Tucker Responds to the Israel Lobby Defeating Thomas Massie and Killing MAGA

I was thinking last night when Massie lost in Kentucky. I was thinking back to Trump's inauguration, the morning of the Trump inauguration, which amazingly was only last year, last January, January 20th.

0:12And I was in Washington for that, and Trump invited me to church on the morning before he was sworn in, and so of course I went.

0:19And it was at St. John's, the Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square, where pretty much every president has gone on the morning of the inauguration. So, I showed up.

0:27Happens to be my denomination, the Episcopal Church, so I know the church pretty well. I know people who work there. So, I was pretty excited about going and saying a prayer for this this presidency. So, I'm standing outside at maybe 6:45 in the morning, and it is freezing. And if you've been to Washington in the winter, you know it's mostly pretty temperate, but the cold days are very cold. And there's something about the cold in a city that is biting, even if you like cold, it's tough. And this was probably 12° and windy.

0:55And I remember that very well, because we were standing in line, in a security line, waiting to go through the magnetometer, and the Secret Service was there. There was a whole rigmarole, and dogs, and and they were taking forever.

1:04It's not their fault, but the protocols are complex.

1:07And it was awful standing there. We were kind of stamping our feet and grousing.

1:11Not many people, it was a pretty small church service, but the people who were standing in line were like, "Let's get going and get into church."

1:17And as we're standing there, feeling freezing, waiting to be searched by federal law enforcement, a woman brushed by me on the left side, kind of walking fast.

1:28Older woman, not very tall, and I recognized her.

1:32And it was Miriam Adelson.

1:34And she blew past me and everybody else in line, and went right to the front, right to the magnetometer, announced who she was, and walked on in.

1:44And I thought to myself, Miriam Adelson, who I know vaguely, not really, but I knew that she was the biggest, or one of the biggest, donors to the Trump campaign, an Israeli, born in Israel, widow of Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor, the casino magnate, but more than anything, a fervent neocon. Her main issue is American support for Israel. She says this, it's not a secret, and she spends accordingly.

2:10And she brushes past me, I remember thinking this, and everybody else, and just walks right in like she owns the place.

2:18And I remember thinking, "Hmm, I hope this isn't an omen. I hope it's not a sign of things to come. It feels a little bit like a metaphor. I hope that's not real."

2:28So, I kind of sublimated it, tried not to think about it. Finally, I got into church, sat alone in a pew with Charlie Kirk, had a great time. We were both almost jubilant, really, that Trump had been elected. We didn't think he would, but he did, and we were thrilled. Not just because we like Trump, which we did, cuz he's hilarious and fun to talk to, and interesting, and but because he ran on ideas that we agreed with, really strongly. And first among them was the idea, self-evident, really, that the US government ought to serve, in fact, it exists to serve the interests of American citizens, and it

3:05really has no other role in the world.

3:07Doesn't mean it has to strike a bellicose posture toward anyone else.

3:10Hurting other people isn't necessary, but helping your own people is the only reason you exist if you're the US government or one of its many employees.

3:19And the American president should proceed from that commitment. I am here to serve my people, well, as a father does with his children, an officer with his men, etc. That's leadership.

3:31Service to the people you lead, and a love for those people. And both of us were convinced at the time that Donald Trump was that man, that he was truly America First, and then because he was, this would be a great moment for our country, a much-needed relief from a worldview that put America at the bottom of its concerns, but that would also change the Republican Party, which was meaningful because the Republican Party, along with Trump, had just taken total control of the country.

4:00Both houses in Congress, House and Senate, the White House, majority of the Supreme Court appointed by Republicans. The Republicans were in charge, and we hoped, and at the moment we believed that the Republican Party would change along with Trump, its new leader.

4:16And that it would change in one specific way. It would come to put the concerns of Americans first. Period. That's it.

4:23We can argue about how best to serve them, but serving them has to be the goal.

4:28And so we imagined, Charlie Kirk and I, we may have talked about this in the pew, that we would see the Republican Party suddenly populated by a lot of people like, well, like Thomas Massie.

4:37I can't remember if we actually talked about Thomas Massie, but we had before, and Charlie Kirk had talked a lot about Thomas Massie.

4:45And Charlie Kirk loved Thomas Massie, not just as a person because he was honest and decent, but because Thomas Massie's orientation was purely about what's best for the country. And again, he said it many times, including in this representative interview of Thomas Massie. Here's Charlie Kirk.

5:03>> He loves liberty.

5:04He's honest, and he's tough, and he's going to really go after the intel agencies.

5:10It's Thomas Massie, who's just terrific from Kentucky. Congressman Massie, welcome to the program.

5:16>> Hey, thanks for having me on, Charlie.

5:18>> This might sound like a strange question, but I know it's on everybody's mind. You're going to be on the committee that will oversee the most powerful institutions on the planet, the FBI, the CIA, maybe the IRS.

5:31Are you concerned for your own safety, and or what they might try to do to blackmail you?

5:37>> Oh, absolutely. You'd be By the way, you're not qualified to be on this committee if you don't realize that there will be an effort to discredit me.

5:46>> It's poignant, and honestly kind of fascinating in retrospect to hear Charlie Kirk express alarm at the behavior of the intel agencies. Are you afraid they're going to kill you or blackmail you? He says to Thomas Massie.

5:58Charlie Kirk was thinking about that even then.

6:02It was only 8 months after the inauguration, less than, that Charlie Kirk, of course, was murdered, assassinated in public in a very, very strange shooting.

6:11And at around the same time Donald Trump pivoted from the promises that we at the time believed to become something completely different. It would have been unimaginable for us sitting in those pews at St.

6:25John's across from the White House on the morning of the inauguration to picture Donald Trump covering up the Epstein files, encouraging more secrecy, encouraging more surveillance, more spying on Americans, to be encouraging data centers across the country to abet that surveillance.

6:41And above all, it would have been stunning for us. In fact, we wouldn't have been able to comprehend it that morning in January of last year that Donald Trump would be cheerleading a regime change war in the Middle East against Iran of all Middle Eastern nations, the biggest and most powerful.

7:01Because both of us understood the point of Donald Trump and the reason that we supported him was because he would never do anything like that.

7:08That morning, the morning of the inauguration, both Charlie Kirk and I believed that Donald Trump had meant what he said in speech after speech, in public, in conversations with us, endless conversations with both of us on this exact topic.

7:22And so, if you're trying now to remember the Donald Trump that we thought was real on the morning of the inauguration, here's a reminder. This is a speech that Trump gave in 2020.

7:33>> Biden shipped away our jobs, threw open our borders, and sent our youth to fight in these crazy endless wars. And it's It's of the reasons the military I'm not saying the military is in love with me, the soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.

7:56Let's bring our soldiers back home.

8:00Some people don't like to come home.

8:02Some people like to continue to spend money.

8:05One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another, and that's what it was.

8:11>> One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another. That's what it was, and he was right. That's exactly what it was. One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another. Betrayals of the United States and its future, the future of our children, including the children that your children may not have because of those betrayals.

8:31Charlie Kirk was very upset about this.

8:32He was articulate in explaining why he was upset about it, and he sincerely believed that Trump would change it.

8:38Trump and people like Thomas Massie.

8:42It's hard to imagine what he would think about the remarks that Donald Trump, the same man that he voted for and campaigned for and went to pray for in the church the morning of the inauguration.

8:52What he would have thought of the Donald Trump on display yesterday when he said this, watch.

8:56>> I'm right now at 99% in Israel. I could run for Prime Minister, so maybe after I do this, I'll go to Israel run for Prime Minister. I had a poll this morning, I'm 99%.

9:08So, that's the >> The president of the United States bragging about his popularity in a foreign country.

9:16I'm 99% in Israel. Unmentioned is the fact that he's 35% in the United States.

9:2235% support from Americans, the people he pledged to represent, to fight for.

9:30Whose side he promised to take in every conflict foreign and domestic. And yet there he is bragging about how popular he is in a foreign country.

9:40The same country that got us into the war that is causing, to some extent, his unpopularity in this country.

9:48Speaking of cold-hearted globalist betrayals.

9:52Now, you can say, "Well, that's just Trump searching for affirmation wherever he can. Unpopular at home, he retreats into the fantasy of his popularity in another country." Well, yes, true.

10:04But, it's not a one-time exhibition of this.

10:10That president has spent the last year looking outward toward the approval of other nations.

10:22That president has spent the last year fighting for people who are not his voters, in many cases not even Americans, and allowing his own country to languish.

10:34The last year has not made America great again.

10:38The last year has diminished American power at a rate some of us thought was unimaginable.

10:44We couldn't have foreseen, less than a year and a half ago, sitting in St. John's, the damage that this administration, led by that president, for whom we campaigned and liked personally, could do to this country.

11:03How did this happen?

11:05Well, historians are going to have to figure that out.

11:07What was the change? Was Donald Trump a sleeper cell the entire time working on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu while pretending to be an America First patriot? Maybe.

11:16Hard to imagine that.

11:19This is someone who tends to externalize everything, who tends to say what he's thinking, probably doesn't have the self-control to be a long-term sleeper agent.

11:29And so, if that's true, if Trump really did change completely, not just by 6 degrees, but by 180 degrees, what caused the change? What was the moment where Donald Trump decided, I really don't care what the people who voted for me think. In fact, I don't think I like them very much. And what I really care about is what a foreign prime minister and some widowed casino magnate think of me.

11:55Who knows what caused that change, but the change is demonstrable.

12:01When did you first notice? I'll tell you when I first noticed. It was last summer.

12:05And the spark wasn't the war with Iran.

12:09It was the Epstein files.

12:13Why the Epstein files?

12:15Well, out of nowhere, the president who had effectively told his voters that he would declassify the Epstein files along with the files pertaining to all kinds of controversial and much discussed events around which conspiracy theories have grown, notably the JFK assassination, but not just that, all of them.

12:34There's too much secrecy in the federal government. That's what the president, the now president, said again and again. Why is there secrecy? Because secrecy hides corruption.

12:43You can't be corrupt in the open, of course.

12:47You need to be shielded by secrecy. And by the way, this is a president who was indicted and threatened with the rest of his life in prison for violating secrecy laws.

12:59Secrecy laws which were not written to protect American national security, of course not, and they haven't.

13:05They didn't prevent Jonathan Pollard stealing our key military secrets and giving them to the Israeli government, which promptly gave them to the Soviets. That didn't help at all.

13:14No, those laws were written to prevent you, the people who pay for the federal government, from learning what the federal government is actually doing.

13:21Secrecy abets corruption. It's obvious.

13:25None of this can thrive in It dies, famously.

13:29And so the pledge, the promise, the core promise behind America First and Drain the Swamp and every other slogan all of which I loved, I'll just say it, and love to this day.

13:42The pledge behind all of those was to let people know what their own government is doing, both because they have a right to know and because once they do know, the corruption will stop.

13:53It's about corruption.

13:56It's about a justice system that does not treat every person as a citizen, much less a child of God, but treats them as members of castes.

14:04And members of some castes have to obey the law and members of other castes don't. There is not equal treatment under the law, therefore there is no justice. Therefore the most basic promise of America which is that you will be judged by what you do is invalid, and so is democracy itself.

14:21How can you vote for things if you don't know what they are?

14:24Well, you can't.

14:25You have no control in a world where the most important facts are hidden from you.

14:32And that obvious observation which spoke not just to Republicans, but to a lot of non-Republicans, famously people who made up the Trump 2024 coalition, that promise was the promise. The government will work for you and you alone, and you will know that because you're going to know what the government is doing.

14:53Because of course foreign lobbying of your government or lobbying by Big Pharma or lobbying by anybody of your government is by definition corruption because it gives more weight to the preferences of a small group of people than to the majority. It's a betrayal, it's a corruption of democracy. It is corruption.

15:13And there is probably no figure in modern history who embodies corruption more perfectly than Jeffrey Epstein.

15:20Not because he was the worst person who ever lived. He wasn't.

15:24He was just an employee in a much larger structure. He wasn't making independent decisions. Come on now.

15:30But he got away with it. Jeffrey Epstein somehow won Powerball in the state of Oklahoma and collected almost $30 million.

15:37Jeffrey Epstein won Powerball. Okay now.

15:41How'd that happen? Wasn't from Oklahoma.

15:43No one's ever explained how he won. The feds looked into it. No explanation.

15:47He just somehow collected almost $30 million from Powerball. Okay now.

15:52So what's the lesson there?

15:54The lesson and the reason it's funny is because the system is rigged. And everyone knows it's rigged. And Epstein proves that it's rigged.

16:01And at some point it was rigged apparently against Epstein.

16:05How do we know that?

16:06Well, because on July 6th, 2019, he was arrested at Teterboro private airport outside New York City on a flight from Paris and he was charged with basically the same crimes he'd been charged with back in 2006 by the state of Florida.

16:21Now you would think that that would be not allowed.

16:25Double jeopardy. Well, the feds made the case, well, that was those were state charges. These are federal charges. But he had a federal non-prosecution agreement.

16:33It's not a defense of Jeffrey Epstein, of course.

16:36It's merely noting the obvious, which is what the Justice Department did to Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 was very weird.

16:43And no one's ever explained why they did that. But what we do know is that a month and three days after he was arrested at Teterboro airport, he was dead.

16:51And he was murdered.

16:53That's obvious.

16:55And it was never investigated.

16:57That's a fact.

16:59So what does that add up to add up to?

17:01Well, I don't know. Draw your own conclusions. Here you have a guy who's entangled with multiple intel agencies from a bunch of different countries, notably the United States and Israel, but also British intelligence, probably French, the usual panoply.

17:16And he's running around the world as an arms dealer and a connector and he's got some relationship to 9/11. What is that?

17:22And he wins Powerball.

17:25He's operating at the highest levels.

17:26He's not running anything, but he's operating at those levels and he knows a lot, a lot, a lot.

17:31And one day he is summoned back from Paris and arrested and a month later he's murdered.

17:37So it stands to reason that anyone involved in any of that probably had direct involvement in his murder.

17:46No one ever asked these questions.

17:48That's not considered interesting cuz it's not related to sex.

17:52But it may be a little bit closer to the heart of why this is such a touchy subject for this administration cuz keep in mind Donald Trump was president in 2019.

18:00And it was his attorney general, Attorney General Barr, the son, strangely, of the man who had given Jeffrey Epstein his first job teaching at the Dalton School and then helped get him a job at Bear Stearns and then launched him into whatever world he occupied until he was murdered.

18:17Under the authority of Attorney General Barr. Kind of weird.

18:22Well, so weird that at very least demands an explanation which we've never received.

18:28Any case, probably not going to receive one anytime soon because the president who could explain it was remarkably touchy about the subject. Very, very touchy.

18:39And whenever it came up, and this was a shock to a lot of his supporters, he didn't just brush it off and say, "Hey, I will get to that after we fix the economy and lowered gas prices and made it possible for your son to get a job."

18:51No, his response was, well, hysterical.

18:54"Shut up!

18:55Anyone who asks about Epstein is not my supporter and I don't want your support." He said that in a Truth Social post at the time, last summer. Look it up.

19:04And so for those of us who campaigned for Trump and voted for him and liked him, the first thought was, "What is this?

19:10Isn't the whole point of your administration to drain the swamp?

19:15Isn't this why you got elected?

19:17So you could end this two-tiered system where some people get to molest kids and win Powerball in Oklahoma and everything's fine until they're murdered somehow, but no no one can ever figure out how.

19:28And the rest of us who get arrested for having three beers and driving to 7-Eleven.

19:35Get arrested cuz you make a mistake on your tax form.

19:38Not all of us have a Department of Justice-ordered respite from federal audits. Some of us are subject to federal audits and know that we'll get them if we step out of line.

19:50So it would be nice, and again, this was the promise of the campaign and of the administration and the reason that some of us filed into church though behind Mirror Madison on that cold morning a year and a half ago. Why would Donald Trump shut down any not just investigation into, but any conversation about the guy who embodies the corruption he was elected to end?

20:14That thought has never left my mind and probably the mind of a lot of other people.

20:19Was Trump involved in some weird sex thing? Probably not, actually.

20:24That might be better than the actual answer.

20:27And the actual answer may be that Donald Trump is covering up for exactly the people he was elected to expose.

20:36So that was the moment. Well, apparently Thomas Massie didn't get the memo, but that is totally off limits. Talk about whatever you want.

20:44You can make fun of Kamala Harris's teeth, but you don't talk about Epstein cuz the whole point of the Republican party is to make sure that we don't talk about Epstein. Isn't that right? Isn't that why you became a Republican?

20:54Thomas Massie didn't get the memo, and he started saying in his kind of autistic forthright way, "What about Epstein? I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT EPSTEIN."

21:02And rather than just brush him off or blow him off or ignore him, Donald Trump fixated on him.

21:08And began to hate Thomas Massie.

21:12And in a move that may reveal what the Epstein story is really about, he made common cause with some of his biggest donors. Those would include Paul Singer.

21:21Paul Singer.

21:23A liberal who is somehow one of the biggest donors in the Republican Party, and John Paulson.

21:28And of course Miriam Adelson.

21:32And they colluded in effect to destroy Thomas Massie.

21:37Now, Thomas Massie, in addition to calling for more disclosure of the Epstein documents, which by the way belong to the citizens of the United States. They're not the personal property of any federal bureaucrat. They belong to the people of the country, who also, by the way, own the federal detention center in which Epstein was murdered, and are therefore owed an explanation of who murdered him and why, and why hasn't that person been arrested.

22:02In any case, Thomas Massie demanded this.

22:05But Thomas Massie also had another distinction, another asterisk by his name. Out of 217 Republicans in the Congress, Thomas Massie is the only one who's never taken money from the Israeli lobby. He's the only one.

22:19And Thomas Massie has never been opposed to Israel in any sense. You can search the archive for Thomas Massie attacking Israel or Jews or anything on the topic. Doesn't seem that interested. Thomas Massie's position is a principled one, and a consistent one going back decades.

22:36The United States has a lot of problems, and maybe first among them is a debt problem. The United States is bankrupt, beyond bankrupt.

22:43The United States is so deeply in debt that its creditors are worried.

22:48And we cannot afford to send any more foreign aid to anyone. That would include Egypt, and it would very much include the largest recipient of foreign aid by far, which is Israel, which is not strategically important to the United States in any sense. We receive nothing of value from Israel, nothing.

23:09And when you compare whatever tech we receive, the spyware on our phones, against the cost in dead Americans and in American dollars and in the total isolation now of the United States, which is in part the result of our alliance with Israel, it's not a good deal for us.

23:28And so Thomas Massie has stood alone all of these years. He's made zero headway in stopping aid to Israel or in even changing minds about Israel.

23:37But he has persisted in his lonely principled campaign against foreign aid.

23:44And so because of that, Trump colluded with three of his donors, including his biggest, Miriam Adelson, to destroy Thomas Massie and to end his career in Congress by beating him in the Republican primary in the fourth district of Kentucky, a place we can bet Miriam Adelson has never been to and could not find on a map and in which she has no real interest.

24:09And that makes you wonder, well, why would she and her fellow neocon billionaires spend tens of millions of dollars to kick Thomas Massie out of the Congress?

24:19And of course, because Israel. That's it.

24:22Thomas Massie criticized not Israel, but America's relationship with Israel, and that can't be allowed.

24:30What's interesting is that it wasn't just Trump and it wasn't just his donors, Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer and Paul Singer and the rest.

24:40It was the entire American news media, left and right.

24:45Here's CBS News interviewing Thomas Massie about his race in really one of the remarkable clips of the past month. Watch this.

24:52>> There have been more than 32 million dollars spent on a primary >> Yeah. in this congressional district, which is now the most expensive House primary ever in the United States.

25:05Is it worth it?

25:06>> You'd have to ask Miriam Adelson on May 20th if it was worth it. Because, you know, they tried to buy my vote for 14 years and it was never for sale. They've tried Now they're trying to buy a seat here in Kentucky.

25:18>> You know that kind of criticism doesn't sit well with fellow Republicans, at least in the House Republican conference.

25:24That there are others who've accused you of all sorts of things regarding Israel, regarding the state of Israel, regarding Israeli government, regarding Jewish Americans.

25:36Are you anti-Semitic?

25:38>> They're trying to tell you that it's anti-Semitic for me to expose the fact that the Republican Jewish Coalition has spent millions of dollars in this race. That a dual citizen, Miriam Adelson, who even Trump says is more loyal to Israel than the United States, has spent millions of dollars in this race. Those are mere facts. And it's really >> yes or no. Are you anti-Semitic or not?

26:01>> Oh, hell no. I'm hell no anti-Semitic.

26:04But here's the danger that AIPAC runs.

26:06They've been too cute by a half. They've tried to get Mike Johnson and he's willingly done this, conflate in resolutions on the House floor that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. Or even worse yet, that if you don't support Benjamin Netanyahu's war in Gaza, then you're anti-Semitic. That's absolutely false and it does Jewish Americans a big disfavor to equate the two.

26:29>> You got to wonder what that kid from CBS News is being paid and does he ask himself, is it worth it?

26:34So he, of course, asked the question to Massie, which is not a question, it's slander posing as a question. Are you an anti-Semite? There's no evidence Massie's an anti-Semite.

26:44Never said anything, not one thing anti-Semitic, ever.

26:47Because he's not an anti-Semite.

26:49Are you an anti-Semite? To which Massie says, "No, actually, the Republican Jewish coalition is spending millions to beat me because I don't believe in sending more money to Israel to fund their genocide against the Palestinians.

27:01He didn't say that, but that's what this is about. Should the United States government pay for a genocide?

27:06No.

27:07Would be the answer for most people.

27:09But the reporter doesn't even listen to it. Are you an anti-Semite? Yes or no?

27:14So Thomas Massie said, "Well, yeah, yeah, well, I'm an anti-Semite, but I mean, I'm What?"

27:19Are you an anti-Semite?

27:21So the reporter has to say it twice.

27:24Anti-Semite, anti-Semite. When Massie's critique of our foreign aid package to Israel has nothing to do with Judaism, Jewish ethnic identity. It has no connection whatsoever to blood libel or well poisoning or any of the historical examples that are often dredged up to compare people like Thomas Massie to. You're a Nazi. He's in no sense a Nazi. In fact, he's an anti-authoritarian.

27:50Unlike the reporter from CBS News, who's bludgeoning him over the head with slander.

27:55So you may say to yourself, well, that of course that's CBS News. You may not even be aware that that was bought by a huge contributor to the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, and part of the rationale, maybe the main rationale for having CBS News at all at this point, is to ask questions like that.

28:12If you didn't know those facts, you might think, well, that's just the mainstream media, the lame stream media.

28:18Using the same tactics they always have.

28:21Slander, innuendo, attacks posing as questions, not bothering to listen to the answer, totally interested in the reality of anything, pushing an agenda.

28:31And you'd be right.

28:34But what's so revealing is that it wasn't just liberal mainstream CBS News, it was what's often incorrectly described as the far right. The far right.

28:48Far right meaning, I don't know, anyone who's against mass migration, who raises his voice or something.

28:56But that would include Mark Levin.

29:00Someone who spent a lot of his life denouncing the lame stream media.

29:04And yet if you listen to Mark Levin's critique of the Massie race, it's identical to the CBS News critique of the race, which is Massie has no valid points.

29:17It's impossible to imagine Massie could be opposing aid to Israel except out of personal hatred, animus, out of anti-Semitism.

29:27It's impossible to imagine any Americans who could support something so crazy as not sending billions to Israel, so the only people supporting Massie must be radical jihadis.

29:38Here's Mark Levin.

29:40>> I'm looking at the support for Massie.

29:43It's the most radical jihadis in our country.

29:48It is Democrats. It is Talib.

29:52I mean, think of It's Rand Paul, the reprobates.

29:58The miscreants.

29:59And I underscore the malcontents are moving behind Massie.

30:06And they're raising tons of money.

30:09And Massie is supported by all the elements that support Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran.

30:20Why is that?

30:22He's supported by all the American haters and Jew haters and many of the Christian haters in this country.

30:28Why is that?

30:30>> They're Jew haters. They support Islamic Jihad, whatever that is.

30:37It's actually not faith so ludicrous that it's funny. It's precisely what the CBS News guy just said to him, "Well, clearly you're a Jew hater. You're an anti-Semite."

30:47And Massie is the perfect foil for this because he sincerely isn't. He doesn't even fully understand what the guy's talking about. No, I just don't think we should send money to a foreign country.

30:55They're mad at Massie why?

30:58One Republican out of 217 who hasn't taken money from the Israeli lobby. Why are they so mad at him? Why was it so important for the Israeli lobby to spend tens of millions of dollars to crush this guy?

31:13He wasn't stopping really the status quo in any way. He did help get some of the Epstein files, some of the Epstein files released, and God bless him for that. He tried his hardest.

31:22But one man against 216 other members of his party is not going to get very far by definition. So, why don't you leave him alone? Why force the issue? Why are they so mad at this guy? Why is Trump so mad at him?

31:33Why is Meara Eilertson so mad?

31:36And of course the answer is because Thomas Massie was willing to say out loud that there is an Israeli lobby.

31:41There is a foreign country whose supporters in the United States in positions of prominence are making campaign contributions purely on the basis of what's good for a foreign country.

31:55Their loyalty is not to the United States, it's to a foreign country.

31:59Well, that's just true. It's just a fact.

32:02But you can't say that. Why can't you say it? Well, because it's true. That's why.

32:07If it was a lie, if you were claiming the Earth was flat, then it wouldn't hurt you.

32:11But be precisely because it is true, it's the truest thing. In fact, it's the it's the definitive fact in American politics, you're not allowed to say it.

32:19And he did.

32:21Now, why do we say that's true?

32:23Isn't that an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory?

32:27Well, I don't know.

32:30Let's go to the Israeli press, which for all its many faults is a little bit more honest, it's a little bit less constipated in its use of language. They can kind of say things out loud cuz who's watching?

32:40Haaretz, the traditionally liberal paper in Israel, publishes an English language edition.

32:45And here was this headline yesterday.

32:47Look at this.

32:48There it is. The most consequential Republican primary for Israel is happening in Kentucky.

32:56Now, why would the Republican primary in the fourth district of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a place doubtless most Israelis have never visited or can locate, why would that be so important for Israel?

33:12Well, because lots of things they tell you were not true are entirely true. First among them is Israel could not exist without the United States in its present form. Its ambitions would be at best vastly curtailed.

33:26Because everything outside its borders that Israel does is done with American tax dollars and with the backstop of the lives of American servicemen.

33:35So, without that, the Greater Israel project is done. Israel can exist in its 48 borders, maybe. It probably can't hold on to its 67 borders. Which is to say, Gaza, West Bank, it's going to be a slog.

33:49Because the United States makes that possible. Israel's expansion is paid for and guaranteed by the United States taxpayer.

33:56And anyone who says that out loud, that is absolutely true. There's nothing more true in global politics than that. But anyone who says it reveals the game and must be destroyed. And that's why even in Israel, they know that beating Thomas Massie is priority number one.

34:16But on its face, that sounds like an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

34:22A Republican primary in a minor Republican state, not even a state, a Commonwealth, whatever that is, is being orchestrated from Israel?

34:33With Israel's interests in mind, not America's interests? What What are you, a Nazi?

34:38Not in Israel you're not if you say that, because it's true.

34:42And they said it.

34:44So, Massie says, "Well, it's AIPAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition. They're the ones opposing me. It's not a groundswell of support from within the district for my opponent, Ed whatever his name is, Galrin or Galrin.

34:56Nobody even knows how to pronounce his name. He's not a I mean, is he a real person? I don't know.

35:00His only real meaningful campaign pledge is to bring back the draft. The draft?

35:06How many people are in support of a draft? How many people of draft age are in support of a draft?

35:11None.

35:14Why would you want a draft? Do the Joint Chiefs want a draft? Would it make the military better if we had a draft? Why would we have a draft?

35:21When entire wars are fought with drones, do we need a draft?

35:26Ed Galrin or Galrin or whatever this composite figure is calling himself, wants a draft.

35:32Can you think of a more totalitarian and less popular position for any person running for office to take than I want a draft? Vote for me and I will take your child and send him to go die for Israel. Is that actually a campaign pledge? He made that pledge.

35:50So, Massie's point is, this guy who refused to have a single debate with the incumbent, not one, who has no obvious support in the district, this guy only has a chance because AIPAC from whom I've never taken a dollar, the only Republican who's never taken money from AIPAC, AIPAC is on his side. That's Thomas Massie's position.

36:13To which CBS News and Mark Levin and all the other dumb people in MAGA world, that's anti-Semitic.

36:21Really now.

36:23Let's see what AIPAC has to say about it.

36:26Minutes after Massie was declared the loser, AIPAC AIPAC the dreaded AIPAC whose name we're not allowed to say AIPAC sent out this tweet in public on Twitter. Here's what they said.

36:38We're quoting. Pro-Israel Americans are proud to help defeat anti-Israeli candidates.

36:47Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.

36:51And good politics exclamation point. In other words, the second Massie loses, AIPAC announces, "We did it.

36:59We did it. We bumped this guy off. He criticized us.

37:02We're literally an unregistered foreign lobby who exist not to help the United States or its citizens, but a foreign country that couldn't exist without our aid anyway, whose aims are so far from ours that they are hurting us gravely.

37:18Whose population may love Trump, but in a lot of ways hate Christian Americans.

37:22That's why they're spitting on nuns.

37:23That country doesn't like this member of Congress, therefore we're going to take him out.

37:28And by the way, we did.

37:31Oh.

37:32So, in other words, AIPAC is saying out loud something that if you said out loud, might get you fired from your job.

37:39Or investigated by the Trump DOJ, which by the way has just announced a multi-city anti-anti-Semitism tour led by Leo Terrell, the chief of anti-Semitism enforcement or something, a Fox News contributor with I think 11 IRS liens against him over more than 10 years. A guy who's sort of wonder like how'd you get into federal service if you have a problem paying federal taxes. We'll leave that between him and the IRS. Maybe he'll get his own exemption from IRS audits. We'll see.

38:09But that guy is leading a tour of the United States to try and do something with the imprimatur of the Department of Justice, which is to say people with guns, about the most pressing problem in this nation, which is criticism of Israel.

38:22Because yes, criticism of Israel is now officially defined as anti-Semitism.

38:27So when they tell you you're committing anti-Semitism, what they're saying is you're critical of a foreign nation. And that's now a crime.

38:35And rather than explain to you why it's so important and so good for you and the grandchildren you hope to have to support Israel. Like you should get on board. This is a great deal. Israel's awesome. Here's how they help us. Here's why you should be all in on Israel.

38:50Here's why the thousands of children they murdered in Gaza deserve to be killed.

38:55Cuz they were future terrorists. You know, make your case. If you have a case, make it. Tell us what you think.

39:00Instead of doing that, the Trump administration is taking the position that noticing is hate. Just noticing it.

39:09That's hate.

39:10It's anti-Semitism. It's a crime.

39:13That's the official message from Department of Justice, which is using your tax dollars to intimidate you into shutting up about something that AIPAC is bragging about publicly.

39:28It's hard to know what this is.

39:30I mean, clearly it's not a sincere effort to reduce anti-Semitism.

39:35If you're going to gin up anti-Semitism, you're going to make people feel bitter.

39:38If you wanted people to blame their problems on Jews, whoever they are, this is exactly what you would do.

39:45Of course. So it's not an effort to reduce anti-Semitism, and you wouldn't have Leo Terrell, the Fox News contributor, with 11 IRS liens against him.

39:58That's your public servant, really?

40:01You wouldn't have that guy leading a multi-city tour to screech at you about how you're a bad person for not liking Israel. And by the way, possibly a criminal for not liking Israel. You wouldn't attack the only truly sacred right this country protects, which is the freedom of speech, on behalf of a foreign country if you were trying to eliminate anti-Semitism? Of course not.

40:23This is something else.

40:25This is a humiliation exercise. This is designed to let you know that there is now a caste system in place under which skepticism of one group is a lot more serious than skepticism of another group.

40:38Another word for this that was very common on Fox News, and in fact it emerged many times from Donald Trump's mouth, was identity politics. That's identity politics.

40:46We should instead have politics based on citizenship.

40:49If you're a citizen, you are equal to me under the law.

40:52There are no distinctions beyond that.

40:55God may make distinctions beyond that, but we're not God, we're a government.

40:59And in our government, the people own the country, they are shareholders in this enterprise, and you treat them all the same until proven otherwise. That's our justice system.

41:10You can criticize anyone you want equally. Every American citizen is allowed to use the same words, regardless of what his parents look like, because we don't have castes, because we're not India.

41:24We reject identity politics. That was the promise. That's why BLM was wrong.

41:29All of a sudden you had to worship black people like gods rather than just treating them like friends or neighbors or citizens or just people, cuz that's what they are.

41:35That's what every person is, just a person.

41:38Good on a good day, bad on a bad day.

41:41Smarter, taller, richer, poorer, shorter, fatter, you know, different in some ways, but fundamentally all the same and equal under the law.

41:50Because this country is governed the same way heaven is governed, by universal principles. If something is wrong, it is wrong for everyone.

41:59If something is okay, it's okay for everyone.

42:02We don't make those distinctions.

42:05Because when we do, it's called corruption.

42:08That's what corruption is. Different rules for me than for you.

42:12But all of a sudden, you have, led by this administration, the one that Charlie Kirk and I were so hopeful about in church that morning in January of last year, you have the most aggressive and the most threatening outbreak of identity politics, maybe in this country's history.

42:30You have the Justice Department endorsing the idea that criticism of foreign nation is potentially a crime.

42:35And you have certain states banning it, like Florida.

42:38Under Ron DeSantis. No, that's a hate crime. You can't criticize that country or our relationship with it. At the very same time, the people encouraging you to go along with this and threatening you if you don't are bragging that everything you're not allowed to say is in fact true.

42:54That's all this is. It's a way to make it really clear.

42:57Jeffrey Epstein gets to win Powerball somehow.

43:02His murderers walk free. We're not even going to investigate it.

43:06But you watch yourself. Watch yourself now.

43:09That's exactly what's going on.

43:12But maybe the most obvious example of what's going on happened last night. And it wasn't just the fact that Ed Gallrine, or whatever the guy's name is, who even knows, who cares?

43:24As he won, somebody, and this was cruel, brought a video camera to his quote victory party.

43:31Now, remember, this is a guy who just beat a seven-term incumbent. And check the numbers on this. It's not that easy to beat an incumbent, a seven-term incumbent, who is wildly popular, even by the standards of Republican states.

43:44Thomas Massie wasn't just popular, he was wildly popular in his district, and the election results over the past seven terms prove that. Look him up.

43:52So, this guy, Ed whatever his name is, just wins, and his one campaign promises to draft your son and send him to Iran, but he wins anyway.

44:02How did he win? Well, obviously, people were just so thrilled by the idea of a draft that they just lifted Ed Gallroon under their shoulders and carried him across the finish line. And then they all streamed into the victory hall for beers and high fives and maybe some brats.

44:18You imagine that must have happened.

44:20People woke up one morning and realized their congressman who we thought was honest and principled and decent, a family man whose four children love him, who built his own home, is the embodiment of the America you thought you lived in, this independent has self-respect and reverence for God and nature. That's what you thought of him. And you realize, "No, no, no, no, he's like a liberal who's actually being supported by the jihadis, who's like some kind of sex criminal."

44:45Cuz that's what they told you. We need Ed Gallroon, the draft guy.

44:51And we're thrilled he got it. Well, let's take a look. Let's take a peek at what Election HQ last night at Ed's victory party actually looked like.

45:24Covered a lot of victory parties in my life, a lot, more than 10.

45:28And some loss parties, too.

45:31That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. There's no one there. What percentage of people in that room know Ed Gallroon or know or related to him, are his neighbors, were paid to be there?

45:43We don't know the answer.

45:45There's nobody there.

45:48So, how'd this guy win? Well, he won on mail-in ballots.

45:51And we'll sort of leave it to online sleuths to determine whether that's legitimate or not. Who knows?

45:59Cuz if you're willing to pour tens of millions of dollars into a Republican primary in the fourth district of Kentucky, you're probably willing to do whatever it takes. And maybe they did, we don't know that. Not alleging it.

46:10But we do know that's not what democracy looks like.

46:13Democracy is the process by which people express their will.

46:18By which they say this is how we want our country to be run because it's our country. It doesn't belong to Miriam Adelson or Paul Singer or Israel or big pharma for that matter or any other small group of rich people.

46:32It's not the plaything of billionaires. It's that doesn't belong to the oligarchs. It belongs to us.

46:37And here's what we want.

46:39And you can't ignore us because we're the owners here. And this is shareholders meeting and we're voting.

46:46And when people win in a race like this, there's evidence of it. And that evidence takes very familiar forms.

46:53Enthusiasm, joy, and just sheer numbers.

46:56Like people show up. They can't believe it. We beat the evil Thomas Massie with his jihadi backers. This is a blow against Islamic Jihad, whatever that is.

47:08Islamic Jihad which along with Hamas is one of the big problems in the fourth district of Kentucky.

47:14They've been very, very concerned about Islamic Jihad and Hamas and Hezbollah for a long time in Covington.

47:21But anyway, there was no such display.

47:23And so it makes you wonder this election itself, was it another part of the humiliation ritual?

47:30Was it a way of saying to the rest of us, people sort of believed in democracy, it's all fake.

47:35We can get a guy whose last name we can't pronounce elected on a platform everybody in America hates because we can.

47:42Cuz we're billionaires and you're not.

47:44And of course our priorities are not aligned with yours. In fact, we hate your priorities and we hate you.

47:48We're going to do this to anyway. Even in Kentucky, we can do it.

47:52It's possible that's the message they were sending. Pretty certain, actually.

47:57So on one level, this is the saddest moment in a long time.

48:00It's not just the death of Thomas Massie's immediate political career, which may be resurrected, one never knows.

48:07It's obviously the death of MAGA, whatever that was.

48:10But, it's also, of course, the end of the Republican Party as we thought we knew it.

48:15The Republican Party of right now bears absolutely no resemblance to the Republican Party we thought we had just elected less than a year and a half ago. None at all.

48:25Its parties are completely different.

48:28Its slogans are completely different.

48:30It is not the same thing.

48:32And maybe there's a working majority somewhere of people who support the new priorities of the Republican Party, but the question would be where is that?

48:41Haaretz readers clearly do. They think that was the most important race in America. Amazing that they were following it.

48:47But, in this country nobody supports this.

48:51Nobody does.

48:55And so that's not all bad.

48:59And it's not bad because the one thing we know is that nothing will be the same after this. This is too much. They went too far.

49:08This is a victory, but it's likely a Pyrrhic victory, actually.

49:12Because we now know, because it's been confirmed, how the system actually works. And no, it's not a democratic system. It bears no resemblance to a democratic system at all.

49:21A small number of people who are more concerned about a foreign country than our country decide who gets elected.

49:28No, that's not a hateful conspiracy theory.

49:31That's a demonstrable fact that they admit.

49:35So, it's on the basis of that that we can proceed. And by that, I mean the truth. That's the truth.

49:39What people whispered about, those crazies on the internet, has now been proven for everyone to see.

49:44Nothing will ever be the same again.

49:47And you got to think it's going to be a little better.

49:50Because there will be actual reform. We have gone too far.

49:54And so whatever comes next, whether it's in the Republican Party or outside it, is likely to be much more honest and direct and less ashamed.

50:03Much more willing to tell the truth as uncomfortable as it may make some people. Because the truth is always worth telling, always.

50:11And a politics based on anything but the truth is always poisonous.

50:15So yes, this is a low point. Is it the end point? Not at all.

50:19It's the beginning.

50:21Maybe of something great.

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51:21>> Rich Baris has been following this for a long time. Not as a candidate, but as a pollster. As someone who is constantly measuring what people want and think.

51:33He's on the Republican side. We think he's really insightful. There aren't many pollsters we'd trust or ever want to talk to, but he's at the top of the list and he joins us now. Rich, are you there?

51:42>> I'm here. Thanks for having me, Tucker.

51:43>> Thanks, thanks so much for for this. So that's my assessment of what we just saw. I think it's it's obvious that Massie would not have lost without the Republican Jewish Coalition and a few neocon billionaires weighing in on behalf of a foreign country. Do you think that's a fair read?

52:03>> Uh 100%. I mean, just so the folks at home understand, we've never seen anything like you may have heard that this was the most expensive primary in history. But, to give people at home an idea, primaries on the Republican side uh in a district like this, you might spend a half you may spend 500,000, maybe it goes to 2 million, Tucker. We have never seen anything like this. This isn't even an expensive media market, Kentucky 4. You have Louisville, but this is not like a New York, a California, or even some of the Florida media markets. This was an insane amount of money. And what does that buy you?

52:36Uh look, in the clip you just played, there was a guy uh that I that I noticed when I saw that clip, and he's waving around a white sign with a Sharpie marker written lower prices. He probably has no idea that one of the few appearances that his candidate made, he was asked about gas prices and the Iran war, and he flatly said the Iran war was worth spiking gas prices. So, I look, that's what $35 million buys you. Uh they drove up turnout, guys. This wasn't about AIPAC. It wasn't a referendum on AIPAC. You know, just to give people an idea what I mean by that, AIPAC will never run ads. They didn't do it in the

53:12the Chicago suburbs where they targeted a Democrat. It was anti-war and anti-foreign aid. You will never hear the ad, and then at the end of the ad it says, "This message was paid for by the American right AIPAC." They're very good at running these through other party groups and making the election about something else. And they made this election about loyalty to Trump. Is he loyal enough to Trump? Is he loyal enough to the party? And some of the questions around some of the immigration votes. And what are you doing in a Republican primary with that? You drive up turnout with boomers, and that is the

53:42lesson here, Tucker. Uh Thomas Massie was clobbering Ed Goleman with millennials three to one. Three to one, not two to one, not one and a half to one.

53:51Younger people need to vote, and Republicans need to get it through their heads right now. You used the word I've been using. This was a pyrrhic victory.

53:59Congratulations, you spent $35 million you needed in November to get rid of the last conservative in the US House of Representatives to replace him with a neocon that the American people rejected 20 years ago and didn't elect Republicans again until Donald Trump's brand of America First came around. This is a pyrrhic victory that they'll suffer for later.

54:22>> They've got to know that.

54:23>> They do.

54:24>> Okay, do Okay, so do they? I mean, this is the end of the Republican Party, not just that I supported. I would never ever It's It would say moral to support this, in my opinion.

54:34But anti-free speech, pro-killing, I mean, it's grotesque in every way.

54:39But it's also the end of the Republican Party that we had and the beginning of something new and deeply unpopular. They got to know that.

54:48>> They do, and I'm just going to tell you a story. I won't You know, I won't blow them up, but you know, being a pollster, unfortunately, I get bombarded by you know, by donors and people who want to pick my brain because they think they're privileged and they're entitled to that phone call. But last night in having several conversations, three of them flatly told me when I was making the argument that Okay, good job. You did it. $35 million to win by nine points.

55:13Now, compare that to when Donald Trump targeted Liz Cheney folks, who was really a rhino, who was really a neocon, who really supported never-ending war.

55:21Liz Harrington barely needed that amount of money, and she thrashed Liz Cheney by more than 30 points. It was the biggest election defeat for any sitting incumbent in history, and it didn't require 35 million votes. So, you beat him, you sent him home. He's going to take 5% of his vote with him.

55:36Libertarians are going to be mad.

55:38They're going to do what they did to Republicans in '18, which is run candidates, independents, and libertarians pulling one and a half here, two and a two and a half there, costing Republican seats because there will be races that close that third-party vote share actually cost them that race. And for what? And the answer basically was, "We don't care about November. Stop worrying about November. That's something we can worry about later. The pendulum swings down the road." This is what I got out of it.

56:05And you said it and you you addressed it in your monologue.

56:08They really do feel that Thomas Massie or anyone who opposes foreign aid, who doesn't support unfettered give their unfettered support to Israel and their ventures in the Middle East, they cannot separate that from anti-Semitism. They think that that's they're anti-Semites in secret and they're cow couching, you know, that that anti-Semitism in some phony philosophy that they can't, you know, vote for foreign spending. And over the course of 45 minutes, it dawned on me. They believe this. They really do believe it. At first, for a long time, I thought it was just junk. And it was just typical almost left-wing kind of

56:47use of how you expand the definition to impose a label on somebody, like the left does with racism and xenophobia. Um which causes a backlash because when you do that, you actually wind up creating more of what you're trying to put down, right? If you're constantly calling somebody anti-Semitic for having a difference in opinion over foreign policy, you're you're almost assuredly going to create more anti-Semitism. Um which by the way, Mark Levin called me an anti-Semite for pointing out. And it gets insane. But they and I thought that, you know, maybe they were just being careless and reckless by doing

57:21this. And it really did dawn on me last night that they believe it.

57:25They believe it.

57:26>> Is there any I mean, if you think about what they're defending, so they're defending two things. One, the proposition that it's okay to be more loyal to a foreign country than your own country.

57:36And two, the behavior of that foreign country, which is not only out of bounds and unacceptable, but I mean, what Israel has done in the last 2 and 1/2 years to people within areas it controls, murdering women and children by the tens of thousands.

57:53I mean, book that that will never be forgotten in history. Is there any sense do you get that they're like ashamed of any of this? Is there any sense of they're doing something wrong or is it entirely like displacement? Like anyone who criticizes or notices it, they're the real criminals. I I you tell me.

58:08>> Yeah, that's a good question. I think the answer is no. And And the reason is, over the last year, you know, I'm a public pollster and my job is to conduct the research and not convey my own opinion, but try to get people to understand what voters are thinking and why why they are thinking the way they are. And over the last year, just polling has been met with incredible blowback. And recently, I reviewed this internal report, it's an Israeli government report. And basically, it admits they have a massive problem in the West, particularly among younger people in America, in Israel's image has

58:39suffered badly. How are they going to confront this and how how are they going to overcome this and still keep their special relationship with the United States and alliances or at least friendly, you know, relations with other Western countries. Going through all of these bullets, they couldn't decouple what we were talking about either. Even in the This is a government report. They couldn't decouple it. But also, um not one single prescription had anything to do with curbing Israel's behavior. And that concerned me because I mean, yeah, it all came down to censorship, Tucker, right? Censorship, some form of

59:13coercion, we're going to do this, we're going to lean on these people, we're going to use our friendships and relationships here to address that group of people. And none of it was dealing with curbing their own behavior. And that is from a you know, view, just from public polling point of view, that's their problem. One of the things that jumped out at me last year was it was different. It was It was something we've never measured before. Young Americans, and when I say young, I mean under 45, even those who identified as America First, viewed what was happening in Gaza as a genocide. And we have never seen

59:45that before, right? I mean, typically the line that we all hear, like the Fox News lines, the human shields, the normal stuff. That worked for a very long time on people.

59:56I think younger people are less less They're less myth-believing society. I don't think they are than boomers, for instance, and they're going to have to confront that reality. They just can't steamroller it because the more they try to steamroller over these people and and their belief that they're entitled to their opinion, the more backlash they're going to get. And the They They acknowledge they had this issue with the left, but here's what I think that they're they're missing on from what is coming from the right now. I think people don't fully appreciate, especially millennial men who supported

60:25Donald Trump, Generation Z men who supported Donald Trump, they don't appreciate that these voters, many of them never voted. They have no vote history or very little vote history, came out for Donald Trump in 24 because they believed that he and J.D. Vance were really their last chance. Their last chance at getting to right the ship in the country and to have a future that people who lived before them had, right?

60:48Their inheritance was being squandered, the economy's just garbage, it costs too much to live, there's no point to go to school. Nobody is appreciating that they have this point of view, and now they look for better or for worse, fair or not, they look at Israel with a little bit of contempt now because they feel like they derailed their presidency. They kind of hijacked it, and they're going to whether you agree with that or not, it's kind of irrelevant. That's how they feel, and if you don't address it, it's just going to blow up in your face because 10 years from now, the you know, the first boomers turned 80 this year,

61:22Tucker. 10 years from now, if Republicans can't put together a coalition like the one that supports Thomas Massie, you're not going to win a general election.

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62:49>> So, I mean, that's so it what you're saying, and I'm not in denigrating in any way. I think it's really smart, but it's also basically a conclusion that anyone who's paying any attention at all would come to. You don't have to be a pollster fluent in math.

63:02>> thought so, too.

63:03>> Right. I mean, no. I think it's kind of self-evident what what you just said, and I'm grateful that you said it.

63:08So, anyone who is pushing the party into a series of positions that the public hates is by definition trying to destroy the party, no?

63:19>> Yeah, this is the This is the AB choice I was trying to convey to people before the Iran war, for instance, which is You You have to decide, and if you're from the right, if you're of the right, you'll understand this better, obviously. If you thought going into 2024 Democrats were the existential threat to the country, lawfare, they were locking up a former president, he literally had to win in order to ensure he wouldn't spend potentially the rest of his life in jail. I mean, we crossed the Rubicon, Tucker, before 2024.

63:52>> And if you truly believe that, then you would Nothing Nothing would come before that. The Iran war could crack the coalition up, could break up the Republican party, and it just isn't worth it, right? Because if you go back to Democratic control, we're all in danger. We're literally in danger. So, if you believe that line of argument, which I believe was a valid argument, I think that's why Donald A big part of why Donald Trump was elected pretty easily, right? Compared to '16.

64:22If you believe that, then there's really no way to square how you would put that at risk for a foreign The The interests of a foreign nation. There really There's no way to to put that together.

64:33You're either prioritizing the viability, the coalition health, to make sure that you stay in power, or you're prioritizing something else. And if you're doing that, then yeah, I mean, what We have to conclude that you're just trying to break up the party. And honestly, in the conversation I was talking about last night, the truth is, and I think a lot of people at home don't know this, the truth is a lot of these people donate to Democrats anyway. Their issue is not whether or not Republicans control the House or the White House. They really don't care, guys. As long as they have a majority, bipartisan majority, that

65:05preserves the foreign policy, you know, water spigot, you know, and preserves the special relationship, then they're good. That's their That's their aim. They don't really care about the viability of the Republican Party.

65:18>> They just don't.

65:18>> Cuz cuz they don't care about the country, of course. I mean, by definition, if if your top issue is Israel, you should have no authority in the United States because you're by definition disloyal to the United States. I mean, I I don't I mean, it just seems like a definitional fact. Um so, I just think So, let me ask, I've watched politicians, you know, work through their campaign messages, and there's a keen attention to to polling and to popularity of the message. What should our message be? How many people will agree with this? Like, you've obviously spent your life with this, so you know

65:49better than I.

65:50How many people would you guess in the United States are for, in order, covering up the Epstein files, the draft, >> Yeah.

66:00>> and unlimited support for what Israel's doing in Gaza?

66:06>> You know, the best way to answer that is to tell you that we have polled different messages that have come out of, you know, the different We know some of them have presidential aspirations, and we know what the messages are going to be going into the going into the midterms. And one of them was articulated very well on the Democratic side by Jon Ossoff. And we just, you know, we simply asked people, "Look, we're going to read you a statement from somebody. We're not going to tell you who it is, but we want you to tell us whether you agree or disagree with this." Uh the Republican the typical

66:36Republican line, one came from Trump, one came from Rubio, got about 53% uh you know, agreement across the board.

66:43The Democratic one was from Jon Ossoff, and it got over 80% agreement, including 40 a little bit more, 42% of Republicans, which directly said, you know, Trump promised to expose the ex-Epstein class, and steady covered for them. It was a speech that, you know, circulated a lot on social media.

67:01Nobody, and I think this goes to the generational divide that we're dealing with in this country, and the answer to a lot of people who are upset over what happened last night is that young people have to vote. You're leaving, especially on the Republican side, you're essentially leaving your the direction of that your party's going to go. You're leaving it up to a group of people that is a minority in their own generational cohort. And what I mean by that is that Yeah, Republican boomers are what we call over here the Fox Boomer Con. I'm not trying to insult anybody. It's just that it obviously makes up so so clearly

67:34what who these people are. The Fox Boomer Con is not even a a majority of boomers themselves. And boomers really we can split up into two groups. And the older boomer element particularly is the one that votes so heavily in Republican primaries. The Gawron campaign, which was really the Trump people, did a great job getting them out and expanding the electorate with those people. The problem is, you know, younger people until they have families, they don't really ratchet up their primary vote history. And it is a simple answer to people who are, you know, feeling that I heard from countless people last night, vote. You

68:12should have just voted. You have the power. The boomers are kind of on their way out. I'm trying to be mean here. I'm just saying they've they've had their electoral dominance for years now. I mentioned before the first of them turn 80, Republicans better realize millennials will soon be the dominant voting group sooner than people expect.

68:30But as of right now, Gen X and millennials alone could have a real impact direction of who gets nominated in these parties. And unfortunately, they just don't vote, Tucker.

68:40>> How do you think Well, actually before I ask you about what's going to happen in the future, the question of the draft, am I imagining this or are people suddenly talking about this? The neocons seem anxious to have a draft all of a sudden.

68:53The White House, through its spokesman, denied that they had ruled it out. Sorry for the double negative. Basically, the question was, are you going to try to institute a draft? And the response was, we're not going to answer that question.

69:07We're thinking about it. Am I Am I being paranoid? I mean, Gauren just ran on a draft. What is the draft? Where's that coming from?

69:16>> Honestly, I nothing there's nothing can make you paranoid these days. Every time you think we've seen the last of it or we've seen the worst of it we're at the end of the absurdity.

69:27Um, we we get something else. You know, every day it seems you know, the vote and this is the voters too. This is voter sentiment. Every day they wake up with something new that they just cannot believe that would ever happen under Donald Trump. So, I mean, I just wouldn't put I would I would hate to tell you tell you that I spoke to this person or that person. They told me, "Oh, don't worry about it. That's just you know, bloviating or people speaking off the cuff." Uh, because I have. But, then I've had these experiences in the last year with other issues. And then two months later it becomes a serious

69:58issue. Amnesty is one of them, by the way.

70:00>> Yeah.

70:00>> You you'd never think of something like that happening get even before Trump was elected or even in Trump's first term.

70:06It just seemed unthinkable that he wouldn't do it. And now here we are and it's a very serious push. I mean, I think the president's with somebody who's if not Maria Salazar, Mike Lawler has to be one of the most pro-amnesty Republicans in the House of Representatives. He's with him today.

70:21>> Well, the neocons love amnesty because the point is not simply to help Israel, but to destroy the United States. And Mike Lawler is all in on destroying the United States. There's no question about that. Um, so what is the public's view of the war in Iran?

70:36>> This thing has always been unpopular.

70:38This is one of the more, you know, head scratching isn't even a strong enough term, but this is something's left me dumbfounded. We have never seen a president try to start a war or or start one without selling it to the public first. I mean, folks, I mean, I know I'm I'm 44. You know how long Herbert Walker Bush I mean, he lied to do it, but do you know how long he took to sell the the first Gulf War to the United to the people in the United States? We heard about babies being thrown out of incubators. Of course, that was a total charade, but at least they put the charade on. Even George Bush himself, you know, after 9/11,

71:14Tucker, they didn't just go into Iraq.

71:16We were in Afghanistan. They had the build-up. They used it as a pretext, and George Bush really made his case. This was And those, by the way, those conflicts became popular. This thing never became popular. And the president didn't even try to sell it.

71:30The closest we we got There's always a rally around the flag effect where the president's voters want to support what he's doing. So, even if they don't really support it, they'll temporarily say, "Yeah, I kind of I'm with him on this." We couldn't get it any closer to a pose plus nine. The thing started at, you know, 21% support, 70% opposition, and it's almost right back to there now.

71:51The next time we pull it, which is soon, it's going to be in 2 days, I I bet it's back to that level or maybe even worse because now we've seen gas prices and some of the other things that the American public really didn't want. And this is This is Gas prices, casualties.

72:06We did ask them about this before the war kicked off. Would you be willing, you know, to to tolerate the pain at the pump? Would you be willing to tolerate 0 to 5,000, 5,000 to 10,000 casualties? I mean, the answer was zero casualties and no pain at the pump. It just wasn't a priority. And I think again, for people who say, "Well, he had to stop him getting the new you know, getting the nuclear program back off the ground." I mean, guys, the bottom line is people are tired of this because they're not seeing their own needs at home being met. It's simple you know, Maslow hierarchy of needs kind of thing. I mean, people can't meet

72:40their basic needs, let alone anywhere else up the pyramid. If they can't meet their basic needs, they're not going to care about the needs of other nations.

72:48And they may say and may you know, might be you know, you play a game with a poll on how you would have questioned Tucker, but Americans will never prioritize their own needs over some the needs of another country. I mean, you know, they'll never put the needs of another country over their own needs, is what I meant to say.

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73:58>> Well, how do you know >> It was sold the president sold it not I I don't think in a straightforward way by saying Israel wants us, we have to help Israel. He sold it by saying Iran can't have a nuclear weapon and that's the most important thing.

74:12Do you remember any polling this winter in January or February that showed, excuse me, fear of Iran getting a nuclear weapon at the top of voter concerns? Were people really worried about that?

74:23>> No. I mean, we do rank distribution for most important issues weekly, which is different than just simply asking which is your most important voting issue. And the reason we do it like that is because we want people to rank them so we can see, you know, sometimes people have secondary and tertiary issues that they vote on. They're not just voting on one issue all the time.

74:40Uh, foreign policy hasn't crept above seventh place Trump's entire term. We actually established a White House focus tracker, which since CBS News you ran before, they tried to copy and The Wall Street Journal tried to copy it once or twice, too. But, we ask people whether or not they think the Trump administration is too focused on foreign policy, not enough on domestic, vice versa, maybe they're too focused on domestic, not enough on foreign policy, and then whether or not they're striking the right balance. That tracker has been 60 north of 60% on the side of too focused on foreign policy, not enough on

75:14domestic, but the better part of now 2 and 1/2 months, but it has always been majority feeling that he is too distracted with foreign policy.

75:24>> So, what does this mean for the next two big election cycles, the midterms and the general in 2 years?

75:30>> Yeah, as of right now, Republicans are going to get creamed. I mean, they're just anyone saying oh, they're just you know, saying otherwise is just gaslighting or glazing you out there.

75:40The New York Times poll that came out the other day, that mirrors our polling almost perfectly. Generic ballot is 11 points. Folks, that's historic. That's worse than 2018. Republicans redistricted, which is good. They came out on top in the redistricting world, helped buffer against some of those losses. But, when you're talking about leads like 10, 11 points, you're talking about Trump districts that are 10, you know, Trump plus 10, Trump plus 11.

76:05We're way outside of whether or not you could win or hold battleground districts. You have to make sure that you don't lose any that are within the swing, and that always happens. There are always districts that nobody sees coming, and then so-and-so gets unseated. That always happens. This looks like a bloodbath right now, Tucker. It does. And the sad part about it is it was fixable. If you look at our generic ballot trend, you'll see Republicans had a lead since believe it was mid-2021.

76:34They had a lead on the generic ballot and didn't lose it until until July of 2025. What happened in July of 2025?

76:41>> Epstein.

76:42>> And then and then followed by bombing bombing the three nuclear sites in Iran.

76:46I've been calling that like a almost like a a two-piece a one-two combo right to the chin of MAGA. That's what put MAGA down. I mean it it really isn't any deeper more difficult than that. People elected Donald Trump to focus on their domestic needs to focus on you know the those broken promises and those betrayals that he said in his own inauguration not you know to to rec to remedy that uh to fix that to make it right uh to be their retribution to use his own words. They they weren't talking about foreign policy retributions. They were talking about squaring things at home. And the reason the Epstein issue hurt so bad

77:23um I think it's a minor correction in his strategy wouldn't even have damaged him that much. I think people would have given him a lot of grace. But people who don't understand why it hurt him don't understand that Epstein was a symbol. He was a proxy of that ruling class that Trump ran against. And it's not just a ruling class that rigs the system and you know games it for their own gain.

77:46It's a it's a class that rigs it games it for their own gain at their expense.

77:52So they wanted these people punished and held to account and this was basically one of the worst things he could have done. And then from that on to pivoting to foreign policy was just more than base could take Tucker.

78:04>> And it revealed a side of Trump. I mean he was so touchy about Epstein and I and I do suspect it has to do with the way Epstein died during Trump's first term.

78:13Everyone has forgotten.

78:15Um but I he revealed when pushed during famously during that cabinet meeting and someone asked him a question about Epstein and he he attacked his own voters on it. Like if if you're interested in Epstein you're a bad person. You're part of a Democrat hoax or something like that. And I think people who really like Trump were stung by that. Why is Is attacking me? I just want to end corruption in Washington.

78:38Like, what was that?

78:39>> When that happened, I instantly thought back to Rush Limbaugh and he repeated it in one of his last broadcast, might have been his very last broadcast where he explained that no matter what the media does to Donald Trump, no matter what the FBI does to Donald Trump, it doesn't matter. It cannot be an external force.

78:55They will never break the bond that Donald Trump has with his voters. And the more they attack him, the stronger the bond will get. The only way you can break the bond is if Donald Trump himself breaks the bond. And when he sent that out, Tucker, I just I I felt it. I I've been tracking the Trump coalition um since the day he gave his CPAC speech and said, "I'm serious about running. I can't I can't let another Bush or another Clinton get in the White House cuz we're doomed." He said at a CPAC event which didn't you know, he wasn't as popular as he was now. At that moment, I knew the guy was was for real and we put him in

79:32our tracker for the Republican primary.

79:34I'll never forget it. Uh but from that point on, we've been studying that coalition since then. That hurt them. It did. It disappointed a lot of them. And I know a lot of his most ardent supporters still the they'll they'll argue against this. I mean, this is my job. I do this every single day. All I do every day is talk to voters. MAGA has not only split. The question of whether it is split is a done question. It has fractured and it has transformed. It split, shrunk, and transformed. And we put this up the other day. I mean, it couldn't have illustrated it better.

80:07Going into November 2024, voters who were above the age of 65 actually identified more as a traditional Republican and not a MAGA Republican. If you were below 65 65 and you were Republican, you majority identified as either America First or MAGA. We usually put them together and then ask will force people to pick one over the other. Um if you were a millennial, 30 to 45 years old, you were 66% identifying as MAGA. That is now around 40%. If you were 18 to 29, it was like 56 and now it's 36. If you're 65 again, never got to majority. It's a majority now and a traditional Republican is about 45. So, what

80:53happened? It got older.

80:54It got older and the younger voters who really had so much riding on this thing, um they're out. They're out.

81:03>> I didn't know older people were so bloodthirsty. Did you?

81:07>> Uh you know what I think it comes down to, especially with when you study the Boomer generation, they a lot of people will split them into two and the reason is because the the Jones Boomers, you know, which is there's Boomer one, Boomer two. The Jones avoided the draft and not by their by choice. It's just their birth year. I think the other generation that was forced to deal with the war, um they were not they were not brought up in an environment like us. You got your news from the mainstream media. There was no way to double-check it. There was no online social media podcast, maybe there

81:41was radio, of course, but it wasn't like it is now. They are still very institutional. I think that's the word.

81:48That's probably the fairest word.

81:50They were the ones during Trump's first term. Ironically, guys, they were the ones who more were more likely to believe the collusion hoax because in their minds they're thinking well, Fox wouldn't be running this if there wasn't some truth to this. Like Fox wouldn't lie to us like this. The rest of the country remembers 9/11. The rest of the country, you know, millennials, my generation is is a great example. We remember being told there were WMDs, right? We remember COVID, by the way, that hurt us greatly. I mean, there was not you know, there was health risks for the older generations, but there weren't

82:22economic risks. So, we're much more sensitive to whether or not institutions are lying to us or not. And I think they're just you know, more more trusting. And unfortunately, that leads to more susceptibility for like war propaganda, which is one of the hardest propaganda, you know, forms of propaganda to resist. They are much more susceptible to it.

82:44>> Where does this leave people who voted for Trump in 2024? The the huge number of people who never voted, who really bought the promise that he would put the country first and their concerns above those of Israel or or anyone else, Epstein's friends.

83:01Like who do they can't They can really vote for the Democratic Party, which hates white people as like a foundational belief. I mean, they say they do, so I believe them.

83:10No, but they can't vote for the Republican Party, which obviously shares none of their views at all. Like is there room for a new party for them?

83:18>> I I Increasingly, we're going to have to start talking about that. Because the people who the people who have voted before, but they were maybe low propensity, they voted once or twice.

83:27Remember 10X, right? For instance, that was the entire point of that was to get people in Michigan and the Rust Belt who don't really vote out to vote. Those people will just stay home. They'll go back to having low propensity vote history, and they just won't vote. The people who were first-time voters, especially if they're younger and they have their lives ahead of them, um they're I mean, the word to describe how they feel right now is basically apoplectic. It's not really anger, it's more like disappointment. Um and I that typically does lead to people staying home, but they're go Many of them will

83:58participate in the midterms. I just don't think they will. But in they have to figure out what they're going to do in the next general election. I think it's too early now, but I think at this point in our history, we have other examples to go back to and rely on. The last time there was a betrayal of this magnitude, it was read my lips, no new taxes. And instead, he raised taxes and started what? A war, right? Uh and that led to the fracturing of his coalition into the Ross Perot coalition, which put the Republican Party in the wilderness, in the dark ages, the political dark ages, for eight years. And it was only

84:34until George W. Bush came in 2000, beat John McCain, who was your textbook rhino, foreign policy hawk. He beat John McCain for that primary running on what?

84:44Not on not on post-9/11 policy. He ran on you know, we can't be the policeman of the world.

84:50>> He rebranded rebranded conservatism compassionate conservatism. That's what it took. So, typically, historically, when we do see something like this, it's very, very damaging to the to that party in power.

85:03>> It just seems like there's such alignment on foreign policy and economics between the Republican and Democratic parties.

85:10And and I I mean, you haven't seen you said the war is so unpopular, but you haven't seen any mass protests against it. Mass protests are typically funded by left-wing nonprofits, and they're not funding anti-war pro- protests right now. So, that's kind of proof to me that this war was, you know, every bit as favored by Chuck Schumer as it was by Donald Trump. So, like, that's not an option, right?

85:37>> Yeah, I think in the short term everyone should probably prepare themselves for you know, the whatever you want to call it, the the uniparty, the you know, the war bipartisan war party, we should prepare for them to win in the short term. If younger voters aren't going to vote, especially in primaries and midterms, we'll be left with you know, two to four years of that being almost inevitable, but this is what I would tell people who are feeling you know, grim out there. It's only a matter of time.

86:05This is something that the the Israel first crowd just wants to deny and pretend is isn't reality. The age signal is way too strong. It is only a matter of time.

86:16And just yeah, I mean, that's that that's our current reality. I mean, it's is what it is.

86:21>> So, la- last question. Thank you for your really smart analysis. You've been watching Trump since his famous or not so famous CPAC speech.

86:30And watching carefully and and polling against everything he says.

86:34You saw the change in Trump.

86:37Is it a real, I mean, do you perceive this as a massive change in worldview for him? And if you do, what do you think accounts for it? Why did this happen?

86:46>> You know, I think it almost doesn't matter what his view is, you know, what he's personally thinking. The perception among voters it's it's a 180. It's completely different. They see Donald Trump in uh now May of 2026 far differently than they saw him in November of 2024. And that's tragic for the Republican Party and their their uh you know, their aspirations and the people there's a deep bench. You know, there's J.D.

87:12Vance. There are others, you know, what what's going to happen to them? What's the smartest move for them to make in the future? He in 2024 made Republican being a Republican cool again. And you know, he won so many uh more younger votes than Mitt Romney or a Mitt Romney-like candidate could ever win. I would leave you with this, too, you know, when we're talking about this generational divide, which is the most important conversation I think to have.

87:36Trump actually did 1 point worse in '24 with 65-plus than he did with it with them in 2020. Yet, he won rather easily even though he lost in 2020. How did he do that, right? And it it's the it really the answer is really simple. He changed how people view the Republican Party. And that he was the oppressed.

87:57And he was the one, you know, it's amazing how he did it. You know, he's like an older billionaire from Queens.

88:02And yet, he got Hispanic, especially young Hispanic men to see eye to eye with him. To think, you know, what I can identify with this guy.

88:11They're persecuting him. They're coming after him. And a lot of these communities, they know the power of the state and the abuse of the power of the state. They know it better than the rest of us in many cases. And they identified with him over it. That's all gone. I mean, I I I hate to just be so blunt about it, but the shine's off on that side, Tucker. It's It's been off. And uh at this point, it would take a radical pivot to even attempt to get it back.

88:35>> Is Is there anyone who's polling well in American politics?

88:40>> Uh No, not really. Not really. I think in 2028 Yeah, I mean, that's almost a good thing because this has happened before and for better or for worse, it usually leads to dark horses on both sides of the aisle that basically rise from the ashes of their destroyed political parties and become um the leaders of new movements and try to take the country in new directions.

89:03Sometimes it ends up fake like a Barack Obama, right? And sometimes it ends up a good thing. We'll see, but at least it provides an opportunity.

89:10>> Which we're so smart. I can't believe you get attacked. You seem as objective as a as a pollster can be. More even than Frank Luntz, I'll say that.

89:18>> Oh, that's something. That's a bar to hit.

89:21>> Yeah, I surprise myself, but I appreciate that.

89:24>> Thank you for doing this.

89:25>> Anytime, Tucker. All the best.

89:27>> Thanks.

89:28And thank you for watching. We'll be back next Wednesday.