And you can’t say it. We just met, but when our relationship starts with a lie, it makes it tough to be friends. Well, I mean, you’ve been lying. Let’s pull that back. I’m happy to explain what I do think. You actually can’t say it because I didn’t say it. The whole point of your question was to be like, you’re a scary racist. Well, I haven’t seen it. And my response is, no, I’m not. Okay, well, how about no more lying in your questions and then I’ll answer it. This is the same theory, or as you say, idea, that has inspired the New York Buffalo shooting, where an eleven.

Come on. Just today, Julian Assange was released after twelve years. Twelve years in custody, and your government did nothing. The UK made it possible and the United States demanded it. You tell me how that’s consistent with the rule of law or democracy. It’s not. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage the one and only from the United States, here, just for us, Tucker Carlson. Thank you. I try not to listen to intros, but we got the most famous journalist in the world. I thought, is that really a compliment? That’s like being the hottest supreme court justice, you know, the best restaurant in Ouagadougou.

Not sure it’s a prize that means that much. I’m a little ashamed to be a journalist, but I’m grateful to be here. Thank you very much for having me. I’ve loved your country from afar my entire life. I’ve idolized Australia, actually, I haven’t been here until a week ago, but I had this view of Australia in my mind of handsome, brave men fighting off dangerous animals, of beautiful women standing windblown in the surf. And it’s all true. So I really have loved it. We’ve been, I think, to five cities, and I’ve just been completely and utterly impressed.

And really sort of the only downside is I’ve given speeches in a lot of them and I felt guilty during every one, because rule one of the being in someone else’s country is don’t talk to them about their politics. There’s something awful about that overbearing. I lived in Washington, our capital city. It’s actually not so different from Canberra. Weirdly, I guess all capital cities are the same, but we would get this sort of continuous retinue of foreigners showing up to lecture us, Bono showing up, and I’d always think, go back to Dublin. Like, what do you know? You’re not even an american.

So with that caveat, my apologies for having anything to say about your politics, which I don’t really understand except in the sort of grossest terms. But the Assange news today just had me thinking so much about Australia. Congratulations, by the way. That happened when I was on the plane and my jaw was open for the rest of the flight this morning from Perth. It’s something that I think anyone who knows anything about the case, and that would include most Australians, is thrilled to see. Anybody who knows anything about that case and believes that Hasan should still be in prison, is your enemy, by the way, and the enemy of human freedom and flourishing.

It was monstrous that he spent twelve years locked away for exposing other people’s crimes. Typically the way it works. I don’t know if law enforcement’s the same here, but the guy who discovers the crime doesn’t go to jail. It’s the guy who commits the crime goes to jail, and that’s been inverted in his case. So I think it’s wonderful news. As you all know, he’s in Guam dealing with one of our colonial magistrates. I didn’t know he even had those, but we do, apparently, in the United States. And then he’ll be flying here where he was born.

And my impression is I was texting with his wife this morning. My impression is he plans to stay here for a while. And so I think, you know, that’s a huge net benefit to your country. Cause he’s a good man. I know him. I visited him a few months ago in Belmarsh prison and saw how they were effectively torturing him to death. And what I didn’t realize until I got there, even though I’ve been steeped in the case, I know his relatives, I know his wife, Stella, is that he was never charged with a crime in great Britain.

Never. He was charged with no crime. So in the free world, we don’t hold people who haven’t been charged with a crime, and we don’t hold them in my country beyond a year, unless they’ve been convicted of a crime or they’re on trial for a crime. That’s just the most obvious abuse of human rights. And it went on for twelve years. And he’s an Australian, and I’m sorry, I don’t mean this as a criticism, just I think this is a perspective providing observation. But, like, why did anyone allow that he was held in the UK on behalf of the United States, which, by the way, until recently, hadn’t charged him with a crime either, and when it did charge him with a fake crime under an ancient statute, that no one has ever charged under the Espionage act, to which he pleaded guilty, apparently, finally yesterday, he didn’t violate it, but he just wanted to get out of prison before he died.

But he wasn’t charged in the US, he wasn’t charged in the UK. He was an Australian. And those three countries are aligned more closely than countries typically are. They’re three of the five eyes, as you know, and nobody did anything about it. And I kept thinking, like, when is Australia gonna send a warship up the Thames to get their guy back? I mean, it. I mean, what is that? I don’t know if you’ve. I mean, the outrage of it. I’ve been to London a lot recently, and now I’ve been in Australia for a week, and there’s just absolutely no comparison.

And I do think it’s very important to update our files, which is to say our perceptions of things are very often way out of date, in some cases centuries out of date. And I think the perception perhaps here, I can’t speak for you, but around the world is there’s this, you know, the mothership, Great Britain, that gave birth to all these other successful countries, including the one that I live in, and that it somehow has, like, moral authority as a result of that. Well, if you haven’t been to London recently, book a ticket and then fly back here.

In fact, why don’t you just fly from London to Perth, assuming there are direct flights, and ask yourself, what do I notice? One city is crumbling. It’s filthy. It’s been so misruled by the people in charge that unless you’re rich, you can’t live there. And you come back to. And that’s not an exaggeration. Go to London. Seriously. And you come back to Perth. And it’s what. And I know everyone makes fun of Perth in Western Australia, but as an outsider, I mean, it’s like San Francisco without the junkies. It’s one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen in my life.

And I thought, I don’t even know who rules this. I don’t understand the details of the politics. I’m a foreigner. But whoever is managing this place day to day is doing a remarkable job. There are very few cities in the world as pretty as your cities. And I know that you’re so isolated and just far away in the southern hemisphere, and you might not have perspective on that, but some of the capitals that you read about and in some cases genuflect toward, consider superior, take orders from, have no right to give you orders because they’re. They’re in no sense superior to you.

In fact, they’re inferior to you by a lot. And London is at the top of that list. So I guess my bottom line advice, and I mean this in this in a, you know, spirit of generosity and humility, but is, you know, understand how impressive Australia is in comparison to the rest of the world, particularly the english speaking world. Australia has advantages that the rest of us, the other four, the five Eyes, can only dream about. You’re sparsely populated, 26 million well educated, decent people, law abiding people. You have virtually no real poverty, no concentrations of poverty in this country.

It’s like the most middle class, english speaking country left in the world, which is a huge compliment. That’s what you want. It’s basically egalitarian country. Egalitarian countries are stable countries. You know, Bolivia is not stable because it’s pyramid shaped. This is pretty flat. It’s the last flat country economically in the english speaking world, and its natural resources dwarf everyone else’s. I mean, I do think one of the great lies that we in the modern world have been told is that prosperity is generated by banks and real estate. And that’s it then. Money lending is the engine of prosperity.

And in the short term, that, of course, can be true because it juices that, you know, that mysterious thing we call GDP, which is the measure of economic activity, but over time, it doesn’t actually create wealth. That’s a lie. What creates wealth is productivity. And what’s required for productivity are resources. And you have more resources than virtually anybody. Bauxite, coal ore, gas, nickel, copper, lead, uranium, more than almost anybody else in a country with almost no problems except the ones that you allow your leaders to intentionally import. And pretty much nobody lives here. I just flew over, you know, most of your country this morning, there was nobody there.

Sheep, dingoes, desert. And I know, you know, a lot of it’s inhospitable, but, I mean, just people from crowded countries, which is most countries in the world, look at this, and they in envy. This should be one of the most powerful countries in the world. In fact, by its nature, it is, because it has more than almost anybody else. And so to take orders from some disgusting, filthy, fog soaked rock in the North Sea, holding one of your citizens hostage because they sent your ancestors here as a penalty, I mean, a certain point I think you need to say to them, I’m sorry, it’s 2024.

We’re in charge. You’re taking orders from us. And if it, you know, I mean, it actually, and I shouldn’t say this because I know that there are members of parliament present, but maybe you should take your refugee budget and buy a nuclear weapon or two so people take you seriously. I’m not joking. If you don’t screw this country up on purpose through mass immigration, which is what the other four countries have done, that’s the reason they’re in decline. No one wants to say it. It’s true. If you don’t do that, Australia will lead the world because you have every advantage and people are happy here.

And so my strong advice to you is don’t go the way of your cousins in our countries. I mean, Canada. Of all countries in the world, I would say Canada is the closest in its sort of essential facts to Australia. It’s huge. It’s actually bigger than Australia. Second biggest landmass in the world. Amazing natural resources. An incredibly nice, polite population, well educated, with a history of valiant war service. You know, sort of everything you would want. A little boring. That’s good. Exciting countries are wildly overrated. Las Vegas is exciting. You wouldn’t live there. Right. There’s something to be said about a country whose main forms of excitement are Molson and sled dogs.

That’s not bad. And that country basically killed itself through bad leadership. They completely changed the population of the country in ten years. Completely. And made it poor. And now people can’t buy houses there. The economy’s in free fall. People who are born in Canada cannot buy a house, period. Because there are just too many people. And I’m sure some of them are great people. And by the way, just to be completely clear, I’m utterly sympathetic to people who want to move to my country. For example, we let in 30 million people illegally in the last four years.

That’s a crime. But I’m not mad at them. I’m actually flattered by it. They want to move to my country. Of course you do, because it’s the best country. That’s how I feel. It’s like someone saying, your wife is hot. Yeah, I think so, too. You can’t have her. But I’m glad you appreciate it. I mean, honestly, that’s how I feel. I don’t begrudge any immigrant from any country wanting to move to the United States, because I love the United States. Above all, I am american. So it’s not a question being mad at immigrants. I’m completely sympathetic.

In fact, I’m empathetic. I can’t wait to get back to my country. But that doesn’t mean that the movement of millions of people, mostly with low skills and no native command of the language and no shared culture of the people who already live there, doesn’t mean it’s good for the country itself. It’s not good, actually, it’s bad. It’s the most destructive thing you can do to a country. That’s not racism. That’s not hate. I’m not racist and I don’t feel hate. I feel true compassion and empathy. But the purpose of running a government is take care of the people who are citizens of that country.

There’s no other purpose. It’s not to save the world or change the global climate or whatever. And it’s certainly not to spend a huge percentage of your budget on refugee resettlement is take care of the people who are born there. That’s your job. In the same way a father’s job is to take care of his children, not the neighbor’s kids. And there’s something almost beyond dereliction of duty in not doing that. In other words, I have four children, for example. And if a couple of them were in real trouble, as people in all of our countries are the native born population in actual trouble? You know, one of my kids has leukemia, for example.

Another one has a drug problem. And I say, you know, that’s tough. I’m really sorry, but the neighbor’s kids literally have never been to Disney World, ever. And that’s just wrong. And so I’m gonna take my retirement account and cash it out and take the neighbor’s kids to Disney World, because everyone should have a chance to go to Disney World. See ya. And I leave. What’s the message I’m sending to my own children? I hate you. I’m ignoring your problems because I’m focused on the problems of people who aren’t in our family. It’s kind of that simple.

A leader’s sacred responsibility is take care of his own people. Period. Period. There is no other responsibility. That’s why he’s elected. That’s why he’s in charge. That’s why your dad doesn’t mean you don’t like the neighbor’s kids or think they should go to Disney World. Everyone should go to Disney World. But the priority has to be if your dad, your kids. Cause you’re their father. So if you’re the prime minister of a country and you find yourself spending all of your time worrying about the populations of other countries, you are not a legitimate leader, period. By definition, we have someone in our country who sort of said that out loud.

I thought it was whatever, leaving aside any other quality, being orange or whatever, whatever qualities you think Trump has or doesn’t have, that was his core pitch in 2016, and there was sort of no arguing against it. Like, how is that wrong? How is the leader’s job not to prioritize his own people? Of course it is. No one can make a rational argument against that. So they don’t. They attack anybody who raises questions about it. And in the rest of those other countries, including mine, they’re starting to criminalize complaining about it. In other words, this is a great thing, and if you see otherwise, we’ll put you in jail.

And they’re planning to do that here. In case you don’t know, they’ve absolutely done that in Canada, in the UK, they put a lot of people in prison for complaining about it. Hey, I don’t think you’re taking care of the people who are born here. Shut up, racist. You’re going to jail. Actually, every week, people go to jail for that. Imagine that. Imagine that. And imagine the mindset that allows that if you are telling people, human beings, adult citizens, that they don’t have a right to express what they believe, what are you saying? Well, what you’re saying is I don’t think you’re human, because the right to say what you think pre exists government, it’s something that you’re born with as a human being.

It’s what distinguishes you from animals and slaves. That’s the core of your human autonomy, the right to say what you really believe, to express your conscience. And if you no longer possess that, you are not human anymore, you belong to someone else. You are an object. And so any leader who tells you you don’t have a right to say that, you don’t have a right to criticize me or my policies, that person considers you subhuman, and that’s a crime as far as I’m concerned. We shouldn’t even have that. By the way, in my country, we have an explicit law against that.

It’s the first amendment to our constitution, because ours is a revolutionary country. And so the framers of our founding documents were forced, under gunfire, actually, to think this through. We’re building a country from nothing. What do we want? But the founders of the other four countries, big countries in the anglosphere, you, New Zealand, Great Britain and Canada, I honestly think they never imagined a world where leaders would strip from people their most fundamental right, the right to express their conscience. I don’t think they imagined that possible. They were Christians and a sort of key tenet of Christianity is God created people.

We didn’t. Therefore, we’re not capable of owning them. That’s. The abolitionist movement was based on that idea. Christians in the west ended slavery around the world. They haven’t gotten a ton of credit for it in recent years, but they did. Of course, it still exists in parts of the world, but it does not exist in the west, thanks to leaders who had a. They may not have been devout Christians, and it wasn’t a sectarian question. It was a more fundamental understanding of the world. You didn’t create people. You didn’t endow them with their rights. God did that.

Therefore, you can’t take them away. And if you try, then you are not treating them as human beings, but as something less than that. And I honestly think that people who wrote your founding documents just assumed that and didn’t think it would ever be challenged. Well, now it is being challenged. And my strong advice to you, and I said I wasn’t going to weigh in on australian politics, but my strong advice to you or any human being who wants to preserve the most sacred of his human rights would be to resist that, up to and including being willing to go to jail for saying what you believe.

Because if they can strip from you your right to say what you think, there’s literally nothing they can’t do to you. There’s nothing they can’t do to you. So, in any case, I will stop there and take your hostile questions. But I just want to say, as an outsider and as someone who is seeing all of this fresh after spending literally 50 years dreaming about Australia, I don’t know why every American is obsessed with Australia. Do you know that any of you who are single, looking for dating opportunities, come to my country? Is that you? You can’t imagine.

You would just tear a swath. It’s the accent. No, I’m serious. Americans are absolutely obsessed with Australia. And it’s not just crocodile Dundee and that horrible chain restaurant. I haven’t seen a bloomin onion since I’ve been here, by the way. I don’t think that’s a native food. Coming here really has shocked me, and I thought it was nice. I didn’t know it was this nice. And I hope that you know how nice it is as compared to places that you think are great. I mean, you. You just have amazing advantages. And if you want to know what can happen if you take those for granted and allow your leaders to act against your interests, the interests of your children, and of your nation, then go to San Francisco or New York City.

Previously great cities that led the world that are now pale imitations, sad, dangerous imitations of themselves. And ask yourself, especially in San Francisco, which does look like an australian city, those of you who have been there, go there now and remind yourself, this could happen to us. Problems like that are actually pretty easy to avoid. You just need to make common sense decisions, like, I don’t know, put your own people first. Enforce the laws already on the books. Don’t put up with absolutely ridiculous behavior like defecating on the sidewalk. You don’t need to put up with that, actually.

That’s not a human right. Just stick to those. The problem is that when you allow them to fester, they are pretty hard to fix, actually. You can get into a vortex. And I’ve traveled to an awful lot of countries around the world and met a lot of really nice people and smart people who live in awful countries. Awful countries. Have you been to Argentina? Everyone should go to Argentina, because Argentina is a lot like the US and a lot like Australia and Canada, for that matter. It’s a beautiful country with great people, really smart, impressive people, a deep culture, natural resources that places like China dream about.

It has every advantage. And they got into a spiral of self hatred and bad rule and allowed a series of leaders to just absolutely wreck the place and wreck their spirit. And when you wreck a people’s spirit, it’s pretty hard to fix that. So if I were australian, and I kind of wish I was australian, actually, at this point. I love your language. I love your profanity, I love your sense of humor. I love the aplomb with which you deal with dangerous animals. It’s also impressive and cool. But if I were an Australian, I’d wake up every single morning and say, I’m an Australian, right? I’m an Australian.

I’m way more impressive. And when Great Britain, on whose behalf you fought from 1900 in the Boer War, all the way through Afghanistan. The number of Australians who’ve died at the command of corrupt leaders in Great Britain is unbelievable. Australia. I was just reading this because I’m seeing all the digger monuments around, and I’m really interested in that. And I was reading yesterday that Australia, in the First World War, lost 1.2% of its entire population in that war. Its entire population. The casualty rate among australian troops in the first war was 68% killed or wounded, highest in the world.

The United States, by contrast, and we commemorate the first World War Armistice Day, 0.1%. So you gave disproportionately to that and every subsequent effort on behalf of other countries, which is a selfless and kind thing to do, and you should be lauded for it. But I think, especially with the Assange stuff, that’s just a sign that it’s time to act on your own behalf and defend your own country. And I hope that you will. Thank you. How good was that? Can we just give another round? Applause to our special guest. We are going to do a few questions and answers, but I’ll start with the first one.

Tucker, obviously, you’ve interviewed many people. Who’s the most challenging and why? People I’ve interviewed, well, I’ve interviewed some true lunatics. I’ve interviewed a lot of drunk people, people who have anxiety attacks on camera live. I’ve interviewed an awful lot of politicians where you just feel like there’s something so dark coming off them. You know, you get that feeling like, I’m not really sure what you’re into, and I don’t really want to know, but I’m pretty sure drinking human blood is part of it. You just. Ooh, you get that feeling. I mean, honestly, if I’m being honest, I think Trump is one of the hardest to interview.

And I love Trump personally, actually. And I agree with him on so many things, and I’m certainly rooting for him. Now, the department of justice, justice in the United States, is trying to take him out of the presidential race on utterly fake charges. So I’m totally for Trump in those ways. But he’s difficult to interview because he’s, what’s the word? Discursive. He sort of goes off in other directions, which very often are hilarious. So you go in there with a set of questions, like, you know, like dutiful little dorky journalist. I gotta ask him about this, gotta ask him about that.

And you get to about midway through the first question, he’s off. Wow. And another thing. And you just sort of realize, no, my job is not to get my questions answered. They won’t be anyway. Just enjoy it. Sit back and think of England. So, yeah, that’s difficult. Unless you. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Excuse me. Unless you approach it with the right cast of mind, which is just let it go. This is a kind of performance art. You’re in the middle of the installation. You know what I mean? So I’m interviewing him soon again, and I’m really looking forward to it.

I mean, I’ll say one last thing. It is. I mean, I’ve been doing this for 33 years. It’s the only job I’ve ever had and my views on it have changed really dramatically. And my views about my coworkers, who I despise, have also changed dramatically. Despise more than really anybody in the world. But, and that’s a heartfelt sentiment, too. I’m not just saying that I really mean it from the bottom of my soul, but my views on it have changed. And I think that one of the mistakes that journalists make, a lot of them are insecure and mediocre as people, which is why they’re in the business in the first place.

So they can suck up to power and feel strong when they’re weak inside. But one of the mistakes they make when they go into an interview is they’re thinking about the people back in the newsroom, and they’re trying to impress them. That’s the real audience for the interview. And so you see them ask these questions, these inherently fruitless questions, all of which are designed not to elicit information from the person being interviewed, but to illustrate the journalist’s moral superiority over the person he’s talking to. Well, is it true of Mister Putin and you eat children? I do not eat children.

But you do. And you sort of have to wonder, like, does the guy expect Putin to be like, well, it’s funny you asked. I do eat children, actually. And you caught me. You caught me. And I’m gonna tell you now exclusively that I eat children. Of course not. The whole point is to let all the other dummies back in the newsroom at ABC News or NBC or what, you know, whatever these ridiculous, absurd, totally discredited news outlets, to let them know that the journalist is brave. And I feel at my advanced age, at 55, that’s actually kind of not my role, that.

My role is to elicit information to the extent that I can for people watching. And in the case of interviewing someone like Putin about whom I do not have strong feelings, by the way, I should say I still don’t. He’s smart, interesting, very russian. I’m very american. You know, my goal in that interview was not to let people know Putin’s bad. They can decide for themselves. They’re adults. Don’t anybody tell you who you have to hate? I decide that I’m an adult man. I pay my taxes. I’ll decide who I hate. What do you think, I’m your dog? No.

You know, if I hate Putin, I can hate Putin. If I like Putin, I can like Putin. It’s completely up to me. Not up to you. Okay, so anyway, but my job is just to get. They haven’t heard him talk to even get him talking. Just get a corpus of information out there from which they can make up their own minds. And I took a lot of abuse for doing that. Oh, you’re his puppet or whatever. Shut up. You know, the whole thing was completely ridiculous. And in point of fact, I mean, they’ve told me to hate Putin for the last four years.

I’ve never figured out why. I mean, I don’t want to live in Russia, I’m not russian. They don’t have the freedom of speech that we have in my country, therefore I don’t want to live there. It’s kind of that simple. But I don’t know why I should be mad at Putin. Great Britain doesn’t have freedom of speech, do you know what I mean? So like, if you really think about it, I’m mad and should be mad at people who have hurt my family. People are like wrecking my country and driving inflation up to a point where my kids can’t afford houses and filling my neighborhood with people who aren’t from there and who are hostile and making our country completely, you know, shattered.

The social fabric is gone. Who did that? Did Putin do that? No, Joe Biden did that. So if it’s a question. If the question is who is a greater threat to your family, Vladimir Putin or Joe Biden? Vladimir Putin never called me a racist. Like, what are you even talking about? I don’t have any feelings about Vladimir Putin. This guy’s a lunatic who’s wrecking my country. So again, don’t tell me how I’m supposed to feel. I reserve that right for myself because I’m a free man. It’s that simple. Thanks, Tucker. I had a, I saw a couple of our friends from the press gallery have a smile when you were getting into the free press.

So I might ask Paul Sakal from the Sydney Morning Herald to ask a question. Great, thank you. You’ve almost. Thanks for your speech. Of course, Mister Carlson. It’s. The media can be extremely negative, so it’s nice to hear uplifting comments about our country. It’s an amazing country. It is. And I think we forget that in Australia oftentimes. So I appreciate that you’ve preempted my question on Putin. Putin, Putin. I think you did strategically because you knew it’s what we’d ask Putin, he’s so bad. And I also appreciate. Did he make you take the COVID shot? Take the what? The COVID shot.

No, he didn’t. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. The co. The COVID shot saved probably tens of millions. Oh, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Safe and effective. This is why everyone loves the media. It’s like a time capsule. It’s like. It’s like you’re like the last japanese soldier on Okinawa. You think the war’s still going? It’s hilarious. Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m being boorish. Can I get the full answering without interruption? Okay. I beg your pardon. I’m interested in your position on Putin. Many people in this crowd would adore conservative prime ministers in this country, like John Howard, Tony Abbott, mainstream right wingers like Boris Johnson, australian liberals, some of their mp’s are in the crowd, are vehemently anti Putin.

They believe he’s a reprehensible figure who doesn’t believe in the values of conservatism, such as the rule of law and democracy, which gives us the freedoms we have in our country. I’m interested. Do you feel any level of shame or regret that you were termed a useful idiot and then post your interview? Vladimir Putin himself said in his russian media that he was surprised at how weak your questions were. And he also said that you were wrong when you said that no other journalists had asked to interview him. He said, that’s not true. We only thought tackle was the only person to report fairly.

I thought that you were describing Putin as a psychopathic liar, and yet now you’re taking his word for things. Let me just. Let me just let me. Let me. Let me just quickly unpack your absurd soliloquy, if I can. First, I’m stuck on the idea that Boris Johnson is a right winger. Do you know Boris Johnson? I do. Boris Johnson is a criminal buffoon who, like so many who claim to love Ukraine, is single handedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of ukrainian men in this war that Ukraine cannot win. And I would just.

I would refer you to Wikipedia. How many. How many more people does Russia have than Ukraine? Do you know? 100 million. Hundred million. And in a land where that’s a relevant number, it is not possible for Ukraine to beat Russia. The best they can do is sue for peace. That’s been known, including by Zelenskyy, who wanted that since the early days of this conflict, and Boris Johnson, on orders from the Biden administration, shut down. And this is not a disputed fact. This is a fact admitted by everybody. Now shut down the peace negotiations almost two years ago, and Ukraine has been completely destroyed.

And now Zelenskyy has passed a law allowing foreign corporations to own land there. So you tell me what Ukraine is going to look like in 30 years, when all of it is owned by Blackrock and multinational corporations and its population is not ukrainian. Okay? So the tragedy of what’s happened in Ukraine, orchestrated by the western powers, including your government, and I hope you do, and driven by my government, I feel shame about it. I hope you do, too, is really one of the great crimes of my lifetime. So the idea that somehow, if you’re against that, you’re for Putin, well, of course, that’s absurd.

And by the way, speaking of your friend, Boris Johnson, he attacked me, of course, ad hominem. And so I called him. He was a journalist, not surprisingly, a man of low character, not shocking. And so I called him and I said, well, you’ve called me all these names, why don’t you sit down for a conversation? I happen to be in your rainy, depressing slum, London. And we could have a conversation. And he said, I won’t do that unless you pay me a million dollars. That’s a fact. That’s an non disputed fact. I have the text messages.

So if that is the credible source of the slur, that, look, if I were a toady of Putin, or I loved Putin, I would just say so, because why do I care? I’ve already been fired. I don’t work for anybody. I have no incentive. And by the way, it’s perfectly fine if people love Putin. I don’t understand what that has to do with anything. We are citizens of different countries. We should judge, first and foremost, our own leaders. How’s our country doing? How are my children doing? What’s their future look like? None of that has anything to do with Putin, except to the extent that you all in this country sit back.

Your government allows the Biden administration to push us into nuclear war, which is where we are right now, right on the cusp of it. And somehow that’s not a story. That is that Putin doesn’t respect human rights or the rule of law. Okay, well, just today, Julian Assange was released after twelve years. Twelve years in custody, and your government did nothing. The UK made it possible and the United States demanded it. You tell me how that’s consistent with the rule of law or democracy. It’s not. It’s ruled by the intel agencies. It’s lawlessness and it’s a crime.

So I’m not. I mean, I’m not saying that we’re morally equivalent to Putin. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is our concern should be, first and foremost, how are our countries run? And we give our own leaders a pass time and time again because they point to some other creep on the world stage and say, he’s bad. Kim Jong un is bad. Well, yeah, of course he’s bad. That’s why I don’t live in North Korea. It’s why I don’t live in Russia. I have no interest in living in Russia. But the point is, you’re bad, too.

And the fact that he’s bad does not allow you to continue being bad. What? And the last thing I will say, that I really feel deeply and I really resent on an emotional level, and you’ll pardon my passion. I don’t know you. I’m sure we’d be very close friends if we did know each other. But I really resent what I have seen across the west in the past 15 years. And it’s a sea change from my youth, when my father was a reporter. This alignment between media organizations and the government I find disgusting. Actually. I think it’s a perfect.

It’s a perfect inversion of what you’re supposed to do if you’re a journalist. Your job is to challenge power on behalf of the powerless. It is not to align with the powerful against the powerless. And that is precisely what you have done. I watched your ABC this morning in my hotel room for about 20 minutes until I looked around for a vomit bag. And I watched. It was one of the most grotesque. I couldn’t even believe it was real. The first story, this is unbelievable. The first story was Assange, God bless them. That is the biggest story.

The second story was a family of four found dead in a house, I think, in a suburb of Sydney, but it may have been Melbourne. I beg your pardon, but four Australians found dead of what they suspected was a drug. Odd. Apparently, they’ve been taking a new synthetic opioid that has emerged in Australia and is killing people. Now, this is a huge problem where I live, much bigger than here, but I’m familiar with it. And the reporter said it’s probably the synthetic opioid and it’s been seen and they’re dead. Onto the next story. The next story was the australian government’s new law that will require a prescription to buy nicotine products.

And we were treated to a 15 minutes lecture on ABC, whatever the hell that is, about how nicotine is dangerous and we need to keep it out of the hands of Australians. And I’m like, wait a second. Nicotine, first of all, is not dangerous. That’s not true. It’s factually incorrect. You know nothing about the science. A b compared to what? Compared to what? Oh, we have this new synthetic opioid that’s killing people. The government not too concerned. What they’re really concerned about is that people might be using nicotine, which, by the way, has the byproduct of raising testosterone levels and making people a little harder to command.

That’s a massive threat. So this is the point where the media gets involved and says, wait a second, let’s start. The death toll from vaping versus fentanyl. Maybe one’s a little worse than the other. And what exactly are you doing about it? Why don’t you press your ministers and your prime minister? What are you doing about it? About drug use. And the answer is, nothing. Instead, they’re hassling people, adults who want to use nicotine, which I would highly recommend to every person in this room as a life enhancing, God given chemical. That’s just my view. But I’m like, a media should be, like, holding these people to the fire on that.

I was fired over a year ago, so I don’t have to, like, worry about this or be defensive about it, because I, like, don’t have a job. So there is a certain freedom in unemployment. And so I sympathize with you guys who work for these companies that are, like, truly corrupt. And you sort of know that, but you don’t want to deal with it because you’ve got kids and a mortgage. I get it. I’ve been there. But let’s just be honest. Everybody else knows what it is. Everyone else knows how corrupt you are, and so there’s a reason they have contempt for you.

I’m just saying. Thanks, Tucker. On that note, I might pass you over to Andrew Green from the ABC. Oh, I love it. You’re gonna take my nicotine? It’s dangerous. Good afternoon, Tucker. A prescription for nicotine. Okay. I missed that segment this morning. It’s shocking. You should watch it. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen on television. I do want to ask about a country you haven’t mentioned today, and that’s china. But before that, I wanted your response to the former vice president Mike Pence, who has tweeted in the past hour or so that the Assange developments are a.

Yeah. A miscarriage of justice by the Biden administration and that Assange endangered the lives of our troops. Can I just apologize for something that I said? And I. And I. And it’s my fault when I ascribe sort of all badness to the Biden administration. That’s actually not true. You know, the worst things that happen in our capital city are a bipartisan effort, and they are. That’s just a fact. And so I don’t want to be partisan and claim it’s all the Democrats fault. It’s absolutely nothing on the worst things that are happening in America. Immigration and pointless wars and COVID policy.

It was both parties, guys like Mike Pence aligning with guys. Well, Joe Biden’s not a person anymore, but the people around Joe Biden. And, you know, the truth is. You want to know the actual truth? I won’t be boorish, but Mike Pompeo was Trump’s CIA director. And it emerged, and it’s factual, that as CIA director, when Assange was locked in the ecuadorian embassy for however many seven years or something, that he plotted to murder him. And Assange had never been charged with any crime in the United States at all. And under our system and yours, you can’t just murder people because they embarrass you.

So Assange leaked CIA secrets and Pompeo, as director of CIA, plotted to murder him. That’s a fact. And the remarkable thing is that no one arrested Mike Pompeo. He’s still walking free. This is a guy who plotted a murder. He’s a federal bureaucrat in a democracy. Federal bureaucrats, people just, like, appointed to a job as a political favor, can’t just kill other people they don’t like. That’s not allowed. Speaking of Russia, and yet in my. This is aimed at my country. People are like, no, that’s totally reasonable. Like, Pompeo’s an upstanding guy. No, he’s not. He’s a criminal.

He’s a criminal, and he tried to murder the guy who exposed his crimes. It’s super simple. It’s what the mafia used to do. That’s why they won every jury trial, killed two jurors. The others acquit. And he tried to do that, and it blows my mind. And I think Mike Pence is a sad, weak man, but I think that’s an incredibly shameful tweet. I read it, and I was enraged by it. And I’m just sorry that I didn’t describe the problem in greater detail previously. I’ll get on to China now. You may or may not be aware of a strategic partnership Australia is involved with.

With your country and the United Kingdom called Aukus, where we will get nuclear powered submarines. Can I get your assessment of that? And it was largely in response to China. Do you think China poses a threat here? I think that, you know, first of all, I think it’s very complicated, but I think the overview is this. China has 1.4 billion people and not enough resources or land. Australia has 26 million people and a sparsely populated continent that is brimming, overflowing with resources that countries with expanding economies need. And I don’t know how expensive your politicians are.

I’m guessing not very. So I don’t think it’d be too much of a lift for China to just buy them all. And I assume they already are doing that. I mean, obviously they are doing that, and they’re doing that in my country, too. They bought the current president’s son, so I’m not mad at China for that. Well, they did. They bought Hunter Biden. I mean, that’s the whole story and it’s proven. Okay, so I’m not mad at China about that. Just for the record, I’m not particularly anti China. I don’t want to live in China. It’s not my system at all.

And I find a lot of parts of the culture repugnant. On the other hand, I see China in China, a country acting in its own interest. So I’m not mad about that. I’m mad about the countries like my own and possibly yours, that allow themselves to be taken advantage of. That’s the truly shameful thing. So I don’t hate, again, I just don’t hate China. You know, I see a rapidly growing country that will do whatever it can to help itself. And if it crushes people in the way it will. Okay, so that’s pretty reasonable. That’s kind of a time tested model.

Your job is not to be crushed. And so I’d be very, very, very concerned about it. I don’t think you face an imminent invasion or anything. I do think that the concerns about China, just the size differential, the resource question, population, these are the fears that have pushed generations of australian governments into a counterproductive alliance with the United States and Great Britain. I think the view here is that the US will rescue us if we ever really have a problem. And I don’t think that’s true. I’m sorry to say that. And I’m just saying that as I just don’t think it’s true.

And I think you’re unwise for believing it’s true. And I think a lot of people on Taiwan thought that was true. It turns out not to be true. I think a lot of Pashtuns in Afghanistan thought that was true. A lot of mountain yards in Vietnam thought that was true. A lot of christian Iraqis thought that was true and all of them were the hard way. That it’s not true that in the end, countries act in their own interest. And in a democratic system, leadership changes every four or eight years with different views, expressing evolved opinions from the public.

No democratic country can be longitudinally reliable as a partner simply because its government changes so often. That’s just a fact. It’s not an attack. I’m not attacking the United States. I’m not attacking you. I’m just saying if you think that allowing the us government to stage, you know, foreign troops on your soil, they didn’t beat you in a war, did they? Then why do they have foreign troops here? That’s. I mean, I’m sorry. I know I’m offending everybody. It’s just a fact. And I don’t know if that’s like a huge part of your economy, but like, rule one in my country is we don’t have foreign troops on our soil.

Cause we’re a sovereign country. And I don’t understand why all these countries allow it. I mean, I love the United States. I’m glad, you know, that. We’ve got the whip hand, I guess, but I just. I don’t think any country should put up with that. You can’t have soldiers in my country. Go away. You know what I mean? Like, we can be friends, but having troops on my soil suggests not a friendship, but a master slave relationship. And I’m just not into it at all. And I don’t think you should be into it either. Thanks, Tucker.

One final question from the press gallery. Kat Wong from AAP. Hi, Tucker. Thank you so much for your address today. So you talked a little bit about immigration, and in the past you’ve talked about how white Australians, Americans, Europeans are being replaced by non white immigrants in what is often referred to as the great replacement theory. This is the same. Have I said that whites are being replaced? Well, I know. I don’t think I said that. Well, it’s been mentioned on your show 4000 times. And. Really? When did I say that? On your. I said whites are being replaced.

You have said that before. Really? Yeah. I would challenge you to cite that because I’m pretty sure I haven’t said that. I said native boy. I said native born Americans have. Are being replaced, including blacks. Native born Americans. Native born Americans. Americans who like black Americans, have been. African Americans have been in the United States for ingest, in many cases their families, over 400 years. And their concerns are every bit as real and valid and alive to me. As the concerns of white people whose families have been there 400 years. So I’ve never said that whites are being replaced.

Not one time. And you can’t cite it. We just met. But when our relationship starts with a lie, it makes it tough to be friends. Let’s pull that back. I’m happy to explain what I do think. You actually can’t say it because I didn’t say it and I don’t believe it. And I’m telling you that to your face. So why don’t you just accept me at face value? My concern is that the people who are born in the country are the main responsibility of its leaders. And as noted earlier, when those leaders shift their concern from the people whose responsibility it is to take care of to people around the world, to put their priorities above that of their own citizens, that’s immoral and they are being replaced.

In my country, people were born in the United States and the birth rate tells the whole story. They are not at replacement rate. And so the US population is growing because we’re importing people from other countries. And my view is that happy people have children and a functioning economy allows them to do that. And we don’t have that. And so you need to fix the economy and fix the culture and make it so that people who want to have kids can. You don’t just go for the quick sugar fix of importing new people. Like, that’s my position.

And if you think that’s racist, that’s your problem. I never called you a racist. But of course you are suggesting, and I must say one of the reasons people don’t like people like you in the media is that you never say exactly what you mean. Your slurs are all by implication and you’re about to tell me the great replacement theory is racist or anti semitic, whatever. I’ve said what I’ve said to you right now, like a hundred times in public, I hope to, if I live long enough, say it a hundred more times. I think it’s completely honest and real, not racist or scary.

It’s factually true. It’s not a theory, it’s a fact. And your, the whole point of your question was to be like you’re a scary racist. Well, I haven’t. And my response is no, I’m not. Okay, well how about no more lying in your questions and then I’ll answer it. Okay, well, this is the same theory, or as you say, idea that has inspired the New York buffalo shooting where eleven. Come on, you know what I mean. It’s not. First of all, it’s inspired the worst, the one of the worst australian guys. How do they get people just stupid in the media? I guess it doesn’t pay well.

Look, I’m sorry. I’ve lived among people like you for too long, and I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to call you stupid. Maybe you’re just pretending to be, but I’ve never. I’m totally against violence. I’m totally against the war in Ukraine, for example, which doubtless you support. And like all dutiful liberals, support more carnage. I don’t. I hate mass shootings. Actually, nothing I said. What does it mean to inspire something? My views are not bigoted against any group. They’re honest. They’re factual. That’s not hate. That’s reality. And my views derive from my deep concern for Americans.

Actually, Americans aren’t having kids because they can’t afford to and nobody in charge cares. And so that’s my position. That doesn’t inspire mass shootings. How dare you try to tie me to some lunatic who murdered people. How dare you? Actually. And in fact, I mean, do you know what I mean? I’d be like, you know, Hitler wore those shoes. A lot of people are saying that you’re like, Hitler. Can you explain those shoes? Hitler wore exactly the same shoes. And you’re like, I’ve got nothing to do with Hitler. That’s how I feel about your absurd, disingenuous question.

Right. So therefore you support gun control. What? I thought it could be a shoe, but it did. No, I don’t support disarming, law abiding people so they can’t defend themselves. So the government has a monopoly on violence? I don’t think so. First of all, in my country, that’s illegal, as you know. But moreover, it should be illegal. In every country, a sovereign person has the right to defend himself and his family, period. And that said, I’m totally opposed to harming anyone. Anyone. Have you been calling? Are you concerned about the war in Ukraine and the countless innocents being murdered there every single day? I doubt you are probably Putin bad.

I am. I’m a Christian. I hate violence. I hate mass shootings. I have guns at home and often on my person when I’m in the United States, I’m proud to say, because I want to defend myself and those I love against violence. That’s the point. I’m not perpetrating crimes. I’m not shooting strangers. I’m defending what I love. And if you’re against that, I guess I would ask, why? Why would you be against that? Well, so you don’t think you harbor any kind of responsibility for these hate crimes? I’m sorry. I’m trying to be charitable. I’m trying to be charitable.

I was like, maybe you’re just pretending to be dumb now. I don’t think it’s an act. Tucker, thank you for taking those questions. I’m sure you enjoyed. Actually, I loved it. I just feel sorry. I mean, because I got here, and the country is so unbelievably beautiful, and the people are so cheerful and funny and cool and smart. I’m like, your media’s got to be better than ours. It can’t just be a bunch of castrated robots reading questions from the boss, and then it turns out it’s exactly the same, maybe even a tiny bit dumber. Huh? Okay, I’ll take your question.

All right. Are you from ABC? I’ll repeat the essence of your question. You can. I can. I can hear. Chief of the US Capitol Police, January 6. Yes. And this was all before the first person walked through the gate. And Stone, Stephen’s son, says to us that he’s also watching. Do you believe that there are other forces at play here? And his response was, there has to be. There is something else. So where do you draw the line? I guess in single that. How do you feel about the 2024 election being legitimate and being accepted the way that we’re seeing at the moment? So thank you.

I would say two things. For those who didn’t hear it, the question was, it turns out a lot of things that have been derided as conspiracy theories actually bear, you know, more investigation, actually. And given that, you know, how do you feel about the prospects of a free and fair election in November in the United States? I think. Is that a fair submission? So I would say first to the phrase conspiracy theorists, which I’m certain has got to be a staple of your news media, given the selection of questions I just received, a. That it’s worth knowing.

The provenance of that phrase. It comes directly from the Central Intelligence Agency. Actually, 1964, in the aftermath of the murder of our president John Kennedy, in November of 63, there was a very famous and entirely fake investigation into a called the Warren commission. And people who were reading it critically noticed anomalies like they didn’t want to investigate the guy who shot the lone gunman. Like what? And raised questions about it. And that phrase conspiracy theorist entered the lexicon in my country, and it was designed to shout down and shame people who asked legitimate questions. Now, that said, there are a ton of wackos out there, and a lot of them show up at my house.

And they’re nice people, but they’re clearly a little touched by the great spirit. That’s all right. I mean, there are crazy people for sure, but there are also far more people who just noticed, like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. And that’s kind of where I started. Like, well, what is that? Shut up, racist or conspiracy theorist or whatever, lone, you know, mass shooter or whatever this chick called me. So I think the first step is recognizing that that’s a control tool. Those are not the responses of someone who seeks an honest, adult conversation with you, where you sort of share evidence and arrive at consensus.

That’s someone who believes that he can make you shut up like you would by yelling at your dog so he can go do something awful without you interfering with him. That’s the truth. Okay, so anyone who uses the term conspiracy theorist is by definition, discredited, in my view. Why don’t you address the specifics of the claim I’m making, no matter what it is? The second thing I would say is, I’ve lived long enough and covered the news long enough to not discount anything. It doesn’t mean every theory is true. I hear some wacky theories, but given what we now know about so many different things, how can I, in good faith, just did dismiss something out of hand? I just can’t at this point.

You have to stay curious, stay rational. I mean, I think people should always stay rational. Like, where’s the evidence for it? If there’s no evidence, it’s probably not true or you can’t prove it, but stay open minded. And as to the question of the election, you know, I’m very concerned, very, very, very concerned, and I don’t understand. I guess I do understand why the institutional Republican Party in Washington hasn’t done more to secure elections. We have this problem of electronic voting machines, which are not more efficient. They don’t produce more precise answers than written ballots, and they don’t get us the tally quicker than written ballots.

So the question is, why do we have them? Okay, that’s one area. But the much more significant fact, I would say, is that the way Americans vote was changed completely using the pretext of COVID And the idea was that Americans were so sick with this killer virus that emerged from a pangolin in a wet market. They were selling mammals in the seafood market. For some reason in Wuhandhe, they were so incapacitated, they couldn’t actually make it to the polls. And so they needed to have their ballots anonymously picked up in these drop boxes without using voter id.

And nothing with voter fraud at all. It was purely a medical response. Well, now Covid is, of course, still around. Hasn’t gone anywhere. Once Fauci created it, it’s gonna be here forever. But we’re not worried about COVID anymore, for some reason. But the voting changes remain in place, and it’s very clear to me that the point of them was to abet voter fraud, obviously. And I don’t think that you. Okay, that’s fine. There’s voter fraud around the world. But you can’t simultaneously claim that you’re here to defend democracy and abet voter fraud at the same time, because voter fraud undermines democracy, very obviously, more than anything else.

Right. If people can’t trust election outcomes, you don’t have a democracy, and Americans can. And I’m very distressed about it, and I don’t really know, but there seems to be no appetite to do anything about it. I mean, one of the things you know and I won’t go on is last thing I’ll say. But the question of voter id is not a question in most civilized countries. France, for example, you don’t have an idea you can’t vote, because how do we know who you are? And we take elections seriously, even in France. Primitive, stinky France takes elections so much more seriously than we do.

It’s shameful to me as an American. And so. But we were told you can’t do that because African Americans just don’t have ids. Really? Is there evidence for that? So in my country, you can’t do anything without a government id. You can’t cash a check. You can’t have a bank account. You can’t buy a pack of cigarettes. You can’t check into a hotel. You can’t get on an airplane. You can’t get on a greyhound bus. You can’t do anything without a government issued id. Of course, you can’t drive a car. And so some enterprising independent journalists went out and tried to get the numbers on this, and it turns out nobody doesn’t have a government id.

If you don’t have a government id in the United States, that means you could have no contact with government. You get nothing from government. You don’t exist in the eyes of the government without a government id. So the adult population of Americans of any color who don’t have government issued ids is, like, approximately zero. Okay? It’s like someone in a nursing home. And yet nobody in the media noted this. And to this day, we don’t have voter id laws in state after state because it’s considered racist. And it’s yet another example of the way that ruthless people with, I think, evil intent leverage the inherent decency of the citizens of our country to get their way.

If they said, we’re just gonna commit voter fraud, and if you don’t like it, we’re gonna shoot you, the people of the United States would rise up as one and put them down. But instead they say you’re a bad. Ask questions, you’re a racist. Well, no decent person wants to be a racist, including me. That’s awful. I think God created every person with identical moral value. Identical. We are all creations. That’s my view. So racism is like, abhorrent to me. So I don’t want to be called racist, and neither is anyone else in my sweet country, because Americans are really decent people.

So that claim right there is enough to shut down the opposition sufficient to roll over it. And that is exactly what’s happened. And I hope we’re at a point where we just stop taking them seriously. These are people who don’t care about the meaning of words, who will accuse you of abetting a mass shooting because you think your country has too many illegal aliens. Like, it’s freaking insane. So obviously they don’t really mean it. They don’t really care. They just want you to be quiet because you’re inconvenient. And my strong advice to you is don’t be quiet.

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