This Was Worse Than the War in Iran…

0:00 So, it wasn't until President Trump threatened Iran's

0:03 civilian infrastructure uh with a profane truth social

0:06 post this past Easter Sunday um that you

0:10 actually started quite explicitly speaking out against him.

0:13 Yeah.

0:13 You can't attack Jesus.

0:14 How's that?

0:15 Well, in a monologue on your show, you said,

0:17 "How dare you speak that way on Easter morning

0:18 to the country?" Tell me what you were responding to right

0:22 then because it really is I think a seinal moment

0:25 for you in terms of publicly breaking with the president.

0:31 So uh I will say what I don't do monologues those that's adlib.

0:35 So that's just I didn't write it.

0:36 I don't have notes.

0:37 It's just like that's how I feel.

0:38 So it's probably not as coherent as it should be.

0:41 Uh, but that was really just an an emotional

0:45 reaction to the experience of waking up on Easter Sunday,

0:49 the holiest day on the Christian calendar in a day of joy and hope,

0:53 literally the resurrection of Jesus,

0:56 and seeing Donald Trump using profanity, threatening to murder civilians.

1:02 I mean, that's a crime.

1:03 That's a moral crime.

1:04 So, uh, to brag about that and then to mock Islam,

1:09 I don't think you should mock people's faith.

1:11 I don't care if it's Judaism or Christianity or Islam,

1:14 but it's especially gling as a Christian who I voted for Trump

1:21 in 2024 and one of the main and I never vote typically,

1:25 but I voted for him this last election and campaign for him in a bunch

1:28 of cities with him because I felt that there

1:31 was clear persecution of Christians in this country,

1:36 people of faith, and it was it was demonstrable.

1:39 Um, and I felt that Trump, and I based this on his explicit promises,

1:43 would be a protector of I didn't never

1:45 thought Trump was a Christian for a moment,

1:48 but I thought that Trump, I took him at his word, would be a defender of faith,

1:53 people of faith who need to be defended, and this country exists to defend them.

1:58 It's in our charter.

2:00 So, um, anyway, I was just completely outraged by that.

2:03 Since that moment, you've gone even further.

2:05 You recently said on your show that you'll be tormented for a long time

2:09 by the fact that you played a role in getting Donald Trump elected and you said,

2:13 "I'm sorry for misleading people." That's gotten

2:15 a lot of attention as I'm sure you know.

2:17 Um

2:17 I don't know because I don't Google myself ever, but

2:23 um I I would like to understand exactly what you mean.

2:26 Um can you explain?

2:28 I'll tell you what I mean.

2:29 I truly believe that the baseline requirement,

2:32 the ticket of admission to the conversation is admitting when you are wrong.

2:37 And I spent 10 years defending Trump on Fox News.

2:41 I'd probably do it again because on the issues I agree with him.

2:44 I never said a sing I never defended a single thing I didn't believe.

2:48 But at this point, the consequences of this decision are so bad for the United

2:54 States and for my my family and your family that like you have to say,

2:59 you just have to say it out loud.

3:01 Like I'm a small reason.

3:03 I don't think I'm I don't think I moved a lot of votes, but I tried to.

3:08 I told people this guy will keep us out of the next Iraq.

3:14 Specifically, will keep us out of a regime change war with Iran.

3:17 And here we are in the middle of a regime

3:19 change war in Iran where hundreds of Americans have been wounded.

3:23 Some number have been killed.

3:24 They won't tell us.

3:26 And that's just the opposite of what I said would happen.

3:29 So I'm sorry.

3:32 So I hear you say that, but I am compelled to question it a little bit

3:37 because are you simply just going public about

3:41 something that you felt privately for some time?

3:44 Because in 2021 through the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News,

3:47 some of your texts went public, right?

3:49 And I'm just quoting from a couple of them.

3:50 You know, you said there really isn't an upside to Trump.

3:53 You said, "I hate him passionately."

3:55 I mean, clearly you had some feelings of reservation about the president

4:00 without question

4:01 before this time.

4:02 There's no doubt.

4:04 So I'm just trying to understand the

4:06 you know I have a lot of thoughts and theories about

4:08 things which you know may or may not be rooted in reality.

4:13 Um so I hesitate even to spring any

4:16 of my theories on you because like they're probably insane.

4:19 But one thing that has bothered me for many years is the fact

4:25 that a lot of people in Trump's immediate orbit have been hurt and really hurt.

4:31 you know, gone to prison, become unemployable, publicly shamed, gotten cancer,

4:36 and I just am a believer in like big picture assessments of things,

4:41 and you know, so you're trying to think like, is Trump good or bad?

4:44 Like, he's saying things I really agree

4:45 with, but then people around him are getting hurt.

4:50 Is the country actually getting better?

4:52 I don't know.

4:52 It's hard to know because to some extent,

4:54 you're like your vision is obscured by the intensity of some of these debates.

5:00 Mine was has been is easily obscured by that intensity.

5:03 But did I have reservations about Trump?

5:05 Of course.

5:07 And you know to some extent I sublimated them or rationalized

5:11 them away or focused on areas where I agreed with him.

5:15 All my fault.

5:17 Um but I told myself and I to some

5:19 extent still believe like it's the big decisions that matter.

5:22 And I knew because I know the Democratic leadership really well,

5:25 that they're completely under the control of the same forces and that we

5:30 would get a regime change war inevitably in Iran if they were elected.

5:36 And so I told myself Trump is the way to avoid the really bad thing.

5:43 come back to um this moment for you um which

5:47 is there's the political case against Trump um that you make

5:52 um but I do want to ask you about the moral

5:53 case that you've been making as well um and that's a word

5:56 that you've used you know in that monologue responding to Trump's

6:00 Easter post you said that Trump's comments were evil and I just

6:04 want to understand that a little bit better do you think

6:06 only his comments are evil or does the evil extend to Trump

6:11 himself is he evil I just want to be really clear

6:15 that there's a lot of evil in me and in every person.

6:19 So, I just don't want to and I've certainly experienced it

6:22 in myself and I've seen it in many in all people.

6:25 You know, we're all capable of of evil.

6:27 So, I I just I want to pull back

6:30 on the judgment and be very precise about what I was saying,

6:33 which is you cannot mock other people's gods and put yourself in their place.

6:39 Period.

6:40 That is a deal killer for me.

6:41 That's worse than the war with Iran in my opinion.

6:43 One more question about the president.

6:45 Your comments um have clearly gotten under his skin.

6:48 I mean, he's posted long screeds on Truth Social about you

6:53 and you know to refer again to those texts

6:55 that came out um in the Fox News Dominion Legal Fight.

6:58 There was one from you saying that Trump

7:00 is good at destroying things and you wrote

7:03 he's the undisputed world champion of that.

7:05 He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.

7:08 I mean, do you worry about him destroying you now?

7:10 He's got a lot of power.

7:12 I don't worry about him destroying me.

7:14 I mean, I'm turn 57 next month and my kids are grown.

7:18 I mean, there's not really What can you do to me?

7:21 I don't work for anybody.

7:22 And I'm not that worried about my own life anyway.

7:25 But he does have the capacity to destroy.

7:27 And I do think that it's a binary.

7:28 You're either creating or destroying in this life.

7:32 And I think he has proved through the course

7:35 of his life better at destroying than at creating.

7:38 I mean, he's created some, but I, you know,

7:41 I have a strong preference for creation over destruction.

7:43 And um, you know, he he's look,

7:46 one of the reasons that I appreciated Trump from day one,

7:49 in addition to always enjoying his company and finding him hilarious,

7:52 is because he was very good at assailing the foundations of rotten structures.

7:58 And I knew that they were rotten cuz I

8:00 am from Washington and I knew those institutions well.

8:04 And I knew that despite, you know, how they described themselves,

8:08 they were basically just fatuous and long outdated and probably

8:11 deserve to be taken down like a house with rotten sills.

8:15 And Trump was great at exposing that and and taking them down.

8:18 You know, USAD, I as someone from DC,

8:21 I knew a lot about USA ID and I thought I thought, why are we doing this?

8:24 You know, this is counterproductive to American interests and Trump just

8:27 went in there and took it out and and I like that.

8:31 But that is the first step.

8:33 Of course, that can't be the end stage.

8:35 The first step is you you scrape the old property,

8:38 then you build something new and better and beautiful,

8:40 and we haven't gotten to that part of the program,

8:43 and it's not even really being promised at this point, which is troubling.

8:48 Do you see a path towards supporting him again?

8:50 I mean, if he suddenly took actions that you agreed with, um,

8:57 do you see yourself coming back into the fold?

9:01 I'd support anybody who made life in the United States better.

9:06 Of course, it's not it's absolutely not personal.

9:08 And that's part of what I hope to convey by always adding the caveat,

9:12 but I like Trump cuz it's not personal.

9:15 Um, so I would always support any,

9:17 and I mean literally anybody, no matter how unlikely the person,

9:20 no matter how much I disagreed with his previous

9:25 policies or reviled him as a man or whatever, it almost doesn't matter.

9:27 If someone's doing a good thing, I want to be honest enough to say,

9:32 "God bless you for doing that, and I support that thing." So,

9:35 it's it's really about what a person is doing.

9:38 It's it's about the fruit rather than the perception.

9:41 You you make this country better.

9:43 I don't care who you are,

9:44 I will cheer you on cuz I live here and I want the country to get better.

9:49 It's not getting better.

9:50 Now, it's very hard for me to imagine any scenario

9:54 in which we look back on the last 2 months,

9:57 this war with Iran, and say that really made us more prosperous,

10:01 safer, happier, united our country.

10:04 It's just I just can't imagine that.

10:06 But then, you know, a lot of things I haven't been able to imagine.

10:08 So if that happens, I will be the very first person to say,

10:11 "Well, I was completely wrong about that, and I'm sorry."

10:14 And I'm grateful that I was wrong,

10:16 and I and I will really mean it because I I'm not,

10:20 again, I I don't have any partisan agenda at all.

10:23 The Republican party could not be more repulsive to me.

10:26 The Democratic Party, same thing.

10:28 So I I just am in this weird non-aligned place, and it's it's totally sincere.

10:33 Like I think the parties and I'm saying this on the basis

10:35 of a lot of knowledge are rotten beyond repair or at least simple repairs.

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