(LifeSiteNews) — In a recent interview, Tucker Carlson did not hold back in his assessment of America’s “ruling class.”
The Fox News host stated candidly that these powerful people “suck.” He also delved into the enormous crises the West faces, including the threat of “nuclear annihilation,”and the fundamentals of his vision for America.
Carlson, who hosts the highest-rated cable news show in history, was interviewed by Fox colleague Will Cain in his podcast program on October 7. Of central interest to Cain was Carlson’s political journey over a thirty-year career in journalism from holding establishment and neoconservative views, to seeing America through “a more populist lens.” Carlson admitted to having been, in the past, “completely wrong.”
“The Iraq war was definitely a pivot point,” Carlson said, explaining that despite his “gut level reservations,” he found himself “cheering it on, basically.”
“I never exactly understood why it would be a good idea to invade Iraq, but I effectively, passively, went along with it,” he said.
Yet following a trip to that war zone in December of 2003, where he “watched the place fall apart, and along with it, a lot of my previous assumptions,” he returned to the United States and admitted he was “completely wrong.”
“And what was so striking about that whole process was how few people were willing to say the same thing,” he observed.
Recalling old colleagues of his from his stint at the neoconservative Weekly Standard, which began in 1995, Carlson said “I don’t think you should lie. I think it’s okay to be wrong, but you should never intentionally lie. And then I watch people like David Frum and Bill Kristol, people I worked with and respected… decide to say things they knew weren’t true.”
“And I found it repulsive, and I still do. So that was really the beginning of my break with the conventional view of things,” he said.
Carlson shared how he advises his children to trust their gut instincts on such matters as they move through life.
“My view is you can kind of tell who’s telling the truth. You can smell it. I always tell my children this. You know, the main loss of modernity is of our instincts. And we’re taught to ignore them,” he declared.
“If you think somebody is creepy, he is. If you think someone’s lying to you, you’re right. Don’t second guess it. If you perceive danger, it’s real. And don’t override those feelings, those instincts, with your higher consciousness because you are in effect lying to yourself,” he said.
The television host continued explaining his political views in a simplified manner: “I’ve always felt very moderate. I’m definitely not in favor of destroying things. I really see the world as binary at this point. There are people who create and nurture, and there are those who deface and destroy. It’s really [as if] there are only two varieties of people. It’s dualism. And I want to be on the side that creates and nurtures, that makes things, that improves things, that leaves things for future generations.”
In his coverage of the mysterious destruction of Nord Stream pipeline in September, Carlson singled out the neoconservatives who occupy important roles in the Biden administration, including Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, whom he called “a lifelong war cheerleader” who helped bring on the “Iraq invasion” and “engineer the [2014] coup that overthrew the Ukrainian government.”
Nuland had projected in advance the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline last January, while the neocon U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken celebrated this destruction after the fact despite it helping to lead to an expected famine and freezing across Europe this winter.
In describing these individuals, Carlson said at the time, “[And] what do they do? They destroy. These people build nothing, not one thing. Instead, they tear down, and they desecrate: from historic statues to the Constitution to energy infrastructure, and no one in Congress is trying to stop any of it.”
‘It’s like everything that they [the media] describe is the opposite of the reality’
While believing that human beings are hierarchal by nature, and thus “you’re always going to have a ruling class,” Carlson is concerned that the United Sates does not have “an impressive ruling class” with self-restraint and wisdom.
“Are they thinking past the next 20 days or are they greedy day traders?” he asked. “And we … have wound up, for a bunch of different reasons, with a really bad ruling class.”
Explaining that he doesn’t have “complicated views, really, about anything,” Carlson declared, “If you’re running a country that purports to be a representative democracy, you should serve the majority of people.”
“[For example], if you wake up one morning, the life expectancy is declining, you’ve really gone off track. If people aren’t replacing the population through native born birth rates, that’s a red flag,” the pundit said. “And if you ignore it, then you suck, [and] then you deserve to be replaced.”
In his dialogue with Cain, Carlson affirmed the interviewer’s own perspective, stating, “I think you’re absolutely right that the people in charge hate middle America. And you have to ask yourself why. And the answer is that they failed middle America.”
“The truth is, you hate the people you wrong. If you commit an offense against someone, if you sin against someone, you end up hating that person,” Carlson said. And thus, “the most powerless and reviled people in America are rural people.”
“Obviously, they can’t get into Stanford no matter what their S.A.T. scores are. No one is putting the thumb on the scale for them,” he said. “But you watch television, and they tell you, ‘Oh, you know, the most underserved, the most marginalized communities, are trans people in cities.’”
“Really? There’s no more privileged group than a trans person in the city. They’re like 100th of 1% of the population [and] we spend 30% of our time talking about them,” he continued, noting that if you criticize them, the Justice Department will be “at your door with guns.”
“It’s like everything that they [the media] describe is the opposite of the reality the rest of us live with. And at a certain point you just completely devalue your credibility, and I don’t believe anything you say because everything you say is a freaking lie. Not only a lie, [but] it’s an inversion of the truth. It’s the precise opposite of the truth.”
‘The big things are where you need to focus your attention’
Regarding his recent report titled “The End of Men”—where he documents the astounding drop of testosterone in men over the last four decades—Tucker observed that “the big questions are always the ones we ignore.”
“Men are different physically than they were when I was a child,” he explained. “Now, I don’t know why nobody cares about that. I think there are all kinds of effects [from this]. Men seem very passive to me.”
“I think there’s a reason people always say, ‘Well, young men just smoke weed and play video games and never go outside.’ Well, maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe they’re physically different,” he suggested. “So, why does nobody care?”
“We spent an endless amount of time debating the minutia, angels dancing on the head of a pin. But, we never step back and say we’re on the verge of a nuclear war with Russia, our debt is literally unsustainable, testosterone is falling to the point where we may not be able to reproduce, and the life expectancy of your average American is in decline. These are the big things. The big things are where you need to focus your attention, in my view,” Carlson said.
‘It’s very easy to see how beating Putin means destroying ourselves’
Discussing the war in Ukraine, Carlson said he didn’t see Russia as anything approximating “our main rival on the world stage,” and he couldn’t figure out “why you wouldn’t want Russia on your side, Putin on your side, as some sort of rough alliance against China.”
He also conveyed that he doesn’t see any American interest in this war. “And I do see very clearly now what the downside could be, which is nuclear annihilation.”
“It’s hard to comprehend how destructive it is. A nuclear strike on New York would eliminate New York and also destroy North Carolina. So, these are weapons that are much more powerful than the average person understands,” he said.
And if Putin “is as crazy and evil as they tell us he is, why wouldn’t he use them? So, a victory over Putin is not necessarily a win for us. It’s very easy to see how beating Putin means destroying ourselves. And I’m just completely baffled as to why you even want to risk that,” Carlson said.
“I would say, the second people start talking about nuclear strikes, whether they are ‘tactical nukes,’ or ‘limited nuclear engagements,’ or whatever, that’s the moment when I look back and say, You know, you’re insane. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“If you’re talking about nuclear strikes, you’ve already lost, you freaking lunatic,” he said.
Tucker doesn’t drink, lives in a ‘tiny house,’ and, ironically, has no television
Aspects of Carlson’s personal life also discussed. Viewers learned that he doesn’t drink and that he and his wife of 31 years live in the “tiny” rural house he grew up in, alone with four dogs. Their four children have grown up and left home, but they all remain close. He and his wife never discuss politics but talk about trees, their dogs, and their children.
“So, it’s a very low-key life. We don’t have a TV. We’re not on the internet all the time. I get all my news by text message. I’ve kind of done all that, and I’m not that interested in being influenced or in letting that s*** into my head because I just don’t think much of it,” he said.
“I don’t have a Google alert. I never read about myself. I don’t know what people are saying [about me].”
Instead, he and his wife are avid readers, he explained as he sat in his family’s library. He described the current book he was reading, The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Matthias Desmet.
Carlson also explained how he and his wife sent three of their four children to the same Episcopal church boarding school they had attended, though they would never do it again. “That whole world that we grew up in changed completely and collapsed, and it doesn’t exist anymore,” he lamented.
Carlson’s vision: a ‘common American culture’
With regards to his vision for the United States, the television host said he was “an egalitarian” who desired a return to the mid-1980’s where people across the nation “had something in common with each other.” The nation was “very middle class” and affluent kids like him from La Jolla, California shared common experiences with the broad middle class, like eating at Denny’s and staying at Motel 6 during their skiing road trips.
The wealthy today are “living completely different livesbecause there’s no broad middle in the country anymore,” Carlson declared.
“I want to live in a country where [we have] lots of different kinds of people [and] different races. I’m all about great pluralism, great. But ultimately that we’re united in some kind of common American culture where every person feels—[and] I hate the word— empowered as a citizen.”
Each person should be confident that they have dignity before the law and in the electoral process, and that they have as many rights as anyone else including the President of the United States or an FBI agent.
“I have as many rights as you do. And I know what those rights are. And we stand equal to each other. We are peers because we’re both American. That’s the attitude I want,” Carlson said.
Back in those days, “it was nice because in the end, everybody or the overall majority had something in common with everybody else. And I want to get back to that. That’s my vision for America.”