Tucker Carlson interviews journalist Max Blumenthal about his detention at Dulles Airport, his reporting trip to Iran, and what he describes as Israeli influence over US media and politics
Tucker Carlson interviews journalist and Gray Zone founder Max Blumenthal.
Summary
Tucker Carlson interviews Max Blumenthal, journalist and founder of the Gray Zone, in mid-September 2026. Blumenthal describes being detained at Dulles International Airport upon returning from Iran, where he had been reporting on the aftermath of the US-Israeli war, including civilian destruction, a bombed synagogue, and the funeral of assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He alleges that his detention was orchestrated by Israeli-linked entities — including Canary Mission and Laura Loomer — who targeted him online while he was in Iran and pressured the Trump administration to act against him. Blumenthal also details a lawsuit he filed over the warrantless seizure of his phones, which a federal judge found likely violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The conversation broadens into an extended analysis of what Blumenthal describes as Israeli control over the Trump administration, US media, Latin American politics, and conservative movement organizations including Turning Point USA following the death of Charlie Kirk.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Blumenthal's detention at Dulles Airport and prior targeting by the Trump administration
Tucker Carlson: Max Blumenthal, thank you for doing this. I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that if you're a journalist who has been taking a position and reporting on stories that are in direct contradiction to the official story in Washington, at some point someone's going to get heavy with you. I want you to describe, if you don't mind, a couple of things that have happened to you recently so everyone knows what the stakes are. You got detained at a US airport recently. Can you explain what happened?
Max Blumenthal: Yeah, and this wasn't the first time the Trump administration had gotten heavy with me over my reporting. I was actually arrested and jailed on false charges that were dropped quickly during the first Trump term. That's a long story, but we've reported on it at the Gray Zone.
Tucker Carlson: You spent a couple of days in jail.
Max Blumenthal: Spent a couple of days in DC jail over completely false, bogus charges. My house was essentially raided — the police surrounded my house, took me out into a wagon, and took me to jail over completely false charges that I had assaulted a woman who was an ally of Juan Guaidó at the time. That's the long story short. I wish I had had legal representation that encouraged me to sue at that time because it was just completely fake.
Right after Trump came in in January, I was stopped coming back from a vacation abroad with my family and shown a list of names and asked, basically, do you know these people — which is far beyond the scope of authority of Customs and Border Protection.
Tucker Carlson: Did they pull you out of the customs line?
Max Blumenthal: Yeah. They were waiting for me. "Mr. Blumenthal" — and they said, "We've been watching you on Judge Napolitano. I watched your last appearance on Judge Napolitano." Referring to Judge Andrew Napolitano, but kind of like a tap on the shoulder — big brother's watching. And I remember those names. I actually didn't recognize them until afterwards. One of them was Susan Benjamin, which happens to be the birth name of Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin. The other names were Arab or Muslim names, and I think one of them might have been Mahmoud Khalil, who was later arrested — one of the Columbia students they tried to deport and put in an ICE facility for a long time. I didn't know at the time, but it all started to make sense once I saw what they were doing. Israel's in charge now, and they want a crackdown. They want to criminalize activism and even journalism that contravenes their objectives.
So the war breaks out — it doesn't just break out. Trump executes Israel's wishes and Netanyahu's greatest fantasy: attacking Iran. We can talk about why that happened later, but I was observing it closely and reporting on it, as you were as well. So I wanted to go there. I had gone the year before without any incident coming back. I participated in a public media festival.
Tucker Carlson: In Iran?
Max Blumenthal: In Iran. I did a documentary on Iranian Jews and what life is like for them in the Islamic Republic. I did reporting. I interviewed top negotiators as the negotiations were about to collapse — about a month before Israel launched its first war on Iran, which ended with Operation Midnight Hammer. So anyway, the major war, Operation Epic Fury, breaks out and I'm observing it very closely. I wanted an opportunity to go. I got that opportunity because Iran's foreign ministry was giving out press passes to mainstream reporters from NBC and CNN, as well as influencers who wanted to go and cover the funeral of the man that Trump assassinated on February 28th, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It was going to be the largest funeral in history, and indeed it was. I witnessed it as a reporter.
One of the things I was reporting on was evidence of US and Israeli war crimes. For example, I visited a neighborhood in eastern Tehran that had been completely destroyed, Gaza-style, without much reporting. I actually hadn't been aware of this neighborhood — just block after block of destruction. Speaking to people on that street with tears in their eyes, telling me how entire families were liquidated in their sleep. Going to the home where a family of twelve was killed and finding the clothes of small children on the ground — clothes that resembled the clothes I dress my children in every day, the same age. It was very upsetting and I had an obligation to report on it. There was graffiti on the wall of a giant civilian apartment building that had been completely destroyed in the middle of the night. It said: "Evidence of US crimes." And that's what I was providing as a reporter on the ground.
I also visited a synagogue — a 50-year-old synagogue that Israel had bombed. Nothing was bombed around it, really, that I could see.
Tucker Carlson: Was it an active synagogue?
Max Blumenthal: It was an active 50-year-old synagogue called the Rafinia Synagogue in central Tehran. I was one of the first American reporters to visit it. My colleague Wyatt Reed had also visited it, along with several other sites — Gandhi Hospital, and others.
Tucker Carlson: Did anyone ever explain, in the coalition — US or Israel — why we would bomb a synagogue in Iran?
Max Blumenthal: Israel always offers the excuse that there was some IRGC site nearby and it was a mistake. But it wouldn't have been the first synagogue that Israel has bombed in the region in order to compel Jews to move out of their historic home and seek sanctuary within the so-called Jewish state. It raised serious questions about what would have motivated them to do it, and I raised those questions in an explainer I filmed there. It's the kind of thing that would anger Israel, especially when it's a Jewish reporter — an American Jewish reporter.
Tucker Carlson: Bombing synagogues was not really on the program, I thought.
Max Blumenthal: The synagogue didn't seem to present a national security threat to Israel. What does threaten Israel is having a community of 10,000 Jews in a Muslim country like the Islamic Republic of Iran — Jews who are recognized as a national minority under the constitution and who are not experiencing antisemitism there. It kind of stands at odds with what Zionists want us to believe about Muslims and the Muslim world.
Tucker Carlson: They might want to frighten them to leave, as they did with the Jewish community in Iraq when —
Max Blumenthal: The Zionist underground, with Israeli help, bombed Jewish community centers in Baghdad, as the Israeli historian Avi Shlaim documented, in 1952 and 1953.
So anyway, I'm doing this reporting. I reported from the funeral. Trump had previously said that the large crowds you see at funerals of Islamic Republic leadership who he or Israel assassinates are AI. So they don't want actual American reporters on the ground there, especially me, when my perspective is very well known. While I was there, I was targeted online by a collection of entities and figures who are completely connected to Israel and no one else. It was an Israeli propaganda operation targeting me. Laura Loomer was obviously leading the way.
Tucker Carlson: This was not an organic uprising of American citizens online.
Max Blumenthal: When I went in 2025, I was tweeting from Iran, producing journalism the same way, and nothing like this happened. But this time it was different, and it wasn't organic in the sense that a foreign state was guiding it. They wanted to character-assassinate me online.
So besides Laura Loomer, who we'll talk about in a second, there was Canary Mission. They were targeting me. They created a dossier about me. They said something like I had dedicated my life to the Ayatollah — some really insane statement — and that I was there to basically pray at his grave.
Tucker Carlson: Officially endorsed him.
Max Blumenthal: Essentially that I endorsed him for leadership of the world. And by the way, if I had done that — if I had converted to Shia Islam and paid homage to the late Ayatollah — that would not have been against the law in the United States, as far as I know. I think I would have been within my rights. But I was just there to report, and that's all I did.
In any case, Canary Mission attacks me. This is a group based in Israel, based in a foundation — it's a front group called Megumat Shalom. Many of its writers come out of the Wexner Foundation, named for the best friend of Jeffrey Epstein. They are American-Israeli dual citizens.
Tucker Carlson: Bought all of it — bought his house on Fifth Avenue. That same guy.
Max Blumenthal: That same guy. And who I think helped Howard Lutnik buy the house next door.
Tucker Carlson: May I ask you — is there evidence that he helped Howard Lutnik buy the house next door?
Max Blumenthal: I'm pretty sure they helped him buy the townhouse next door. If not, we can edit it out or I'll retract it, but I'm pretty sure that's the case.
Tucker Carlson: Amazing.
Max Blumenthal: They definitely shared a wall. But this is totally peripheral to the story I'm telling. The point I'm making is I was targeted by a foreign government for contravening their propaganda objectives as a reporter. Canary Mission has been used by the State Department under Trump to determine which green-card-holding students they should arrest in the street and deport — students who did nothing more than write an op-ed criticizing Israel for their student paper.
Laura Loomer, Israeli-linked pressure campaigns, and the Trump administration
Max Blumenthal: It's been reported that Marco Rubio's State Department was relying in part on Canary Mission to target students. And Canary Mission was founded in 2015 to ruin the lives of US college students who were participating in Palestine activism on campus — by doxing them and preventing them from gaining future employment. This is an Israeli group meddling in our society and trying to ruin the lives of Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights.
So now they're targeting me. Another group was ViceGrad 24, which seems to be shilling for the UAE as well as Israel. And then Laura Loomer comes in and demands that Mark Wayne Mullen arrest me, have me hauled off the flight, that my passport be revoked — basically that I'd be denaturalized as a natural-born US citizen. For what? For simply reporting from Iran. And then maybe they can find some facts later with which they can use to criminalize me.
Tucker Carlson: She said this in public?
Max Blumenthal: She tweeted this. She said, if Mark Wayne Mullen is worth anything, he will do this. She called for my home to be raided at 5:00 a.m. She specifically called for Rubio to yank my passport. She boasted that she had called the FBI, the State Department, and DHS on me.
Tucker Carlson: How does she have this kind of access?
Max Blumenthal: She's boasted of calling law enforcement on over a thousand people in the US. So this is typical behavior. And I come back kind of knowing what to expect. They're going to get heavy with me because Laura Loomer has become their go-to propagandist and they use her. They kind of outsource her, but she's also able to frighten people in the administration like Mark Wayne Mullen, who she was attacking a week later, calling him Mark Wayne Muslim. She was calling him all sorts of names because he wasn't doing enough deportations. So his ass is on the line from someone who just a couple of years ago was chaining themselves to Twitter headquarters because her account had been pulled. Someone who earlier this year justified a mass shooting at a US mosque. Someone who called some Black Democrats "black ghetto" — you know the word. She's seen as so outlandish, but people in the Trump administration are frightened of her, and other people are using her.
Tucker Carlson: Why would they be frightened of her?
Max Blumenthal: Because there are powerful forces behind her, including some extremely powerful Zionist figures. And you're absolutely right that they're afraid of her. Who's behind her trip to Ukraine? How do you get an audience with Zelensky like that? And then you're meeting with Andriy Biletsky, the leading neo-Nazi in Ukraine, and whitewashing him. And then you're going to an energy plant for a company called DTEK — which seems completely random — whose board member is Jeffrey Pyatt, the guy who was handing out cookies at the Maidan in 2014 with Victoria Nuland. Who owns DTEK? It's Rinat Akhmetov, one of the richest men in Ukraine, a de facto crime boss in Kyiv involved in all kinds of corrupt activity. Who's got her pushing for the removal of sanctions on Venezuela's government even when Maduro was in power? Probably some pretty powerful businessmen who might own Venezuela's sovereign debt and want to collect on it. Who's pushing her to target anyone who gets in the way of Israel's genocidal agenda in the Middle East? We could choose between any number of major Israeli or pro-Israel figures, from Miriam Adelson to Bill Ackman. I don't know who they are specifically.
Tucker Carlson: But I think we could all agree this is not the way a country does diplomacy.
Max Blumenthal: Well, this is what happened to MAGA. They've driven out everyone who believed in anything Trump campaigned on in 2016 and 2024 — national sovereignty, America first rather than Israel first, not continuing the Ukraine proxy war. Zelensky is now asking for $28 billion from the US. All of these things were what I think motivated you to campaign for Trump. And now you're being targeted as one of their main enemies. Laura Loomer is attacking you right now, along with other figures who have a very murky relationship with the Trump administration, like this Jennica Pounds character — a Republican who was just exposed as a special Pentagon employee, but we thought she was just a pro-MAGA influencer.
Tucker Carlson: What do you mean, a Pentagon employee?
Max Blumenthal: A special employee of the Pentagon who's been hired by the Pentagon and has a .civ email. This was reported in the Washington Post.
Tucker Carlson: So this is someone who's attacking people politically online all the time, and she's getting paid in US tax dollars to do that?
Max Blumenthal: I don't know how much she's being paid, but she exposed herself as such.
Tucker Carlson: Let me make this point about where MAGA is. Laura Loomer is the face of MAGA right now. And when that's the face of your movement, it doesn't stand for anything anymore.
Max Blumenthal: Except the raw Machiavellian exercise of power.
Tucker Carlson: And looting.
Max Blumenthal: And looting, corruption, and genocidal bloodlust, which is something she represents. After the mass shooting that killed three people at a mosque in San Diego this May, she called for ICE to raid the homes of the victims.
Tucker Carlson: What?
Max Blumenthal: In addition to saying the whole thing was a false flag to elicit sympathy for Muslims, and that all Muslims in America should be deported. So this is the person that people in the administration are answering to, and everyone's seeking to use her as well.
Tucker Carlson: What's the difference between saying that and saying all Jews should be deported? Once you decide that an entire ethnic group or religion is evil because of how they were born, how is that different from any other variety of that? It doesn't seem any different to me at all. And it all seems disgusting. It disgusts most people. But this is what they've been reduced to. Who is using her? How is Israel able to move this administration to the point where they're even that focused on me — willing to not just detain me, but confiscate my phones on my way back with no suspicion of any criminal activity?
Max Blumenthal: I've told it the long way, but I wanted to help everyone watching understand why this happened. It happened explicitly because Israel didn't want me reporting from inside Iran, and they thought they could exploit my vulnerability coming back from Iran to have something terrible happen to me in this area of our country where you are told, when you enter, you have no constitutional rights — which is a huge problem.
Tucker Carlson: You're an American citizen.
Max Blumenthal: I'm an American citizen. You're an American citizen. You have no other passport.
Tucker Carlson: So how do you forfeit your American constitutional rights?
Max Blumenthal: Once you are called in for secondary inspection or questioning by Customs and Border Protection when you arrive from another country — you get the red X, they put your passport in a plastic box, and they send you back there — CBP tells you that you essentially do not have the same constitutional rights.
Tucker Carlson: But you're on US soil. What airport was this?
Max Blumenthal: This was Dulles — appropriately named — International Airport.
So I come back and I got the four S's on my ticket coming back. I am questioned, and they're asking me questions that seem to follow the same line that Loomer, or whoever was handling or backing her, was pursuing. I was very cooperative and polite. I figured I can be transparent here and be polite rather than refuse — and you do have the right to refuse those questions, but then you're just going to be there for hours and hours and they're going to use that to punish you. At the end of the questioning, they searched my bags and everything, which they wouldn't have the right to do outside of there without a warrant and individualized suspicion.
Tucker Carlson: Right.
Max Blumenthal: They then demanded that I open my phones. Anyone watching this who's concerned about having their phones opened or seized, pay close attention. They said, "We're just going to check for evidence of criminal activity and CSM." And so just give us your passcodes.
Tucker Carlson: And they said it's child sexual material, and you're looking at them like —
Max Blumenthal: Your natural reaction would be: I don't have that on my phone. Were you calling me a pedophile? What the hell's wrong with you? No, here, just take my phone — those are my kids. But I'm not stupid. So I said, no, that is a violation of my constitutional rights. And they said, well then just give us your phones.
And from there, if you don't give your phones, I've been told they've revoked people's passports temporarily. So they took two phones I had. Oddly, they didn't take my other devices or seem that interested in them — like my laptop. If you think I'm this criminal and some IRGC agent, why wouldn't you take my digital camera or my laptop? No, it was just like they were trying to harass, punish, and intimidate me, and to satisfy Laura Loomer and whatever Zionist figures are behind her.
The lawsuit, Cellebrite phone extraction, and Fourth Amendment ruling
Max Blumenthal: A few days later, I go to Janine Ununice, who is a lawyer — a true free speech warrior. Not like the fake free speech warriors who only defend the free speech of conservatives or whatever interest they represent.
Tucker Carlson: Whatever. And then when someone says Israel did a naughty thing, they want them imprisoned.
Max Blumenthal: She's not Alan Dershowitz or Ben Shapiro. Her feelings only care about facts. She argued at the Supreme Court against the Biden administration's policy of banning social media accounts that had criticized Biden, in a lawsuit filed by Republican governors. She was one of the major critics of the whole COVID lockdown mandate policy from a constitutional perspective. Now she is the president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and she's doing very important legal actions defending the rights of Americans who are basically being targeted for criticizing Israel.
So she filed a lawsuit demanding my phones and all the data they had taken back. Within 24 hours, I got a call from CBP telling me my phones were ready for pickup. They had been holding them for days and days.
Tucker Carlson: Your phones?
Max Blumenthal: Yes. And they said, "We're going to hook them up to machines." What I understand they do is hook them up to machines and run a program called Cellebrite through the phones to brute-force open them.
Tucker Carlson: That's an Israeli technology. So they're using Israeli technology to get into your phone.
Max Blumenthal: Once they get in, they can scrape metadata, access deleted text messages, deleted files — your whole life. And without a warrant. Warrantless seizure is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So we filed this lawsuit. We actually went to court at the Fourth District in Northern Virginia. A veteran judge declared her opinion that my Fourth Amendment rights had been violated and that the government was going to have to produce some level of discovery to explain what they did with my phones.
We've expanded the lawsuit. It's now a Fourth Amendment and First Amendment based lawsuit seeking injunctive relief — basically that they stop harassing me. And this is for everybody. This is for every journalist. This is for every American who believes they're entitled to their Fourth Amendment constitutional rights at the border. If the government suspects you've committed a crime, they can get a warrant very easily and search your phone. But without it, they can't. And that's what the Fourth District has found in cases like Belmonte-Cardenas versus the US government, which the government lawyer wasn't even familiar with. So we're enforcing precedent and trying to reinforce it to protect the constitutional rights of Americans — which I was denied because a foreign government did not like me reporting from a country which they have attacked, where they have committed war crimes, and where they seek to commit further crimes and carry out regime change.
Congressional letter, Canary Mission, and the Hannibal directive
Max Blumenthal: The whole situation has escalated since we filed this lawsuit. The Israel-first forces in the US are retaliating against me. Weirdly, on Shabbat, two weeks ago, three of the biggest Israel-first figures in Congress — Randy Fine, Randy Weber, and someone I'd never heard of before, Keith Self — released a letter on congressional letterhead through Laura Loomer's Twitter account calling for me to be investigated. They didn't produce any evidence that I had done anything criminal. They just pointed to my journalism from Iran and my journalism in general, which had upset Israel — including my investigations into what really happened on October 7th.
I was one of the first reporters in US media to produce massive amounts of evidence pointing to the fact that Israel had killed many of its own citizens on October 7th by initiating something called the Hannibal directive, which enables the Israeli army to kill its citizens if they believe they are going to be taken captive and become political collateral — because the price of letting them go over the Gaza border alive is more than the price of killing them. I was heavily attacked for that in Israeli media.
Tucker Carlson: Is that a real concept?
Max Blumenthal: Yes, it's a real concept that's been confirmed — even by the former Israeli defense minister. A colonel serving on that day said they enacted a mass Hannibal. It's been confirmed that in Kibbutz Be'eri, an Israeli tank crew was ordered to fire into a home in which twelve Israelis were being held captive.
Tucker Carlson: Come on. They killed the hostages on purpose?
Max Blumenthal: They knowingly killed the hostages. We reported on that at the Gray Zone. We were one of the first sites. The lone survivor and witness to that provided testimony in Hebrew in Israeli media, and we then conveyed that testimony to an American audience at the Gray Zone.
So they dedicated a paragraph to my reporting on October 7th. Anyone watching this can find a documentary called Atrocity Inc., in which I detail all the reporting I did on October 7th — on how Israel in many cases fabricated atrocities like forty beheaded babies, or Hamas carrying out systematic mass rape, in order to manufacture consent for genocide. But there was also the fact that they may have killed hundreds of their own citizens on that day.
My reporting was eventually corroborated by the same publications that were attacking me. Yedioth Ahronoth in Israel reported — in an article co-authored by Ronen Bergman, who also writes for the New York Times — that over seventy cars were targeted by Israeli helicopters heading towards the Gaza border with many occupants inside. Haaretz said a free-fire order was given on that day and possibly hundreds of strikes were carried out under the auspices of the Hannibal directive.
About 400 Israeli soldiers were killed. Their bases were targeted on October 7th. Those were active-duty combatants who were enforcing the siege of Gaza, and they were the main targets. But there were many other Israelis who were caught in the crossfire — seized as captives during a moment of opportunity. For example, the Nova electronic music festival, which had been extended for another day right next to the Gaza border, and then the helicopters come in and start targeting everyone.
Another person who seems to have been targeted under the Hannibal directive was named Gal Abdush. She was photographed outside of a car that looked like it had been blown up with a Hellfire missile. She had rigor mortis. She was wearing a small dress because she'd been at this rave, and her legs were spread because of the rigor mortis. She becomes the subject of a front-page New York Times investigation called "Screams Without Words" about how Hamas had committed mass rape. They called her "the girl in the black dress" whose legs were spread, found by her car. Her family came out and said, "This was totally false. Our daughter was not raped. The New York Times tricked us." And it very much appears that she was one of those cars targeted by the Israeli military.
All of this reporting I've been doing over the years — and you were around a lot of the neocons and pro-Israel characters in Washington, and you heard what they said about me over the years.
Tucker Carlson: They hated you with a unique passion, I would say.
Randy Fine, Randy Weber, Keith Self, and the criminalization of journalism
Max Blumenthal: So they're looking for any opportunity to silence me by locking me up. And they have full control over Trump and the Trump administration. Their best asset is Laura Loomer right now, for whatever reason. And this was kind of their moment. They get these three figures to call for me to be investigated by the State Department and FBI. In the letter, they say I've been cultivated as an asset by the IRGC — which is complete defamation. There's no basis for saying that. It's just defamation, but typical of Randy Fine.
And you look at who they are. Who is Randy Fine? This guy is desperate to shut down the Constitution for Israel. He's even made littering a hate crime in Florida punishable by five years in prison because some anti-Jewish goofballs called the Goyim Defense League threw leaflets on the ground. He's enforcing the IHRA definition of antisemitism in Florida — which holds that if you criticize Israel, you're an antisemite.
Tucker Carlson: The majority of the definitions in the official list pertain to the state of Israel, not to Jews.
Max Blumenthal: He said he would like to see the streets of Gaza overflow with blood. I actually challenged him in Congress on his call for Gaza to starve away. He said, "Gaza should starve away." And I said, "How do you think you would fare in Gaza given your —"
Tucker Carlson: He'd be the last man standing.
Max Blumenthal: He's like a walking advertisement for the American Nazi party. No one produces more antisemitism than him. He actually said at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Committee that he's glad that Thomas Massie is blaming the Jews — his words — for being thrown out of Congress. He took personal credit for throwing Thomas Massie out of Congress, and he's clearly acting on behalf of Israel.
Then you have Randy Weber, who wears an Israeli tie on the House floor. This is tragically the guy who replaced Ron Paul in Texas. Not exactly a libertarian who believes in the Constitution. He said the US has to support Israel because Israel is the apple of God's eye. And Keith Self — I don't know what he does. He's introduced a bill to stop Sharia in Dallas. And Laura Loomer — it's pretty clear she's being backed by some pretty powerful Zionists. And they're calling me a foreign agent. That's like having child protective services called on you by Jeffrey Dahmer and Jeffrey Epstein. You can't overstate the irony of that.
Tucker Carlson: Do you think you're under investigation?
Max Blumenthal: How would I know?
Tucker Carlson: Right. You wouldn't know.
Max Blumenthal: I wouldn't know. And this administration seems capable of anything. But I'd also wear this letter as a badge of honor. Coming from four of the worst people on the planet, singling me out and calling for me to be criminally investigated for my journalism — so much of the letter is dedicated to my journalism. To me, it's confirmation that I'm doing the right thing.
Zionism, antisemitism, and the logic of perpetual conflict
Tucker Carlson: There's something going on that I don't understand and that doesn't make sense in conventional terms. You alluded to it a second ago when you described Randy Fine as like an agent of the American Nazi party because he inspires antisemitism. If I've got a product I'm trying to make more popular — if I'm selling the Apple iPhone, I'm telling you all the things the iPhone does. I don't make you hate iPhones or technology. But the people making Israel's case in public are people like Randy Fine, who's just been named the 45th most influential Jew in the world by the Jerusalem Post. Why wouldn't you get someone who is appealing and not hateful and not laughing at pictures of dead children? It seems like an intentional effort to inspire hate against Israel. What is that?
Max Blumenthal: That's Zionist logic. Zionism needs antisemitism. Antisemitism is the fuel for Zionism. What would happen if Jewish life were normalized in the West? It would be a disaster for Zionism, because there would no longer be a way to justify Israel waging war after war, building walls and de facto concentration camps around the indigenous population — unless it were a sanctuary for Jews who were experiencing antisemitism and had nowhere else to go. So it's needed.
Then you have a whole antisemitism industry. What would Jonathan Greenblatt do without the specter of constant antisemitism? Which is why they have to keep redefining antisemitism to mean pretty much anyone who's upset with the mass extermination of children and does anything about it. It used to be: anyone who hates the Jews. Now it's: anyone who the Jews hate. But I wouldn't even say "the Jews." This is a contingent of Jewish life which is increasingly extreme and lives in its own echo chamber. The ADL is a multi-million dollar organization with a command center in Silicon Valley. It has its eyes and ears within law enforcement agencies. Greenblatt basically brags about it being an auxiliary force of the FBI and that they're conducting spying operations inside activist organizations. If Jewish life were normalized and we were just like, "Hey, we love America, we are experiencing a golden age here" — his gravy train would immediately end and he'd have to go back to being a bottled water salesman, which is what he did before the ADL.
Tucker Carlson: I actually grew up in a country that was kind of like that.
Max Blumenthal: Me too. I don't remember stark, angry divisions. I never heard anybody express hate toward anyone else. Not one time. So I'm not imagining it now that I'm saying it out loud.
Max Blumenthal: And Israel can't be at peace either, because of Zionist logic. Imagine if Israel were at peace. First of all, it would be like Israel was in 1966, when the society was uncertain of its own survival and all of these different groups were at each other's throats — the Ashkenazim and the Mizrahim, the religious and the secular. Then they had 1967 and suddenly the country became dynamic. And what else happened in 1967? American Jews became very deeply interested. The baby boom generation started going to the kibbutzim and brought their guitars. A lot of immigration that year from the United States to Israel.
Zionism became this dynamic global force with 1967, which was a war of choice that Israel launched — totally unnecessary — while portraying themselves as the underdog. Now they have to be in constant war. Think about all of the Zionist billionaire class in the US. A lot of them aren't even particularly religious. I don't think Bill Ackman is that religious. Without Israel being at war, it doesn't need you anymore, and you have nothing to do, and then your identity comes into question. I don't have anything to donate to that makes me feel Jewish. Am I going to actually observe real Talmudic rituals? Am I going to actually do Shabbat and put my smartphone away?
Zionism has become a central pillar of identity for so many American Jews who wouldn't know how to otherwise be or feel Jewish. For them, they need this transcendental identity as they start to experience mortality. Sheldon Adelson got into Israel late in life and said, "I want an Israeli wife." And Miriam Adelson is now directing his whole empire. So it has to be in a state of war, and Netanyahu is a master of it. He understands the thinking of American Jews and what they need. He understands how Zionism can be carried forward, and he cares more about that than he does about the reality of Jews in the world or even Jews in Israel, who are in a state of complete social crisis right now.
The internal crisis of Israeli society
Tucker Carlson: Can you give a short summary of what that crisis is?
Max Blumenthal: I published a book in 2013 called Goliath, which was a portrait of Jewish Israeli society from the inside. I spent off and on about five years working on that book — going for a few months, coming back, writing. It's mostly about Jewish Israeli society. It's a portrait of a society that was poised to commit genocide.
Tucker Carlson: You saw that then?
Max Blumenthal: I saw it then. I took a look at the psyche of particularly Jewish Israeli youth. You can just look at the polls that the Israeli Democracy Index conducts — the vast majority of them have genocidal attitudes, at least anti-Palestinian attitudes, and they're more hostile to Palestinians than their grandparents were.
Right now, Jewish Israeli society is in crisis because the part of the population producing the most children — giving them a positive birth rate — are the ultra-Orthodox. And the ultra-Orthodox men are being subsidized to simply be there and read Torah all day. There are constant bills being pushed to force those ultra-Orthodox men into service in the Israeli military. And what are they saying? The Torah forbids killing. We will not do it. They've been having huge protests around Israel — you could call them anti-Zionist protests. They get very little attention in US media. They block traffic, and the secular or Zionist part of the society hates them.
Tucker Carlson: I don't think hate is an overstatement based on what I've seen.
Max Blumenthal: In many ways they hate them more than they hate Hamas.
Tucker Carlson: I totally agree. I've seen it in Israel. The division is so bitter.
Max Blumenthal: And this bitterness is going to grow, along with the bitterness of the world towards Israel. Then you have all these reservists who served in Gaza and committed horrific crimes. There's a documentary coming out right now called Naza, made by Yuval Abraham, who's an Israeli journalist, and a filmmaker — I think her name is Rachel Szor. These are Israelis, Israeli lefties, and it consists of twenty-four interviews with Israeli soldiers. Most of them were in military intelligence involved in targeting. You can't see their faces; their voices are altered. They're describing the most sickening crimes you can think of. One of them talks about how they were hacking into the phones of young girls in Gaza to determine when their fathers would come home, and then they would order an air strike on the home and listen to the girl burn alive through her phone. The soldiers are comparing themselves to Nazis in this film. Now Israeli ministers are calling for stripping the filmmakers of their citizenship and punishing them. Netanyahu just a few hours ago released a statement calling the film a blood libel.
Then you have other reservists in the Knesset saying, "We are not getting the support we need. We're all on drugs and we're all suicidal." They're playing out their trauma against their wives, against themselves. And they see these ultra-Orthodox men who aren't serving. They want them forced into service, or they're going to go crazy. And the ultra-Orthodox parties are keeping Netanyahu's coalition together — United Torah Judaism. So this crisis is going to increase. There's civil strife now. Could it be a civil war later? Very possibly. Especially if Netanyahu doesn't have a big war to distract everyone, like the war on Iran.
And should we condemn the ultra-Orthodox? Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here? You've got a secular Israeli in Tel Aviv who loves to go hang out in Berlin and have vacations in Bali — totally secular — but they participate in the Israeli military. They help find targets in Gaza. One of them just told the group Breaking the Silence that they asked their commanding officer for a target and were told, "There are two million targets. Just find anything you want." So they go and do that. They believe in political segregation — that the Palestinians have to be segregated behind walls so they can have their European lifestyle and their raves inside their little — as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called it — their villa in the jungle.
And then you have the ultra-Orthodox. What do they want? They want religious segregation in a very traditional Jewish way. They want to live a kind of medieval Jewish lifestyle, but they have no interest in Palestinians. They don't care. As long as they're left alone, the Palestinians are immaterial to them. They don't want to kill them, but they're indifferent. So who's the bad guy and who's the good guy here? The ultra-Orthodox are saying killing is against the Torah, and they are going to be forced into the world's biggest, most ruthless killing machine if these bills go forward. That's Zionism. We're moving towards the terminal stage of Zionism in our lives, and it's creating crisis here and it's creating crisis there, and we don't know where it ends.
And yet all of a sudden, despite — I've lost track of how many fronts Israel is fighting on —
Tucker Carlson: According to Netanyahu, it's eight. We are the eighth front — the United States. He said that at a meeting with US influencers who seem to be on Israel's payroll.
Max Blumenthal: And it's a propaganda war. It could turn into something else if the situation grows more dire for Israel. But right now it's an information war, a legal war, and a political war.
Israeli influence across Latin America
Tucker Carlson: That's a lot for any country of nine million people to undertake simultaneously. It's also obviously disgusting, but it's just a lot of stuff — expensive, a lot of things to pay attention to simultaneously. But at the same time, and this does amaze me, Israel seems to be everywhere — all over Latin America, Africa, Somaliland, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia. All of a sudden there are Israel-related stories popping up in all these countries around the world. First of all, how do you have time to do that? Second, what are you doing? And third, what is the point of all that? What are we watching?
Max Blumenthal: Trump has won every election in Latin America over the last two years. These are candidates that Trump Incorporated controls. Most recently, I think it's Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia. And in one of his first speeches after he won, Abelardo — who was the former lawyer for the cartels — pledged loyalty to Israel. Why Israel? What does Colombia have to do with Israel?
I think it was Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, who called Colombia the Israel of Latin America. They were getting a lot of Israeli weapons and training. Going back to 1984 — this will help explain some things about this very weird phenomenon — Congress passes the Boland Amendment during the height of the Contra War, which required Reagan or any executive to sign off on covert action.
Tucker Carlson: Great piece of legislation. Back when Congress used to do intelligence reform.
Max Blumenthal: That was the last real attempt — the Boland Amendment. So Efraín Ríos Montt was a US-backed dictator who was also close to the Christian right and Christian Zionists like Pat Robertson. He was the first evangelical president. And Israel comes in and says, "We will supply him. We'll give his soldiers Uzis to basically mow down the Mayans and what's left of the Guatemalan insurgency and destroy entire villages, and we will train them." Ríos Montt said that the model for the Venezuelan soldier is the Israeli commando, and Reagan won't have to sign off on anything. So Israel provided them with the computer systems and surveillance systems to round up activists who opposed his rule. And from there it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship with these pro-US governments that were seeking to destroy their supposedly leftist opposition.
It's across the board. Ecuador has a billionaire president who was born in Miami, Daniel Noboa. I saw a report a few weeks ago that in Ecuadorian schools, they're now going to teach Holocaust education. There's nothing wrong with learning about the history of Jewish genocide or the genocide of others in World War II, but it just seems a little on the nose. And he's of course extremely pro-Israel, as all of these leaders are.
Juan Orlando Hernández was collaborating with Israel as he was, in his own words, shoving cocaine up the Yankees' noses — which led to him being jailed in a federal prison in Miami, along with his brother Tony Hernández, who was marking bags of cocaine to the US with his initials. Trump pardons Juan Orlando Hernández because they needed to legitimize his national party so they could win another election in Honduras.
What happened in Venezuela? As soon as Delcy Rodríguez — who Trump says will do whatever we want — comes into power following the violent abduction of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, his first lady, there's an earthquake. A very fortuitous earthquake, which brings in who else? Israeli rescuers. They'll rescue people all around the world except in the Gaza Strip, where they have destroyed like 80% of homes. I don't know how many people they rescued, but the next thing you know, Delcy Rodríguez is meeting in Miraflores Palace with Israeli military officials and Israel's relationship with Venezuela is normalized. In 2009, Hugo Chávez, the nationalist leader of Venezuela, whose first priority was sovereignty, kicked out the Israeli ambassador in protest of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip that year. And actually, the first time I ever saw Delcy Rodríguez speak, she was wearing a keffiyeh to show her solidarity with Palestinians. Next thing you know, the US is in charge and Israel's on the ground.
Tucker Carlson: Why would Maduro's son have to go do a very public meeting at a pro-Israel synagogue in Caracas?
Max Blumenthal: It seems totally irrelevant. It's across the world. Nobody has a historic relationship with Israel — it's been around since 1948. This whole thing has no grounding in a practical understanding of the world.
Here's one concrete thing Venezuela did that Israel got out of this: Venezuela removed itself from the International Criminal Court. A country whose diplomatic core, ever since Hugo Chávez came into power in 1998, has emphasized the importance of international law and the Geneva Conventions to guarantee their sovereignty — because they've been under constant attack from the US. So they remove themselves as a signer of the Rome Statute and leave the ICC. Because what did the ICC do? They indicted Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza. And Netanyahu essentially boasted that this was being done on behalf of him by Marco Rubio when Rubio sanctioned the ICC, just days before Venezuela did that.
What else does Israel gain out of Venezuela? The Iran war is failing. It has failed. And one of the biggest political problems for Trump is the price of oil and US strategic petroleum reserves. The SPR has been at a lower point than it's been since 1983. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. The US just signed a deal at gunpoint with Delcy Rodríguez to exploit one of Venezuela's oil reserves. The oil will be transferred as soon as possible, in violation of the Venezuelan constitution, with no guarantee of any return to Venezuela, to the US strategic petroleum reserve — and then it will fuel the drive for war in a war for Israel. So there are many things Israel can extract from this relationship.
Tucker Carlson: I just don't understand why — whatever you think of what the Trump administration did in Venezuela, it's kind of hard to defend, impossible to defend really — but at least you thought, well, maybe it was for the United States. But it seems like the first thing they did when they arrested the leader of the country was to force the new leaders to make nice with Israel. Why is that the number one priority of our State Department?
Max Blumenthal: The same reason the US went to war on Iran. This is an administration that's acting on Israel's behalf.
Tucker Carlson: A slave to Israel.
Max Blumenthal: Absolutely. And in many cases, personnel is policy. Look at the kind of people in the administration. Susie Wiles controls everything the president sees and hears. You have to get through her to meet with the president, which is why when you saw the photos of the administration when they launched the war on Iran on February 28th, there was Team A in Mar-a-Lago — Susie Wiles, Marco Rubio, John Ratcliffe, and Trump. And then there was Team B who was on the outside: Joe Kent, Tulsi Gabbard, JD Vance — the so-called restrainers. Susie Wiles wasn't letting them in the room, and she never was.
What was Susie Wiles doing before she was in the Trump administration? She was a major lobbyist, but she was also working for Netanyahu — and no one knew that when she came in. It was subsequently reported by the Washington Post that when Netanyahu was in a little bit of political hot water and was campaigning for re-election, he called in these super Trump consultants, including Susie Wiles, to help him stage Trump-style rallies. She literally worked for Netanyahu.
Harmeet Dhillon is the head of the Office of Civil Rights in the DOJ, which increasingly looks like the Office of Israeli Rights. Her law firm — I think she put her brother in charge of it — is called Dhillon Law. They are representing a federally registered Israeli foreign agent called Show Faith by Works. Their job is basically to propagandize evangelicals for Israel, geo-fence their churches, and distribute Israeli propaganda.
I got leaked audio from an AIPAC congressional meeting — a private, off-the-record event. Someone who identified themselves as a forty-year veteran of AIPAC said the importance of their lobbying is they go down to congressional districts and recruit people right when they come into Congress. One of them was John Ratcliffe. He said, "We went down to Dallas. We heard he was running. He was really good. We've loved working with him ever since." Marco Rubio is another one. Mike Waltz is another one. "These are our lifelines inside the administration," he said. And of course, Marco Rubio's career has been heavily advanced by Paul Singer's donations — Paul Singer being a major Israel-first billionaire. So you look at the personnel in there, and look at what happened to anyone who tried to resist their agenda, which was essentially Netanyahu and Israel's agenda. They're not in there anymore.
Netanyahu's February visit, the assassination of Khamenei, and Trump's psychological vulnerability
Tucker Carlson: What is the big-picture goal? Any rational person assessing the facts as we find them right now in mid-September 2026 sees the US and the UK as really the last allies that Israel has in the world. The populations of both countries — speak for my country — the population here is becoming aware of the cost of this relationship and aware of the genocide in Gaza. People are mad at Israel. It's just obvious. And young people especially. So if you're Israel, you're not stupid. You know this relationship is going to change, not to your benefit. What's their plan? What are they doing right now?
Max Blumenthal: You mentioned the UK being a key Israeli ally. I just wanted to mention something that recently happened. Andy Burnham comes in and recognizes where public opinion is in the UK on the Israel question. So he announces some form of sanctions — they're not going to buy products from the occupied territories in support of a two-state solution, which is by this point dead. It was a symbolic move. Israel went bonkers.
Tucker Carlson: They shut down Heathrow Airport in two hours and thirty-five minutes, I think.
Max Blumenthal: Hours after his announcement, Heathrow Airport's air traffic control systems had a glitch.
Tucker Carlson: Coincidence? I don't know. Just kind of odd. I had family members stuck in the airport that day. Was there any foreign software at work in that airport?
Max Blumenthal: I don't think the UK is going to come out and say we point the finger at Israel and escalate the situation.
Tucker Carlson: They essentially toppled the leader of the Labour Party prior to Keir Starmer.
Max Blumenthal: They have a lot of power in the UK. What are they doing there? They're destroying whatever's left of democracy through the courts in order to prosecute activists from this group Palestine Action.
Tucker Carlson: Which is now defined as a terrorist group. They're now defined as terrorists by the Trump administration because Israel told them to define these British activists as terrorists —
Max Blumenthal: Almost on the same day that Trump lifted sanctions on the leadership of al-Qaeda in Syria. So what they're doing in the UK is they're having these trials of activists who have removed or stopped production of Israeli weapons at four state weapons facilities owned by Elbit Systems in the UK. They do direct action — they'll come in, smash up the clean room, vandalize some things. They try to avoid harming people. And then they go to court, and they have been exonerated or let out in case after case by juries of their peers, because the juries sympathize with the argument that what these activists are doing is actually saving lives as Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and that the harm they prevent is worse than the harm they caused.
So this has become a real threat to not just the British system, but the Israeli project of essentially occupying Britain and its war machine. Now what's happening in these trials is the jury won't be told that they're terrorism trials. They think they're convicting or acquitting on criminal charges, and then the judge applies the terrorism charges after. The media in Britain is not allowed to report on these trials. We've been reporting on them at the Gray Zone because we're American. One of the barristers who's defended Palestine Action has himself faced contempt of court charges because his defense was too effective.
So they want to bring that system here. Israel needs to de-democratize Western societies in order to maintain control because the population is turning against them. They need to brainwash youth and bring Prager U curriculum into state education systems. They basically need to jail journalists in our country who have interfered with their propaganda objectives — like me — and they will activate all their assets to do so.
But what they ultimately want — and it sounds extreme, but this is what I've had to conclude — they want global control. As the world forms into a more multipolar world and US empire seems to be receding somewhat, Israel is still determined to gain control at the heart of Eurasia, and that's where Iran is situated. Imagine if they had achieved regime change in Iran. There was a group associated with the lobbying group for Reza Pahlavi — the PTOIC, a Maryland-based self-proclaimed crown prince. They put forward a white paper for the day after in Iran. It said basically the Mossad will come in and help us purge the Islamic Republic. We'll carry out a mass purge. Israel will be assisting us in renewing the economy. They're basically putting Israel at the center of everything in an Iran post-Islamic Republic, post-Ayatollah.
So Israel gets control of this strategically located country that represents a 3,000-year-old civilization with control over the waterway through which 20% of the world's liquid natural gas passes. What do Russia and China do then? Certainly Russia would have to deal with Israel, and China probably would as well. And then Israel has the United States pretty much under its thumb through Trump or some Democratic tool like Joe Biden was. And they have Russia and China being forced to deal with them directly as they exist at the heart of this country that's being plundered — as Venezuela is being plundered in Latin America. That's what they would do in Iran. So that's the objective.
But did Netanyahu actually have a plan? No. He marched right into the White House. Remember when he came in February —
Tucker Carlson: February 3rd?
Max Blumenthal: Yeah. They were shutting down traffic. It was like a presidential-style visit. There were helicopters everywhere. He marched into the situation room, sat at the head of the table. Trump sat to the side, which doesn't seem very Trumpian to me. And David Barnea, the Mossad director at the time — who is now the head of a US weapons company, which is absolutely wild — was brought in on a big screen. And they give Trump his marching orders: you are going to bomb this meeting of the Ayatollah and his advisers in Tehran on February 28th. We know it's taking place. And Trump just said, "Okay, all right, boss. I'll do it." And no one was willing to stand up to him. He was surrounded by a bunch of yes-men.
And Netanyahu said — or at least I know what Trump was thinking — we just did look what we just did in Venezuela. We're going to get an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez. Maybe it'll be Reza Pahlavi and it'll happen in four days. He also believed his own line about the protests in January, which were absolutely a militarized operation instrumentalized by foreign intelligence services including Israel and the US. Very violent. But he believed the Iranian people were going to come out into the streets and sweep away this regime. And the opposite has happened.
So Israel actually had no plan except to get Trump into the war, to get the US into a state of constant escalation with Iran for as long as possible. That was their only plan. And look at the result. It has been disastrous for the US economy. It's been disastrous for Trump politically. He's at historically low approval ratings. There was a poll out today showing that most people who believe the war is affecting their pocketbook interests are going to vote Democrat — 64%. The deficit is $40 trillion. This has a lot to do with the war. The war is going to cost over a trillion dollars. And once you factor in inflation over ten years, the cost of paying veterans, the rising cost of weapons, the US is expending munitions to the point where it's having to reposition THAAD batteries and PAC-3s from other supposedly more strategically significant locations. It's been a blow to US empire. The US as a maritime power is being exposed as a paper tiger. Sailors can't reach land until they go to Thailand, having had food rationed because they were being supplied by bases put out of service by Iranian missiles. It's been a total disaster because Trump followed Netanyahu's marching orders.
Tucker Carlson: No, he's an instinct player. Netanyahu is obviously an instinct player, and his instinct is aggression and expansion, and it's worked incredibly well. I don't think it'll end well for him. But it doesn't answer the question. Everything you said is consistent with what I know to be true. But it doesn't answer the question: why would Trump — who intensely dislikes Netanyahu, as everybody does — sit in the subordinate position in the situation room? Why would he take orders from Netanyahu? He took orders from him before the twelve-day war. Netanyahu said, "We're doing this," and Trump followed him. That's a fact. I'm not guessing.
Max Blumenthal: And Rubio confirmed that in his meeting with the Gang of Eight when he came out. He said, "We did this because Israel was going in and we couldn't just leave them alone."
Tucker Carlson: That's right. But the point is Trump went along with the leader of a country of nine million people who he dislikes personally and who was under indictment in his own country. So that's not a picture of power — at least conventional power. Why would you listen to a guy like that? Why would you follow a guy like that to your own political death? What am I missing?
Max Blumenthal: That's one big factor. Miriam Adelson — someone who Trump has said has visited him more, along with her late husband Sheldon, in the White House than anyone. When he was speaking at the Knesset, he said, "Well, I don't know if she really cares about America. Israel is her cause, but she's an important person." He openly said that. Who had the best seat in the house at the inauguration — better than any member of Congress or incoming secretary?
Tucker Carlson: She breezed right through the magnetometer without being checked at the church service that morning with Trump. I was there. She walked right past me and everyone else standing in line, blew right through without a security check. She's not even an American.
Max Blumenthal: She's an Israeli warlord, essentially.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah. And I was born here and she marched right past me. And Charlie Kirk was standing right there. And it was like — this is not a good sign at all. I remember watching it and thinking, we're going to have a war with Iran. Just looking at her right behind Trump, I was like, that's what's going to happen. And we're talking about $300 million of donations to Trump over the years, or to his PACs.
Max Blumenthal: But he got elected. Trump has been reelected. He wanted to get re-elected to be vindicated. They called him dead in the water. They called him a criminal. And he gets reelected president. So it's like he doesn't need the donors anymore. But he's basically throwing away his entire legacy, his family's future. All of this is being destroyed because he's following Israel. Why is he doing that?
Let me tack on a few things to the point I made before and then move on to another theory about his psychological motives. About a week after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, his podcast, which was being broadcast on Salem Media, was effectively taken over by a federally registered Israeli foreign agent. It's called Clock Tower X, which is operating one of the biggest foreign lobbying contracts ever — I don't want to say multi-million, it's like $50 to $100 million — on behalf of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. It's being run by Brad Parscale, who was Trump's chief of staff in 2020. Remember, he got Baker Acted — his house was raided on video.
Tucker Carlson: On video. It's a very ugly scene. He was fired.
Max Blumenthal: And he had created Trump's whole Facebook strategy, including seemingly bots. Probably a talented guy. Israel hires him, plucks him out of the wilderness, and he takes over Salem Media, which is one of the largest pro-MAGA, pro-Republican, conservative media platforms. They had Charlie Kirk's podcast, but they also have Scott Jennings's podcast — who's being talked about as possibly the next White House press secretary. All these people are kind of involved with the Israeli Foreign Ministry now. And if you don't like that, you can leave, but none of them are leaving. And who got a 30% stake in Salem Media? Laura Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law, and I believe Don Jr. So they are seemingly involved somehow in this contract. They also are themselves doing business with Israeli drone companies that are getting contracts to do anti-drone technology in Iran. There's all kinds of incentivization to maintain this relationship.
And the breaking away from the relationship — we were just talking about what happened in the UK at Heathrow the day that Andy Burnham did a symbolic gesture. What happened in Spain?
Tucker Carlson: The Ceuta situation?
Max Blumenthal: Yeah, exactly. They give the middle finger to Israel, and the next thing you know, Morocco is sending tens of thousands of people into your country.
Tucker Carlson: Yep. And like every pro-Israel influencer and Israeli official down to Itamar Ben-Gvir was like, "Aha, this is what you get." F around and find out.
Max Blumenthal: Not following the program laid out to you by Benjamin Netanyahu on February 3rd is also disincentivized.
Tucker Carlson: That's a soft way of putting it. You're terrified.
The assassination of Soleimani, Trump's fear of Iran, and the psychological manipulation of a president
Tucker Carlson: So back in 2020, Mike Pompeo and Benjamin Netanyahu convinced Trump to assassinate the second most powerful official in Iran.
Max Blumenthal: The head of the Quds Force for the IRGC, Qasem Soleimani.
Tucker Carlson: Only one person in mainstream media criticized that decision. I'm not bragging — it's the only thing I'll brag about. I was that guy, and I took a huge amount of crap for it.
Max Blumenthal: I remember.
Tucker Carlson: But I thought that was the beginning of war with Iran. It seemed obvious to me. And it was also the beginning of something else — you bring the US and Iran into a cycle of escalation, and that's what Netanyahu needed. He needed Trump to begin to escalate with Iran, and he wanted Iran to retaliate. The Iranian retaliation for Soleimani's killing in Iraq, as he was on his way to a peace conference, was pathetic. And everyone I interviewed in the Iranian establishment believes that today — if they had hammered US bases the way they're doing now, this war wouldn't have happened. But they allowed themselves to be set on this course to war. What happened with Trump was he also began to be kind of a psychological prisoner of the retaliation.
Max Blumenthal: And the Israelis started to exploit his worst fear.
Tucker Carlson: How is assassination different from murder?
Max Blumenthal: Assassination is murder. The distinction we make between the legitimate use of force by the state and homicide is either imminent self-defense — someone's coming at you and you have to kill the person to protect your life or the lives of others — or a process sanctioned by the state called a trial.
Tucker Carlson: So any killing outside of those two is murder. I thought those were the definitions.
Max Blumenthal: But even if you believe assassination is legitimate, you have to think about the consequences of a figure like Soleimani being taken out. How do Iranians regard him? Millions of Iranians saw him as a hero who prevented ISIS from swamping their country with jihadist fanatics who would come and kill them because they were Shia. He was a direct US ally in the fight against ISIS who was very effective in defeating them. ISIS attacked Iran's parliament in 2017, killed a number of civilians, and Trump essentially mocked Iran and said if you support terror you will get terror in return. So Soleimani was fighting that whole project. And again, he was a national hero. Many Iranians wanted revenge on Trump for that.
The Iranian establishment does not have a policy of assassinating because they did not want escalation. They wanted negotiation. But all of these plots start getting rolled out through the FBI that always seem to involve confidential human sources and informants who are pushing these mentally vulnerable characters. One in particular involved Asif Merchant, who was a Pakistani national who had traveled from Iran. He was led into the US despite having been flagged on a terror watch list, and apparently all of the intel that got to the FBI about Merchant was coming from Israel. What happens as soon as Merchant comes into the US? They throw a confidential human source at him who starts pushing him to enact a plot to assassinate Trump. He seems to be going along with it. His defense in court was, "I felt like I was a doomed man and there was nothing I could do." He had a very weird trial. The plot was to have a group of people create a distraction at a Trump rally and then have a sniper exploit the distraction to target Trump.
Butler, Pennsylvania happens soon after. Thomas Matthew Crooks — one of these lone-wolf guys — you exposed that he did have a social media footprint.
Tucker Carlson: Quite a large social media footprint in which he was clearly in contact with people from foreign countries whose identities we don't know. It didn't seem like there was anything you could find, or any investigators could find, that connected him to Iran.
Max Blumenthal: I don't think he had any connection to Iran.
The day after the Butler, PA plot missed Trump's ear by a millimeter, the FBI rushes down to Houston, where Merchant was being held in prison. He had just been arrested. They interrogate him about Butler. And then Mike Waltz — who was in Congress at the time, one of the lifelines of AIPAC, one of Israel's greatest allies in Congress — starts using the opportunity to try to point the finger at Iran for Butler through the Butler investigative commission.
War. Israel initiates war in June on Iran. It's unclear what the US is going to do. The war is not going very well for Israel. I think they underestimated Iran's capacity to hit back and to recover after its leadership was assassinated. And Netanyahu has a desperate interview on Fox News with Bret Baier where he's trying to get the US into the war. He said Iran is responsible for Butler and for two assassination attempts on Trump — referring to Butler and the Mar-a-Lago attempt by Ryan Wesley Routh. He understands that's the way into Trump's head. He's such a liar.
Tucker Carlson: And Bret Baier is astonished. He said, "What are you talking about? Do you have intelligence on that?" And Netanyahu said, "Yeah, through proxies" — but it's just his own BS. He's trying to push Trump to get into the war by saying Iran's trying to kill you. You have to take them out.
Max Blumenthal: So flash forward about eight months. Trump carries out Netanyahu's wish to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his staff and his children and his grandchildren. And Trump comes out and says, "I got him before he got me." So clearly this psychological pressure, and a lot of these very dubious assassination plots, were affecting the way he was thinking. During the 2024 campaign, he went on a decoy flight because the FBI told him that IRGC agents were in the country with man-pads. He went on Steve Witkoff's jet and left the rest of his staff to go on Trump Force One.
Reporting from Iran: the funeral, civilian anger, and the Iranian establishment's response
Max Blumenthal: So I was in Iran to see this funeral, and I was stunned by the amount of anger there. This is after the signing of the ceasefire. The anger ended the ceasefire, along with Trump violating eight of its terms. But people were in the streets crying. They were furious. They considered Soleimani a hero, but killing Khamenei was another level. What they would say is, "We considered him to be a father, a teacher, a guide. How could you do this? He was 87 years old. And you slaughtered our children. You slaughtered 130 schoolchildren on the same day you killed him. We're not going to take this. We're a strong nation, and we want retaliation, and that means Trump has to be targeted." People were holding signs that said "Kill Trump." One woman held up a gold chain and said, "We're basically collecting a thousand chains for the person who will exact justice for what was done to Khamenei" — like a bounty.
So I interviewed the mayor of Tehran, who had run for president and is in the more conservative camp — a critic of the ceasefire, a very big critic of the current reformist leadership that wanted a deal. His name is Ali Reza Zakani. I asked him: is this the policy now? What do you think of all these calls to target Trump and Netanyahu in the streets from people who are furious about this? He was also a friend of Soleimani's and of Hassan Rouhani, who died a mysterious death — the former president who probably could have been the next Ayatollah. And he said to me, "We have to respect their call for sacred justice if we support the revolution." But he went on to say that justice could be achieved by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Revenge could be achieved by removing US bases from the region. Revenge could be achieved through actually rolling back the empire that has been suffocating us. And that's kind of the response of the Iranian establishment. They do not want to target Trump. They don't see any point in it.
I also interviewed an Iranian academic who understands her society much better than me, and she reinforced that point. She said Trump is just a figurehead. It wouldn't make any sense anyway. Abbas Araghchi, the current foreign minister, said Trump is doing a good enough job of destroying his own career and society. Why would we want him dead? And I believe that's the case.
So right after that funeral took place — this is July of this year — NATO happens in Ankara, and the Israelis feed intelligence to the Secret Service that Trump is going to be targeted by IRGC assassins with man-pads who are in the country. And according to many reports in mainstream media, Trump was hidden in a food cart — it's like a scene out of a Leslie Nielsen comedy from the '90s — and taken out of Air Force One and put on another decoy flight. So the Israelis manipulated Trump into this epic humiliation of hiding in a food cart, as they had manipulated him into war by exploiting his greatest psychological vulnerability: his fear of mortality and his very legitimate fear for the safety of his family.
The war's trajectory, economic consequences, and Iran's resilience
Tucker Carlson: How is this resolved? Do you think the war against Iran —
Max Blumenthal: It's going to be a protracted war, and I think it could escalate right before the midterms. I saw a report about Trump appointing two unnamed advisers — it's in Axios today, which is never to be fully trusted, but it's an important indication of what the Trump administration is thinking because it's basically like a bulletin board for them. Two US officials are putting forward a post-election plan for the Middle East. Well, they have no plan, and it's going to fail, and the war will likely continue as a protracted war. There are many dangers in that, as Joe Kent has pointed out — former director of the counterterrorism center at the ODNI, who's now considered an enemy of this administration because he told the truth and tried to prevent this war.
Tucker Carlson: He's one of Trump's only real friends in the entire administration.
Max Blumenthal: I would agree.
Tucker Carlson: Which is to say he told the truth in a way that Trump really needed to hear. It was almost nobody else who would.
Max Blumenthal: The fact that they consider Joe Kent an enemy says everything about that.
Tucker Carlson: Well, he believed in America first.
Max Blumenthal: Sincerely. So many others who've held on seem to just believe in Trump Incorporated. He is warning of a nuclear strike.
Tucker Carlson: Yes. I think that's the most dire scenario.
Max Blumenthal: I don't think a US ground invasion is very likely. Iran's economy is suffering. When I talk to people I know there who are just regular middle-class people, they are suffering inflation, but they're not going to head out into the streets anytime soon and seek to overthrow their government. There is a real coming together that I saw in Iran. I was walking through the Tajrish market in northern Tehran — just wanting to get some souvenirs on my way out. That's an area where opposition to the Islamic Republic is very strong, where wealthier secular Iranians live. Talking to shop owners and people around there, you see so many women not wearing hijab. You go into the malls at night or the hotels, women are dressed like they're going to a club in the United States. Just to give you an idea of the vibe there. And people, when I said I was from the US, were never furious with me. They just wanted me to know how furious they were about the murder of the girls and the kids in Mob.
And there's a rally-around-the-flag effect. They're willing to take economic pain. The question is, are we as Americans willing to take so much economic pain? Gas prices went up like twenty cents this week per gallon. Are we willing to take that for Israel? Are we willing to take more dead American soldiers for Israel — Black and brown kids who are just trying to advance in life, maybe save up money through the military, who are being wasted at these bases that no Americans even knew existed? I don't think so. No. This war is just opening up contradictions that didn't exist before between the American public and the Israeli agenda. And Trump has been caught in between, and he's siding with a foreign country.
Tucker Carlson: Except the pain hasn't really started. And it was yesterday that diesel fuel — on which the entire economy runs — hit ten dollars a gallon in California.
Max Blumenthal: Our fuel pumps aren't even designed to register $10. They're going to have to change the pump. You can imagine this becoming not just a squeeze or a downturn but a catastrophe where people in the United States get poor and people in other countries starve. The cost is really high if the strait remains closed and if the Red Sea remains closed because of Yemen.
Tucker Carlson: It's an epic catastrophe. I agree with Robert Kagan, who said this is a greater catastrophe for the US than Vietnam. He's coming at it from a different angle than me.
Max Blumenthal: And it's an economic catastrophe because it threatens the dollar as the global reserve currency. The $40 trillion deficit is costing the US the confidence of investors permanently. So that's what they're risking here. And this war is a major factor in that.
Tucker Carlson: Trump does follow commodity prices. He is worried about it. He's absolutely worried about fuel prices, and not just fuel — food. Those prices go up, he really feels it. The only way out is to constrain Israel. So it's just binary. It's a choice. Disaster at home or loyalty to Israel. And as of right now, he's choosing loyalty to Israel. So what could possibly explain that behavior? I just think it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.
Max Blumenthal: And nobody's being held accountable in the administration. Pete Hegseth — he's not being held accountable. He's hiring propagandists as secret special employees. They just made Erica Kirk essentially a Pentagon propagandist too. She was appointed to the board of the Air Force Academy. It's an absolute joke what they're doing. And there's no sense from Trump that anything that has happened hasn't gone according to plan. He keeps saying the Iranian military is destroyed. The Iranian navy is destroyed. The US controls the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Ansar Allah, the Houthis, are advancing and taking unprecedented amounts of territory from the fake Yemen government, which is based in a hotel room in Riyadh. They could close the Bab-el-Mandeb, which is another extremely strategic waterway. What would that do to the US economy? There are more cards that Iran can lay down on the table if Trump doesn't start to pull back and find a way out of this. I think he probably does want to find a way out of it.
Tucker Carlson: He definitely doesn't know how.
Max Blumenthal: Well, he can't do the one thing that's necessary, which is to constrain Israel. And I just don't understand why. No matter how much money they promise you or radio shows they sponsor or whatever they're doing, in the end you're looking at becoming the most unpopular president in the history of our country.
Tucker Carlson: His midterm strategy is all about getting out the base. Trump won because he went beyond his base — people who would not have even voted decided to vote for Trump in 2024. His base is dwindling.
Max Blumenthal: Part of this also is weaponizing the government to target dissenters and calling everyone to the left of Barry Goldwater in 1964 a communist. The insane anti-Muslim hysteria they're trying to whip up, exploiting the 25th anniversary of 9/11 — accusing me of being too pro-Muslim. Things have gone completely crazy. But that's all they have left — a very dwindling cult-like base that largely consists of Fox News boomers who are mad about Sharia law.
I know they don't like Sharia law because it prohibits usury. But the point is — and I'm not defending Sharia law, I'm an Episcopalian — I don't remember the last time I was frustrated by Sharia law. It's not an issue in this country. Prices are an issue. Lack of opportunity is an issue. Drugs are a massive issue. SSRIs that are making everyone crazy and causing mass shootings. There are a lot of issues. But Sharia law? They're running on Sharia law. Who thought this up?
Tucker Carlson: That's their strategy against Abdul El-Sayed. You saw Jesse Watters ask him about that in their —
Max Blumenthal: That's the candidate in Michigan. I supposedly endorsed him.
Tucker Carlson: Some Manhattan Institute front group said you officially endorsed him.
Max Blumenthal: Which is absurd. I don't endorse anybody. I'm a podcaster. But moreover, I just know the guy he's running against — Mike Rogers — who is a loathsome person and exactly the Republican you run if you want to lose. They ran him before and he lost because no normal person would ever vote for Mike Rogers. He is the embodiment of everything that is ugly, immoral, and stupid about the national security state. He is a tool of repression. He's totally for warrantless spying and searches — everything that a conservative should be against. Mike Rogers is not a conservative, to put it mildly. So I said, "This is craziness. You're running Mike Rogers? No way." And they're like, "Well, you endorsed the Muslim guy."
Tucker Carlson: He's the distillation of everything disgusting about the neocons. Actually craven, stupid, and mostly just doesn't care about the United States. What's happening here?
Max Blumenthal: People will say, "Oh, well, Max Blumenthal — he's a leftist." If you Google me, it says far left. Fine. It's not about me or what I think about this race. It's about what Michiganders think. And their economy is linked to Canada. Trump kind of screwed Mike Rogers with initiating a trade war with Canada. So much of Michigan's exports depend on Canada. Cars are being assembled with parts from there. There are all of these kitchen table issues that are being completely ignored for these boutique fanatical causes like creeping Sharia. And Trump is not setting the stage for a new generation of conservatives to come in enthusiastically and support whatever comes after him.
The death of Charlie Kirk, TPUSA, and Israeli donor control over the conservative movement
Max Blumenthal: I think what happened at TPUSA is a great metaphor for what's happening overall with MAGA — a microcosm for what's happened to MAGA with the untimely death and removal of Charlie Kirk, who was being forced to reckon with the fact that his base, the young conservatives, were done with Israel. They were sick of it. They didn't think it comported with America first. And he was starting to get in tune with them.
I see no evidence — just in case anyone's watching this and trying to call me a conspiracy theorist — I have no evidence that Israel was responsible for his assassination. But what happened was, with one bullet, one of the greatest threats to Israel's control over the movement he represented was removed. He was like the only guy with that level of power who could get in the Oval Office with Trump and was even willing to lobby Trump against joining the Israeli war on Iran back in June 2025. He was the only one who could get in the way and get in tune with the younger conservative base that was filling up TPUSA events. And he's gone.
What replaced him? Erica Kirk, who seems to be herself a complete tool for the national security state — which is why she's on the board of the Air Force Academy now. Her mother was a defense contractor who helped kind of launch her first foundation. And she has allowed Israel back into the building.
I broke the story about Dr. Bob Schillman — the largest donor to TPUSA, who is an Israel-first centimillionaire who also sponsored the career of Laura Loomer. He wanted his name on a building at TPUSA's campus in Scottsdale. And days before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, he denounced him at a private awards gala in LA and said, "I'm not giving him the $2 million." I managed to confirm that and reported it. It's true. I don't know if Bob Schillman is currently funding TPUSA, but I uncovered a contract.
Tucker Carlson: Why did he not give the money? What was he mad about?
Max Blumenthal: Charlie Kirk was opposing the war on Iran. He was questioning Israeli and pro-Israel control over himself. He went on Megyn Kelly's show in May of 2025 and complained about Jewish stakeholders and supporters who were becoming hypercontrolling and demanding, telling him that he has to care obsessively about a foreign country. I also exposed how there was a secret influencer summit convened by the pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman in the Hamptons in August of 2025, and Charlie Kirk was there. He was screamed at by this Zionist lawyer Natasha Hausdorff because he started questioning why he had to center everything around Israel and why he couldn't host you at his youth conferences. That's what they were demanding. No Tucker Carlson on the stage.
Tucker Carlson: I spoke at a lot of them and really enjoyed it. Everyone, you know.
Max Blumenthal: So now TPUSA — if you look at the way it's talked about in the conservative grassroots, by any organic person — it's seen as an op, a scoop. It's regarded with deep suspicion. And I got a leaked contract between them and a group called the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which is a very shady organization — the second-largest non-governmental donor to the government of Israel. Its president is based in Israel. They had pledged $700,000 to TPUSA in May of 2025 when Charlie Kirk was alive. And what he was saying about Israeli control over the movement and about Iran was threatening that donation as well as many others. But under Erica Kirk, it's very clear that donation has continued. And now the TPUSA faith events that you see — including one recently in El Paso where an Israeli flag was draped on the stage — those are being sponsored in part by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Tucker Carlson: These events are in churches.
Max Blumenthal: They're in churches.
Tucker Carlson: Why would an American church put any national flag in a Christian church? I've never understood that. But certainly a foreign flag in a Christian American church. Like, why would you do that?
Max Blumenthal: If you are the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, you basically want them to be good little foot soldiers for this foreign country's agenda by exploiting their interpretation of the Bible and the end times. The IFCJ has an agenda to plant three million flags in churches globally. But also, they're a deeply corrupt organization. Their founder, who's now dead, Yechiel Eckstein, paid himself $1.2 million. He paid his family hundreds of thousands of dollars. They raise money from poor and working-class Christians — not just in the US, but in Latin America, where like half the population lives below the poverty line — and they give it to Israeli organizations and extremely wealthy pro-Israel American Jewish organizations like the Jewish Federations.
They also are giving money to failing media organizations like Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, which has had to lay off executives and has dwindling viewership. He's been bleeding YouTube subscribers. And so he has a paid partnership with IFCJ and hosts interviews with their new president Yael Eckstein. Who else gets paid partnerships with them? Mark Levin, I think, has one. Ted Cruz. And this is wild. Ted Cruz has a paid partnership with IFCJ, and he's a sitting senator.
Tucker Carlson: Now, seemingly that would be legal because they're technically a non-governmental group, but he's also taking ads on his show on iHeart Media from the Israeli government itself. And iHeart Media has an arrangement with Ted Cruz to donate that revenue to a PAC — I think it's called Truth and Courage — associated with Ted Cruz that supports his reelections.
Max Blumenthal: What?
Tucker Carlson: So indirectly, it looks like the Israeli government is supporting Ted Cruz, whose office is basically — wait, is that illegal? Can a US senator take foreign money for a campaign?
Max Blumenthal: You would think it would be, but Pam Bondi got rid of the foreign corrupt practices division of the Department of Justice, which is involved in FARA, right when she came in. So there's all kinds of this — it's shady. I don't know why it's legal. It was upsetting Charlie Kirk. And now there's no resistance to Israel or these Israeli proxies.
Actually, after Charlie Kirk was killed, the IFCJ — which channels money from working-class Christians to powerful Jewish groups and Israel — hosted an event in Jerusalem alongside the Israeli Foreign Ministry. They gave an award to Erica Kirk in the name of Charlie Kirk. They wanted to basically claim Charlie Kirk and bury the whole crisis he had caused for them. Erica Kirk started getting criticized when word leaked that she was going to accept the prize, because younger conservatives are not very happy about the way Israel is influencing the US government. And so Andrew Kolvet, their PR guy, said, "No, this is all fake. Erica Kirk had nothing to do with this." It was too soon for them to embrace Israel.
But then she goes on a town hall with Bari Weiss on CBS — a very eerie and cringe-worthy town hall. The whole thing felt staged. Bari Weiss being the self-proclaimed Zionist fanatic who is the editor-in-chief of CBS News, installed by Larry Ellison's son, who is himself very connected to Israel. And Erica Kirk said, "Why would anyone hate Israel? Me and Charlie went there and we saw the Bible come alive. How could anyone hate that place? Charlie loved Israel." So she's already trying to reverse his position. She was asked, "Do you oppose the war on Iran?" And she refused to answer the question. So that's gone. But what's also gone is TPUSA's credibility.
Since I published that leaked contract and my whole analysis of everything that's happened over the past year at the Gray Zone, all we've heard from TPUSA is that a statue of Charlie Kirk was defaced at their campus, and that's all they're focusing on. They're not responding to anything. Andrew Kolvet didn't respond to me. And I hope they produce CCTV footage showing that and they catch whoever did that, which is disgraceful. But that's what they're focused on.
Tucker Carlson: It's so sad to see. I know all those people and I've tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. They're in a super tough spot and I get it. But one thing I really do resent is the idea that when you bring up stuff like this, some of the people you mentioned will say to you, "You're kind of obsessed with the Jews." It's like — I'm in no sense obsessed with the Jews. I'm obsessed with my kids and a lot of things, but not the Jews at all. Other people are obsessed with Israel in a way that's really destructive and ugly, I think. But it's not even quote Jews who are doing this. It's the Christian Zionists who are doing it. So it's not a good-faith response at all. Why is there an Israeli flag in a church at your event? Shame on you. It's super simple. And they'll be like, "Oh, you hate the Jews." Nope. Don't hate the Jews. Hate that behavior.
Christian Zionism, philo-Semitism, and the IFCJ's fundraising model
Max Blumenthal: Isn't the point of Christian Zionism to make Christians obsessed with the Jews? Because you place Jews at the center of history and you are dependent on the Jews in order to achieve the rapture. I've read the New Testament a lot — like every day — and I just don't see any of that in the New Testament. So I really don't know what it is exactly. I think there are an awful lot of very nice Christian Zionists who are decent people. However, there is a spell that settles over people, and you wind up with a lot of people — including some I know — who are like, "No, no, no. We need to support people who reject Jesus as they kill Christian children because Jesus wants us to." And it's like, can you hear yourself? That is not what the New Testament tells us.
Tucker Carlson: I don't think it's Christian.
Max Blumenthal: Another Christian interpretation comes from Pastor John Hagee, which is that all Jews need to be gathered in the so-called holy land — greater Israel — in order for the rapture to take place. And that Hitler was actually part of the rapture because he helped establish Israel through the Jewish genocide in Europe, and that Herzl was also part of the rapture in that he created this concept through which Jews could be gathered. He calls it: Hitler was a hunter and Herzl was a fisher, something like that. The point is they want Christians to be obsessed with the Jews, and they want them to be philo-Semitic to the point where I get deeply uncomfortable. Philo-Semitism feels like the other side of the coin from antisemitism.
Have you ever heard the ads that IFCJ — this Israeli-based group which is sponsoring TPUSA — has been running all across the radio in the US? They come on and say, "You can save one Jew for $700. You can rescue a Jew from a life of antisemitism by sending them on one of our freedom flights to Israel. Give us your money and save a Jew." Look at the state of Jewish life in the US. Do we need to be saved? This is crazy. But they've convinced people that they have to give them their money.
Tucker Carlson: I used to hear this from a couple of Black leaders who I didn't agree with on a lot of things, but they always hated white liberals. And I did too — we hated them for different reasons. They disliked white liberals because they would have this sort of fake worshipful attitude: "You're holy because you're Black." And they're like, it makes me uncomfortable. I'm just a person. It's important to treat people as human beings and not obviously denigrate or dehumanize them — of course, that's evil. But also not deify them. That's also evil. They're people just like us. That is the flip side of hate, actually.
Max Blumenthal: And you are told in Christian Zionist churches — there's actually a film I'm forgetting the name of, made by Israeli filmmakers, showing a church in Appalachia where the pastor is telling young people that the Jews are better than you. Those are his exact words. It's going viral on X right now. I've seen that going to Christians United for Israel conferences and seeing the way they treat me when they see my name is Blumenthal.
Tucker Carlson: How do they treat you?
Max Blumenthal: They're like, "Oh, Blumenthal. Wow. You're Jewish and we just believe that you are special and you are blessed." They want to be Jewish. They blow the shofar and they wear the tallit — the Jewish prayer cloth — and they basically impersonate Jews. It's kind of like a minstrel show. I had the same reaction a Black person would have to seeing Al Jolson in his prime. And Israel's behind this whole thing. AIPAC helped set up that organization. They are dependent on that organization, and they are running a basically philo-Semitic minstrel show across the heartland.
The collapse of the neocon worldview and the search for political leadership
Tucker Carlson: So how does this all end? I mean, it doesn't feel like this whole moment can end well.
Max Blumenthal: Will this podcast end well? Like, what's going to happen to me when I walk out of here?
Tucker Carlson: I don't know. By the way, I don't think you've said anything hateful or unfair. I know you haven't. You've said a lot of things I haven't personally reported, but I think you're a meticulous reporter. I don't think you've been attacked too much for being wrong. I think you've been attacked for having unpopular opinions, which are two different things.
Max Blumenthal: From my point of view, how will this all end? I'm not Professor Mearsheimer.
Tucker Carlson: No. I kind of love that guy. Every time we had him on, I must have got a hundred texts saying, "This is an op, it's a scoop." And it's like, okay, first of all, what isn't? But I still think he's interesting.
Max Blumenthal: I crossed paths with him in LA. I interviewed him driving around Skid Row, just getting his impressions. I'm in favor of engaging with people with different perspectives. And I got the same thing — a hundred people from another perspective saying he's an op or he's this.
Tucker Carlson: You think he's interesting as a thinker?
Max Blumenthal: It was an interesting conversation. I avoid making bold predictions that I then have to back up and double down on even when they're proven wrong.
Tucker Carlson: Of course. I guess I just feel like we've got simultaneous crises accelerating at once. You've got this war in Eastern Europe. You've got this war in the Middle East. And you have the collapse of the two-party system — well, it hasn't collapsed, but it's been revealed as fake. And you have very intense discontent at the center of both parties. And then you have this looming financial disaster. That's a lot at once.
Max Blumenthal: It would seemingly be a major blow to unipolar US power. The whole psychological world that the neocons created in the 1990s as reality — they actually convinced the American political class, a large section of American society, and US corporate media that their worldview was reality. They got the Iraq War out of it and so on. That reality has completely shattered. And what we're going to see is just an increasing, growing clash between — I don't know what to call them. It would be crude to call them the ruling class, but that's what they are. A 0.1% of the United States who is increasingly afraid of the rest of the public and knows they no longer have consensus for their agenda.
Tucker Carlson: No leadership in either party has real credibility or identity after Trump.
Max Blumenthal: We can't even visualize who the Democratic candidate might be.
Tucker Carlson: That's right. Or the Republican candidate for that matter. There's a deep-seated fear —
Max Blumenthal: Of stochastic violence or terrorism from the 0.1% — carried out by lone-wolf individuals like Luigi Mangione against the ultra-rich — as well as direct action protest. And they're classifying everyone as terrorists, which we all saw coming after the Patriot Act was passed. Now it's sort of reaching its culmination.
So what we can say is the US will be less democratic. The US public will be less economically stable. The country will be more politically unstable, and there will be more and more desire for a kind of political insurgency. Yet there's no clear leadership. Who are the leaders right now? Who are the figures that people look to? One of them is you. And I never would have thought that — although, having known you for several years, I'm not entirely surprised that now you can walk through an airport in a liberal city and people are approving of what you're saying.
People look to comedians like Jimmy Dore or Tim Dillon. Comedians have far more credibility in our culture than politicians. And people are looking for real, credible, independent journalism that isn't corporate journalism, because they finally understand the point that Michael Parenti made in his book Inventing Reality — one of the most important books about the media — which is that the concept of objectivity within the media is a ruse or a device which corporate media enforces in order to enforce their own ideology. Which is now coming out. What is their own ideology? It's whatever Palantir's ideology is. It's whatever Larry Ellison's ideology is. It's whatever their corporate masters' ideology is. And of course they're militantly Zionist as the US population is turning against the special relationship with Israel.
So in that respect, it's a generally good time for independent media. The problem is there's no political leadership to guide this anywhere, and it may be off limits in our political system — which will be exposed very shortly.
Tucker Carlson: There is a red line there somewhere. It's one thing to talk about what changes we should have on a podcast. It's another thing to try to affect those changes in the political arena, and that's when we find out exactly.
Max Blumenthal: Do Americans want a violent revolution? No.
Tucker Carlson: Of course not.
Max Blumenthal: They want to see real reforms, and we haven't seen them. I don't think there have been any important reforms in my entire life.
Tucker Carlson: Never. All we've seen — we still have carried interest in the tax code.
Max Blumenthal: NAFTA and what happened to Ross Perot when he campaigned against it. The Federal Communications Act deregulating media. No real antitrust legislation. Nothing to bring down prices. It's just a constant conveyor belt of deregulation, and still the public has nothing to hope for right now. So it sounds like a black pill, but —
Tucker Carlson: I just have to say one thing because I just realized it. So 1996, thirty years ago, I'm working at the Weekly Standard for Bill Kristol with Bob Kagan, David Brooks, and the whole cast of neocons. I got along with them all — John Podhoretz and others. I'm twenty-six or whatever. And Bill Kristol assigns me a piece on Ross Perot. Basically my marching orders are: he's crazy, go prove it. So I write this piece. It was my first cover story. It was called "Is He Nuts?" And Bill Kristol called around and got me on every TV show to promote this piece. And I remember — it was a decently written piece, incredibly nasty in the way that young people write really nasty magazine pieces, as I know you know. And it was twenty-five years before I realized I'd been completely used. It's to my shame. I mean, I agreed to it. I did it. It's all my fault. But I was used to stop Perot — not because he was crazy. Everyone in politics is crazy. He's like one of the least crazy people. He married the same woman his whole life. He wasn't crazy really, compared to what Lindsey Graham or John McCain — no. Because he had a take on economics that wasn't populist exactly, but it wasn't neoliberal, and that was the real threat. And they hated him for that.
Max Blumenthal: And he was an extremely wealthy, eccentric character who was comfortable in his rank, who couldn't be pushed around and didn't care. Smart. That's the fear — or the fear of someone like a Roosevelt taking on the economic royalists who comes from American aristocracy.
Tucker Carlson: I think there's a fear of you for the same reason — you just feel too comfortable in who you are.
Max Blumenthal: I'm not intimidated by them. That's for sure. Who are these people?
Tucker Carlson: That's how I feel. But anyway —
Max Blumenthal: I want that to be how I come out of this whole episode of being targeted by Randy Fine and Laura Loomer — I'm not going to be intimidated. I'm going to escalate my journalistic activities.
I was actually a couple of weeks ago, not far from here in Vermont, at the Bread and Puppet Farm. That's one of the first and now the last sort of anti-imperialist puppet troupes. They put on this really fun anti-war circus, and people come from miles around to watch it. I gave a talk there — they hosted me to speak in a barn. And I learned about the history of Bread and Puppet. It was founded by a figure named Peter Schumann, who's now ninety-two. His family were liberal Germans. They were not Jewish, but they opposed the Nazi regime. They fled Nazi Germany. He met a woman — Elka Schumann, I believe her name was — who helped him sharpen his politics. And I learned about her grandfather, who is named Scott Nearing, who apparently with his wife had a farm not far from here where we're sitting. He helped popularize the homesteading movement. Scott Nearing was one of the major opponents of World War I. He saw it as a war for the bureaucrats — the only winners of this war, in which the senior class of Princeton was liquidated in minutes in battles, were the plutocracy.
You read his arguments then and what he was saying in debates, and it's very similar to what I'm hearing now from opponents of the Iran war. And he ran for Congress in New York against Fiorello La Guardia, who was coming back from World War I as this great war hero. The Republican party and the Democratic party closed ranks and essentially conspired to stop Scott Nearing from winning a congressional seat because he opposed what both parties truly agreed on. He opposed the duopoly back then. He was prosecuted under the Espionage Act. He was basically driven out of polite society, and that's how he got into homesteading and selling maple syrup. He thought it was the only way he could have intellectual freedom, and it brought him up here to where you spend a lot of time.
So I think we have to consider that politics within both parties is increasingly off limits to people who think independently and are willing to call out bankers' wars. Where is the path forward? And I don't have an answer to that. I'm a journalist. Could there be a third party — including in this upcoming presidential campaign — that could actually bring people together, put the divisive culture war issues to the side, and focus on what people really seem to be agreeing on? Opposition to AI superintelligence — Skynet. Opposition to data centers taking over our resources and communities. Opposition to flock cameras. Opposition to the special relationship with Israel, which is driving us to war and destroying our economy. Support for real reforms. Do you think that's possible in America anymore?
Tucker Carlson: I haven't the faintest idea. I hope so. But I think it'd be tough with the current system. We'll find out. It's mid-September. We've got the midterm elections the first Tuesday in November, and I think it'll be a much clearer picture after that. I will be reading you as I always do. And I'm just grateful you spent all this time here. Max Blumenthal.
Max Blumenthal: Great seeing you.
Tucker Carlson: Good luck, man. They want to hurt you, but I'm thankful for you.
Max Blumenthal: Same to you. Thank you.