The Tucker Carlson Show - December 16, 2024


Jeffrey Sachs： The Inevitable War With Iran, and Biden’s Attempts to Sabotage Trump

Topics
Hillsdale College Imprimus course regime change in syria war with China
Hosted by
Tucker Carlson
Mentioned
Assad Biden Donald Trump Tucker Vladimir Putin Obama Ramp Hillary Clinton Mitch McConnell Henry Kissinger Jeffrey Sachs Julian Assange Zbigniew Brzezinski Liberty Safe Jake Sullivan Condoleezza Rice Edward Snowden William Burns Robert McNeil Bobby Kennedy and 40 more
Why the Intel Agencies Want to Track Your Every Transaction and Throw Roger Ver in Jail for Life Tom Homan’s Plan to Destroy the Cartel Empire, End Child Trafficking, and Secure the Border for Good

Episode Stats


Length

2 hours and 3 minutes

Words per minute

131.39

Word count

16,208

Sentence count

1,430

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

50

sentences flagged

Hate speech

71

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Tucker Carlson: What happened in Syria last week was culmination of a long-term effort by Israel to reshape the Middle East in its image . It has been, in his view, a complete disaster for the U.S. and for the Mideast, he says . He says it has been Netanyahu's MO since 1996, and the United States goes to war on his behalf .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:15.340 Well, first of all, thank you.
00:00:17.060 So many things have happened in the last two weeks.
00:00:20.140 I keep thinking, where's Jeff Sachs?
00:00:21.820 I want to know what this means.
00:00:23.420 So the most dramatic and, from my perspective, unexpected thing that happened was all of a sudden the government in Syria changed.
00:00:29.300 There was regime change in Syria.
00:00:31.660 Who did that? 0.91
00:00:33.220 Why?
00:00:33.760 And what does it mean?
00:00:35.580 Well, it's part of a 30-year effort.
00:00:38.420 This is Netanyahu's war to remake the Middle East. 0.70
00:00:43.440 It's been a disaster.
00:00:45.020 It continues to be a disaster.
00:00:47.180 But as Netanyahu himself said after Assad left, we have remade the Middle East.
00:00:55.660 And so it has to be understood as something that didn't just happen in a week but has been an ongoing war throughout the Middle East.
00:01:05.340 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.
00:01:17.840 We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else.
00:01:22.160 And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.
00:01:25.180 We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly.
00:01:30.460 Check out all of our content at tuckercarlson.com.
00:01:33.480 Here's the episode.
00:01:34.120 And maybe the right way to understand what's happened with Syria is to think back to a really remarkable occasion when Wesley Clark, the general who headed NATO, went to the Pentagon just after 9-11.
00:01:51.160 And famously, he showed a piece of paper that said, we're going to have seven wars in five years.
00:01:59.900 And he was completely dumbfound.
00:02:01.740 He said, what does this have to do with anything?
00:02:03.580 And he was told that the neocons and the Israelis are going to remake the Middle East.
00:02:09.720 And the seven countries on the list are very telling.
00:02:14.700 They were Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and then in Africa, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan.
00:02:25.880 And seven countries.
00:02:28.960 We've been at war in six of them now.
00:02:31.760 And I mean, we, the United States, on behalf of Israel, including in Syria.
00:02:37.700 And so what happened in Syria last week was the culmination of a long-term effort by Israel to reshape the Middle East in its image. 0.88
00:02:49.120 That started with Netanyahu and his American advisors in 1996 in something called Clean Break, which was a political document that the Americans and Netanyahu made when Netanyahu became prime minister.
00:03:04.540 After 9-11, it went into full gear with the Iraq wars being the first of those wars.
00:03:11.760 Clean Break, what does that refer to?
00:03:13.180 Clean Break is we're going to make a clean break of the Middle East. 1.00
00:03:17.660 A break with the past.
00:03:18.540 We're going to break with the past.
00:03:20.080 We're not going to have land for peace, which is the idea that Israel would have a Palestinian state next door. 0.98
00:03:28.420 No, we're going to have greater Israel, and we're just going to bash anybody that doesn't like it. 0.91
00:03:34.540 And we're going to do that by bringing down any government that supports the Palestinians. 0.99
00:03:41.820 It's a rather shocking amount of hubris.
00:03:45.340 It has been, in my view, a complete disaster for the United States and for the Middle East. 1.00
00:03:51.900 It has been Netanyahu's MO since 1996, actually, and he's been prime minister more than half the time since then.
00:04:00.840 And the United States goes to war on his behalf.
00:04:04.760 And what happened in Syria is the culmination of that effort.
00:04:10.180 Netanyahu came to the U.S. in 2002, excuse me, after 9-11.
00:04:24.560 Actually, he came in September 20th, 2001, if I remember correctly, and gave a speech that said, there's terrorism, but you don't fight the terrorists.
00:04:36.000 You fight the governments that back the terrorists.
00:04:38.760 That's the idea.
00:04:39.620 So, you go to war.
00:04:42.000 You don't just have a kind of an anti-terrorism effort.
00:04:45.320 You go to war.
00:04:46.640 And the first of those wars was Iraq, but Syria was supposed to be exactly the next war. 0.81
00:04:53.660 And the timeline was this remarkable idea of seven wars in five years.
00:04:58.980 According to all of the understanding that we now have from lots of insiders, from documents, from the archives, what happened was the U.S. got bogged down in Iraq.
00:05:11.760 There was the insurgency.
00:05:13.500 We didn't move onward to the next war, which was to be Syria, which was to happen already 20 years ago.
00:05:21.200 But in 2011, what really brought Assad down last week started under Obama.
00:05:30.320 And yes, and this is also interesting.
00:05:35.040 It doesn't really matter who's president.
00:05:38.160 This is long-term deep state policy.
00:05:42.720 Obama ordered the CIA to overthrow Assad.
00:05:47.340 So, that started in 2011.
00:05:49.500 But why would Obama want to overthrow Assad?
00:05:52.160 Because Israel has run American foreign policy in the Middle East for 30 years.
00:05:59.280 That's how it works.
00:06:01.280 We have an Israel lobby.
00:06:03.420 We have this clean break strategy.
00:06:07.340 We have a plan for seven wars in five years. 0.62
00:06:11.580 And what's interesting is they actually kind of carry out this madness.
00:06:17.140 They don't explain any of it to the American people.
00:06:20.100 They don't tell anybody.
00:06:21.920 But you can watch step by step.
00:06:24.420 We've had six of those seven wars.
00:06:27.900 The only one that hasn't happened is Iran.
00:06:31.860 And if you watch every day now, the MSM, the mainstream media is pushing for U.S. war with Iran.
00:06:42.240 Netanyahu is pushing for war with Iran.
00:06:44.400 They're really trying to get this started to make seven out of seven.
00:06:47.800 But Obama, you know, for no particular reason, by the way, but he launched two of these wars on the list of seven.
00:06:58.880 He launched the war to bring down the Libyan government, Muammar Gaddafi, in the fall of, or the war started in March 2011.
00:07:11.120 And he and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, said Assad must go in the spring of 2011.
00:07:21.840 I remember scratching my head at the time saying, oh, that's interesting.
00:07:26.740 How are they going to do that?
00:07:28.960 Syria was a normal functioning country at the time.
00:07:33.020 Despite whatever you read, whatever propaganda is said, Syria was a normal functioning country.
00:07:41.860 I recently dredged out a report by the International Monetary Fund on Syria in 2009 that praised the Syrian government for its reforms and its rapid economic growth and look forward to continued years of economic development.
00:07:57.720 In other words, it was not this wasteland or this battlefield.
00:08:06.460 It was an actual normal country.
00:08:09.520 Was it a threat to the United States?
00:08:11.100 It was no threat to the United States whatsoever.
00:08:13.540 But it was deemed to be, by Netanyahu, a threat to Israel because of a simple reason, which is that Netanyahu wants to control all of Palestine, wants to rule over the Palestinian people, does not want a Palestinian state.
00:08:32.680 And that has led to militant opposition.
00:08:35.660 That's led to Hamas. 0.89
00:08:37.100 That's led to Hezbollah. 0.92
00:08:38.380 That's led to other groups.
00:08:39.760 Netanyahu's theory is, well, we're never going to allow a Palestinian state, so we have to bring down any government that supports those militant groups against us because our core aim is greater Israel.
00:08:55.420 That's not much of a worthy cause, by the way.
00:08:59.580 Having a Palestinian state next door and having peace could have saved probably a million lives by now over the last 30 years.
00:09:07.680 But that's not Netanyahu's crazy ambition, which is—
00:09:13.500 What is greater Israel? 0.81
00:09:14.800 Greater Israel means, depending on how crazy the people are, either that Israel controls not only its geographic territory, but that it essentially controls or annexes the West Bank, 0.56
00:09:33.780 the Golan Heights, which they've just enlarged Gaza.
00:09:39.400 Golan Heights being part of Syria, historically.
00:09:41.800 It was part of Syria.
00:09:43.760 It's claimed by Israel, and now with an expanded territory, and East Jerusalem.
00:09:51.860 So everything that was captured in 1967, Netanyahu explicitly said, we're never giving that back.
00:10:00.020 Now, there are two motivations for that.
00:10:03.420 One, Netanyahu says, not safe to give it back because he doesn't want to negotiate any kind of peace or any state of Palestine.
00:10:12.540 Then there are religious zealots.
00:10:16.140 I would use even stronger terms who use the book of Joshua, which is 2,700 years ago that said, well, God gave us everything from the river in Egypt, meaning the Nile, to the Euphrates.
00:10:35.320 And there are zealots in Israel, and they're in the government, who believe, yes, this is God's ordinance.
00:10:43.300 We're going to take whatever we want.
00:10:46.140 So the Nile to the Euphrates would include what?
00:10:48.820 Well, if you take the greater view of this, it would include Lebanon.
00:10:56.180 It would include Syria.
00:10:57.480 It would include part of Iraq.
00:10:58.960 It would include part of Egypt.
00:11:00.400 And some of these people actually quote the Bible and say, we're going to do this.
00:11:08.300 And it's a little sad and absolutely terribly frightening.
00:11:15.540 But I'd say the more narrow vision is what they call from the river to the sea, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean.
00:11:24.160 That's taken as a pro-Palestinian chant, but it's exactly the opposite.
00:11:32.900 It is the greater Israel literal vision of the government of Israel.
00:11:39.740 It's the literal idea.
00:11:41.560 There happen to be 7 million Palestinians there.
00:11:43.880 That's a minor problem.
00:11:46.460 Maybe they can be ethnically cleansed. 1.00
00:11:50.020 Maybe they can be thrown out.
00:11:51.540 Maybe they can just be ruled in a military-dominant way.
00:11:59.340 Of course, probably well over 100,000 have been killed in the most recent war by Israel.
00:12:09.380 Well, official count 45,000 of bodies claimed from the rubble, but we know that there are a lot more that have died since this war in Gaza began.
00:12:22.220 But all of this is to say, this greater Israel idea says we can't make peace with the Palestinians. 0.71
00:12:33.400 So anyone that supports the Palestinians is, by definition, a mortal threat to us. 1.00
00:12:40.500 And when you have a mortal threat, you must destroy it.
00:12:44.860 And so this is the opposite of diplomacy.
00:12:47.240 It's war, and as Netanyahu crowed last week, it's war to remake the Middle East.
00:12:55.380 It's all spelled out, by the way, in very clear ways, but you have to dig for them.
00:13:02.180 You have to find them.
00:13:03.140 You have to understand that this is longstanding.
00:13:07.380 You have to understand that each president has played part of that role.
00:13:12.540 So when we come back to Obama, he started the war with Syria in 2011.
00:13:20.120 I can remember actually vividly the call that Assad must go.
00:13:27.980 And I did scratch my head.
00:13:31.040 I was actually, I think it was on Morning Joe when it was said, and I was asked by Joe Scarborough, what do you think?
00:13:37.980 And I said, well, that's pretty odd.
00:13:40.940 How's he going to do that?
00:13:42.240 It turned out it was going to be 13 years of mass war, 300,000 dead, and destroying a country. 0.58
00:13:49.500 That's what it turned out to be.
00:13:51.260 But Obama signed an order called Operation Timber Sycamore.
00:13:57.260 People should look it up.
00:13:59.260 You can find it online, but you can't find it in the mainstream media because it's not discussed.
00:14:04.840 But it was a so-called presidential finding that the CIA should work with Turkey, with Saudi Arabia, with others to overthrow the government of Syria.
00:14:19.800 So that was the plan.
00:14:22.480 We went to war.
00:14:24.560 We had—
00:14:25.420 This is what led to Benghazi, correct?
00:14:27.640 Benghazi is Libya. 0.67
00:14:29.420 So Libya—
00:14:30.080 I understand.
00:14:30.500 Yes, but it was the same time in 2011.
00:14:33.820 My understanding was the reason there were so many American intel assets there was because they were moving arms from Libya to—
00:14:41.680 Oh, sorry.
00:14:42.800 Yes, if you say it that way.
00:14:44.080 To Syria. 0.74
00:14:44.400 One of the first things was to establish a rat line, so-called, from Libya to Syria. 0.97
00:14:51.940 Absolutely.
00:14:53.060 And Seymour Hersh wrote a terrific piece explaining all of that.
00:14:57.280 That was never explained—I mean, I worked at a news organization at the time that made a lot out of Benghazi and the death of a U.S. ambassador and, you know, what was the Obama administration, you know, thinking?
00:15:07.520 They were so negligent.
00:15:08.740 But there was never any discussion about what they were doing there in the first place.
00:15:12.560 No, none of this is explained, of course.
00:15:15.080 This is—it's none of the public's business.
00:15:18.240 This is our business.
00:15:19.920 We're the war machine.
00:15:20.900 You stay out of this.
00:15:21.860 So none of this is explained.
00:15:24.240 Interestingly, the whole Syrian operation—I think I counted right that the New York Times mentioned Operation Timber Sycamore, I think, three times in the 2010s.
00:15:37.160 So a war that cost billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, CIA operation, covert action, links with Libya, never explained, never discussed.
00:15:51.200 And even when the government falls last week, no background given.
00:15:57.140 You know, we're supposed to have amnesia.
00:15:58.780 We're not supposed to understand that what happens is the result of long-term plans that have been pretty disastrous.
00:16:08.680 And, by the way, as I've said, Israel has driven so many American wars. 0.70
00:16:16.340 And we say, absolutely, yes, that's our greatest ally.
00:16:20.120 These have been at huge cost to the United States.
00:16:23.640 Cost of trillions of dollars.
00:16:25.840 Cost geopolitically.
00:16:27.220 But somehow, we gave away our foreign policy to Israel years and years ago.
00:16:35.480 And it's been absolutely devastating.
00:16:37.900 And it's interesting to go back and watch Netanyahu speak to the American people.
00:16:44.120 Go look at a video clip of 2001, 2002.
00:16:48.060 In 2002, in October, he comes and testifies in the Senate.
00:16:52.040 And there's a nice clip of him promising how wonderful the war in Iraq is going to be.
00:16:58.900 Because Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.
00:17:03.960 He says, 100% certain.
00:17:06.300 Complete lies, by the way.
00:17:07.800 And they knew that they were lies at the time.
00:17:10.520 And it's going to be wonderful.
00:17:11.980 We're going to topple that dictator. 0.94
00:17:13.480 And then dictators are going to be toppled everywhere.
00:17:16.760 And the young people of Iran are going to rise up.
00:17:20.000 This is his idea.
00:17:23.040 Together with his U.S. political consultants.
00:17:26.280 Together with neocons in the U.S. government for the last 25 years.
00:17:31.520 They have never apologized for dragging the United States into countless wars in the Middle East, spending trillions of dollars running up U.S. debt and doing what?
00:17:44.040 Creating chaos.
00:17:46.360 So just to go back to the seven countries, because it's worth remembering, Lebanon, it barely exists as a functioning country right now.
00:17:57.400 Syria, it's going to be picked to pieces. 1.00
00:18:00.440 Don't believe, well, it's obvious in what we're seeing every day, territorial integrity.
00:18:06.320 Yeah, Israel's just invaded from the southwest into a deeper Syria. 0.89
00:18:12.900 Turkey from the north.
00:18:14.740 Russia has its area.
00:18:16.740 The United States and the Kurds have their area.
00:18:19.340 This place is just going to be a battlefield for years to come.
00:18:24.140 Iraq.
00:18:24.880 We know what happened with Iraq. 0.98
00:18:26.480 Iraq, trillions of dollars, a complete destabilization of the country. 1.00
00:18:32.540 Look at the other three wars.
00:18:35.360 The United States broke apart Sudan. 0.96
00:18:38.600 Why?
00:18:39.440 Well, Sudan was an enemy of Israel.
00:18:42.500 So we have to break apart Sudan. 1.00
00:18:44.560 So we supported the South Sudanese.
00:18:46.620 Now we have the real trifecta, massive civil war in Sudan and massive civil war in South Sudan.
00:18:56.100 In other words, we broke apart the country and now there's civil war in both halves of the country.
00:19:01.940 Somalia basically doesn't exist as a country.
00:19:05.720 Libya, it doesn't exist.
00:19:07.460 It's a battlefield.
00:19:08.440 It's a war zone.
00:19:09.220 So that's six out of six.
00:19:11.760 And Netanyahu's crowing.
00:19:13.860 Now we go on to Iran.
00:19:15.840 Do you ever feel like you can't trust the things you hear or read?
00:19:18.820 Like every news source is hollow, distorted, or clearly just propaganda lying to you?
00:19:24.780 Well, you're not imagining it.
00:19:26.660 If the last few years have proven anything, it's that legacy media exists to distort the truth and to control you,
00:19:33.900 to gatekeep information from the public instead of letting you know what's actually going on.
00:19:37.900 They don't want you to know.
00:19:39.380 But there is, however, a publication that fights this that is not propaganda,
00:19:44.240 one that we read every month and have for many years.
00:19:47.020 It's called Imprimus.
00:19:48.240 It's from Hillsdale College in Michigan.
00:19:49.860 Imprimus is a free speech digest that features some of the best minds in the country addressing the questions that actually matter,
00:19:56.980 the ones that are not addressed in the Washington Post or NBC News.
00:20:00.980 The best part of it, it is free, no cost whatsoever, no strings attached.
00:20:04.180 They just send it to you.
00:20:04.980 Hillsdale will send Imprimus right to your house, no charge. 0.52
00:20:09.080 All you got to do is ask.
00:20:10.600 Go to TuckerForHillsdale.com and subscribe for free today.
00:20:14.360 That's TuckerForHillsdale.com.
00:20:16.880 The only way this stays a democracy is if the citizenry is informed.
00:20:22.260 You can't fight tyranny if you don't know what's going on.
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00:22:51.000 Tucker says it best.
00:22:54.120 The credit card companies are ripping Americans off, and enough is enough.
00:22:58.760 This is Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas.
00:23:01.420 Our legislation, the Credit Card Competition Act, would help in the grip Visa and MasterCard have on us.
00:23:08.680 Every time you use your credit card, they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee,
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00:23:52.220 Who's paid for all this?
00:23:57.420 You have.
00:23:58.280 I have.
00:23:59.420 Of course.
00:24:00.360 This is, where does $28 trillion of debt come from?
00:24:04.300 We've paid probably $7 trillion if you add it up according to Brown University studies, for example.
00:24:13.820 Something like $7 trillion has gone into this.
00:24:17.820 Israel couldn't do this for one day. 0.61
00:24:20.780 Israel, you know, Netanyahu, we are lions.
00:24:24.160 Yeah, right. 1.00
00:24:24.880 You are liars. 1.00
00:24:26.380 But we are the ones funding you, arming you, paying for all of this. 0.99
00:24:31.660 That's the United States.
00:24:33.880 And this is weird to me because we say, yes, to defend our ally.
00:24:40.120 No, no, no.
00:24:40.760 We're doing their foreign policy, which makes no sense, which doesn't lead to any peace, which leads to basically a war zone across the Middle East.
00:24:51.800 And we say, this is good for us.
00:24:54.220 Why is this good for us?
00:24:56.360 What's the United States getting out of any of this?
00:24:59.700 We haven't gotten anything out of any of this except massive geopolitical isolation.
00:25:05.520 The most recent votes in the UN, for example, put the United States alone, alone with Israel.
00:25:13.440 And I shouldn't exaggerate.
00:25:15.740 We have Micronesia on our side. 0.62
00:25:17.820 We have Nauru on our side with its 12,000 people, maybe a couple of other countries.
00:25:22.740 The whole rest of the world is saying, what is going on?
00:25:25.840 Endless war in the Middle East. 0.91
00:25:28.000 Well, this is because we're defending someone with some 7th century B.C. vision of what they want their country to be.
00:25:38.060 Were Americans involved in the overthrow of Assad last week?
00:25:42.700 Of course they were because this has been an ongoing operation.
00:25:47.020 Whether they were involved in the final days, I don't know.
00:25:51.460 They were involved in the 13 years nonstop.
00:25:55.680 I don't understand how.
00:25:57.880 Actually, let me tell you an interesting story, by the way.
00:26:01.920 The war started in 2011.
00:26:06.420 It was portrayed as always, as the CIA does, as a local uprising and the freedom fighters.
00:26:17.700 And it was said this was Syrians protesting against Syria.
00:26:22.220 That's always how any CIA regime change operation works.
00:26:27.760 There may also be local opposition.
00:26:30.640 But the CIA is the provides the armaments.
00:26:34.420 It provides the flow of heavy weapons.
00:26:36.220 It provides the financing.
00:26:37.880 It provides the training.
00:26:39.120 It provides the camps.
00:26:40.420 It provides the political organization.
00:26:43.060 So this started in 2011.
00:26:46.300 In 2012, there was already a bloodbath underway and a lot of people dying and a lot of civilians dying and a lot of ancient historic sites because this is the fertile crescent.
00:27:00.300 This is the birthplace of humanity itself, of civilization, being destroyed.
00:27:07.320 And so a very senior global diplomat that I knew very, very well was tasked with trying to find peace.
00:27:19.780 Peace.
00:27:20.540 Nice idea.
00:27:21.500 Maybe we don't need the bloodbath.
00:27:23.740 Peace.
00:27:24.740 And I met him in the spring of 2012 and he said it failed and said, why did it fail?
00:27:33.360 He said, well, we had a full peace agreement, but it was blocked by one party alone.
00:27:39.880 We had the different forces in Syria.
00:27:42.340 We had the regional, but it was blocked by one.
00:27:45.280 Who was it blocked by?
00:27:46.580 It was blocked by the United States government.
00:27:48.600 And why?
00:27:50.660 Well, because their condition was that Assad must go on the first day of the agreement rather than a political process.
00:28:00.520 Everyone else agreed on a political process.
00:28:03.320 But the United States said, no, no, this is regime change.
00:28:07.100 Assad must go on the first day.
00:28:09.220 And that was not possible.
00:28:10.740 So that was the end of the attempted peace.
00:28:13.440 So we should understand this was an American operation.
00:28:19.760 But I never understood what I didn't understand and still don't understand is why we're all required to hate Assad.
00:28:26.100 I'm not speaking for myself.
00:28:27.160 I don't have strong feelings about Assad one way or the other.
00:28:29.100 Apparently, he's protected the Christian.
00:28:30.580 So I'm grateful for that as a Christian.
00:28:32.920 But I don't.
00:28:34.500 Why am I required to hate Assad?
00:28:36.740 Tulsi Gabbard went and met with Assad.
00:28:39.000 She's been attacked ever since.
00:28:40.600 Has anyone ever explained why Americans should hate Assad?
00:28:46.260 Because every regime change operation we ever do, we have to make sure that the opponent is the worst villain since Hitler or Hitler reincarnate.
00:28:58.820 Some ophthalmologist from London is a bloodthirsty dictator.
00:29:02.140 I never I didn't really.
00:29:03.080 We have to say this and this is part of the PSYOPs or the info war that goes along with regime change operations.
00:29:12.080 This is completely typical.
00:29:14.680 And we're told if we don't stop him now, it's only going to spread.
00:29:19.340 And he'll be in Des Moines.
00:29:21.620 Exactly.
00:29:22.500 This is the Nicaraguans.
00:29:27.240 We're going to be in Harlingen, Texas.
00:29:28.740 Remember, you know, this is this is standard fare.
00:29:33.820 It's so pedestrian, such bad script writing that you can't believe it's still rolled out.
00:29:40.440 But why doesn't someone at the New York Times just ask the obvious question, which is, why am I supposed to hate Assad exactly?
00:29:45.200 Why is it somehow a test of my loyalty to the United States?
00:29:49.020 Would I think of Bashar al-Assad?
00:29:50.900 Like, who cares?
00:29:51.820 Like what?
00:29:52.660 That's such an that's such a core question.
00:29:54.700 I've never heard anyone ask that.
00:29:55.820 Can I can I laugh when you mention New York Times?
00:29:58.720 Because they won't cover any historical background of any conflict at all, because all of this is aimed at a free hand for the security state, a free hand for the military.
00:30:19.940 But why would the New York Times be parodying the security state?
00:30:22.900 Well, I think that's that that's a question that goes back decades, partly because it's staffed in part by probably people from the intelligence agencies.
00:30:36.120 We've known that for years.
00:30:38.080 I don't know.
00:30:38.460 The New York Times.
00:30:39.280 Who?
00:30:40.060 But we know in the past that CIA just had reporters on the payroll.
00:30:45.100 I mean, whether they do or not now, I have no idea.
00:30:48.000 So I'm not making a current claim, but we know that that's a historic fact.
00:30:51.540 We know historically that the with with very rare exceptions, the New York Times has just followed the the unnamed official sources that this is the whole M.O.
00:31:05.140 This patriotic newspaper follows what it's told to do.
00:31:09.520 And it doesn't ask questions.
00:31:12.580 It has not asked any questions about any of these wars in recent memory, not about Ukraine, not about the wars raging throughout the Middle East.
00:31:24.320 As I said, I think there was one full page actually about Operation Timber Sycamore in 2016.
00:31:32.600 You would think that something that got us into a war of 13 years where we spent billions of dollars, where hundreds of thousands of people died.
00:31:43.180 Even at this stage, there would be a kind of page or a box explaining the historical background to this, but it didn't exist.
00:31:51.320 First, I actually wrote, I have to say, I wrote to one of the reporters saying, couldn't you mention a little background?
00:31:58.100 Said, oh, very interesting idea, Mr. Sachs.
00:32:00.600 So I'm waiting.
00:32:03.840 You wrote to a New York Times reporter.
00:32:05.460 Well, I know these people for decades.
00:32:07.560 Yeah.
00:32:07.740 And by the way, not only do I know them and some I like very much, by the way, and some have been classmates of mine a long time ago, and they know things that they don't report.
00:32:22.880 And that's also important to understand that what they will say in private is the opposite of what their newspaper says.
00:32:31.060 And I mean literally the opposite.
00:32:33.840 So that's very worrying to me because we operate foreign policy in secrecy.
00:32:41.800 We do not have any kind of democratic oversight of foreign policy.
00:32:46.540 There's no explanation of it.
00:32:48.520 There's no accountability for it.
00:32:50.840 It's in very few hands.
00:32:53.440 It's not in good or reliable hands.
00:32:56.320 It's not explained that we gave over Middle East foreign policy to Israel a long time ago, not to U.S. interests, but to Israel's interests.
00:33:05.000 That is the Israel lobby. 0.71
00:33:07.300 And we don't hear questioning of this at all.
00:33:13.180 Of course, not from the government, not from the Congress, not from oversight by any democratic institutions,
00:33:20.760 nor does the mainstream media, which fewer and fewer people are interested in because they don't get any facts from it, look into these issues.
00:33:34.200 What happens next in Syria?
00:33:36.340 Well, there'll be continued war, and now the drumbeat is for war with Iran.
00:33:42.120 Anything is possible.
00:33:46.300 Netanyahu dearly wants the U.S. to go in and bomb Iran.
00:33:51.100 Probably some of President Trump's advisors will feel the same.
00:33:56.540 The incoming administration is a mix of old school hardliners and people with a very different perspective.
00:34:04.860 So there will be an internal battle for the heart and soul of the new administration.
00:34:11.040 But there will be some who say, yeah, now it's time to carry on the war.
00:34:16.760 Hezbollah and Hamas have been weakened.
00:34:20.640 Syria has fallen. 0.92
00:34:21.820 The air defenses are gone.
00:34:23.140 Now we can fly and do in Iran.
00:34:27.800 Of course, all of this is a profound delusion.
00:34:33.620 And that's, I think, really important to understand.
00:34:37.860 We've had six wars so far, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya.
00:34:48.000 Six out of the seven that were on the list shown to Wesley Clark, not one of them has led to stability, to peace even, much less to geopolitical interests being solved.
00:35:02.440 So it's not like we're finding solutions to anything.
00:35:09.440 Yes, it has allowed at unbelievable cost Israel to hold on to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and Gaza as if that's some kind of grand strategic aim of the United States or justifiable in the face of international law and nearly global opposition to such thinking.
00:35:37.600 But it doesn't lead to any answers.
00:35:41.600 And there's no way to, quote, defeat Iran. 0.80
00:35:46.640 Even if we went in and bombed Iran, Iran has strong allies. 0.96
00:35:53.200 Iran has Russia and China as allies.
00:35:57.760 Iran is part of the BRICS.
00:36:00.260 Iran has a military relationship with Russia.
00:36:05.780 Of course, we have even crazier people who think we're going to defeat Russia.
00:36:11.620 But Russia has 6,000 nuclear warheads, of which 1,600 are deployed.
00:36:19.520 It has its new hypersonic ballistic missile, which travels at Mach 11.
00:36:33.520 It has other hypersonic weapons.
00:36:36.160 So, yes, we have people in the U.S.
00:36:40.420 Who, in their mental blindness, think about continued escalation all the way to nuclear Armageddon.
00:36:51.480 They really do. 1.00
00:36:52.420 They're very ignorant people. 1.00
00:36:54.720 And they're around in high positions. 0.99
00:36:57.400 And so, when you ask what comes next, what comes next is whether President Trump can change course.
00:37:08.240 This is the most important question facing the United States.
00:37:13.000 And there are several different factions in Washington right now that are fighting for ultimate say.
00:37:28.100 There's a piece by Mitch McConnell, our octogenarian who is completely living in a delusional past, who has a lead article in Foreign Affairs magazine calling for America to commit to primacy.
00:37:49.980 And he calls for a massive military buildup to get ready for every kind of eventuality with Russia and China.
00:38:00.320 That's the old school.
00:38:01.580 And it remains very powerful.
00:38:03.260 And it's got very powerful interest because it's the biggest business in Washington, about $1.5 trillion of annual spending for the military machine.
00:38:14.660 And Mitch McConnell absolutely represents that.
00:38:18.500 Then there are groups that say, you know, we don't really have any fundamental conflict with Russia and Russia is no real threat to us.
00:38:32.500 But China is the real threat. 0.94
00:38:35.020 So, we should end the war in Ukraine, something I completely agree with. 0.98
00:38:40.180 But we should do it so that we build up and get ready for the war with China. 0.96
00:38:46.280 And this is kind of the middle ground, which is-
00:38:52.580 A war with China.
00:38:53.560 Well-
00:38:55.280 A country that manufactures all of our antibiotics. 0.98
00:38:59.040 Everyone is talking about war with China in Washington by 2027.
00:39:05.300 And it's so weird, as if we just are trying to rush headlong into complete destruction.
00:39:16.060 But we have official documents, a Navy strategy saying we must prepare for war with China by 2027.
00:39:24.000 We had a major article in the New York Times, which I actually once upon a time read with interest.
00:39:33.740 But in any event, it was a story about the Pentagon preparing for war with China.
00:39:39.660 And I wrote the reporter, actually.
00:39:43.020 This is another-
00:39:44.240 I know these people for decades.
00:39:46.260 So, I wrote the reporter and I said, thank you for writing that story.
00:39:50.880 I was happy to read it now because there'll be no time to read it after the war.
00:39:55.180 We'll all be dead.
00:39:55.900 So, I'm glad that we have the story now.
00:39:59.420 And the reporter wrote back to me right away.
00:40:02.440 He said, oh, Jeff, the editor-
00:40:07.900 I had put in three times that the Pentagon doesn't want this war, but the editor took it out three times.
00:40:15.660 And I don't really know why.
00:40:17.520 And I didn't notice that in the hurrying to finish the piece.
00:40:22.780 Do you understand that?
00:40:23.920 You're one of our world's great journalists, a person writing a front-page story about war, and she's written three times the Pentagon doesn't want it, and the editor takes that out all the time.
00:40:36.560 And she didn't recognize that.
00:40:39.080 That's the New York Times.
00:40:40.380 I don't know even what that means.
00:40:43.120 Well, that's when you quit.
00:40:44.240 I mean, you can't allow that.
00:40:45.380 This is so amazing.
00:40:47.520 But, yes, so there is a group gearing up for war with China.
00:40:53.320 It's unbelievable.
00:40:54.660 Nuclear superpower with a much larger army on their shores. 0.83
00:41:02.740 I mean, the whole thing is beyond belief.
00:41:05.620 Then there is a group.
00:41:07.440 There actually is a group that says, hey, we don't need war with anybody.
00:41:14.700 We're not threatened.
00:41:16.780 The United States is more secure than at any time in history and any time that a country could be secure.
00:41:24.460 We have two big oceans.
00:41:26.320 No one can attack us.
00:41:27.680 We have every amount of deterrence.
00:41:30.840 China does not threaten us and could not threaten us.
00:41:34.700 And so what are we talking about war this way?
00:41:38.060 Why are we in war with Russia in Ukraine?
00:41:41.660 And that is a U.S.-Russia war, as everybody should understand.
00:41:45.620 Why are we at war all over the Middle East?
00:41:47.920 And that is a U.S. war.
00:41:50.540 We've got absolutely troops on the ground.
00:41:55.800 I mean, we have troops on the ground, of course, but we have forces on the ground.
00:41:59.460 They're often CIA or covert.
00:42:03.980 But, yes, this is our wars.
00:42:05.560 We're paying for them.
00:42:06.320 We're financing them.
00:42:07.320 We're arming them.
00:42:08.200 We're the intelligence, if you can use that word.
00:42:12.640 Why do we need a war with China?
00:42:17.040 And so there are people who say, hey, why don't we make business, advance technology,
00:42:23.960 actually have some attention to our economic needs, not go bankrupt in the process?
00:42:31.760 And that group is also part of the Trump incoming team.
00:42:37.660 And this is probably the most consequential question that a country could face,
00:42:43.780 is which of these different voices will prevail in this new administration?
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00:46:59.960 I've never felt more uneasy than I have in the last few weeks during this period between the election and the inauguration.
00:47:11.860 And it does, well, it doesn't seem like it is a fact that the outgoing administration is trying to accelerate conflict
00:47:17.340 to leave the incoming administration in charge of a bunch of different wars, especially with Russia.
00:47:23.240 I have to say, yeah, my, I think the Biden administration has been the worst of our governments in modern history.
00:47:32.780 And that's saying a lot because I'm a complainer.
00:47:35.660 So I don't generally, I don't generally praise administrations.
00:47:41.040 I like to think of myself as a responsible, tough grader.
00:47:46.220 And I haven't given high marks to any administration from Clinton onward.
00:47:53.740 I think they've all been failures.
00:47:56.000 But Biden's administration has been a complete shocking disaster, which has brought us closer to nuclear war,
00:48:06.120 brought us into more conflict, didn't have one iota of diplomacy.
00:48:14.120 I don't count diplomacy, meaning you go talk to a junior ally.
00:48:19.500 I mean, diplomacy, meaning you talk to someone on the other side to figure out how not to escalate.
00:48:26.320 And we know, you know very well, and you heard it recently from the Russian foreign minister that our secretary of state
00:48:38.760 and the Russian foreign minister have not spoken at all for years. 0.99
00:48:45.280 This is the most mind-bogglingly stupid approach to our security and survival imaginable. 0.97
00:48:53.560 And as far as we know, and this is what Lavrov said in his interview with you, 0.99
00:49:02.040 Biden and Putin have not spoken once since February 2022.
00:49:09.140 It's just unbelievable.
00:49:11.820 To not even speak, to not try to understand each other's position, to not discuss, to not try to find a way out,
00:49:21.420 when now the most accurate assessment is that there are at least a million Ukrainians dead or severely wounded since February 2022,
00:49:33.280 when the United States hasn't lifted a finger, not even one time, to try to talk to the other side.
00:49:41.060 So, yes, this has been a shockingly terrible government.
00:49:46.600 Biden, we don't know, really, you may know, I don't know whether he's compass mentis.
00:49:52.560 I don't know whether the guy thinks, I'm told, till four in the afternoon he can still function to some extent.
00:50:00.180 I don't know if it's true.
00:50:01.860 But Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, I regard as complete failures.
00:50:10.600 Sullivan's job is our security.
00:50:13.240 He's not made us any more secure.
00:50:15.240 He's made us profoundly insecure.
00:50:18.040 And we're getting closer and closer to nuclear war.
00:50:21.360 And the only way we avoid that realization is to laugh away every statement.
00:50:30.460 And President Putin said it again today, by the way, that we are absolutely mocking Russia's serious red lines.
00:50:40.780 Is that really for our security that we don't have a discussion about them even?
00:50:48.620 And we're not.
00:50:50.100 And everything, yes, is escalating.
00:50:53.380 We see little fires being set all over the neighborhoods of these war zones.
00:51:02.020 And it's not only throughout the Middle East and the drumbeat for war with Iran.
00:51:08.020 It's not only Biden authorizing the use of long distance strikes into Russia, which, as President Putin has accurately said and has not been denied by the United States, are actually U.S. strikes on Russia.
00:51:27.420 But this is incredible.
00:51:29.200 How would we feel if Russia were attacking the United States? 0.76
00:51:35.380 Would we say? 0.64
00:51:36.100 And trying to kill the president? 0.99
00:51:37.320 Yes. 1.00
00:51:37.480 We are trying to kill Putin right now. 0.99
00:51:38.900 Would we say that's just fine? 0.96
00:51:41.920 Don't worry if Americans are getting a little upset about that.
00:51:46.320 But that's literally what Biden has approved.
00:51:49.800 And then we see hot spots around.
00:51:53.160 You have to be, you know, really into this to be following them.
00:51:57.520 But in the country of Georgia, in the South Caucasus region, there's a little typical regime change maneuver that's been underway in recent weeks.
00:52:09.900 It will not succeed.
00:52:11.740 But the aim was to destabilize that region.
00:52:15.420 The hand of the U.S. is absolutely clear in that.
00:52:20.500 We see in Romania another bizarre episode where a presidential election was in its second round and the lead candidate was saying we should end the war with Ukraine.
00:52:33.140 And the Supreme Court of Romania annulled the election, claiming Russian interference.
00:52:41.820 And so that candidate that was calling for peace could not win election.
00:52:48.780 We're seeing those kinds of events all over.
00:52:52.900 What are we seeing in South Korea?
00:52:53.940 In South Korea, of course, we saw something that we don't understand that's also mind-boggling, which was an attempted coup by the president of Korea, President Yeung, who called out the military to surround and arrest the parliament.
00:53:14.800 And ultimately, the coup failed and the president was thrown out of office.
00:53:20.180 But why he made that coup is not absolutely clear.
00:53:25.640 And the U.S. reaction was bizarre.
00:53:29.980 The U.S. said, we're watching with concern.
00:53:33.440 That was all.
00:53:34.660 It didn't say anything about restore the constitutional order or we're against the coup or anything else.
00:53:40.920 And there was a glimmer of possible reason.
00:53:48.200 I don't want to overstate any certainty on this because this is, of course, also not analyzed properly or made public.
00:53:58.740 So we don't have the information.
00:54:00.500 But the week before the military action, the coup attempt, there was a visit by the Ukrainian defense minister for armaments from South Korea, something that the United States has been pushing very hard for.
00:54:19.100 The United States has been trying to get South Korea to ship arms to Ukraine because the U.S. inventories are depleted.
00:54:27.780 And South Korea, under its law, cannot do so because it cannot ship arms to belligerents that are engaged in war.
00:54:37.880 And the parliament opposed it.
00:54:43.180 The parliament president does not have a majority in the parliament or the former president.
00:54:48.680 And the opposition opposed the armaments.
00:54:52.800 So there's some possible relationship with this that when Yoon declared martial law, he said that that the opposition was siding with the North Koreans.
00:55:08.900 That was his statement.
00:55:10.220 And some read that as a way to clear the way for South Korea to enter the Ukraine war with massive arms shipments.
00:55:21.140 I don't know whether that's the case, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's the case.
00:55:26.320 Maybe we'll find out.
00:55:28.660 It happens that the acting president was my first Ph.D. student at Harvard.
00:55:34.040 Now, so I go back with him 44 years, which is nice.
00:55:40.600 Amazing.
00:55:41.440 Yeah, just a coincidence.
00:55:43.820 That's amazing.
00:55:44.760 I meant to ask you, why did Russia stand aside as Assad fell?
00:55:51.940 I think that it was a, first of all, a military choice because Russia is in the midst of a very tough war along a 1,200 kilometer front in Ukraine.
00:56:10.240 And it did not want to divert any major military effort in that direction.
00:56:18.460 Second, the proximate reason why Assad fell was that the main military backing of Assad was Hezbollah forces and the Iranian guard.
00:56:34.640 And they had both been, especially Hezbollah, had been very badly mauled by Israel in the last month and a half and had pulled its reinforcements from Syria to reinforce Lebanese positions.
00:56:54.480 And so Assad was left without the backing of Hezbollah forces, several thousand, which was the bulwark of his military.
00:57:03.320 I think a third reason is that Russia doesn't think it's leaving Syria, that this isn't the end of the story.
00:57:11.260 And immediately, the supposed new force in Syria, the HTS, said that it wants Russia to stay and to keep its bases in Syria.
00:57:25.700 Russia has a naval base and a small one and an airfield, and Russia has redeployed its forces from within Syria to both of those bases but is probably not leaving.
00:57:40.920 So I think from probably a strategic calculus, Russia just regards this as a temporary step on a path to continued conflict and that this was not the time to get into another major front.
00:58:00.960 Yes.
00:58:01.160 And that would be my assessment.
00:58:03.820 So we've got a little over a month between now and the inauguration.
00:58:09.160 Clearly, as noted, the Biden administration is trying to make decisions that are evocable and deepen the war between the United States and Russia and then all these other things.
00:58:19.000 If you were the Trump people right now, before the inauguration, what would you be doing?
00:58:23.280 Well, I would first be clear, under the Constitution, Biden is president until January 20th.
00:58:34.800 I think it's right to say that Biden should not put America into further insecurity.
00:58:45.260 He's done enough damage.
00:58:46.440 And so I think it's right for every political figure to say to Biden, you're at the end of your term and the world is very dangerous.
00:58:59.140 You do not have a mandate to increase the danger.
00:59:03.220 You should never have authorized the use of ATACMS and other U.S. missiles in deep strikes into Russia.
00:59:15.060 Stop further provocations now.
00:59:18.840 So I hope that politicians of both parties and I think President Trump can also make this clear.
00:59:27.520 It's not to take over the government until January 20th.
00:59:31.020 But Biden absolutely, in my view, is without the legitimacy to further endanger us and they should prevent any actions from abroad that threaten American security, of course.
00:59:53.180 But I don't see those happening.
00:59:55.260 I think the biggest risk right now is continued U.S. provocations of the kind that we've been discussing in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in the periphery of Russia, in the Far East.
01:00:10.500 Stop any further provocations.
01:00:13.020 The idea of somehow tying Trump's hands is completely illegitimate constitutionally and politically, and it's a disastrous approach.
01:00:28.420 We're not playing a game of two people or a game of two administrations.
01:00:33.200 We're trying to survive at a time of perhaps maximum global peril right now.
01:00:41.500 So just to say, most experts that look at this think we're closer to nuclear war than we have ever been.
01:00:50.520 And I refer often to the doomsday clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which is the graphic to demonstrate how close or how far we are from nuclear war.
01:01:04.040 And that doomsday clock puts the clock puts the clock at 90 seconds to midnight, which is the closest to nuclear Armageddon that it has ever been since the clock was first rolled out in 1947.
01:01:19.600 So I think it behooves those people who are making the decisions in the Biden administration to stop imperiling Americans at this point and to understand that their job right now is to keep things stable, to give power over to President Trump on January 20th, 2025.
01:01:45.800 One of the promises of the new administration is massive declassification.
01:01:54.800 Pardons for...
01:01:55.800 Please, if it could only be...
01:01:58.700 This would change so much.
01:02:01.360 So one of the things that I'm interested in learning about is 9-11, because I think it's important to understand why that happened.
01:02:09.700 And I think my guess is that one of the reasons so many documents from 9-11 are still classified 23 years later, it's hard to imagine why, is because they tell a more detailed story about why Al-Qaeda struck the United States.
01:02:24.920 And it seems clear it was a response to, and I'm not defending it, of course, obviously, but it was still cause and effect.
01:02:33.800 And the cause was American foreign policy, was a response to that.
01:02:38.700 A, do you think that's true?
01:02:40.300 And B, if it is true, then how afraid should we be about future terror attacks, given what we've been doing?
01:02:47.720 Well, let me say something about declassification.
01:02:52.680 We had one and only one close look at the CIA in its entire history of the last 77 years.
01:03:04.460 And that was actually 74, 75.
01:03:08.040 It'll be the 50th anniversary this coming year of the Church Committee.
01:03:12.800 Yep.
01:03:12.960 It was the only time that there was even a partial look inside what the CIA had been doing. 1.00
01:03:22.880 What they uncovered was a viper's nest of stupidity, evil, disaster, and, of course, unbelievable unaccountability. 1.00
01:03:37.840 They uncovered, of course, numerous assassination plots. 1.00
01:03:43.300 They uncovered an absolutely shocking and awful program called MKUltra, which was a massive warped program for trying for mind control,
01:04:02.880 where they took innocent people, vagrants, off the streets of Times Square and shot them up with drugs or drove them to suicide through sleep deprivation.
01:04:16.200 Every kind of shocking thing you can't even make up.
01:04:20.340 And that made for great movie series like the Bourne series, which is about MKUltra, in fact.
01:04:28.860 Now, that was 1975.
01:04:31.400 We've gone 50 years of further secretive operations.
01:04:40.960 I've mentioned one of them, the timber sycamore.
01:04:46.360 But that's one of many.
01:04:48.180 I've seen many myself by accident because I'm not in the security field.
01:04:53.740 I'm an economist.
01:04:54.440 But I'm around lots of governments.
01:04:58.000 I'm all over the world.
01:04:59.480 I've seen coups with my own eyes.
01:05:01.460 I've seen the U.S. role in these coups.
01:05:05.200 I've seen things that are absolutely disgusting, not because people are showing me secret documents.
01:05:13.000 I don't even want to see those, by the way.
01:05:14.780 I see them because I happen to be told or shown or walked around the Maidan soon after a coup overthrew Yanukovitch.
01:05:26.840 And people explain things to me, which I found completely awful about American complicity in all of this.
01:05:34.200 I had a president in the Western Hemisphere say to me, Jeff, they're going to take me out.
01:05:42.900 And I said, no, no, no, no.
01:05:44.560 We're going to – everything is going to be fine.
01:05:46.420 And they – see, I took them out in broad daylight.
01:05:49.480 And so we have no review of any of this.
01:05:57.240 We have gone to war repeatedly on false pretenses.
01:06:02.700 We have gone to war repeatedly in so-called covert operations.
01:06:08.060 They're not covert to the people being affected.
01:06:11.340 Well, that's right.
01:06:11.900 But we just hear denials. 1.00
01:06:14.940 We hear stupidity from the New York Times, a complete imbecility, childishness that they don't want to ask any single question. 1.00
01:06:25.280 What about the Maidan? 1.00
01:06:27.400 What was the U.S. government doing there?
01:06:30.040 Well, it's easy enough to find out.
01:06:34.280 What were the decisions taken in overthrowing various regimes?
01:06:40.960 What about a number of assassinations that we have every forensic reason to know were conspiracies that the U.S. never allowed to be understood?
01:06:55.980 Whether any of this is ever found, I don't know.
01:06:59.060 But if it is, it would change the course of America back to a true republic.
01:07:04.600 Because what happened in this country is that we were overtaken by the security state.
01:07:12.520 And we became a system of confidentiality and unaccountability.
01:07:19.420 And it's a big, massive machine.
01:07:24.060 And a lot of people are paid to keep quiet or to salute whatever the military industrial complex or the intelligence agencies are doing without asking questions.
01:07:37.000 Because when you have $1.5 trillion a year spent on that, you're a pretty big business.
01:07:42.620 And it has affected the universities, the think tanks, of course, the Congress, which asks no questions of any serious kind.
01:07:52.120 And so major, major events of fundamental significance for our insecurity take place without any truth-telling at all.
01:08:04.080 So all of this is to say, it may be the most important thing that President Trump could do would be to open up the historical record so that we understand what has really happened.
01:08:20.040 Because we are 90 seconds to midnight.
01:08:23.040 We are closer to nuclear war than ever.
01:08:25.460 We have a military machine in the service of the Israel lobby or in the service of the military contractors or in the service of the deep state on its own or for whatever other crazy idea.
01:08:41.700 And we just don't have democratic deliberation or accountability about this.
01:08:49.740 But we could.
01:08:51.240 If we did, we would change the direction of this country.
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01:10:01.280 Well, the system is designed with accountability at the heart of it.
01:10:19.340 And we have oversight committees in the House and the Senate that are supposed to be making certain that the intelligence community, the IC,
01:10:27.840 is operating in accordance with the Constitution of the United States.
01:10:30.880 That's their job.
01:10:31.880 They obviously don't do their job.
01:10:35.740 But what they do is very interesting.
01:10:39.120 Our system of government is actually rather ingenious.
01:10:43.740 It's ingenious because you can buy a piece of government at very low cost.
01:10:49.520 If the military industrial contractors just buy off a couple committees, that's enough because they're the only ones that have responsibility.
01:10:58.880 If the health insurers just buy off the health committees in the House and the Senate, that's enough.
01:11:06.360 If the Israel lobby just gets its hold on a couple of committees, they run American foreign policy in the Middle East.
01:11:14.880 So what I have found to be ingenious about our completely corrupted political system is how inexpensive it is to buy your corner of the story.
01:11:27.020 You don't control everything.
01:11:29.160 No one controls everything.
01:11:30.400 But if you want to control health care, it's a couple committees.
01:11:34.560 If you want to control the military industrial machinery, that's just a couple of committees.
01:11:40.840 And so there is no oversight.
01:11:44.120 And there won't be oversight until there is public oversight.
01:11:47.980 Nobody oversees themselves.
01:11:50.660 And the idea that a few congressmen, and I know some of them, that they're really constraining anything that the CIA or the intelligence community does, no way.
01:12:07.640 We've talked about it before.
01:12:09.540 Well, they're puppets of it.
01:12:11.240 Completely.
01:12:12.180 And they're funded.
01:12:13.820 They need some scrutiny.
01:12:14.980 They're funded by it.
01:12:16.920 They're puppets of it.
01:12:18.360 There are almost no independent members of our Congress.
01:12:22.740 Everyone, almost everyone is on the take.
01:12:25.900 Rand Paul is my one exception.
01:12:27.820 I think he's the most principled member of our Congress in both houses.
01:12:34.280 He really believes in honesty and small government and wants to know the truth.
01:12:40.940 And I'll give an example of the complete lack of oversight and something we may know and something we talked about.
01:12:50.700 Okay, where did that pandemic come from?
01:12:52.920 The evidence is now overwhelming, though still not definitive, that it was made in a U.S. lab.
01:13:00.060 This is overwhelming.
01:13:02.220 Even the report of the House committee that issued a report a couple of weeks ago says, yes, there was obviously a lot of cover-up and a lot of unanswered questions and a lot of engagement of U.S. scientists in this.
01:13:18.520 And we know that the U.S. government lied up the wazoo on all of the question of the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that made the pandemic, and has lied until today.
01:13:32.140 We know that the intelligence agencies know a lot that they haven't said.
01:13:37.620 So this is another area.
01:13:39.560 Could we actually have some honesty?
01:13:43.360 Could we actually have some transparency?
01:13:45.740 Could we actually look at something where a pandemic took perhaps 20 million lives worldwide?
01:13:54.220 Where did that come from?
01:13:55.520 Especially since the evidence is now overwhelming that it was a laboratory creation with U.S. scientists and U.S. funding playing a huge role in this.
01:14:08.100 Do you think the new president will pardon Edward Snowden and Jelena Assange?
01:14:13.380 Oh, Snowden is a remarkable person.
01:14:17.200 I don't know Julian Assange.
01:14:18.740 I do know Edward Snowden.
01:14:20.660 And he is an absolutely remarkable person.
01:14:26.200 And, yes, he is a hero because he told us what the government was actually doing towards us.
01:14:34.240 And, of course, the security state, which really runs America, therefore immediately branded him as the worst villain.
01:14:43.680 But we found out more from Snowden about the risk to our freedom than from just about anybody else.
01:14:52.880 And Julian Assange, you know, almost every day I invoke a memorandum that he enabled me to see and you to see and all of us to see that explains the Ukraine war better than anything else.
01:15:16.540 And Julian Assange deserves all of the credit for this.
01:15:22.240 And it's also an interesting story, if I may just say in one minute.
01:15:27.020 Our current CIA director, William Burns, in 2008 was the U.S. ambassador to Russia.
01:15:34.520 And when he was U.S. ambassador to Russia, he understood completely, perfectly, that the U.S. push to expand NATO to Ukraine was disastrous.
01:15:48.920 Pure provocation, crossing Russia's red lines, likely to create a civil war inside Ukraine and a possible war between the United States and Russia.
01:16:00.700 And he wrote a memo back to Condoleezza Rice, our secretary of state.
01:16:09.360 And the memo said that the entire Russian political class opposes NATO enlargement and for real reasons.
01:16:20.780 And that memo famously became known as yet means yet.
01:16:27.140 No means no.
01:16:28.460 Don't play games with this.
01:16:29.960 This is real.
01:16:30.820 This is a red line.
01:16:32.300 OK, something like this should be understood by the American people.
01:16:37.360 We've just spent around 200 billion dollars.
01:16:40.700 We've just caused deaths of perhaps six or 700,000 Ukrainians on completely false pretenses, on false pretenses that, as the New York Times has wrongly stated unendingly, that the war in Ukraine was, quote, unprovoked.
01:17:00.900 Not only was it provoked, the U.S. provoked it.
01:17:05.160 And not only that, our senior diplomats knew that, knew that at the time and wrote about it.
01:17:12.260 Now, this memo makes this perfectly clear.
01:17:15.620 Anyone can go online and type William Burns, yet means yet, cable, and you will come up with this cable. 0.95
01:17:22.800 And then you can read why in 2008 we knew that the deep state push for NATO enlargement was mind-bendingly stupid, dangerous, provocative, and likely to get us into disaster, which it did. 0.90
01:17:40.900 How do we even see that memo? 0.94
01:17:43.460 Do you think that a congressional committee called Condoleezza Rice and said, could we have the documentary evidence to understand the choices you're making?
01:17:52.580 Of course not.
01:17:53.600 There's no oversight when it comes to security issues.
01:17:57.680 We are already in a security state that has no resemblance to democracy whatsoever.
01:18:04.760 But Julian Assange enabled us to see it.
01:18:09.420 So we have to express gratitude for that.
01:18:14.240 This is the truth.
01:18:15.280 If you don't want leaks, don't have a world run where every consequential fact is hidden from the American people and it enables one disaster after another.
01:18:27.740 And just to make clear how disastrous this is, Bill Clinton, who was, in my view, a completely ineffectual president in a long list of ineffectual presidents, came to office in 1993 when the doomsday clock was at 17 minutes from midnight.
01:18:48.560 Meaning that it was the farthest away from nuclear war in the whole history of the nuclear age.
01:18:57.140 Every single president, starting with Clinton, brought the doomsday clock closer to Armageddon.
01:19:04.580 So we went from 17 minutes to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight with no accountability or explanation at all.
01:19:13.320 Do you think it's fair to say that anyone who opposes pardons for Ed Snowden and Julian Assange should be looked at with suspicion or is actually an enemy of the country?
01:19:27.220 Well, I think that they may just be ignorant or don't understand, or maybe they're New York Times readers.
01:19:33.060 In other words, there are a lot of people who really don't understand the situation right now, don't understand how dangerous it is, don't understand how lawless it is, don't understand how we're driven by these long-term aims that are absolutely disastrous.
01:19:54.900 I thank Mitch McConnell, by the way, for writing his essay that the goal is primacy.
01:20:02.540 Too late.
01:20:03.960 If our goal is primacy and we pursue that like this octogenarian who can barely function anymore says we should, we'll all get blown up.
01:20:14.980 We'll move from 90 seconds to midnight to 60 seconds to midnight to 30 seconds to midnight and goodbye, because we can't have a world where the United States says we're in charge of everything.
01:20:27.300 If you aim that way, we will end up with World War III that will not go well.
01:20:34.260 Well, we're begging South Korea for munitions.
01:20:37.360 So the truth is we don't have the power to affect that anyway.
01:20:39.780 But, you know, this is the interesting thing.
01:20:45.020 Already, you could know back in 2014, don't overthrow the Ukrainian government.
01:20:54.180 You could know in 2015, honor the Minsk agreement that would end the war.
01:21:00.420 You could know in 2021, negotiate with Russia because actually Ukraine, I won't even say Ukraine, the United States cannot win a war in Ukraine against Russia.
01:21:14.460 We knew that.
01:21:16.440 But these are not clever people.
01:21:20.040 Jake Sullivan's not a clever person.
01:21:22.040 They don't understand.
01:21:24.060 They're like terrible poker players that somehow are sitting at, you know, the Grand Slam of poker.
01:21:31.160 They don't know what they're doing.
01:21:32.620 And they're bluffing and they're betting and they're doubling down with our money, by the way.
01:21:38.300 You know, and so, yes, you could know this primacy thing.
01:21:44.420 Come on.
01:21:44.960 This is what does it even mean in a world of multiple nuclear superpowers?
01:21:50.560 What does it even mean?
01:21:52.820 It means we just ignore all of that till we're all blown to smithereens?
01:21:58.000 No.
01:21:58.740 But, you know, Mitch McConnell's barely functions anymore.
01:22:02.760 But he's got the big story in foreign affairs about how we need to preserve primacy.
01:22:08.660 So there's a lot of momentum and ignorance and deep state arrogance. 0.92
01:22:16.600 Who the hell are you to tell us? 0.95
01:22:18.240 You don't even read the secret files. 0.95
01:22:20.240 You know, this is really where we have been for a very long time.
01:22:26.600 Since 1991, the deep state, the CIA and others have been trying to defeat Russia.
01:22:34.500 Since 1991, Netanyahu's been with American military remaking the Middle East. 0.71
01:22:42.820 It's been a disaster on both fronts.
01:22:45.660 It's made America drastically less secure.
01:22:50.180 But they continue this group in power.
01:22:53.420 And there's a chance that President Trump could change this.
01:22:58.260 This is the most promising single reality of his government if he chooses rightly.
01:23:06.580 He has to understand he's got a completely divided team and he's got a completely divided landscape in Washington.
01:23:15.920 And I think he knows the deep state is not going out with a whimper.
01:23:22.980 It's going to fight for its prerogatives.
01:23:26.160 Are people you know worried about a terror attack in the U.S.?
01:23:29.880 I don't know.
01:23:32.340 They don't tell me.
01:23:33.580 And I'm frankly myself more worried about World War III.
01:23:40.060 Yes.
01:23:40.340 So, you said the president has assembled a divided team.
01:23:44.540 One person who I think is pretty close to his stated objectives on foreign policy is Tulsi Gabbard.
01:23:51.020 Yes.
01:23:51.340 Who he's nominated to be director of national intelligence.
01:23:54.580 The entire Senate and Intel committee appears to be against her.
01:23:58.320 I think every member.
01:23:59.180 And that shows that she is completely on the right side.
01:24:03.120 Well, that's exactly right.
01:24:04.840 Do you think she'll make it?
01:24:06.120 How important is it that she make it?
01:24:07.660 She's probably, and I don't want to jinx anything, she's probably the most important appointment of the Trump administration.
01:24:15.620 Does it seem that way?
01:24:16.160 She is incredibly intelligent, incredibly honest, incredibly committed to U.S. security, and would do a superb job.
01:24:28.420 So, that's why she's being opposed. 0.98
01:24:32.880 Because the forces that are worse than mediocre, that are right now on top of a $1.5 trillion a year machine, that have been running disastrous wars, that have been bringing us closer and closer to doom, don't want any accountability.
01:24:56.160 And what Tulsi Gabbard would represent is competence, honesty, forthrightness, and not having been a party to all these failures.
01:25:10.600 So, if you're the incoming administration, how hard do you fight for her nomination?
01:25:14.060 Well, she's critical because this is the most important question facing the United States today.
01:25:22.900 We have many important questions.
01:25:24.720 We have major financial, social, political, economic, institutional questions.
01:25:31.060 But the most important question facing us is, is a country that potentially is more secure than any country in the history of the world going to do itself in by a self-provoked World War III?
01:25:46.860 And we're on that course.
01:25:48.800 And five presidents have been on that course through their incompetence and their obedience to an unaccountable deep state.
01:25:59.080 And President Trump is coming in saying that he's going to change direction.
01:26:04.520 He says every day that he wants to be president of peace.
01:26:09.820 By the way, I think the greatest thing that could happen is four Nobel Peace Prizes for President Trump.
01:26:15.940 He could end the war in Ukraine.
01:26:17.680 He could end the war in the Middle East, not by bombing Iran.
01:26:21.140 That would do the opposite, but by enabling a two-state solution in the Middle East and the wars would all end.
01:26:29.540 He could end the talk of the war in East Asia, which would be the utter disaster and folly, by recognizing that we shouldn't be meddling in China's internal affairs.
01:26:45.100 And Taiwan is an internal affair of China.
01:26:48.740 And he should be restoring a framework of nuclear arms control.
01:26:56.260 I give him four Nobel Peace Prizes for that.
01:26:59.940 If he chooses that direction, he'll be the most consequential president in our modern history, perhaps in our history, because he will reestablish security for the American people.
01:27:09.720 If he follows the hardliners, he's just going to add yet another years of bringing us closer to doom.
01:27:19.680 How is the Ukraine war settled?
01:27:21.420 The Ukraine war is settled literally in one call, just as he says.
01:27:25.720 Because all he has to do, really all he has to do, is pick up the phone and call President Putin and say, you know, that 30-year effort to expand NATO to Ukraine and to Georgia was ridiculous, unacceptable, unnecessary provocation.
01:27:50.360 And it's led us to this juncture.
01:27:54.880 I'm against it.
01:27:56.240 I'm going to say it publicly.
01:27:58.140 We're going to end this adventurism.
01:28:00.480 And you stop fighting today.
01:28:02.460 And the fighting will stop that moment, actually.
01:28:06.380 Then there will be details.
01:28:09.440 And the details are where the borders will be drawn exactly.
01:28:14.700 But the war will end. 0.84
01:28:16.820 The war will not end, by the way, by saying, let's have a ceasefire.
01:28:21.760 That's a meaningless statement.
01:28:23.720 As you heard repeatedly from Foreign Minister Lavrov, and as I know and as anyone thinking about this knows, this isn't about a ceasefire.
01:28:35.320 This is about a cause of this war.
01:28:37.580 And the cause of this war is that Russia does not want the U.S. and its missile systems on its 1,200-kilometer border with Ukraine right now. 0.98
01:28:51.080 And Biden was so stupid, and I'm using the term, of course, it sounds, I don't know how it sounds, but it's true, that he couldn't say that and avoid the war. 0.98
01:29:03.320 That was obvious how to avoid this war. 1.00
01:29:06.500 Obvious how to avoid this war.
01:29:08.760 But Biden couldn't do it.
01:29:12.060 That's why I say he's been such a terrible president.
01:29:16.820 And I think that President Trump wants to do it this way.
01:29:21.080 Now, again, he's got people around him of many different views.
01:29:27.320 Some say, promise him, just ask for a ceasefire.
01:29:31.760 Freeze the conflict.
01:29:33.500 Armistice.
01:29:34.800 Korean solution, 1953.
01:29:37.280 This is completely beside the point.
01:29:40.500 Russia isn't going to freeze the conflict.
01:29:42.440 It's actually winning on the ground.
01:29:44.280 But why is it fighting?
01:29:45.680 It's fighting because it does not want this regime, which was installed by the United States in 2014, to have U.S. bases, NATO, U.S. weapons and missile systems on its border.
01:30:02.880 And the fact that Biden just proved the point by saying, yeah, we'll fire the missiles into Russia, make it all the more clear why they're concerned about this.
01:30:11.680 This isn't an idle threat. 0.66
01:30:13.260 This isn't some dumb thing.
01:30:15.040 This is, they're being hit right now by U.S. missile systems, by U.S. personnel firing these missile systems.
01:30:25.140 So, it's not an idle threat.
01:30:27.120 So, people who say freeze the conflict, they don't get it.
01:30:30.720 People who say, and there was an initial statement, NATO will not enlarge for at least X years.
01:30:41.580 Somebody said 10 years.
01:30:42.860 Somebody said 20 years. 0.91
01:30:44.060 This is also completely ridiculous.
01:30:47.000 Then, another idea, well, we'll give Russia this territory, Donetsk and Lugansk and maybe Kherson and Zaporizhia and Crimea, but all the rest of Ukraine will be part of NATO.
01:31:02.120 Of course not.
01:31:03.080 It's the same deal. 0.99
01:31:04.500 This is ridiculous.
01:31:05.560 So, if you understand what this is about, where it came from, why it continues to this moment, there is one phone call that ends it, which is get to the underlying cause of the war. 0.63
01:31:20.360 The underlying cause of the war, going back to a decision that Bill Clinton made in 1994, is the decision to expand NATO to Ukraine.
01:31:32.340 And, by the way, they want to expand it to the South Caucasus, to Georgia, which is also in turmoil right now.
01:31:38.280 It's very interesting, Tucker, that Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled this out to the letter in 1997, and it's fascinating to read his account.
01:31:55.000 All wrong.
01:31:57.060 He got it completely wrong, but he spelled it out.
01:32:01.220 And what he said was, in his book, The Grand Chessboard, in 1997, we should expand NATO eastward.
01:32:13.280 We should expand Europe eastward.
01:32:15.960 And we should ask the question, what will Russia do?
01:32:20.520 Russia won't like it.
01:32:22.440 So, Brzezinski spends a whole chapter, what will Russia do?
01:32:26.140 And he asked the question, well, could Russia ever align with China?
01:32:32.120 Nope, that's not going to happen.
01:32:34.500 Could Russia ever align with Iran? 0.59
01:32:37.400 Nope, that's not going to happen.
01:32:39.740 Russia's only choice is to exceed to the U.S. action.
01:32:45.600 So, in 1997, it was perfectly clearly understood, what is the strategy, what are we going to do, and what will happen?
01:32:56.760 The only problem is, it was wrong.
01:32:59.340 This is the only problem.
01:33:00.860 He got it completely wrong.
01:33:03.040 And you can go back, and to his credit, he wrote his prediction.
01:33:07.420 It's wrong.
01:33:08.580 But why are we still playing that game until today?
01:33:12.140 Why did Biden exactly continue on that failed course? 0.97
01:33:18.020 Because he's a failure. 0.96
01:33:20.180 That's why. 0.99
01:33:20.960 Because he didn't understand.
01:33:22.880 Because he's surrounded by mediocrities at best. 0.64
01:33:27.560 The Biden administration has tried to kill Vladimir Putin.
01:33:30.640 That's a fact, I think.
01:33:32.520 And they funded separatist groups within Russia, probably going back before Biden.
01:33:37.720 Well, this has been, by the way, CIA opts to have separatist groups everywhere.
01:33:45.060 And fascinating, just if I could mention, because it's almost humorous, except that it's so tragic.
01:33:52.800 There was a, I don't remember the exact name, but something around 1998 called the Chechnya Friendship Committee.
01:34:01.460 Chechnya, okay. 0.92
01:34:02.940 Burning issue for the United States?
01:34:04.480 I dare one in a million of your listeners to know exactly where Chechnya is in its history, because who knows who cares? 1.00
01:34:12.000 But if you look at the Chechnya Friendship Committee, it was the blue ribbon committee of American neocons.
01:34:19.820 This big Brzezinski right there.
01:34:22.360 Everyone that wants the hard line.
01:34:25.060 Why?
01:34:25.320 They couldn't care for one iota of a moment about Chechnya.
01:34:33.920 Of course not.
01:34:35.180 They wanted to break up Russia.
01:34:37.760 Everything is antagonism to break up Russia.
01:34:39.860 So they fund Islamic extremism. 0.91
01:34:41.560 So they funded the jihadists everywhere.
01:34:44.820 And by the way, it's not even, it's, we made Al Qaeda. 0.51
01:34:49.360 I think everyone understands this.
01:34:50.900 We made Osama bin Laden. 0.99
01:34:52.580 We made this, the overthrow in Syria where they're saying, oh my God, it's a HTS.
01:35:01.080 What do you think?
01:35:02.220 This was what Obama tasked in 2011-12.
01:35:07.540 Jihadists. 0.97
01:35:08.260 So what would happen if they succeeded in killing Putin? 0.86
01:35:13.280 I mean, what, I don't understand why that would be in America's interest to have 6,000 nuclear warheads unsecured floating around in a country that's 20% Muslim and very complicated. 1.00
01:35:26.820 And like, that seems like the last thing that you would ever want to do.
01:35:31.720 When he's the most pro-Western leader in Russia.
01:35:33.960 Yeah, let me address it in a little bit different way.
01:35:38.580 In the last year, the leaders of Hamas wanted to make peace with Israel.
01:35:48.460 And their political negotiator was a man named Haniyeh.
01:35:53.900 What did Israel do when the peace feelers came out?
01:35:58.460 They assassinated him to make sure that there would be no attempt by Hamas to make peace.
01:36:07.200 Nazrullah of Hezbollah.
01:36:09.760 For real?
01:36:11.440 For real.
01:36:12.320 He's the one that they killed at the inauguration of Hezbollah. 0.92
01:36:15.900 Yes, I remember, but that was after.
01:36:17.860 Because he was the political negotiator for Hamas.
01:36:21.460 And they wanted to try to find a peace.
01:36:25.180 Israel hates the idea that there would be negotiations with Hamas.
01:36:31.580 The idea is to remake the Middle East through war, not through a peaceful negotiation. 0.80
01:36:38.060 Then Nazrullah in Hezbollah wanted to make peace with Israel.
01:36:49.780 What did they do?
01:36:51.440 They killed him, of course.
01:36:54.000 This is a basic point. 1.00
01:36:57.720 Kill the peacemakers. 0.99
01:36:59.800 This is very important to understand. 0.99
01:37:01.900 You assassinate the people that might want to negotiate.
01:37:06.600 This was something that JFK learned, I think, the hard way.
01:37:12.020 Well, this is the modus operandi of the CIA.
01:37:17.660 And it's the modus operandi of Mossad.
01:37:20.380 And it's the modus operandi of this deep state, which is you're not aiming for peace.
01:37:28.440 You're aiming for primacy.
01:37:31.240 You're aiming for dominance.
01:37:32.680 You're aiming to remake the region in your image.
01:37:35.940 You're resisting any call for compromise.
01:37:41.500 Yitzhak Rabin, when he wanted to make peace, he was assassinated.
01:37:46.500 Killed the peacemakers. 0.52
01:37:48.540 But what we know is that this is state action.
01:37:53.340 We know this in the United States. 1.00
01:37:55.780 Kill the peacemakers. 1.00
01:37:56.920 We know it of Mossad. 1.00
01:37:59.000 Rise and kill.
01:37:59.960 And they've done it repeatedly in front of our eyes. 0.95
01:38:03.520 So it's not the harshest enemy you try to kill.
01:38:07.300 It's the one that threatens you, not with war, but with diplomacy.
01:38:13.980 That's what they dislike.
01:38:15.580 They don't want peace.
01:38:16.920 They want primacy.
01:38:18.520 This is really a different thing.
01:38:20.600 Where is it getting us?
01:38:22.060 Since the whole thing is completely delusional,
01:38:24.820 it's getting us closer and closer to nuclear annihilation.
01:38:29.640 How could anyone think you'd kill the president of a nuclear superpower?
01:38:34.920 Of course, it's the most mind-boggling, wrong-headed idea.
01:38:41.520 I have no information about that.
01:38:43.620 What I do have information about is the ones that they actually kill.
01:38:48.020 By the way, I also know through lots of discussions,
01:38:54.020 and I can't go into all of them because I just have been lucky to have fascinating discussions,
01:39:04.640 Iran has been asking for peace and for reaching out to the Biden administration
01:39:11.180 for the last two years.
01:39:14.300 How do we take that?
01:39:16.200 Oh, they must be vulnerable. 1.00
01:39:18.920 Now we must kill them. 1.00
01:39:20.640 That's the idea. 1.00
01:39:21.780 It's so weird.
01:39:23.460 Iran is reaching out for peace now.
01:39:25.320 Iran has been for two years.
01:39:27.520 There have been peace.
01:39:28.560 I talked to an intermediary recently.
01:39:30.660 I've talked to many diplomats in most recent months.
01:39:36.020 By the way, there's an astoundingly, oh my God, an astoundingly insightful episode that was reposted of PBS NewsHour
01:39:49.480 with Robert McNeil interviewing Henry Kissinger and Jack Matlock in 1994.
01:39:58.640 So this is the 30th anniversary of this show.
01:40:02.520 And the show was on NATO enlargement.
01:40:06.220 And Matlock, who was the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and a wonderful diplomat and a very, very smart, fine man,
01:40:16.800 was saying in 1994, don't provoke.
01:40:21.380 We have peace now.
01:40:22.820 Don't expand NATO.
01:40:24.260 We've said we won't.
01:40:25.820 We shouldn't.
01:40:26.420 And if Russia ever becomes belligerent again, of course, we would reconsider and take action.
01:40:32.960 But right now, there's no belligerency.
01:40:35.420 There's no reason to provoke.
01:40:39.420 Kissinger is incoherent, actually, which is unusual.
01:40:45.600 But Robert McNeil kind of can't even fathom what Kissinger is saying until Kissinger finally stumbles out with the statement.
01:40:58.380 And I won't get it exactly right, but he says something to the effect,
01:41:02.680 if you can't provoke Russia when they're weak, how are we going to provoke them when they're strong?
01:41:08.440 And it's just such a weird idea that there's no moment when you could actually try to make peace because if they're weak,
01:41:17.360 definitely don't make peace because if you try not to provoke them then, well, then you won't be credible when they're strong.
01:41:24.620 And so the idea is you always must be aggressive.
01:41:27.780 So Kissinger was saying in 1994, of course, we need to expand NATO.
01:41:32.900 And yes, Russia won't like it, but they're weak now, so they can't resist. 0.91
01:41:37.600 Later on, by the way, he came to understand that expanding NATO to Ukraine was just too far.
01:41:44.600 He actually did reach that understanding in 2015.
01:41:48.140 But watching him in 2004 is very interesting because 2004 was the year that the decision was made.
01:41:57.160 And this is also something very important to understand about our foreign policy.
01:42:01.580 It's not that a president comes in and then we have a new foreign policy and then another president.
01:42:07.260 And we have a new foreign policy.
01:42:08.380 These things are very deeply set courses.
01:42:12.560 These wars in the Middle East go back 30 years.
01:42:16.220 This war against Russia actually goes back to 1945 at the end of World War II, but in the current version goes back to 1991.
01:42:27.760 And by plan to 1994 when Clinton laid out the NATO enlargement.
01:42:34.900 And then Brzezinski spelled it out for the public in 1997, but it was decisions already taken.
01:42:42.720 So we can watch Kissinger in 1994 explaining, yeah, Russia's weak.
01:42:48.740 Take advantage of them.
01:42:49.840 It's this is the time to take advantage of them.
01:42:52.260 This is what gets us into such unbelievable insecurity.
01:42:57.260 We could be the safest people in the world in history.
01:43:01.040 No one could conceivably attack us.
01:43:03.660 And yet we're 90 seconds to midnight.
01:43:07.220 Do you have any expectation that will change?
01:43:10.900 I'm counting on President Trump to change this.
01:43:14.920 I think his instinct is right.
01:43:18.080 I think his sense is right.
01:43:19.720 I think he doesn't like war.
01:43:22.460 I really do.
01:43:23.640 You know, he.
01:43:24.300 Oh, he doesn't.
01:43:25.140 He displayed that in the first term.
01:43:29.000 And he said that repeatedly now.
01:43:31.720 This is the best thing we have going for us.
01:43:35.120 Now, in his first term, he hired a lot of very irresponsible people.
01:43:40.720 That like war or that like duplicity or that like the deep state or that like accountability, unaccountability, like John Bolton, one of my least favorites among all of these.
01:43:56.960 Fair.
01:43:57.300 And, and, and, and, and Trump hired them.
01:44:00.580 So the question now is probably not his deep sense, which I think is absolutely right.
01:44:10.180 But now his tactical sense inside the U.S. government, please don't let the deep state continue on a path that it's been on.
01:44:20.960 And don't let the normal hardliners, because Washington is filled with people who have been on the payroll of the military industrial complex their whole careers.
01:44:33.740 Don't let them dominate policy.
01:44:36.420 And the incoming administration is such a, a mix right now.
01:44:43.540 And we see that the clarity of those who want to control this, how hard they're being, you know, how harshly they're being opposed like Tulsi Gabbard.
01:44:57.500 Or, or let me say Bobby Kennedy, though, his department is health, but he understands this peace side as well, very clearly.
01:45:09.360 These are the ones that they're fighting because we have been for, I'd say, again, 30 years at least, and arguably, basically 80 years since the end of World War II on a particular jab.
01:45:25.600 Which, at least Mitch McConnell does us the service of naming by its name, which is primacy.
01:45:33.140 And if we continue on that course, Trump will fail and the United States will be gravely endangered.
01:45:39.720 And if he reverses that course, he stands to be a great and historic president.
01:45:47.040 Because there's so much at stake, you sort of wonder what the people who oppose that kind of reform would do.
01:45:51.840 I mean, the national security state has been willing, eager to use violence abroad again and again and again, murdering people.
01:45:59.880 As I said, trying to murder Putin.
01:46:02.080 Would they, or are you concerned that they would be willing to use that domestically?
01:46:06.620 I think there's no doubt that they've used assassinations at home.
01:46:11.500 I'm of the view that JFK was the first clear case of that at home.
01:46:17.880 I, this is a long, long story, and some people roll their eyes at it, but I've spent much of my life reading, studying, examining this.
01:46:30.620 I think it's quite arguable for Bobby Kennedy the same way.
01:46:36.240 And I don't think that there have been scruples inside about keeping prerogatives.
01:46:43.840 At the same time, the situation is better now in one regard.
01:46:51.760 30 years of failure.
01:46:54.000 So, it's not as if the course that we're on is giving us these great benefits.
01:47:02.600 The United States needs to change course for our own security.
01:47:08.540 We need to change course for our own finances.
01:47:12.640 We're not in good shape in this country.
01:47:15.380 When 75% or so of Americans repeatedly say America's on the wrong track, they're correct at that. 0.89
01:47:26.060 And they say that now.
01:47:28.160 That's the latest Gallup findings.
01:47:31.880 And they're completely right.
01:47:34.340 So, this is not the exuberance, and I would say the hubris, of 1991.
01:47:41.280 And I was there then as an economic specialist and an advisor, unpaid and informal, but an advisor to President Gorbachev and an advisor to President Yeltsin and an advisor to Ukraine's President Kuchma on how to stabilize their desperately destabilized economies and how to move to market systems.
01:48:09.660 And the United States was not interested in peace.
01:48:15.420 We had this hubris that history had ended.
01:48:19.780 We had won, and now America would run the show.
01:48:23.500 The difference today is that we're 33 years after the end of the Soviet Union.
01:48:31.540 We tried the neocon approach for 30 years now.
01:48:36.120 We have engaged in all of Netanyahu's wars. 0.67
01:48:39.820 We went to war in Ukraine.
01:48:43.660 Everything that was predicted has been proved wrong.
01:48:48.320 The neocons failed time and again.
01:48:51.660 They didn't remake Afghanistan.
01:48:54.920 They didn't remake Iraq. 0.90
01:48:56.800 They did not remake the Middle East.
01:48:59.120 They did not call Putin's bluff and enter Ukraine with NATO.
01:49:07.740 They did not enter Georgia with NATO.
01:49:12.240 They completely misjudged how we would push the rest of the world into unity, as I mentioned with Big Brzezinski saying Russia will never side with China on this.
01:49:26.260 Well, of course, he got wrong the most fundamental diplomatic change of our age, the rise of China and the creation of a group that does not want U.S. hegemony and a group that is increasingly integrated in production and military and security and diplomacy.
01:49:47.600 So, we are at a time where the failures are self-evident if people open their eyes and the American people know it, in fact.
01:49:57.940 So, it's not even convincing the American people, oh, it's worse than you think.
01:50:02.660 No, they know.
01:50:04.040 They want their own problems solved.
01:50:07.420 Yeah.
01:50:07.480 How about jobs, some housing, reduce crime in my neighborhood, keep the inflation down, could you keep the debt from destroying American public finances?
01:50:18.140 They're not interested in Mitch McConnell's primacy continuing.
01:50:23.180 He's an octogenarian, go, done, you're done.
01:50:27.040 It's time for something different.
01:50:28.640 So, in this sense, it's really possible for this administration, this incoming administration, to change course because it doesn't require a massive public education.
01:50:41.900 It requires honesty.
01:50:44.820 It requires seeing down the deep state internally.
01:50:48.800 It requires making sure that the key appointments that want competence, honesty, and security for America actually get the job.
01:50:58.460 And, of course, it requires President Trump following through on his profound main insight, which is that there is no reason for war with Russia.
01:51:12.400 There's no reason for war with China.
01:51:14.920 And I want him really to know, really to know, there's no reason for war with Iran.
01:51:21.320 None.
01:51:21.960 But every week, every day, Fox News tells me that there's some, you know, assassination attempt by Iran.
01:51:30.100 They're sending drones from their ships offshore over our country to scope it out for future attacks.
01:51:36.140 I mean, Iran is presented in the U.S. media as the aggressor trying to kill Trump, for example.
01:51:42.280 I don't know if those Fox reporters have the chance to speak with the Iranian senior officials or Middle East officials.
01:51:54.040 I do.
01:51:54.840 I do all the time.
01:51:56.580 I am able to ask questions, to check facts, to understand circumstances.
01:52:05.240 I speak to lots of people engaged all over the Middle East on these questions, and it's simply not true.
01:52:14.240 So the first thing one should do, period, in this world is talk to the other side.
01:52:21.020 And if Donald Trump has that, this would be the farthest reach, but if he has that impulse with Iran too, he will be perhaps amazed, perhaps gratified, but he would do a huge service for the American people, huge service for the American people.
01:52:43.660 My sense is that, you know, a war with Iran feels inevitable. 1.00
01:52:50.740 I'm obviously opposed to it, but tell us how you think that would go if it happens.
01:52:56.020 There's nothing inevitable till it happens.
01:53:00.160 Amen. Thank you.
01:53:00.700 This is extremely important.
01:53:03.280 A war with Iran will be World War III. 0.98
01:53:06.500 So that's the point.
01:53:08.240 Iran is not alone, and it will not remain alone.
01:53:14.280 And so if we go to war with Iran, we are expanding the war with Russia. 0.57
01:53:20.420 With Russia, we are at a possibility of peace, but we're also at a possibility of nuclear war. 0.98
01:53:28.640 They're both very close.
01:53:30.320 And if we go to war with Iran, we make the war, nuclear war, all the more likely. 0.90
01:53:38.240 Do you think that the people pushing us toward war with Iran understand that?
01:53:45.780 No.
01:53:46.700 No.
01:53:47.360 I think that they're following a plan, clean break, 1996, and a plan, 1991, seven wars in five years,
01:53:59.860 that has been deep set and that has been Netanyahu's baby all the time. 0.56
01:54:05.860 Netanyahu, I regard as one of the most delusional and dangerous people on the planet.
01:54:12.900 And he has engaged the United States so far in six disastrous wars, and he's aiming to
01:54:19.880 engage us in yet one more.
01:54:23.360 But Netanyahu's track record is just about the worst of any person on the planet right
01:54:30.960 now in terms of damage done, and we should be able to understand that.
01:54:36.140 And we have a lot of rhetoric in this country standing up for Israel.
01:54:39.880 We're not standing up for Israel. 0.96
01:54:41.700 We are engaging in war on Israel's behalf all over the Middle East. 0.94
01:54:48.740 That's a completely different thing.
01:54:50.580 I believe in Israel's security alongside a state of Palestine, which I know completely 0.85
01:54:59.860 to be possible and achievable and peaceful and ending this risk of World War III and could
01:55:08.300 have prevented the million or so deaths that have come from Netanyahu's wars up until now.
01:55:14.500 And the Arab states have been saying this repeatedly since 2002.
01:55:20.120 It's called the Arab Peace Initiative.
01:55:22.060 Anybody can look it up.
01:55:24.020 They repeat it basically nonstop in the last two years.
01:55:30.160 The Iranians want peace.
01:55:31.960 I know that as well.
01:55:34.040 And so the whole game is to make claims about the other side and to say if you talk to the 0.91
01:55:41.380 other side, oh, you're a traitor. 0.89
01:55:43.420 That's what they say about Tulsi Gabbard. 0.98
01:55:45.620 She talked to Assad.
01:55:47.860 Well, what about that?
01:55:49.300 Isn't that amazing?
01:55:50.220 But I just, again, just to refer back to the core of it, I don't understand when Assad became
01:55:55.440 our enemy and why and why should I go along with that?
01:55:58.600 It was almost a flip because there were nice words said about him by Hillary Clinton one year
01:56:04.760 and then the next year exactly the opposite.
01:56:06.900 Because these are mind games that are played for reasons that are not said directly.
01:56:15.340 And that have no bearing on American national security or aren't motivated by a desire to
01:56:19.280 protect the United States.
01:56:20.340 There's nothing to do with that.
01:56:21.340 Of course not.
01:56:22.120 Nothing that has happened in the Middle East has been for American national security.
01:56:28.060 None of it.
01:56:29.040 Not one of these wars.
01:56:30.880 These have been Netanyahu's wars. 0.65
01:56:33.140 Watch him cheerlead.
01:56:34.260 Why does, I mean, it's just amazing how few Americans, many Americans love their country
01:56:40.880 and willing to lay down their lives for it and have.
01:56:43.200 But how few are willing to say what you've just said?
01:56:46.480 Because they're told repeatedly the opposite.
01:56:52.260 And you can be told anything can be sold, even not that people believe it, by the way,
01:56:58.240 but they don't hear the correct story anywhere in the mainstream.
01:57:04.140 They hear things that don't quite make sense to them.
01:57:07.620 And by the way, this is one of the points of Infowar.
01:57:11.560 The public didn't believe the official narrative about JFK's assassination.
01:57:17.540 The public didn't believe the official narrative about RFK's assassination.
01:57:21.540 The public didn't believe the official narrative about COVID.
01:57:26.160 The public didn't believe the official narrative about Iraq.
01:57:30.240 The public doesn't believe these things, but it doesn't hear the coherent explanation
01:57:36.520 from the New York Times or MSNBC or CNN or anybody else.
01:57:42.000 No one actually tries to explain.
01:57:45.580 And so what hangs out there is something completely unsatisfactory,
01:57:51.000 but it doesn't have an alternative explanation.
01:57:54.920 And if you don't have the clarity of the alternative,
01:58:00.060 then this miserable, phony, infowar approach, it fills the space.
01:58:08.120 And they're not interested in convincing us
01:58:11.100 because we don't have any say in any of these issues.
01:58:14.540 They're interested in doing what they want to do without being stopped.
01:58:19.300 That's the difference.
01:58:21.180 When was the last time you appeared or wrote for a mainstream publication
01:58:25.360 or television channel here?
01:58:26.600 It was the day that I was on Bloomberg and I said the U.S. blew up Nord Stream.
01:58:34.860 I remember that.
01:58:36.060 And they cut you off.
01:58:36.980 And they cut me off and then berated me for several minutes
01:58:42.000 while I was watching on the screen but cut off.
01:58:45.180 And that was the last moment.
01:58:46.460 But the U.S. did blow up Nord Stream.
01:58:48.120 Pardon me?
01:58:48.600 You were telling the truth.
01:58:49.640 Of course.
01:58:50.540 And exactly who did it when is something that would be easy to find out in five minutes.
01:58:56.600 So that's not even hard to find out.
01:58:59.280 But you haven't appeared on any mainstream?
01:59:01.580 Not once because that's not quite true.
01:59:04.960 You know, if it has nothing to do with foreign policy issues,
01:59:08.200 it's just an economics question once in a while.
01:59:11.300 But basically, the mainstream follows the security state line.
01:59:20.880 But so, I mean, and they're acting against their own interests.
01:59:23.160 This is not flattery, but it's just true.
01:59:24.420 Whenever we do an interview with you, it gets millions of views and people love it.
01:59:27.440 And we make revenue off it.
01:59:29.360 And it's like it's good business to have you on.
01:59:31.400 I happen to agree with you and think you're wise.
01:59:33.540 But it's not like people don't want to hear what you're saying.
01:59:35.320 Lots of people do.
01:59:36.200 We've proven that.
01:59:36.880 People want to hear some explanations.
01:59:39.860 No, but you specifically.
01:59:41.140 So you were a fixture on different channels, NBC, for example.
01:59:45.780 And so when they ban you from those channels, they're hurting themselves because viewers want to watch you.
01:59:51.160 Well, it's just I know that because I have you on.
01:59:52.960 So how exactly does that order go out, do you think?
01:59:57.300 Do you know the mechanics of keeping you off?
01:59:58.900 Like one day there's just a bulletin, you know, no more Jeffrey Sachs?
02:00:02.700 Or how does that work?
02:00:03.560 I need to ask you because the phrasing, the official lines, kind of the stupidities and sillinesses on almost any story of the kind that we're talking about get repeated across the mainstream space very, very quickly.
02:00:25.560 And not only on the U.S. side, but generally in the British media as well.
02:00:33.560 And so there's certainly some, there's an official narrative, of course.
02:00:40.340 So this is part of the story that senior White House briefing Jake or somebody else briefs.
02:00:47.400 And that becomes the meme.
02:00:49.240 That becomes what you have to defend.
02:00:51.280 You have to defend your continued access.
02:00:53.380 You have to be good, loyal citizen of this.
02:00:57.300 By the way, there are lots of contracts that go out with the military-industrial complex.
02:01:03.640 This is a trillion and a half dollar a year business.
02:01:08.320 Not a small business, by the way.
02:01:09.840 It's real business.
02:01:11.500 It's lots of think tanks.
02:01:13.260 It's lots of academic centers.
02:01:15.760 It's lots of people on hire.
02:01:18.420 It's lots of contracts.
02:01:19.860 It's lots of that all.
02:01:22.240 You don't get any.
02:01:23.260 I mean, I don't want any of that, but you don't get any of that if you're standing outside that.
02:01:29.800 None of it.
02:01:30.480 So people make decisions.
02:01:32.620 I think one of the best lines of modern history is the line of Sinclair Lewis that you can't convince a person to believe something when their salary depends on believing the opposite.
02:01:46.760 Yes.
02:01:47.100 And that's a real thing.
02:01:49.820 People have jobs.
02:01:51.020 They just don't want to get out of line.
02:01:54.960 They don't necessarily believe, but they don't want to get out of line.
02:01:59.000 And it's very worrisome.
02:02:03.060 And we thought that checks and balances of the U.S. government would be a stabilizer and especially that we would have voices in Congress that would be able to ask real questions.
02:02:20.960 And we have in the past.
02:02:23.220 We had Frank Church.
02:02:24.600 We had J. William Fulbright, who was not only brilliant and a critic of American foreign policy, was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
02:02:36.240 Who do we have now?
02:02:37.940 We have Rand Paul, and we had Tulsi in Congress, but basically almost nobody now.
02:02:45.480 They're scared, or they don't want to talk, or they're paid for by, who knows, RSX or Northrop Grumman or General Dynamics or Boeing or somebody.
02:02:58.600 So they don't even ask questions.
02:03:01.620 This is the reality.
02:03:04.920 Jeffrey Sachs, thank you very much.
02:03:07.420 Great to be with you as always.
02:03:08.700 Great to be with you.
02:03:09.360 Thank you.
02:03:09.640 Thanks for listening to the Tucker Carlson Show.
02:03:13.740 If you enjoyed it, you can go to TuckerCarlson.com to see everything that we have made.
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