The Ben Shapiro Show - February 13, 2024


The Political War Over Ukraine

Topics
foreign policy mess Tucker Carlson interview with Putin Moscow vs. New Yorks City leadership Russia's territorial ambitions
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Vladimir Putin Ought Tucker Carlson Donbass Dmitry Medvedev Donald Trump Vladimir Zelensky Joe Biden Hunter Biden Imad Eldin Adib Andrew Klavan Mike Johnson Matt Walsh Burisma Hitler Kiev Candace Owens Evan Gershkovich Michael Corleone Henry Kissinger Michael Knowles and 10 more
What I Learned From "The Big Game" Homeland Security Secretary IMPEACHED

Episode Stats


Length

51 minutes

Words per minute

203.93

Word count

10,543

Sentence count

663

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

34

sentences flagged

Hate speech

30

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about the Ukraine aid bill that passed the Senate, and why the U.S. should not be sending any more money to Ukraine. I also talk about why the United States should be worried about Russia expanding its influence in Eastern Europe, and what it could do about it. And I talk a bit about why it s a good idea to think outside the box when it comes to foreign policy and counterfactuals, and how to understand why we should be spending so much money on our military when there s no actual reason to be spending money on it in the first place. And, of course, I answer the question: What are the real reasons for the massive amount of aid to Ukraine? And what are the reasons for wanting to see the Russians take over Ukraine? And why does it matter if they do? And how can we stop the Russians from taking over Ukraine if they want to expand their influence in the Black Sea region of the Baltic Sea? And why is it a good thing that they don t want to be taken over by other countries? I also discuss the economic and geopolitical benefits that could come from taking control of Ukraine and other countries in the region, like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Lithuania. and why it could be a good deal of good news for the Russians in the long-term, especially if it happens to be the breadbasket of the world's largest grain exporter, Ukraine. . I finish the job of providing food and infrastructure in Ukraine, which has been producing a lot of grain produced by the grain produced in a country that has been a long, long, far, far and far, long and far from other countries in the world, and much more. I discuss why the Russians are not interested in Ukraine and why they don't want to take control of the land that could be taken by other European countries. , and why that s a bad thing. ... and why this is bad news for them. and how it s good news, and the reason why they should be taking control over Ukraine so they should get control of it not good news. And I explain why they re not going to Ukraine, not good at all at least not good, but good news that they need to get control over the land they ve been given the grain that s been produced in Ukraine and other things like that the grain they ve produced.

Transcript

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Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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00:00:00.000 Massive debate has now broken out in Congress over the passage of a $95 billion bill that provides some $60 billion in support to Ukraine and provides another $14 billion for Israel's war against Hamas and then $10 billion for supposed humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones including Palestinians in Gaza.
00:00:18.000 This thing passed 70 to 27 or 70 to 29 in a vote in the Senate last night with 18 Republicans voting along with the Democrats in favor of passing this particular bill.
00:00:30.000 The Republicans were very splintered on it.
00:00:32.000 They split almost down the middle in terms of who voted for the bill, who voted against the bill.
00:00:35.000 And there are a few reasons for this.
00:00:37.000 One is, there's a bunch of bad stuff in the bill.
00:00:39.000 There's no question. 0.99
00:00:40.000 Even if you support aid to Ukraine, even if you support aid to Israel, there's a bunch of bad crap in the bill. 0.99
00:00:45.000 The biggest piece of garbage in the bill is this $10 billion in humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza. 0.99
00:00:50.000 Distributed it by whom? 0.99
00:00:52.000 Handed out to whom?
00:00:53.000 Why should American taxpayer dollars be sent to a place that will be then run, presumably, by the UNRWA or by Hamas or by some other agency that acts on behalf of terrorists?
00:01:03.000 That's just one problem with the bill.
00:01:05.000 But there are plenty of other problems with the bill.
00:01:07.000 One of the questions about the amount of Ukraine aid is what is the Ukraine aid for?
00:01:11.000 And this raises a broader question about exactly what the goals of the United States are in Ukraine and what the United States is hoping to forestall for additional aid to Ukraine.
00:01:22.000 So, this is a broader scale foreign policy question.
00:01:25.000 First rule of foreign policy.
00:01:27.000 First rule of foreign policy.
00:01:28.000 Foreign policy is about preventing the worst outcome very often using the second worst outcome.
00:01:34.000 Foreign policy is a series of bad choices that you have to make.
00:01:39.000 And one of the problems with doing foreign policy is that if you are successful in a foreign policy context, then what you typically have done is you have forestalled the counterfactual.
00:01:50.000 So, for example, let's say that the United States, instead of going isolationist after World War I, had remained relatively interventionist and had built up its military power and said to the Germans and Japanese, we're not going to allow you to get aggressive.
00:02:02.000 And World War II had never happened.
00:02:03.000 Well, the critique would have then been, why is the United States spending so much money on its military when there is no war?
00:02:10.000 Only the counterfactual allows you to understand what could have happened if not for particular intervention or particular action.
00:02:18.000 That's why hindsight is always 20-20 in foreign policy.
00:02:21.000 Because the reality is that whatever choice you're making right now, you have to try to imagine outside your box.
00:02:29.000 It's very easy to say in 2002 that the American military drawdown in the 1990s and the perception of weakness by America's enemies led to 9-11.
00:02:39.000 And that's clearly true.
00:02:40.000 And there were people making that argument at the time.
00:02:42.000 But the argument on the other side of the time was, why are we spending so much money on the military when the USSR has just fallen?
00:02:48.000 There's no actual reason for it.
00:02:50.000 So when it comes to every foreign policy debate, we have to understand what exactly is the goal.
00:02:55.000 So is the goal in Ukraine to, for example, degrade the Russian military,
00:02:59.000 which by the way is something I think is worthwhile because I believe that the Russian military
00:03:03.000 has been used for expansionist purposes and is working hand in glove with the Chinese military
00:03:08.000 and that both of them provide threats ranging from naval arena to ground assaults
00:03:15.000 in various places in Eastern Europe, for example, to places like Taiwan.
00:03:19.000 Okay, but let's talk about what are the American goals.
00:03:22.000 Degrade the Russian military would presumably be one. 0.55
00:03:24.000 Two would be prevent the Russians from taking over all of Ukraine and then threatening NATO's borders.
00:03:30.000 Because Ukraine is in fact a giant chunk of landmass directly in the middle of Eastern Europe.
00:03:34.000 It borders Poland, it borders Hungary, borders a bunch of important states.
00:03:38.000 The taking of Ukraine would also provide impetus for Russia presumably to try to attack one of the outlying states like Lithuania in the Baltics.
00:03:47.000 Because the Russians actually do, if you look at a map, hold a piece of territory on the edge of Lithuania called Kaliningrad, which used to be known as originally German territory, known as Konigsberg, where Immanuel Kant was from.
00:03:57.000 So theoretically, that could incentivize the Russians to move into Lithuania.
00:04:01.000 Ukraine happens to be the breadbasket of the world.
00:04:03.000 Huge amount of grain is produced there.
00:04:06.000 Ukraine also happens to provide quiescence in the Black Sea in a way that the Russian domination of the Black Sea would not.
00:04:11.000 There are a bunch of geopolitical and strategic and economic reasons that you don't want the Russians taking over all of Ukraine.
00:04:17.000 So, if the two American goals are to degrade the Russian military, specifically because the Russians have been expansionist, And to prevent them from taking over all of Ukraine, those are American goals that have largely been achieved at this point, maybe.
00:04:31.000 If the goal is to push Russia out of Donbass and Crimea, that's not going to happen, and pretty much everybody understands that's not going to happen.
00:04:36.000 So the big question for the Ukraine aid is, is this aid being sent to Ukraine?
00:04:42.000 It's military aid.
00:04:43.000 Which means, honestly speaking, it's just American military spending.
00:04:46.000 It's we spend money by giving it to Ukraine and Ukraine then spends it on American military contractors to build up all of the military credibility that we actually require.
00:04:54.000 Like, it actually gets the machine working.
00:04:56.000 And so if you think the world is about to become a much more violent place, which I do, it's actually not a terrible thing that you have more money pouring into the systems that sort of grease the wheels of the American military complex in terms of being able to produce weaponry for use against further threats like, say, China invading Taiwan.
00:05:11.000 But, Put all that aside, if the money for Ukraine is designed to prevent the full takeover of Ukraine, then that's the amount of money that we should be spending on Ukraine.
00:05:22.000 That is what is in America's interest. 0.98
00:05:23.000 If that money is being given to Ukraine in the bizarre assumption that that will allow for the full-scale reconquest of Donbass and Crimea, that's stupid and it's not going to happen. 0.96
00:05:34.000 No one has made clear at this point exactly what the aid is for. 0.97
00:05:37.000 This is a signal failing of the Biden administration.
00:05:39.000 It really is.
00:05:41.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:07:51.000 So there are a couple of big battles that are broken out, one on the Democratic side
00:07:54.000 and one on the Republican side.
00:07:55.000 The battle on the Republican side is a almost tripartite battle.
00:07:59.000 There are three positions on the Republican side with regard to Ukraine.
00:08:02.000 Position number one is the position that I take, which is that, effectively speaking, it is in the interest of the United States to prevent a full-scale Russian takeover of Ukraine, but it is not in the interest of the United States to prolong the war only to grant the false assumption that Ukraine is going to take control of Donbass and Crimea.
00:08:20.000 And so we should seek an off-ramp while also preserving Ukraine's independence against the Russians. 0.54
00:08:25.000 That happens to be the Henry Kissinger position.
00:08:26.000 I've been taking that position since, I believe, April of 2022, like two months into the war.
00:08:30.000 This has been my consistent position.
00:08:32.000 At no point, for example, have I suggested the Ukrainians invade Russian territory.
00:08:37.000 At no point have I even suggested that there was a possibility the Ukrainians would take back Crimea or the Donbass.
00:08:43.000 At no point have I suggested that there ought to be American boots on the ground.
00:08:45.000 There should not be.
00:08:47.000 I've not even suggested there should be an American no-fly zone over Ukraine.
00:08:49.000 So, the position that I've taken is America's interests are promoted by preventing the Russians from taking all of Ukraine, but they already were in control of the Donbass and Crimea, and that's probably not going to reverse itself. 0.79
00:08:59.000 That's position number one.
00:09:00.000 Position number two is the position that Joe Biden seems to be taking, kind of, which is that we should just, in an open-ended way, grant aid to Ukraine for anything they want.
00:09:11.000 We'll let them decide the off-ramp. 1.00
00:09:12.000 I think this is an idiotic position. 1.00
00:09:14.000 Why exactly should Ukraine decide the off-ramp? 1.00
00:09:16.000 In fact, Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, is actually trapped.
00:09:19.000 He's trapped because he can't tell his own people who want back the Donbass and Crimea that he's going to stop the war short after a full-scale invasion of his country.
00:09:27.000 So he actually does not have the ability to go back to his own parliament and to his own people and say, I want an off-ramp here.
00:09:33.000 And I'm going to let them keep Donbass.
00:09:34.000 I'm going to let them keep Crimea. 1.00
00:09:36.000 Which means that it's actually in the United States' interest, if it could, and again, I've been saying this for almost two years at this point, It's in the interest of the United States to actually, if they could, go negotiate a separate peace with Vladimir Putin that would guarantee the future security of Ukraine, American security guarantees, Western security guarantees, and also acknowledge that Russia is going to maintain control of the Donbass region as well as Crimea.
00:09:59.000 So, there's the Biden position, which is basically like, okay, blank check, do what you want with the money, push hard, maybe you'll get the non-bass back, maybe you'll get Crimea back.
00:10:08.000 And I've always thought that was a stupid position because the American people do not have taste for that, nor really should they, because it really is not in America's interest. 0.66
00:10:14.000 And then there is the third position. 0.98
00:10:16.000 And the third position has not been clearly articulated, but it has been heavily implied.
00:10:21.000 And that position seems to be that Ukraine ought to be fully ruled by Russia, that Russia actually should win in Kiev, that Russia should actually take over all of Ukraine and install a puppet dictator in Ukraine.
00:10:34.000 And so it's unclear to me in a lot of the foreign policy, or at the very least, that the United States doesn't have any interest if Russia takes over all of Ukraine.
00:10:42.000 So theoretically, I guess you could say there are four positions.
00:10:43.000 There's the full isolationist position, which is we shouldn't care about anything that happens outside the borders of this country.
00:10:49.000 Which, again, I think is consistent, but I think short-sighted.
00:10:53.000 Because the reason we do foreign policy in this country is not because it's a fun thing to do on the side.
00:10:58.000 It's because foreign policy has significant ramifications for Americans.
00:11:02.000 It has ramifications in terms of security.
00:11:04.000 It has ramifications in terms of economics.
00:11:06.000 It has ramifications in terms of resources.
00:11:07.000 There are lots of ramifications to foreign policy.
00:11:10.000 But, you can say there are four positions, I suppose.
00:11:12.000 One, full isolationism.
00:11:13.000 Shouldn't care anything that goes on anywhere in the world.
00:11:15.000 Bring everybody back home.
00:11:18.000 Wall on all of our borders and that's it.
00:11:20.000 I don't think that's a possible solution, but that is one position.
00:11:24.000 Position number two is that for some odd reason, Vladimir Putin would be better running Ukraine than the current government of Ukraine.
00:11:30.000 And not only do we have no interest in stopping Putin, we actually should effectively pull out of Ukraine with our money and allow Ukraine to fall in the interest of fostering a broader peace with Vladimir Putin.
00:11:42.000 Position number three, which is my own, is we should stop Vladimir Putin from taking all of Ukraine, but we should acknowledge the realities of the situation on the ground, and we should acknowledge that Donbass and Crimea aren't going to be taken out of Russian hands.
00:11:52.000 And position number four is the Biden position, which is sort of open-ended, poor money and hope that Ukraine can take back everything.
00:11:59.000 Those are the four articulated positions, and Republicans seem to be split between these four positions when it comes to Ukraine.
00:12:06.000 And meanwhile, Joe Biden has not even articulated what the $60 billion is for.
00:12:09.000 Is the $60 billion designed for his ends?
00:12:12.000 Like, quote-unquote, liberate the Donbass and Crimea?
00:12:15.000 Or is it designed for, let's look for an off-ramp while we freeze the lines of conflict?
00:12:20.000 He's not made that clear.
00:12:21.000 And so that's opened up a weird debate in which no one will actually state their position on Ukraine.
00:12:25.000 Like, I, honest to God, don't know the position of many members of the Senate on Ukraine.
00:12:30.000 If not granting Ukraine the aid means that Kiev falls to Putin, Are you okay with that?
00:12:38.000 Or, is what you're saying, maybe what you're saying is this, we don't actually think Kiev is going to fall to Putin, we want to grant enough aid to prevent that, but we're not going to prevent forward-looking aid that is essentially designed for humanitarian purposes, or it's designed to shore up the economy of Ukraine, or it's designed to take the Donbass back.
00:12:55.000 We're not going to do any of that.
00:12:57.000 So because no one is clarifying their positions, this entire thing is incredibly muddy.
00:13:01.000 And the same thing, by the way, is happening on the Democratic side of the aisle, because they don't know what their position is with regard to Putin and Ukraine.
00:13:07.000 So there's all sorts of confusion with regard to Ukraine.
00:13:11.000 Meanwhile, on the Israel side of this particular policy, you have an isolationist right, which is increasingly arguing That there is something bad and immoral about supporting a democratic ally of the United States in destroying a terrorist group that just murdered 1,200 citizens of their country and took 200 hostages, including 100 who are still being held in captivity.
00:13:30.000 There is that isolationist right that believes that.
00:13:32.000 And much more importantly, there's a large block of the left that seriously sympathizes with actual Palestinian terrorism.
00:13:40.000 And those folks are sort of voting on the same side when it comes to Israel aid with regard to Hamas.
00:13:46.000 In other words, foreign policy is a mess right now.
00:13:48.000 The clear lines that used to exist with regard to sort of foreign policy positions are completely collapsing.
00:13:54.000 And when people make arguments, like you see Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, he put out a statement on the passage of the Ukraine aid, in which he said, House Republicans were crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions, any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border, and then he makes the case that border has to be included in this particular act.
00:14:13.000 Border was just stripped out of that act because the Senate couldn't come up with anything workable that Republicans were willing to endorse.
00:14:19.000 For good reason.
00:14:20.000 Republicans shouldn't endorse what Democrats want on the southern border.
00:14:22.000 And let's be realistic about this.
00:14:24.000 What's happening on the southern border is not a question of money.
00:14:27.000 It really is not a question of funding.
00:14:29.000 It's a matter of the political willpower to tie the hands of the executive branch in enforcing the southern border.
00:14:34.000 I say this as someone who just went down to the southern border and produced a full documentary about the southern border and who spent time with the head of the Border Patrol Union.
00:14:42.000 And he's spoken with border patrol officers, and he's spoken with senators.
00:14:45.000 I promise you, the problem at the border is not lack of funds.
00:14:47.000 The problem at the border is lack of will.
00:14:50.000 That is a very different thing.
00:14:52.000 So in other words, when Mike Johnson says, we can't fund Ukraine or Israel because of what's going on at the border, that's a complete non sequitur.
00:15:00.000 Make the argument that the bill on Ukraine aid is bad on its own merits, that it gives too much money to the wrong places.
00:15:05.000 Or make the argument that the bill for Israel aid is bad on its own merits because it gives $10 billion, for example, to the Palestinians in Gaza, most of which will be sucked up by terror groups.
00:15:13.000 Make those arguments.
00:15:15.000 But what I'm seeing is a lack of clarity with a wide variety of these issues in which it's unclear exactly what everyone even wants.
00:15:24.000 And that's confusing to me.
00:15:26.000 That is confusing to me.
00:15:28.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:16:36.000 Meanwhile, the Republicans are making some claims about this particular bill that I actually don't think hold water.
00:16:42.000 So, there's a claim that's being made about the Ukraine bill, that because the Ukraine bill includes funding for Ukraine, that stretches into 2025, that this is somehow an impeachment procedure.
00:16:53.000 Now listen, I opposed both impeachments against Donald Trump.
00:16:56.000 They did not allege high crimes and misdemeanors.
00:16:58.000 And I have to love everything that Trump did in his conversation with Vladimir Zelensky, asking Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden and Burisma in order to recognize that that did not rise to the level of high crime and misdemeanor, that was an impeachable offense.
00:17:10.000 The claim right now that is being made is that because the funding to Ukraine extends into 2025, and this is just useful for purposes of fact checking, that because of that, this is the predicate to an impeachment push.
00:17:20.000 That basically, the first impeachment of Donald Trump was rooted in Donald Trump saying to Vladimir Zelensky, I'm not going to give you the supplemental aid that has been allocated to your country until you investigate Burisma.
00:17:33.000 Because he withheld the aid, impeachment went forward.
00:17:35.000 Thus, a new bill that allocates aid to Ukraine puts Trump at risk of impeachment if he withholds the aid to Ukraine.
00:17:42.000 That doesn't follow.
00:17:43.000 The actual rationale for the impeachment, to be fair, was not just that Trump was holding up the aid to Ukraine.
00:17:48.000 If he had said, Ukraine is corrupt, I don't think, as a foreign policy matter, we should be giving that aid to a corrupt country, so I'm not doing it.
00:17:54.000 That would not be impeachable in any way, shape, or form.
00:17:57.000 I don't even think Democrats would have tried to impeach on that basis.
00:18:00.000 So the argument that simply by allocating aid in the future to when Trump could be president, that's kind of the predicate for impeachment.
00:18:07.000 I don't think that argument holds particularly a lot of water.
00:18:09.000 I think, again, there are good arguments against the bill.
00:18:11.000 I don't think that happens to be one of them.
00:18:13.000 OK, all of this meshes with, again, this broader foreign policy debate inside the Republican Party right now.
00:18:20.000 And that was brought to the fore, a lot of this, by the interview that Tucker did with Vladimir Putin.
00:18:24.000 Tucker Carlson, of course, went over to Moscow where he interviewed Vladimir Putin.
00:18:27.000 We covered that pretty extensively on the show.
00:18:29.000 We went through the interview.
00:18:30.000 Again, I thought that Tucker did a fine job in asking questions that allowed Vladimir Putin to talk.
00:18:34.000 And so the question with any interview is sort of, what's the goal of the interview?
00:18:38.000 Tucker asked a series of questions that were not designed to be confrontational, that were not designed to be aggressive against Vladimir Putin, and that's totally fine.
00:18:48.000 You're allowed to do an interview that way when the goal is to allow the dictator to speak for himself so that everybody can see what he says and what he thinks.
00:18:56.000 And even moments where it looked like Tucker was trying to elicit a particular response, Putin didn't go for it.
00:19:02.000 I mean, to be perfectly frank with you, I think that Putin blew a massive opportunity.
00:19:05.000 I think that if Putin had come out and made the case that I've seen so many people on the right make, which is Ukraine is sort of a left liberal country, and that when you fight for the Ukraine flag, you're actually fighting for the LGBTQ flag, or that the entire debacle that's been happening in Ukraine is the result of American foreign policy elite establishment types.
00:19:25.000 Like, that would have been the argument.
00:19:27.000 That Putin could have made that I think would have drawn more eyeballs.
00:19:30.000 Instead, he went into his actual true rationale, which was this sort of long historic explanation of why Ukraine ought not exist and why he ought to take the whole thing.
00:19:41.000 Well, I mean, the argument that he makes leads conclusively to the conclusion that he really, really believes that Russia should be the ruler of Ukraine, period, full stop.
00:19:52.000 That was the case that he was making.
00:19:53.000 He tried to back off of that when he said, oh, well, maybe there'll be an off-ramp, but then he refused to suggest sort of an actual realistic mechanism for an off-ramp.
00:20:00.000 And listen, I'm somebody who's warm to an off-ramp.
00:20:02.000 If he presented one, I'd say the United States should jump on it like right now.
00:20:04.000 Okay, but that's the interview that Tucker did with Putin.
00:20:09.000 But it elicited questions about what Tucker's beliefs are with regard to Vladimir Putin because, again, this foreign policy debate that's happening inside the right is really kind of fascinating right now.
00:20:20.000 And I think it's worthy of elucidation.
00:20:21.000 And I think, again, Tucker's a very articulate person and he articulates a point of view on foreign policy with which I heartily disagree.
00:20:29.000 I've invited Tucker on the show to discuss it.
00:20:31.000 Hopefully he'll take me up on that.
00:20:33.000 I would love to have a conversation with him about that to clarify positions.
00:20:36.000 I think it'd be good for the movement.
00:20:37.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:21:44.000 In any case, Tucker was at the World Government Summit in Dubai with an Egyptian journalist named Imad Eldin Adib.
00:21:51.000 And one of the clips that he stated during this interview kind of went viral.
00:21:56.000 And it went viral because it's evocative.
00:21:59.000 It's actually not even remotely the most controversial thing that Tucker said.
00:22:04.000 Now again, Tucker's interview with Putin, I'll say it again, I have no problem with Tucker's interview with Putin.
00:22:07.000 I think anybody should be able to talk to any dictator at any time and ask any questions they want.
00:22:11.000 And I didn't find Tucker's questions to be particularly bad.
00:22:15.000 I thought that some of Tucker's questions, particularly at the end about Evan Gershkowitz, were quite good.
00:22:21.000 But Tucker's conclusions are ones that have real implications for the Republican Party.
00:22:24.000 Because again, what I'm seeing in this debate over the Ukraine bill, I'm not as interested in the Ukraine aid bill itself as the foreign policy debate over what that means.
00:22:33.000 Is the Republican Party moving in a direction in which it effectively says that the United States should not have a foreign policy and should be totally isolationist?
00:22:41.000 Or is the Republican foreign policy establishment moving in a direction that says that people like Vladimir Putin Ought to have more power because the United States is actually a bad force in the world, which is an even stronger argument in almost horseshoe theories with Bernie Sanders.
00:22:58.000 There is a part of the libertarian right that horseshoe theories all the way around and meets Noam Chomsky on the left.
00:23:03.000 Is that what's being articulated on the right?
00:23:05.000 Or is it sort of a foreign policy realism, which is sort of where I sit, right?
00:23:09.000 Opposing some wars, like for example, in Libya, suggesting foreign aid to some countries that are American allies in order to achieve American interests.
00:23:17.000 And then, of course, there is sort of the older school mid-2000s neocon position, which is that the United States should be involved in a vast variety of wars, whether or not it is in America's interest, kind of a Wilsonian perspective on foreign policy in which America has to preserve morality in the world at the cost of blood and treasure, whether or not it's in direct America's interest.
00:23:38.000 Those are the open lines of debate.
00:23:38.000 Okay.
00:23:39.000 And I think Tucker's interview in Dubai sort of brought these to the fore.
00:23:44.000 So again, he's being interviewed by an Egyptian journalist named Imad Eldin Adib.
00:23:47.000 And here's the clip that went viral.
00:23:49.000 It's him talking about Putin and Moscow itself.
00:23:53.000 So an incapable person couldn't do that.
00:23:55.000 He is very capable, and many of you know him, and you know that.
00:23:58.000 What was radicalizing, very shocking, and very disturbing for me was the city of Moscow, where I'd never been, the biggest city in Europe, 13 million people.
00:24:05.000 And it is so much nicer than any city in my country.
00:24:08.000 I had no idea.
00:24:09.000 My father spent a lot of time there in the 80s when he worked for the US government, and it barely had electricity.
00:24:14.000 And now it is so much cleaner and safer and prettier aesthetically, its architecture, its food, its service, than any city in the United States that you have to... And this is non-ideological.
00:24:25.000 How did that happen?
00:24:27.000 How did that happen?
00:24:28.000 And at a certain point, I don't think the average person cares as much about abstractions as about the concrete reality of his life.
00:24:35.000 And if you can't use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York City because it's too dangerous, you have to sort of wonder, like, isn't that the ultimate measure of leadership?
00:24:45.000 The ultimate measure of leadership, in other words, is that Moscow is clean while New York City is dirty.
00:24:49.000 Okay, well, there are a few things at play here.
00:24:51.000 So one, I totally agree with Tucker when he says that there are many cities abroad that are better run than American cities.
00:24:57.000 There's no question that that is the case.
00:24:59.000 I've been to many more beautiful cities than any city that I've seen in the United States.
00:25:04.000 And there are some really beautiful cities in the United States.
00:25:06.000 They also have pretty seamy underbellies.
00:25:08.000 There are kind of smaller cities that I think are quite beautiful, like Charleston, South Carolina.
00:25:12.000 There are bigger cities that have areas that are beautiful, like Boston, but some other areas that are really, really not nice.
00:25:17.000 I spent most of my life in big American cities, like Los Angeles, which turned from a fairly nice place to live into a very bad place to live.
00:25:24.000 So when Tucker says that, for example, law and order matters in major American cities, that of course is for sure true.
00:25:30.000 But when he uses that as a stand-in for the Russian model of governance, that's when I start to have some questions.
00:25:36.000 And maybe he didn't mean that.
00:25:37.000 I don't know.
00:25:38.000 But it seems like when he is saying that it radicalized him, why would Moscow radicalize you exactly?
00:25:43.000 I mean, Tucker's always been a law and order guy.
00:25:45.000 Tucker's always wanted, for example, broken windows theory applied in places like New York or Washington, D.C.
00:25:50.000 It's not like Tucker was ever pro-crime or something.
00:25:52.000 He's never a liberal on these issues.
00:25:55.000 So what exactly radicalized him?
00:25:58.000 Did it radicalize him to a different idea about how government works when he says abstractions are less important than how you live life on the ground?
00:26:05.000 Abstractions are kind of important depending on what abstractions you're talking about.
00:26:08.000 If those abstractions are, for example, Liberty in the American model versus, say, the Russian model, where liberty really does not exist.
00:26:15.000 And this is where the other clips from Tucker, from this interview, I think are more evocative of maybe what Tucker means than this clip right here.
00:26:23.000 By the way, it should be noted at this point, Moscow, I've never been there.
00:26:27.000 So I'll take Tucker's word for it and the word of many other people that it's a beautiful city.
00:26:30.000 We should also point out at this point that the GDP per capita in Russia is $12,000 per year.
00:26:35.000 Only 77% of the Russian population even has indoor plumbing.
00:26:38.000 All the wealth gets sucked into Moscow, where it is widely distributed among people who are friends of Putin and friends of the friends of Putin.
00:26:46.000 The Moscow metro area has an income twice that of the general Russian economy.
00:26:52.000 Russia continues to have a stagnating economy.
00:26:55.000 They had an inflation rate of 6.3% in this year, 5.28% in 2023, and almost 14% in 2022.
00:27:01.000 So when we talk about, you know, the glories of Moscow, we should also recognize that a lot
00:27:07.000 of dictatorships had really nice cities.
00:27:08.000 Berlin under Hitler was a beautiful place. 1.00
00:27:11.000 Dresden under Hitler was a beautiful place. 1.00
00:27:13.000 Rome under Mussolini was a beautiful place.
00:27:15.000 In other words, a beautiful city...
00:27:18.000 Beautiful cities can exist across the world, in various locations, and under various systems of government.
00:27:23.000 They are not actually the best marker of whether a government is properly run or whether the leader is good at his job.
00:27:30.000 That is not a sole indicator.
00:27:32.000 Every single factor analysis fails.
00:27:34.000 Anytime you say, ah, I can tell that leader is good because he has a beautiful city.
00:27:36.000 There's like 85,000 other factors as to whether the leader is good.
00:27:40.000 But again, I think that what Tucker is saying there, just to take it on its face value statement, is the least Problematic or interesting thing that he said during this interview.
00:27:50.000 That Moscow is beautiful and American cities are not as beautiful and we should clean them up and not allow graffiti and not allow pot and all that.
00:27:55.000 I agree with all of that.
00:27:56.000 It's some of the other things that he said that I think have broader implications for American foreign policy.
00:28:01.000 So, for example, Tucker was asked by this Egyptian journalist about Vladimir Putin and assassinating people.
00:28:08.000 And the Egyptian journalist was like, well, you know, you could have asked him about why he kills people and censorship and all the rest. 0.94
00:28:14.000 And here was Tucker's answer.
00:28:16.000 You should challenge some ideas.
00:28:19.000 For instance, you didn't talk about freedom of speech in Russia.
00:28:26.000 You did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations, about the restrictions on opposition in the coming elections.
00:28:37.000 I didn't talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about.
00:28:41.000 Why?
00:28:41.000 Because those are covered and because I have spent my life talking to people who run countries
00:28:47.000 in various countries and have concluded the following, that every leader kills people,
00:28:52.000 including my leader. 0.98
00:28:53.000 Every leader kills people. 0.97
00:28:54.000 Some kill more than others. 1.00
00:28:55.000 Leadership requires killing people, sorry.
00:28:56.000 That's why I wouldn't want to be a leader.
00:28:59.000 That press restriction is universal in the United States, I know because I've lived it.
00:29:03.000 I've, you know, asked my former, you know, I've had a lot of jobs.
00:29:07.000 And I've done this for 34 years and I know how it works.
00:29:09.000 And there's more censorship in Russia than there is in the United States, but there's
00:29:13.000 a great deal in the United States.
00:29:14.000 Okay, we can stop it right there for a second.
00:29:17.000 Okay, so.
00:29:17.000 Thank you.
00:29:19.000 This is where we start to get into the more interesting part of what Tucker is saying here.
00:29:21.000 Okay, when he says that he likes Moscow, alright, fine.
00:29:24.000 When he starts to say that the Russian way of assassination and censorship is somewhat akin to how the United States runs things, the answer there is no.
00:29:32.000 Just on a factual basis, the answer there is no.
00:29:34.000 You know how I know? 0.90
00:29:35.000 Because Tucker Carlson doesn't only live in the United States quite safely, criticizing the current president of the United States as a senile dotard, he makes millions of dollars doing so. 0.99
00:29:44.000 You know what happens to you in Vladimir Putin's Russia if you criticize Vladimir Putin as a senile dotard? 1.00
00:29:49.000 You kill yourself by shooting yourself twice in the back of the head and then being thrown off a building. 1.00
00:29:54.000 These are not comparable.
00:29:55.000 When Tucker says that everyone assassinates, everyone kills, kind of reminiscent of Michael Corleone justifying the mafia when he's talking to Kay in Godfather 1.
00:30:04.000 It's like, oh, Kay, now who's being naive?
00:30:08.000 The idea that the President of the United States has the summary ability to simply murder his opponents, the way that Vladimir Putin does, is not reality.
00:30:18.000 I don't like Joe Biden either.
00:30:19.000 I think he's a terrible president.
00:30:20.000 I hope he's not president as soon as humanly possible, obviously without wishing any ill health on anyone.
00:30:25.000 But let's be clear about this.
00:30:27.000 If your vision of the United States is that it is somehow comparable to the governance of a kleptocrat like Vladimir Putin, that seems pretty wild to me.
00:30:36.000 And if that's the basis of foreign policy, I'm not sure how that is sustainable.
00:30:42.000 The attempt to relativize the United States to Russia under Vladimir Putin, that's the part that I'm finding bizarre here in what Tucker is saying.
00:30:51.000 And that leads to a foreign policy that is quite dangerous for the future of the United States.
00:30:56.000 If the foreign policy of the United States is Russia good, Russia no worse than United States, therefore, if Russia takes Ukraine, for example, no problem.
00:31:06.000 I don't understand how you uphold A powerful America in the world for the benefit of its own citizens under that rubric.
00:31:16.000 Again, that's not a defense of anything Joe Biden is doing.
00:31:18.000 But Tucker comparing himself and his treatment in the United States to the treatment of Russian journalists who descend from Vladimir Putin is just, it is not factual.
00:31:26.000 It does not seem to have a relation to factual reality.
00:31:29.000 We'll get to more on this in a second.
00:31:30.000 Because again, I think that there are some very significant gaps in American foreign policy thinking.
00:31:35.000 And again, this is why I've invited Tucker on the show, because I would love to discuss this stuff with him.
00:31:39.000 And I'd love to clarify our thoughts on this.
00:31:40.000 What does he think a good American foreign policy looks like?
00:31:43.000 We'll get to more of this in just a second.
00:31:45.000 First, mark your calendars.
00:31:46.000 It's the epic return of Backstage.
00:31:48.000 Almost a year away filming the Pendragon cycle, but Jeremy Boring is back.
00:31:52.000 He is joined by Matt Walsh, Candace Owens, Michael Moles, Andrew Clavin, and me.
00:31:55.000 Join us tonight at 7 p.m.
00:31:56.000 Eastern, 6 p.m.
00:31:56.000 Central, as we go behind the scenes and beyond the headlines.
00:31:59.000 There's a lot to cover.
00:31:59.000 You're not going to want to miss a minute.
00:32:01.000 Watch the show live exclusively on Daily Wire Plus tonight at 7 p.m.
00:32:04.000 Eastern, 6 p.m.
00:32:05.000 Central.
00:32:05.000 You're not going to want to miss it.
00:32:06.000 Okay, meanwhile...
00:32:07.000 Okay, so we are going through this Tucker interview in Dubai because it has sort of his thoughts about what happened with Vladimir Putin.
00:32:12.000 Again, there are two interesting things about the interview with Putin.
00:32:15.000 One is what Putin had to say, which we went through pretty in-depth the other day.
00:32:18.000 And the other is sort of what Tucker's perspective is because, of course, Tucker has a huge following and is incredibly talented at what he does.
00:32:25.000 Again, the clip that has been going viral is the one about him saying that Moscow is a wonderful place.
00:32:30.000 I find that less interesting and compelling than his clip suggesting a sort of moral equivalence between Vladimir Putin's assassinations and what the United States does.
00:32:39.000 Or censorship in Russia and censorship in the United States.
00:32:43.000 And that extends to Tucker really giving the benefit of the doubt to Vladimir Putin.
00:32:46.000 So he starts talking about Vladimir Putin's rationale for invading Ukraine.
00:32:52.000 And I gotta say, I don't believe that this is reflective of the facts on the ground.
00:33:00.000 American policymakers have convinced themselves that Vladimir Putin is going to take over Poland.
00:33:05.000 And it is not a defense of Putin.
00:33:06.000 I don't mean to defend Putin.
00:33:07.000 I'm not a fan of Putin's and I'm not a subject of Putin's.
00:33:09.000 I'm an American.
00:33:10.000 However, there's no evidence that Putin has any interest in expanding his borders.
00:33:14.000 He is the largest country in the world and it's very hard to run.
00:33:17.000 They don't need natural resources.
00:33:19.000 There's nothing in Poland he wants. 1.00
00:33:20.000 There's nothing he will gain by taking Poland other than more trouble. 1.00
00:33:23.000 The core question is why did he move his forces into Eastern Ukraine?
00:33:29.000 And I watched this from a distant vantage in the United States and I watched the Vice
00:33:33.000 President of the United States Kamala Harris go to the Munich Security Conference just
00:33:37.000 days before that in February of 2022 and say in a public forum at a press conference to
00:33:43.000 Zelensky the President of Ukraine, we want you to join NATO.
00:33:46.000 Which is another way of saying, it's a synonym for we plan to put nuclear weapons on Russia's 0.89
00:33:50.000 border.
00:33:51.000 You think they threw a bait for him?
00:33:52.000 I'm not joking, of course they did.
00:33:53.000 They threw a bait.
00:33:54.000 And it just tells you how constipated and restricted and censored the U.S.
00:33:58.000 media landscape is, that I was the only one who said that.
00:34:01.000 Well, wait a second.
00:34:02.000 The purpose of diplomacy is to reach a peaceful, mutually one hopes beneficial conclusion to a crisis.
00:34:09.000 So if you're showing up voluntarily at the Munich Security Conference and saying, hey, Zelensky, why don't you allow us to put nuclear weapons on Russia's border? 0.71
00:34:15.000 You're cruising for a war because you know that's the red line.
00:34:19.000 Okay, so first of all, let's be clear that NATO already extends to Russia's borders.
00:34:23.000 The Baltic states are on Russia's borders and they are members of NATO.
00:34:26.000 In fact, NATO has expanded during this war to include places like Finland, also on Russia's border.
00:34:31.000 As far as the argument that Vladimir Putin does not have any designs on Poland, his entire disquisition on history to Tucker suggests that he would be warm toward the division of Poland.
00:34:42.000 Because, again, if you look at Polish history, Poland did not exist for solidly 150 years as an independent nation from about the mid-18th century all the way up till the end of World War I. It did not exist as an independent nation because it was under the preserve of the Russians.
00:35:00.000 The land of Poland was divided during that time.
00:35:04.000 And again, the Russians were in charge of it. 0.98
00:35:07.000 And then after Poland was reconstituted, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the Russians and the Nazis split Poland right down the middle, in which the Soviets basically had a peace agreement with the Russians so that they could gain half of Poland.
00:35:22.000 So to pretend that Russia has no territorial ambitions toward Poland is weird.
00:35:26.000 It's also very, very weird considering that literally in November, Not of 1939, of last year, of last year, Dmitry Medvedev, who's the former Russian president and a Putin ally.
00:35:37.000 In fact, when he was the president, that was that brief period in time where Putin stepped over to being prime minister and Medvedev was the shadow president.
00:35:44.000 This is why you will recall in 2012, Barack Obama talking to Medvedev and saying, tell Vladimir, I'll have more flexibility after the election because everyone knew that Medvedev was just a cutout for Putin.
00:35:54.000 Well, in November, Medvedev wrote a piece, an 8,000 word article, on Russian-Polish relations, saying Moscow had a dangerous enemy in Poland.
00:36:02.000 Quote, We will treat Poland precisely as a historical enemy, said Medvedev in November of last year.
00:36:07.000 If there is no hope for reconciliation with the enemy, Russia should have only one and a very tough attitude regarding its fate. 0.59
00:36:13.000 History has more than once delivered a merciless verdict to the presumptuous Poles. 1.00
00:36:16.000 No matter how ambitious the revanchist plans may be, their collapse could lead to the death of Polish statehood in its entirety.
00:36:24.000 So, again, Medvedev is a cutout for Putin.
00:36:28.000 He's an ally of Putin, explicitly threatening the end of Poland.
00:36:31.000 And if you spend time in Poland, what you'll find is that everyone in Poland is deeply concerned with what's going on in Ukraine because the Polish people remember being invaded multiple times.
00:36:41.000 They know Polish history, in which Poland was divvied up repeatedly.
00:36:46.000 Poland was then occupied by the Soviet Union after World War II.
00:36:49.000 It wasn't just that it was divided with the Nazis at the beginning of World War II.
00:36:52.000 It was then occupied by the Soviet Union for the entirety of the rest of the Cold War.
00:36:57.000 So, this bizarre notion that Russia has no territorial ambitions in Poland, again, runs counter to what members of Putin's inner circle are saying, like, right now.
00:37:07.000 And grants a level of credible doubt to the Russians that I don't actually understand Tucker doing.
00:37:15.000 Not just that.
00:37:16.000 When Tucker suggests that NATO should have invited Vladimir Putin in, in 2000, The reason that NATO did not invite Vladimir Putin into NATO in 2000 or disband NATO in the aftermath of the Cold War is because Russia has had a long history of territorial ambition in Eastern Europe.
00:37:34.000 The purpose of NATO was, as Tucker says, to check Russian ambitions.
00:37:38.000 Once you invite Russia into the group, you have an inter-NATO conflict. 0.51
00:37:42.000 So let's say that Russia invades Ukraine, and let's say that both of those countries were members of NATO.
00:37:47.000 Now, Article 5 cannot be invoked, because Article 5 is only able to be invoked against an aggressor against NATO, not by NATO against a member state against another member state.
00:37:59.000 If, for example, Lithuania were to invade Estonia tomorrow, you could not invoke Article 5 realistically, because both of those countries are members of NATO.
00:38:09.000 So the idea of Russia trying to get into NATO to thus thwart NATO, that is typical Russian foreign policy.
00:38:15.000 That's exactly how Russia has used its seat, for example, on the UN Security Council.
00:38:19.000 They tried to use its seat on the UN Security Council in order to thwart NATO intervention in Yugoslavia during the Yugoslav War of 1999.
00:38:24.000 And in fact, that's something that Putin is still mad about.
00:38:30.000 So this kind of notion that Vladimir Putin is a kindly hearted gentleman who is not seeking territorial expansion, who does not have ambitions toward his Eastern European neighbors, who is not using threats of military force in order to convince territorial neighbors to move toward him, which is clearly what he's doing.
00:38:47.000 He doesn't have to invade Belarus.
00:38:48.000 Belarus is already a proxy state of the Russians.
00:38:50.000 And presumably that is what would happen if he took over Ukraine in full.
00:38:53.000 It wouldn't just be that Russia rules Ukraine directly.
00:38:55.000 It would be that he installs a dictator, declares Ukraine quote-unquote independent, and then rules via proxy.
00:39:01.000 Almost as part of the new Soviet constellation.
00:39:06.000 It'd be a state ruled by proxy from Moscow through an ally.
00:39:11.000 So, the level of credibility that Tucker is granting to Putin here, what does that say about what his view of American foreign policy is?
00:39:19.000 I really am not sure.
00:39:21.000 Again, I keep calling for clarification because Tucker's a really important voice and I'd love to know what he thinks on all these things.
00:39:27.000 Then Tucker was asked during this interview about America's policy with regard to Israel and Gaza.
00:39:32.000 And this part of the interview is rather stunning.
00:39:34.000 So he suggests that America's role with regard to Israel and Gaza should be to force Israel to stop its killing of Hamas members and its attempts to defend its own borders.
00:39:44.000 And in fact, he goes further.
00:39:46.000 He suggests that America is evil for not doing that.
00:39:48.000 Here was Tucker in Dubai.
00:39:51.000 Sir, do you have an explanation?
00:39:54.000 Till this moment, since the Gaza events took place, till now, nobody came out and said how on earth the United States of America is vetoing the stoppage of fire?
00:40:12.000 How a country would veto Not to continue war.
00:40:18.000 How somebody is against stopping a war?
00:40:22.000 The United States is, for this moment, is the most powerful country in the history of the world.
00:40:29.000 So if you were to frame this in terms we're all familiar with, which are the most basic terms, the terms of the family, the United States would be dad, would be the father.
00:40:37.000 And the father's sacred obligation is to protect his family and to restore peace within his walls.
00:40:44.000 So if I come out, I fortunately... I'll get positive for a second.
00:40:46.000 So first of all, for Tucker, who has posited that the United States really has no interest in things that go on outside of its borders in large scale, to be suggesting a familial analogy here is already very strange.
00:40:57.000 At the very least, it's strange.
00:40:59.000 The idea of America as world father is extremely imperialist.
00:41:03.000 That America is basically out to dominate every- I mean, it sounds Wilsonian, almost. 0.93
00:41:08.000 That it is the job of America to impose its will wherever humanly pos- I mean, I think that's a proposition that the Tucker disagrees with.
00:41:14.000 So it's strange to use an analogy where America is the father and its job, as America, is to restore peace everywhere on the globe.
00:41:22.000 First of all, just start with that.
00:41:23.000 That's weird.
00:41:24.000 But the analogy continues.
00:41:27.000 So if I come home... I have four children.
00:41:28.000 If I come home from work and two of my kids are fighting, what's the first thing I do, even before I assess why they're fighting, before I gather the facts and know what's happening?
00:41:34.000 I stop the fight.
00:41:35.000 I stop fighting.
00:41:36.000 Yes.
00:41:36.000 So if I come home and I have two kids fighting and I say, Go!
00:41:39.000 Go! 0.99
00:41:39.000 Beat the crap out of them! 0.99
00:41:41.000 I am evil. 1.00
00:41:43.000 Because I violated the most basic duty of fatherhood, which is to bring peace.
00:41:48.000 Because I have the power.
00:41:49.000 I'm the only one who can bring peace.
00:41:51.000 And so if you see a nation with awesome power abetting war for its own sake, You have a leadership that has no moral authority, that is illegitimate.
00:42:01.000 And I'm very distressed and concerned that we are entering an era where this awesome force for good is instead being used for evil.
00:42:11.000 Okay, so he says America is effectively evil for not promoting a ceasefire, leaving Hamas, a terrorist group, in control of the Gaza Strip, using this familial analogy.
00:42:21.000 So again, there are a thousand problems with this familial analogy, just on the face of it.
00:42:25.000 Number one, Hamas is not part of the family of nations.
00:42:29.000 Okay, so even if you were to accept Tucker's analogy that America is somehow great father in the sky, that rules foreign policy all over the globe, and has a role in ending every war, which I know Tucker does not agree with.
00:42:41.000 Even if you accept that analogy, the next question is, are these children both yours?
00:42:47.000 Because I'm pretty much clear on the idea that Israel is an American ally, an incredibly pro-American democracy in the region that provides pretty significant intelligence support to the United States.
00:42:58.000 And that Hamas is a terrorist group.
00:43:01.000 So those are not... If you were to carry this analogy realistically, it would be the father of one country, meaning like the father, and then any associated child would be presumably an American ally in this particular analogy.
00:43:13.000 And then you would have a foreign child coming in and murdering 1,200 of the citizens of your child. 1.00
00:43:21.000 Beyond that, let's just take his analogy straight.
00:43:25.000 If you were the father and you walked into your home, and I'm father of four, and one of your children had stabbed the other child in the eyeball, which is what happened on October 7th, your first move would presumably not be to sit everyone down and find out how this had started by stopping the conflict. 0.99
00:43:44.000 Some shit would get real. 0.97
00:43:47.000 Because you would be the enforcement mechanism against that sort of thing. 1.00
00:43:52.000 You as the father are the enforcer.
00:43:53.000 So, in other words, he would be calling for interventionism.
00:43:57.000 Now, again, the entire analogy doesn't make any sense.
00:43:59.000 Israel is an independent country.
00:44:00.000 Hamas is an independent polity. 0.97
00:44:02.000 The United States has its own interests.
00:44:04.000 Those interests don't align always with either group that is being discussed at this point.
00:44:10.000 But the notion that America is evil For facilitating Israel's care on its own borders to destroy a terrorist group that just murdered 1,200 of its citizens is pretty, I mean, that's pretty stunning stuff. 0.70
00:44:23.000 And it does line up with a sort of broader tenor to Tucker's view of America's role in the world, which is that America historically and currently has been Apparently, a fairly negative force in the world.
00:44:36.000 I say that not just because of what he's saying about what's happening in Gaza or American support for Ukraine or any of that.
00:44:42.000 He did an interview with Russell Brand that came out fairly recently in which he was talking about World War II.
00:44:49.000 And what he suggested is that America was bad during World War II because America had engaged in what he called collective punishment.
00:44:59.000 Now let's be clear about what America did during World War II.
00:45:02.000 In, for example, the firebombing of Dresden, which was in fact a manufacturing center, or the firebombing of Tokyo, which was a military center, or in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.
00:45:12.000 America was attempting to win a war and forestalling American casualties therein.
00:45:16.000 So if you are America first and you wish for America to win wars in which it is engaged without getting a lot of Americans killed, sometimes you have to do really, really ugly things.
00:45:26.000 I think most Americans understand that and historically have understood that, particularly the grandchildren of the people who did not die invading the mainland of Japan because of the dropping of the atomic bombs, for example.
00:45:36.000 Military estimates suggested that a million Americans could die in the invasion of Japan if it had been an amphibious assault as opposed to the dropping of atomic weaponry over Japan in August of 45.
00:45:47.000 But here was Tucker talking about American evil during World War II.
00:45:52.000 Collective punishment is completely accepted as legitimate. 1.00
00:45:56.000 They're all part of the same bloodline.
00:45:58.000 That's incomprehensible to the Christian mind.
00:46:01.000 Because bloodline is irrelevant, neither Jew nor Greek. 0.60
00:46:04.000 I mean, the whole point of Christianity is it doesn't matter who your parents were or what your DNA is.
00:46:10.000 You have a direct relationship with God, and if you're on board with that, then you're a Christian, and if you're not, you're not.
00:46:16.000 But there's no sense—there's no template for collective punishment in Christianity.
00:46:22.000 It's repulsive to Christians. 1.00
00:46:25.000 It's repulsive, and in my view it should be, and it always was in the West. 0.99
00:46:28.000 And I do think there are war crimes that the United States committed during the Second World War, the firebombing of Tokyo, famously Dresden, that were collective punishment.
00:46:38.000 And I would also say, by the way, the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that's collective punishment. 0.66
00:46:44.000 And I think that rotted the soul of the West.
00:46:46.000 I do.
00:46:46.000 I think that's so immoral that it did two things.
00:46:50.000 One, you know, you carry the burden of sin at scale like that.
00:46:54.000 You just do.
00:46:55.000 You can't help it.
00:46:56.000 And two, that level of power in the hands of human beings convinced them that they were gods.
00:47:02.000 Yes, it's curious because you would hear a comparable argument offered for slavery, for example, that this burden is borne by American culture.
00:47:11.000 And yet I've never heard anyone advance it around the acts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
00:47:17.000 I wanted to... We dropped atomic weapons on civilian populations. 0.82
00:47:21.000 I'm not endorsing Imperial Japan.
00:47:24.000 Yes.
00:47:25.000 And it was an imperial power in the worst sense. 0.96
00:47:28.000 Horrible, horrible, horrible government.
00:47:31.000 However, you can't annihilate a civilian population and call yourself the good guy. 0.98
00:47:37.000 I don't care.
00:47:37.000 I love America.
00:47:38.000 I will defend America almost under any circumstances.
00:47:41.000 You can't defend that.
00:47:43.000 And the right and the left, I mean, everybody in our country, no one revisits that.
00:47:46.000 It was only 80 years ago.
00:47:48.000 We dropped atomic weapons on a civilian population. 0.78
00:47:51.000 I know that there were munitions plants there, but you just vaporized tens of thousands of people who had nothing, women, children, the elderly, they had nothing to do with this.
00:48:00.000 Yes, then or now.
00:48:01.000 How can you feel good about that?
00:48:03.000 It's not permissible unless you can undergird it with a set of ethical and moral arguments. 0.98
00:48:07.000 But it's all bulls**t! 0.95
00:48:09.000 Absolutely. 0.99
00:48:10.000 Okay, so let's be, can we be clear about something?
00:48:12.000 The West has then spent every moment trying to develop weaponry so sophisticated That they can target specific military members, even as they embed among civilian populations, which is what Israel is doing, for example, right now in the Gaza Strip, or what the United States did when it fought ISIS, or what the United States did when it was fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.
00:48:31.000 But the baseline notion that collective punishment is equivalent to war, collective punishment is, I know who the bad guys are, and I don't care who the bad guys are.
00:48:42.000 I want to punish all of you out of malice and pressure.
00:48:46.000 That is the goal of collective punishment.
00:48:48.000 Collective punishment is not you're at war with a country.
00:48:51.000 That country is threatening you.
00:48:54.000 The only way to win the war and to make sure that your interests are maintained is to take certain military action that will have collateral damage.
00:49:01.000 Collateral damage is not the same thing as collective punishment.
00:49:04.000 But Tucker seems to equate these two things, collateral damage and collective punishment.
00:49:09.000 As though the intent of the dropping of these bombs does not matter whatsoever, and that forecloses the possibility of winning a war like World War II.
00:49:19.000 Again, war has gotten a lot more meticulous since then, which is why casualty numbers in war have dropped so significantly.
00:49:25.000 It's also why, for example, the United States, despite having a nuclear monopoly in the aftermath of World War II, if that had truly corrupted the American soul to the extent that Tucker suggests here, if that had truly corrupted the American national soul that way, From 1945 until 1949, the United States had a nuclear monopoly.
00:49:44.000 No one else had a bomb.
00:49:46.000 We could have literally bombed Moscow into rubble.
00:49:49.000 We could have dropped one nuke and we could have finished the Cold War at the beginning of the Cold War.
00:49:55.000 But we didn't.
00:49:56.000 Because we cared about collateral damage.
00:49:58.000 Because we did not want collective punishment.
00:50:01.000 So, you know, this sort of generalized view of foreign policy, which essentially suggests that everything that's bad in the world is a response, it's a blowback to America's interventionism in the world, because America has historically and currently fostered bad things in the world, suggests a revanchist foreign policy in which the United States basically undercuts all of its interests in the world in the interest of what?
00:50:27.000 Now, again, maybe that collapses back into that original isolationist argument that the U.S.
00:50:30.000 has no foreign policy, we don't need a foreign policy, erect a wall, everything's good.
00:50:34.000 Maybe that's the idea.
00:50:35.000 Okay, I think that's shortsighted.
00:50:37.000 I don't think that that is going to...
00:50:39.000 I don't think that is going to be realistic in a world in which vacuums are filled by forces nefarious that do not like America and do not wish for the prosperity of American citizens.
00:50:47.000 But at least that's a foreign policy.
00:50:49.000 But this is why clarification on these issues, I think, would be a good thing.
00:50:53.000 There's a lot of vague talk floating around about foreign policy.
00:50:55.000 And for the third time, I would love to sit down with Tucker and talk about these things to actually establish what he thinks a good and moral American foreign policy should look like.
00:51:04.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
00:51:06.000 We will be getting into the Democrats desperately attempting to continue to paint Joe Biden as a victim of a special counsel.
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