So for the last two weeks you've probably been watching very carefully what's happening in the conflict with Iran. The United States and Israel are engaged in a joint war against Iran and all of us are trying to figure out you know what's happening there.
But as our attention is diverted outside of our borders, it's also worth paying attention to what's happening here and in the rest of the West that is not directly connected to this conflict, but still affected by it. And one of the things you notice is that Our country, and certainly Europe and Australia, New Zealand and Canada, have all clamped down on their own populations in very unusual, unprecedented ways.
Over the past year, but particularly since this war started two weeks ago. And that's a familiar phenomenon. Countries at war tend to become more author authoritarian. It always happens. But we should be on guard against it. And one of the ways it is happening in the United States is that free speech is being curtailed. Your inherent God-given right to say what you believe in public. That's the basis of the United States.
It's the very core of our Bill of Rights, of our founding documents. It's the reason that we are exceptional in the world. It's that one thing. our ability to say what we think, because that right comes from God, not the government. That's what our documents say. And so of all rights that we should be resistant to losing, that would be at the very top of the list.
And yet there is a concerted effort, as our next guest is about to explain, to strip that right from Americans using both the pretext of war and the cover of war. And again, we should be on guard against it. Glenn Greenwald has spent his entire professional life advocating for the freedom of speech, has been punished for it.
He has been analyzing carefully what's going on right now. He joins us now. Glenn, thanks a lot for doing this. How would you assess the state of free speech in the West right now? It is seriously in peril. It's often in peril, but it's more in peril than ever before. And there are a couple of different reasons. Obviously, there's been a attempt on the part of the EU to undermine the ability for people on this populist right to express certain views.
And there's been a lot of attention paid to that. But the far more significant threat to free speech, and you and I have been talking about this Tucker since all the way back in twenty twenty three after Octo uh after October seventh. is the very concerted effort on the part of the Israeli government and in each of these democratic countries they have pro Israel lobbying groups, not as strong as in the United States, but still very strong.
that have overtly said that there's too much permissive language under the laws of these countries for what you can say about Israel. And Netanyahu himself, just a couple of months ago, said that We're warning Western states, you better do more to protect the Jews in your country, and you better heed that warning. And ever since, and even, you know, there's been a spate of these kinds of things before that, but ever since.
There's been an ex a lot of draconian changes to just obliterating free speech in the name of protecting this foreign country, the most brazen of which was, I don't know if you saw, but The Australians after Bondi Beach, at the insistence of the Israelis, passed a law banning a whole bunch of common political slogans that offend Israel, like to from the river to the sea.
and things of that nature. And a bunch of Australian citizens were angry that they're not allowed to express this political view any longer or else they'll be arrested. And they went as kind of civil disobedience wearing a t shirt that said From the river to the sea and each and every one of them was arrested and processed through the court system.
So when you see these sorts of things, these kinds of new speech codes that have been promulgated, including in the United States, a whole bunch of legislative frameworks. that really have no purpose other than to expand the definition of anti Semitism that's existed for decades.
to include a wide range of common criticisms of Israel or even of Jewish individuals, that is an extremely serious attack on free speech, not in the name of marginalized groups in our own country, but in the name of shielding this foreign country. I I just uh the Australia story is so shocking that I didn't think it was real at first. I talked to a friend in Australia who confirmed that it was, but it leaves so many questions, the first of which is.
How does a foreign prime minister have the power to tell citizens many thousands of miles away that they're not allowed to criticize him?
I think, you know, if if if you had asked me this three years ago, I would have had to have been delicate because the answer is something a lot of people were unaware of or even taught was taboo. But I think a lot of people understand now that these countries have very strong organizations, activist groups, well funded lobbies that are not loyal to the interests of ordinary Australians, British people or Canadians or Americans.
but instead are coordinating what these laws need to to be in the West in order to most effectively and aggressively shield Israel. And Bondy Beach was, you know, in fairness, a a pretty horrific attack. There was, you know, a two gunmen and and they, you know, a Hanukkah celebration in and gunned down people. But since when in the West do we believe that the solution to massacres or to mass shootings, which happen all the time, is to immediately curb
free speech and not only curb it but make it illegal to express a whole wide range of views. And it's not just Australia Tucker. It's happening in I can, you know, go through every single example of which there are many over the past two years and especially recently where very similar things are happening in Canada, in South America, all throughout Europe, and even increasingly in the United States. C if I can just give one example.
One of the most disturbing things I think, and it got very little attention, was that when President Trump got into office, he made combating anti-Semitism a major priority across all agencies of his administration. They even have a anti-uh Semitism czar, who's very, very aggressive. And a bunch of regulations got passed saying that if you criticize Israel, you're not eligible for these kinds of programs. And what Israel did about 10 years ago was
promulgated this very new radically expanded hate speech code called the IA I IHRA, which is the International Holocaust Remembrance Act. And it takes very benign and and common views about Israel or about Jews, such as Israel is a racist society. or uh you can compare Israel to the Nazis or the Jews played a role in in killing Jesus, a whole bunch of other kind of criticism of either Israel uh Israelis or Jews or Israel and and they banned it as hate speech.
Which is, I thought, what the American right was was so angry about for so long. And when Trump negotiated when he withdrew funding from a bunch of colleges on the grounds that they were allowing too much anti-Semitism, every one of the negotiations required them to implement this. aggressively expanded definition of anti Semitism so that even at professors of of genocide and Holocaust studies who have been teaching for decades.
decided that they had to change their their reading list because it was now prohibited in the name of Israel. This is America, the first where the First Amendment uh is still in place and and yet this is all over our academic institution. And they this all happened under the cover of combating wokeness.
combating the left-wing death grip on American higher education, which is real. I mean, it's the most real thing of all. But rather than break that grip, it hasn't been broken, it's still in place completely. This was used as Like an opportunity to restrict the inherent free speech rights of Americans. And very few people noticed this. I d I didn't understand it was happening.
Because the problem here is that it's happening in our most elite institutions of higher learning, our universities, our colleges, which, you know, going back to the Enlightenment. Everybody agreed was the one place where you needed completely unfettered uh speech and debate, including offensive ideas, to test things that had been declared taboo, to even, you know, dissect the most sacred orthodoxies. The fact that these speech restrictions are happening on college campuses.
I think is is extra disturbing and and and destructive to free speech. Um and there's also, you know, uh it's not it's very hard to pinpoint because there's been so many, you know, you mentioned D E I. The Trump administration came in promising to dismantle DEI. They did dismantle a lot of so called DEI programs for black people for months recognizing this group or that group. But in many of these agreements, Tucker, with some of the biggest universities, they included classic DEI requirements.
But not for black people, not for women, not for trans or gay people, but for Jews. And and there's a lot of these programs that say once a year you have to have an event. Recognizing the importance of Jewish life on campus. You have to go recruit at Jewish day schools to try and get people who are Jewish to go to the school. You have to create a whole office where people feel offended. And and it's
a series of rights and and agencies ex available only for Jews. It is classic DEI. So they dismantled DEI for some of the unfavored groups, but created new DEI programs for the ones that are most favored. Well and that actually happened? Why did no one on the right say anything about it? Well, I didn't say anything about it. Again, I I wasn't aware and I should have been aware, it's my fault, but I didn't know it was happening. Did I mean, why did no one mention it?
I've been mentioning it a lot and there's, you know, some uh university or associations very worried about free speech and scholarship that have been active on it. But one of the things that happened is at the beginning of the Trump administration, there was a zillion different initiatives. They really came in prepared to to their credit.
And it was just one after the next. And I always felt like one of the most dangerous ones was that they cut off university funding for all of our most important institutions. And these this government funding, you know, doesn't go to like Uh
trans people in in Armenia in the seventeenth century. The reason gu the our universities get government funding is because that's where the most important advances in in technology and in science are developed. That's where the internet came from was government funding. of the internet research a at universities and they cut it all off.
And they said, you're not getting it back unless you agree to all of our conditions. And one of the main conditions was the installation of these heightened uh speech codes, hate speech codes that ban uh the the airing and expression, not just by students but by faculty of all sorts of ideas, had nothing to do with the protest. They also forced the firing of Middle East professors and chairs of departments who they deemed to be too friendly to criticism of Israel. It was a remarkable assault.
on academic freedom at our highest and and and most uh well regarded educational institutions. And it was kind of done as you said with very little attentive because there was this flurry of other stuff going on at the
beginning of the Trump administration. But if you go back and look at what those agreements were or what the DI DEI causes were are, or what that IHRA hate speech code is, you will be shocked at the kinds of ideas that are no longer permitted to be expressed in classes by faculty, in reading, in student debates, upon pain of being expelled or suspended or fired.
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Bokar redan nu på wing.se. De bästa resorna försvinner först. Ving- semester. It's sh it's shocking to me that that happened. Um, and again, I just want to apologize for not understanding what was happening as it was. But I have to ask about the pretext for it. I mean, I hate seeing anybody hassled for his religion or ethnicity. uh uh Jews, Christians, Hindus. I just don't like it, okay? And uh I I hate what a lot of
you know, agents of you know of neocon politics are now doing with Muslims. Hate all the Muslims. I don't like that any more than I like hate all the Jews. But I wonder, like on was there massive harassment of Jewish students in the Ivy League or Jewish students underrepresented at Ivy League schools? Was there evidence that they were systematically discriminated against?
The ADL about a year ago issued this statement uh complaining that Hollywood had adopted all these diversity rules for how many actors you have to have and directors and whatever, and they complained.
that Jewish people were not among the minority groups that were part of the diversity count. And they basically argued, not just implicitly but explicitly, that Hollywood has long been known for discriminating against or creating barriers for the participation of Jews in various uh power sectors in Hollywood, which I think would come as a gigantic surprise to anybody who has ever had any remote familiarity with with.
Uh Hollywood. And the same is true at educational institutions. Go and look who the last seven of eight Harvard professors were. They were all Jewish. Uh John Miersheimer talked about this, you know, he's been in in academia for fifty years and he said, I keep hearing that there's this like problem with not enough Jews or Jews being attacked. I've been in academia for fifty years. The idea that Jews are underrepresented um is so insultingly false.
But the attempt to turn these educational institutions into somehow fastions of anti Semitism, even though they're filled with Jews at every crucial level, including donors and administrators and professors and students. You know, you always need a reason to censor. You always have to cite some sort of crisis. But I think the key thing here, Tucker, is that even if you believe those protests were anti-Semitic and harassing Jews and
They it was wildly exaggerated for so many reasons. We don't need to get into that, but these speech codes I'm talking about that Trump forced the administration the the universities to adopt are IH R A uh hate speech codes, they have nothing to do with protests. They're not about conduct. They're solely about ideas. And I mean I could just give you a couple. You're not allowed to say that the existence of the state of Israel is a racist endeavor.
You're allowed to say the United States is a racist endeavor. You can say that about China or Japan or Iran. Norway, Indonesia, any other country on the planet. In our schools, you're not allowed to say it's a racist endeavor. You're not allowed to s claim that Jews uh participated in the killing of Jesus.
You can't draw comparisons between Israeli policy today and that of the Nazis. You can compare American wars to Nazis, any other country. It's all special protections of the kinds that we told we were gonna be done by. And there's so many more of these that that are amazing that are just so obviously protected speech but no longer safely expressed in the college or university setting. But it leaves
America, just like this war, it leaves America unprotected. So, I mean, not that these are protections and I I would never, of course, support a law banning criticism of the country that I own, you know, America. We all own this country as citizens. Um, so I would never support those, but it's just interesting that there's no criticism of the United States, our country, that is banned. or even discouraged only of a foreign country. Is that is that correct?
There are no bans on your ability to criticize the American government, American wars, the American founding
You know, and that's what's remarkable. I was obviously vehemently opposed to the kind of tsunami of left wing censorship that happened in our in our elite university that was on your show many times to talk about why that that was so dangerous. Um And I don't wanna in any way justify it, but what I will say is at the very least The ostensible pretextual argument for why we needed censorship of anti-black.
speech or anti-trans speech or whatever is because we were protecting marginalized American citizens who belonged to groups that were endangered. Totally false, totally dangerous. But at least they were trying to ostensibly protect American citizens in the United States. What's so remarkable about these new codes is they're only to protect Israel.
Like imagine you go in and and and you're a citizen of Australia and you wear a shirt criticizing or advocating for something with Israel and you get arrested in your own democratic country of Australia. It is bizarre, Tucker. There's no other uh laws that that would be applicable to any other countries. It's only for this one country over and over and over.
And it also sends a very unsettling message because censorship, you know, is always levied on behalf of the people in charge, of course. The people with the power are the only ones who ever Pass laws telling you you can't criticize them. I mean of course. And so what does this tell I mean, what is this? It's spooky. I've never been
The guy who runs around saying Israel runs the United States, it's overstatement, you know, but I don't I certainly don't want to think that. But like if you can't criticize a foreign country, then that country's in charge, right? I mean, what other conclusion should I draw? I can't really provide you with the cogent one. I will will I will say I think And it doesn't in any way justify or change anything you said, but I I nonetheless think it's important to to to note.
that I think one of the reasons this is happening, and Miersheimer and Walt who wrote that uh the Israel lobby book back in two thousand seven, the pioneering first ever real book about the influence of the Israel lobby, uh They've recently talked about how, especially Mir Shamber, how back, you know, over the last several decades, it was very important for the Israel Lobby to act kind of in the shadows. I don't mean that nefarious. I mean they just didn't want it obvious that there was this
you know, force that they I mean, like most lobbyist groups uh operate in the sewers and and and, you know, shadows uh of the capital. But over the last three years, the pro Israel lobby has had to come out into the open. so much more than ever before and really just be so explicit in calling everyone anti Semitism and advocating for speech restrictions. And the reason is is because there has been a very radical And from an Israeli perspective, an extremely alarming collapse.
in support for Israel. uh among Americans in basically every demographic group other than conservatives over fifty. So basically like decades long Fox watchers. But even conservatives under fifty. Have all basically now have majority opinions that are disfavorable to Israel. And you see some of what they've been trying to do in response. Larry Allison tried to buy TikTok, which was one of the perceived sources where so many people were hearing about
anti Israel cro uh criticism. So they s they they tried it out of the hands of the the owners and put it into Larry Ellison's hand. You see the Ellison family buying C B S and News and putting Barry Weiss there. There's an IDF soldier at TikTok. So these are all desperate moves. And I think the same is true with this very brazen attempt that they wouldn't have done before. So so out in the open trying censor American speech.
for Israel, but it's because they they they feel panic. They're in panic. It's kind of a desperation. That spiral of support for Israel among Americans which had been Utterly unthreatened for decades is very rapid. And I don't think it's ever going back. And I think a lot of these efforts, as kind of, you know.
uh just obvious and and with such a high potential for backlash are being pursued anyway because they're just desperate about trying to find some way to reverse that that public opinion trend in the United States. Inflation makes credit cards
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So maybe, and it's I mean, really having the opposite effect. It's changing people's minds against Israel. Israel is doing that. And so you have to wonder, like, maybe that is the goal. I we saw the exact same thing many times, but most recently with the left and you know, in the wake of George Floyd and and and me too, they just started kind of frantically accusing everybody of being a racist and a white supremacist and a misogynist and
People got really tired, you know, that was peak woke and and people got really tired of it. And and so many people were being accused that at some point it just lost its meaning and people got angry about it. Nobody appreciates those who are trying to stifle debate. And there was a huge backlash in in terms of people no longer caring about being called racist because they drained it of all its meaning. Exactly the same thing is is so clearly happening here. And
Of course, there's gonna be a lot of resentment the more people see how much of a speech crackdown in the West generally in the United States in particular there is in defense of this foreign country. But again, I would just go back to the fact that it was really the Obliteration of Gaza, all the inhumane atrocities that we saw that accompanied it, that we saw literally every day.
That we realized the United States was paying for under Joe Biden and arming and funding, it really radically transformed how people think of their own government and how they think of Israel. And I just think that this was all this is all an effort to put the cat in the bag because there's always been a perception that Israel's existence depends on widespread support of the United States and that is crumbled.
It I hesitate even to say this'cause it pains me so so much, but you know, we've been doing shows together for a long ten, ten years. And the basis of most of them has been, you know, free speech. It's it's the most American idea there is and it's the one worth dying for. And we both have always agreed on that. And you're a lifelong figure on the left. I'm a lifelong figure on the right.
And we both agreed that like the left was the real threat to free speech because it was. Over the last year The right sees seems every bit as the right, whatever that means, like the Republican Party, I guess. Seems every bit as threatening to free speech, maybe even more so, maybe more effective in this attack on free speech than the left. I I really don't want to think that. It pains me to admit it, but I wanna be honest and I'm starting to believe that.
Yeah, I wouldn't say it's because the left suddenly had a an awakening about the importance and virtues of free speech and the need to protect it. It's really because they're out of power. Um, and and the right is in power, and that of course is something very common when people claim to believe in certain liberties and certain civil civil rights and they get into office and suddenly they find reasons to unravel it. But
This has been going on for a while. I think, you know, you mentioned how the the hate speech codes at universities didn't get a lot of attention. Another thing that never got a lot of attention and it drives me very crazy to this day because it's so preposterous and it what it really predates October elev uh seventh. I would say it's now up to thirty five or thirty six states in the United States, the vast majority of which are red states, but not all.
that have enacted laws that make it a requirement, if you want a government contract, that you certify that you do not support a boycott of Israel. And a lot of people who had contracts before this law was passed ended up getting fired because they refused. There have been hurricane relief. uh uh aid that cities have conditioned on signing a form that says you don't support a boycott of Israel.
There have been all kinds of firings in universities for people who criticized Israel. So it it it's been Developing for quite a while. It's not like it just started. Hurricane relief was predicated on a signed statement that you don't support a boycott for Israel. In other words, you don't even have to be actively boycotting Israel, but if you conceptually support it, You can't get hurricane relief, emergency disaster aid.
Is that true? This is the kind of thing that I know people don't believe unless they go up. You know, it's it's so shocking. I know if I didn't see it myself, I also wouldn't believe it. If I heard that I'd be like that that's a conspiracy theorist saying crazy stuff. No, that that actually uh actually is uh uh something that was instituted in many places. Different kinds of language, but mostly it requires that you Certify that you don't participate in a boycott event.
Um in order to get you know, a state contract or in order to get uh hurricane relief, there were uh HF H H S regulations, uh once RFK took over. that were forced on by the administration that said certain grants you can't get unless you certify that you're not supporting a boycott of Israel. Talking about grants for research that would help Americans help.
That would then got conditioned on this sort of thing. So this has been something that has been going on for a while. Let me just say one other thing, Tucker. Uh One of the people who supported that that ban on people getting state contracts unless they certify they won't support uh a boycott of Israel was Andrew Cuomo when he was governor of New York.
When he was governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo ordered the state to boycott the state of North Carolina and the state of Indiana over anger due to because of their their bathroom bills, their trans bathroom bills. I remember that. So Cuomo ordered a boycott of American state. Once these laws started proliferating, Andrew Cuomo embraced this and said, if you boycott Israel, New York State will boycott you, meaning we won't do business with you.
This is someone who said it's totally fine to boycott your fellow countrymen, your states in the in the United States. That's not only is it fine, I'm ordering those boycotts. The one thing you you can boycott any other country on the planet as well, any other state, any other city. You just can't boycott Israel. So many American laws in place that impose draconian deprivations in the event that you're not able to certify that truthfully.
It's uh it's beyond belief that there uh not only states that did this, the majority of states by your telling, but that there's been no protest against it. I mean,'cause of course there's no ban on p boycotting the United States. I mean our country doesn't play a role in any of this. It's like a foreign country of nine million people. Their interests determine whether you get hurricane relief or a federal contract? Like, why has no one protested this?
It's just it you know, for a long time before October seventh, especially, there was just kind of a for Israel was sort of on the back burner, but also there you you know this very well. There was a really a taboo. There was a high career and reputational cost if you were going to talk about Israel and anything other than the reverend you know, bipartisan script that we always have to finance and arm and support Israel and go to war for Israel. If you deviated at all, a lot of people
you know, paid a big price for that. So I think there was just always, you know, I've been writing about Israel and this sort of stuff and its influence in the United States for twenty years. And I've there are many times when I saw things that I I I just couldn't believe they were real. And they were real. And as you say, they they got very little attention because there was a climate that
convince people, implicitly or otherwise, you're better off just not talking about Israel. There's a million other things you can go talk about. Leave the Israel topic alone. And a lot of people did it. And after October 7th, it just became unsustainable. I mean a and I think after this war it will become unsusta unsustainable. I d I don't think um that any of this can remain unchallenged and some of it will be overturned. Um and actually let me just Take a quick side detour here and ask you.
This war is not popular. I'm I just wanna say on the record, I'm hoping for the best resolution f the for the United States'cause this is my country. But it's not popular and it hasn't been uh from the very first day. In fact, the majority of Americans are against it. But there have been no protests, no meaningful protests against it. What is that? One of the problems is that there's a
constitutional framework that was created by the founders, that everyone can go read the Constitution in Article 1 says that Congress has the exclusive right to declare war. And not just to declare war, but other aspects of how those wars are conducted. And
There was a reason for it. If you go read the Federalist Papers, if you go read a bunch of other stuff that was written about it at the time. The reason is is because wars are the singular, most potentially dangerous thing, the worst thing, the most destructive thing that a country can embark upon. And the people who end up having their lives risked for it are the citizens of the country fighting the war. At least that used to be true. That's no longer true, but it was true.
back then and the theory was if you're gonna start a war, you have to have the consent of the people who are gonna actually be fighting in the war or paying for the war or otherwise burdening themselves. And the way to do that is you have The people, the, the, the, the, the branch that's closest to the American people is the Congress, because they're elected. They're elected every two years. And that was why it was so important to approve those wars. We've completely gotten away from that. Uh
presidents believe in both parties they can start wars and they frequently do without any kind of attempt to gain congressional approval. Obama started the war in Libya with no congressional approval. A couple of days later the House actually voted on whether to authorize it. The House voted no. We're not authorizing it and Obama just went ahead and did it anyway. So we've lost this idea that we're supposed to have a debate, that it's in the hands of anybody other than the president.
I think beyond that though, I Traditionally, people have gotten really angry about wars, have started protesting wars when there's a lot of Americans well deployed in Vietnam and i i by a draft, but even, you know, in Iraq when there's a lot of troops coming home in in body bags. uh or dying and I think the idea is if we're just air bombing, you know, just air bombing, if if that's all we're doing, uh, it just doesn't
provide the impetus for for Americans to go out and protest. And and also the big difference between the Iraq war and the the Iran war, for all the valid criticisms of of Bush and Cheney and Condoleez Rice and that whole crew At least they
had a nationwide campaign for more than a year to convince Americans that they should support the war and laying out the case. It was filled with lies and falsehoods and all kinds of uh wrong and and and and ignorant predictions, but at least they did it. This war was just like Here it is. And and there was no public debate.
meaningful debate about whether we should have a second war. It wasn't part of the twenty twenty four campaign. So I think it just happened so quickly. There was never really any consistent rationale or motive as to what we were doing or what the goals were. And I just don't think that gave Americans the fuel to protest. I think you will see that if if this gets further out of control.
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The Great Gold Scam. Watch it now at TuckerCarlson.com. People are getting robbed. We're sounding the alarm, and we hope you will join us. In the modern age though, protests are organized and they're organized over social media or by text message.
And they're organized by groups with a stake in, you know, politically, whatever the outcome of the debate is. So You know, the Iraq war protests were organized by groups and the George Floyd protests were organized by groups that we could identify and paid for by companies. whose names we know. It it's like they're there it wasn't just random Americans showing up on the national mall to express their opinions. They were bust in, which and I'm not criticizing that at all.
But that's not happening now. So it's not just that Americans aren't engaged, like they're opposed to it, but there's no group On the left that seems interested in making a big deal out of this, would I just find that so weird. Uh well, I think the other problem with it is that although there are a lot of Democrats posturing as being opposed, you know, when they go on like MSNBC or whatever.
There's no real effort on the part of the Democrats in in Congress to take any steps that would actually impede the war. I mean, there was a vote about whether they needed authorization and and they lost that vote, but The reality is that the Democratic leadership, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, they support this war, especially Chuck Schumer. They Have no interest in in doing anything like having votes on funding because they don't think it's politically wise. And when you have no leadership,
from the Democratic Party, which is supposed to be the opposition party, I think that also contributes to a reason why there's there's not a lot of nationwide protests. You need leaders to to to do it. But but again, I think the big issue was it just came out of nowhere. You know, it wasn't like the Iraq war, other words, where you had time to protest. You just woke up one day and there was a true social post from Trump in the middle of the night announcing the war and then there was the war.
Yeah. No, that's a that's a really good point. And so like so many of these changes, it was unheralded, it just happened. So w and so just back to the speech question. I know there um there was a not famous enough moment where the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who's I think been a pretty good governor in some ways. but traveled to Israel to sign what looked like hate speech laws.
That are applicable in Florida. Is that a m mischaracterization? Some of his supporters denied that actually happened. Did it actually happen? And what does it mean? It did actually happen. He actually went to Israel twice to sign laws in Israel that applied to
uh people in Florida. The first one was kind of benign and had some connection to Israel. The second one though, which was in I believe twenty twenty two when he was gearing up To run for the Republican uh primary nomination, a big part of of what the strategy was was they were they were gonna get, and they did get. Most of the hardcore fanatical Zionist groups and pro-Israel uh activist types and pundit types, they they they lined up not behind Trump, but behind Ron DeSantis.
And that was very much a part of his strategy, was curing favor with this crowd, which, okay, that's, you know, but people do in politics. to go to and I don't wanna completely mischaracterize the law because there is some uh you don't want you can overstate it, but it absolutely was a law that took certain speech and prescribed it, not for the people in Israel, but for the people in
uh Florida and it was about funding hate speech programs and again only about anti-Semitism in Israel and he went to Israel in order to sign it. That was just true. I can't I don't understand that either. You know, that that that was not something that provoked a lot of outrage. Why is he signing bills for the people in Florida?
in Israel when it actually can have the effect of confining or restricting the speech of the people in Florida in relation to Israel. It seems like he he was siding with this foreign country over the citizens of the state that elected him. It's if nothing else, it's so humiliating. It's so obviously humiliating. I mean, I'm going to a foreign country to sign a law, any law that affects you. in my state. I mean what what I mean, I'm just trying to understand the psychology here.
I mean, again, like a lot of the things you've just mentioned, I didn't really believe that could actually have happened. So I didn't I wasn't as focused on it when it did happen. I should have been. My mistake. But I'm wondering the thinking of like these Rayleigh government officials who pushed this, there were some. How did they think that helped them? Didn't they think that would engender resentment? How could it not engender resentment?
I mean, did it though? Because, you know, again, I think that there wasn't that much attention paid. How many people really know that Ron DeSantis did it? Every time I mention it. people who don't know are are shocked and and angry for for obvious reasons. But if this were something that were done in isolation. You could create some kind of rationale. You know, again. Yeah, for sure. Ron DeSantis was trying to be a pro Israel, you know, candidate.
Going there kind of does that. There's a lot of money there. You know, you have Miriam Adelson. It's it's it can be a campaign strategy. But the problem is, is that I can point you to every institution, laws and hate speech codes. Do you know how many people got fired after October seventh? for expressing criticism of Israel or dissenting from the narrative about Israel. Bill Ackman assembled blacklists for students who signed a petition blaming Israel for the conflict in general.
This was a huge crackdown on speech after October seventh. People and media and journalism and art and and everywhere got fired, including in in in again in academia. for the crime of expressing views about Israel that were deemed off limit. And it is pervading our our country. You can see it in every sector all the time. I mean, I chronicle it all the time. So it's like the most of them aren't available off the top of my head because there's so many.
It's uh it's where does this go? Like'cause this is totally incompatible with our founding documents, with the history of the United States and with American culture itself. It's too much. And so it either becomes much, much worse or it goes away. I don't think we can stay where we are. That's my instinct. What's yours? Well, I'm Jewish, so when people talk about anti Semitism and the crisis of anti Semitism.
That is something that I don't dismiss slightly. Like anti Semitism is real. It's been dangerous in history. You know, like anti black racism, lots of other things. And for a long time there was this kind of victimhood mentality after October seventh that Jews were uniquely endangered in the United States that I found very uh unpersuasive to put it generously.
But I do now think that when you have You know, all these people who are loyal to Israel buying up our media and putting IDF soldiers in charge of TikTok censorship and Barry Weiss here uh at CBS News to kind of control the the moderation. And on top of that, you know, you have This war now that that was for Israel, um, or at least in large part, Israel played a very big role. I mean, even government officials mentioned that. Obviously, it was Israel's main adversary. There's no denying that.
That's when I really start to think that the more they try and Few this anti-Semitism accusation at everybody, the more they get more desperate, as we were talking about before, and interfere in our American politics to try and w you know, have lockdowns and crackdowns on our speech. The more Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and all these politicians constantly are talking about how often they're in Israel and saying that their main, you know, issue when they ran for Congress was defending Israel.
I do think that has a very high potential of producing anti Semitism because. At some point people are gonna be asking, what what is going on here? Why is there so much external influence on behalf of this foreign country and who's doing it? That is something that worries me. Well, I think you have every I think all of us have every reason to be worried. And it's absolutely producing actual anti Semitism. I see it every single day.
when I go on the internet, which I try not to do too much, but you you can't avoid it. And it's real too. It's not just like I don't like what Israel's doing. APAC is bad, which I vehemently agree with. It's like Jews are bad. And it's not clear to me exactly where all of it's coming from. I think some of it's inorganic, clearly. These are basically ideological false flags. But I do think some of it is organic. I think some of it is absolutely real.
And I hate to agree with the ADL, but on the specific specific point, is anti semitism rising in the United States? Oh, no doubt. And it's bad. It's totally bad. So that kind of gets to my deeper concern, which is not about Jews specifically, it's about all Americans. I feel like ethnic conflict is being encouraged in this country.
Yes. I mean we have had ethnic conflict before and part of what I hated so much about the left wing ideology and the way it expressed itself over the last decade was the fact that it just seemed so maliciously designed to defide people based on these very primal uh
crude demographic groups and to separate them and tell them to all go into their corners and to blame the others, which is incredibly volatile volatile and dangerous to do. And I think that, you know, if you if if you turn on, I don't know how often you do this, but you know, there's this whole like as you get older, there's like these different sectors of media and entertainment that you know nothing about because it's not for you.
But I try and make an effort to to to pay attention to them. You know, there's all these like huge celebrities, but because you're over thirty, you have no idea who it is. Right. Oh yes. I'm sure. But they're like they're super famous and you're like, who's that? Um, but I try hard, especially when it comes to political stuff, to pay attention to like big streamers and that whole culture where Gen Z does politics.
And you will be shocked if you go and and and listen to it or watch it for any amount of time how common how how overwhelming anti-Israel sentiment is in a very aggressive way and how often it does kind of morph into, you know, sometimes ironically, sometimes transgressively, but it's very linked to how people feel about Jews. And let me just say one quick thing on this, Tucker,'cause this is uh such an important point that it's hard to express like on social media or whatever.
One of the in that I I I H R A hate speech, uh definition that Israel promulgated. It ended up in the criminal law and the EU. It's now in Australia. It's on our on our campuses. One of the things that bans is conflating Jews in Israel, meaning if Israel does something bad, you're not allowed to say, oh, this was done by Jews.
because that is a conflation that is considered anti Semitic because you're blaming a bunch of Jews who had nothing to do with Israel for what you're criticizing. Right. Yet look how often The people who are on the other side of that debate, who love Israel, who constantly say they worry about anti Semitism, they conflate Israel and Jews all the time. And I think this is the problem. So if you say
you know, Israel killed, you know, 10,000 children, they'll immediately say, oh look, blood libel. He's accusing Jews aga of of killing, you know, 10,000 people or having, you know, raped soldiers. And no, you didn't accuse Jews, you accused Israel, but when they conflate it in order to place criticism of Israel off limits to make it seem like you're attacking Jews even though you're not? That too is a very dangerous conflation that they themselves are promoting.
So that when people now think about Israel in their minds, because they're constantly hearing it, that means Jews. So if they're angry at Israel, if they think Israel did something disgusting, if they don't want the US funding Israel or Israel interfering, that quickly becomes Jews. And it's their fault, the fault of the people who are Israel supporters in managing this discourse.
I couldn't agree more. I think that's that's the original sin here. I think it's very short-sighted and dangerous. If there were a self-identified Christian nation that was just for Christians, there isn't one, but if there was I'd be like, yeah, go Christian country. I'm Christian. And then if that country started behaving in ways that were brutal and outrageous and deceptive and started killing people because of their bloodline, really behaving in ways that were impossible to defend.
And they started filling my airwaves with propaganda about how every Christian has to be loyal to this country, doing things that are nauseating to me. I would feel first of all I'd be outraged by that. Uh that don't do that in my name would be number one. And number two, I would feel threatened. I would feel physically endangered by that. Why are you tying me to this? I've got nothing to do with this. I I I mean, I would, I think.
Well well, and that that was very much what happened uh, you know, after September eleventh. Was there was this huge danger that because some Islamic groups or Islamic countries Right. That all Muslims were going to be blamed. And so many Muslims had all sorts of different views. You know, you're talking about hundreds of millions of them or or billion. And
One of the things George W. Bush did to his credit was work very hard from the start to say, No, we're not at war with Islam. This isn't Islam that did this. This is this distorted version of Islam. And that I think is exactly what we're seeing now is It's such a important rhetorical tool to say Israel is the state of the Jews. Oh look, Tucker Carlson said this horrible thing, even though you said it about Israel, about the Jews.
And this constant conflation for the reasons you just said is exactly what if you're in that group being tied up to this nation state, you should fear more than anything and combat as as passionately as you can. I mean d you must feel that well I guess you're maybe in a separate category because you're you are Jewish, but you have you had the same views for your entire professional life and you've been very vocal about it. But I mean, this must be a like a real concern.
For a lot of people who aren't against Israel but are not on board with the Netanyahu government and they're somehow tied to this against their will. Like Yeah, I mean, you know, if you're gonna have this foreign country, and this is what I was getting at before, exerting massive amounts of influence inside another country.
You better make sure that you're doing it in a way that's very subtle, that's fairly visible. You know, and that they were always doing that. And that's why they were so angry at Edmir Scheimer and Wald's book. You go back and if you don't remember, look at them. Yeah. Just the absolute uh attacks on them. Uh they people lost their mind.
uh about that book because it dragged into the light something that was always supposed to be secret. The problem now is it's not secret. The desperation and panic have made them have to come out into the light and be very open about what they're doing and people see it and
If you're gonna just sit there and be very visible and vocal and all over the place about how we have to change our laws or, you know, restrict speech and everything else, fire people to defend this foreign country or protect this foreign country. The outcome is going to be very predictable, and I think you're seeing a lot of that.
So w it just back to the previous question, because you don't just cover principles and ideas, but politics and have for a long time. Where do you think this goes politically? Like what does the country look like? We've got midterms this fall. Two years from then we have a presidential election. Clearly there's gonna be a realignment.
The neocons have intentionally blown up the Trump coalition. They hated it from day one because it was, quote, America first, which obviously precludes putting Israel first. So they wanted to destroy the coalition. They have. Wh where do things land given those facts? You're already seeing this. major transformation, actually well on its way, if not coming soon to its conclusion in the Democratic Party, where it's becoming almost untenable for
candidates in the Democratic Party, including incumbents to run, especially in primaries, if they're too supportive of Israel, if they accept APAC money. This transformation is is close to to complete. That is not gonna be reversed. And what made the Israel lobby so powerful for so long was that it was
more than anything else, bipartisan, unfailingly bipartisan. It wasn't one party or the other. Netanyahu kind of destroyed that, but there was still a lot of pro Israel supporting the Democratic Party. That's gone. And I think if I were Israel and I were, you know, uh Israel first or in the United States, pri primarily concerned with the standing of that country in the United States, the thing that would alarm me the most is that this is now happening on the right.
I can't imagine a 2028 primary campaign in the Republican Party that does not prominently feature this question. And I also can't imagine that there's not gonna be somebody like a major candidate who's not purposely occupying that lane of saying We were told that we weren't gonna have any more foreign wars or foreign attachments. One of the major problems is Israel. We don't hate Israel. You know, we don't have anything against it. We just need to stop
being responsible for funding it and fighting wars for it. And I think that's gonna have a lot of appeal. So it's always gonna take the DC establishment very long. I don't know if Susan Collins is like walking around, she promised she was going to only have serve two terms. I think she's getting like seeking her seventh.
And somebody went up to her and said, What about all these dead people in in Gaza that you paid for? And she kind of like just stumbled into her car very dazed because of her age and she just like uttered this cliche.
I'm pro Israel. And so you have this like older establishment generation that's never going to change. It's programmed in their brain. But You see the trend so clearly, not just in the Democratic Party and but in the Republican Party, where this issue is transforming and not solely, but after Well this is why the neocons. So hated Charlie Kirk.
because he saw this happening. And I remember you and I did an interview at my house this summer and you explained a lot of your views on this topic on Israel and were immediately, you know, they leaked a tape to try to embarrass you. And one of the very first people to defend you in a heartfelt way was Charlie Kirk. And uh I was actually made emotional watching it because it was just so principled.
And it was so not what you expect. And he did it at actual personal cost to do this, but he really meant it because he could see that you and he, while you have differences, were basically seeing the same picture of the future of America, which is like, let's help the country. And they hated that. I never forget that as long as I live. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, you know, Charlie and I have had a lot Charlie was a super interesting Yes independent, subtle thinker. And I know everybody on the left, if you say anything good about Charlie Kirk, they're immediately gonna get enraged. I don't really care at all. I think We are missing. Like not just emotionally, but very substantially and in a very compelling way, the presence of Charlie Kirk when it comes to this war and and related issues.
And uh, you know, we we I mean, he was very supportive of the Snowden reporting and free speech. We had a lot of that in common, but also this question, and I talked to him as he was evolving.
And you know, one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen, Tucker, was you know for a long time Charlie Kirk was was very pro Israel and he obviously started questioning that in all sorts of ways to the point that he was refusing to de platform you, even if it meant the loss of donors that that uh in the millions of dollars.
who didn't want anybody questioning Israel or criticizing Israel on the stage. And he went out in interviews, including on his own show and a big one with Megan Kelly, where they both said Um, you know, what is going on here? Like we need to start questioning this, but they try and make it so that you can't because you'll d have your reputation destroyed because they will call you anti, anti-Semite.
And one of the things Megan said that that I really uh think was observant and perceptive was that Charlie represented younger conservatives, you know, eighteen to to thirty two or whatever the age group was. And overwhelmingly they are turned against Israel.
And he couldn't just be this hardcore fanatical pro-Israel uh champion. He had to acknowledge that the debate was opening and had to open that debate. And when he did, he himself started Not abandoning Israel, not becoming anti Israel at all, but clearly being skeptical of US support for it. And I will never forget that within seconds or minutes after he he died, Benjamin Netanyahu was all over American media. you know, that day for hours and then for days after on every network you could find.
talking about how Charlie was the most stalwart, devoted Israel loyalist that the United States has ever produced and That was a very strange uh development, but it was also a very propagandistic one to try and prevent people from remembering that even Charlie Kirk was having serious second thoughts about the whole Israel.
Well he defended you. Really at a moment where he did not need to say a word about that. You're a t traditionally a very famous man of the left, so it's not like he was he was not pandering to his own audience. Obviously he was enraging his donors. They were already enraged with him.
But there was just no reason for him to do that other than heartfelt conviction. Principle. Principle. Principle. I felt that was one of the bravest things I have ever seen in American politics. It was basically ignored. But I just wanna say that out loud because that revealed who he was. Like in a moment you you you can just stay silent and just not say anything. He like stopped and said, I just wanna say Glenn Green, while well we disagree on some things, we have different orientations.
He is a good man and this is a political hit on him. And that was about Israel. I mean, you had just I mean, I think that's why that hit happened, it's because of Israel. But whatever the cause, he did that, and that tells you everything about what he was thinking. At the time and why he was so hated by the neocons and to see them get up and be like, Oh, here's my best friend. Okay. Not true.
Yeah. Um, you know, this topic for so long, Tucker, has relied on a climate of intimidation and bullying and coercion. And it's not just that you get criticized. I can show you hundreds of cases of people being fired before October uh seventh in the United States for stepping out of line in Israel or losing funding or or all sorts of other ramifications. And Most people, if they're being, I guess, self-interested or pragmatic. maybe well advised to avoid it, you know, because they just
figure, oh, I have a lot of other issues and problems. I don't need this one. And the fact that Charlie not only was doing it with Israel before that happened with me, but on the day that it happened stood up and so f emphatically uh defended me and and implied a some of the the problems uh or the causes that that probably led to it. Um yeah, I I remember seeing that and I was really moved as well. Oh, it made me emotional. I'm not even connected to it. Yeah. Just was friends with both of you.
Um, so do you think that I mean, it's we're we're guessing now, but we're also extrapolating forward based on what we're seeing right now. Do you think that what's this conflict with Iran, which has revealed so much and you know, we pray it goes well, but if it continues to on its current course, does it
Does it kind of reorient the two parties? Does it shake up the system? People keep saying, you know, no matter who you vote for, you get President Netanyahu. And there's some truth in that. I mean, let's stop lying. There's some truth in that. The big decisions are influenced, if not made, by a foreign leader. Does that end after this? And if so, how? There have been presidential debates uh in the past.
30 years most recently probably or vice presidents ones as well, where the two party candidates, when it came to Israel, started arguing about who was pro more pro Israel. That's typically the limits of the debate that we've that we've been uh permitted to have. One of the things that I'm so amazed by, maybe I'm being naive here, but i it it's very frustrating and shocking at the same time. Iraq War was One of the worst tobaccos, probably the worst American tobacco in our lifetime.
Yeah, the two thousand eight financial crisis and all the other things. But that was what led to this whole unraveling of trust and faith in the uh integrity and and reliability of American institutions that has caused so many things after that.
But also just the the what it did to that region itself. All the lies that the credibility of the United States with those lies, everything that we were told would happen, none of it happened. It gave rise to ISIS. It was, you know, everybody acknowledges it was one of the worst. uh actions in in American history. And yet here we are 20 years later. And the thing that has really amazed me was to the extent there was any kind of attempt to have a debate about the Iran war to justify it.
It was based on exactly, exactly the same tactics, the same script, the same rhetoric, the the same jargon, the same twisted rationale, and often the same people. Who sold the war in Iraq back in two thousand and two and two thousand and three? I I saw a Fox News clip. They like excavated Condoleezza Rice from some like underground lair or bunker or whatever in which she works these days.
And they put her on, Brett Baer did, and she gave like this five minute speech about how we have to go to war in Iran to you know, make sure they don't have weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons and they fund terrorist states and will bring freedom and democracy to the exactly verbatim what she was saying. And the debate has almost been identical. So I wanna say Yeah, if this war goes really bad, it'll create this gigantic realignment.
And maybe it will as part of, you know, these developments that these events that led up into the Iran war, including the Israel stuff we were talking about, could create a realignment. But I don't know, I'm I I thought that we would never live through you know, uh a a a very similar, if not identical, new war to the Iraq war. And yet here we are doing exactly that in ways that aren't even pretextually different. Like they're not even changing the script or the cast of characters.
Literally. And I I guess one of the lessons I learned from the Iraq war is that. You know, the groundwork is always laid for big changes and you sort of see it being built, but you don't r really believe it's gonna happen. I remember being at the White House right before the start, you know, like in February of twenty of two thousand three. And someone told me, yeah, we're about to invade Iraq. And of course I'd been advocating for it.
Shamefully, but I didn't really believe it was gonna happen. Even though I was like on the side of it, I thought that's too crazy. Like that can't actually they had nothing to do with 9-11. Like, so why are we doing this? And this person's saying, Well, of of course we're doing I'm like, what do you think this is?
And so, with that lesson in mind, when the ship started steaming toward the Persian Gulf, I was like, Oh, it looks like we're gonna have a war. To take that same principle and apply it. to the IHRA effort, you know, the effort to constrain free speech and to to ban and to make illegal certain expressions of conscience and opinion. Like, do you feel like we're getting to a place where people are gonna be arrested in the United States for their opinions?
The one thing we have is is the First Amendment. Um way We should be very grateful for because if it were time to create a constitution now we that w we would not have that. Um and one of the ways I know that is that, you know, I'm f very familiar with a lot of other countries, including one I I live in, where that doesn't exist. The UK doesn't have it, uh obviously all all throughout Europe doesn't have it. But
It is already happening in in other countries. Uh You know, there was uh there were two bands in in the UK that did a concert and and one of them said uh Death, death to the IDF. Not death to Jews, not even death to Israel, death, death to the IDF, the the military uh uh uh of the of Israel that was fighting a war. And another one uh sang a song about Hezbollah and Hamas. They were criminally charged with terrorism. The courts ultimately just in the last week threw it out.
We just saw the the woman being arrested in in in Australia. This is absolutely the trend in the West. Uh, over the past I think the the the galvanizing event was the dual traumas of Brexit and then Trump's victory in twenty sixteen over Hillary that made Western elites think we cannot tolerate any longer. free exchange of ideas on the internet, in fr uh dissemination of of news and i it it's just too unpredictable and it and it causes too many dangerous outcomes that are out of our control.
But for sure, I this is the trend in in so many ways. And yeah, the the West is is abandoning very aggressively their belief in in free speech, not as some absolutist. You know, uh concept in the way that I might affirm it, but just the basic notion that you can't be punished by the state for the expression of political views. I mean, that is the rule everywhere in the world, I think. I don't know that there is a country in which free speech exists except the United States.
And I and it's as we've been talking about for an hour, it's it's definitely under attack. But do you despite the fact we have a First Amendment, we've all kinds of we have a Fourth Amendment too, and it's routinely ignored. I've been the subject of, you know, it's violation. Uh and you have too. So like amendments to the to the constitution, the Bill of Rights is ignored routinely.
Do you think it's possible that it the First Amendment will be overridden by the state to punish people for having opinions the state doesn't like? Again, this is gonna sound probably naive, um, but this is actually what my my immediate reaction to it is. If you go to law school, which of course every judge in in the federal uh judiciary does and has done, and you study, you know, the history of jurisprudence or whatever.
The idea that the First Amendment is the kind of you know, crown jewel of American rights and constitutional liberties. is so indoctrinated into your brain. And it is before that as well. Like one of the things we were taught is that the reason America is exceptional, the reason America is different, is because we have the right to say things without being punished and other countries don't. This is something that's you know, inculcated in our culture for so long. So, I, I...
I'm sure there will come a day when judges will start to retreat from that. But for the moment, and I you've seen some actually good cases uh where judges draw a line pretty rigorously. Uh that no, the state can't do this. The problem is is that So much of the censorship now is through big tech companies, it's through online.
And there are ways to circumvent it increasingly. And I do also think that, you know, if these Western liberal democracies start embracing a true aggressive form of a framework of censorship. You have political changes in the United States and I could easily see them starting to find ways to circumvent it too. None of these things are permanent. None of them are guaranteed.
You know, you have rights that you think are guaranteed on the parchment, and I've seen it many times. So as everybody who studies history, it's gone the next month or the next year, even though none of the processes to get rid of it were invoked. Right. That's right. Or, you know, and you see this also in a lot of countries where the husk of the old system remains in place. The Roman Senate is still, you know, gathering.
But it's not a legislative body anymore. It it's a symbolic body or whatever. It's its existence is Designed to bolster authoritarian power. It's not a counterbalance against authoritarian power. Like you see that. I mean, in s judges in Zimbabwe still wear wigs. Yeah. Um, and in the UK too. Uh let me just add one thing is that even though I was I can't kinda give a rosy eyed optimistic answer, but I won't eventually been uh naive. When it comes time to war for war
Ever all bets are off. And we've seen that in a lot of wars. Um, in the middle of the war on terror, Newt Gingrich wrote this article saying it's time to uh repeal and and uh limit the the first amendment.
There have been all kinds of measures designed to, you know, accept it by courts. I mean, you can go find it. It's online. It's like 2006, we're fighting for the American way of life and our rights and liberties. And he's like, appeal, repeal the First Amendment. Um But uh war is when things get really scary because people
You know, all of war propaganda is so effective. If you look at it rationally, it i uh you can deconstruct it transparently, but you don't really react to war propaganda rationally. It's designed to trigger like most primal influence uh instincts of tribalism and you know patriotism and getting bad guys and feeling noble.
And when that happens, people do start to think that if you're criticizing the war a little bit too excessively, if you're questioning the real reasons for the war, that this is somehow not just a irresponsible or destructive opinion, but it starts to ease into sedition or treason We've seen this a lot in many different American wars and I do think there's kind of a sense of of of seeing that now. I mean not
so much that I can point to somebody convicted or charged with with sedition. But there's a lot of sentiment going around, not just from random accounts, but in mainstream ones, that this needs to happen. Well, as you said earlier, when when things change is the moment at which like lots of Americans die.
And that's why nine eleven was the most profound thing to happen in our lifetimes, because three thousand Americans died on camera and it was just like the worst thing anyone still the worst thing I've ever seen. And I think every American felt that way. And so at that point, It gives the people in charge license to do things they would not be allowed to do, like create TSA or whatever, invade Ira Iraq. And so are you concerned?
that, you know, there could be attacks here in the United States and like what then? I I feel like there was already an attack on the United States that that Austin shooting for we haven't heard much about it, but it seemed pretty clearly linked. Yeah. To the Iran war. And if it goes on, I would be very, very surprised if there aren't others, which again, I think means that not only are we fighting a war
for the benefit of citizens in another country, we're doing it by endangering the citizens of our own country for so many different reasons. Uh and I do think if it gets to the point where, you know, this really gets out of hand and you start to see mass casualty attacks in the United States, you know, the history of the United States and and other countries leaves no doubt that emergency measures will be instantly imposed in those emergency measures.
Don't go anywhere uh when there are emergencies. That that that was the history of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act was this radical, extremist, un American law that we needed supposedly in the wake of nine eleven. If they assured us, Oh, don't worry, it's gonna be temporary. Here we are, twenty twenty six, it's part of our Woodwork and nobody ever talks about it anymore. That's how quickly these things can get normalized. Man, it's
Well, I I hope you never go off the air because I I hope this isn't our last conversation. Glenn Greenwald, thank you for all your time and your wisdom. Keep up the great work, Doctor. Always great to see you.