00:01:13.600And Iran has pledged to respond, not by bombing the United States because they can't, but0.77
00:01:18.520by hitting our allies in the region, the six Gulf states who are our closest allies in
00:01:23.080Middle East, and almost all of them have sustained tremendous damage, in some cases very severe
00:01:28.300damage, to military and civilian infrastructure. And they'll continue to do that. So this is1.00
00:01:33.840escalating. The war is back on despite repeated promises that it was over, that we'd already won.
00:01:41.340We could play you a lot of clips. No point really in doing that because it's depressing. We could
00:01:47.500play you all 38 announcements of an imminent deal. Again, you get the point, but we can't
00:01:53.260resist playing just one from about six weeks ago. This is the president of the United States saying
00:01:57.620that victory is already ours and we're all really only hanging around to increase the magnitude of
00:02:04.880the victory. Here's President Trump. We've already won, but I want to win by a bigger margin.
00:02:11.560But we have. We have destroyed their Navy, destroyed their Air Force, destroyed all of their, if you look at their anti-aircraft equipment, their radar equipment, their leadership. Their leadership is destroyed. We've destroyed everything.
00:02:31.940So it's hard to know which of those details is accurate or not, because there has been
00:02:36.580really since February 28th when this began, a total news blackout on the details of this war.
00:02:42.000We don't know how many Americans have been killed. We don't know how many have been injured. We don't
00:02:45.340know how they were killed and injured. We really don't know anything beyond what we read on the
00:02:51.240internet or in press releases. And in case after case, that has turned out to be untrue. So there
00:02:55.800really has never been a war of this magnitude with this little factual coverage supplying
00:03:01.940the public with usable information about how it's going.
00:11:50.780That's just the cost of war, apparently.
00:11:53.820And more specifically, and in some ways more shockingly, the United States government has threatened to target and then two days ago targeted civilian infrastructure.
00:12:07.240Meaning the systems that keep people alive, keep civilians alive in Iran and any country.
00:13:09.680And there's also, of course, because why wouldn't you at this point?
00:13:13.000It's threatening nuclear strikes against entire populations,
00:13:17.020or as the president himself said, civilizations.
00:13:20.360Now, let's hope none of that happens and let's hope there aren't further strikes on civilian infrastructure that civilians aren't killed on purpose.
00:13:28.640Not simply because we're bleeding heart liberals that think it's bad, but because it's not good for our country because, well, in the end, what you do will be done to you.
00:13:47.040And the United States has a lot more civilian infrastructure than Iran does.
00:13:51.640So if the global hegemon is announcing that it's okay to murder civilians in a country you don't like, whose policies you oppose, it stands to reason that we may be the victim of that kind of thinking.
00:14:10.700In fact, it's dead certain that we will be the victim of that kind of thinking.
00:19:49.820you're going to have to deal with Iran.0.92
00:19:52.500So that means that after months of war with Iran, this rogue state, this Middle Eastern North Korea run by crazy people who are cannibals or throwing gays off buildings for fun, that country becomes almost inevitably a real country that other real countries deal with as a peer country.0.79
00:20:13.340It's also pretty easy to imagine an enhanced Iranian economy, because at some point, U.S. sanctions will either have to be dropped, reduced, or they will just become less meaningful because the U.S. dollar will not be dominant in the way that it is now.0.57
00:20:30.860And finally, and this is not a minor point either, Iran's image around the world will be enhanced.
00:29:26.500It was the only country besides Kuwait where both the government and a majority of the population favored the war.
00:29:35.700The Israeli government, to include Prime Minister Sharon, pushed the Bush administration hard to make sure that it did not lose its nerve in the months before the invasion.
00:29:47.680Other influential Israelis, like former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, also implored the United States to take down Saddam.
00:30:01.060In fact, Israel was pushing so hard for war that its allies in the United States warned Israeli officials to damp down their rhetoric, lest it be seen as a war for Israel.
00:30:14.780I might also add that President Clinton said in 2006 that every Israeli politician I knew thought that Saddam was so great a threat that he should be removed even if he did not have WMD.
00:30:32.340So you can see why Professor John Mearsheimer was considered threat number one by AIPAC,
00:30:38.140and we'll just use the phrase, and it's Amen Chorus in the American media.
00:30:42.300Not because he's a bigot or a Nazi, but precisely because he is not.
00:30:46.960He's an eminently reasonable man who understands the facts and isn't afraid to say them.
00:36:30.800Nothing but trouble everywhere, and that makes it incredibly interesting and depressing at the same time.
00:36:40.220I do wake up sometimes in the morning depressed at the thought that I'm now going to have to go read all the newspapers and all the websites and get the bad news.
00:36:47.260But it is a fascinating world, and trying to make sense of it is a very interesting business.
00:36:53.900So, you know, the idea of coming here to talk to you is very enticing because we get to sort of feel our way around and try and figure out what's going on.
00:37:16.620I think with regard to both the Ukraine war and the war against Iran, profound change is going to result from both.0.88
00:37:26.340I think that Putin is going to win in Ukraine.0.93
00:37:29.560Ukraine is going to end up as a dysfunctional rump state.0.99
00:37:33.220I think in the process of this war, NATO has been wrecked.0.95
00:37:38.560The U.S.-European transatlantic relationship has been badly damaged.
00:37:46.620And if you go to the Middle East, I think the Iranians are going to come out of this war in much better shape than they went into the war on February 28th.
00:37:57.280And I think that America's position in the Middle East and certainly Israel's position is going to be badly damaged as a result of this war.
00:38:35.440Yeah. And I would just say as a general point, I think that the worst outcome in both cases, and I can expound on each, is the possibility of nuclear weapons being used.0.53
00:38:46.540And let's start with Ukraine, as you say. The Ukrainians, with strong support from mainly the Europeans but also the United States, have ramped up their drone war and missile war against the territory of Russia.
00:39:05.900In other words, they're striking deep into Russia, and they're doing significant damage inside of Russia.0.83
00:39:13.540And the Russians believe that this has to stop, especially since the Europeans and the Americans are talking about increasing the volume and quality of the attacks in the future.
00:39:29.640I don't think President Trump himself, but I think the deep state is committed to the Ukraine war still.
00:39:37.340I mean, Trump has pulled away in a lot of respects, but I think the deep state remains committed, and certainly the Europeans remain deeply committed to helping Ukraine inflict punishment on the civilian population and on infrastructure deep inside of Russia.0.54
00:39:56.320And the Russians are having the devil of a time stopping that.
00:40:01.000And the end result is that there is increasing talk inside of Russia that the only solution to this problem is for Russia to attack with conventional weaponry to start with European countries or NATO countries.
00:40:18.560In other words, Russia has to stop limiting its attacks to Ukraine, and it has to start thinking about attacking inside of Europe, but with conventional weapons.
00:40:30.680And the view of many inside of Russia is that if that doesn't work, if the conventional weaponry doesn't stop the attacks on Mother Russia, then what Russia should do is use limited nuclear attacks against NATO countries to send a very clear signal to the Europeans and to the United States that they better stop or this will escalate out of control.
00:40:58.840So I think there is a serious possibility.
00:41:01.560I don't think it's a likely possibility, but I think there's a serious possibility that nuclear weapons will be used in the Ukraine war.
00:41:11.840There's been very little coverage in the American press of Ukrainian-European-American attacks on the Russian homeland.
00:41:20.780To what extent have they caused damage and casualties and they're serious attacks?
00:41:25.420Well, they've caused serious damage to the energy infrastructure, and they occasionally kill a good number of Russian citizens.
00:41:36.440This is nothing like the bombing attacks in World War II or even the American bombing campaign in Vietnam.
00:41:45.600But from a Russian perspective, any serious attacks on Mother Russia are unacceptable.
00:41:54.020And the problem that Putin faces is that there has long been widespread criticism inside Russia that he has not waged the war against Ukraine vigorously enough.
00:42:06.960The fact is that Putin and the Russian military, of course, have gone to great lengths to minimize the number of Ukrainian civilians who have been killed.
00:45:26.160Like what do they hope to achieve by doing that?
00:45:28.200Well, the Karaganov argument, which I think is correct, is that the Russians believe that they don't think that this is a red line.0.72
00:45:37.020People in the West, especially in Europe, think they can continue to up the ante and increase the number of attacks and the quality of the attacks or the lethality of the attacks.0.65
00:46:12.260And the argument that people like Karaganov make is that the only way that we can reverse this situation is make it clear to the West that there is a red line here.
00:46:21.620They don't understand that, but we're going to make it clear.
00:46:24.040And the way we're going to do it is we're going to attack NATO countries.
00:46:27.220And we're going to dare them to counterattack.0.53
00:46:31.300And the bet is that the Europeans and the Americans will back off and tell the Ukrainians no more of those attacks.0.93
00:47:01.660I think that the European leaders and American leaders would be thrilled if Russia bombed the Baltics, Eastern Europe, even Western Europe.
00:47:11.360And I think they'd be more thrilled if they used nuclear weapons because it would give Western leaders a justification for waging an all-out direct war on Russia, which is what they want.0.53
00:47:22.560I don't think the United States once in all direct war on Russia.
00:47:26.600If it was a nuclear war, that would mean that a large number of people would be incinerated.
00:47:33.660It does seem like, though, there's this pattern, and I think you see it in this current war,
00:47:38.280where the West provokes Russia to action so it can cast Russia as Nazi Germany and justify aggression against Russia.
00:47:48.060But here we're talking about NATO getting involved in a war.
00:47:52.560And NATO's in no position to win a war against the Russians, number one.
00:47:59.080Number two, the last thing the United States wants, given that we're up to our eyeballs and alligators in the Middle East, plus we have to worry about containing China and East Asia, is a war in Ukraine against Russia.
00:48:12.380And then most important of all, once you talk about the United States and Russia actually fighting each other, the threat of nuclear escalation goes up greatly.
00:48:23.320And the last thing we want is a nuclear war over Ukraine, because Ukraine is just not that important.
00:48:28.640It is to some people in the U.S. government.
00:48:32.120I mean, their ancestors are from there.
00:50:35.840Ukraine, an ally of the United States, a country we're supporting, invaded Mother Russia.
00:50:42.140Then, that was in August of 2024. Then in February of 2025, Ukraine attacked one leg of the strategic nuclear triad of Russia. It went after its nuclear bomber force. It was supported, again, Ukraine is supported by the United States. It gets intelligence from the United States.
00:51:05.420These kind of actions were unthinkable during the Cold War.
00:51:10.660So here you have a situation today where we are right on Russia's doorstep, and we are supporting Ukraine, which invaded Mother Russia and is launching attacks on its strategic nuclear triad.
00:51:24.660The Russians think that this is categorically unacceptable, and they're going to go to enormous lengths to prevent this from continuing.0.61
00:51:33.720They're going to win the war. They're determined to win the war. And they're determined to make sure that NATO does not continue working with the Ukrainians to hit targets deep inside Russia. They feel like their survival is threatened. They feel like they've been backed into a corner. And when great powers feel like they've been backed into a corner, you never want to underestimate the risk that they're willing to take.
00:51:58.820And that's why people should take Karaganov's warnings so seriously.
00:52:36.440Well, let me just start by reminding you that in his first term, when he came into office, he had two goals, two major foreign policy goals.
00:52:45.000One was to end engagement with China and move to a policy of containment.0.86
00:52:51.360And he was very successful at that.0.84
00:52:53.120But he also wanted to improve relations with Russia, with Putin in particular, and do everything he could to peel the Chinese and the Russians away from each other and get the Russians on our side of the ledger.0.92
00:53:13.080It's very important to understand that.
00:53:14.520So when Trump leaves office in 2021, relations between Russia and the United States have hardly improved at all.
00:53:23.120Now, when he comes into office in January of 2025, at that point in time, his goal is to do in the second term with regard to Russia what he did in the first term, okay?
00:53:39.700And lots of people, me included, believe he has all the right instincts and that he's in a position where he can significantly improve relations with Russia, which would certainly be in our interest.
00:53:52.500and maybe even end the Ukraine war, which would be in everybody's interest, including Ukraine's
00:53:57.920interest. But the problem that he runs into is twofold. First of all, he's ham-fisted when it
00:54:05.700comes to diplomacy. He's just not good at the art of the deal, at least at the diplomatic level.
00:54:13.000Yeah, at all. There's just no question about that at this point in time. So he fails to shut down
00:54:18.340the war. And of course, he's facing huge resistance from inside the deep state because there are lots
00:54:26.200of people inside the deep state who don't want to reach an accommodation with the Russians. And
00:54:32.360there are lots of people on the outside as well in the general foreign policy establishment who
00:54:37.060don't want to reach an accommodation with the Russians. So that's point number one. But point
00:54:42.340number two is he then gets deeply involved in the Middle East, especially with the Iran war.
00:54:48.340And in a very important way, he's now so consumed with Iran that he has hardly any time to pay attention to what's going on in Ukraine.
00:54:57.440And that allows all of these people in the deep state and in the foreign policy establishment who want to continue to have good relations with the Europeans and Ukrainians and antagonistic relations towards the Russians to dominate the diplomacy in Europe.
00:55:15.720So for that reason, we're basically back to square one with regard to Ukraine.
00:55:22.320And we have less influence in Europe than we have had in our lifetimes, I would say now.0.58
00:55:28.320It's harder to restrain the Europeans.
00:55:32.340Things around the world are moving so fast right now, it's impossible to keep up with all of the changes.0.96
00:55:38.000But we do know that when those changes happen, markets change too.
00:55:42.940And nothing changes faster than the price of precious metals, gold and silver.
00:55:47.740It just shifts in an instant because it is a reaction to and against what's happening in the world.
00:57:28.220Therefore, why would you expect the Russians to throw their hands up and surrender?0.73
00:57:34.320And in fact, given our previous discussion five minutes ago, what the Russians are talking about doing now in response is attacking into Eastern Europe.
00:57:43.760It just seems like there is this misperception, and you see this in a lot of other theaters and countries, of the leadership of Russia.
00:57:51.980So we tell ourselves that Putin is an absolute dictator, Chairman Mao style dictator who can do whatever he wants, who's got total autonomy, sovereignty in his own country, that there are no competing political forces.
00:58:03.400He's not under pressure from anyone domestically.
00:58:06.140He just like wakes up and decides what to do.
00:58:27.280People who argue that we should get rid of him and we'll get, you know, a real peacenik in his place are living in a dream world.
00:58:36.140As I said before, he's being criticized far and wide inside of Russia for not having waged the war vigorously enough.
00:58:44.540In fact, going back to when the war started in 2022, I've argued on a number of occasions that if I were playing his hand, I would have mobilized the Russian military much more quickly than he did.
00:58:57.500And I would have played hardball in ways that he has not played.
00:59:00.760So he has been, I don't want to say he's been a pussycat, but the idea that he's been this ruthless leader on the same scale as someone like Adolf Hitler is a laughable argument.0.70
00:59:11.740But what's happened in the West is that we've created this caricature of him, and we've created this Russian threat that bears no resemblance to reality.0.51
00:59:24.780I mean, you see this when people talk about the danger of Russia conquering Eastern Europe.
00:59:32.220In other words, a lot of people are saying we've got to stand up to the Russians now because they're on the verge of conquering all of Ukraine.0.86
00:59:39.740And once they're done with Ukraine, they're going to move into Eastern Europe.
00:59:42.920And Putin's ultimate goal is to recreate the Soviet empire.
00:59:46.260And, of course, he has the wherewithal to do that.
00:59:48.480That's one set of arguments that you hear.0.83
00:59:50.560But then you hear the argument that the Ukrainians now have the Russians on the ropes.
00:59:57.500The Russian military is suffering enormous casualties.0.99
01:00:00.600They're being pushed back to Ukrainians by the Ukrainians.
01:00:03.980These are two completely different sets of arguments that are at odds with each other.0.99
01:00:08.680And the question is, which one is true? And the argument that the Russians are on their back feet is wrong. The Russians are moving forward. They're steadily, but slowly, winning the war. But the idea that they're going to conquer all of Ukraine, not going to happen. The idea that they're going to conquer territory in Eastern Europe, not going to happen.
01:00:29.140But people in the West make that argument. This is especially true in Europe because they want to create a Russian boogeyman so that the Ukrainians stay in the fight. We continue to support the Ukrainians and we go to great lengths to continue to wreck Russia.
01:00:46.340There are lots of people, it's important to understand this, who want to wreck Russia.1.00
01:00:51.920They want to continue to do everything they can to wreck the Russian economy, more and more sanctions.
01:03:18.140So for that reason, we got increasingly angry with Putin as the unipolar moment wore on.
01:03:26.580And then once Russia becomes a great power in roughly 2017, the United States is interested in knocking Russia out of the ranks of the great powers, right?0.79
01:03:40.240We understand that they've become a great power, but we'd like to knock them out of the ranks.0.89
01:03:45.400And of course, you want to understand that the Russians, after 2017, when they're a great power, are resisting our efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO.
01:03:55.940And this is just unacceptable to us.0.75
01:03:58.860So we begin to think of ways to undermine Russia, to knock Russia out of the ranks of0.76
01:04:18.740If you go back, let's say, to December 27, 2021, December 2021, and ramp forward to when the war actually starts, what you see, if you look carefully, is that Putin is going to great lengths to try to avoid a war.
01:04:47.680Well, and not just that, but provokes Russia by sending Kamala Harris to the Munich Security Conference and saying in public to Zelensky, we want you to join NATO on camera.0.52
01:05:07.120Shortly thereafter, I mean, a day or two later, Putin sends a message to Zelensky and says, let's start negotiating.
01:05:14.460they first start negotiating in belarus and then they go to istanbul these are the famous istanbul
01:05:20.900negotiations okay this is in march early april of 2022 almost immediately after the war starts
01:05:28.440and it looks like the ukrainians and the russians may be able to cut a deal they did not cut the
01:05:36.000deal but they're getting closer and closer things are working out very well what happens boris
01:05:41.940Johnson, with support from the United States, of course, comes in and he tells the Ukrainians
01:05:48.220to walk away from the negotiations. Now, the question you want to ask yourself is why did
01:05:54.200this happen? Yes, I wanted to ask him that, but he won't talk to me. The reason it happened is
01:06:00.560that we thought that economic sanctions would bring the Russians to their knees and that the
01:06:08.620Ukrainians who we had armed and trained, we meaning the West, had armed and trained between
01:06:15.8402014, when the crisis first broke out, and 2022, when the war broke out, the actual war. In that
01:06:24.340eight-year period, we had armed, we meaning the West, had armed and trained the Ukrainians,
01:06:29.580and they were a quite formidable fighting force, as the Russians found out over the course of 2022.
01:06:35.160We believed that the Ukrainian army on the battlefield, coupled with economic sanctions, would do the Russians in.
01:06:43.420And that's why we told Zelensky to walk away from the negotiations in Istanbul.
01:06:49.540And you want to also remember that late in the fall of that year, 2022, General Milley, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, understood that the Ukrainians by that point in time had reached the high water mark.
01:07:06.420Remember, the Ukrainians had launched two successful offensives against the Russians in 2022, one in Kharkiv, one in Kherson. And Milley said, this is wonderful, but it's time to cut a deal now, because as time goes by, the balance of power will shift against Ukraine and in favor of the Russians.
01:07:29.700because at that point, Putin was beginning to mobilize the Russian army in a serious way.
01:07:35.800I think he called up 300,000 troops in September of 2022. But anyway, what happened was that Milley
01:07:44.400was told to cease and desist from making that argument. They put Milley in the back closet,
01:07:49.860said, no more talk about cutting a deal now because we think we've got the Russians on the
01:07:57.060And you remember, it's in early June, I think it was June 4th of 2023. Remember, 2022 is when the war starts. In June of 2023, that's when the Ukrainians launched that massive offensive where they think they're going to affect the blitzkrieg and bring the Russian military to its knees.0.85
01:08:17.960This just shows you that we thought the success that the Ukrainians were having on the battlefield, coupled with the sanctions, would allow us to defeat Russia and knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers and put an end to having to deal with Vladimir Putin, who wouldn't dance to our tune.
01:08:38.660i mean i kind of get it conceptually and i have no question that you're describing the thinking
01:08:46.860of the people who made these decisions but i think if you just ponder like the potential
01:08:51.620consequences of their plan so you knock russia out of the ranks the great powers you displace
01:08:58.060putin somehow what happens then this is the biggest country on earth it's diverse it's got
01:09:06.280all kinds of ethnic groups and who get along sort of, but like it could break apart and it's got
01:09:10.720the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Destabilizing Russia could be really dangerous0.75
01:09:16.140for everybody. Did that occur to them? No. How stupid are they? Incredibly.
01:09:24.060Look, as I said to you before, you know, I've studied a lot of international relations over
01:09:29.360time. And when you corner great powers, when you threaten their survival, you do not want to
01:09:34.980underestimate how risky the policies will be that they are willing to pursue. Okay. And I think if
01:09:43.900our policy had actually worked, if it looked like the Russians were going to be knocked out of the0.74
01:09:51.060ranks of the great powers, they would have then used nuclear weapons. Yes. Or if it did, if the0.89
01:09:56.920government collapsed, whatever that meant, and we succeeded in killing Putin, which I know we've
01:10:01.880been trying to do on and off for a long time like what then what if there was a civil war
01:10:07.700ethnic breakup of russia like how is that good for ever for the rest of the world it's terrible
01:10:14.320for russia but what about the rest of us it's not good for us either chaos is not good is it0.87
01:10:18.780absolutely you're correct i mean we could have easily lived with the russians yes putin wanted
01:10:50.720And by the way, just to go back to Trump,
01:10:52.480I think Trump's instincts on both China and Russia, starting with his first term, and even in his second term, in the beginning, his instincts were correct in both cases.0.87
01:11:03.560It was time to abandon engagement, contain China.0.92
01:11:06.640And with regard to Russia, it was time to have good relations with Russia, to end the war in Ukraine.0.74
01:11:12.320This is in his second term because the war didn't take place in his first term.
01:11:15.720So I think Trump's instincts were good.
01:11:17.520But again, Trump's problem is that when it comes to diplomacy, he has the Midas touch in reverse.
01:11:25.820And the end result is that he's made a hash of things with the Russians.
01:11:30.420So what's the motive of European leaders, of Macron and Starmer and Mertz in Western Europe and then the various Eastern European leaders?
01:11:39.900Like, why are they monomaniacally focused on Putin?
01:12:06.160I mean, there's just no evidence to support this argument in terms of what Putin has said over time or what he's written over time.
01:12:14.000Or if you just look at the power that's built into the Russian army, this army's had a difficult time capturing the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine.
01:12:24.740The idea that it's going to conquer all of Ukraine and roll into eastern Europe is not a serious argument.
01:12:31.360And again, he's never said that he was interested in doing that.
01:12:35.020This is not the second coming of the Wehrmacht.
01:12:37.240But for some reason, the European elites have convinced themselves that this is the case, and it seems that they won't listen to common sense on this issue.
01:12:49.340So the idea is that the largest country in the world by landmass with the most resources on earth wants to capture overcrowded, collapsing welfare states and do what with them?
01:14:59.300You want to remember that before 1947, that was when the National Security Act created
01:15:06.300created the Air Force Academy and created an independent Air Force, that the Air Force was
01:15:14.460actually the Army Air Corps. So West Point provided officers to the Army and to the Air Force. And
01:15:21.140when I graduated from West Point in 1970, there were a set of limited conditions under which you
01:15:25.860could go into the Air Force. And I qualified, so I was in the Air Force rather than the Army.
01:15:31.100The vast majority of my classmates went into the Army, but I went into the Air Force.
01:15:36.600But I had been in the Army as an enlisted man before I went to West Point.
01:15:41.240So I actually, including my West Point time, spent 10 years in the military.
01:15:46.560But to go back to your excellent question about the Soviet Union and its experience in Eastern Europe,
01:15:53.340The reason that the Soviet Union ended up in Eastern Europe is because on June 22nd, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa for the express purpose of destroying the Soviet Union.0.69
01:16:11.720Thankfully, the Soviets won the war.0.55
01:16:14.000But to win the war, they had to drive across Eastern and Central Europe into Germany.0.92
01:16:22.800You remember, it was the Red Army that went into Berlin.
01:16:29.600And that's when Hitler, of course, committed suicide.
01:16:31.940And that war ended on May 8th, 1945.0.79
01:16:35.800And the Soviets ended up, needless to say, occupying virtually all of Eastern Europe.
01:16:45.080But what happens after that is that the Cold War breaks out.0.61
01:16:49.800And you have the United States on the other side of what we came to call the Iron Curtain, called the intra-German border, and the Soviet Union on the other side.0.65
01:17:03.360And I think that there were two reasons that the Soviets had a vested interest and we had a vested interest in keeping that status quo.0.77
01:17:13.180One is we didn't trust each other and we were afraid if we got out, the Soviets would conquer more territory.0.68
01:17:19.080And they were afraid that if they got out, we would move eastward.0.76
01:18:24.440But that's why the Soviets stayed. But what eventually happens is two things. And this leads to the end of the Cold War and the end of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe. Number one, the Soviet economy begins to run aground.0.72
01:18:42.380It really starts in the mid-1960s, and it accelerates in the early 1980s.
01:18:49.580And, of course, Gorbachev comes along, and the rest is history.
01:18:53.740But it's fundamental flaws in the Soviet economy that eventually brings the Soviet Union down.
01:19:01.100But the second thing that happens, getting back to what we were talking about before,
01:19:04.980is that the Soviets understand that occupying Eastern Europe and Central Europe is incredibly expensive.
01:19:41.540Yeah, yeah. By the way, if you just think about the collapse of the great empires, you know, we read about the great empires like the British Empire, the Belgian Empire, the French Empire, the Dutch Empire, and so forth and so on. They've all gone away, okay? And the question you want to ask yourself is why did they all go away?
01:20:17.480Did not want the British or the French or the Portuguese telling them how their politics should be run.
01:20:26.560They wanted to be independent nation states.
01:20:30.860What I'm telling you is that nationalism, this incredibly powerful force, was the number one reason for bringing down these empires.
01:20:41.200The second reason was that the economic benefits, once the Industrial Revolution comes, melt away, right?
01:20:50.320Before the Industrial Revolution, we're in a world where commerce is of great importance.
01:20:55.780You can exploit these colonies and they make a lot of sense economically.
01:21:00.880But by the 20th century, by the time the Industrial Revolution is in full swing, these empires are basically an albatross around your neck.
01:21:11.480India is an albatross around Britain's neck, in my opinion.
01:21:15.660And you'll notice, just going to who the powerful countries are in the 20th century, Germany, the United States, and Russia slash the Soviet Union, the only one that has an empire is Germany.0.91
01:21:30.680And it's a tiny empire that it acquires in Africa in the late 1800s.
01:24:04.560If you really think about it, invading other countries and trying to, you know, do social engineering, it's going to get you into a lot of trouble.
01:24:14.180And for all the hate, much of it so well-deserved toward Israel now, part of me always feels sorry for Israel because I don't think they're brilliant at all.0.78
01:24:24.000I don't think they're even very clever because they're ignoring the lessons that you're just describing now, which don't ever change.0.54
01:24:29.940which is over hubris leads to destruction overreach territorial overreach always weakens you0.94
01:24:36.560you can hold gaza for 65 years or whatever it's not even not even 60 years actually
01:24:42.260and uh the west bank and all that stuff but like in the end lebanon israel is0.99
01:24:49.580kind of ensuring its own destruction by its behavior right now and i feel sorry for them0.51
01:24:54.660they don't seem to know that. Well, they have, let me make two points on this. The Israelis have
01:25:02.100no sense of the limits of power. Yes, exactly. And we have a lot of that. Oh, I know we do.0.99
01:25:07.840You know, right? But the Israelis have no sense of the limits of military power. They think you
01:25:15.720can just pound people into submission. And you can do that sometimes, but most of the time you
01:25:20.700can't. The second point I would make to you is, if you think about the whole Zionist enterprise,0.85
01:25:27.420you go back to 1900 and ramp forward to the present, it's an amazing accomplishment0.89
01:25:36.020that small numbers of European Jews coming out of Europe could go to the Middle East0.85
01:25:47.200and could carve out a state, a Jewish state, in a sea of Arabs or Palestinians.0.97
01:26:03.200Yeah. But in the early years, certainly up until 1967, the Israelis have a really powerful sense of the limits of what they could accomplish.
01:26:42.320They have to be tactically and strategically smart.
01:26:45.880But what happens to Israel over time is not only do the guardrails come off, or maybe put it in slightly different language, not only do the checks come off, but they develop this incredibly powerful military, right, because of help from the United States.
01:27:08.880And, of course, this is where the Israel lobby comes in, right?0.69
01:27:28.160The United States will not only sanction anything they do,
01:27:34.160It will support what they do with material resources and protect them diplomatically.
01:27:41.680Just think about the genocide in Gaza.
01:27:44.120I mean, here we have a people that was a victim of one of the greatest genocides in recorded history not long ago, committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
01:27:57.840And the United States is complicitous in this genocide, both under the Biden administration
01:28:08.240And it just goes to show you that Israel can do almost anything, and we protect them, and
01:28:14.620we provide them with huge amounts of weaponry.0.79
01:28:19.240And this has not worked to Israel's advantage.
01:28:24.120And in a very important way, the lobby, which is so essential for making this relationship work the way it does, is undermining Israel.0.91
01:28:36.760All these people like Bill Ackman, who think that they're doing wonderful things for Israel, that they're protecting Israel, are living in a fool's paradise.
01:28:45.620The best thing that could happen to Israel is if Donald Trump could actually get tough with them, read them the riot act.0.82
01:28:52.220And that was true of many previous presidents.
01:28:55.760People like Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, these people were not anti-Semites.
01:29:00.960They actually were philo-Semites of the first order, and they cared about Israel's security.0.69
01:29:06.560They just thought that Israel was going about providing for its own security in the most foolish ways, and they wanted to crack down on the Israelis.0.56
01:29:15.140But they couldn't do that because the lobby made it impossible to do.
01:29:19.620And the end result is that Israel is in a deep hole.
01:29:27.540Because it can get away with it and because it believes that there's got to be some magic military formula that we can find to win against Hezbollah, to win against Hamas, to win against Iran, and to have absolute security.
01:30:12.680Like that's exactly what we're watching, I think.
01:30:15.500I think, Tucker, what we're saying here, and this gets back to our conversation about how European leaders think about Putin as Hitler and they think about this great Russian threat.
01:30:25.900And when we talk now about the Israelis, there are just a lot of people who are not thinking straight these days.0.51
01:30:44.340I mean, first of all, in the mainstream media during the Cold War, we had a much more vibrant and open-ended debate about foreign policy than we do now.
01:30:57.040We have a big debate now, but it's sort of the alternative media platforms.
01:31:01.880Like your show, Judge Napolitano and all these other shows, on one side and the mainstream media on the other side.
01:31:09.740But inside the mainstream media, it's truly amazing the extent to which people parrot this conventional wisdom and prevent voices that get heard on the alternative media from intruding into the mainstream.
01:31:26.560Yeah. And the thing is that most people in the United States, and I believe around the world for sure, understand that what they're hearing from the mainstream media and what they're hearing from their leaders makes no sense.
01:31:42.640And this, of course, is why someone like Trump gets elected, right?
01:31:46.800Because Trump says things that are counter to the conventional wisdom.
01:31:51.680Forget what he actually does when he's in office.
01:31:53.580He ran on a platform that there's something fundamentally wrong and the elites are bankrupt and people voted for him.
01:32:03.180And of course, people who think that the establishment,
01:32:08.120whether you're talking about, you know,
01:32:09.640the foreign policymakers, people at think tanks,
01:33:30.340they won't say that. In the Middle East, same thing. Oh, sure, sure, sure. I simply don't
01:33:38.400have a good explanation. But just to add to your point, we also just have a lot of evidence over
01:33:44.560the past decade or so that thinking the way the elite has been thinking does not lead to a good
01:33:52.740ending. It's not like we've had great successes. It's not like the Israelis have had great successes.
01:33:59.780Exactly. You know what I mean? I kind of don't get it.1.00
01:34:05.500So, okay. So, just back to Ukraine. Sorry, I have too many questions. How do you think that, what's the most likely resolution to that and when, if you had to guess?
01:34:17.820I think you're going to get a frozen conflict. And what's going to happen here is that the Russians are almost certainly going to end up conquering the four oblasts that they have now annexed. They fully control one of those oblasts, Luhansk.0.79
01:34:35.640The one that gets the most attention in the media today, Dohansk, they control 85% of that, Donetsk, and they control about 75% of Zaporozhia and about 75% of Kherson.0.88
01:34:55.520I think they will continue the war until they fully control all the territory in those four oblasts, which, again, they've annexed along with Crimea.0.88
01:35:05.960I would not be surprised if they actually end up taking more territory.0.94
01:35:11.660I wouldn't be surprised if they take Odessa and Kharkiv as well.
01:35:18.500I think it's quite clear that their progress on the battlefield has been relatively slow, and it's in large part not because the Ukrainian ground forces are formidable troops, but because of drones.
01:35:34.640I think drones have made it very difficult for either side to move.
01:35:37.980But I think the Russians will end up conquering a huge slice of eastern Ukraine, and at some point, the Ukrainians and the Russians will stop firing at each other.0.51
01:41:00.480And if you see the Poles getting nuclear weapons, how do you think about that, right?0.95
01:41:06.740So the potential for danger here is just not to be underestimated.0.80
01:41:12.200I mean, we were talking before about the Sergei Karaganov scenario where the Russians use nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe because the Ukrainians are attacking Mother Russia with drones and missiles.0.71
01:41:25.700Here we're talking about a situation where Poland and Germany might go down the nuclear road0.65
01:41:32.060and asking ourselves the question, what would be the Russian reaction?
01:41:39.060Before I ask you about what's happening in Iran, a mystery that I'd love to hear explained.
01:41:45.840Why is it that the very same people who pushed Donald Trump to war, regime change war against Iran,
01:41:52.120are literally the same people who pushed him
01:41:54.600to continue the regime change war against Russia,
01:42:49.640I think is America's on the verge of being invaded, which it's not, but because Israel might need the fire department to show up in an emergency and we've got to pay for that?0.72
01:42:59.280Yes, you want a big fire department that is fighting wars and is honed to win those wars.0.97
01:43:43.380And since Elbridge Colby works mainly on China issues, the Times speculated on why Israel would be so interested in keeping a careful eye on Elbridge Colby.
01:43:57.140And the Times actually said at the end of the piece, it's probably because he's a restrainer, right?
01:44:05.100He's interested in a restrained foreign policy.
01:44:08.660Colby does not want to be fighting wars everywhere.
01:44:12.280He once told me that he was opposed to the Iraq war back in 2003.
01:44:16.660He wants to concentrate on containing China, but he's not interested in fighting in Ukraine.0.85
01:44:23.560And, of course, the Israelis do not like restrainers.
01:44:27.140They do not like the Quincy Institute, right?0.76
01:44:29.960So they're allowed to just spy on American citizens, but then continue to receive our tax dollars in order to fund spying on us?
01:44:36.440Well, the answer is yes to that, or at least it's been yes to that in the past.
01:44:40.760But in answer to your question, the first reason here that our engagement in Ukraine is pushed by the same people who are pushing the Iran war is because of Israel and the Israel lobby and the influence that the lobby and Israel have and seeing the United States involved in places like Ukraine.0.89
01:45:07.500The second reason is you have lots of Americans, Jews and non-Jews, who have roots in Ukraine, and those people believe strongly that Ukraine should be a sovereign state and that the Russians are the bad guys, and they believe that we should support the Ukrainians' hook, line, and sinker.
01:45:31.180And the journalist, Steve Kinzer, has written a book on this that I believe is coming out later this year that explains this phenomenon in great detail.
01:45:42.120Steve, in his new book, shows how many Americans inside of the foreign policy establishment who have roots, family roots, in Eastern Europe or in Ukraine or in Russia are deeply committed to supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia, which they see as the bad guy.
01:46:07.260yeah it was right around 1905 that there were quite a few loud voices in america saying let's
01:46:13.140not have mass immigration from eastern europe because it's going to cause us massive problems
01:46:16.320down the line when they were dismissed as crazy just want to say that out loud um well anytime
01:46:21.760you have immigration you run into the problem i was recently in miami florida and uh it's quite
01:46:28.340clear that one of the principal reasons that we now have our gun sites on cuba which i think is0.84
01:46:33.020ridiculous insane is he's because of the cuban-american community which wields significant
01:46:40.000influence inside the united states much like the israel lobby yeah i mean i i wouldn't i've spent0.86
01:46:47.320a lot of time i mean i lived in washington most of my life spent a lot of time at the white house
01:46:50.720and in congress i never once lobbied for swedish interests it just never occurred to me though my
01:46:54.840name is carlson i have blue eyes but uh yeah i didn't i just i felt like that would be wrong0.78
01:47:01.040do you know what i mean it's disgusting come here and then lobby on behalf of a foreign country
01:47:06.640whatever that country is it's disgusting i agree completely uh i'm i'm against dual citizenship0.73
01:47:12.800of course i think if you come to the united states you become an american you should have
01:47:17.620american last name have you ever lobbied on behalf of germany no i i don't consider myself german
01:47:23.660american or irish american because i'm also partly irish american i consider myself american i do
01:47:29.160too yeah i think when you come to the united states there's and you become a citizen there's
01:47:33.740a social contract involved and that social contract involves becoming an american and uh becoming an
01:47:41.100american first year by definition uh otherwise don't come to the united states or you know get
01:47:47.860a temporary visa which is fine but if you become an american i believe that uh you should not be
01:47:54.140Lobbying on the part of other countries, whether it's for Cuba or China or India or Israel.
01:48:07.060And I think it's within bounds to say that.
01:48:09.640As an American, I think I have a right to say that.
01:48:11.560And I say that, by the way, as somebody who's been a big proponent of immigration over time.
01:48:17.120I'm glad they let all those Russian Jews into the United States or East European Jews into the United States.
01:48:22.740I think immigration is what made the United States great. If you go back and read about what happened in this country, you know, after we got our independence in 1783, and certainly in the 19th and early 20th century, all the immigration is what turned us into the superpower that we are today.
01:48:47.180Immigration is a good thing, but it has to be done in a very careful way.1.00
01:48:50.060Well, sex is a good thing. Eating is a good thing. But, you know, you keep them within certain boundaries so they remain good things. And if you're going to have immigration, particularly at scale, you have to have rules. And the number one rule has to be transfer your allegiance from the country of origin to the country you live in now. That's just got to be rule one. And if you can't hold to that rule, you can't have immigration, it seems to me. Right?1.00
01:49:13.740I think that illegal immigration is an absolutely terrible thing, and I think it's damaged many Americans' views towards immigration in general.1.00
01:49:24.900Number one. And number two, although I'm in favor of immigration, I do think if you come to the United States, you become an American, and only an American.0.99
01:49:33.340You give up, you know, your German citizenship or your Russian citizenship or whatever.
01:49:39.960What about working as a guard at a prison camp in Israel on a volunteer basis like Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic did as an American?
01:49:47.600Is it okay if you're a leading American foreign policy thinker to volunteer as a prison camp guard in a foreign country?
01:49:58.240Or is that there's something kind of maybe disloyal about that?
01:50:01.000Well, this is a particularly egregious situation.
01:50:27.300And, of course, he is the editor of one of the most influential magazines in the United States, where he's in a position where he can control the content of that magazine in ways that support Israel.
01:50:41.120And you can rest assured that anybody who criticizes Israel in a meaningful way is not going to appear on the pages of The Atlantic.
01:50:49.440How have you been treated in The Atlantic?
01:50:51.280well there is the period before uh jeffrey goldberg and since jeffrey goldberg i certainly
01:51:02.400have not appeared in the pages of the atlantic since jeffrey goldberg but uh beforehand you
01:51:08.260want to remember as i think you do that uh our lobby piece the piece that steve walton i wrote
01:51:14.100on the israel lobby which appeared in 2006 in the london review of books was originally supposed
01:55:14.020So what's happening here is Trump is being pushed from one side by Bibi, and he's being pushed on the other side by the inexorable forces of the international economy as it reacts to the shutdown straits, okay?0.76
01:55:28.860So what's happening is that desperate Donald Trump is beginning to put pressure on the Israelis, because he can't put pressure on the Iranians.0.63
01:55:37.520He's putting pressure on the Israelis in ways that he's never done before.
01:55:41.720So he had this conversation where he said really terrible things about Prime Minister Netanyahu last Monday.
01:55:53.420And he's been really playing hardball with the Israelis in ways that we've not seen before.
01:56:01.080And you can tell that Bibi Netanyahu understands this.
01:56:04.640He understands that Trump is desperate and that Trump is putting real pressure on him.
01:56:10.160Now, Netanyahu has resisted to a large extent, not completely, but to a large extent up to now.
01:56:17.600But I would maintain that what's likely to happen as we move forward is that that international economy is going to continue to put pressure on Trump.
01:56:27.060And because he can't put pressure on the Iranians who are in the driver's seat, he's going to put pressure on the Israelis in ways that he has never done before.
01:56:36.280So the question you have to ask yourself is, what is this growing conflict between the United States, and in particular Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu going to look like moving forward?
01:56:49.260You saw yesterday Mark Levin, who's a longtime Trump hater, then became Trump's closest political ally, start to attack Trump for wavering on the question of backing Israel.
01:57:04.460The second Trump criticized Bibi, Mark Levin attacks Trump.
01:57:10.980Can Trump realistically, do you think, fight a battle, a rhetorical battle against Netanyahu and win,
01:57:19.880given that his support now in the United States politically is only Zionists,
01:57:24.440kind of the only people who still support Trump?0.71
01:57:26.800Let me ask you a question. What's the alternative?
01:57:29.300take this to a really really crazy place you know where all of a sudden the war comes home i mean
01:57:41.040there's some attack on the homeland and all of a sudden you have to you know you go full post 9 11
01:57:47.820where the whole country is like you know mobilized against iran i mean that seems more likely to me
02:01:08.560He knew. Yeah. And he is in deep, deep trouble, as is Bibi Netanyahu, by the way. He's in deep, deep trouble, too, just like Trump is. He's in a no-win situation. If he bucks Trump, he's in real trouble. And if he doesn't buck Trump, he's going to be clobbered inside Israel because his critics, the opposition, is going after him for being a pussycat, for not being willing to say no to Trump.
02:01:36.580So if he doesn't say no to Trump, right, he'll get clobbered.0.95
02:01:42.140Who are the Israelis who are like the most flagrant welfare case in world history?0.97
02:01:49.720I mean, way more dependent on our government than any like welfare queen in Detroit has ever been.1.00
02:01:57.840Like without us, they're done, literally done.
02:02:01.260What world are they living in where they're like, well, don't take that from Trump?
02:02:08.680Look, the argument you can make, just building on what you said, is that the Israeli body politic, and you were talking mainly about the Israeli elites, will understand what you just said, which is they can't survive in a meaningful way without American support.
02:02:27.400and that they are running the risk of losing American support if they don't cooperate with
02:02:34.960Trump. If they don't cooperate with Trump, they run the risk. And the threat of losing American
02:02:42.360support will be sufficient to convince the Israelis to play ball with Trump. So the argument0.51
02:02:50.120there is that Trump can play hardball with the Israelis in ways that no other president,0.88
02:02:55.620including Trump himself, have ever played hardball with the Israelis and that it'll work because of
02:03:00.600the logic that you just spun out. I talked to someone in Israel yesterday who's smart and very0.57
02:03:06.560smart who said there's no sense of that at all. Israel, the average Israeli support for the war
02:03:12.880was over 90% in Israel, it was 93%. And the average Israeli thinks that they're running the0.77
02:03:19.880world, that they have total control and that they need nobody. And that if the U.S. pulls, you know,
02:03:24.880we don't need the U.S. actually, there are too many strings attached. In fact, there are no
02:03:28.440strings attached, but they're just so high on their own supply that they don't see at all
02:03:34.000their vulnerabilities. They're really at peak hubris, as this person told me.
02:03:39.460Well, there is some of that for sure. And there's good reason for them to think that they own us
02:03:44.960because they have owned us. But I do think we are at a very special point in history here.
02:03:53.320I think, again, you cannot underestimate what a colossal blunder President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu made on February 28th.
02:04:04.160And the chickens are coming home to roost now.
02:04:07.040And I believe that Netanyahu, who's had a handful of conversations with Trump, fully understands the pressure that Trump is under.
02:04:16.040Right. And I believe other people in the administration are talking to the Israelis and telling them that. And it's easy for the opposition to Netanyahu or on the outside and who would like to run Netanyahu out of office so they can move into his seat to criticize Netanyahu.
02:04:36.980But I think even with regard to them, they will eventually get the message.
02:04:42.480And if they don't, Trump then has two choices.
02:04:46.240He can basically cut off aid to Israel and distance ourselves, distance the United States from Israel in ways that was unimaginable, you know, a month ago.
02:05:17.120That was not true on February 27th, but it's going to be true going forward, period.
02:05:22.000Yeah. First of all, we had four demands regarding Iran's missiles, support for Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, regard to their nuclear program, and with regard to regime change. Those were the four goals that we started with. None of them have been achieved. That's the first point.0.96
02:05:48.380Second point is your point that they now control the Strait of Hormuz, right?
02:05:54.640Third point I would make to you is they're going to come out of this in better economic shape, in part because they control the Strait of Hormuz, but also because a lot of sanctions are going to be lifted off them, right?
02:06:11.160So, economically, they're going to be in a superior position after February 28th than before February 28th.
02:06:19.500Finally, you want to remember that on February 27th, we had a basing structure in the Gulf, and we had an alliance structure in the Gulf that looked quite formidable.
02:06:29.800All those bases have either been destroyed or badly damaged, and that alliance structure that we had with the six Gulf states has been wrecked in very important ways.
02:06:41.140And it's not clear that we can stay in the Gulf.
02:06:55.100You and I agree on that, that so many of these things are so obvious, but yet so many really smart people.
02:07:02.720You know, people who went to fancy universities, have fancy degrees, worked for fancy law firms or what have you, were successful in business.
02:07:10.520you name it, don't see obvious things that people like us see in the foreign policy realm.
02:07:18.220Again, getting back to your question before, I can't explain it.
02:07:23.340Not to get sidetracked, but since you've seen more of it than I have, do you think
02:07:27.720that, well, I know the answer, to what extent has the caliber of public policy,
02:07:34.780public intellectual declined over the past 50 years?
02:07:37.520Oh, drastically. There's just no question about that. If you think about the discourse, right, we live in a world.
02:09:10.140And in terms of going up the escalation ladder, which is what we're talking about here, the United States cannot trump Iran as we go up the escalation ladder.0.93
02:09:23.020Iran has a huge inventory of missiles and drones.0.88
02:09:27.060It operates in a target-rich environment.0.90
02:09:30.440And if we go after targets inside of Iran, you can rest assured that the Iranians will find targets to go after inside of, you know, American-controlled areas.0.91
02:09:44.940And we don't end up coming out on top.
02:09:48.040I mean, let's watch what happens with President Trump.
02:09:50.440Is this going to improve our situation?
02:10:49.700It was the king of battle, and what really mattered was, in Ukraine this is, was the balance of artillery on the two sides, and I paid hardly any attention to drones.
02:11:01.100If I were writing about the balance of power between Ukraine and Russia now, artillery would get second place on the list of important weapons, and I think drones would be the most important weapon affecting events on the battlefield.
02:11:18.000And so that's 2024. Here we are in 2026. So it's only recently that we've become aware that drones matter as much as they do. And I would imagine that the U.S. military is now scrambling like crazy to deal with the drone issue.
02:15:57.660I don't think they're going to get a nuclear deal.
02:15:59.760And the Iranians, as we both know, have a lot of highly enriched uranium, up to 60%. They can easily turn into weapons-grade material and build the bomb. And the Israelis have just demonstrated that they don't have the capability, and we have just demonstrated that we don't have the capability to go in there and get that weapons-grade material and shut down their nuclear enrichment capability forever.0.97
02:16:26.360So it is possible that the Iranians may get a bomb.0.59
02:16:31.240Well, they're certainly going to get a more robust economy,
02:16:33.040and they certainly have cemented their place as like a legit regional power,
02:16:36.960which they sort of weren't fully before.
02:16:40.960I also think this changes their relationship with the GCC.
02:16:43.500I think some of the Gulf states at least were kind of shocked by the unwillingness
02:16:49.000or inability of the United States to protect them from Iranian attacks.
02:16:53.260actually act as a magnet for Iranian attacks.
02:19:58.080So the Biden administration, one could argue, is almost as bad, if not worse, than the Trump administration.
02:20:03.920May I ask you, so over the past six years, there have been a bunch of different moments where the United States has been accused of using negotiations as a ruse in order to lure its opponents into vulnerability and then assassinate them.
02:20:19.560and i've been hesitant to believe that that could be true because i'm american and i love this
02:20:26.100country and that's so dishonorable that you would never want to live in a country that would do
02:20:29.340something like that that that's truly out of bounds starting with the killing the assassination
02:20:34.760of general soleimani about six years ago in iraq he flew in commercial for negotiations he was
02:20:41.580killed which was shocking to me but everyone else loved it and then a bunch of times in the past
02:20:47.480several months the the bombing of doha by the israelis on september 9th of last year
02:20:55.800again and again and again it seems like the united states has been party to or aware of
02:21:01.000traps in which diplomacy was used as the lure is that real do you think we actually did that
02:21:09.560well there's no question that our closest ally in the world who we support at every turn which0.74
02:21:17.460as the israelis is obsessed with assassination they're constantly murdering and i think murdering
02:21:25.600is the right word right uh leaders in countries and in organizations all over the middle east
02:21:34.600there's no question about that and there's also no question as the soleimani case makes clear
02:21:41.340that we've moved in that same direction.
02:26:18.140What you want is you want lots of people with different views to contend with each other and for them to fight it out.
02:26:25.560And I don't mean fight it out in a nasty way.
02:26:27.940Fight it out in a professional way, for lack of a better phrase.
02:26:32.120But anyway, I find that, you know, when I go talk to groups or when my podcasts appear on the Internet, that I get lots and lots of people who applaud me.
02:26:45.340And nevertheless, at the same time, we'll, I won't say often, but we'll sometimes criticize my views on particular issues at the same time they're applauding me.
02:26:57.900And I do not feel bad about that at all.
02:27:00.860I think that's the way the business should work.
02:27:05.120you know, I'm not going on your show or going on any other show to tell people the truth and tell
02:27:13.400them that they should accept the truth from John Mearsheimer. What I'm trying to do is talk in a
02:27:18.840very intelligent way, as you are, about how we think about particular issues. And of course,
02:27:25.620people are sometimes going to agree with us and sometimes disagree with us. That's wonderful.
02:27:29.920And what's happening here is that in the vast majority of cases, I think people take their bearing from what we have to say.
02:27:38.020If they listen to Tucker Carlson talk about issue X and they're trying to figure out what they think on issue X, they'll use your framework.
02:27:46.920They'll use your answers to help inform how they think.
02:27:50.840And hopefully you'll have a positive influence.
02:27:53.320Hopefully I'll have a positive influence.
02:27:55.120but i think this may sound idealistic but i do think this is the way it should work
02:28:01.240and this is why you this is why you want to have an open discourse of course
02:28:05.940i think now is like i said this is the outset i really believe it though i don't
02:28:14.660fully understand i think this is like a pivot point in history and it it's important to
02:28:20.360understand at least some of what's going on i think it's impossible to understand all of it
02:28:23.960and how it interconnects and what it will mean down the road.
02:28:27.220But I don't think that we should just see these
02:28:30.640as like isolated bubbling up of turmoil