The Tucker Carlson Show - March 17, 2025


Rick Sanchez： Fired and Threatened With Jail for Refusing to Spout Zelensky’s Talking Points


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 11 minutes

Words per Minute

196.40501

Word Count

14,048

Sentence Count

1,294

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

28


Summary

Rick Sanchez is a former CNN anchor, host, producer, and host of the RT Radio Atlantic's Morning Show. He is also the author of the best selling book, The Secret Life of the KGB, and has been featured on CNN, NBC, CBS, and Fox News. Rick has also been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, CNN Worldwide, and many other media outlets. He has worked at all three of the major networks and is a regular contributor on CNN and Fox.


Transcript

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00:00:30.740 Rick Sanchez, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for doing this.
00:00:32.940 Oh, it's a pleasure.
00:00:33.540 How did you wind up at RT and what did you think?
00:00:35.600 Larry King gives me a call one day.
00:00:37.580 Come on.
00:00:38.000 Larry King.
00:00:38.920 By the way, Larry's a great man.
00:00:40.560 I totally agree.
00:00:41.260 I love Larry.
00:00:42.240 He was kind.
00:00:43.120 He says, Ricky, you ought to really look at this.
00:00:45.480 And I'm thinking, Larry, the Russians?
00:00:47.640 I mean, come on, man.
00:00:49.380 I was born in Cuba.
00:00:50.740 It's a communist country.
00:00:51.840 I mean, just in case he wants to, you know, but he, but Larry says to me, let me tell you
00:00:56.360 something.
00:00:57.320 Ricky, let me tell you something.
00:00:58.520 This is the way Larry will say it.
00:00:59.220 It sounds so...
00:01:00.100 You know, they don't tell me what to say.
00:01:02.740 They don't tell me what to do.
00:01:04.440 They don't tell me who I have to interview.
00:01:06.480 They let me be in control of my show.
00:01:09.400 And I guarantee you, they really like you.
00:01:12.700 They really want you.
00:01:13.440 If you come here and do this show that they want you to do, they're going to do that for
00:01:17.360 you as well.
00:01:17.980 And I said, really, Larry?
00:01:19.380 You sure?
00:01:19.700 And finally, I came to terms.
00:01:23.380 You know, at the time, I'd been fired by CNN.
00:01:46.400 I went to Miami.
00:01:47.180 I decided to leave television altogether, television news.
00:01:50.580 And at the time, I was, I had started a new healthcare company in South Florida, which
00:01:55.060 we took public for a couple billion dollars.
00:01:57.340 And it was a great story.
00:01:59.220 But as the store, as that, that company was growing, I started thinking to myself, you
00:02:04.740 know, I miss my calling.
00:02:06.440 My calling is this.
00:02:07.720 Yeah.
00:02:07.980 What you do.
00:02:08.600 Plus, it's fun.
00:02:09.380 I love to tell stories.
00:02:10.680 I like finding out things that I didn't know.
00:02:13.080 And I love sharing them.
00:02:14.580 And doing that for a living, I think, is just a wonderful thing.
00:02:17.800 I totally agree.
00:02:18.500 So because I was kind of missing that, when I got a call one day from an agent saying,
00:02:22.940 you know, there's this group that wants to hire you, and they're a real network.
00:02:27.120 Would you come up and talk to them?
00:02:28.940 And then subsequently, I had the call with Larry King.
00:02:33.120 I said, you know what?
00:02:34.260 I might want to do this.
00:02:35.940 Sat down with my wife and my family, and I said, you know what?
00:02:38.580 I'm going to put the healthcare company aside, and I'm going to go back to what I really
00:02:42.340 want to do.
00:02:43.080 So I joined RT.
00:02:44.720 I said yes.
00:02:45.740 What year?
00:02:47.060 That was five years ago.
00:02:48.220 Yeah.
00:02:48.600 Yeah.
00:02:49.120 Five years ago.
00:02:49.860 2020.
00:02:50.680 Yeah.
00:02:51.160 Way before 2019.
00:02:53.500 2019.
00:02:54.100 Way before, like, this war and everything else.
00:02:57.060 And the footing between the United States and Russia at the time was not hostile.
00:03:03.160 It wasn't necessarily overly friendly.
00:03:05.280 It was just kind of in the middle.
00:03:07.040 Muddy.
00:03:07.320 Exactly.
00:03:07.920 Yeah.
00:03:08.120 At the time.
00:03:09.500 Yeah.
00:03:09.680 So what was it like?
00:03:10.500 It was everything Larry King said it would be.
00:03:14.720 Really?
00:03:15.560 Surprisingly so.
00:03:16.320 I'm not surprised, but it's interesting.
00:03:17.820 But I think others would be surprised.
00:03:19.560 So like you, I like dominion of my product, right?
00:03:22.280 Of course.
00:03:22.560 I want to be a writer.
00:03:24.040 I want to be able to talk to my producers.
00:03:26.500 I want to know who my other writers are.
00:03:28.180 Yes.
00:03:28.320 And so I picked my staff.
00:03:31.280 I wrote my entire show.
00:03:33.380 I picked my topics.
00:03:35.020 I led the editorial meeting every morning discussing what was going to be on our news agenda of the day.
00:03:40.520 And can I tell you something?
00:03:43.200 I never had that opportunity at CNN or Fox or NBC.
00:03:48.060 I'm sorry to say this.
00:03:49.420 I've worked at all three and I can confirm that.
00:03:51.240 Yeah.
00:03:51.560 I mean, you do have some sense or some liberty or journalistic independence when you work at those places, but not like this.
00:03:59.840 I'll just say right now, and I hope I'm not breaking anybody's heart out there who's a big CNN fan or any cable news fans out there.
00:04:06.560 But if you decide you want to interview somebody and he's not on their list of okay interviewees, they're not going to let you interview him.
00:04:15.760 And if you want to go down a certain path.
00:04:18.040 He's banned.
00:04:18.900 He's banned.
00:04:19.740 Oh, I've run up against that many times.
00:04:21.960 And you're saying this is a good man with interesting things to say.
00:04:25.100 Or he's in the news.
00:04:26.020 Like this is a relevant person.
00:04:27.440 Our viewers need to hear about this.
00:04:28.780 Sure.
00:04:29.340 The Jeffrey Sachs of the world, the Mearsheimer's of the world, the Colonel McGregor's of the world.
00:04:33.280 They're not allowed to be on those networks.
00:04:35.500 Rats a rock.
00:04:36.260 Yeah.
00:04:36.480 Right?
00:04:37.180 It's crazy.
00:04:38.260 So I started seeing some of these things when I was at CNN.
00:04:41.720 I saw them as well at NBC and Fox, you know, to be fair.
00:04:46.020 Maybe sometimes coming from a different direction.
00:04:48.980 And sure, I was allowed to have some, you know, say in the editorial decisions, but not as much.
00:04:57.580 Can I just ask, since I worked at the same three companies that you worked at.
00:05:01.280 Well, you and I worked at CNN together.
00:05:02.560 Exactly.
00:05:04.000 I would say the one thing.
00:05:05.300 So people look at, you know, CNN and MS are on the left.
00:05:08.100 Yeah.
00:05:08.920 Fox is on the right.
00:05:10.140 But there's also this sense that like, wait, maybe they're telling versions of the same story.
00:05:14.580 Yes.
00:05:14.940 And I found over 25 years that the one thing that none of those networks would accept was
00:05:20.200 anybody who questioned the Neocon storyline.
00:05:23.880 So I actually did have Doug McGregor to Fox's great credit.
00:05:27.680 They allowed me to have him on.
00:05:29.060 But I think that, I don't think he's been on since I left.
00:05:31.300 And I think they really hated him.
00:05:32.820 But I think Doug McGregor is as offensive to Fox executives as he is to CNN executives as
00:05:38.100 he is to MSNBC executives.
00:05:39.280 You think that's fair?
00:05:40.160 I think it's very fair.
00:05:41.460 And kudos to you for being the first person to put his thought process.
00:05:45.240 Yeah.
00:05:45.480 Well, I mean, it was so different.
00:05:46.440 It was up.
00:05:47.300 And that is really, the credit goes to the Murdochs who let me do that.
00:05:51.060 You know, a lot of things to criticize, but they did.
00:05:53.280 And your message was simple.
00:05:54.840 We're being told we're winning this war in Ukraine.
00:05:57.060 We're not.
00:05:57.700 Yes.
00:05:58.060 And here's a man who's going to take us through this.
00:05:59.760 That's all it was.
00:06:00.240 But I don't want to make it about me.
00:06:01.100 I just want to say, I think we had the same experience, which is the red line at all three
00:06:05.560 channels is exactly the same question.
00:06:07.880 Neocon foreign policy.
00:06:09.780 And we're done.
00:06:10.680 So as a journalist, working at RT, going back to your question, was almost nirvana for me.
00:06:17.120 Yes.
00:06:17.700 It was fantastic.
00:06:18.960 I reveled in this opportunity.
00:06:21.560 I would get up with a, you know, with a little skip in my step every day, thinking about what
00:06:26.800 we can talk about and how we're going to explain it and who we're going to talk to.
00:06:30.160 As difficult as it was, because a lot of guests wouldn't want to come on because it was RT,
00:06:33.700 you know, but it was really a great experience, especially comparatively speaking to what I
00:06:39.940 had experienced in the past.
00:06:41.440 And my old friend, Larry King was right.
00:06:44.480 They generally did not mess with me.
00:06:46.680 And when they did, when we had normal editorial arguments, which happened in every newsroom
00:06:52.220 and should, we would talk it out.
00:06:54.740 And sometimes I would win and sometimes I would lose, but it would be a discussion.
00:06:58.140 It wouldn't be like, this is what you're doing.
00:07:00.940 So it's a great experience.
00:07:02.880 So you felt that RT from, you know, internal editorial perspective, obviously you're the
00:07:07.800 anchor.
00:07:08.000 So you, you see what happens.
00:07:09.900 You felt that it was freer than Fox, NBC, or MS.
00:07:14.860 I wrote my entire show from top to bottom and nobody looked at it until it went on the air.
00:07:19.480 Okay.
00:07:19.740 How's that?
00:07:20.200 There you go.
00:07:20.920 There you go.
00:07:21.420 Can I, you know, can, is there anything more than that?
00:07:24.620 Nobody looked at my script before I went on the air, except, except me and some of the
00:07:29.060 editors who had to put pictures.
00:07:30.380 Of course.
00:07:30.960 Right.
00:07:31.220 Yeah.
00:07:31.560 But nobody was looking at it.
00:07:32.880 Aha.
00:07:33.200 No, this goes out.
00:07:34.060 You can't say this.
00:07:34.840 You can't say that.
00:07:35.620 That's amazing.
00:07:36.100 Because they trusted me.
00:07:36.900 I mean, look, man, I mean, I've got, I've been a part of two Peabody award-winning
00:07:40.920 teams.
00:07:41.540 I've got a DuPont.
00:07:42.760 I've got five Emmys.
00:07:43.920 I've interviewed four U.S. presidents.
00:07:45.500 I've sat down with Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev.
00:07:48.680 And yet there's not a single entity in the United States who seems to be interested in
00:07:52.320 hiring me.
00:07:53.740 Why?
00:07:55.380 Well, now I would say, I mean, there may be a lot of reasons, but now that you've worked
00:07:58.800 at RT, I think it's illegal to hire you, right?
00:08:00.500 Yeah.
00:08:00.700 Yeah.
00:08:01.140 Yeah.
00:08:01.420 It is.
00:08:02.680 Yeah.
00:08:03.220 It's something.
00:08:03.940 So how long were you there?
00:08:05.060 I worked for the first three years and then left prior to the invasion because my friends
00:08:13.300 back in South Florida who were now building this $4.4 billion healthcare company, and I
00:08:18.580 was one of the original partners of it, said, can you come back and help us handle the marketing?
00:08:23.640 I mean, we need you to just jump back in there and there's some things we want you to fix.
00:08:27.800 So I left and I said, okay, I'm going to go back and go back and do the, you know, the
00:08:33.920 job building back this healthcare company that I had built with my friends.
00:08:38.780 And while I was doing that, I then got a call from another dear friend, Ben Swan, who's
00:08:46.840 a really good journalist.
00:08:48.420 And he said, would you, you want, you want to do a show?
00:08:53.080 I said, oh my God, I'd love to do a show.
00:08:54.760 I miss doing a show.
00:08:55.800 So after taking a little hiatus for about a year and a half, I went back and started doing
00:09:00.240 a show.
00:09:00.800 He said, it's not allowed to air in the United States, but you get to produce your own show
00:09:06.000 and they air it all over the world and you get to do it in Spanish and in English.
00:09:10.740 So suddenly I started doing the show again, Tucker.
00:09:14.280 And when would, that was after the Ukraine war started?
00:09:16.900 That was after the Ukraine war started.
00:09:18.820 Correct.
00:09:19.180 How was, I mean, that must've been, because that was the moment when, well, the Ukraine
00:09:22.540 war is not a Ukraine war.
00:09:23.880 It's a war against Russia led by the United States.
00:09:25.740 Yeah.
00:09:26.160 And you're working at RT, Russia today.
00:09:28.420 Yeah.
00:09:28.720 So what was that like?
00:09:30.120 It was tough.
00:09:31.640 It was tough.
00:09:32.580 But after reading enough and knowing enough and hearing some of the people that we aforementioned,
00:09:39.100 McGregor's and Sachs, and I started thinking to myself, you know, I should do this because
00:09:45.060 we need to have a conversation with these people.
00:09:47.480 We need journalists and others and academics and whoever to start engaging with the journalists
00:09:54.320 and the academics over there so we can have discussions and work out a solution before
00:09:59.320 we start another fricking world war here.
00:10:01.300 I mean, so this will be a good thing.
00:10:05.760 I can make the world a better place by having a show from the United States that shares the
00:10:12.040 American perspective from a person who loves America.
00:10:15.360 Of course.
00:10:15.900 A guy who was born in a communist country and spent all his life listening to his parents
00:10:20.880 say, we're in the greatest nation on earth and sharing that with people around the world.
00:10:25.760 And RT was going to give me an opportunity to do that.
00:10:28.040 They weren't asking me to be a Russian.
00:10:29.540 They were asking me to be a journalist who happened to be American.
00:10:32.900 And why wouldn't I tell that kind of story?
00:10:35.480 I totally agree.
00:10:36.340 And that's what we grew up with.
00:10:37.980 I remember as a kid watching Phil Donahue interview Brezhnev in New York, surrounded
00:10:43.020 in a studio when Brezhnev would go to the UN, he would interview him.
00:10:48.100 And here he was in the studio with all these women asking this man questions.
00:10:51.600 I remember that was Phil Donahue.
00:10:53.360 I remember Ted Koppel once a week having a Soviet reporter on.
00:11:00.000 His name escapes me, but he became very famous at the time.
00:11:02.700 Yes.
00:11:03.400 And they would go back and forth and debate ideas.
00:11:07.340 Suddenly we're living in an era where our president hasn't spoken to their president for
00:11:10.920 almost four years.
00:11:12.720 This isn't right.
00:11:13.620 It's lunacy and we're so diminished by it, actually, and imperiled by it, I would say.
00:11:18.680 I've had every thought that you've had.
00:11:20.640 That's why I've been to Russia a couple of times for that exact reason.
00:11:22.820 Yeah.
00:11:23.280 As a proud American who's never leaving, doesn't have another passport, hasn't served in anyone
00:11:27.140 else's military.
00:11:28.100 I've never been to Russia.
00:11:29.080 Right.
00:11:29.440 Well, you should go.
00:11:30.240 It's a wonderful place.
00:11:31.020 But it doesn't make me less American.
00:11:33.000 I love my country more than anything.
00:11:34.440 But anyway, the point is I can understand and empathize with and so strongly agree with
00:11:38.760 everything you said.
00:11:39.600 But I wonder for that first year or two years, you know, the anti-Russian hysteria in the
00:11:47.720 United States was that like a comical pitch.
00:11:49.800 Like, I don't think the U.S. Open put Russian names on the screen of the players.
00:11:54.000 Like, people were not allowed, Russians weren't allowed to compete in sports.
00:11:56.500 It really became pretty evil, actually, I would say.
00:12:01.380 And but you signed back up with RT.
00:12:04.700 Like, what was that like with people you know?
00:12:06.980 What did they say to you?
00:12:08.220 I tried not to bring it up in polite conversation.
00:12:12.940 It would get impolite really fast.
00:12:15.320 It's like, you're doing what?
00:12:17.920 I would, you know, people would ask me, I'd say, oh, my God, Rick Sanchez, I grew up watching
00:12:21.000 you on TV, you know, in Miami.
00:12:22.300 Yeah, yeah.
00:12:22.660 Where I used to be on local television.
00:12:24.300 And they say, so what are you doing now?
00:12:25.740 I'd say, well, I'm doing a bunch of global stuff.
00:12:28.960 Because you just unless unless the person happens to be if I recognize that it's someone
00:12:33.640 who's astute and has some kind of geopolitical observations or knows the world or is kind
00:12:38.140 of smart, then I tell them and they go, oh, man, that's cool.
00:12:41.180 That's great.
00:12:41.940 But you just don't want to, you know, have an argument with people during the day.
00:12:45.500 So what does your kids say?
00:12:47.600 They were perfectly fine with it.
00:12:49.460 Yeah, we totally understood.
00:12:51.240 We've taught them.
00:12:52.400 Suzanne and I have really taught.
00:12:53.840 Well, she's a much better parent than I am, but I've done my part as well in making the
00:12:58.740 kids understand that we live in a world where there's a lot of different opinions and a
00:13:03.020 lot of different ways of looking at things.
00:13:04.320 That's right.
00:13:04.880 So you couldn't talk to my kids and come away thinking, oh, they're liberal.
00:13:08.360 Oh, they're conservative.
00:13:09.280 Or they're this.
00:13:09.960 Or they just they're smart enough to understand and recognize things for what they are.
00:13:13.680 Yes.
00:13:14.340 And I think that's important.
00:13:15.980 It sounds like you've done a great job.
00:13:17.220 I couldn't agree more.
00:13:18.400 She did.
00:13:18.780 I believe you.
00:13:21.960 Was there blow was there blowback, though, at all to your personal life?
00:13:26.960 Yeah.
00:13:28.120 Not to mention, you always felt like if ever you wanted to do something outside or let's
00:13:37.640 suppose Fox News would call.
00:13:40.180 Yeah.
00:13:40.340 One of your ex, you know, colleagues would call and say, hey, Rick, we were thinking about
00:13:44.660 inviting you because, remember, you used to talk about such and such and they'd want to
00:13:47.860 book you and you'd think they were booking you for something.
00:13:51.080 And you go, sure, I'd love to come on.
00:13:52.280 And then all of a sudden you get that famous phone call that all bookers had to get.
00:13:55.100 We're going in a different direction.
00:13:56.300 Yeah.
00:13:56.620 We changed the show.
00:13:57.880 We're not going to do that story.
00:14:00.700 And actually was they found out that you work at RT.
00:14:03.500 Of course.
00:14:03.920 And now they're not going to have you on simply because you work at RT, which is so prejudicial.
00:14:08.760 It's also so small minded and childish.
00:14:10.880 Like these are these are children who don't know anything about the world at all.
00:14:13.900 Rick Sanchez, we want you to talk about the new elections in Mexico, but we're not going
00:14:17.420 to get you on because you work at RT.
00:14:19.080 What the hell does one thing have to do with the other?
00:14:20.920 Well, of course.
00:14:21.660 And by the way, let me just back up a bit.
00:14:23.740 You said that by the time.
00:14:25.760 So you were there from roughly speaking, like 2019 to late 2021.
00:14:32.340 End of 21 or something like that.
00:14:34.440 And then you come back in, say, 22 or 23.
00:14:37.320 Correct.
00:14:37.920 After the war begins.
00:14:38.960 Yes.
00:14:40.080 But by that point, you can't watch RT in the United States.
00:14:44.000 RT is not available in the United States.
00:14:45.800 It was totally banned.
00:14:47.140 So the problem there, it's not really about Russia who owns RT or its agenda.
00:14:50.900 It's about the United States, which has a bill of rights.
00:14:53.680 The first right enumerated is the right to free speech, the right to see, hear and say
00:15:00.060 whatever you choose.
00:15:01.540 Because that had already been gotten rid of.
00:15:02.820 You're not a slave.
00:15:03.960 You're a free man.
00:15:05.200 So no one can control what I hear or what I think.
00:15:07.980 Right.
00:15:08.520 Well, but how did they ban a TV network in the United States?
00:15:11.420 When did that happen?
00:15:12.500 After the war in Ukraine, they decided that no one in the United States should have the
00:15:19.140 right to understand the perspective other than the Ukrainian perspective.
00:15:23.960 Therefore, RT, which was possibly going to share the Russian perspective, should not be allowed
00:15:32.080 to continue to operate in the United States.
00:15:34.080 But how did that happen?
00:15:34.980 Oh, they just put out an edict, I think.
00:15:36.600 I think it went through the Treasury Department once again.
00:15:39.260 But what happened like-
00:15:40.020 Your license is revoked and this particular entity is not allowed to operate in the United
00:15:43.640 States.
00:15:43.660 But what about civil liberties?
00:15:44.620 Aren't Americans allowed to hear whatever they want to hear?
00:15:46.760 Well, that's what I thought, right?
00:15:48.260 Congress shall pass no law.
00:15:49.900 Freedom of speech, all that jazz.
00:15:51.600 Where'd it go?
00:15:52.820 But then Biden doubles down, right?
00:15:55.060 And that-
00:15:56.400 Do you want me to share the phone call?
00:15:59.020 Yeah, I want to know everything.
00:16:00.200 I mean, this is-
00:16:01.140 But I just want to set the context.
00:16:02.520 This is pure craziness.
00:16:04.440 And they can say, Russia, bad, Russia, bad, Putin agent, all they want.
00:16:08.980 I don't care, personally.
00:16:10.560 But what they can't do is end the Constitution because that's not their right.
00:16:15.820 It pre-exists their rule.
00:16:17.400 And it will, I hope, endure after they're long gone.
00:16:20.240 So, like, I don't really know the part where they ended the First Amendment.
00:16:23.680 I don't really understand that.
00:16:24.680 You know, it's really weird because if you watched my show, and many people did, and some Americans were watching the show because they'd, you know, back-channel it somehow through the Internet or something.
00:16:37.380 My show was very, very popular in Latin America, one of the most popular shows in Latin America, huge in India and in different parts of the world.
00:16:44.280 Because RT happens to be one of the most respected, you know, journalistic networks, content creators in the whole world.
00:16:53.500 It's a very viable, you know, they put a lot of money and they've got a lot of smart people working there.
00:16:57.780 And I think they generally do a pretty good job with their product.
00:17:00.620 I will say this, I'm not allowed to watch it.
00:17:02.540 So, obviously, I haven't seen it that much as an American.
00:17:04.560 It's forbidden for me to have those ideas or that information.
00:17:07.560 But to the extent I have seen it, it's super interesting.
00:17:09.740 Yeah.
00:17:09.960 Super interesting.
00:17:10.620 Yeah.
00:17:10.720 It's not just news on a loop like the channels that we worked at are.
00:17:14.340 It's like, here are the eight stories of the day.
00:17:15.860 We're just going to flog the shit out of them and you can't hear anything else.
00:17:18.840 They have tons of interesting stuff.
00:17:20.400 Yeah.
00:17:20.940 And my show was not necessarily every day about the Ukraine war, nor was it about Putin, nor was it, it was U.S. politics.
00:17:29.060 It was a little bit of India.
00:17:30.540 It was about the South China Sea.
00:17:32.440 You know, we covered all the interesting things that were going on out there.
00:17:35.320 With interesting people from around the world who would love to come on and talk to us.
00:17:39.900 And a lot of people found it invigorating and interesting to watch a perspective that was different than the normal perspective you get here in the United States all the time.
00:17:48.420 I totally agree.
00:17:48.660 And to hear an American perspective, which as an American you brought, is, I think, really cool and important.
00:17:54.980 And it's good for us and it's good for them and it's good for just talking.
00:17:59.300 And by the way, even if it's not good or you think it's not good, you're not allowed to get in the way of it because that's against our Constitution, which is the basis of our civilization.
00:18:07.320 So back off.
00:18:08.320 A government is not allowed in this country, or so we're told, to tell us who we can work for, who we can watch, or what news entities can deliver news and which can't.
00:18:18.440 You probably haven't forgotten the image of empty grocery shelves during COVID.
00:18:24.620 Lockdowns and out-of-control mandates made that nightmare hard enough and not being able to get the food you want for your family was just too much.
00:18:32.960 So the people who run this country should do everything possible to make sure that never happens again.
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00:19:30.560 Tucker says it best.
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00:21:00.580 So then I just wanted to get that as a sort of foundation for the story you were about to tell.
00:21:05.460 So then what happened?
00:21:06.080 So this last year, sometime around August, I come home and I'd had a great newscast.
00:21:14.560 Last year, so 2024.
00:21:16.040 Correct, 2024.
00:21:17.220 So right in the middle of a presidential campaign.
00:21:19.360 That's correct.
00:21:20.560 Okay.
00:21:20.780 In the middle of a presidential campaign.
00:21:22.800 Keyword, presidential campaign.
00:21:25.360 I get this interesting phone call.
00:21:27.760 I had just come home from work and I get a phone call.
00:21:29.500 And it's an old friend who used to work with me in mainstream news.
00:21:33.100 He was a manager at CNN, as a matter of fact.
00:21:36.260 Ricky, what's going on?
00:21:38.060 Yeah, hi.
00:21:38.760 Oh, my God.
00:21:39.560 What are you doing calling me?
00:21:40.580 He goes, I just wanted to check up on you, see how things are going.
00:21:43.140 I said, good, Jim.
00:21:43.920 Things are going pretty well.
00:21:46.300 He says, just calling to let you know that I'm now working somewhere else.
00:21:51.500 I'm no longer in news.
00:21:52.660 I said, oh, okay.
00:21:54.380 And where I work, a lot of people are talking about you.
00:21:58.180 And I said, well, cool.
00:21:59.140 That's neat.
00:21:59.780 Where are you working?
00:22:01.300 He says, like, the State Department, kind of?
00:22:04.620 Oh, come on.
00:22:06.440 I'm like, no.
00:22:07.780 I'm like, oh, wait.
00:22:09.940 You work at the State Department.
00:22:12.980 Who knows?
00:22:14.240 USAID.
00:22:16.180 Or other agencies.
00:22:17.860 Yes.
00:22:19.280 And the guys are talking about you.
00:22:22.120 I said, well, good.
00:22:22.900 What are they saying?
00:22:23.760 Well, your show is very popular.
00:22:25.300 So, come on.
00:22:26.560 Yeah.
00:22:27.120 I said, well, what do you think?
00:22:29.400 He goes, well, they don't necessarily like some of the things that you're saying.
00:22:33.120 And I said, okay.
00:22:34.960 And I said, well, they're welcome to come on and tell me, whoever they are.
00:22:38.080 Tell me.
00:22:38.460 I mean, we could have them on as a guest and we can discuss whatever it is.
00:22:41.980 But throughout the conversation, he was very evasive but was letting me know that I guess he was letting me know that I was being watched.
00:22:54.500 And that was part of his mission.
00:22:57.340 And not only was he telling me that I was being watched, but he would kind of hope that I would somehow change what I was saying.
00:23:05.720 But he wasn't coming out and exactly saying it.
00:23:08.400 So, when we were done with the conversation, I remember I hung up the phone and I thought, what the hell was that?
00:23:13.760 Was that a warning or a threat?
00:23:18.020 I'm not sure.
00:23:19.280 Or maybe both.
00:23:20.060 And then three weeks later, all of a sudden, I'm hearing, and then it happens, the Biden administration has decided to go through the Treasury Department, this little agency called OFAC that most people have never heard of.
00:23:37.260 Oh, yes.
00:23:37.760 Which controls what businesses in the United States are allowed to exist and which ones aren't.
00:23:43.140 And they shut down the place where I worked.
00:23:47.500 And not only that, they passed a measure within that provision that seemed to say, and I'm not a lawyer and I'm not an expert on it, but it seemed to say that any American working for this entity will go to jail or be fined if they continue working for that entity.
00:24:02.460 So, and that's what happened.
00:24:04.220 And the next day, man, I was on the street.
00:24:07.260 That's absolutely mind-blowing.
00:24:10.580 So, let's just back up.
00:24:11.460 You say three weeks later, the State Department shut down the place where you work.
00:24:16.460 What does that mean?
00:24:17.100 That means that they officially announced that RT as an entity and anybody associated with media in Russia, I think is the way they wrote it, is not allowed to hire or even contract anyone in the United States.
00:24:39.500 I, Rick Sanchez Productions, my show, had been hired by an entity to do a show that was airing on RT.
00:24:48.620 I didn't work directly for RT, but I worked for a U.S. company that was doing shows.
00:24:55.620 They sold the shows and they sold this show to RT.
00:24:59.500 So, my show ended up being on RT.
00:25:02.180 Well, they back channeled the Treasury Department under Mr. Biden decided to follow all those little loopholes or whatever.
00:25:11.940 And they went all the way back and said, not only can RT not exist in the United States, RT is not allowed to pay money to anybody in the United States for any product.
00:25:22.420 They can't buy a product.
00:25:23.500 They can't contract anybody.
00:25:25.160 They can't, nobody can work for anybody who contracts through RT.
00:25:28.340 And if any of those people are caught in the United States, somehow contracting or working for RT, I don't care if you're a janitor or a carpenter or a plumber, you will be fined or even go to jail.
00:25:41.180 That's the new law, according to Mr. Biden, three weeks afterward.
00:25:44.660 And they said something in the dicta, in the explanation about why they were doing this, that they thought that the Russians were once again preparing to interfere in our election, as they had before in the case with Mr. Trump.
00:26:00.160 So, they were shutting down RT and anybody who could be in any way associated with RT, even though I wasn't doing pro-Trump stuff.
00:26:06.920 In fact, I was criticizing Mr. Trump during the campaign for certain things that he did, just like I was criticizing Kamala Harris.
00:26:14.660 So, it's totally unfair that here I am just doing a basic newscast every day, sharing it with them.
00:26:20.260 That was getting, garnering tens of millions of people around the world.
00:26:24.360 And a lot of people thought it was fair and it was sharing a perspective that Americans needed to hear.
00:26:30.040 And the Biden administration said, no, you cannot practice your craft as a journalist if you're in any way associated with those people.
00:26:37.480 But it wasn't airing in the United States.
00:26:39.280 No, it wasn't.
00:26:41.760 That's just pure craziness.
00:26:43.860 Well, that's what happened.
00:26:45.540 And it happened in America.
00:26:48.320 And it hurts being a guy who was born in a communist country and has spent his whole life saying, we are so different than the rest of the world because we allow people to say and think and work wherever they want.
00:26:59.980 And all of a sudden, here I was being told I couldn't work or think or say whatever I wanted.
00:27:07.520 That's like unbelievable.
00:27:09.120 Did anyone from the U.S. State Department reach out to you after?
00:27:15.680 No.
00:27:17.160 No.
00:27:17.780 Did you speak again to the sinister CNN colleague who called you from the State Department after this happened?
00:27:25.020 He sent me a Christmas card recently.
00:27:30.440 Did he leave like a horse's head on your bed or anything like that?
00:27:33.180 He did.
00:27:33.620 We did have – no, actually, we did have a –
00:27:36.220 That's such mafia behavior.
00:27:38.080 I mean, it's insane.
00:27:38.420 We did have a secondary conversation.
00:27:40.640 And interestingly enough, he suggested that he would help me if I wanted to maybe go to work like at Fox or someplace like that, that they could make some phone calls.
00:27:51.380 Oh, he could.
00:27:53.380 So we'll welcome you back into neocon world if you'll just bow before the throne.
00:27:58.720 Isn't that kind of a feeling you get?
00:28:00.480 Is that what they were saying?
00:28:01.340 That's the reality.
00:28:01.620 I don't know.
00:28:02.160 This is all so damn coded, man.
00:28:04.420 It's coded, but the message is clear.
00:28:06.160 When you're living it and you're experiencing it – and thank God, you know, we've done well and Suzanne and I are – you know, there's other people who are affected by this.
00:28:15.020 You know, guys who were producers and writers.
00:28:16.900 All Americans.
00:28:17.420 They hired teams of people all over Washington and New York and they're good people, people who worked with you at Fox and people who worked with me at CNN and people who worked at local news.
00:28:28.620 They're just regular American people, writers, producers, you know.
00:28:32.400 And they're all out on their ass simply because Mr. Biden thought that the Russians might be mean to him and, you know.
00:28:38.600 But not even in the United States.
00:28:41.720 Exactly.
00:28:42.120 I will say one of the smartest people I've ever met in my long life and most patriotic American I've ever met in my life, certainly up there, worked at RT, just a fact.
00:28:54.020 And I met on a news assignment in a foreign country years ago and just a truly brilliant person.
00:29:00.460 But anyway.
00:29:00.780 I found the Russians in general to be – and have found them to be since I've been working with them – to be extremely transactional and extremely honest, sometimes, you know, more so than we are.
00:29:14.920 Yeah, well, blunt, yeah.
00:29:17.740 They say what they think.
00:29:19.960 You know what they want.
00:29:21.380 And when you talk to them, they're very exact about what they want.
00:29:26.300 And I kind of find that admirable.
00:29:28.500 It's a – you know, we're talking in generalities here.
00:29:32.500 Hasty generalizations are never good.
00:29:34.140 There's all kinds of Russians just like there's all kinds of Americans.
00:29:36.680 But generally speaking, I found their mannerism to be very easy to work with and for.
00:29:45.240 So I thought – I grew up in a country that took the Second World War seriously and its lessons.
00:29:49.680 Our whole civilization – our whole society in the U.S. was based on the lessons we learned in World War II from the Nazis.
00:29:55.460 That's the country I grew up in.
00:29:56.740 And one of the main – you know, so what were the lessons?
00:29:59.600 We don't judge people on the basis of their appearance.
00:30:02.380 Racism is bad.
00:30:03.440 Right.
00:30:04.280 Eugenics and all that garbage.
00:30:05.400 We're against that.
00:30:06.960 And number two, we don't demonize whole groups of people.
00:30:10.340 If an individual does something bad, we can say that and we can punish that individual.
00:30:13.540 But we can't punish his parents.
00:30:14.800 Right.
00:30:15.260 Or his children or his neighbors because they didn't do anything.
00:30:17.520 We don't believe in collective punishment.
00:30:19.920 That's immoral.
00:30:20.660 It's anti-Christian.
00:30:21.200 But it's also the lesson of the Second World War.
00:30:24.160 And so I totally buy that.
00:30:26.200 I still believe that.
00:30:27.980 Truly.
00:30:28.640 Like in my heart, I believe that.
00:30:30.380 Call me liberal.
00:30:31.440 But it's so crazy to see like our whole society doing that.
00:30:34.820 And it's like, you don't like Putin.
00:30:36.120 That's fine.
00:30:36.800 You've got all sorts of like things you don't like that he's doing.
00:30:40.860 You want to do things he's preventing you from doing.
00:30:42.560 I get it.
00:30:43.780 But to turn around and say 150 million Russians are evil or Russia is a gas station with nuclear
00:30:51.100 weapons like that low IQ buffoon McCain used to say and all the other low IQ buffoons in
00:30:55.880 the U.S. Senate, which is like 95 percent of them, it's a gas station with nuclear weapons.
00:30:59.900 Really?
00:31:00.760 Have you ever read Tolstoy?
00:31:02.080 Yeah.
00:31:02.220 Have you ever been there?
00:31:02.900 Like you may hate Russia, but to say it's a gas station, you're an idiot, actually.
00:31:07.800 And to hurt like professional tennis players because they have Slavic last names.
00:31:12.560 Like, I don't want to live in a country that does that.
00:31:15.480 Do you know what I mean?
00:31:16.460 Oh, absolutely.
00:31:17.280 I thought it was first they came for the so-and-so, then they came for the so-and-so, and I said
00:31:20.560 nothing.
00:31:20.840 It's like, that extends to all human beings.
00:31:23.320 If they did that to the Malaysians or the Chinese or anybody, it doesn't matter.
00:31:27.780 The Belgians, you can't collectively punish people.
00:31:32.460 Yeah.
00:31:32.660 Right?
00:31:33.660 And we did.
00:31:34.840 Since you made the historical reference to World War II, last time I checked, and there's
00:31:39.840 no American who knows this unless we as parents tell them, but I hate to break it to you,
00:31:46.120 but the French were not the reason that Hitler was defeated.
00:31:50.540 I'm aware.
00:31:51.280 I know we think this, and I know every year or every couple of years we have this, you
00:31:55.640 know, celebration.
00:31:56.220 The French Resistance did it, yeah.
00:31:57.400 Yeah, Normandy thing where we invite everybody but the Russians, and the French president,
00:32:03.300 and whoever he happens to be at the time, whether it's Macron to Mitterrand, sits there
00:32:07.020 and says, oh, look what we did in Europe.
00:32:08.960 Look what we did?
00:32:10.380 Really?
00:32:10.880 No, I know.
00:32:11.260 You lasted five minutes, dude.
00:32:13.160 But yeah, yeah.
00:32:14.460 Part of the story.
00:32:15.380 It's just that impulse, the impulse of the crowd to call someone unpopular and then lynch
00:32:21.760 him, like, that's a human impulse.
00:32:23.540 All people have that impulse.
00:32:25.080 It's incredibly ugly.
00:32:26.760 Civilization exists to keep it in check.
00:32:28.720 It's why we're against lynching.
00:32:30.080 It's why we're against war crimes.
00:32:32.060 It's why we're against, like, mob behavior in general.
00:32:34.440 And to see the U.S. government encouraging that, whether it's against people who don't
00:32:38.600 get vaccinated or Russians or just pick a group, I don't care who it's against.
00:32:41.560 I'm opposed to that, right?
00:32:43.180 Just know this, Tucker.
00:32:46.460 And I think you do.
00:32:47.660 Every time a bullet is spent, every time a helicopter crashes, every time a fighter plane
00:32:52.100 goes down, somebody somewhere in the United States says, cha-ching.
00:32:56.420 I hate that.
00:32:57.720 I mean, you're right.
00:32:58.540 I know that you're right.
00:32:59.300 Fortunately, wars and enemies are chosen for a specific reason.
00:33:04.300 And more often than not, it has to do with financial reasons.
00:33:07.600 And it has nothing to do with the good people of this country.
00:33:10.980 Right.
00:33:11.240 Just like there are good people in Wisconsin who don't want to share their communities
00:33:16.020 with tons of immigrants.
00:33:17.740 And it's not because they're bad people or dislike immigrants.
00:33:21.180 And they're not the ones who started the problem in Honduras or Guatemala that caused 500,000
00:33:27.100 people to leave the countryside and come to the United States.
00:33:30.520 Completely agree.
00:33:30.880 So there are some people in our government.
00:33:32.420 We, I love the United States.
00:33:34.440 But there are some people in our government who do some very nefarious things, who create
00:33:39.020 bad results that make the rest of us feel it and look bad.
00:33:42.800 That's the shit we got to take care of.
00:33:44.400 And hate each other, too.
00:33:46.340 They inspire hate.
00:33:47.300 I don't like that.
00:33:48.040 I don't think a government should ever whip its population into a frenzy of hate.
00:33:51.880 I think it's really scary.
00:33:52.940 Right.
00:33:53.280 Even against the Russians.
00:33:55.560 So I'm hardly an expert on Russia.
00:33:58.100 I've been there a couple of times.
00:33:58.940 I don't speak Russian.
00:33:59.980 I don't, you know, I'm not Russian.
00:34:01.320 I'm from La Jolla.
00:34:02.640 But my...
00:34:04.180 I've come to understand their perspective.
00:34:06.020 And I think it's a fair perspective.
00:34:07.660 Well, you worked with them.
00:34:08.600 So that's my question.
00:34:09.340 You know more about Russians than I do just because you worked with a lot of them.
00:34:11.880 What was their perspective on the war?
00:34:14.000 Their perspective on the war was quite simple.
00:34:16.080 It goes back decades where it seemed to them that NATO and the United States, which many
00:34:26.840 people would argue NATO has really run out of Washington, have for years broken their
00:34:32.060 promises.
00:34:33.040 It's almost this simple if we were trying to explain it in very simple terms.
00:34:37.520 After the Soviet Union broke apart, they were desperate for a friend.
00:34:43.140 And we said we would be their friend.
00:34:45.200 And we would show them how democracy and capitalism works.
00:34:49.600 And we sent the brightest minds in America.
00:34:52.160 And we even had James Baker say to them, don't worry, because you're no longer our enemy,
00:34:58.060 we're not going to encroach on you.
00:34:59.500 We're not going to point missiles at you.
00:35:01.280 We're not going to continue NATO expansion all the way up to your border.
00:35:06.040 We're just not going to do that.
00:35:07.240 We promise we're not going to do that.
00:35:09.900 And then they found out over the years that that wasn't true.
00:35:13.040 That every single thing that we said we would not do, we actually did.
00:35:18.500 And if you actually looked at Russia and then you looked at NATO now, it's almost like they're
00:35:24.560 feeling a little bit surrounded.
00:35:26.640 Well, because the point of NATO is to surround them.
00:35:29.400 Yeah, from Estonia to Latvia and there's missiles pointed there and they started getting fear.
00:35:34.000 So now you have this here, which is Ukraine, which is almost the end of the encirclement.
00:35:40.400 And they finally thought to themselves as citizens and their president said, guys, this is too much.
00:35:47.660 I mean, now you want to take Ukraine?
00:35:50.520 We got a 4,000 year history here going back to Catherine the Great.
00:35:54.520 And it's now you say not only do you want to take NATO, but you're already putting military hardware in there.
00:36:00.980 And then there was this thing which they believe is very true, which our government under a woman named Victoria Nuland in 2014 helped to foment, along with Mr. Biden, who was vice president, a coup in Ukraine that caused a democratically elected president to be removed simply because he was friendly to Russia.
00:36:25.960 He wasn't necessarily a Russian, but he was friendly to Russia.
00:36:29.700 In other words, he wanted to have good relations with Russia.
00:36:31.440 It's one of the world's great powers right on his border.
00:36:34.480 Correct.
00:36:34.820 Be like, is the president of Mexico generally friendly to the president of the United States?
00:36:39.460 Yeah.
00:36:39.940 Yeah.
00:36:40.440 No choice.
00:36:41.160 Right.
00:36:41.620 Not on everything, but they're going to have relations.
00:36:44.080 We decided it was wrong for the president of Ukraine to have relations, certainly not friendly relations with Russia.
00:36:51.320 So we went in and we started a coup, which we've been known to do, as you know.
00:36:55.960 And as a result of that coup, we had the guy essentially eventually removed.
00:37:00.860 And that finally was the last straw.
00:37:03.640 That's where the Russians, their mindset, their president, their politicians said, this is too much.
00:37:10.740 This just cannot continue.
00:37:12.380 And that's what led to this war.
00:37:14.800 So that's their way of looking at it.
00:37:17.460 Like they were being encroached.
00:37:18.940 Is it right?
00:37:19.860 Is it wrong?
00:37:20.700 Do they have a right to think that way?
00:37:22.940 It's not for me to decide.
00:37:24.080 Maybe historians can decide that.
00:37:25.960 But there's another story besides one day the Russians just got angry and decided to go after Ukraine for no reason whatsoever.
00:37:32.680 Because they're rebuilding the Soviet Union and they want to take Poland.
00:37:36.100 And it's like the dumbest storyline I've ever heard.
00:37:38.860 And there's nothing factually to back that story up in any way.
00:37:42.440 I'm aware.
00:37:43.080 I'm aware.
00:37:43.440 They have been losing territory, not gaining territory, and they're fine with it.
00:37:48.060 And they don't want to go.
00:37:48.960 They don't want to.
00:37:49.580 I don't think the Russians want to run Ukraine.
00:37:52.500 Do they need more land with the Russians?
00:37:54.220 No, but part of Ukraine is Russian.
00:37:56.040 No, I'm aware.
00:37:56.680 But I'm just saying the idea that they want Eastern Europe.
00:37:59.340 Oh, right.
00:37:59.360 The largest country in the world.
00:38:01.160 That's like extremely complicated to run.
00:38:03.580 What I have noticed, and that makes me sadder even than anything, because ultimately I care about what happens in my country because my kids live here.
00:38:11.580 And so watching the style of debate in America change to, you know, a system, an age-old system, a Western system where, you know, you think one thing, I think another, we like talk it through, the guy with the best point wins, right?
00:38:27.200 To a system where we just create a villain, and if we don't like what the other person is saying, we tie him to the villain, and it ends the conversation.
00:38:36.160 Shut up, Rick Sanchez.
00:38:37.360 You're a Putin puppet.
00:38:38.400 Correct.
00:38:38.520 You took money from Putin.
00:38:39.880 Correct.
00:38:40.080 Why should I listen to you?
00:38:41.580 Yeah.
00:38:42.380 And it's like, at first when this started happening, it started happening a while ago.
00:38:46.180 I was like, that's so childish.
00:38:47.360 I'm not even going to acknowledge it.
00:38:49.720 And then it spread, like the stage four cancer that it is.
00:38:54.060 And all of a sudden, everybody thinks like that.
00:38:56.780 Everybody thinks like that.
00:38:57.820 It's like, you're connected to Russia.
00:39:00.620 The latest is Qatar, which is a country of 300,000 people.
00:39:05.560 It's like, oh, Qatar is running our American media.
00:39:08.960 It's like so floridly insane.
00:39:11.040 But also so, like, unimpressive.
00:39:14.320 Like, do you really think like that?
00:39:15.420 There's something that bothers me so much lately.
00:39:18.020 I created...
00:39:18.600 I just, well, because I'm bored, and I created a new podcast.
00:39:23.660 It's called Journalistically Speaking.
00:39:25.320 And I named it Journalistically Speaking for a reason.
00:39:28.520 You know, I got a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota.
00:39:30.660 I've practiced journalism most of my life.
00:39:32.160 I feel good about it.
00:39:33.060 I think it's an honorable profession.
00:39:34.820 But I'm kind of trying to stick it in the eye of the other people who call themselves journalists who work at all these places today.
00:39:41.200 I started looking around and looking at MSNBC and CNN and Fox, how the people who work at these places were former spokespersons for the Pentagon or the State Department or President Bush or President this or President that.
00:39:57.280 And I'm thinking, and they say, Russians are state TV?
00:40:01.900 We've got literally the person who spoke for the President of the United States is now the anchor at such and such a network.
00:40:08.000 Oh, I agree.
00:40:08.560 And they're all over the place.
00:40:10.940 And what is more state TV than that?
00:40:14.200 And most of them didn't even study journalism and have never covered a story and wouldn't know what it looks like if it hit them in the ass.
00:40:21.140 So funny.
00:40:22.580 There's this one chick on MSNBC who I knew, and I can't remember her new last name.
00:40:27.360 It was Nicole Devenish.
00:40:28.900 Nicole Wallace is her name.
00:40:30.240 Yeah.
00:40:30.920 And she was Jeb Bush's, like, coffee girl and flack, kind of, like, in the 90s.
00:40:36.640 And I covered Jeb Bush.
00:40:37.760 So I remember her very well.
00:40:39.320 She was totally incompetent then.
00:40:41.180 But she was incompetent in this very specific way that people in Washington are.
00:40:45.240 She was totally obedient to the message.
00:40:47.360 Yes.
00:40:47.980 No creativity, no independent thinking, pretty low IQ, nasty.
00:40:53.600 But, man, if you told her to say something, she would just say it.
00:40:55.900 Yeah.
00:40:56.440 And it's so sad to see someone like that rewarded in this great country, which I guess she has been.
00:41:01.260 I think she has a TV show still, right?
00:41:03.140 Nicole Wallace?
00:41:03.920 Nicole Wallace.
00:41:04.580 Yes.
00:41:05.060 Yeah, yeah.
00:41:05.440 Is it still on the air?
00:41:06.300 She worked for McCain.
00:41:08.360 I think she ultimately went for McCain.
00:41:09.740 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:41:09.820 But I knew her when she worked for Jeb Bush.
00:41:13.540 But I just couldn't believe, like, she's a journalist?
00:41:17.680 Yeah.
00:41:18.240 Like, are you joking?
00:41:19.320 She's like a flack and not even a good one.
00:41:22.020 They're either...
00:41:23.060 But obedience was her main qualification.
00:41:24.700 Yeah, and that's how they keep their jobs.
00:41:27.460 And that's why the Rick Sanchez's of the world get fired from those places.
00:41:30.980 And the Tucker Carlson's of the world get fired from those places.
00:41:33.200 Oh, I'm so grateful that I did.
00:41:34.360 Whatever happened, there was...
00:41:35.400 Me too, you know?
00:41:36.620 I shouldn't even ask you this in the middle, you know, on camera, because I have no idea what your answer is going to be.
00:41:40.840 But there was a guy...
00:41:42.900 Well, you don't know what any of my answers are going to be.
00:41:43.900 No, that's true.
00:41:44.800 No, but this could be...
00:41:46.240 But Dylan...
00:41:47.360 Radigan.
00:41:48.340 Radigan.
00:41:49.100 Yes.
00:41:49.560 Okay, so I think I was at NBC...
00:41:51.220 Brilliant guy.
00:41:52.340 Exactly.
00:41:53.060 Yeah.
00:41:53.700 And he was on the left, and I remember thinking, oh, he's like some liberal.
00:41:58.180 He was not a liberal.
00:41:58.920 No.
00:41:59.060 He was on the, like, traditional, he was like free-thinking left guy.
00:42:01.520 Right.
00:42:01.940 And he started saying stuff.
00:42:03.400 I think I was...
00:42:04.200 Worked there when this happened.
00:42:05.660 And he went from being like, oh, liberal guy, whatever, abortion, abortion, abortion, to being like, hey, why don't we pay people fair wages?
00:42:13.880 Which is a real thing, as far as I'm concerned.
00:42:18.240 And all of a sudden, he, like, disappeared.
00:42:20.320 We never heard from him again.
00:42:22.220 Whatever.
00:42:22.900 And so I thought he was impressive, but I knew that his brand of politics was not acceptable.
00:42:27.860 Whatever happened to him?
00:42:28.960 They did the same thing with him that they did with me.
00:42:31.740 I mean, you know, they said, look, I know you've got a new contract you signed just a little while ago, so we're going to continue to pay you for the next two and a half or three years.
00:42:39.280 And the only thing is, you can't say anything bad about us, and you can't really take another job unless it's more money.
00:42:45.400 And, you know, it's crazy.
00:42:47.520 I don't know where they get the money, but they have a lot of money in those places.
00:42:50.480 Oh, I know they do.
00:42:51.280 Because they just hand it out, and they told Dylan Rattigan, no, we don't want you working here anymore.
00:42:55.680 And it was like, they did it from one week to the next, and he was gone, simply because he was challenging the status quo.
00:43:02.000 And he was.
00:43:03.020 And I remember, like, I didn't pay any attention to Dylan Rattigan at all.
00:43:06.740 But then one day I heard him say something, I was like, well, that's, I don't even know if I agreed with it or not, but it was interesting.
00:43:11.360 And I could tell that Dylan Rattigan was actually thinking for himself, and he's smart.
00:43:14.620 I totally agree.
00:43:15.260 I don't know him, but I remember thinking, this guy's smart.
00:43:17.360 Yeah.
00:43:17.960 And then he was gone.
00:43:19.560 Yeah, I got that same feeling at CNN.
00:43:21.280 As soon as I started challenging certain principles, criticizing, for example, certain things, then the elders at CNN, those people who were in that, the row, they called it.
00:43:35.020 Oh, I remember.
00:43:35.480 They had this thing called the row, and it was like five, six, seven, eight older guys who decided what stories went on the air, why they went on the air, when they should go on the air.
00:43:44.700 And I remember I wanted to start doing certain stories about some of the mistakes and foibles that we had made in Latin America, for example, that were causing this immigration thing that was going on.
00:43:56.580 And they said, no, no, no, we're not reporting that.
00:43:58.700 I said, what do you mean we're not reporting that?
00:44:00.560 I said, you know, to a certain extent, we kind of started a civil war in Guatemala that ended up in the deaths of 200,000 people.
00:44:07.280 And we removed a democratically elected president back in the 1950s, which has led to the problems that have gone into Honduras.
00:44:14.260 And as the only Hispanic anchor in America working at your network, I'd like to tell some of these stories, not to be critical, so we can learn.
00:44:22.260 We make mistakes.
00:44:23.160 It's OK.
00:44:23.560 They said, no, you will not do that story, period.
00:44:28.700 Why?
00:44:29.840 How?
00:44:31.640 I guess it made certain people in the neocon establishment look bad, and they were trying to move.
00:44:36.840 That foreign intervention, especially in a country you don't understand, has massive consequences, generational consequences.
00:44:43.020 Exactly.
00:44:43.900 Right.
00:44:44.140 Have some humility when you act.
00:44:46.520 Like you bomb somebody's country.
00:44:48.240 Everyone's like, oh, just bomb the country.
00:44:50.480 OK, fine.
00:44:51.500 You bomb the country, kill a bunch of people, take out a nuclear site.
00:44:54.420 But, like, what happens then?
00:44:56.020 Yeah.
00:44:56.480 Yeah.
00:44:57.020 And maybe there was a good explanation for it.
00:44:59.860 I agree.
00:45:00.400 Maybe there was something that was going to lead.
00:45:01.960 But you can't just say, well, the guy seemed to have some leftist tendencies, so we took him out.
00:45:05.940 What?
00:45:07.100 I mean, you know.
00:45:08.300 Especially since he was interesting.
00:45:10.180 And it does make you wonder, like, the people who remain, and I like them perfectly fine.
00:45:15.320 I have nothing.
00:45:15.920 I always like Wolf Blitzer.
00:45:17.400 Always got along with Anderson Cooper.
00:45:18.680 There are a ton of people like that who've just, like, kind of been there forever at all the networks, not just CNN.
00:45:25.360 But, and I never had any problem with any of them.
00:45:27.540 Wolf was always nice to me, for example.
00:45:29.100 Yes.
00:45:29.400 Wolf's a really nice guy.
00:45:30.360 Yes, totally.
00:45:31.160 I completely agree.
00:45:32.400 And Anderson Cooper never had any problem with him at all.
00:45:35.120 No, a little weird, but he's a nice guy.
00:45:36.540 I never got any kind of human warmth sense from him.
00:45:41.140 But whatever, you know.
00:45:42.380 But in order to stay at a channel like that for that long, the number of, like, deep moral compromises you have to make is crazy.
00:45:53.920 Don't you think?
00:45:54.620 Is that fair?
00:45:55.140 I was watching you and Cuomo the other day, and I thought, wow, the questions that you guys were going back and forth on, I was thinking, does he really not know?
00:46:04.440 Does he really think, for example, not to bust his chops?
00:46:07.680 Because I think he's a good guy and generally does a good show.
00:46:10.800 So, he's inquisitive enough to ask good questions.
00:46:15.260 But guys like him who you think, this guy is really smart, and when he's kind of defending Zelensky as some kind of, you know, novel, perfect leader, I'm thinking, dude, really?
00:46:25.700 I mean, the information's out there if you just want to look for it.
00:46:29.300 Or do you not want to find it?
00:46:31.300 I don't know.
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00:48:03.260 So the people who built this country built it because they wanted freedom.
00:48:05.880 One word, freedom.
00:48:06.740 They wanted freedom from oppressors who forced them to buy overpriced tea, then blockaded them when they tried to dump it into the ocean.
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00:49:02.460 What is that?
00:49:03.100 Do you think that it is a kind of instinctive deference to true power that keeps people in line?
00:49:12.260 Is there some kind of conference call I've never been invited on?
00:49:14.740 I'm like, how does everybody know what the red line is?
00:49:18.420 When you are hired in the United States of America as a communicator, one of the first things you adhere to is the principle of power.
00:49:30.440 So having access, if you're a local reporter in Wichita, to the police chief so that you can go out on the buy busts that they're going to do or the investigation on a local politician, you yearn for that connection.
00:49:47.500 Somewhere along the line, that never seems to be broken for some people.
00:49:52.180 It's like, all I got to do to be a good communicator is get tight with the mayor's office, the police chief, and then as you grow, maybe you end up at CNN.
00:50:03.580 Now it's the State Department.
00:50:05.840 No, it's totally right.
00:50:06.940 The CIA.
00:50:08.520 As a journalist, I represent power.
00:50:10.960 And somewhere along the line, somebody needs to slap the shit out of all of us and say, no, you don't.
00:50:16.160 No, you don't.
00:50:16.760 Your job is not to represent.
00:50:18.360 Your job is to represent the people down there, the workers, the people who pay the taxes.
00:50:24.540 Yeah, and your audience.
00:50:25.340 Those people.
00:50:25.880 Yes.
00:50:26.600 They are the people you need to work for.
00:50:28.900 Your audience, the average American.
00:50:32.240 And they're not.
00:50:33.020 They're like, yeah, the average American's here, but the people that I really want to impress are over here because that's what gives me access.
00:50:38.920 And access is everything.
00:50:40.060 Access is growth, and it gets me the next job.
00:50:42.300 And that's a strange little thing that we've developed in this country.
00:50:45.220 Did you ever know Jen Griffin at Fox, the Pentagon reporter?
00:50:48.400 I think I may have met her, but no.
00:50:52.180 I don't want to single her out.
00:50:53.120 She's perfectly nice.
00:50:54.200 That's not true, actually.
00:50:55.060 Pentagon reporters are usually salutes.
00:50:56.920 Whoa, whoa.
00:50:59.040 And what's interesting is she just carries the, she lies, and she carries the Pentagon line, not the kind of top, you know, not the defense secretary line.
00:51:11.080 He's a political appointee, but the permanent Pentagon, the interests of this agency, the largest government agency.
00:51:16.000 And she just carries her on no matter what, no matter what.
00:51:18.840 It doesn't matter how implausible it is.
00:51:21.060 And it's a neocon line.
00:51:22.040 It's a very strict neocon line.
00:51:22.260 And when you challenge her when she's on your show, which I'm sure you had this happen, because I had this happen at CNN, I'd, you know, have the Pentagon reporter on, and I'd challenge her on a question.
00:51:32.980 She would complain to management, and then management would call me in and say, hey, take it easy with your questioning and what you were doing.
00:51:39.920 Are you serious?
00:51:40.320 Oh, I remember John Klein calling me the president of CNN.
00:51:42.980 You remember, John?
00:51:44.280 Do I remember, John?
00:51:45.320 Yeah.
00:51:47.780 Do you want to go into a rabbit hole here?
00:51:50.860 No, I'm not going to.
00:51:51.640 But John would call me and say, Rick, such and such says you've got to really back off on this stuff.
00:51:56.740 It's like, why?
00:51:57.440 It's a perfectly legitimate question.
00:51:59.460 Well, she's upset.
00:52:00.640 That was attestive of my personal decency and religious principles, because I was so mistreated by John Klein in the most dishonest way.
00:52:07.780 No one's ever been that dishonest with me ever in my life that when John Klein got fired, which was, of course, inevitable from CNN, I called him to say, you know, I heard you get fired, and I'm just so grateful that you did get fired because you deserve it.
00:52:21.780 Did you say that?
00:52:22.540 I didn't.
00:52:23.380 So I called him on a cell.
00:52:25.380 This was years later.
00:52:26.200 He picks up, and then I was like, that's really, don't do that to somebody.
00:52:30.600 Like, I'm a Christian.
00:52:31.460 Don't act like that to somebody.
00:52:33.400 You know, kick him when he's down.
00:52:34.780 Don't do that.
00:52:35.320 So I just hung up.
00:52:36.060 He's like, hello, Tucker?
00:52:36.880 Hello?
00:52:37.180 And I hung up.
00:52:38.480 And that was the best I could do.
00:52:40.140 What I should have done as a Christian has called him and said, you know, John, we had problems between us, but I know what it feels like to be fired.
00:52:48.040 I'm really sorry.
00:52:48.660 I wasn't man enough to do that, but I did pull back.
00:52:51.800 What a moment.
00:52:53.060 Well, that middle moment, that half a second on the phone of silence must have been.
00:52:57.840 I don't want to be that person.
00:52:58.360 I don't want to kick the suffering man.
00:53:00.000 I'm glad about your cancer diagnosis.
00:53:01.040 Damn.
00:53:01.440 I don't want to be that person.
00:53:02.480 But boy, I was tempted.
00:53:04.980 Because, I mean, John Klein is, I've never dealt with anybody that dishonest.
00:53:09.600 Like, literally, I resigned my job at CNN.
00:53:12.420 I went to lunch with my brother at the Palm on 19th Street.
00:53:15.200 I'll never forget.
00:53:15.660 This was, like, back when you didn't check your cell phone all the time.
00:53:18.040 I get back to my office and I have a call from Dave Bowder at the AP, who's the AP writer, and he's like, call me back right away.
00:53:25.880 He's like, I'm sorry, you just got fired from CNN.
00:53:29.160 We have a statement from John Klein.
00:53:30.680 I was like, what do you mean fired?
00:53:31.520 I resigned this morning.
00:53:32.420 I didn't get fired.
00:53:32.900 What are you talking about?
00:53:33.660 He's like, no, no.
00:53:34.120 John Klein called me.
00:53:35.260 Well, I was at lunch.
00:53:36.100 Oh, my God.
00:53:38.420 I was like, are you kidding?
00:53:39.740 So I called John Klein.
00:53:40.680 I was like, is this real?
00:53:41.880 And he said, and I'm quoting, as God watches, he goes, it's just business.
00:53:45.480 It's just business.
00:53:47.020 I don't know why I'm telling this story.
00:53:48.020 I've never told that story to anybody, but that was, yeah.
00:53:50.500 That's a great story.
00:53:51.480 So, John, no, but that's how the business runs.
00:53:53.600 Sounds a little like the mafia.
00:53:54.660 Well, it totally is, and I'm sorry that I.
00:53:56.780 It's just business.
00:53:57.760 Now.
00:53:58.120 No, you and I have had interesting careers.
00:53:59.560 25 years later, it's like, of course, that's what happened.
00:54:02.020 It doesn't bother me at all, but.
00:54:03.480 And we're both better for it.
00:54:04.560 Oh, I completely agree.
00:54:06.400 And anyone who's shocked by that kind of stuff is naive, and I don't want to be naive.
00:54:10.840 So, but, um, so you, so I'm totally stepped on over your story because you triggered me
00:54:15.440 with John Klein.
00:54:16.120 Well, here, let me help you.
00:54:17.540 So, um, after the Biden administration decides that they think this entity, which they really
00:54:24.260 don't even understand, but apparently they thought my show was too popular and they didn't
00:54:28.840 want me to be popular on a network other than the BBC or CNN.
00:54:32.920 And, uh, so they essentially shut it down, thereby shutting me down by penalty of imprisonment.
00:54:39.240 And I was a little angry about it.
00:54:41.840 So I went around and I started telling people about it all.
00:54:44.540 Anybody who would listen, I would say, look, this, this is the situation I'm in and it's
00:54:48.200 very bothersome.
00:54:49.520 And I got a lot of people, including the, uh, society of professional journalists who
00:54:53.640 said, look, in a country like ours, the government doesn't get a chance to decide who are the
00:54:58.780 winners and losers who can report and who can do anything else.
00:55:01.940 So they've invited me to actually speak at one of their forums, which I thought was cool.
00:55:06.080 And then a very large newspaper here in the United States, in Washington, no less, decided
00:55:12.260 they were going to run a story on this.
00:55:14.280 And essentially they wrote a story that essentially says the headline of, you know, Rick Sanchez,
00:55:19.160 former CNN reporter, challenging the Biden administration, hoping that the, the new Trump
00:55:23.900 administration will change this law.
00:55:25.720 And it was a legitimate story telling the story that I've been telling you that one day
00:55:29.480 I was working and suddenly it was, this was taken away from me and it was unfair, perfectly
00:55:33.480 legitimate story.
00:55:35.020 Um, and it was about to air or pardon me, be published, uh, the very next day.
00:55:40.320 And I get a phone call.
00:55:42.520 Remember we talked earlier about a mysterious phone call.
00:55:45.320 Yeah.
00:55:45.820 Now there's this young journalist, nice young man, worked hard on the story, smart kid.
00:55:51.040 And he says, Mr. Sanchez, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but the story that was going
00:55:56.300 to come out tomorrow that you and I were both excited about it, it's been killed.
00:56:00.100 They're not going to run the story.
00:56:01.440 I said, why wouldn't they run the story?
00:56:03.520 They said, well, because our managing editor, not my boss, his boss, apparently got a call
00:56:10.120 last night from somebody and they convinced him in that phone call that we should kill
00:56:14.280 this story.
00:56:15.120 And I said, can you give me more details?
00:56:17.140 Do you know why?
00:56:17.860 He goes, no, I don't even know who the person was who called him.
00:56:20.420 And I don't usually work with my manager, with, with the guy at the top.
00:56:24.260 I usually work with my regular editor.
00:56:26.220 I'm just a reporter, but I've never even heard of a phone call coming from the very top
00:56:31.120 like that and canceling the story.
00:56:33.240 So now not only did I get a mysterious call that led to me losing my job at RT, now my just
00:56:40.220 trying to share my story with people was being killed by another mysterious phone call.
00:56:46.840 Well, it was in Neocon Publication.
00:56:48.360 So I'm from D.C.
00:56:50.140 You're not.
00:56:50.800 So I'm, I happen to know the publication very well.
00:56:54.960 And it's a Neocon publication.
00:56:56.800 And we don't want to say it because we're a young man.
00:56:58.880 I don't want to be fired.
00:57:00.000 It didn't happen to me.
00:57:00.680 So I don't have the right to divulge it.
00:57:02.260 But it's a publication in Washington, D.C.
00:57:04.360 that is resolutely Neocon.
00:57:06.720 And they're like, no, this is contrary to the story that we're telling.
00:57:09.720 So what you're telling me and what we're coming to realize in this conversation, you and I, is that the State Department, who I know reached out to me when I was working at RT to kind of threaten or warn me not to work at RT, which is my choice and was taken away from me, also then followed up by calling a American newspaper to tell them not to cover me or tell my story based on what they needed as well.
00:57:34.100 Of course.
00:57:34.540 This is crazy.
00:57:35.940 It is crazy.
00:57:37.120 This is crazy.
00:57:38.140 And by the way, I don't know anything.
00:57:40.580 No, of course.
00:57:41.180 The mechanics of what actually happened.
00:57:42.320 No, of course.
00:57:42.740 But I can say that there is a conspiracy of temperament and worldview that is not explicit.
00:57:49.980 And I doubt it's even like a true conspiracy in that I don't know if there's communication between the parties.
00:57:54.920 But the people who work at the State Department, the people who work at the Washington Post, the people who work at, you know, every big news organization in D.C. and New York have the same worldview.
00:58:02.940 And so they know that, you know, telling your story, explaining how your First Amendment rights as an American were violated by the U.S. government is contrary to their interests as cheerleaders of the war against Russia.
00:58:18.740 It'll help Putin.
00:58:20.240 So we can't say it.
00:58:21.620 Right.
00:58:22.300 It's like, I mean, that seems like deep corruption.
00:58:24.380 And all we want to do is engage.
00:58:26.320 I mean, I am not here, you know, being a cheerleader for Russia or any other country.
00:58:31.620 We are allowed to be.
00:58:32.640 We're not at war with Russia, by the way.
00:58:34.600 So we are, in fact, waging a war against Russia and have been hundreds of billions of dollars later.
00:58:40.100 Through a proxy.
00:58:40.940 You know, more than a million people dead later, you know, we're losing.
00:58:44.880 But and it's all very sad.
00:58:46.300 But the truth is we're not actually at war with Russia.
00:58:48.740 Congress has not declared war on Russia.
00:58:50.440 So you've got every right to go to Russia, to take Russia's side if you want.
00:58:55.400 I mean, I don't think you are.
00:58:56.500 You haven't been to Russia and you're not taking Russia's side.
00:58:58.180 But just to be clear, you have a right to do that.
00:59:00.640 And it's an inalienable right.
00:59:02.080 As a journalist, it's my responsibility to represent their point of view, to put a microphone in front of them and say, what is your opinion of this situation?
00:59:08.780 And then report back.
00:59:10.060 But we're not allowed to do that.
00:59:12.220 I'm being told you're not allowed to get that side of the story.
00:59:15.440 And if you report that side of the story, we're going to put you in jail.
00:59:18.360 So I do think that most journalists obey because they fear social sanction.
00:59:23.100 They fear someone saying you're a Putin puppet or whatever.
00:59:25.840 Oh, I hate that.
00:59:26.480 But in your case, you actually saw an administration try to apply the force of law.
00:59:31.700 Like, we'll put you in jail.
00:59:33.220 So that's what I think is different about your story.
00:59:35.120 It's not just like people are embarrassed to be seen as pro-Russia.
00:59:38.200 They were like, no, you violate the order and you're going to prison.
00:59:42.180 That's a different level now.
00:59:43.440 And I'm challenging it.
00:59:44.560 As an American, first of all, just from a constitutional standpoint, I think I have a right to challenge it.
00:59:49.840 And I've talked to enough people in the legal community who are helping me with this who are saying, if you want to continue doing that, you have a right to petition to continue doing that in the United States.
01:00:00.540 And now that the Trump administration is there, we're getting some friendly responses from people in the Trump administration who are saying, why is Rick Sanchez not allowed to work?
01:00:10.680 I know.
01:00:11.080 No.
01:00:11.260 And I can't say definitively yet that the Trump administration will undo this because, you know, things are moving and there's negotiations now with Russia.
01:00:20.620 And I understand the Trump administration is trying to remove some of the silly sanctions that we have on them that are just ridiculous.
01:00:26.140 But the reason it's so hard to do any of that is because of the leash that remains in place, which is the fear people have, good people, patriotic Americans have, of being tied to Russia.
01:00:37.580 So, so total has been the propaganda victory.
01:00:41.360 You're connected to Putin.
01:00:42.540 Putin's bad.
01:00:43.560 Pull 100 Americans.
01:00:45.200 99 will tell you Putin is evil, which you may be.
01:00:47.680 I mean, I don't know.
01:00:49.180 Yeah.
01:00:49.920 More evil than like a lot of our allies.
01:00:52.520 Probably not.
01:00:53.400 But whatever.
01:00:54.620 I'm not defending.
01:00:55.120 He happens to be the president of a country and they have something to say and we should report it.
01:00:58.600 Yeah.
01:00:59.060 But like it's gotten to the point where that kind of lynch mob mentality is so entrenched in the United States that even to suggest that someone is close to this boogeyman is enough to shut it down.
01:01:11.620 And that's a leash.
01:01:12.840 What they're doing is controlling your behavior.
01:01:14.880 You're absolutely right.
01:01:16.040 But even on a more pragmatic standpoint, I looked this up the other day.
01:01:19.620 I said, how much money did we spend to rebuild Europe after World War II?
01:01:23.100 $140 billion in today's money.
01:01:26.580 Yeah.
01:01:26.840 We've spent over $200 billion in Ukraine.
01:01:29.380 To destroy Ukraine.
01:01:30.400 To destroy Ukraine.
01:01:31.320 Well, that's the difference, right?
01:01:32.840 Think about that.
01:01:33.540 If you ask the average American, back then we spent $140 billion to rebuild Europe after the Nazis destroyed it.
01:01:40.960 Was that okay?
01:01:41.540 I think 99% of us would say, yeah, we needed to do that and I'm glad we did it.
01:01:46.440 If you went around America and you said $200 billion of your tax money has been spent in Ukraine and then you said, can you find it on a map?
01:01:55.120 What would you care?
01:01:56.300 And what could you do to Gary, Indiana and Baltimore and Detroit and Minneapolis like with that money?
01:02:01.720 In general, I think the destructive impulse is satanic and I think it really is a dualism.
01:02:07.400 Either you're creating or you're destroying.
01:02:09.660 And if you look around and you're like the outcome of all these different adventures is just purely destruction, I think you can say you're serving evil.
01:02:17.280 I think it's honestly that God creates, Satan destroys.
01:02:20.480 I'm sorry to like get all heavy on you, but I think it's just very basic.
01:02:23.700 Yeah.
01:02:24.040 Right?
01:02:24.300 Isn't it?
01:02:24.680 Not only that, but I think it's all about engagement and I keep going back to this idea that I keep having, call me crazy, that my calling is sharing stories and I want the right to be able to share stories.
01:02:40.940 And my parents told me one day when they brought me to America from a communist country that this was a unique place where I would always be able to share any story.
01:02:49.380 And I'm being told that I can't share stories.
01:02:52.420 Yes.
01:02:52.700 And if we don't engage with Russia, if we don't talk to Russia or any other country for that matter, even Iran or whatever other countries out there that are supposed to be the boogeymen, if we don't engage with those countries, we're creating a path which is going to be so dangerous that we're not going to be able to come out from it.
01:03:10.440 And that's my fear.
01:03:11.420 Well, I mean that, right, from a geopolitical standpoint, we've really, really squandered American power to the point where we have less power than most Americans understand.
01:03:21.620 And it's really scary.
01:03:22.260 I want America to be powerful.
01:03:24.160 I want us to be able to project power if we need to.
01:03:26.740 I want us to be able to protect our interests.
01:03:28.220 I want us to stay prosperous and free.
01:03:30.000 And the degree to which we've, like, kind of wrecked ourselves is not obvious to people.
01:03:37.200 And it makes me want to cry when I think about it.
01:03:38.980 And how is it that we can continue to convince Americans of these things that aren't true and have them buy it?
01:03:45.400 Are they just too busy?
01:03:46.740 Is the money too big?
01:03:48.320 Is the media too—
01:03:48.640 It's the power of propaganda.
01:03:49.920 It's how, you know, the State Department or your CNN former colleague calls you up.
01:03:55.120 It's like, no.
01:03:56.900 What the—
01:03:57.620 Okay, the people in charge are terrible at building things.
01:04:00.120 They've built nothing.
01:04:00.880 Our country's collapsing.
01:04:01.900 Our infrastructure's garbage.
01:04:03.180 Our population is dying.
01:04:05.000 Okay, that's just a fact.
01:04:06.140 Yeah.
01:04:06.640 I grieve over that.
01:04:08.000 I want this country to be prosperous, free, and happy.
01:04:10.880 I want people—I want my kids to get married and be able to afford houses.
01:04:13.700 I want them to have my grandchildren.
01:04:15.240 I mean, these are, like, basic desires.
01:04:17.180 The people running it have no ability to do any of that, to help with any of that, to actually help the population of the United States.
01:04:23.980 All they can do is destroy.
01:04:25.640 And how do they pull that off without, like, sparking a revolution, a much-needed revolution in their country?
01:04:31.360 They do it through propaganda.
01:04:33.300 And I have been an instrument of that throughout my life unknowingly.
01:04:36.660 A propaganda that lies to people in a way that's so aggressive and all-encompassing.
01:04:42.540 You don't know that it's dark because there's no light.
01:04:45.740 You have nothing to compare it to.
01:04:46.700 You have no idea.
01:04:47.640 Your worldview is so controlled that you have no freaking idea what reality is.
01:04:52.840 You know, I was just thinking something, which is really interesting, and that is comparable almost.
01:05:00.200 I was thinking to myself, you had the number one show in the United States of America at the number one network, and somehow that was taken away from you.
01:05:11.700 I happen to have a pretty darn good show that was seen by also tens of millions of people, but mine didn't air in the United States.
01:05:18.500 It aired around the world.
01:05:19.720 Both of us seem to have that show kind of taken away from us one day.
01:05:25.460 And I think, if I'm not going too far on the perch here, that it happened as a result of the same thing and was caused by probably the same people.
01:05:37.660 Well, of course.
01:05:38.820 I mean, of course.
01:05:39.880 I was so grateful, by the way, because I will always, you know, give Fox the credit.
01:05:47.220 It deserves a lot of credit for being kind to me, which they always were, of not really getting in my business and of, you know, giving me all that freedom for so long.
01:05:55.640 And I'm grateful to the Murdoch family for that.
01:05:58.140 But, you know, clearly, foreign policy, neocon foreign policy is the red line.
01:06:03.240 They don't care what your views on transgenderism are, on abortion or gun control.
01:06:07.660 Or tax policy, all that stuff that we claim is important.
01:06:10.300 They don't think that's important.
01:06:10.900 Go ahead and do that.
01:06:11.740 Go ahead and do that.
01:06:12.460 Fight amongst yourselves.
01:06:13.880 Yeah, exactly.
01:06:14.460 You know, have a race war.
01:06:16.060 You know, great.
01:06:16.700 Have a race war.
01:06:18.960 Oh, that's so true.
01:06:19.900 No, it's totally true.
01:06:20.660 Have another race war.
01:06:22.460 And they just don't care.
01:06:23.660 What they do care about is the ability to keep the money flowing and, you know, the coffins filling.
01:06:30.700 Like, they love to kill and they love, they worship money and death.
01:06:34.500 And that's just a fact.
01:06:35.620 And I know them because I'm from there.
01:06:37.460 So, anyway, I came to this very slowly, just being involved in public policy debates my entire life.
01:06:43.980 I realized, oh, the only thing they really care about is the foreign policy stuff.
01:06:48.860 And so I got fired.
01:06:50.480 And that was, like, totally inevitable.
01:06:51.520 I knew that it was going to happen at some point.
01:06:53.320 It was a shock that morning, but, like, not a shock big picture.
01:06:56.420 And I was so grateful for it and have woken up happy every single day for two years because of that.
01:07:02.400 So I'm not complaining in the slightest.
01:07:03.700 No, I know.
01:07:04.380 But you're absolutely right.
01:07:05.540 It's the same thing.
01:07:06.540 That's the red line.
01:07:07.800 There's so many fake red lines out there.
01:07:10.200 Like, oh, you know, anyone who's, like, the race stuff was like, most Americans do not hate each other because of race.
01:07:15.860 And despite the best efforts of our leaders to get us to hate each other, man, they have tried so hard.
01:07:20.760 And most Americans don't want to hate Russia.
01:07:23.200 At all.
01:07:24.100 Right.
01:07:24.860 But, again, it's North Korea.
01:07:26.820 But it's like you have to.
01:07:27.820 You don't even know what you don't know.
01:07:30.260 Right.
01:07:30.840 And I didn't even know until, like, I'm a huge believer in, like, just looking at stuff and, like, smelling stuff and, like, what's the obvious reality?
01:07:39.520 You can tell me any story you want, but let me go see it.
01:07:42.300 And that's why I've traveled so much.
01:07:43.860 And it was just so clear when I went to Moscow, like, I don't want to move there or whatever.
01:07:48.820 I'm not Russian.
01:07:49.500 But, like, you've been lying to me about this in a really big way.
01:07:52.660 And if you've lied to me about that, what else have you been lying to me about?
01:07:55.860 Anyway, whatever.
01:07:56.620 But we should.
01:07:57.840 And I now feel compelled.
01:07:59.800 And that's one of the reasons I'm telling this story.
01:08:02.500 I don't need to.
01:08:03.400 It's an amazing story.
01:08:04.660 I don't need to work because, thank God, I've done fine and, you know, I'm in a good place.
01:08:10.040 But I want the opportunity to continue to help engage and tell the stories that bring us together as a people.
01:08:18.120 Russia's story, the American story, can be one story.
01:08:21.320 We can share our stories.
01:08:22.540 We can disagree.
01:08:23.340 We can hate each other.
01:08:24.220 We can love each other.
01:08:25.040 But this whole idea that we have to be like, this is just crazy.
01:08:30.300 And it's going to lead to a bad thing.
01:08:32.140 Well, it's just so.
01:08:32.640 And Trump's instincts are correct on this.
01:08:34.620 I hope he can fulfill them.
01:08:36.200 And the real battle that has, you know, it's never changed for the last 2,000 years was between East and West.
01:08:41.880 It's between worldviews.
01:08:43.580 And you have the Christian West and you've got the non-Christian East.
01:08:46.680 And the truth is Russia is really part of the Christian West.
01:08:49.880 And so anyone who's trying to make Russia into the main enemy of the United States is trying to divide and destroy the Christian West.
01:08:56.620 That's just a fact.
01:08:57.720 So I don't know why people don't say that.
01:08:59.480 It took me a long time to figure it out.
01:09:00.840 But it's just so obvious, you know.
01:09:02.900 And isn't that funny?
01:09:04.340 We, you know, like Le Mans, the BBC, all these people.
01:09:07.200 I hear these people.
01:09:08.340 My friends say, oh, yeah, I don't trust American newspapers or American media.
01:09:11.600 So I watch the BBC.
01:09:12.780 I said, dude, it's the same damn thing.
01:09:15.500 No, you need to watch maybe a little India or a little Russia.
01:09:18.400 Or a little Brazil or just get, if you want to get into a perspective, you want to go to the global South countries.
01:09:23.360 It's so funny.
01:09:24.320 Of course.
01:09:25.160 Al Jazeera.
01:09:25.860 I mean, just read, watch it all.
01:09:27.220 Read it all.
01:09:27.760 Disagree with them.
01:09:28.360 Whatever.
01:09:28.580 But the funny thing is, that's such like the upper middle class, half-wit, lady with the beach novel thing to say.
01:09:36.040 You know, I really, I watch the BBC because it's just more.
01:09:39.900 I don't trust CNN.
01:09:40.700 I watch the BBC.
01:09:41.880 It's the same damn thing.
01:09:44.500 I've heard that so many times.
01:09:47.160 Really, it's the BBC.
01:09:49.080 It's like, oh, my gosh.
01:09:50.340 So true.
01:09:50.820 I don't.
01:09:51.260 Anyway, Rick Sanchez, it is wonderful to see you after all these years.
01:09:53.960 And thank you for your amazing story.
01:09:55.440 And thank you.
01:09:56.260 Thank you.
01:09:56.720 And for your resilience through, you know, many different jobs.
01:09:59.380 I do respect that.
01:10:00.380 You just keep on fighting.
01:10:01.420 Amen.
01:10:02.120 Amen.
01:10:02.880 Dale.
01:10:03.280 Vamos.
01:10:05.500 Thanks, man.
01:10:06.080 My pleasure.
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01:10:15.080 We know the people who run it, good people.
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01:10:31.180 We appreciate it.
01:10:31.740 Time for another True Life Alp story.
01:10:34.500 I got a call from a friend of mine yesterday.
01:10:36.180 Honestly, true story.
01:10:37.880 Who said his girlfriend had just broken up with him over Alp.
01:10:41.320 He wouldn't stop.
01:10:42.340 And I thought to myself, that's kind of sad.
01:10:43.600 And he said, no, it's not sad.
01:10:46.020 Imagine if I'd married her.
01:10:48.760 Now I know.
01:10:49.880 I was saved.
01:10:51.220 Then the next day, this same friend is driving at twice the speed limit through a major American city,
01:10:55.640 pulled over by a cop in a speed trap.
01:10:57.560 Cop takes his license registration, goes back to the patrol car, runs him, comes back,
01:11:01.120 looks in the window and sees a tin of Alp on the dashboard, pauses, stunned, says to my friend,
01:11:07.020 use Alp?
01:11:08.100 Yeah, I do, says my friend.
01:11:09.520 So do I, says the cop.
01:11:10.500 We all do.
01:11:11.500 He looks at my friend thoughtfully and goes, drive safely, sir, and hands back his license and registration.
01:11:15.840 No ticket.
01:11:16.400 So in two days, he's saved from a tragic marriage to a girl who doesn't like Alp and a speeding ticket.
01:11:23.480 All true.
01:11:24.440 It's more than a nicotine marriage.
01:11:27.320 In an age to 350 million people, we're guessing there are about 350 million Alp stories.