I have some tour dates to let you know about Athens Georgia on November seventh and Atlanta Georgia on November 29th and 30th at the Fox Theater. Get your tickets at theovon. Com/tour. We got new merch, three new shirts. You can check them out. They're beautiful, they're nice. If you're getting somebody a Christmas gift, this could be one, get on in early. Rat King America, Gang Gang Palm, and the hitter 500 racing. Get all that and more at theovonstore. Com. Thank you so much for the support. Today's guest is a journalist, political commentator, author, and just damn, Yapper. He's one of the guys that has made a big transition recently from going to Major Network onto X, which is a major network, but it's a little bit different. You guys know him probably by name. And if you don't, you're going to get to. Today's guest is Tucker Carlson.

I'm going to.

Insert his in.

You need a spit cup?

Yeah, you got to try this product. It's unbelievable.

Maybe I'll try one towards the end of the episode.

It will wind you up.

Really? Yes.

Once you try this, you're going to get a lot richer.

Zin? Is that their advertising campaign?

Zin is not a sin. That's the advertising campaign. Really? Yeah, but the truth is Zin is a powerful work enhancer and also a male enhancer, if you know what I mean.

Really? Yeah. Talking Erection, huh? Yep.

There's no election fraud with Zenn. Wow.

I don't know if I want a Zenn supported wiener. I don't know. I think you do. You think so? Oh, yeah, because you want people to get addicted.

To it. Just close your eyes. Oh, damn. It was like that.

That's the neighbor saying, Hey, it's real quiet over there.

Just whack it on the night stand. Sorry, excuse me. Sorry.

Dude, I would hate to have a real long weiner if you have a cat. It would be the fucking...

That would be the fucking-It would be dangerous. It would be dangerous. Talk about a cat toy.

Oh, yeah. But you'd have to put a little bell at the end of it or something. You would.

And a feather. Yeah.

Nice to meet you, man. We never met. You have such a crazy laugh, don't you?

It's real.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful. I shouldn't have said that. It's very hot. Are we on TV? Huh? Is this being recorded? Yeah, we're doing toward. My laugh is very high, and that's how you know that it's real because it's so embarrassing and I do it anyway.

I like that. Yeah, and I shouldn't have said that. It's not nice to condemn somebody's laugh or whatever.

You can't hurt my feelings.

Okay, go ahead and try it. I'll give it a run, man. Okay, good. No, I think your laugh, it reminds me of a proud grandmother from maybe the 1850s or.

Something, maybe. Totally, sending her boys off to war.

Or like a woman that has just got a new cookie recipe in the mail.

It's joyful, but there's a undertone of diabolic.

Oh, yeah.

But in my case, it's totally real. And again, it's not an appealing laugh. It's not like, Wow, what a manly laugh that is. It's not a chortle. It's more a giggle.

Yeah, no, it seems like a kid would love it. It seems like...

But not too much.

Yeah, it reminds you of Winnie the Pooh. You low key do have a Christopher Robin vibe if he grew up.

Thank you. I don't think he ever did, though. I think he exists only in the pages of the books. Oh, yeah. Actually, there was a Christopher Robin that was Milne's son, and he grew up to be a bit of a bitter atheist who hated his dad. Uh-uh. Yeah, it didn't work. Really? It's all fantasy. Yes. Wow. Unless I'm misremembering that. A. A. Milne, who wrote the book, he had a tragic.

Family life. Oh, that's heartbreaking. Good to see you today, man. We never met before.

One of my children is your biggest fan.

Really?

Yes.

How children are we talking?

Mid.

20s. Oh, that's fine. I'm just saying I don't want.

To -Nothing creepy or.

Anything like that. I don't need that. Because it's weird that they allow like...

Little kids to.

Watch you? To see that sometimes it's weird that there's no barrier to entry.

In a lot of the world. There's porn on Twitter, dude. In a world that allows that.

You're fine. You think there should be porn on Twitter? No.

No, it shouldn't be porn on Twitter. I mean, I'm... No.

Yeah, don't go to Twitter.

I mean, I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to ban porn on Twitter, but porn on Twitter? Come on. Twitter is for your ugly opinions, not your nudity. Yeah.

What things do you think shouldn't be on Twitter?

I think everything should be allowed on Twitter. I'm on Twitter because everything is allowed. I don't think everything is allowed on Twitter. I haven't found the boundary yet, but Elon Musk, who owns it, has said that he's for free speech. If it's a political view that most people don't like, it's still allowed. I'm so grateful for that. Someone with unpopular views.

Well, didn't they have... Well, one thing that I don't like on Twitter, sometimes you see people beating up teachers and stuff like that. Do you ever see any of this violence that happens? I hate.

That shit. I don't like it.

But the fact that they allow it and kids beating up each other, they'll have those things where somebody's filming, some other kids are going to come in and beat up the kid, right? Me. But why did that? Because then I feel like if they would stop allowing that then... Because other kids just start mimicking what they see.

Well, it's also bad for you to watch it. I say it's someone who's watched a lot of it. It's like the ISIS videos. Do you know what I mean? Or there's a whole bunch of channels of criminals getting shot coming into a jewelry store or a liquor store, and some Korean guy just blows them away. You can't help but love it. I mean, it is the most alluring porn. You just watch it again and again, this guy getting killed. You think, This is not good for me, actually. I shouldn't watch this.

Yeah, they're probably part of your spirit or whatever.

Totally. It's not edifying. It's actually bad, but it's very hard. Have you ever seen the criminals getting.

Killed channels? Yeah, I've seen a couple of them. There's one guy who's so good at it. He's killed seven criminals.

Yeah, he's a watchmaker in L. A. Oh, is he? Yeah. No, he's a very famous guy.

Oh, there's the one guy. I'm like, Dude, they got to quit trying to rob.

This guy. Well, he finally gave up. Now I think he lives in Vegas, but this was in the '80s or '90s in L. A. I think he killed five people, literally, with revolvers, too. This was before everyone had a double-stack 19-round magazine. These were just with conventional 38 or 357 revolvers.

That's him right there. Can you have that up for me, Nate? This is a...

Yeah, watch seller. He's actually a watchmaker. He's the guy who fixes expensive watches and makes the new gears. He's a very... Yeah, look at.

That, Mr. Thomas. The dealer, Lance Thomas, was wounded five times at his shop. -wow. -let's see.

-he's like the fifth. -okay, I'm sorry. Is my memory pretty good or what? He killed five robbers since '89.

That's amazing. He's like the 50 Cent watchmaker. He's like 50 seconds.

-he's likeThat's good.

That dude's unreal. They ran me out of business this time and says, There's got to be a truth. There's got to be a time. Out. There's got to be a time when you walk away from the war zone. Wow, so he just quit because it was.

Too- But what a BMF. I mean, he just, yeah, he shot a couple in one day.

He says, this is his best quote, Mr. Thomas said he felt no remorse for the lives he had taken. The police ruled each shooting was justified. I was ice, he said. A frightening thing about this is that it all becomes easier.

Wow. It's not good for you to... I mean, you don't want to have to kill five people. I don't think it's good for you.

What's a fair amount of people to kill?

I don't think you want to kill anyone if you can help it. Well, it's certainly justified in self-defense. No one will judge you. No honest person will judge you for killing someone to protect your life, your loved ones, even your property. But I just don't think you want to have.

To do that. Yeah, I agree. Well, unfortunately, there are some people I think that wake up and they're looking, wouldn't mind getting into a little killing or whatever. But I think... Yeah, I think you have a lot of people move into places where you can defend yourself, where the laws are more in your favor to defend yourself because it feels like your own safety has become your own responsibility.

Well, if you can't defend yourself, you're a slave. By definition, if someone can hurt you, but you can't defend yourself, then you're not a human being. You're subhuman, obviously.

Because that's a human right. That precedes government, right?

Being a human?

I think so. Defending yourself. You have to be able to defend. If I walk up and punch you in the face and you can't hit back, I'm the master. You're the slave, obviously.

Yeah.

That's why I think it's one reason why you can't take guns away is because people have at the end of the day have to be able to defend themselves or groups that people have to.

Of course, and the police, they've got their own thing, their own concerns, and you can't rely on them.

But I was thinking, yeah, what I don't like about those violence that they show on Twitter where it's like the children beating up children is because if you're a kid and you see that and you see it gets a lot of traction, then you get to go do it. So you're just replicating this vibe. You see so many more kids doing it now because they've seen it as a thing. So that thing, I don't think they should allow one there.

Well, also you don't want to see every ugly thing that people do. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You don't want to see fat people in the shower. You don't want to see people in the John. There are a lot of things that happen that you don't necessarily want to look at.

Video of. I don't mind watching a thick person in the shower if there's a real skinny person in there with them and they have to like jockey for position or something. Showing with somebody's hard, I think. I don't know no matter what.

Size they are. Have you seen a lot of that?

I think I've been in some showers with varying size as humans.

What's the fattest person you've showered with?

Probably a good... I'm trying to remember.

Like real fat or just bulky?

I remember I picked this gal up one time trying to fucking go back to how it felt on my back. I'd probably say upper ones. Upper ones?

-upper ones. But you're not going to...

I wouldn't get into that.

No, just this.

Yeah.

Okay, you're lying. I can tell. No. Yeah, you are.

Is there laws? Do you know if there's any laws? Like if there's people who are doing pedophiling, right? And they are reaching out to children through social media, why isn't there a responsibility on the social media companies? We're allowing that to be a open wall.

I think there is. I think there is. And I think some have gotten in trouble for that. Oh, okay. Providing a space for that. I'm not a lawyer. But it's certainly wrong. Certainly immoral. You got to think they make some effort to stop that, though. I think there's a lot of it. There are a lot of creepy.

People out there. Yeah.

And the number of creepy people is increasing.

You think so?

Seems to be. Yeah, seems to be.

Yeah, I wonder why that is.

Because you can look up other creepy people. You said you wouldn't allow video of kids fighting on the internet because it inspires other kids to fight. I think creepiness inspires creepiness, right?

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, man, I just want to get to know you a little bit.

I want to get to know you too, but not the whole shower thing.

Oh, no. Out. No, you don't weigh enough, I don't think. I'm close. For what I'm looking for. Okay. Yeah, man, nice to meet you. So you grew up in California, right? I did. I think people were you in a fraternity? I think that's the most thing people look at when they see you.

-in a fraternity? -yeah. No, I wasn't.

-what fraud was this guy? -no. Really? No. Okay.

I never joined a fraternity. Well, my roommates joined a fraternity. I actually lived in a fraternity, but I never joined. I don't like to be told what to do at all. Really?

Me neither, dude. Like at all.

Like at all. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's my big... It's like I have a moral claustrophobia about being told what to do. I'm happy to do things. I don't mind serving other people, but it has to be voluntary. I can't be ordered around.

Yeah, I don't like being.

Told what to do. Hey, bitch, go get me a cigarette. You're a pledge. I don't think so.

Yeah, that's a good point. I don't think -I'm not going to do that. Yeah, and I don't want to be told what to do by some white kid that's in poli-sie or whatever.

Or any color kid. No color kid. Yeah, any color. Or adult for that matter. I just don't want to be bossed around. By the way, I don't mind taking advice or wise counsel from people I respect. I'm often wrong. I'm not saying that I'm always right. I'm definitely not. But being ordered to do things suggests a level of disrespect. I just can't deal with it at all.

And even just about work and stuff, were you always like that from just with work? Like you want to be your own voice?

Of course, yeah.

It's where you end up, right?

I keep getting fired. Right. Yeah. Not that I don't want to fight about it. I'm not interested in being like, You can't tell me what to do, or give a lot of lectures about it. But I definitely... Especially in my business, you have a similar job where you're paid to say what you think.

Yeah.

Right? And so you want to do your job, which is to say what you think.

Was there even a time when you were working at different newsplaces where you were like, Gosh, this still isn't my own voice? Oh, all the time. Really?

Well, it was always my own voice, but you could feel the parameters. I mean, I started in my 20s, mid-20s, and now I'm in my mid-50s, so it's been a.

Long time. Why you look great for 50s, man.

I'm.

54.

Are you really?

Yes. Oh, wow. I know.

Isn't that shocking? Shocking. I don't feel it. But anyway, but when you're much younger and you've got little kids, I always had a lot of kids just reproduced like a crazy person, which I recommend strongly to you. You feel vulnerable and you're not allowed to say certain things. I do think I was never censored, but I self-censored, for sure. You know? When the War and a Rocket breaks out and you're like, Maybe it's a good idea. But it's not a good idea, and you know it's not a good idea. You know what I mean? But you allow yourself to be convinced because you know it's super unpopular to say it's not a good idea, but it clearly wasn't. War with Iran, not a good idea. I can say that now.

Why do we go along with that consensus a lot of times? What is it that makes us afraid to speak out?

Well, people have a deep need to be part of a group. It's a human need right up there with sex and food and shelter. It's like people want to be connected to other people, which I understand, and I want that too. But that can override reason and common sense very often. And a million studies have been done on this, but if you're in a group, I mean, everyone experiences, you're in a group full of people, and everyone's like, I hate chocolate ice cream. And you're like, I like chocolate ice cream, but you don't say anything about it because people that like chocolate ice cream suck. And you're like, Yeah, they suck. You know, it's a human thing. People go along with stuff that their gut tells them isn't the right thing, but you should never ignore your gut, your instincts, which you inherited from your ancestors, which are encoded in your DNA, and which are almost never wrong. If you're with someone and you feel like, God, that person's lying. That person's lying. You may not know what about. You don't have X-ray vision to someone's soul, but you can smell the deception on someone.

I know that you can. We all can. Oh, yeah. Or if you feel dangerous, you're like, Wow, this person poses a threat to me. You're right. You don't know the details. You don't need to know the details. Get away. And if something's really stupid, like Let's go have a war with Ron. It's like, What? And I just feel like it's maybe because of my age and my job, I have a moral obligation to say, I think that's really unwise.

You don't want to go to war with Iran? No, because I'm not insane.

That's insane. Oh, yeah, look, I'm not saying it is either. I don't think that we should be involved in a lot of this shit.

You think? I don't think so. Is it helping you a lot?

No, it's.

Just causing-All these moral victories you're winning?

It's causing more problems. I don't even know if I'm winning any moral victories. It just causes more problems. It's hard to navigate between my friends that are different ethnicities or from different places now.

But we shouldn't have to because we all live here and we should all be united in that.

Right, but do you think, and I think when I was a child, it felt like we were all Americans. It felt like we were united that we were all Americans. But it doesn't... I feel like that's been pretty heavily compromised pretty quickly even, which is almost amazing. And I feel like... And these aren't Debbie Downer feelings. These are just thoughts. I should say that. I think sometimes that, yeah, it's like America just feels like a shell company that...

People just park their.

Assets here. We're just an LLC for the world. -for a lot of... Yeah. -no, I mean... -have we always been.

That, though? Of course not. It was a real country. It wasn't just an idea or some shell company or LLC. That's so nice. I'm stealing that, by the way. I hope this never airs so I can steal that. But now a buddy of mine, one of my best friends just sent me a video about eight minutes ago. He's visiting his daughter at parents' weekend at a college, a well-known college. And there's a huge demonstration in the middle of campus between two sides in the Middle East. And one of the sides starts burning the other side's flag. It's a foreign flag, okay?

Okay.

And this fistfight breaks out. And I'm like, I mean, I have views on who's more right or whatever, but I thought to myself and I said to him, If someone burned an American flag, nobody would fight over it. You get to burn the American flag. But burning the flag of another country, which is not our country, to which we do not pay taxes, whose military we're in, don't serve it. That's the most offensive thing. I'm like, We have lost the thread, man. We're all Americans. And if you wind up in a place where our allegiance to other countries or regions or things that are not American take precedence over our common Americaness, I mean, we're screwed.

We're screwed. I feel like we're at the apex of that sometimes. Yes. And if we're not at the apex of that, I don't think in the... I can't tell if we're at that in the... I think we're getting to that in the moral compass of a lot of people. And it's sad because I think a lot of people, myself included, or for myself, I don't think I ever wanted to get to that place. No. But I think a lot of people are just starting to feel like once your Americanism dissolves and once your common thread dissolves, you don't have a connection. And so then your instincts start to take over, like we were talking about, and you have to take care of yourself. And so once the ice you're on starts to get melding, like before you're on an ice, you can skate, you're seeing other people, you're buying a bootleg, gretsky, jersey off somebody, whatever, you guys are all on the ice, right? You're imitating home alone. There's a fucking gays. There's a gay guy that's always on the ice. But it's like...

What are the gays doing on the ice, two things? Skating, bro.

Yeah. Stupid question. But they're having fun, right? And I'll say that I live with a gay ice skater, and he could jump over a Volkswagen, right?

That's impressive.

Oh, it was unbelievable, bro. I've never seen it.

Strong ankles.

I mean, just the dude was like... Yeah, he brought us out of the living room once and showed us and blew our minds, man. Beautiful guy. I mean, pretty beautiful, I guess, tall.

Tall.

Which adds a little bit-But.

Well built too, obviously.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to quit thinking about him. But anyway, but once that ice starts to melt, the first thing you have to think about is yourself, right? Yeah. That's what I feel like we're at now, and a lot of people are having to think about themselves, literally watching our country or what we viewed as our ideals and morals and what we held dear sink in this water. There's nothing you can do about it except take care of yourself. That's why I feel like a lot of people are at. There's nothing they can do right now but take.

Care of themselves. And they're displacing a lot of their frustration about our economy, which we never talked about. It's getting very expensive for people to live here. Like, too.

Expensive, actually. Oh, yeah, I saw some gas the other day. I was like, Jesus, man.

How do people afford that?

Yeah, you know? How do you even do a bonfire anymore?

It's totally right. No, it's completely right. How do you if you want to take gasoline and pour it on the pallets like it's six bucks? Right. But they're just placing a lot of that frustration onto regions, countries, conflicts that are thousands of miles away. It's almost like I'm picking a team and all my rage is going to... And I do wish people reserved their anger for our leaders who deserve it, in my opinion, on both sides, and for the problems that are besetting the country. You drive through America recently, it's not in good shape at all. It's poor, actually, shockingly poor. People should be really mad about that. Instead, they're mad about whatever, Israel, Hamas. I get it. I understand people are upset on both sides. However, it's unhealthy to spend all your time in your head, enraged about a foreign conflict when your own country is suffering so badly. We need that energy, that constructive energy here. I never hear anybody say, 108,000 people died of fentanyl tox last year in my country. Young people, a lot of them weren't doing fentanyl. They were taking Percocet or Benzos, and they ingested a pill with fentanyl and they died.

They were poisoned to death, okay? That's unbelievable. That's outrageous. No one seems mad about that.

They're.

Mad about some foreign war, and what a waste, because we can't control that anyway.

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Well, that was that show that I really liked? Yeah, Dope Sick. Do you see Dope Sick? No. Man.

I don't know if I can handle it, but I live in a place with a lot of that, so I see it.

Well, it's about the fan. It's about Michael Keaton is in it, right? I think that's him. He used to be Batman, but now I guess he's selling drugs, right? Which is a perfect example.

Oh, it's about Purdue Pharma.

It's a perfect example of our country. Even Batman is fucking selling pills, you know?

Well, the company that got the country got rural America hooked on opioids, got away with it. They paid a fine. Nobody went to jail. The Sackler family, they're still rich and really, they didn't go.

To jail? I think about this every single day. I hate the Sackler family. I hate this whole thing that happened. It's unbelievable.

But they got away with it.

How do you do that? Well, these people, this country, our FDA let these people down.

But no one was punished. Not one.

Person was punished. Yeah, I know.

You see people go to jail. I mean, this is not even a political point. It's true. Voters for both parties go to jail for very small things. Very small things. Yeah. And yet you poison the entire country. You wreck an entire generation of kids, and you're still a billionaire. Tell me how that works. I don't know.

If I ever saw that guy on the street, I would fucking saw his face off.

How would you saw his face off?

I'd figure it out.

Do you bring a saw? Do you have a saw with you?

I'd just turn into a saw. That's how much I hate that guy. You know what I mean? It's just unbelievable how many people I got killed in no care or concern. No. And then the way that they lobbied our own FDA people, they took them off of the job and paid them more to work for them to help them beat the laws. Yeah. Sorry, man, I didn't mean to.

Bring that up. No, but I mean, next time they tell me I have to take some pharma product, I'm probably going to pass. I'm just saying.

I'm probably.

Going to pass. I don't trust you anymore. Sorry.

Well, I missed the day you could get some fucking good pills, too. I mean, there's part of that in this. When a dude could give you a couple of stack or twos, you'd hold up the wall over there and have a boken for an hour.

I think those days are over. You got to go to fentanyl.

I just don't want to do it. No, I don't think you should. Well, I'll overdose, man. I'm sober 18 months. I would overdose easy. You're sober 18 months? Yeah. One of the reasons I don't do cocaine anymore is because they fucking ruined it.

Why?

With the fentanyl.

It used to be just baby laxative.

Yeah, but I'd rather shit than die.

I agree with.

That completely. I'd rather get off the and be like, Oh, that was hectic. Then be like, I was laying there just like, God. -i wish I could shit. -go in blue, yeah. But I got to go to heaven.

And that, by the way, is a guess. Okay, but that's the hope. How has it been 18 months?

It's been good, man. I love it.

How were the first six weeks?

That's the toughest part. Oh, I know. I've been there. Oh, you have? Yeah. What did you have to get.

Off of? Oh, you name it. But yeah, it's been 21 years, but yeah.

But you can drink, though?

I can do a little blow. I can drink. But other than that, I'm totally sober. It's a modified Shepherd. Who is your sponsor?

Shepherd Smith?

Okay, that's funny, but I'm not going to comment on it beyond that. That's fine.

No, and no dig to Shepherd. I'm a fan of Shepherd. Yeah, yeah. But he's just a legend in a lot of circles from a lot of friends of mine from different colleges.

How do you.

Know all this? Dude, it's easy. You just be alive and you just pay attention. Right.

Well, without commenting on.

That, I will say-But no, sobriety has been cool for me, man. But it.

Was tough the first six weeks. How would you do?

Yeah, I think what's tough is having to change, having to quit something. Having to not have a beer if you need it, having to not have something to give me a little bit of respite from my own angst.

Yes, that's right. That's a lot of it. Did you go off everything?

Yeah. I don't have a problem with anything except for cocaine. So if I could have a drink, I'd be fine. I hated drinking. But I know if I have a drink, the only reason I'm going to have it is so I can go. I'll have four sips, and then I'll go get some cocaine.

And then I'll be fine. How did you deal with feeling terrible the next day?

On the cocaine? Yeah. Oh, poorly, brother. Begging people for Gatorade over text message? Yeah. It was horrible, dude. Yeah, this was some of this they.

Didn't have that. It's a high cost drug. Yeah. And not just on the front end, on.

The back end. Yeah, the next day was horrible. The things I'd have to apologize for.

Yeah. What's the freakiest thing you did while in cocaine?

Oh, dude, I'll tell you something. Well, the weirdest thing is I would look for escorts on the internet, right?

Classic cocaine move there. Yeah, dude. Hunter Biden has plowed this furrow before. Others have been where you were.

Literally. Yeah, I think Hunter even was my plug on some of this. But then they would come to my residence. I would be so scared and paranoid, I would take the money and hand it out the door because I didn't want to not pay for the... The service. They drove over, right? So yeah, I would pay them, and then I would just be grateful that they weren't there.

So you wouldn't stiff the hooker, but then you wouldn't stiff the hooker. Yeah, well.

Played, brother. I think, look, I just felt bad.

You must have been their favorite account.

Well, then sometimes, dude, I had to talk to a lady who speaks another language. That's crazy, because then you're playing charade. You're fucking high on cocaine.

You were ordering the human trafficking ones?

I wouldn't say that, dude. These people were off the interstate. I would say that. They were- Off the interstate? Yeah, they weren't like-What.

Are they calling? The lot lizards?

No, this was out of this was... I mean, they weren't. I think these were decent ladies who were trying to make a dollar. I never... Yeah, anyway, this didn't get in well, but yeah, that was the toughest part because I was just looking for some connection. Of course. And I.

Just-that's a real thing what you just said.

I get that. I didn't know how to get it.

Because it's isolating. Drugs and alcohol are isolating. You're really about yourself when you're doing them. Part of you wants to reach out and connect with someone else. I think that's absolutely right.

Yeah, I like cocaine because I needed to control how I felt immediately. That's one reason I didn't like alcohol, because I was just such a control person that I needed to control how I felt immediately. So cocaine, I could do it immediately. The feeling would be there immediately. And so that's one reason that I liked it.

But you never got into Zanex or alcohol or anything to help you come down.

No, I wish I had. I didn't know you.

Could do that. Oh, yeah, you can do that. I mean, I don't think it's legal, but you can.

So I was.

Doing-you're doing it wrong. You had the wrong cocaine addiction.

And most of the shit I was doing, I think it was Sherwin-Williams-Lunch. This shit had... I remember doing an eight ball of Matt Finis. So I'm like, This isn't legitimate. Some semi-gloss. I'm like, This is for fucking shutters. This is outdoor. I've done some very questionable cocaine. Is what was it like for you getting off of it?

I mean, it was awful. It was awful. It was absolutely awful. But I'm so grateful that I did. I'm thankful my brother and I both did, actually.

Wow, so it's in your family? Well, it's in my family.

We're Swedish, yeah.

Oh, you all are.

Oh, yeah. The farther north you go on the globe, the higher percentage of people have drinking problems. I mean, that's, I think, pretty well.

Established fact. Look at Santa. Dude works one fucking day a year.

I mean, the Eskimoes. No, I'm serious. A lot of ancestors from Northern Europe. So yeah, alcoholism is a big thing. I needed to get off it and had all these children and a job on TV, and it's just not compatible with a productive, happy life at all. I quit and the first few months were shocking. I didn't realize. I didn't realize. Well, I had no help at all. Really? Yeah, I did it at home alone.

Were you not willing to try and have? I felt like were you that... Were you scared?

Well, I had a public job. I was an anchor on CNN, and so I just thought, I don't want to get into the whole, I'm going to rehab or whatever. I just didn't want to get involved with that. And it was fine. It worked great. I've never gone back, and I never would for anything. However, I didn't realize that, and I knew very little about it. This was before I was using the internet. I just didn't know that much about addiction at all. I quit and all of a sudden I had these withdrawal symptoms that were shocking. My hands are shaking. I feel like I'm going to freak out all the time. Super anxious, super, super anxious. Sweating, heart palpitations. I was like, What is this? I asked somebody, I didn't tell many people. I asked somebody, he was like, Oh, you're withdrawing from alcohol. And if you start to hallucinate, that means you have the DT's, the deletium tremens, and you need to go to the hospital because you could die. I was like, What? I never got that, thank Kevin. But anyway, yeah, it was awful. But then within like, like, I don't know, six months, I felt great.

I started smoking two cigarettes at once. I mean, my nicotine prom got a little more intense, but I felt wonderful and I felt great ever since.

Wow. And did you ever go to minis? Did you ever get into 12 Step or no?

Not one time. But I love it. I had just had dinner last night with Bobby Kennedy, who's been in 12 Step program. Russell Brand, same thing, another friend of mine.

I almost went to a meeting at Bobby's house on Tuesday.

Okay, then what a wonderful.

Man he is. Bobby's a neat guy, isn't he?

He is. He's a very deep person, and he's learned the right things, and people like that make me very pro 12 Step. They're just like, I'm not in control of my life, and they're not because nobody is. Everyone lies about it. Oh, I've got it under control. No, you don't.

You.

Have no freaking idea what you're doing. You can't extend your life by a single day. You're lying to yourself and those around you. Just admit you have no clue. You're doing the best you can. You're a totally screwed up, embarrassing person. You know what I mean? Okay. And be liberated. You got me. I strongly believe in that because.

It's true. It is the truth. I know, and the rest of it is such a fucking, such a sled we pull.

And it's fake.

It's ridiculous. As I always say to my kids, Everybody knows who you really are. Everybody already knows what your bad qualities are, and they love you anyway. So don't even try and hide them. I'm sure you know people who are alcoholic or bad temper, secretly gay or whatever, and they're like, Oh, no one knows. No one knows. It's like everybody knows. Are you kidding? And again, they love you anyway, so you don't need to hide it. Just be who you are. And when you are, I mean, you are so liberated. It's this massive weight coming off you. It's like, Yeah, fucked up, but more than some, less than others, but trying. And people are like, That's great. Yeah. People are way less judgy than.

You think they are. Right. There's some inverse of it where it's like we think someone's so, but then if we look at the way we look at people, we might have some jokes about it, stuff, but most of the time you have empathy.

At dinner, two nights ago, I'm sitting next to this woman, and she said something about... It's a long story, but basically it was about a woman gaining weight. I said to her, I've never been in a group of just men on a hunting trip or just men.

Where.

Someone's like, She had a fat ass. It's like men have the widest strike zone imaginable. Men like women, heterosexual men like women. They don't judge their appearance very harshly at all. They tend to like all sorts of women. That's true. If you knew how non-judgmental men were about women's appearances, you would relax. But of course, you don't care what men think about your appearance. You only care what other women think about your appearance, and they're very judgy. But it's the same principle. It's like we are less judged than we think we are.

Yeah, it's funny, but it's not the nature of us to think that we are.

Did you tell people when you quit using cocaine?

Yeah, I did, I think. Let me think. Yeah, I did. I told them. Well, I got into meetings. It was been in my family, in my family, a lot of my family, it's in my family.

The cocaine thing.

The drug, just alcohol, childhood issues, really. A lot of my stuff comes from really intimacy disorders, like connectivity disorders. But then whenever anything triggers one of those connectivity disorders, then a lot of times it would lead me to doing drugs. Of course. Yeah, I just love it. What I love about it is now I get to see, man, I saw a dude yesterday who just got a six-month chip. And the guy, man, to see somebody whose life is changing. You get to.

Witness fucking miracle.

It's unbelievable. I totally agree with that. I had a friend call me this morning, right? And we've been friends for years, and we both know that we have some of the same problems. It was like the first time he opened up to me, man. We're both sitting there just crying on the phone. Because when he opened up, it just made me feel like I was... I don't know. I just understood him. And it was like, I don't know. It was just so important.

Well, that's what intimacy is. That's what intimacy is.

It is. Yeah.

I've always thought that we misread intimacy. We think it's when someone tells the truth about other people. It's very easy to tell the truth about other people. It's only when someone tells the truth about himself. It's only when you admit who you really are to someone else that you have intimacy. That's the measure of intimacy. If you're willing to tell someone who you really are, you are intimate with that person and vice versa. And that's totally the key. So if you want to know how many truly close relationships do I have, that's how you know. How many people am I willing to admit what a schmuck I actually am to? That's the number. And what I love about Twelve Step, I've never actually been to Twelve Step, I've only heard about it. Actually, I was at Russell Brands' house. And he had a meeting? And he had a meeting, yeah.

Oh, that's cool. Hilarious people. Was it?

I didn't stay for it. I had to leave, but they were... One of the guys was smoking, which I love, and old school. But I love the Twelve Step thing because you just like it. As with Christianity, which I also like, you admit right away that you are- Powerless.

Yeah, exactly.

You're not in control. Your life is unmanageable. That's a nice word that they use a lot because it's like sometimes people are like, Man, I'm not powerless. But I'll be like, You know, things are unmanageable. Unmanageable for me. The way that they phrased everything, it was just really articulate. But anyway, man, well, congrats on that. Yeah, I think it's interesting and it gives me a better scope to handle my own life. It definitely gives me more opportunity to look at other people when I'm able to.

Do you find yourself less judgmental? What about all the guys you used to do cocaine with?

Do you still talk? I did it by myself. Good.

That's a fun way to do it. -yeah. -chopping outlines.

At home. I'd change outfits and come back in and be a different guy doing it. I'm like, Hey, don't do any of this. This is from me. He's yelling at the other me.

You're literally doing it alone.

Oh, yeah, brother. I would do it alone, and I'd go hide it somewhere and I'd be like, I'm going to bed and not do it anymore. Then I would fucking get up and go find it, and I would do more.

It does affect your sleep patterns.

Yeah.

Bro. I've heard that, yeah.

Most of my sleep patterns was me praying, dude, that somebody would fucking pour Gatorade down my chimney. I would just want Gatorade. Why Gatorade? Just because it has electrolytes in it. I would be so dehydrated.

So you're not much of a planner? No, no, no. You can go to Costco ahead of time. Just get a pallet of it for home.

No. No, bro. Did you have some pretty crazy nights or no?

I had a few. Yeah. Kaki. Kaki going crazy. The good news is that... I mean, it was a different... I'm 54. Right, so it was a different time. In the world that I started where I started work in '91, everyone went to lunch every day. I was a writer at a magazine, and everyone went to lunch for an hour and a half every day. Period. I mean, it was a different economy. This was before the corporations took over everything and implanted chips on your phone to listen to your conversation and track your whereabouts. Before we became East Germany, they didn't really know where you were. It was just a civilized place, and you could just have lunch. If you drank, it was totally within bounds to have a couple drinks at lunch and smoke at lunch, and then that could keep going. I'm not saying it was great for productivity, but it was a better country.

That's just a fact. It was, yeah, it was some fun.

I would just say the great blessing in my life is it definitely erased my memory of a number of years. I don't have a lot of guilt, simply because I don't really remember what I was like. But I don't think very appealing. -yeah. -not a great drunk. Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

When you drink, like even if you're not setting out to say, use cocaine, you can wind up doing that. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. If somebody's got some cocaine, you're going to stang around them until they don't have it anymore until you have it.

I've heard that, yeah. That's true.

Oh, yeah, that's me right there. I did one time. I was doing some cocaine at the house. I was like a big vest guy for about eleven months.

Vest with nothing underneath? Yeah, just fucking vest at night. That's the Chippendale thing.

-sat night. -some shades. Yeah, dude, just chilling in my apartment. Did you ever dance? Huh? No, I wouldn't dance. I'd make a smoothie. But just like dancing, but just do.

A little meal. But literally nothing underneath it.

Just the vest. Yeah, no, just the vest. Yeah, because this was in California. You to the wet... It was weather-permitting.

Yeah, it's totally normal. I mean, I grew up in California, and I'd often wear a vest. A silk vest, gets my nipples. I liked it.

Do you remember when silk came out and it was like, remember silk shirts?

Oh, yeah.

They were so bad. I'm not going to wear... You remember real?

Yeah, I never wore a silk shirt in my whole life. -you're a lion. -no, I swear. -yeah. -i never. I never.

Fell for that. Good for you, actually.

I fell for it. I never bought anything from Fila, and I never did. I never did anything that was volure. I mean, their whole epochs in fashion history, that is missed. I just totally ignored it. I've been wearing the same freaking clothes since 1984, and I mean it. Wow, I believe that, dude. If you just say exactly the same, like someday this will be super cool. For a moment and then we'll move on to something else. We'll go back.

To vests. When I was in school, it was good, man. -it was good, right? -it was good, right? Yeah. You seem like you were conceived that like a Johnson & Murphy and something just fucking rolled.

Right out. I don't know what that is, but I will take.

That as a compliment. Yeah, it's a compliment, man. My best friend, Kevin, likes.

That story. What's Kevin do?

He does, I don't know. He's looking for a place right now, but his wife, he got married. But that's Johnson & Murphy. They're at the airport. He's a producer.

-they're at the airport. I buy almost no clothes at the airport. But I'm not against it.

Let's get into something important then, right? Yeah. Did you have trauma? I'm just trying to think of a word to take this thing.

You're going to say trauma?

No. Trouble.

Trouble hooks.

Trouble, trauma, Trump. Those are the fucking... Okay. Those are buzzwords.

Buzzwords, yeah. You're making me nervous. I'm going to grab another Zan.

-do you mind? -yep, one in. I almost want to do one, but I just don't know how I'll do with it.

Why don't we wait until we're about to close because things may happen to you that you're not ready for. Okay.

It gets wild, huh?

It gets wild in a subtle way. It grows on you. It's not like doing cocaine. Okay. It's not like firing up the pipe, you know what I mean? Blast off or anything like that. It's a much more subtle, organic. You just all of a sudden you feel good. Then you feel the power rising from your central nervous system, then going outward through all the nerve endings down to the tips of your fingers. And then up here, it just starts crackling the synapses. Just make connections that you hadn't before. I know I'm making it sound like ayahuasca. It's a lot more subtle than that.

Tuck. If you did like a tucker, a lip tucker.

If.

That was your brand of nicotine?

I'd like to do that because I believe in it.

Yeah, tuck-a-tuck.

Tuck-a-tuck. Yeah, tuck-a-tuck. You could have a Native American attached to it.

I love that. I definitely get picketed, but I do it anyway.

Yeah, but some of them would love it. Native Americans love.

Nicotine, dude.

They certainly do.

God, they love it. And unlike most people, I actually know Do you? Yes, I do. Because I live near a population of Native Americans.

In.

Maine? In Maine. And employ two and have for years, and they're really wonderful people, spend a lot of time with them. And the two that I know very well both love tobacco and they have every right to.

Yeah, look, I think let them love it, at least leave them with tobacco. 100 %.

Well, they actually gave us tobacco.

They did?

100 %. How Yeah, I mean, there are a million... Native America is one of those terms. I'm not sure what Passamaquoddy's have to do with Hopes. It's pretty-And.

There was a lot of beef. There was a lot of beef between different Indian tribes. Oh, big tribes.

Yeah. Some of them were very warlike, I think it's the term we use. But no, they used a lot of tribes used it in religious rituals, and they would use it rectally.

Uh-uh.

Really? Yeah, tobacco suppositories. There's a ramrod.

Get it up there. Oh, dang. Yeah, for real.

Look it up.

Boof and fricking, that's insane. What? I can't... Did Indian? Yeah, let's see tobacco smoke animal. Oh, there you go.

Oh, yeah. Look at that. Okay, so that said it was used by... Okay, imported from the New World.

Okay, and an insufflation of tobacco smoke into the rectum by enema was a medical treatment employed by the European physicians. But also it says tobacco smoke was used by Western Metal as a tool against cold and drowsiness. And drowsiness, bitch, if I'm drowsy and you're blowing smoke in my ass, I got a wrong PPO.

You definitely do. And by the way, it's not even covered now. No, that and leaches are completely ignored by the medical establishment. But yeah, it was common.

The procedure was used to treat gut pain and attempts were often made. I'm not.

Making this up. You're fact-checking me in real time.

No, I love this, but applying it by enema was a technique appropriated from the North American Indigenous people.

-yes, that's right. Wow. See? How great is that?

It's amazing. They even thought it up. I think if you're chilling around that long, you got somebody's going to blow smoke in somebody's ass.

-you think so?

-yeah. Yeah, dude, you.

Get people around for-So how many thousands of years does it take in the evolutionary process for someone to say, Okay, we've reached this point in civilization where somebody's got to blow smoke up someone else's ass. What's that? Is that before or after the wheel? Because they never figured out the wheel.

I think it's four years somebody's blowing smoke. -really? It's quick. -it's quick, yeah. I mean, I don't know. It'd be interesting to see how the first things happened like that.

How were the pyramids built?

I don't know, people talk about it a lot.

-people don't know.

We don't know.

How is that? And I'm not, by the way, suggesting.

Any theory. Yeah, no.

Well, look, I think-But how do we not know that? And why doesn't that make all of us humble? If we don't know how they built the pyramids, three or 4,000, or actually, we don't know when the pyramids were built, to be totally honest.

If.

We don't know that, then we don't know shit, right?

Oh, yeah. So much did.

Just say that.

Yeah. Why don't we just say we don't know shit? Yes.

All wisdom begins with acknowledging what you don't know. And anyone who tells you I know the answer is about to lead you into say, War with the Ron or something equally crazy. Take the vax. You know what I mean? That's a lie. Yeah. So never try to anybody who claims to have it all figured out because he's lying to you.

Well, do you think that one of the political parties thinks that they have it all figured out more than the other?

I think they both do. I mean, I think politicians by their nature, are unwilling... By the way, every once in a while you get somebody who shows up and starts to tell a portion of the truth, and everyone loves him. Then he's always invariably accused of taking someone at that point. I got to take him out. Anonymous charges, He raped me in 1985. I can't tell you my name, but it happened. They just did this to.

Russell Brand. Yeah, there's always somebody, yeah, they'll come out with anybody.

Or nobody in his case. I don't think they put a name to any of the four people who are accusing him of sexual assault.

I'm not shocked. Well, now there's bots. They can even... I mean, there was bots writing articles now. I read an article the other day about my parents. I'd never heard of either the two people in the article. Are you sure? Yeah, it was a bot article.

It was a bot-Have you done 23 in me? You're positive?

Okay. Yeah, you're right actually.

Because you don't know, dude. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, it's a good point.

Yeah, maybe I'm angry at the wrong woman. Exactly. That's a.

Good point. You're telling your shrink about the wrong mom.

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Well, I've got one suggestion, and that is.

Whenever you-Not to change the subject, I'm just trying.

To think. No, it's a fair question. I mean, how do you make sense of the world if you don't believe what people are telling you about the world? How can you make rational decisions if you can't be certain that the input is accurate? I can't really answer that. I know what I do, which is I don't read any of the New York Times or the Washington... I don't want that in my head. The Washington Post or NBC News. Are they liars? I know there are lies. I've written for all three of those. I know that they lie, so I don't get anywhere near it.

When you say they lied, does that mean you write an article and you give it to your publisher, your producer, and then they say no and they change it?

Or what do you.? No, it means they don't assign stories on things they want to ignore.

I see. And where do they get those orders from?

It's all by instinct. So their job is to protect the people who are in charge. I mean, it's to protect the people who have power currently. The point of journalism is to challenge the people who have power on behalf of the rest of the country.

Right.

And they've inverted the formula. And so if you work for The Washington Post, the idea is just protect Jeff Bezos and his friends at all costs, and that's what they do. But I'll tell you a way that I think is a good start to figuring out what's true is watch what they become hysterical about. You'll see somebody occasionally say something and people just land on him. Shut up. Let's put him in jail. Whatever that guy is saying is true, or it points in the direction of the truth. When someone says something that's legit and say, No one's mad at the eschizophenic on the bus. He's talking about whatever, the earth is flat or lizard people, which by the way, may be true.

I don't even know. Yeah, you're fucking playing duck, duck, goose on a-Totally.

Nobody cares because he's not a threat to anyone because he's insane. Insane people are not a threat to the existing order because they're crazy. They're self-discrediting. But when they become hysterical about somebody and they're like, He's a conspiracy theorist, without even refuting what he told you, then you know he's onto something. I mean, a hurt dog barks, right? When you have an infection, someone touches you near the infection and hurts. What does that tell you? You have an infection. Yeah.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Well, do you think that's one of the reasons why Bobby Kennedy was looked at as so crazy?

100 %. Yeah. And what's so funny, as I said, I saw him very recently the other night, and I said to him and I saw him, I follow it. I'm just interested in the reaction to Bobby Kennedy. Remember they attacked him as a crazed conspiracy nut because of the vaccines? He said there may be a connection between the vaccines and autism. They're like, Shut up. They literally canceled his contract with The New York Times. He had a contract to write for them. They canceled it. They just basically drummed him out of polite society. They don't talk too much about that anymore. But the vaccine stuff, because I think there is this recognition, and by the way, I'm not an expert, but that actually a lot of people were hurt. A lot of people were hurt. Not just with the most recent round of mandatory vax, but in earlier rounds. Now you could argue it was worth it. We have a flu vaccine that academically supposedly prevents the flu, so maybe we get it, and some people get hurt. But they were telling us for years, Nobody gets hurt. Well, that's just a lie.

Yeah, people get hurt all.

The time. They get hurt all the time.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of vaccines. It's like even the polio vaccine, I write this a lot, but they tested the polio vaccine in our hometown where I'm from, they had a primate testing facility there. Are you serious? Yeah, and that's where they tested the polio vaccine.

You grew up in a town with a primate testing facility? Yeah. What town?

Tulane National Primate Research Center.

That's got to be the most depressing place in the world. Is it in New Orleans?

Is this Uptown? It's outside of New Orleans. No, this is outside of New Orleans.

Yeah, they don't allow that in Audubon Park, do they?

They don't allow it in our town, this is where they made it at. But that vaccine gave cervical cancer to tons of women. And they knew it when they put it out, but they'd already ordered it. They're like, Well, fuck it. We already paid for it. Exactly. I think.

That-it's bad to lie, and it's especially bad to lie at scale. Like if I lie to you about something, but if I'm lying to 350 million people, that's a crime. And they've done it. And the problem is, at this point, it's like, I would go to a surgeon because that's a pretty straightforward operation. I've got a knife, I'm going to take this thing out or sew this up or whatever. But I don't think I would go to a doctor for, Well, we're going to try this drug. It's like, Maybe I would. I don't know. I haven't had to make that choice, thankfully, but I would be hesitant because I don't trust them because they lied. They got caught lying and they never admitted it.

That's part of it. There's never any resolution. There's never any affirmation to your questioning. And even if you were right, there's never any about-face acknowledgment.

But it can't get better. If you get in a fight with your girl, okay, and one of you behaves horribly, one of you is on, say, cocaine and says something outrageous and you want to continue the relationship, there has to come a point where you're like, I really was an asshole, and I'm sorry, and I love you, and I'm sorry I did that. Right. And only when you do that can it get better. It cannot be healed before you do that. It doesn't work. And that's true with public trust.

As well. And that's where we've gotten to.

The point-But I don't understand why they can't admit it. I've been wrong about a ton of things. I agree. And I feel so much better when I admit it. I can't take it and stop pretending that I'm omniscient. I don't know everything, and that's okay. Why can't they do that? Why can't Fauci just be like, Wow, I told you this in good faith. I was wrong, and I'm sorry. He would do more for people's trust in science if he did that. He's totally incapable of that because he's a freaking sociopath, dangerous human being.

He's a shitty pitcher, too. You see that?

Quite a shitty pitcher. And I say that as a shitty pitcher, but even I, he's got little dwarf arms, but still... Sorry.

No, it's okay, man. Look at this. Let's show this shit, bro. God, I get fucked. That dude is.

Out of his mind, bro. He's got a mask on outside. Huh?

Dude, that guy's got fucking-But.

It's so primal facial retarded. It's like there's a dwarf on the field with a mask on. I'm outside throwing it at the bat boy. This is not a real country. If that guy's running it, this is a joke.

First of all, the bat boy is 11, so he's flirting with a child. Let's call that he's flirting with a child. Let's call it.

What it is.

Yeah, you freak. Now half of America needs a Tommy John surgery in their heart because of this dude, Myocarditis, right there. And there I am with a fucking slider, boy.

Well, you don't even dick around, do you? Is that you?

I've done some things, but no, not on this.

Where is that?

That was St. Louis. But actually, I got to throw it out for the diamond back, so that's why I'm wearing this jersey.

How nervous were you?

I was pretty nervous, I guess. It suddenly makes you feel like how old you are. You're like, Fuck, I'm getting old. How old were you? I was 41 and I'm 43, but I was like.

Oh, shit. 43 is pretty old.

Yeah, it feels old sometimes. Actually, does it feel old? No, it just feels old when you're running upstairs.

Yeah, I know.

What I'm talking about?

I'm 54, yeah.

I.

Can't believe that. But I always run upstairs. I always run upstairs just because.

Yeah, you're like, I'll show them.

100 %. Yeah, I've always been like that. And I'm with my wife who's very fit, like next-level fit. Crazy. And she doesn't even... She'll just be prattling on, running upstairs.

Doesn't even-She does, huh? She's whimsical.

I don't know if she's whimsical. She's just got like crazy cardio. Oh, God. Because she never stopped doing it. When you're a kid, they make you do physical fitness. And then I took about 40 years off for cigarettes and stuff, and she didn't. So yeah, it pays off, it turns out.

When was your first cigarette? Do you remember it?

Yeah, I remember it really well. It was delicious. My father smoked and he smoked on filtered cigarettes called Perlmels. We called them Perlmels. Oh, yeah. Palmalls. But they were extra long, flavored with liquor, I think, made by the American tobacco company. Great cigarette and a red pack. And we had many... I don't even know if there's a picture of the he smoked. Right there, right there. One down. One down. That right there. That's the cigarette of my childhood. He picked him up in the Marine Corps when he was 17. I guess they came in as K-Rash in the end. That was the cigarette of my childhood. There was always one smoldering in an ashtray in our kitchen and everywhere else. Anyway, but I was like, when I was little, I was against it. My father really loved cigarettes, and he wasn't embarrassed of it. It wasn't like, I smoke, but I feel bad about it. He was like, No. I smoke on filters because you feel stripping when you're done, there's no filter. You smoke them backwards so the enemy doesn't know it's an American cigarette. You burn the logo off the paper. Yeah, he really likes cigarettes, and he felt sorry for people who didn't smoke.

I was maybe 13. I was in eighth grade when I started, and it.

Was totally -Where were you? Were you out with the boys, or you was at the house and.

You smoked one? I was at school.

I was at school. Smoked one at school?

Oh, yeah. It was loud, actually. It was pretty freaky with a teacher. I know it sounds like it was in.

The 1800s. Sounds romantic, I think.

It was romantic. It was great.

Just a sneak. It sounds.

Like espionage. No, it was totally open. You could smoke at school. I could smoke at school through senior year of high school. Oh, yeah.

You could smoke as a child at school.

Oh, yeah. I had parental permission. Really? I shouldn't be saying this. You know what's so funny? People would be like, Yeah, I did ayahuasca or DMT, and everyone's like, It's so cool. It's like, Yeah, I smoked a cigarette. What? You're a criminal. But I wouldn't say smoking is a great long-term play. I don't think that it is. I quit when I was 45 because I felt like I probably should. It'll probably get me anyway. But I did enjoy it. I really did. I never had a bad one. There are no bad cigarettes. You're not like, Oh, this is disgusting. I never felt that way at all. I've had bad Fig Newtons. You can screw up almost any consumer product, but a cigarette is remarkably consistent.

And it.

Gives you what it promises you. The payoff is always there.

That's a good point. Yeah, the payoff is always there. You know, especially that first.

Fucking dreg in the morning. In the morning.

You know what I loved was they had a man in our area, and it was actually my grandmother was married to a man, and he would light a cigarette and he would let us inhale the lit, the smoke up our nose when we were really young. No.

Louisiana is the.

Best, isn't it? God, it was fucking good.

I think it's got the highest smoking rate of any state.

You know what Louisiana does have? It has the most people that are born there that die there that never leave there. I believe that.

It's a cool place. That's. It's not like every other place, actually.

No, dude, it is. I always say like New Orleans, it's a good place to get oyster and murdered.

Yeah, you get murdered and oyster. That's totally right. The thing about Louisiana, it never gets credit for everyone talks about diversity in the melting pot. Louisiana actually was that long before most places. You had a bunch of different cultures there, and they got along, anyway.

You still got a good mix down there. Yeah. We had an area bus called Chifunkta, that was the river, and it was named after the Chifunkta Indians.

Chifunkta? Is that like the Fugaway tribe? I'm not sure. That's not a real, that cannot be a.

Real name. It's a real name T-C-H-E-F.

Chifunkta?

Yep.

Yeah, Chifunkta. It does sound like a.

Joke, right? Right there in Louisiana. Yeah.

It sounds like a play on words.

Yeah, it does. Well, here's how they got the name. A long time ago, a Native American threw a big rock into the river, and that's the sound when it made when it went in.

Oh, that's so cool. -is that true?

-yeah, true story. It's pretty fascinating. But that right there is a perfect example of Louisiana to me, is that it's a place for great storytelling. It's a great place for a family. Yeah. So that's one story I like to tell about that.

People have dinners with their families there.

People have 90-minute lunch breaks. People wake up, get to breakfast, and then do two or three things before they go to lunch. I love that. Yeah, it was part of just... That's how life was. It wasn't.

All about efficiency.

No, it wasn't.

So if your life is all about efficiency and every moment is being monitored and counts towards something, then you're not really human. You're a machine at that point, aren't you? You're a cog in a larger machine.

And that's what I think a lot of people feel like these days.

Well, and for good reason. There's some chick on the internet, 22-year-old, experiencing life in the corporate world for the first time. And she does this video like, This is terrible. Don't make any money. And they treat me like shit and treat me like... I'm not worth anything. I'm not human. And everyone's like, Shut up and work, honey. And I watch this and I'm like, No, I hope you win. I hope you win. I hope you... The seeds of revolution are sprouting in my heart. I just so hate that culture. Oh, yeah. That treats people like they're not people. Like, for what?

Yeah. Well, I think for some people, in my own sense, learning to be a boss and leader has been tough just because I never... I just started out wanting to be a comedian. I wanted to sleep in and masterpiece and go be chatty. I didn't get crazy with it. Okay. I didn't like, yeah, I was not-Not.

Compulsive or anything like that.

No, I was an organized patient, Matt.

Okay, that's fair.

Yeah, one-off guy. Kind of like when they play the trumpet.

In the morning. You never got greedy, though.

You never went back. Never, I had greedy. I was like, That's it. Yeah. I think learning to do that personally has been a journey for me. But yeah, I think with companies, it's like, How do we get away from that? Sometimes I think America was just this Christian experiment that got compromised and has turned out poorly.

You think? I think you're onto.

Something there. I hate to say that because the part of me doesn't really want to admit it.

Well, it's obviously true. It's obviously true. I mean, you can't have a democracy unless it's a voluntary system. People have to show a lot of restraint. They have to be all in. There has to be some sense of the common good. You can't just be like, How much can I grab? It's like Halloween. It doesn't work if all the kids just empty the basket on the front steps. -you have to fuck that kid. -in the first wave of trick or treaters. No, it's true, though. No, you're right. And a democracy is very much the same way because you can take power and then just steal everybody's money legally. And so you really have to have some boundaries that you impose on yourself. And that has to come from within. You have to have the sense that someone more powerful, like I hate to use the word, but God is watching. And if you don't have that, then it just descends into greed and selfishness, which is where we are now.

Have we let... Because do you think America is still a Christian nation? No.

What.

Is it?

It's an LLC, as you said, so brilliantly, actually, again.

I'm just doing that. We've enter privatized communism, it feels like to me.

I think it's exactly right. I mean, no one's for the free market. Everyone's for using power to hobble their competitors. The only reason we have regulations is to create monopolies. The system is completely rigged. And you know that you're asking how do you get reliable information about the news? The news media want to talk about race. That's their main thing that they want to talk about. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian. But that's actually not an interesting conversation because you can't change your race and people are different races, and they're different, but they're also very much the same. It's not that interesting a topic to me personally. I'm not interested in talking about race. What's really interesting is that the United States of America is being looted by a small number of people who are getting away with it, and they don't want to talk about that. They never want to talk about economics. They never want to talk about the tax code. They never want to talk about any of that stuff, ever. And that's how you know that CNBC and CNN and The New York Times, all these people are looking out for you are actually just the pretorian guard standing in front of the people with the most power and money and keeping the masses from asking uncomfortable questions.

And so whenever anyone asks about like, Well, wait a second. Why do we tax people at half the rate for investing that we do for working? Literally, they pay half the tax rate. So you have a job and you work every day and you pay one rate. But if you just stay home and invest money and live off the interest, you pay half as much. So are we saying it's twice as virtuous to invest as it is to work? Is that what we're saying?

If you're a day trader or just trading stocks or something, you don't have.

To pay taxes. Or if you're a private equity guy and you can claim that your income is actually investment, is interest on your investments, you pay half the taxes. We have a tax code that discourages work and encourages parasitic behavior. Now, there are arguments on both sides, and I'm not an economist, but you don't even hear those arguments because it's like, Shut up.

Racism.

Trainees or whatever. It's all a distraction from what the real story is, which is they're looting the country.

And.

At this point, we can't repay the debt that we owe. So it's going to be like, Well, unfortunately, we had to sell Yellowstone. And no, I mean, it's going to get to the point where.

We're actually... And now.

We sold it to Asians. No, for real.

And then they're going to say the sale was racist, too. That's going to be the craziest part.

No, you're asking questions about it as racist. Okay. You're always the racist. Just to be clear, you're always the racist. Louisiana man. He wasn't David Duke from Louisiana. Shut up, Kansman.

Yeah, I used to lift weights with David Duke.

In prison?

No.

I can see you guys in the yard. All the area nation guys. He's like, On your back, because you're doing push-ups.

Bro, I was never in any area nation, dude.

Not even in prison?

No, I never even went to any of their meetings or anything. I saw pamphlets or whatever, but I never pulled up over there. But yeah, we shared a back fence. And he used to date this hot girl that worked at a seafood restaurant that I worked at. So he'd pop in there and I'd watch him eat shrimp or whatever.

What was the seafood restaurant?

It was called Morton's Seychood in Madisonville, right on the River. Really? I worked over there, baby. I was a bus boy and they used to have raccoons coming out the wall when they'd cook duck. The boarding was bad on the wall. It had rotted out, and they'd let one of us bus boys get there with a broomstick. We'd have to stand there and beat the raccoons back.

Into the wall. They're ferocious animals.

Well, they.

Love duck. Of course they do. And pizza.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Oh, wow.

We call them trash pandas where I live, and you see them outside in the trash cans. Oh, yeah. And they love pizza. I like pizza, unfortunately. And yeah, you have pizza and you- God, boy. Yeah, they go crazy.

I'd love to see. Now, that would be a good day at Portinol thing where he gives up. He does one bite to hit a cone with a bite.

Have you ever seen a raccoon eat? You never gave them any duck, did you?

Oh, I pulled up on them and.

They're always like this.

Yeah, right, with their hands. We didn't do it. No, no, you don't. The gayest one is the one in the recycling bin. He's always like, Hey. At least the other ones are in the trash. There's always that one that wanders up in the recycling bin, and he's wearing a negliget at your mom or something. You're like, What the fuck is that one been doing? -what? -you know? But yeah, they always are like plead.

Innocent or whatever. No, they do. They're so clever. I love them.

Oh, they're crafty.

Yeah. I've never shot one. I've seen them so many times in the woods. There they are. They love dog food. Yeah. That's a main G one. I've seen we have big ones where I live.

Yeah, I grew up around a lot of rabies. So when one would come down the street, we'd all have to go inside.

Do a lot of people have maybes where you grew up?

Yeah, I would say it was... Well, there was a big scare of it. When was maybes popular? Can you look that up, please?

When was rabies popular?

When I was a kid, it was a big thing. Get out the street. There's a sick raccoon.

But when they got cars and electricity and stuff, they fixed all that.

I mean, it wasn't as big of a thing. But yeah, David Duke, man, we would go to the gym sometimes, and I'll say this, nice guy.

I never met him.

Nice guy. We just did chest and tries or whatever. There was never any racial things or whatever. Whatever you know. But he was a very fit man.

I've never met him, but I will say this, and I'm not saying he's a Fed, though he's obviously a Fed, but every time I would get a new show, I don't know anything about David Duke. I'm from La Jolla, California. He wasn't quite as popular there.

Could have done another pitcher without you.

But every time I get a new show, there would be some news story. David Duke endorses Tucker Girls. I don't know you. I don't know anything about you. I'm from La Jolla. Okay, we don't share a common culture.

Yeah, I'm from Mint Romney country.

Yeah, exactly, 100 %. Literally, Met Romney goes to La Jolla.

Yeah, Comedy Store La Jolla is one of my favorite-No way. -i think my favorite comedy club in the whole country.

I've been there a long time. It's the best club. Since I was a child. Really? Up in the village, yeah. In fact, there was a jack in the box next door that I used to ride my bike to.

I remember that. It was maybe disappeared a few years ago if it did.

They closed it down for a while because he had caught selling kangaroo meat.

In the '70s.

Oh, yeah, boy. I don't know if that story was actually true, but that's what everyone in the town thought.

I mean, look, if you can get a fucking couple grams of roo in La.

Jolla, I'm in. I told roo burgers. That's what we call them. That's so funny. I would have that the heartbeat. And if you took a close look at the meat, it was gray and grizzly, and it was not beef. I mean, and I think the company was owned by Wallstone, Perina at one point.

Oh, yeah. And they're out of, I believe they're out of St. Louis. Are they? I think. Yeah, I know they're out of the Midwest. But yeah, I loved it over there. You would always hear I love La Jolla. It's a beautiful area.

But they weren't big on racism there when I was a kid.

Yeah, I don't know if they had... Well, it's mostly white there.

Well, that's why they're not big on racism. Right.

People are expecting that we can't do it.

No, it was like rich white people.

Oh, yeah. You have rich white people. Oh, yeah. No, it seemed like rich people. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's like, yeah, you feel rich even when you're driving by or you feel like people want you to leave, I feel like. It's beautiful there.

Yeah, it's.

Really pretty.

It's very beautiful. It's sad, though, soulless.

Is it?

Yes. Yeah, no soul at all. No one had a last name. I mean, obviously it's one of the prettiest places in the world. But yeah, it was, Hi, I'm Bob. I'm a Sagittarius. Nobody had a real connection to anyone else. Everyone was just passing through. The first time I went to New Orleans, which is obviously a disgusting place, but I loved it because it was just so thick. It was just so much there and all these weird rituals and customs and it just had a culture and I just didn't grow up around that at all. Even though I didn't understand what they were doing in New Orleans, and obviously I was very threatened by it because.

Half.

The town is a violent criminal, right? But I still liked it because I thought this is interesting in a way that nothing I grew up with was interesting at all.

I could totally see that. Yeah, I think I grew up in a place that was just so... There was so much lore and stuff in our area that... And I think that's just a lot of the way that Louisiana was.

Amos Moses.

It's from Louisiana?

I don't know, but I love that song. But you just picture wrestling alligators in the swamp. Where I grew up, people literally talked about the weather every single day, every day. And the weather never changed. It wasn't like we lived in Minnesota or something.

It's very Truman Show there in L. A.

It's unbelievable. You're like, Well, it's going to be '72 and partly cloudy, moving to mostly sunny in the afternoon. It's going to be 68 overnight tomorrow, and then it would just be on an endless repeat. It was a skipping record.

Did you hate that about yourself? Was there any self-loathe? Because I've never hated myself because I was poor, right? But does that happen on the other end of the spectrum? And I hated my neighborhood. I just felt embarrassed, right? Does that happen on the other end of the spectrum where people-No.

Not enough. There should be a lot more self-hatred in rich.

Neighborhoods, I think. I hate to say self-hatred, sorry. I was ashamed of myself. That's a better.

Way to say it. There should be more shame. There should be more shame. If you've amassed $100 million from sucking the last remaining lifeblood out of some manufacturing company in the Midwest, calling it private equity, you should hate yourself a little bit. You know what I mean? There's none of that. I think that's part of the problem. There's not enough guilt among the ruling class. There's no sense of obligation of people beneath them. That's one of the reasons they hate them so much. That's one of the reasons that the fentanyl crisis has not even been acknowledged by Washington, is because they know they're responsible for it, and you wind up hating the people you've wronged. I have noticed.

What do you mean that you wind up.

Hating it? If you commit a sin against somebody, if you're cruel to somebody, unfair to somebody, you cheat somebody, you wind up hating that person as a way of justifying what you did. The only way to stop that is by admitting what you did, saying it out loud to the person's face and asking for his forgiveness, which again, is why the 12-step model works, right? But if you don't do that, you wind up blaming the person for the crime that you committed against him. That's one of the reasons that people who don't get sober are so angry at the world. They're pissed at their parents. You meet these people, their parents sent them to rehab six times, and they're pissed at their parents. Why are you mad at your parents? They did everything they could. The reason that Junky's mad at his parents is because he knows that he's actually the guilty party, and he's committed massive crimes against them, but he can't admit it, so he blames them. That is true at a macro level as well. If you're a ruling class of all the richest people have gotten rich by dicking over the people beneath them, running these fascist companies that spy on their employees phone calls and track them as they come in and out of the building and require them to work on Sundays with no overtime and just really inhumane sweatshop-type practices, creepy Stasi stuff, those people end up having great contempt for their own employees.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I think it's one of the spaces we're getting to right now in the country is people, if you're an owner of something, if you are a... Well, you know what's interesting is when you say that, I recently met a guy who is a Democrat, right? He's like a devout Democrat, right? And he said to me, this was interesting. I never heard this. He said, I vote for Democrats because I want there to be programs in place to keep the people that are struggling. I want to satiate them just enough so they don't rebel.

They don't have power.

Right, and I never heard that. He said that out loud? Yeah, he said that to me. I was like, I never.

Heard that before. Here's your weed, here's your porn.

Just don't make a mess. Just don't make a mess so that the rest of us who aren't as unfortunate as you can still operate like we operate. Okay, so-I just never heard that perspective.

Was.

This on camera? No, this was just in a human conversation. There's two humans eating-Well.

An inhuman conversation, really. Inhuman, yeah. I mean, like what?

Yeah, I had a salad. I don't know what he had. We were having lunch.

The blood of children, probably, I would say.

He was. Sounds that way. He had an O negative, Junior.

I mean, that is so dark, but it's so true. And by the way, bless him for his honesty, because that is exactly what's going on. And that's not how you treat your own kids or people you love. You'd never say, I'm going to keep you on just enough assistance that you cannot starve to death, but that you'll be so harried by the shittiness of your existence that you'll never challenge my power. That is a crime. I've never heard that. Well, that's.

The plan. Well, to me, as an American value, that was like, Oh, that's never a way that I ever would thought.

Or think. No, because you encourage self-sufficiency because that's where self-respect comes from. I've got my shit in a pile and I'm proud of myself. That's the goal for an adult man. And if you're preventing people from getting to that, then you are a crime, and you should be held accountable for it, in my opinion.

But there's nobody to hold anybody accountable anymore, it.

Feels like. I know. Well, I'm very aware of that.

Sorry. Everyone's in on it. Well, it's just so interesting.

How do we get out of it then?

By saying the truth out loud, I think that's the only recourse I think that's more powerful than guns. I mean, I do saying truth. I mean, that's what they get hysterical about. There'll be a mass shooting, and they'll be three days, We need to take all our guns away. They're not going to take your guns away, okay? Because they can't. But that's not their priority. But when somebody says something that's true, I mean, they will disappear a person for that. You'll never hear from them again. There's a reason. The reason is nothing is a greater threat to the people running things than true words.

And that's why they're-You mean like about Kanye, you mean?

I'm not talking about... Well, Kanye was disappeared. My view of Kanye would be, if you show up on Alex Jones in a hockey mask saying you love Hitler, you're probably not really a threat to anybody. Actually. I mean, really a lot of people are going to watch Kanye being like, I love Hitler, and be like, Wow, I love Hitler, too.

Yeah. No? No. Oh, you might be able to walk on with The Devil Ray's maybe. I'm just saying that.

If you actually wanted to promote Hitler, and I hope no one would ever want to promote Hitler, but if you did, that would not be the way to do it. Actually, how is Kanye a threat to anybody? I don't think he was.

By.

The way, he's a recording artist. He's a musician and a clothing designer. He's not in charge of federal policy. So I did think, yeah, I thought that was distressing, just because I don't think anybody should be silenced. If you're not committing violence against somebody, you have the right as a human being because you are not a slave, you are a human being, you have the right to say what you think. That is a foundational right. And if you don't have the right to say what you think, then you're not a human being, you're a slave. That's the acid test. Am I a slave or not? I don't know. One simple question. Can you say what you really think? And if you can't, then you're a slave. Super simple.

Well, now it feels like they own... It used to feel like you could write what you think, but now it feels like the paper is owned, right? Yeah. So they can... Even with AI coming out, it's like they could even adjust what you write. So you don't even fucking have a value to write anything anymore. It's like, Hey, just put in how you feel will write what you're saying. It's getting to that... You know what I'm saying? It almost starts to... It could be two years from that where it's like...

I've been a writer all my life and to see now machines doing that and actually doing a fairly serviceable job. I mean, writing poetry and screen plays and like...

Yeah, giving me a fake father.

But upgrade or no?

A little younger than my dad, but I don't know, that guy seemed a little bit devious. My father seemed a little happier than him. Fair. I'm going to urinate real fast.

You're going to urinate? Yeah.

Is that all right?

Like a race horse, my brother.

You ever owned a horse?

Never owned a horse. I'm a dog guy.

Really? You ever bet on dogs? You ever put one in at the track?

Honestly? Yes, I have. Yeah, in Florida. And in fact, in Florida in the '80s. And that dog track has now been closed. And I love dogs, and I've always loved dogs. And it's the one in Miami that's near the airport, and it was the most depressing, inhumane, like you just wanted to send money to Peter, spending 20 minutes there. But I did go there. Yes, I had been drinking and probably other things, and I did bet on the Greyhounds, and I feel bad about it.

Yeah.

I do.

You ever ridden on Greyhound?

I've always been a sizable man, and they buck me off every time I try. Really? Yeah, wheel around and bite me. Yeah, they don't. It's hard to saddle a Greyhound.

No, I mean the bus service.

Oh, sorry. I thought you meant the dogs. Oh, no. I spent a lot of time on... Actually, true story. Yeah. I had a girlfriend in high school, but we went to different colleges, and she went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. I lived in New England, which is a small.

Colder region. We had our Will Shepherd over there. Go on.

I took the bus. I took a Greyhound bus from Washington, D. C, where my parents lived, to Nashville, which is like 12 hours. And then I took one back. And so this bus was going on to New York City, and for some reason, it was 100 % Puerto Rican and me. I was at the back of the bus and then left at midnight. Yeah.

And I.

Was drinking and smoking, but that's how long ago it was. This was 1987. I'll never forget it. I fall asleep because I'm so loaded. I'm taking a leak in the empty cans. -just doing what you want to do. I'm in.

A great life. -yeah, living life, dude.

And all of a sudden, I feel this wet grainy thing on my face. And these people right there in the seat right across the aisle were just full coitus, just like playing couchball, just full-blown, sound effects, everything. And the guy was wearing socks, and one of the socks hit my face, and it was just moist and had a lot of gravel from the ground on it. I remember thinking, I can't wait to get off this bus. It was dark. It was nothing erotic about it at all.

Oh, yeah. Right? I mean, I don't know. It depends on how you are at the time, I think.

Well, I was drunk in a dead sleep, and they're rolling around, and she's making these animal noises. They were not at all inhibited, which was impressive in a way. But I felt it was very much an intrusion into my space.

Wow. Yeah, that's fair. Like, Hey, is there any zoning over here? You're right. Do we have a town planner?

That's a true story.

Yeah, that's good. Oh, Greyhound is unbelievable, dude. I remember one time a guy was on there sitting by me. He goes, Hey. And it was a brother on there, and he goes, Hey, you want to see something? And I thought it was going to be his wiener, right? Because I've been on the bus before.

But you said yes.

Well, it was a two-hour ride. I was like, I'll fucking see it now. I'm not going to pretend.

You thought he cut a hole in the bottom of your head. Yeah, I.

Thought so. I get it. Some Weiner trip. In there totally.

The old Greyhound Weiner trip.

I was like, Yeah, I'll see it. He had a bag of jewelry and a gun, and he just robbed a jewelry store. -wow. -he had a bag of jewelry and a gun. -did you buy any? -no, I didn't buy any, but he wanted me to sit there and look at it and I put on a couple of the necklaces or whatever.

Did you act impressed?

Oh, yeah, because I was scared. And they always give the guy, once you get out of jail, they give you a ticket on the.

Fucking Greyhound. But imagine you rob a jewelry store and your getaway vehicle is a Greyhound bus. -unclear. -you are retarded.

If.

You're doing that.

You're like, We got to get out here in seven hours.

I bought the ticket.

It's pretty cool. Dude, yeah, I mean, I love riding Greyhound. I used to work on a farm up in Mississippi, and so I would take a Greyhound bus up there, and I would ride it up there and there was always people on there. What's the bathroom like? On a Mississippi, at a bathroom? It was always closed, they said. I was on one with, yeah, part of it was on fire. I was on one where a guy stopped to fucking meet his ex or something for like 20 minutes, and we all had to chill at an I-Op.

No way.

100 %. Dude, go to GreyhoundBus, Twitter feed, GreyhoundBus. Help, and look at their replies on there. Bro, welcome to America, bro.

I love that. So it's just like every Waffle House, they stop at.

Oh, it's just like, The bus is supposed to leave at 4:30. It's 9:70. Somebody like, It's 9:70. Well, you have a bad watch. But it's 9:72. Two people are pregnant. It's just the list goes on, man.

Chances I'd like the people on those buses 100 %.

I got everything on here is unbelievable.

This is... But seriously, all the drivers left my bag to be stolen on this trip.

Where's customer service? Yeah, go back. One, I got a video. Let me see that video on there. This is what I do at night. I go to Greyhound Bus, help Twitter feed, and they'll show stuff. Yeah, little eight balls between the seats or different things. There's somebody. I found a gram down there between the seats.

Did you ever do that?

I never found any drugs on there. That might be somebody touching themselves. Don't let that video finish, please. But I spend a lot of time on this, man. It's insane.

-the lay-down-bus-hel, it's called?

Greyhound Bus Help. But yeah, they could change it. It would still work. I'm going to urinate real fast. All right. Sorry I had to urinate, and.

That's why.

I heard it. Yeah, well, then it's okay.

Strong-stream.

I'm a new-The saddest part was being little and just not being able to pee in there. I grew up around, we had a lot of dudes, and they would hold a lot of brothers back three or four years. You'd have a big brother in there, and he'd pee with his dude, Mr. Larry, right?

Mr. Larry?

Yeah, he was like, they'd held him back seven times, right? So at that point, you got to respect him. 100 %. And he would urinate over your back and just right into the urinal, dude. You'd be standing there peeing, right? You're like, I'm a scared kid. Remember how scary it was the first time you had to go into the urinal as a kid?

No.

I.

Grew up in a less threatening environment.

Oh, you did?

Because there's no one doing piss rainbows over my shoulder.

No, that wasn't a. Mr. Larry, he was the fucking Gary Payton of piss on me. He would from deep. And so you'd literally be peeing. Imagine this, and you can't pee. You're scared. And then a fucking pee comes just from above and goes perfectly in.

-that's so impressive.

-you just feel demoralized, though.

No, but I mean, the pounds per square inch, just the velocity. You know what I mean? You think you'd almost need CO2 to get that much power.

Yeah, it was impressive, man. It's crazy what some men can do. We're young men or adolescence.

Yeah, there's not a lot of dribbling at.

That age. Oh, there wasn't any dribbling, dude.

No dribbling. It was just shooting. And then at the end, it's like, Bam, off. It's like the Bellagio Fountains. Like, When it's done, is done. I do respect that.

What is news like around the world? That's something I.

Don't understand. It's so different. It's crazy. -is it really? -you don't realize that we live in this bizarre biosphere where you have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world. You have no idea how you're perceived, the United States is perceived, and you have no idea, really, your place in the global order because we're cut off from the rest of the world, and we have these two extremely lame, irrelevant countries bordering us, but that's it. Mexico and Canada. No offense, I like them both, but nobody cares. But there are big, important countries around the world, and they're very focused on the United States. They have all these views about what we're doing, and those views are never expressed here. So if you're a leader in the United States, you can be like, Well, we're doing this for democracy. This is the arsenal of democracy. And then you go to the countries that are directly affected by those policies and they're like, You're freaking insane. You have no idea what you're talking about. I mean, the mindblower for me this summer, we traveled all over the world, a bunch of different continents, and we're still doing it because I got fired.

So I've been stuck in a studio for all those years.

Now you got to get out and about.

Well, I go on vacation for two weeks a year, but that was it. You do a show regularly. You're tied to where you are. Period. You're in a studio.

Yeah.

So all of a sudden, I'm like, Wow, I'm emancipated. Yeah, for a few months, and it was the summertime. Anyway, so we wouldn't... But the shock for me was, and this is not a partisan point at all.

At all. What does partisan mean? It means.

Like caring water for a party. This is what Republicans think, this.

Is what Democrats think. Non-partisan means not.

Choosing-this is just what I think is true, and it doesn't matter what the other party says.

Okay, what does non-partisan mean?

It just means not partisan. You're not connected to a party, you're not helping either party. Okay. But what I mean is both parties, Republican and Democrat, were saying for a year and a half, Ukraine is winning this war against Russia.

Yeah, I remember hearing that.

Oh, yeah, and I still think people believe that. So whatever you think of the war, Russia, Ukraine. I'm not that interested, honestly, because I'm not Russian or Ukrainian is the truth. But lots of Americans seem to be interested and they have their little Ukrainian flags and they're learning to pronounce Kiev as Kyiv, and they're doing all the steps that you need to do, repeating all the dumb slogans.

Slava Ukraine.

Yeah, whatever. Americans have this thing where they have no idea where something is, but they're like, You see it now with the Middle East. I'm an expert. It's like the Nakba. What? Stop. But anyway, but the article of faith for most Americans was that Ukraine is winning the war. So, I mean, how do I know? You know what I mean? I'm stuck in the studio. So I go over to the region, two different countries that border to Ukraine.

You popped over there.

To Ukraine. No, I didn't go to Ukraine. I don't think I do well in Ukraine, no.

Really?

The government of Ukraine has attacked me by name a lot. I felt like that.

Was unwise. Who's their master over there, their leader?

Well, the President is a guy called Vladimir Zelensky.

Oh, right. That's right. He's a fucking comedian.

Yeah, a very unfunny one.

Yeah, do we have any videos of him doing stand-up comedy?

He's got one where he's playing the piano with his dick. I don't know if you can.

Find that. Oh, really?

Yeah, and actually.

Fairly well. Was it at a Sig App House? Where was that?

It was in Ukraine somewhere. Oh, no way. Yeah, it's a pretty common thing. There. Oh, there he is playing piano with his penis. Yes.

Is he really?

Oh, yes.

Oh, anybody can be President now.

Well, I don't know. Can you play the piano with your penis? Huh? Oh, no.

A little bit of Boltovin. Kind of hacky, but it's cute, though.

-that was good. -thank you. I like that.

I said that just because I knew you.

Might like it. I love that. I wish I had said that. But anyway, so I don't care about these guys in any way. But I go over there and I start talking to very knowledgeable people, like the people who run these countries, and they're like, What? No. Russia has 100 million more people than Ukraine. 100 million. And much deeper industrial capacity. They have all these weapons, factories. It's the largest country in the world by landmass. There's literally no chance, even theoretically, Ukraine could beat them.

But aren't they an industrial old... Are they Russia? Things made out of stone, aren't they living in the past with a lot of technology?

Well, it turns out, I mean...

Or is they a military advanced?

Well, we always made fun of it during the Soviet period because it was super inefficient and they were all drunk and they would crash their commercial airliners all the time from drunkenness, all the time. In fact, a famous carrier, the international carrier, their national carrier is called the Aeroflot, the Russian carrier, was the Soviet carrier. And in a very famous crash, the pilot had his son in the cockpit with passengers on the plane. And the cockpit voice recorder proved this. And the son just takes the yoke and just pushes it down and flies the plane right into the ground. People made fun correctly of Soviet technology, but it turns out they were actually pretty good at this. They produced a lot of chess players. They're not stupid people at all. And neither are the Ukrainians for that matter. But anyway, the point is the Russians were never going to lose, period. Anyone who looked at it objectively would know that, except no one in the United States knew that. That freaked me out. I'm like, We have a big country, smart country, the most advanced country in the world, supposedly, and nobody even knows a basic fact-Who's really winning.

-like Russia has 100 million more people. Of course, they're not going to lose to Ukraine. That's insane. Yet nobody knew that. I thought, Wow, what else don't we know? Just the amount of lying that you can do in a world where everything is controlled. All information is controlled, with the exception pretty much of Twitter. Because the guy who owns it has said he's not going to censor.

Yeah, you know what? It's nice. I feel like that's one thing that I thought was that, yeah, maybe that's what's about censorship, is at least you feel like you can say things or that things can be shared on there.

Because they didn't-Do you feel, I mean, as someone who writes comedy, who does this every day, do you feel freer on the platform now?

On Twitter?

Yeah.

I feel like at least if YouTube takes me down.

Oh, look at that. Comedy is legal on this platform. So Elon specifically endorsed.

Your right to say it. Yeah, it was nice when we had Rosanne Barr on and she's a-I.

Like.

Her a lot. Oh, dude, she fucking did so much for a comedy. She did so much for women and gays.

Oh, wait, I saw part of that.

Hollywood threw under the fucking bus as soon as they had a chance because they are heartless. Anyway, she was on my show and.

She-wait, I saw that. Tell me if I'm misremembering this. They took a line that she had and they cut out all the context and put it on TikTok, and it made her sound like she was a crazy person or a vicious person, which.

She's not either one of those. Yeah, she's a Jewish. I mean, she was born Jewish. I think she's still Jewish, right? She is, yeah. And so she said, Oh, and the Holocaust never happened, right? She said.

Sarcastically, right? Of course. I think she had relatives who died in it. Yes.

-yeah, very obvious, right?

Right, of course.

And some guy on Twitter, asshole, Sam, I don't know what the guy's name was, something's Fucklestein or somebody. He fucking made a big deal about it.

From the Minneapolis, Fucklestein's.

Yeah, probably. I know them. This was two weeks after, right? Makes a big deal about or just put that clip in or whatever, no context. So then YouTube took that episode down, but we got to put it on Twitter. So that was at least because it was an honest place. But what I worry about is, didn't some of these companies, didn't Twitter or Facebook, didn't they get in trouble for not letting during election times, not real information being allowed to be shared?

Yeah, I don't know who would get them in trouble. They run everything. My concern would be as we're getting to this election, it's very intense. I think they're very intense people on both sides. If you actually had a platform that was open for everyone to say what he or she thinks, that's a massive threat to the asshole community. And I think that because the truth is always a threat to lies, that's just never changes. People are killed never for lying, ever. They're only killed for telling the truth. You're only punished for telling the truth. People get mad is because you told the truth. Everyone should know that. I can't imagine the pressure that's going to come to bear on this company X now, over the next year. It's going to be without precedent.

I think. Do you think Elon could be... I mean, there could be even an assassination attempt on him or something?

I would never speculate about something like that, but I just think there's...

But just guess. You're a guy at a bar. What are you going to say?

I think there's going to be, I would have a food taster. I mean, I think look, the one thing we know... Look, if you're doing a great job at something, if you're a great father, great husband, great employer, great comedian, you're not too worried because you know you're doing a good job. But if you're doing a bad job and the only beneficiary of your work is you and everyone else is getting screwed and they can't even afford to fill up their truck or buy groceries and you're still getting rich, you're very worried. Dictators are always worried about their own security. Okay, so what's the biggest threat to you? The biggest threat is someone calling you out. You have to shut down any medium where that could possibly happen. Obviously, Facebook is completely controlled. Google is completely controlled. Tiktok, foreign-owned company, God knows what their agenda is. So really the only big platform that's pretty not controlled with apparently some limits, but in general, it's not controlled. It's free speech. It's X.

I agree.

There's a lot at stake. Legitimate leaders don't worry about this. If I'm a legitimate leader, if I'm a good father, one of my kids is like, I want to smoke weed at the breakfast table. You're like, You can't. Sorry. Because I make the rules no weed at the breakfast table. I'm not worried about saying that because I think I'm a pretty good father, and I think my kids think I'm a pretty good father. But if I'm a terrible father who's abusing my kids, I can't let them say anything because the authorities might find out. I could get punished for what they know. That is the same attitude that every dictator has. That's why all dictators take the guns and impose censorship as the first thing they do. They don't want to throw you in prison. It's expensive. It's difficult. They don't want to execute you. They just want you to shut up and be obedient. Elon Musk in buying this platform and opening it up to all positions, even unpopular ones, is the single greatest threat to their hegemony, to their control. I'm not predicting their response, but I mean, it's going to be intense, super intense.

I can say that. Would you have security and that thing if you were him? Would you have somebody... Would you make sure that the Tesla truck, which is supposed to have been out for 17 years, but that it has extra bulletproofness in the glass?

I would definitely include, as a standard feature, not an add-on, the oil tanks that drop the oil onto the road behind you so that when you spin out and go right into a bridge abutment or off the side of the mountain, off Mallholland, you know what I mean? I would definitely do that. I'd have hidden machine guns under the side view mirrors. I'd have a death rate possibly. That would probably be a custom feature, but I would have stuff like that. Yeah, for sure.

Do you think we get fair news about even the war in Israel and Hamas? Do you think we get fair information about that? Joe Regan had a lady on recently, and she was saying that the perception of what happens over there isn't the information that we get. Do you see that?

Think of it this way. What's at stake? People's lives, control of governments, control of land, ancient rivalries and hatreds. There's so much at stake here.

This is the Celtics and the Lakers from the Bible.

That, of course, yeah, it's very intense. Of course, there's going to be massive lying on all sides, and there is. That's fine. When you go into it knowing that I've spent a lot of time over there, and I will freely confess, I don't understand a lot of the dynamics because I'm from La Jolla. I'm not from Janine or Jerusalem or Qatar. I'm not from the region, okay? I don't speak the languages, but I know enough to know that there's massive lying, and I think it's good to know that. The only thing that enrages me is when you hear people say, You must believe me. I have no obligation to believe anybody. You have an obligation, if you want me to believe you, to prove what you're saying. Right. And I have a right to ask simple, fair questions. How do you know that? How can I trust that? And if you don't give me those answers, then I just don't believe you. And I don't have to believe you. And if your recourse is, You're a bad person for not believing me, fuck you. That's my response. Fuck you. And especially in this case where my money and potentially my children's lives, well, that was a cocaine thing.

Yeah, one of these things got blown out of my nose every now and then. I got to make sure it works.

You got to open it up. Yeah. I agree with that.

Just.

Widen them out. There's no shade.

-god, does it feel good? -doesn't it?

God, dude. If I can feel it dripping down the back of my throat right now. Anyway, sorry to use profanity on your show, but it...

Somebody put on some cash. You know? Let's fucking rock.

Is that what you listen to?

I don't know what happened, dude.

No, be honest. What were.

You listening to? I think it was probably, yes, some Keshia, some Traveling Wilberies.

Traveling Wilberies.

Maybe a.

Little bit of a-That's the soundtrack of your private cocaine use, the Traveling Wilberies?

I got a unique listen. A little maybe some Morgan Wallet, different, eclectic mix, I think.

James Blake. What about Dusty Nebaggy or Billy Strings?

Never heard that. I love Billy Strings, but I haven't heard Dustyne and Baggy. Oh, it's a.

Great tune, and it's about.

Dusty and Baggy. I thought it was an Irish guy, Dusty and Baggy. -that's good. -you met him. -that's good. -dustin. Hey, Dusty. Mom's pissed.

Yeah.

Sorry, I'm just.

From Pittsburgh. Have you ever been to Boston?

I've been to Pittsburgh, though. Dave Chappell was just in Boston, man. You saw what they did to him over there?

It was unbelievable.

Yeah. Do you think that's fair that they should... Because it's not fair, but it's like, I don't know if you go to listen to Dave Chappell these days, you know he's going to talk more about a lot of stuff. Dave Chappell criticizes Israel, spars with crowd at Boston Show. Oh, he criticized Israel. So I didn't know that's exactly what he did. I mean.

Look, I wasn't there. I only.

Know what I read. I wasn't there either.

But I think he made one point, which I think is entirely, I don't know if I agree. I don't agree with Dave Chlewell and everything, of course. But the one point that I read that I did agree with was the United States is implicated in this, and so we have a right to have an opinion on it. That is obviously true. Anyone who tells you don't have a right to have an opinion or you must have one specific opinion is wrong. I think it's fair to say that.

Yeah, I think people should be able to have their opinions. Yeah, because once you don't have your fucking opinion, then it's like, how do you get to a revolution? How do we get to a revolution? Because at what point do people just say, Well, if you don't want my life to mean anything to me based on how you've set up the environment, at what point do you go from there to then I am not going to play this game? Or how does a revolution start?

They're very worried about it. That's why they're putting people in prison.

I think they should be worried about it. They are worried. I'd love to fucking be on a horseback, dude.

Well, but you know how you get to revolution is by not listening to people and not serving their interests and telling them to shut up again and again, calling them names. You've got a legitimate question. Like, why should I support a war with Iran? Shut up. Calling me what? I have four children of draft age. Why is that not a fair question for me? Shut up. You do that enough, and I have recourse because I have a platform, but most people don't. If you tell them to shut up enough, we don't care that you care about gas prices and your stupid pickup truck. Well, some people like their pickup trucks and they use them for work. If it's not affordable to fill it up, that's a big deal for them. If you're like, Shut up, climate change. Pig. Your nephew ODs on fentanyl and nobody cares. If you keep that up for long enough, you will make people radical. And why wouldn't they be radical, actually? I'm so insulated for most of it because I have enough money and I'm not in debt and my kids are grown and paid and I'm in a much easier position than most people.

I feel radical just watching. Right. So why wouldn't they be on the brink of being unreasonable? It doesn't need to be this way. You don't have to solve all people's problems. Some problems are very hard to solve, and people know that. There's no magic button you press that ends inflation or stops fentanyl, and everyone knows that. All you need to do is express the fact and do it sincerely that you care. You acknowledge these are big problems. But when the speaker of the House, who I know is a nice guy from your state, the new speaker of the house comes in, and the first thing he does is issue a statement on behalf of foreign country. That's the most important thing. I'm not even against the statement, but I'm just saying, what bigger statement does that make?

That's him, Mikey Johnson?

Yeah.

He's the speaker?

He is.

Praise God. I don't mean damn, Mikey.

He's a nice guy, and I'm not against him. But I'm just saying if you think the welfare of another country is the most important thing for you as one of the leaders of our country, third in line to the presidency, you have lost the thread, son, because it's not. Nothing is more important for the leaders of our country than our country and how it's 350 million people are doing. So I was enraged by that. And people were like, Oh, are you for Hamas? Of course, I'm not for Hamas at all. I'm for America, actually. I shouldn't even have to answer that question. Are you for Israel or Hamas? I mean, obviously I'm for Israel over Hamas, but that's irrelevant. I'm for America, and no one even asked that. I feel deep resentment about that, that the concerns of this country have no concern. Right.

It feels like our concerns don't even fucking matter anymore. They don't matter. That's why it makes you wonder, are we just a shell company for Israel? Are we just a shell company for China? Where are we anymore? Are we just...

Well, there are a lot of people who live here who really like it here, who are boring.

Oh, yeah, I.

Love it here. I know you do. I'm just saying it doesn't have to be this way. There are hundreds of millions of people whose ancestors are buried here, and they want to stay here. They don't have another passport. It wouldn't be hard to rally them and just say, You're a Democrat, you're a Republican, you're this, you're that, but we're all American, and let's have a conversation about what's best for our country. You would get people from all sides being like, That's right. That's the right conversation. We may not even agree, but that's the conversation we should be having. And if you don't do that, I'm just telling you, you play with fire. People go crazy. I'm totally convinced that the mass shootings we're seeing and the massive spike in mental illness that we're seeing, which is leading to the mass shootings, these are manifestations of the frustration, the hopelessness that people feel when they realize their leaders don't care about them. I believe that. I can't prove it, but I believe it because I happen to live in a place with a lot of people who are not succeeding in the modern world, and they're good people, and they have skills, and their families have been here for hundreds of years.

We should care about them.

I agree. But yeah, I think our country has been compromised by people that don't care and they don't see value in that. It feels like it's just about a bottom line or it's about, I don't know, some goal that to me seems so erroneous, I can't even fathom that you wouldn't have feelings. Like when you're like that Sackler family that's just watching people's children die. You can make money off of a fucking pill. Who cares? What are you going to get? Another half-bathroom or something? What are you going to get? Exactly. I don't understand the goal sometimes of some of that or why people would think that selling someone out to such a point where they don't have any purpose, where you take away their hope. We had a guy on here talk about meaning, this guy, John Verbeike, and he was real interesting. This guy is from Canada, and he just talks about meaning and when people don't have like... When they don't feel like they're supported by... I'm going to fuck it up, but if they don't feel like they're part of a group or they don't feel like...

If they're totally cut off from other people and just floating around, atomized, and alone, it.

Drives them crazy. -right, you go crazy.

-and then you get a necessary.

-you put them in a solitary confinement. Exactly. So you've basically taken so much of America by taking away things that brought us together. And some of those things were smaller towns, like businesses in small towns, things that made people feel of value. My father went to a... My father, his family was mahogany farmers. They did wood. So I think if your father went into the woods in your town or whatever, part of a company that built tables.

-they were literally.

Mahogany farmers? Yeah, and you had a table at home, and then it was your dad's company's table. We eat at our families, we did build it in our town.

Some physical connection between labor and reward. Theoretical and digital and bullshit. Zoom calls.

Yeah. Now it's just like, do you want to eat at this fucking Chipotle sit-go where they're selling gas and buritos? -and it's just like... -is that a thing? But that's a fucking town hall of a lot of... Now, everything has just been a dollar general in most towns, and that's what it is. Just we've killed off a lot of that.

What's interesting is you drive through... I like to hunt and fish, so I've been in a lot of small towns in America because that's where the hunting and the fishing. Some of these towns, and especially the county seats in rural towns, have beautiful courthouses. Beautiful. Somebody spent a lot of money and a lot of time to make a beautiful public building. One of those hasn't been built since the Second World War. That is true. Probably since the '30s, since the Depression. Your state, especially, you've got a lot of great public architecture in Louisiana. None of it has been built since Huber-Long was murdered, okay? So why is that? And it's been replaced by disposable garbage in the dollar store. I'm sorry to single them out, but they are a symbol of it. It's so intentionally ugly. Box stores are so ugly. You're like, There's got to be a purpose behind. Architecture exists for a reason. You're sending a message when you build a building, when you build anything. And the message of box stores and dollar stores and the DMV is, You mean nothing. We're not going to spend any time or any energy trying to elevate you or please your senses or build anything beautiful.

It's ugly on purpose to let you know that you mean nothing. You do not count. Shut up and obey. You're an animal, actually. I just feel like there's something very profound about that, the message that it sends, and everyone receives the message whether they know it or not. You go into a DMV, what's it telling you? Wait your turn, wait for your number, and then some surly, low-IQ person hassles you over. It's like, I'm a citizen of this country. Why do I even have to have a driver's license? Give me my fucking papers and let me get out of here. How dare you speak to me that way. But you can't because she's in charge. The whole experience is designed to degrade you and make you less powerful to take your self-respect away. I'm very.

Upset by it. Oh, the DMV. It's almost like they have a line. If you come out of the closet, you get to go to the front of the line. I'd be.

Willing to do that.

Yeah, but that's the shit I'm saying. It's like that's how much they want to compromise who you are or what you are.

But look at that. Okay, the drop ceiling. There's no reason to have lighting like that. It doesn't cost more. Maybe to put some or sconces or something. There's nothing more oppressive than a drop ceiling with fluorescent lighting, and there's no reason to have that. Everything is made out of vinyl and metal. There's not one natural material in there. Why don't I have wooden benches? What would that cost extra? Train stations used to have them, but they don't because the message there is all this shit is disposable. It'll be in a landfill in five years, and so will you. Everything about that is degrading to the citizen, and it's not an accident. We've been doing that since the day we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That is true since the end of the second one. I have a lot of theories about it. I have no evidence to back up any of my theories, so I should just say that. I think that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan convinced the US government and the Western leaders more broadly that they were God. They had the power to destroy whole cities. Nuclear power, when weaponized, is the most powerful tool man has ever made.

And it gave people the impression that they were God, and they lost all humility and all love for their fellow citizens. They lost love for their fellow citizens. That's what our architecture, post-war architecture conveys. I don't love you. I don't care about you. The British colonized whole countries, India, for example, they didn't love the... I mean, they love the Indians, but they thought the Indians were lesser than them. They did. They were racist in our current understanding of that word. But they built train stations in say, Calcutta or Bombay that would blow your freaking mind. There's nothing as beautiful in the United States as the train stations they built in the subcontinent.

In India. Oh, yeah, stunning places. Right, stunning. What does that tell you?

These were colonial train stations built for Indian subjects.

Right. Look at that. But they still had a lot of pride in what.

They built. They did, but people... Here, do the one in Mumbai. The Mumbai train station is like the most unbelievable, eminent.

I met a Pakistani the other day.

Well, that was part of India up until 1947.

They have their own autonomy now.

They do. They have nuclear weapons, actually. Look at... Look at that right there. -wow. -look at that. -come on. -that looks like, I mean, that's the train station in Bombay, Mumbai, India. Oh, yeah. I've been there. I sat there and it's very poorly maintained. The Indian government has done nothing to preserve it, unfortunately, and they've built a lot of garbage architecture. They stole from our anti-human architects. But what country would build something like that? A country that cared about pleasing people. You look at that, that pleases you. You want to keep staring at it because it's beautiful. We've created nothing of beauty in the United States in 80 years. What the hell? Roy Licktonstein and Andy Warhol, that's beauty. No, it's not.

It's garbage. Yeah, it's bootleg.

You're getting.

Me going, baby. Am I? Yeah. Oh, yeah, dude, I like your attitude. Well, you know where there's great architecture that blew my mind? Milwaukee.

The best. Down by the river?

Dude, Milwaukee-Yes. -is such a.

Beautiful city. I totally.

Agree with you. I had no idea.

Have you tried Cleveland? Yeah. I mean, Cleveland obviously is famously screwed up, mistake by the lake, but it's like, look at that right there. So the Germans built it. Milwaukee was a German city, obviously. It was? Oh, yeah. That's why the beer was brewed there. Oh, yeah. Very German city.

And.

They recreated Europe. The best of Europe.

Yeah, Cleveland definitely, it was a bit of a different experience, I think, when I was there. Look at that. Look at that building.

-it's stunning. -imagine building something like that. And instead, we build glass boxes that are lead certified. And it's like we've built nothing of value, nothing of permanence, nothing we have built in my lifetime will last. And rightly so. There are Roman buildings and arches, Rome.

-that are going to last longer. Rome fell in the fifth.

Century, and.

They're still there. And that will outlast the construction of a fucking half these petcoes or whatever. It's true.

It's totally true.

Sorry. I know it's crazy, though, but something happened. I think that's the infection that starts to get into the spirit of us. I think that's the fight that's going on inside of a lot of people.

Make something beautiful. That's what we should be telling kids. Your job in life, it's not just working for the man and paying the bills. It's make one thing that's beautiful that you are proud of, that's an expression of something good inside you. Make it with your hands or with your mouth, but make it. Make something beautiful. I don't know why that's... And by the way, when you say something that you think, not others, you think is particularly funny or insightful, you're getting the truth about something, aren't you filled with this? Wow. Doesn't that feel better than anything?

Yeah, I think it feels like what you're supposed to be doing.

Yes, that's it. Exactly. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing, what God made you to do. That's my feeling. But that's not advice that we give at all. It's like how to be an obedient, get some stupid degree at some stupid college to be an obedient employee to some stupid asshole who runs it, who's going to mistreat you.

Yeah. How do we... What's new in your world? What are you doing?

Well, I've gone crazy.

What are you doing now that's different with... You got on the Twitter, right? And so I know that. And congratulations. Thank you. I think it's interesting. It's brave for people to get out of the system. A lot of people think-I was.

Expelled from.

The system. Oh, yeah. You got laid off from everywhere. Was it cutbacks or why did you.

Take cutbacks? I'm going to use that, though. There's downsizing. Just downsizing. I'm being retrained. I'm learning to code, actually. They closed the plant. I totally get out. I was on third shift, and they're just the demand was in decline. I am going to use that, though, next time. How are you fired?

But you got out and you.

Moved to-I was thrown out. You were thrown out. And Elon called me the day that my show was canceled. And... And I was grateful that he did.

He called you, huh? Had you spoken to him before? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. And I really liked him. And I'm not a technology person, to put it mildly, like at all. -yeah, I've heard that. Very anti-technology. Like almost on a crazy Ted Kazinsky way, which is I'm not defending.

It's bad. So who handles tech for you then?

The tech people, they live in Bangalore. I don't know their names. Just kidding. No, we have super.

Smart people.

-the Bangaloreans? -the Bangaloreans.

No, actually, our...

The Mandaloreans. Most of our staff from Fox came. We don't work for Elon. I'm a Twitter user like everybody else. But all he said was, I'm going to keep the platform open and people with differing views, whether they're with them or not, are welcome on the platform. And that's the guarantee that I wanted and needed. I've been super grateful. I mean, that's all I've ever wanted, by the way, is to have never been... I have made some money, but I never got crazy rich, but I never wanted to. That wasn't my goal at all. I guess I would like to be richer, I guess. I don't know what I would do with it exactly.

Well, it is now. It almost looks like a sickness, too. I think there should.

Be a -The money acquisition thing? Yeah. There was a name for that, actually. Historically, it was called greed. Yeah. And then somewhere along the line, we decide you weren't allowed to complain about greed. And I don't really... Because you're against capitalism. First of all, there is no capitalism in the United States. There's no free market, okay? The government controls everything. You can't have a business without intersecting with government, and the government is used by businesses to create monopoly. So there's no free market, so let's stop lying about that. Second, I am not against capitalism. I'm for competition. I wish capitalism would return to the United States. But that doesn't mean that you can't say, if I've got a billion dollars and I need 10 more, that that's your sick, actually. If that's your goal, what would you do with the billion dollars? I don't want a billion dollars. Not that I'm in danger of getting it, but if I was, I'd be like, I don't want that, because then you spend your whole life worrying about losing it, and your existence becomes about preserving money when your existence should be about loving the people around you and creating something beautiful.

Those are your jobs as a person, in my opinion.

Yeah. Well, could we put a cap on how much money people are allowed to make?

I guess people would find their way around it. I mean, the way to do it is to say it out loud. Again, everything changes with words. Articulate the truth. It's not an attack on capitalism, which again does not exist in the United States, and I wish it did, to say it is ugly. In fact, it's a sin to worship money. It is. You should not be worshipping money. Worship God, worship people around you, worship nature even. But worshipping money is disgusting, and we should not compliment people who do it. We should instead criticize them and say, That's gross. Hey, Hedge Fund Manager, that's gross. I'm sorry. I think that.

No, I fucking think that too, man. I remember maybe two years ago, it was the first time I'd really made some money in my life, and I thought, and I remember I was in my garage and I just was fucking heartbroken, man. I remember calling my brother, I was crying.

But it didn't make you happy?

I thought, yeah, because I didn't even know it was money. I didn't know if it was popularity. I don't know what had happened, but I got into a different space in my career. I finally knew I could pay my mortgage for the year. I thought that that somehow in the back of my head, without even realizing it, I thought that that would be the answer to everything. And when it wasn't, it fucking killed me. But nobody wants to hear that also from somebody.

Who-but it's the most familiar thing I've ever heard. It's like I could tell you.

So many stories. It just made me so sad that I've just been fooled. And even fooled by myself.

Well, getting what you want is one of the saddest things that can happen to you. I mean, when you're happiest when, as a man, I'll speak for men because I am one, you have a clear mission.

For now.

For now, I could totally change. Oh, it will change you, dude. If I get a better spot at the DMV.

Tucker?

It does change you. There is something going on in the water, baby. And that's why if I could take a break to just promote my non-sponsors in. And these are threes, and I normally use sixes, but I appreciate the gesture, but I do think nicotine does keep your testosterone levels up.

Really? I do one of those suppositories. I'm not doing a big win or anything, you know? I mean, maybe during the.

Holidays, I would. It's not like an expander.

It's just a regular suppository. Okay, I would do something small. Just pop a bead in or something if I'm going to be at the ballpark. I do probably just something half a gram or whatever milligrams. I don't know what it comes in.

Three milligrams? Yeah, dude.

But getting what you want succeeding, that's when men fall apart.

But then also, I think that there were more opportunities for success in the past, and there was more opportunities to feel value in the past. I remember when I was a kid, we used to get our name in the paper, and it made you feel so good, like you're a local baseball score, right? And even if you lost, they fucking put your last name. Yeah, I get it. Went 0 for 4, right? Cried, even they'll put cried in parentheses, and you're like, Fuck yeah, dude. At least I'm on the stat sheet.

They cut you crying?

Yeah, I mean, I had an appendectomy, right? And the guy who I think was Closeted or whatever was our coach, was like an assistant coach or whatever, and he was screaming at me to get to third base. And literally, my appendix had burst.

Can you show me on the doll where this happened? Yeah.

Dude, I remember we had a dude, boss.

There's something here. I can feel it.

Oh, bro, this guy's screaming at me to get to third base. My appendix burst. I'm laying in the fucking dirt, right? And that's a sign of our fucking country nowadays. They're like, Get to fucking third base. You're like, I have sepsis. And nobody fucking cares, man. But they still put you in the stat sheet, 0 for 4. Yeah, I think we had a dude who was touch and... I think they were touching the players, and they just called him and they're like, Look, you can't keep coaching if you're going to touch players.

That was the era. Touching him in an affirming way?

I think just extra affirming.

Like too affirming.

Like overhand, you're affirming. But once you turn the hand this way.

I totally agree. Reach around, not affirming.

If you're doing that, that's totally- Totally agree. -that's unaffirming, dude. What do you think about where do we go? Does Bobby Kennedy Jr. Have any chance? Does a third party have any chance these days? No.

A third party can affect the outcome for sure. But the system is, and this could change with time, but the system is showing no sign of changing. I could bore you for hours, but Ross Perre ran in '92 and then '96. Yeah, I remember that. And he got Clinton elected in '92.

Fear the ears, that was the campaign, I think.

Yeah, Fear the ears. I never heard that.

I just made it up.

That was good. Thanks. And he actually was impressive.

He was a real smart guy.

Hes he was. He said a lot of things that turned to be true, but of course, he was attacked as some crazy person, but including by me, I should say.

I'm not.

Damn, really? Yeah, I was used as a tool.

Do you even notice you're a tool? When you're a tool like that for.

The-no, no. I was in my early 20s, and I was writing, I was covering... First of all, people in their early 20s should not be covering anything other than kids with appendectomies in baseball. That right? Shouldn't be covering national politics in your 20s. What do you know? You don't know shit. -yeah. -so you shouldn't be rendering judgment and other stuff like that. -fun, okay, contest and stuff like that. 100 %. Fsa events or whatever, but not politics. But anyway, I was, and I attacked him as a crazy person, and I was used by the person I was working for, who's still a public person and truly a dishonest person. But anyway, whatever.

If it's Chuck Schumer, just say it.

More dishonest than Chuck Schumer. Anyway, I can't even get into it. But the point is, he got 23 % or whatever, I think it was 23 that year in '90. -bush, Perot did?

-oh, yeah. Wow. Dude.

Because he was running basically on a pre-Trump, more restrained, more academic, less Trump. But the idea was the same, like manufacturing is dying and it's going to wreck the country. We need to make things, stuff.

Like that. Is that Bush, Perot, and Dukakis? No, who was that?

No, Dukakis was '88. It was Bush, Perot, and Bill Clinton.

Who was.

Then the governor of Arkansas in 1992. It was the first race I covered. Perot did really well despite massive hostility from the media, because, of course, they were protecting their bosses. The establishment. Exactly. That's exactly. But I didn't perceive any.

Of that. -what did he get? 18.9 % he got. What did he get?

18.9 %. I'm sorry, 19 %. I'm embarrassed.

Did he affect the outcome of that race?

Well, he won it for Clinton. I mean, Clinton won it, as you can see on the page, at 43 %.

Absolutely. If Perot didn't win, do you think that Bush wins that?

Of course, yeah. Absolutely. He took from.

Bush, yeah. Who is Kennedy taking from?

What do you think? Trump.

You think?

Of course. There's no person who's thinking, I'm going to vote either for Joe Biden or Bobby Kennedy.

I have some friends that are. No way. I swear. Really? I have some friends that have known Bobby. I mean, these are people that have known Bobby Kennedy for a long time, but who are Democrats, who are like, This is my guy.

The only reason you would vote for Joe Biden is because you believe their safety in numbers. You're voting for the party. I'm not attacking Biden, but you're not voting for Biden. You're voting for the Democratic Party because you think when they have more power, you're safer, richer, or whatever. That's the only reason. Bobby Kennedy, man, I've never seen anybody get right to the core issues affecting the country the way he has. I don't agree with him on everything, but he names names in a.

Big way. Yeah, that's why I love him. I think... Well, I just think he can fuck you. I don't feel like he's in anybody's pocket. Do you feel like low key there's some party that's planted him in there? People say that, but that's crazy.

Shit, I think. I feel like I know Bobby very well, and I am totally convinced just on a human level that he is an honest person. And I don't think that he would do that. I'd just have to ask. Are there people in his orbit who would do that? I believe, yes, is the answer. But I don't think he knows about it or has anything to do with it. I think he's totally sincere. He's certainly not in anyone's pocket. I mean, the guy could be... His name is Bobby Kennedy. He's the son.

Of-he could do whatever.

He could do whatever. He could do whatever.

And he has done. He's done a ton of great stuff with his life.

He has. But I'm just saying it's very easy to be loved by everybody and it's very easy to make money when everyone loves you. Bobby Kennedy could have an infinitely easier life than the one he's chosen. He's doing this because he sincerely believes it. Look at that, right? And he's under threat. I was with him on the street the other day. I was in New York in Washington, and the security people around him were very nervous. He was not nervous at all, but they were. Anyway, the point is, I think Bobby is totally sincere, but he is giving a massive middle finger to the establishment, almost as aggressively as I've ever seen anybody.

Why can't we get him to a level? Because what % does he have to get? I guess we don't know because you don't know what.

Has to win. We need to get the plurality. We need to get more than the other two. Unfortunately, the system is set up where it's hard for a third party guy to get on all ballots. They've rigged the system against a third party challenge because.

They don't want that. Who has rigged the system? Both of the parties?

Both of the parties, yeah, of course. Of course, they don't. I mean, once you have power, what's your number one goal? It's preserving it and preventing people from challenging you.

Of course. When there's a revolution, what city should we meet up in?

Well, if there is a revolution, and I pray there isn't because they never end well, but if there.

Is-but it'd be fucking fun.

The first 20 minutes when you actually storm the best deal and free the prisoners or whatever, hang your homemade flag from the roof of the Capitol or whatever.

Burn the news networks. It's the first thing you would have to do.

So that'd be the fun part of the revolution. I think that would definitely be the fun part. But then it gets then you have show trials and famine and you have all the downside. But whatever, I'm not in church. So if that happens, I will be so deep in the woods surrounded by my dogs, and I'll say it, firearms, you're.

Probably not going to hear it from me. Let's just pretend one of your dogs is named firearms.

I actually have a dog called Firearm. I have AK and 47.

I got a bow, I got arrow, I got whatever. I got all my weapons in the woods with me. You can even just text me and just let me know where you're going to be. But I think about that sometimes.

But you're going to be in L. A.

No, I won't be. I live in Nashville.

Oh.

You don't live in L. A. No, I live in a place where if somebody is being weird, you can do them.

Okay, because if you're in L. A, you just get eaten.

Yeah. Oh, well, here's the move you would do in L. A. You would get in a boat and go off the shore. That would be the first move and let the otherHaving.

Grown up on the Pacific, let me just say it's a little bigger than the Chunk of Funky River, wherever you're from. It's a super big ocean.

Yeah, and also Fuck, Ben and Jerry while we're at it. But go on, they're Marxists.

Is it called Chunky, Monkey? What's the name of your river?

Chifunkta.

But I love that, dude. That's the greatest name ever. But the Pacific goes on forever, and then you make it to Hawaii, like six days later in your Boston whaler. Oh, thank God. Yeah, right.

Well, if you've been lost at sea for six days, you deserve to show up in.

Hawaii, I think. It's easy to miss Hawaii, though, in the middle of the Pacific. You could, yeah, that's a long way to Thailand. Did you imagine.

They'd kick you up there like, You fuck. You were this close to Hawaii. Like, What the fuck? I let my wife draw.

No, the Pacific is not a good escape plan at all. No. Because south you have Baha, Sonata, right? That's going to be a little chaotic, it always is. From Los Angeles to what? The Arctic Circle? I mean, that's just like nothing. It's like Alaska, like there's nowhere to go.

But.

You get in the woods.

Deep in there.

Yeah, you got a shot.

You got a shot. Then-radley up in there with a couple of pups?

100 %. You go full boot, Bradley. Definitely. Live in the hallow of a tree. Yeah.

That's it. I love that. Me too, man. It sounds exciting. But I think people start to think that way. And that's a sad... It's interesting because that thought just comes in my head sometimes. I've thought about asking people I know. I've thought about asking Joe Regan, Where do we meet up if shit gets weird? And I never used to.

Think that. I don't think Joe is going to leave his.

House, right? He might not, but I think everybody's got a little bit of a place. I think some people are thinking maybe it could be, I think you want to do mountainous. I think you go Salt Lake or Denver. Broncos suck. But so I don't know if I'd go there. Utah at least doesn't have a team. I don't know, but you start to think about that. You want to get up to sea level. You don't want nature beating you. So you don't want to drown out. You don't want to be in fucking Johnstown or something or whatever that place is.

Johnstown or Jonestown.

Or Jonestown. Both of them are.

Fluttered up. Both of them are bad. Purple Kool-Aid, Overflowing Rivers. You don't want to go anywhere, I think is the truth. You don't want to go anywhere. -you don't want to. -you don't want to travel. If things go sideways, you don't think you want to be on the road.

That's a good point.

The two times I've been in places for brief periods where there really was no authority.

What did that feel like and where was it?

One was in Katrina, right after the storm in New Orleans.

Wow, you were down there, huh, bro?

I was, and the other was in Baghdad in December of '03 when it started to get, I felt, out.

Of hand. Which one was more hectic, you think?

Oh, Baghdad. But for the United States, no one ever says this. I really feel like Katrina was almost unbelievable how chaotic it was.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, for real? Yeah, I could.

Bore you, but-Oh, I've been at a game when the Saints are fucking losing to the Falcons and it gets fucking.

Hectic enough. There is no one there to call, period. And then people start behaving in ways that are ridiculous. I saw that with my own eyes and dead people and people getting shot. I saw it, not guessing. I was just like, This cannot be America. I always thought if something bad happened, there would be like, you just call some special number and dad comes and restores order. No, no at all. The police were looting. I saw it. The police were looting during Katrina. Anyway, whatever, my point is I don't think you want to travel too much if you can help it. It's better to be in a place where you're just like, This is my place, and I'm defending it with these firearms until things calm down, until electricity is restored after the MP attack or whatever, because that's what's going to happen.

You hope it'll be a nuclear attack?

No, it's pretty easy to take down a society that's digital.

Oh, yeah, once you unplug that, and then when there's... But that's a crazy feeling when you're like, Okay, because your first thought is let me call somebody. Your phone isn't going to work.

No calling, no oil through the pipelines, no.

Food delivery. God's going to have the busiest afternoon.

No airlines, no one on the roads, dams fail. If you've put everything online, because the people who run our country are so stupid, they've actually done that, you are so vulnerable that it's unbelievable. And you're using Chinese servers and switchers. At that point, you have no control. You don't need to drop a nuke on anybody.

Yeah, first of all, if anybody's doing any of that shit, do not nuke.

Just scramble the circuits. You just scramble the circuits. You don't need to. You don't need to.

Let us at least enjoy the mystery of it for a little while, too.

But people are so... That doesn't mean just no DoorDash. That means no anything. And people, one thing I've noticed in both the places.

I've been work-No Stacey-dash either, huh?

No, Stacey-Dash. Sorry. That was dumb. You can't call any of your call girls from the interstate.

Oh.

Thank.

God. What if they start showing up? They will.

They'll be seeking refuge at your place. Remember me? You tipped me for no service.

Seeking refugerainment. That was a tough play on words. That was a good one, though. Thank you, dude. But you wouldn't be able to use money anywhere.

No.

That's going to become a no-bath. It's weird we're having this conversation, but even as me listening to you talk, my brain, I think, is recording this because it feels like it could be plausible. All you need is a couple of cops to be like, You know what? Fuck these people as well. I'm not going to fucking quit. I'm not going to quit blockating or attacking these people who I know are really struggling when I'm going home tonight and being one of them.

100 %. And by the way, my kids are at home. And this happened in New Orleans, drug, Katrina. It's cops, and I give them all the benefit of the doubt. Some of them, you do some criminal cops down there, but you also have good guys, too. And the good guys are like, I'm sorry, I got a wife and kids at home. I'm not, and people are going nuts. The thing that I noticed was it took like zero time from when authority disappeared for people to get super afraid for the predators to come out and start praying on people, and for everything just to fall apart. Everything. And if you unplug this country, and by the way, once you decide you're going to go to war with Iran, as we've apparently the morons who run our country have decided, that is a very likely outcome that they're going to do something like that. Really? Absolutely. Everyone's like, Oh, they could send an ICBM or whatever. Why would they bother to throw a missile at the United States across the ocean when they could unplug the country? Then you have real casualties, mass casualties, and mass chaos, like true, true chaos.

People are not prepared for this. They haven't thought it through. Our leaders have not prepared them for it at all. It's like, Oh, it's on your iPhone. You don't have an iPhone. There's no electricity and there's no electricity, and there's no water, and there's no way to get anywhere. Come on, dude. And that could happen. That's not science fiction. That could happen soon, and we're not ready for it. As you said, it's not a cohesive country. People are not like, I'm going to help my neighbors. You don't know who your neighbors are. They may not speak the same language.

Well, you're certainly not going to also help your government. So that's going to be the weird thing. When the government's like, People do this. You're a lot of people are like, Fuck you. I don't trust you. Totally.

And people have not seen chaos. They don't know what chaos looks like.

When.

People imagine war, they imagine two lines against each other, lobbing artillery shells or rifle fire at each other. There's a certain order to that, and people can handle it. It's dangerous, but I can handle it. It makes sense to me. It's orderly, it's geometric. Chaos is completely different from that. Chaos is like you have no freaking idea what's happening, who's on your side, who's not, who's a threat, who isn't, where things are going. People are not designed for that. People can't handle chaos and they go crazy. And I've only, as I said, had a taste of this a couple of times, but enough to learn chaos is the one thing you have to avoid, because that's when people become animals and really start behaving in ways that are inconceivable to civilize people.

We're going to turn into middle monkeys real fast.

Like in minutes. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, bro. Dude, I was at a Dave and Busters one time, right? I'm not even joking. Fucking power goes out, dude.

Did you eat anyone?

Bro, it was whaka everyone in that best, dude. People were beating the shit. It was complete darkness. Yeah, you're fucking feeling around for whatever, birthday cake or whatever. You don't even know what's going on. But that was created after Dave and Busters. I know. You know? So what is your plans now? You're on Twitter, you're in a free space as much as we have in today's society. You're in a free space for free speech. What else is there like?

We have some plans. I mean, some of them, if I'm being honest, include territorial expansion. We're going to invade Canada.

Just knock.

No, pillow fight. I'll take them in a second. Yeah. No, I just want to continue doing what we're doing, which is just say things that can't be said in other places, bring facts that maybe people haven't heard with the spirit of humility. I'm having spent my whole life in Washington, and most of it, 35 years. I'm very, I know.

I can't believe I did that. But you know what? I think a lot of people are glad that somebody was there. It's nice to see people that get out of a space because then you're not as compromised when people don't seem as compromised.

It's totally right. No, it's totally true. But I didn't realize just how control my brain was by it when I was in it because you don't, right? But anyway, but I've been around a lot of people who set out with these grandeose plans. I'm going to change the world. Those people invariably, 100 % of the time, make the world worse. Approach every task with the knowledge. I have no real idea what I'm doing. I don't know the long-term consequences of this. I probably can't fix every problem. I'm just going to try my best with humility to make things slightly better. That's my goal, make things slightly better. But anyone who tells you, If we pass this legislation, we're going to fix everything. We're going to fix healthcare forever, said Barack Obama in 2010. As soon as he said that, I was like, I don't even know much about healthcare. I'm hardly an expert. But I was like, The second you tell me you're going to fix something as complicated as one-fifth the entire US economy and one piece of legislation, fuck you. Because you're lying, actually, because that's impossible. And it turned out they made it worse.

Of course. So I don't want to do that. Not that I even have the power to, but I just want to tell the truth and do it without being told not to. And I think that we can.

And Tucker on X is your show, right? Yeah. Right. And do you guys have... Would you ever do a show with a partner, you think, or anything like that? I'm not going to pitch you an idea. I'm just... Because that's usually the predecessor question of somebody trying to pitch you an idea. But do you think about that thing? Do you.

Have-well, I have a million people I would like to work with. I like to interview people actually, and a lot, and I really try to be quiet while I interview them because I'm a compulsive talker, obviously. But I'd like a respite from that where I can just listen. We will have a lot of people on and we'll have a lot of recurring guests. But yeah, we're making a bunch of documentaries and doing stuff like that.

So like a production company more? Are you expanding in that sense? Yep. What is that? One, Ben Shapiro has one, Outkick is a company. Is that a company?

Dailywire? I don't know what Outkick is. I have a friend who works there.

Outkick, I think it was football and then they... Okay.

Does Jason still work there? Do you know Jason Whitlock?

Yeah, I do know Jason Whitlock. I met him one time.

So I love Jason Whitlock.

He's a really neat guy. He seemed very friendly. I didn't get to talk to him much. He's a.

Great guy and very deep. He's not a shallow person at all. Really? He's the person when you're talking to him, Whitlock, there he is right there. Whitlock will say things and you're like, Wait, what? I'm sorry. I just want to have a super shallow conversation. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Because I'm shallow in some ways. He doesn't think like that or talk like that. It's super heavy stuff out there.

-and it's cool. -that'd be interesting. Sometimes I want to have deeper conversations with people, but I think I might get afraid to get into them or I don't know how to get into them without seeming like I'm being intrusive or I don't know.

With him, you don't have to worry because he does it.

He's okay with it, yeah.

Well, he just goes there. Immediately goes there. I like that about him.

Do you ever get asked, and then we'll wrap up because I know you've been here for a while and thanks for your time. I love it. Do you ever get asked to bring people over to Twitter? Is there like, movement? Because I know John Stewart just had a show with Apple, right? Was that recently? Where he canceled. Yeah, he had a show with Apple.

John.

Stewart.

John Stewart. The guy from The Daily Show?

-from The Daily Show. John Stewart's show on Apple is ending. Mr. Stewart and, sorry, Apple are parting ways because of creative differences.

Over the problem. I didn't even know he had a show on Apple, so it shows.

You what I know. People with the knowledge. But they had a disagreement about the type of episodes he wanted to do. He wanted to do episodes on... Can we move it down? Okay. According to Haller, reporter ahead of his decision to end, Apple approached Stewart directly and expressed its need for the host and his team to be aligned with the company's views on topics discussed. Rather than falling in line when Apple threatened to cancel the show, Stewart reportedly decided to walk. Stewart's intended discussions of artificial intelligence and China were a major concern for Apple. Why would they be concerned with him having episodes like that?

I mean, we're assuming that's true. I hope it's true. That's a noble reason to leave. If you think there's something really important you want to cover and your boss says no, it's a good reason to quit. I hope that that's right.

Was there another time you almost quit.

Before you got laid off all the time? My sense is that show... I didn't know even though that show existed, so I don't think it was.

Doing well.

I don't think so. Stewart, obviously a talented guy. I knew him...

Yeah.

He's beloved. 25 years ago. Yeah, I always thought he was talented, he definitely did what I think everyone does at some point, and it's important to come out of it and start to mistake your sofa a messianic figure and just be like, No, I'm just a guy. It's so important. I've done that, so I've been there.

Oh, yeah, your ego is the first thing to grow. Hundred %. And it's very scary. You're like, dang, does God have some special reason for me?

No, you will humiliate yourself. You will humiliate yourself and you'll destroy yourself. You will lose the respect of your wife and your friends if you don't pull back from that. Yeah. And just remember, I am an asshole. And if you don't believe that, next time you get out of the shower, walk in front of the mirror and look at yourself and be like, Am I really impressive?

No. No, not really. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I saw it this morning. Did you? What did.

You think? Right.

Yeah. Did?

Yeah, right, exactly. So it's important to do that. You know what I mean? That will keep you from thinking you're the Messiah. I don't think he has any mirrors in his house.

Yeah. Any other question or anything you wanted to talk about, Tucker? No. Okay, I know you share everything on your own show.

I just share everything in general.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've enjoyed the.

Hell out of it. Yeah, man, it's been a lot of fun.

I've had a.

Great time. Yeah, me too.

I appreciate that. You're the only person I've talked to in the last, well, probably ever, who one of my kids will be impressed by. They're not impressed at all. They're impressed by you. I don't know why. You've obviously got some weird magic power over younger people.

And I don't know anything about that.

But you don't abuse it. Well, no, that's the thing.

You're.

Not going to start a children's.

Crusade or anything. They came after our industry a couple of years ago.

Oh, I didn't mean anything creepy. Okay, good.

Yeah, and I only know adult women.

Oh, the old women like you?

No, I just only know people that are legally adults.

Well, of course.

Okay, that's all I'm saying, dude, because immediately, I remember The New York Times hunted down half of our industry.

I.

Noticed. Yeah, just that vague stuff where it.

Comes up. I think there are a lot of creepy comedians, but not as many as there are in journalism.

Yes, there are some creepers in journalism. Dude, what happened? Remember the guy who jerked off in the Zoom meeting and then they brought him back on for the interview?

He sat there and he's like, You're going to get caught whacking off in a Zoom and everything. I mean, it just shows you his name is Jeff Tubin. Not a stupid guy, actually, I know him and I have worked with him, but he's... But his desire to be on television trumps everything else. Like if I said to you, if that happened to you, you'd be like, You know what? I'm just out. I'm going to do something. You know what I mean?

I'll find something else. People know I've had issues with it.

Right. But you said you have them under control. You're not compulsive.

No, I'm doing great.

Just habitual, but not a problem.

Just on a full moon.

But imagine if you're Jeff Tubin to sit there with this female anchor on Fox and talk about that, it's like there's no shame that you won't bear. There's no shit you won't eat just to be on television. I obviously had no respect for Jeff Tubin in any way because I know him, but I had even less after that.

It's weird how God will give you your gifts. You don't fucking know what they're going to be wrapping. It's like all he wanted to be was on camera. I know. And just like.

There he is. You got to want the right things, you know what.

I mean? I think you got to get real specific with God, bro, because he's busy.

I totally agree. And last thing I'll say is I think it's so important if you are publicly humiliated, and I have certainly been, and he was, of course, too, it can be a great thing. That's a great thing.

Yeah.

And you should treat it that way and be grateful for it. This is keeping me from becoming an even worse person than I might otherwise have been. There's nothing worse than a man who spent his entire adult life succeeding and never being humiliated. They become unbearable. They talk only about themselves. They can't bear to listen to you. Every time you talk, they're holding their breath until you stop so they can start up again. They become true narcissists. And I just hope for Jeff Tubin, who's really an asshole, actually, I'm just saying.

I don't know him, but he's a lot.

Well, I do. I'm just like to say he's like-He's an asshole. Yeah, he is. But he may be less of one now, actually. And I've certainly been an asshole a lot, so I'm not judging.

Yeah, I do it.

So I have high hopes for him. Wacking off there's a massive upside potentially.

Oh, yeah, dude. I mean, definitely. Yeah, that guy definitely likes jerking. But yeah, anyway, Tucker Carlson, thanks so much, dude. The best. It was interesting, and I really appreciate your time. I really do. I did.

Thank you. And thank you for the zen.

All right. Yeah, you bet, brother. I might do one later. We'll see. Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. But when I reach that ground.

I'll.

Share this piece of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones.

But it's going to take a.