Tucker Carlson 与 Mark Cuban 辩论如何拯救美国 🔥｜All-In Summit 2025

Mark Cuban is here. Ever since he was a child, he wanted to be an entrepreneur.

I just love to compete, for whatever reason. I do.

We want all our fellow Americans to succeed.

The Dallas Mavericks are NBA champions. The first title in franchise history.

One of America's most famous professional sports owners is selling his beloved team.

You've done a reality show, just retired from that, cashed out of the Mavericks, check. Kinda adds up to you're gonna run for president, and—

No, no. There's no way.

No? Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mark Cuban.

What's up, big dog?

Huh.

Good to see you.

All right.

Yeah.

Thanks for being here.

God, Mark, it feels like we've been doing this for 30 years, and we have.

We have, I know.

We have.

What GLP are you on?

None.

He's in retirement. He sells the team.

Nah, not in retirement.

Takes a break.

Just working on myself.

All the stress is off.

I mean, you really do look incredible. Are you doing something?

I'm working out.

Yeah?

That's it?

I eat better.

We want to know about the off-menu items. We'll talk backstage.

There are no off-menu items.

Nothing. Just exercise, huh?

Exercise and watching what I eat, yeah.

What was more painful in the last year, Kamala losing or Luka getting traded?

Luka getting traded. It's not even close. And no, I had nothing to do with it.

We know. You sold the team, and you explained it 50 different ways to Sunday, but there was this idea that you would still be involved to some extent.

Yeah, I fucked up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Unpack it.

When I did the deal, the presumption was that I would still be running basketball, and we tried to put it in the contract, but the NBA said the governor is the governor, and they make all final decisions. Then I was involved, and we went on this run where we went to the Finals. Rather than trying to interject myself all the time, I was like, “I don't want to get in the way. We're rolling.” That was a mistake.

Right.

There were some things that happened internally where the person who traded Luka didn't want me there. And so they won. I lost.

Yeah.

But that's in the past. I'm still hardcore Mavs. I'm FFL.

A rare L for Mark.

No, there's been plenty of them. I just try to minimize them.

Yeah.

Mark, let's talk about healthcare. You started a business that has had a really profoundly disruptive impact, and it's compounding. Tell the people the business you started, tell them why you started it, and why you think healthcare's broken.

1. Healthcare's Transparency Problem

Sure. I got a cold email from Dr. Alex Oshmyansky, and he wanted to create what's called a compounding pharmacy, where pharmacies can make drugs per order. It was right around the time the Pharma Bro was going to jail for jacking up the price of this generic drug called Daraprim, and I was like, “How can he do this, Alex?”

In investigating it, it became very clear very quickly that no one knew what the price of any medication was, and there was zero transparency. I was like, “This is wrong.” So we got the URL, CostPlusDrugs.com, and set it up so that when you go to CostPlusDrugs.com and put in the name of the medication, whatever it may be, we're going to show you our actual cost.

Not only are we going to show you our actual cost, we're going to show you our markup, which is only 15%, plus, for mail order, $5 for shipping and $5 for the pharmacist to review. We also have the option of local pickup. What really created the change is that we were the first to ever do that, and even to this day, 3.5 years later, nobody else publishes their price list for medications. When you think about healthcare, particularly the financial side, nobody trusts it at all.

In reality, trust is actually a formula in my mind: trust equals transparency divided by self-interest. We were completely transparent, and in terms of self-interest, only a 15% markup on medications is fair, and it's nothing. I get emails all the time like, “I was looking at having to pay $900 or $1,000 or $1,500 or $2,000, and your price is $21.”

But just explain that. It's not as if it's $21 versus $40 or $90. It's $21 versus $900. How does that happen?

2. The PBM Power Grab

Because it can. If you have an entire industry of insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers that either own them or control the financial flow in an entire healthcare industry, and it's completely opaque by design, they get to charge what they want.

Unless you know to go to CostPlusDrugs.com, you have no idea what your medication costs. But unless you know to check pricing with us, you're just walking in and hoping you can afford it.

The way the system is set up, even with Medicare Advantage or Medicare Part D, our price will be cheaper than your copay, particularly if it's coinsurance. One of the things the pharmacy benefit managers did that's just a complete rip-off is that they created tiers of medications. There are generic tiers and brand tiers, but even in Medicare Advantage, they created these things called specialty generics.

They're just pills. There are drugs like imatinib and all these multiple sclerosis drugs. There's a long list of them. But because they designated them as special, they either use coinsurance or a very high copay. We don't do any of that, so a big part of our business is people on Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, and corporate plans.

Are there drugs you can't get access to, compound, or make?

Yeah, there are certain drugs, like the biggest brand drugs—the Eliquis of the world—we can't get access to them. The reason why we can't get access to them is because those big PBMs have these things called formularies, which determine the drugs that you're allowed to access for 180 million-plus people.

They've literally told the brand manufacturers, “If you deal with CostPlusDrugs.com, we will diminish you on that formulary.” So instead of reaching 180 million people, they reach fewer—not just for the drugs they work with us on, but for their entire portfolio.

That sounds like an antitrust case.

Yes, it is.

But, Mark, if this gets changed, the PBMs get wiped out. First of all, should the PBMs all get deleted? If they do get deleted, what's going to happen in the marketplace? Is there suddenly going to be a big commoditization, more competitors for your business, et cetera?

I don't care about the competition, because our market's still gonna be 15%. We're so AI-driven; we only have 70 people in the entire company, and we manufacture drugs and the whole nine yards. If they're all wiped out, the easier approach is to require that the formularies are segregated from the PBMs, because all they really do is auction off access to those formularies.

Yeah. Yeah.

So do you think the PBMs should be deleted?

Well, there are pass-through PBMs. The shit that PBMs do is just insane. If you get your insurance from your employer and they wanted to go to Lilly or Novo Nordisk to do a wellness program to determine who's most suited for GLP-1s, they're not allowed to do that.

And the reason is?

They get blocked out.

Yeah.

They want you to go direct.

They don't want you to go direct.

You would think it'd be valuable for the claims of all the people who use Zepbound or whatever, the GLP-1s, to go to the manufacturers so they can determine adherence, what's working, and issues. Not allowed. In fact, they'll charge them to get access to that.

Are there things that government agencies or the next round of legislation can do to take the advantages of what you've learned and apply them so that everybody can get the benefit of this? And have you talked to the administration about that?

I've talked to some people, but then they say, “We're not going to tell anybody we've talked to you.” The simplest approach really is just market-driven.

Wherever you guys get your insurance—for yourselves, for the besties, for the companies that you guys work with out there—tell them, “Don't use one of the biggest...

“Don’t use any of the big PBMs. Use these things called pass-through PBMs that allow you to own your own claims, own your own data, get the lowest price, et cetera.” So there are market solutions to get there.

Right.

Is the original sin in this country tying healthcare to employers and making them responsible for it, and is that—

No.

—is that what we have to solve for?

The original sin is allowing these companies to become vertically integrated and enormous. There’s one big insurance company just for intercompany transfers. Each year, it’s about $161 billion. That’s 0.3% of our GDP. They have gotten so large and so vertically integrated that they can game the entire system.

You want your medical loss ratio to be where it needs to be? Well, then push the cost to the PBM. You want to increase your profits here, you want to make your Medicare Advantage programs work, game the system this way.

The big insurance companies—think about this, right? We all have insurance, or we’re on our parents’ insurance at some point. The insurance company defines a plan, right? They set a premium, and they set a deductible and a maximum out-of-pocket. The less you make, the more likely you’re going to take a lower premium and a higher deductible.

But excluding the people on Medicaid, 40% of people can’t afford a $400 bill or expense. Yet they’re the ones choosing the $2,500 to $5,000 deductibles and the $9,000 out-of-pocket maximums. That means, for the insurance companies, they know that people can’t afford to get the first level of care anywhere. They can’t afford to go to the hospital, so the insurance company is just keeping the premiums.

Even if you work for a company—let’s say you work for a company here in Los Angeles and your net take-home is $35,000 to $40,000, and you have a $2,500 or $3,000 deductible, and you’re playing basketball and you go to dunk, like Jason always does, and break your leg—

Yeah.

—you’re fucked.

Yeah.

You’re not going. That’s why my fingers are like this, right? You just can’t afford to use your deductible. That’s the problem with the system. As long as we have these companies that are so vertically integrated and continue to buy more and more companies so that they can game the system even more, they control the patient flow and they control the flow of drugs.

So there’s an interesting reaction happening in the markets, which is self-directed healthcare. Affluent people, in some cases, are opting to pay higher premiums and saying, “You know what? I’ll just do my own blood work with SuperPower or Function. I’m going to take care of my own peptides. I’m going to go to a compounding pharmacy. I’m going to go to row.com—

Yeah.

—and I’m going to get whatever I need there.”

Well, you spend it, too. If you go to Ro.co, let me just tell you, for my friends my age, 90 tadalafil tablets cost less than a bag of M&M’s. Tadalafil is generic Cialis. We charge less than a bag of M&M’s. If you go to Row or Hims or those guys, you’re getting ripped off.

Mark, let me ask you—

But the self-directed concept—

But the self-directed—so that—

Jason’s going to change his prescription.

I’ll change my prescription right now.

You have—

But just on the self-directed piece—

Right. So on that point, we’re creating a company called Cost Plus Wellness that hasn’t launched yet. It’ll hopefully launch at the end of this month. What we’re doing is going out there—for my companies, we’re eating our own dog food—and setting up direct contracts with 8,000 providers at this point.

It’s based on cash pay because those insurance companies not only rip off patients and deny care, et cetera, et cetera, they also underpay providers and all these other things. They have to respond, and they underpay doctors, too.

Yeah.

What we’re doing is going out there and negotiating these cash prices with terms that pay. We’re paying on a cash basis. But what’s different about it is that, when we launch, we’re going to publish all those contracts. There’s absolutely no transparency whatsoever on the insurance side. Your companies don’t know what they’re doing. They're permitted from having discussions with each other to compare notes, so we’ll publish the contracts.

And just to wrap that point, on costplusdrugs.com, this isn’t going to impact your economics personally in any way. You’re doing this because, hey, maybe as a third act, you see this as a way to give back to society.

I want to fuck up healthcare. Who here thinks the financial side of healthcare is great? Nobody. It’s a fucking mess, right?

So you’re doing this to prove a point, to help people.

’Cause it’s fixable.

Yes.

It’s fixable, but politicians have got to do what politicians do, right? Even with the president—

Have you gone to D.C. since President Trump? I know you were campaigning for Kamala Harris. Have you been to D.C. since the election?

Yeah. One time.

You have. And how did it go? Our experience—and look, maybe we’re a little bit influenceable or whatever because of various relationships, but everyone we speak to, it’s an open-door policy. The administration is listening to everyone on all of these important issues.

Yep.

And we’re hearing this from industry leaders from both sides of the political spectrum.

Trying to get them to move is different, right? Because the president—and actually, his MFN executive order was great, right? No knock on that whatsoever.

The problem is, we literally went to manufacturers and said, “Take the PBMs out. If you take the PBMs out and sell to us at a higher price than what you’re selling to the big PBMs, and just let us mark it up by only 15%, our price will be close to all the European countries that the MFN wants to compare to.” Because you know what the difference is between our countries and theirs? They don’t have PBMs, right?

So I went to CMS and told them we would do these things. Then we started talking to the manufacturers, and the manufacturers backed off. CMS knew they backed off. You know why they backed off? They were more afraid of the PBMs and being removed from formularies than they were of Donald Trump.

Mm. Wow.

I even wrote a letter for them to give to the president explaining all that. Whether or not they ever gave it to him, I don’t know. But it’s crazy that they would rather piss off Donald Trump and make the EO not happen, because—

Mark—

—it’s been a lot longer than 90 days, and we haven’t seen a single drug that falls under the MFN principles.

Look, you’ve had a lot of chapters in your life. Very successful. But if you’re able to crack this, it will obviously not just be a great service for people, but you will build an immense amount of social and political capital. We mentioned this backstage, but some folks have whispered and said, when we ask who is the leader of the Democratic Party, “It’s Mark Cuban.”

Eric Swalwell said this on our show in D.C.

That was a long time ago.

But Mark, can you just transition and talk about that? Where is the Democratic Party? If you’re able to get this done, how can you reinvigorate that side of the aisle?

3. The Parties Both Suck

I don’t care about the Democratic Party. People think I’m a Democrat. I’m not.

I think you’re a Democrat.

I’m not. If it were up to me, I’d kick both parties to the curb. I think both parties suck, right?

I’m with that. Moderates and independents—common sense.

Just independent, yeah.

So does that mean you’re a pro-America Party? If you were advising Elon, would you tell him, “Stay out of the Republican Party. Just try to win some seats for common sense,” and would you back him with the America Party?

It depends on the policies and who—

Yeah.

—the politicians were. But yeah, I said—I tweeted or posted—“Yes, I’m wide open to that.” We need to look at each individual situation on its own merits.

Yeah.

I just don’t care about either party. Both—like, the Republican Party isn’t the Republican Party anymore. It’s the Trump family business. The Democratic Party doesn’t even exist anymore because they don’t even know what they’re doing, and there’s nobody in charge, right? They both suck.

Yeah.

Do you get calls from Democratic leadership saying, “What should we do? Give us—”

Yeah.

And what do you say?

Start all over. Basically, what I tell them is, “You have to learn how to sell.” They have no idea how to sell. I’ll give you a perfect example, right? Right now, the enhanced ACA subsidy credits are set to expire at the end of this year. When they expire for 12.5 million people—

These are the Obamacare healthcare credits.

Right, right. For the ACA, right? And so when they expire, let's just take a family of 5 from the great State of Texas, with $125,000 in income and 3 kids. By the time you look at all their adjusted gross income and all that kind of stuff, their net federal tax rate is 3.3%, their effective tax rate, 3.3%. That same family, if they lose their enhanced credits because they're eligible for them, their monthly payments will go from $880, give or take, per month, to about $2,300 a month. So that delta of $1,500 a month, that's $18,000 a year.

That's everything.

That's 20%. That's a 20% tax increase. Now that's right in front of the Democrats to jump all over when it comes to all the stuff that's coming up, right? Yet not a single word that this is the biggest increase in the history of tax increases ever.

And so they're not cognizant of just the obvious things. And then the Republicans aren't cognizant of it either because they've got to realize that you are about to screw over 12.5 million people in a way they've never been screwed over before. It's just right there, right in front of them, and nobody's paying attention.

When you say that, what do they say? When you point this out to Democratic leadership that calls you, what's the response?

That's a good point.

Yeah. They're leaning into “ban the billionaires” and social spending.

Yeah, and that's so stupid. I had that conversation the other day: 942, or however many people. Look, it's like the Mamdani thing, right? They haven't learned from 10 years of Trump. Mamdani is just Trump, progressive version, right?

Yeah.

You just say what people want to hear. You want rent control? Yeah, I'll give you rent control, right? You want free transportation? Got it, right? You want grocery stores paid for by the government? Done. That's Trump 101, you know? And so he has figured it out.

Yeah.

The rest of them have not.

Yeah.

I think this might be a good time to bring out our—stay here, Mark.

Yeah, I want to introduce you to a friend of ours.

Let's just add one more bestie.

Let's add a bestie.

We're gonna add a bestie.

Give us a surprise bestie.

Hey, Tucker.

Come on out.

Surprise bestie coming out: Tucker Carlson.

Oh. Oh.

Woo! Woo! Woo!

Oh.

And it's him. I'll give you a hug.

Good to see you. Thank you.

Is that a hug? Gentlemen.

Grab a seat.

All right.

Nice to see you.

Thanks for coming out.

I think you guys are on the couch next to each other.

The right and the left.

Mark raised an interesting question there, which is—

He certainly did.

I'm curious to get your take, Tucker, which is: Where is the line in democracy, Tucker, between giving the people what they want, which is democracy, versus what Mark seems to be saying, which is pandering to them or offering something that—

4. Democracy And Economic Populism

Where is the line? I mean, I can identify it. It's at costplusdrugs.com.

I would say that that falls on the kind of radical democracy end of the spectrum, which I oppose. No, I mean, it's a balance. Obviously, the founding documents reflect the balance that the founders—who, for all their sort of overhyped genius, really were geniuses, actually—thought deeply about: How do you not devolve into the ugliest form of democracy, which inevitably leads to tyranny, where you're taking payoffs and seeking affirmation from the mob, or into the oligarchy that is the other extreme?

Clearly, we're sort of—or were, up until Trump's election—at one end, where there's no demonstrable effort by the government to meet the basic desires of the population, doing just the opposite. There was never any effort to poll people: “Hey, would you like 40 million new Americans?” No one's for that, in any country ever. And they just sort of gave it to you and shouted you down whether you wanted it or not.

“Hey, maybe we should— the real problem is the Houthis.” Okay. Oh, the Houthis. All right. As my father said to me growing up, “Just beware of the Houthis.” Ancient, ancient enemy of our people. Like, what? And they would just sort of present these things, or, “Putin is bad. You gotta hate Putin.” Really? I don't really have strong feelings. “Shut up, Russian tool,” or whatever. This is even before I loved Putin. I was like, “What are you even talking about?”

In place of the actual organic desires of the people, which are never that different from society to society—peace, prosperity, hope of a better future for your children, the promise of grandchildren, not just sterility—in place of those, they manufacture these things you're supposed to want. So that's obviously way on the other side of what we think of as just basic responsive government. Are we going too far the other way? I don't know. We're not even near it, but that is the tension.

Tucker, I want to get your reaction to what Mark said. Mark characterized Mamdani as Trump on the left: He's taken the Trump playbook and inverted it and applied it with leftist rhetoric. Do you agree with that characterization? What is working in Mamdani, and what is the same and different versus—

Well, I mean, I'm not an expert on Mamdani. I don't know him. I've tried to interview him a bunch of times because I think he'd be interesting. There's clearly something there, right? It's not just about hating Israel or the foreign policy stuff. I refuse to believe that's the core of it. I think it's part of it, but I think the core of it is just economic frustration, and I think this is a marker for what we're gonna see a whole lot more of, which is economic populism.

That's the actual next chapter. That's gonna scare the shit out of everyone in this room, and I get it. I'm not even calling for it. I'm just saying, when your kids can't buy a house or even dream of buying a house, when they're buying DoorDash on credit, you're ripe for some kind of revolution, and the question is, is it a violent one, God forbid, or is it a kind of sincere Bernie Sanders? But either way, you're gonna get some kind of massive reaction to that, because that is a core human need.

What's the impact of social media in all this? Because I think one thing that Mamdani and Trump have in common is they know how to make the algorithms work in their favor. When Trump talks about them eating cats and dogs, it's not because—

Which I think they were, by the way.

Well, maybe one person was, right? But it was certainly—

Okay, maybe one person?

So that's not a thing.

Eating 1 dog is too many. If—

That's not a thing.

If being American means anything—

Yeah.

If you could boil down the national creed to 1 statement, it is: no dog eating here.

Yeah. What about cats?

I'm agnostic on cats, but no dog people. Yeah, cats are pricks.

That's a foundational principle.

Well, no, but if it is about wages, if it is about affording a home, let's put the political parties aside. What's the path forward, Mark, Tucker, of maybe letting the bottom third believe in America again? Should we raise the minimum wage? Do we need to have a Manhattan Project to do something as easy as build 5 million homes?

I mean, we live in the great state of Texas. They build homes like you wouldn't believe, and rents have gone down in Texas 3 years in a row. I mean, there are solutions to these problems. What should we solve for as a country? Politics aside, if we had a top 2 or 3 things, what do we need to solve, Mark? And then Tucker, same for you.

I think we've forgotten about entrepreneurs. I think that's one of the challenges of the tariffs: We hear about $500 billion investment, $600 billion investment, $2 trillion, whatever, in aggregate investment, but we don't talk about the 10% effective, or 15% or 20% effective, tariffs and the impact on small businesses—not just from the actual tariffs per se, but from the friction that they create for the companies trying to run their companies.

For my Shark Tank companies, it's put several out of business. And when you hear the president talk about them, I understand he's trying to work on a macro basis. That's what he's trying to do. That's fine. But there are 33 million companies.

30 million of them are solopreneurs. There are only 22,000 companies that have 500 or more employees. 60% of new jobs are created by small companies. I think they're being ignored.

And to your point, if he's able to reduce friction in terms of zoning, in terms of anything else that makes it more difficult to run, whether it's using AI or whatever it may be, then I think the American spirit takes over, right? You guys are entrepreneurs. You're an entrepreneur. You know that—the ideas are there. The people who want to implement those ideas are what makes this country great.

You can go around the world, and they don't talk about the French Dream or the Houthi Dream. They talk about the American Dream.

By the way, over lunch, the French government collapsed, I understand.

Yeah, I saw that.

Yeah.

But they talk about the American Dream. That's what makes this country great. That's what makes this country different, and I think for a long time now, we've forgotten about those entrepreneurs.

Absolutely. I agree.

Tucker, what do you got on the short list?

I think housing is the core of everything. Where you live is one of the central questions of your life. I don't think it's actually about housing. It's about autonomy.

Mm.

Actually, both sides want to subvert it. The left is always talking about housing the unhoused as if the core problem with homelessness is that we don't have enough Section 8 high-density buildings or something. It has nothing to do with that. And the right talks about it like even to address the question is to sort of buy into the Mamdani program. You're a socialist or something.

Yeah.

And no, I think the material condition of your people is a really big deal, and you should focus on it. It doesn't make you a socialist at all. I am not a socialist, obviously. And then they go too far.

I don't think building condos in Yellowstone either is the answer. We have way too many people in the country, so the top-line numbers really matter. How many people live here? Well, we don't actually know the answer.

Right.

Trump told me directly he thought it was 50 million. He's the president of the United States. He doesn't know how many people whose identities we don't really know live here, which is a little weird in a time of facial recognition. I have to have my nose scanned to get on an airplane, but we don't know who's here? I call bullshit.

But whatever, we don't know. But we do know that, and you know from traveling, that how many people a country has determines the nature of the country almost more than anything, right? I mean, this is kind of why the places you go on vacation are not densely populated. So we need to articulate the obvious supply-and-demand principles out loud.

Don't we have more fundamental issues than that, though? Because—

There's no more fundamental issue than who lives in your country, dude.

There is, right? Because—

Okay.

Because if you want the birth rates to go up—

But if you can't afford to live here, you can't afford kids, right?

No, I get it.

Mark, let me ask you a question. What's your take on whether we should be sending money to Ukraine or not? Were you in favor of that?

Man, they need it.

I mean, honestly, I don't have a good answer. I can make an argument both ways, and half my family's Ukrainian, from my grandparents. So personally, I think we should help. But I don't have a studied answer for you.

How much money have you sent to Ukraine?

None.

Oh, so what do you mean by “we”? You're the one whose family's from Ukraine. Why don't you send them a billion dollars?

Because I'm trying to fix healthcare.

Why don't you fix their healthcare? If you think we need to help, why don't you start? How about you first?

Yeah.

I notice that's never even an option for anybody. It's like, “We need to help.” That's not what charity is. Forcing other people to help is not charity.

Here's the good news.

It's vanity.

The good news is all the weapons were on Lend-Lease. We're getting it back, and our dear President Trump has negotiated that we own half the minerals.

Right.

So he turned this horrible, tragic war into a profit center, which is one of his unique gifts. I think we can all agree.

Right.

Can I just follow up on another alternative root cause? I've harped on this a lot: federal spending. Ultimately, if the federal deficit remains as it is—6.5% of GDP—we're printing money. The Federal Reserve has to buy all the Treasuries to fund the government.

That money printing and all of those inefficient programs for lending, for housing lending, for student loans, spending on stuff that has no ROI, et cetera, et cetera, ultimately leads to inflation and leads to everything becoming unaffordable. Is it not an option, and how much do you both care about or think about reining in federal spending and having those pointed conversations about the importance of this?

Go ahead, Tucker.

I think about it a lot. I think about the devaluation of the dollar. I think about how it's just not worth as much. I'm not an investor. I don't invest in anything, but the things that I buy with an eye to retaining value are physical things. I just don't believe in any of this at all.

And so I caught myself the other day. I'm at such a low level compared to everyone else here. I'm not especially rich, but I had a little bit of extra money, and I'm like—it really was like the Weimar impulse: “Shit, I gotta buy something soon before it loses—”

Before the dollar's worth less.

Yeah. Everyone I know—and I live in a very rural area, and most of my friends are crazy—is thinking in terms of land, gold, ammo.

Right.

Are you really laughing? Are you tittering nervously? Because you know that's not insane.

No.

That's right. Right.

So I own a shit ton of Bitcoin, first and foremost, right? It's kind of a hedge. I've probably had it for 5 years now.

Yeah.

But we do need to cut costs, and I'm hoping AI is a path there. Government as a service, AI as a service, reducing the number of people it takes to get things done, understanding that laws that were written in the '60s that are still in place don't apply now. It's kind of the government's version of the innovator's dilemma.

We have to modify things that are in place already so we can start to optimize, and I think we haven't done that in a long, long time. I don't think we're in the process of changing that right now.

But may I ask—and I'm not against anything you said. I'm for technocratic solutions to moral problems, too, but I wonder—just kidding. I'm wondering what the aim is. It seems like with any project, you begin by articulating your goal.

Right.

Which is one thing America's super bad at. So if you want to get to the moon, say so, and then if you don't get there, just fake it or whatever, like we did.

But it begins with—again, kidding—but it begins with saying what the goal is. What kind of society do you want?

No, absolutely.

No, but you never—I'm not attacking you at all.

Right.

I do think you should give the money to Ukraine, but I think we're all at fault. It's all like, “Well, how can we do this more efficiently?” Well, do what?

In the end, I want to live in a society where people live in single-family homes with little lawns that they own, that are not going to be taken away from them, like actual property rights, not theoretical property. It's like my house, okay? I want married people, and I want them to have children and grandchildren, with the rough assurance—the future, of course, being fundamentally unknown, but rough assurance—that it'll kind of be the same. Radical change all the time drives people insane.

Yeah, but there's not radical change to do—

And so there has to be accountability. It's not radical change? Dude, I grew up in this city. I don't recognize it. I'm only 56. That's radical change.

What, you're talking about Los Angeles?

Yeah.

What is this?

Look, you can go into any decade, any generation—

Rick Rubin says radical change.

No, there’s never been radical change. There has never been population change—

There’s been radical change.

Okay, then. I dare you, because I know you’re a historian: Give me another example, other than the mass rape by the Mongols, of population change like what we’ve seen in the West over the past 50 years. You can’t, because there isn’t one in all recorded history. So you can be for it or against it, but you can’t say there’s a precedent—

You keep on answering your own questions.

No, but that way I get to the right answer.

You don’t ask the questions.

I just answer my own questions.

Yeah.

This is a monologue posing as a colloquy.

Okay.

5. AI Will Displace Jobs

Let me bring us to AI job displacement. It’s been a big debate we’ve been having on the pod. We all know that AI is going to replace a large number of jobs.

Do we know that?

I don’t know about that either. Yeah.

Any self-driving car replaces 4 or 5 drivers, full-time positions. That’s indisputable.

But there could be different jobs.

Well, okay, we’re going to get to that. But for our guests, do you think we’re going to have job displacement that could be acute, and how should we handle that? Because we’re seeing people make Optimus robots. The idea that any human is going to be in a factory sorting things—and all the factories we’re making today are designed explicitly to not have humans in them. We may be talking about bringing back and onshoring factory jobs. That’s not happening. All the new factories are going to be run by robots. We all know that. They’re lights-out facilities. So what’s the best worst-case scenario here in terms of managing that?

Can I give you the upside?

Please.

Everyone knows this, but the IBEW is fine. Your electrician will still exist. We’ve got 1 million lawyers in the United States, and a lot of them are just SOL. I think it’s just so great to think of unemployed, employable people. No, I’m serious. I do think, to some extent, it’s going to affect the worst, most entitled, most annoying classes of people, okay? So that’s an upside. I don’t want to see any other—

So, first of all—

Working-class people. So can I say just one thing? You can displace farm workers. What are they going to do about it? You can displace factory workers. They’ll just kill themselves with drugs and fast food, which they have done, and you’ll feel sort of guilty but then ignore it. If you do that to lawyers and nonprofit-sector employees—who I lived around in D.C.—you will get a revolution, and I mean that. I’m dead serious. Where did Pol Pot come from?

Yeah.

Where—I mean, there’s never been a revolution that wasn’t fomented by frustrated members of—

Of the—

—the insurgent class.

The meritocratic class.

Yeah, exactly.

It’s totally true.

Yeah.

Sub-aristocrat—

Yeah.

—but the striving class, the most repulsive people there are, I think it would be fair to say, but also the most intent on getting what they want. If you put them out of business, I mean, I’m not joking at all. I think—

We’re seeing this—

—we could get unstable.

We’re seeing this already, and one could argue that the Mamdani election surge—

Yes.

—may be the result of young people coming out of colleges that were in that exact same situation.

Exactly.

The striving elite.

And they don’t have rent—

... thriving. And they were told that if they take on $400,000 of debt, they’ll end up making a good living and progressing in life, buying a home, and all of that turned out to not be fucking true.

So I got 2 kids in college, and what I tell them is, “If you are looking for a job at a big company, you’re not going to get it.”

Right.

Because the big companies can implement what they need to do with AI in the short term. The small- to medium-sized companies need all the help they can get from AI natives, right? Because walking in and understanding AI and being able to implement it for that company is a huge step forward for them. So I think that’s one way we’ll adjust.

Number 2, the tools you have as someone in college—there’s no better time to be in college or just graduating than right now.

Right.

Because you have more resources available to you in your phone than anybody in the history of everything, right? Because if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to do whatever it is, you have every expert right there available to you. It’s not going to go as far as you think in the short term, but in the long term, it comes down to robotics.

Because the electrical workers, if robotics do what robotics need to do, they’re fucked, right? Here’s the disconnect right now that I think people don’t understand in AI. On one hand, we’re so used to the large language models, right? But those are all text-driven. They don’t know anything that’s happening here. They can’t acquire all this video. They can’t adapt. There’s a huge latency, and it’s all text, and all their IP is being siloed, right? They’re going to have to pay for it, so they’ll all have their own specialties. A lawyer’s large language model—there’ll be millions of large language models.

Robotics, on the other hand, it’s not even so much about self-driving cars or what I use in the factories at Cost Plus Drugs. It’s about in your house. It’s about walking down the streets. It’s about doing those things. You have to get to a point—we have to get to a point for it to be impactful—where you can say to a robot, “Clean the house.”

Mm.

And they’ll know not to touch Jason’s socks, right? And they’ll know, right? The whole idea is robots use video, and they capture it, and they have to be able to process that video, which means understanding the laws of physics, which means—

Skid marks.

Yeah.

Skid marks—

Wait, would you let a robot with a video camera in your house, honestly?

Yes. Right? And beyond that, houses are going to—

You’re a very self-confident man, aren’t you?

Right.

Tucker—

Houses are going to be redesigned, because right now, when we design houses and we design robots, we design them to work for us. The optimal robots aren’t going to look anything like us at all.

All right.

Mark, thank you.

Hold on. We’re running out of time.

I know. Please have a segment.

Tucker, lightning round. Was Epstein a spy?

No, no, no, we—

Is Putin a—

We’re going to stay with Tucker now.

We’re going to stay with Tucker for a little bit?

Yeah, we’re going to stay with Tucker.

Okay. Well, damn.

Oh, you’re going to stay. Okay.

So—

We just want to thank Mark.

Well, you gave it away, man. Now I’m going to prepare my answer.

Let’s thank Mark Cuban, everybody.

Mark Cuban, everybody.

Tucker’s going to stay.

Tucker’s going to stay for a little bit. Okay. Sorry.

Thanks, bro.

Great job, brother. Move over one. Okay, Tucker, now you get your own segment here.

All right.

So I need to get these answers. Okay.

Yes. Was Epstein a spy? Is Putin a war criminal? And what was Sacks like in college? Go.

Was Epstein a spy? No. I don’t know. I do know a lot about the story. I don’t think he was a conventional spy. He wasn’t, like, an asset or something. He did a ton of work on behalf of intelligence agencies, American, French, Israeli, probably British. I mean, you know.

He did do work on behalf of intelligence agencies?

Yes. Well, no question. He was involved in Iran-Contra—American, French, Israeli, probably British. I mean, I know a million people, and so do you—

Mm.

—in that category.

Yeah, there’s a number of them.

Which is most people who travel a lot.

Okay, now Putin.

I know a lot of people are doing that.

Putin, war criminal?

Let me define war criminal. A war criminal is anybody who kills the innocent, and that’s what terrorism is. That’s what a war crime is. That’s the basis of Western justice: We punish the guilty.

Okay.

We punish people as individuals, not as groups, because we don’t believe in blood guilt. We don’t believe in collective punishment. And so, by that standard, there are very few who are innocent.

Mm.

I’m not being a relativist here, but I think it’s really important—

Fair enough.

—to define the term.

Yeah.

And just to say it again, a war crime and terrorism have the same root crime, which is punishing the innocent, period. And if there’s one thing that Western civilization exists to uphold, it’s this sense of fairness and justice, and it’s rooted in that.

We punish the guilty. We do not punish the guilty's relatives. We don't punish people who look like the guilty—

Right.

We don't punish people from the same place as the guilty. We punish the individual because we believe that all people are fundamentally equal—not in their aptitude, but in their value—because they're all created by God. That is the West. The West! The West! We're fighting to uphold the Western values. No, what is it, then? That's what it is.

Love it.

And so, to the extent you fall short of that, yes, you are a criminal. Period.

Got it. Now, most importantly, what was Sacks like in college? Take us back to—

Totally fucking out of control. You know, I never—

Let's go.

It's funny.

By the way—

People are always like, “If you mix cocaine and ayahuasca, it's really hard to stand on the roof of a moving car.” And I'm like, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Yeah.

Until you see someone do it.

Absolutely. But more importantly, if you bang one of these—

You don't want to hear more?

Where are we at? Are you—No, we're going to get there, but I want to be on the same level as you. Are you banging nines or threes right now?

I don't want to say, on the grounds that it'll make me seem impossibly cool, but nines, obviously.

All right, here—

Let me—Here you go. Can I get you a chilled one? What do you have? What are you packing? I know you have something. You have to share with us.

I pack, and I'm not allowed to make any medical claims, so these do cure illness.

No. No.

These just make you a god. I can just tell you these make you a god. But what do you have? Come on, tell us. You have to share with us.

It's my version of CostPlusDrugs.com.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Oosh.

Sweet nectar. Ooh. So you're banging nines?

Sweet nectar nines. Yes.

You're banging nines.

I have one in from morning till night.

All right. Well, that puts me at 12. Let's go.

I've used nicotine for 41 years.

Whoo! Come on, Sacks. Get on the level.

Oh, God. Acal [?] is going to become so difficult this afternoon.

Oh, man.

No. Let me—

It's crazy what they do. You know, the health benefits are insane. I never go to the doctor. I eat a lot of pizza. I never intentionally exercise. I'm 56, and I feel great, and I mean that.

Yeah.

And I take saunas.

I mean, you looked great in Niseko.

Okay. Sorry, sorry.

Okay, back on the rails.

Tucker, I would like to go around the world in the 11 minutes that we have and just get your reaction to a bunch of different things. Okay, let's start. In Europe, the UK, and then just continental Europe, what has happened?

6. The West Is Killing Itself

I feel like all of those nations—the Anglosphere specifically, but Western Europe in general—are poised for massive change, and I just hope it ends peacefully. But the story in the West is population change. Period. That's the story. And following from that comes culture and political change, and it's always painful.

I don't think it's always bad, personally, but at the scale it's happening, it's happened way too fast. And there will either be a true reaction of the kind that none of us want to see, or there will be a full totalitarian clampdown.

What was at the root of—for example, there was a post on X that said that Canada's population increased by 30% in, like, the last 7 years.

Yeah.

35%. 35%.

35%.

10 years.

In the UK, when you look—

Simultaneous with government-sponsored suicide, where native Canadians are encouraged to kill themselves at government expense for nonterminal illnesses, up to and including economic distress. And that's sponsored by the government. It's called the MAID program. It's the darkest thing that's happened since Europe in the '30s. We're instructed to ignore it.

The government advertises it in conjunction with private businesses in Canada, and it's one of those things where your grandkids—

What was at the root of—

Assuming you have them, they're going to ask you, “What was that, and why didn't anybody say anything about it?”

Yeah.

I gave a speech in Canada recently and mentioned it. I started with it because it's so mesmerizingly horrifying, and people just stared at me like, “I don't think we're supposed to talk about that.” The brainwashing is so generational and crazy that they can't even notice when people are dying at the behest of the government. The behest, by the way.

And to be clear about what we're talking about: assisted suicide, end-of-life suicide. You can go in, you can set a date—

Not for the terminally ill. For, like—

Yeah.

The bummed-out—

Yeah.

Or veterans who don't have adequate housing.

Yeah.

We'll kill you for free, and they are pushing that program. Thousands of people have died, and they, of course, don't release most of the numbers. But they did release numbers this summer that showed it's, like, 100% native Canadian.

Yeah.

Because people who show up there from Gujarat are like, “Why would I kill myself? This is awesome.” They have the spirit of life in them. And what is that? It's not just the government. I mean, there's something going on with Western populations that is suicidal, and they're participating in it.

Do you think that's related to fertility and birth rates?

Fertility and birth rates—their decline reflects the change that I'm describing, which is very obvious. I spend a lot of time in Europe for a bunch of reasons, and I have family there. I was just there, and I can't not believe this is happening.

There was a—

Why doesn't anybody say anything about it?

There was a survey that was just published today. I got to pull it up, but it surveyed 12 things and ranked them in order of importance. Men who voted for Trump ranked having children number 1. Women who voted for Kamala ranked having children number 12 out of 12.

And do you remember the percentage? This was American women who voted for Kamala, asked about their priorities. What percentage said having children was an interest of theirs?

What was it?

6%.

Why?

So that's suicide. You're watching the end of something.

Why?

That's people voluntarily—

Is it deep pessimism about society? Is it a deep depression that I can't progress in life? Where is it? What is going on?

I mean, yes, yes, of course that's what it is.

Yeah.

But that's without precedent, really. Even in the final years of the Soviet Union, there was no indication that it was that bad. But it is reflective of what a defeated empire does, like a defeated people.

Personally, I think there's something bigger going on. Why is it happening in New Zealand? Why is it happening in Ireland? These are not colonial powers. Ireland was never a colonial power.

Korea.

They were colonized, actually.

Korea. South Korea.

Korea.

Japan.

Which—

Japan.

By the way—

Well, this is—

A Korean friend of mine said to me, “In 50 years, there will be only North Korea.”

Are these all just post-industrial? Is that what they are, versus rising industrial—

Just the opposite.

Yeah, the opposite.

You feel the life force when you go to places.

Fertility rates or birth rates in Africa, I think, are, like, 6 to 7—

But the Global South more broadly, that is true.

Global South. That's right.

And the Middle East. But, yeah, I mean, there are lots of causes, but there's a spiritual root. The secular places are killing themselves.

Yeah.

And the religious places—it's not happening with Orthodox Jews in Borough Park.

Does industrialization kill religion?

The atom bomb killed religion. Hiroshima killed the West because, of course, you're God now. And every assumption we've made since August of 1945, 80 years ago, has been based on the core, often unstated, belief that we're in full control of nature.

There was a—

Completely right.

It's also why we became so deeply techno-pessimistic, I think.

Yeah. There is—

Well, I think there's some evidence to support that pessimism.

Right.

This is something that the Japanese people can kind of teach us from, because the last 2 times I was there, 2 different people said they weren't having kids. I asked why, and they said it's immoral to bring children into a world of global climate change, and that it would be totally immoral because temperatures are rising.

I was just like, “Are these people hallucinating?”

Well, they don't even go through the steps—

You can't survive this.

—required to have children in the first place.

Right.

So any society where people have to be encouraged to have sex is a society that has decided to extinguish itself, because that's—honestly, that's like being Bobby Sands and starving yourself to death. That's like you're at war with nature. You've decided my most basic impulses must be overridden—

Right.

—in the service of what? Death.

Mm.

I've never been a super religious person. I'm certainly becoming one, that's for sure, at high speed, just in reaction to watching what's happening, and I think it's the darkest thing that's happened in 1,000 years, at least.

We were talking about SSRIs earlier. What's your take on medicating everybody with these—

I think it should be illegal immediately.

—antidepressants and Adderall?

7. SSRIs Are Not Science

SSRIs—I mean, don't get me going, but let me just say this. I should say this as a sober person who doesn't use deodorant and doesn't believe in any of that stuff: I don't take any pills ever. You'd have to be as crazy as I am to wonder, “What does an SSRI do?” We've been taught falsely that they correct a chemical imbalance. Okay, if it's an imbalance, what's the baseline? There's no answer to that.

No.

What's the actual diagnosis of, say, bipolar disorder? Unknown. There is none.

No.

So, on the basis of that, that's not science at all. That's witchcraft.

It's a questionnaire.

But on the basis of it, they prescribe drugs which do not correct a chemical imbalance. They limit emotional range, and limiting emotional range is taking someone's soul. Emotional range is your soul. That's what it is. You feel sad when someone dies. You feel joyful when something great happens. That's what it is to be alive. That's called—

Life.

—the human experience.

Yeah.

So, by the way, the unintended but very common effects include genital amnesia. You know what that is? That's when you feel nothing between your knees and your navel permanently, and there are tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands—because 1/5 of the entire American population is on SSRIs—

Right.

—who feel nothing, who are permanently sexually disabled by these drugs.

Now, are there people you know or I know personally who were going to kill themselves and they got on an SSRI and they didn't? That's a massive success. Thank God for that. There is no indication ever for prescribing an SSRI for 5 years or 10 years. Same with benzos, which are also prescribed. Same with amphetamines that we give to our children. The whole country is addled on drugs, and it's changing the nature of people and making them into something that is less than people. It should be banned immediately.

100% agree.

I think it's crazy that it's happening.

I mean, we're giving kids speed. We're giving them meth.

And good people are doing it—people I know, people I'm related to, who love their children, who would die for their children—are told by doctors, air quotes, doctors, who know nothing about the long-term effects because they've never been studied, to put their kids on meth. And they do because they love their children.

I want to make sure we—

Mm.

—get to a couple of other things. Tucker, just react to what happened this weekend in Charlotte on the train with the woman who was stabbed by—

8. Punishing The Innocent

I think it's got to be a turning point. I think that the number one thing you don't want—

How can there be just a coordinated suppression? How does that happen?

Well, that's—you know, this is how people wind up with really dark theories about what's happening, because why would you suppress that? A young woman, by the way, Ukrainian—

Mark Cuban.

Mark Cuban.

Yes, Mark Cuban.

Sorry.

Yes, sir.

If you really care—

About the Ukrainian people.

One was just stabbed to death on a train for being white. Why doesn't anybody say it? Where are all the—where's Bill Kristol on this? We love the Ukrainians. One just got stabbed in the neck on public transportation, and no one cares. What? I don't have an answer to your question.

I will say that the one thing you have to worry about in a multiethnic society is ethnic conflict, because it's enduring. It doesn't go away. It's generational, and we're moving toward that. She was stabbed because she was white, and everyone knows that, actually. And knowing that and not being able to say anything about it because you fear you're going to be called names doesn't make the problem go away. It makes you move to Bozeman, and it makes the problem worse.

Mm.

And that's what you're seeing. Everyone I know who can afford it is moving to Bozeman or Jackson or Sun Valley or whatever, but they all have one thing in common, okay? Let's just stop lying. And I don't like that.

Mm.

Okay? Because that suggests a future of ethnic conflict, which is—ask anybody from a country that has it. Ask a Belgian. Belgium has ethnic conflict.

Yeah.

So this is inherent to the human condition, and you want to be very thoughtful in trying to avoid it. Things like that exacerbate it to a crazy, crazy—

Yeah—

—animal level that—

Tucker, let me just ask: Three parts to this, but short. Do you believe that there is rising antisemitism in the West? And why do people say that you are contributing to it? Why has that become—

Well, I think there's rising antisemitism on the left and right. There's definitely rising antisemitism, for sure, and I hate it. You don't have to believe me, but—

You hate it, on the record, right?

Of course I hate it.

Yeah, because there's a lot of social media, a lot of this coordinated effort from large industry groups saying Tucker Carlson is an antisemite. Why is that the case?

Of course.

Yeah.

Attacking my children over it. Yeah, I'm aware.

Yeah.

I actually called an Israeli official who I know—I know a bunch of them, including the prime minister—and said, “Why are you doing this to me? If you think I'm your enemy, man, you're really out to lunch.”

They're totally out to lunch, and I've never seen anybody mismanage anything the way the government of Israel is mismanaging the response to what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank, and the way to—and it's not my country, but I'm just noticing that this is really bad for everybody.

Two things. One, you have to be willing—if I stand up and say, “I'm an American, and my family's been here for 300 years, 400 years, and I love this country, but my government's done a lot of horrible things,” no one's like, “You hate America.” If you're like, “I love Israel,” or, “I like Israel. I'm a visitor to Israel, a frequent visitor to Israel, but this is not good,” they say, “Shut up.” That's not helpful at all. You turn your allies into enemies by acting that way. That's A.

B, conflating a nation-state with an ethnic group is not a long-term strategy. It's not wise, because you are tied to the temporal politics, to the politics of the moment. Bibi's political—I don't hate Bibi, but his individual political fortunes play a role in his calculation in everything that he does. True with all politicians. You want to tie an entire group to that? I don't think that's very smart.

You can say, “I really like Israel,” or, “I love Israel. I have family in Israel,” whatever you think about Israel, but, like, “I don't think this is a good idea,” or, “I'm offended by it,” or whatever. If you eliminate the distinction between a political organization, which is a synonym for government, and an ethnic group, boy, you're going to hurt that ethnic group. And that's exactly what's happened. It's so bad, and it freaks me out.

And I will say once again that my views on Israel apply to the United States, they apply to Senegal, they apply to Malaysia, they apply to people—

But not to the Jewish people?

Come on, dude.

Right.

No.

Right.

And I'm not even—I don't even fight back against it because I'm like, “That's so low.” I'm not playing your fucking game, okay?

My view is really simple. I don't think that it is allowable—it is the most immoral thing to punish the innocent. The United States government has punished the innocent a lot. They did it during COVID. I yelled about it every night on Fox News. All governments do this because all leaders get carried away with hubris, and they treat people like numbers or enemies or nonhuman beings, and they kill them.

I'm opposed to that. You should be. We're all opposed to that, by the way. I'm opposed when it happens in Gaza. I'm opposed when it happens in Texas. I'm opposed. I'm just opposed.

And all of a sudden, we've reached this place where people are so overwrought and defensive. I came out and said something about—I don't know—I'm glad we beat Imperial Japan.

I'm kind of sad that we incinerated all those people with the atom bomb. Ben Shapiro did a whole segment about how I was a quisling or something. “You hate America.”

No, I love America. That's why I don't ever want anybody to kill people who didn't do anything wrong. That is the basis of justice. We punish the guilty. We can argue about to what degree they should be punished. Should it be Norway, where they get high-speed internet and massages, or should it be Malawi, where they rot in a cave?

Why are we not allowed—

We don't punish the innocent, and that includes children—all children.

Tucker, why are we not allowed to say we are absolutely saddened at the tragedy that happened on October 7th, and we're absolutely appalled at watching people starve and innocents being killed in Gaza and not being able to get the aid? Why can't you say both things—

Well, you should—

And not be criticized?

You should be, and I've decided that I'm old enough and I know—God, now I sound like such a fraud. I know my heart. But I—you can feel the hate coming off people or whatever. I would hear Obama talk, and I always really liked Obama before he became a senator, but I would hear him talk and think, “Wow, that's animated by hate.”

And it would be in this “This is your captain speaking” voice, but it didn't matter. I was like my dogs. I could feel what was in him. And I feel very confident in my views. I like people, and I just feel that way, and I'm not going to play the game where I have to be like, “Oh, actually, my wife is part Jewish,” or whatever, which I could play.

Final question.

I'm not going to do that. I think we should stand on principle: Don't punish the innocent. I don't care who you are. No one has a special dispensation that allows him or his country to punish the innocent, and if you do, I'm going to call you on it.

Okay.

And let me just back up. In lieu of a final question, I just want to back Tucker on this: The basis of conservatism is not believing that any government is sacred.

Thank you, David Sacks.

Yeah.

Every government should be subject to criticism because we know that they will always abuse their authority. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All governments must be subject to criticism, and governments shouldn't seek to make themselves immune by essentially calling people names.

I've known Tucker for 30 years. He doesn't have an anti-Semitic bone in his body, and it really pisses me off the way that he gets attacked for criticizing the conduct of a government.

I'm not even that critical, by the way.

Right, go ahead.

That's the hilarious thing. I'm not even that critical. I've been around—

David, as we wrap here—

And I know that people do shitty things, and I'm not—

I think, for what it's worth, you're an American treasure. I appreciate that you—

Well, thanks.

Yeah, and Sacks, as we wrap here, tell us about the meet-cute moment when you met Tucker and you fell in love with Tucker.

Oh, the meet-cute.

You love Tucker.

Ah, yeah, meet-cute. Tell us.

Give us the meet-cute. You come around a cubicle. What happens? You see Tucker—he's got the bow tie.

You guys lock eyes? How did it—

Yeah, what happens? Take me back.

So it was at lunch in Union Station in Washington, D.C. I'll never forget.

Tell us, Sacks, your earliest memory of Tucker.

It was just a camaraderie born of some common views.

Yeah.

And can I say one thing about David? David was saying—I don't even get into it—but he was saying things that now would be considered, well, of course, but at the time were pretty brave, I thought. He had written a book, and we had a mutual childhood friend, and I was super impressed because he was saying things that the people around him would be like, “You don't need to say that. Why are you doing that?”

And he was just totally principled, completely principled, and you just don't meet that many people like that.

Yeah. You have a straight shot to the presidency. Are you going to take it? You, Tucker Carlson. Your fans want it. They want you to run. You have the audience. You have the skill. You have the intellect. Would you consider public service? Would you consider—

Not even for a second, but if I did, I would be like, “John F. Kennedy was very moderate, actually—”

Yeah.

On almost everything. They killed him anyway.

So I'd make it about 10 minutes.

Self-preservation is a strong driver.

I'd get the Jack Ruby kind of cancer. Who knows where he got it?

Thank you.

Woo.

Thanks, man. Thank you. Thank you, David.

You crushed it, brother.

Thank you.

Good job.