Introduction

What was your first impression when you met Vladimir Putin for the interview? I thought he seemed nervous, and I was very surprised by that. And I thought he seemed like someone who'd overthought it a little bit, who had a plan, and I don't think that's the right way to go into any interview. My strong sense, having done a lot of them for a long time, is that it's better to know what you think, to say as much as you can honestly, so you don't get confused by your own lies, and just to be yourself. And I thought that he went into it like an over-prepared student, and I kept thinking, "Why is he nervous?" But I guess because he thought a lot of people were going to see it,

So you mentioned Navalny. After you left, Navalny died in prison. What are your thoughts on just at a high level, first about his death? Well, it's awful. I mean, imagine dying in prison. I've thought about it a lot. I've known a lot of people in prison a lot, including some very good friends of mine. So I felt instantly sad about it. From a geopolitical perspective, I don't know any more than that. And I laugh at and sort of resent, but mostly find amusing the claims by American politicians, who really are the dumbest politicians in the world actually, "This happened and here's what it means." And it's like, "Actually as a factual matter, we don't know what happened. We don't know what happened." We have no freaking idea what happened. We can say, and I did say, and I will say again, I don't think you should put opposition figures in prison. I really don't. I don't, period. It happens a lot around the world, happens in this country, as you know, and I'm against all of it.

How many black people have died by gunfire in the four years since George Floyd died? Well, the number's gone way, way up and that was a Black Lives Matter operation, defund the police. So I think we can say as a factual matter, data-based matter, Black Lives Matter didn't help black people and if it did tell me how. "Well, these are important moral victories." I'm over that. That's just another lie, a long litany of lies. So I try to see the rest of the world that way. But more than anything, I try to see world events through the lens of an American because I am one. And what does this mean for us? It's not even the war, it's the sanctions that will forever change the United States, our standard of living, the way our government operates. That more than any single thing in my lifetime screwed the United States. Levying those sanctions in the way that we did was crazy. For me, the main takeaway from my eight days in Moscow was not Putin. He's a leader, whatever. None of them are that different actually, in my pretty extensive experience, no, it was Moscow. That blew my mind. I was not prepared for that at all and I thought I knew a lot about Moscow. My dad worked there on and off in the 80s and 90s because, a US government employee. And he was always coming back, "Moscow, it's a nightmare," and all this stuff, "no electricity." I got there almost exactly two years after sanctions, totally cut off from Western financial systems, kicked out of Swift, can't use US dollars, no banking, no credit cards. And that city just factually, I'm not endorsing the system, I'm not endorsing the whole country. I didn't go to Lake Baikal. I didn't go to Turkmenistan. I just went to Moscow, largest city in Europe, 13 million people. I drove all around it and that city is way nicer, outwardly anyway, I don't live there, than any city we have by a lot. And by nicer, let me be specific. No graffiti. No homeless. No people using drugs in the street. Totally tidy. No garbage on the ground. And no forest of steel and concrete soul- destroying buildings, none of the postmodern architecture that oppresses us without even our knowledge. None of that crap. It's a truly beautiful city. That's not an endorsement of Putin. By the way, it didn't make me love Putin, it made me hate my own leaders because I grew up in a country that had cities kind of like that, that were nice cities that were safe, and we don't have that anymore. How did that happen? Did Putin do that? I don't think Putin did that actually. I think the people in charge of that, the mayors, the governors, the president, they did that and they should be held accountable for it.

I think after you did the interview with Putin, you put a clip, I think on TCN, your analysis afterwards. It wasn't much of an analysis.

You mentioned Jon Stewart, the two of you have a bit of a history. I don't know if you've seen it, but he kind of grilled your supermarket and subway videos. Have you got any chance to see it? I haven't seen it, but someone characterized it to me, which is why I pivoted against it early in our conversation about how the price of freedom is living in filth and chaos.

How do you hope the war on Ukraine ends? With a settlement, with a reasonable settlement. You know what a reasonable settlement is, which is a settlement where both sides feel like they're giving a little, but can live with it. I mean, I was really struck in my conversation with Putin by how he basically refused to criticize Joe Biden and to criticize NATO. I will just be honest, as an American, it would be a little weird to be pissing on Joe Biden with a foreign leader, any foreign leader, even though I don't think Joe Biden is a real person or really a president. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. But still, he is the American president technically, and I don't want to beat up on the American president with a foreigner. I just don't. Maybe I'm old fashioned. So that's how I feel.

What do you think of Putin saying that justification for continuing the war is denazification? I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard. I didn't understand what it meant. Denazification?

So you mentioned there's a bunch of conspiracy theories about Putin's health. How was he in person? What did he feel like? Did he look healthy? I'm not a health person myself, so I can easily gain 30 pounds and not know it, so I'm probably not a great person to ask. But no, he seemed fine. He had his arm hooked through a chair, and I heard people say, "Well, he's got Parkinson's." And Parkinson's can be controlled I know for periods with drugs. So it's hard to assess. One of the tells of Parkinson's is gait, how a person walks, I think. And his walking seemed fine, and I walked around with him and talked to him off camera. He's had some work done, for sure. He's 71 or two.

Since we're on the time period, let me ask you a almost cliche question, but it applies to you, which you've interviewed a lot of world leaders. If you had the chance to interview Hitler in '39, '40, '41, first of all, would you do it? And how would you do it? I assume you would do it given who you are. Man, it would be a massive cost for doing it. It may destroy my life to interview Putin, though I can tell you as much as I want that I'm not a Putin defender, I only care about the United States. That's 100% true, anyone who knows me will tell you what's true, I keep saying it. But history may record me to the extent it records me at all as a tool of Putin, a hater of America. That seems absurd to me, but absurd things happen. What would I ask Hitler? I don't even know. I guess I would probably ask him, what I asked Putin, which is what I ask everybody, "What's your motive? Why did you do..." I mean, if he'd already gone into Poland, "Why are you doing that? What's your goal?" And then the question is, is he going to answer honestly? I don't know, you can't make someone answer a question honestly. You can only sort of shut up while they talk and then let people decide what they think of the answer.

At Fox, you were for a time the most popular host. After Fox you've garnered a huge amount of attention as well, same, probably more. Do you worry that popularity and just that attention gets to your head, is a kind of drug that clouds your thinking? You think? I live in a spiritual graveyard of people killed by the quest for fame. Yes, I have lived in it. I mean, I would say the two advantages I have. One, I Have a happy family, and a stable family, and a stable group of friends, which is just the greatest blessing, and a strong love of nature that my family shares. So I'm in nature every day. And I have a whole series of rituals designed to keep me from becoming the asshole that I could easily become. But no, of course, I mean, that's what I... And I don't want to beat up on... I'm grateful to Elon who gave me a platform, and I mean that sincerely. But I definitely don't spend a lot of time on social media or on the internet, for that exact reason. Well, first of all, I think it's, as I've said, a much more controlled environment than we acknowledge, and I don't want lies in my head. But I also don't want to become the sort of person who's seeking the adulation of strangers, I think that's soul poison.

Let me ask you, you've been pretty close with Donald Trump. Your private texts about him around the 2020 election were made public in one of them. You said you passionately hate Trump. When that came out, you said that you actually no, you love him. So how do you explain the difference? My texts reflect a lot of things, including how I feel at the moment that I sent them. That specific text I happen to know since I had to go through it forensically during my deposition in a case I was not named in. I had nothing to do with whatsoever. It's crazy how civil suits can be used to hurt people you disagree with politically. But I was mad at a very specific person. I mean, really I, you're asking me, I'll tell you exactly what that was. It was the second the election ended and they stopped voting, stopped the vote counting on election night. I was like, well, this is, and it's all now mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines. I was like, that's a rigged election. I thought that then, I think now. Now it's obvious that it was. But at the time I was like, "I feel like that was crazy what just happened".

I'm doing an Israel Palestine debate next week, but I have to ask you just your thoughts, maybe even from a US perspective, what do you think about Hamas attacks on Israel? What would be the right thing for Israel to do and what's the right thing for us to do in this? If you're looking at the geopolitics of it. I mean, it's not a topic that I get into a lot because I'm a non-expert and because I'm not... Unlike every other American, I'm not emotionally invested in other countries just in general. I mean, I admire them or not, and I love visiting them. I love Jerusalem, probably my favorite city in the world, but I don't have an emotional attachment to it. So maybe I've got more clarity. I don't know, maybe less. Here's my view. I believe in sovereignty as mentioned, and I think each country has to make decisions based on its own interest, but also with reference to its own capabilities and its own long-term interest.

Not to try to get a preview or anything, but do you have interest of interviewing Xi Jinping? If you do, how will you approach that? I have enormous interest in doing that, enormous, and a couple other people and we're working on it.

What advice would you give to young people? You got four, you somehow made them into great human beings. What advice would you give people in high school? Have children immediately.

What hope, positive hope do you have for the future of human civilization in say 50 years, 100 years, 200 years? People are great just by their nature. I mean, they're super complicated, but I like people. I always have liked people. If I was sitting here with Nikki Haley, who I guess I've been pretty clear I'm not a mega fan of Nikki Haley's, I would enjoy it. I've never met anybody I couldn't enjoy on some level given enough time. So as long as nobody tampers with the human recipe, the human nature itself, I will always feel blessed by being around other people. That's true around the world. I've never been to a country, and I've been to scores of countries, where I didn't, given a week, really like it and the people. So yeah, bad leaders are a recurring theme in human history. They're mostly bad, and we've got an unusually bad set right now, but we'll have better ones at some point. One thing I don't like more than nuclear weapons and more than AI, the one thing that really, really bothers me is the idea of using technology to change the human brain permanently. Because you're tampering with the secret sauce. You're tampering with God's creation, and totally evil. I mean, I literally sat there the other day with Klaus Schwab. I was with Klaus Schwab. He was like a total moron, like 100 years old and has no idea what's going on in the world. But he's one of these guys who, speaking of mediocre, everyone's so afraid of Klaus Schwab, I don't think Klaus Schwab is going to be organizing anything. Again, he's just like a total figurehead, like a douchebag.