnicity or religion. It's just like, what's best for America.
- [107:12]
Glenn Greenwald
The protest movements on college campuses were, I don't want to say led by. Because that's maybe an exaggeration, but in many cases it's accurate. Definitely true, but in. Driven in large part by Jewish students vehemently opposed to the destruction of Gaza by Israel. So the idea that somehow it's anti Semitic to question either the Israeli destruction of Gaza or the US Financing of it when you have huge numbers of Jews on the streets every day marching in protest against it by itself should reveal how corrupted that that tactic is. And yet it's. It's just, it's so effective because it's instantaneous.
- [107:49]
Tucker Carlson
Right.
- [107:49]
Glenn Greenwald
No one wants to be called a racist. No one wants to be called an anti Semite.
- [107:52]
Tucker Carlson
No.
- [107:53]
Glenn Greenwald
And it is an effective tactic, at least. Like, it. It makes it so that you think, like, maybe it's just easier for me to keep my mouth shut about this and talk about something else.
- [108:01]
Tucker Carlson
I've always felt that way. It's way easier. I don't want to get involved in it. It's not worth it. I've got all kinds of concerns about my country, which really is kind of falling apart in key and measurable ways. Like, people are dying younger. I feel like that's something we should think a lot about and try and fix and everything. It's like, I don't want to get involved. And I do grieve when I see our public conversation hijacked by what I consider foreign concerns. Like both sides. Like, you know, you shut down midtown Manhattan because of some conflict thousands of miles away. It's like we.
- [108:31]
Glenn Greenwald
Except it's an American war, though.
- [108:33]
Tucker Carlson
Well, that is. That is it. But. But it's not just Israel. I mean, you. You see it all the time. You see people getting murdered in, like, the upper Midwest because of, like, there's a sick Hindu, you know, whatever, all that stuff. I just feel. I do feel like this country needs a lot of care and attention, and it's been neglected, and that's how I feel. So I. Or maybe that's how I justify staying out of it. I don't want to be involved in it.
- [108:56]
Glenn Greenwald
But you have kind of been a little bit more involved than it used to be. And I think. But also because what's going to destroy.
- [109:02]
Tucker Carlson
The MAGA movement, which I think is really important, it's, in a sense, not just about Trump. Of course I love Trump. I've said that many times. I have displayed it. I campaigned for Trump, and I'm glad that I did. But I feel like if there's one thing that could destroy this essential reform movement, it's like kind of our last chance to make government responsive to the people who own the government, which is the citizenry. This will destroy it.
- [109:27]
Glenn Greenwald
Because the massive contradiction sitting at the heart of it, not necessarily. Like, it's not all the stuff we talked about, but also free speech, free expression, not being punished for your views was also a vital part of this movement. I know. That's what. Why I found so much common ground with the American right and with the MAGA movement over the last 10 years, because of my vehement opposition to attempts to censor the Internet or introduce laws to characterize certain views as hate speech and therefore punishable. And that's exactly what has been done and is still being done.
- [109:55]
Tucker Carlson
I don't even believe it. Like, when I always liked DeSantis, I spent a lot of time in Florida. I was there for part of the pandemic. And. And I like DeSantis, that he's smart. You know, he's not a warm guy or anything. But I don't, you know, I'm not looking for new friends. I like, respect DeSantis. And he's very on it, on the details. Then he signs a hate speech law, travels to a foreign country to sign a hate speech law in Florida. And I was so confused. I didn't even think this was real. And I said to somebody, well, that was a hate speech. It's not a hate speech law. Law looks like a hate speech law. It looks like Sharia law, kind of a version of Sharia law in Florida.
- [110:31]
Glenn Greenwald
Shut up.
- [110:32]
Tucker Carlson
And no one said anything about it. And then, like, all the desantis people start attacking me for noting that I've never talked to DeSantis again on the basis of that. Like, I don't. What is that? How can you do that in the United States?
- [110:43]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, there's this attempt now to impose on colleges, require colleges to adopt, but also enact into American law this radical expansion of what anti Semitism means. Like, there's laws that say, here's what racism is, here's what, you know, xenophobia is. Here's what Islamophobia is, misogyny, whatever. To expand the definition of anti Semitism to include statements not only about Jewish people who should be subjected to critique. Like, you should be able to say, huh, that Ben Shapiro seems to care quite a lot about Israel, maybe even to the point that he cares about it more than the United States. You should be able to express that critique. So this expanded definition prohibits not only statements like that accusing any Jewish person of having greater oil. You can have you. I can say, oh, that person's Irish. He seems to really care a lot about Ireland more than the United States. Or that person is Indian. He really seems to care a lot about India, maybe even more. So you're allowed to say all that.
- [111:37]
Tucker Carlson
Or in my case, Swedish. I've been accused of dual loyalty many times.
- [111:41]
Glenn Greenwald
Oh, you're, you're really. Sweden is so annoying and like, very disturbing. But the other thing is, is you cannot say, for this is just one example. You cannot say Israel is a racist endeavor. You can say Iran is a racist endeavor. You can say Hamas is a racist endeavor. You can say the United States is a racist endeavor. You can say anything. You, you can be a student at a, at a school a month away from completing your PhD with a completely clean record, and you can write a not bad saying, I think America is a, a country of violence and imperialism and evil and was founded on racism. And you'll be totally fine. You write an op ed one tenth of those criticisms. But about Israel and ICE is coming to get you and to deport you. Why is that? Why is not just our free speech being limited, but being limited not even to protect our own society and our own government, but to protect a foreign government from critique? So this is the kind of thing that cannot be sustained by a movement that has certain values that it professes, that are being radically assaulted by this one single policy and loyalty toward this other country.
- [112:48]
Tucker Carlson
I could not agree more. I mean, it's in no matter. And I, and I do think, and I know people who, you know, love Israel and believe in the project, and it's fine. I have a million friends who, who believe that and that I'm not mad at them about it. But you could believe that and say America's founding documents, its Bill of Rights is sacrosanct. And under no circumstances should American citizens be stripped of their rights. Any circumstances, period. It doesn't matter whether it's in the service of a foreign nation or any service of anything. Like that's the whole point of America. Like, you could have that position, couldn't you?
- [113:24]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, there's the, the whole MAGA movement is about preserving American identity and American values. So what does that mean? It certainly has to include America's founding documents.
- [113:36]
Tucker Carlson
I don't know what else it would include. I don't know what else there is.
- [113:38]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. So if you cannot simultaneously say, want to be a movement that is devoted to preserving American identity and American values while at the same time permitting attacks on the core rights and the core founding ideals on which the entire country was founded.
- [113:55]
Tucker Carlson
Right, right. No, I couldn't agree more. I'm for all my really sustained efforts to just stay away from stuff I don't want to deal with. It upsets people. It's like, not my greatest interest in life. It's not even on the top 10. And I shouldn't have to care this much about a foreign country. That's kind of like my internal monologue on this question. I feel like it's being pushed to the point where it's in a. This whole species of news stories, ideas, developments, is a threat to, to our Bill of Rights, like you. And that has to be the point where you're like, no, stop. Right.
- [114:32]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, you know, I, I though I was said before that you go to other countries and you see all these values of other countries that you're told have none. But I also said, like, there are certain things about the United States that I consider uniquely valuable, and one of them is, you know, the stuff that I went and studied in law school, which I became incredibly enamored of and still am, which are like the Federalist Papers and the debates over, like, how to form this new government to prevent it from replicating the tyrannies of other governments, including the empire that they had just risked all of their lives to wage war from and gain independence from, and created these documents that to this very day continue to be our guiding principles. And the idea that we're going to permit the erosion of those for any reason is offensive to me. But to do so in defense of a foreign country on the other side of the world because they have so much influence in our politics, that is, I mean, that is just so offensive to me. I don't care what impact it has on my career. I don't care what people say about me. Like, that is something I will never stop talking about.
- [115:31]
Tucker Carlson
I agree, and I think it's not, it's not sustainable because as you said, it's. The contradiction is just too, it's just too obvious. And I, and, and last thing I'll say is not that it's like a top concern of mine or whatever, but I don't think it's great for Israel actually at all. I just, like, long term, this is not the way to play well, an.
- [115:46]
Glenn Greenwald
Israeli politician or actually a general just said, israel's on the way to becoming a pariah state.
- [115:51]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, that's not. I don't know how that helps. And you can't transfer American military technology to China. I just want to say that for the fifth time because I don't think most people know that that's happening, but it is. I want to ask you one last question. We had this, like, long and deep conversation off camera about what makes people happy. And there does seem to be, quite apart from politics or global affairs, like an epidemic of unhappiness, at least in the world that I live in.
- [116:23]
Glenn Greenwald
In the West.
- [116:24]
Tucker Carlson
In the west, just not, thank God, in my family. But everywhere else, people are really unhappy. It's measurable. Suicide rates, all that stuff. Where do you think? What is that?
- [116:33]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, first of all, there's a documentary that is on Netflix that I watched many years ago called Happiness, and it measures the rate of happiness in various places around the world. And it turns out that in some of the poorest countries in the world, the levels of happiness are at its highest. In some of the richest countries of the world, the rate of happiness is at its lowest. And in many of those poorest countries, they live in villages where they have their children around them all the time. Yes, they have extreme connectivity and connection to other human beings who live in their community. They live in a communitarian way. So they are constantly receiving one of the things, I might even say the greatest thing that constitutes human happiness, which is connection to other human beings. We are political and social animals. We can't survive isolated. You look at any people who have been put in sustained isolation, and they will say that there's nothing worse than that. John McCain talked about it all the time, that he was physically savage, but that that was nowhere near as, you know, as horrifying and terrorizing as the sustained isolation that he was kept in, where you have no human beings around to connect to or talk to or interact with. We need that. So fundamentally, and you look at how the west is now constructed, where people leave their house early in the morning, both couples, you know, both parts of a couple the children don't go run off to. So everybody's running off in different directions. When our parents get sick, we put them at homes. We don't, you know, when they get old that we put them at homes. We don't stay together as families anymore. And then when we work, we all go scatter far away, and we spend all day in cubicles. And then the worst Part is the Internet encourages us to stay at home. People got trained during COVID especially how to live completely isolated from the rest of the world and from everybody else. They were forced into it. And if you deprive human beings of connection, then there you can have all the money in the world, all the fame in the world. Whatever you think is the thing that will make you happy and you will never find happiness. And I think we both know Johanna Hari, who's a friend of ours, who wrote this incredibly like, I think, revolutionary book about how to understand addiction.
- [118:48]
Tucker Carlson
Yes. And, and depression and sadness in general emptiness.
- [118:52]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. He then wrote another book about just like the, the depression epidemic in, in especially among younger people in the west. That first book about addiction, the thesis of it was that people think the opposite of addiction is sobriety, when in reality the opposite of addiction is connection. And by that what he means is that all of these things are spiritual diseases. Depression and addiction and anxiety and all these disorders that people suffer from that are new. Like you talk to anyone in Gen Z. I have colleagues in Gen Z. My kids are getting to that age. You know, they're 16 and 17. I see their, their, their age group. There's so much like mental disorder. It's because society is not giving human beings what they want, which is, is connection. And that's why like the only. You can go talk to medical doctors about addiction and they will all tell you the same thing, which is like, there is no cure for addiction chemically. Medically, the only cure for addiction is going to places like an A or A or whatever. Because there you find this instant and immediate connection based on, with any kind of human being, based on shared experiences. And that's the only thing that cures that disease. Because it's a disease of the spirit, like of the soul. It's not a biological disease where chemical medications will cure it. And I think that the ability to be open to human connection, to have it readily available, is probably the foundation of human happiness. And the deprivation of it is what will eliminate human happiness. And all of modern society is about keeping people stratified and isolated and away from each other. And you know, I think there's like surveys that say, you know, people who are in their twenties will say on average they have like one friend at most or like two friends at most, that they rarely see people live away from their family. Everything is about depriving people of connection. Not saying that was the intent or the plan, but that's the outcome. And there's no way to have human Happiness without connection.
- [120:57]
Tucker Carlson
I know that in my life, the place where I've seen it most clearly is in aa. I haven't, so over many years haven't been AA a ton. But the first time I ever went, I was so struck by how what I was seeing was kind of what people have talked about, but sort of presented an ersatz replica of like true connection between people from totally different backgrounds, cultures, races. It was the diversity we're always promised. But like we're so cynical about. I am so cynical about. It's all, you go to an AA meeting and because it begins with stripping away, with basically ritual humiliation, oh, I'm Tucker, I'm an alcoholic. It's like, say that out loud. It hurts. Even if it's true, which my case.
- [121:42]
Glenn Greenwald
And like the first admission is like, I am powerless.
- [121:45]
Tucker Carlson
That's exactly right.
- [121:46]
Glenn Greenwald
Like you're to confess your impotence, but.
- [121:49]
Tucker Carlson
You have to confess it. And once that, that strips away all the pretense. And then you like, you experience people on a level that church promises, but I, I personally have never experienced in church. I want to, but where it's just like you are dealing with people on the most human level. Like all that matters is the other person's soul or something. I don't know.
- [122:15]
Glenn Greenwald
I, you know, it's into like the new, the new Pope. And like this is the part of Catholicism that I really admire so much. Like the ethos of the Gospels, you know, Jesus always wanted to minister to the, like the lepers and the prostitutes and the outcasts, even though there was no necessary like common bond between them other than their humanity. Which is what the Gospels teach you to, to basically think about the world as being about is human connection, as the ability to look at the lowest people and see their soul, see that they're all equal before God, all of this.
- [122:52]
Tucker Carlson
Exactly.
- [122:53]
Glenn Greenwald
And one of the things diversity does, like diversity in this modern corporatized HR sense is it pretends to do that, but it actually is constantly reminding you of these differences and forcing you to think about them. Like, oh, I have three black co workers that I'm supposed to get along with and I have two gay ones over here. And it is constantly stratifying people across these lines, like categorizing them and counting them based on their differences. And so there's any kind of like similarity or connection is forced. It's like very self conscious.
- [123:23]
Tucker Carlson
Nothing causes more division than that.
- [123:26]
Glenn Greenwald
Right. You strip everybody down to like no ego and have everybody converge based on their greatest weakness and suffering. And difficulty, and you don't even have to give the slightest thought to, oh, this person is different. And yet I'm able to have communion with them that's so genuine. It just happens automatically. Like it. It. All those things fade away. Like, people can walk into an NA meeting and just feel like they're living in a different world and thinking about other people and feeling other people in a way, and then they walk out and the whole world then reappears. That constantly teaches us to, you know, keep everybody at arm's le length. But you walk into those kind of meetings, the idea of it is like, you strip down to your. The deepest core, like, foundation of your humanity, and then on that level, everyone is the same. And it's the connection that emerges from that is why it works, why people go their whole lives to it. You know, even if they haven't had a drink or a drug for 25 years, they still need it.
- [124:26]
Tucker Carlson
Well, that's why I went. I have no interest in drinking. I went because a loved one, you know, someone I love, needed to go. So I brought that person in. I was like, I want to go every day. I've never seen anything like that in my life.
- [124:40]
Glenn Greenwald
It makes you see the potential for what the world could be.
- [124:42]
Tucker Carlson
That's what everyone wants, is the connection.
- [124:44]
Glenn Greenwald
Right.
- [124:44]
Tucker Carlson
Because other people are all that matters, just to reset. Other people are all that matters. And you. Gosh, that's so easy to lose that thread.
- [124:51]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, that's like our humanity. That's like the soul. That's like the spirit. It's everything. And that is what Western and society is assaulting and. And depriving people of. And so it's no wonder we have epidemics of addiction and suicide and anxiety disorders and depression and distraction. It's so easy to see why you should write.
- [125:13]
Tucker Carlson
You should write on this.
- [125:15]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, I've thought a lot about it. I think a lot about it. I try and, like, incorporate it and. And at some point, maybe I will.
- [125:20]
Tucker Carlson
I hope you will. You. Can you describe it much better than I do. I'm still trying to sort it out in my head. I've really. It was less than a year ago I saw this. I was like, I've not stopped thinking about it.
- [125:28]
Glenn Greenwald
Yeah, we talked about it. And so then I thought about it last night, this morning. So it's fresh in my mind as well, like, in terms of what it means and how to think about it. But, yeah, it's something that is. I think it's kind of like sitting there right in plain sight. It's a solution to a lot of things, but for a lot of reasons. You need a lot of vulnerability and humility to strip yourself down that way to admit your powerlessness. We're constantly taught to affirm our invulnerability. Like I'm strong, I'm powerful, I can deal with anything. But human beings are by themselves not all that powerful. But there's a lot of things we can do, there's a lot of things we can't. And the whole point of these kind of addiction groups or whatever, there's a lot of these different kind of groups. I think all communities are like them is like together, like human beings connecting to each other creates a much bigger power than every human being sitting kind of isolated and alone.
- [126:21]
Tucker Carlson
Yes. I mean I, I believe in a religion that extols humility, that in which humility is like the, the COVID charge. Like you don't get anywhere without humility. That teaches that God like submitted to being tortured to death.
- [126:35]
Glenn Greenwald
So like, and you get on your knees in a church, Islam, you like bow on the ground.
- [126:40]
Tucker Carlson
Like it's exactly right.
- [126:41]
Glenn Greenwald
An expression of that same.
- [126:43]
Tucker Carlson
I remember after 911 when I was like, you know all about attacking Islam. I knew nothing about Islam. I'm not Muslim, by the way. I don't work for Qatar, contrary to.
- [126:51]
Glenn Greenwald
What a lot of people think, despite the paychecks from Qatar.
- [126:54]
Tucker Carlson
Not a secret, but I remember hearing someone on. I worked at CNN at the time and like we had all these endless experts, most of whom kind of worked for the CIA, but whatever. I realized that later, but I remember who it was, come on and be like, you know, Islam is bad. And I was like, sounds bad, you know, whatever. I don't know if I ever met a Muslim. But he's like, you know what Islam means? Submission. And like let it hang in the air. Like that was self evidently disgusting. And I was like, I kind of think submission to God is like the whole point of life.
- [127:22]
Glenn Greenwald
But I didn't say anything. I was like, I don't think I'm against that.
- [127:26]
Tucker Carlson
Actually anyone who submits to God, like I'm just for that.
- [127:32]
Glenn Greenwald
Well, and the, the found. I mean I think a lot of religions seek the same things, just find different ways to think about how to, to find them. But the whole point of AA and na, like the foundation of it is that you submit to a higher power.
- [127:47]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [127:48]
Glenn Greenwald
It can be, you know, understanding that there's a lot of people who are now atheists or secular. It doesn't necessarily have to be some, like, religious conception of a God. And so many people go into these groups and they're adamantly contemptuous of this idea. Like, this is so irrational. I'm not going to pretend that there's some magic thing. And, you know, I used to think that way, too. And then I got the point where I was like, no, you know what actually is irrational thinking that there's no higher power than you. Like, I am the highest power. Like, that's the. The absurd thing. But it's all about, you know, losing that sense that you're invulnerable and understanding that, you know, you can find something higher than yourself. And it could just be the connection of the human group. Whatever you want it to be like, whatever you recognize as being able to something, being able to do things that you can't do is already an acknowledgment that there's a higher power than you. You.
- [128:39]
Tucker Carlson
But if you're. If you think you're God, you're not allowed in.
- [128:42]
Glenn Greenwald
I mean, if you think you're God, you're going to have a lot of difficulties in life.
- [128:46]
Tucker Carlson
You're going to be Toria Newlin. So it's not good. Glenn Greenwell, thank you. Really always my favorite person to talk to. So I appreciate your.
- [128:53]
Glenn Greenwald
Thank you, Tucker. I always enjoyed as well. Thank you.
- [128:59]
Tucker Carlson
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