FULL SPEECH: Tucker Carlson’s Last Address Before Leaving Fox News at #Heritage50

I love the music thank you you're really nice I feel a little underdressed looking out in this crowd of handsome well-dressed people I just came from work and if you wear a tuxedo in the air they think it's the March of Dimes so I didn't want to make any you know I think it was a Telethon so pardon my appearance it's amazing to be in a room this is far more people than live in the town that I live in um I've been in an elevator in three years that's how remote my life has become so it's very cool or worn socks for that matter uh to be in a room full of nice people um and I want to thank you Father Scalia wherever you are that invocation for some reason that that really got me um yeah it did and actually I'll just tell you since it's just us and no one's watching um that it it reminded me that I don't pray enough for the country and I should and I'm I'm upset but the answer is is to include the country in your prayer so thank you for reminding us of that um anyway thank you I just want to start by saying that I'm grateful to be here and I want to tell you why I am here there are two specific reasons um the first and most immediate is that during this Fall's midterm elections I got almost every single call wrong I typically don't weigh in on Races because you know what do I know I don't actually cover politics I'm not that interested but this time I got so spun up and so emotional that I convinced myself there was this wave coming this political Liberation that was going to happen and I told our viewers that in some great detail and introduced a series of candidates who subsequently lost as you know the new governor of New Yorker fill in the blank and it was so humiliating to be that wrong in public often wrong not usually in front of other people that I thought I've just got to take some time off and think about why I was so unbelievably wrong so I went pheasant hunting not that it was the pheasants fault but that is kind of a way to clear your head and I um and I wound up because bird hunting really is again not good for the birds but very good for you and I wound up uh in South Dakota with Kevin among other people including a couple of my college roommates and I was just I was so impressed by him as a person and really that having spent my life in Washington I can tell you if you're not from here the key question about anybody who runs any institution in Washington is how false is this person God sent some messages we can't immediately translate all of them so I I can't tell you what that meant there clearly is meaning the point is uh the man who runs Heritage is not false at all in fact my assessment of him was he's completely real he's a complete he's an honest person he means it he's not playing a role and that was so thrilling to me to see that and by the way it was confirmed by one of Heritage security people who was standing backstage with me and I asked him because the security guys always know they're all former cops you know they've seen everything they have seen Humanity in various states of drunken undressed like you can't shock them and they know who's real and who's not and I asked you know what do you what do you think and one of them said to me to my face I would go to war for him and I thought and and these are the kind of people who will tell you the truth I mean like why would he lie to me I don't even know his name but he meant it um and so to see a leader a real leader at the helm of an institution that matters that has the kind of throw weight that Heritage does was thrilling was absolutely thrilling for me because the story of the last decade is the collapse of leadership not of the population the people remain Noble and decent so far as I can tell I still live here I'm never leaving we have good people we have terrible people in charge and not just of our government but of the institutions that I grew up in the Episcopal Church my high school you know I could just go on and on and on they're all run by weak people and you know it's the same in marriage you know weak husband causes angry wife weak leaders cause an angry country that's true and to see someone who's not a weak leader at the helm of Heritage just thrilled me um so I wanted to come for that reason just being totally blunt with you and the second reason is to pay homage and to give some measure of thanks to Ed fulner for giving me my first job which changed my life and I was to say I was not a promising hire would be an understatement it's not false modesty in fact if anything I'm underplaying it um but I was leaving College without a degree or a job and attempting to marry my girlfriend which I subsequently did and ran into this giant roadblock in the form of Episcopal priest father who said no you know job first um and not only did I not have a job I had like no idea what I wanted to do and so I applied to a couple of different places the CIA if you can even imagine um some boarding school in robot because I thought you know Morocco lower standards maybe they'll hire me no and I went I wound up at Heritage as you heard uh as a fact Checker copy editor um at policy review the quarterly magazine of the Heritage Foundation and it that job absolutely changed my life I was paid 14 000 a year plus a hundred dollar bill for Christmas which Dr fulner gave out personally to the entire staff at least half of whom went downstairs and bought liquor with it at the liquor store which I think is now part of the intern housing um but it was a long time ago it was so long ago I smoked in my office that's how long ago it was that's like that's like riding a mule to work just to put it in the context of American History spoke in your office yeah it did um in fact Matt Spalding told me to stop one day and I thought wow uh this modernization program is moving too fast for me I can't deal with it I've always been conservative in the truest sense but Matt you were right and I quit and anyway um but yes it was a long a long long time ago and in the course of that job though I didn't get rich to be honest with you um I did learn what I wanted to do with the rest of my life which was become a journalist and that was really under the guidance of a man called Adam Meyerson who ran it who was that was 32 years ago and to this day he really is the kindest person I've ever worked for just kind and patient and exactly he thought I was completely Nazi thought I was a lunatic and um and I could tell he thought that uh but he was patient with me through my entire year and a half there helped me get my next job at a newspaper in Arkansas because no one else would hire me but he set me up with this job he walked into my cubicle and said do you want to move to Arkansas and so I called my bride who was a religion teacher at the local episcopal school and I said do you want to move to Arkansas and what a wonderful woman she's turned out to be and she said of course is that near Colorado quote quote very well she was willing to go there um very much in northeastern or at heart but uh and we did and we loved it but I got there because Adam Meyerson felt that it was his job to help me get my next job because his job was to train up reasonable people and put them in journalism even if it meant sending them to Arkansas um and and I was thinking about Heritage this morning in the shower not a place I think about it but I did today and what makes it great and one of the best things about Heritage over time longitudinally 50 years say is that Heritage has always hired a lot of people and that is an underrated thing it really is giving people a job even if it's 14 Grand a year plus a hundred dollar bill for liquor you change someone's life you put them on a trajectory at least that's true for me I mean I had not succeeded in school to put it mildly and I did not feel I was I always felt like I was smart not one other person felt that way until I got to Heritage I'm not sure they were super impressed but they treat him like an adult because they had Heist they had high intellectual standards they were standards of honesty and you know the idea at Heritage when I worked there wasn't just that you know we're fighting this war against the other side of course but it did not logically fall from that at Heritage that you could say whatever you wanted the other side was rotten didn't mean you could be rotten they really hued to the highest standards of factual accuracy intellectual honesty they really meant it they did and even if you didn't agree with them they were very serious about they were intellectually serious people every single person I worked with the receptionist in the office at policy review was going to school at night to learn Russian and then the week I started at policy review the Soviet Union collapsed which was an amazing thing the coup against Gorbachev in the third week of August 1991 was the week I started at Heritage and in retrospect of course you never appreciate the significance of things as they happen to you can't really know what the movie's about until it ends but at the time we didn't really appreciate how well two things one our entire political orientation was based on this war between the United States and the Soviet Union this cold war but very much a war and every part of our politics as you well remember those of you my age and older remember every part of our politics revolved around that central conflict we were in conflict with a country that was both anti-markets and anti-christian and that put in Stark relief our own beliefs and what would happen when that ended when there wasn't that clear contrast that's the first thing and of course the second thing is we could never have known the third week of August 1991 as we saw totalitarianism die that it would ever come here we just couldn't imagine that you know we believe that victories were permanent they're not of course that's the first lesson of History you know nothing is permanent except our own demise and God but we didn't kind of get that you know if you told me then that this week the Department of Justice would have indicted a group of people people I don't agree with by the way on a lot of different issues black nationalist socialists from Florida okay kind of not my demographic but would have indicted them for criticizing the U.S position the bite administration's position on the war in Ukraine and charged them with felonies for which they're each facing 10 years in prison if you told me that could happen here I would have laughed at you no we have a First Amendment that can't happen here but it has that and a lot of other things which are gravely unsettling actually in people who who were rooted in the the Cold War story in the reality of the Cold War again my age 53 kind of know where that goes so the purpose of my talk which I by the way I will keep brief I'm an inveterate talker I can literally talk forever you can't even imagine my capacity for loquaciousness I mean it just it has no and it's a bottomless well you know if you dropped a quarter off the observation deck of the Empire State Building how long would it take to hit the sidewalk that was always what we talked about when we were kids you would never hear it in my case I can literally go on first so I will stop and Kevin and I are going to have a conversation so they'll be much more edified but I would just say two things about the present moment because I I think about them all the time and I brewed on this constantly and then I take every afternoon because fundamentally I'm Swedish I take a sauna every day as a rest I do I'm not kidding every single day never miss it and my whole family does as a it's like our one cultural contribution oh we're Swedish ooh it's a very deep ethnicity oh yes a lot of Swedish traditions you should hear our comedy it's hilarious um but the one thing I do is take a sauna to kind of get out of my head and get away from all this stuff and I never can and I just use my time Dishonored to brood more but here are two conclusions I've come to which I think are slightly less depressing than the most obvious which is the country's really going at high speed in the wrong direction yeah no kidding like in ways that are just unfathomable and and for people my father's age for example who's 82 and such a decent man and like you're going Forever by my dad who I saw this morning um you know born in an orphanage called the home for little Wanderers in Boston and became a success in the head of a federal agency and served to the Marine Corps and sort of lived the America that you imagine is possible for people who are smart and try hard and all that for for people of that age it's it's too much actually the change is too abrupt it can't metabolize it really it's too horrifying but for those of us who are still engaged in trying to figure out what this means and not just repelled by it I would say two things that are I think we're thinking about the first is is you look around and you see so many people break Under The Strain under the downward pressure of whatever this is that we're going through and you look with disdain and sadness as you see people you know become quizlings you see them revealed as cowards you see them going along with a new new thing which is clearly a poisonous thing a silly thing you know saying things you know they don't believe because they want to keep their jobs if there's a single person in this room who hasn't seen that through George Floyd and kovid and the Ukraine war raise your hand oh nobody right you all know what I'm talking about and you're so disappointed in people you know you are and you realize that the hurt instinct is maybe the strongest Instinct I mean it may be stronger than the hunger and sex instincts actually the instinct which again is inherent to be like everybody else and not to be cast out of the group not to be shunned that's a very strong impulse in all of us from birth and it takes over unfortunately in moments like this and it's harnessed in fact by bad people in moments like this to produce uniformity and you see people going along with this and you lose respect for them and that certainly happened to me at scale over the past three years I'm not mad at people I'm just sad I'm disappointed how could you go along with this you know it's not true but you're saying it anyway really you're putting your pronouns in your email you're ridiculous you know but no one else thinks it's ridiculous who knows the pronouns in the email what does that even mean what does it even mean you're saying you're saying lbgtqia Plus Plus the plus is invited to my show anytime find a plus and I'll interview them what's it like to be a plus am I a plus I'm serious I feel like I'm an addition does that make me a plus no one even knows what it is and the whole society lgbtqia Plus all right what's the plus oh shut up racist okay so you you reach that place and you feel and this is one of the reasons father Scalia I was actually overcome a little bit with emotion as you prayed because I realized that I was so upset by the behavior of some people I love frankly in a country I Revere and always have um that I wasn't praying for the country you know that's on me and we all should be but back to my point so you see the sadness happening but there is as there always is this is a fact of Nature and Theology and of observable reality there is a countervailing force at work always there's a counterbalance to the Badness it's called goodness and you see it in people so for every 10 people who are putting he and him him in their electronic JP Morgan email signatures there's one person who's like now I'm not doing that sorry I don't want to fight but like I'm not doing that it's a betrayal of what I think is true it's a betrayal of my conscience of my faith of my sense of myself of my dignity as a human being of my autonomy I am not a slave I am a free Citizen and I'm not doing that and there's nothing you can do to me to make me do it and I hope it won't come to that but if it does come to that here I am here I am it's Paul on trout here I am and you see that in people and it's a completely unexpected assortment of people I'm really interested in cause and effect and as I noted at the outset of my remarks and my ability to predict the future working on that but because I'm sort of paid to predict things I try and think a lot about you know what connects certain outcomes that I should have seen before they occurred and in this case there is no thread that I can find that connects all of the people who've popped up in my life to be that lone Brave person in the crowd who says no thank you you could not have known who these people are they don't fit a common profile some are people like me some of them don't look like me at all some of them are people I despised on political grounds just a few years ago I could name their names but you may not even know about their Transformations I don't want to wreck your dinner by telling you who they are but there's in one case someone who I made fun of on television and certainly in my private life in vulgar ways who was really the embodiment of everything I found repulsive to the middle of covid decided no I'm not going along with this and once you say one true thing and stick with it all kinds of other true things occur to you the truth is contagious lying is but the truth is as well and the second you decide to tell the truth about something you are filled with this I don't get Supernatural on you but you are filled with this power from somewhere else try it tell the truth about something you feel it every day the more you tell the truth the stronger you become that's completely real it's measurable in the way that you feel [Applause] and of course the opposite is also true the more you lie the weaker and more terrified you become we all know that feeling you lie about something and all of a sudden you're a prisoner of that lie you are diminished by it you are weak and Afraid drug and alcohol use is the same way it makes you weak and Afraid but you look around and you see these people and some of them really have paid a heavy price for telling the truth and they are cast out of their groups whatever those groups are but they do it anyway and I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration I am paid to do that I face no penalty someone come up to me you're so brave really I'm a talk show host it's like I can have any opinion I want that's my job that's why they pay me it's not brave to tell the truth on a cable news show and if you're not doing that you're really an idiot you're that you're literally making a living to say what you think and you can't even do that please but how about if you're a senior vice president at Citibank I'm serious it's Citibank and you're making you know four million a year and you've got three kids in Bedford and two are in boarding school and one starting at Wesleyan next year and like you need this job honestly and your whole sector is kind of collapsing and you know that there is no incentive whatsoever for you to tell the truth about anything you just go into little re-education meetings and you're like yeah diversity is our strength that's exactly right we need equity in the capital markets okay all right so if you're the one guy who refuses to say that you are a hero in my opinion and I know some of them in fact my job is to interview them and I sit back and I look at these people and I give them more credit than I do people who display physical courage which is often impulsive by the way and I'm not denigrating physical courage which I deeply admire but you interview people who do amazing things you know who rush into the proverbial burning building and like every man is kind of trained from birth to fantasize about what he would do and the building catches fire and you're a baby crying and so you run inside no one is trained to stand up in the middle of a Dei meeting at Citibank and say this is nonsense and the people who do that oh they have my deepest admiration and so their example really gives me hope it Thrills me I talk to them all day long people like that that's the first thing we should in this sad moment of profound and widespread destruction of the institutions that people who share our views built by the way earlier Generations that would agree substance substantially with every person in this room they built those and now they're being destroyed and oh that's so depressing but we can also see rising in the distance new things new institutions led by new people who are every bit as Brave as the people who came before us amen here's the second thing I'd like to say before I get to the conversation with Dr Roberts which is that it might be time to start to reassess the terms we use to to describe what we're watching so when I started at Heritage the presumption was and this is a very anglo-american assumption that the debates we're having are kind of rational debates about the way to get to mutually agreed upon outcomes right so like we all want the country to be more prosperous and free and people to be less oppressed or whatever and so we're going to argue about tax rates and I think higher tax gets gets us there on the Keynesian and you disagree you're in Austrian or whatever but the objective is the same and so we write our papers and they write their papers and made the best papers when I I don't think that's what we're watching now at all I don't think we're watching a debate over how to get to the best outcome I think that's completely wrong and I've come to this conclusion not and I should say at the outside of an Episcopalian so don't take any theological advice from me because I don't have any I grew up in the shallowest Faith tradition that's ever been invented it's not even a Christian religion at this point um I say with shame but I'm just saying this is an observer of what's going on there is no way to assess say the transgenderous movement with that mindset policy papers don't account for it at all if you have people who are saying I have an idea let's castrate the Next Generation what's sexually mutilate children I'm sorry that's not a political debate what there's nothing to do with politics what's the outcome we're Desiring here an androgynous population is that really what we are we arguing for that no I I don't think anyone could like defend that as a positive outcome but the weight of the government and you know a lot of corporate interests are behind that well what is that well it's irrational if you say well you know I think abortion is always bad well I think sometimes it's necessary that's the debate I'm familiar with but if you're telling me that abortion is a positive good what are you saying well you're arguing for child sacrifice obviously it's not about like oh a team you know a teen girl gets pregnant and what do we do about that and victims of rape I you know I get it I of course I understand that and I have compassion for everyone involved but when the treasury secretary stands up and says you know what you can do to help the economy get an abortion well that's like an Aztec principle actually there's not a society in the history that didn't practice human sacrifice not one I checked even the Scandinavians I'm ashamed to say it wasn't just the mesoamericans it was everybody so like that's what that is what's the point of child sacrifice well there's no policy goal entwined with that no that's a theological phenomenon and that's kind of the point I'm making none of this makes sense in conventional political terms when people or crowds of people or the largest crowd of people at all which is the federal government the largest human organization in human history decide that the goal is to destroy things Destruction for its own sake hey let's tear it down what you're watching is not a political movement it's evil so if you want to assess and I'll put it in non and I'll stop with this I'll put it in non pull it I'll put it in non-political or not rather non -specific theological terms and just say if you want to know what's evil and what's good what are the characteristics of those and by the way you know I I think the Athenians would have agreed with this this is not necessarily just a Christian notion this is kind of a I would say widely agreed upon understanding of Good and Evil what are its products what are these two conditions produce well I mean good is characterized by order calmness Tranquility peace whatever you want to call it lack of conflict cleanliness cleanliness is Next to Godliness it's true it is and evil is characterized by their opposites violence hate disorder division disorganization and filth so if you are all in on the things that produce the latter basket of outcomes what you're really advocating for is evil that's just true I'm not calling for a religious War far from it I'm merely calling for an acknowledgment of what we're watching which is not what and I'm not certainly not backing the Republican party I mean look I'm not making a partisan point at all [Applause] I'm I'm just noting what's super obvious like those of us who are in our mid 50s are caught in the past in the way that we think about this one side's like no you know I've got this idea and we've got this idea and let's have a debate about our ideas they don't want a debate those ideas won't produce outcomes that any rational person would want under any circumstances those are manifestations of some larger force acting upon us it's just so obvious it's completely obvious and I think two things one we should say that and stop engaging in these totally fraudulent debates where we are using the terms that we used in 1991 when I started at Heritage as if maybe you know I could just win the debate if I marshaled more facts I've tried that doesn't work and two maybe we should all take just like 10 minutes a day to say a prayer about it I'm serious like why not and I'm saying that to you not as some kind of event s I'm literally saying that to you as an Episcopalian the Samaritans of our time coming to you I'm literally an Episcopalian okay and even I have concluded it might be worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future and I hope you will good job thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh man the chance to interview Tucker Carlson do I have some questions but uh because you made your first point seven times we only have a few minutes that's the elitist in you well there's a lot of that still we've got time for two questions great but all seriousness Tucker thank you what a great message oh thank you yep that was heartfelt things go south at Fox News there's always a job for you here well we we do that for a lot of people very happily we're not called America's Outpost for nothing yeah think about that first question all all kidding and sarcasm aside what do you think over the last 10 or 20 years whatever timeline you think is appropriate has changed the most that is and I mean that's socially and culturally I don't mean that politically although you can go there if you want that has affected everyday Americans lives the lack of information I I oh this is so name dropping but I I can't resist because it's the elitist in you no I know it must be no I was actually interviewed Elon Musk this week there you go I know I was talking to Elon Musk Elon and I thank you smoking a cigar on his G4 and he turns to me he says you know Tucky calls me tuck um no no I hear I hit him for work obviously and he had a great he had such Wonder said the most likely outcome is the most ironic outcome and I thought boy is that that is just that's actually a I I would I would argue that's a Christian precept actually you know it's kind of the Beatitudes you know the first shall be last and the opposite of what you think is going to happen happens and so often and so the internet the core promised the internet was as much information as we've ever had at your fingertips and the result has been a centralization of information this is deliberate needless to say but unnoticed by most people that results in more controlled information than we could even have imagined 20 years ago so a lot of information just is not available I mean because it's digital and it's controlled by a small number of companies the polling suggests that a lot of Americans I don't mean like hundreds I mean hundreds of millions of Americans have no idea what's going they don't know the facts about certain things that it's not just because they're dumb or they're distracted on their iPhones the whole point of the iPhone was to inform you and the net effect has been to make people completely ignorant of the court or the actual facts like the non-disputed facts about a lot of different things and you saw this certainly during covid so that challenges the idea of democracy which you know rests on the notion of an informed voting public of a citizenry and we don't have that and um and that really I never would have expected that at all the last thing I'll say is don't throw away your hard copy books because they are the Repository the enduring repository that cannot be and I'm dead serious and I don't mean to I'm not going to tell you to buy gold and ammo though obviously you should think about it but definitely don't throw away your books because they can't be disappeared because they exist physically and I would say a car later that is don't throw away your relationships with other people because they can't be disappeared either the the material the physical things that you can smell those are the things that you can trust your spouse your dogs your children especially your dogs but you know your your actual friendships your college roommates people in person as the world becomes more digitized and people live in this kind of this realm that's disconnected from physical reality I think the only way to stay sane is to cling more tightly to the things that you can smell and I've really gotten to the point where if I can't smell it I'm not dealing with it and I mean that um and that includes books anyway that's what's changed books relationships and ammo Tucker girls Guide to the universe yes that is awesome well we've got 46 seconds okay and it's tight because we have two real treats even after you I talk too much in my apologies no don't don't apologize oh great I knew you were going to talk more than you said you would every time ask my wife and now we're down to 28 seconds so everyone what tomorrow whether they're staying here or they're able to go home what should be top of mind for them to do in their local community oh well the very first thing you should do every single day is tell all the people you love that you love them for two reasons because you do and affirming things out loud makes them real words are the most important and most powerful thing that we have and of course I have an interest in saying that if I sold Chryslers I'd be like cars are the most important thing but but words are in the beginning was the word and so articulate it and that is also simultaneously an acknowledgment of a truth that we don't face which is we don't know what's going to happen today and we could die that's the one thing that unites every person is the certainty of death and reminding yourself of that every single day will bring you paradoxically Joy I love you that's the most important thing what a wonderful response in a lot of ways that's a fitting way not for just you and me to conclude our brief Consciousness sorry you're never going to live that one yeah well but in a lot of ways also a good way for us to conclude this gathering before some additional entertainment and so I will ask all of you to join me in thanking Tucker Carlson for being here tonight and for what you do thank you God bless you thank you thank you [Applause] [Music] laughs but we're not done yet thanks again Tucker so in a few moments just a few moments my friend and colleague Genevieve wood will be at here and tell you a little bit more about what we're going to do but I wanted to leave you with one thought of course I've told you sort of two thoughts I'll be abusive like Tucker was thank you for being here tonight thank you for those of you who've been here for the last few days but I'll cut to the chase in the interest of time because we have so much in store for you for the next little while and that is every single time that Americans backs have been at the wall 1763 French and Indian War 1776 you know that one 1781 the first few hours of the Battle of Yorktown if you know weren't really a given the War of 1812 I mean right where we're sitting basically the British were here and the future of this young country was undetermined Civil War obviously both World Wars the wars of more recent times plus the the political cataclysms that happen in a republic every single time every single time no exceptions people thought it could never be worse people despaired people were despondent because of human nature and yet there's something about the American Spirit represented best by that flag that ought to tonight and every night every night instill in us a hopefulness about the future not just a perseverance not just the great cardinal virtue of fortitude which is kind of quintessentially American but a hopefulness that as we fight as we charge Hills as we bear the burdens we have that we always know for the United States of America bestowed with so many virtues as a society by our creator there's always more thank you for celebrating 50 years with the Heritage Foundation and don't you ever doubt that when the chips are down we're going to be there charging the hill with you God bless you

Channel: The Heritage Foundation

Views: 6,271,572

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Length: 36min 45sec (2205 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2023