I'll tell you, this is a long way from being inmate number 40892424.
Well, I must say your prison story, I've heard a lot of prison stories, one of the most incredible I've ever heard.
Yeah, I'm writing a book about it.You should.And it's an unusual story.It's a story that starts with one president, Obama.He started the whole thing because he sent someone to me to make a political deal for the senator. ends with Trump, okay?
And most of it's about a government prison with Crips and Bloods, gangster disciples, Sinaloa cartel drug dealers who look up to El Chapo like my daughters look up to Taylor Swift.Murderers were in there for my first three years.
I lived in a six foot by eight foot prison cell. far cry from the 50,000 square foot governor's mansion.
Well, it's incredible, but what's incredible to me was the fact that you survived it mentally, not just intact, but stronger.And I just find that, I mean, if you'd killed 10 people, it's not even about, I mean, I think you got screwed, as you know.
Thank you.But even if you hadn't gotten screwed, I would still be in awe of your toughness, emotional, spiritual toughness to come out positive, focused, not bitter.I mean, that's remarkable to me.
Thank you.Thanks for saying that.
No, I mean it.What's so obvious?
If I had, how long were you away?2,896 days, one month short of eight years.Not that I was counting.I'm sorry to laugh at your prison sentence.Go ahead.
No, but it's just, it's remarkable. Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else.And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.
We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly.Check out all of our content at tuckercarlson.com.Here's the episode.
If three years in that six foot by eight foot prison cell, you know, in the higher prison where they were squeezing me, you know, with the gangbangers, murderers, bank robbers, pedophiles, transgender people who were half woman, half man, funded by you, the taxpayer.
Mermaids.And you can't call them a woman or they'll throw you in the shoe, solitary confinement, they take away your good time.
So I know what it's like to live in a society that's imposing what you can even say, you know, having been there for that time.Um, but no, you know, that's such a smart point.
I mean, they're basically trying to turn the country into an open air prison where they control your behavior, your language, your thought.
Yeah.Well said.Faith, hope, and love is what got me home.Faith, hope, and love, you know? And you get those moments when you find yourself in deep despair and you feel like there's no chance.The system is so rigged.You can't get justice.
You can't even get mercy because you fought back.No one even said I took a penny.It was all politics.Request for campaign contributions, no quid pro quo.We knew where the lines were.
Tried me twice, and then you put your faith in the appellate court, and then they can't uphold the so-called sale of the senate seat because if they allow that standard, government shuts down because that's all horse trading, and that's what they called it, and they were right.
So they eventually reversed that, but I'm known for this.
uh... the other ones were three fundraisers request made by third parties not even by me and they knew not to make any promises or threats and uh... the criminalized it by using a standard that the supreme court said wasn't the law and it was whitewashed by the uh... the appellate court to protect them and uh... you get those moments but then you say to yourself you know it ain't about you anymore it's about your daughters they were little girls when i left home and your wife you gotta be strong for them and as long as you have purpose
In life, you can survive anything.And Viktor Frankl wrote that book, Man's Search for Meaning, Holocaust Survivor.I mean, a million times worse than anything we went through.
But his point was, the last of the human freedoms is our freedom to choose our own attitude in any given set of circumstances.It was very helpful.And I got to tell you, and this is not baloney, am I on right now?Yeah.Yeah. The Bible.
I mean, I was so alone in the beginning and I reached for that Bible in a way I never did before.
I wasn't going to bother with the Genesis or Leviticus or Deuteronomy and get caught up in who's begetting who, because that would always slow me down when I try to read the real world.I went right to the Psalms and got inspiration.
And then I moved on.I went to Isaiah and Jeremiah.Then I went to the Gospels.Paul, of course, and well, all of them.
Speaking in prison terms. Exactly, in Rome.Paul did a lot of time.He sure did.
And it just gave me strength and drew me closer to God.I'm not running for anything, so I'm not giving any BS to your listeners.It was just real.
And in some respects, I'm not saying it was good, but I'd have moments over the years where I would actually feel some sort of real unique connection to God.And it was somewhat like what Solzhenitsyn had written when he was in Siberia.
And he had said something like, thank you prison for what you did for me, but for what you did, I would not feel as close to God as I do now.
Boy, that's just such a remarkable perspective, such a non-American perspective.Thank you for prison?
Yeah, that's what he said.Yeah, that's what he wrote.I'm not quite going that far.
No, but I think what you're saying is that suffering turned you into a different man, a better man.
Yeah, I think, yes, and I think a greater appreciation for the things that really matter most in life, you know, like the people in your life that you love, and the appreciation for the simple things that maybe you were, you know, a little bit less aware of because you were so busy in the race of life to get ahead, right?
No iPhone must have been nice. There was no iPhone in the world at that time when I left home.When I got home eight years later, what is this thing?Right?The world changes.And that's another thing, it's humbling.
Is it okay if I keep talking like this?I hope you will.Yeah.It's like, you ain't so good.You ain't so great, man.It ain't like the world waits for you.It just keeps spinning around, man.
Huh? That is the truth.In the end, all graves go unvisited.That should be on everybody's refrigerator.Wow.Your party changed.Very much.What did you notice when you get back?
Well, I noticed this whole new thing called wokeness and cancel culture, which I wasn't aware of before I left.I noticed the intolerance of the far left of the Democrat party.I noticed that my daughters, my little girls grew up and became vegans.
Um, not that they're, you know, far left, but that was weird.
I think that's it.I mean, there's nothing, you know, I'm not against, you know, whatever you, whatever you want or whatever you, you know, don't eat what you don't want to eat.
On the other hand, that's, that's like the fear of every father that your girls are going to become vegans because it feels like it represents something else.
But it has nothing to do with diet.It's that they, you know, they feel like it's wrong to, you know, eat meat to, you know, kill an animal.And it's a very sweet, kind thing on their point of view.Oh, it is.Oh, I agree.
and then you know i came home to a you know working-class neighborhood in chicago i mean we live in this little neighborhood but uh... where the local democrat party began to turn socialist and uh... you know the local city council people become alderman in chicago i think it too thousand uh... nineteen my sister-in-law was the alderman in our or she had inherited that seat from her father been there for a long long time
And she got beat by a socialist, lost by 12 votes by a socialist.That was like shocking to me.And then some of the other longstanding members of the city council were defeated by socialists.
And so suddenly that was this new realization that the Democrat party at the grassroots level was radicalized.
Were they good at governing the socialists?
No, they're terrible at governing.And now we're going to get a major property tax increase in Chicago.The mayor, Brandon Johnson, just announced that.
And as I read that this morning, I was thinking, driving here, geez, I wonder if we're gonna, we have any risk of getting carjacked up here in Bethel, Maine, right?Because in Chicago, you got to think about those things.
I mean, it's, you know, people have all these ideologies and I'm a this or I'm a that, I believe, you know, here's my worldview, but I don't know, on some level, it's kind of about, do you make the town, the state, the country better to live in or not?
And you're saying that the people who took over Chicago did not improve life.
No, they've made it more unsafe.They're unwilling to have any kind of open-minded discussion about the fact that the schools have been failing for generations, and most of the kids that are suffering are the black kids.
They talked a big game about being on the side of the black people, but they won't even give a black mother a choice or a chance to maybe try another school because the public schools are so locked in to what the teachers' unions want.
And I'm not here to say that I wasn't exactly, you know, part of that Democrat party and the unions and the teachers unions.Well, you were part of it.That's why it's so interesting.
Well, yeah, you're a product of it.You're a governor of the state, right?And you came out of that world.I did.So, well, that's why it's worth asking you about this because you've seen the whole scope of it.That's right.
From the daily years to present.That's right.
And, you know, the Democrat Party that I was in, the party of the second mayor daily, the party of the first mayor daily, practical, you know, practical governance, just make people's lives better.
The best snow plowing in the United States.That's it.When it snowed, Chicago got plowed before the suburbs.It was, I saw it.It was amazing.
Yes, that's right.And not too stuck on ideology, but there were certain values that were fundamental to traditional Democrats.What were they?Love of country, faith, family, love of country.And this Democrat Party is none of those three.
And there is an assault on faith in America by these Democrats, by the more radical Democrats, and it's something that has grown over the last couple of decades, something I saw when I was a Democratic member of Congress.
I hope I don't turn your listeners off, but I supported Pelosi to be the Democrat leader when I was there. I saw even the beginnings of that when they were trying to take God out of the, you know, the, in God we trust.
Well, she's a Catholic girl from Baltimore, son of the mayor.Yeah.She was very, I mean, she was the son of Baltimore's Mayor Daley, like kind of old school machine Democrat.Right, that's right.
But she changed.Because she's a practical politician, and so she's gravitated towards that energy in the Democrat Party today, which is that far left socialist Democrat Party that wants to,
We change America and you say this and I'll repeat what you say and that is to force us and make us to try to believe things we know They're just not true.
Yes, right and that's this dictatorial Democrat Party But you saw a hostility to Christianity when you were there.Yeah, I did rowing.
Yeah in the late 90s I did, you know, they'd be once in a while.They'd be ready congressional resolutions to take God out of the the chamber, the House chamber, and then there was the judge in Alabama, Roy Moore.
I'm proud to say that back in the late 90s, as a Democrat congressman from the city of Chicago, I supported that judge.Why can't he put the Ten Commandments up there in his courthouse?What's wrong with the Ten Commandments?
That's the foundation of our laws.It's the foundation of our values.That's literally true.It is the foundation.It sure is.
Yeah.So why were people so hysterical about Judge Roy Moore? I mean, they destroyed Judge Roy Moore.Yeah, and as a person.
I saw that from afar, from the deep dark valley, I watched all that. Because there's an element in America, and it's found a home in the Democrat Party, that's all about science and absolutely nothing about religion.
I think that part of the coalition is the Democrat Party, and I've been supportive of LGBTQ issues, but I think they feel threatened by Judeo-Christian values, and so they've become in many respects antagonistic to those traditional values.
And these are some of the practical considerations that are part of why a lot of these Democrats have left the traditional Democrat, you know, working person's view of God and have become more apt to embrace science.
And you know, one of the, I'm not saying there's any advantages to be in prison for a long time.But when you got all that time and you gotta kill it, you either try to use it constructively or it'll kill you.
And it's a good place to catch up on your reading.And I used to read a lot of the sermons from Martin Luther King.And one of his sermons was really powerful and he talked about what science can do, the good things.
but it's God that provides the conscience to guide science.And you know, science creates the medicines that cure people, which is great.Also created the nuclear weapons that can destroy the world.What is it that's gonna guide that?
Are we gonna trust in people?I know how people can be.I know how wicked they can be.The best and brightest can be corrupt because I know what they did to me and to my family.
It was shocking to me that US attorneys could be so dishonest and corrupt and that the judge would be in on it.Just go along with it. So my faith's not in people.
So you were shocked?I mean, obviously you're distressed it happened to you, but you were shocked that it happens?
Yes.I thought they were the good... I was a Cook County prosecutor when I started out, in a low level.
Daly, the second mayor of Daly at the time, was the elected Cook County state's attorney.And he was my boss, so he's way up high.And I'm a traffic court, right, just starting out.There were like 800 of us assistants.Big, you know, big office.
I ended up in the misdemeanor branch courts, and then I went into private practice, so I never met him when I worked for him.It was only until I became an elected official, and then in ten short years, I became the governor.He was the mayor.
He still thought I worked for him, by the way.
That's a fraught relationship always between Chicago mayor and Illinois governor anyway, isn't it?
Yeah, I think so, but I think that he's practical and, you know, these Democrats, you know, have programs and stuff that they want to pay for and, you know, bloated budgets are not a priority.And even the old school Democrats, that's not a priority.
It's, you know, jobs and, you know, opportunities for people who've helped and that kind of thing.
But the point I wanted to make about Daley was when I worked in that state's attorney's office, I learned a lot about how prosecutors operated and they were all right, mostly good. But I imagine that the federal U.S.
attorneys who went to the better schools, you know, I could never have a chance to be one of them, right?
Grades, I was a Gentleman C Scholar in law school, that these people had to be really smart, really bright, and they had to be super honest compared to the local Democratic prosecutors, many of whom, you know, had some political backing to get their jobs.
And I discovered they are, In my case, anyway, and I don't want to speak generally about everybody, but they're so corrupt.You can't get a fair trial if they're against you.
Well, look at Andrew Weissman, you know, who's at the very top, was a truly evil man.Evil.And, you know, Weissman, I'm sure, was smart, clever anyway, and certainly well-credentialed, and has almost unchecked power.
I mean, it's crazy that that exists.
So he destroyed Arthur Anderson with fake law.That's what they did to me.Fake law.They just make it up.They just move lines to get the convictions.
Supreme Court took the case, and Weissman's standard that used to destroy Arthur Anderson and cost all those people jobs, nine to nothing, the Supreme Court ruled, he was wrong.That wasn't the law. Oh yeah.
Yeah, so he destroyed the con- and what does he get for that?He gets rewarded by being some big commentator on CNN and people listen to this guy like he's, like he's honest.It's disgusting.
It is disgusting.So what, not to get sidetracked, but what are the, what is the Daley family, I think Rich Daley's still alive, right?He is, yes.
What do they think of the modern Democratic Party, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, like what do they think of that?
So Bill Daley ran for mayor of Chicago while I was in prison, and shockingly got his ass kicked in the new Chicago.And that's when Lori Lightfoot was elected, the new kind of mayor in Chicago, right?
She was a big failure and she got defeated soundly. The fact that The Daily could lose in Chicago was another reminder that, boy, times have changed.Different population in Chicago.Very different demographic now.
The city that used to be, you know, diverse racially, you know, very strong, it's still, you know, black population, still in the poor, bad, rough neighborhoods, a big Latino population, but it was a city of white working class, white ethnics.
Yeah, Central, Eastern European people.That's right.Large Polish population.Slavs.That's right. That element is gone now.You know, they, two, three generations, they worked hard to build better lives for themselves.
They're taking advantage, like our friend Phillip over here, working hard to make the American dream.They've moved upward out of the city and into, you know, more affluent suburbs.But they were the basis of the city.They sure were.
And they've been replaced by these young, you know, young new generation, not very politically aware, you know, probably driven by the social issues more than anything else. You know, a woman's right to choose those kinds of issues.
Right.So they've been replaced by affluent, white, inherited money kids.
Generally speaking, that's exactly right.
Right.So that's always the model.It's rich white women and illegal aliens working in tandem to destroy civilization. It is in cities across the country.That is the model.
The unhappiest people and the most, you know, the people with the least power who just can be used as cannon fodder for the program of the unhappiest people.So, but do you know what the dailies think of this?Like watching their city become a joke?
Well, look, yeah, I know Rich Daley better than Bill Daley.I know them both.And then there's John Daley, the younger one, and the father.I mean, this is not their Democratic Party.
And Mayor Daley, who's in his early 80s now, he hosts a Christmas party every year.And I get invited, I get to see him, and he's had a couple of strokes.And then he hosts the St.Patrick's Day parties, you can imagine.Of course he does.
I think he's quietly gonna vote for Trump. Oh, I'm sure.Yeah, and Bill Daley maybe not because he's sort of, you know, he was more like, Bill Daley didn't win elected office, he was more of an appointed guy, you know?
Yeah, he worked for Bill Clinton and he was still- That's right.That's right.
And, well, I don't want to demean him, but he doesn't have the same kind of testicular virility you got to have to be in the arena and be good at it, you know what I'm saying?
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So what role did Obama play?I mean, I think most people thought Obama was like a sign that America was getting healthier healing from past trauma and all that.He was a sign of hope.And then it just got super evil.
But when did you realize that Obama was not what he seemed to be?And what role did he play in the disaster in your life?
He started the whole thing.My story, the book that I'm writing, is a story that started with him on election night in 2008.It was magical.First black person, half black, mom from Kansas, dad from Kenya, elected president.I've known him since 1995.
We both came up together in politics, had good relationships. I was introduced to him by a guy by the name of Tony Bresco.I think that name is familiar to you.It was not nearly what the guys who's been portrayed.
I mean, business man, very practical, extremely generous to Obama and good to Obama, helpful to both of us raising money and things like that. And when I was elected governor, he would come to me with requests from Obama.
And, you know, a lot of it were appointments to high positions in state government.I was two years ahead of Obama in terms of going to the next level, because I was the first Democrat governor elected in Illinois in 2002.
And with this long and hard to pronounce last name, which was kind of cutting edge at the time, because for the most part, Illinois was electing guys with Anglo, names, or Irish names.
You know, we had Thompson, we had Edgar, and we had Ryan before me.All those guys went to prison?Well, Ryan did, yeah.Thompson put Governor Kerner in prison.That's another story.
And then I won.It's like being a first lieutenant in Vietnam, the odds are bad.
Right, exactly, right.The death rate.
But I think in some respects, I should apologize to the American people because I might have had something to do with Obama's success because I think he saw that if I won, and I could win downstate in the rural areas and deep Southern Illinois, which is the American South, a guy like me from Chicago.
he could do it and with a name you can't say, his name, he could do it.And two years later he did, and he got the opportunity to give that speech in Boston, which was his William Jennings Bryant moment, right?
He electrified the crowd with that speech.I was there.Yeah, so was I. I turned to Bobby Rush, the congressman, former Black Panther.I said, Bobby, just think about that.
As soon as he got done with that speech, you're the only guy, because they were beating that guy in an election, because Obama challenged him in 1998.Oh, I know. But no, I thought Obama was all right, you know, kind of cold and impersonal, but okay.
And I was happy to be helpful.But he's one of the more selfish people in politics on a one-on-one level.And he's not pure like the driven snow in the sense of his ethics or morality.
And, you know, Tony Resca is the guy who bought this lot next to Obama's home.
And one of the things I write about in my book is that when I was governor first, and then Barack won in 2004, I was asked to make a phone call on behalf of Michelle Obama, because as soon as he won the Senate race, she wanted a job either at Northwestern University or the University of Chicago hospitals for two to $300,000 a year, the wife of the new Senator.
And I was asked, would you call?
And- Was she specific about how much she wanted?Yeah. She was specific about salary?
Yeah, and I think to the Northwestern, we should double check this, but I think my recollection is good.I think Northwestern was willing to pay $200,000 to hire her.This is the wife of the new U.S.
Senator and federal money for, you know, Medicaid and Medicare, things like that.And then, They got a better offer at the University of Chicago, which is in Hyde Park, where they're from, $300,000.And she ended up working there.
And I called to help because you need to help people in politics.And the guy's wife wants a job, I'll make a phone call.
She didn't get it because of me, but it didn't hurt to have the governor call and say... The second Obama gets elected, Michelle says, I want a job at one of two hospitals for between $200,000 and $300,000.That's correct.
Yeah.And she ended up working at the University of Chicago Hospital on almost $300,000 a year. And so Rusko was really helpful, really helpful to Obama.
And so when the investigations against me heated up, it had to do with fundraising and Tony was part of that.And I got to say this, Tony suffered.He spent eight years in prison.
I don't know whether those things that they said he did were even legal based on what they did to me.I'm not so sure they were illegal. It had nothing to do with my administration.They were business matters.
But Obama just ran from him, did nothing to help him.And, you know, pretends like he never knew him.And yet the moment he became Senator, she gets that $300,000 a year job with a little help, tiny little bit of help from me with a phone call.
And then they buy this mansion in the Kenwood neighborhood, which is High Park, Chicago.Beautiful old mansions where the family of Leopold and Loeb, they lived, right?
So a lot of sickos in that neighborhood going back a hundred years.Well, those guys, those two boys were.
I mean, it's a bashing of, you know, liberal America there.Dickie Loeb. But so what happened was the Obamas bought this mansion.Now he's the new senator.The first thing they do is buy a mansion.
I guess he felt like I was getting a mansion because I was the governor.It wasn't mine, but I got the use of a 50,000 square foot governor's mansion.I guess they wanted their own.So they could only afford 750,000.So they purchased
the lot with the house on it, the mansion on it, but they couldn't afford the adjoining lot, so they asked Resco to buy it for him.And he did.
And my understanding of the federal investigations with me were also connected to Obama, that these guys were apparently looking into that. and some other things.
Along the way, the dynamic changed, and Obama started moving up in the presidential race.And here again, this is something I'd like to take back, but I was the first governor in America to endorse him for president.
We had a personal relationship from Illinois, and he was running against Hillary, so it wasn't hard.But what ultimately happened was, when he started rising,
Axelrod, David, who used to work for me, and then went on to Obama, I knew what they were doing.They were, for political reasons, they were influencing the media to pretty much tone me up more than Obama.I was more toned up.
And Tony was a supporter and a friend, and I liked Tony, in spite of everything that's happened to him.But Obama knew him and loved him longer. And Tony had done more for Obama over the years than he did for me.
And ultimately, politically and in the media, the media just conveniently ignored Gresco's relationship to Obama.They give it very little coverage.And it was all about me and Tony.So Axelrod worked for you.
He did when I was a congressman, when I ran for Congress.What's he like?Oh, he's very smart.You know, I like him a lot.His son was an intern for me.His son, Michael, he's a great kid.He's grown up now.
No, I like David a lot, but he's a very practical guy and he's very ambitious politically.And, you know, it's a rough and tumble business.And, you know, when his interests collide with yours, you know... His one out.
He will exercise what's in his interests.Yeah.And I think a lot of the political consultants are that way.He denies saying this. But he did.When Kerry had been beaten by Bush in 2004, and the Democrats all felt like Kerry was gonna win.
In fact, Kerry was getting some massage in Boston that night, election night.And what's the guy's name?He used to write great speeches for Ted Kennedy.Bob Shrum.Shrum.
Shrum walked in and told him something like, I'd hear this stuff from the Democrat world, you know.Let me be the first one to congratulate you, Mr. President, right? Remember that?
And then the next morning it was finally concluded that Bush won Ohio, right?
I knew them all very well.And Trump, you know, had good qualities.You're smart, but what a toady, what a professional fellator of politicians.It's just really disgusting.
So that was a Tuesday, right?And then of course, Wednesday, I get a phone call about six in the evening.I'm at home, election's over.David Axelrod, now he denies this, but it happened.
And he said, you know, the Democrats, Hillary's the front runner in 2008, but too liberal, too disliked.Kerry should have won.He couldn't.We're looking for a new face.Somebody from the heartland of America, that's what he called it.
You need to have an open mind about thinking about running for president and challenging Hillary in 2008. Now, at that time, he had Obama.Obama was his candidate for the Senate.He had been his consultant.Obama won, and he had that great speech.
But I think David wasn't quite sure that maybe America was ready to elect a black person.So he's in the business of being a consultant.He wanted to make sure he has a horse in the race, because the Clintons already had their people.
He had Edwards in 2004. And didn't go well.Yeah.So he's looking for candidates for president.So Vilsack, do you remember that name?Very well.Me in Illinois and Obama, the three of us.
He was probably positioning himself to see which one of us might have the better chance.And he picked the right horse eventually, because Obama was the right one.And of course, Obama's success and my calamity parallel, right?
And so you asked me, this is a long answer to your question about 55 minutes ago, What did Obama have to do with my problems?
Was election night, we're there, and a labor boss by the name of Tom Balanoff, Service Employees Union, big supporter of both of us, came up to me.Grant Park in Chicago, beautiful weather, magical, historic night.
And he said, Barack called me last night.He wanted me to talk to you about Valerie Jarrett.
He'd like her, very close friend of Michelle Obama, by the way, he'd like you to appoint her to the United States Senate because the governor has to appoint the senator.And he wanted me to ask you what you would want.
Can I call you and come and see you and make an appointment?I said, of course, call me tomorrow.We'll set something up this week. That's how it started.
And then at the next day, I got done running and went out and ran like eight miles that day, seven miles.I'm just loosening up.I'm laying on my little family room floor, stretching.
I'm on my back and I'm talking to one of my aides and I said, oh, Balanoff called.Apparently Obama sent him to me.Obama sent him to me.He wants to make a deal on the Senate seat.What should we do?What should we think about getting?
appellate legal stuff not you know can be cash or anything that which would be a legal political frustrating which eventually split the supreme court i mean the appellate court said it was and then i say and you know this i do something you know significant this will be in my obituary so it's always suggested that uh... we just kisses ass and give whoever he wants but that seems like that would be political malpractice and we have a golden opportunity we have a real opportunity here to do you know
do something meaningful.And then I said, I know it, this is effing golden.I'm not giving it up for nothing, right?I'm known for that.And- You didn't realize this was being taped.I didn't realize it, but let me say something to your listeners.
When you're in Chicago politics and the ethics in that place and the way they do business and the way the feds not wrongly necessarily try to set people up to see whether or not they'll take a temptation.
They send people in, they give you, offer you cash and stuff like that. You'd be an idiot if you don't think they may be listening.I had been under federal investigation for five years.
I knew it because of the Resco stuff and some other stuff, people who were supporters of mine and Obama.I mean, I thought it's all very possible and everything I'm talking about doing is legal.
And I was super careful because I was under such intense federal investigation at that time to make sure that anything I talked about doing, I checked with my governor's lawyer.
and lawyers, and my lawyer was on the, on average, on all these FBI tapes, they taped my calls.To this day, 98% of those tapes are covered up under a court seal.
The judge would not allow us to talk about how my lawyer was on those calls three times a day, because at that point, you know, now you know they're coming.You want to be absolutely careful that whatever you do on this Senate seat is legal, right?
And so you're throwing out all kinds of ideas, because you do have this effing golden opportunity.We talked about Oprah for a couple of days, all these crazy ideas. And everybody wanted it.Everybody wanted me to appoint them, as you can imagine.
And through third parties or suggesting deals that were political, they weren't illegal.Some had suggested money and campaign funds, which would have been illegal. But I would talk to my lawyer three times a day, and he was advising me.
In fact, one call, I say something like, we're discussing a creative way to create a nonprofit political action committee. to help support the advancement of access to healthcare, which was a big issue for me when I was governor.
And Obama was talking about doing Obamacare and all this at the federal level.And some of the people that had put our healthcare plans together in Illinois went on to work for Obama.
And so the question was whether or not there was something that we could do to be helpful to push it further in Illinois and do something.And can we put together a 501C3 or a 501C4?
Obama gets some of these big rich Democrats who give money to him to put in our thing.And can we, you know, perhaps make the deal on the Senate seat for something like this?
And so I say to the lawyer, and to one of my aides, I say, I mean, how do you do a deal like that?I mean, it's got to be legal, obviously.I'm on the tape saying that.
A couple of years go by, I'm at my second trial because they failed to convict me on their corrupt charges the first trial, and they're going to play that tape against me.And I'm actually charged.One of the crimes was that phone call.
How do you do a deal like that?I mean, it's got to be legal, obviously.I'm asking.I don't even know if you could do it.I'm just thinking out loud.And they criminalized it, but surely I'm going to get acquitted on this.
But the jury instruction was custom-tailored to fit these conversations, to tell the jury that those things were criminal.And they can convict anybody if they do that.
If they decide, for example, that this conversation you and I are having, and they charge us, and then they gotta prove it before a jury, and they gotta judge us when we do anything they want them to do, all they gotta do is just write up a jury instruction, 12 laymen, average, everyday, ordinary people who aren't lawyers, aren't in politics, just tell them this is against the law.
And they'll make the right decision.They'll convict you of this conversation, because they're told by the judge and the prosecutors, it's against the law.So big picture, why do you think they did this to you?
The Democratic establishment did this to you.
Well, they were Bush prosecutors that started it.Here's what I think happened.It's Gerald.That's right.That guy's so dirty and rotten and corrupt.I've noticed.Yeah.
Here's what happened, so they came at six o'clock in the morning and arrested a sitting governor.I mean, I was Roger Stone, years before Roger Stone, right?My little girls are sleeping, gonna get up shortly for school, my little one at the time.
It was five, and she was in bed with us.And I got up at six.I was going to actually go run that.It was winter.I was going to go run.I had my running clothes laid out.Phone rang, and I thought it was a friend of mine.
The guy says, we have a warrant for your arrest, and the agent so-and-so.I had state police security all the time as the governor. And I thought it was a friend of mine.I say this a lot because he's like that when I really did.
I said, come on, State Senator Jimmy DeLeo.And I said, come on, Jimmy, stop effing around six o'clock in the morning.But it wasn't him.It was really the FBI with a warrant. I think they got me, handcuffed me, drove me to their facility.
Four hours later, about 10 o'clock, they were a good cop.And they had me in, and you're not a bad guy, we listened to all your tapes, you're just a product of Chicago politics.They wanted me to cooperate.
I believed, my interpretation was, they wanted me to talk about Obama.I don't think they were ever gonna go after Obama at that point, first black president.
But I think they wanted to see whether or not I would, here's a prison term, snitch on the president-elect, and then go back to him and say that. They probably told him that anyway because they lie.
In any event, I said, I was never involved in any wrongdoing with him.I don't know whether he's involved in anything of that sort.I can tell you I'm not, and I got nothing to talk about.Whatever I discussed was politics.
And then they changed their attitude.They shipped me to another facility, the court building, and put me in a small little cell.
And they had me next to this really angry guy, all caught up on PCP, screaming and MF, and he had no clue that he was right next to the governor.
I'm doing push-ups in there because I'm thinking, this is really a bad day and this is going to be really bad.
But maybe at some point I want to be able to say that while I was in the heat of the moment, I still was strong enough to do some push-ups in my cell.So I did push-ups in there.So I can say that I did it, right?
Plus, if you're gonna join a gang, you need to be buff.
Yeah, there's some truth to that, yeah.Anyway, so I think, and then they went to Obama the next day, and they interviewed him.They call him 302s, FBI 302s.
Every criminal defendant is entitled under the Constitution to have evidence that could exonerate him or her.And Obama's 302s are relevant, directly relevant to my case.To this day, they won't give it to us, what Obama said.
And he publicly contradicted what the labor boss, Balinoff, had said, that he had come to me the night before because it all started that way.
And Balinoff had testified under oath twice in two trials, that he said that Obama had called him and sent him over to me, and it was about talking about a political deal. And Obama publicly said no.
What he said in those FBI 302s might contradict that, I don't know.If you lie to the FBI, you know, it's a crime.So I think what happened was, because it's unusual and you know this, the new president doesn't keep the U.S.
attorney from the previous president, especially if it's the other party.Of course.But suddenly now they made a deal with Obama.We'll leave you alone.You keep us here until we get him.
And it wasn't until they got me at the second trial years later that they all went into private practice and became partners at big firms making millions of dollars.
One lady, one of them became a judge, but Fitzgerald's a partner in a big law firm, the lead prosecutor, partner in a big law firm.And the moment that they got their convictions against me in the second trial, that's where they went.
And I think the reason Obama did nothing to be helpful while I'm in there and after being in prison for, well,
Five and a half, six and a half years, I was unusually, unlike the 151,000 federal inmates, I was probably the only guy who was able to get, this is the vernacular of prison, my paperwork in front of two presidents.
Axelrod was getting my request for a commutation from Obama on Obama's desk. He gave him letters from, you know, my two daughters, my young daughters to the president.Obama's daughters are the same age as mine.
And I'd done already six and a half years asking for clemency.And we recognized the politics of him and, you know, his image and walking out of the White House on January 20th, 2017.
So we're not even going to have it be where someone might have a, you know, the screenshot of him leaving the White House and me leaving the big house at the same time. because we were connected to the case.
But why don't you just cut my sentence in half from 14 years?I never took a penny.It was a request for campaign contributions and a political deal you wanted to make, right?
Just cut my sentence from 14 years to seven, which would be higher than anybody governor's ever gotten from Illinois who's been in prison, probably maybe the longest actual time served of any governor. and I'll limp out of prison in October of 2017.
And it sure looked promising in the days leading up to that, because a few days before that, he had released from prison a member of the FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist group that was blowing up federal buildings.
So you should have been a Puerto Rican terrorist.This guy got released by Obama a few days before, and I'm thinking, Ooh, that's a good sign for me, right?And then a guy got 35 years in prison for treason against the United States.
His name was Bradley Manning.He went into prison as Bradley Manning.Came out of prison, Chelsea Manning, through the largest of the taxpayers.Obama cut him, cut her loose after six years or seven years.I'm thinking, I'm easy compared to these two.
And I had members of Congress, Democrats who had served with Axelrod, asking him to do it.And he didn't do it.And I think it's because he made a deal with them.They basically said, we'll leave you alone.
You don't interrupt, get involved in any of this.And you don't help him.That's what I think.But here's what's interesting.And it shows a lot about the kind of person Trump is.
And all through this process, these long, hard years and the years of dashed hopes and expectations, because there was no way we could lose our appeal.These things are legal.
Then you figure, then they reversed the Senate seat after I'm in prison for three and a half years and vacate my sentence.Now I have no sentence.So I went from 14 years to no years for a year, which was easier time to do, because when you're looking,
You know, you walk into prison in March of 2012, March 15th, and your exit day is May 2024, right?That's a long, hard road.So you try to break up, psychologically, you try to break up that time, right?
So you say, okay, let's get from here to the first, the appeal.We're gonna have hopes that we can win that, though deep down you just know, you've seen enough of this system to know you're dead, right?But you cling to that hope.
They can't uphold the Senate seat.They reverse it.Now I have no sentence.I discussed with my attorney, when do we go back to resentencing?They got to give you a sentence.You go back to the same judge.Let's just wait a year.I'll just stay here.
I'll keep working out, reading, and just trying to grow.And then we'll go back to this judge when I will have served almost five years, more than just about anybody.I mean, nobody.
in American history other than me has served a single day in prison for a fundraising violation.And this wasn't even a violation, but let's assume the worst that it was.No one had did a single day.And my lawyer presented this to the judge.
There's not a single case.And Letters my little girls had grown up.
They gave beautiful presentations in court I'm video from Colorado in prison for the resentencing August 9th 2016 Okay So I go from no sentence the centerpiece of the case was a big lie to begin with it was never a crime No sale of the Senate seat No sentence back before the judge.
I've been Well-behaved inmate we submit well over a hundred letters from my colleagues guys that I helped good guys I'm criminals, but I learned a lot of these guys aren't bad guys.Some are really bad.
Some are pretty good guys They're just you know, you've gone the wrong way and got bad habits we submit the letters and There's real expectation that I'll go home.He puts me back at 14 years.
And I hear my older daughter sobbing in the courtroom after they gave these beautiful presentations.I'm watching my little girls who've grown, and I'm so proud of them.And look how sweet and nice and smart they are.
And boy, Patty did a great job raising them.All these things I'm thinking at this resentencing. but here's where God comes in and this whole miracle of how I eventually got home and that Donald Trump would be the instrument.
See, this is part of what I read about in my book.
I got to know him a little bit on Celebrity Apprentice, a show I never watched, but after they took everything away from me and I had no income and I was an honest governor, didn't get rich in the business,
I was getting these opportunities to do these, you know, one place that you can actually make a living when you got this leprosy is in entertainment.Yeah, exactly.No one wants to come near you when you got it, understandably.
But you're better than Diddy, so you can still get paid, yeah.
So yeah, I turned down a bunch of really bad stuff, like being a greeter on an HBO show called The Bunny Ranch.It's a whorehouse in Henderson, Nevada.They offered me six figures.
They thought I was perfect for the role, because I was such a scoundrel in the media, right? I turned it down, the guy's name was Dennis Hoff.
Yeah, nice guy.Yeah, he was.But I couldn't, I got two little girls, I'm not doing that.Anyway, but Trump's show can't call him because he saw me on television fighting back.And so I did Celebrity Apprentice.This is October, 2009 that we tape it.
It airs in... like March, 2010, my first trial is June, 2010.And he was so good to me.He was so sympathetic.He was so kind.
People don't realize on a personal level, Trump's a kindhearted person, very different from most politicians and the direct opposite of a cold, selfish, completely practical Obama, right?So when Obama passes me by, Back to the resentencing.
On the 9th of August, the judge puts me back at 14 years.My daughter's sobbing in the courtroom.I can't see her, but I hear it. Hope is gone now, right?But here's how God works.
He sends me more hope because that afternoon, Trump's giving a speech in North Carolina.It's running against Hillary.And he starts talking about crooked Hillary, right?And before the audience starts chanting, lock her up, lock her up, he says.
And then there's this governor from Illinois, blah, blah, blah.They just gave him 14 years.Again, 14 years.He's a choir boy next to Hillary, something like that. Trump's got to be on his radar, right?
And I'm thinking, because I believe, I know politics, I think he's going to beat her.Even from afar in prison, I felt he was going to beat her because he was different and he was standing up to stuff.
He wasn't backing down like typical politicians do.And I thought, wow, so if Obama doesn't do it, who knows? And he was so good to me on that show.Well, he didn't do it, Obama, the 20th of January.
One month later, Trump's been president for one month.I get called into the case manager's office and they have a form I have to sign.It's a waiver.I have to, if I agree, to allow the White House pardon office to get my prison records.
Of course, what do I sign?So I signed two things.Trump's looking out and wants to see whether or not I was a well-behaved inmate.There's a way perhaps where he can send me home.
And Obama was never going to do it because they never asked for my records.And what that did for me was it gave me hope for the next couple of years.And then after the Supreme Court didn't take our case, God bless you, my friend.
Me and my homies in prison are watching my wife on your show on a Monday in the spring of 2018.Supreme Court turned me down that weekend.That Monday evening you had Patty, my wife Patty, on.
Yeah, I'll never forget it.
Yeah, and you were fantastic, and I'm really grateful to you.
Oh my gosh, well, there's nothing more beautiful than a loyal spouse.
Yeah, she's amazing, isn't she?
Yeah, I agree with that strongly.So when you see, going through everything that you did, when you see the FBI raid Mar-a-Lago in the summer of 2022, what do you think?Deja vu all over again.
These lying scumbags.Yeah.Weaponized.They're politicians.They're political agents.KGB, Soviet-style police state politics in America, and the Democrats have embraced it.The Bush administration started it, but this Fitzgerald is his own guy.
And Comey and Fitzgerald are real close.
And there's no doubt in my mind that what they did to me at the AAA level to a Democrat governor, they said, ooh, we can get away with this.Let's do it to Trump, a Republican president at the major league level.
And that's exactly what this whole Russian collusion bullshit was all about.And I'm watching this from prison, and I know all of it.I recognize it.I know the tactics.I know what that stuff they say to the media, how they leak stuff and how they lie.
They're political operatives.Our country is on the crossroads, on the threshold.I mean, so important to elect Trump for a thousand reasons.This might be the most important one of them.
Because if we lose this, the ability in America to elect our leaders without the intervention of prosecutors, criminalizing things that aren't crimes for politics, the voters don't have any choices.Free and fair elections don't matter.
It's all rigged, like they do in the old Soviet Union.What did Beria say?Show me the man, I'll show you the crime.Exactly.Yeah.
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So, I mean, we have a media protected, you know, first line item in the Bill of Rights, as you know, in order to push back against the abuse of power by the government.And they don't seem to be playing that role, their assigned role.
the role that duty would compel them to play.They seem to be covering for the people in power.
Oh man, duty would compel them to play.The fourth estate, a free press and a free society.You don't have that to check power.We're dead, right?
That's kind of what I naively thought when I'm sitting in the backseat of the FBI vehicle, handcuffed behind my hands.I'm the governor of Illinois.It's the fifth largest state in America, right?Now they got me.And I said, well, what's this about?
And the guy said, the sale of the Senate seat.I said, what?First of all, you got to be a horse's ass to think that you can get away with something like that.
I'm gonna steal, I'm gonna sell Obama, any presidency, but Obama at that time, he was a demigod elevated by the media, okay, all superficial bullshit about how great he is, but I'm gonna be that stupid where I'm gonna actually try to sell his Senate seat, and I'm already under intense federal investigation for Bresco and some of these other guys, and, you know, activists and politics and stuff, and they're trying to find crimes, they can't find them for five years, so now this?
I'm thinking the media, and not so great, but the media is certainly gonna laugh them out of court before they get into court.Who'd be so stupid to do something like that?
And the reality was they were all over it because it was just too super sensational to pass up.It sold newspapers, it was good for ratings.So they're more interested in the storyline than the truth.
abrogating their responsibility to all of us as citizens to keep an eye on the power.The government has no power.These federal prosecutors have all the power, unchecked power, not foreseen by our founding fathers when they divided our government.
They didn't know that there'd be a branch out of the executive part of the government, an agency out of the executive branch that would grow like a cancer there.
Originally going after the Al Capones of the world and now taking that power to all kinds of levels to turn it into a political.And it becomes the secret police.There you go.
Yeah, this is why the work that you do, Tucker, and I mean, you're so nice to me, but I'm grateful to you for what you do and others like you are fighting for, you know, freedom and Elon Musk and these guys.
Which is so corrupt, I mean, and I think it's important to say out loud what it is, which again is corrupt and evil.
Corrupt and evil, yeah. So, um, does, I mean, does Trump have a, well, in a fair election, do you think Trump will win?
Oh, yeah.In a fair election, he wins every one of those battleground states with some cushion.It's another thing I want to say to your listeners.They should listen to me on this sort of stuff.
You know, in a fair election, one thing I've been good at in life is winning elections.I've run 14 of them.Seven or eight were really hard.Primaries really hard against other Democrats.
you know, running against Republicans for governor in Illinois, being the first Democrat to win after 26 years.Those are really competitive races.So I'm giving me high marks.
I'm an expert witness when it comes to politics, understanding the mood of the voters, sensing them, not just what the polling says.Actually, it's more instinctive what you saw at Madison Square Garden when you gave that great speech.
I saw the crowds there.They're not Nazis.You know what they are?They're white people and they're black people.Exactly.They're Hispanics and they're Asian.They're old and they're young.They're good, decent, hardworking. forgotten Americans.
And there's more of them that aren't, and they've learned to know what's being done to them and how our country is setting the priorities that go against their interests now so blatantly for those who don't legally come to the United States.
They're not stupid.And I believe if this election is run fairly, it's going to be a
19 or 2024 version of 1980 when the country made us this choice between Reagan and Carter by the first or second weekend of October and started shifting and going towards Reagan ended up winning, you know, maybe 49 states or something that won't happen now because the demographic in America is different the ballgames those battleground states.
But if I'm right about this, Trump will sweep all of them and might be competitive in states like Virginia, maybe, or Minnesota even.Keep an eye on that, we'll see.But I'm very hopeful and as Reagan used to say, cautiously optimistic.
Well, it does seem, I mean, I'd bet my house on the proposition that Trump is more popular than Kamala Harris and more people in those seven states will vote for Trump than Kamala Harris. But that doesn't mean that he's going to be president.
What do you think will actually happen?
Well, that's a good question.I couldn't imagine what happened in 2020.You can't really talk about it, but I have tremendous skepticism about all of that.I was asked after that election about, you know... Well, you literally can't talk about it.
And if we talk about that, this will be taken off YouTube. Yeah.But why do you think that is?Why do you, I mean, if somebody says, you know, we can talk about anything you want except this one thing.Yeah.
Well, you look at those FBI tapes, I want to play 98% of them, right?They wouldn't let me play them in court even, to prove my innocence, right?
If you're hiding something, there's a reason, right?
They're the ones that are lying.Yeah, of course.They're the ones who did it.But I think that I think there's such a movement for Trump right now.I think there's such a movement against what's happening.
And I think the testicular virility, that great courage Trump showed at that moment when he got shot, Butler elevated him to a very different place.He's no longer your typical politician.
I think he represents something that's really powerful and you can just see all the things that are unfolding.And here's another reason why I feel very good about this election. The public polls, whatever they are, I never relied on those.
We had our polling, and it guided how we ran the race and what the strategy was to run and win.And you know that the other side has their polling too, and in all likelihood, it's probably as good as yours.So they know what you know.
They're seeing what you're seeing. And so if you really want to know how the campaigns are going, just watch the candidates, where they go, what they say, what they do, and what they're running on.
And Trump's running on a message on things that he wants to do for the American people.You might disagree with those things, but this is what he's saying he's going to do.It's about you, the people.What's she saying?He's a Nazi?
Now they're in the last late stages and making these outrageous accusations and calling people names. Whenever that would happen to me, they weren't calling me a Nazi, but I was, you know, you get nasty stuff thrown at you when you're ahead.
You love it because you know you're winning.Yeah.Right?So he's winning.And if it's fair and honest, he'll win comfortably in those seven states.
So if they come to us the day after the election, and by they, I mean Morning Joe and the rest of the sycophants in the media, and tell us that Kamala Harris turns out to be just incredibly popular, incredibly popular, and her compelling vision got her across the finish line with a massive margin, and she got, you know, 84 million votes, and she's the winner, and if you disagree, you know, you're a criminal.
Will people accept that?Obviously, I will not accept that, but will others accept that?Like, what happens then?
In Nazi Germany, they held a plebiscite.Hitler wanted to confirm some of what he was doing, and it was like 99% yeah.That's how you say yes in Germany, right?I think that's the only way they could even remotely have a chance.
But I mean, shouldn't, look, I don't want to be an election denier or denier of anything that's true.I always want to acknowledge what's true, period.
But I also don't think that any of us are under the obligation to accept them at face value, at their word.I think they've kind of tried the limits of good faith.And aren't we allowed to say, look, you say Kamala Harris won.Great.Show us the books.
No doubt about it.We know them to be liars.
They've been lying through the years, and they've just recently been lying about, well, what, the cognitive capabilities of the president, and they throw him out of office and, you know, hijack him from office and put her there, and, you know, lying about her record.
She didn't work at McDonald's, even.They lie about everything, right?No, we can't believe that.That's going to be really hard to believe.Why don't we have electronic voting machines
I thought the idea, I was never against them, I never thought about it, but I assumed that they were more efficient, that you got the results faster, and that they were more accurate.
And they're not more accurate than hand counting paper ballots, and they're certainly not faster.You know, the resulting countries that don't have electronic voting machines are reliable and they're in long before our results are.
So what is the reason that we have electronic voting machines?
So among the different people I write about in my book is Walter Hill, black guy from East St.Louis, Illinois.And when I first got to prison, he embraced me.He was, you know, you my governor, right?And he told me about a time that we had met.
He had lost some weight, but he had been a big guy.And when he told me about having met him once down in the Metro East area of Illinois, down Southwestern Illinois, in East St.Louis, I kind of remembered him.
And he was like some liquor license commissioner, and I don't think he'd mind me saying this, a colorful figure and a good guy.But he was wrong when he did.
But he said to me, and he was sympathetic to me because he's in politics, couldn't believe I'm in prison for what? But he said to me, you know, I voted for you two times, right, in East St.Louis.And I said, oh, wow, thanks.
How many times you voted for Obama?Nine. He said, you're a racist, man.We're both Democrats.You vote for the black guy nine times, me only two?Right?That's why.That's your answer.
I don't remember Obama running for president nine times.How did Mr. Hill pull that off?No, in that first election.
I met him in 2012 before the re-election.So this would have been the 2008 election.And I frankly believe he was telling me the truth.But that's the answer to your question about those electric, those machines.
You know, what gives me hope too about this election is among the ways Democratic precinct workers, and Obama and I know this, we were high up, but you kind of know these activists are doing whatever they're doing in the polling places that are controlled by Democrats, largely in the inner city, in the poor neighborhoods.
is through the, what's called the absentee ballots.And they gather them up and harvest them.And what happened in 2020 was that on steroids with the COVID situation and the mail-in ballots.
And that's among the reasons why I have a, you know, I believe an honest skepticism about the result of that.Don't know that Trump even had a fair chance to get in the court on any of that stuff.
And again, I know from my experience how the courts can, you know, be dishonest.There's got to be so many reforms that have to happen.God willing, Trump wins to clean up that justice system.And I think there has to be, nobody should be unchecked.
I think that's the lesson from my hard experience.Human nature, even good people can get tempted to do the bad things and wrong things.Another reason why, thank you scientists for your great intelligence and the great contributions you make.
But unless we guide you through conscience, which comes from God, Exactly.You're going to destroy the world.
So, to answer your question, I think the voting system is the way it is today because of political priorities that are above and beyond what's fundamentally right for our country.
What really makes me angry at my party is nothing sacred to these people anymore, that they would weaponize the law and the justice system to destroy Trump because they know that if they
destroy Trump, nothing's gonna stop them from destroying our freedoms.And little by little, this I know too, having lost mine, I see the steady erosion of freedom in America.
And it's so much like countries that, like my father came from after World War II, Serbia. he didn't want to live in a communist country.And, you know, they saw, they know how those rights and freedoms are taken away.
And here's this, what Lincoln called the last best hope on earth.If we lose freedom here, you forget about it all over the world.
I think we're going to start seeing the beginning of a new dark age where tyrants and totalitarian governments are the rule and democracy's dead.That's what I think.
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It does seem, look, if Kamala Harris wins fair and square, blessings to her, and I hope she fixes the country that she helped destroy.But I really do fervently hope that, and I mean it, and I will support any effort to do that.
But if she declares victory without proving that she actually won fairly, I think it is the duty of the rest of us to resist that.You're not allowed to steal elections.That's the end of democracy.
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.That's right out of the Old Testament.I feel that.No doubt about it.Look, we're in this historic state of Maine where you have this wonderful studio.
I mean, think about the patriots in America who began our country and resisted the tyranny from England.Oh, sure.It's a unique place. I wasn't setting the world on fire in school.I went to not-so-good schools in Chicago, public schools.
My parents were little working people, five-room apartment.My father spoke broken English, and my mom worked for the public transit system passing out transfers.We didn't know anybody in politics or anything.We were just working people.
I became the governor of Illinois. Anything's possible in this country.If we lose this, it's why everybody wants to come here, but just follow the law, right?And they're destroying the law.
And the idea of sanctuary cities, I'm sitting in prison watching the Democrats for these sanctuary cities.That was unthinkable.
How's that not insurrection?Correct. Against the federal government?
I mean, what happened in Fort Sumter in 1861 was less radical than sanctuary cities.We're saying that we're ignoring federal immigration law.How are we not breaking away from the rest of the United States?Right.How's that secession?I don't get it.
I hear you.It's crazy.But again, the media just made it seem like an exercise in compassion.
Yeah. Here again, thank you for what you do, and thank you for a lot of the other services that are out there who are providing alternative views from what the mainstream media has become.
I mean, when you guys talk about mainstream media, you're right.They've been so corrupted, so co-opted.They're corporate media.
Have you talked to Obama since you got out?
He never called you?Oh, no.Oh, God, no.What's he mad at you about?
What'd you do wrong?No, I don't think he's mad.He's just like, uh, that guy can only hurt me.And, you know, of course, he's living the good life.You know, you think about Obama.He's close to being a billionaire.
Those Obamas have monetized, like the Clintons did, their time in the Oval Office and in the White House.I think about Trump.How did Obama get so rich?Right.Well, I mean, he's, you know, he's got that whole
establishment stuff that, you know, overpay them for things.I think got a deal for like a book deal that was like $60 million or something in advance.
And I don't know what the other things he's doing, but I think there's like documentaries he supposedly makes for Netflix.They paid him a hundred million dollars or something.
But I think about that, and I know them, and the moment they won for the Senate, and she wanted a job.
There's other things about him that I've been told by Tony that I don't think I should say just because, boy, they're terrible of true, and I tend to believe they are.About his personal behavior?
About the desire to have upward mobility, and where he was in the late 90s.He's a money worshiper.
Yeah, and I think I see I compare that and I think about Trump who's made all that money and built it up in business and then decided to leave that good life to go and put his self through this in this rotten nasty business and they get he gets treated like that where they're trying to literally destroy him and his family and all that wealth that he created and the juxtaposition between that and
where he wants to serve and Obama, how they catapulted to that level after the presidency by just playing the inside game and being part of the establishment.It's a dramatic difference.
Do you see, when you keep hearing these whispers, a lot of them are just like nonsense on the internet, but then you do hear from Democrats, I don't know if it's true, but that Obama would like to see his wife run after Kamala Harris loses.
Do you think there's any truth to any of that?Yes.I think that's not unlikely.I don't know that she wants to do it, though.It doesn't seem like she does, but what do I know?Yeah, I know.I'm the same way.Sure, I can see the possibility of that.
How much control does Obama have over the modern Democratic Party?
It's a good question.He's the most influential person in the Democratic Party today.But I would say that his influence wanes as the years go by.He's not as influential now as he was four years ago. or eight years ago.
Times change, new people come in.I do think that the socialists, the Democrats, the AOC types are further left than Obama.And that's a tiger that he can't hold by the tail that are kind of pushing him and others that way.
I don't know that he's comfortable doing that.The thing about him is he's got a fundamental left-wing ideology, but he's a lot more practical than that.He's all about just winning for himself.
And, you know, I think about when he ran for president in 2008, he supported a border wall.Oh, yeah.Right?It was practical politics at that time.He was willing to ditch that right away.
And so I would say as time goes by, his influence will wane, continue to wane.But probably four years from now, he'll probably still be, God willing, Trump's the president, the most influential Democrat.
Boy, he was pretty cold with Joe Biden, who was always kind of running around pathetically bragging about how close he was to Obama and they were buddies.And Obama just knifed him twice.One in 2016, supporting Hillary for the nomination.
And again, this summer with, you know, leading the coup against him.What's that?
It's Machiavelli.He went to Harvard.He was probably reading the law and reading The Prince, right?No, he's a cold-hearted, very Machiavellian.
Look, it's a tough business, and I don't want to be a whiner, a complainer, and like, oh, woe is me, look what happened to me.It is a tough business.It's a rough business, and you know you're in a rough business like that.
Harry Truman said, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog, right?There's a lot of truth to that.But within the spectrum of these practical people in a business of bullshitters,
and duplicitous phonies who almost embrace their hypocrisy as if it's like some sort of skill or talent that they have.In other words, Michael Jordan, you know, his game got better as he got greater, right?He became a much better shooter.
I'm from Chicago, six championships.We love Jordan, right?But Jordan wasn't as good a shooter when he first came out of college as he became.His game got better. And so you embrace that.
He can move, go to the left a little bit better than he did when he first started.You embrace the improvement of his skills in sports.
These politicians, what they do is, like the Chuck Schumers of the world, they laugh at their duplicity and their hypocrisy.It isn't that they're being phony or fake.They feel good because they're getting away with it.
And the people are buying it, right?And at some level, including me, there's a level of that that's part of that business. But there is a difference between a lot of the people in politics that aren't like that.
And in spite of what everybody, well, the establishment's been saying about Trump, he is probably the least political of the people I've known in politics.And I've known a lot.I mean, I knew Biden when he was a Senator and I was in Congress.
I knew Bill Clinton.He was actually a very nice guy.That's my Bill Clinton impersonation.I really liked him, right?Defended him, and that was a hard thing to defend.I mean, what are you doing with an intern, man?Come on. Right?
Anyway, Obama, I knew since 1995.
Was that Monica Lewinsky thing some sort of op from a foreign country to control Clinton?You ever heard anybody say that?
No, I haven't actually, no.
You do wonder.Do you think?Yeah.I don't know.Gosh, I don't know.No, I think it was real.Oh, totally, yeah.You do sort of wonder.Do you ever talk to Clinton?Is he still around?You hear he's not well, but I don't know.
No, I haven't seen him since before prison.
Is he still a force in the party?Less so, yeah.
Less so.Obama's eclipsed him.
You said that if it was a choice between Obama and Hillary, it wasn't a tough one for you.You obviously know Hillary.Why weren't you eager to support her?
The reason Bill Clinton won and the reason she lost is the reason you talked about Trump at the Madison Square Garden.Trump likes people.Clinton likes people.She has contempt for people.
That basket of deplorables, I think she feels that way about all the people, everyday people.She's just so focused and guided and a political animal.Whatever she stands for is driven by focus groups and polls.She has no feel for anything.
I really believe that about her.I mean, she's, you know, at a personal level, you meet her, I mean, you know, no surprise she didn't win, right?Really?Yeah.No.Not a warm person?Oh, not at all.
Very cold, very cold-hearted, very ambitious, very dishonest, very dishonest.She, her best friend worked for me in my administration.I hired this woman, I can't remember her name, but
And she was a nice woman, she was competent, but not like she ever told me anything bad about Hillary.It's just that I'd been around Hillary enough, not a lot, but enough, and Bill Clinton too, to see a very big difference between the two people.
You just naturally like Clinton.I'll tell you a quick story.You wanna hear this?Very much.Yeah, so I'm a congressman, it's 1999, the United States and NATO, without UN approval, are doing to my father's Serbia, what Russia is doing to Ukraine now.
Oh, I noticed.Right?We decided to bomb a sovereign country, forcing them to give up a part of their country.
Do you remember this?Thank you.Can I ask you to pause it?Because I want to thank you for bringing that up.Oh.It's one of the worst things that this country has done in a long time, and it's been completely forgotten.It was not talked about then.
Right.And so I hope people aren't familiar with what you're talking about.We'll listen carefully.
It was 1999. Balkans and Serbia and the United States and NATO decided to bomb Serbia over Kosovo, which is part of Serbia.
And basically it was whether or not the Serbs would accept an agreement that was made in France, Rambouillet, that basically said, this part of your country has to be submitted to a referendum where the Muslims outnumber the Christian community by like 10 to one.
And if you don't submit this to a vote, which obviously was gonna go for separation, secession, we're gonna bomb you. Extortion at the highest level.
But what was the motive there?Why would we want to get involved in the internal affairs of Serbia?Why would we kill all those people to achieve that result?
Do you have any idea?I do.I have different ideas.I think a lot of it has to do with the politics in the Middle East and having a Muslim country or two in Europe itself, because before that was the war in Bosnia.
where it was divided up three ways, and the Muslims have a section of Bosnia, and to the east is the Republic of Srpska, where the Serbs and the Croatians are to the west.
The Balkans have historically been, you know, very difficult places with the different peoples getting along, and it is... Hence the word Balkanized?Yeah.That's exactly right.But, you know,
I learned this about politics at the high level, which was surprising to me, that a lot of our foreign policy, and this is frightening, is driven by campaign contributions.Of course.Yeah.I could see... All of it.Yeah.
But foreign policy, think about that.That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, I mean, of course it is.Yeah, I see it every day.
Yeah.Well, she was running for the U.S.Senate in New York, Hillary was.And there's a prominent Albanian community in the state of New York.
How much Clinton's desire and attention to support the Kosovar issue that the Albanians supported had something to do with his local domestic politics.Tip O'Neill said, all politics is local.The Clintons are experts at that.
I don't know for sure that that was the motivation.I think it might've been part of it because she was running for the Senate.However it was, they did it.
And I was the only Serbian American in Congress and I was a Democrat and my party was doing this. But most of the Republicans went along with it as well, because it was the established Republican Party of the Cheneys, right?Of course, it's war.
We get to kill people.It's a good thing.Yeah, that's right.Always.Yeah.And so they bombed this country my father came from, and it was, on a personal level, it was really hard.
You know, I think about my late father, and, you know, he would tell me stories about World War II.My father spent four years in a Nazi prison war camp. And then three years in a refugee camp after the war, waiting for the U.S.
to pass a law called the Displaced Persons Act, which allowed my father and millions of others like him, with these millions, these long and hard to pronounce last names, a chance to come to America.Freedom, my dad loved America.
And he just, there was no place like it.You can, if you're worthy and work hard, you can make it.And if you don't, your kids can do good, like actually what happened with my brother and me.But freedom was the thing. And I saw that.
David Ashford was working for me then.And I would go to his office and I'd vent these MFs, this MF and Clinton.Where did they come up?Serbia was an ally for the United States, with the United States in World War II.
Serbia was an ally of the United States in World War I. And now they're violating international law and bombing a sovereign country to support those on the other side of the war, as opposed to trying to work something out through the United Nations.
You know what, it was just maddening.And I got to support this, I got to support my party.So anyway, and I'd vent.And so we're figuring out ways where I could be constructive.
Now I'm an American and God forbid, and now we're at war with the country my father came from, my loyalties are to the United States. And there was a big vote.Bless you for saying that.
It was a big vote on supporting the military effort against Serbia, against my father's country.It was tied.2-12-2-12.My colleague and at the time friend Jesse Jackson Jr.voted against the war.The Black Caucus was against the war.Good for him.
Black kids go and fight these wars. I took the position, I hate this war, I spoke against it before they started it.
I was one of 15 congressmen, Democrats could send us another one who said, don't do this, you bombed this country, you're gonna unleash the furies, Milosevic is a crazy guy, he's gonna kick out innocent Kosovars out of that country, it's coming.
They wanted it.It was a provocative act by NATO.No one Milosevic would do that.And most people would suffer like they did, but then they put it on the Serbs, right?And demonize them worldwide.
But the Black Caucus, in many ways, the Black community really understands abuse of power more than any other community, because they've been on the wrong end of that, historically.They're not buying it.
So the bombing starts on a Thursday as we all leave from Congress.They timed it.We had a two-week recess for spring break.And I'm Saturday, you know, I'm watching this on CNN.
Anyway, long, long story short, I'm venting to Ax Rod, and this is making me sick.I got to do something. And by then, they had taken three U.S.soldiers had been taken prisoner by the Serbs during that war.
They had stumbled into Serbia, and they were taken prisoners.Nobody knew where they were.The Red Cross wasn't allowed in.Milosevic had been demonized, the president of Serbia, and in many ways, justifiably, but worldwide.
and they were making them look, and they were calling ethnic cleansing genocide, which is also not a lie.It's not good, but ethnic cleansing, you know, it's the nature of how things have happened in Europe all over the place.
12 million Germans were ethnically cleansed from the east to the west after World War II.A lot of them murdered.Yep.Yeah, right?So, anyway, I'm frustrated.Axelrod comes over, they take the soldiers,
I'm being, because I'm the only Serb, these guys from the Serbian government are reaching out to me.I don't know if they're real or not.
And I see one of them on television with Milosevic, a guy by the name of Karić, Bogolyub Karić, very interesting man.Long and short of it is, I asked for a meeting with him, I want to play a role, I got to do something.
And he says, why don't you try to get those soldiers out?But you can't do it by yourself, because I speak the language.That's my first language, my father.My mother was American born. How do you get there?They won't let me.I'm a junior congressman.
I mean, they'll crush me.They won't let me go.State Department was against it.And then I saw that Reverend Jesse Jackson, Ramsey Clark, you know.Of course.Right?Reverend Jesse Jackson wanted to do what Ramsey Clark had done.
He wanted to go visit the bombing sites, but that he had made a condition that he won't do it unless he can see the three soldiers.So, I don't know Jesse Jackson at the time.Since then, he's become kind of a friend.So, I
I see the son, you know, we're young congressmen, and I see Jesse Jr., and we vote on a Tuesday.
We get done with our votes, like 11 o'clock Washington time, we're sitting in the chamber, it's empty, it's just me and him, and I said, you know, hey, Jesse, I saw that your dad wants to go to Serbia and see those soldiers.He goes, yeah.
And I said, I don't know if this is bullshit or not, but these guys from the government reproached me, because my father came from that country, and I speak the language.If I could arrange for your father to go to Serbia to see those soldiers,
You think he might do it?And he said, he sure would.Why don't you call the reverend now?And I said, what?He said, call the reverend now. And I said, you call your dad Reverend?Right?
No.And he said, you call him.I said, look, I don't know your dad.You call him.See if he's interested, then let me know.And then I'll call him.So moments later, we're at our offices.He calls me, I'm in the Cannon building, right?Fifth floor.
And he says, I just talked to the Reverend.He's in Mississippi at a voter registration drive.Call him.He's waiting for your call.So I call him.First time I ever talked to Jesse Jackson.It's like, I don't know, spring, May of 1999.And April, May.
And I said, and if you ever talk to him on the phone, he speaks very softly.He's a very powerful speaker, but privately, very softly.And I said, Reverend Jackson, this is Congressman Lukojevich.I serve with your son.I understand, he says.
I said, can I call you on a hard line?You know, you're on a cell phone.It's kind of a delicate thing I'm talking about.I don't know if this is proper.He goes, I can't right now.I'm on a voter registration job in Mississippi.Talk to me in code.
First time I thought, I gotta go, right?Okay, I said, well, I'm calling you about over there.And he says, understand.I said, I talked to a guy in the government who says it's possible for you to go over there, understand.
I said, if you're willing to do it, he's gonna talk to the big cheese today at four o'clock. Understand.I said, if the answer is yes, how soon can you go?And can you go, can you leave tomorrow?And he says, oh, I can't.
I'm here doing voter registration because it was a Tuesday.But if you make this happen, I can go on Friday and we can move on.He says to me, right?
I miss people like this.Yeah.
Yeah.And then I said, and then he says, and you pull this off, I'm taking you with me. I didn't say it, but I'm thinking to myself, of course I'm going with, okay?I'm putting this all together.Anyway, we got to go.He did it.
The government wanted Jackson, and Jackson put together this interfaith coalition of religious leaders, left-wing religious leaders from very diverse, you know, Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, Methodist ministers,
This lady named Dr. Joan Brown Campbell from the National Council of Churches.They were all part of this delegation.Jesse Jackson and me.And so we go.
I speak the language and you know they're very understandably mistrustful of America because we're bombing them. Bombs were falling while we were there.They wouldn't stop the bombing.The Clinton administration kept trying to squeeze us.
Jackson, I guess he's able to procure things.He got like a plane.He got like a commercial plane.You'll appreciate this story.World Airways.And we're supposed to leave on Saturday.
And then Friday evening, I get a phone call from his aide and he said, we gotta postpone our trip because, I said, why?
He goes, well, the CEO of World Airways called the reverend and said, they can't let us have the plane until they get war insurance on it, okay?So the next day, my wife sees me and says, I thought you were getting ready to go to Serbia.
Patty and our baby Amy was just, our first one was two years old.And I said, no, it's been delayed.That's something about war insurance.And then it clicked.Patty said, war insurance.I said, yeah, we're flying into a war zone.
They don't want us to give us a plane.And so then she quietly calls our insurance agent, neighborhood insurance agent, State Farm, says if my husband voluntarily goes into a war zone and gets killed, Do I still get his life insurance?Right?
And they checked, he got back to her and said, yeah, he's covered.And she said, okay, I love you.Good luck.Wish you luck.Right.Maybe...
Well, I don't know the real explanation that would explain why we pushed NATO to bomb Serbia, but I do know that we killed a ton of Christians.We took the... In Kosovo, the Serbs, they were ethnically cleansed in Kosovo.Oh, I'm aware.Yeah.
So the U.S., but it does seem like a lot of our interventions wind up...
killing Christians from the Bama Nagasaki, which was not a military significant place, but it was the center of Christianity in Japan, to the war in Iraq that basically ended the Christian population of Iraq, to Syria, to Gaza, to Serbia.
It seems like one thread that connects all of those is the killing of Christians by the U.S.government.
Has anyone thought of that? I haven't, but I didn't know that about Nagasaki, but that's really, it's interesting.
The bomb landed on the church.The majority of Christians in Japan lived in Nagasaki, and the majority of them were killed.
If you're asking me to speculate on why that might be the case, I don't think it's so much a desire to hurt Christians as it is, if we got to hurt anybody, we'll hurt the Christians and not the other groups, because it's politically incorrect if we hurt the other groups.
Yeah, and they won't complain because they're Christians.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.
But we did kill a ton of Christians in the Balkans.
oh there's no doubt about it and uh... it was really maddening because you know uh... these otherwise liberal democrats who were it turned out i think right on vietnam that was wrong the wrong war and how do you get out of this was the issue and i think nixon frankly did the best he could under the circumstances a war started by johnson now suddenly they were all war hawks all these liberal democrats were war hawks against serbia in nineteen ninety nine it was sickening and i had to work with these people you know
and uh... well that was just a a foretaste of the world to come wasn't it?
It really was and you know so i wrote an op-ed for the washington post at the time suggesting that they they should partition kosovo then and stop the bombing stop the killing the bombing of a sovereign country partition that country protect the orthodox monasteries the christian orthodox monasteries that are so vital to the serbian experience because kosovo
in the Serbian history is historic.It is to Serbs what Israel is to Jews.
and they had lost his battle in the fourteenth thirteenth hundreds against uh... the turks adamant or five hundred years of enslavement after that you know adamant control and the battle of kosovo is central to the serbian hitch history and culture i'm american-born and i didn't really understand it but i got a much better appreciation of it during that war and so i suggested this as the bombing was going on the american people really never understood why we were doing it clinton was losing support
and particularly with the black caucus being against it and leaders like Jackson speaking out against it.
That's why he was so vital going there and making the deal to get the soldiers back, which we successfully got those soldiers back, Jackson and I. What happened was that they had to justify this war, so they went extremely hard in trying to demonize the Serbs.
without any kind of honest analysis of the complexities of those issues over there.And it's really galling.And Wesley Clark, the general, was the one running.Oh, I'm very aware of that.And I'm told he's doing business there in Kosovo now.
If that's true, that's sickening.
He's a sickening person, a totally hollow, clever but not wise, ruthless human being.Yeah. So, last question, just to circle back to where we began, and that's the condition of your party.
I don't think it's an overstatement to say you were born in the Democratic Party, rose to the top of it.When you see Kamala Harris on the road campaigning with Dick Cheney's repulsive daughter, what do you think?
That ain't my Democratic Party.
Dick Cheney is now a Democrat?
I mean, it's incredible.It is sickening.That's another sickening thing.But the good news is, it just shows you how politic is being realigned in America today.
And those traditional Democrat working class voters, everyday ordinary people, I talked about them before, the silent majority, including a much larger number of black people than even the polls are reflecting, and Latinos.
I predict Trump, across the country, will actually win a majority of the Latino vote in this election.And the beauty about the Latino vote, they remind me so much of the immigrant background, my background. God-fearing, hard-working, family-oriented.
Most families are like that, who come here legally.And those illegally, you know, go back and come back legally.And that's what we should all follow our rules, especially when you first come here, right?Don't break into our country.
And the Democrats have opened the doors.Kamala Harris.All by design.
But when I think about how the parties have changed, those corporate country club warmongering Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney Republicans have a lot more in common with the left wing Kamala Harris wing of the Democrat Party than traditional working class daily type Democrats, John F. Kennedy Democrats, Robert Kennedy Democrats have with them.
and they're now part of this new coalition Trump's building and this new Republican party and it's very exciting.
I see all these history books that you have here and my reading of history, and I had eight years to read a lot of it, right, is we're going through a historic political realignment.These parties are very different.
This new Republican party is the party, the little guy.Truly believe that.My voters, I saw that at Madison Square Garden.Those were my voters that I saw there.They look just like my voters.
You know, good people, working people, honest people, not the elites.How'd they treat you? F and gold.
They were warm and loving.
I can't, I can't improve on that.Governor Rod Blagojevich, it's great to see you.Great to see you, Tucker.Thank you.That was amazing.Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Show.
If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made, the complete library, tuckercarlson.com.
