[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you can keep the, you know, whatever, the Malaysian mafia from reading your text, probably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You cannot keep the big intel services from reading your texts. It's not possible. Any of them. Or listening to your calls. So...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was the firm conclusion of people who've been involved in it, you know, for a long time, decades, both, in both cases. So, I just thought, you know what? I don't care. I don't care. I'm not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sending a ton of naked pictures of myself to anybody. Not a ton, just a little. Not a ton!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The guys travel with three people I work with who I love, who I've been around the world with for many years and I know them really, really well. And they all got.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, separate phones and I'm leaving my other phone back in New York or whatever and I just decided I don't care actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I resent having no privacy, uhm, because privacy is a prerequisite for freedom, uhm, but I can't change it and so I have the same surveilled cell phone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I do switch them out because, there it is, uh, because if you have too much spyware on your phone, this is true, it wrecks the battery. And no, I'm serious. It does. And we got, it was, I don't know, five or six years ago, we went to North Korea and, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My phone started acting crazy, and so I talked to someone on the National Security Council who actually called me about this, somehow knew that your phone is being surveilled by the South Korean government. I was like, why the, I like the South Korean government, why would they do that? Uhm, because they want more information, they thought I was talking to Trump or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, but I could tell because all of a sudden the thing would just drain in like 45 minutes. So that is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Flinty Yankee type in some ways, so I don't, I don't like to spend a thousand dollars with a freakin' Apple corporation too often, but yea, I do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, they leaked it to Semaphore, and they leaked it to the New York Times. Look, it's, I would even put up, well, there's nothing I can do, so I have to put up with everything, okay?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I would probably not be actively angry about being surveilled because I'm just so old and I actually do pay my taxes. I'm not sleeping with a makeup artist or whatever, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't care that much. The fact that they are leaking against me, that the intel services in the United States are actively engaged in US politics and media


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's so unacceptable. That makes democracy impossible. There's no defense of that. And yet NBC News, Ken Delaney and the rest will defend it. And it's like, and not just on NBC News by the way, on the supposedly conservative channels too, they will defend it. And there's no defending that. You can't have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Democracy if the intel services are tampering in elections and information.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, the lawyer said, no, he said very specifically, if, you know, depending on the questions you ask, Putin, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you could be arrested or not. And I said, listen to what you're saying. You're saying the US government has like control over my questions and they'll arrest me if I ask the wrong question? Like how are we better than Putin if that's true? And by the way, that's just what the lawyer said, but I, I can't overstate


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the biggest law firms in the United States, Smart Lawyers, we've used for years. So I was, I was really shocked by it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't believe in leaders very much, like this whole like, oh, Zelensky's Jesus and Putin's Satan. It's like, no, they're all leaders of countries, okay?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like grow up a little bit, you child. Have you ever met a leader?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is damaged morally in my opinion. You shouldn't be seeking power. You can't seek power or wealth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For its own sake, and remain a decent person. That's just true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there aren't any, like, really virtuous billionaires, and there aren't any really virtuous world leaders. You have...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Grades of virtue, some are better than others for sure. But, I mean, in other words, Zelensky may be better than Putin. I'm open to that possibility.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But to claim that one is evil and the other is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Virtuous, it's like you're revealing that you're a child. You don't know anything about how the world actually is or what reality is. Like it's, it's us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I actually reject even that formulation. I don't think it's always about the leaders. I mean, of course, the leaders make the difference. A good leader has a healthy country and a bad leader has a decaying country, which is something to think about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's about the ideas and the policies and the practical effect of things. So we're very much caught up in the personalities of various leaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not just our political leaders but our business leaders, our cultural leaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are they good people? Do they have the right thoughts? It's like, no, I ask a much more basic question. What are the fruits of their behavior? Now I always make it personal because I think everything is personal. Does his wife respect him?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How's your suicide rate? What's drug use like? Are people having children?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are people's children more likely to live in a freer, more prosperous society than you did and their grandparents did? Like those are the only measures that matter to me, the rest is a lie. But anyway, the point is, we just get so obsessed with like, the theater around people, or people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we miss the bigger things that are happening and we, we allow ourselves to be


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Deceived into thinking that what doesn't matter at all matters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That moral victories are all that matters. No, actually, facts on the ground victories matter more than anything. I mean, you certainly see it in this country. Black Lives Matter, for example. How many black people did that help?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It hurt a lot of black people, but in the end we should be able to measure it. You know, like what, how many black people have died?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By gunfire in the four years since George Floyd died, well the number's gone way, way up. And that was a Black Lives Matter operation to defund the police. So I think we can say, as a factual matter, a data-based matter, Black Lives Matter didn't help black people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, along litany of lies. So I try to see the rest of the world that way, but more than anything, I try to see world events through the lens of an American, because I am one. And what does this mean for us? And it's not even the war, it's the sanctions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That will forever change the United States, our standard of living, the way our government operates, that more than any single thing in my lifetime, screwed the United States.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leveying those sanctions in the way that we did was crazy. And that was that for me, the main takeaway from my eight days in Moscow was not Putin. He's a leader.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] None of them are that different, actually, in my pretty extensive experience. No. It was Moscow. That blew my mind. I was not prepared for that at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I got there almost exactly two years after sanctions, totally cut off from Western financial systems, kicked out of Swift, can't use US dollars, no banking, no credit cards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that city, just factually, I'm not endorsing the system, I'm not endorsing the whole country, I didn't go to Lake Bakal, you know, I didn't go to Turkmenistan, I just went to Moscow, largest city in Europe, 13 million people, I drove all around it, and that city is way nicer, outwardly anyway, I don't live there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Than any city we have. By a lot. And by nicer, let me be specific.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No graffiti. No homeless. No people using drugs in the street. Totally tidy. No garbage on the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And no forest of steel and concrete, soul-destroying buildings. None of the postmodern architecture that oppresses us without, without even our knowledge. None of that crap. It's a truly beautiful city. And that's not an endorsement of Putin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by the way, it didn't make me love Putin. It made me hate my own leaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I grew up in a country that had cities kind of like that. That were nice cities. That were safe. And we don't have that anymore. And how did that happen? Did Putin do that? I don't think Putin did that actually. I think the people in charge of that, the mayors, the governors, the president, they did that. And they should be held accountable for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're the main metrics that matter. They're the main metrics that matter. The main metrics that matter are


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cleanliness, safety, and beauty, in my opinion, and one of the big lies that we are told.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In our world is that no, something you can't measure that has no actual effect on your life matters most. Bullshit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What matters most, to say it again, beauty, safety, cleanliness. Lots of other things matter too. A whole bunch of things matter. But if I were to put them in order, it's not some


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Theoretical. Well, actually, I don't know if you know that the Duma has no power. Okay, I get that. Freedom of speech matters enormously to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They have less freedom of speech in Russia than we do in the United States. We are superior to them in that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you can't tell me that living in a city where, you know, your six-year-old daughter can walk to the bus stop and ride on a clean bus or ride in a beautiful subway car that's on time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And not get assaulted. That doesn't matter. No, that matters almost more than anything, actually. And we can have both. And like the normal regime defenders and morons, John Stewart or whatever he's calling himself,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're like, well, that's the price of freedom. Like people shitting on the sidewalk is the price of freedom. It's like, you can't fool me because I've lived here for 54 years. I know that it's not the price of freedom because I lived in a country that was both free and clean and orderly. So that's not a trade off. I think I have to make.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can't, that is the beauty of being a little bit older because you're like, no, I remember that actually. It wasn't what you're saying. We didn't have racial segregation in 1985.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a really nice country that kind of respected itself. I was here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think with younger people, you can tell them that and they're like, oh, 1985, you were, you know, selling slaves in Madison square garden. It's like, no, they weren't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're going to Madison Square Garden and not stepping over a single fentanyl addict.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Worse. Of course. I agree with that vehemently. This is not a defense of the Russian system at all. And if I felt that way, I would not only move there, but I would announce I was moving there. I'm not ashamed of my views. I never have been.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And for all the people who are trying to impute secret motives to my words.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm like the one person in America you don't need to do that with. If you think I'm a racist, ask me and I'll tell you. Are you a racist?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, no, but if I was like a defender of Vladimir Putin, I would just say I'm defending Vladimir Putin now. I'm not. I am attacking our leaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm grieving over the low expectations of our people. You don't need to put up with this. You don't need to put up with foreign invaders stealing from you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, occupying your kids' school, your kids can't get an education because people from foreign countries broke our laws and showed up here and they've taken over the school. That's not a feature of freedom, actually. That's the opposite. That's what enslavement looks like. And so I'm just saying,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Raise your expectations a little bit. You can have a clean, functional, safe country. Crime is totally optional. Crime is something our leaders decide to have or not have. It's not something that appears organically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wrote a book about crime 30 years ago. I thought a lot about this. You have as much crime as you put up with. Period.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it doesn't make you less free to not tolerate murder. In fact, it makes you unfree to have a lot of murders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and so I just, but it makes me sad that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People are like, well, you know, I guess this is, I can't like live in New York City anymore because of inflation and filth and illegal aliens and people shooting each other, but you know, I'm just, I'm glad because this is vibrant and strong and free. It's like, that's not freedom actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was so shocked by it. I was so shocked by it. And, and there were two, to the extent I regret anything and am to blame for anything, it would be not, and I've done this a lot, not giving it context, not fully explaining why are we doing this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The grocery store, I was shocked by the prices. And yes, I'm familiar with exchange rates, but very familiar with exchange rates. But those don't, and I adjusted them for exchange rates. And this is two years in to sanctions, total isolation from the West.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I would expect, in fact I did expect until I got there that the supply chains would be crushed. How do you get good stuff if you don't have access to western markets?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I didn't fully get the answer because I was occupied doing other things when I was there, but somehow they have. And that's the point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they haven't had the supply chains problems that I predicted. In other words, sanctions haven't made the country noticeably worse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so again, this is commentary of the United States and our policy makers. Why are we doing this? It's forcing the rest of the world into a block against us called bricks. They're getting off the US dollar. That will mean a lot of dollars are going to come back here and destroy our economy and impoverish this country. So the consequences, the stakes are really high.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're huge, and we're not even hurting Russia. So like, what the hell are we doing? One, on the subway, that subway was built by Joseph Stalin right before the Second World War. I'm not endorsing Stalin, I, obviously. Stalinism is the thing that I hate, and I don't want to come to my country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm making the obvious point that for over 80 years you've had these frescoes and chandeliers, maybe they've been redone or whatever, but like somehow the society has been able to not destroy what its ancestors built. The things that are worth having, and they're a lot. And that, like why don't we have that? And even on a much more terrestrial plane.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, why can't I have a subway station like that? Why can't my children who live in New York City ride the subway? A lot of people I know who live in New York City


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or freight ride the subway. Young women especially. That's freedom? No. Again, it's slavery. And how can, if Putin can do this, why can't we?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like what? It's not, in other words, I mean this is like so obvious. I'm a traitor. Okay. So if I'm calling for American citizens to demand more from their government and higher standards for their own society and remember that just 30 years ago we had a much different and much happier and cleaner and healthier society,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where everyone wasn't fat with diabetes at 40 from poisoned food.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, how is the- I'm not a traitor to my country, I'm a defender of my country. By the way, the people calling me a traitor, they're all like, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're not, I would not say they're people who put America's interests first. To put it mildly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have more central planning here than they do in Russia. No, that's not true. Of course it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You think that's true? The climate agenda? Of course. They're telling the US government has in league with a couple of big companies decided to change the way we produce and consume energy. There's no popular outcry for that. There's never been any mass movement of Americans who's like, I just, I hate my gasoline powered engine. No more diesel. That has been central planning. That is central planning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you see it up and down our economy. There's no free market in the United States. You get crossways with the government. You're done. If you're at scale, I mean, maybe you've got a barber shop or a liquor store or something, but even then you're regulated by politicians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, no, we, I actually am for free markets. I hate monopolies. Our economy is dominated by monopolies. Completely dominated in- Like what do you mean? Google.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What percentage of search does Google have? 90? Google's a monopoly by any definition and Google is just rich enough to continue doing whatever it wants in violation of US law.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, there's no monopoly in Russia as big as Google.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not, again, defending the Russian system. I'm calling for a return to our old system, which was sensible and moderate and put the needs of Americans at least somewhere in the top ten.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Somewhere in the top 10. I'm not saying that Standard Oil was like interested in the welfare of average Americans, but I am saying that there was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A constituency in our political system, in the Congress, for example, different presidential candidates were like, no, wait a second! What is this doing to people? Is it good for people or not? There's not even a conversation about that. It's like, shut up and submit to AI.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, no offense. And so, I'm just- Offense taken.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it's stronger, you'll be the first one to go. Well, as a white man, I just won't even exist anymore, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm just saying that I think it's changed a lot in the last 15 years and that we need to update our assumptions about what we're seeing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's, that's true up and down. That's true with everything. It's true with your neighbor's children who you haven't seen in three years and they come home from Wesleyan and you're like, oh, you've grown.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is true for the world around us as well, and most of our assumptions about immigration, about our economy, about our tax system are completely outdated if you compare them to the current reality.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I'm just for updating my files, and I have a big advantage over you because I am middle-aged, and so I don't- You've called yourself old so many times throughout this- I don't trust my perceptions of things, so I'm constantly trying to be like, is that true? I should go there. You know, I should see it. And I guess just in the end, I trust-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I trust direct perceptions, like I don't trust the internet actually. Wikipedia is a joke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wikipedia could not be more dishonest. It's certainly in the political categories for things that I know a lot about. Occasionally I read an entry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Written about something that I saw or know the people involved and I'm like, well, that's a complete liar. You left out the most important fact and it's like, it's not a reliable guide to reality or history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that will accelerate with AI where history, our perception of the past is completely controlled, uhm, and distorted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I think just getting out there and seeing stuff and seeing that Moscow was not what I thought it would be, which was a smoldering ruin, you know, rats in a garbage dump, it was nicer than New York.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have no plans to move to Russia. I think I would probably be arrested if I moved to Russia.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The most famous sort of openness transparency advocate in the world, I would say, along with Assange.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doesn't want to live in Russia. He's had problems with the Putin government. He's attacked Putin. They don't like it. I mean, I get it. I get it. I'm just saying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What are the lessons for us? And the main lesson is we are being lied to. Like in a way that's bewildering.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And very upsetting. I was mad about it all eight days I was there because I feel like I'm better informed than most people because it's my job to be informed. And I'm skeptical of everything. And yet I was completely hoodwinked by it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would just recommend to everyone watching this, like you think you know, like if you're really interested, if you're one of those people, and I'm not one, but who's like waking up every day and you've got a Ukrainian flag on your mailbox or whatever, your Ukrainian lapel pen or absurd theater, but if you like sincerely care about Ukraine or Russia or whatever,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why don't you just hop on a plane for 800 bucks and go see it? Okay? No, that doesn't occur to anyone to do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I know it's time consuming and kind of expensive, sort of, not really.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I know you've had this experience where you think you know what something is or you think you know who someone is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you have direct experience of that place or person and you realize all your preconceptions were totally wrong?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were controlled by somebody else. Like, you know, in fact, I won't betray confidence, but off the air, we're talking about somebody and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You said I couldn't believe the person was not at all like what I thought. That's happened to me. In the positive direction. In the positive direction. By the way, for me, it's almost always in that direction. Most people I meet, and I've had the great privilege of meeting a lot of people over all this time,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're way better than you think or they're more complicated or whatever. But the point is a direct experience unmediated by liars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well so that's been, and I haven't been to Ukraine and I've certainly tried and they put me on some...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kill him immediately, List, so I can't. I've tried to interview Zelensky. He keeps denouncing me. I just want an interview with him. He won't. Unfortunately, I would love to do it. I hope you do. I do too. But one of the, uhm, things that bothers me most, I'd love to hear that, what you just said about Kiev. But I'm not really surprised. One of the things that I'm most ashamed of,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is the bigotry that I felt towards Slavic people, also toward Muslims, I'll just be totally honest, because I lived through decades of propaganda from NBC News and CNN where I worked, you know, about this or that group of people and they're horrible or whatever, and then you whine, and I kind of believed it, and I see it now, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We can't even put the word Russia at Wimbledon because it's so offensive. What does the tennis player have to do with it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did he invade Ukraine? I don't think he did. You know, stealing all these business guys' yachts and denouncing them as oligarchs. Like, what do they have to do with it? You know, whatever. Here's my point. The idea that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just don't believe that. I think it's immoral to think that. And I can just tell you my own experience after eight days there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's a really interesting culture, Slavic culture, which is shared by the way by Russia and Ukraine, of course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their first cousins at the most distant and uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I found them really smart and interesting and informed. I didn't understand a lot of what they were saying. I don't understand the way their minds work because I'm American, but it wasn't a thin culture. It's a thick culture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and I admire that. And I wish I could go to Ukraine. I would go tomorrow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, oh, you mean if I also said that? Well yeah, I mean I, of course I think that, I'm not. Sue, I guess...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part of it is that I'm a little, because I have such a low opinion of the commentariat in the United States and the news organizations, which really do just work for the US government,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean I really see them as I did as Vestia and Pravda in the 80s. Like they're just organs of the government and I think they're contemptible. I think the people who work there are contemptible and I say that as someone who knows them really well personally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think they're disgusting. Uhm, that I- I'm a little bit cut off, kind of, from what people are saying about me, because I'm not interested. But uhm, so I try not to be defensive. Like, see, I'm not a tool of Putin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the idea that I'd be flacking for Putin when, you know, my relatives fought in the Revolutionary War, like I'm as American as you could be,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it's like crazy to me. Anne Applebaum calls me a traitor to my- Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's just like so dumb, but no, of course they don't have, no country has freedom of speech other than us. Canada doesn't have it. Great Britain definitely doesn't have it. France, Netherlands, these are countries I spent a lot of time in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Russia certainly doesn't have it. So that's why I don't live there. I'm just saying our sanctions don't work. That's all I was saying. And we don't have to live like animals. We can live with dignity. Even the Russians can do it. That's kind of what I was saying. Even the Russians under Vladimir freakin' Putin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can live like this. And no, it's not a feature of dictatorship.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the most, I think, discouraging and most dishonest line by people like Jon Stewart, who really are trying to prepare the population for accepting a lot less.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He is really a tool of the regime in a sinister way. Always has been. Uhm, like, how dare you expect that? What, are you a Stalinist? It's like, no.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't, and everyone's afraid in this country they're gonna be shut down by the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tech oligarchs or have the FBI show up at their houses or go to jail and people are legit afraid of that in the United States. And my feeling is, so? Like show a little courage. Like what is it worth to you for your grandchildren to live in a free, prosperous country? It should be worth more than your comfort. That's how I feel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, that's why they're 61. But I'm saying, look, I don't know what the criteria are they're using to arrive at that, but I know press freedom when I see it, I try to practice it, which is saying what you think is true, correcting yourself when you've been shown to be wrong, as I have many times.


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[Assistant] Uhm, being as honest as you can be all the time and not being afraid. And those are wholly absent in my country, wholly absent. People are afraid in the news business, I would know.


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[Assistant] So I have sympathy, but they go along with things, like you would, you are not allowed, if you stand up.


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[Assistant] At any cable channel, any cable channel in the United States and say, wait a second.


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[Assistant] How did the Ukrainian government throw a US citizen into prison until he died for criticizing


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[Assistant] The Ukrainian government, and we're paying for that. That's why it's offensive to me, we're paying for it. And that happens all the time around the world.


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[Assistant] Of course. But this is a U.S. citizen, and we're paying the pensions of Ukrainian bureaucrats. Like we, we are the Ukrainian government at this point.


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[Assistant] And like, if you said that on TV, on any channel, well you, you know, you'd lose your job for that. So like, that's not, I don't care, Norway is at the top, really, Norway. If I went on Norwegian television and said NATO blew up Nord Stream, which it did, NATO blew up Nord Stream, the United States government,


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[Assistant] With the help of other governments, blew up, committed the largest act of industrial terrorism in history. And by the way, the largest environmental crime, the largest emission of CO2, methane. Could I keep my job now?


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's not the only measurement. Obviously, being thrown into prison is much worse than losing a job. I've been fired a number of times for saying what I think, by the way. Uhm, and it's fine. I've enjoyed it. I don't mind being fired. I've always become a better person after it happened.


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[Assistant] But it is one measurement of freedom. If, you know, if you have the theoretical right to do something, but no practical ability to do it, do you have the right to do it? And the answer is not really.


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[Assistant] I haven't seen it, uhm, but someone characterized it to me.


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[Assistant] Which is why I pivoted against it earlier in our conversation about how the price of freedom is living in filth and chaos.


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[Assistant] I mean for me, you know, as I was saying to you before about how it takes a long time to digest and process and understand what happens to you, or at least it does for me.


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[Assistant] I didn't understand that as a particularly significant moment while it was happening. I just got off on a plane from Hawaii. I mean, I was out of it as usual. And I was very literal as usual.


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[Assistant] And so from my perspective, his criticism of me to the extent I remember it, was that I was a partisan.


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[Assistant] Well, he had two cards, one that Crossfire was stupid, which it certainly was. In fact, I'd already given my notice and I was moving on to another company by that point.


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[Assistant] Uhm, Crossfire was stupid. Crossfire didn't help. Crossfire framed everything as Republican versus Democrat.


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[Assistant] Whatever, it was not helpful to the public discourse. I couldn't agree more. And that's why I left.


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[Assistant] I'm not sure I would have admitted it at the time because I worked there and it's sort of hard to admit you're engaged in an enterprise that's like fundamentally worthless, which it was. But, uh,


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[Assistant] But his other point was that I was somehow a partisan or a mindless partisan, which is definitely not true. I mean, it is true of him. He is a mindless partisan.


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[Assistant] But I'm not, and I haven't been for, I really haven't been since I got back from Baghdad at the beginning of the Iraq war, and I realized that the Republican Party, which I'd voted for, you know,


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[Assistant] It was like pushing this really horrible thing that was going to hurt the United States, which in time it really did. The Iraq war really hurt the United States. And I realized that I had been on the wrong side of that. I said so publicly, immediately, from Baghdad I said that, to the New York Times. And I really meant it, I mean it now. And so to call me partisan, you can call me stupid.


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[Assistant] You can call me wrong, I certainly have been wrong, but partisan, I just didn't think it was a meaningful, I mean it's like, that's just not true. It's the opposite of true. So, I didn't really take it seriously at all.


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[Assistant] And uhm, I, and I never thought much of him, so I was like, whatever, some buffoon jumping around on my show, grandstanding. Uhm, but I do think it was recorded, and by the way, that happened right at the moment that YouTube began. I think that was one of the first big YouTube videos, it was one of the first big YouTube videos.


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[Assistant] So it, it had a virality that, if that's a word, it went everywhere, uh, in a way that didn't used to happen in cable news. I mean, by that point, I had, that was 20 years ago, as you point out, I've been in cable news for nine years. So in the, before 2004, we.


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[Assistant] Would say something on television and then it would kind of be lost like people could claim they heard it but you have to go to the university of tennessee at noxville archives to get it suddenly everything we said would live forever on the internet.


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[Assistant] Which is good, by the way. That's not bad, but it was a big change for me and I just couldn't believe how...


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[Assistant] Widely that was discussed at the time, cause I thought he was not a...


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[Assistant] An interesting person, I think he's obviously a very unhappy person. Uhm, I just didn't take him seriously then and I don't now. But, uh.


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[Assistant] So anyway, that was it. It was a smaller thing in my life at the time than other people imagined.


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[Assistant] Believe that whatever political debate they're engaged in is the most important debate in the world.


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[Assistant] And so they bring an emotional intensity to those debates and they're inevitably disappointed because no...


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[Assistant] No eternal question is solved politically. So they're kind of on the wrong path, right? And they're doomed to frustration.


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[Assistant] Uhm, if they believe that, and many do, he certainly does, that whatever the issue is, so you know, Clarence Thomas, stop being Supreme Court Justice! And the implication is, well, if someone else is Supreme Court Justice, we'll live in a fair and happy society, but that's just not, it's a false promise.


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[Assistant] So I think that people who bring that level of intensity to politics are by definition bitter, by definition disappointed, bitter in the way that disappointed people are.


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[Assistant] And that the real questions are like, what happens when you die? And how do the people around you feel about you? You know, those are...


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[Assistant] Those are not the only questions in life, but they're certainly the most important ones.


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[Assistant] And if we're spending a disproportionate amount of time on who gets elected to some office, not that it's irrelevant, it is relevant, but it's not the eternal question.


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[Assistant] Kind of bitter, silly person in Washington or in its...


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[Assistant] In its orbit, there are many, and a lot of them are Republicans, so uhm, but I just thought it was ironic, I mean everything is ironic to me, but like being called a Russia sympathizer by a guy who calls himself Boris.


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[Assistant] That just made me laugh. No one else has ever laughed at that. Boris Johnson's real name is not Boris, as you know.


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[Assistant] He calls himself Boris, it's his middle name. Uhm, and so like if you call yourself Boris, you don't really have standing to attack anyone else as a Russia defender, right? That's my, I think that's funny.


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[Assistant] No one else, as I noted, does, but uhm.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of things you could say about me, but he's much more partisan than I am, so to call me a partisan is like-


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[Assistant] He's a dead serious, he's a very serious person in this, I will say this, and he shares this quality with a lot of comedians. I know a lot of comedians. I know a cross section of people just having done this job for a long time.


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[Assistant] And, uh, a lot of them are very serious, like, about their views. And they have a lot of emotional intensity. And he certainly is in that category. He's not, that's, that's like the silliest thing. Yeah, he's a comedian for sure. He can be very funny for sure. He has talent, no doubt about it. I've never denied that. But he is a, he's motivated by, um, by his moral views. You know, this is right, that is wrong. And, and I just think that's, it's a misapplied passion.


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[Assistant] Look, I'm not trying to claim, I couldn't claim that I haven't said a lot of dumb things, and one of the dumbest things I ever said.


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[Assistant] Was when he was on our set lecturing me, you know, he's, he's a moralizer, which I also just don't really care for as an aesthetic matter, but he, um, he was lecturing me about something and I said, I thought you were here to tell jokes, which I shouldn't have said.


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[Assistant] Because he wasn't there to tell jokes. He was there to lecture me and I should have just engaged it directly rather than trying to diminish him by like, you're just a little comedian. Well, he doesn't see himself that way.


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[Assistant] But I would just say this, Jon Stewart's a defender of power. Like, Jon Stewart has never criticized. Like, what's Jon Stewart's view on...


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[Assistant] You know, the aid we've sent to Ukraine, the hundred billion dollars or whatever, like what happened to that money? What happened to the weapons that it bought? He doesn't care.


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[Assistant] He has the exact same priorities as the people permanently in charge in Washington.


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[Assistant] So whatever, he doesn't, he's not alone in that. So does Mika Brzezinski and her husband and all the rest of the cast of Dummies.


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[Assistant] If you're gonna pretend to be the guy who's giving the finger to entrench power, you should do it once in a while.


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[Assistant] And he never has. There's not one time when he said something that would be deeply unpopular on Morning Joe. That's all I'm saying.


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[Assistant] And so don't call yourself a truth teller, you're a court comedian or a flatterer of power. Okay, that's fine, there's a role for that, but don't pretend to be something else.


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[Assistant] So I thought that was disingenuous, and I haven't watched it, I never have watched a clip one time in my life, and uhm, I don't like to watch myself on television, I never have. So, and that's my fault, and I probably should force myself to watch it though, of course I never will, but I uhm,


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[Assistant] I think the takeaway for me, which was really interesting and life changing was, I agree with your assessment. I'm not just, I've lost a lot of debates. I've been humiliated on television. I'm not above that. It certainly happened to me. It will happen again.


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[Assistant] But I didn't feel like it was a clear win for him at all.


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[Assistant] You know, maybe a TKO, but it was not a knockout at all.


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[Assistant] And then I realized, no, John Stewart was more popular than I was.


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[Assistant] Therefore he was recorded as the winner. And that was hard for me to accept because that struck me as unfair. You should rate any contest on points.


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[Assistant] Here are the rules, we're gonna judge the contest on the basis of those rules. And no, in the end, it's just like the more popular guy wins, every TV critic like Jon Stewart, every one of them hated me, therefore he won, and I was like, wow, that, I guess I have to accept that reality.


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[Assistant] And you do, like the reality of the sunrise, you just have, you know, you're not in charge of it. So that's just what it is.


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[Assistant] People like, well, I certainly have, or change, anyway, you hope it's growth, you hope it's not shrinkage, but uhm, but, it is filled outside. Yeaah. I, I mean, look, I, I,


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[Assistant] I haven't followed Jon Stewart's, uhm, career at all. I don't have a television, like I'm pretty cut off from all that stuff. But, uh, so I wouldn't really know, but...


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[Assistant] The measure to me is, are you taking positions that are unpopular with the most powerful people in the world, and how often are you doing it? It's super simple. Not for its own sake, but do you feel free enough?


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[Assistant] To say, you know, to the consensus, I disagree. And if you don't, then you're just another toady. That's my view.


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[Assistant] The big things, this is my estimation of it, others may disagree, the big things are the economy and war, okay? The big things government does can be, I mean a lot of things government does, government does everything at this point, but,


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[Assistant] Where we kill people and how and for what purpose and how we organize.


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[Assistant] The economic engine that keeps the country afloat. Those are the two big questions.


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[Assistant] And I hear almost no debate about either one of them in the media.


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[Assistant] And I have dissenting views on both of them. I mean, I'm mad about the tax code, which I think is unfair. I don't think we should be.


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[Assistant] The fact that we have a carried interest loophole in the tax code and people are claiming that their income is investment income and they're paying half the tax rate as someone who just goes to work every day. It discourages work.


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[Assistant] It encourages lending at interest, which I think is gross personally. I'm against it. Sorry. And, um, and the fact that we're creating chaos around the world, like it's the saddest thing that's happening right now and nobody feels free to say that. So that's not good. How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends with a settlement?


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[Assistant] With a reasonable settlement, and you know what a reasonable settlement is? Which is, uhm.


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[Assistant] He basically refused to criticize Joe Biden and to criticize NATO.


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[Assistant] And it is, I will just be honest, as an American, it would be a little weird to be like...


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[Assistant] Pissing on Joe Biden with a foreign leader, any foreign leader, even though I don't think Joe Biden is a real person or really president and the whole thing is ridiculous, but still he is the American president technically and I don't want.


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[Assistant] To beat up on the American president with a foreigner. Just don't. Maybe I'm old fashioned. So that's how I feel. So I didn't push it, but I thought it was really interesting. And cause of course Putin knows my views on Joe Biden. He knew I applied to the CIA, so they've done some


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[Assistant] Done some digging on me. And uhm, but he didn't mention it. And he didn't attack NATO. And the reason is, I know for a fact, cause he wants a settlement.


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[Assistant] And he wants a settlement, not because Russia's about to collapse despite the lying of our media. That's just not true. And no one is even saying it anymore because it's so dumb.


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[Assistant] He wants you because it's just, it's just bad to have a war. And it changes the world in ways you can't predict. People die. Everything about it is sad. And if you can avoid it, you should. So I would like to see


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[Assistant] A settlement where, look, the thing that Russia.


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[Assistant] I don't think NATO was good for the United States. I think it's an attack on our sovereignty.


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[Assistant] I would pull out of NATO immediately if I were the US president because I don't think it helps the US.


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[Assistant] I know a lot of people are getting their bread buttered by NATO.


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[Assistant] Anyway, that's my view as an American. If I'm a Russian or a Ukrainian, let's just be sovereign countries now.


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[Assistant] We're not run by the US State Department. We're just our own countries. Like that's, I believe in sovereignty. Okay, so that's my view. And I also want to say one thing.


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[Assistant] About Zelensky, I attacked him before because I was so offended.


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[Assistant] By his cavalier talk about nuclear exchange because it would kill my family. So I'm really offended by that. Anyone who talks that way, I'm offended by.


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[Assistant] But I do feel for Zelensky. I do. That he didn't, he didn't run for president to have this happen. I think Zelensky's been...


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[Assistant] Their ambitions are geopolitical ambitions, but also the many American businesses who've used Ukraine as a way to fleece the American taxpayer.


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[Assistant] NATO and the United States is driving history. Putin is driving history. There's this guy, Zelensky, so...


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[Assistant] You know, I do feel for him, and I think he's in a perilous place.


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[Assistant] I just tried to a second ago. I don't, I don't know, um, the extent that he is in Kiev. He seems to be in the United States an awful lot, like way too much. You can do a satellite interview. You don't have to speak to my Congress. You're not an American. Please leave. That's my opinion.


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[Assistant] You got many zingers, Tucker. No, no, no, it's just heartfelt. It's bubbling up from the wellspring that never turns off. Um, but I would say this about Zelensky.


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[Assistant] Yeah, to the extent he's in Ukraine, good man. You know, George W. Bush fled Washington on 9-11. I lived there with three kids, and he ran away to some Air Force base in South Dakota. And I thought that was cowardly, and I said so. At the time.


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[Assistant] And I, man was, I attacked for saying that. And I wrote a column about it in New York Magazine, where I then had a column, hard to believe, and uh,


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[Assistant] But I felt that. I felt that. Like that's, I think the prerequisites of leadership are really basic. The first is caring about the people you lead. That's number one. You know, deep, in the way a father cares for his children. An officer cares for his troops. A president should care for his people. And, and that leads inexorably to the next requirement, which is bravery. Physical courage. And I believe in that.


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[Assistant] And I'm not like some tough guy, but I just think it's obvious if you're in charge, you know.


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[Assistant] I'm at my house and I feel like someone broke in. I'm not going to say to my wife, hey baby, go, go deal with the home invasion.


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[Assistant] I'm gonna deal with it, because I'm dad, okay? So, if you're the president of a country, and your capital city is attacked, as ours was at the Pentagon, and you run away? Well, the Secret Service told me to.


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[Assistant] Bitch, are you in charge? Like, who's daddy here, the Secret Service?


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[Assistant] Do you know what I mean? I found that totally contemptible. And I said so. And man, did I get a lecture, not just from Republicans, but from Democrats. Oh, you don't know. Put yourself in that position. I was like... Okay.


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[Assistant] I don't know what I would do under that kind of stress. Enormous stress, I get it. I know one thing I wouldn't do is run away. Cause you can't do that.


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[Assistant] Well, the leader of Afghanistan, the U.S.-backed leader, when the Taliban came, got in a U.S. plane with U.S. dollars and ran away, and of course is living on those dollars now. So yeah, there's a lot of cowardly behavior, good for him. I, uhm, I mean, I guess I'm looking at it slightly differently.


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[Assistant] Which is, what's the op- what's the option? You're the leader of the country, you can't leave. Like, Stalin never left Moscow during the war, it was surrounded by the Germans, as you know, uhm, for a year, and he didn't leave, and when I was in Russia, they were like, you know, Stalin never left, it's like, he's the leader of the country, you can't- I mean, like, that's just table stakes, of course.


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[Assistant] I would say, but you raise an interesting by implication question, which is,


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[Assistant] You know, what about Kiev? Like, you think the Russians couldn't level Kiev? Obviously they could. Why haven't they? They could, but they haven't.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that may be totally, I don't, I don't know. I don't think, I have no idea what Putin was thinking, um, when he did that about Zelensky. I didn't ask him.


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[Assistant] But it's a mistake to imagine this is a contest between Putin and Zelensky. This is Putin versus the US State Department. I mean, Zelensky, that's why I said I felt sorry for him. I mean, as I said, we're literally paying the pensions.


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[Assistant] Endorse that in the same sentence that you use the term democracy, because that's not a democracy, right? Obviously.


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[Assistant] He wants a settlement, he wants a settlement and he doesn't want to fight with them rhetorically. And he just wants to get this done and he made a bunch of offers, uhm, at the peace deal and...


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[Assistant] You know, we wouldn't even know this happened if the Israelis hadn't told us, and I'm so grateful that they did, uhm, that Johnson was dispatched by the State Department to stop it, and it's like...


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[Assistant] I mean, I think Boris Johnson is a husk of a man, but imagine if you were Boris Johnson and you, you know, you spend your whole life with Ukraine flag pen. I'm for Ukraine. And then all those kids died because of what you did.


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[Assistant] And the lines haven't really moved. It hasn't been a victory for Ukraine. It's not gonna be a victory for Ukraine. It's like, how do you...


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[Assistant] How do you feel about yourself if you did that? I mean, I've done a lot of shitty things in my life. I feel bad about them.


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[Assistant] But I've never extended a war for no reason. Like that's a pretty grave sin in my opinion. You know?


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[Assistant] Well, we're not allowing, the US government is not allowing negotiations. And so that for me is the most upsetting part. It's like in the end.


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[Assistant] What Russia does, I'm not implicated in that. What Ukraine does, I'm not implicated in that. I'm not Russian or Ukrainian. I'm an American who grew up really believing in my country. I'm supporting my country through my tax dollars.


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[Assistant] And it's like, I really care about what the US government does because they're doing it in my name. And I care a lot because I'm American. And we're the impediment.


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[Assistant] You know, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this. I don't, I hate that whole conversation because it's not real. It's just ad hominem. It's a way of associating someone with an evil regime that doesn't exist anymore. But in point of fact,


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[Assistant] Nazi-ism, whatever it was, is inseparable from the German nation. It was a nationalist movement in Germany. There were no other Nazis, right? There's no book of Nazi-ism. Like, I want to be a Nazi. What is it? What does it mean to be a Nazi? There's no idea. There's no Mein Kampf. Mein Kampf is not Das Kapitel. Right? Mein Kampf is like,


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[Assistant] Nationalist Ukrainians, Putin hates nationalism in general, which is interesting. And of course he does, he's got 80 whatever.


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[Assistant] Republics and he's afraid of nationalist movements. He fought a war in Chechnya over this So I understand it, but I have a different I'm for national and for American nationalism So like I disagree with Putin on that but calling them Nazis. It's like


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[Assistant] I thought it was childish. Well I, I do believe that he believes it. So that's so intre- I agree with that. I was, cause I was listening to this, because in the United States everyone's always calling everyone else a Nazi. You're a Nazi! Okay. But I was listening to this and I was like, this is the dumbest, sort of, not convincing line you could take.


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[Assistant] And I sat there and listened to him talk about Nazis for like eight minutes and I'm like, I think he believes this.


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[Assistant] Right, and I agree with everything you said and...


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[Assistant] I do think that the war, the Second World War occupies a place in Slavic society, Polish society, you know, Central Eastern Europe.


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[Assistant] I think I've watched, I don't think I know, I've watched the misuse of words, the weaponization of words for political reasons for so long that I just, I just don't like.


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[Assistant] Though I do engage in it sometime. I'm sorry. I don't like just dismissing people in a word. Oh, he's a Nazi. He's a liberal or whatever. It's like, tell me what you mean. What don't you like about what they're doing or saying?


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[Assistant] And, and Nazi especially, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about.


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[Assistant] Of course I don't know, but I suspect you're right on both counts, but I would say it points to something that I've thought more and more since I did that interview, which was like two weeks ago I guess.


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[Assistant] I didn't think he was, like, as a PR guy not very good. Like, not good at telling his own story.


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[Assistant] You know, the story of the current war in Ukraine is the eastward expansion of NATO, scaring the shit out of the Russians. With NATO expansion, which is totally unnecessary, doesn't help the United States. NATO itself doesn't help the United States.


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[Assistant] And so, I'm not pro-Russian for saying that, I'm pro-American for saying that, and I think that's a really compelling story because it's true.


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[Assistant] He did not tell that story. He told some other story that I didn't fully understand. Again, I'm not Russian. He's speaking to multiple audiences around the world. I'm not sure what he hoped to achieve by that interview. I will never know.


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[Assistant] But I did think that, like, this guy is not good at telling his story. And I also think, honestly, on the basis of a lot, I mean, I know this, very isolated during COVID. Very.


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[Assistant] Uhm, we keep hearing that he's dying of this or that disease. He's got ALS. I mean, I don't know. I'm not his doctor. There's a ton of lying about it. I know that. But one thing that's not a lie is that he was cloistered away during COVID. I know this. And only dealing with two or three people.


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[Assistant] And that makes you weird. It's so important to deal with a lot of people to have your views challenged. You see this with leaders who stay in power too long. He's been in power 24 years, effectively. He's done it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there have been upsides, I think for Russia, the Russian economy, Russian life expectancy, but there are definitely downsides. And one of them is you get weird and you get autocratic.


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[Assistant] You know, like this is why we have term limits. Very few kings don't get crazy in old age.


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[Assistant] Have you seen some of the interview he did with some NBC News child?


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[Assistant] Well, first of all, I accept your criticism and I accept it as true that in some way I'm probably pivoting against what I dislike.


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[Assistant] And I have such contempt for American journalists on the basis of so much knowledge that I probably was like, I don't want to be like that. Fair. That is a kind of defensiveness and dumb. So.


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[Assistant] Right. Uh, as for the Nazi thing, I was like...


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[Assistant] I really felt like we were just speaking so far past each other that we would never like come to, I was like, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about.


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[Assistant] And especially when I decided or concluded that he really meant it, I was like, that's just too freakin' weird to me. It's almost like...


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[Assistant] Yeah, I can think of many other examples where you're interviewing someone and they'll say something that's like,


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[Assistant] I was interviewing a guy one time and he started talking about the black Israelites. And we're the real Jews and I was like, you know.


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[Assistant] And it wasn't on camera, but I was like, I don't, that was so, it was so far out to me that I was like, we'll never kind of understand.


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[Assistant] So, I mean, I can easily gain 30 pounds and not know it. So like, I'm probably not a great person to ask, but no, he seemed fine. He seemed, um, he had his arm hooked through a chair and I heard people say, well, he's got Parkinson's and, um, Parkinson's can be controlled, I know, uh, for periods with drugs.


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[Assistant] So it's, it's hard to assess. I'm just not, uh, one of the tells of Parkinson's is gait. You know how a person walks, I think. And his walking seemed fine. I walked around with him and talked to him off camera. Uhm, his, he's had some work done, for sure. I mean, 71 or two.


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[Assistant] Putin or anybody, like talking about stuff that is off the record.


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[Assistant] I'll just say that uhm, when I said that he didn't want to fight with NATO or with the US State Department or with Joe Biden because he wants a settlement.


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[Assistant] Russia tried to join NATO in 2000. That's a, that's a fact. Okay, they tried to join NATO. So just think about this. NATO exists to keep Russia contained. It exists as a bulwark against Russian territorial expansion.


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[Assistant] And whether or not Russia has any territorial ambitions is another question. Like why would it? It's the largest landmass in the world.


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[Assistant] That's why it exists. So if Russia seeks to join NATO, it is by definition a sign that NATO's job is done here. We can declare victory and go home.


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[Assistant] The fact that they turned him down is like so shocking to me, but it's true. Then he approaches the next president, George W. Bush, that was with Bill Clinton at the end of his term in 2000. He approaches the next president and said, let's in our next missile deal, let's align on this and we'll designate Iran as our common enemy.


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[Assistant] Iran, which is now, you know, effectively in league with Russia thanks to our insane policies, but uhm,


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[Assistant] And, and George W. Bush to his credit's like, well, that seems like kind of an innovative good idea. And Condi Rice, who's like one of the stupidest people ever to hold power in the United States, if I can say, who's like monomaniacally anti-Russia for, cause she had an advisor at Stanford who was or something during the cold war. No, we can't do that. And Bush is just weak. And so he agreed. It's like, what? That is crazy. If you're.


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[Assistant] What's the counter-argument? I don't even understand it. And no one has even addressed any of this.


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[Assistant] The war of Russian aggression. Yeah, it was a war of Russian aggression for sure. But how did, how did we get there? We got there because Joe Biden


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[Assistant] And Tony Blinken dispatched Kamala Harris, who does not freelance this stuff, okay? Fair to say.


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[Assistant] To the Munich Security Conference, two years ago this month, February 2022.


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[Assistant] And said in a press conference to Zelensky, poor Zelensky.


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[Assistant] Knowing, because he said it like four thousand times, we don't want nuclear.


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[Assistant] What is that? And if you even, I raised that question in my previous job and I was denounced as, you know, of course a trader or something, but okay, great. I'm a trader. What's the answer? What's the answer? These are not into, you know, Toria Nguyen, who I know, not dumb.


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[Assistant] Hasn't helped the US in any way. An architect of the Iraq war, architect of this disaster, one of the people who destroyed the US dollar. Okay, fine. But you're not stupid. So like, you're trying to get a war by acting that way. What's the other explanation?


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[Assistant] By the way, NATO didn't want Ukraine, because it didn't meet the criteria.


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[Assistant] So, for admission, so why would you say that? Because you want a war. That's why. And that war has enriched a lot of people to the tune of billions.


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[Assistant] I don't care if I sound like some kind of left-wing conspiracy nut, because I'm neither left-wing nor a conspiracy nut.


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[Assistant] Of course there are conspiracies, but in general the hive mind is responsible for the worst decisions. It's a bunch of people with the same views, totally, you know, views that have not been updated in decades. Uhm, Putin said something


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[Assistant] That I thought was absolutely true. I don't know how he would know this, but it is true because I lived among them. So the Soviet Union dissolves in August of 91.


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[Assistant] On my honeymoon in Bermuda, we'll never forget it. And it was a big thing, you know? If you lived in DC...


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[Assistant] I mean, the receptionist in my office in 1991 was getting a masters in Russian from Georgetown. He was going to be a Sovietologist.


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[Assistant] Dedicated for over 40 years to opposing this thing that no longer exists. So there's a lot of forward momentum. There's a huge amount of money. The bulk of the money in the richest country in the world aimed in this direction is very hard for people.


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[Assistant] To, to readjust, to reassess. And you see this in life all the time.


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[Assistant] You know, I, I, you know, I love my wife. All of a sudden she ran off with my best friend.


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[Assistant] Holy shit, I didn't expect that this morning, now it's a reality, like how do I deal with that? Well, you know, I got stage 4 cancer diagnosis.


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[Assistant] Okay, you know, it's all bad, but I'm just saying, like, that's the nature of life. Things you did not anticipate, never thought you'd have to face happen out of nowhere.


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[Assistant] And you have to adjust your expectations and your goals. And people have a hard time with that. Very hard time with that. So,


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[Assistant] That's a lot of it. You know, people, if you're Condi Rice...


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[Assistant] Sort of like highly ambitious midwit who gets this degree from Stanford and you read Tolstoy in the original, sure you did. And, uh, and you spent your whole life like thinking that Russia is the center of evil in the world.


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[Assistant] It's kind of hard to be like, well, actually there's a new threat and it's coming from farther east. It's primarily an economic threat.


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[Assistant] And maybe all the threats aren't reduced tank battles. That's the other thing.


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[Assistant] Like a new framework. And the new framework is not that you're going to go to war with China over Formosa, Taiwan.


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[Assistant] You know, the framework is that all of a sudden all the infrastructure in Tijuana is going to be built by China. And like that's a different kind of threat. But they can't


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's a template for everything. And I think it's of huge significance to the development of the West, to the civilization we live in now, to world history. It was a world war.


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[Assistant] And so I think it's worth knowing a lot about and being honest about and all the rest. But it's hardly the sum total of human history. It's a snapshot.


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[Assistant] And so you keep hearing people refer to, not even the war. No one ever talks about the war. Like, what, how much does Tony Blinken know about the Battle of Stalingrad? Probably zero. Uhm, doesn't know anything. Largest battle in human history, but I bet he knows nothing.


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[Assistant] And everything is kind of expressed through that, that...


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[Assistant] That formula, and not everything is that formula, that's all I'm saying. And the Republicans have a strange...


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[Assistant] The most vulnerable, I would say, among them. Uhm.


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[Assistant] Emotionally, psychologically vulnerable, the dumbest. They will always say the same thing. And it appeals to Republican voters, unfortunately, that every problem is the result of weakness. Everyone's Chamberlain. Like, Germany never would have gone into Poland, Czechoslovakia if England had been stronger. That's the argument. Is that true? I don't know.


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[Assistant] Actually, maybe. It might be totally true. It might not be true at all. I really don't know.


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[Assistant] But not everything is that. That's not always true. If I go up to you in a bar and I say I hate your necktie, I'm being pretty aggressive with you, pretty strong.


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[Assistant] You might beat the shit out of me actually or shoot me if I do that. Like an aggressive posture doesn't always get you the outcome that you want. Sometimes it requires.


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[Assistant] A more sophisticated Mediterranean posture. I mean, it kind of depends. It's a time and place thing.


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[Assistant] And, uh, they don't acknowledge that. It's like everything is the same template. And I just, that's not a, the road to good decision making at all.


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[Assistant] It may destroy my life to interview Putin, though I can tell you as much as I want that I'm not a Putin defender. I only care about the United States. That's a hundred percent true. Anyone who knows me will tell you what's true. I keep saying it.


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[Assistant] But history may record me to the extent it records me at all as a tool of Putin, a hater of America. You know, uhm, that seems absurd to me, but absurd things happen. What would I ask Hitler? I don't even know. I guess the...


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[Assistant] I would probably ask him what I ask Putin, which is what I ask everybody, like, what's your motive?


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[Assistant] Why did you do, I mean, if he'd already gone into Poland, like, why are you doing that? You know, what's your goal? And then, you know, the question is, is he gonna answer honestly? I don't know, you know, you can't, you can't make someone.


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[Assistant] Answer a question honestly, you can only.


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[Assistant] By focusing on a supermarket video of 4 minutes versus a 2 hour and 15 minute long interview with a world leader.


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[Assistant] Anyone who doesn't want more conversation, who wants fewer facts, fewer perspectives, is totalitarian. Probably doesn't have good intent.


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[Assistant] I've never tried to like, make people shut up. You know, I just, it's not in me. I don't believe in that.


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[Assistant] It's horrible. I mean, I don't have much of a technique as an interviewer.


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[Assistant] Other than listen really carefully. That's my only skill. I don't have the best questions. I certainly don't have the best questions.


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[Assistant] All I do that I'm proud of and that I think works is I just listen super carefully. I never let a word go by that I'm not paying attention. It exhausts me actually. But uhm, you can't do that in a foreign language because there's a delay. Here I'm just whining.


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[Assistant] So what's happening is, so the translator, so we were of course extremely uptight about


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[Assistant] The logistical details, so we brought our own cameraman.


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[Assistant] Who I've been around the world with, who worked at Fox, came with me now. Amazing. And he did, I mean, it was, it was our cameras.


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[Assistant] Lighting everything like we had full control of that and we had control the tape. The Russians also had their own cameras and I don't know what they did with it.


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[Assistant] So I think we had a good translator, we had two of them actually, and, but the pro- because they get exhausted, but the problem is...


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[Assistant] From my perspective, as someone who's like trying to think of a follow-up and listen to the answer,


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[Assistant] Putin will talk and you can in part of your ear hear, you know, the Slavic sounds.


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[Assistant] And then, then over that is a guy with a Slavic accent speaking English.


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[Assistant] And then you can hear Putin stop talking, and then this guy's answer goes on for another 15-20 seconds.


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[Assistant] So it's super disconcerting and it's really hard. And the other thing is it doesn't matter how good your translators are. I'm, I'm interested in language. I speak only English fluently and, but I'm really interested in language and I know, and I work in language. You, it doesn't matter how good your translator is.


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[Assistant] In literature and in conversation, you miss so much if the language is moving. I mean, you see this in Bible study, you see it in Dostoevsky, you see it everywhere. If you don't speak.


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[Assistant] You know, Aramaic, Hebrew, Russian, you're not really getting, I mean, even in romance languages, like I, you know, I like Balzac, okay. I like, it was obviously written in French. You read Paragorio, it's an amazing novel, hilarious. And it's like, you're not really getting it. And it's not that, you know, French and English are not that far apart. Russian? Like,


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[Assistant] As a lover of Russian literature and English is that it's, it's not a simple language at all.


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[Assistant] There's a lot that's expressed that will be lost in the translation. So yes, I mean, the fact that you speak native Russian,


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[Assistant] I mean, I would run not walk to that interview because I think it would just be amazing. You would get so much more out of it.


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[Assistant] For sure. And Putin speaks decent English. I spoke to him in English, so I know that. Uhm, but he's not comfortable with it at all.


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[Assistant] I don't think they're allowed to speak in Russia in some places in Ukraine, right? That's one of the reasons that Russia was so mad is that they were tacking language and that's a fair complaint. Like what?


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[Assistant] And by the way, if you haven't been to Moscow in a while, you should see it and you will pick up a million things that were invisible to me and you should assess it for yourself. And my strong advice would be even if you don't interview Putin.


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[Assistant] Go over there, spend a week there and assess what you think. I mean, how restricted does a society feel? I mean, it would take a lot of balls to do this because you'll.


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[Assistant] I mean, whatever you decide, you will be sucked into conversations that have nothing to do with you, political conversations. You're obviously not.


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[Assistant] A political activist, right? You're an interviewer, but I think it would be so interesting.


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[Assistant] Yes, I mean, I think, um, you know, I approached the, and maybe I did it incorrectly, but this was the product of a lot of thought. I was coming.


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[Assistant] Into that interview aware that he hadn't given an interview at all with anybody since the war started.


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[Assistant] So I had a million different questions and as noted, I didn't ask them because I just wanted to focus on the war.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's probably right. I did have the, the question that I really wanted to ask that I was almost going to ask because it made me laugh out loud. I was sitting.


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[Assistant] Having, drinking coffee before with my producers and I was like, I'm gonna go there. My first question is gonna be, uh, Mr. President, I've been here in the Kremlin for two days preparing.


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[Assistant] And I haven't seen a single African American in a position of power in the Kremlin. Sure.


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[Assistant] You think? I live in a spiritual graveyard of people killed by the quest for fame. Yes, I have lived in it. Uh, I mean, I would say the one advantage, the two advantages I have.


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[Assistant] And one I've, I have a happy family and a stable family and a stable group of friends, uhm, which is just the greatest blessing and.


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[Assistant] Uh, but no, of course. I mean, that's what I just, you know, that's, I, and I don't want to beat up on, I'm grateful to Elon, who, you know, gave me a platform and I mean that sincerely, but I,


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[Assistant] Definitely don't spend a lot of time on social media or on the internet for that exact reason. Uhm, well, first of all, I think it's, as I've said, a much more controlled environment than we acknowledge.


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[Assistant] And I don't want lies in my head, but I also don't want to become the sort of person who's seeking the adulation of strangers. I think that's soul poison. And I said earlier that I think that the desire for power and money will kill you. And I believe that and I've seen it a lot.


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[Assistant] But I also think the desire for the love of people you don't know is every bit as poisonous, maybe more so.


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[Assistant] And so yes, and it's not just because I've obviously spent most of my life in public.


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[Assistant] In fact, I don't spend my life in public and I'm a completely private person, but professionally I've spent my life in public.


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[Assistant] It's not just that, it's like social media makes everybody into a cable news host.


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[Assistant] We're talking off the air. My, my new, I just, I'm obsessed with this. I don't know enough about it, but here's what I do know.


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[Assistant] South Korea, amazing country, great people. I grew up around Koreans. Probably no group, if I can generalize about a group that I like more than Koreans are just smart.


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[Assistant] Funny, honest, brave, there's, I really like Koreans, I always have, my whole life growing up in Southern California with Koreans.


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[Assistant] South Korea is like dying. It's literally dying. It's way below replacement rate and fertility. Its suicide rate is astronomical. Uhm, why is that? It's a rich country. Of course, I don't know the answer, but I suspect it has something to do with the penetration of technology into South Korean society.


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[Assistant] Is I think one of the highest, certainly one of the highest in the world. People live online there.


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[Assistant] And there was a belief for a bunch of reasons in South Korea that Western technology would be a liberating progressive force. And I think it's been the opposite.


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[Assistant] It's my sense, strong sense, and I think it's true in this country too.


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[Assistant] I don't understand how people can ignore the decline in life expectancy or the rise in fentanyl use. Like it's not just about China shipping precursor chemicals to Mexico. It's like, why would you take that shit?


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[Assistant] Well, let me ask you, and I know you're a technologist and there's a, and I respect it, and there's a lot about technology that I like and have benefited from. I had back surgery and it worked, okay, so I'm not against all technology. But,


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[Assistant] Can you name a technology, a big technology in the last 20 years that we can say conclusively has improved peoples lives?


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[Assistant] Well, I love that. I love that idea. Are people better informed or are they more superstitious and misled than they were 20 years ago?


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[Assistant] I couldn't agree more. You can very quickly imagine you're an expert, and that may be the problem. I think, uhm, no, it's, I just experienced it in Moscow. It's like, again, I feel like I'm in the top 1% for information, certainly intake, because it's my job.


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[Assistant] And I had literal, and plus I'm always out of the country. I've been, I've been around the world many times. Like I feel like I know a lot about the rest of the world or I thought I did. And how did I not know any of that?


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[Assistant] And maybe I'm just like unusually ignorant or something or reading the wrong things. I don't know what it was, but all I know is.


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[Assistant] The digital information sources that I use to understand just something as simple as what's the city of Moscow like?


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[Assistant] We're completely inadequate. And anyway, look, I just am worried that...


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[Assistant] If you have a society where people just can't deal with being sober, don't want to have children, and are dying younger,


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[Assistant] You have an extremely sick, you have a suicidal society, okay?


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[Assistant] And I'm not even blaming anyone for it, I'm just saying objectively that is true.


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[Assistant] And the measure of the health of your society is the number of children that you have and how well they do. It's super simple. It's the next generation. We all die.


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[Assistant] And what replaces us, and if you, if you don't care, then you're suicidal. And maybe other things too, but that's all I'm saying, so.


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[Assistant] What happened to South Korea? Like, why can't anyone answer the question? They're great people. They're rich. They have all these advantages. They're on the cutting edge of every American, for a foreign country, they're more American than maybe any other country. Other than Canada. And like, what happened?


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[Assistant] Well, let me just ask you this. I think North Korea seems like the most dystopian, horrible place in the world, right? Obviously. It's a byword for dystopia, right? North Korean. I use it all the time. And I mean it.


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[Assistant] If in a hundred years, there are more North Koreans still alive than there are South Koreans,


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[Assistant] What does that tell us? Yeah, that's something to worry about, but also- But like, how did it, how did it happen?


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[Assistant] Like, why? I'm interested in the why. This is a question I ask Putin. You know, sometimes we don't know why, but why does no one ask why?


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[Assistant] I've always assumed that was true and I should say that when I was a kid, I lived in La Jolla, California next to the Salk Institute, named after Jonah Salk, a resident of La Jolla, California.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If technology is so great, why is life expectancy going down, and why are fewer people having kids, and why would anybody who has internet access ever use fentanyl?


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[Assistant] What is that? What is going on? And until we can answer that question, I think we have to con...


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[Assistant] Assume the question of whether technology is in that good or in that bad is unresolved, like at best, right?


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[Assistant] I mean, I want that to be true, and when you said that the internet allows people to escape the darkness of ignorance, man, that resonated with me because I felt that way in 1993 for when it was first starting and I first got on it.


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[Assistant] And I thought, man, this is amazing. You can talk for free to anyone around the world. This is going to be great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But let me just ask you this, this is something I've never gotten over or gotten a straight answer to. Why is it that in any European city, the greatest buildings, indisputably, were built before electricity and the machine age?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why has no one ever built a medieval cathedral in the modern era, ever?


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[Assistant] Alright, let's be specific. Pick a European city or any city in the world and tell me that there's a...


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[Assistant] Prettier building than say Notre Dame before it was set fire to.


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[Assistant] Of course. Of course. Trees are prettier than any building in my opinion, so I agree with that.


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[Assistant] You know, the Ted Kaczynski in me wants to, but that's too close-minded. I agree. I'm completely.


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[Assistant] Purely in the realm of architecture, cause it's like, limited in, and it is.


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[Assistant] You know, one of the pure expressions of human creativity. We need places to live and work and worship and eat. And so we build buildings and every civilization has.


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[Assistant] And the beauty in our, in that one expression of human creativity, architecture. And why is that?


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[Assistant] I like bridges too, so I agree with you sort of, but like the Brooklyn Bridge, I don't know that there's any modern bridges, you know, that was built in late


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 19th century, yeah, uhm, very much in the industrial age, but I'm just saying like the great cathedrals of Europe, even the pyramids, uhm, whoever built them.


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[Assistant] It doesn't, it seems like if you, it's just, it's like super obvious. I'm just like, I'm dealing on the autism level here. Why is that? But that's a good way to start. If all of a sudden you have electricity and hydraulics,


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[Assistant] And you have access to my machines in my wood shop at home.


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[Assistant] There are so much more advanced than anything that any cathedral builder in 15th century Europe had.


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[Assistant] And yet there's neither I nor anyone I know could even begin to understand how a flying buttress was built, right? And so...


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[Assistant] Was the Manhattan Project a good idea to create nuclear weapons? That's an easy call. No.


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[Assistant] We haven't had a world war in 79 years, but one nuclear exchange would of course kill more people than all wars in human history combined, so.


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[Assistant] I am counting because I think it, obviously it's like completely demonic and everyone pretends like it's great. Nuclear weapons are evil. The use of them is evil. The technology itself is evil. And in my opinion, I mean, it's like, if you can't, that's just so obvious. And that's what I'm saying is like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not against all technology, I took a shower this morning.


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[Assistant] Yep. Heated by a water heater, like I loved it. I sat in an electric sauna. You know, like I'm not against all technology, obviously.


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[Assistant] But the mindless worship of technology? Sure.


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[Assistant] Mindless worship of anything is pretty bad. But I'm just saying, so you said let's approach this from a realist perspective. Okay, let's.


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[Assistant] If we think that there is a reasonable or even a potential chance.


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[Assistant] It could happen. Maybe on the margins. Let's assign it a 15% chance that AI, for example, gets away from us and we are now ruled by machines that may actually hate us. Who knows what they want? Why wouldn't we use force to stop that from happening?


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[Assistant] So you're walking down the street in midtown Manhattan, it's midnight, you've had a few drinks, you're coming from dinner, you're walking back to your apartment, a guy, a very thuggish looking guy, young man approaches you.


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[Assistant] Cause all the data, look, he hasn't shot you, he's not committed a crime other than carrying a weapon in New York City, but maybe he's got a license, you don't know. Could be legal.


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[Assistant] But he's pointing a gun at you, is it fair to kill him before he kills you, even though you can't prove that he will kill you?


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[Assistant] No, but you're wearing cowboy boots and they're clicking on the cobblestones. It's actually more than meatpacking.


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[Assistant] We've faced this, I mean, we've faced this, and the last president to try and keep, in a meaningful way, nuclear proliferation under control was John F. Kennedy, and look what happened to him.


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[Assistant] But uhm. But what's your suggestion? Like is it, wasn't it inevitable? Well, their position in 1962 was, no, it's absolutely not inevitable.


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[Assistant] And, or perhaps it's inevitable in the sense that our death is inevitable, but, you know, as human beings, but we fight against the dying of the light anyway, because that's the right thing to do.


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[Assistant] No, we were willing to use force to prevent other countries from getting the bomb because we thought that would be really terrible because we acknowledged


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[Assistant] That while there were upsides to nuclear weapons, just like there were upsides to AI, the downside was terrifying in the hands of... I mean, that's the thing that I kind of don't get. It's like...


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[Assistant] The applications of that technology in the hands of people who mean to do harm and destroy, it's like so obviously terrifying.


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[Assistant] I mean, this is one of the reasons I wasn't afraid in the Vladimir Putin interview because it's like, it's all ending anyway.


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[Assistant] Might as well dance on the deck of the Titanic. Don't be a pussy, enjoy it.


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[Assistant] If you live in a society where people don't read anymore...


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[Assistant] Like, but they don't know it? It's like, I do think the Wikipedia culture, and I think there are cool things about Wikipedia, certainly its ease of use is high, and that's great, but people get the sense that like, oh, I know a lot about, you know, this or that or the other thing, and it's like, the key to wisdom, again, the key to wise decision making is knowing what you don't know.


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[Assistant] And it's just so important to be reminded of what a dummy you are and how ignorant you are all the time. That's why I like having daughters. It's like, it's never...


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[Assistant] You know, my texts reflect a lot of things, including how I feel at the moment that I sent them.


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[Assistant] That specific text I happen to know since I had to go through it forensically during my deposition in a case I was not named in. I had nothing to do with whatsoever. Uhm, it's crazy how civil suits can like be used to hurt people you disagree with publicly, but uhm,


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[Assistant] I was mad at a very specific person. I mean, really what, what that, I mean, you're asking me, I'll tell you exactly what that was.


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[Assistant] The second the election ended and they stopped voting, stopped the vote counting on election night, I was like, well this is, and it's all now mail-in ballots, electronic voting machines, I was like, that's a rigged election. I thought that then, I think it now. Well now it's obvious that it was.


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[Assistant] But at the time I was like, I feel like that was like crazy what just happened.