Bret Weinstein and Tucker Carlson discuss Charlie Kirk's murder, the war with Iran, and the failure of public debate
Tucker Carlson and Bret Weinstein speak candidly about the Iran conflict, Charlie Kirk's assassination, and the suppression of dissent.
Summary
Tucker Carlson and Bret Weinstein discuss the war with Iran and its connection to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Bret Weinstein, who had been working with Charlie Kirk on a project to warn the president about the dangers of mRNA shots, describes Kirk as someone who would have been a formidable opponent of the Iran war — both publicly and privately — and raises questions about whether Kirk's murder and the subsequent war are connected. Weinstein notes that Benjamin Netanyahu's rapid and unsolicited denial of responsibility for Kirk's murder struck him as deeply unnatural. Both speakers argue that the American public has lost its ability to challenge war policy on its merits, with logical objections being deflected by accusations of bad character rather than answered on substance. Weinstein expresses frustration that no one else would speak publicly against the Iran war, and calls for full public disclosure so that dark suspicions can either be confirmed or dismissed, arguing that suppression and obfuscation breed hatred rather than resolve it.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The FBI, Charlie Kirk, and the road to war with Iran
Bret Weinstein: I'm just going to say it. We don't have an FBI. We know that because things that need to be thoroughly investigated obviously aren't — whether that's the assassination attempt in Butler, whether it's the Zoro ranch that never got searched that Epstein had, or the Charlie Kirk assassination.
Tucker Carlson: Yep.
Bret Weinstein: All I know about the Charlie Kirk assassination is that I've been handed a story that doesn't add up. I don't know why it doesn't add up, but the fact that we didn't get to the bottom of it in some way that produced a compelling explanation worries me for the following reason. I didn't know Charlie well. We were becoming friends, and I feel confident that that would have continued and progressed rapidly, but I didn't know him all that well. We were teamed up on a project to essentially compel the president to recognize the danger of the mRNA shots. That meant I had contact with him and knew something of what he thought.
I know you knew him well. Even his public-facing side was very clear about his concerns about an attack on Iran. He was not only very clear about his concerns, but he was very knowledgeable about the hazards. He would have been a formidable voice at this moment. I don't know how we ended up in this conflict with Iran. It's a headscratcher to me. It seems, as I've said to you, like such a mind-blowing political error that it's hard to imagine that President Trump would have made it. But if I try to rerun the tape of how we got here, and I imagine that not only did President Trump have you in his ear, but he had Charlie in his ear — and you were both saying, "Hey, this doesn't make any sense. It's not a political win. It's terrible for the country, and here are a spectrum of downsides that could come from this that will have impacts for generations." I don't know what effect that would have had.
The neocon project and Iran's place on the list
Bret Weinstein: But I do know — and I've been concerned about it and I've been vocal about it for a very long time — that we had a policy unfolding under our collective banner as Americans where we were toppling regimes across the Middle East, and Iran has been on that list from the beginning. We didn't get to Iran in the war on terror. Why? Because the quagmire in Iraq caused an analog for what used to be called Vietnam syndrome. Vietnam syndrome was the unwillingness of the American public to commit troops in foreign engagements after they were traumatized by the quagmire in Vietnam. George Bush Senior famously proclaimed with glee that during the first Gulf War — which was a very easy war for us to win — that we had finally broken Vietnam syndrome.
Tucker Carlson: Very well.
Bret Weinstein: So he said we had broken Vietnam syndrome, and what that meant was: we've got license to start making war again. A very ominous chapter in American history. The war on terror resulted in ill-conceived adventures in the Middle East that ended badly. Iraq was so bad and so publicly so that the public again was traumatized by the idea of these engagements. And what that did is it put Iran on hold. The neocons didn't give it up, but it went on the back burner.
I feel — and I cannot say for sure — but I feel that something was watching and felt the clock ticking and its opportunity to finally bring about this war, which I think Benjamin Netanyahu said he's been dreaming of for 40 years.
Tucker Carlson: He did say that.
Bret Weinstein: So something wanted this war to happen, and there was the perception that the window was closing, so it had to be brought about quickly. Given how public Charlie was on this topic, I can't help but wonder. Now, obviously that will sound crazy to many people — that something would have even considered such a thing. But I will say that after Charlie was killed, Benjamin Netanyahu very quickly denied responsibility for it. I was shocked by this. It did not seem natural. I'm not saying that means anything in that quadrant was responsible for the murder. All I know is that we didn't get a decent investigation. But I did feel — and maybe I hope you will tell me that I'm imagining this — I did feel that that denial by Netanyahu was effectively a Rorschach test, and maybe designed to be one, where I was supposed to feel alarmed by it and a normal person was supposed to think, "That is crazy. He said they didn't do it. Obviously they didn't do it."
So I'm not telling you that I see evidence that somebody did it. But what I am telling you is we've just found ourselves in a war that Charlie would have been opposed to. We know that from his public and private statements, and he would have been a formidable force in opposition. So what am I to think? At least we should have an investigation that tells us for sure that we know who committed the crime and that there wasn't something larger about it. But I look — I've now said unforgivable things. It's done.
Tucker on Netanyahu's behavior and Charlie Kirk
Tucker Carlson: I don't know why that's unforgivable. This is an American citizen, someone you knew. You're not accusing anyone of anything. And I do think, leaving aside Charlie's murder and the question of who did it — for a foreign leader to weigh in immediately and hog all the attention and make it all about himself and start issuing all these statements about how Charlie lived and died for Israel is totally unforgivable. And I say this as his friend. I just think if someone did that to me after my death, my family would be outraged. It's not about you, BB.
So that was disgusting behavior from someone with a track record of disgusting behavior. But at the very least, we could say that's just wrong. That's not how you behave in the wake of a young man's murder. And I've never alleged — I don't even talk about this topic. I'm not going to now, other than to say I think everything you've said is entirely reasonable and it's not an insult to the living to want to know what happened to the dead.
Bret Weinstein: Yes, of course. And let's put it this way. If we had a healthy public discussion in which we could air ideas, dismiss them because they don't stand up logically, that would be fine. But we don't have that.
Bret's mission to stop the war and Charlie's role
Bret Weinstein: You've been on a lonely mission to convince the president not to engage in war with Iran and to get him to back out as quickly as possible, declare victory, and go home. It hasn't gone well.
Tucker Carlson: No, it's been an abject failure.
Bret Weinstein: What do you think Charlie would have been doing if he had lived?
Tucker Carlson: I think he'd be doing the same. If there's one topic I talked to him a lot about, it's this. His motive was pure. I sincerely believe that his only interest was in the United States. He certainly wasn't opposed to Israel — he loved Israel. He often said that he didn't love BB. Sorry, that's — anyone who claims otherwise is lying or doesn't know. But he did love Israel, both as a biblical concept and as a current reality. He went there and liked it. But he was totally opposed to this war. He said that many times.
But I do think his murder, and all that has happened subsequently — whether or not they're connected, I can't say — they've had the cumulative effect of intimidating the hell out of everybody. No one wants to pipe up. And I was already all in. I've been against a war in Iran for ten years, doing whatever is in my limited power to persuade decision makers not to do it, because I don't think it's good for America. I'm not for Iran. Like, stop. I just don't think it's good for the United States. And I've said that many, many times. This time I found that no one else wanted to say that in public because the costs seemed really high.
Full disclosure and the need to clear the air
Tucker Carlson: I don't say this as self-pity, but that's just a fact. I think we need to re-engineer this whole thing when it's over — hopefully soon — to see how it happened. How was a country of 350 million people hijacked by a determined minority of ideologues whose interest is not in that country? And I don't think it's a matter of stoking conspiracy theories against the Jews or anything like that. In fact, I don't want that at all. In fact, one of the reasons I want full disclosure is so everyone can settle down and stop muttering darkly.
Bret Weinstein: I don't like dark mutterings at all. I like sunlight — to quote Justice Brandeis. I hope we can do that. I hope there's not more deception and obfuscation and hiding of the facts, because that just makes people hate each other.
Tucker Carlson: That's it. I want to find out that my darkest concerns are wrong, in an open enough public conversation that even if they're right, we just get it over with. I mean, I went last week to an AA meeting — I don't go to AA meetings, I don't drink — but I went with a really close friend of mine who does go a lot. And if you've never been, you should. I know you're not an alcoholic, but you should play one for a weekend and go, because the freedom that comes from admitting your deepest sins, your most profound weaknesses — the true liberation that comes from that is like nothing else. There's no liberation like that.
Bret Weinstein: Yep. I did it. I did it.
Tucker Carlson: We need that. There's so much burden from what we can't discuss and don't know. Clearing the decks and getting it all in the open — some kind of reset — would be a wise thing for us to do.
Bret Weinstein: Yes. This is like Christmas dinner at the Episcopalian house where it's just a lot of silence and unspoken grudges and everyone's mad but no one will say so. That's not healthy.
Stakes, existential fear, and why people do extreme things
Bret Weinstein: I want to say one other thing about the unforgivable things I've now said about Charlie Kirk and my concerns. I don't think it's logical to regard those concerns as preposterous if you also regard the stakes in Iran as existential for Israel. In other words, what will people do if they think their interests are all bound up in a policy that has to happen right now, and that people are standing in the way and therefore putting them in jeopardy — them and their children and their children's children and their nation? Try to see the world through other people's eyes just for a second and you can understand dynamics. People risk their lives to rob liquor stores.
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Bret Weinstein: People will do anything to protect themselves and their children from a threat that they perceive.
Tucker Carlson: Of course.
The silencing of logical dissent through moral accusation
Bret Weinstein: My concern is that we are not allowed — somehow, as Americans — we have lost our right to challenge the policy on its merits. You speak logically about the likely outcome of war in Iran and the response that comes back is about your morality. That's a non-sequitur. We can talk about two different things: what are our moral obligations, and what is the logical context in which we are being asked to participate in this? Those are both worthy conversations. But when you come back at me for my logical point about this military engagement with an accusation about my character, something has gone awry. That's not how we behave. We have a right to air our grievances, and the marketplace of ideas can sort out which ones are right.
Frankly, there's only one metric that really matters in the end, and that's predictive power. Who has deployed their model, said what they think is going to happen, and has actually been insightful? In science, in politics, that's the way you know who knows what's going on — someone who says something that has some relationship to what actually occurs.
Tucker Carlson: The opposite is also true. People with a long track record of failure shouldn't be consulted as experts.
Bret Weinstein: Right. If you've been married eight times, I'm not going to marriage counseling with you.
Tucker Carlson: If you have a record of failure, we should ignore you. It doesn't matter what degree you have or what office you hold — you're not a credible source.
Defending the reasonableness of the position
Bret Weinstein: I'm feeling a little defensive about this — about the Charlie Kirk thing and about all of it, really. About the fact that my character is in question by virtue of beliefs that I think I've arrived at honestly, but others will imagine something else.
Tucker Carlson: I'm obviously too close to this. I should say we're the same age, from the same part of the country, grew up in the same world despite differences — your family was Jewish and atheist, mine was agnostic and Christian, but whatever. We grew up in the same world. And what you're saying to me is so self-evidently true and reasonable and moderate and sensible and logical that I can't even conceive of how you could be attacked for saying any of it.