Latest / The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson / In Defense of Western Civilization: Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg One-on-One
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome.
- 0:01Speaker 2: It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
- 0:03Speaker 2: It's so nice to have you with us wherever you
- 0:06Speaker 2: are around the country. And this episode is going to
- 0:08Speaker 2: be a really fun one. So if you're listening on audio,
- 0:11Speaker 2: you might want to check it out on YouTube as well. Senator,
- 0:13Speaker 2: I tell you, you and I have moments. where we
- 0:16Speaker 2: sit there and we're like, can you believe that went viral?
- 0:19Speaker 2: We had a few of those moments with a sit-down
- 0:22Speaker 2: with Tucker Carlson, and you had the brilliant idea of,
- 0:25Speaker 2: you know what, that individual we should probably ask to
- 0:28Speaker 2: come on Verdict and talk about the insanity of that
- 0:30Speaker 2: conversation and what was said in Europe about Germany, about
- 0:35Speaker 2: the Nazis. It was truly incredible, and so I want
- 0:38Speaker 2: you to go ahead and introduce our guest.
- 0:40Speaker 3: Well, we're very pleased to welcome to Verdict Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.
- 0:44Speaker 3: Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg was previously Minister of State and Minister
- 0:49Speaker 3: for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency in the Cabinet Office
- 0:53Speaker 3: between February 8, 2022 and September 6, 2022. He was
- 0:59Speaker 3: the Lord President of the Council and the Leader of
- 1:02Speaker 3: the Commons from July 24, 2019 to February 8, 2022.
- 1:04Speaker 3: And I've got to say right now, just at the outset,
- 1:11Speaker 3: the British titles are so much cooler than ours are.
- 1:15Speaker 3: I mean, there's just, we don't have a Lord President. Like,
- 1:20Speaker 3: I'm not even exactly sure what that means. But with that,
- 1:27Speaker 3: with those high accolades, we are honored to welcome Sir
- 1:34Speaker 3: Jacob Rees-Mogg to Verdict.
- 1:36Speaker 1: Sir Jacob, we are very glad to have you.
- 1:38Speaker 4: Well, Senator, thank you so much for inviting me. And
- 1:42Speaker 4: though I may have had grand titles, I've always thought
- 1:44Speaker 4: that being a senator of the United States is a
- 1:47Speaker 4: wonderful thing to be, a very, not just a grand title,
- 1:50Speaker 4: but a powerful position that determines the future of the world.
- 1:54Speaker 4: So I'm very flattered that you should invite me on
- 1:56Speaker 4: to your program.
- 1:57Speaker 1: Well, you are very gracious.
- 1:59Speaker 3: You are officially the first knight to be on this show.
- 2:05Speaker 3: And I did have a discussion of what is the
- 2:08Speaker 3: proper appellation. And I was told, Sir Jacob, you Philistine cretin,
- 2:15Speaker 3: which I recognize is probably fair. But in my defense,
- 2:20Speaker 3: for years, Ben has been trying to convince me to
- 2:24Speaker 3: call him Sir Ben.
- 2:25Speaker 5: Yes, yes.
- 2:26Speaker 3: And his argument is that he received a knightly ring
- 2:30Speaker 3: in a box of Captain Crunch.
- 2:32Speaker 5: Right, right. You get it however you can get it,
- 2:35Speaker 5: Sir Jacob, right? It doesn't matter who does it.
- 2:37Speaker 1: Absolutely right.
- 2:39Speaker 4: But I'm sure you know that being from Texas, you
- 2:42Speaker 4: must like eating beef. The sirloin of beef was knighted
- 2:46Speaker 4: by King James I.
- 2:50Speaker 4: Said this meat is so good, it must be knighted.
- 2:53Speaker 4: And the loin of beef became the sirloin of beef.
- 2:56Speaker 5: And that's actually true.
- 2:57Speaker 1: Wow.
- 2:58Speaker 2: Who says you don't learn something every day on this
- 3:00Speaker 2: show right there?
- 3:01Speaker 5: I like it.
- 3:02Speaker 2: I got to tell you, I love when I get
- 3:03Speaker 2: to talk to you about organizations that are having a
- 3:07Speaker 2: major impact. And I get to tell you about it
- 3:09Speaker 2: because then we get to make a big difference in
- 3:12Speaker 2: someone's life. And if you're going to change someone's life,
- 3:15Speaker 2: You want to know that it actually lasts, and that's
- 3:17Speaker 2: one of the many reasons Compassion International has become one
- 3:21Speaker 2: of the most trusted child development ministries in the world. Now,
- 3:25Speaker 2: independent research shows children sponsored through Compassion stay in school longer.
- 3:31Speaker 2: They're 40% more likely to graduate high school and 80%
- 3:34Speaker 2: more likely to finish college. Now, those numbers, especially coming
- 3:38Speaker 2: from third world countries, are unbelievable. And why does this happen?
- 3:42Speaker 2: It's because sponsorship isn't just temporary relief. It's a long-term
- 3:47Speaker 2: investment through, and this is the key, the local church,
- 3:51Speaker 2: meeting the fiscal needs while sharing the hope of Jesus. Now,
- 3:55Speaker 2: I do this, and it is so rewarding to know
- 3:58Speaker 2: that I'm helping someone, and I want you to do
- 4:00Speaker 2: it as well.
- 4:01Speaker 5: For only $ 43 a.
- 4:02Speaker 2: Month, you can help shape a child's future. It's also
- 4:06Speaker 2: a great way to teach your children or your grandchildren
- 4:09Speaker 2: about helping others. And you can sponsor a child today
- 4:12Speaker 2: at Compassion.com. That's Compassion.com.
- 4:18Speaker 3: So let me start with a little background, which is
- 4:21Speaker 3: when did you first get into the world of politics?
- 4:24Speaker 3: When did you first enter Parliament?
- 4:27Speaker 4: I first entered Parliament in 2010 when David Cameron became
- 4:31Speaker 4: Prime Minister and won that election. I'd obviously been involved
- 4:35Speaker 4: in politics before I'd stood for parliament before, but that
- 4:37Speaker 4: was when I went into the House of Commons.
- 4:40Speaker 3: As Ben mentioned, recently, a couple weeks ago, you sat
- 4:43Speaker 3: down for an interview with Tucker Carlson. Tucker is someone
- 4:47Speaker 3: Ben and I both know exceedingly well.
- 4:50Speaker 1: We've known him a long time.
- 4:52Speaker 3: I'm curious, when you received the invitation to go on
- 4:55Speaker 3: a show to sit for the interview, what prompted you
- 4:58Speaker 3: to say yes, that this was a conversation in which
- 5:01Speaker 3: you wanted to participate?
- 5:02Speaker 1: It's a very good question.
- 5:03Speaker 4: I'd heard of Tucker Carlson, but I knew very little
- 5:07Speaker 4: about him. I knew that he'd done an interview with
- 5:12Speaker 4: President Putin and that he was seen as quite a
- 5:15Speaker 4: controversial figure. So I consulted some of my political advisors
- 5:21Speaker 4: to see whether they thought this was a good idea
- 5:23Speaker 4: or not. And I've always broadly taken the view that
- 5:26Speaker 4: you want to discuss things with people. If you believe
- 5:29Speaker 4: in freedom of speech, you want to debate with them.
- 5:32Speaker 4: And that although he's given a platform to some pretty
- 5:35Speaker 4: unsavory people, including obviously Putin himself, that's not a reason
- 5:39Speaker 4: not to talk to him. Because if you talk to him,
- 5:41Speaker 4: you may be able to get your message across to
- 5:44Speaker 4: his supporters and followers. So I thought it was a
- 5:47Speaker 4: risk worth taking. And he happened to be in London
- 5:51Speaker 4: the following week. And I also thought he fundamentally misunderstood
- 5:55Speaker 4: what I'd said about being prepared for war. suggesting this
- 5:59Speaker 4: was warmongering, which it obviously isn't.
- 6:01Speaker 7: Being prepared for.
- 6:01Speaker 1: War is not warmongering.
- 6:04Speaker 7: It's trying to avoid war.
- 6:05Speaker 3: Well, that is exactly right. And the argument that the
- 6:09Speaker 3: isolationists make is that withdrawing from the world and weakness
- 6:15Speaker 3: somehow avoids the risk of military conflict. And we have
- 6:19Speaker 3: only millennia of human history to the contrary, that when
- 6:23Speaker 3: a nation is weak, when they are unprepared to defend themselves,
- 6:26Speaker 3: that's when they become attractive to bullies and tyrants and
- 6:30Speaker 3: invading armies, and history has shown that the strongest, the
- 6:35Speaker 3: easiest way, the best way to avoid war is to
- 6:38Speaker 3: be so strong that your enemies don't want to mess
- 6:40Speaker 3: with you. It is what Ronald Reagan referred to as
- 6:44Speaker 3: peace through strength, and that's a concept that the isolationists,
- 6:50Speaker 3: it simply eludes them. I want to say at the
- 6:55Speaker 3: outset that Sir Jacob, your performance in that interview was
- 7:00Speaker 3: simply masterful and it was as if you took Tucker
- 7:05Speaker 3: as an ill-behaved and petulant second grader and you very
- 7:09Speaker 3: calmly put him over your knee and showed him the
- 7:13Speaker 3: discipline which I am now convinced in his upbringing was
- 7:18Speaker 3: sorely lacking, that I think nobody properly spanked Tucker and
- 7:23Speaker 3: he has continued down this road as a consequence. I
- 7:27Speaker 3: have to say, when you sat down, you may have
- 7:30Speaker 3: had some curiosity. What questions is this American going to
- 7:35Speaker 3: ask me? Where are they going to come from? Did
- 7:38Speaker 3: you envision that it would start with the question of,
- 7:44Speaker 3: are we glad with who won World War II, and
- 7:47Speaker 3: wouldn't it be better if the Nazis had won World
- 7:49Speaker 3: War II?
- 7:50Speaker 1: Did that surprise you?
- 7:52Speaker 4: Yes, it seemed to me a completely extraordinary question. It
- 7:55Speaker 4: didn't seem to me a question a serious person would ask.
- 7:58Speaker 4: There are debates about many wars as to whether they
- 8:01Speaker 4: were right to fight or not. But the one which
- 8:05Speaker 4: seems to me to be the most obvious that had
- 8:08Speaker 4: to be fought is the one against Nazi Germany, that
- 8:12Speaker 4: Hitler wanted to dominate the whole of Europe, ideally the world,
- 8:17Speaker 4: and he was never going to stop. And he had
- 8:20Speaker 4: to be stopped because what he wanted to do was evil.
- 8:25Speaker 4: And I think there is a fight between good and
- 8:27Speaker 4: evil and that politicians, statesmen have to take their position
- 8:32Speaker 4: on this, commentators as well. So no, I was very
- 8:36Speaker 4: surprised that that was the line of questioning. And it
- 8:40Speaker 4: didn't seem to me to be a very difficult answer
- 8:41Speaker 4: to say that that war was fundamental and that Yes,
- 8:46Speaker 4: it cost the UK a great deal of money and
- 8:48Speaker 4: a great number of lives, but it was nonetheless not
- 8:52Speaker 4: only the right thing to do, but led to a
- 8:55Speaker 4: better world afterwards for every country that came through it.
- 8:59Speaker 3: Well, and I think you saw in that interview, Tucker
- 9:02Speaker 3: Carlson is, I have said many times, I think he
- 9:05Speaker 3: is the most dangerous demagogue in America.
- 9:08Speaker 1: And he uses a host of tools. He uses sophistry.
- 9:12Speaker 3: And I was very glad just a minute ago in
- 9:14Speaker 3: your answer, you made reference to the fact that Hitler
- 9:17Speaker 3: was evil and what he was doing was evil. And
- 9:21Speaker 3: I very much believe that good and evil exist, that
- 9:24Speaker 3: there is objective truth. Not everything is black and white,
- 9:27Speaker 3: but many things are black and white. And what the
- 9:30Speaker 3: Nazis did, standing up concentration camps, exterminating more than six
- 9:37Speaker 3: million Jews, also exterminating gypsies and homosexuals and people with
- 9:41Speaker 3: disabilities systematically putting human beings in gas chambers and ovens
- 9:48Speaker 3: to engage in genocide, to engage in mass murder, not
- 9:52Speaker 3: to mention to engage in horrific torture and rape and
- 9:56Speaker 3: all kinds of human abuse, there is no gray about that.
- 10:00Speaker 3: There is no ambiguity. That is not just one country
- 10:03Speaker 3: ordinarily fighting. That is the very embodiment of evil. And
- 10:08Speaker 3: part of what Tucker does frequently is elide over evil.
- 10:13Speaker 3: When he looks to the Middle East, when he sees
- 10:16Speaker 3: Hamas on October 7th coming into Israel and murdering more
- 10:21Speaker 3: than 1,200 Israelis, raping little girls, raping women, kidnapping over
- 10:27Speaker 3: 200 Israelis, murdering dozens of Americans, raping Americans, kidnapping Americans
- 10:34Speaker 3: for him, that does not rise to the level of
- 10:37Speaker 3: evil and instead he engages in a moral equivalence where
- 10:42Speaker 3: he has said in another one of his shows that
- 10:45Speaker 3: he doesn't know if Hamas is a terrorist organization He
- 10:49Speaker 3: thinks they may just be a political movement, and that's
- 10:52Speaker 3: the same process of alighting over the facts and erasing evil,
- 10:59Speaker 3: and it's not a new trick for a demagogue, but
- 11:02Speaker 3: it is one of Tucker's favorites, and it is, I believe,
- 11:06Speaker 3: thoroughly dishonest.
- 11:07Speaker 4: Well, I'm not a moral relativist. I think there are
- 11:10Speaker 4: absolutes in morality, and I agree with you entirely on
- 11:14Speaker 4: Hamas and the point that you make, and I think
- 11:18Speaker 4: that It is in all our interests, America's interests, Britain's interests,
- 11:23Speaker 4: to try and maintain as much order in the world
- 11:27Speaker 4: as is possible. We can't put every wrong right. We
- 11:31Speaker 4: can't do anything effectively to help the Uyghurs in China.
- 11:35Speaker 4: But that there are many things we can do. And
- 11:38Speaker 4: supporting Israel against a threat to its very existence is important,
- 11:43Speaker 4: not least because the stable order that we want is
- 11:48Speaker 4: built upon the nation state. And I think this is
- 11:50Speaker 4: absolutely fundamental. The rights of countries are based on nation states,
- 11:55Speaker 4: and that terrorists and foreign powers that wish to destroy
- 11:58Speaker 4: individual nation states have to be opposed, because if they're not,
- 12:03Speaker 4: the risk ends up coming to the bigger nation states,
- 12:06Speaker 4: who find, by having sat back and done nothing, that
- 12:10Speaker 4: they are ultimately under threat. It's the Old line from Kipling,
- 12:13Speaker 4: if you keep paying Danegeld, the Dane doesn't go away.
- 12:16Speaker 4: If you don't project strength, if you're not able to
- 12:18Speaker 4: defend yourself, then you will find that ultimately people are
- 12:21Speaker 4: coming after you.
- 12:23Speaker 3: Well, I think that's right, and I think it is
- 12:26Speaker 3: also incumbent on leaders, particularly leaders in Western democracies, to
- 12:32Speaker 3: call out evil where they see it.
- 12:34Speaker 1: And these are distinct questions.
- 12:35Speaker 3: One question is whether you speak the truth about what
- 12:39Speaker 3: is happening. A second question is which doesn't necessarily follow,
- 12:43Speaker 3: is what steps do you take in response to that evil,
- 12:47Speaker 3: and in particular, does that necessarily entail military conflict? That
- 12:51Speaker 3: is an altogether different question. So as you noted, the Uyghurs,
- 12:56Speaker 3: the Chinese communist government, has over one million Uyghurs, an
- 13:00Speaker 3: ethnic minority Muslim Chinese, who are in concentration camps. It
- 13:05Speaker 3: is the largest instance of human slavery on planet Earth
- 13:08Speaker 3: right now. and it is a grotesque human rights violation. Now,
- 13:14Speaker 3: I think any leader of decency and morality has an
- 13:19Speaker 3: obligation to call it out, to call it out for
- 13:21Speaker 3: what it is, which is torture and murder and slavery. Likewise,
- 13:26Speaker 3: when the Chinese Communist government engages in forced organ harvesting
- 13:33Speaker 3: from the Falun Gong, a religious minority where they forcibly
- 13:36Speaker 3: remove organs in many instances, killing the person in the
- 13:40Speaker 3: process and take the organs to give them to some
- 13:42Speaker 3: other citizen whom they deem more valuable, I think all
- 13:46Speaker 3: of us have an obligation to call.
- 13:48Speaker 1: It out and say that is wrong. Now, there's a
- 13:49Speaker 1: distinct question.
- 13:51Speaker 3: Neither the United States nor the United Kingdom have sent
- 13:54Speaker 3: tanks into China to invade, to shut down those concentration camps.
- 14:00Speaker 3: You could make an argument that we should. You could
- 14:03Speaker 3: make an argument that we should not. But either way,
- 14:07Speaker 3: The threshold for military action is substantially higher, and the
- 14:10Speaker 3: bare minimum is, can you speak with moral clarity and
- 14:13Speaker 3: call it out? And I believe doing so has enormous power.
- 14:18Speaker 3: For me, the formative and transformational foreign policy and national
- 14:26Speaker 3: security event of our lifetimes was the fall of the
- 14:30Speaker 3: Soviet Union, was winning the Cold War.
- 14:33Speaker 1: And that did not happen by accident.
- 14:35Speaker 3: That did not happen just with the.
- 14:38Speaker 1: Winds of time.
- 14:38Speaker 3: It happened because of clear and strong leadership. And it
- 14:43Speaker 3: happened because of clear and strong leadership from President Ronald
- 14:46Speaker 3: Reagan in the United States and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
- 14:50Speaker 3: in the United Kingdom and Pope John Paul II. And
- 14:54Speaker 3: the world was blessed to have those three leaders converge
- 14:58Speaker 3: with the moral clarity and the moral strength.
- 15:01Speaker 1: To stand up to the Soviet Union.
- 15:04Speaker 3: And in my view, we are in a similar time
- 15:07Speaker 3: where we need similar clarity and strength.
- 15:10Speaker 4: Well, I agree with absolutely everything that you have said.
- 15:13Speaker 4: I think the clear moral leadership of Pope John Paul II,
- 15:18Speaker 4: the military might of Ronald Reagan, that he spent an
- 15:22Speaker 4: enormous amount of your taxpayers' money to ensure that America's
- 15:27Speaker 4: defense was the best in the world and Russia simply
- 15:30Speaker 4: couldn't keep up. And then the sheer backbone of Margaret
- 15:33Speaker 4: Thatcher was a combination that meant the Cold War was
- 15:37Speaker 4: won without a shot being fired.
- 15:39Speaker 1: Yes.
- 15:39Speaker 4: And this is tremendously important because it was won through
- 15:43Speaker 4: strength and deterrence. It wasn't won through giving in to Russia,
- 15:49Speaker 4: allowing it to get away with things, saying things that
- 15:52Speaker 4: were wrong were right. And I think in the context
- 15:54Speaker 4: with China and Whether our relationship with China can improve
- 15:58Speaker 4: or not, I don't know.
- 15:59Speaker 7: But I think China is a major security risk.
- 16:02Speaker 4: There, the issue is, can Taiwan be defended by.
- 16:07Speaker 7: A similar level of deterrence?
- 16:09Speaker 4: It's utterly impractical to go into China to protect the Uyghurs,
- 16:12Speaker 4: that China is too strong and it would be too
- 16:16Speaker 4: great a war and something that we could not undertake.
- 16:19Speaker 4: But the doctrine of deterrence has protected Taiwan already for
- 16:22Speaker 4: a long time. And I think that that is a
- 16:25Speaker 4: very important issue. line in the sand for the Western world.
- 16:28Speaker 2: All right, let me just take a moment. I want
- 16:30Speaker 2: to talk to you real quick about Regent University. I've
- 16:33Speaker 2: known about them and been working with them for years.
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- 16:39Speaker 2: let me just say this. Somewhere along the way, we
- 16:41Speaker 2: got this crazy idea that a serious education and a
- 16:44Speaker 2: strong Christian faith have to live in two different worlds.
- 16:47Speaker 5: Well, guess what?
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- 16:51Speaker 2: isn't an afterthought. It's at the heart of the education. Now,
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- 17:03Speaker 2: Regent is serious about academics. With more than 150 areas
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- 17:12Speaker 2: Because a great education shouldn't just prepare you to make
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- 17:44Speaker 2: That's regent.edu, Regent University, Christian leadership to change the world.
- 17:50Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question on that, and it
- 17:51Speaker 2: deals with the incredible relationship the U.S. has had with
- 17:55Speaker 2: the U.K., There are some that think it's very strained
- 17:58Speaker 2: right now.
- 17:58Speaker 5: I want your take.
- 18:00Speaker 2: If things like that happen, where the UK and the
- 18:03Speaker 2: US have to unite on a front to say, hey,
- 18:06Speaker 2: we're going to stand with Taiwan, for example, how do
- 18:09Speaker 2: you feel like the relationship is, from your perspective, with
- 18:13Speaker 2: Parliament and with the leadership in your country and the
- 18:15Speaker 2: US right now?
- 18:16Speaker 4: Well, I think that Sir Keir Starmer made a mistake
- 18:21Speaker 4: in not supporting the United States in what it's been
- 18:25Speaker 4: doing in Iran. even though I wish your president had
- 18:28Speaker 4: not done what he's done in Iran. I think that
- 18:31Speaker 4: our relationship with America means that we should support you,
- 18:35Speaker 4: even if we have questions about the policy you're following,
- 18:38Speaker 4: because your contribution to global security is fundamental. And to
- 18:43Speaker 4: make that contribution, you need allies.
- 18:45Speaker 7: So I.
- 18:47Speaker 4: Think it is really very important that the UK supports
- 18:51Speaker 4: the US, works alongside the US, recognising that you are
- 18:55Speaker 4: the power that it is your decision, not ours, but
- 18:59Speaker 4: that our security actually is very dependent on a good
- 19:01Speaker 4: relationship with you, as is global security. And I think
- 19:05Speaker 4: that in relation to Taiwan, yes, there would be people
- 19:09Speaker 4: in England who say it hasn't got a lot to
- 19:11Speaker 4: do with us, a faraway country of which we know
- 19:13Speaker 4: very little. But I would certainly be arguing that the
- 19:16Speaker 4: defense of a place that has an active democracy operates
- 19:22Speaker 4: like a country ought to be defended against an aggressor
- 19:26Speaker 4: as a matter of principle, even if that means you're
- 19:29Speaker 4: having to protect them against mainland China, against communist China.
- 19:35Speaker 1: Well, and Sir Jacob, I'd say a couple of things
- 19:37Speaker 1: on that.
- 19:38Speaker 3: Number one, let me underscore the special relationship between your
- 19:42Speaker 3: nation and our nation, that we have a long and
- 19:46Speaker 3: shared history right from the very founding of our nation.
- 19:48Speaker 3: And it is a it is a valuable, it is unique,
- 19:52Speaker 3: it is a special relationship. I have joked that in
- 19:55Speaker 3: my marriage, that we have a mixed marriage, because I'm
- 20:00Speaker 3: an Anglophile and Heidi is a Francophile. And as you
- 20:04Speaker 3: know well, that is a fundamentally different orientation on life.
- 20:08Speaker 3: And I got to say, I have a deep respect
- 20:11Speaker 3: for British society, for the courage of a not terribly
- 20:16Speaker 3: large island nation through which developed the principles of the
- 20:21Speaker 3: Magna Carta and rule of law and fundamental rights and
- 20:25Speaker 3: democratic representation and became an empire that bestrode the world,
- 20:33Speaker 3: but did so in a way that brought values, those
- 20:36Speaker 3: same values of human rights, of equality, of democratic representation
- 20:41Speaker 3: and and and uh... the principles upon which we based
- 20:44Speaker 3: america we got very directly uh... from the united kingdom
- 20:49Speaker 3: and and our shared values so so that relationship i
- 20:52Speaker 3: think is and should be incredibly valuable on the second
- 20:57Speaker 3: point on taiwan i would i would suggest a slightly
- 21:00Speaker 3: different way of looking at it which which is you
- 21:03Speaker 3: you mentioned uh... an obligation to protect a democracy in
- 21:07Speaker 3: the face of uh.
- 21:09Speaker 1: hostility and aggression. And I understand that argument.
- 21:13Speaker 3: I would have a different take on it in that
- 21:15Speaker 3: I believe American foreign policy should focus like a laser
- 21:19Speaker 3: on the vital national security interest of the United States.
- 21:23Speaker 3: I think a mistake American foreign policy made in previous
- 21:27Speaker 3: decades is getting away from that central focus. And indeed,
- 21:32Speaker 3: if you look during the George W. Bush presidency, I
- 21:36Speaker 3: think you saw interventionists who argued, we must protect democracy
- 21:41Speaker 3: wherever it occurs. And then, look, the Iraq War, for example,
- 21:47Speaker 3: I believe the Iraq War was a mistake because we
- 21:50Speaker 3: got away from the objective of protecting U.S. national security,
- 21:53Speaker 3: instead came in and tried to transform Iraq into Switzerland,
- 22:00Speaker 3: into a democratic utopia. And I don't think it is
- 22:03Speaker 3: the job of the American military to try to transfer
- 22:08Speaker 3: other countries into democratic utopias. It's certainly not our job
- 22:12Speaker 3: to risk our sons and daughters to do so. The
- 22:15Speaker 3: reason Taiwan is so incredibly important, and it is incredibly
- 22:19Speaker 3: important to the United States, it's incredibly important to the
- 22:21Speaker 3: United Kingdom, is Taiwan produces a vast percentage of the
- 22:28Speaker 3: advanced semiconductors that are used in just about everything in
- 22:31Speaker 3: the world, whether from our fighter jets and our destroyers
- 22:35Speaker 3: and our satellites to to our cell phones, to our
- 22:38Speaker 3: cars and trucks, and were China to invade Taiwan and
- 22:43Speaker 3: seize that advanced semiconductor production, it would give China a
- 22:48Speaker 3: massive economic stranglehold and military stranglehold. And so from my view,
- 22:54Speaker 3: that's what makes it compelling, is Taiwan remaining free significantly
- 23:00Speaker 3: advances American national security and economic security, and it also
- 23:04Speaker 3: significantly advances British economic and national security.
- 23:08Speaker 4: Yes, I certainly agree with that. I'm not a liberal interventionist.
- 23:11Speaker 4: I don't think it is the job of America or
- 23:14Speaker 4: Britain to go into countries, foreign countries, to enforce a
- 23:18Speaker 4: particular constitutional settlement. I suppose with Taiwan, when I was
- 23:23Speaker 4: saying a democracy, I was dancing around the point of
- 23:27Speaker 4: it being a sovereign state. It is a de facto
- 23:30Speaker 4: sovereign state, though not one either of our countries recognize.
- 23:33Speaker 6: Right.
- 23:34Speaker 4: And that's a complicating factor. But I don't think either
- 23:37Speaker 4: of us really think that it is merely a province
- 23:40Speaker 4: of China.
- 23:41Speaker 3: Well, and what terrifies China is that you have ethnic
- 23:48Speaker 3: Chinese living in Taiwan whose background, history, education is identical
- 23:56Speaker 3: to the Chinese on mainland China. And you've got 1.3
- 23:59Speaker 3: billion Chinese citizens who look over at Taiwan and they
- 24:03Speaker 3: see the incredible prosperity in Taiwan. They see human rights,
- 24:08Speaker 3: they see free speech in Taiwan, and they see that
- 24:11Speaker 3: the lives of their Chinese brethren living in Taiwan are much,
- 24:15Speaker 3: much better than the lives of the Chinese citizens living
- 24:19Speaker 3: in mainland China. And that utterly terrifies the communist regime.
- 24:25Speaker 3: And in my experience, dictatorial regimes are terrified of their
- 24:30Speaker 3: own citizens. They're terrified of their citizens realizing It doesn't
- 24:35Speaker 3: have to be this way. They don't have to live
- 24:37Speaker 3: under tyranny. And it's why calling out evil is so problematic. Now,
- 24:44Speaker 3: I want to go back to what Tucker's endeavor was.
- 24:47Speaker 3: He's engaged in a series of endeavors. One of his
- 24:50Speaker 3: endeavors is to say, Hamas and the Islamists, they aren't
- 24:53Speaker 3: so bad. A second endeavor he's engaged in is to say,
- 24:58Speaker 3: Putin and Russia, they aren't so bad. And a third
- 25:01Speaker 3: endeavor he's engaged in saying is, Hitler and the Nazis,
- 25:05Speaker 3: they aren't so bad.
- 25:06Speaker 5: There's a theme there, right, Senator? Like, it's a consistent theme.
- 25:09Speaker 2: Take the worst things in the world, the worst parts
- 25:11Speaker 2: of history, and just kind of whitewash it or make
- 25:14Speaker 2: people numb to it.
- 25:14Speaker 5: Like, oh, it wasn't really that big of a deal.
- 25:16Speaker 3: Well, and he goes through systematically, and one can... Actually,
- 25:20Speaker 3: I was going to say, one can pose the question,
- 25:22Speaker 3: why would he be trying to rehabilitate and defend Hamas
- 25:28Speaker 3: and Putin... and Hitler. And let me pose that question
- 25:31Speaker 3: to you. I know you're not a psychiatrist, but do
- 25:34Speaker 3: you have any thoughts on what's going on there?
- 25:37Speaker 7: Well, there are a number of thoughts.
- 25:39Speaker 4: First of all, he could just be doing it for
- 25:41Speaker 4: the cash, that it gets him a lot of clicks,
- 25:43Speaker 4: it makes him a lot of money. That's his business.
- 25:47Speaker 4: And there is a temptation for people whose income stream
- 25:51Speaker 4: is dependent on social media to say increasingly extreme things
- 25:56Speaker 4: to keep.
- 25:56Speaker 7: The clicks up, the clickbait approach.
- 25:59Speaker 4: The second is that there's long been a political view
- 26:04Speaker 4: in America that is isolationist. And the counter to that
- 26:08Speaker 4: is of course, that in the second world war, what
- 26:10Speaker 4: America did was fundamentally right. And that if you can
- 26:15Speaker 4: persuade Americans that actually the second world war was a
- 26:18Speaker 4: mistake and it cost you much money, then you're able
- 26:21Speaker 4: to make a stronger case for isolationism as a political
- 26:24Speaker 4: force today. And as that strain, And I feel rather
- 26:29Speaker 4: embarrassed to talk to great experts on American politics about
- 26:33Speaker 4: my understanding of it from abroad. But there is this
- 26:37Speaker 4: strain of isolationism. And if you can say that the
- 26:40Speaker 4: Second World War wasn't worth fighting, you strengthen that strain.
- 26:43Speaker 4: So it becomes very politically powerful. And it's why it's
- 26:47Speaker 4: so important to stop, because the world obviously benefits from
- 26:52Speaker 4: American leadership. But dare I suggest America does too, that
- 26:57Speaker 4: it is actually the way in which America has become
- 27:01Speaker 4: very prosperous, because by creating an essentially peaceful world, there
- 27:05Speaker 4: are huge markets for American goods and services. There's economic
- 27:09Speaker 4: growth that benefits American citizens. There is a world of stability,
- 27:15Speaker 4: which leads to prosperity. And so there is an interest
- 27:18Speaker 4: in ensuring that that is maintained. But that requires an
- 27:22Speaker 4: active American presence on the world stage. And moving away
- 27:26Speaker 4: from that would risk world stability, but also would probably
- 27:30Speaker 4: make Americans poorer.
- 27:32Speaker 1: I very much agree.
- 27:34Speaker 3: You know, one of the exchanges from your interview with
- 27:37Speaker 3: Tucker that went viral was the exchange where he suggested
- 27:41Speaker 3: the UK would have been better off if the Nazis
- 27:44Speaker 3: had won World War II. I want us to watch
- 27:47Speaker 3: that exchange and then get your thoughts and comments on it.
- 27:52Speaker 1: Let's give a listen.
- 27:53Speaker 6: Has the UK benefited from it?
- 27:55Speaker 7: We did the right thing.
- 27:56Speaker 6: Is it a better country than it was? To have
- 27:58Speaker 6: defeated Hitler, yes. So the UK is a better country now.
- 28:01Speaker 6: It's a healthier country now.
- 28:03Speaker 7: Otherwise, we'll be speaking German.
- 28:05Speaker 6: Who cares? There are a lot of people in Britain
- 28:07Speaker 6: who can't speak English. So it would be nice to
- 28:09Speaker 6: have at least a European language spoken in your country.
- 28:12Speaker 4: No, I see no advantage speaking German over any other language.
- 28:16Speaker 7: We want to speak English. Thank you so much.
- 28:19Speaker 5: You can't make it up, and yet it happened.
- 28:22Speaker 2: And as the senator and I watched this, I remember
- 28:24Speaker 2: someone texted to me, Jacob, and it was like, did
- 28:27Speaker 2: that really just happen?
- 28:28Speaker 5: Did he really just say that?
- 28:30Speaker 2: And then I think Senator said the clip, and I
- 28:32Speaker 2: was like, yep, we're all on the same page on
- 28:34Speaker 2: this one.
- 28:35Speaker 5: What in the world?
- 28:36Speaker 2: When you were having that exchange, what was that like?
- 28:39Speaker 4: Well, you know, many years ago, I was interviewed by
- 28:44Speaker 4: a man called Ali G.
- 28:46Speaker 1: who is a comedian.
- 28:48Speaker 4: And... When he came to interview me, he'd never been
- 28:51Speaker 4: on telly before, so I had no idea who he was.
- 28:53Speaker 4: And he sat down, he asked me a whole stream
- 28:55Speaker 4: of completely daft questions, which for an extended period I
- 28:59Speaker 4: answered to the best of my ability. And I had
- 29:02Speaker 4: a similar experience with Tucker Carlson, thinking, why am I
- 29:04Speaker 4: being asked completely bizarre questions, to which the answer is obvious,
- 29:09Speaker 4: and every sensible person will agree that the thought that
- 29:14Speaker 4: Britain would have been better off if we had been
- 29:16Speaker 4: taken over by the Germans.
- 29:18Speaker 7: not just.
- 29:19Speaker 4: Speaking German, but have lost all our ancient rights. We're
- 29:21Speaker 4: already mentioned Senator Magna Carta and the history of freedom
- 29:24Speaker 4: that this country has and your country enjoys too.
- 29:27Speaker 7: All that would have been gone.
- 29:29Speaker 4: And it's almost impossible to comprehend that somebody of such
- 29:33Speaker 4: intelligence and capability as Tucker Carlson, he's clearly not a fool,
- 29:38Speaker 4: would even want to posture that we would have been
- 29:40Speaker 4: better off if we just allowed the Germans to take over.
- 29:43Speaker 3: Well, and I will say that that clip was a
- 29:46Speaker 3: particular illustration of one of the tricks of sophistry that
- 29:51Speaker 3: Tucker regularly employs, which is he says, well, gosh, do
- 29:55Speaker 3: you think things are better now? And I don't want
- 29:59Speaker 3: to put words in your mouth, but I suspect you
- 30:02Speaker 3: would agree that in certain aspects, and maybe even many aspects,
- 30:07Speaker 3: life in Britain today has gotten worse than, say, life
- 30:11Speaker 3: in Britain in the 50s and 60s. I would agree
- 30:14Speaker 3: with that proposition in the United States, that there are
- 30:16Speaker 3: many aspects of our society from the 50s and 60s
- 30:19Speaker 3: that we have seen deteriorate in a way that is
- 30:22Speaker 3: deeply harmful. Would you agree with that statement that life
- 30:26Speaker 3: has gotten worse in some respects?
- 30:29Speaker 4: Well, you mentioned life, and life seems to me to
- 30:31Speaker 4: be at the heart of this. We have this great
- 30:33Speaker 4: tragedy in this country that 250,000 babies are killed every year.
- 30:38Speaker 4: That is something that did not happen in the 1950s.
- 30:41Speaker 4: So there are elements of our society that are deemed
- 30:46Speaker 4: to be progressive that I think have been extraordinarily damaging
- 30:50Speaker 4: to society. but they don't really correlate with the Second
- 30:53Speaker 4: World War and whether or not it was right to
- 30:55Speaker 4: fight the Second World War.
- 30:57Speaker 1: Well, and it slides forward.
- 31:00Speaker 3: When I look at Britain and when I look at
- 31:02Speaker 3: Europe as a whole, our country came in a very
- 31:06Speaker 3: real sense from Britain and from Europe. My ancestors are
- 31:11Speaker 3: Irish and Italian and Cuban. And our nation really has
- 31:15Speaker 3: been a melting pot from nations all over the world,
- 31:18Speaker 3: but Europe especially and critically in terms of culture, in
- 31:22Speaker 3: terms of the first immigrants who came to America. And
- 31:26Speaker 3: when one is looking at the threats facing Europe, I
- 31:31Speaker 3: see no threat greater than the massive illegal immigration which
- 31:35Speaker 3: the leaders of Europe have welcomed with open arms. And
- 31:39Speaker 3: the Islamification of Europe, where you now see Islamists engaged
- 31:45Speaker 3: in crime. I think the pattern of rapes that we
- 31:50Speaker 3: have seen, rapes of young women carried out by Islamist
- 31:54Speaker 3: violent criminals in the UK is deeply, deeply disturbing. And
- 31:58Speaker 3: the politicians who look the other way and are complicit,
- 32:02Speaker 3: that is deeply, deeply disturbing.
- 32:04Speaker 1: But the.
- 32:06Speaker 3: The sophistry that Tucker is playing is many of his
- 32:10Speaker 3: viewers are aware of that slippery slide down, and they say, well,
- 32:16Speaker 3: I don't like what's happened in the UK. And then
- 32:19Speaker 3: he comes up with this weird non sequitur, which is, well,
- 32:23Speaker 3: it would have been better if Nazis were in charge.
- 32:27Speaker 3: There's nothing about the Nazis that would have been better
- 32:29Speaker 3: than the status quo. If it is right that the
- 32:31Speaker 3: Nazis are evil, if it is right that the Nazis...
- 32:34Speaker 3: engaged in systematic murder and torture and oppression and an
- 32:39Speaker 3: utter violation of human rights, subjecting yourself to evil and
- 32:43Speaker 3: totalitarianism is never, ever, ever better. And here's the final
- 32:48Speaker 3: kicker irony on all this. What Tucker is putting up
- 32:52Speaker 3: as the specter of what's bad in Europe, you know,
- 32:56Speaker 3: he smarmily said, well, at least German is a European language.
- 33:00Speaker 1: Ha ha ha ha ha.
- 33:01Speaker 3: Um, The irony is Tucker also spends a great deal
- 33:05Speaker 3: of time defending Islamists and defending Sharia law and saying
- 33:10Speaker 3: we would be better off with more Islamists and more
- 33:14Speaker 3: Sharia law. In fact, just two weeks ago in the
- 33:16Speaker 3: United States, Tucker formally endorsed Abdul Al-Sayed, an open Islamist,
- 33:24Speaker 3: a man who I believe supports the Muslim Brotherhood, who
- 33:27Speaker 3: is running for Senate as a Democrat in Michigan.
- 33:30Speaker 1: And so the.
- 33:32Speaker 3: specter that Tucker points to as bad, the rise of Islamism,
- 33:36Speaker 3: is in fact a specter he defends. And so he
- 33:40Speaker 3: raises that as a threat and then said, wouldn't we
- 33:42Speaker 3: be better if we had Nazis instead? That is not
- 33:46Speaker 3: what I would call tight or rational or even good
- 33:49Speaker 3: faith argumentation.
- 33:51Speaker 4: No, I completely agree with you. Mass migration has been
- 33:55Speaker 4: a disaster. It's done terrible things to countries and you
- 34:01Speaker 4: have shown the way actually in succeeding in stopping illegal
- 34:05Speaker 4: immigration in the United States since Donald Trump became your
- 34:08Speaker 4: president and we should learn from that and it's caused
- 34:12Speaker 4: great dislocations within society and cultural problems of which the
- 34:18Speaker 4: rape gangs that you refer.
- 34:19Speaker 7: To are a part.
- 34:22Speaker 4: But that has absolutely nothing to do with the defeat
- 34:24Speaker 4: of Hitler as you quite rightly say it's bizarre to
- 34:27Speaker 4: try to connect The two, that these were decisions that
- 34:31Speaker 4: were taken long after the war, that they were taken
- 34:35Speaker 4: for economic reasons that turned out to be mistaken, but
- 34:38Speaker 4: also a hyper-liberalism that is unwilling to say that our
- 34:43Speaker 4: culture is better than other people's. Now, the reason we
- 34:47Speaker 4: were right to defeat Hitler, among other things, was that
- 34:51Speaker 4: the Anglo-Saxon culture was better than the Nazi culture. And
- 34:56Speaker 4: we are entitled to say that one culture is better
- 35:00Speaker 4: than another and therefore to defend it and therefore to
- 35:03Speaker 4: reject the premise of multiculturalism that assumes all cultures are
- 35:07Speaker 4: basically equal.
- 35:08Speaker 7: They're not.
- 35:09Speaker 4: Some are more civilized than others. And I think the
- 35:12Speaker 4: highest form of Western civilization has been achieved in what
- 35:16Speaker 4: perhaps I would, with a degree of vanity, call the Anglosphere.
- 35:19Speaker 4: But that's the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada
- 35:23Speaker 4: and New Zealand.
- 35:25Speaker 3: Well, and the multicultural lie is every cultural is equally
- 35:30Speaker 3: valuable and you can't make an assessment. And if you
- 35:32Speaker 3: go back to how we started this discussion, with the
- 35:36Speaker 3: recognition that truth exists, good and evil exist, then you
- 35:40Speaker 3: can make relative judgments.
- 35:42Speaker 1: And you look at our societies.
- 35:44Speaker 3: American society was predicated 250 years ago on very simple
- 35:50Speaker 3: but very powerful principles. As Thomas Jefferson penned, in the
- 35:54Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence, we hold these truths to be self-evident,
- 35:59Speaker 3: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
- 36:04Speaker 3: by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
- 36:10Speaker 3: are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now that
- 36:15Speaker 3: was in the document that initially began the war between
- 36:20Speaker 3: my nation and your nation.
- 36:21Speaker 1: We were declaring our independence.
- 36:23Speaker 3: The 56 signers who put their name on the bottom
- 36:26Speaker 3: of that document, they pledged their names, their fortunes, and
- 36:29Speaker 3: their sacred honors. And that was not an idle pledge
- 36:32Speaker 3: because at the time the United Kingdom had the mightiest
- 36:35Speaker 3: military in the world and they were in a very
- 36:37Speaker 3: real sense risking their lives and their fortunes and many
- 36:41Speaker 3: of them lost their lives and their fortunes. But the
- 36:45Speaker 3: principles that were reflected in the Declaration that later were
- 36:48Speaker 3: embodied in the Constitution are the principles of governance that
- 36:53Speaker 3: the Americans had learned from the British, had learned from
- 36:57Speaker 3: the Magna Carta, had learned from the British Bill of Rights.
- 37:00Speaker 3: And those same principles to protect human rights, to treat
- 37:05Speaker 3: all men as equal, to protect free speech and religious liberty.
- 37:10Speaker 1: That is right.
- 37:12Speaker 3: And to violate those rights, to murder and torture and
- 37:17Speaker 3: engage in slavery, that is wrong. And for those moral
- 37:22Speaker 3: relativists that want to blur the two, well, it leads
- 37:24Speaker 3: to things like the exchange where Tucker upbraided you for
- 37:31Speaker 3: the United Kingdom not apologizing to Oswald Mosley.
- 37:36Speaker 1: And I want us to listen to that exchange as well.
- 37:39Speaker 6: Now, the British government did that in the Second World
- 37:41Speaker 6: War immediately.
- 37:42Speaker 7: It did it in the Second World War.
- 37:43Speaker 4: I knew a wonderful man, amazing man. I'd gathered his
- 37:48Speaker 4: father's who was rounded up in 1939 when water was declared,
- 37:54Speaker 4: was put in an enemy aliens camp in Shropshire. And
- 38:00Speaker 4: he was German, Jewish, and all Germans were rounded up.
- 38:04Speaker 4: He was a fighting age. The day he left the camp,
- 38:06Speaker 4: he joined the British Army, and he ended the war
- 38:09Speaker 4: as a brigadier.
- 38:09Speaker 6: Amazing.
- 38:09Speaker 1: Amazing.
- 38:10Speaker 6: Yeah, because he sounds like a very forgiving man.
- 38:12Speaker 7: He was a wonderful man.
- 38:13Speaker 6: He sounds it. But I'm not talking about people who
- 38:16Speaker 6: are rounded up as potential foreign nationals.
- 38:19Speaker 4: We can't round up people for their expression of opinions,
- 38:21Speaker 4: and people must be free to oppose.
- 38:23Speaker 6: But the British government has never apologized for violating its
- 38:27Speaker 6: own ancient principles by rounding up not simply members of
- 38:30Speaker 6: the opposition party, but their families.
- 38:32Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
- 38:33Speaker 6: And I'm talking about the Mosleys, but also everyone who
- 38:35Speaker 6: worked with the Mosleys, the whole leadership, and their wives.
- 38:38Speaker 6: And no one's ever apologized for that.
- 38:40Speaker 1: No one.
- 38:42Speaker 2: The way that he just completely tries to whitewash every
- 38:46Speaker 2: scenario now, the way they just did. When you're sitting there,
- 38:50Speaker 2: what was your reaction to that? Just the thoughts in
- 38:52Speaker 2: your head of what he was saying.
- 38:54Speaker 4: Well, I'm a great believer in freedom of speech. And
- 38:56Speaker 4: I think that strong countries don't lock up their political opponents.
- 39:00Speaker 4: But we were at a state of total war and
- 39:02Speaker 4: that Oswald Moseley was somebody who believed that the other
- 39:06Speaker 4: side should win. And of course, you lock them up
- 39:09Speaker 4: in those circumstances. that you do things in war that
- 39:12Speaker 4: are not the same as ones.
- 39:13Speaker 7: That you do in peace.
- 39:14Speaker 4: You have to, and Churchill said something about this, about
- 39:17Speaker 4: how awful it was that to defeat dictators, you had
- 39:20Speaker 4: to use some of the means of dictators. And that
- 39:23Speaker 4: is just the fact of life. And to apologize to
- 39:26Speaker 4: Oswald Moseley, I think would have been absurd. And to
- 39:29Speaker 4: his family and his friends, they made a conscious decision
- 39:33Speaker 4: to support the enemy at a time of war.
- 39:36Speaker 5: All right, I want to take a moment.
- 39:37Speaker 2: I just want to talk to you about the midterm elections.
- 39:40Speaker 2: Right now, there are enough people listening to this show
- 39:43Speaker 2: that if they don't vote, it could swing key states
- 39:46Speaker 2: in the 2026 election to the Democrats. And everyone listening
- 39:50Speaker 2: knows every single ultra far left Democratic socialist will be
- 39:54Speaker 2: showing up to vote this fall. Democrats and the socialists
- 39:58Speaker 2: are fired up and we can't let them win because
- 40:01Speaker 2: if we lose, they'll undo everything our movement has fought
- 40:04Speaker 2: so hard for. I need you to vote early so
- 40:07Speaker 2: that you can bank your vote and fight back against
- 40:10Speaker 2: the left's turnout machine. Now, if you live in the
- 40:13Speaker 2: critical Senate battleground states of Maine or Ohio, early voting
- 40:17Speaker 2: is already underway starting this week. So go to GOPvotes.org
- 40:24Speaker 2: right now and find out when you can vote. Making
- 40:27Speaker 2: your voice heard is easier than ever. You can get
- 40:30Speaker 2: election reminders. Look up your polling location and pick a
- 40:34Speaker 2: date to vote early. Go to GOPvotes.org today. Paid for
- 40:39Speaker 2: by the CLF PAC, not authorized by any candidate or
- 40:44Speaker 2: candidates committee. There was another interesting point, and the Senator
- 40:48Speaker 2: and I, we saw this, and it was another thing
- 40:49Speaker 2: that went viral. One of the things that Tucker seems
- 40:51Speaker 2: to be obsessed with is defending Russia and putting out
- 40:56Speaker 2: propaganda about Russia and how great it is.
- 40:58Speaker 5: We saw that in the Putin interview.
- 40:59Speaker 2: We saw that in the weirdest thing I've ever seen
- 41:03Speaker 2: him do, which was talking about how somehow Russia had
- 41:06Speaker 2: better grocery stores, United States of America. We've talked about
- 41:08Speaker 2: the Cold War, and we've talked about when the former
- 41:11Speaker 2: leader of the USSR came to Houston, Texas, went to
- 41:14Speaker 2: a grocery store, and realized, like, we need this, we
- 41:18Speaker 2: don't have this. And now he's out there saying, no, no, no, like,
- 41:21Speaker 2: Russia's amazing. One other part of the interview that you
- 41:23Speaker 2: guys did, he was trying to tell the world that
- 41:27Speaker 2: Russia was somehow bigger and better than the UK.
- 41:31Speaker 5: And I want to play that clip as well. Take
- 41:33Speaker 5: a look at this.
- 41:34Speaker 6: So let's explain why Russia would want to pick a
- 41:36Speaker 6: fight with Britain. It's got a much... larger economy than
- 41:41Speaker 6: Britain's by, I think, basic measure.
- 41:43Speaker 4: No, it hasn't got a larger economy than Britain's. It's
- 41:45Speaker 4: got a smaller economy than Britain's. It's got a larger military.
- 41:49Speaker 4: It has a much larger economy. It has much more
- 41:51Speaker 4: wealth and resources. It has a much larger manufacturing sector.
- 41:54Speaker 7: Its GDP is smaller than the UK's.
- 41:57Speaker 6: GDP is not, I mean, the only measure of an economy.
- 42:01Speaker 7: It's a pretty important measure of an economy.
- 42:03Speaker 6: It's one measure.
- 42:05Speaker 7: Russia is an economic failure.
- 42:08Speaker 4: That it could have a huge economy But it's got
- 42:11Speaker 4: a small economy because it's deeply corrupt and it hasn't
- 42:15Speaker 4: managed to use its resources effectively. And so although the
- 42:20Speaker 4: population of Russia is bigger than that of the United
- 42:23Speaker 4: Kingdom very significantly, its GDP per capita is so much
- 42:26Speaker 4: lower that the total GDP of Russia is smaller than
- 42:30Speaker 4: that of the United Kingdom.
- 42:31Speaker 6: Right.
- 42:32Speaker 2: I mean, that's just pure propaganda from Russia at that point.
- 42:35Speaker 7: It was an extraordinary thing for him to say. So
- 42:38Speaker 7: simply factually wrong.
- 42:40Speaker 4: And his apologists have tried to go on about purchasing
- 42:42Speaker 4: power parity GDP, but I'm afraid purchasing power parity GDP
- 42:47Speaker 4: doesn't pay your bonds.
- 42:50Speaker 3: Well, and listen, Tucker has an objective. His objective is
- 42:55Speaker 3: to say Russia and Putin are better than America. His
- 42:59Speaker 3: objective also is to say Hitler and the Nazis are
- 43:03Speaker 3: better than America and better than Britain. He is engaged
- 43:07Speaker 3: in an effort to rehabilitate and indeed to celebrate some
- 43:10Speaker 3: of the greatest villains of the world. Many have asked
- 43:16Speaker 3: whether Tucker is being paid by Qatar and other Islamist sources.
- 43:21Speaker 3: I don't know if he is, but I am a
- 43:23Speaker 3: believer in Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is usually the
- 43:26Speaker 3: right one. And there was a time not too long
- 43:29Speaker 3: ago when Tucker wore bow ties and brought out pom-poms
- 43:33Speaker 3: and was cheering on the Iraq war. And almost every
- 43:37Speaker 3: syllable of every word that came out of his mouth
- 43:39Speaker 3: he has since repudiated. He keeps the pom-poms, but now
- 43:43Speaker 3: they are reserved for Hitler and Putin. And he also engages,
- 43:47Speaker 3: that shows another one of Tucker's methods, which is simply lying.
- 43:53Speaker 3: He engages in debates in a fact-free environment where he
- 43:57Speaker 3: makes assertions that are just wildly wrong on the assumption
- 44:01Speaker 3: that he won't get called out. So he says in
- 44:03Speaker 3: that discussion... well, Russia's economy is much, much larger than
- 44:08Speaker 3: the UK's, to which your response was to laughingly say, well, no,
- 44:12Speaker 3: that happens not to be true. And by the way,
- 44:16Speaker 3: I just pulled out my phone and typed in really quickly,
- 44:19Speaker 3: compare the GDPs of the UK and Russia. And here's
- 44:25Speaker 3: what Google comes up with. The United Kingdom's GDP is
- 44:29Speaker 3: $ 4. 26 trillion. That is ranked fifth globally. Russia's GDP is
- 44:36Speaker 3: $ 2. 65 trillion, ranked ninth globally. So that means the British
- 44:41Speaker 3: economy is nearly twice the size of Russia's economy. But
- 44:47Speaker 3: more importantly, and this is a point, Sir Jacob, you emphasized,
- 44:50Speaker 3: is GDP per capita. Because you rightly observed, Russia's a
- 44:55Speaker 3: much bigger country geographically, but has a much bigger population
- 44:59Speaker 3: than the United Kingdom. GDP per capita. The United Kingdom
- 45:04Speaker 3: is $.
- 45:05Speaker 1: 61, 000 per person.
- 45:06Speaker 3: That is a robust GDP per capita among the highest
- 45:09Speaker 3: in the world. Russian GDP per capita is $ 18, 500 per person.
- 45:18Speaker 3: So less than a third British GDP per capita. And
- 45:24Speaker 3: the reason that Tucker so desperately wants to lie about
- 45:28Speaker 3: this is he's not just trying to rehabilitate Putin.
- 45:34Speaker 1: He's trying to rehabilitate communism.
- 45:36Speaker 3: He's trying to rehabilitate the economic system that justifies the
- 45:40Speaker 3: totalitarianism of Russia and before that the Soviet Union. And
- 45:45Speaker 3: you quite rightly pointed out the Russian economy is an
- 45:48Speaker 3: absolute disaster.
- 45:49Speaker 1: It is a failure.
- 45:51Speaker 3: And Ben made reference to the fact Tucker did a
- 45:56Speaker 3: year or two ago a TV show where he went
- 46:00Speaker 3: to Russia. He interviewed Putin and he went to a
- 46:02Speaker 3: grocery store and he oohed and aahed that they had
- 46:05Speaker 3: some bread on the grocery store shelves. And in his telling,
- 46:09Speaker 3: the Russian grocery store was far nicer than any grocery
- 46:13Speaker 3: store these uncivilized oafs in the United States might have.
- 46:18Speaker 3: And I don't know that Tucker fully realized that he
- 46:22Speaker 3: was at that point, he should have pulled on a
- 46:26Speaker 3: clown suit because he was clowning reality. And ironically, he
- 46:32Speaker 3: was mimicking what had happened decades before when Boris Yeltsin
- 46:36Speaker 3: came to my hometown of Houston and went to a
- 46:40Speaker 3: local grocery store and walked through. And this was not
- 46:43Speaker 3: a grocery store we had singled out as like, oh,
- 46:46Speaker 3: this is the grocery store to show the Soviets and
- 46:48Speaker 3: prove that. It was just a standard grocery store that's
- 46:51Speaker 3: sitting there.
- 46:51Speaker 1: People went shopping.
- 46:53Speaker 3: And he walked in and was utterly flabbergasted at the
- 46:58Speaker 3: 30 different kinds of bread and the fresh fruit and
- 47:02Speaker 3: 40 different kinds of ice cream and everything. And he
- 47:06Speaker 3: marveled at the time that there's no way we can
- 47:09Speaker 3: compete with an economy that can produce this kind of abundance,
- 47:14Speaker 3: this kind of variety. And going back to truth, free
- 47:17Speaker 3: enterprise works. Communism doesn't. Socialism doesn't. Tucker is also engaged
- 47:24Speaker 3: in an endeavor to defend socialism, to defend Zoran Mandami,
- 47:27Speaker 3: to defend Abdul Al-Sayed, to defend Marxists and government control.
- 47:33Speaker 1: And so.
- 47:35Speaker 3: We should wrap up, Sir Jacob, but I want to
- 47:39Speaker 3: ask a question, a general question.
- 47:42Speaker 1: Two parts.
- 47:45Speaker 3: One, why do you believe it is a good thing
- 47:50Speaker 3: that the Allies won World War II? And number two,
- 47:55Speaker 3: What is good and valuable and worth preserving about British
- 48:02Speaker 3: culture and values and American culture and values?
- 48:06Speaker 5: Thank you.
- 48:06Speaker 4: Well, first of all, as an Englishman who's visited America
- 48:11Speaker 4: from time to time, American supermarkets are a level above
- 48:15Speaker 4: from British supermarkets. And we're not too impoverished here. But nonetheless,
- 48:19Speaker 4: your supermarkets are on a scale that we simply don't
- 48:23Speaker 4: see in this country, let alone in Russia. So to
- 48:26Speaker 4: say Russian ones are better is just very, very deeply silly.
- 48:30Speaker 4: What was the reason for fighting the second world war? Well,
- 48:34Speaker 4: of course it was the fight of good against evil.
- 48:37Speaker 4: It was the understanding that sovereign borders need to be respected.
- 48:41Speaker 4: That is the foundation stone of the international order that
- 48:45Speaker 4: we've had really since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
- 48:50Speaker 4: And it creates a stability that allows for prosperity because
- 48:54Speaker 4: if you look, at how prosperity comes about. It comes
- 48:59Speaker 4: about because of free constitutions, where people have rights, where,
- 49:05Speaker 4: in the words of John Fortescue, writing in the 15th century,
- 49:09Speaker 4: so rightly put it, the king is under the law
- 49:12Speaker 4: as well as everybody else. So if you make money,
- 49:14Speaker 4: you keep it. Free societies become prosperous, but a free world.
- 49:18Speaker 7: Is also more prosperous.
- 49:20Speaker 4: The controlled dictatorial world has never managed to be very
- 49:24Speaker 4: prosperous for very long. And so the Second World War
- 49:28Speaker 4: was worth fighting on absolute principles, on the absolute moral
- 49:33Speaker 4: principle of good against evil. And that was worth doing
- 49:36Speaker 4: on and of its own because Hitler was was a
- 49:39Speaker 4: degree of magnitude more evil than other dictators. But it
- 49:44Speaker 4: was also worth fighting because it was in the interest
- 49:47Speaker 4: of prosperity and of freedom. So what do the United
- 49:52Speaker 4: States and the United Kingdom give to the world? And
- 49:56Speaker 4: I expect everyone you speak to from England always says
- 49:59Speaker 4: the affection we have for America. I have a particular
- 50:02Speaker 4: one because, although you may think I sound very English,
- 50:05Speaker 4: actually my grandmother... was American and very proud of being
- 50:11Speaker 4: an American. She died when I was only eight or nine,
- 50:13Speaker 4: but I was very fond of her as a child.
- 50:16Speaker 4: So I have an American connection. What we have given
- 50:20Speaker 4: to the world is this concept of freedom. I think
- 50:24Speaker 4: two countries have beautiful constitutions, yours and mine, and they
- 50:30Speaker 4: are different in one way. Ours is very easy to change.
- 50:34Speaker 4: Yours is very difficult to change. Yours has the judges
- 50:37Speaker 4: who have a degree of extra authority, and ours is
- 50:41Speaker 4: a system where Parliament has all the authority. But the
- 50:44Speaker 4: two systems have protected and preserved freedom and liberty, not
- 50:49Speaker 4: just for our own citizens, but across the world, for
- 50:53Speaker 4: the last 200 years, really. And we've become friends fairly
- 50:57Speaker 4: soon after the American Revolution. We've patched things up. A
- 51:02Speaker 4: lot of people in England recognised the rights of Americans
- 51:07Speaker 4: as people who, had they been in England, would have
- 51:10Speaker 4: had those rights. They're very sympathetic to the arguments being made.
- 51:14Speaker 4: And so we put our differences aside relatively quickly. Certainly
- 51:17Speaker 4: by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, we're getting on
- 51:20Speaker 4: really very well. And we are the force for freedom globally,
- 51:25Speaker 4: which has led to prosperity, living standards that are unimaginable
- 51:29Speaker 4: to our forefathers. And that has been a phenomenal contribution
- 51:35Speaker 4: To the world, but also to our own people. And
- 51:38Speaker 4: I happen to think that if you put your own
- 51:40Speaker 4: national security, your own way of life, your own civilization
- 51:43Speaker 4: and culture first, you then help the rest of the world.
- 51:47Speaker 4: And I think most of the time we've had it
- 51:49Speaker 4: the right way around. Just one final thought on what
- 51:53Speaker 4: you were saying about Mr.
- 51:54Speaker 1: Carlson.
- 51:56Speaker 4: Isn't it interesting that eventually that you become so right
- 51:59Speaker 4: wing that you become practically a communist?
- 52:01Speaker 3: Yep. The horseshoe theory is powerful. We are seeing that overlap.
- 52:07Speaker 3: And it does help to remember that truth is truth
- 52:10Speaker 3: is truth and evil is evil is evil. Sir Jacob,
- 52:14Speaker 3: thank you for joining us. This was a delightful conversation.
- 52:16Speaker 3: I will say next time we will have to do
- 52:19Speaker 3: it in person and perhaps imbibe a bit of scotch
- 52:23Speaker 3: and light up a cigar from my father's homeland. But
- 52:28Speaker 3: fear not, if we do that, we shall burn the evidence.
- 52:32Speaker 3: And I am thankful for your erudition. I am thankful
- 52:36Speaker 3: for your courage. I am thankful for your good spirit.
- 52:40Speaker 3: And let me say, God save the king.
- 52:43Speaker 7: Thank you very much. And may I say, God bless America.
- 52:46Speaker 1: Amen. Thank you.
- 52:48Speaker 2: Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Hit
- 52:50Speaker 2: that subscribe or auto-download button. The Center and I will
- 52:53Speaker 2: see you back here in a few days. And also,
- 52:56Speaker 2: you can watch this video on YouTube or Facebook as
- 52:59Speaker 2: well and share it wherever you can.
- 53:00Speaker 5: We'll see you back here again real soon.