Tucker Carlson and Michael Shellenberger Break Down the California Fires
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So I guess the first question is, thank you for doing this. Are we rolling? We're rolling. Okay. Let's roll, shall we? Good to be with you, Chuck. Nice to see you. Good to be with you. As I've said to you privately, and I mean it, I think you're maybe the best reporter working. I know you don't even think of yourself as a reporter, but a gatherer of facts and an explainer of what they mean, I think you're the best. Thank you.

Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show. We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else. And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers. We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly. Check out all of our content at TuckerCarlson.com. Here's the episode.

So where do these fires, first of all, how many fires are there and where do they come from? I believe there's five active fires right now. And these are ignition-driven fires, meaning that this is all shopper all or scrubland brush area. So this is different than the Sierra forests. Right. These are not forest fires.

Yeah, these are not forest fires. And that doesn't mean that you're doomed to them, but it's not the same problem that we get in the Sierras. So they're ignition driven and they're obviously wind driven, but there's nothing unusual. You know, I just interviewed a climate scientist about this, or rather an environmental forest scientist about this. There's nothing unusual about this. I mean, it is somewhat unusual to get, you know, you have a dry period and then the Santa Ana winds in January, but it's not like that never happens.

I'm working my way there. Of course. The important thing to know is that the National Weather Service put out a fire warning on January 2nd, and a local weatherman actually forecasted on January 1st.

They said we're headed towards a super dangerous moment. The next day, the National Weather Service Los Angeles held a briefing to underscore that point. The day after that, the mayor flew to Ghana. I mean, it's crazy. These were public press conferences. Yeah, these were. Oh, I mean, it's absolutely public and it goes to the politicians first, but it's all said publicly. It's the National Weather Service. So, yeah.

So that was like literally on the first or second, the governor should have called out the National Guard. He should have called all of our neighboring states. He should have called Canada and Mexico, asked for all their backup help. They should have started circling C-130s that are especially retrofitted that can dump the fire retardant or water. They should have had helicopters circling to see where the fires were. It should have been immediate mobilization. Pardon my ignorance. First of all, I didn't see that news when it happened.

But I didn't know that. So it was really clear to the people who run the city and the state that you had this combination of dry conditions and heavy winds, high winds. Yeah. And because there's so many ignitions, because of really these two factors, mostly the electrical wires, you know, brushing up against, you know, vegetation and triggering a fire. That's kind of one of the main ones. The other one is homeless people starting fires. Yeah.

All over LA, half of all fires put out by the LA Fire Department are started by homeless people. It's been that way for years. Why do homeless people start fires?

Well, you know, it turns out meth heads love to start fires. You know, there's just every drug has its kind of weird element to it. But meth heads love starting fires. They love destroying things like meth is like the drug of nihilism. So it's like perfect drug for L.A. and California at the moment. So it's not these are not cooking fires, right?

They could be cooking fires. But starting fires to destroy things. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah, for sure. But it's not evil or anything. No, totally fine. What could go wrong? But isn't classically starting fires and torturing animals, aren't those like signs of sociopathic behavior? Psychopathy. Yeah. I mean, for sure. I mean, look, meth makes you psychopathic. It makes you psychotic. It's meth induced psychosis.

But I mean, yeah, and all the crazy, I mean, people behave, I mean, things that people do on meth. I mean, it is like, it's like they behave with like superhuman crazy powers, the levels of violence, the assaults, the, I mean, you just, when you interview people, particularly people in recovery that describe being on meth. I mean, they're just awake for like weeks at a time. Like it's not even clear how they get any sleep at all.

So that's just – that madness has continued. And Mayor Bass, who's the –

Not totally. I mean, I think homeless people are going to often start fires for a lot of different reasons. I mean, drugs can start fires, but the meth heads are like into fire. Like it's a big part of meth culture. It's just starting things on fire. No one sees this in theological terms. It's like this. I know. It's amazing. Well, it is amazing. Yeah. No, it's satanic. I mean, it seems about as obvious as it could be. Yeah, it's awful. So but, you know, you kind of go.

I mean, so first of all, that problem should have been dealt with, obviously, years ago. It should never have been allowed. But they knew on January 1st, January 2nd, that the fires were coming. It was inevitable that there would be fires. There was zero doubt among anybody that knows anything about fire in Los Angeles that the fires were coming. The fires were coming. So the governor should have been there. The mayor should have been there. Literally, it's all about prevention, in part because...

By the time the fire trucks are having to weave their way up those little hills of the Pacific Palisades, it's over. I mean, so the other thing to keep in mind is that, okay, well, so that's the first thing is that they just have to mobilize in advance. So that's a feature for people who aren't aware of the geography of LA. Oh, it's just incredible. It's why it's so beautiful. Beautiful places are dangerous. Exactly right. So-

So that was – so that's like the main event. So the – I mean, because I knew – I did – my first thing I did is I was like, look, they're going to come out and say it was inevitable, and that's just a total lie. Because of global warming. Yeah, because of global warming. And I mean, anyway, we can get so – there's so many places to go here. But just on the most practical sense –

They knew the fires were coming and they didn't do anything. The mayor leaves the country. She flies to Ghana after having promised not to leave the country, by the way, as mayor. She's traveled at least six times out of the country and she promised not to travel.

Why is it important that Mayor be there? Because, hey, well, aren't there other people in charge? Because it's a command. It's an emergency command situation. She has to be able to issue orders and to, you know, waive regulations and make things happen. The governor has to be doing that. They didn't do that. They should have had, by the way, they should get the fire trucks up into the fire areas right away. They can also start, you know, they can start clearing brush. They can start

You know, but literally they could just be in those neighborhoods just sitting there for days at a time waiting for the fires to happen, put them out as soon as they happen. I'm not saying that they would have been able to prevent all the fires from happening. But you remember, like, the big fire in 1993, I think it was Laguna Beach, right?

or maybe it was Malibu as well, but it was like 700 homes. We're at 10,000 structures at this point, homes and buildings gone, 200,000 people evacuated. I mean, it's madness. It never needed to get to that level. Okay, so that's the first thing. They just needed to have been there before the fire started, and they didn't do that because the politicians are just, they're focused on themselves, they're focused on the next political office they wanna get.

So that was the first thing. The second thing is the water runs out, right? So that was the – and you hear people go, oh, well, there's nothing you can do because like once the homes are burned down, like the water lines, you can see the pictures, you know, the water like will be spilling out, you know, of the homes. And so that lowered the water pressure. That was a total lie. There is something called the Santa Ynez waterline.

reservoir, which is the potable water, meaning the drinking water that also goes into the fire hydrant system because the fire hydrant, you know, the fire hydrant system is the drinking water system. It's the same thing. There's the exact same system. That reservoir was empty and it was the second largest of the 10 potable water reservoirs that serve L.A. County.

there let me make one distinction here because there's actually two kinds of reservoirs there's the reservoir with the snow melt water these really big lakes basically um and then there's the and that's that's the um unpurified water and then those and then they purify it and then they feed into these reservoirs where they store the water for for all sorts of reasons for emergencies so that is an absolute crime that that santa ines reservoir

Why? Because, first of all, it's right next to the Pacific Palisades. So for people that don't know, Pacific Palisades, of course, is like right near, it's on your way to Malibu. It's like the last big neighborhood before you get to the- And they're palisades. They're over the water. Yeah.

That's right. And so they have a reservoir. You look at the Google Maps and you look at where the Santee and Hayes Reservoir is, it's right next to like a few thousand feet from Pacific Palisades and it's above, it's really high up. And so if you had had water coming from that, the firefighters would have had plenty of water. It would not have, they would have had the water pressure, even if you had lost some homes and had those, the water out. So I mean, so two major reasons.

um failures the first was the failure to aggressively respond days in advance even though they had very clear warnings the second was the reservoir was empty one reporter has reported that the that the uh the firefighters had not been warned by the los angeles department of water and power that that reservoir was empty if that's true that's just additionally scandalous but

One of the things that we think probably happened is that they had been required to build – have a cover for the clean – for the Santinese Reservoir, which is the potable water, the cover to prevent the water from being contaminated in the old days like the 50s and 60s.

You know, birds would poop in those reservoirs and they would just put a bunch of chlorine in them. And then we decided, well, the water was still had a lot of, you know, it still was not particularly clean. So we wanted to be cleaner. So you can just put a cover over it, which is a kind of plastic or rubber lining. It appears that there was a tear in that. They had to repair it.

They should not have removed that water ever during a fire season. If you need to make that repair, you do need to drain right before you do the repair, but you would make that drain. The people that I interviewed said,

said look it would take you know days if not a couple of weeks to repair it it was empty for at least a year so it was sitting there for a year and the person i interviewed who works at a as a senior executive at a different um water utility in california said if if we had any of our reservoirs empty we would be like super nervous the entire time and you would also then have backup water systems

So it's like any catastrophe. You know, you just have multiple errors occurring in advance and at the moment. Right.

And then the fires and then the actual ignitions. You can't completely prevent ignitions, but you can significantly reduce them. One would be to not allow people to camp outside all over Los Angeles, Los Angeles County with somewhere around, I think it's 40 to 60,000 homeless people in the whole county, madness. And then the other is the electrical wires that brush up against the vegetation and create fire.

With that, you want to clear the vegetation from around the wires, that's obvious. And then you can also just stop, I mean, this is a not great solution, but you could certainly do it in a pinch if you need to. You just stop the electricity from going into those homes for some period. I mean, it's a drag. I live in the Berkeley Hills, which is also a dangerous fire zone. And when the winds are really strong, they'll just cut off power as a precaution so that to prevent an ignition.

I think the thing that, the reason I wanted to come on your show, even though I'm in the midst of a huge book deadline, is because I'm really concerned about this nihilistic discourse that there's literally nothing that could be done. I mean, that is exactly where the politicians want to go. I worry that, you know, ordinary people have that idea. The problem is, I mean, it's absurd. I mean, this idea that you couldn't live in Los Angeles, right? And it's like,

It's like you can say it about anywhere. You'd be like, oh, there's snowfalls in this place during winter or hurricanes. I mean, we're in an area that's Hurricane Valley, right? Huge amounts of hurricanes.

That's not how humans roll. Like, we're capable of living in many different environments, including with extreme weather conditions. And we're really good at it. It's like saying, I can't stop my kids from dying of tetanus. Right. Or starving to death. Right. I mean, what... Yes. Right. It's so nihilistic. There's no way to become an agency. No, that's totally... It's so nihilistic. And you trace it back. I mean, the best, the most articulate...

advocate of that view is a Marxist named Mike Davis, who wrote this book called City of Courts. It's a crazy nihilistic book, but he had an essay and also a chapter in that book called Let Malibu Burn. I mean, it's classic kind of radical left politics. It's classic sort of

envy or sour grapes i mean sour grapes goes i can't remember the the parable but basically it's like some animal wants to eat these grapes but they're up too high and he says oh well those grapes were sour anyway it's like right it's a consolation for your own personal weakness and failure

That's just, you know, let Malibu burn. I mean, you know, you have an ideology of Marxism that is based on resentment and envy. And so then you go, well, yeah, all those rich houses should go up in flames. It's a fantasy. I mean, it's a left-wing fantasy. I should know. I was on the radical left. Like,

The fantasy, you hate the rich people because you want their wealth and you admire them in some level, but you know you can't get it. So, I mean, this is how envy works. So you end up constructing this whole political ideology. I mean, this is what Marx has done.

And it's infected like the citizenry. I mean, it's infected the politicians. And so there's this – I think that even though it's not consciously – the politicians aren't consciously saying, oh, let's let Malibu burn. That is the – the behaviors they have taken have had that impact. So I think that what you're seeing in real time in these fires in Los Angeles, these

is the manifestation of a nihilistic ideology. It's an emergent quality. It happens through a million small steps. But this heavy focus on left-wing ideology, whether it's DEI or ESG or climate apocalypse or just class resentment, manifests itself in like the most spectacular, beautiful neighborhoods just being turned into ashes and cinders.

It's also on a more prosaic level of violation of like the most basic agreement there is between citizens and their government, which is I send you more than half of what I own, but you keep my house from burning down and methods from scaring my children or whatever. Like you provide public safety, fire protection, safety.

you know, water, sewer, electricity, like just the basic stuff seems to be totally ignored. Absolutely. So why is anyone paying taxes? Why isn't there a revolution? There should be. Well, because, of course, they're all trapped by this ideology. I mean, these are the neighborhoods that voted overwhelmingly for Kamala, that voted overwhelmingly for Gavin Newsom, that voted overwhelmingly for Karen Bass. I mean, Tucker, I watched folk. I saw focus groups and

in 2022 with two Latinos, men and women separated, Latino group and a white group. And the Latinos were great. I mean, they were just like, when they started talking about the mayoral race, they were like, well, what are their positions? And like, what are their policies? And what do they want to do? And whatever. And they were very rational about it. They're very, as you would hope, they were self-interested. Yeah, what do I get out of this? What do I get out of these candidates? Fair question. The whites...

I mean, it was amazing. Like they first of all, they every focus group when the moderator would just be like, oh, hey, you know, just how's it going around here? They don't even try to lead to the conversation anywhere. And everybody just starts talking about the homeless situation and the crime, you know, which is basically continuous with homelessness.

And then they would be like, oh, yeah, okay, well, about the remedies. Oh, there's a mayoral race coming up. I think it was in the – it was like in the summer, you know, that these focus groups were held. Caruso versus Bass. Caruso versus Bass. And they hadn't really been thinking a ton about it, but there's a moment there where you see it dawns on the white focus group participants. And they were not like recruiting like leftists or Democrats or anything. It was just supposed to be a mixed group of swing voters. Yeah.

And they just, as soon as it dawned on them that there was a black woman running, they were like, oh, well, I mean, that's, I mean, got to vote for the black woman. Like it was the most racist, like you would think like in the most racist moments in American history, right?

you know, the stereotypes that we would have, you know, about the South or whatever, you know, Reconstruction or something. Like, people would not be as open and honest about it, but they were just like openly like, well, we have to vote for the black woman. And then in the rest of the focus group, when they, a lot of them knew who Caruso was, because, you know, he's famous for these really spectacular, you know, housing developments. And also they're kind of

Calling them malls is a kind of – well, it's not a description. Beautiful outdoor shopping centers with lawns, and you can get fantastic restaurants, and you can have the kids can play freely on these lawns. I mean, it's sort of tragic because, of course, it's all private. It's not public spaces. But nonetheless, you feel safe. You go in there. It's an amazing place. So they didn't do it for that. These white participants, I was watching them through basically over the next hour, hour and a half,

Explaining why Caruso was a bad guy for just running against this black woman. Like, it was just outrageous. And what is he trying to do? He's trying to make money. I mean, which is just crazy because, of course, he's just, you know, like, he's like a billionaire. I mean, he's self-made and extraordinarily successful person. And clearly running for mayor is an altruistic act.

So it was just appalling. So, of course, I mean, I have to say... What is that? I mean, I've been to every big white country in the last year. Australia, Canada, UK, US, obviously. And that very specific brand of self-hatred, nihilism, that brain disease is everywhere. It's not just here. It's throughout the Anglosphere. And it's history changing in its effects. Like, what is that? Why is...

The white world determined to kill itself. Do you have any idea? It's really noticeable. Yeah, I mean there's so much in that I mean it seems like there's like multiple levels I mean at one superficial level or at least a kind of psychological sociological level They're all competing with each other to show who's a better person. Yeah more I The moral hatred I expressed towards white people the better I am as a human destroying your own kids is like the measure of virtue Oh, yeah the nihilism

Obviously, this is a very old story about decadence and of, you know, comfort. And you start to kind of believe. I mean, there's something really checked out from reality about the whole thing. I mean, first of all, it's the stories that get told are just, you know, like absurd, like 1619 being the founding of America. That's just obviously wrong. The country was founded, you know, our Constitution is 1789, Declaration of Independence is 1776.

And not only that, but like slavery was never at the heart of the United States. It was always – it was a whole place committed to – it was English Americans or the American English as they were referred to wanting to create a country the first time that was just founded on the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and of free expression. I mean, so important. They put us the First Amendment. They insist on a Bill of Rights. So you just get this completely twisted disinformation story about the United States that gets embraced. Yeah.

Yeah, it's nihilism. But embraced by whites at when it's aimed. So it is a – I mean, leaving aside the fact that it's false, but a lot of creation myths are false, but this one is false in a specific way, which is like you suck and you should die and all the way. It's like, yeah, you're right. I should. Right. I mean, it's end of civilization sort of ideology, isn't it? That's it. I've never seen anything like it.

No, I mean, when you read the old... And it is the whites, too. Oh, yeah. No, because the Latinos, I mean, they're more... They're like, what? Yeah, for sure. They're like more working class. They're more Christian. They're more... They love America more. They remember where they came from more...

So, yeah, I mean, it's also, yeah, so it's just in some ways it's an old story of a civilization just at its end. I mean, including all the transgenderism. I mean, that's, you know, that's the Camille Polly is famous writing about how that shows up at the end of civilizations. Yes.

And so, you know, if you read Toynbee, it's like one of the characteristics is when the elites stop, the creative class of elites, which is, I mean, Los Angeles, they stop identifying with their own working class and they start to identify with, you know, with outsiders, basically with people from foreigners from outside the country. That's another sign of a civilization change.

at its end. So we were in a meeting here at TCN the other day and I looked around the room and every other person had a kind of ruddy vitality, pink cheeks, alertness, bright eyes, full mental acuity and a cheerfulness you could almost smell. And I asked, why does everyone look so good?

And part of the answer, of course, is they like what we do for a living. It's really interesting. We think it's important. But another reason everyone looks so good is because they'd all had a great night sleep. I'm not making this up.

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or visit TNUSA.com. That's 1-800-780-8888. You alluded a minute ago to its cause being affluence. Just generational affluence makes people... Seems like it. It feels that way to me, too. I'm not an expert. I mean, it's a cliche, but like a lot of cliches, it's got a lot of truth to it, is the good times make soft men and soft men make bad times. Yeah.

So, I mean, there's obviously been a huge correction in the United States, which is, you know, welcome, which is a sort of re-embrace of the ideals of the United States. I mean, let's hope that this has been a wake-up call for the people of Los Angeles. I mean, they are reaping what they sowed, and the people of California are reaping what we sowed. And, you know, that is, you know, I mean, it's really quite...

symbolic, you know, it's like the neighborhoods of the elites in Los Angeles that are really, that really got the most affected that are having to flee. And, but again, I mean, part of the reason I wanted to come on, I've been writing about it every day and trying to surface the stories of the utility, the water utility executives. And I've got a story coming out later today from a firefighter who, you know, like basically just described, I mean,

The firefighters, of course, the men and women on the ground doing the hard work, they're blameless. But I mean, the destruction, there's 29 fire departments in Los Angeles, including L.A. County Fire Department. You know, there's 88 cities. People don't realize like Los Angeles is a city, but then there's a much larger county around it with 88 cities in it. And there's and not all of them have fire departments. Like most of them don't. Right. So the ones that don't have their own fire departments, they depend on L.A. County Fire Department. Right.

But, you know, and it's been this way for a long time, so it's not like it can't work, but it definitely introduces a level of complexity into it.

I mean, the priorities of these fire departments, it's not just like a social media meme. I mean, it really has been DEI. Like, it really has been the priority of these fire departments. The first priority of the fire departments should be to put out fires and keep people safe and save lives. But the first priority has been DEI. I mean, that is clearly... Is there evidence? Do we have social science that shows that lesbians are better firemen than non-lesbians?

I mean, what are the chances, right? That like all three of these executives are, I mean...

You know, it's like it's also sort of like I mean, it's it's funny because the way that the the defenders of it sort of talk about it is as though they're imposing equality. Actually, they're demanding that that it not be based on merit. I mean, first of all, there was never any evidence that the fire departments were like systematically or structurally excluding qualified people. I mean, as I say, that never happened. There wasn't some racism. I mean, of course there is. But it's like.

They got into a situation where people are getting promoted who were not as qualified as other people on basis of race. I mean, that is anathema to the American system. And by the way, the people of California have now twice rejected racial preferences, one of them in 1994.

I believe. And then the other again in 20, was it 2018? They also rejected gay marriage, but they're not allowed to get what they want. Actually, it turns out because whatever you think of gay marriage or racial preferences or whatever, if you believe in democracy and you have a referendum system, you have to abide by the results. Well, yeah, and they haven't. No, they haven't. I mean, the spirit, the spirit of California, I mean, there's a true spirit of California that I do think is very American, which is really a egalitarianism. I mean, the American creed,

If you believe Daniel Bell's analysis of it, you know, it's liberty, it's laissez-faire, it's individualism, and it's egalitarianism. That's the state I grew up in. It was the most American of all states. That's right. It's not equity. It's equality of opportunity. That's what egalitarianism is. It doesn't matter who your family was. We used to say when I was a kid, no one in California used his last name. Now, why would that be? You know, you go back east, as we called it. We'd go in the summertime. I'd be like, hi, I'm Michael Schellenberger in California.

California. It's like, I'm Mike. Well, my father would always say that's because in California, it's not about the legacy of your family. It's not about caste. It's about you. Right. You do it or not. Right. That seemed like a great system to me. It's great. I mean, that's what I love. I mean, it's the part I love about California is like I lived on the East Coast for like a year. It was a traumatic experience. You go to parties and someone would be like, oh, what school did you go to? Oh, totally.

And then they'd be kind of looking over your shoulder and you're like, well, what? Like, who cares what school I went to? Like, you know, who am I? Exactly. Where are my passions? Exactly. So that was like, I was like, wow, that is like, that is weird. You know, in California, it's like, what's your jam, dude? You know, it's like really like, what are you into? You know, it's that's like the best of it. Who are you as a person?

Yeah, who are you as a person? It's the human, you know, it's like, obviously, you can get culty and whatever, but I mean, it is the best of that human potential. Well, you're not held responsible for the sins of people you're related to. And, you know, I come from a complicated family, so I always love that idea. Yeah.

You know what I was like? You're judged on you. Yes. The choices that you make and the character that you have. Right. Your decency. Which is actually radical individual responsibility. That's what I always thought. Yeah. I mean, that was always for me. It was like, you know, Viktor Frankl who wrote Man's Search for Meaning. Yes. He was just incredibly a Holocaust survivor. The whole thing was like, you know, being in a death camp shouldn't control how I think about the world. I mean, that's about as radical of an individual mentality as,

And now, of course, that's viewed as very right-wing and very unsympathetic and whatever. But Viktor Frankl was just loved by the existentialist California left in the 60s. I mean, he would sell out these huge auditorium in Berkeley and they would, you know, they'd go to Esalen. And so, I mean, you go from that to basically nobody taking responsibility. I mean, it's incredible. And everyone living under the crushing burden of history is.

Most of it misconstrued in a lie anyway, but still the idea that the past is determining the present and the future. That's like the least Californian, least American idea ever. That's so well-spoken. No, no, it's totally brilliantly well-spoken. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's like we in our next book, we're working on this idea of these singularities, meaning like these just awful events in the past, the Holocaust, slavery, indigenous genocide, etc.

And they become like gods for secular people. They become like super present. Like, you know, there's it's just everything that we do is affected by slavery. And, you know, everything that this is indigenous land. I mean, I was going through the I was just going through the all of like the various documents over the years of like water and fire and disaster in Los Angeles. And they they like all open with land acknowledgments. You know, you're like, well, yeah, but like literally you think that white people don't belong here.

Like, that is literally what you're saying in those land acknowledgments. You're saying, we don't belong here. And you may have seen, there's a very, there's a clip that went viral on social media with the deputy police, the deputy fire chief of Los Angeles, where

Where she's sort of saying, oh, yeah, people ask me, you know, can you carry my husband out of a house, you know, in danger? And she's like, well, you know, your husband got himself in a place that he shouldn't have been. That was her response. It was like... I saw that video. And my first thought was that can't be... Was that real? I know. It looks like a parody. It's crazy. You're like, yeah, that's literally your job is to be able to carry someone...

Can you imagine someone being like, oh, yeah, your father, your elderly father, we couldn't carry him out of the house, and he shouldn't have been in that house when it was burned down. Or your daughter gets raped walking to school. Well, she shouldn't have been wearing a skirt. Right. Yeah. Which was all but...

That's like the left campaign. Like when I was in college, like that was the whole don't blame the victim. That was the whole thing. Of course, they're all. Which I would kind of agree with, by the way. I mean, you should be able to look attractive and not get raped. Of course. You should be allowed to be old and immobile and not die in a fire. Right. What are we even saying? That's civilization. It's civilization. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. What's the point of civilization? The point of civilization is to protect the vulnerable. Right. To make it possible for people to reproduce. Yeah.

and continue right so make it possible for you to have kids and your kids to have kids like there's no reason to have it other than that so the most basic level yes and so i don't understand like how could she say something like that and not get fired or i know she should have been fired as soon as that came out i mean and gavin newsom should have called for her to be fired the mayor should have called for her fire she's still in that job i mean

she's that that's dangerous. Like it's a violation of firefighter ethics. It's that person is a danger. In other words, she's going around suggesting to all of her people that work for her that they're not responsible for saving. But I think it reflects the mentality, which is a nihilistic mentality, which is that we don't belong here. You know, we stole, we stole this land. And so you, so, and this is this, you know, Mal let Malibu burn. I mean, it is,

Definitionally nihilism. I mean, it's anti-civilization nihilism. You know, there's sort of two forms of nihilism. One of them is basically anti-civilization, anti-human, anti, you know, modern life nihilism.

And it stems from this earlier nihilism, which is that life has no meaning. We're just like animals in the famous Russian novel Fathers and Sons by Turgerev. You know, the nihilistic character dissects a frog and says, we're just like this frog. You know, we're just matter. You know, we're just dead matter, just disassembled. So it's a very dark nihilistic story that then leads to

this just um yeah nihilistic anti-civilization ideology which became very fashionable i mean city of quartz the mike davis book i mean it was a very fashionable book to read in places like pacific palisades and hollywood and santa monica and venice so yeah i think it's um you know i hope it's a wake-up call i don't know if it will be

but it is a completely preventable disaster. Fires are definitely not completely preventable, but that level of destruction absolutely is. And anybody who says that it's that it is not preventable should be as far away from power as possible. Like anybody who believes

that it was inevitable to lose 10,000 homes and buildings in Los Angeles over a week. They should not be in – they should be very far away from political power. They should not be in charge of any fire department because it ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I've taken you right to 50,000 feet.

the future of the whites and all this stuff, which I'm grateful that you addressed. But just back to the, and I'm sorry for digressing so much, back to the first question, how did this start? You gave a great explanation. Did climate change play a role? Did

Was this caused by climate change? No, it's not caused by climate change. I mean, certainly warmer weathers, all else being equal, makes the wood, you know, drier. But there is no change in precipitation over since 1877. They've kept very good records of rainfall, annual rainfall in the Los Angeles basin. And it's

unchanged. Really? There are, I know it's incredible. There's wet years and dry years. You know, you look at it, I just posted on X. It's just, people can go look at it. It's from the Almanac. No change in precipitation at all in Los Angeles. There have been Santa Ana winds in January. Many times in the past, there have been, you know, and by the way,

Like, this is a dry year now, but the last two years were very heavy rains. Too heavy. Yeah. Mudslide heavy. Yeah. And so, you know, it's extremes. I mean, that's why California is so beautiful. It's a place of extremes. And so we, you know, we adapt to that. I mean, you know, like. But there's been no, in the aggregate, change in rainfall in 140 years. No, absolutely not. That's crazy. Yeah.

No. It's actually a remarkably stable climate. Well, it is. I mean, anyone who's lived there can tell you that's its appeal. Yeah. It is a pretty stable climate, actually. Yeah. I mean, it's stable climate with these amazing extremes. So, like, you know, you'll just get these, I mean, the best, I mean, for my favorite weather is, like, after, like, you know, three days of just intense rains and you're just, like, trying to make sure that your house isn't flooded and everything.

you know the mud's everywhere it's just the dogs are bringing in mud yeah and then the sun comes out and it's just heaven on earth i mean that's why we're in california right you're just like ah so we love those we love those extremes um yeah i mean i think that's part of the i mean it's so funny because it's like it you the reversion back to these you know people are cursing the weather you know they're blaming the weather

That's why we need human sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, another one was literally just before I got here, the legislature got to its very important work of passing a bill just now that sets aside $50 million for California to sue Trump. Like literally, and they were in a special session. Yeah.

They that they kept going. They were in a special session to figure out how to sue Trump while L.A. is burning. And meanwhile, Gavin's going out there all the time being like, oh, well, boy, be really terrible if, you know, if Trump, you know, withheld disaster aid or heaven forbid, you know, required that we, you know, get our shit together. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say in your podcast, get our things together, you know.

And then literally he's like, we're going to sue him for implementing the agenda he was elected on by a majority of the American people. So it's just an MSNBC agenda. It's just a silly, rich, white, liberal agenda. And I will say I've thought for 20 years that California will only be saved by like Naeem Bukele type figure. Some authoritarian Latino in a cape is going to show up and just impose order on the state.

And I'm not, I'm not being, I am white. I'm not against whites. I love whites. My children are white. But that the fact is they can't do it in that state. Gavin Newsom can't do it. The burden of guilt and self-hatred is too heavy. And you're going to get some,

guy from Oaxaca who's smart is going to be like, we're not putting up any of this bullshit at all. And no, you can't camp in LA. No, you can't do meth in LA. And yes, we are going to have like full reservoir. I mean, do you know what I mean? It would be amazing. It would be amazing if we had that. I mean, there was sort of an idea that Karen Bass, because she was black and because she came from the left, would be able to do things that a white guy wouldn't be able to do. That was part of the reasoning for her.

She didn't do it. I mean, she's just, I mean, look, she's very, people have to remember, she's very radical. I mean, and I get it. I mean, I was like, I was there, but I left it. But, you know, she went to Cuba a bunch of times and, you know, like admired Castro and everything.

And you kind of thought, well, maybe that was behind her, but it's not. You know, it really isn't. I mean, the thing where like you're like literally get a warning that the whole city is going to go up in flames and you're like, oh, I really got to be in Ghana for the inauguration of the new president. I mean, look at where your head's at. I mean, she she talks about she loves going to Africa all the time. I love going to Africa, but I do, too. You're like.

You're like the mayor of like... It's just silly and selfish, really. It's really narcissistic. It's really vapid. It's not good to have people kiss your ass your whole life and tell you... I mean, that is just bad. When it happens to me, it's bad for me. It's bad for anybody. And if some people are always being like, you've got black girl magic, like after a while... No, I'm serious, because there is no black girl magic. There's no white man magic. It's all bullshit, actually. But if you start to believe it, having people kiss your ass...

Having had many people kiss my ass, I know corrodes your soul and makes you into a bad leader. And I really think that's part of it. We're seeing it not just in L.A., but like the black girl magic thing has been bad for a lot of people. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. As the white man magic would be, too. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, she gets I mean, they so the other thing was she did cut the fire department budget. OK, she just cut it. I mean, she just it just happened.

And then literally... They're denying it. I know. So she literally goes up at a press conference and it was word salad. I mean, it was quite impressive. I mean, she was just sort of like... Like, you were like, what did she just say? I mean, she's kind of... She goes, well, that was...

You know, it would kind of be like, well, that was different because we just approved this other money. And she would basically just was a non sequitur. I mean, she's describing a totally different salary negotiation. They cut $17.5 million from the budget. And not only that, but then they had this internal memo that leaked that said they were looking to cut another $48.8 million, another $49.9 million. From the fire department. From the fire department, which had already was already decimated.

I mean, there's a whole story on this. It's like famous for fires. No, it's crazy. So they do that. And of course, the LA Times and Politico and I can't remember other people, they all come out and they go, did she cut the budget? You know, it's complicated. You know? I mean, it's amazing. It's complicated, which is like, yeah, yeah, she did cut the budget. But nobody, the media was not being honest with people about what was really going on until...

The fire chief, the lesbians, L.A. County fire chief, to her credit. She was being, actually, she was being grilled by a local Fox television reporter who was just doing a great job, actually. I mean, just to be handed, the local TV, actually, some of the best reporting still. Only in L.A. L.A. has always had

great local television. I don't know why. No, I think I agree with you. Yeah. It's fallen off in the Bay Area. They did a little bit better in Oakland when things get really crazy. But she just kept going after her. She just kept asking her over and over again about the budget cuts. And she was kind of having a high. Finally, she was just like, yeah, yeah, she did. She cut that money. And she's like, and did it matter? Yeah, yeah, it mattered. You know, she had sent a letter. I mean, there was a letter from, I think it was December 4th that the fire chief had sent where

which said specifically, this is going to reduce our ability to deal with wildfires. She said it twice. Yes, she said it twice in the letter. So it was a little bit like, okay, you were on the record saying it was going to hurt your ability. So, but then she was like, yes, yes, it did hurt our ability to deal with it. Then she just was like, I think at that point, the fire chief, she was just like, all right, you know, like the gloves are off. So she goes on CBS and on CNN and reiterates it and with very strong language, like,

ICE was able to get into this piece that will come out shortly. I was able to get into the weeds a little bit on it. But basically, there's 100 fire trucks that are currently in the maintenance shop that just need to be fixed. There's 100 fire trucks missing. The person I interviewed was like, we could have bought, for $100 million, we could have bought...

you know, like 100 or 200, you know, kind of used fire trucks or whatever, just get fire trucks from wherever, maintain them and just put them in different points all around the city. You wouldn't necessarily have the staff to deal with them.

But you could then, as soon as you get that fire warning again on January 1st, January 2nd, you can just fly in firefighters from around the country, from around the world. You just be like, look, we're just going to bring everybody in. We don't know what's going to happen. And then they can just go. He was this person was like, you know, we could put like 30 of them at Dodger Stadium. You know, you could just like put these fire trucks that are well maintained, you know. But so she was like, because I didn't quite understand it either, because she was like, we didn't have the money for the mechanics.

And you're like, well, what do you need the mechanics for? Well, you need the mechanics to maintain the fire engines. Right. So, I mean, this is what, you know, it's like when civilization breaks down, it breaks down in like just a million small ways, you know. So, you know, is there some DEI part of it? Yeah, there was. They were promoting people not based on merit.

Is there budget cuts? Absolutely. I mean, they didn't, you know, and what goes wrong when you don't have those budget cuts? Everything. You know, I mean, the other complaint I've heard, you know, is just that,

It's just the advanced thinking. It's just getting people that can kind of be thinking in advance. That's where their focus is. That's where their priority is. So the problem with the DEI is that when you're just orienting an entire organizational culture towards racial and sex quotas rather than towards, okay, you know, what about the Santa Ana winds and the fire risk and whatever, it's just we all know that like

It's not just time in the day. It's also mind time. It's like, what do you think about when you take a shower? What do you think about when you're putting on your shoes? Like, where is your head at? Their head has been in the clouds around, you know, DEI, the larger society, ESG, climate, homelessness. I mean,

I mean, the list goes on and on. But it was on homelessness. We now know because the state audit came out, $24 billion on homelessness since Gavin took office in 2019.

Tucker, homelessness in California increased by 40% under Gavin. Can you believe that? I mean, 40%. So, because everyone goes, it's such a curious mystery as to we spent all this money on homelessness and yet it just increased. It's like, well, yeah, because you spent money incentivizing and subsidizing homelessness. You spent all this money to attract people from all over the United States.

I mean, I interview people in California that are on the streets and it's like, nobody's from California. I mean, they come in. The only reason I feel like I have any understanding of what homelessness is, is because the interviews that you did several years ago, which are the most unbelievable. I never heard of you before. I saw these interviews and you did. And I would recommend to our listeners to go find them because they're on YouTube.

You did the thing that nobody, I've never seen anybody do it before. Others have followed since you did it, but you just went and you interviewed the homeless and like, what are you doing here? Tell me your story. And they were remarkably honest. Oh, they're, they want to be. They see the thing is like homeless people, they're always lonely, you know? And so they, they're, um, obviously these are people in a really bad way and they're eager to tell their story. They have a lot to say. They're not, most of them are not dumb. Some of them are not dumb at all.

I was shocked by it. Oh, no. And they do lie, like, at the beginning. So, I mean, you have to... The secret to all great interviews, as you know more than anybody, is you need to have a long time. Yes. Because people tell the... They lie at first, and then the truth comes out. So, like, you'll interview people, and you'll be like, you're like, where are you from, brother? And they'll be like, oh, I was raised here. And then you get, like, 30 minutes in the interview, they're like, oh, I'm from Arkansas, you know? I'm from Texas or whatever. So, yeah, I mean...

So, yeah, they're from all over. They came here. They come. You know, the most famous one I did with it was with James Church. He had tattoos on his face and he was just incredible. I just love that interview so much. I think it was like an hour, hour and a half with him just holding my iPhone up to him while he's talking. But he was the one who was like, yeah.

If I'm being honest, they pay people to be homeless here. I was like, "What do you mean by that?" He's like, "Well, I get 650 bucks a month in cash welfare to be homeless here, plus a couple of 100 bucks more in food stamps. It's a great deal." He was like, "I got Netflix on my phone. I watch Amazon Prime TV on my phone. I still have Electric City from the light pole right here."

That video, I will say, is very satisfying. I do think that played a pretty big role in the voters of San Francisco voting to get rid of cash welfare for homeless people. - Make 2025 the year you check life insurance off your list and protect your family's future with Policy Genius.

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But why did it, I know I've asked this before, but why did it fall to you to do that?

Well, it's because, well, we know why. Because you weren't a reporter. You weren't working for a newspaper or a TV station. No. I mean, look, for me, this is the golden age of journalism. It is so much fun. Because basically, I can go into every story and you discover that people aren't really doing reporting. I showed up at the house that the guy lived in, the guy that assaulted Nancy Pelosi's husband. Yes. Just to give you a sense of where journalism is at.

And I show up and I'm like, I'm just happy to be there. And there's all these journalists there. It's like a bunch of like local TV news and like the local print, whatever. And I was like, I just kind of like, oh, hey, what's the call? He lived out in Berkeley, right? Yeah, he's in Berkeley. Yeah. Black Lives Matter flag and, you know, abandoned school bus. They were really it was really terrible environment. But and I was like, oh, I was like, so I was like, have you guys already? I was kind of like, I got here late. I was like, so you guys already like knocking on all the doors, the neighbors. Yeah.

And they were just like, looked at me and they were like, no, we're like not, we're, I can't remember one of them said, he's like, oh, we don't want to be like rude or something, or that would be like inappropriate. I was like, I was like, and at that moment I was like, oh God.

"God, this is gonna be great." And I just like went and knocked on all the doors and like you had all the information. Like, "Oh yeah, they would around naked out there and they would be on drugs all the time." And yeah, they were like all left wing and it was like, you know, I was like, "Oh, this is amazing." Like there's no competition. Like it's, you know, I got on the White House briefing just recently, the White House briefing on UAPs, which you and I are both interested in, on the drones.

And it was just like, you can kind of go into these stories, you just start talking to people and you just realize journalists aren't really, they're not really journalists. They're more like-

Kind of the people that would run for, like, class president or something. They're kind of goody two-shoes types. They're ass-kissers, yes. Yeah, they're actually very author—I mean, they're the ones that wanted all the censorship. Of course. So they're not—that old picture of journalists is like this kind of cantankerous and, like, you know, crabby. They got rid of all those people. Anti-authoritarian. Anti-authoritarian, um—

Yeah, difficult people. I'm the son of one of those. Yeah. Yeah, I grew up around this. Classic, right. That's like the greatest. I mean, there's like, and you realize it's essential to the functioning of civilization to have a bunch of disagreeable people running around asking impertinent questions. So with this one, it was like, yeah. So, I mean, you basically get, like when you just look at the coverage of the fires, I mean, it was like the reporters that are going out and doing it, it's like their whole thing is like, oh, we've got to make sure that the right wing doesn't,

take advantage of this situation to push their agenda. Like literally, that's how they think about it. So they're out there running cover for the policy. I mean, it's amazing, you know, somebody did like a little meme on it, but it's like that thing where it's like,

Yeah, it used to be that the reporter would like be holding the microphone up to the politicians and being like, answer my questions. And now they're like demanding that the people defend themselves for their terrible votes. You know, it's like a complete reversal. It's so true. Well, they're the Praetorian Guard for the powerful, of course. Yeah, yeah. So, but one of the things I learned from your interviews with the homeless, which I just cannot recommend strongly enough as a primary source of information, actual information, is the degree to which the

narcotics fuel homelessness. You can't really disaggregate homelessness from drug addiction. No.

Of course. I mean, it's really... I mean, you say of course, but like... No, I know. Well, no, I know. I wrote San Francisco because it was literally like... Because I knew drugs. Me too. I know drugs. I made three friends from high school. I became homeless addicts. Two are dead. It's like I happily avoided personally all the hard ones, but you saw your friends. You'd leave. You're like, wow, you guys are doing meth. It's like, meth's bad, guys. What time did you go to high school on?

Greeley, Colorado. Yep. You know? So, you know, my parents are psychologists. I remember just being around, my aunt had schizophrenia, you know. I've told this story many times, so I don't want to bore you. But basically, it was like, it was just kind of like, so wait, everyone just thinks that this is like a housing problem. Like, that's just crazy. So, you know, you sort of needed to, I needed to go do all those interviews. But I mean, really, the first homelessness epidemic, the first time that we're modern homelessness was in the early 80s.

And it was just – it was basically all it was was a combination of the emptying, the final closure of all the mental hospitals where they literally, literally dumped people on the streets. Like I thought that that was – that sounded like an exaggeration when I first started. They literally were putting schizophrenics and stuff on the streets. And then the crack epidemic. Like that's all it was. It was just those two things.

And then, of course, then, you know, left-wing mayor of San Francisco and others are like, oh, well, we can't, like, we can't, like, require that people not camp outside. They're poor. The left, in reaction to Reagan, then took up homelessness as something that they claimed was caused by Reagan. Like, I mean, he'd been in office for, like, whatever, two or three years, and they would just make ridiculous claims. You know, the Reagan budget, you know, that's why he's on the street. So, it really gets used. So, it becomes viewed by the left as,

early on as a political propaganda tool. I also blame the comics, by the way. I mean, and just I'll name them. Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg. They did this whole thing. You may remember Comic Relief. Yeah. Where they framed the whole thing as a problem of poverty, which is just, you know, it's just...

It's just such a disservice to the people on the street who need an intervention. Right. There's a natural, like when, for addicts, there's a natural progression where you, you know, whether from trauma or just because you enjoyed getting high, your addiction gets in the way of your job and you stop going to work. And you often, you know, live at home with your parents or with friends. You lie, steal, and cheat from them repeatedly. They give you multiple warnings, right?

They finally kick you out. That's often the route to homelessness. You end up on the street. That's the moment where the society, the family and friends were not able to impose an intervention. So,

The way it should work is that you end up you go out camp on the street and the cop goes, hey, you can't camp here. It's illegal to camp here. And they go, what am I supposed to do? And they're like, well, we're going to take you to jail or you can go to rehab. Like those are your two choices, two choices. And natural intervention is imposed in that situation. What progressives and Democrats did was.

for 40 years is they just removed the intervention in the name of compassion. The most compassionate thing is to impose the intervention. I mean, the thing that's most common, I'll even find this with like harm reduction workers. I was just with some harm reduction workers in Skid Row and one of them was telling me the whole usual thing. Oh, you can't make somebody get clean. They have to hit their own bottom, like whatever. And I was like, and they were like, I used to run around here, you know, on meth. It was a...

an Asian American woman who was doing this. And I was like, oh, wow. I was like, what did it finally take you for you to get clean? She was like, well, I went to prison. You know, it's like, well, right. So... I have a really close friend who's lived that same trajectory. I have a couple friends, but I have a legit close friend who's totally out of control on drugs and lost kids and all the things that happen when you're addicted and got sober in prison and rebuilt a life, a wonderful life. Yes, but...

Yeah. And they're like the, by the way, the recovering addicts are like the greatest people. I mean, they're the funniest, most honest people. They have an equanimity about them. I go to AA meetings when I can, not because I'm in danger of partying again. I'm not after 22 years, but because I like the people because they're so honest and they, they're honest about the one thing no one's ever honest about, which is themselves. It's super easy to be honest about you. I don't like your sweater, Mike.

That's disgusting. Like, that's not hard. You've gained weight. That's not hard. Yeah. I've gained weight. I'm wearing an ugly sweater. Those are hard. Yeah. And you find among those people, the recovered people, like a true honesty about themselves. Right. It's like,

it's like the greatest church service there is right because they're all born again in an important sense they've all died in some way yeah no i so that's the but to deprive people of that yes to encourage them to continue to use drugs and alcohol is like

I mean, don't even, whatever, it's an interview of you, not me, but I just feel like sobriety has to be the goal, not just for the individual, but for the society. I really believe that. So sobriety is the greatest gift. A, B, use of drugs and alcohol causes mental illness, which nobody ever says out loud. I've seen it.

to some extent, experienced it, I know you can cause severe mental illness by using drugs and alcohol. Like, right? Is that even controversial? It shouldn't be. But that's... I mean, you've done more on this than I have, much more, but... It's sort of coming back a little bit. People talk about meth-induced psychosis now more, but...

Yeah, it's really... And weed-induced psychosis. Oh, yeah, and the weed now, it's just so potent and dangerous and, yeah. So, but you, as someone who still lives in California, does anybody, do you ever hear people say that? Like, why are we paying people to use drugs? Like, should it surprise us that things are falling apart? I mean, I do think that the conversation has changed a bit. I'll take some credit for it with San Francisco and the videos in particular. Yes.

But yeah, it's just still that thing where it's like they kind of go, but yeah, but there's a black woman running for mayor. And it just, it's like the singularity. It's like when I always say that, it's like this just, it's just hovering over people. It's a race thing. Yeah, it's really about race in a really important sense. And then the guilt. It's like the dealers are all immigrants from Central America. We can't do anything about it. Right. Oh, Sanctuary State, Sanctuary City. That's part of what they're going to sue on. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's just, yeah, it's a big trap. I mean, I think that it's funny because, you know, we're a guilt culture. And so, you know, like, you know, Japan's a shame culture. Yes. And, you know, guilt is this incredibly important part of the Christian tradition. Yes. Well, you stop believing in original sin and you stop believing in Christianity. You still, apparently, there's still this deep desire to feel that guilt and to sort of,

show it as well. In other words, it is a social part of it. People wanted to see in that focus, they wanted other people to see in that focus group that they felt guilty. You know, it's very important to that. But what's interesting is, so in, you know, traditional Christianity and other religions, you know, the guilty person repents, atones, dons ashes, sackcloth, and covers himself in ashes as a way of saying, you know, I am worthy of the degradation. Yes. But

We've kind of transferred that. It's almost like the homeless are in sackcloth and ashes. Do you know what I mean? Like I live in the Palisades. I produce music videos. I'm doing pretty well, but I still feel guilt. So, but like seeing somebody like, you know, writhing on the sidewalk, I'm like displacing my atonement on him. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah. Well, then they talk about it that way. Even when you talk to the activists that justify it,

They're like, well, that's a – those people are suffering because of capitalism. Exactly. And slavery and white supremacy. But the whole point of Christianity is, no, no, no, you suffer. You – Right.

Like, confess your sin. You don't, like, put it off on some junkie. Right. Well, it's the part of it that's just really satanic. I mean, not to be theological about it, but it's just a complete reversal of the traditional Christian process. It's just, yeah, it's exactly. It's making other people... Atone for your sins. Yeah, it's crazy. It's unbelievable.

It's so bad. And they're sort of on display. You know, it's the it's the it's really if you kind of read it, I mean, it's like it's like it's like they want to they want it to be on display. They want to sort of show it. And that's why they insist that they not be arrested or mandated treatment.

It's wild. It is like, you know, like you go to Skid Row and it's still like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. You know, it's just like, you just can't, you still can't believe it. I mean, you still can't believe there's a person lying there

um you know sweating profusely passed out you can't tell if they're alive or dead you don't know like do i do an intervention and it's just it's really breaking down these are human beings i don't know that's i'm not a particularly compassionate or kind person i'm kind of a dick actually but even i like whenever i see that i feel such deep sadness oh yeah person it's like heartbreaking like of course don't allow if that was my child would i allow it not for one second

I would take that child and chain him to the fucking radiator until he got better. I would not allow that. My child. It's a healthy response, by the way. Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is. Those are the people that end up getting off the street. You raise the bottom instead of lowering the bottom. If you're still using Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, obviously our condolences, but you're going to want to hear this. Our cell phone company, Pure Talk, gives us the exact same service you're currently getting from those big companies, but for half the cost. Not a joke.

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God, we're so far afield from the box. Okay, so there are in L.A. County, 78? How many fire departments? Well, there's 88 cities and there's 29 fire departments in county to county. No, no, that's fine. But yeah, so like literally, like once the fire starts, I didn't even understand this until I started investigating it. The county fire chief has to call all these cities and be like, hey, can you send a couple of trucks? We're putting together a strike team.

you know, can you send some engines or whatever? And they have to call around and they're like, okay, we're all going to meet. The fire's like blazing away. And they're like, okay, well, we're all going to meet, you know, wherever, you know, Sepulveda or whatever the streets are in LA. You know, we'll meet in this place and we'll all get together and we'll sync the radios and we'll develop a plan. I mean, this is all happening like while the city's burning. I mean, it's madness, right? The other thing is that it's, I mean, there's...

So they didn't have any preparation for this? There's nothing, man. I mean, there might have been something that we... But obviously, if there was, it wasn't enough. I mean, it's a little bit like when they go... When the people that are like... When the nihilists are defending what happened, they're like, well, there was nothing else we could have done or we did everything we could have. It's like, well, no, obviously you didn't. Like, it doesn't matter what it is. It obviously was... There's only one right answer, which is that you didn't do enough. You know, the...

the fatalism, you know, it's a, it's a way to disavow responsibility on the one hand. Again, I think it expresses that nihilism, but I think it's like people just have been out of practice, but you have to, this is part of the journalism too, you know, it's that you kind of, it has to be like, no, no, we're not accepting that as an answer. Like the right attitude for the journalist is,

Is to basically be no excuses. Of course. It makes for like, I mean, maybe the journalists are being too much of a hard ass and too much of a dick about it. Maybe they need to be a little bit whatever. That's fine. That's their role. It's like your role is to be the prosecutor against the on the case of the failure. Your role is to be the investigator. You're the public defender.

Yeah. The public defender or the prosecutor or the – but your point is to be like, oh, no, that can't be right. Because when they go, well, we ran out of water. Well, why did you run out of water? Well, there wasn't enough water. No. Well, why wasn't it – well, because actually it turned out one of the reservoirs didn't have any water in it. Isn't it your job to make sure there's enough water?

You know, I mean, and this is what they do when they go after Trump and stuff is that like because Trump will often be like directionally correct. Right. You know, like, oh, but Trump was referring to the wrong kind of reservoir. You know, the other reservoirs were full. It's like, OK, fine. But the reservoir right next to the Pacific Palisades was empty. Right.

So, you know, the basic intuition, which is, I think, I often talk about the importance of, you know, like if you're defending civilization, it's a physical thing, right? So I'm always thinking of myself as like,

like there's a physicalism in my world view which is like okay that's a that's a person that's a body you you need to they need to they're in somewhere they shouldn't be they need to be somewhere else so we can have a debate about how to move them somewhere else that's totally reasonable debate to have but they can't be there they can't be there because they're creating fires they're breaking the law they're hurting themselves and others similarly

There wasn't water there. There needed to be more water. And if you go, okay, well, let's say that they had all the reservoirs, the potable water reservoirs. Let's say they had all been full and they still ran out of water. Well, then there was some other problem you needed to solve. Maybe you needed more reservoirs or maybe you needed the preparation there. So you just have to have...

I mean, you know, the Bukele type that you'd want to see or somebody. You just have to touch something that's just like literally no excuses all the way down the line. But when you say there's a – I feel like you're on something super important. If you could flesh it out, you say there's a physicalism to your worldview. Contrast that with the worldview currently in power.

Oh, well, this is, yeah, this is exactly, it's like, first of all, it's like, I mean, it's just so symbolic. It's the city of angels, you know? So it's like, we're up here and you want it, like the wealthier you get in LA and I guess with some exceptions like Venice Beach, but mostly you're getting up higher. Oh, yeah. You're moving up, up, up, up, up.

You're trying to get away from- To the cliffs of Malibu. Yeah. And you end up in the heavens and people talk about, I live in a little tree house. I mean, I get it. I love it. It's like, I live in the Berkeley Hills. I'm not like, you know, but it's like, I'm above all that. I'm away from all that. Like, I'm connected to nature up here, but also, you know, away from all the, you know, the plebes. And so you actually, I think they do, it's that whole thing. We talk about people being in a bubble, you know? I mean, it's like the most bubbly place in the world, except for that it's not. And you're in a massive thaw.

fire zone that must be constantly managed. There's consequences of living in these spectacular places. But you've got people that are, it's the whole industry is a fantasy industry. I mean, it's just exists to construct a fantasy reality. And yeah, you would hope that people would be able to compartmentalize. Yeah, my day job is constructing fantasies that we charge...

you know, $20 to stream. But I know that when I go home that like all the brush has to be cleared around my house and I have to vote for candidates that are physicalists. I mean, look at physicalists. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I mean, I don't know if that's the right word. There's something there. Yeah. Important.

They're fantasists. I mean, the other people, I mean, I don't want to use the word idealist because there's too many other connotations to it, but there's just, it's just a difference between being your heads, your heads up in the clouds and also, and then as opposed to just being really, you need the firefighter view of the world. You need the cop view of the world. Frankly, you need the homeless guys. The homeless people like live in a, I mean, they're high a lot, so they're switching in and out, but they have to get their physical needs met to,

You know, there's just a... Yeah, so it's... When we first had kids, I remember my wife being, and I had much lower standards, but insistent on the house being clean and orderly. And I remember saying, like, you know, the point of having kids is to instill values in them. She goes, yeah, but one of the values is, like, order and cleanliness. And, like, they will feel like things are out of control if the house isn't clean and orderly. And she's really insistent on that. And we've lived that way our whole lives. And I...

It's a version of what you're saying. It's like you can tell your kids about honesty and decency and compassion and high achievement or whatever. But like someone has to make the bed and vacuum the floor. If there's dog shit in the kitchen, like it has to be cleaned up. Right. Like that's she understood that. Right. And has imposed it to great effect, I would say.

I'm sure. No, I think that's right. And also like parents, we all, I did it too. So I'm not like judging, but like we talk too much to the kids. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And you see like new parents talking to their kid and the kid's like, what? It's like the peanuts is right. Like the whole, what they hear is the wah, wah, wah, wah. It's so true. As opposed to like, could you, could you set the table? You know? Um,

Kids like to have a job. They want to have a chore. Chores are super... Kids love that. You're teaching the kids to clean the classroom every morning. The problem is the specialization and the wealth. They sort of get disconnected from it. You talk too much to the kids. Do you know what I mean, though? That's why I'm laughing. And dogs, too. People do it with their dogs. You ever see people with their...

You know, whatever. I live in the Berkeley Hills. It's like, you know, older ladies and their dogs and the, you know, and they're just like saying blah, blah, blah to the dogs. It's like, well, you're not holding the leash tight enough, lady. You know? Yeah.

You rewarded the dog when he did something bad. You should have rewarded it when it came to you. Anyway, so all these things break down. It's so deep and true. You just said you're a physicalist. I want that to become an intercom in usage because I think that is really, really important. Yeah, I think it's because people say things like practical, which is good, and pragmatic, but some pragmatic got started to mean things like making shitty political compromises. Do you know what I mean? Right.

Or it's an American linguistic tradition or philosophical tradition. But yeah, physicalist, it's like, yeah, somebody's got to clean up all the, you know, if you have all the homeless people, you're going to have to spend millions of dollars on cleaning up crap. Right. All the time.

And, you know, the homeless, one of the things you probably have observed is that I think it's like probably a compensating mechanism, but they're just they're obsessed with collecting tons and tons of garbage. Yes. Yes. So they'll, you know, you'll clean up these homeless encampments and you'll be like, oh, wow. They're not minimalists. No, no. They're not living the Zen lifestyle. Bang and Olfsen life. Right. Very much.

No, no, it's very cluttered, you know. And so they're probably over it. But so, yeah, I mean, they need, you need to, we need to reimpose some limits. You know, there's a, I'm also, I just became really obsessed with the scholar I just discovered who wrote a trilogy on nationalism named Leah Greenfeld. Highly recommend her books. Her first book is called Nationalism. Second book is called Spirit of Capitalism. And the third book is called Mind, Madness, and Modernity.

And these books are just incredible. But basically, it's actually L-I-A-H and then Greenfeld. Common spelling. Yeah. L-I-A-H. L-I-A-H. Yeah, she's a Russian. I think she's a Russian Jew who went to Israel, lived in Israel for a long time. And then her mentor was Edward Schills, the sociologist. Yeah.

So she's a sociologist, but the nationalism book is beautiful. I mean, it's like the famous book on nationalism is called Imaginary Communities by Benedict Anderson, and he's a Marxist. And so it's all the whole thing is like him trying to explain how nationalism, why it's so powerful when Marx thought it should wither away.

So she defines nationalism, the picture that people have of nationalism is completely wrong. She describes nationalism as a sovereign community of fundamentally equal individuals who have a shared identity. And so she's like nationalism is fundamentally democratic. Now you might have some systems that are nationalist, but they don't have proper democracy. But really the basic idea is that egalitarian idea that we're Americans, we live here, we have the same solidarity.

I've also become – I'll come back to the Greenfield, but I've also been obsessed with Hannah Arendt, who I had never read until recently. I don't think you're allowed to read her anymore. Well, I know. Well, she was canceled. I know. I discovered she was canceled. I love Hannah Arendt, but I didn't realize just like Freud, who was also a huge figure in my childhood. Everyone talked about Freud, alluded to Freud.

And then he just kind of disappeared one day. And Hannah Arendt, same thing. Oh, yeah. Totally canceled, but it's brilliant. She's too honest. Well, yeah, yeah. She was very – well, it's really in – I read her two books. One is the Antitalitarianism book, and the other one is Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann in Jerusalem, it's rough because she describes how the Jewish council participated with the Nazis. I mean, that was what was really controversial. Yeah.

But what really blew me away from reading Hannah Arendt, because I was coming to the nationalism conversation. I mean, self-confession, because I should have been reading nationalism starting in 2016. But I finally was reading on it and it was like,

She was like nationalism is a barrier to totalitarianism because totalitarianism is attempting to destroy all relationships between people other than the relationship with the state. And so religion, nationalism, you know, the classic de Tocqueville associative ties. Exactly. You know, all of that is a threat to totalitarianism. Yeah. Yeah.

And so that really struck me. And Leah Greenfield kind of, she has a, I just interviewed her, so she has like a difference of opinion with Arendt on this issue. But nonetheless, I was just struck by how

I don't know what the right, I must like, like for me, like nationalism, because I come from the left, you know, from the radical left, and we would code our socialist yearnings as the public interest. Yes, of course. You know, Ralph Nader kind of took all of the Chomsky and left-wing views of the early 60s and packaged them for moderate. He kind of made it all seem very reasonable, you know, and the environmentalists did the same thing. So, the brilliance of the left in general, but the radical left in

particular was of just cross-dressing as mainstream issues. So, it became, so really what is the socialist movement became a consumer rights public interest, the women's rights movement. And you get these really radical ideologies. I mean, I'm just obsessed with this, the ways in which like, so Marxism,

You look back on it, it's like, wow, I can't believe the things I believed in. Marxism has this idea that the capitalists, like what's distinct about them is that they're just super greedy and they're thieves and that they're stealing from their workers. And there's really no difference between the entrepreneur, the capitalist entrepreneur like Elon Musk or Thomas Edison or Henry Ford or

And they're workers. They're just meaner and they steal from them. And it's like, it's just an amazingly audacious lie because whenever you go and actually study an entrepreneur,

What's incredible is that it's not just that they are doing, it's not like they're the best at what they're doing. They're the best at like 12 different things. You may remember when Trump and Elon were beginning their bromance, Trump goes, he goes, you know, I asked you, I was like, I was like, what is that you're really good at? You know, you can see it was like probably a question that Trump is used to asking people that he interviews for a job or something. And he goes, turned out it was a lot of different things, you know? And it's like, well, yeah, like, I mean,

Because, of course, like with Thomas Edison, people go, oh, we invent the light bulb. He didn't invent the light bulb. He improved it. He invented a viable economic model for electricity production. I mean, he invented the electrical grid. He found the customers. I mean, one of the things that impresses me so much with Elon is like I'll see him. You'll see him out there and he'll be selling electricity.

You know, which is kind of I mean, selling is sort of the worst part of our jobs in some ways. I mean, you can do with pleasure and you can do it with Verve and stuff. But but, you know, you kind of like I do it. I mean, I'm always like subscribe now, you know, and you're like, you have to do it like it's part of the work. But I'm always like, wow, Elon is he's the richest man in the world. He's probably he may be the greatest innovator in American history, certainly top three, but.

And he's still out there having to hawk his products, and he does it great. He's an amazing job of it. One of the innovations was he just become the biggest user of Twitter rather than buying paid ads online.

But so this gigantic lie from Marx, which is that the – first of all, the entrepreneur, the capitalist is just a meaner version of the worker as opposed to this Schumpeterian genius. And Schumpeter comes along and then his – the other thing, the big lie, and then Schumpeter points it out.

is that the owner of the company and the workers have the same fundamental interest. In other words, Elon Musk's employees and Elon have the same interest. They want to expand their markets and want to expand their products. So to put them opposed is just so dishonest. And it's so reminiscent of what

You can say feminism or radical feminism, but this idea that the interests of women are opposed by men, that women and men have different interests. And of course, you trace it back. It all goes back to Simone de Beauvoir, who's a Marxist writing in the post-war period. I guess it was like the 40s. Her book came out, The Second Sex. But she's just taking this totally idiotic Marxist framework and

And applying it to women and men.

within a relationship between a man and a woman that are not at all described or even acknowledged, right? It's the basis of life itself. Of course. So it is like really you trace back like the emergence of nihilism. It really is in Marxism. It's in feminism. And then they successfully cross-dress for decades and they get so good at it. This is the famous long march through institutions or what they call cultural Marxism.

But they basically dress themselves up as civil, you know, basically civil rights. I mean, because once you get equal rights, the work is done. Same thing with gays and lesbians. Right.

I mean, it took a long time for me to get it, but it was like, oh, right. Like the people that call themselves environmentalists are actually just radical leftists, slightly different from Marx because they're actually into Malthus, this totally dystopian anti-human view.

But the genius of the left is that they are so successful at masking their real agenda behind something else. You know, we just want equality for people of color. We just want to create equal opportunity for migrants. No, their agenda is the destruction of civilization. I know. And you see, I'm

And it's working in L.A.

And that was to your point about physicalism. Like I like redwoods and like, if there's a reason to cut them out, okay. But like, maybe don't because they're just so beautiful. That's my personal view. I always have felt that way. So like here was someone who was, she saved a tree. That's gotta be the highest level of what they claim they're trying to do, but they totally ignored her. They don't give a shit about her at all. She died in a tree, probably better for them. What they really wanted to do was disconnect people from nature and

It was the opposite. Right. So why is it that every single person I know who really spends a lot of time outdoors, who's into the sporting life or whatever, lives in a rural area? Man, their goals are the opposite of those of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club. Right. Do you know what I mean? Well, and also, I think the physicalist distinction works on that as well. I mean, here you have...

I did an interview with a terrific scientist I mentioned, and he's just like, you know, when you're dealing with fires, the main event is what is happening on the ground. And the climate extremists are out there basically saying, no, no, no, ignore this whole physical reality. We just need to reorganize the entire global economy. Exactly.

Exactly. Like we can't stop these fires, let Malibu burn, but give us control over the driver of the economy. I mean, it's such madness. Exactly. And it's the opposite. And they don't care. I mean, what what's the pollution generated by these fires? Oh, it's oh, it's so much. I mean, it's.

I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but it's massive. And dangerous, right? Well, yeah. I mean, oh my gosh, the air in LA now. I mean, it is. My daughter's in college there. I'm worried about her. I mean, it is absolutely toxic air. I mean, of course it is. And you have a lot of electric cars and you have a lot of batteries going up.

We don't know what that stuff is playing out in terms of particulate matter. So, no, it's awful. I mean, you know, ostensibly you'll get, you know, tree growth and the carbon will be, you know, reabsorbed and it's going to be reabsorbed. But, yeah, no, I mean, it is. I'm not talking about carbon. I mean, like, poison in the air and water. Oh, for sure. I mean, think of all the houses with all the plastic and electricity burning. It's terrible.

No, for sure. I mean, yeah, it's a chance to get regrounded, I think. A chance to, I mean, you know, it is also an interesting moment, right? Because Hollywood, it's just producing garbage. It is just, it is incredible how bad the cultural production is. Just at a straight, like, you know, if you're someone that just loves pop culture, like, you just love Steven Spielberg, we're not getting that level of quality. I mean, we tried to watch...

something on Netflix. It's just awful. And it's because they're all trying to fit it in. Artistry and creativity is transgressive. It's supposed to be breaking. I mean, that's actually where you want your... I want my transgression in my art, not in my civilization. I want a really boring civilization and really transgressive art, but it's become the opposite. The art has become...

boring and conformist and authoritarian. And the civilization has gotten completely transgressive. So people are not where they need to be. The laws are not being enforced. So, I mean, part of you go, God, I do hope it is a wake up call. It was five years ago this month that people started to drop dead in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Five years since the beginning of COVID, tens of millions dead, societies reordered completely. A

Economies destroyed. And yet, for some reason, we still don't know answers to the most basic questions. Where did this virus come from? How did it get here? Why did the government tell us to do things they knew wouldn't work? None of those questions have been adequately answered. And one man knows those answers. His name is Dr. Tony Fauci.

Until now, nobody has really pressed. And now a documentary filmmaker called Jenner First is out with a new film explaining exactly what happened. The film is called Thank You, Dr. Fauci. Jenner First spent years trying to get answers. And in that time, as he awaited Dr. Fauci's response, he went through tens of thousands of pages of documents.

and piece together the story, which is shocking. We are proud to host that documentary here on TCN from December 20th to January 19th. You will see it exclusively here on TCN. Again, it's called Thank You, Dr. Fauci, and it's worth it. So what, speaking of the laws not being enforced, tell us what you know about looting. Oh, I mean, that's kind of the standard. That's like the norm in Los Angeles, isn't it? I mean...

Even when there's not a fire burning. No, of course. It's terrible. I mean, I don't know if you saw the arrest. I guess they had a couple of guys. They found a couple of guys looting Kamala's house, and then they let them go. Of course, of course. They got the guy. They found the guy that set one of the fires, a homeless guy that set one of the fires, and they let him go. I mean, it is...

It's amazing. I mean, the comedians like all their best materials just, you know, in the news already. So how could they let your you're stealing from people in the middle of a of a profound disaster? The city's burning down and you're stealing. People are dying and you're stealing.

aren't you, you're like a true villain. Oh yeah, for sure. And then, and then they let them go. And then that became widely publicized. Well, guess what? You know, this is the thing that people have to understand, you know, criminals, you know, they read the news. Like criminals are very online. It's not like criminals don't know what's going on. And we have these amazing, there's these amazing, like, I think it was like phone calls between people in the Oakland jails and their friends. And they're like,

basically Auntie Pam, the name of the DA, they're like, Auntie Pam's going to make sure we, you know, get off. You know, they all know where the laws are not being enforced. What's their job? Of course. Yeah. They're rational actors. Yeah.

You know, the irrational ones are the rest of us, the ones trying to, you know, live there. So if you're Gavin Newsom or Karen Bass, like, you're all in on the climate change explanation, right? That's all you've got at this point. I mean, they did—I think they are backing off a little bit from it. I think that they're in a—they're a little trapped, which is great, which is that, on the one hand—

They can't accept responsibility because they know that if they accept responsibility, then it's just – then their political futures are doomed. On the other hand, by not accepting responsibility and passing the buck, that also becomes obvious to people. So, you know, they should all go. I mean, remember, like, you know, New Orleans, like, that mayor was out of there. I mean, like – Ray Nagin was there for that. Yeah. So –

That should be what happens. But New Orleans has, that just accelerated the decline of the city. Yeah. I mean, it's, I was there for Katrina. I covered that. And I thought at the time, 20 years, I guess it was 20 years ago, incredibly, 2005. I thought, well, you know, it's obviously tragic, but Bush is sending over a billion dollars to rebuild it. I'm sure the city will be better. And it's been much worse ever since. Yeah.

That's depressing. But LA is not New Orleans. It's our second biggest city. It's the, in a lot of ways, the greatest city we've ever built. And in my opinion, and like, so what happens to it now? Well, there's no vision for it at all, you know, and we don't have anybody visionary in there. You know, and they do, I mean, I think we had this guy, Rick Caruso, as you were mentioning, who ran for mayor. I mean, someone found, you know, there is a video of him calling for increasing the fire department budget. I mean, kind of like that. What else do you need to know at this point? Can that overcome the,

I do think that the woke trance was broken. I mean, Trump broke it. You do? I do, for sure. And look at that. I mean, look at the catastrophe that the news media is in and the success that people like you and I are having and Joe Rogan being the most influential. Yeah. I mean, he's like the new Walter Cronkite. Yeah. He's where Mark Zuckerberg goes to confess his sins. Exactly.

So it's a different world. I do have some hope for it. I mean, the thing about the United States that's so different from Europe is just that literally they – I'm becoming like an old man because I'm talking about how great the founding fathers were. But it's like literally they created this incredible system that if you have free speech, if you can protect your free speech, which we've, I think, succeeded in doing, you bake it in, you remind people of its importance –

You then are, I think, going to be able to self-correct in ways that places that allow higher levels of censorship are simply not going to be able to do. I mean, just look at this impact that Elon is having right now. It's incredible. I was on some social media chat group and somebody was like, how come we're all talking about the British grooming gangs? It's like because Elon decided that that was an issue.

The AFD in Germany may end up, you know, be, I mean, I think they're going to come in at least second in the elections next month because Elon has mainstreamed them. Of course. So that gives me a lot of hope. You've got a platform now that is still just the, I mean, we always knew that the media had that agenda setting power. Yes. But it's amazing to sort of see it so dramatically. You only can really see it when it shifts from the

mainstream news media. We were writing last summer about how the sovereign in the United States, meaning like the true power center in the United States was the news media. That is now, in my view, clearly shifted to X. It's just, I think you said something recently. I think I saw a clip of you saying the same thing. I mean, it's just clear like that is where- It dominates everything. It's just everything, you know? And like Blue Sky gave it a

they gave it a shot but nobody can go on there it's too mad it's too insane so i think it could be very very positive you know i always compare acts to you know it's like when the printing press was first shows up in the end of the 15th century for like about 100 years the catholic church is like the printing press is great you know we can print bibles and give them out to all the priests it's very cheap the catholic church loved the printing press

And then Martin Luther got a hold of the printing press. And it was just, for the next, you know, five centuries, it was game over. I mean, the best history of the printing press is,

She goes back, I think it's Oxford History. She goes back and just looks at its impact and she comes back and she's just like, you know, a few years of study or whatever. And she's like, oh, we knew it was a big deal, but it was a much bigger deal than we thought. It's not just the Protestant Reformation. It is that it's also the scientific revolution. It's the industrial revolution. It's nationalism and it's democracy. I mean, so you get a huge epical change with this shift of communication technologies and social media. We knew it. I mean, we...

Martin Goury famously wrote this book, Revolt of the Public, about the game-changing aspects of social media just on the Arab Spring, which is now 14 years ago. But in some senses, it really just didn't get its power until Elon came in, bought it, and held strong against people calling him a racist anti-Semite for two years. I mean, it was just crazy. It was like two years of the media just...

Making him out to be the devil incarnate and he held strong and he ended up breaking the news media. I mean, they're just not getting the traffic. They're done there. It's over. Yeah, it's over. So where does it? I mean, so if I couldn't have happened to a worse group of people, I spent my whole life among them. I can tell you that's absolutely true. And they're, you know, they're terrified. I was I was watching.

John Karl on CBS who I've known, someone sent me a clip this morning. John Karl, I've known him for over 30 years, nice guy, reasonable guy. And then Trump comes, the business starts to collapse and he realizes, I'm speaking for him, but he realizes, oh shit, I'm a middle-aged white guy. I better go along. And he becomes just this cheerleader for every stupid woke idea ever. It was, you feel sorry for him. He's a nice guy actually, and not a stupid guy.

Someone just sent me a clip of John Curl, like basically defending Trump. Wow. And it's just like, I'm again, I'm not attacking. The weather, the wind moved. The wind moved. Then you realize that most people just kind of,

You know, they're easy to control. You just tell them what the program is and they go along with it. Well, yeah. It's Kent Brockman. No, you're totally right. I welcome our new alien overlords. You know what I mean? They're the first. They're the first ones to shift. No, you're right. You're right. Yeah, because they're covering the news. Like, they know. They're the first ones to know when the winds are coming. The principle plays no role. Most people just kind of go along with what they think the marching orders are. It's amazing. It really reveals, doesn't it, the herd animals?

Yeah. And did I say CBS? I think he said ABC, whatever. They're all the same and they're all going away. Yeah. But if your true entrenched power, which does exist, particularly in the intel agencies, I mean, that's where it really resides as far as I can tell. Yeah.

I don't know. It's like pretty threat. You've just lost. There's been a massive movement in power from the news media, which you control. That's a fact, I would say. In effect, control. News media is controlled by the intel agencies. Fact. To something you can't control. So that's a huge loss of power for you. So like, how can you let this continue? Well, yeah. I mean, how can they stop it, though? I mean, the- I don't know. I'm just feeling a little paranoid right now. No, no, I am too. This is too much freedom. No, I know. I know.

No, I totally do too. You're like, when's the penny going to drop? Yeah, kind of. Well, yeah. And I also kind of go, are they really going to disclose all the stuff that they have? I mean, we were going down, we just did a, actually, I don't know if we published it yet, but we were just going down the list of all the files that we want. Exactly. Because, you know, people are like, oh, can we have the Twitter files for the government? And you're like, yes. So what? I mean, there's so much in there, right? It's a Russiagate thing.

You know, the Russia collusion hoax, COVID origins, COVID vaccines, Hunter Biden laptop. Yeah. I mean, I'm assuming there's just a bunch of stuff on Russia, Ukraine that's there. I mean, remember, because they keep leaking. They go, there's no bio labs in Ukraine. They're like, well, there were some. We were doing some help with the bio. Well, not only are there bio labs in Ukraine. There are a lot of bio labs in Ukraine which are working on biological weapons. That's what they're not there for. Right. Livestock vaccines. Sorry. Right.

You know, the thing that people don't in this country understand is that the Ukrainian military is selling about half of the arms they get from the United States into international black markets. And they're winding up in some case with the drug cartels in Latin America. That's a fact. Okay. It's a fact. And you can, you can buy them. And I spoke to someone who did buy some actually. So I know, I know this is a fact.

And they're bragging about it. So they're selling conventional weapons, including weapon systems that are very dangerous and very destabilizing that would make commercial air travel impossible, for example. Right. And so what are they doing with the pathogens in those biolabs? And does the Biden administration have a manifest? Do they know exactly what's in those labs? And will they turn it over to the Trump administration so we can keep track of these things? And the answer is no, actually. The answer is no. I know this. Wow. So that's like the scariest thing that's ever happened.

And so, like, I think the Ukraine war has the potential to destabilize the world more than anything that's happened in my lifetime just because of the scale of the weapon systems and biological agents involved in the most corrupt country in the West, which is Ukraine. I'm not attacking Ukraine. I feel sorry for Ukraine, but...

What the hell? Yeah. And so we could use some, we could use, that's why I'm saying this right now, because I hope this is widely disseminated, because I think it's like the scariest thing I've heard in a long, long time. That is scary. But it's all flowered in secrecy. That's the point. Yeah. The only reason this stuff has happened, like this end of the world stuff has happened, is because there's no disclosure at all. Everything is- Right.

Oh, it's so much pent-up stuff. So much. I mean, we're still, yeah, we have the JFK files, the UFO files, UAP files, I was just to say. Yeah, there's so much there. So I spoke to someone about the UAP thing. Now we're so far afield, but I do think it's all connected. No, it is all connected, though. It's like none of this stuff happens except in secrecy. And I said, let's stop playing. Like, I've been talking to these people for years now. And the answer was the public is not ready for...

this information because it's too much. And what's your view of that?

And this is someone who's pushing disclosure, by the way. This is not. I know. I don't know. Yeah, I'm worried that it's bad news. Well, that's the point. It's bad news. Yeah, I'm worried it's bad news. Really bad news. Yeah. Do you think that's true? Well, I don't know. Notice I'm not even saying it because I don't know if it's true. And it is bad. It's super bad. I mean, it seems like the dominant two theories are now that it's non-human intelligence or that we or our adversaries have mastered anti-gravity technology. Uh-huh.

The other scenarios of, you know, some kind of new plasma or, you know, it's just kind of the phenomenon doesn't seem to be showing up in that way. Well, the core idea seems to be that it's that there is non-human intelligence, whether all these manifestations of it are that or whether they're government programs or Chinese or whatever. It was probably a pastiche of all of them. But.

The core idea seems to be that there is non-human intelligence, which is plausible, and that it's been in interaction with the U.S. government for quite some time, and that it plays a role in our— What role is it playing? I mean, well, there are all these things that I—I don't know what is true or what's not true. Do you think any of that is true? I know you've done work on this. Yeah, I mean, you know, and I—it's hard. I mean—

I covered the New Jersey drone situation. I went to Jersey and interviewed a bunch of people. I mean, for me, the weirdest moment is where you have

John Kirby, the Defense Department spokesperson at Mayorkas, basically on the same day or the same 48 hours, just when they were asked about it, they just came out affirmatively and they were like, well, we're definitely not getting any drones over the military bases or other sensitive sites. And you're like, I was like, why would you lie about that? I couldn't. I couldn't because, of course, you know, all else being equal, I think that they don't people don't want to lie. Politicians don't want to lie because it just creates more work or hassle for your life. It complicates your life. Honesty is the best policy.

So why would they lie about that? Especially because the Wall Street Journal had like, they did this huge piece about all of the drone, so-called, by the way, unidentified anomalous drone flyovers over the military bases and sensitive sites, which includes nuclear plants. I mean, part of my interest in this was always, you know, I was trying to save Diablo Canyon in California. They kept getting drone flyovers. Also Palo Verde, which is our biggest nuclear plant, three beautiful reactors there in Arizona. Like a lot of

I'm also from Northeast Colorado, which is where, you know, the ICBMs are. They had this exact same drone situation. I believe it was December. I want to say December 2019. And they had this whole interagency task force. And they were like, we're going to put a plane up. And they kind of put a plane up. And you're watching them. You're like, well, why are they not scrambling jets? Like, what are we doing here? Like, this is really bizarre. It doesn't make any sense. I can't figure it out because...

I think the other issue is that they may not know. I mean, OK, well, so to finish that story. So then drone and microcrits do that. I go out and I'm just like, like, that's the weirdest lie because like it was just it's been heavily reported. I mean, the drones, I mean, the drones over sensitive military bases is really well reported. And some of the best reporting was by a publication called The War Zone, which is highly recommend.

very good, serious investigative reporting. They don't believe it's aliens at all. Like they're just openly like anti-alien. They're like, this is, and I think it's, well, anyway, for whatever reason, they're just like, this is Chinese or Russian or whatever. They're not taking it seriously, but they do some of the best reporting because they're kind of, because they can't figure out why the military is being so weird about it. So then Trump comes out and he goes, they know what it is. I don't know why they're not telling anybody. And I'm going to tell everybody on the 20th.

I mean, first of all, I'm really happy that they're going to disclose. And I want to raise expectations about what the Trump administration is going to do. We want the data. And I mean, someone was criticizing me because they were like, oh, because I came out. I said, I'm confident the Trump administration is going to share the data. And they're like, that just shows that Schellenberger is, you know, it's like pro-Trump and whatever. And I was like, no, I'm just like pro-disclosure. I want the expectations to be high because they should be high. There is so much information they're not releasing.

So, you know, they were over Bedminster. And he's talked about it twice now, by the way. So, look. He's distressed about it, obviously. He's worried about it. So, we're either headed for a pretty epic moment of disclosure. There's another part of me that worries. So, I, okay, so it seems like

Yeah, they could do disclosure and we could find out what it is. You know, is it... There could be aliens. If it's aliens, that's just a whole can of worms. And then you have to be like, is there... Like, do we talk to them? And if so, who's doing that? Do you think we have? I genuinely don't know. I genuinely don't know. I mean, there's...

There's this guy named, I can't remember his first name, Stringfield. He wrote this incredible thick book of UAP crashes, crash retrievals. And he started doing it, I want to say, 50s or 60s. And I think he went for like multiple decades. And you just sit down with that book and it is like...

it's impressive i mean if it's a hoax it's just um one of the greatest hoaxes of all times you know like other hoaxes um you know like the protocols of the elders of zion or whatever they're they're really bad like they're really you're just like this is like the dumbest hoax ever like most hoaxes are not that sophisticated with all these details unless people interviewed of course roswell is the big case but it's only apparently one of them there's others

So there is this incredible, you know, gray literature never published by any academic press, by really a little bit of commercial nonfiction. Obviously, you have David Grush and Lou Elizondo. I testified in front of Congress on this in, I guess I was in December or November. And, you know, two people, the two guys from the military, when we were asked, what are they? Two guys said non-human intelligence. And then me and the NASA guy said, we don't know. Yeah.

Because I just don't. I mean, I just... What do you think the Jones who were in New Jersey were? I mean, look, here's... Let me tell... Let's just look at the possibility that they're human. Um...

They didn't get a single one of them. They didn't down a single one of them, not a single one of them crashed. And there was a lot of them. And there was a lot of look, there's a lot of mistaken sightings. You know, it is easy to mistake things. It's totally natural. But but there was also I mean, I interviewed mayors, two mayors, two mayors.

Where like one of them was like I had an SUV sized drone flying over my house. Another one said he was going to a Fox News interview in New York. The car came from he walks out his door and there's one hovering right over him. And he said it felt like it was watching him like it was there monitoring him. I mean, that's weird stuff. So we can't get a single drone down there over military bases. They can't seem to get any of them. Yeah.

You know, do I think the Chinese could be behind or the Chinese? I mean, when the Chinese decide to like encroach in you in like in the South China Sea, when they decide, you know, how they like they'll like warn the United States occasionally, you're flying over our airspace. It's all super calculated and like.

You know, like they're making their their it's like a performance. The Chinese are like, we're messing with you, like you all kind of know. And they're doing it in ways where they don't want it to escalate, but they want to get a little bit more of that space. It's all super calculated. Now, there was the balloon, you know, are there Chinese balloons? Yeah. But I mean, to be buzzing air, our military bases, it's just so aggressive. Now, I've I've said that before. I've had other people point out they go, well, they're aggressive with the cyber attacks, right?

I guess that's true. As a physicalist, I guess I kind of go flying your drones over U.S. military bases and nuclear plants, that is just a level of aggression that just doesn't seem characteristic of the Chinese. Unless you were – well, of course I agree with you. An Intel person told me that this person believed that they were in fact Chinese and that a Chinese satellite went down, was visible to the naked eye. There were news stories about it.

It evaporated, burned up, and this person told me that was taken down by the U.S. government. That was a command and control satellite for these drones. Oh, wow. Okay. And the belief was the Chinese government was sending the following message, we're moving on Taiwan and maybe other things. Wow. Okay. You can't do anything about it. Okay. So, you know, I have no idea if that's true or not. Zero. Zero.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. That just doesn't... It just... I just got to say, it's just so aggressive. And also... But the other thing is that, like, you know... It seems reckless, actually. It seems really reckless. And...

The Chinese have not been seeking confrontations like that for the most part. Now, Jesse Michaels, who is doing some of the best reporting on this issue of UAPs, he's doing YouTube videos. He just did a documentary that was incredible. I think it's like a couple of hours. Highly recommend it.

That goes through the very long history of unidentified anomalous phenomena over U.S. military bases, including all these cases of, you know, several cases of them shutting down missile systems. Like a 65-year-long history. Yeah. Yeah. And there was this famous press conference with like missileers and others from military bases in Washington, D.C., I want to say in the 90s, maybe, maybe 80s.

So, you know, like that predates any of the Chinese stuff by far. It predates all the drones. So that was going on for a really long time. I mean, if you just kind of if you step back and you look at it, it looks like a very like what is it communicating on a very basic level? It's definitely communicating dominance. You know, it's it's you can read in a lot of different ways. And that's similar to what the the Navy pilots said around the Tic Tac incident.

interactions off both coasts is that these were phenomena or objects, whatever you want to call them, or craft that were just demonstrating dominance over our craft. They were able to do things that our craft weren't doing. So,

Yeah, I mean... And that was, from their perspective, the point of the behavior was to say, we can do things that you can't. Yeah. And so then the question would be, so if it is NHI, then the question is, are they communicating something? And if they are communicating something, why would they only be doing it in that way? Like...

You would, like, if you're, like, if you're trying to demonstrate your strength in an adversary or something, you're trying to send some message, why would you just do that? Because there's nothing that we can do with that information. So, then you have to wonder, okay, if it is NHI and it's behaving in that way. Non-human intelligence. Yeah, non-human intelligence. Then is there some...

Is there actually some other communication going on that we don't know about? And of course, there's just a long history and there's all these crazy stories of, you know, presidents. I mean, going back to Eisenhower. So just to just to bottom line your view after reporting on the lights over New Jersey in Pennsylvania, New York, Mid-Atlantic drone hysteria. Do you think they were human made drones?

I genuinely don't know. I mean, I might be more shocked if they were human-made because of their behaviors and they never were able to get one. I did have somebody tell me recently that they had heard... I mean, again, it's always secondhand. It's so untrustworthy. But somebody told me that

that the military got one of the the orbs the famous orbs and open it up and it was chinese i mean if that's the case then somebody has mastered anti-gravity and that's almost harder for me to believe than that it's nhi because i mean it's just i mean i don't know i mean look we have a i mean here's the i literally go back and forth you can see me doing it in the same conversation but we have these huge black budgets in the military i mean just gigantic and they've been there for decades

So is it possible to cover up something like that? I think it might be. I mean, I'm much more after having covered the Hunter Biden laptop and I mean, Russiagate, too, but really the Hunter Biden laptop. I was just impressed by how many people were involved in the conspiracy to cover it up. I mean, you had the FBI getting it, covering it up, basically working with working with Aspen Institute to run a disinformation campaign there.

By the way, this is Vivian Schiller and Garrett Graff run the disinformation campaign aimed at persuading journalists in advance of the release of the Hunter Biden laptop that it was a Russian information operation. Garrett Graff is the guy that goes and does the big UFO book. So these things all, I mean, this was very weird. So he comes out with a big book on UFOs. I think it was last year. It's called UFO, Garrett Graff.

This is somebody that is famously close with the intelligence community. His other books were on Watergate and on 9/11.

The book... And both of which were totally legitimate. No, for sure. And I'm sure the official story is everything we need to know. So, you know, you sort of go... And what was his conclusion on UFOs? Well, it was very... It's the... The narrative is that they don't know what they are. So he doesn't fully... He's not like a debunker, like these guys who are like all, oh, we can explain everything. So he's much more sophisticated than that. But it's basically a debunking. It's basically that...

it's basically that it's it's just all the you know typical explanations um and then maybe some u.s military programs but he also just says that he just argues that the us military doesn't know what it is

I don't believe Garrett Graff. And the reason I don't believe Garrett Graff is because I saw him participate in a disinformation campaign on Hunter Biden laptop. And I know for a fact that there's something else going on at that Aspen Institute program. And Aspen Institute, of course, is a massive U.S. government funded NGO that cosplays as a kind of, you know, bourgeois gab fest.

So, for me, that all came out in the Twitter files. I discovered that in the Twitter files. And for me, it was like pulling back the curtain and you actually have, as a journalist, we have the emails, you have the documents, you have the tabletop exercise where they're brainwashing journalists into believing a lie about the Hunter Biden laptop.

That was so sophisticated of that because they basically go and brainwash journalists before the story comes out because they know they're listening to Giuliani. You know, their FBI tap on Giuliani. They're listening to Giuliani. They had they knew we had to go brainwash the journalists. They go get all the journalists from all the major outlets, plus the social media platforms in these seminars where they program them.

I mean, that was like for me, it was like, wow, there's like a secret government. Like it was like there's some there's like a whole there's like a whole it's a very and it was very just sophisticated. I don't know what else to describe it. Like it was very everything seemed very careful. Also, with all the censorship stuff, you see these limited hangouts, right, where limited hangouts are kind of like the public relations of a.

covert operation of like a covert propaganda operation where like after they get caught they can be like oh no we were totally honest about what we were doing we were talking about it but they do these weird limited hangouts you'll see these people that clearly look like either directly intelligence community or their intermediaries having these conversations they put on youtube and like they're like but it's like you know a couple hundred views like they're not promoting them in any way and

And so you just kind of go, wow, there's like a whole creepy like world of disinformation. And what you realize is that the covert operations are really not covert, like all the all the information's out there, actually. Right. But it's just discredited or unnoticed or no one colates it. Have you noticed that? Yeah.

Yeah, no, I know. And you only can understand it when you see the whole big picture because there's no smoking guns ever. So there's never something you can, I mean, a hunter buying a laptop got us about as close to as a smoking gun as you can get. And it helped because it was, what helped to expose it was that it was partisan. And so it was a particular partisan weaponization. My concern with the UAPs

I mean, it's now, I guess the strength and a weakness is that it's become bipartisan in terms of the desire. I mean, it was really, I mean, Tucker, the weirdest experience I've had, I've testified now like 12 times or 13 times in front of Congress in the last few years.

The weirdest experience I've had was on UAPs, seeing the Democrats and Republicans basically being aligned in wanting to get to the bottom of the UAP thing. I mean, it's beautiful. I've never seen it. I was like, I've never heard of bipartisanship. Never thought I would see it in the wild. So that is exciting. On the other hand, I suspect that there is also some bipartisan group that's trying to prevent that information from getting out for some reason. So, I mean, look, I mean, it is...

I mean, what is going to happen? I mean, part of me is, you know, maybe it's my defensive pessimism on it because like everybody else, I want the information. Part of me is like, there's just no way they're going to let that information out. It's just something is too, there's something about the UAP thing, like the JFK thing, where there's some secret there that they are really, there is some group of people that really don't want us to know.

So, you know, that's that's a fact. Yes. Bumped up against that personally several times on both of those issues, which appear to be related. Yes. But I don't know the answer. It's almost like seeing something in photographic negative. All I know for a fact confirmed is that they are willing to go to extreme lengths to keep it secret. Right.

And so that's just to tell that it's something profound there. It's not just a bureaucracy covering its own ass. It's more than that. I mean, how about the clip where Pompeo is being interviewed about the JFK files? And then he like literally mid-sentence goes, but I mean, I've also seen the UFO files. And it was like, well, why did you just switch from like what made you think of the UFO files on the JFK files?

I don't know. I mean, so anyway, is there a secret? Have we developed anti-gravity? Have we developed, I mean, we know that in the 50s, there were like, there was a whole book on it. It's very fascinating. But there was like, there was an anti-gravity program in the U.S. military with our defense contractors. It made the cover of one of the aerospace magazines. It was like, there's like a cover of it. And then it just disappeared. And so you can kind of go,

I mean, the official experience is, yeah, we tried that and it didn't work. It's like, well, that's never stopped you before. Right. Like, it not working, like, that's like, you know, like you would keep working on it if you can do antigravity. So, the other possibility is that it just went dark and they just kept doing it. Well, I wonder, though, about, like, the possibility that there is or has been technology transfer from some other realm to this realm, right?

Because there are, you know, just in the study of history, there's really no understanding at a bunch of different points in human societal evolution. Like, where did that technology come from? And you see that on a bunch of different technologies. But nuclear, anti-gravity, that kind of stuff, like, are you open to the possibility that there's been, like, a transfer of that technology from some other? I mean, that is definitely, that is what a lot of people talk about.

I mean, the problem with this issue is just it's very frustrating because it's just all secondhand. Of course it is. And so like the 100-byte laptop is not secondhand. Like it's firsthand and I have the documents. Now, there are a bunch of really fascinating, you know, alleged U.S., secret U.S. government documents on UFOs, on alleged alien spacecraft crashes. Right.

They're called the Majestic Documents or the MJ-12 Documents. And so the story is that one or two of these craft crashed in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico. And that sort of begins in – and there's a whole cast of characters that allegedly, including Oppenheimer, were involved in that program –

Why would Oppenheimer be involved? Well, I mean, because he was the man. He was our greatest scientist, obviously, the father of the atomic bomb. And Roswell is where we launched the flights to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it's a very symbolic event.

In that sense... Maybe more than symbolic? Yeah, maybe more than symbolic. I mean, they keep flying over nuclear... As my wife says, she's like, your aliens really don't like the nuclear. Because I love nuclear. And I'm kind of like, well, yeah. And also, the most ridiculous thing is when people are like, yeah, they want us to give up our... The people that believe in them, they go, the aliens are here and they want us to give up our nuclear weapons. It's like, doesn't sound like a good idea to me. The foreign space invaders would like you to give up your most powerful weapons.

But those documents, I spent a bunch of time on them and I couldn't figure out how to report anything on it because, of course, of course, FBI was like, these are all debunked. They're all frauds. But there are, first of all, there's a lot more of them. You go to MajesticDocuments.com and you can look at them. They're amazing. I mean, if they are...

And I've also had the other – and they're, by the way, in the Garrett Graff book. They're in that book. They're also in another debunking book called – by Mark Pilkington. I'm playing on the name right now. But they all – all the people that are the debunkers deal with these documents. And their story is not that they were all hoaxes. Their story is that they were what's called counterintelligence passage material –

that were created by the U.S. government but leaked to people to ostensibly be able to smoke out double agents or people like you would see them, I guess you would trace these documents. Like putting dye in the water to find the leak. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, but the thing is, I mean, it is like, there's like, one of them is a handbook of crash retrieval, like for like to, like that the soldiers would ostensibly read to retrieve these crash. I mean, it's,

If they're hoaxes, they're incredible. I mean, they have the people, I forgot what it's called, but basically a manifest where they show who's checked it out on Reddit and they have all these different names and they've checked those names and those were real people at those airbases that had these

And then, you know, there was one document in particular where it was a memo from JFK to the CIA director Dulles where he says, I want to see you on this particular day. It was like July 62 or 63, I can't remember which.

And now again, everyone's like, oh, that's a forgery. It's part of the MJ-12 documents or whatever. It's not real. But then they released the JFK files. And then sure enough, we see the Dulles calendar and he had met with JFK twice that day. And nobody had known that they had had those meetings until we had that JFK memo and until we had the confirmation of the memo. So that would suggest that at least either that document is real, the JFK memo to Dulles, or whoever forged it,

knew that he had met with dullest that day and nobody else had known that so you know you'd be sort of like i guess i guess you could still put it in the this is why this is the problem with this issue is you can still there's there's still plausible deniability for a lot for all these things you know you can make up a reason for why these documents are all counterintelligence passage material um

I don't know. That's why I just have to kind of go. I don't know. I mean, I talked to a lot of people and yeah, it's just a lot of secondhand information and the documents are secondhand. So you kind of go there's like my world of like the Hunter Biden laptop, which still a bunch of my progressive and Democrat friends and family don't believe. You know, they still they still think the Russians were somehow involved. But like I actually have the documents and we can prove what happened there on the UAP stuff. It's just still.

Just surrounded in... But the incoming president has said, he just said, I'm going to tell you what those drones were about.

He was very relaxed about it, too. I mean, I was struck that when he did... He said it twice. He said it again recently, like last week, right? But then he said it in December. He goes, I don't know why they're buying... Like, I don't know why they're not telling people what they are. They know what they are. And I was like... I mean, it was a really... He made it sound like it's no big deal. Like, we should just tell people what it is. But if Trump knew what it is, and if it's NHI and Trump knows that, he seemed very relaxed about that. Because, of course, the... I mean, the main...

The dominant, the conventional wisdom among people that follow this who think it's NHI is that it's bad news. That it's not a great...

that it's not a great story that if it were good news and they were just friendly space brothers you know offering us you know advanced tech then and they'd be like and there's no strings attached or whatever that would be a much easier story to sell but if there's some bad news in that story then that might explain why they're so secret clearly there's some bad news my theory is that the reason that permanent washington or deep state or whatever

people who administer the system hate Trump is not because of any of his policies, which is probably agnostic on, but because they fear that he will

disclose information. I think it's, everything's about disclosure. If you look at the federal government, what's its defining quality is secrecy, right? Yes. Billion classified documents. Why is that? Right. It's not good. It's never good. Your kids behave like that. It's not good. No. They're using drugs or whatever. You know what I mean? Right. They're having sex they shouldn't be having. There's never a good reason for that kind of secrecy. It's not privacy. It's secrecy. Right. Yes. And there's something about Trump that makes everybody nervous that he might say, well,

More of what he knows than he should. Well, they don't control him. That's right. So that's that's very nerve wracking. I mean, how much do you think that they're just worried that he's going to pull out of NATO? How much of it is that? That's I mean, I of course, that's that's in my daily prayers that he would do that. I don't think he's in danger of doing that. I certainly hope so. But I think it's even more fundamental. It's like this guy could say the truth. Mm hmm.

Because Trump is not much of a liar, actually, by Washington standards. He's an exaggerator, of course. But actually, his defining quality is like saying the truth. Being honest about issues. The big issues. So what do you so you think he knows what it is? The UAP stuff? Yeah, I do think that. Yes. And you think it's a NHI?

you know i he hasn't told me but yeah i do think he knows i'm pretty sure pretty sure he knows and i'm pretty sure that everybody i've ever spoken to who i think knows a lot more than i do i mean what does it mean to know like do we really know anything i don't know i'm i'm not sure anybody fully understands this or even partially understands it but the people who

Who I'm confident have a lot more information than I have to a person are very, very uncomfortable about it. Yeah. Since not in public and private, which is another tell that I've just not, I mean, you've talked to a lot of people. I mean, yeah, no, I mean, it's there. It's very, um, yeah. I mean, I say my prayers. I'm still Christian. I mean, um,

You know, it's interesting, Joe, when I was on Joe Rogan's podcast last time, I mean, here, you know, Joe was like, I think that they're extraterrestrials. You know, he's openly saying that. Yeah, it's not. So you kind of. Not the case. Well, okay. Or NH, I guess NHI. Yeah. But I mean, here, you and Joe are like the two big, most influential podcasters in the country. And you both think that it's not just a government secret tech or that it's not just plasmas. No, no.

And Joe's very close with Elon, loves Elon, you know, like me, and I think probably like you, believes that Elon deserves a huge amount of credit for saving free speech in this country.

um elon says there's nothing there he never sees anything and they've got an amazing rocket system that sees a lot of things i'm not sure i've talked to elon about this a number of times okay and i'm not sure he said that okay i thought he did say that no i thought he said if i see if there's any aliens he jokes about it which is a tell um trump does too uh and they all they joke in the same way i mean i of course i love them both obviously and i feel like you know i'm

I feel like they both have really been great for this country, you know, net-net, as they say. But no, they joke about it in the same way that a lot of people joke about. They're like, no, there are no flying saucers from Mars. Of course, they're not from Mars. They're not from another planet. They're from here. They've always been here. These are spiritual entities. This is my view, and I sincerely believe it. Can't prove it.

But since you asked, so he is, I've never heard Elon say that's not true. Be dismissive. That there's nothing there. He just said, look, we monitor space. That's what they do, right? And this is self-evident. If there were, there have been so many sightings in this country and around the world that if they were from another galaxy far, far away, there would be some satellite evidence of that. They'd be picked up coming into our atmosphere. And of course, that's not true.

As far as I know. Well, we do have some photos. I mean, there's that one photo of the one, I can't remember, it's like, it's in the James Fox documentary. So there are some of those, apparently. Coming through space in here. And certainly I've been told there's a lot more of those photos and images. But yeah, I mean, there's also... It would not surprise me, though. I mean, it's clear that these things reside, you know, deep in the earth, under the water and in the...

And why the elusiveness then? Why the secrecy? Well, that's the question. That is the question. I mean, why is everybody who, again, I don't know what anybody really knows. I don't know anything. I just want to start every sentence by admitting I don't know anything. I don't know what happens when you die. I don't know how the brain works. I don't know anything. I don't know what sleep is for. No.

None of us do. That's a really interesting one. That's a surprisingly interesting one, actually. But it's so revealing of the limits of human knowledge. It's like, oh, science has solved this. Really? What's sleep for? Tell me how that benefits us. Sleep? Really? But anyway, so I just always want to say and remind myself of the limits of my knowledge, which are profound. So I don't know anything. But once again, every person I've talked to who I believe has deeper knowledge on this question than I have,

has seemed burdened by it. Have you noticed this? Yeah. Yeah. It's not fun anymore. And these are not people who are making money from it. No. These are not people trying to get famous from it. These are people who just seem to have this knowledge and they're bothered by it. So that's... And I don't think it's to cover up a secret weapons program. I mean, in other words, I don't think that's how you would do it. It's so like, yeah, I don't believe it. A secret weapons program.

Yeah. Sorry. It's much deeper. Weapons programs come and go. Right. Weapons that we thought were fearsome when I was a child are a joke now. We're watching weapons technology change so fast in the Ukraine war that people can't even get their brains around. And you wouldn't need this elaborate. And also, if you're doing passage material, just to go back to those cases, why would it be that? And why would there be so much of it? Why wouldn't it be something...

Anyway, it's a very curiously large body of passage material on this particular topic. Well, that's right. Well, that's what I was saying. Like, I do think all the puzzle pieces are sort of in plain sight. Did you ask Putin about it?

I did not ask Putin about it. I would never have done it on air because I did ask him a bunch of questions off camera about, you know, he has access to, of course, he controls the Soviet archives, which, and the Soviets were great archivists. And we know that from the, you know, couple of, I'm interested in Soviet leadership and government and all that stuff. There've been a couple amazing books written about,

The Court of the Red Tsar being, I think, the greatest of them about Stalin, for example. And one thing you learn from reading the book is they kept records on everything, almost like the Nazis, like crazy level records. And, you know, most of them have never been as close. So I did have some questions for Putin about that, about Rudolf Hess specifically. It's one of the great stories in history that doesn't make any sense at all. The number two guy in Nazi Germany flying into Scotland in a plane by himself and bailing out, you know, right before...

the U.S. entry into the war and had all these things to say that were wild. And one of the things he apparently said in his debriefs was he believed that Hitler was being influenced by demonic spirits that he had summoned through the occult. Huh? That's not worth knowing more about? There's a lot of stuff on that. There's a lot. There's a lot. But Hess said that. So I immediately asked Putin about that off camera. I don't want to seem like a wacko having unauthorized questions, but I did ask him about that. He did not get...

a satisfactory answer, but I did not ask him about UFOs. Well, I thought also that, you know, you may have seen Marc Andreessen recently said that when he met with White House officials who said that they wanted to take all they they wanted to take control over all AI, that they said to him something like, we've we've declassified whole areas of science since the 1950s. And I was like, that just seemed like a reference to this stuff.

at least at least at least the anti-gravity if not to some of the uap stuff i think the modern western mind the post 1945 western mind is incapable of understanding some of the stuff because we lack the language of you know metaphysics

And I think that's just been a feature of human thinking from the cave period until we dropped the atom bomb, in which case it just turned off and we're like, oh, only the material world is real. But no one else has ever thought that because that's not true. Well, like for 100 years, right? Really from Darwin, 150 years or something. Yeah, but I don't think, I mean, even before the war, before dropping those bombs-

which really i mean i do think that's like the pivot point in history more than anything else but yeah there have been secular movements you know rich people always think they're god and so they want to eliminate any rivals from the public from the conversation but those bombs man everything changed you don't think well it sure seemed like it i mean there's a really positive side of it though which is that we haven't had these awful wars yes brutal i mean when you look at the death toll that was going up from up and up and up from wars all throughout the

19th and 20th centuries, it's awful. So they've spared us that, but it took something apocalyptic. Well, it's been 80 years. We'll see. Yeah. So last question. Sorry, I've got... Can you imagine sitting next to me at dinner? Like, I never get any done. And you're, I think...

one of the most knowledgeable people in the country on like all the most interesting topics. So... Too kind. No, it's just a fact. In fact, if there's anything in this conversation I think is like provoked in people, it's a desire to hear more Michael Schellenberger. Oh, thank you. Do you think it's possible that what we're seeing in LA, which does feel like the destruction of our second biggest city, from which maybe there's no recovery, I don't know, I hope, but do you think it's an act of war in some sense? Mm-hmm.

You mean from a foreign power or... I do. Oh. Like, what's the evidence for that? It happened. And it happened between Trump's election and his inauguration. And it's just crazy. The second Trump got elected, I had this instinct like, oh, man...

I bet a lot there's going to be bad stuff that happens in the next two months. I mean, I was more struck by that on the UAP, on the drone UAP. Yeah, well, exactly. It's of a piece. Yeah. Bizarre Tesla explosion in Las Vegas. Very weird. Mass shooting. Like, there's just... Yeah. If there's a two-month period in my whole life, 55 years, where more weird shit's been packed into two months, I can't think of it. Yeah. Can you? Yeah.

No, it's freaking me out a little bit. Honestly, I mean, I spent a bunch of time on the Livels burger. That's the guy that killed himself in the Tesla in Las Vegas. I mean, you definitely have cases of PTSD causing people to do things and people are surprised by suicides sometimes.

But yeah, it was a weird one, you know, and I was skeptical of his emails because, you know, I sent these emails to Sean Ryan. It's another excellent podcaster. Now, I think you've had him on or you've been on there. I was a friend of mine. I can just for the record, I consider him an honest. Oh, no, I did. Ryan is an honest man. No, no, for sure. CIA operative. Oh, shut up. No, no, no. I was like I was like injured because because I believe in Sean and and I didn't I'm sure he did not fake that.

So, you know, and then they and then the FBI did confirm that those emails were real. On the other hand, you know, that was a weird one, too, because it felt like he was like, oh, the Chinese, those were Chinese drones. They've mastered Gravetic. It just felt like he didn't really know what he's talking about either. So there's just a lot of.

Have you ever heard the word gravedic before? I mean, I thought it was anti-gravity is what I've heard. But I'd never – well, you're a writer. You're a word person. I'd never heard that word or seen that word. No, I felt like he was using it wrong. That was my instinct. That was my thought too. I looked it up. Yeah.

No, I mean, I guess I look at it, I just think Nietzsche really nailed it, which is that when people stop believing in traditional religions, they unconsciously develop a new sense of guilt, a new vision of the apocalypse. They invent a new soul. I mean, people think that there's this thing called gender, which is separate from your body. It's kind of like a soul, my friend Abigail Schreier said.

pointed that out. And so we just end up recreating Christianity, but in a deformed and deranged way. And the emergent quality of it is this destructive fire. It's actually more powerful because nobody got out there and said, let's let, I mean, somebody did say, let's let Malibu burn, but that was never like the explicit policy of the government of LA. It's just something that emerges after

years of budget cuts after years of self-hating ideologies like dei like climate apocalypse like the homeless apocalypse it's just emerges kind of deep from deep within us from some from some self-destructive part of us so for me if there's a foreign invasion it came through the human psyche not from outside of it michael schellenberger how can um people find you

public.news and at Schellenberger on X. The best. Thanks for having me, Tucker. Thank you very much. Really appreciate you. Yeah. Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson Show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to TuckerCarlson.com to see everything that we have made. The complete library. TuckerCarlson.com.