Tucker Carlson Ep. 24 - Javier Milei

We're in downtown Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. This was once, about 100 years ago, one of the richest cities in the world. And you could tell as you walk around the faded grandeur of a once great city. But this is now a desperate country. Its economy is in shambles, has been for a long time. Argentina famously defaulted on its debt more than 20 years ago. But now hyperinflation has made this country genuinely desperate. You see, when you have dinner here in restaurants and people pull out bricks of local currency, the peso, to pay, it feels like Weimar or Zimbabwe, but it's not. This is a developed country that's moving backwards at high speed. And because of the frustration that has built up among the population, particularly among poor people, a man called Javier Mille is poised to become its next president. He's a former soccer star, a goalie, a performer in a Rolling Stones cover band, and a libertarian economist. He's not a libertarian in the traditional American sense. He wouldn't fit into the Cato Institute, which has attacked him for liking Donald Trump too much. He's a libertarian in the traditional sense. He believes people should have the maximum amount of freedom they can be given, which is a lot, much more than they now get in Argentina. He has moved from basically nowhere in the last several years to become maybe the most famous person in this country. The election is next month in October. And once again, it seems like he's likely to win. The reception he's gotten from the press in the West, particularly in the United States, the New York Times, the Washington Post, also the Financial Times, has been hostile, to put it mildly. They describe him as a far-right figure, like he's a Nazi. Is he? We sat down with him at great length just a moment ago, here right across from the president's mansion, the pink house that he hopes to soon occupy, to find out what he's like. He didn't seem very radical. Continuing what they're now doing in Argentina seems radical. In fact, insane. But judge for yourself. Here he is. Thanks so much for joining us, or for letting us come and interview you here in Buenos Aires. So why do you think, from your perspective, you've become a man with no political background, so popular so quickly in this country? Well, I have my personal background, which has to do with the fact that I've been a football player, at the same time I've been a rock and roll singer, and I'm also an economist. And I think that combination is an attractive combination in terms of television product. But on the other hand, what is also important is the issue of ideas. And Argentina is basically a country that has been embracing socialist ideas for 100 years. And so the natural rebellion of the system was to be liberal. And that's why the natural rebellion always appears in young people. And young people found someone who spoke to them about liberalism, who rebelled against the status quo. I don't understand how people with power in Argentina could support the status quo, given that your inflation rate is up there with Lebanon and Zimbabwe and other countries that aren't real countries. But your country is beautiful, abundant natural resources, intelligent, well-educated population. And yet its economy is in shambles. So clearly the system isn't working. How could anyone support that? The problem is that Argentina started embracing socialist ideas more than 100 years ago. And the analogy or metaphor of the toad in the water is always good. And then you start heating the water and the toad doesn't notice. But there comes a time when it's too late to notice and it ends up dead. Argentina started embracing socialist ideas with a phrase that looks very attractive, but is terrifying in terms of how the economic system works. It's the idea that where there is a need, there is a right. And that's a problem because the needs are infinite and someone has to pay for the rights. And the problem is that the resources are finite. So in the face of the situation of infinite needs and finite resources, a conflict arises. Liberals easily resolve that conflict, which is with freedom of prices and private property. And that's what generates the coordination mechanism to resolve this tension in society. However, the idea of the invisible hand, socialists don't like it. And they prefer the grip of the state and basically hide it behind the idea of social justice, where social justice is deeply unfair because it implies an unequal treatment of the law, preceded by a robbery. I didn't fully appreciate the degree to which the Argentinian government had embraced fringe, academic, American-style social justice. A businessman told me at lunch today that people identify as transgender, pay lower taxes. In 2019, you had a Ministry of Women and Diversity created in this country for the first time. What does that ministry do? Well, supposedly it is dedicated to dealing with issues related to women. However, when you look at the results, they have not achieved any result. That is, making songs... Are women happier here? No. No, because in reality there are no results. That is, painting a red square bench or making a song, that does not change the conditions or the problems that women may be suffering from. In fact, probably one of the greatest achievements of liberalism is equality before the law. And this type of ministries... I mean, the question is, then why is there no Ministry of Men? Not only that, but also, let's say, if we have equality before the law, what we need is for the law to be fulfilled, not for there to be a Ministry of Women. In fact, they start from premises that are absolutely false. For example, they say, no, the glass ceiling for women, and that women earn less than men. And at the same time they claim that businessmen are cursed pigs, that the only thing they care about is making money. So, if businessmen are cursed pigs, that the only thing they care about is making money, the question is, why, if I enter an office, it is not full of women? It should be full of women. And yet, when one looks at it, the distribution is quite even and in line with the population. Therefore, what one sees is that, when one leaves the average values, and that has to do with the decisions, in aggregate, of men and women, regarding which professions to choose, one sees that when one makes the correction for the type of profession, type of work, and so on, the remunerations are arbitrated. And the reality is that all these regulations and restrictions that promote this type of body, such as the Ministry of Women, the only thing they do is create a positive discrimination, an affirmative action, which is discrimination, which I also find absolutely offensive to women, because it implies treating them as inferior beings, which I find truly abhorrent, but it also generates opposite behaviors to women, which end up harming women. The same thing always happens. Any state action generates a greater damage than what it wants to correct. For example, in Argentina they wanted to correct the problem with the renters. They put a rent law, now we are much worse. They want to correct the problems of hunger, there is more hunger. They want to correct the problem of poverty, there is more poverty. They want to correct the lack of employment, there is less employment. Well, every time the state intervenes, as it is a violent action that ends up harming the right to property and freedom, the final result is much worse than what we originally had, and the Ministry of Women was evident that the only thing it was going to cause was harm to women, except for those who benefit from being public employees. You oppose abortion. Why? Well, because as a liberal, I mean, liberal libertarian, of course, because in English, liberal is different, so I'm going to say it as a libertarian, we believe that liberalism is the unrestricted respect of the project of life of others, based on the principle of non-aggression and in defense of the right to life, freedom, and property. Therefore, adhering to the ideas of freedom, basically, one of the fundamental ideas is to defend the right to life. In other words, philosophically, I am in favor of respecting the right to life. Then there is a justification from the point of view of science, of natural sciences, let's say, which is the fact that life begins at the time of fertilization, and at that very moment a new being is generated, in evolution, with a different DNA. That is to say, it is true that the woman has rights over her body, but that child inside the womb is not her body. That is to say, the child is not her body. Therefore, abortion is a murder aggravated by the bond and by the differential of forces, since it has no way of defending itself. And not only that, but there is also a matter of mathematical nature. Life is a continuum with two discrete jumps, which are birth and death. And any interruption in the middle is a murder. So, I would think you're a Catholic, you said, you're just defending, really, the Catholic life principle. The Pope, the current Pope, is from Argentina. I would think he would support you. He has instead criticized you, and you've called him a communist. Why the disconnect? Well, first of all, because the Pope plays politically. That is, he is a Pope who has a strong political ingerence. He has also shown a great affinity with dictators like Castro or like Maduro. That is, he is on the side of bloody dictatorships. Wait, I'm sorry, Raul Castro is a murderer. Yes, and Fidel Castro was also another murderer. But the Pope, you believe the Pope has an affinity for Raul Castro? Yes, exactly. Yes, he has an affinity for murderous communists. In fact, he does not condemn them. That is, he is quite condescending with them. And he is also condescending with the Venezuelan dictatorship. That is, he is condescending with all the leftists, even when they are true criminals, which is a problem. But he is also someone who considers social justice to be a central element of his vision. And that is very complicated, because social justice, which is to steal the fruit of one person's labor and give it to another. So it implies two things. One is a robbery. And the problem is that the robbery is against what the ten commandments point out. That is, to endorse social justice is to endorse robbery. Therefore, it is a problem that is violating the ten commandments. The other problem is that it is an unequal treatment of the law. And I don't think it's fair, let's say, that some are rewarded and others are punished from a position of power like the one that the state has, which has the monopoly of violence. That is a first characterization of Argentina. As for what the autonomous city of Buenos Aires has to do with, when one looks at the architecture, the architecture of liberal Argentina is that architecture that generates so much fascination and that is dazzling, because it is the architecture of glorious Argentina, of liberal Argentina. The best example of this is the Teatro Colón. It is one of the best lyrical theaters in the world because it is the reflection of that powerful, liberal Argentina admired by everyone. And then all the buildings, already more square, have the best effect. It is what was once called the Ministry of Labor or the Ministry of Social Action. It is the one that is on the 9th of July, a truly ugly building, with Soviet characteristics directly. In fact, at one point there was a statue, now they took it out, but there was a statue that was in this shape, with the hand like this, basically to reflect a coima, which was one of the things that the building did in repudiation of the amount of coimas that were asked for while the building was being built. That is architecture, and it is getting more and more boring, it is getting uglier, and only the parts that progress are those that have businesses linked to politicians. For example, Puerto Madero. Square and plain and ugly. Why does the left love concrete so much? Your old buildings are built out of stone and plaster, but the newer socialist buildings are all concrete. What is that? Because it has to do with the values of the left. The underlying values in the ideas of the left are envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment of the law, and violence. So all that socialist altruism ends up generating a contamination of incentives that generate poverty. So, of course, when one is poor, the building that can face poverty is clearly owned by someone poor. Because this is interesting, socialism is always and everywhere a violent, murderous, and impoverishing phenomenon. That is the characteristic of socialism. What advice would you give to Americans having lived it? That they never embrace the ideas of socialism. That they never let themselves be seduced by the singing of the sirens of social justice. That they do not let themselves be trapped by that nefarious phrase that where there is an old man, there is a right. But that is not done alone. For that, you have to be prepared and you have to fight the cultural battle day by day. And you have to be careful because they have no problem getting into the state and applying Gramsci's techniques, seducing artists, seducing culture, seducing the media, or getting into the contents of education. You have to be very careful. You have to cut their funding and make them compete at the same time. And at the same time, you have to make the entrepreneurs aware that it is necessary. Milton Friedman said that the social function of the entrepreneur was to make money. Well, that alone is not enough. Part of the investment has to be invested in the defenders of the ideas of freedom so that the socialists cannot advance. Because if they don't do it, they are going to get into the state and from the state they are going to impose an agenda that in the long term will end up destroying everything that touches. So there, let's say, a strong commitment is necessary of all the creators of wealth to fight against socialism, against statism, and understand that if that is not done, the socialists will always keep trying. Because, what is the point? As they try to live off others without working, they are tireless in looking for this. Because their leitmotif in life is to live off others. So they never give in to this mechanism of appropriation of wealth and money or the generation of income of others. So that battle has to be given permanently. You can't rest. Because when one rests, socialism advances. Donald Trump is running for president again in the United States, as you know. What advice would you give him? That is, the state does not create wealth. The state destroys it. The state cannot give anything because it does not produce anything. And when it wants to do it, it also does it wrong. So it seems to me that from my small place, the only thing I could tell you is to double the efforts in the same direction to defend the ideas of freedom and not to give a second to the socialists. Do you see the climate change movement as part of the same socialist agenda? Yes, it is part of the socialist agenda. In fact, post-Marxism what it is trying to do is that given the economic failure that became evident with the fall of the wall, although in reality socialism failed in the year 61 when they had to build the wall, in rigor, they, in the face of that defeat, transferred the class struggle to other aspects of life. So, for example, the struggle between blacks and whites, that is, Black Lives Matter, the LGBT lobby, everything that has to do with radical feminism, because we have to remember that feminism, as an original cause, is a liberal cause. The first to promote this was Jeremy Beckham in the middle of the 18th century. As part of that agenda, there is also the agenda of man against nature, where man is the one who damages nature. When, in reality, the world has had other peaks of high temperatures, as it has now, it is a cyclical behavior, regardless of the existence of man. And that if the prices were free, those problems would be solved without any problem. We do not need the state to regulate, because every time the state regulates, things get worse. And also, that agenda has a much darker part, which is a murderous agenda, which is the agenda of abortion. As a consequence of the fact that humans harm the planet, they promote the murder of people in the womb of the mother, which is abortion. Therefore, it is a policy that has always failed in the world, but not only because it is tremendous, because it always fails, but because it is also a bloody policy that certain human beings believe to be in situations of deciding who lives and who does not. It is like a maximum expression of fatal arrogance, where how a human being is going to determine who lives and who does not. That is what I want to make clear. Socialists have their hands stained with blood. All the time they have their hands stained with blood. Are you arguing that socialists commit bloodshed because they believe they are God? Because they believe they are God. That is, they are heretics. That is why Hayek, in his last book, called this fatal arrogance. Because to coordinate all this type of actions, the amount of knowledge that must be had, and this is linked to another article by Hayek called The Use of Knowledge in Society, where he gives a more scientific and profound form of the idea of the invisible hand, by Adam Smith. What he says is that to be able to apply socialism, it is necessary that the people who do it must be omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. That is to say, they believe they are God. And I am going to tell you something. They are not God. And I am going to tell you something worse. They are so miserable and so cunning, the politicians, especially those on the left, who are also below the average people. Because only, who is going to pretend to be equal to the average? Only the one who is below. Therefore, it is the agenda of the envious. Envy is a capital sin. Nothing good can come out of that. Nothing good can come out of murder. Nothing can come out of theft. So, going back to Pope Francis, why does he defend an agenda that defends murder, theft, envy? It's strange, isn't it? So, why does he? What's the answer? I think he should give it. That is to say, because in light of the debate, in light of empirical evidence, he is the one who has to give explanations why he defends an economic organization that leads to poverty, to misery, to violence, to decadence, and that, if left alone, would destroy the world. He should explain it. I am not a socialist. I am a liberal. As president of Argentina, you will not do business with China. That is to say, we want to be the moral beacon of the continent. We want to be the defenders of freedom, of democracy, of diversity, of peace. So, we, as a state, are not going to promote any kind of action with communists or socialists. That does not mean that Argentines cannot do business. If they want to do business with China, with Russia, with Brazil, with whoever, that is the problem of the Argentines. Do you pray for wisdom and guidance? Well, I realize that there are many people praying for me. I am very happy when many people, for example, go to the Kotel, the Wall of Sorrows in Israel, and leave petitions for me. So, I feel good. But apart from that, I am convinced of what I am doing. So, let's say, life without freedom does not deserve to be lived. That is to say, at some point I was asked if I would be willing to give my life for the freedom. And I am willing to give it. And I seek to be a witness of that way of living, of living in freedom. Slavery seems to me to be something horrible. And I am going to fight for the city of freedom, whatever it takes, with the consequences that it brings. Because doing the right thing is not a business. Interesting. Last question. You said there is this enormous state workforce, government workforce in Argentina, but you said that you would not lay them off immediately until you built up the private sector economy, because you worried there would be violent protests. Are you worried that there will be violent protests or violence against your supporters over the next month, before the election? I am not worried because I am going to govern with the law in my hand. And the law in my government is going to be fulfilled. And whoever does it, pays for it. And besides, they would not have to complain because, let's say, they are not going to be affected by the first-generation reforms. And when the second-generation reforms take place, they themselves are going to leave aside those jobs in the public sector for a matter of incentives, for a matter of remuneration. Therefore, it should not be a problem. But if they still want to cause problems, we are going to apply the law. And those who cause disturbances and those who violate the law, we are going to put them in jail. Do you believe law enforcement is on your side? Then, justice would not be working. And in reality, I am going to be working actively so that justice is truly independent and can act freely. And there, let's say, those who violate the law and who violate the Constitution have to pay for that. Therefore, in a justice that gives political support so that it is truly independent and works on the reforms so that it is truly independent, I don't see why they should not support it. Otherwise, it would not be justice. Robert Mille, thank you. You are welcome. Appreciate it. Thanks.