Lex Fridman Podcast
#414 – Tucker Carlson: Putin, Navalny, Trump, CIA, NSA, War, Politics & Freedom
Tue, 27 Feb 2024
Tucker Carlson is a highly-influential political commentator. You can watch and listen to him on the Tucker Carlson Network and the Tucker Carlson Podcast. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - ZipRecruiter: https://ziprecruiter.com/lex - Listening: https://listening.com/lex and use code LEX to get one month free - HiddenLayer: https://hiddenlayer.com/lex - LMNT: https://drinkLMNT.com/lex to get free sample pack - AG1: https://drinkag1.com/lex to get 1 month supply of fish oil Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/tucker-carlson-transcript EPISODE LINKS: Tucker Carlson Network: https://tuckercarlson.com/ Tucker Carlson Podcast: https://tuckercarlson.com/listen/ Tucker's X: https://twitter.com/tuckercarlson Tucker's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@TuckerCarlson Tucker's Instagram: https://instagram.com/tuckercarlson Tucker's Facebook: https://facebook.com/tuckercarlsonTCN/ Vladimir Putin Interview: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fOCWBhuDdDo PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (11:58) - Putin (28:13) - Navalny (49:25) - Moscow (1:08:54) - Freedom of speech (1:15:08) - Jon Stewart (1:27:54) - Ending the War in Ukraine (1:37:21) - Nazis (1:45:48) - Putin's health (1:56:52) - Hitler (2:06:17) - Nuclear war (2:24:36) - Trump (2:41:33) - Israel-Palestine (2:47:42) - Xi Jinping (3:01:40) - Advice for young people (3:06:58) - Hope for the future
The following is a conversation with Tucker Carlson, a highly influential and often controversial political commentator. When he was at Fox, Time Magazine called him the most powerful conservative in America. After Fox, he has continued to host big, impactful interviews and shows on X, on the Tucker Carlson podcast, and on TuckerCarlson.com.
I recommend subscribing, even if you disagree with his views. It is always good to explore a diversity of perspectives. Most recently, he interviewed the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. We discussed this, the topic of Russia, Putin, Navalny, and the war in Ukraine at length in this conversation. Please allow me to say a few words about the very fact that I did this interview.
I have received a lot of criticism, publicly and privately, when I announced that I will be talking with Tucker. For people who think I shouldn't do the conversation with Tucker, or generally think that there are certain people I should never talk to, I'm sorry, but I disagree. I will talk to everyone, as long as they're willing to talk genuinely in long form for two, three, four more hours.
I will talk to Putin and to Zelensky, to Trump and to Biden, to Tucker and to Jon Stewart, AOC, Obama, and many more people with very different views on the world. I want to understand people and ideas. That's what long-form conversations are supposed to be all about. Now, for people who criticize me for not asking tough questions, I hear you, but again, I disagree.
I do often ask tough questions, but I try to do it in a way that doesn't shut down the other person, putting them into a defensive state where they give only shallow talking points. Instead, I'm looking always for the expression of genuinely held ideas, and the deep roots of those ideas.
When done well, this gives us a chance to really hear out the guests and to begin to understand what and how they think. And I trust the intelligence of you, the listener, to make up your own mind, to see through the bullshit, to the degree there's bullshit, and to see to the heart of the person. Sometimes I fail at this, but I'll continue working my ass off to improve.
All that said, I find that this no tough questions criticism often happens when the guest is a person the listener simply hates and wants to see them grilled into embarrassment, called a liar, a greedy egomaniac, a killer, maybe even an evil human being, and so on. If you are such a listener, what you want is drama, not wisdom. In this case, this show is not for you.
There are many shows you can go to for that, with hosts that are way more charismatic and entertaining than I'll ever be. If you do stick around, please know I will work hard to do this well and to keep improving. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for your support. I love you all. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description.
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This episode is also brought to you by Hidden Layer, a platform that provides security for your artificial intelligence and machine learning models. I'm actually going to have a bunch of conversations in the upcoming weeks and months on artificial intelligence. I think with Gemini, the language model that Google released updated one, 1.5.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Tucker Carlson. What was your first impression when you met Vladimir Putin for the interview?
I thought he seemed nervous, and I was very surprised by that, and I thought he seemed like someone who'd overthought it a little bit, who had a plan, and I don't think that's the right way to go into any interview. My strong sense, having done a lot of them for a long time, is that it's better to know what you think, to say as much as you can honestly so you don't get confused by your own lies,
And just to be yourself. And I thought that he went into it like an overprepared student. And I kept thinking, why is he nervous? But, you know, I guess because he thought a lot of people were going to see it.
But he was also probably prepared to give you a full lesson in history, as he did.
Well, I was totally shocked by that and very annoyed because I thought he was filibustering. I thought he would, I mean, I asked him, as I usually do, the most obvious, dumbest question ever, which is, you know, why'd you do this?
And he had said in a speech that I think is worth reading, I don't speak Russian, so I haven't heard it in the original, but he had said at the moment of the beginning of the war, he had given this address to Russians in which he explained to the fullest extent we have seen so far why he was doing this.
And he said in that speech, I fear that NATO, the West, the United States, the Biden administration will preemptively attack us. And I thought, well, that's interesting. I mean, I can't evaluate whether that's a fear rooted in reality or one rooted in paranoia. But I thought, well, that's an answer right there.
And so I alluded to that in my question, and rather than answering it, he went off on this long, from my perspective, kind of tiresome, sort of greatest hits of Russian history. And the implication, I thought, was, well, Ukraine is ours, or Eastern Ukraine is ours already. And I thought he was doing that to avoid answering the question.
So the last thing you want when you're interviewing someone is to get rolled. And I didn't want to be rolled. So I a couple of times interrupted him politely, I thought, but he wasn't having it. And then I thought, you know what? I'm not here to prove that I'm a great interviewer. It's kind of not about me. I want to know who this guy is.
I think a Western audience, a global audience has a right to know more about the guy. And so just let him talk. You know, because it's not, you know, I don't feel like my reputation's on the line. People have already drawn conclusions about me, I suppose, to the extent they have. I'm not interested really in those conclusions anyway. So just let them talk.
And so I calmed down and just let them talk. And in retrospect, I thought that was really, really interesting. You know, whether you agree with it or not, or whether you think it's relevant to the war in Ukraine or not, that was his answer. And so it's inherently significant.
Well, you said he was nervous. Were you nervous?
Were you afraid? This is Vladimir Putin. I wasn't afraid at all. And I wasn't nervous at all. Did you drink tea beforehand?
I did my my normal regimen of nicotine pouches and coffee. No, I'm not a tea drinker. I tried not to eat, you know, all the sweets they put in front of us, which is that that is my weakness is eating crap. But you eat a lot of sugar before, as you know, before an interview and it and it does dull you. So I I successfully resisted that. But I know I wasn't nervous.
I wasn't nervous the whole time I was there. Why would I be?
know i'm 54 my kids are grown i believe in god you know i'm not i'm almost never nervous but um no i wasn't nervous i was just interested i mean i couldn't i you know i'm interested in soviet history i studied it in college i've read about it my entire life my dad you know worked in the cold war it was a constant topic of conversation and so to be in the kremlin in a room where stalin made decisions either wartime decisions or decisions about murdering his own population i just i just couldn't get over it we're in molotov's old office
So for me, I was just blown away by that. I thought I knew a lot about Russia. It turns out I knew a lot about the Soviet period, the 1937 purge trials, the famine in Ukraine. I knew a fair amount about that, but I really knew nothing about contemporary Russia, less than I thought I did, it turned out. But yeah, I was just blown away by where we were.
And that's kind of one of the main drivers at this stage in my life. That's why I do what I do is because I'm interested in stuff. And I want to see as much as I can and try and draw conclusions from it to the extent I can. So I was very much caught up in that. But no, I wasn't nervous. I didn't think he was going to kill me or something. And I'm not particularly afraid of that anyway.
Not afraid of dying.
Not really, no. I mean, again, it's an age and stage in life thing. I mean, I have four children, so there were times when they were little where I was terrified of dying, because if I died, it would have huge consequences. But no, I mean, at this point, I don't want to die. I'm really enjoying my life, but
I've been with the same girl for 40 years, and I have four children who I'm extremely close to, well, now five, a daughter-in-law, and I love them all. I'm really close to them. I tell them I love them every day. I've had a really interesting life.
What was the goal? Just linger on that. What was the goal for the interview? How were you thinking about it? What would success be like in your head leading into it?
To bring more information to the public. Yeah, that's it. I mean, I have really strong feelings about... what's happening not just in Ukraine or Russia, but around the world. I think the world is resetting to the grave disadvantage of the United States. I don't think most Americans are aware of that at all. And so that's my view, and I've stated it many times because it's sincere.
But my goal was to have more information brought to the West so people could make their own decisions about whether this is a good idea.
I mean, I just, I guess I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective, which is a tiny group of dumb people in Washington has decided to do this for reasons they won't really explain, and you don't have a role in it at all as an American citizen, as the person who's paying for it, whose children might be drafted to fight it, you know, to shut up and obey.
I just, I just reject that completely. You know, I'm a, I think, I guess I'm a child of a different era. I'm a child of participatory democracy to some extent where your opinion as a citizen is not irrelevant. And, um, so I, I, I'm just, and I guess the level of lying about it was starting to drive me crazy.
And I've said, and I will say again, I am not an expert on the regional, really any region other than say Western Maine. I just don't, you know, I'm not Russian. And, um, But it was obvious to me that we were being lied to in ways that were just, it was crazy, the scale of the lies. And I'll just give you one example. The idea that Ukraine would inevitably win this war.
Now, victory was never, as it never is, defined precisely. Nothing's ever defined precisely, which is always a tell that there's deception at the heart of the claim. But Ukraine's on the verge of winning. Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm hardly a tactician or a military expert. For the fifth time, I'm not an expert on Russia or Ukraine.
I just look at Wikipedia, Russia has 100 million more people than Ukraine, 100 million. It has much deeper industrial capacity, war material capacity than all of NATO combined. For example, Russia is turning out artillery shells, which are significant in a ground war, at a ratio of seven to one compared to all NATO countries combined. That's all of Europe.
Russia is producing seven times the artillery shells as all of Europe combined? What? That's an amazing fact. And it turns out to be a really significant fact. In fact, the significant fact. But if you ask your average person in this country, even a fairly well-informed person of good faith who's just trying to understand what's going on, who's going to win this war? Well, Ukraine's going to win.
They're on the right side. And they think that because our media, who really just do serve the interests of the US government, period, they are state media in that sense, have told them that for over two years.
And I was in Hungary last summer talking to the prime minister, Viktor Orban, who's a, you know, whatever you think of him, he's a very smart guy, very smart guy, like smart on a scale that we're not used to in our leaders. And I said to him off camera, so is Ukraine gonna win? And he looked at me like I was deranged, like I was congenitally deficient. Are they gonna win?
No, of course they can't win. It's tiny compared to Russia. Russia has a wartime economy. Ukraine doesn't really have an economy. Look at the populations. He was like, looked at me like I was stupid.
And I said to him, you know, I think most Americans believe that because NBC News and CNN and all the news channels, all of them tell them that because it's framed exclusively in moral terms and it's Churchill versus Hitler. And of course, Churchill is going to prevail in the end. And it's just so dishonest that even it doesn't even matter what I want to happen or what I think ought to happen.
That's a distortion of what is happening. And if I have any job at all, which I sort of don't actually at this point, but if I do have a job, it's to just try to be honest. And that's a lie.
There is a more nuanced discussion about what winning might look like. You're right. A nuanced discussion is not being had, but it is possible for Ukraine to quote unquote win with the help of the United States.
I guess that conversation needs to begin by defining terms. And the key term is win. What does that mean?
Peace, a ceasefire, who owns which land. Yes. Coming to the table with, as you call the parent, the United States. Yes. Putting leverage on the negotiation to make sure there's a fairness. Amen.
Well, of course, as a... And I should just restate this. I am not emotionally involved in this. I'm American in every sense. And my only interest is in America. I'm not leaving ever. And so I'm looking at this purely from our perspective. What's good for us? But as a human being, as a Christian, I mean, I hate war. And anybody who doesn't hate war shouldn't have power, in my opinion.
So I agree with that definition vehemently. A victory is like not killing an entire generation of your population. It's not being completely destroyed to be eaten up by BlackRock or whatever comes next for them. So yeah, we were close to that a year and a half ago.
And the Biden administration dispatched Boris Johnson, the briefly prime minister of the UK, to stop it and to say to Zelensky, who I feel sorry for, by the way, because he's caught between these forces that are bigger than he is. to say, no, you cannot come to any terms with Russia. And the result of that has not been a Ukrainian victory.
It's just been more dead Ukrainians and a lot of profit for the West. It's a moral crime in my opinion. And I tried to ask Boris Johnson about it because why wouldn't I after he denounced me as a tool of the Kremlin or something? And he demanded a million dollars to talk to me. And this just happened last week. And by the way, in writing too, I'm not making this up. I'm not making this up.
Just for the record, you demanded a million dollars from me to talk to me today.
I did. And you paid. No, I'm of course kidding.
And I said to his guy, I said, I just interviewed Putin, who is widely recognized as a bad guy. And he did it for free. He didn't demand a million dollars. He wasn't in this for profit. Like, are you telling me that Boris Johnson is sleazier than Vladimir Putin? And of course, that is the message.
And so I guess these are really, it's not just about Boris Johnson being a sad, rapacious fraud, which he is, obviously, but it's about the future of the West. And the future of Ukraine, this country that purportedly we care so much about, all these people are dying and like, what is the end game?
It's also deranged that I didn't imagine and don't imagine that I could like add anything very meaningful to the conversation because I'm not a genius, okay? But I felt like I could at the very least puncture some of the lies and that's an inherent good.
Vladimir Putin, after the interview, said that he wasn't fully satisfied because you weren't aggressive enough. You didn't ask sharp enough questions. First of all, what do you think about him saying that?
I don't even understand it.
I guess it does seem like the one Putin statement that Western media take at face value. Everything else Putin says is a lie, except his criticism of me, which is true. But, I mean, I have no idea what he meant by that. I can only tell you what... My goal was, as I've suggested, was not to make it about me. I watched, you know, he hasn't done any interviews of any kind for years.
But the last interview he did with an English speaking reporter, Western media reporter, was like many of the other interviews he'd done with Western media reporters. Mike Wallace's son did an interview with him that was of the same variety. And it was all about him. You know, I'm a good person. You're a bad person. And I just feel like that's the most tiresome, fruitless kind of interview.
It's not about me. I don't think I'm an especially good person. I've definitely never claimed to be. But people can make their own judgments. And again, the only judgments that I care about are my wife and children and God. So I'm just not interested in proving I'm a good person. And I just want to hear from him.
And I had a lot of, I mean, you should see, I almost never write questions down, but I did in this case because I had months, well, I had three years to think about it as I was trying to book the interview, which I did myself. But they were all, it was all about internal Russian politics and Navalny, and I had a lot of, I thought, really good questions.
And then at the last second, and you make these decisions, as you know, since you interview people a lot, often you make them on the fly. And I thought, no, I want to talk about the things that haven't been talked about and that I think matter in a world historic sense. And then number one among those, of course, is the war and what it means for the world. And so I stuck to that.
I mean, I could answer that. I did ask about Gershkovich, who I felt sorry for, and I wanted Putin to release him to me, and I was offended that he didn't. I thought his rationale was absurd. Well, we want to trade him for someone. I said, well, doesn't that make him a hostage? You know, which of course it does.
But other than that, I really wanted to keep it to the things that I think matter most. You know, people can judge whether I did a good job or not, but that was my decision.
In the moment, what was your gut? Did you want to ask some tough questions as follow-ups on certain topics?
I don't know what it would mean to ask a tough question. Clarifying questions, I suppose they would... I guess. I just wanted him to talk. You know, I just wanted to hear his perspective. Again... I've probably asked more asshole questions than like any living American. You know, I'm, as has been noted correctly, I'm a dick by my nature.
And so I don't, I just feel at this stage of my life, I didn't need to prove that I could be like, Vladimir Putin answered the question.
Sure, for sure.
You know, I think if I had been, you know, 34 instead of 54, I definitely would have done that because I would have thought this is really about me and I need to prove myself. No, I just, there's a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale people do not understand. The US dollar is going away.
That was, of course, inevitable ultimately because everything dies, including currencies. But that death, that process of death has been accelerated exponentially by the behavior of the Biden administration and the US Congress, particularly the sanctions. And people don't understand what the ramifications of that are. The ramifications are poverty in the United States, okay?
So I just wanted to get to that because I'm coming at this from not a global perspective. I'm coming at it from an American perspective.
So you mentioned Navalny. After you left, Navalny died in prison. What are your thoughts on, just at a high level first, about his death?
It's awful. I mean, imagine dying in prison. You know, I've thought about it a lot. I've known a lot of people in prison, a lot, including some very good friends of mine. So I felt instantly sad about it. From a geopolitical perspective, I don't know any more than that.
And I laugh at and sort of resent, but mostly find amusing the claims by American politicians who really are the dumbest politicians in the world, actually. you know, this happened and here's what it means. And it's like, actually, as a factual matter, we don't know what happened. We don't know what happened. We have no freaking idea what happened.
We can say, and I did say, and I will say again, I think, I don't think you should put opposition figures in prison. I really don't. I don't. Period. It happens a lot around the world, happens in this country, as you know, and I'm against all of it. But do we know how we died? Short answer, no, we don't. Now, if I had to guess, I would say,
Killing Navalny during the Munich Security Conference in the middle of a debate over $60 billion in Ukraine funding? Maybe the Russians are dumb. I didn't get that vibe at all. You know, I just don't, I don't see it. But maybe, you know, maybe they killed him. I mean, they certainly put him in prison, which I'm against. But here's what I do know is that we don't know.
And so when Chuck Schumer stands up and... Joe Biden reads some card in front of him with lines about Navalny. It's like, I'm allowed to laugh at that because it's absurd. You don't know.
There's a lot of interesting ideas about if he was killed, who killed him. Because it could be Putin. It could be somebody in Russia who is not Putin. It could be Ukrainians because it would benefit the war.
They killed Dugan's daughter in Moscow. So yeah, it's possible.
and it could be i mean the united states could also be involved i don't think we kill people in other countries to affect election outcomes oh wait no we do it a lot and have for 80 years and it's shameful i can say that as an american because it's my money in my name um yeah i'm really offended by that and i never thought that was true and i spent again i'm much older than you and so i spent my my my world view was defined by the cold war
And very much in the house I lived in, in Georgetown, in Washington, DC, that's what we talked about. And the left at the time, I don't know, wacko MIT professor who I never had any respect for, who I know you've interviewed, et cetera. Like the hard left was always saying, well, the United States government is interfering in other elections.
And I just dismissed that completely out of hand as stupid and actually a slander against my country. But it turned out to all be true or substantially true anyway. And that's been a real shock for me in middle age to understand that. But anyway, as to Navalny, look, I don't know. But we should always proceed on the basis of what we do know, which is to say on the basis of truth, knowable truth.
And if you have an entire policy-making apparatus that is making the biggest decisions on the face of the planet on the basis of things that are bullshit or lies, you're gonna get bad outcomes every time, every time. And that's why we are where we are.
Does it bother you that basically the most famous opposition figure in Russia is sitting in prison?
Well, of course it does. Of course it bothers me. I mean, it bothered me when I got there. It bothers me now. I was sad when he died. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the measures of, it's one of the basic measures of political freedom. Are you imprisoning people who oppose you? You know, are you imprisoning people who pose a physical risk to you? I mean, there's some subjective...
decision-making involved in these things. However, big picture, yeah. Do you have opposition leaders in jail? It's not a free, it's not a politically free society, and Russia isn't, obviously. And as I said, a friend of mine from childhood, an American actually, he was a wonderful person, lives in Russia with his Russian, Moscow with his Russian wife, and I had dinner with him.
He's a very balanced guy, totally non-political person. and speaks Russian and loves his many Russian children and loves the culture, and there's a lot to love. The culture that produced Tolstoy, you know, it's not a gas station with nuclear weapons, sorry. Only a moron would say that. It's a very deep culture. I don't fully understand it, of course, but I admire it. Who wouldn't?
But I asked him, like, what's it like living here? And he goes, you know, it's great. Moscow is a great city, indisputably. He said, you don't want to get involved in Russian politics. And I said, what? he said, well, you could get hurt. You could wind up like Navalny if you did. Um, but also it's just too complicated. You know, the, the Russian mind is not, is not exactly this.
It's, it's a Western, it's a European city, but it's not quite European. And, um, the way they think is very, very complex, very complex. It's just, it's too complicated. Just don't get involved. And, I would just say two things. One, uh, I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know.
But my strong sense is that Navalny's death, whoever did it, probably didn't have a lot to do with the coming election in Russia. My sense from talking to Putin and the people around him is they're not really focused on that. I mean, in fact, I asked one of his top advisors, when's the election? And she looked at me completely confused. She didn't know the date of the election. She's like, March?
Okay. And I asked a bunch of other people just in Moscow, who's Putin running against? Like, nobody knew. So it's not a real election, right? In the sense that we would recognize at all. Second, I was really struck by so many things in Moscow and really bothered by, deeply bothered by a lot of things that I saw there.
But one thing I noticed was the total absence of cult of personality propaganda, which I expected to see. and have seen around the world, Jordan, for example, if you've been to Jordan, but go to Jordan in every building, there are pictures of the king and his extended family. And and that's a sign of political insecurity.
You know, you don't create a cult of personality unless you're personally insecure and also unless you're worried about losing your grip on power. None of that. It's interesting. And I expected to see a lot of it, you know, like statues of Putin. No, no statues of anybody other than like Christian saints. So that was like, I'm not quite sure. I'm just reporting what I saw.
um so yes it's not a in a political sense it's not a free country it's not a democracy uh in the way that we would understand it or want i don't want to live there okay because i like to say what i think in fact i make my living doing it um but it's not stalinist in a recognizable way and anyone who says it is should go there and tell me how
I mean, this question about the freedom of the press is underlying the very fact of the interview you're having with him. So you might not need to ask the Navalny question, but did you feel like, are there things I shouldn't say?
I mean, how honest do you want me to be? I mean it when I say I felt not one twinge of concern for the eight days that I was there. Maybe I just didn't, and I feel like I've got a pretty strong gut sense of things. I rely on it, I make all my decisions based on how I feel, my instincts, and I didn't feel it at all. Um, my lawyers before I left, and these are people who work for a big law firm.
This is not Bob's law firm. This is one of the biggest law firms in the world said, you're going to get arrested if you do this by the U S government on sanctions violations. And I said, well, I, you know, I don't, I don't recognize the legitimacy of that actually, cause I'm American and I've lived here my whole life. And that's so outrageous that I'm happy to face that, uh,
that risk because I, I so reject the premise. Okay. I'm an American. I should be able to talk to anyone I want to. And I, I plan to exercise that freedom, which I think I was born with. I gave them this long, long lecture.
They were like, we're just lawyers.
But that was, um, It was, it was, let me put it this way. I don't know how much you dealt with lawyers, but it costs many thousands of dollars to get a conclusion like that. Like they sent a whole bunch of their summer associates or whatever they sent. They put a lot of people on this question, checked a lot of precedent.
And I think, and they sent me a 10 page memo on it and their sincere conclusion was do not do this. And of course it made me mad, so I was lecturing him on the phone and I had another call with the head lawyer and he said, look, a lot will depend on the questions that you ask Putin. If you're seen as too nice to him, you could get arrested when you come back.
And I was like, you're describing a fascist country, okay? You're saying that the US government will arrest me if I don't ask the questions they want asked? Is that what you're saying? Well, we just think based on what's happened that that's possible. And so... I'm just telling you what happened.
So you were okay being arrested in Moscow and arrested in- I didn't think for a second.
I mean, maybe, look, I don't speak Russian. I'd never been there before. Everything about the culture was brand new to me. Ignorance does protect you sort of when you have no freaking idea what's going on. You're not worried about it. This has happened to me many times. There's a principle there that extends throughout life. So it's completely possible that I was in grave peril and didn't know it.
Because like, how would I know it? You know, I'm like a bumbling English speaker from California. But I didn't feel it at all. But the lawyers did. Yeah, I mean, it scared the crap out of people. You're going to look and you have to pay in cash. They don't take credit cards because of sanctions.
And you have to go through all these hoops, just procedural hoops to go to Russia, which I was willing to do because I wanted to interview Putin because they told me I couldn't. But then there's another fact. Which is that I was being surveilled by the U.S. government, intensely surveilled by the U.S. government.
And this came out, they admitted it, the NSA admitted it a couple of years ago that they were up in my Signal account. And then they leaked it to the New York Times. They did that again before I left. And I know that because two New York Times reporters, one of whom I actually like a lot, uh, said, oh, you're going, and called other people, oh, he's going to interview Putin.
I hadn't told anybody that, like anybody, like my wife, two producers, that's it. So they got that from the government. Then I'm over there, and of course I want to see Snowden, who I admire. And so we have a mutual friend, so I got his text and come on over, and Snowden does not want publicity at all. And so, but I really wanted to have dinner with him.
So we had dinner in my hotel room at the Four Seasons in Moscow. And I tried to convince him, you know, I'd love to do an interview, shoot it on my iPhone. You know, I'd love to take a picture together and put it on the internet because I just want to show support because I think he's been railroaded. He had no interest in living in Russia, no intention of being in Russia. The whole thing is a lie.
But anyway, whatever, all this stuff. And he just said, respectfully, I'd rather not anyone know that we met. Great. The only reason I'm telling you this is because, and I didn't tell anybody and I didn't text it to anybody, okay, except him. Semaphore, Semaphore runs this piece saying,
reporting information they got from the US intel agencies leaking against me using my money and my name in a supposedly free country. They run this piece saying I'd met with Snowden, like it was a crime or something. So again, my interest is in the United States and preserving freedoms here, the ones that I grew up with,
And if you have a media establishment that acts as an auxiliary of or acts as employees of the national security state, you don't have a free country. And that's where we are. And I'm not guessing because I spent my entire life in that world. 33 years I worked in big news companies. And so I know how it works. I know the people involved in it. I could name them.
Ben Smith of Semaphore, among many others. And I find that really objectionable, not just on principle either, in effect, in practice. I don't want to live in that kind of country. And people are like, they externalize all of their anxiety about this, I have noticed. So it's like, Russia's not free. Yeah, I know. You know, neither is Burkina Faso.
Like most countries aren't free actually, but we are. We're the United States, we're different. And that's my concern. Preserving that is my concern. And so they get so exercised about what's happening in other parts of the world, places they've never been, know nothing about. It's almost a way of ignoring what's happening in their own country right around them.
I find it so strange and sad and weird.
So the NSA was tracking you? Do you think CIA was? Are people still tracking you?
look one of the things i did before i went um just because the business i'm in all of us are in and just because we live here you know we all have theories about secure communications channels like signal is secure telegraph isn't or whatsapp is owned by mark zuckerberg you can't trust okay so i thought you know before i go over here i was getting all this
We're having all these conversations, my producers and I, about this. And I decide, you know, I'm just gonna actually find out what's really going on. So I talked to two people who would know, trust me. And it's all I can say, and I hate to be like, oh, I talked to people who would know, but I can't say who they are, but I mean it. They would know.
And both of them said exactly the same thing, which is, are you joking? Nothing is secure. Everything is monitored all the time, if state actors are involved. I mean, you can keep the, you know, whatever, the Malaysian mafia from reading your text, probably. You cannot keep the big intel services from reading your text. It's not possible, any of them, or listening to your calls.
So, and that was the firm conclusion of people who've been involved in it, you know, for a long time, decades, both, in both cases. So I just thought, you know what? I don't care. I don't care. I'm not sending a ton of naked pictures of myself to anybody. Not a ton, just a little bit. 54, dude, probably not too many.
So the guys travel with three people I work with who I love, who I've been around the world with for many years and I know them really, really well. And they all got separate phones and I'm leaving my other phone back in New York or whatever. And I just decided I don't care actually. And I resent having no privacy. Um, because privacy is a prerequisite for freedom. Um, but I can't change it.
And so I have the same surveilled cell phone and, you know, I do switch them out because there it is. Uh, because if you have too much spyware on your phone, this is true. It wrecks the battery. And no, I'm serious. It does. And we got... It was, I don't know, five or six years ago, I went to North Korea, and my phone started acting crazy.
And so I talked to someone on the National Security Council who actually called me about this, somehow knew that your phone is being surveilled by the South Korean government. I was like, I like the South Korean government. Why would they do that? Because they want more information. They thought I was talking to Trump or whatever.
But I could tell because all of a sudden, the thing would just drain in like 45 minutes. So that is... That's the downside.
So you keep switching phones, getting new phones for the battery life.
Yeah, I mean, I try not to do it. You know, I'm kind of flinty Yankee type in some ways. So I don't I don't like to spend a thousand dollars with a freaking Apple corporation too often. But yeah, I do.
I mean, you say it lightly, but it's really troublesome that you as a journalist would be tracked.
Well, they leaked it to Semaphore and they leaked it to the New York Times. Look, I would even put up, well, there's nothing I can do, so I have to put up with everything, okay? But I would probably not be actively angry about being surveilled because I'm just so old and I actually do pay my taxes. I'm not sleeping with the makeup artist or whatever. So I don't care that much.
The fact that they are leaking against me, that the Intel services in the United States are actively engaged in US politics and media, that's so unacceptable. That makes democracy impossible. There's no defense of that. And yet NBC News, Kandalinian, and the rest will defend it. And it's like, and not just on NBC News, by the way, on the supposedly conservative channels too, they will defend it.
And there's no defending that. You can't have democracy if the intel services are tampering in elections and information, period.
So you had no fear. Your lawyer said, be careful which questions you asked.
You said, I don't have- Well, the lawyer said, no, he said very specifically, depending on the questions you ask Putin, you know, you could be arrested or not. And I said, listen to what you're saying. You're saying the U.S. government has, like, control over my questions and they'll arrest me if I ask the wrong question? Like, how are we better than Putin if that's true?
And by the way, that's just what the lawyer said, but I can't overstate One of the biggest law firms in the United States, smart lawyers we've used for years. So I was really shocked by it.
You said leaders kill, leaders lie. Yeah.
I don't believe in leaders very much. Like this whole like, oh, Zelensky's Jesus and Putin's Satan. It's like, no, they're all leaders of countries, okay? Like grow up a little bit, you child. Have you ever met a leader? Like all of the... First of all, anyone who seeks power... is damaged morally, in my opinion. You shouldn't be seeking power.
You can't seek power or wealth for its own sake and remain a decent person. That's just true. So there aren't any like really virtuous billionaires and there aren't any really virtuous world leaders. You have grades of virtue. Some are better than others, for sure. But I mean, in other words, Zelensky may be better than Putin. I'm open to that possibility.
But to claim that one is evil and the other is virtuous, it's like you're revealing that you're a child. You don't know anything about how the world actually is or what reality is.
That's quite a realist perspective, but there is a spectrum.
There's a spectrum. Absolutely. I'm not saying they're all the same. They're not.
And our task is to figure out where on the spectrum they lie. And the leader's task is to confuse us and convince us they're one of the good guys. Of course.
But I actually reject even that formulation. I don't think it's always about the leaders. I mean, of course, the leaders make the difference. A good leader has a healthy country and a bad leader has a decaying country, which is something to think about. But it's about the ideas and the policies and the practical effect of things.
So we're very much caught up in the personalities of various leaders, not just our political leaders, but our business leaders, our cultural leaders. Are they good people? Do they have the right thoughts? It's like, no, I ask a much more basic question. What are the fruits of their behavior? And I always make it personal because I think everything is personal. Does his wife respect him?
Do his children respect him? How are they doing? Is the country he runs thriving or is it falling apart? If your life expectancy is going down, if your suicide rate is going up, if your standard of living is tanking, you're not a good leader. I don't care what you tell me. I don't care what you claim you represent. I don't care about the ideas or the systems that you say you embody.
It's dogs barking to me. How's your life expectancy? How's your suicide rate? What's drug use like? Are people having children? Are people's children more likely to live in a freer, more prosperous society than you did and their grandparents did? Those are the only measures that matter to me. The rest is a lie.
But anyway, the point is, we just get so obsessed with the theater around people, or people, and we miss the bigger things that are happening, and we allow ourselves to be
deceived into thinking that what doesn't matter at all matters that moral victories are all that matters no actually facts on the ground victories matter more than anything i mean you certainly see it in this country black lives matter for example how many black people did that help It hurt a lot of black people, but in the end, we should be able to measure it.
You know, like how many black people have died by gunfire in the four years since George Floyd died? Well, the number's gone way, way up. And that was a Black Lives Matter operation, defund the police. So I think we can say, as a factual matter, a data-based... matter. Black Lives Matter didn't help black people. And if it did tell me how, well, these are important moral victories. I'm over that.
That's just another lie, you know, a long litany of lies. So I try to see the rest of the world that way. And, but more than anything, I try to see world events through the lens of an American because I am one. And what does this mean for us? And it's not even the war, it's the sanctions. that will forever change the United States, our standard of living, the way our government operates.
That, more than any single thing in my lifetime, screwed the United States. Levying those sanctions in the way that we did was crazy. And that was, for me, the main takeaway from my eight days in Moscow was not Putin. He's a leader, whatever. None of them are that different, actually, in my pretty extensive experience. No, it was Moscow. That blew my mind. I was not prepared for that at all.
And I thought I knew a lot about Moscow. My dad worked there on and off in the 80s and 90s because he was a U.S. government employee and he was always coming back to Moscow. It's a nightmare and all this stuff, no electricity. I got there almost exactly two years after sanctions, totally cut off from Western financial systems, kicked out of SWIFT, can't use US dollars, no banking, no credit cards.
And that city, just factually, I'm not endorsing the system. I'm not endorsing the whole country. I didn't go to Lake Baikal. I didn't go to Turkmenistan. I just went to Moscow, largest city in Europe, 13 million people. I drove all around it. And that city is way nicer outwardly anyway. I don't live there. than any city we have by a lot.
And by nicer, let me be specific, no graffiti, no homeless, no people using drugs in the street, totally tidy, no garbage on the ground, and no forest of steel and concrete soul-destroying buildings, none of the postmodern architecture that oppresses us without even our knowledge, none of that crap. It's a truly beautiful city. And that's not an endorsement of Putin.
And by the way, it didn't make me love Putin. It made me hate my own leaders because I grew up in a country that had cities kind of like that, that were nice cities, that were safe. And we don't have that anymore. And how did that happen? Did Putin do that? I don't think Putin did that actually.
I think the people in charge of that, the mayors, the governors, the president, they did that and they should be held accountable for it.
So I think cleanliness and architectural design is not the entirety of the metrics that matter when you measure a city.
They're the main metrics that matter. They're the main metrics that matter. The main metrics that matter are cleanliness, safety, and beauty, in my opinion. And one of the big lies that we are told in our world is that no, something you can't measure that has no actual effect on your life matters most. Bullshit. What matters most, to say it again, beauty, safety, cleanliness.
Lots of other things matter too. A whole bunch of things matter. But if I were to put them in order, it's not some theoretical, well, actually, I don't know if you know that the Duma has no power. Okay, I get that. Freedom of speech matters enormously to me. They have less freedom of speech in Russia than we do in the United States. We are superior to them in that way.
But you can't tell me that living in a city where, you know, your six year old daughter can walk to the bus stop and ride on a clean bus or ride in a beautiful subway car that's on time and not get assaulted. That doesn't matter. No, that matters almost more than anything, actually. And we can have both. And like the normal regime defenders and morons, Jon Stewart or whatever he's calling himself.
They're like, well, that's the price of freedom. Like people shitting on the sidewalk is the price of freedom. It's like, you can't fool me because I've lived here for 54 years. I know that it's not the price of freedom because I lived in a country that was both free and clean and orderly. So that's not a trade-off I think I have to make.
You can't, that is the beauty of being a little bit older because you're like, no, I remember that actually. It wasn't what you're saying. We didn't have racial segregation in 1985. It was a really nice country that kind of respected itself. I was here. And I think with younger people, you can tell them that and they're like, well, 1985, you were selling slaves in Madison Square Garden.
It's like, no, they weren't. You're going to Madison Square Garden and not stepping over a single fentanyl addict.
It is true, there doesn't have to be a trade-off between cleanliness and freedom of speech. But it is also true that in dictatorships, cleanliness and architectural design is easier to achieve and perfect and often is done so, so you can show off, look how great our cities are.
while you're suppressing- Of course, of course. I agree with that vehemently. This is not a defense of the Russian system at all. And if I felt that way, I would not only move there, but I would announce I was moving there. I'm not ashamed of my views. I never have been.
And for all the people who are trying to impute secret motives to my words, I'm like the one person in America you don't need to do that with. If you think I'm a racist, ask me and I'll tell you. Are you a racist? Of course.
No, I am a sexist, though.
Anyway, no, but if I was like a defender of Vladimir Putin, I would just say I'm defending Vladimir Putin now. I'm not. I am attacking our leaders and I'm grieving over the low expectations of our people. You don't need to put up with this. You don't need to put up with foreign invaders stealing from you. occupying your kid's school.
Your kids can't get an education because people from foreign countries broke our laws and showed up here and they've taken over the school. That's not a feature of freedom, actually. That's the opposite. That's what enslavement looks like. And so I'm just saying, raise your expectations a little bit. You can have a clean, functional, safe country. Crime is totally optional.
Crime is something our leaders decide to have or not have. It's not something that just appears organically. I wrote a book about crime 30 years ago. I thought a lot about this. You have as much crime as you put up with, period. And it doesn't make you less free to not tolerate murder. In fact, it makes you unfree to have a lot of murders.
And so I just but it makes me sad that people like, well, you know, I guess this is I can't like live in New York City anymore because of inflation and filth and illegal aliens and people shooting each other. But, you know, I'm just I'm glad because this is vibrant and strong and free. It's like that's not freedom, actually, at all.
Your point is well taken. You can have both. But do you regret... We had both. That's the point. We had both. I saw it. Do you regret to a degree using the Moscow subway and the grocery store as a mechanism by which to make that point? No.
I mean, I thought... I mean, look... I'm one of the more unselfaware people you will ever interview. So to ask me, you know, how will this be perceived? I literally have no idea and kind of limited interest, but I was so shocked by it. I was so shocked by it.
And there were two, and to the extent I regret anything and am to blame for anything, it would be not, and I've done this a lot, not giving it context, not fully explaining why are we doing this, The grocery store, I was shocked by the prices. And yes, I'm familiar with exchange rates, but very familiar with exchange rates. And I adjusted them for exchange rates.
And this is two years into sanctions, total isolation from the West. So I would expect, in fact, I did expect until I got there that their supply chains would be crushed. How do you get good stuff if you don't have access to Western markets? And I didn't fully get the answer because I was occupied doing other things when I was there, but somehow they have. And that's the point.
And they haven't had the supply chains problems that I predicted. In other words, sanctions haven't made the country noticeably worse. Okay. So again, this is commentary of the United States and our policymakers. Why are we doing this? It's forcing the rest of the world into a block against us called BRICS. They're getting off the US dollar.
That will mean a lot of dollars are going to come back here and destroy our economy and impoverish this country. So the consequences, the stakes are really high. They're huge. And we're not even hurting Russia. It's like, what the hell are we doing? One, on the subway, that subway was built by Joseph Stalin. Right before the Second World War. I'm not endorsing Stalin, obviously.
Stalinism is a thing that I hate, and I don't want to come to my country. I'm making the obvious point that for over 80 years, you've had these frescoes and chandeliers, maybe they've been redone or whatever, but somehow the society has been able to not destroy what its ancestors built, the things that are worth having, and they're a lot. And that, like why don't we have that?
And even on a much more terrestrial plane, like why can't I have a subway station like that? Why can't my children who live in New York City ride the subway? A lot of people I know who live in New York City are afraid to ride the subway, young women especially. That's freedom? No, again, it's slavery. And how can, if Putin can do this, why can't we? Like what?
It's not, in other words, I mean, this is like so obvious. I'm a traitor? Okay, so if I'm calling for American citizens to demand more from their government and higher standards for their own society, and remember that just 30 years ago, we had a much different and much happier and cleaner and healthier society,
where everyone wasn't fat with diabetes at 40 from poisoned food like how is that i'm not a traitor to my country i'm a defender of my country by the way the people calling me a traitor they're all like you know whatever uh they're not i i would not say they're people who put america's interest first but there's many elements like you said you don't like stalinism
you're a student of history, central planning is good at building subways in a way that's really nice. The thing that accounts for New York subways, by the way, there's a lot of really positive things about New York subways, not cleanliness, but the efficiency, the accessibility, how wide it spreads. The New York network is incredible. But Moscow, under different metrics,
results of a capitalist system? And you actually said that you don't think US is quite a capitalist system, which is an interesting question in itself.
We have more central planning here than they do in Russia. No, that's not true. Of course it is. You think that's true? The climate agenda? Of course. They're telling the US government has in league with a couple of big companies decided to change the way we produce and consume energy. There's no popular outcry for that.
There's never been any mass movement of Americans who's like, I hate my gasoline powered engine. No more diesel. That has been central planning. That is central planning. and you see it up and down our economy, there's no free market in the United States. You get crossways with the government, you're done.
90?
Google's a monopoly by any definition, and Google is just rich enough to continue doing whatever it wants in violation of US law. So there's no monopoly in Russia as big as Google. I'm not, again, defending the Russian system. I'm calling for a return to our old system, which was sensible and moderate and put the needs of Americans at least somewhere in the top 10. Somewhere in the top 10.
I'm not saying that Standard Oil was interested in the welfare of average Americans, but I am saying that there was... a constituency in our political system, in the Congress, for example, different presidential candidates are like, no, wait a second. What is this doing to people? Is it good for people or not? There's not even a conversation about that. It's like, shut up and submit to AI.
And no offense. And so I'm just- Offense taken.
I'm just- We will get you.
Yeah. When it's strong enough. I have no doubt. You'll be the first one to go. Well, as a white man, I just won't even exist anymore, so.
So much to say on that one.
I bet when you Google my picture, 20 years from now, I'll be a black chick.
Well, I hope she's attractive.
I hope so, too.
It'd probably be an upgrade. So, well, the central planning point is really interesting, but I just don't... I don't know where you're coming from. There's a capitalist system... I mean, the United States is one of the most successful capitalist system in the history of Earth. So just say- What's the most successful?
I'm just saying that I think it's changed a lot in the last 15 years and that we need to update our assumptions about what we're seeing. Sure. And that's true up and down. That's true with everything. It's true with your neighbor's children who you haven't seen in three years and they come home from Wesleyan and you're like, oh, you've grown. That is true for the world around us as well.
And most of our assumptions about immigration, about our economy, about our tax system are completely outdated. if you compare them to the current reality. And so I'm just for updating my files. And I have a big advantage over you because I am middle-aged. And so I don't... You've called yourself old so many times throughout the summer. I don't trust my perceptions of things.
So I'm constantly trying to be like, is that true? I should go there. You know, I should see it. And I guess just in the end, I trust... I trust direct perceptions. Like I don't trust the internet actually. Wikipedia is a joke. Wikipedia could not be more dishonest. It's certainly in the political categories are things that I know a lot about.
Occasionally I read an entry written about something that I saw or know the people involved. And I'm like, well, that's a complete liar. You left out the most important fact. And it's like, it's not a reliable guide to reality or history. And that will accelerate with AI where history or perception of the past is completely controlled and distorted.
So I think just getting out there and seeing stuff and seeing that Moscow was not what I thought it would be, which was a smoldering ruin, you know, rats in a garbage dump, it was nicer than New York. What the hell?
Direct data is good, but it's challenging. For example, if you talk to a lot of people in Moscow or in Russia and you ask them, is there censorship? They will usually say, yes, there is.
Oh yeah, of course there is. I agree. Yeah. I mean, just to be clear, I'm not... I have no plans to move to Russia. I think I would probably be arrested if I moved to Russia. Ed Snowden, who is the most famous sort of openness, transparency advocate in the world, I would say, along with Assange, doesn't want to live in Russia. He's had problems with the Putin government. He's attacked Putin.
They don't like it. I mean, I get it. I get it. I'm just saying... What are the lessons for us? And the main lesson is we are being lied to like in a way that's bewildering and very upsetting. I was mad about it all eight days I was there because I feel like I'm better informed than most people because it's my job to be informed and I'm skeptical of everything.
And yet I was completely hoodwinked by it. I would just recommend to everyone watching this, like you think, you know, like if you're really interested, if you're one of those people and I'm not one, but it was like waking up every day and you've got a Ukrainian flag on your mailbox or whatever, your Ukrainian lapel pin or absurd theater.
But if you like sincerely care about Ukraine or Russia or whatever, Why don't you just hop on a plane for 800 bucks and go see it? Okay? That doesn't occur to anyone to do that. And I know it's time consuming and kind of expensive, sort of, not really. But you benefit so much. I mean, I could bore you for like eight hours.
And I know you've had this experience where you think you know what something is or you think you know who someone is. And then you have direct experience of that place or person and you realize all your preconceptions were totally wrong. They were controlled by somebody else.
In fact, I won't betray confidence, but off the air, we're talking about somebody and you said, I couldn't believe the person was not at all like what I thought. Mm-hmm. That's happened to me- In the positive direction. In the positive direction. By the way, for me, it's almost always in that direction.
Most people I meet, and I've had the great privilege of meeting a lot of people over all this time, they're way better than you think, or they're more complicated or whatever. But the point is, a direct experience unmediated by liars
There's no substitute for that. Well, on that point, direct experience in Ukraine. So I visited Ukraine and witnessed a lot of the same things you witnessed in Moscow. So first of all, beautiful architecture. Yes. And this is a country that's really in war. So it's not- Oh, for real? Like for real, where most of the men are either volunteering or fighting in the war.
And there's actual tanks in the streets that are going into your major city of Kiev. And still the supply chains- are working just a handful of months after the start of the war. Everything is working. The restaurants are amazing. Most of the people are able to do some kind of job, like the life goes on. Cleanliness, like you mentioned.
I love that.
Security, like, it's incredible. Like, the crime went to zero. They gave all guns to everybody, the Texas strategy. It does work. Yeah, when you witness it, you realize, okay, there's something to these people. There's something to this country that they're not as corrupt as you might hear. Right. You hear that Russia's corrupt, Ukraine is corrupt. You assume it's just all going to go to shit.
Well, so that's been, and I haven't been to Ukraine, and I've certainly tried, and they put me on some... kill him immediately list. So I can't, I've tried to interview Zelensky. He keeps denouncing me. I just want an interview with him. He won't. Unfortunately, I would love to do it. I hope you do. I do too.
But one of the things that bothers me most, I love to hear that, what you just said about Kiv, but I'm not really surprised. One of the things that I'm most ashamed of
is the bigotry that I felt towards Slavic people, also toward Muslims, I'll just be totally honest, because I lived through decades of propaganda from NBC News and CNN where I worked, you know, about this or that group of people and they're horrible or whatever. And then you wind, and I kind of believed it.
And I see it now, like, we can't even put the word Russia at Wimbledon because it's so offensive. Well, what does the tennis player have to do with it? Did he invade Ukraine? I don't think he did. Stealing all these business guys' yachts and denouncing them as oligarchs, what do they have to do with it? Whatever. Here's my point.
The idea that a whole group of people is just evil because of their blood, I just don't believe that. I think it's immoral to think that. And I can just tell you my own experience after eight days there. I think it's a really interesting culture, Slavic culture, which is shared, by the way, by Russia and Ukraine. Of course, they're first cousins at the most distant.
And I found them really smart and interesting and informed. I didn't understand a lot of what they're saying. I don't understand the way their minds work because I'm American. But it wasn't a thin culture. It's a thick culture. You know, and I admire that. And I wish I could go to Ukraine. I would go tomorrow.
So I think after you did the interview with Putin, you put a clip, I think on TCN, where like your sort of analysis afterwards. Yeah, it wasn't much of an analysis. No, but what stood out to me is you were kind of talking shit about Putin a little bit. Like you were criticizing him. Why wouldn't I? It spoke to the thing that you mentioned, which is you weren't afraid.
Now, the question I want to ask is, it would be pretty badass if you went to the supermarket and made the point you were making, but also criticized Putin, right? Criticized that there is a lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. In the supermarket? Yes.
Oh, you mean if I also said that? Well, yeah. I mean, of course I think that. I'm not... So, I guess... Part of it is that I'm a little, because I have such a low opinion of the commentariat in the United States and the news organizations, which really do just work for the U.S. government, I mean, I really see them as I did Izvestia and Pravda in the 80s.
Like, they're just organs of the government, and I think they're contemptible. And I think the people who work there are contemptible, and I say that as someone who knows them really well personally. I think they're disgusting. That I'm a little bit cut off, kind of, from what people are saying about me, because I'm not interested. So I try not to be defensive. Like, see, I'm not a tool of Putin.
But the idea that I'd be flacking for Putin when, you know, my relatives fought in the Revolutionary War. Like, I'm as American as you could be. It's like crazy to me. Ann Applebaum calls me a traitor to my, okay, right. It's just like so dumb. But no, of course they don't have no country has freedom of speech other than us. Canada doesn't have it. Great Britain definitely doesn't have it.