This week, Tucker Carlson went on comedian Theo Vaughn's podcast for over two and a half hours and they talked about cocaine just a lot. >> [LAUGH] >> And I wanna analyze it with you guys. [00:00:15] But something that came up over and over again was Carlson's particular distinctive brand of what I would call fake populism, which he dabbled in at Fox, which he kind of cut his teeth on and is now running wild, sinking those teeth into as many people as possible. [00:00:35] The podcast called out corporations, billionaires and private equity and even the loss of meaning in American life. And of course, Carlson's fake populist, and he completely exposes real intentions at the end of the interview. And we're gonna save that moment for last. [00:00:51] But for now, let's start with the most timely topic the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Carlson had a long history of criticizing our involvement in Ukraine, which you might have seen on his show, and he pushed that same line with the conflict in Palestine as well. Let's watch. [00:01:07] >> Speaker 2: Let's go to war with Iran, what? >> Speaker 1: Yeah. >> Speaker 2: And I just feel like, maybe because of my age and my job, I have a moral obligation to say, I think that's really unwise. >> Speaker 3: You don't wanna go to war with Iran. >> Speaker 2: [LAUGH] No, because I'm not insane. [00:01:25] >> Speaker 3: I don't think that we should be involved in a lot of this. >> Speaker 2: You think? Is it helping you a lot? >> Speaker 2: No, it's just causing. >> All these moral victories you're winning? We're all Americans, and if you wind up in a place where our allegiance [00:01:40] to other countries or regions or things that are not American take precedence over our common Americanness, I mean, we're screwed. Why should I support Iran? Shut up. Calling me what? I have four children of draft age. [00:01:56] Why is that not a fair question for me? Shut up. The new speaker of the House comes in and the first thing he does is issue a statement on behalf of foreign country. That's the most important thing. And I'm not even against the statement, but I'm just saying, like, what bigger statement does that make? [00:02:12] >> Speaker 1: All right, so Waz, you saw a little bit of it. What have you learned from Tucker Carlson's approach to this? What is your take on his take and how he's talking to Theo Vaughn about essentially American interventionist, foreign policy? [00:02:28] >> Speaker 4: I think Tucker Carlson realizes that all of these wars are deeply unpopular with everybody, even Republicans. So the idea that he would take that stance, it seems pretty obvious to me. And then I think people don't understand that Tucker Carlson [00:02:44] is like a waspy prick and that informs a lot of his politics. And so a lot of it is yo like, we shouldn't be getting involved with the state of Israel's affairs. Why should I care about it, right?. We shouldn't be getting involved with what's happening in the Ukraine with [00:03:02] those people. Like, I don't care about that, all I care about is this. And so it's very American exceptionalist. We should only care about ourselves, we should be isolationist. That's a very old school American disposition. [00:03:18] That used to be the dominant strain of belief here, of course, before World War I. And so I don't think he's doing anything revolutionary and I don't even think it's disingenuous. I think he genuinely understands that it's popular and probably does feel [00:03:34] like we waste a lot of time, resources and energy on this kind of thing. >> Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Tucker and Trump have this very specific power, and maybe they just put like, a secret microphone near water coolers in blue color office spaces. [00:03:51] >> [LAUGH] >> They just repeat that line. They just say stuff like, I don't wanna pay any more damn taxes. What the hell are we doing in Iraq? >> [LAUGH] >> And they just show up. He is so pathological that he can [00:04:06] be there in his Oxford shirt and his know sweater V-neck. He's just a giant pleated pant hit with an experimental gamma ray that turned into a person. [00:04:23] Like, that is Tucker Carlson. And he sits there with Theo Vaughn, who's like, I don't know, man. And as though this is all just coming to Tucker Carlson off the top of his head. And he hasn't been made in a lab going to speech and [00:04:39] debate since his consumer reports ambassador to the Seychelles father. >> [LAUGH]. >> Who ran the broadcast industry. Those are all facts about his dad. Like, I'm just thinking this. [00:04:56] And here's the feeling of watching Tucker Carlson talk to Theo Vaughn. It's like when I was in college, there were like guys who were horrible boyfriends. They were the worst boyfriend in the galaxy. And there's a girl at a party and you don't know her, but you're watching this [00:05:15] guy go up to her and you're like, he's hitting on her and it's working. And you're like, he's going to treat her like such crap, he's just lying to her. And even if I go up to her and say like, this guy's bad news, she's gonna be like, he's just dangerous and fall for it harder. [00:05:34] That's what listening to this two hour and I listened to at least 2 hours of this, of Tucker Carlson talking about it. That's what it was like. Another recurring theme of the interview was Tucker lightly criticizing corporations and the ultra wealthy in America. [00:05:52] Let's listen to that. >> Speaker 3: Do you think America is still a nation? >> Speaker 2: No. >> Speaker 3: What is it? >> Speaker 2: It's an LLC, as you said. No one's for the free market, everyone's for using power to hobble their competitors. [00:06:09] The only reason we have regulations is to create monopolies. If your ruling class of all the richest people have gotten rich by over the people beneath them running these fascist companies that spy on their employees phone calls and track them as they come in and out of the building, and [00:06:24] require them to work on Sundays with no overtime and just really inhumane sweatshop type practices. Creepy Stassy stuff. Those people end up having great contempt for their own employees. If you've amassed a hundred million dollars from sucking the last [00:06:39] remaining lifeblood out of some manufacturing company in the Midwest. >> Yeah. >> Calling it private equity. Like you should hate yourself a little bit, you know what I mean? And there's none of that. The news media wanna talk about race. That's like their main thing. The United States of America is being looted by a small number of people who [00:06:56] are getting away with it and they don't wanna talk about that. They never wanna talk about economics, they wanna talk about the tax code, CNBC and CNN and The New York Times. All these people are like looking out for you are actually just Praetorian guards standing in front of the people with the most power and money but [00:07:13] worshiping money is disgusting and we should not compliment people who do it. We should instead criticize them and say that's gross. Hey hedge fund manager, that's gross. Yeah. >> Speaker 1: It is my contention that the same person that listens to Tucker Carlson go like there shouldn't be super duper rich people. [00:07:31] There's a lot of those that are Trump fans and Trump will say, hey, if I'm I'm dodging taxes just like you should, I'm not gonna pay back into the system. I made my money through hard work, screw everybody else. And these two conflicting messages can either be interpreted [00:07:50] as Tucker Carlson's wedge issue against Trump, or just the knowledge that if you say enough of these, like, man, the system sucks platitudes for long enough, people will just agree with you. [00:08:07] And then, unfortunately, they will be so used to thinking you're a dope guy that when your final solution is to ban immigrants from having homes and jobs, that you just go along with it. I don't know Waz what'd you think about his statements about corporate America and [00:08:23] how the rich have too much money. >> Speaker 4: I mean to me it just sounds like a guy who spent the last four or five years with the most popular show on Fox News. Meaning he has an understanding that the status quo has ripped off white Americans, period. [00:08:39] Like there's no other read on this. This idea know, essentially the reverse of the people who invented representation politics, right? Like how Joe Biden could be like, look, we're gonna put a black guy in charge of the Joint Chiefs even though he's from. [00:08:59] The people who invented that are white betters before it was literally representation politics. It's like, don't worry, there's no blacks or Latinos running any of this stuff, it's all white people. You're being represented, and the result was what? [00:09:16] Neoliberalism nonsense, deindustrialization shipping out every single thing abroad. In return we got cheap ass products and terrible jobs, terrible outcomes. The Rust Belt has never recovered from it, and [00:09:33] Tucker Carlson is acutely aware of this fact. The people who did that were corporations, was private equity was this idea that, yeah, corporations should have the opportunity to squeeze out every single profit at the expense of literally anything else. [00:09:52] Doesn't matter. So long as they were making more profits, it was justified. Even if it hollowed out whole cities and towns that used to be these thriving places. And so, yeah, I think he understands that nobody got more screwed by the status quo than white people. [00:10:10] And at Fox, he understood who his audience were, he understood who the people were that were pissed off about America. Now, I feel like a lot of that pissed off got directed to a bunch of black and brown people and [00:10:28] even some Jews like Bret Ehrlich. >> Thank you for the inclusion. >> Speaker 4: [LAUGH] That's what he diverted the hate to mostly on Fox. But I think that's what he's tapping into. >> Speaker 1: Let's focus a little on the private equity aspect of it because that's [00:10:47] what Tucker really did focus on. So let's take a look at a little bit of that. >> Speaker 2: And so whenever anyone asks about like, well, wait a second, why do we tax people at half the rate for investing that we do for working? [00:11:02] Literally, they pay half the tax rate. >> Speaker 3: So if you're a day trader just trading stocks or something, you don't have to pay your taxes. >> Speaker 2: Or if you're a private equity guy, and you can claim that your income is interest on your investments, you pay half the taxes. So we have a tax code that discourages work. [00:11:22] >> Speaker 1: Thoughts on that Waz? >> Speaker 4: I mean, Bernie Sanders couldn't have said that, Karl Marx himself couldn't have said that any better. Just the idea that labor is taxed at a higher rate than like, [00:11:38] meaning money working gets taxed at a lower rate than your actual work, that's insane. >> [LAUGH] >> Tucker Carlson is I mean, he's right. [00:11:54] He's saying the truth of all of it, but it's just I don't know how we could take this serious from a guy like Tucker Carlson knowing his history. But it's facts. >> Yeah. >> He is saying the truth. >> Speaker 1: So producer Taylor and I were just kibbetzing before the broadcast here. [00:12:12] >> [LAUGH]. >> And that question he had was like, where's the real Tucker? Where is the Tucker? And my answer is that's Tucker, in my opinion, Tucker is the guy whose sole purpose in life is to be paid for [00:12:31] being a guy who gets you to like him. [LAUGH] And that's it. And I mean, this guy on his show for as populist as he is, whenever he was complaining about something on his show on Fox, he was talking about whether or not he was invited to dinner parties anymore. [00:12:50] >> [LAUGH] >> My dear friends, what are you gonna talk about at dinner parties? Like, I made a compilation for one of my videos. It was like a minute and a half long. It was like, dinner party, dinner party, dinner party. It's ridiculous. [00:13:05] And so he takes that, and his next step is to leverage it into showing sympathy because he's such a nice guy. So here's a little bit of Tucker showing sympathy for the millions of Americans who are struggling to get by. >> Speaker 2: It's getting very expensive for people to live here. Like, too expensive, actually. [00:13:20] >> Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw some gas the other day, I was like, Jesus, man. >> How do people afford that? >> Speaker 3: Yeah, how do you even do a bonfire anymore? >> Speaker 2: There's some chick on the Internet, like 22 year old experiencing life in the corporate world for the first time. And she does this video. Like, this is terrible, I don't make any money. And they treat me like I'm not worth anything, I'm not human. [00:13:39] And everyone's like, shut up and work, honey. Yeah. And I watch this and I'm like, no, I hope you win. I hope you win. The seeds of revolution are sprouting in my heart if you tell them to shut up [00:13:54] enough, like, we don't care that you care about gas prices in your stupid pickup truck. Well, some people like their pickup trucks, and they use them for work. And if it's not affordable to fill it up, that's a big deal for them. >> Speaker 1: I've heard as I'm speeding by them in the back of the car, [00:14:11] I'm being driven in. Like, it's my heart. He's such a terrible, terrible guy. >> Speaker 4: I want you to win. That was so disingenuous. >> Speaker 1: But there's a vibe on him where like, you contemptible cur. [00:14:30] And you're just like, stop it. And let's hang out because the rest of the podcast he's talking about how much he did coke. He didn't, but people drink, and he wants to talk about girls and stuff. It's just so creepy. [00:14:46] >> [LAUGH] >> As he promised, he did let a little honesty slip. So let's take a look at this. >> Speaker 2: But anyone who tells you if we pass this legislation, we're gonna fix everything. We're gonna fix health care forever, said Barack Obama in 2010. [00:15:02] As soon as he said that, I don't even know much about health care, I'm hardly an expert. But I was like, the second you tell me you're gonna fix something as complicated as one fifth of the entire US. Economy in one piece of legislation, you. >> Yeah. >> Because you're lying, actually, because that's impossible. And it turned out they made it worse, of course. [00:15:20] >> Speaker 1: So that's the thing. My problem with his whole logical framework is he basically says that government only exists to screw things up, essentially. Every regulation is only a regulation meant to protect the rich at [00:15:36] the expense of the poor. But anytime I ever looked at any legislation trying to get passed and regulatory reform by the Trump administration, most of the Republican administration, which he was a fan of until it was no longer convenient for him. [00:15:51] It all was like, yeah, let's just let us pollute stuff like more, and let's get away with making those things that he criticized for being crappier and worse over time since the proud days of the 50s and the GI Bill. [00:16:07] He's against that stuff. He's for it in the beginning and then he's against it later. I don't know. What are your thoughts? >> Speaker 4: I think more importantly, he's just annoyed by Barack Obama. Just Ivy league elite. Just better at what Tucker Carlson fashions himself as than [00:16:25] Tucker Carlson is. To me, that sounded like actual personal animus. Like, screw you, you're not gonna do that. That's what that felt like to me, that felt personal. More so than his ideas about federal legislation. [00:16:41] It's come on, man, give me a break. Just think about something like the FDA, which I think doesn't do enough, is actually too lenient. Just think about the we used to eat and get freaking sick and stuff like that from come on now, stop it.