Tucker speaks at AmericaFest
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Well this is a trip, thank you. Thank you. I really feel like I should have a guitar. This is like the scene in Spinal Tap with Stonehenge and they came out and... It's such a trip. Thank you all for having me. Most... Thank you. Most of my life bears no resemblance to this at all, I can promise you.

I don't know what you said, but I agree with you a hundred percent. Lady in the front row with the loud voice, thank you. Thank you. I have to say, I knew I was in the right place because I've spoken. In fact, I speak here every year because I really enjoy it and I love Charlie. So there was never a question of whether I was in the right place. But when I heard Tulsi Gabbard mention the phrase Nikki Haley...

And people booed. I was like, oh, yeah, we're in the right. But then it raised actually a philosophical question for me, which is, should you put air quotes around Nikki Haley? Because otherwise you're just assuming this is a real person and not just a hologram put out there by Ken Griffin and the billionaire class to torment you. And I do think that's like an open question. Is Nikki Haley real?

And actually, I mean, I don't know. Do I look like a biologist or a theologian? I don't know. What is real? But I... Exactly. It's funny. We were in the car coming here. We were doing like a thought experiment in the car, a couple of my producers. And we were like, wouldn't it be fun? And now I'm letting it out of the bag, so I probably shouldn't do this. Now we actually can't do it because she'll possibly see it. But wouldn't it be fun to call Nikki Haley...

and pretend that we're secret representatives in Geneva of the government of Iran and say, look, you've been pretty tough on the Islamic Republic of Iran, obviously, but we have some of the biggest oil reserves in the world and we can cut you in on them. And what would it cost for you to become our advocate? What is the number at which Nikki Haley would be like, you know what, I'm not working for Boeing anymore, I'm working for Iran. And there is a number, right? And so you could say, all right, well, wire it down.

We'll wire it to Switzerland. We'll hold it in account for you. And the next time the Republican candidates get together, just get up there and take up the cause of the mullahs. And I don't have any doubt in my mind that she'd be like, OK. And there'd be Nikki Haley being like, you know, I've been a little tough on Iran, but actually it's a pretty great place. And I think of that every time the Hunter Biden story comes up. Of course, I love the Hunter Biden story. We were early on that. And it just has everything. You know, it's got the audio visuals.

It's got the intrigue. It's just got a lot of flamboyant components that I, as an inherent drama queen, just absolutely love. The teeth picture, just like the whole thing, I love it. The only thing I don't like about the Hunter Biden story is that it may give some people the impression that he's the most corrupt person in Washington. Or his father is. And that's just not true. And as someone who's spent a long time there, like actually my whole adult life...

I could say, and as someone who like lived right down the street from Hunter Biden and knew him well, I can say I didn't really notice how corrupt Hunter Biden was because he wasn't different from like most other people in my neighborhood. No, and that's totally sincere. That's not that weird for Washington, which is the reason it's the richest country in the world. I don't have my glasses on. Thank you, though.

And I like signs. I like people who wave signs. I like people who scream weird questions. We're doing Q&A at the end. Oh, yeah. But anyway, but here's the point. That's not strange. It's a whole city of Hunter Bidens. Less crack, better teeth, fewer weird incestuous affairs. However, that mode of behavior, that way of making a living is absolutely standard.

What's changed is the object. If you live in a society where the people in charge just want to sell you out to get rich, that's bad. But that's not what we're watching. We're watching something much darker than that. So the objective of, I would say, the entire administration and its enablers in the Republican Party, which is most elected officials there,

is to destroy the United States, the recognizable United States, the country you grew up in, the country you've been living in, say, 10 years ago. And that's kind of obvious to everyone. Too few people pause and ask, "Well, what is that?" These people live here. They don't all have secret island getaways, especially now that Epstein is gone. And so if they succeed in their project of destroying the United States, where are they going to go?

It's a little bit like burning your own house down. So why would you do that? That's not just an act of destruction, it's an act of self-destruction. So is that a political program? No. A political program is designed to help the people who institute it and their voters and donors. Their program helps nobody. If you successfully convince an entire generation of young people not to have children,

What you're doing is denying yourself grandchildren, which I can tell you at 54 is kind of the only thing you want. And it's not only the only thing you want, it's the only thing that anyone has ever wanted because having children and continuing the species, passing on your DNA to future generations you will never meet, is the whole point of life. There is no other point and there's no other accurate measure of wealth than your descendants. So if you are creating a society where, and that's not,

That's not like some kooky evangelical view. That's like a very obvious thing that was obvious to everybody in all human history until about 20 minutes ago. So if you're doing that to your own country and your own children, and they are, and I know because I lived among them, their children aren't doing great at all. They may be rich, but they're totally screwed up.

And they're totally loaded up with benzos and SSRIs and addled by porn and they're as stupid and aimless and doomed as anyone else's children. And probably a higher percentage of them are trans or non-binary or two-spirit or whatever. Which is to say, doomed to a life of barren unhappiness. So, what is that? And what it is, is evil. That's what that is. And I think people misunderstand evil.

They assume that evil is something that you inflict on other people. I do an evil thing to you because I am evil. And what they miss is that that's not exactly how it works. Evil pre-exists us. Evil's been around since the beginning of time. And certainly in the beginning of recorded history, we know that. And it's not something that people simply do to one another. It's something that acts through people. People become conduits for evil. And in the process of doing that, what happens to them? Anyone? Anyone? They're destroyed.

The people doing evil do not win in the end. They are destroyed by the evil that flows through them. They are miserable people. And that's kind of the tell, right? I mean, I remember as a kid, you know, reading books about the mafia. And they were bad and they killed people and they loan sharked and sold heroin and they did stuff that was bad. I mean, undeniably bad. But the one thing about the people who ran the mafia, at least in New York, they looked kind of happy. Just being honest about it. They did.

They kind of retire to some restaurant in Brooklyn and pat their bellies and smoke and laugh and... You know, it was kind of working out pretty well for them before the FBI got involved and they did the RICO. Right? It was. And by the way, there are people who do bad things who seem kind of happy with their lives. But if you're channeling actual evil, if you're trying to destroy people for the sake of destroying them, if you are lying for the sake of lying, for the thrill of telling a lie,

And if you are hurting people for the sin of telling the truth, and you're offended simply because it is true, if the idea that somebody somewhere might be saying a true thing enrages you, that's not politics. That's theology. You are a conduit for evil. So the reason I'm going on about this is not to give you some, you know, half-baked theology lecture. It's merely to let you know what the plan is. There is no plan. They don't have a plan. There's not a plan.

Why would you, as the American economy sits on the cusp of collapse, when the US dollar is worth less than it's ever been worth, when our debt service is more than our defense spending, and when robotics are eliminating entire classes of jobs for working class people, why would you admit, illegally, tens of millions of people from the poorest countries in the world with no skills? Why would you do that? Is there some crazy plan the Chamber of Commerce, which is for it, by the way,

Has? Where this is gonna, I don't know, make labor cheaper? No. There's no plan. That will destroy the country, and that's why they're doing it. And I think a lot of people who are doing that have no conscious awareness of this. I don't think the staff of the Atlantic Magazine, many of whom I know, wake up every morning thinking, "How could I destroy America, the country where my kids live?" I don't. But there is no mistaking the effects of what they're doing. It's destruction for its own sake.

And so that lets us know that it's not even about the next election, which I think is pivotal. It's not about some political debate between, I don't know, pick the buffoons. It's not about whatever the dumb cable channels are doing. It's about your existence here, actually. And so I'm not going to respond to that. So the question is, how do you respond? What do you do? Well, that's one thing you could do. No, what do you do in the face of something this profound?

And, well of course you fight back, but what are the tools you need to do that? And the first tool you need, it's not even money. In fact, you could look at successful resistance movements, I don't mean revolutionary movements, resistance movements that actually have made change in their own country, and some of them are unarmed and penniless. I mean, you know, a hundred years of the Raj ended pretty quickly under a non-violent movement in India.

And like, how did they do that? And they did it because they sincerely believed they were right and they were strong inside. They were strong inside. That's the key. So how do you become strong inside? You're getting warmer, baby. You get strong inside. And this is a non-sectarian point, which is open to people of all backgrounds and faiths, because this is a truth of the universe. You get strong inside by telling the truth. And but but but but really telling the truth, really telling the truth.

Not just some truths, but being completely honest all the time, not just in your public facing life, but in your personal life. Now, what does that mean? One of the huge misconceptions about telling the truth is that it applies to your descriptions of other people. And that's not the case. The hardest truth, and that's very easy. Oh, you've gained weight. Not a hard call. I personally have heard that before. It's not hard to point out other people's

And honestly, you take a kind of perverse, cruel thrill in doing so sometimes. And telling the truth can be a cover for cruelty to other people. I'm just telling you the truth. You suck. That's true. Okay, great. That's easy and it's not what I'm talking about. Telling the truth means the hardest truth of all, which is telling the truth about yourself. Being honest about who you are. It's the commitment to stop playing a role.

It's the commitment to living honestly. And that means revealing who you are without shame. Not posing at all. But you. And you will find if you attempt this, the first thing you'll find is how unbelievably dishonest you are. I tried this. It's a little like a low-carb diet. It sounds easy. Then you realize, actually, I really love Reese's. I just do. I'm sorry. And you didn't really know how much you loved Reese's until you went keto. And then you're like, all I care about is Reese's.

And then you realize, like, you really are kind of disgusting. And telling the truth is the same project. If you wake up and you're like, I'm just going to, in every statement I make, in every word that my lips form, I'm going to be honest, particularly about myself. When I make a mistake, I'm going to admit it. When I describe something, I will not exaggerate, not even a little. I'm going to tell the full truth. And there are some things I don't express. Because telling the truth does not obligate you to unload the contents of your brain on anyone else.

And there are some things that are ugly and probably best kept inside your own head. Because freedom is impossible without privacy. So you can maintain privacy within your skull, that's okay. But the words your lips form should be utterly true all the time. And if you do that, you will find swelling in your breast a power of unknown origin, but still unmistakably a power, a strength. You become stronger. More than if you ran the Ironman.

You will find yourself empowered in the truest sense. You will find that a force moves through you and other people can feel it. It comes off you in waves like a jet engine on a hot day. You can see the weird distortions in the sky and they will back off. It intimidates people. It scares people if they know that you're strong inside. It doesn't mean, you know, you have to be huge or ripped or whatever, drinking that weird protein powder that all the kids drink. Not that I'm against it.

I don't know what it is, but anyway. Check the ingredients on that, by the way. It's the parts of animals you're not supposed to eat. That's just a guess. Anyway, but anyway, no, it's a real strength. It's a moral strength, not a self-righteousness, which is the opposite of moral strength. That's always a signifier of weakness. The guy who tells you how great he is is weak inside, because why are you telling me that? I'll decide. I know how good you are because I can smell it like a dog can smell it.

All of these perceptions and all of our deepest perceptions come to us at a level above words or maybe below them But certainly outside of language we know what people are about when we're in their presence when we watch them your dogs can't speak English I mean my hand but yours can't um No, but really a dog knows who people are instantly because they can feel it and so can you the distance between a human being and an animal the distance between our society and the animal kingdom is very small and

And we lie about that. We've been lied to about that for whatever reason. But that's totally real. And you have those powers too. And so does everyone around you, whether he knows it or not. And so if you are strong inside, people will make way for you. And that's important because we are entering a period of real volatility. I mean, clearly, of real volatility.

And I'm not a parent. I mean, I should just say at the outset, you know, as I noted, I'm 54. I grew up in Southern California back when that was literally the greatest place on earth. You felt deep sympathy and sadness for anyone who didn't live there, for the billions of people who didn't live in Southern California. And there were a lot of people who didn't live in Southern California. And we honestly, we had a moment of silence for them because it was so great.

So I am not a person who looks for apocalypse on the horizon. I always think it's going to be 74 and sunny, just my nature and my upbringing. Oh, 74 and sunny. You're from Newport Beach. Okay, I got it. Anyway, but the evidence unmistakably shows an acceleration in whatever this dark force is in this country whose only impulse is to destroy. Not to improve or create, but to destroy. And it's all around us. And the only way to stop it is

is with that moral strength I described. Guns won't stop it. They have more than we do. That's just true. And they're happy to use them. They're happy to use them.

And when I hear Senator Dick Durbin, who might be the most evil member of the Senate, and it's quite a tight race for that title, when I hear Senator Dick Durbin say, maybe we should take some of the tens of millions of foreigners who've arrived, all of whom seem to be about 23 and in great shape, and hand them automatic weapons in our military and give them badges and guns in our police departments, I'm wondering, what exactly is that?

You're assembling an army against your own people. That's what you're doing. That's exactly what they're doing. And you know that that's what they're doing. So whatever, there are hard times ahead. And you can't beat them with force of arms. You can only beat them with the truth by showing up and standing immobile in the face of their lies and not fearing them. And there's far too little of this going on. And I felt it today as they announced they're going to tear down the monument commemorating the peace between North and South in the Civil War.

What is that? And I thought, where are the... And this is at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, right across the bridge from Washington, D.C. And I read that news and it was stayed by a judge, thank heaven, but no one showed up to protest it. And I thought, where are the veterans? Where are the descendants of Civil War veterans like me, like many people in this crowd who had ancestors who fought in that war on both sides, they were all Americans, to stand in front of that monument and say, it's not yours to destroy. Right?

That's my history. This is my country. I was born here and you may not do that. And their position will be, oh, we're going to throw you in jail. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. It only takes three or four people with that crazy. I'd go ahead. Look before they're like, whoa, wait a second. We're dealing with a force here. And I should say at the outset, I don't want to seem self-righteous. I did not do that. Okay, I'm here. And so I hate it being a case of like somebody should do that.

But I guess what I'm really saying is everybody should do that. Everybody should do that. We know where this is going. There's no happy endgame here. They're not trying to build a better society. If there is, where's the evidence of their efforts? It doesn't exist. They're purely trying to destroy. We live here. Our children live here. Our ancestors lived here. How about no? And that literally will change the whole story. And I have to say, as you look at Europe, because I was unemployed all summer, I took a bunch of trips.

Around the world. Are you really cheering unemployment? Well, I was and I thought you know, I can't fish all summer and bird seasons not till October So like I gotta get on the road so I I went and visited all these countries in and a bunch in Europe and one thing I noticed was when they have like some you know political turmoil in France for example that affects the farmers or the Netherlands like the farmers just kind of show up with their tractors and

Or they do. They just changed the government. They're in the process of changing the government in Holland because people got out and said no. And I thought, well, wait a second. I'm old enough to remember when everyone on my side denounced the French as surrender monkeys and, you know, the French are weak. Really? No one's doing that here, I notice.

And is it a question of our ability to do it? Is the police state in the United States so powerful that people don't dare to do it? Possibly. It is powerful, that's for sure. We live in a police state, obviously. But it's probably more than that. And I think what it really is, is that most Americans don't understand the terms. We've never had political volatility here at this scale, ever. Things have been absolutely fine since, well, Appomattox in 1865. We've had ups and downs, the Vietnam War and Occupy Wall Street and all that stuff. But, like, there hasn't been a moment where...

100 million people felt like, wow, they could put me in jail. And we're in that moment now. So it's time to recalibrate what we're looking at. Or else, the humiliation rituals will continue. And if they continue unabated, how does that end? Ask yourself, honestly, how does that end? If they're treating you like you're subhuman, what are their plans for you? If they won't let you say what you think, they don't consider you human. Period. Free speech is not some abstract concept. Free speech is what

delineates a free man from a slave. The slave has to shut up and do what he's told. His opinion is not welcome. A free man, a citizen, can by definition express what he thinks. And there's nothing anyone in authority can do about it ever. A government that cares about you tries to elevate you, tries to make you stronger, more independent as you would with your children. Any parent who inculcates dependency in kids

is killing the kids. If you're 15 years old, your parents are like, oh, did you have a bad dream? Come sleep in bed with us. If you're 25 and your parents are like, you don't need a job, just live with us. Mom will make you Cap'n Crunch for breakfast. They're trying to hurt you whether they know it or not. Anyone who tries to make you dependent is trying to hurt you. Anyone who tries to make you weaker does not have your best interest at mind. And anyone who bombards you with ugliness hates you.

And we are being bombarded with ugliness, and we don't even notice. And what do I mean by that? I mean the physical landscape around us. This is the most beautiful country in the face of the earth, and I can say that with some, I think, certainty, having been to many, many countries. We have the best looking country. And the way things look really matters. If you raise a child in an isolation room, what happens to the child? He becomes completely disabled.

If you love your children, you raise them with lots of visual stimuli and beautiful things so they will be inquisitive and bright-eyed and cheerful. The uglier you make an environment, the more you oppress the people who live in the environment. And it can't be accidental because what is beauty? Beauty is truth. The truer something is, the more beautiful it is. The most beautiful things were made by God. Period. The most beautiful things are in no museum. They're nature.

They're trees and leaves and grass. They're animals. They're your dog's face. There's no painting in the Louvre that's half as beautiful as your dog's face. That's not a sentimental statement. That's a reflection of fact. And if I'm lying, find one. There isn't one. And all great art is the closest approximation people can get to the things that God made. That's what it is. And the most beautiful thing of all, of course, is people.

A person's face. I'd say a woman's face, but opinions may differ. But the human face is the most beautiful thing. So to the extent they deface that, literally deface that, to the extent they make our environment uglier, they're trying to hurt us and they are serving evil. And we don't take it seriously. I was driving here today. I was driving through Phoenix, which I like. I like Phoenix, actually. And we passed a new mall, new construction. You can't blame the 70s for this architecture.

And it was so overpoweringly ugly. It was so aggressively unattractive. It was such an offense against aesthetics that I thought, and I meant it with my whole heart. Where's the architect? And why is he not in prison? And I mean that. And if you think that's radical, if you think that's crazy, that someone would be allowed to deface the public view, the landscape we all live in along a highway and get away with it.

And we're like, actually, the real criminals were January 6th. No, the real criminals are the ones building dollar stores in your town. I'm sorry. And they can tell you, well, it's really important that poor people have cheap goods from China and they come in lots of bright colors. Really? That's nothing but degrading. And I also say just as an ancillary matter that any economic system that produces that I'm opposed to. I don't care what you call it. If it increases the amount of ugliness and human degradation, I'm against it.

I'm against it. You can call it whatever you want. And you can call your new economic system whatever you want. As long as it produces a prettier, more pro-human world, I am for it. Period. So why are they doing this? Because they don't consider you human. That's why. It's that simple. You would never treat a fellow human being the way they are treating you.

And the last thing I'll say, which I've been thinking about a lot, and this is kind of inchoate, so pardon me if I don't explain it correctly, but I do think we're looking at a very different worldview from the one that we assumed we were looking at. This is not a Western worldview. The goal is to overthrow Western civilization. What is Western civilization? Anyone Wikipedia that recently? It's Christian civilization. That's what it is. And by the way, if I can just say...

As a nod to my fairly ecumenical beliefs, you don't have to be a Christian to live in that civilization, to love it, to uphold it, to benefit from it. But we should not lie about where the civilization comes from because it's based on the precepts of a very specific religion. That's called Christianity. And it's very different from the Eastern view. And that's not an indictment of people who live in the East, many of whom I love, the East of the globe, I mean, at all. And a lot of them want to live in a Western civilization. So again, I'm not kind of attacking anybody. I'm just noting.

that the Western worldview, the Christian worldview, upon which Europe and the United States and the Anglosphere, meaning Canada above us, and New Zealand and Australia, were founded on these ideas. What are those ideas? Well, the core idea is that the individual matters. The individual has a soul. And that's one of the reasons that in Western wars, even in the First and Second World Wars, which were atrocities and killed more people than anywhere ever, the amount of intentional war crimes is actually...

On most sides, certainly on the American side, pretty low. For a war. And the way those civilizations were organized was always around the individual. Maybe you had a king and he was in charge, but it didn't mean he could treat you as a subhuman. He had every reason to do that. But above all, it meant that we punish the individual for the things that the individual did, and not for things other people did. Collective punishment is a foreign concept in Western civilization because it's a foreign concept of Christianity.

Christianity and the West are open to everybody. They're non-sectarian. And it's not passed on by your blood. It's a choice that you make. And that's the best thing about America. And it's why, as much as I think our current immigration disaster will destroy our country, I will never stop feeling a lot of warmth for immigrants who, like, love America more than a lot of Americans do. I love those people. And I mean it. Wherever they're from. And that's a sincere feeling.

It's amazing. In fact, well, whatever. You've had a lot of people out here and some of them weren't born in this country. They're like the most articulate defenders of our system. But the core of our system is that it revolves around the individual because the individual has a soul. He is not just part of a group. He's not a faceless head in the crowd. He's a human being because God created him. Our leaders don't feel that way.

Our leaders group us into large groupings. You're black, you're white, the dreaded white, you're Hispanic, Asian, trans, gay, straight, whatever. These aren't individuals. These communities. No woman ever gave birth to a community. These aren't real. Yeah, she may have. Don't bait me into a mean joke. These are categories that by their nature dehumanize us and deny the primacy of the human soul.

So there is no history of collective punishment in the United States. Where is there? Well, in the East. In Russia, in China, in North Korea, where it's, to this day, considered normal to arrest the person for the thought crime and then to arrest his children and parents. Because they're all in the same family, so they're punished as a group. That concept cannot exist here, and if it does, we are not America. You are responsible for what you did.

Not for what your parents did, no matter what they look like, no matter what class they belong to. We don't have Kulaks here. People throw in the term Kulak. What was a Kulak? Well, I mean, it was someone of the bourgeoisie, usually agricultural, farmers with more than two cows. But the idea was they weren't just sinful because they had more than two cows. They were sinful because their parents did too.

And their neighbors did too. And they were punished collectively. Nothing like that has ever happened in the West. In no country in the West. For all the bad things that, say, Belgium, which I love to beat up on, has done. You know, they actually were a pretty crappy colonial power. They never inflicted collective punishment because Christians don't do that. But you are seeing a leadership class in this country on both sides who is starting to think that way. And that is a massive threat to you.

So just remember, what threatens you is not a political movement, it's a spiritual movement. The plan can only end in true sadness and tears and weeping and gnashing of teeth. There's no happy ending to the story that they are telling. And the third and most important thing is that you can only fight back. In fact, maybe you can only survive, not by changing them, because you can't, but by changing yourself.

And by becoming more impressive, more honest, and as a result of that, stronger. Thank you, and I will take your hostile questions.

I didn't see whether you did upper deck or lower deck. Lower deck, baby. Okay. So yesterday, while speaking, Vivek Ramaswamy briefly mentioned the issue of large influx of illegal immigrants coming to America and how it is affecting our economy and everyday Americans and everything that we do.

And his solution for this was to send back all illegal aliens. So I wanted to present to you the circumstance that I have seen that has affected me in the state of Texas, where there are children that come here with their families at a very young age when they're not old enough to make that decision to come here legally or illegally. So while they're here, they're subject to the jurisdiction of the American government under public protection.

education systems, they receive their education here and they are influenced by our culture here and this is the only language and experience that they have in society. So with them being sent back it would obviously be detrimental for them. So what is your opinion of this and how would you handle that situation? Well I would say just the obvious point first since they call me Captain Obvious.

That whenever you move large groups of people from one place to another, particularly if they don't want to move, there's a lot of suffering. That's true when people come here illegally, ask anyone who's made it through the Darien Gap, you know? A lot of people die, most women are raped. I mean, the whole thing's a disaster. Mass movements of people are bad, okay, in general. So there's that. If you did that, you would cause some suffering. No doubt. It's gone on too long.

On the other hand, I don't really see how we have a choice. Because how can you say you're a nation of laws if people from other countries don't have to obey your laws? And you really can't. And I really don't know what to say. I mean, if I break the law, or if you break the law, especially now that they found out you came here...

You know, you're going to be held to that standard ruthlessly. I mean, I have a friend, Peter Navarro, who's about to go to prison for not responding to a subpoena from Liz Cheney and her fake committee. Hunter Biden does it. It's like totally cool. It's Hunter Biden is cool. So, like, yes, if you want to restore the country to where it needs to be, which is a fair country, fairness is the goal. Fairness, which means universal principles, universally applied.

then you have to be serious about your laws and probably need like far fewer laws. We could probably get rid of 99% of laws. I've got a lot of kids. I don't have a lot of laws in my house. You know, can't smoke weed at the dinner table or whatever, you know, like the obvious ones. I don't need a law for that. So anyway, the point is you degrade your country and its justice system when you allow tens of millions of people to break the law without punishment, okay? The second thing I just know from traveling a lot

is that I'm not sure how it helps any country to have its most ambitious people leave. And the funny thing, if I can just say, about American liberals is they're so convinced that their system is superior, they're like, well, you know, of course anyone living here in some depressing suburb of Houston on food stamps has a much better life than someone in El Salvador. Well, actually, I've been to El Salvador a lot. It's pretty great. And I'm not convinced it's the worst place to raise your kids right now, to be honest.

But more to the point, how is that compassionate? Syria had a civil war and like almost every single doctor in Syria left and went to the West. Oh, a new life for the doctors. What about people who still live in Syria? They don't have any doctors. And if you talk to anyone who runs one of these so-called third world countries, some of which are pretty nice, I got to be honest, they're a lot better than downtown L.A.,

We're always like, oh, it's so third world. Really? They have none of that in El Salvador. None. There's no one on the street. They have families. It's embarrassing to have your relatives beg. They have no murders. Like the third world is not. I mean, everyone should visit just like give you a little bit of perspective on, say, Baltimore. But if you talk to people who run these countries, they're like all the people with the most ambition take off. Like that's terrible for us. We're losing a whole generation. The brain drain is real.

And so, like, why doesn't, you know, if... I think most immigrants now are not from Latin America. They're mostly coming from Africa and the Middle East, some from Asia. But I don't know how that helps Liberia, or more likely Nigeria, for everyone to come here. It definitely doesn't help us at all. And there's no justification for it economically at all. And by the way, this country is so big and so spread out that most people have no idea what's going on in it. But I would just...

I honestly, if you have a free day, drive 500 miles in one direction, stay in a motel and drive back. And tell me what you see. Is that the country you remember? There's garbage on the side of the road. There are people living in the bathroom at the hotel. Really? It's scary. Like, how did that happen? And how do we know it was? Why didn't we know what's happening? So I just think we're in an actual crisis. I think if we deported a single person, it would be sad for that person, probably. But we don't have a choice. Yeah, Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley.

No, Nikki Haley isn't real, as I told you at the outset. She literally isn't real. You've never seen her walk by a mirror. The whole thing's a hologram designed by Republican donors. By the way, I would just the marvelous thing about Nikki Haley is she gets so much attention on television. She's here. I don't have one, but apparently she's on television like every commercial break when we come back. Nikki Haley. And like there's not like 27 Republican primary voters who aren't billionaires who support her program.

It's insane. She's running on things that are completely irrelevant to Republican primary voters. Just look at the polling. And yet she persists. You don't want to live in a society where every politician has to have a personal billionaire backing his campaign. Where every cultural movement has to have... Because what is that? That's an oligarchy. And do you want to live in one? That's Russia, right? Russia! It's an oligarchy! Okay. They don't have freedom of the press! Yes, sir?

Hi, I'm Jaden Rodriguez, more commonly known as the Gadsden Flat Kid. And I wanted to ask you a few questions. Hit me, baby. Would you ever consider doing kids programming? And if so, would you hire me? Absolutely, but you'd have to be our CFO. Okay. And also, would you consider being vice president for Trump? No.

It's funny you ask! So, thank you for asking me, Jayden. And it's funny that you paired those two questions together because they have the same answer. So you asked, "Would I ever consider doing kids programming?" And, "Would I consider entering politics?" And there's a phrase in Western Maine that I just love: "I don't know nothing about that stuff."

That's the phrase. And I feel that way. I feel like there's this weird temptation for people when they do something for... I mean, I've done the same job for 32 years. And you get good at something if you do it enough. You know what I mean? That's why you want to go to the knee doctor who does it eight times a day. And if you get to middle age and you're like, I've been relatively successful in my own stupid field. I'm good at this. I think I'd also be a great landscape painter or hip-hop artist or movie producer or...

You've got to shake yourself and say, no, actually, that's a very recognizable syndrome that afflicts mostly men, but also Nikki Haley, who may or may not be real, which is called hubris. Hubris. And hubris means the belief that you are God and that you're somehow good at everything. And I don't believe in that at all. And I check that impulse in myself on a daily basis. I'm a talk show host. That's what I do. And I talk about the world and my dumb ideas and everything.

and the hijinks that they're up to, and I fulminate and scowl and stare blankly into the camera. And, you know, I enjoy doing that. I think I'm pretty good at it. How could I not be? It's all I've ever done. But one thing I have never done, probably not very good at, is making children's programming. I have a lot of children. Didn't allow them to watch TV, so I have no idea what kids watch. And politics, well, I've

Followed it all my life, of course. With every passing year, I become more repulsed because it becomes ever more repulsive. And I don't just mean the system, just to be totally clear on this. I don't just mean the system of politics. I mean the actual people who participate in it because I know them personally.

And with some, with real exceptions. I mean, I have a couple of friends in politics, amazingly. But in general, I think they're probably the worst people in our society, which, and there's got to be a name for this, a country of great people run by the worst people. It also describes the U.S. military. The best people led by the worst.

And I honestly, I don't think I could be around that. I mean, I think it's absolutely important, maybe like historically important for Trump not to be stopped by this totally immoral country changing political vendetta. You cannot use the Justice Department to knock the front runner out of the race on fake charges, period. And if you allow that, you're done. OK, so there's that.

And you also can't allow a political party to choose a senile guy to quote, run your country when every single person knows he's not running the country because he's senile. And no one's allowed to say so because it's mean. Stop. So I do think that's super important. It's just impossible to imagine myself ever getting involved in something like that. And not because I'm afraid, because I'm not afraid at all. I don't really care what happens to me. And I mean that. I mean that. But because...

How would I be good at that? Do you know what I mean? I just, I don't think I would. And I also, I think, I mean, I just can't imagine myself at a fundraiser or something. And somebody like, well, actually, Zelensky is a lot like Churchill. And I just couldn't sit through it. I don't care how much money you're giving me. Zelensky is not like Churchill. Okay. Zelensky has tried to get my country where my children live in a nuclear war. And anyone who tries to get my children in a nuclear war is my enemy.

And so I couldn't sit through that meal without making Ken Griffin mad. Oh, Ken Griffin, I'm a billionaire. Oh, shut up. You know nothing. And I've watched it. I interviewed a presidential candidate at one point who, like, said, what do you think of Ukraine? Oh, well, I think, you know, Ukraine is a sad regional conflict. I don't think Russia should have invaded. Fine. But it's not in our core national interest. Well, that's obviously true. And Ken Griffin calls the guy up and is like, you can't say that. And he's like, issues a statement the next day, like, I can't say that. Actually, Ukraine is really important. Slensky's Churchill.

I'm not naming names, but I will say I thought that was disgusting. And I liked the guy who did it, by the way. That's disgusting. You should be ashamed. You're a grown man and you're taking orders from some moron. Some guy doesn't know anything who may be good at, you know, investing. It doesn't mean you're a good person. It definitely doesn't mean you're wise. Wealth is not a measure of wisdom and wisdom is all that matters if you're running things. So I just can't imagine. Anyway, one last question. Thank you so much.

If I change my mind, I'll hire you. Yes, sir. It's the last question. Got it. Hello, I'm Jackson Robinson from Lafayette, Louisiana, and I started Turning Point Club at Lafayette High School, and I have two questions for you. Hit me with them! Would you fully support a theocratical government structure based on the teachings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? You know, of course I have no idea what that means. So, I don't know.

Would say that I mean don't even get me going I left the church that I grew up in over this question Christianity has to stand distinct from politics because when Christianity mingles with politics Christianity dies and I've seen it and watching these churches many of which I support because spoiler I'm a Christian and

start pushing the Vax at the demand of the CDC and others and the propaganda campaigns that individual churches conservative evangelical churches Inflicted on their parishioners telling them that Jesus would want them to take this back which was not tested Longitudinally, I was so offended that I left and I'm not attacking those churches. I'm sure they're nice people I think they're sincere believers but the point is when you mingle with people who are corrupt and

Unless you overwhelm them with the truth. If you're even a little bit impressed by their earthly power, even a little bit impressed, you'll be corrupted. And I've seen that happen. It happened to Russell Moore. Runs Christianity. Totally corrupted by politics. Completely corrupted. And his impulses are political impulses. They're not Christian impulses. And he's constantly thinking, well, will I offend this or that person in power? And if you think even for a second about what your witness, who will be offended by it?

You know, you're way off track. You're serving the wrong leader. And so I just I'm very concerned with any intersection. And I will say, finally, just having traveled a lot, that the death of Christianity in Europe, which is one of the biggest things ever to happen, was a Christian continent. And that's only true in Eastern Europe now. In Western Europe, it's totally atheist or full pagan. That happened in part because the church was an organ of the state. And people really came to hate the church as a result of that.

And that makes me sad because I like the church. I like churches. I like religious people. I also, to be totally honest, even though I don't share their faith, I kind of like religious people of a lot of different faiths. And when I saw the Hasids in Brooklyn during COVID and they're like, we're going to our weddings because that's what we do. And they don't want to fight with the government, but they're like, no, we're going to our weddings. I know you have your little pandemic or whatever, but we're still going to our weddings because we're Orthodox and that's what we do. I was like, you go Hasids. Do you know what I mean?

Faith gives you strength. That's not my faith. I don't agree with that faith, but I respect them because they do believe their faith. And that's how I feel. So I would just be, I think our country, the last thing I'll say is I do think that countries like people suffer consequences for immorality.

And if your country celebrates it, if it elevates abortion as a positive good, a means of freedom, it's just child sacrifice. That's exactly what that is. And mutilating children, discarding children, promoting prostitution, selling people's bodies. What? I think you suffer consequences. I think there's a lot of evidence that you do. And again, I'm not a theologian. Don't ask me if the end times. I have no idea. But that is a very dangerous thing to do. And we are doing it.

And so is theocracy the answer? I don't know what that means, but I don't want the government anywhere near my church, and I mean it. Thank you.