The Tucker Carlson Show
Matt Gaetz: Ted Cruz’s Delusional 2028 Bid, the ADL, and Identity Politics Taking Over the Right
22 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the current understanding of antisemitism?
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Especially in Florida.
Especially in Florida, exactly. So I just want to start with a clip that I saw this morning that I think is amazing and tells you a lot about a lot. This is from the Jerusalem Post Washington conference this weekend. The man speaking is a guy called Yehuda Kaplan.
I don't think I've ever heard of before, but now apparently works at the State Department in the office to fight antisemitism, which I guess is part of the State Department. And here's what he said, watch this.
I get off a plane. I am the president's representative and I am walking off with a yarmulke and I have kosher food and embassies will have kosher food. It is a game changer. The appointment is a game changer and it's not about history. It's about education and how do we educate. Indonesia has 350 million Muslims living in the country. How do we change their textbooks?
How do we hold the people in Gaza accountable that if America is paying for UN textbooks and supposedly the changes are made, why are those textbooks not being used and why are they using their old textbooks? We have to teach people it's not okay to educate your kids to be a martyr. Okay, and we have to hold those countries accountable. How do we battle antisemitism on the internet?
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Chapter 2: How does the U.S. government address antisemitism?
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Chapter 3: What is the impact of identity politics on discourse?
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So I think what you're saying, so I'm, I was, well, I want to get to the thing that really bothered me about the statement from Yehuda Kaplan, whoever, who apparently now runs the State Department, he just told us, I did not vote for this, just to be clear, period. Any of what I just saw, yeah, that guy. But you're saying maybe I should calm down a little bit because, like, who cares?
History's passing this whole conversation by.
I'm not saying who cares because that was a disgusting display of, I think, parochial interest that you just saw. Yes, that's correct. But we see that often, so I don't get too worked up about it. The bigger issue is that
Rabbi Yehuda would probably classify you and I as anti-Semitic because we've been critical of some of the policy choices of the Israeli government and that broad application of anti-Semitism, to say anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, to say that even some things in the Bible may be deemed anti-Semitic if they're critical of Jews at any point.
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Chapter 4: How is censorship perceived in the context of free speech?
I think that what the Netanyahu government is doing to Israel is bad for Israel, much in the way the United States created more terrorists than we killed during the wars in the Middle East that have consumed most of my life. I think that is the chapter of the book they're in right now. This expansionism and the adventurism. And it ends badly. It ended badly for us.
Remember, Syria is in the news now because tragically we've lost Americans in uniform in Syria and a translator there as well. And reasonable people are asking, why are we still in Syria? What are we doing?
So we can't lose troops. That's why.
That is so sick.
Well, I believe that's true.
You believe that those people are there so that they can die and trigger a war. That is correct.
And a deeper commitment and an emotional commitment. You've lost people here. I do think that.
When we lost someone in Mogadishu, did that create a deeper emotional... connection to Somalia? Or did that cause Americans to say, what are we doing patrolling around Mogadishu?
Well, it allowed the State Department and the rest of the federal government and its constellation of NGOs to import tens of thousands of Somalis into the United States because all of a sudden... Well, that had been happening under Clinton, you know, for some time. Yeah. Well, that... Right. But that, I believe, Blackhawk Down was at the... During the Clinton administration. Yeah. Right. So...
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Chapter 5: What were the circumstances around Matt Gaetz's potential appointment as Attorney General?
So I was there to be a trusted friend, and Charlie Kirk and Stephen Miller and I had talked to a number of people who wanted to be attorney general, and we were presenting some of those ideas to the president.
I was advocating for a different person to be the attorney general on a plane ride with the president, and he just sort of, as he has a tendency to do, said that that wasn't who he wanted, and he wanted me to do the job.
And you had no idea this was coming?
No, none.
And it was... So you're telling Trump, actually, I think you should pick so-and-so.
Right, right. And I did tell him if he wanted me to do it, I would do my best job. I would work hard to be confirmed. And that I thought I could lead the department out of some of its darkest days and towards something better. I think Pam Bondi has done a very good job. I know she has her critics. By the way, I would have too.
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Chapter 6: How did internal party dynamics impact Gaetz's confirmation process?
Like if I'd have been the attorney general, there probably would be a whole... ecosystem saying I wasn't doing enough, but I actually think Pambani's done a good job and I'm here to be her supporter and advocate.
Clearly you are here to be her supporter and advocate. I disagree, but whatever. Let's get into that. Wait, but hold on. I'm not here to attack Pambani who I know well and I've always liked Pambani. But, you know, you were willing as a sitting member of the Congress in the House to like go after your own party when you thought that they were wrong.
And I think Trump also believed that someone who had been unfairly accused of something and who had endured the grind of that. Would care about justice. Yes. Yeah, would be really interested in fixing it.
I mean, I think that's why President Trump asked me to do the job is because he saw that I could empathize with those who had been treated unfairly and that I would approach the position with a true sense of justice. I love that.
No, I share that view. And I do think the only quality that matters in a leader is strength. Not so we can oppress people. Weak people oppress others.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did Gaetz face in gaining Senate support?
Strong people have no need to oppress others or rule over others. They can serve others because they're not compensating for the void within them. And I think you would have been the best person I can think of because you've been through it. You didn't collapse. You married a great girl right in the middle of it. You got reelected.
Like, your life shows that you were not destroyed by what happened to you. So you are strong by definition. That's what we need. And all of America's problems are downstream from weak men, obviously. That's why the women are crazy, because the men are weak. So, like, let's find a strong one to lead a critical agency. That's my, like, primitive view of it, but I think I'm right. What happened?
Why did you not get that gig?
There were a lot of great people I interacted with in the Senate, but at the end of the day, there was a core block of about half a dozen of them who'd said they would never vote for me. And I could have endeavored to grind that down, maybe win one or two of them possibly over an extended period of time. But
You saw the way courts started enjoining the actions of this administration right off the bat. Pam Bondi did defeat nationwide injunctions as a ruling legal theory. And had we not had her and her team lined up to do that, I actually think that we'd be in a very different position today with the deportation agenda. Yeah, how can... But I mean, look, you know how a lot of my conversations went?
I'd be like, yes, Senator, so-and-so, this is Matt Gaetz. I'm calling about my confirmation for attorney. What was tweeted about you? Now, that was a staffer years ago, and they were fired immediately. Oh, they were that petty. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, several would bring things I tweeted about them to the meetings.
Is that really so the point of your attorney general is not to say mean things about an individual senator? Like what? Talk about making it about you.
Well, yeah. Who cares? And then I had one senator from Oklahoma really grill me about my vote against the anti-Semitism bill. So how can I vote for someone who voted against the anti-Semitism bill? And I'm thinking, like, is this some driving issue in Oklahoma that I'm unaware of? Just mentioning it.
Yeah, Langford is such a weak man. It's sad. And is a tool for evil, in my opinion. So sorry, that's what I think. Despite having good qualities. So who are the senators who are against you? Do you care to name any of them?
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Chapter 8: How do societal changes affect the perception of marriage and family?
Yeah, I didn't think that me doing some multi-week, multi-month fight to try to grind down the last of Mitch McConnell was somehow going to help the administration in the end.
Can I ask, do you think, just since you know the system so well because you served within it most of your life, do you think there's anything you could have traded in exchange for their support?
I don't know. I don't know. I oftentimes couldn't get a meeting with people like Senator Murkowski and Senator Collins. They were not interested in even having a discussion with me. So it would have been hard to execute a trade.
I mean, I think part of the problem is you're not the kind of guy who makes those trades, and that's why they opposed you in the first place.
Well, and I think also there's something unsettling about my unpredictability. People who read the script are easy to predict and manage.
So you wind up with a government and business. You wind up with a whole society run by weak people.
Not at the top. Trump's pretty strong.
And I think Vance is strong. And I think Susie Wiles is strong. There's no doubt about what you just said. But no, I mean, beneath the very, you know, you're talking about the pinnacle of the pyramid. I mean, like all the way down. They're just, everyone's so weak. And that's where evil thrives is in weakness.
Weakness and risk aversion. And risk aversion is fundamentally anti-American. We are a nation of risk takers at our best moments. That's who we are. But in government, it's often, you know, how do I avoid any attention or ire? I do think that the riskiest thing we've seen is what Obama got everybody together to do on December 9th of 2016 when he ordered the Russia hoax.
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