Ken Paxton: How Soros Protects Drug Cartels, Being Blacklisted by Fox News, and the Laken Riley Act

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tucker Carlson Show – "Ken Paxton: How Soros Protects Drug Cartels, Being Blacklisted by Fox News, and the Laken Riley Act"

Release Date: February 12, 2025

In this episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, host Tucker Carlson engages in a comprehensive and candid conversation with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The discussion delves into pressing issues facing Texas, including immigration, the influence of drug cartels, political corruption, and the intricate dynamics of state and federal governance. Below is a detailed summary capturing the key points, notable quotes, and insightful conclusions from their dialogue.

---

1. Immigration and Federal Policies

Key Discussion Points:

• Impact of Immigration on Texas: Paxton emphasizes the transformative effect of immigration on Texas, highlighting increased crime rates and economic strains.
• Biden Administration's Policies: Both hosts critique the Biden administration's immigration stance, suggesting it has inadvertently empowered drug cartels.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [00:33]: "Trump was the first president to use the force of our federal laws, which are good and designed to protect us."
• Paxton [02:27]: "The Biden administration has indirectly funded the cartels by encouraging illegal immigration."

Insights: Paxton argues that stringent enforcement of immigration laws, as exemplified by former President Trump's policies, is crucial for safeguarding Texas. He asserts that current federal policies not only fail to control illegal immigration but also financially empower criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking and other illicit activities.

---

2. Drug Cartels and Security Concerns

Key Discussion Points:

• Designation of Cartels as Terror Organizations: Paxton praises Trump's executive order categorizing drug cartels as terrorist entities, enabling military intervention.
• Weapon Proliferation: Concerns are raised about the flow of weapons from Ukraine to Mexico, potentially exacerbating cartel armament.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [01:39]: “By designating these cartels as terrorist organizations, the military force can be used against them.”
• Paxton [03:50]: “If you go out to our financial crime unit in Tyler, they will tell you about all these crime groups coming in from other countries.”

Insights: Paxton highlights the necessity of elevated federal intervention to combat the militarization of cartels. He warns that without such measures, Texas remains vulnerable to the sophisticated operations of these criminal networks, which threaten public safety and state stability.

---

3. Influence of George Soros on Texas District Attorneys

Key Discussion Points:

• Soros-Backed DA's: Paxton accuses George Soros of influencing Texas district attorneys to undermine law enforcement, leading to increased crime.
• Legislative Inaction: Frustration is expressed over the Texas legislature's failure to counteract Soros' influence, allowing corruption to proliferate.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [04:17]: “George Soros has gone in and elected DAs in Democratic counties... He went in and knocked off DAs who were actually prosecuting and replaced them with Soros DAs.”
• Paxton [05:16]: “DA's have more power in Texas than any elected official I've ever seen because they're not accountable to anybody.”

Insights: Paxton contends that Soros' financial backing has strategically installed friendly DAs in key Texas counties, effectively paralyzing crime prosecution. This, he argues, creates an environment where criminal activities can thrive unchecked, undermining the rule of law and public trust in the justice system.

---

4. Corruption and Lack of Prosecution

Key Discussion Points:

• Impunity of DA's: The conversation explores the unchecked power of district attorneys in Texas, who can indict individuals without accountability.
• Fear Among Legislators: Paxton claims that state legislators fear repercussions from powerful DA's, hindering meaningful criminal reforms.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [06:05]: “They're afraid of the DA's... you can lie and you can get an indictment.”
• Paxton [07:05]: “They allow crimes to go as much as possible. It's destabilization.”

Insights: Paxton emphasizes that the current DA system grants excessive power to prosecutors, enabling miscarriages of justice without consequences. This systemic flaw fosters an environment where legal processes are manipulated, exacerbating societal instability and eroding faith in governmental institutions.

---

5. Impeachment of Ken Paxton

Key Discussion Points:

• Due Process Concerns: Paxton recounts his impeachment, criticizing the lack of transparency and due process.
• Allegations of Unfair Trial: He alleges that the impeachment was a politically motivated attack without substantive evidence.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [35:06]: “They convinced themselves that I deserve it because I'm a bad person. None of it was proved.”
• Paxton [35:54]: “My impeachment was done in three days, no due process.”

Insights: Paxton portrays his impeachment as a partisan maneuver lacking foundational evidence or fair trial standards. This narrative underscores his broader critique of political corruption and misuse of power within Texas's legislative framework.

---

6. Political Dynamics and Karl Rove's Influence

Key Discussion Points:

• Blacklisting by Karl Rove: Paxton accuses Karl Rove of blacklisting him from Fox News, diminishing his public platform.
• Internal Republican Conflicts: The episode discusses internal struggles within the Republican Party, particularly in Texas, driven by external influences like Rove.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [32:26]: “Karl Rove is booking shows at Fox News... he just goes around and controls.”
• Paxton [33:35]: “They try to stop conservatives in Texas in general. His fundraising... he's out to help Republicans take out conservatives.”

Insights: Paxton asserts that influential figures like Karl Rove undermine genuine conservative voices by manipulating media access and funding, fostering division within the Republican Party. This interference, he argues, stifles effective political reform and diminishes the party’s ability to address critical state issues.

---

7. Plans to Challenge Senator John Cornyn

Key Discussion Points:

• Primary Challenges: Paxton expresses intentions to run against Senator John Cornyn, citing Cornyn’s lack of genuine representation for Texans.
• Electoral Strategy: Emphasis is placed on grassroots support and confronting entrenched political figures through transparent and accountable campaigns.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [29:49]: “Somebody needs to run against him in that primary.”
• Paxton [46:15]: “I'm strongly considering it... John Cornyn is not loved in my state by Republicans.”

Insights: Paxton aims to mobilize Republican voters dissatisfied with established senators like Cornyn, advocating for candidates who prioritize state needs over political allegiance. This approach reflects a push for internal party renewal and enhanced accountability within Texas’s political landscape.

---

8. Legal Battles Against Big Tech

Key Discussion Points:

• Lawsuits Against Tech Giants: Paxton outlines Texas’s aggressive legal strategy against companies like Google, Facebook, and Meta for deceptive practices and antitrust violations.
• Antitrust Enforcement: Emphasis on dismantling monopolistic control to restore market competition and consumer choice.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [63:55]: “We sued Facebook because they tell you one thing and do another. They lied, and they're so big they just think they can win everything.”
• Paxton [67:00]: “We have antitrust laws. If we don't stop them now, they'll control all our stuff.”

Insights: Paxton advocates for stringent antitrust enforcement to prevent monopolistic dominance by tech companies, arguing that such practices harm consumers and stifle innovation. His lawsuits aim to enforce transparency and fair competition, aligning with broader Republican efforts to regulate big tech.

---

9. Transparency and Accountability in Government

Key Discussion Points:

• Demand for Transparency: Paxton calls for open government practices to expose and counteract hidden influences undermining democratic processes.
• Critique of Media Control: Criticism is directed at media conglomerates for their role in perpetuating misinformation and suppressing dissenting voices.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [45:22]: “We should be transparent. We should tell the world who's working against us because they've done all this in secret.”
• Paxton [68:19]: “Transparency is what we need in government.”

Insights: The conversation underscores the necessity of transparent governance to ensure accountability and restore public trust. Paxton argues that exposing covert operations and undue influences is essential for revitalizing democratic institutions and safeguarding state sovereignty.

---

10. Conclusion and Final Remarks

Key Discussion Points:

• Future Political Aspirations: Paxton reiterates his commitment to continuing legal battles and political reforms to protect Texas from internal and external threats.
• Call to Action: Emphasis on voter engagement and support for candidates aligned with transparent and effective governance.

Notable Quotes:

• Paxton [72:03]: “If you can help, you could just buy something on the dark web. Oh, hilarious. Ken Paxton, thank you so much for taking all this time.”
• Paxton [71:56]: “I'm looking forward to setting up someone who can run against him.”

Insights: Paxton concludes by reinforcing his dedication to battling corruption, advocating for judicial reforms, and challenging incumbent politicians who do not serve the best interests of Texans. His vision encompasses a Texas governed by law enforcement empowered to counteract criminal influences and a political system responsive to the needs of its people.

---

Final Thoughts:

This episode of The Tucker Carlson Show provides an in-depth exploration of significant challenges facing Texas, as articulated by Attorney General Ken Paxton. From immigration and criminal justice to political corruption and antitrust battles, the conversation highlights the complexity of governance in a state grappling with both internal and external pressures. Paxton’s perspectives offer a provocative critique of current policies and advocate for sweeping reforms aimed at restoring law, order, and authentic representation within Texas’s political framework.

Notable Timestamped Quotes:

• [00:33] Ken Paxton discusses the effectiveness of Trump's immigration policies.
• [01:39] Paxton elaborates on the significance of designating cartels as terrorist organizations.
• [04:17] Critique of George Soros' influence on Texas DA's.
• [35:06] Paxton describes his impeachment process.
• [32:26] Accusation against Karl Rove for blacklisting on Fox News.
• [63:55] Details on lawsuits against Facebook for deceptive practices.
• [45:22] Call for transparency in government.

This structured and detailed summary encapsulates the essence of the episode, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted issues discussed between Tucker Carlson and Ken Paxton.

Transcript

[Tucker Carlson]

Have you ever spotted McDonald's hot crispy fries right as they're being scooped into the carton? And time just stands still. Thank you for coming on, Mr. Attorney General.

[Ken Paxton]

Glad to be here.

[Tucker Carlson]

So the most pressing problem, I think it's fair to say, as an outsider in Texas, is immigration. It's totally changed your state in every way. Do you expect that the new administration and the executive orders in the first couple of days are going to have a material effect, a noticeable effect?

[Ken Paxton]

I know they are, just because I saw what happened four years ago or eight years ago when Trump came into office. I mean, I went through. I've been in politics since Bush was in office, and I've seen how Republicans and Democrats have dealt with immigration. They have not dealt with effectively because they have not enforced federal law. Trump was the first president to use the force of our federal laws, which are good and designed to protect us. Whether it was remain in Mexico or whether it was title 42 or it was stopping catch and release, basic common sense things like building a wall, those things work. They just absolutely work. And just what he's done in the first couple of days is significant in changing where Biden was taking.

[Tucker Carlson]

So one of the things you pointed out off camera was his executive order designating the drug cartels as terror organizations is significant.

[Ken Paxton]

Yes. We as states don't have much authority to stop illegally immigration, but the federal government has that authority. And by, by designating these, these cartels as terrorist organization, now the military, our military force can be used against them rather than just using, you know, border patrol and, and leaving the states subject to the cartels, you know, crimes.

[Tucker Carlson]

You do wonder about the, about the power of the drug cartels. They've, you know, a lot of the weapons we've sent to Ukraine have been sold by the Ukrainian military onto the black market. That's a fact. A lot up to half and a lot of them have been purchased by the drug cartels. You see in Mexico pitched battles, military engagements between the cartels and the Mexican military, where they're very, you know, they're well armed. Are you worried about that happening in Texas?

[Ken Paxton]

Absolutely. I think the Biden administration has indirectly funded the cartels. They have encouraged by saying no deportations on day one of his administration. They've encouraged illegal immigration. And there's, that's a profit center for the, for the cartels. They make, you know, eight to twelve thousand dollars a person. We have, if you just do the numbers on 14 million, that's a lot of money. They're making billions Every month. And then they can go and use that money to buy weapons from Ukraine, which we're funding. We're sending that over free. So indirectly they're part of the whole process. One, allowing the cartels to have access to our country and allowing them to make a profit and then to use that money to arm themselves in a significant way.

[Tucker Carlson]

I was just.

[Ken Paxton]

That's our government.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, it's horrifying, I mean, because, you know, some of the weapons are surface to air weapons. So you wonder like, what's the threat to commercial air travel? You could see things kind of starting to fall apart. Is there like widespread acknowledgment of this in Texas, that we could have a serious problem with these cartels?

[Ken Paxton]

I think even just common people are aware of that. Just because of the influx and the just increased crime associated with just everyday crime that they, that people see as relate as it relates to the cartels moving into our state. And that network that they built is not just in Texas. They have building that network all over the country and they're not gonna, they're not gonna want to give it up. They're making too much money on drugs, sex trafficking, other crimes and the importation of people.

[Tucker Carlson]

Every big construction site in this country has prostitution run by the cartels, often of children. I don't see anyone do anything about it. And it makes you wonder like Mexico is completely, utterly corrupt because of cartel money. Politicians, judges, journalists, all on the payroll. You see this in other Latin American countries. I mean our, our, our politicians are not that expensive. Like you could do that in a state like Texas, right, Or California.

[Ken Paxton]

Well, here's, here's one of the biggest problems we have. We have it in Texas, we have it in other parts of the country. George Soros has figured this out. He's gone in and elected DAs in Democratic counties. Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio. So 70% of our population controlled by Soros DAs. He went in and knocked off Democratic DAs because we can't get elected Republicans in those areas. So he went in and knocked off DAs who were actually prosecuting and replaced them with Soros DAs. Now our legislature could fix that. They haven't. They could come in and say, ag, you have concurrent jurisdiction to go after these crimes. But because they haven't done that, crime is proliferating in all of our cities. Financial crimes, other types of crimes, because they will not prosecute crimes. And so the cartels have an open invitation. So do other cartels from other countries. So if you go out to our financial crime unit in Tyler, they will tell you about all these crime crime groups coming in from other countries because they know they can get away with it. And our legislature so far has never has not fixed that.

[Tucker Carlson]

Why? Okay, then the question motive arises, like why wouldn't you want to stop crime in your state?

[Ken Paxton]

That's a very good question. I find that DA's have. They have more power in Texas than any elected official I've ever seen because they're not accountable to anybody that if they commit a crime, no one can prosecute them. If it's a state crime, they'd have to prosecute themselves and they can allow any crimes in their area and they can go after. In Texas, it is so easy to get an indictment. You just walk in, you can tell the grand jury anything you want to. You can lie. Once you have the indictment, you've got it. There's no getting out of it. And so I think a lot of our politicians are afraid of their DAs, and even if they're liberal Democrats. But if we don't get control of this in our state in other states and give somebody like the attorney general, I'm not going to be there forever give that authority. So there's another way to prosecute when the Soros das and Soros has figured it out, but the Republicans have not.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean, it's so obvious just in your, you know, 45 second explanation that, you know, it makes sense. So how is it that they haven't figured it out? Or do they have a higher loyalty?

[Ken Paxton]

They're afraid of the DA's. They're afraid the DA's come in and lobby and everybody's afraid of their own da, that they'll get indicted if they do it. There's just that power because to get an indictment in Texas, you don't have to have. There's no recording of it. It's only one side of the story. You can. And if they lie and they get the indictment, there's no remedy, there's no consequence to the da, and there's no remedy for the victim of that lie. You are going to trial. You can. Even if somehow you could find out what happened in that secret grand jury proceeding which I have before, it doesn't matter. You can go to judge and say they lied. You still are indicted and you're still at risk of going to prison.

[Tucker Carlson]

You have to tell your kids you've.

[Ken Paxton]

Been indicted and you might be in prison. You might be in front of a jury that doesn't know the truth and you go to jail or you're in a, you know, Democratic county, you might go to jail on something that they made up.

[Tucker Carlson]

So you, you really think. I mean, I'm sorry to be so naive, but I grew up in this country and we didn't have things like this that I was aware of in 1985. But, but you think that members of the Texas legislature are afraid they'll be indicted if they push back against the DAs?

[Ken Paxton]

I think there is a fear and there is this lobby of these DAs have so much power, otherwise why would they allow Soros to control the major cities and the pro. It's obvious that they're not prosecuting crimes. They won't even prosecute shoplifting for. Like, if you give free ride, if you want to, as long as you take $750 a day in Dallas county, whatever the number is, and you go to different stores, you can do that every day. And you will. You. The DA there said, we will not prosecute you.

[Tucker Carlson]

But why would you want that unless you were trying to destroy a civilization?

[Ken Paxton]

Soros, it's exactly what he wants to do.

[Tucker Carlson]

So there's no political goal here.

[Ken Paxton]

It's just destabilization.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right?

[Ken Paxton]

And it's so easy. It is literally so easy to do that. And he also, I believe, got control of our Court of Criminal Appeals, which is our highest court. We have a bifurcated system in Texas. We have the Texas Supreme Court, that. That's the final appeal in civil, and the Court of Criminal Appeals. But no one knew who they were. And suddenly they strike down a law that allowed me to. That directed me to prosecute voter fraud. And they took it away just by saying, oh, it's unconstitutional because you're in the executive branch and separation of power says you can't be in court. How insane is that? So I've had to go run three. I'm trying to take that court back. But we. Right now I can't even prosecute voter fraud, which opens us up to unfair elections in Texas, which we, which I was prosecuting plenty of voter fraud before that happened.

[Tucker Carlson]

So who, who's supposed to have prosecuted voter fraud?

[Ken Paxton]

The Soros. Das. So that's where we're at in Texas. So that's why I ran. This is a nine member court, six year terms. They waited till two days after the filing deadline to announce their decision. This is a 1951 statute that has thousands of cases of precedent. And they came up with this insane idea that it was unconstitutional for the attorney general to be in court. Because I'm in the executive. If that's true. Every AG in the country is violating the Constitution. So that was a rationale. I had to wait two years. I recruited three people to take out the three people that were up. So we've replaced three. We've got one good one on there, but we're still down 5, 4. So until we fix those things in Texas, we're at risk.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, big time. Oh, big time. So do you think that these Soros DAs have hesitated to go after the drug cartels?

[Ken Paxton]

They don't. They don't go after crime in general. They don't work. They are. They do political crimes, but they generally are not there. They don't do their jobs. They don't prosecute.

[Tucker Carlson]

Even when people get killed.

[Ken Paxton]

Hit and miss, Hit and miss. But they're not. They're. The message from Soros is let as much crime go as possible.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's amazing that a non US Citizen who hates the United States, hates the western, could have that much power in our country.

[Ken Paxton]

It's just his money. It doesn't take very much to elect a DA in a Travis county, which is Austin. You're in a Democratic primary. It doesn't take that many votes. You've got. I was working with a DA there who was a Democrat. I didn't agree with her on everything, but she was doing her job. He spends a little bit of money, takes her out, and suddenly now I've got a DA who won't prosecute anything. Same in Bear county, which is San Antonio. I worked with the DA a lot in Bexar County. A guy named Nicola Hood, his brother is now converted to Republican. He's a state rep. He was awesome to work with. And.

[Tucker Carlson]

And he was a Democrat.

[Ken Paxton]

He was a Democrat.

[Tucker Carlson]

I.

[Ken Paxton]

He did his job. Guess what source replaced him with money. So that's what. It doesn't take him that much money. And he controls our.

[Tucker Carlson]

Our.

[Ken Paxton]

Our whole situation with crime and controls our judicial system, at least on the criminal side. And we're sitting here letting it happen in Texas and other states.

[Tucker Carlson]

What did you think when Joe Biden gave George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

[Ken Paxton]

Disgusting. I mean, the guy's done more to. I mean, as far as I know, there are not many people in the world that have done more harm to our country. And he's being applauded by Joe Biden. It's not surprising because Joe Biden has the same motivations. Yeah, I mean, what is. What did Joe Biden do that was good? Can you name it? I can't. No.

[Tucker Carlson]

They worked from Day one, to destroy what future, what past generations had built this amazing country.

[Ken Paxton]

And it had to be on purpose. And the reason I say that is because you, you would think that randomly he could, he would have done something good. If he weren't, if it weren't purposeful, he would have had something economically, internationally, the border. Something would have been right. Right. Just randomly. There's no.

[Tucker Carlson]

The law of averages suggest a victory once in a while.

[Ken Paxton]

The bell curve tells you he would add something good. He didn't have anything good. It was all on the other end of the curve. The downside of the curve, which was harm to Americans, that. That cannot be accidental.

[Tucker Carlson]

And two individual Americans. I think that's absolutely right. But what. Again, I just, I'm so fixated on this. Why would you want to do that?

[Ken Paxton]

I truly believe that this. And this started, I think with President Obama, first president. I believe that didn't love America, that really thought we were a bad country, that thought we were racist and that we deserve to be taken down to another level. And I think they operate under this idea that we're a bad country, that we're bad people, and that we, we don't deserve this. And they fundamentally don't believe in what was created here. I truly believe that.

[Tucker Carlson]

And they want to destroy it, take it down, dismantle it, because they think it's bad.

[Ken Paxton]

They think we're bad.

[Tucker Carlson]

I don't see another explanation. There's hate behind it. There's no doubt about it. How could you wind up with the outcome with people dying of drug ODs on the street and stores closing because of stealing and kids cutting their own genitals off. You would have to hate someone.

[Ken Paxton]

You remember the contempt that Biden, not Biden. Obama said they cling to their religion, their guns and their God. There is contempt for that. What the founders put in place, a bunch of white racist who had slaves. And so that. That permeates his view of America. And yet that's not. There's no excuse for slavery. We messed up in that. We had, we fixed it. We were moving in the right direction. But his view is we're broken because of that. And therefore we, we deserve to be dismantled because we don't about that.

[Tucker Carlson]

I mean there are countries. Slavery is still practiced in certain countries, but there were like critical US allies that had slavery until the 1970s. And no one ever. 1970s and no one ever mentions that. What holds them responsible. Obama has no problem taking money for speeches in those countries.

[Ken Paxton]

That's why it doesn't make Sense it's slavery around in the world forever. And it's not awful. It is awful.

[Tucker Carlson]

And the US and Great Britain were the reason that we don't have it anymore and globally for the most part. And no civilized country would tolerate slavery. But if you're against slavery, by the way, why would you be for the drug cartels which practice slavery, which sell people?

[Ken Paxton]

All I know is it seems like the things they focus on do the greatest harm.

[Tucker Carlson]

No, I totally agree, but it does. I think it's a mistake to take their explanations at face value. I think there's something deeper like they just hate, want to hurt people.

[Ken Paxton]

They do not have an abiding love. Look, I didn't like Jimmy Carter as president. I think he did a good job. But he didn't have a hatred for this country.

[Tucker Carlson]

I don't think so.

[Ken Paxton]

I don't. I don't think he did. I think, I think we've had a lot of mediocre to bad presidents who still didn't want the country to be just me. But I think it started with Obama. Biden didn't know what he was doing. He's being told by others he was incompetent and that this was the third presidency of President Obama and he didn't have to worry about being popular anymore because he limited himself a little bit because he wanted to get reelected. He didn't care if Joe Biden got reelected.

[Tucker Carlson]

You think it's over for Obama? His influence is permanently diminished.

[Ken Paxton]

I think it's been impacted and affected. It could be if we continue the momentum, we don't mess this up. If we get caught up in not focusing on the best things for America, he can come right back in. If we don't take care of the American people and make that our number one focus, what's best for the American people. If we stay on that track, we have a really good chance of being successful for a long time. If we lose sight of that and we start worrying about our power and our.

[Tucker Carlson]

I agree. We.

[Ken Paxton]

Once we start taking care of ourselves, then they have a chance back in because the American people see that.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think that's really wise. I'm concerned about that. Not because of any individual acting in bad faith, but because human nature, the depravity, what it is, it's exactly right.

[Ken Paxton]

The Presbyterians actually had that right when they set this government up. It was based on the depravity of men. It was the reason they wanted three branches of government that made it so frustrating to get things done. It's because they didn't trust people in power. Because every human.

[Tucker Carlson]

I wouldn't trust myself in power at all. I don't want power because I don't trust myself. I don't think any. An honest person can really say my motives are pure. Right.

[Ken Paxton]

No, I agree with that. We're all have this pull towards.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. And anyone who doesn't admit that's a liar.

[Ken Paxton]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

So, yeah, I want oversight of me.

[Ken Paxton]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

You know, and then you see Chuck Schumer, like, that guy needs a lot of oversight. Like armed oversight. You know what I mean? Like all of us.

[Ken Paxton]

Yeah, I think you got it right in your speech at the Bible museum during the inauguration about humility and realizing your need for God's work in your life. And without that, we all have a tendency to go down the road 100%.

[Tucker Carlson]

And you lie to yourself, oh, I'm doing this for the greater good. You know, I have known people personally who've killed other human beings because they thought or they convince themselves. You know, this is actually for the, you know, some. The humanity will benefit from.

[Ken Paxton]

Oh, yeah, that's what we all convince ourselves. Whatever we're doing, that we're doing this. And it really, we, we, we tell ourselves, well, this is really good because we are off base many times.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's so, it's so true. So the whole point of market capitalism is consumer choice. You have a choice between products and services, and the competition between companies makes the goods and services better. That's the core idea. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of monopolies out there. Monopolies are not good for consumers. They are not good for you. And one of the places where there's effectively a monopoly is in wireless contracts. But it's not a complete monopoly. You're probably paying way too much to use your cell phone. But now you have a choice. You don't have to pay. Pay a hundred bucks a month just to get a free phone. That's not a good deal. There's a company called PureTalk, which we use, that has no inflated prices. With a qualifying plan of just $45 a month, you can choose a free phone, an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Gallery. Then you get unlimited talk tax, 25 gigs of data, which is enough for most people, a mobile hotspot, all for that low price. And it's got the most dependable 5G network. So you get your free iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy by visiting PureTalk.comtucker and you switch to PureTalk. Today, America's wireless company, PureTalk.

[C]

As we welcome in A new year. It's time to focus on what matters most, creating healthier habits, enjoying more moments with family, and spending less money on going out to eat. GoodRanchers.com is here to help you turn those resolutions into solutions. During Good Ranchers Year New Meat Special, you can subscribe to any box of their 100% American meat and wild caught seafood. And if you use Code Tucker at checkout, you'll get $25 off and your choice of free ground beef, chicken or salmon in every order for an entire year. By shopping with Good Ranchers, you're supporting local farms across the US and avoiding the chaos of grocery store imports. Most importantly, you'll enjoy stress free, delicious meals that let you focus on what matters quality time with loved ones. Start 2025 with better choices, better meals and better moments at home. Claim your free meat for a year plus $25 off with code [e-mail] American.

[D]

Meat Delivered Tucker says it best the credit card companies are ripping Americans off and enough is enough. This is Senator Roger Marshall of K Kansas. Our legislation, the Credit Card Competition act, would help end the Grip Visa and MasterCard have on us. Every time you use your credit card, they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee, and they've been raising it without even telling you. This hurts consumers and every small business owner. In fact, American families are paying $1,100 in hidden swipe fees each year. The Fees Visa and MasterCard charge Americans are the highest in the world, double Canada's and eight times more than Europe's. That's why I've taken action. But I need your help to help get this passed. I'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the Credit Card Competition act, paid for by the.

[Tucker Carlson]

Merchants Payments Coalition, not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Www.merrestancespaymentscoalition.com so can I can I ask you, I was reading in the final weeks before the election that the Biden administration was selling off portions of the materials for the border wall. Is that actually true?

[Ken Paxton]

I believe it is. And here's what happened. We had sued the Biden administration a couple of years ago. You know, these cases, these federal cases don't happen overnight. It took us a couple of years. We sued them and we said Congress appropriated money for the building of the wall. You are not building that wall. You're actually selling off assets. So we sued them. We won that lawsuit and in May we got an injunction from a federal judge saying you doj, you Biden administration Cannot sell any more assets off. So then I get a call from President Trump, you know, a month ago, and he said, they're selling assets off, so would you sue them? And I said, I don't have to if I've already done it. I already get an order. So we go back into court, we tell the judge, hey, they're selling off assets. We've been told they're selling off assets. We went in accounting, and before we got there, DOJ is calling us, begging us, hey, we don't, we're not selling. We swear we won't sell any more assets. They didn't say, they hadn't said, we won't sell anymore. So they, they signed an agreement, they wouldn't sell anymore. But the judge, which we asked for, there's going to be an accounting and there's potential sanctions if they lied and they follow it. They did not follow that order. We don't know that yet, but we're going to know that soon now that DOJ is switching. We're going to know that soon. And I truly believe they were selling off assets in violation not only of federal law, but in violation of a court order that we got in May saying, you can't sell off assets because we were trying to protect those assets so that if Trump won, we would come. Because I knew Biden would never build that wall, even if he was instructed by Congress to do so.

[Tucker Carlson]

How hard is it? I never have really understood, why is it so hard to build a. Seems like a pretty straightforward infrastructure project.

[Ken Paxton]

It is a pretty straightforward infrastructure project, but they hate it. It's some kind of symbol of, I don't know, racism or whatever, but it's not. It protects us from exactly what we've had.

[Tucker Carlson]

So why not pass a law that says anyone, any elected official who opposes the building of a border wall is prohibited from putting a lock on the front door.

[Ken Paxton]

Well, that would affect a lot of republics. I mean, my own senator would, Would, would, would have, would have trouble with that. John Cornyn, because he's been against the, the border wall, saying it wouldn't work. But we all know that walls do work. They do work. And I've seen it. I've seen how it works. The Border Patrol.

[Tucker Carlson]

Why would John Cornyn be opposed to a border wall protecting his own state?

[Ken Paxton]

I don't understand it. I've seen quotes from him. I've seen video clips from him over and over how it's, it's not enough, it doesn't work. It's a bad it. He is opposed to the border wall.

[Tucker Carlson]

But he's, I mean, boy, he's helped appropriate billions and billions and billions of dollars for border security in other countries.

[Ken Paxton]

I know it's really odd that he thinks it works other places, but it doesn't work in Texas. And he's. He's sort of mocked it and said it does. It doesn't work. It's not.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's not to hear him mock Israel's border walls. Do you think he will? No, I'd love to hear him mock Ukraine's territorial integrity. Do you think?

[Ken Paxton]

Nope, Never heard him do that.

[Tucker Carlson]

What is that about?

[Ken Paxton]

I don't understand it. I mean, I think the Bushes had the same idea that open borders were relatively good. I don't think that he or the Bushes.

[Tucker Carlson]

But only for us, not for. No one's calling China to open its borders.

[Ken Paxton]

No. I don't know why they have this view, but, I mean, even under the Bush presidency, I don't think they took immigration seriously. The first president I've ever seen take it seriously is Donald J. Trump.

[Tucker Carlson]

How did John. I mean, this is a question I could ask if so many, no offense. I say this is a Texas lover who's got a lot of relatives there, including a child. So I love Texas. And however, I think you've got some of the worst politicians in the country. Like, how did that happen? How does that happen?

[Ken Paxton]

So I, you know, I think about, like, the Texas House and what's going on there, what's gone there for 16 years, where a small group of Republicans for power align themselves in the House with the Democrats so that the speaker is elected by mostly Democrats and a few Republicans. They just did it again. Dustin Burroughs just got elected by a minority Republicans after he put the rules in place that the caucus, the Republican caucus, would decide who the speaker was. And when he lost that vote in caucus, he walked out, cut a deal with the Democrats and he just became speaker of the Texas House. That is for power. That is for his own personal, you know, power. And that the Republicans that do that have traded getting good policy done, getting property tax done, school choice, protecting the border, not doing impeachments of guys that just got elected. They traded that to have power. That's all it is.

[Tucker Carlson]

With all this drug cartel money in your state, it's not going to get better because you could just buy a member of the Texas legislature. What would that cost? Not too much.

[Ken Paxton]

Not too much. I mean, these guys, I mean, they only make $600 a month. So, you know, anything is good after that.

[Tucker Carlson]

We're pretty vulnerable that way.

[Ken Paxton]

I think we are. And I think a lot of these people, because Texas House, you get paid $600 a month. So most people that run have to have money.

[Tucker Carlson]

You can't, of course.

[Ken Paxton]

And if you don't have money, you're. You're getting paid somewhere for something because it's impossible to live on, obviously, $600 a month. So everybody has to either work, and it's hard to work when you've got a job that may take a year out of every two years.

[Tucker Carlson]

So specifically on John Cornyn, how did he get to be a senator when statewide in Texas?

[Ken Paxton]

So this goes back to George W. Bush appointed him to be a U.S. supreme Court judge in the Texas Supreme Court judge. And when he did that, he authored an opinion that created this thing called Robin Hood, which takes from the wealthy school districts and gives to the poor, supposedly. And what that did to our system was it created a mediocre school system because it's just socialism. Instead of just letting the wealthy school districts make their schools however they want to, we've got to take their money away. Why don't we just fund the poor school districts? It makes no sense. But I think because it's not about.

[Tucker Carlson]

Helping the bottom, it's about crushing the top.

[Ken Paxton]

It's about making it all equal. That's socialism. It doesn't work. It's never worked anywhere. We have no example that it actually works. So. But. And yet John Corn did that for George W. Bush, because George wanted to be president. He didn't want to pass a major tax increase, so he let John do it judicially. It was a 54 decision. John Cornyn was on the 5, 4.

[Tucker Carlson]

Really.

[Ken Paxton]

I'm pretty sure he authored it. And so in the late 90s. Yes. And for that, he. They pushed him. Rove and Bush pushed him to be the Attorney General of Texas, first Republican, actually. And then they pushed him into the U.S. senate. So he has been pushed and funded by that group. And fortunately, Texans have caught onto that and. And realized that group, whatever they say they believe isn't really what they believe because they don't actually follow through on it.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, I mean, we kind of know what Bush believes. I mean, his family's out there campaigning for Planned Parenthood, voting for Kamala Harris. I was with him two days ago. And Obama at the inaugurations, right next to them across from. I watched him, you know, pal around with, you know, he's friends with Obama.

[Ken Paxton]

That's his world, right?

[Tucker Carlson]

That's his world. That's all well known. But what's and pretty distressing was running mate endorsed Kamala Harris and his sad little daughter campaigned for Kamala Harris. So that whole world is now they're all Democrats, but John Cornyn is still an elected statewide elected official in Texas. He's a puppet of the left, obviously. Like how does that continue to happen?

[Ken Paxton]

So I think it's because people weren't as aware of what the Bushes did and what he's done and but they've come become more aware because of people like you and others who have outed that. So he's never had a real problem. He had four people running in some, none of them had money. Nobody ever run before. No one even knew who they were.

[Tucker Carlson]

It was all fake.

[Ken Paxton]

And he claims, you know, he got 76% of our. Of course he had nobody running into that. I could tell you who it was and I'm pretty involved in politics. Somebody needs to run against him this time because he has been there for what, 16 years just in that position count as AG that's four years he was Supreme Court, I mean Texas Supreme Court justice and before that a district. He's been doing this a long time and he's gotten away with this. It's about time that he'd be held accountable because I can't think of a single thing that he's done for Texas that's good. He has no acclaim for doing things good for Texas.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oregon, he's helped Zelensky and that's pretty much it. So how, okay, so what's the process? The guy, I mean, I've never met anyone who likes John Cornyn. Never met anyone who thought he's achieved anything. Never met anyone who thinks he's smart, he's pompous, he's quite a self righteous little guy. So I think he's very unpopular with every person I've ever met in my life. And yet all things being equal, he gets reelected. So how do you, how do you stop something like that?

[Ken Paxton]

So I'll give you an example of what you're just saying so to right after I beat George P. Bush, who he, he came out and endorsed of course. And then he, he made disparaging comments about me being an embarrassment to Texas and he made some comment about me being part of Russia propaganda.

[Tucker Carlson]

You're a Russian propaganda?

[Ken Paxton]

Oh, I don't know how that happened. I'm in Texas. I became part of the Russian propaganda because I criticized him on Ukraine.

[Tucker Carlson]

He said that you were Russian propagandist.

[Ken Paxton]

Yes, that's what he Said crazy stuff.

[Tucker Carlson]

You know, people didn't used to say things like that, right?

[Ken Paxton]

Well, guess what?

[Tucker Carlson]

So who's a more loyal American, you or John Cornyn?

[Ken Paxton]

Look, I'm.

[Tucker Carlson]

Who's more focused on the fortunes of his own country and his own people, you or John Cornyn, who obviously doesn't care at all, didn't say anything as his own state was invaded, and lectures us endlessly, so tool the intel agencies, lecturing us about Ukraine, but you're the disloyal American. It's actually like, you shouldn't say things like that. It should not talk.

[Ken Paxton]

It's crazy. It is. And so justice, the crazy thing. We have a text Republican convention shortly after the election where I win by 38 points against George P. Bush, which is a pretty significant margin in a primary. So we have the convention. There's 12,000 Republicans there. He and his wife walk up on stage, and for 10 straight minutes, he doesn't say a word. He gets booed for the 20 minutes that he's speaking. He never adjusts his speech. He gets booed the entire 20 minutes. He gets booed 30 minutes straight. I'm standing, waiting to go on stage. I walk away because I'm afraid of what I might say after he's said these things public to me. I go up and get a standing ovation. So there is the people of Texas, no John Cornyn. And I don't think he'll survive another primary.

[Tucker Carlson]

So how do you stop this cycle?

[Ken Paxton]

So I think in Texas, it's very doable because people realize now who John Cornyn is. We have a primary next. Not this March, but the next March. So somebody needs to run against him in that primary.

[Tucker Carlson]

So in a year, basically, in a year and two months, you have a primary. Yep.

[Ken Paxton]

So that primary.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, it's imminent.

[Ken Paxton]

It's coming. Yeah, absolutely. So he's. He's. I don't think he's. He's long for this Senate world, so.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, I'm sure he's got such an enormous reservoir of skills and talent that he'll. He'll thrive in the private sector. Doing what?

[Ken Paxton]

I don't know if he's ever been there.

[Tucker Carlson]

He couldn't start my truck on a cold day. He has no idea. He has no skills. But anyway, sorry, I'm being too mean, but it's all true. How do you. How do you beat him in a primary?

[Ken Paxton]

So I. I mean, I. I don't know. I'm running for sure. I'm looking at it probably in the next few months. I'LL be talking to people around the state. But, I mean, I've run two primaries against George P. Bush and another guy, Dan Branch, who was one of George W's.

[Tucker Carlson]

I knew Dan Branch. Yeah.

[Ken Paxton]

Yeah. One of his close friends, but very moderate. And I.

[Tucker Carlson]

You're a nice guy.

[Ken Paxton]

I beat him. Nicer to you than he was me.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Ken Paxton]

I served in the house with him. 1. Always so nice to me. 65. 35. Him with. He had a lot more money. Same with bush. I beat him 68, 32. So primary voters, if they're educated, will make good choices based on what you've actually done. Yes. And that was always me with Dan Branch. We were in the house together for 10 years, and I moved over to Senate for two while he was in the House. And I said, don't listen to the rhetoric. Look at the record. We both have a record. Go look at the record. Compare them. See if they're the same. They're not. He can say what he wants. He is not what he's. He's. He's running on my record. Look at his record. And that works in primaries. And the same thing with John Cornyn. I bring out what he said about Trump and how disparaging it was a Trump in 2016 and 2000, just in this last election, saying he shouldn't run. He's not the right guy. I mean, John's wrong about most everything. There's very few things. He tends to side with the swamp in Washington, and he does what Karl Rove tells him to do. So that. That doesn't work in Republican primaries, not in Texas.

[Tucker Carlson]

What is Karl Rove? I mean, Karl Rove is. I mean, he's got to be 70 anyway. At this point, I would think he's been around. I mean, I've known him for pushing 30 years. I don't think his track record is something anyone could brag about at all. He's been wrong about. He's subgenius, I would say, for sure. I'm a genius. No, you're not. And his record suggests he's not. And so, like, why does he still have influence? Does he. Is he still effective?

[Ken Paxton]

Let's be honest. He's propped up by Fox News. He has the platform. They take care of him. He. He can keep people. Like, for instance, I can't get on Fox News.

[Tucker Carlson]

He's still on Fox News.

[Ken Paxton]

He's still on Fox News. And he's. He's kept me off for a couple of years because I. When I ran against Bus, they got Bush on And took me off. And all the shows. I used to be on almost all of them.

[Tucker Carlson]

Are you serious?

[Ken Paxton]

I know that for.

[Tucker Carlson]

I know for a fact this is a disadvantage. Karl Rove is still on Fox.

[Ken Paxton]

He's still on Fox. I just saw him during the inauguration. He's there a lot. I used to go in studio at the same place in Austin. I used to trade out with him.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, I've been to that studio.

[Ken Paxton]

Yeah. And he got me cut out for sure. And I know that from hosts of shows who have said, sorry, weakness. They will even, like, I will have a case. They will. We will get. We will. Jesse will talk to my communications, talk to him. They'll book me. Then they'll cancel me. Then they'll go try to find another ag. They'll call the Republican. Can we find another ag? Or they'll ask for somebody else in my office other than me. That was Karl Rove blacklisting me on this.

[Tucker Carlson]

Karl Rove is booking shows at Fox News.

[Ken Paxton]

He just goes around and he controls. That's so crazy. No, I've been told by people, you know that have shows.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, you know everyone there.

[Ken Paxton]

I just don't want to out them.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, no, I get it.

[Ken Paxton]

That have told me we can't have you. And for the last two years, I've been on Fox like, maybe a couple times. I used to be on every day sometimes.

[Tucker Carlson]

Imagine if I can just say, since I know these systems, I lived it. Imagine you're the host of a show and you get a call saying, the sitting Republican attorney general of the second big estate is not allowed on your air because of reasons we won't explain. Because, like, Karl Rove, it's like a totally discredited buffoon. Doesn't like the guy be like, buzz off.

[Ken Paxton]

Well, I think he went to, like, Paul Ryan, the board and just got. It's like, I am.

[Tucker Carlson]

Why would you cave to that? Like, no job is worth taking orders.

[Ken Paxton]

You didn't cave then.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, I got fired.

[Ken Paxton]

Exactly. But that's.

[Tucker Carlson]

I wouldn't even consider that. Like, what I would always say on the three or four times they ever said anything like that to me and be like, that's totally great. Just put it in writing. Just send me an email explaining why we can't have this guest. The rationale for it. And. And I'll assess and I'll respond in writing. The second you say put it in writing, they're like, they never call you again.

[Ken Paxton]

I'm just telling you, I put it.

[Tucker Carlson]

Just. Just put it in writing. It's totally fine. I don't. You know what? I've got some hearing issues, so if you could just write it down. Explain what exactly about Ken Paxton is like, verboten.

[Ken Paxton]

I was supposed to go on a show.

[Tucker Carlson]

There was all.

[Ken Paxton]

There's still one host that would sort of have me. And I was supposed to go on this show and I. I had two different settings to go on and both got cancelled. I was told you got canceled from.

[Tucker Carlson]

We're moving in another direction. Yes.

[Ken Paxton]

Even if it's my case. I mean, I follow the case and they want another attorney general to come on and talk about it.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. So I would just never put up with that. I would always call and say, like, what? You know, what is this? Well, the decision's been made by whom and why.

[Ken Paxton]

But that's why Kov still has his platform.

[Tucker Carlson]

Because it's all the most disgusting kind of power, which is like stealthy, feline power, behind the scenes power, rather than just saying, here are my views and this is what I think and I'm happy to debate it or whatever. I think you're wrong. I don't like Ken Paxton's evil. Here's why they'll never do that, because they're not honorable people. And I'm not talking about at that company. I mean more broadly in our society, the people who win every bureaucratic battle are exactly the same. They're all. They operate in darkness. They're never straightforward about anything.

[Ken Paxton]

You talked about my impeachment. I came in. You were the first person I talked to about the impeachment. That was how my whole impeachment went. It was done in three days, no due process. I didn't get any information. I wasn't allowed to participate or respond. All behind closed doors. And then they leak stuff to the media that's not even true. And I've got a gag order on me and I can't talk.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's so dishonorable.

[Ken Paxton]

How do you survive that? It's really hard.

[Tucker Carlson]

How do you live with yourself? Like, how do you live with yourself if you operate that way?

[Ken Paxton]

They convince themselves.

[Tucker Carlson]

If I don't like someone, I'm always delighted to call them on the phone and say, I don't like you. And here's why.

[Ken Paxton]

They convince themselves that, like, I deserve it because I'm a bad person. Because all of this stuff is true, but none of it was proved. You know why? Because it wasn't true.

[Tucker Carlson]

But why. But why do it behind the scenes? Why?

[Ken Paxton]

Because I can tell you why they. So I had Friends that were called into the Speaker's office, Republican House members, and they were saying, look, we need you to vote for this impeachment. They said, well, can you just show us, like, some evidence? Well, you have this, you know, three day hearing, three hour hearing. Well, there was no evidence there. Can we see some evidence? No, you're not getting any more. Well, can we, like, have a little more time to, like, kind of figure this out? We've only had like, three days. We're going to vote on this in three days. No, we're not giving you any more time. What about, like, can we talk to the witnesses? We don't even know who they are. None of them were sworn in. We don't even know who the witnesses against him are. And they said, no, we're not going to let you do that. And they said, well, why is it that we can't see the evidence? Why is it that we can't see the witnesses? Why is it that it has to be in three days over Memorial Weekend? And they said, because if we give Ken more than three days, he'll win. That's what they told him.

[Tucker Carlson]

That is, you know, if you find yourself living your life like that, you have to make a change because that's really deceptive.

[Ken Paxton]

That was the Republican, supposedly the Republican House controlled by the Democrats.

[Tucker Carlson]

Oh, they're all like that. I got called in one time by executives of a company and they, they're trying to tell me that Roger Ailes was a rapist who I, you know, I knew well and, and really loved, you know, flawed guy like we all are. But I didn't feel like a rapist. To me, pretty sure he wasn't a rapist. And I remember saying, like, okay, who did he rape? Well, we know this. We just know this. You know, we had Ropes In Gray do this investigation. He raped people and. Well, okay, who were they? Because I know everybody. I work there. I know everybody. Can't just, just, just trust me. If you saw what we saw, you. And I was like, okay, but can you just tell me, like, what were the circumstances of the rape? This is like an elderly man who's got hemophilia. Don't think he's raping anybody or. And they were very annoyed that I asked the basic questions. And look, I don't know so many things I don't know. But I did come out of that meeting thinking he didn't rape anybody. You know what I mean?

[Ken Paxton]

Oh, absolutely. I see it all the time where they. People get accused of things, then they get overwhelmed by media and then they're.

[Tucker Carlson]

They get overwhelmed and people always say the same thing. We know this, we know. Look, I've talked to people. We know this. Like, look, let's just start there. We know this.

[Ken Paxton]

Paul Rove did that to me. He went to people and said, we know this, we know this, we know this. And, and they're like, well, where's the proof? I've got it somewhere. That's what he does.

[Tucker Carlson]

But I do think to you just all you need is self respect. Like, I'm not going to be lied to if I can help it. I'm lied to all the time and I don't know it. But if, but I'm not going to allow myself to be lied to if I can help it. Well, look, but people are just like, they're willing to be lied to. It's the vaccine safe and effective, okay? Then it turns out it's not safe and effective and they don't have enough self respect to demand an accounting of those lies. Like, you told me, this turned out not to be true. Why'd you do that? No one ever does that. Or that Karl Rove shows up and is like, we know Ken Paxton's a criminal. Okay, where's everyone's self respect? Like, I'm an adult man. You can't lie to me. Okay? That just seems like a kind of baseline.

[Ken Paxton]

It is a baseline. And that's why when I was in the middle of that impeachment and I had no voice, I could not respond. I'm getting beaten up every day. Tell my lawyers, I know you, I know you think I'm going to resign, but I haven't told no one I'm going to resign because I'm not even allowed to talk to the media. So how could I even tell? Because there were printing stories, I'm going to resign. I said, I want you to know, I don't care how bad it gets. I don't care what they say. These senators are going to. I'm going to make them vote. They're going to. I got elected four and a half months ago by the people. Let them vote me out. If they do, they will be accountable to voters. But I will not give in, no matter what.

[Tucker Carlson]

I, I watched it up close and you won. It was, it was amazing. And it was, it was hard to. So how many times did you want at the Supreme Court with the pre. The Biden administration?

[Ken Paxton]

How many times? Yeah. Gosh, I mean, we had 106 cases. We won over 75 of our cases, but several ones that we. I can't even keep.

[Tucker Carlson]

106.

[Ken Paxton]

A lot. We went there a lot.

[Tucker Carlson]

You shoot him 106 times. So I'm kind of thinking, since this is politics, that that may have had a role in your impeachment.

[Ken Paxton]

I have no doubt. You know how I know they were there. I'm convinced the Biden administration went to the House. Texas House, with the Democrats that we want him impeached. And. And then Biden sent two lawyers from the Department of Justice to help the general investigating committee, which is five member committee. Three Republicans, two Democrats. They had four lawyers. Two of them came from the Justice Department. Just randomly showed up to help. Was the Biden administration involved? I don't have proof, but I'm not. I prove it. I'm not stupid.

[Tucker Carlson]

That's unbelievable. So is there any. So do you expect that Karl Rove will be involved in this primary?

[Ken Paxton]

Oh, absolutely. He. He will do whatever he can to stop. He does whatever he can to stop conservatives in Texas in general. Most of his.

[Tucker Carlson]

Texas National.

[Ken Paxton]

Yeah. His fundraising, everything's. He's out to help Republicans. He goes into primaries to get Republicans take out conservatives. He is not there raising money to go after Democrats. He's there to go after Republicans.

[Tucker Carlson]

What do you think he's doing? I mean, it's amazing the number of Republicans who are Republicans who are mobilizing against Trump's nominees, particularly Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard. He must be having. I don't know this, but do you think Carl has a hand in any of that?

[Ken Paxton]

I would not surprise me at all.

[Tucker Carlson]

Wouldn't surprise me.

[Ken Paxton]

Not at all. And the reason they. To go after those two is because they're gonna. They're effective, they're courageous, of course, and they're gonna change America if they're given the opportunity.

[Tucker Carlson]

That's exactly right in there, you know, so sad to see some Republicans who I know well mobilizing against Bobby Kennedy. And they're saying we're doing. Because he's pro choice. And well, I'm vehemently, passionately pro life. I have always been, I will always be. But these are all people who are themselves pro choice, who supported plenty of pro choice nominees. And it's not about that. It's about the fear that Bobby Kennedy means it, that he's sincere and that he'll get something done. And by getting done, it's like fighting the corruption that controls Washington.

[Ken Paxton]

The thing that's most missing in political leadership is not knowledge of what to do or how to do it. It's courage. And the thing that Bobby Kennedy has, he will take on the Democrats, his own family and the food, the big food world.

[Tucker Carlson]

Exactly right.

[Ken Paxton]

And they know that, and that's what they're afraid of. So they have to stop them.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, it's the testosterone level that scares them. It's totally. You're absolutely right.

[Ken Paxton]

Unafraid. He's unafraid.

[Tucker Carlson]

So in September, we went across the country, coast to coast, 17 different cities on a nationwide live tour. And it was amazing. We brought the entire staff with us like we always do, because we all work together for so long and enjoy traveling together. And one of our producers is a documentary filmmaker, and so he decided to make a documentary film about our trip. A full month across America with some of the most interesting people around. Different people joined us every single night. Bongino and Russell Brand and Bobby Kennedy and J.D. vance and Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera. We had the best time. And the fruit of that is a documentary called on the Road, the Tucker Carlson Live Tour, which is available right now on tcn. On the Road. Tucker Carlson Live Tour is hilarious.

[Ken Paxton]

You will like it.

[Tucker Carlson]

This episode is brought to you by Meundies Underwear drawers are like the Wild West. You never know what you're going to pull out or what shape it's in. So upgrade your collection with the buttery, soft comfort of Meundies. Meundies signature fabric is as soft as a warm hug from your favorite sweater. Plus, it's breathable and oh, so comfy, making it ideal for all day wear. Get 20% off your first order, plus free [e-mail] Spotify with code Spotify. That's meundies.com Spotify. Code Spotify. So the whole point of market capitalism is consumer choice. You have a choice between products and services, and the competition between companies makes the goods and services better. That's the core idea. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of monopolies out there. Monopolies are not good for consumers. They are not good for you. And one of the places where there's effectively a monopoly is in wireless contracts. But it's not a complete monopoly. You're probably paying way too much to use your cell phone. But now you have a choice. You don't have to pay a hundred bucks a month just to get a free phone. That's not a good deal. There's a company called Pure Talk, which we use, that has no inflated prices. With a qualifying plan of just $45 a month, you can choose a free phone an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Gallery. Then you get unlimited talk tax, 25 gigs of data, which is enough for most people, a mobile hotspot, all for that low price. And it's got the most dependable 5G network. So you get your free iPhone 14 or Samsung Galaxy by visiting puretalk.comtucker and you switch to Pure Talk. Today, America's wireless company, Pure Talk. It's interesting. Do you think it's fair to keep a list? I mean, I'm probably too fixated on this just because I lived in Republican world in Washington for so long, but I think it's fair to keep a list of like the Republicans who are working against reform, who are working against Trump's best decisions, which are reform minded decisions like nominating Bobby and Tulsi. Like we should keep a list of them.

[Ken Paxton]

Absolutely. And it should be open. We should be transparent. We should tell the world like, who's working against us because they've done all this and they try to do this in secret and then they go back and tell their constituents, well, yeah, I did my best. No, they did not do their best. They were behind the scenes. This is John Cornyn's career. This is what these people do. Transparency. Just like my impeachment, transparency of a trial actually helped me because the truth comes out. Transparency is what we need in government. And we don't get it with people like.

[Tucker Carlson]

No, the people you're talking, that's. I think that's really deep and true. The thing they hate most is exposure. So I've always thought that's why they hated Trump. They were worried he was going to declassify stuff or say secrets out loud that, you know, that implicate the people running things.

[Ken Paxton]

They hate him for that and they hate him because he also is courageous and he doesn't. His agenda is the American people.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, no, I think that's interesting. So you, do you think you may run against Cornyn?

[Ken Paxton]

I'm strongly considering it. I haven't made a decision. I have the spring to kind of work it out and, you know, I'm still doing my job. I had a lot to do under Biden before he left. It's a lot easier with Trump because we're working cooperatively instead of having to be adversarial on everything. So, you know, I'll be looking at this spring and seeing what people see. I'm going to travel the state and get a, get a feel for it. But my sense already is that John Cornyn is not loved in my state by Republicans. He may be loved by the Democrats, but he is not loved by the Republicans.

[Tucker Carlson]

How long do you think Texas has before it becomes a Democratic state?

[Ken Paxton]

It's totally up to us. We can preserve it. We can. Just like with this thing I told you about America, if we do the right things and we take care of the people in our state and we give them opportunity, we give them a good education, which the state is responsible for, if we provide opportunities for their children, if we provide just freedom to go back, be the best you can be and not get in their way with regulations and taxes we give them, we will be a Republican state because what, it doesn't matter what your skin color is, if you get a chance to be successful, you're going to vote with the people that gave it to you.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think that's right. I think that's right. And I, and I'm embarrassed to say that I kind of bought, I guess intuitively I didn't really think about it, but the idea that demographics is destiny. And I do think that's, there's a lot of truth in that. However, you know, Texas went from a majority white state to a really a majority Hispanic state. And, but that doesn't mean that it has to be like a dystopian left wing state at all.

[Ken Paxton]

Hispanics are conservative socially. They are hard working. They are family people and they want to, and they want to be successful, too.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, but it's interesting so that I first heard that line from Karl Rove, actually, how surprising next door neighbor is. And he would always say, you know, Hispanics are natural conservatives. And I would say, well, I'm from California. And that became majority Hispanic state. And it just, it just went right off the cliff. It became, you know, really, really dark, socialist, dystopian place. And he, and I would say, so what do you make of that? What I didn't realize was it was actually the liberal whites who are the problem. I mean, that state's run by Gavin Newsom. He's not from Oaxaca. You know what I mean? He's from Martin county. And a lot of the decisions are made by people like that. And actually Hispanics are conservative. I mean, that's real. Look at El Salvador. And so what's happened though is that the party is controlled by neoliberals like Gavin Newsom, like Karl Rove. And they use the power of the Hispanic vote to affect outcomes that I think a lot of Hispanic voters reject. Right.

[Ken Paxton]

Yeah. And look, Trump is winning counties in Texas that have never been won before. And we are that we are having more and more Democrat Hispanic politicians move to our party and their positions are not changing. They're just realizing that the Democratic Party allowing all this illegal immigration and hurting their areas and all those types of things, they don't want that they're leaving the machine.

[Tucker Carlson]

I guess the only thing I would say, just as an outside observer, is if the drug cartels are allowed to control the machinery of democracy in Texas, like it could become Mexico.

[Ken Paxton]

That's why the whole DA thing that I was telling you about is so important. I remember when I was coming into the Attorney General's office. Abbott has served as long as serving ag in Texas history. 12 years, becoming governor. I'm now about to tie that. But it was, he was the one that told me, the most powerful elected officials in the country, Texas district attorneys, because they can do whatever they want, they can allow any crime they want, they can let their friends commit crimes, and there's nothing that can be done to them. They are free to do what they want.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, so we had problems like this in the 50s and 60s after Brown vs Board, where, you know, certain states just didn't want to comply with federal law. There was, and, you know, eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock and said, I'm sorry, you can't violate federal law. You can't, you're not your own country, actually. And, and you wonder, like, how serious could the Trump DOJ be in reining in this crap. No, you're not allowed to have chaos in your state. This is an American state.

[Ken Paxton]

No, I, I agree with that. I, and I, I think you're already seeing it on the border. He's already sent federal troops down there. And I think he, as long as it's, it's following federal law. I know that Trump is going to be aggressive at protecting this country.

[Tucker Carlson]

I, I hope so, and I believe it. So here's a question I've been obsessed with recently, and I don't know the answer, but you're an Attorney General. How are states allowed to have sanctuary cities in open violation of federal law? And that's not insurrection, because we've allowed it.

[Ken Paxton]

That, to me, that, that should, I mean, like, in our state, we banned them. You cannot have a sanctuary city and we can remove people from office. That, that, that put that in place.

[Tucker Carlson]

But can states just say we're going to ignore federal law? I think we had a civil war over that, didn't we?

[Ken Paxton]

No. As long as the federal law is constitutional and it is not infringing upon states rights.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Ken Paxton]

You're not. Every federal law is correct.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Ken Paxton]

But the ones that are that. That are correct, then, yes, it has to be followed.

[Tucker Carlson]

These are the borders of the nation.

[Ken Paxton]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right. So what states do with immigration affects the other 49. Any individual state.

[Ken Paxton]

Exactly right.

[Tucker Carlson]

Because it does seem like there was a standard in place under Biden where illegal aliens who are, by their presence, committing a crime were held to a lower standard than American citizens.

[Ken Paxton]

We had to sue the Biden administration. We sue them specifically over letting criminals into this country, known criminals. And they fought us on it. They fought us on a very. Yes, we are in litigation over whether the Biden administration can purposely bring criminals. And of course, all these countries were emptying their prisons to get rid of their bad people from all over the world. And Biden say, come on in. It's, It's. That's what I say. Evil. Like, I don't believe they were trying to do good for America. You cannot do that and tell me you are trying to help America.

[Tucker Carlson]

How hopeful are you that we can deport millions of people?

[Ken Paxton]

Look, I've seen Donald Trump do things that I never thought could be done. He. He said he's going to do it. I think it's. You're not going to get every one of them. But I think Tom Holman, I love that guy. He. I think there's going to be a real serious effort to get as many out as possible, and that's really all you can do. But I think it's. I think it will be a success in the end because they are going to. One stop the. You got to stop the bleeding.

[Tucker Carlson]

Right.

[Ken Paxton]

We've been bleeding, like, profusely. And then second, start moving. Don't accept the fact that these people came in here illegally and just let them stay.

[Tucker Carlson]

There will be a lot of forces arrayed to stop that. Obviously, the.

[Ken Paxton]

I already know. The Democratic ags. I already know. I mean, I know the game plan, and I was.

[Tucker Carlson]

The game plan.

[Ken Paxton]

The game plan is to sue Trump and stop him at every turn, legally go to liberal judge, try to get an injunction, and then, you know, slow. Just slow it down. So I know. I think California AG already, they've already allocated 25 million to this fight. So I.

[Tucker Carlson]

To stop Trump from deporting criminals and.

[Ken Paxton]

And to stop his agenda in every possible way. So the Democratic attorney generals are going to be suing and trying to stop all of this. The good thing is I've got one of my guys that was my offensive coordinator to sue the Biden administration. If he gets confirmed, he'll be in a strategic position, and he knows exactly the game plan and how to deal with it.

[Tucker Carlson]

If you go and beat Cornyn in the Senate, which I certainly hope you will, is there someone coming up behind you who can get elected, who will be as aggressive and focused on the needs of Texans?

[Ken Paxton]

So one of the reasons I didn't want to leave last time, one is I don't want to be forced out. I didn't want them to. I didn't want to step away under their terms because I just thought it was wrong. That's the second was I didn't. I mean, I ran against three people that I just thought would be horrible for. For that job. They didn't know what they were doing. There are certainly people that will run that. I mean, there are. There are lawyers who've never practiced law that want that job because they're in politics. That's not the right way. I want somebody knows how to practice law that understands the law. And yes, there are a couple people that I know that could run and I think might run. Otherwise, I'd have a hard time walking away from it because I don't want to give. This is such a crucial position, really, for the entire country. The Texas attorney general has the largest Republican office with the most resources and has the most ability to go fight. We have. We can attract talent, and so we have a lot of ability to take DOJ straight up. That's why we've run up one over, you know, three fourths of our cases, because we can fight them toe to toe.

[Tucker Carlson]

I just think it's. You see this weird dynamic in Texas where, I mean, there's so many great people in Texas, but all the money, not all the money, but a lot of the money in, you know, Highland park and River Oaks, you know, your richest zip codes. Pretty liberal. What is that? And by the way, I know a lot of those people, and I really like them. And I'm not attacking anybody personally because I know, you know, I know a lot of them, but, boy, they. They seem to be funding people who will not continue Texas as currently organized.

[Ken Paxton]

Like, it's exactly right. So a lot of it's very strange. So this group, Texas for Lawsuit Reform, used to take a lot of that. They. They would funnel their money through them. So it wasn't them directly. And that's the group that spent, you know, 10 million recruiting the Supreme Court justice who was a DEI person, as it turns out. That's how we. We expose that. And she blew up. That's who they supported. I don't totally understand it, but they.

[Tucker Carlson]

Don'T like you too. They're like, oh, no, Paxton's so embarrassing.

[Ken Paxton]

I know it's because.

[Tucker Carlson]

But if you ask them to run on a piece of paper, like, what are your political priorities? They would. They would be not so different from yours.

[Ken Paxton]

Is that whole.

[Tucker Carlson]

But they don't like it when you actually try to implement what you say you believe.

[Ken Paxton]

Here's part of what I think happened. I think that I. When I rang a Sand Branch, he was w. Is one of his best friends. Of course I knew Dan Branch. He was not. His deal was always this. I've spent 10 years with him. I would say, hey, we need to do this. This is the right thing to do. He goes, man, what are the optics here? I'm like, who cares what the optics are? This is the right thing to do. It was always the optics. How does it look? And his voting record, you can look at is not consistently what most voters. Most Republican voters would want. But it was for Highland Park.

[Tucker Carlson]

I don't know what is an affluent part of Dallas. Yes.

[Ken Paxton]

And same with. You were talking about River Oaks in Houston. Those that Bush world that supported Bush.

[Tucker Carlson]

And I have family in both those places, and I think they're wonderful.

[Ken Paxton]

They're not. No.

[Tucker Carlson]

And I like all the people. And as I said, I like Dan Branch. I mean, I think I'm probably susceptible to charm in a way I shouldn't be because, like, I like all those. They're all good guys. But, like, they. In the end, it's considered somehow gauche or bad to actually try and do what you say you're gonna do. That's why they don't. Like. I've just. No offense, hope it doesn't hurt your feelings, but I've been at dinner and people like, oh, Ken Paxton, you know, Ken Paxton's like, why? Because he's doing what you say you.

[Ken Paxton]

Believe the same thing happened.

[Tucker Carlson]

What the hell?

[Ken Paxton]

It's the same thing with Trump people. I mean, I don't know. You're right.

[Tucker Carlson]

It is.

[Ken Paxton]

I was at his announcement at Marla. You know, elected officials were there to support him that first. There were lots of regular people there. Me and Troy Nels at the very first announcement, everybody then was, like, thinking it might be somebody else. And no one wanted to touch. They weren't sure because he got. He had these indictments. And it's the same thing with Trump. If you actually go out and do the hard things, then you're controversial, and then they attack you for being the media, they don't like it. And then people go, well, you know, we need to see. And I'm like, okay, you don't want Trump because he's controversial. That means you don't want somebody to actually get something done. The people that aren't controversial are the people that don't get anything done. The media doesn't attack them. And so then all these people are like, oh, I just don't like his tweets, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, what? I care about what he gets done?

[Tucker Carlson]

I think it may be that rich people are so insulated from the effects of everything that they don't really feel like these arguments are existential, that they really, really matter. Whereas, you know, if you make 120 grand a year and you live in Houston and you see the city, like, you can't use the hospitals and crime's out of control, and, like, everything is changing too fast to metabolize and you can't really. You make 120 grand a year, you can't really do anything about it. You are powerless. And that's, by the way, twice what the average person makes.

[Ken Paxton]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

You're like, you realize this is not a joke. They're wrecking my city for real. It can't be fixed.

[Ken Paxton]

I think you've hit it because those people, even those people are affected by inflation, right? Everything is more expensive. Gas is more expensive.

[Tucker Carlson]

No, that's totally right.

[Ken Paxton]

The. The average American and even above average American feels all of those negative effects every day. If you're a billionaire, it just, it just, it just. No, I know you don't care what it costs to fill day, fill up your gas can. You don't even think about it. You could.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's just weird in Texas. So if you go to California, if you go to Marin or downtown San Francisco or, you know, the town that I grew up in, affluent town, you know, everyone's kind of openly liberal. You know what I mean? Like, they're smoking weed with their kids and they're. Whatever, they're liberal. You go to Texas and you meet the affluent class in Texas, and boy, they're just great people. They're just great people who share your values and. And I think they really do, by the way. At least the ones I know they sincerely do. But they don't feel that sense of, of eminence, of like, holy, we got it, this is like a crisis. They do not feel that.

[Ken Paxton]

Well, those are the people that elect me. If you look at my Campaign finance reports. I usually have a massive number of people giving, but a lot lower level than some of the other statewide officials. Yeah, the numbers are just staggering. I, I raise less money, but my contributions from the number of people I get. I think I had the last report. Maybe I'm off on this. Maybe it was one for 8,000 contributors in six, six months. Well, I don't think anybody comes close to that. But it's a, it's, it's not the million dollar checks. I don't get million dollar checks. I have a much lower contribution. But I love it because I like the fact that the people as a group are helping me.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yes.

[Ken Paxton]

That's who I'm beholden to. Those people.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think that's right. And there's a. By the way, I just want to be clear, especially in Texas, like the rich people I know in Texas are good people with nice, you know, love. Their families, their children turn out well. Like, they're good people for real. I love them actually. But I. And they would agree with everything you say, but in practice it freaks them out. And you see this with Bobby Kennedy too. Like anyone who's kind of tuned in realize, yeah, Bobby Kenny is like a turbo liberal. He's a Kennedy.

[Ken Paxton]

Yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

You know, he said all this crazy gun grabby pro abortion nonsense. But then you watch him and you're like, oh no, that guy's on the same wavelength as me. And he might actually get stuff done. It's only, it's, it. Honestly, it's the rich Republicans who he freaks out. He scares them because he. For the same reason you scare them, because you mean it. And they're like, ah, this is embarrassing. And maybe I can't fully control it. I'm not sure I'm for this.

[Ken Paxton]

Part of the problem is they all talk to each other and they all get their ideas from like, each other. It's just almost too inbred. They don't get. They don't get down to talk to the people that you're. That you and I are talking about. They don't know them. They are not around them. They don't live with them. So they don't feel it. It's part of what your original point was. They just don't know these people. If they knew those people, I think like you said, they're not bad people. I think if they can connect with people that are not billionaires instead of just with each other, I think that's totally right. It would help them.

[Tucker Carlson]

I think it's totally right. I grew up in a rich person world, the greatest gift I ever got was spending time in a non rich area for a portion of every year. And it really changed my worldview like so dramatically. Just having contact with people who aren't, you know, in that world, like just getting out of it a little bit.

[Ken Paxton]

It's called perspective.

[Tucker Carlson]

I don't have a ton of perspective, but I have like a little bit of perspective.

[Ken Paxton]

Right? You know what I mean?

[Tucker Carlson]

So like that's super helpful.

[Ken Paxton]

It's super helpful.

[Tucker Carlson]

It is, it's super helpful. And wow, that's so interesting. Can you win if you don't have the support of the big money in Texas?

[Ken Paxton]

Well, all I can tell you is I've been, I've been statewide for 12 years and I've won my closest primary runoffs when there weren't, you know, four people in the race was 65, 35. The last one was better, 68, 32. So I just go to the people and not. I usually get outspent. As long as I can be within like 2 to 1 spending, I have a really good chance of winning a primary. And I think anybody whole is consistent on views that are, that take care of their constituents. That's the key to winning, is take care of your people, care about them.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, well, I've always thought that. But then I up and down the ballot and state after state, you see people elected who are basically promising to destroy their own constituents. And all the black leaders in Chicago who are like, you know, lecturing about black political power and how important it is, and then they make this the city, Hispanic, now they have no political power. It's like, I mean, whatever you think of identity politics, I'm opposed to it. I don't think you should be running on your race anyway. But it's just a fact that they did exactly the opposite of what they promised their constituents. And really now nobody cares what those people think.

[Ken Paxton]

It's the same problem. People like that were taking care of themselves. They were not actually looking out for the people they said they were looking out for. And then they, they leave them in a terrible situation. They're not better off. What Donald Trump, supposedly the guy that doesn't like those people, when he's finished these all categories of people, black, white, Hispanic, are better off. That seems like a good thing, right? I know, but yet he's a bad guy.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's amazing. Suit, here's a complicated issue that I think, I know that you've addressed it in court. Data privacy, the idea that you ought to be Allowed to have, like, conversations without other people listening to them. The idea that people shouldn't be able to steal information about you and profit from it. Where are we on that?

[Ken Paxton]

So, you know, my first term was about stopping Obama.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah.

[Ken Paxton]

And so I think in two. Two years that he was there, I seen him 27 times.

[Tucker Carlson]

Now.

[Ken Paxton]

I stepped it up a little bit with Biden, but we had four years with Trump. And the reason I ran the second term was to deal with exactly that issue. I saw. I saw big tech and I saw big corporations, and people felt powerless because all their information is being taken. They have no control over it. They're being censored. And I'm like, how do I solve this? So I went out to Palo Alto. I spent, like, a year of my life going out there, talking to professors, talking to lawyers who were tech experts, and we ended up putting together many lawsuits, several against Google, several against Facebook. We just had, like. We sued Facebook because they. There's a text law that says you cannot steal somebody's face, take somebody's face or their voice without their permission. And then once you've taken it, you have a certain amount of time, a reasonable period of time to keep it, and then you have to destroy it, and you can't sell it without their permission. Well, guess what? Meta now, Meta, they were doing it. They just did it anyway.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. Why do they care?

[Ken Paxton]

So we sued them, and we got the largest settlement between a state and a business ever. $1.4 billion. We have sued Google, I think, five times. We've won two of those cases. We got two settlements, but the three biggest are coming. One of them is about the same thing that Meta did. They stole our faces. Another was about Incognito, where they told people, by the way, you go into this incognito, you sign up for this, we will not track you. Lie. They tracked us anyway. That's a deceptive trade practice in text, where they tell you one thing and do another. They lied, and they're so big and they make so much money, they just think they can win everything. Well, the final one was, this is one that everybody thought was crazy, but we did it. And now then DOJ filed a copycat case under Biden, actually, where they were. Google controls 97% of the ad market, and they destroy the competition. If you're competing, and we believe they cut a deal with Facebook to keep them out of it. Pay them off, and they destroy you. If you're small enough, they buy you. If you're big enough, and they Cut a deal if you're super big and, and all of that's illegal under antitrust law. So we, in April, we are going to trial in Texas. They delayed me for two years by force me into what's called multi district litigation and I got put in New York. But we get a piece of legislation stuck on a bill that got us back out of that. So we're back in Texas. So we are going to take on the big tech companies, we're taking on General Motors because General Motors would sell you a car and they wouldn't tell you that their OnStar system, when you signed up for it, was tracking all of your driving. And then they're selling that to insurance companies and then you get canceled and your insurance goes up because they're tracking every, you know, every turn of your car, what time you're driving, how many miles. They don't tell you. That's, that's a deceptive trade practice. So. And of course we sued Pfizer and for, for lying to us about the vaccine.

[Tucker Carlson]

It was a little weird after all of that to see Larry Ellison stand up and be like, everyone's getting an MRNA vaccine for cancer. What?

[Ken Paxton]

I mean, it's crazy.

[Tucker Carlson]

I don't even know. I'm trying to digest all that.

[Ken Paxton]

Maybe just living in lanai, you know.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah, exactly. But do you have a hope? It does seem, Look, I'm not against, let's say I am against technology, but I don't think I should be against technology. I should be a little more open minded. But you know, there's a, there's a place for technological progress. Of course there is. But it does seem like it's unrestrained. It does. You know, I believe in force, counterforce. I believe in balance. I believe in marriage, which is that, you know what I mean? Two forces having to accommodate one another and in that you find peace. I don't see that dynamic with tech right now. It's just, it just seems unrestrained charge of the elephants, like nothing can get in the way.

[Ken Paxton]

So that is the reason I saw, I saw that if we didn't step in soon and I didn't see anybody else doing it. DOJ wasn't doing it. I didn't see other states doing it. So it was my, that's why I ran the second time. My mission was we don't stop this now. They make so much money, they just buy their way out of everything. So they get sued by the, you know, European Union, they just pay 2 billion. They just jack up their price when you're making $130 billion a year. That's just a minor little tax right for Google. So that is why I didn't just. I'm not just doing this for money. I'm asking for restructuring of Google. I don't want them to be able to do this to us anymore. They need to divest things so that there is competition in the marketplace. I'm not. I am totally free market. But one company that controls 97% of the market and then destroys competition, that is not good for consumers. And that's why we have antitrust laws. So if we don't stop them now, they'll control all our stuff.

[Tucker Carlson]

We still have antitrust laws.

[Ken Paxton]

We do.

[Tucker Carlson]

You'd never know it.

[Ken Paxton]

We brought them back. And by the way, DOJ copied our Google case exactly. Biden did.

[Tucker Carlson]

Is there any hope?

[Ken Paxton]

There's hope. And I think the fact that you see, after we settled with Mark Zuckerberg, he's shown up at Trump. So he was. He spent what, 400 million trying to beat Trump last time? Yeah. You're seeing the CEOs come in now. They're. They're trying to keep their profit motive going and they're. It's hard to get anything done in Congress because they give so much money. But I think the state ags and hopefully DOJ with Pam Bondi are key to making sure that they play fair. Look, go make billions, I don't care. I want you to go make a lot of billions. I want American companies to do well all over the world, but play fair and allow consumers choices. Don't destroy choice.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. And just acknowledge that what you do has an effect on a lot of other people, and it's okay for other people to weigh in and have an opinion. You get this. I mean, I know a lot of these people, you get this scent. They're so annoyed if there's any impediment to what they want. Like, so annoyed. Like, they can't even believe it. Like, what you're getting in the way of progress. It's like, well, first of all, I'm not totally convinced this is progress. Like, that's a subjective term. We debate what that is. But second, like, I don't know. I. There are all kinds of things I want to do, but I have to negotiate with the people who are affected by those things to reach some accommodation. That's just what life is. But the idea. And you see this with some countries, too, like, oh, you know, our neighbors don't like a tough shit. It's like I don't know. That's not what life is like. Everything is give and take is a.

[Ken Paxton]

Give and take compromise. Well, so.

[Tucker Carlson]

And where do we get these attitudes, like, I just get to do exactly what I want? It's going to totally overturn your life. And if you don't like it, like, shut up.

[Ken Paxton]

These are super companies, right? Companies are bigger than most countries. They have more money. And I think that that arrogance that we talked about in politics, oh, my gosh, it happens in business. And so not only do they want to control every market and control every, you know, transaction on the Internet, but they also want to tell you what to say and what you can. What you can say on their. On their platforms. And then they tell you they're not censoring, but they are. And so even with the Pfizer case where we. We went and sued him, we sued them not just for lying about the effectiveness of the vaccine, which they did do, you haven't noticed, but secondly, for trying to censor people once they found out that their vaccine didn't work.

[Tucker Carlson]

I want to do that with this podcast. So what I want is Congress to pass a law preventing anyone from suing me no matter what I do. And then anyone who criticizes me is pulled off the Internet and called a racist. That's a pretty good deal, don't you think?

[Ken Paxton]

Absolutely. And then if you happen to, like, not participate in their little scheme with the vaccine, then you lose your job and you're.

[Tucker Carlson]

So listen to my podcast or you're fired.

[Ken Paxton]

Right.

[Tucker Carlson]

Yeah. That does seem like an unfair business advantage.

[Ken Paxton]

It's pretty unfair. And I actually, it's crazy because then there's no incentive for them to test it. They didn't test the vaccine. They don't have to. Why would they? They. They test it for, like, six days.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, they're fully indemnified.

[Ken Paxton]

There's nothing you can do to them. So we got. Actually, we sued Pfizer over the vaccine. We got dismissed by a federal judge who said we didn't have. Because of that federal law, our state laws don't apply. I don't think that's right. So we've appealed to the 5th Circuit saying, Wait a minute, they have their federal laws, but our state law, if you deceive someone, you lie to them, that is a violation of state law. Who cares what the federal immunity thing is? It has nothing to do with our state laws. And that's our argument.

[Tucker Carlson]

Man. You guys, you know, there's so. There's so many arms available on the Black market. I think Texas should buy some just to give for a little more influence. You know what I mean?

[Ken Paxton]

That's not my department. I always tell people, they want me to go, why don't you do something? Why don't you do something more? I said, well, I am. But they didn't give me any guns. They just gave me, like, lawyers. All I have is lawyers.

[Tucker Carlson]

Be like the drug cartels. Just buy them on the dark web. Oh, hilarious. Ken Paxton, thank you so much for taking all this time.

[Ken Paxton]

Oh, I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

[Tucker Carlson]

And I hope you crush that John Cornyn. I really do. I'm rooting for you.

[Ken Paxton]

Well, thank you.

[Tucker Carlson]

No one else agrees, but I'm in Highland Park. But I'm on your side.

[Ken Paxton]

Hey, thank you. Appreciate it.