 All right, sad news out of Russia today. There's always sad news out of Russia. I think that's the essential characteristic of Russia is sadness. But Alexei Navalny, a longtime opponent of Vladimir Putin, a longtime opposition leader, a longtime anti-corruption activist, has died. No cause of death was provided. And he was seen healthy yesterday on video at one of the hearings related to his trial. And his mother talked to him on Monday. She seemed completely healthy. Anyway, he's dead as of this morning. And Navalny, of course, has been fighting against the Russian machine, if you will, a political machine since at least 2011. He had his own YouTube channel, his Twitter account. And in a 2011 radio interview, he described Russia's ruling party as a party of cooks and thieves. I think pretty much captures it, pretty much captures it. And he published investigative journalism around this that accused high-ranking senior officials in the Russian government of corruption. Over the years, Navalny was arrested many times. And he ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013. He tried to run for president of Russia in 2018, but the Central Electoral Commission ruled him ineligible. In 2020, he made headlines in the West because he was poisoned. It was on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He became poisoned with a nerve agent. He was immediately shallowed off to Berlin, where he received medical treatment. And where the idea that he was poisoned was confirmed by German doctors. He made a recovery, recovered fully from the poisoning and decided, kind of crazily, to actually return to Russia and continue his fight against Putin. Even after knowing Putin wanted him dead. There was no doubt, by the way, on who poisoned him. It was Putin and the Russian officials. He was arrested when he landed in Moscow. Russian prosecutors opened a criminal, obviously, he's been accused of violating terms of suspended jail sentence, something like that, and working against the state. He's been within the Russian judicial system since 2020. He was sent to a, what do you call it, colony, a prisoner colony. I didn't even know they had such things. Above the Arctic Circle in Siberia, very reminiscent of Stalin, where he passed away. He's been on and off sick. And many people thought he was going to die a while back. But he died this morning at the prison. I don't know much about the politics of Navalny other than he opposed Putin. And other than that, obviously Putin, at least, thought he was unbelievably dangerous and needed to be silenced. Just from that, I conclude Navalny was a hero, a hero of more freedom in Russia. A hero of getting rid of the brutal, you know, homicidal regime of Vladimir Putin. And Navalny, of course, suffered the consequence of that homicidal regime. This is, of course, the same Putin that Taka gave a platform for. This is the same Putin that in many ways, or the same Russia that Taka praises. By the way, there's a video circulating. Not only did Taka go to the train station to the underground station, he went to grocery shopping. We talked about that yesterday. But he also went to a fast food place in Moscow and was raving about the non-GMO food. You can find that video online. This is the Taka who now loves all things Russian. Anyway, on the way home, I guess it was home, but on the way leaving Moscow, Taka stopped in another bastion of liberty and a bastion of freedom, another city that is super clean, very, very clean. And where there is no crime, almost zero crime, maybe safer even than Tokyo. And that is Dubai. In Dubai, he sat down at the World Government Summit. I don't know what that is, but it's a World Government Summit. And he was interviewed by a local, I don't even know who's interviewing. I have no idea. He has an Arabic accent, so he's local. But more than that, I do not know. And in that interview, Taka Carlson was asked about Navalny and why he didn't ask Putin about him. And I think this is a video worth watching. I think we should, you shouldn't believe what I say Taka said. You shouldn't listen to it himself. I'll play it with the question and the answer. And we can discuss it after that. But this is the link between Navalny and Taka beyond the fact that one was fighting to free Russia and one was fighting to bring Putin, I think is still fighting to bring Putin's ideology to the United States. Here is the video. This is the World Government Summit. This is about a few days after the interview with Putin and I will play it. I assume the sound should be fine. The devil's advocate. Advocate away. Yes, okay. I'll tell you. You should challenge in the rules of an interview and you're a master in your business. It's not for me to give you a lecture about that. But you should challenge some ideas. For instance, you didn't talk about freedom of speech in Russia. You did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about restrictions on opposition in the coming elections. I didn't talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about. Because those are covered and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries. Now, notice he says those are covered. But everything he asked Putin has been covered. I mean, everything Putin said had been covered. And indeed, I thought the whole point of the interview with Putin was discover what Putin thought about this, not what is covered by American mainstream media that we all know. But the whole point of the question is, the whole point of questioning Putin is discover what does Putin think about free speech? Wouldn't that be interesting rather than bring that out? So, Takkehiu is being duplicitous. He's being hypocrite. He's lying. But why doesn't he just say? You know, to say I didn't cover it because the mainstream media covers it. The mainstream media is not interviewing Putin. He had this unique opportunity to interview Putin and find out what Putin actually thinks about a free speech. He didn't ask it. Now, we get to the actual reason why he didn't ask it. So, back to Tucker Carlson. I have spent my life talking to people who run countries in various countries and have concluded the following, that every leader kills people. Every leader kills people. Every leader kills people. They're all the same. Model equivalency. Some might kill more. We'll say that in a minute. Some might kill us, but they all kill people. There's no difference. Putin, Biden, Trump for that matter. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Every leader kills people. This reminds me of an interview, almost verbatim, of an interview Donald Trump did in 2016, relatively early in the presidential campaign, where he was asked about Putin. He was asked about Putin assassinating his rivals. And Trump said, you know, we assassinate people too. What's the big deal? This is who you want to hand the country to. These are the people who should govern. These are the people who should set the course for the country. God help us. Including my leader. Every leader kills people. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people. Sorry. Leadership requires killing people. It doesn't just, it isn't just, you know, leaders are corrupt, but leadership requires killing people. That's a pretty strong statement and tells you a lot about kind of the political, the political thinking that somebody like talking, we're not talking about here. I mean, he'll say, oh war and stuff like that. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, first of all, we're talking the context of killing your political opponents. We're talking about killing your political opponents. And he will say, well, everybody goes to war, leaders kill people. I don't know. I'll leave that for a minute. That's why I wouldn't want to be a leader. That press restriction is universal in the United States. I know because I've lived it. I've asked my former, you know, I've had a lot of jobs. So censorship in Russia? Censorship in the United States? Same thing. I know Biden is very critical of Biden. He's done a lot of shows criticizing Biden for years now. Is he being sent to Northern Alaska, to ice fish and to a labor camp? I don't know. If you guys are furious right now, if you guys are mad, if you guys are not ready to dump Tucker and anybody associated with him, then all I can say is it's hopeless. It's hopeless. If this doesn't make you steaming mad, because Tucker is not a trivial journalist. Tucker is the journalist of the right. Tucker is, his interview was what, 500 million times or something. And I've done this for 34 years and I know how it works. And there's more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit more censorship in Russia than there's in the United States. There's a great deal in the United States. And so at a certain point, it's like people can decide. There's almost no censorship in the United States. It's complete BS. Whether they think, you know, what countries they think are better, what systems they think are better. I just want to know what he thinks. That was the whole point. Yeah. Yeah, then why didn't you ask him? But that's the point. He didn't ask him what he thought. He didn't ask him about free speech, what he thought of free speech. Whoops, what am I doing there? I shouldn't be there. I should be there. All right. I don't know. I, my frustration is not so much at Tucker. It's at his audience. It's at the, I mean, Tucker's doing what Tucker needs to do to maintain his audience. I think Tucker at the end of the day, this is Tucker. I think Tucker went from being a kind of pro-American, almost libertarian, pro-free market idealist to, I think, coming to the conclusion that that was hopeless and becoming, he's become a completely committed cynic, a complete and committed statist. I think he's gone through that evolution. So I don't think he believes in anything right now. I think he's playing a horrible, cynical, disgusting game. I think, I can't think of anything more despicable, anybody more despicable and disgusting that I've just, that I've encountered on, you know, on the media, in the media over the last, what is it now? Few years, and I've been telling you this over and over again, than Tucker Carlson. And I hope that his performance over the last week or so, you know, shows that and maybe other people start seeing what I saw years ago and what, anyway, I don't know. I am super frustrated, super frustrated. All right. A neat comparison here, some you might think between Tucker Carlson doing what he's doing in Moscow and Walter Durante. Walter Durante, for those of you who don't know, is the New York Times bureau chief in Moscow in the early 1930s. He won a Pulitzer Prize for 13 articles. He wrote in 1931 analyzing Joseph Stalin's regime. He is known for having basically lied about what was going on in Ukraine, the mass starvation in Ukraine. What was that movie? God, I forgot my another movie, but a wonderful movie. Well, wonderful, scary, but wonderful, really good movie about, God, somebody remind me, about the famine in Ukraine, Mr. Jones. Thank you, Emmett. Mr. Jones, Durante plays a role then. He's shown to be the creep that he was. Durante was a communist spy, and he worked for the New York Times, and he wrote articles basically subtly praising Stalin. Durante, to a large extent, was responsible for FDR re-engaging with the Soviet Union, establishing re-establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. I think Tucker Carlson is the Durante of today. He's not a spy. I don't think Putin's paying him. The sad thing is, just like Durante found an incredibly receptive audience in the United States. In the 1930s, certainly the intellectual class in the United States were, the intellectual class in the United States were communists. I think the same today is with Tucker. Tucker finds a mass, large number of fascists in the United States. They don't call themselves fascists. They don't think of themselves as fascists, but they are fascists in the United States, who love him and adore him as freedom in the United States declines. And as the contest between the authoritarians of the left and the authoritarians of the right and who gets to dominate the scraps of what's left of America, Tucker is the Walter Durante of the right. He is their spokesman. He is their guy giving us a beautiful reports from Russia. And anybody who loves Tucker, and here I'm talking about Ken, and I'm talking about Richard and others on this chat, not only can you go to hell, but you guys are at the forefront of destroying this country. At the forefront of destroying this country. You are part of the destruction of this country. You are part of the end of this country. You should be ashamed of yourselves. And it saddens me to see you on my chat. One last thing, maybe a little humor with the God of Tucker at the end, because I am kind of angry. This is from your district judge, Mary Kay V. Scottsill. She was a judge in the Southern District of New York. And she was the judge responsible for the defamation lawsuit against Tucker Carlson. And this is basically what she ruled. She ruled that the genia tenure of the show should then inform a viewer that Carlson is not stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary. This is by the way the position the Fox lawyers argued for, and Tucker Carlson's lawyers argued for, that he is an entertainer. She wrote, quote, Fox persuasively argued that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism about the statement he makes. By the way, she was an appointee of Trump. She's a Trump appointee, not some leftist. Whether the court frames Mr. Carlson's statement and exaggeration, non-literal commentary, or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same. The statements are not actionable. Anyway, can't sue him because he's not really, nobody takes him seriously. Nobody should take him seriously, put it that way. The comments I'm making about Tucker, based on everything I've said about Tucker over the last few years, but certainly over the last three days, the analysis of his interview with Putin, which was a joke, and then all this commentary on Moscow where he fawns over Moscow, and of course the video I just showed you, where he basically morally equivocates between the Russian regime and the American regime and the Western regimes and advocates that leadership means killing people. It's a big deal if Putin is killing people.