Tucker Carlson: This Is Not About Ben Shapiro vs. Me, It’s An Overdue Conversation About The Point Of This Country
In this powerhouse episode, 1819 News CEO Bryan Dawson sits down with Tucker Carlson for the most explosive and candid conversation ever featured on the podcast.
HOST: Amen. So I feel like that interview seven years ago was kind of ground zero for the civil war that we’re seeing right now within the conservative movement. It’s very reminiscent of the civil war that took place back in the 90s between the neocons and paleoconservatives. When the good guys with superior arguments were blacklisted by William F. Buckley and essentially canceled from polite society. I’m sure you’ve watched all of that. TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I knew them all. Yes, I know. HOST: And so to me, Tucker versus Ben is Buchanan versus Buckley, but this is V2. But now the rabbit has the gun. CARLSON: I think that’s true. And I would obviously never threaten anyone with a gun, but just to be clear. It’s a metaphor. We have to clarify these days. Not defend the murder of civilians in Gaza. I’m just not that enthusiastic about violence as a So I just want to be clear with that. But no, I think the real two things have changed at least. And the first is, you know, the means of communicating with people have completely changed. So, you know, 35 years ago, National Review was like a meaningful way to communicate with Republican voters. Now, of course, it’s irrelevant. And the difference is the internet and social media and X in particular, thanks to Elon Musk in particular. So that really changed everything. It’s hard to, you know, Ben’s views or those views, libertarian economics, plus neocon foreign policy. That’s the orthodoxy that has dominated the institutional right my entire life. Literally, I’m 56. So that’s a long time. And I’ve been involved in it my entire life and been around it my entire life. So I’ve really seen the whole thing. And that still is the view in the think tanks and at, you know, the dwindling number of publications like National Review or the in-house, I don’t know, newsletter of AEI or the Daily Wire for the most part, not all, not Mount Walsh. But other than that, no one believes that. No one wants that. No one’s gonna voluntarily support that. They will only support it unthinkingly if they don’t know that there is an option. If they think the option is AOC versus Ben Shapiro, they’ll go with Ben Shapiro. And I probably would too. I get it. I think I would. I hadn’t thought about it. But most people are sort of trapped in that kind of thinking. It’s like, we have to support Bibi Netanyahu because the option is Al-Qaeda. Well, I’m certainly for Netanyahu over Al-Qaeda too, of course. But of course that’s not the option. It’s not the binary. It never was. The whole construct is fake and it’s designed to herd you into a position that is contrary to your own interests. And that’s where most conservatives have been. And that dam has broken. I don’t think it’s between me and Ben Shapiro at all. I think it’s a much long overdue conversation about what the point of all of this is, especially now that Republicans have power. And it’s like, if the point is not to help the people who live in this country, then what is the point? That’s it right there.
