Jeffrey Sachs: The Untold History of the Cold War, CIA Coups Around the World, and COVID’s Origin

do you drink coffee all the time non-stop me too non-stop N9 or 10 cups a day yeah it’s good I like coffee and I drink it straight until minutes before bed I do too oh do you yeah and we will never drink as much as volter drink yeah yeah oh is that right like 40 cups yeah oh is that right oh yeah and it worked okay so the the one thing that we know we heard about the movement of Russian troops into eastern Ukraine in February of 2022 was it was unprovoked here’s a here’s a selection of what we know about that the Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine without provocation without justification without necessity this is a premeditated attack Russia’s unprovoked and cruel Invasion has galvanized countries from around the world Russia’s unprovoked an unjustified attack on Ukraine Russia conducted an unprovoked war of aggression against this unprovoked Russian war of aggression has got to be met with strength Vladimir Putin decided unprovoked to start this war so was it unprovoked well we did hear that a lot of times I I actually asked research assistant of mind to count how many times we heard that in the New York Times in that first year from February 2022 to February 2023 in their opinion coms was 26 times unprovoked of course things aren’t unprovoked it’s almost a brand name The unprovoked Invasion it’s it’s the lazy person’s uh Dodge for uh actually trying to think through what’s going on and and it’s very dangerous because it’s uh it’s wrong uh it gets the whole story completely wrong and it misunderstands the Trap that we set for our elves as the United States to push Ukraine deeper and deeper and deeper into this hopeless uh mess that they’re in right now so in what sense was it provoked like what started this basically it started very simply which is that the United States uh government let’s not call it the US people they had nothing to do with this but the US government uh said uh we’re going to put Ukraine on our side and we’re going to go right up to that 2,100 kmet border with Russian we’re going to put our troops and NATO and maybe missiles or whatever we want because we are the sole superpower of the world and we do what we want and uh it it goes back actually uh a long way it goes back 170 years the Brits had this idea first uh surround Russia in the Black Sea region and Russia’s not a great power anymore and that was uh Lord Palmer’s idea in the Crimean War 1853 to 1856 and the Brits taught us what we know about Empire uh and they basically taught us the idea you know Russia it needs an outlet it needs an outlet to the Middle East it needs an outlet to the Mediterranean you surround Russia in the Black Sea uh you have rendered Russia a second or third rate country and big brinsky uh one of our lead geost strategists of uh uh the current ERA wrote in 1997 let’s do this uh let’s make sure that we basically surround Russia in in the Black Sea region they got this idea that will expand NATO so that every country in the Black Sea around Russia is a NATO country right now uh well back then turkey was a NATO country but we said okay we’ll get Romania and Bulgaria and we’ll get Ukraine and we’ll get Georgia now Georgia you know not not our Georgia Atlanta Georgia Georgia of the Black Sea we used to call it Soviet Georgia yes Soviet Georgia if you want to call it that home of Stalin it it it it’s not NATO North Atlantic it’s it’s way out there on the Eastern edge of of the Black Sea region people can look at a map but we said yeah we’ll make Georgia part of NATO too and the reason was very clear and and big was very explicit about it that this is our way to basically dominate Eurasia if we can dominate the Black Sea region then Russia’s nothing if we make Russia nothing then we can basically control Eurasia meaning all the way from Europe to Central Asia and through our influence in East Asia do the same thing and that’s American unipolarity We Run the World world we are the hegemon we are the sole superpower we are unchallenged so that’s the idea but why would you want that why would the Brits want that why does the US state department want that what what about Russia which is not actually much of an expansionist power is so threatening like it it’s it’s it’s not about Russia it’s about the US it’s it’s about Britain before that um I think it’s a little bit like uh that old game of risk I don’t know if you played that as a kid but you the idea was have your peace on every place in the world you know that that was the game and you read the American strategists whether it’s big vinski although he was a very moderate or the neocons who have run US foreign policy for the last 30 years us the the the neocons are very explicit the US must be the unchallenged superpower in every place in the world in every region we must dominate it’s quite a that’s quite a load for us American people what they say is we are going to be the constab constabulary duty holder what fancy word for saying we’ll be the world’s policeman they they say it explicitly they say that’s lots of Wars we have to be ready for all these wars to my mind it’s a little crazy but their idea was after the end of the Soviet Union well now we run the world and to come back to Russia the idea was well Russia’s weak it’s down it’s we’re the sole superpower they’re they’re on on their back or on their knees whatever it is and now we can move NATO where we want and we can surround them and uh the Russians said um please don’t do that don’t don’t bring your troops your weapons your missiles right up to our border it’s not a good idea and and the US I was around in those years involved in in uh Russia and in Central Europe the US was uh we don’t hear you we don’t hear you we do what we want they kept pushing inside the US government in the 1990s when this debate was going should NATO expand some people said yeah but uh we told gorbachov and we told yelson we weren’t going to expand at all now come on Soviet Union’s done we can do what we want we’re the sole superpower Clinton bought into that that was mateline Albright’s line uh NATO enlargement started and our most sophisticated diplomats we used to have diplomats at the time we don’t have them anymore but we used to have diplomats like George Kennan said this is the greatest mistake we could possibly make we had a defense secretary Bill Perry who was Clinton’s defense secretary who agonized God I should resign over this this is terrible what’s going on but he was outmaneuvered diplomatically by Richard Holbrook and by meline Albright and Clinton never thought through anything systematically in my opinion and uh so they decided okay Hungary Poland Czech Republic first round and then brinsky in a 1997 article in foreign affairs magazine which is kind of the bellweather of yes foreign policy wrote uh a strategy for Eurasia where he laid out exactly the timeline for this us expansion of power and he said late 1990s we’ll take in Central Europe Hungary poll and Czech Republic by the early 2000s we’ll take in the Baltic states now that’s getting close to Russia by 2005 to 2010 will invite Ukraine to become part of NATO so this this wasn’t some flippant thing this was a long-term plan and it was based on a long-term geost strategy now the Russians are saying are you kidding we wanted peace we we ended the Cold War I you didn’t just defeat us we said no more we disbanded the Warsaw Pact we wanted peace we wanted cooperation you call it Victory we we just wanted to cooperate I know that for a fact because I was there in those years what gorbachov wanted what yelson wanted they didn’t want war with the United States nor were they saying we’re defeated they were saying we just want to cooperate we want to stop the Cold War we want to become part of a world economy we want to be a normal economy we want to be normal society connected with you connected with Europe connected with Asia and the US said we get it we get it we won you do everything we say and we determine how the pieces are going to go so in the early 2000s Putin comes in first uh uh first business for Putin was good cooperation with Europe you go back to the early 2000s again I know the people I watched closely I was a participant in some of it Putin was completely pro- Europe yes the and and pro Us by the way I know and and we don’t want to talk about this we don’t want to admit it because we don’t want anything other than unprovoked so so everything is phony what we say everything is a lie but just to say the US kept doing unilateral things that were really outrageous in 2000 in 1999 we bombed Belgrade for 78 days bad move uh absolutely we bombed a capital of Europe for 78 days what was looking back what was the point of that the the point of that was to break Serbia into create a new state Kosovo where we have the largest NATO military base in southeast Europe we put Bond steel base there because we wanted a base in South Eastern Europe and again you look at the neocons it’s nice of them they actually describe all of this in various documents you have to make the links but in a document called uh uh rebuilding America’s defenses in the year 2000 they say the Balkans is a new strategic area for the us so we have to move large troops to the Balkans because their idea is literally the game of Risk not just you need good relations or peace we need our pieces on the board we need military bases with the uh with the advanced positioning of our military everywhere in the world so they wanted a big base in uh in Southeastern Europe they didn’t like Serbia Serbia was close to Russia anyway we’re the sole superpower we do what we want so uh they divided the country uh which they now claim you never do you know you never change borders we broke apart Serbia established by our declaration a new country Kosovo we put a huge NATO base there and that was the goal so that was 199 it wasn’t to save the oppressed Muslim population excuse me it wasn’t to save the oppressed Muslim population it it was uh very very much to save the military-industrial complex to have a nice location in Southeastern Europe it killed all those people wrecked the city you know it was a little bit sad but uh we do lots of sad things and lots of destructive things lots of Wars we’re the country of Perpetual War we don’t look back we’re not even supposed to talk about this cuz this was unprovoked remember so in 2002 the US unilaterally pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty unilaterally well that was one of the stabilizers of the relationship with Russia it was one of the stabilizers of the the global nuclear uh situation which is absolutely dangerous and the US unilaterally started putting AIS missiles into first Poland then Romania and the Russians are saying wait a minute what do we know you’re putting in this you’re a few minutes from Moscow this is completely destabilizing do you think you might want to talk to us so then comes 2004 seven more countries in NATO lvia Lithuania Estonia Romania Bulgaria Slovakia and Slovenia now starting filling in the Black Sea Romania and Bulgaria suddenly they are now North Atlantic countries but it’s all part of this design all spelled out all quite explicit were surrounding Russia in 2007 President Putin gave a very clear speech at the Munich security conference very powerful very correct very frustrated where he said uh gentlemen uh you told us in 1990 NATO would never enlarge that was the promise made to president gorbachov and it was the promise made to president yelon and you cheated and you repeatedly cheated and you don’t even admit that you said this but it’s all plainly documented by the way and as you know in a thousand archival uh sites so it’s easy to to verify all of this James Baker III our secretary of state said that NATO would not move one inch Eastward and it wasn’t a flippant statement it was a statement repeated and repeated and repeated Hans D Hans dietr genter the uh foreign min minister of Germany same story the Germans wanted reunification gorbachov said we’ll support that but we don’t want that to come at our expense no no it won’t come at your expense NATO won’t move one inch Eastward Mr President repeated so many times in many documents many statements by the NATO Secretary General by the US Secretary of State by uh the German Chancellor now of course all denied by our foreign policy blob because we’re not supposed to remember anything remember this was all unprovoked so back to 2007 Putin gives this speech and he says stop don’t even think about Ukraine this is our 2,100 kilometer border this is absolutely part of the integrated economy of this region don’t even think about it it now I know from insiders from all the Diplomatic work that I do that Europe was saying to the US European leaders don’t think about Ukraine please you know this is not a good idea just stop we know uh from our current CIA director Bill Burns uh that he wrote a very eloquent uh impassion uh articulate clear secret as usual memo uh which we only got to see because uh Wikileaks showed to the American people what maybe we would like to know once in a while but we’re never told what our government’s doing what they’re doing and how they’re putting us at nuclear risk and other things okay this one did get out and it’s called net means net no means no is and what what Bill Burns very uh perceptively articulately conveys to con Lisa Rice and back to the White House in uh 2008 is Ukraine is really a red line don’t do it it’s not just Putin it’s not just Putin’s government it’s the entire political class of Russia and just to help all of us as we think about it it is exactly as if Mexico said we think it would be great to have Chinese military base on the Rio Grand we can’t see why the us would have any problem with that of course we would go completely insane but we and we should and we should of course it’s the whole idea is so absurdly dangerous and Reckless that you you can’t even imagine grown-ups doing this so what happens is the what for what I’m told by European leaders uh and by long detail discussion Bush Jr says to them no no no no it’s okay don’t don’t uh don’t worry I hear you about Ukraine uh and then he goes off for the Christmas holidays and comes back whether it’s Cheney whether it’s Bush whatever it is says um yeah NATO’s going to enlarge to Ukraine and the Europeans are shocked pissed uh what are you doing you may have come to the conclusion that the real debate is not between Republican and Democrat or socialist and capitalist right left the real battle is between people who are lying on purpose and people who are trying to tell you the truth it’s between good and evil it’s between honesty and falsehood and we hope we are on the former side that’s why we created this network the Tucker Carlson Network and we invite you to subscribe to it you go to tuckercarlson.com podcast our entire archive is there a lot of behind the scenes footage of what actually happens in this Barn uh when only an iPhone is running Tucker carlson.com SLP podcast you will not regret it so Bush did not make that decision Bush did not make the decision right I mean it sound if I’m hearing what you’re what I’m saying yeah no Bush did make the decision no what I’m saying is he had told the Europeans I hear you I’m not going to do it but it sounds like he was influenced by the people around him no that could be yeah I don’t know whether it was CIA or whether someone explained to him or whether someone said George Mr President uh this is a long-standing project you know it’s not something for a European country to object to I don’t know what happened there but what I do know is that he came back and told the European leaders no we’re we’re doing it they said no no no no no no we’re not doing it and then they had the NATO Summit in Bucharest and this was 08 and the Europeans uh Chancellor Merkel uh the French President all of them George don’t do this don’t do this this is extraordinarily dangerous this is really provocative we don’t really need or want NATO right up to the Russian border Bush pushed pushed pushed this is a US Alliance fundamentally and they made the commitment Ukraine will become a member of NATO the Dodge was okay we won’t give them exactly the road map right now but Ukraine will become a member of NATO because in those days the US and Russia met in a NATO partnership even then Putin was there the next day in Bucharest saying don’t do this this is completely Reckless essentially this is our fundamental Red Line do not do this the US can’t hear any of this this is our biggest problem of all because the neocons who have run the show for 30 years believe the US can do whatever it wants this is the most fundamental point to understand about US foreign policy they’re wrong they keep screwing up they keep getting us into trillion dollar plus Wars they keep keep killing a lot of people but their basic belief is the US is the only superpower it’s the unipolar power and we can do what we want so they could not hear Putin even that moment they couldn’t hear the rest of the Europeans and by the way they said Georgia would become part of NATO again the only way to understand that is in this longstanding Palmerston brinsky yes Theory this isn’t just halfhazard oh why don’t we take Georgia this is a plan okay the Russians understand every single step of this so another thing goes arai what goes arai the ukrainians don’t want NATO enlargement the ukrainians don’t want it they’re against it the public opinion said no this is very dangerous neutrality it’s safer we’re in between East and West we don’t want this so they elect Victor yanukovich yes a president that says we’ll just be neutral and that’s absolutely the US’s oh what the hell is this Ukraine they don’t have any choice either so yanukovich becomes the enemy of the neocons obviously so they start working of course the way that the US does we got to get rid of this guy uh maybe we’ll elect his opponent afterwards maybe we’ll catch him in a crisis and so forth and indeed at the end of 2013 the US absolutely Stokes a crisis that becomes in Insurrection and then becomes a coup and I know again from firsthand experience the US was profoundly implicated in that but you can see our Senators standing up in the crowd like if Chinese officials came to January 6th and said yes yes go you know can how would we like it if if if if Chinese leaders came and said yeah we we were with you 100% American Senators standing up in Kiev saying to the demonstrators we’re with you 100% Victoria nuland famously passing around the cookies but it was much much more than the cookies I can tell you and so the US conspired with a Ukrainian right to overthrow yanukovich and there was a violent overthrow in the third week of February of 2014 that’s when this war started this war didn’t even start in 2022 it’s started in 2014 that was the outbreak of the war was a violent coup that overthrew a Ukrainian president that wanted neutrality when he was violently overthrown and his security people told him you’re going to get killed and so he flew to Har and then flew onward to Russia that day the us immediately in a nano second recognize the new government this is a coup this is how the CIA does its regime change operation so this is when the war starts Putin’s understanding completely correct in this moment was I’m not letting NATO take my naval fleet and my naval base in Crimea are you kidding the Russian naval base in the Black Sea which was the object of the Crimean War and in its way is the object of this war in savasta has been there since 1783 and now Putin’s saying oh NATO’s going to walk in hell no and so they organized this referendum of the this is a Russian region and there’s an overwhelming support we’ll stay with Russia thank you not with this new post coup government an outbreak uh breaks out in the Eastern provinces which are the ethnic Russian provinces in the donb in the donbas in lugansk and donet and there’s a lot of violence so the war starts in 2014 so saying something’s unprovoked in 2022 is a little bizarre for anyone that actually reads a normal newspaper to begin with but in any event the war starts then and within a year the Russians are saying very wisely we actually don’t want this war we don’t want to own Ukraine we don’t want problems on our border we would like peace based on respect for the ethnic Russians in the East and political autonomy because you the coup Government tried to close down all Russian language culture uh and uh rights of these people after having made a violent coup so we don’t accept that so what came out of that was two agreements called the Minsk one and the Minsk 2 agreements the Minsk 2 agreement was backed by the UN Security Council and it said that we’ll make peace based on autonomy of the donbas region now very interesting the Russians were not saying that’s ours we want that all the things that are claimed every day that Putin just wants to recreate you know he thinks he’s Peter the Great he wants to recreate the Russian Empire he wants to grab territory nothing like that the opposite we don’t want the territory we actually just want autonomy based on an agreement reached with the Ukrainian government so what was the US attitude towards that US Government attitude US Government attitude was to say to the ukrainians don’t worry about it come on don’t worry about it you keep your Central State we don’t want to see Ukraine weakened at all we just want a nato in a unified Ukraine don’t go for decentralization we tell them to blow off the very treaty that they’ve signed then we accuse Russia of not having diplomacy by the way which is you know power for the course oh you can’t trust them we blow off every single agreement we blow off not moving one inch Eastward we blow off the anti-ballistic missile treaty uh we uh have so many uh natol Wars of choice in between I didn’t even mention in Syria CIA attempt to overthrow Assad uh in Libya and so forth and we blow off the Minsk agreements and actually Angela Merkel explained in a rather shockingly Frank interview that she gave last year when asked why Germany didn’t help to enforce the Minsk agreement because Germany and France were the guarantors of the Minsk agreement under something called the Normandy process she said well we just thought this was to give some time to the ukrainians to build up their strength in other words they were guarantors of something in a phony way and the US was uh uh absolutely lying about this and I know senior ukrainians who were in government and who were around the government who said to me Jeff we’re not going to do that anyway that was at gunpoint we don’t have to agree with that so all that diplomacy was blown off the war continued the US pumped in arms built up armaments was building up what would be the biggest army of Europe actually uh a huge Army uh that Russia was watching what are you doing you know you’re not honoring Minsk you’re building up this huge Ukrainian Army paid for by NATO paid for by the United States basically yes and uh in 2021 Putin met with Biden and then after the meeting he put on the table a draft Russia US security agreement put it on the table on December 15th 2021 it’s worth reading very plausible document I don’t agree with some of it it’s it’s a negotiable document something you would negotiate I thought the core of it was stop stop the NATO enlargement and uh I called the White House myself at that point and uh uh said don’t have a war over this who did you talk to I talked to Jake Sullivan and I said don’t don’t have a war over this uh we don’t need NATO enlargement for US Security in fact it’s counter to US security the US should not be right up against the Russian border that’s how we trip ourselves into World War three no Jeff don’t worry no war there’s not going to be a war don’t worry we we’ve got a diplomatic approach to said Jake this is a basis for diplomacy negotiate well the formal response of the United States is that issues about NATO are non-negotiable they’re only between NATO countries and NATO candidates no third party has any stake or interest or say in this Russia it’s completely irrelevant again to use the analogy you know if Mexico and China want to put Chinese military bases on the real ground the United States has no right to interfere no interest in it and no interest in it and no bilat and this was the formal us response in January 2022 so unprovoked not exactly 30 years of provocation where we could not take peace for an answer one moment all we could take is we’ll do whatever we want wherever we want and no one has any say in this at all so can just go back 12 12 I guess 22 years Putin told me and I checked I think it’s true that he in Clinton’s final days asked Clinton if Russia could join NATO which seems almost by definition like a victory NATO exists as a Bull workk against Russia Russia wants to join the alliance then you’ve won right why would why would the US government have turned that offer down and do you think that was that is real Russia and actually Europe wanted used to want before Europe was completely a kind of vassel province of the United States uh government wanted what they call collective security which was we want security Arrangements in which one country’s security doesn’t ruin the security of another country and there were two paths to that there basically three paths let’s say One path was what they call the occe the organization of security and cooperation in Europe really a good idea it was it’s Western Europe Central Europe Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union and the idea was let’s bring us all together under one kind of Charter and we’ll work out a collective security arrangement I liked it I mean this is what gorbachov was saying we don’t want war with you we don’t want conflict with you we want collective security second Arrangement that actually makes a lot of sense but people say is this guy out of his mind but it actually makes a lot of sense gorbachov disbanded the Warsaw Pact we should have disbanded NATO said NATO was there to defend against a Soviet invasion there’s not going to be any Soviet invasion in fact after December 1991 there’s not even a Soviet Union we don’t need NATO why is there NATO NATO was established to defend against the Soviet Union so why did it continue after gorbachov and yelson the neocons thankfully thank you read the document it’s all explicit this is our way of keeping our hegemony in Europe in other words this is our way of keeping our say in Europe not protecting Europe not even protecting us this is hemony we need our pieces on the board NATO’s our pie on the board why would European why would Germany allow foreign troops Garrison garrisoned on its soil for 80 years I don’t understand why would European country allow that would you want foreign troops in town Tucker when uh when uh you had your wonderful interview with Putin he answered everything except once you asked him what did the Germans seeing in this and Putin said I don’t get it and I thought oh my God thank you I don’t get it either is it just broken by war guilt is it masochism I mean honestly it’s not masochism it’s not war guilt there is there are basic mechanisms uh that I don’t understand truly after being around more than 40 years in this and knowing all the leaders and I know Schultz and I know others I don’t understand it but when the US has a military base in your country it really pulls a lot of the political strings in your country it really influences the political parties it really pays I know it’s I’m naive you know and other words the Germans are not they’re not free actors in this that’s the point if men with guns showed up in your apartment in New York and just camped out there you probably wouldn’t really be the head of your household anymore would you it’s probably true but you know your your question uh of uh um why would the Germans want this it’s the same question of after the US blew up the nordstream pipeline why wouldn’t the Germans have said before or after why did you do that this is our economy you just blew up but they don’t and so they’re so subservient to the US interests it’s a little hard to understand because it makes no sense for Europe but like you said you know there armed people in your house maybe that’s the bottom line I’ve spoken to European leaders who have said to me I can’t quote it because it’s so shocking and I won’t quote it because it was said confidentially but basically they don’t take us seriously in Washington and I said yes I didn’t say it was the bubble over my head speaking to a European leader but um maybe if you pushed a little bit you could be you would be taken more seriously not in this way of just defeat but it was said to me in such a sad way I just felt oh God don’t tell me that you’re a leader of in Europe but we’re occupying their country with soldiers and guns how could we take them seriously they’re a I mean honestly no I don’t know it’s really sad and it’s it’s doing a lot of damage to it’s it’s doing huge damage to Europe it’s destroying Ukraine by the way that’s the the first point it’s destroying Ukraine it’s doing a lot of damage to to Europe it’s uh wasting a hell of a lot of lives and money in the United States which the neocons don’t count um and almost nobody stands up and talks about it and your first question about being unprovoked we even have a story about it it’s the story’s complete bull it’s complete nonsense it’s for people who don’t want or don’t remember don’t want to remember uh anything before February 24th 2022 uh but there’s a whole long history to this that’s absolutely kind of absurd and tragic I mean it’s it’s absurd it’s utterly tragic 500,000 ukrainians dead for nothing do you think that’s the number I think that’s probably the number yeah that’s the best number that I know I mean we talked about this last night in dinner but one of the most shocking things just as someone who lived in Washington to me is if you ask any of the Senators for as I have who voted to keep this war going with us tax dollars how many of your beloved ukrainians have been killed they have no idea and they’ve no interest in knowing and they don’t care at all and sometimes they say they don’t care uh om said uh you know it’s greatest bargain no American lives uh dick Blumenthal said the same thing basically this is a great bargain no American lives they don’t isn’t that evil I mean at some point es it’s certainly hypocritical they’re telling us we’re doing this for Ukraine for our friends in Ukraine the standard Bears of democracy but also don’t you have an obligation to kind of care about the people you kill I think so you think so uh I think Americans think so uh I don’t think that the security apparatus think so uh because the security State you know you got to be tough to play that game of Risk uh you got to know there going to be some collateral losses uh some we millions of people have died in American wars of choice uh but if you’re a big boy you can’t let that deter you so I think uh it’s pretty deeply ingrained that a few hundred thousand lives here and there come on we’re talking about who runs the world after all it’s really really dark I think it’s extraordinarily r Ju Just to Circle back but also look if the pretext for all of this is some sort of moral Authority we’re for democracy they for authoritarianism this has nothing to do with morality this has nothing to do with morality it has nothing to do with Western values it has nothing to do with American values it it doesn’t even have to do with American interests from what I can see although it says that they say that American interests are at stake well we’ve spent uh maybe 7 trillion dollar on these Reckless Perpetual Wars since 2001 is that really we’ve added to the debt uh the debts gone from uh about 30% of national income to more than 100% of national income we’ve had these disastrous Wars is this America’s interest no I mean maybe we could have actually rebuilt a bridge or a road along the way or destroyed our country even at a a mile of fast rail in our country or something but no we had to spend trillions and trillions on Wars so so to my mind it’s all completely perverse but what I find amazing is that once in a while you have to look but once in a while you’ll actually find the truth expressed in such a vulgar way no they don’t count the Ukrainian lives they literally say no American lives we’re not even so sure about that by the way but have died yeah it’s not not a large number but it’s uh it’s some but they don’t tell us the truth about that either so just a c go back to the provocation I watched as a complete non-expert um the administration send the vice president to the Munich security conference in February of 2022 when it was clear that things were getting really hot and watched kamla haris say to zilinsky on camera we want you to join NATO when everybody even me a talk show host knew that that was the red line for Putin so the only conclusion I could reach was they want him to move across the border into Ukraine they want a war what is your take Tucker just to say until this moment every senior official in the US or the the Secretary General of NATO Yen stoltenberg says Ukraine will join NATO and one thing everyone that’s listening should understand Ukraine will never join NATO short of a nuclear war so because Russia will never allow it period so every time we say it all we mean is the war continues and more ukrainians are destroyed and we’re willing to risk nuclear conflict and some people definitely are because they’re idiots really because that my resentment gets very high when we reach that level but we he talk about nuclear war these days we here we’re not going to be blackmailed by this nuclear threat and so forth well God damn it you better be worried we’re talking about a counterpart that has 6,000 nuclear warheads we have 6,000 nuclear warheads we have a lot of crazy people in our government I know it I’m adult enough to know over 44 years of professional life that there are a lot of intemperate people in our country we have a lot of allies that say oh we can do this we have a president of lvia Tweeting or Xing or whatever the verb is these days Russia delenda EST in other words Russia must be destroyed playing off of the old Kato the Elder carago denda s Carthage must be destroyed honestly a president of a Baltic State tweeting that Russia must be destroyed this is prudent this is safe this is going to keep your family and my family safe are we out of our minds and all through this Biden hasn’t called Putin one time and I speak to very senior Russian officials you speak to the most senior Russian official they say we want to negotiate of course we’ll talk zalinski quote unquote made it illegal and the United State says well we won’t do anything that the ukrainians don’t want this is insane by the way as if this is really between Ukraine and Russia this is about the United States and Russia this everybody should understand this isn’t even about Ukraine and Russia this is about the us being in Ukraine and Russia so the ones that need to talk are Biden and Putin period And I keep saying if I may say it again just now I keep saying to Biden if you want to use my zoom account please use it I’ll lend you my phone you make the call start negotiations I don’t like my family being at risk of nuclear war why won’t they because they believed up until now I think they can’t quite believe it now they believed up until now that they would get their way through Bluff or superiority of force or superiority of Finance they gambled because they were gambling with someone else’s lives someone else’s country and someone else’s money our money the taxpayer money but they were gambling not with their own Stakes but they were gambling they’re not very clever they gambled wrong all along Putin said no for us this is existential for you it’s a game apparently the game of Risk you need your piece on that board as if American NATO forces in Ukraine is somehow existential for the United States as opposed to a neutral Ukraine and they thought that they would get their way and I spoke with senior officials all along who just thought Russia won’t object or can’t object or will be pushed aside or will fall to its knees with us Financial sanctions or will succumb to the US himars and attack thems just one absolutely naive idea after another but you might ask me how can they have such naive ideas well that’s that was my question yes and I I’m sorry to put words in your mouth but I would say well I’m old enough to remember Vietnam I’m old enough to remember trying to overthrow Bashar al-assad I’m trying to I’m old enough to remember Libya I’m old enough to remember Afghanistan we screw up non stop this is not clever what we’re doing but the people what’s so interesting so you’ve been an academic your whole life you I think you’re one of the youngest tenure professors at Harvard but you’ve also been I think uniquely a diplomat uh on and off mostly on for you know decades so you know the people who are making us foreign policy personally well and the quality of the person engaged in that seems to have declined just dramatically I think that’s true by the way I think it’s true in general general of American politics uh maybe it’s an illusion but when I was a kid uh in college I uh I uh did my summer internships in my Senator’s office Senator Phil Hart he was a man of great integrity of great intelligence he was a Democrat but he had lots of Republican friends and colleagues there were big people uh there uh and uh they were serious people Fulbright and and and uh Frank church and really wonderful impressive people Chuck Percy uh Luger really impressive people who wanted the us to do right to do good and I admired them and it was on both sides of Republican and and Democrat and you feel it’s it’s not like that right now it’s really not like that right now and I don’t see it um I don’t see wise people on either side I hate to say that I don’t think it’s a partisan divide they all seem crazy and dumb to me you know we’ve we we chatted uh Rand Paul’s the only one for me that makes sense on foreign policy right now he says stop this there so many damn Wars it’s putting us at incredible risk uh but you don’t hear the Democrats they line up 100% for more military spending continue the war we have people that completely shock me that are saying these stupid things about uh no us lives as if Ukrainian lives don’t matter uh nobody wants to talk about negotiation no one says anything onest no one calls no one even wants the truth out of the White House or the executive branch which is another role of Congress which is don’t take us for a ride we’re an independent uh separ equal part of government and it used to be that Congress kind of resented when the executive branch lied to it yes you don’t see that res you don’t see that resentment you see partisanship if it’s a Republican president then the Democrats go after him if it’s a Democratic president Republicans but nobody from one’s own party even tells their president stop bullshitting us yes and that’s very serious well and and these are not small lies so the two are the big biggest lies are that Ukraine can win whatever that means never defined push Russia back to its January 2022 border and two that Ukraine will join NATO and neither one of those things is true they’re not only not true if you are able to watch uh you or someone outside the mainstream it becomes obvious that these aren’t true but if you follow uh Admiral Kirby and the White House every lying with a smirk on his face which I can’t stand cuz he can’t even control his smirk cuz he tells us I’m lying you know as as he’s talking it’s unreal uh but if you or if you read the New York Times which is sad and pathetic uh you won’t know but if you actually listen to any independent Outlets which I do because I’m traveling in the world most of the time actually not uh not in the US you know that these things are obvious someone asked me a couple days ago Ukraine’s getting it’s getting blasted on the battlefield now some days are 1, 1500 dead typical 1,000 dead Russia has you know air superiority artillery superiority missile superiority uh everything and the ukrainians are getting blasted and now the US press is reporting oh the Ukrainian are you know falling back and and the tone has suddenly changed so someone asked me a couple days ago you know why did this Sudden Change on the battlefield occur and I said excuse me he said yeah why did this Sudden Change I said there’s no Sudden Change this whole trend has been obvious for more than two years we’re in a war of attrition and the bigger party is blasting hell out of the much bigger party much bigger ex but you wouldn’t know it by any of our narrative official Congressional or uh or our kind of mainstream media because they don’t tell the truth until I’d say until but even after it’s staring you in the face then maybe they’ll say something that’s a little bit true that just feels like North Korea to me or what you imagine North Korea is this news vacuum where everybody is under these huge misimpressions like nobody has any reference point in the truth at all people don’t even know they’re being lied to it you travel constantly is this the most sort of cut off country from an information perspective in the world you know when uh I’ll give an example when uh the uh us put on sanctions on Russia in March 2022 just after uh the beginning of this latest phase of the war that started in 2014 um I know senior US Financial officials and they oh we’ve got them this going to crush them I said I don’t think so you know I’m I I was in Latin America last week they’re not going to do this I was in India the week before that it’s it’s not going to go like that so what happened was the only ones that applied the sanctions are Europe the United States and a few allies in East Asia Japan Korea Australia New Zealand Singapore the rest of the world said we’re we’re not part of that you know this is we don’t sign up to this we don’t like this we don’t agree with the NATO enlargement we don’t like this narrative and the sanctions prove to be you know pretty uh useless in ter compared to what this grandiosity of uh the US strategist thought so it comes to this question you know what does the rest of the world think the rest of the world doesn’t think much of the United States what it’s doing it seems to them as a bizarre country why are you pushing NATO enlargement why are you bringing us into your War we don’t we don’t really want this interestingly most of the rest of the world is not against the United States by the way they they said just don’t make us choose all these things this isn’t our battle and we don’t even like what you’re doing just make peace calm things down and we we don’t want bad relations so it’s not as if the world’s antagonistic but Washington does not get this at all I I probably speak to more world I don’t know I speak to a lot of world leaders in developing countries all the time it’s my job as a development Economist so I’m talking to world leaders foreign ministers heads of state and so on and I know their understanding and position very clearly I don’t know whether the White House or blinkin or anyone else in the administration understands even these basic points but it was obvious to me obvious to me a little bit not not well it seem from the outside it seems like blinkin is a driving force I doubt it who do you think is uh I think this a big deep project with of the security apparatus that goes back 30 years I think the CIA continues to be a driving force uh I I I don’t know uh National Security councils obviously driving force the pentagon’s obviously a driving force uh the armed services committees it’s not uh one individual but it’s a project that is long dated and it doesn’t turn and we don’t have a president that’s very flexible of mind to we don’t have a president that is you know on top of any of this it seems to me not a Nimble president not Nimble not effective not necessarily in charge not necessarily making decisions I don’t really know but what I do know is that it’s not improv it’s a a Rudder that’s stuck I would say in other words they can’t do something different and each what what is improv is that the last thing they tried didn’t work so now they need to quickly improvise something else as the Rudder is stuck so we continue on the same destructive path and it’s not working so oh my God we’ve got to do something else that’s the Improv part but what is not changing is goals direction right strategy or this most basic point which for me is a kind of uh it sound so simple-minded but I actually from a lifetime of experience really believe in it we don’t talk to the other side we we also seem to be um huffing our own gas a bit believing our own lies we we believe that we need to lie to because maybe if your rudder’s stuck and you’re the skipper you have to say Full Speed Ahead uh in other words if you can’t move the rudder uh you have to give some self-justification for why we continue towards dis so for example since you AR Economist um the the econ the economic effects of kicking Russia out of Swift etc etc right of these very serious sanctions imposed against Russia two and a half years ago big picture it seems like that’s a country with an Economy based on natural resources and Manufacturing ours is largely an Economy based on finance lending money and interest and real estate right which is more durable which is more real that’s I mean that’s my perspective what’s your sense well I I I think the basic point on the sanctions is if you have oil if you don’t sell it to Europe you could sell it to Asia well yeah and it wasn’t so hard and they figured that out even I know that though they they figured out how to get those tankers in they figured out how to get insurance cover and they figured out how to do it and they’re making a lot of money and the sanctions didn’t have any effect and what they also didn’t understand and I think it’s it’s also important uh for people to understand in all of this neocon strategizing they had this glimmer of insight and actually big brinsky was was very good on it he said by all means the one thing never never to do is to drive Russia and China together well exactly and he said very explicitly and he says in 1997 in his book The Grand chessboard I think it’s called he says but this is so unlikely you know this would be so crazy to do and this is exactly what these thunderheads have done who are the neocons how would you describe them what is a neocon a neocon is a a a group of True Believers starting uh uh that really Rose to uh force in the last uh years of uh Bush senior uh it was Cheney woloz uh Rumsfeld uh but it became abolutely bipartisan Victoria nuland is kind of the ultimate her husband um Bob Kagan Robert Kagan is uh kind of the public intellectual of the neocons I mean he is he is I know Bob well he’s an idiot yeah well he’s your public intellectual he’s he’s the guy that writes the the toms that say child I think that this has been just about the most disastrous foreign policy imaginable how can you go from uh from peace uh in 1991 when you have a chance for creating a a peaceful Cooperative world that could actually be prosperous and uh do good things together to this mess that we’re in it took a strategy so stupid so reckless uh so blind uh and that’s what the neocons gave us they gave us a strategy which said uh we now run the world and explicitly we will be the world’s policemen we will fight fight the wars that we need to fight whenever and wherever we need to fight them we will make sure that there’s never a Ral well you do that long enough you end up in lots of absolutely destructive stupid Wars and the rest of the world doesn’t just sit back and say oh thank you us we’re so grateful you’re the leader they say come on we’re you know you’re 4.1% of the world population there’s another 95.9% of the world population that actually would just like peace and some cooperation and not you to be telling us what to do so this strategy was explicit clear uh adopted in the last years of uh basically in 1991 92 uh after the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 Clinton was he just not serious consequent uh or experienced enough uh he wasn’t a rigid neocon but um meline Albright was a True Believer uh and uh Clinton drifted in that direction and that’s also partly something to understand which is when you have the biggest military machine in the world when you are so powerful the war machine is always revving uh there’s always some case for war the neocons basically said yeah we’re we’re the policemen we’re the constabulary we this is our duty we and said you have to you have to be in each of these conflicts because you know us reputation also depends on this so they invited Regional Wars and everywhere and all the time and believed of course you we could clean out governments we didn’t want regime change by War by covert operations and so on and it became not a little movement it became the dominant drive so uh Clinton kind of drifted his administration was divided between meline Albright and Holbrook on one side and and uh William Perry on the other side but he went with with Albright uh by the end of Clinton’s term was NATO enlarg M bombing of Belgrade and and we were kind of Off to the Races then came uh Bush Jr 911 uh global war on terror but basically 911 as the opportunity to implement the project for The New American Century which is the document that defines the neocon agenda and it’s such an interesting document because very clear it was very carefully studied and it’s also important to understand the the US is a big ship so it doesn’t turn quick so you prepare a path or it’s this stuck Rudder as I said and you can read in building rebuilding America’s defenses which was a kind of campaign document for the incoming Bush uh junior Administration what we should do and it defines this neocon agenda so Bush Jr introduced all of these things the unilateral withdrawal from ABM the the war in Iraq uh the expansion of NATO to seven more countries the uh commitment to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia then comes Obama you you don’t think of him as a a neocon especially but who becomes the point person for Eastern Europe and uh and and Ukraine Victoria newand so so interesting Victoria newand was was the deputy National Security adviser of Cheney I remember very well yes so she was Cheney’s adviser then she was a uh she was George W’s uh uh ambassador to NATO during the commitment to enlargement and if Obama weren’t uh uh a neocon you would say well that’s not someone I’m going to hire but all of a sudden she lands as Hillary’s uh as Hillary assistant now Hillary’s absolutely neocon to the core and there’s Victoria Newland and she goes from being Hillary’s assistant becoming a assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs and becomes the point person in the overthrow of yanukovich uh at the end of 2013 and early 2014 and Obama uh is he not you know he’s also very inexperienced in for obviously no experience at all in foreign policy but um he wasn’t by Nature a neocon but but the system keeps you moving unless you’re a president that knows how to keep a foot on the brakes uh and we haven’t had many presidents like that uh Eisen Hower was one who knew how to put his foot on the brakes cuz he really understood this system uh John Kennedy learned it but only after the Bay of Pigs and uh probably was uh was killed uh by our government for trying to keep his foot on the brakes uh and there have not been many other occasions when presidents kept their foot on the break so in 2011 Obama does the absolute neocon play of saying almost out of the blue by the way why don’t we overthrow Bashar al-assad Syria president well that’s a little damn weird but suddenly you start start hearing Assad must go I was on Morning Joe when uh that statement by Hillary was made and Joe Scarboro looked at me and said Jeff what do you think and I said well how are they going to do that that sounds like another pretty stupid idea and it turned out that was 2011 we’ve had 13 years of war in Syria hundreds of thousands dead destroyed the country of course destroyed the country and and who presid president Bashar Alat and interestingly I can tell you uh oh God yeah I can tell you in 2012 uh the US you know there there were protests there were things that were going on in Syria but but the president said okay we’ll send in the CIA to overthrow uh the government in Syria and if anyone is wondering we do this dozens of times so don’t have any illusion that this is unusual it is the job the terms of reference of the CIA to overthrow governments in other countries I don’t approve I think it leads to war destruction it hasn’t passed the Putin’s notice that that’s the job of the CIA so it’s another reason he doesn’t exactly want the US on his border and so forth okay so we start uh arming uh the jihadists crazy things in Syria yeah I can say it I’m just thinking cuz and the US says Assad must go so a diplom the UN starts a diplomatic process uh to try to find peace which is the job of the UN it’s not to implement us regime change it’s to try to find peace so the US uh the UN succeeds in getting all of the parties to agree to a peace agreement except one the US so the yes so the idea that uh you know you couldn’t find peace you couldn’t find these all these different factions uh in Syria there was an agreement reached but there was one obstacle to the agreement and the obstacle was the US said on the first day of this agreement Assad must go and uh the response was you know why don’t you have it a process there’ll be in two years an election or three years don’t overthrow the government the first day we have all this in place and Obama well I don’t know if it’s Obama probably Hillary but whatever said no so that’s why there was no agreement but what was the motive like why would you want to overthrow Bashar Assad very strange uh I I’ve never heard an absolute uh intelligent reason for this believe me their idea is we can do it why not one argument was that the neocons had a list uh and this is actually what Wesley Clark who was you know NATO Supreme Commander uh in the end of the 1990s I know Wesley quite well and he’s also spoken about this he said the neocons had a list that they were going to clear out in the 2000s all of the governments aligned with the Soviet Union or with Russia now Syria has a naval Russia has a naval base on the Mediterranean yes and so Assad is therefore an enemy uh or not an enemy they he doesn’t rise to the level of being an enemy someone who peace you can take off the board and put in your own peace that’s all so the idea is incredible arrogance they don’t think honest to God I don’t know whoever gave that order knew nothing about Syria that I can guarantee you but the downstream effects of that were were horrifying well unbelievable because created Isis so yeah but we probably created Isis pretty directly because we funded jihadists all along the way that’s our story since 1979 actually yes uh so this goes back along long time um they don’t they’re not clever they’re not honest they’re not transparent they are arrogant to the hilt and they don’t talk to anybody else including to us the American people including to Congress including to counterparts in other countries and it gets you into trouble when you’re so flippant and flagrant because remember what was happening in Syria they did exactly the same thing in Libya uh and you look at Libya they decided to take out Gaddafi why no one really knows he was cooperating with us at that point no one knows because uh some people say sarosi uh KN that that uh that Gaddafi had contributed to sari’s campaign that it was a personal Vendetta there are 100 theories the fact that there are 100 theories shows that the whole thing was to use a technical diplomatic term you cannot even know right now why what you know is that they misused a un Security Council resolution to protect the people of Benghazi to launch a monthong NATO aerial bombardment of Libya until they brought down the government Unleashed war in in Africa for the next uh 13 years until today which is still roiling all of the countries of the region they do these things because they can because it doesn’t count maybe another theory which is uh even a maybe true what difference it’s money it’s a business we’re running a business we’re trying weapons we’re doing this maybe it’s all a success from somebody’s point of view that you have all these wars going with this big military machine I don’t know that’s that is a theory which is is not completely dismissible because what you can’t do Tucker is look and say my God we had a geopolitical reason to do this this was really part of American Security we really needed to overthrow Assad we really needed to take out Gaddafi because if we didn’t do that something else would happen you cannot even concoct a crazy narrative exp poost that explains that so these are not deeply explicable facts but the pattern is is very is recognizable immediately here you have a country with unchallenged for a moment unchallenged power starting Wars for not any obvious reason all over the world when was the last time an empire did that you know the British that was the last time I think we learned everything from the British they were non-stop Wars skirmishes you know when you’re an Empire and and if anyone still plays risk I I don’t know I played it 60 years ago I have to admit so I’m I’m not sure if people still play the game but risk you’re trying to get your peace on every part of the board when you have your peace someplace on the board if the neighboring spots are not yours you better have wars with them or they’re going to take you out and so every place becomes an object for war because it becomes next door to wherever you have your bases your concern and so on so we have military bases in I would say 80 countries probably uh something like that of course the count is not public so people put together their own list we have about 750 military bases around the world each of those places has a neighborhood uh each of those places has the next door which oh well they’re not we don’t have a base there we better have a base there uh and so that’s the logic which is is if you’re at the outer end of this well you better continue because otherwise your outer limit is what we don’t learn actually and it’s another analogy which I found to be useful the Romans by around 110 ad uh with hadrien said and and trun okay we’ve reached a good limit yeah and they stopped trying trying to expand y they built they built a wall they left it there exactly and they said they had a there was a war that I find analogous to Ukraine uh they had a war in Germania so-called east of the rine uh in what is now Germany uh in 9 ad uh which was a war of expansion by Augustus to tame the German tribes and they lost that War the war of the totenberg forest and they lost that war in 9 ad they basically decided after that not entirely they didn’t say well this is the end of the Roman Empire they said okay we’ll just leave Germania yeah there limits to our power right there there limits and that’s fine why don’t we behave like that we’re not threatened by Russia we are not threatened by Russia and Ukraine being neutral is not a threat to US security it’s builds US security period That’s what I said to Jake svin it’s not even a concession Jake it’s a benefit for us leave some space between you and them that’s what we want some space so we don’t have an accidental trip wire that’s the real logic of this world give a little space yes we don’t have to be everywhere we’re not playing risk we’re trying to run our lives we’re trying to keep our children safe we’re not trying to own every part of the world so speaking of increasing our risk I I think the unstated but very clear objective of all of this is to kill Putin and and replace him and break up Russia that that’s my read on it if you read even this project for a New American Century rebuilding America’s defense es it says maybe Russia will be decentralized into a European Russia Central Asian Russia Siberian Russia they call it and a and a Far East Russia uh this is essentially what you’re saying they they talk there’s even some Commissions in Washington decolonizing Russia they their hope the cia’s hope if they would ever tell us the truth about anything uh was uh but they they don’t get any of this right but their their thought probably in this deep long-term Vision was after the Soviet Union fell so too will Russia disintegrate it will disintegrate along its ethnic lines it will disintegrate along its Geographic lines why is that a US project it’s a US project only because from my point of view the US resent that there is a country of 11 time zones and it’s so big that it is on its face a denial of us Global hegemony uh in other words U how obnoxious of them to be there uh but but the problem is they don’t see it that way but but just if you’re looking at this purely through the lens of like what’s good for us us interests which I I do think is their job actually but um chaos across 11 time zones and innumerable ethnic groups and religious divisions with 6,000 nuclear warheads that’s really a threat to the world I couldn’t agree more is it not am I missing something no you’re not missing anything uh and and the fact of the matter is you know I was an advisor to gorbachov in 19991 I got to watch closeup I was an advisor to president yelson in 199 1992 I actually it’s literally true as weird as this sounds I well maybe not to you you’re about the one person for whom it’s not weird I sat in the Kremlin uh sitting across from yelton the day the Soviet Union ended uh in in a in a really and and not even quite that day literally it was even more remarkable and are than that I was leading a little economics delegation to talk about the collapse of the economy that was underway and yelson came from the back of the room in one of these giant Kremlin rooms yes and walked across the long room and sat down right in front of me and said gentlemen I want to tell you the Soviet Union is over that’s incredible like that and then he point Ed to the back door he said do you know who is in that room over there it’s the leaders of the Soviet military and they have just agreed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that was the first words I heard out of his mouth sitting directly across from me so what a moment yeah that was of course the most unbelievable moment I’ve had and you’re sitting in the Kremlin and you hear that suddenly and um and then he went on to say he spoke very beautifully for a few minutes what does Russia want and he must have used the word normal 10 times in that short speech we want to be a normal country we’re done with the communism we we want to be normal we want to be friendly we want to be part of Europe we want to be part of the world economy we want to be be normal Mr ax can you help us be normal and I said Mr President um the world will be so grateful for this opportunity for peace that I am absolutely sure that the United States and the rest of the world is going to come to your assistance and I said this most remarkably wrong fact because I believe it I knew that that was America’s interest I believed we would follow our interest and I had had a very unusual experience uh wonderful experience two years earlier when I served as Poland’s main outside economic advisor helping them to develop the plan for becoming a market economy in part of Europe and in those days I helped Poland raise many billions of dollars of emergency support to stabilize a very shaky unstable economy and in those days in 1989 every everything I recommended was adopted by the United States government almost immediately I thought hey I’m pretty good I I once went in one morning to Senator Dole and I said Poland needs a billion dollars to stabilize its currency and he said Mr Sax come back in an hour and I came back in an hour and there was Brent scof uh and our national security advisor and Senator said you know who this is Mr Sax I said General it’s an honor to meet you and skof said uh what is it what’s your idea and I I handed him my one page about a billion dollars and he looked and he said uh will this work Mr ax and I said I think this is the right way to stabilize the currency he said well we’ll get back to you uh and uh at 5:00 p.m uh as Dole asked me uh I called Dole and uh he said tell your friends they have their billion dollars uh within n within eight hours basically okay so I said to yelson this will be great you know you’re going to get all the support we’re going to go mobilize a financial package for you we’re going to help you stabilize the ruble we’re going to get a stabilization fund for the ruble we’re going to get this and that and of course every single thing I recommended that had worked in Poland they rejected in Washington and I just for the life of me what the hell is going on here stabilization fund it worked this walty was stable the Polish currency stabilized no Mr saaks I’m afraid we don’t support that and one after another knocked down so I did not understand the geopolitics yeah that I was in at all I didn’t get it I said are you kidding they want normal they want peace this is our greatest moment this is the greatest moment of the second half of the 20th century the scourge of nuclear war has been lifted the Cold War is Over do something no so so that’s that’s it what do you make of Putin he’s very smart uh he has uh LED Russia very effectively um and uh because he emerged from the KGB he understands the us the way the US operates because we became a Security State we became a state where the CIA has absolutely extraordinary influence and Putin gets that and so he really understands how we operate he doesn’t like it but he understands it and his background uh especially because his background comes from the KGB his counterpart was the CIA he does not have Illusions about the United States uh and um I wish I wish we were proving him wrong but we’re not how influential is the CIA in the operations of the US government definitely in many many places it is the instrument of regime change and the US is the only country in the world that relies on regime change as I would say the lead diplomatic let me put it a different way not diplomatic as as the lead foreign policy instrument in other words most countries virtually any small country any middle power country when it doesn’t like another country it either has to deal with it or it comes begging to the United States to take out that country uh and we are the country that uh makes a living by overthrowing other governments and that’s not a good vocation for us it almost always ends in disaster in Bloodshed in continued instability but that’s the job of the C that became it’s half the job of the CIA CIA is also an intelligence agency it collects information and makes analysis and it gives uh uh intelligence findings and I have no problem with that role at all although I don’t want them to spy on us but I think that making intelligence findings for the US government is uh is necessary um but being a private army or or uh a uh a hidden force that overthrows governments that Stokes unrest uh that puts people in power um that runs uh covert operations I’m against it so if a big part of the cia’s job is taking down leaders of foreign countries how long before it does that here in the United States I mean it doesn’t doesn’t seem unlikely that like why wouldn’t they do that here yeah probably 61 years ago was their first run at this uh with the President Kennedy from I think it’s a best guess not sure but best guess that this was at least uh maybe Rogue CIA or maybe official CIA or maybe compartmentalized CIA operation uh it was clearly someone’s operation not Lee Harvey Oswald’s from know uh and all of the evidence points in that uh that direction it used to be said why is the United States the only country in the world that’s never had a coup uh and the answer was well we’re the only country that doesn’t have a US Embassy uh well of course we’ve had a coup I mean Mur murdering the president is aoup but we probably had a coup in broad daylight on November 22nd 1963 and uh we never quite got over it uh and um we never looked into into it on on the contrary we covered it up from the beginning and Drip by drip evidence comes including the most recent evidence that that magic bullet which was one of the justifications of the Absurd account of a lone gunman uh was also debunked by the uh I think now 88-year-old Secret Service uh agent who said I actually put that bullet from the back of uh Kennedy seat in limousine on the stretcher at Parkland Hospital uh so there’s so many things wrong with the official I mean it’s Preposterous almost nobody believes it uh and or should believe it but it’s also interesting for all that we’re discussing uh most likely it was a it was a government coup in broad daylight with the tremendous amount of evidence that it was a conspiracy at a high level uh and yet it it for the the last 61 years without any uh official practical note of that fact do you think that was the last time the CIA tried to influence domestic politics in this country well I’m sure the U the CIA influences influences domestic politics all the time in this country because we know about extensive surveillance operations the this was but it’s interesting you know next year will be the 50th anniversary of the church Comm committee hearings and Frank church was a very unusual figure from Idaho uh a pretty staunch Republican state and he was a a young gifted Patriot uh whose favorite Senator was Bora a Conservative Republican senator and he was just an upright very decent person who uh saw more and more my God it’s the things we’re talking about something’s not right people people are getting assassinated in other countries our government uh it doesn’t look uh clean and um one thing after another in a series of uh events led him to chair the only time a senate investigative investigative committee actually looked deeply into CIA operations that was 1975 fascinating uh you know what made it possible was just a Confluence of events uh Nixon had resigned Ford was an unelected president who came from Congress who didn’t want to take on Congress so he didn’t resist uh Church’s uh uh investigation even though his chief of staff Dick Cheney was telling him go after thisy guy we got to crush this investigation but uh but um Ford said no no no we can’t in anyway Supreme Court and I don’t want to get into another huge fight uh Hoover had died uh um jgar Hoover had died in 1972 I believe so the FBI couldn’t resist the same way uh uh Bill Colby had become CIA director and he didn’t want to inherit all the from the past CIA so there came this one moment when all these pieces enabled actually someone to look into what this organization was doing and the first thing they discovered was no one had ever looked into any of it before nothing second they discovered this is an army of the president of the United States yes this a private Army and they debated is it a rogue Army does it do it on its own or is it an army of the president but it’s an army and it’s an army completely outside of our our oversight and control then the third thing they found is they’re assassinating lots of people they’re assassinating Americans by the way through these unbelievably crazy LSD experiments uh but they you know basically uh they weren’t the ones to put the bullet through the head of Patrice lumba in the Congo but they they tried and they were they supported the overthrow of lumba and of course they were trying to kill Castro and many other things so they found unbelievable things now that was 1975 since then we’re 49 years there’s never been another church Committee of its kind it’s unbelievable how many things have happened since then the list believe me is very very long I’ve seen some of it so directly I can’t it it’s just shocking to me but just an insight into how our country Works which you know very well but to me I find it so weird I was asked to help um uh ared in Haiti yes okay Haiti’s oh so poor so unstable so desperate and uh aist uh asked me for economic help that’s what I do uh that’s that’s my expertise so I uh flew down to Port of Prince and I had a very good meeting with him and at the end of the meeting he said uh Mr sacks they’re going to take me out they’re going to take me out and what do you mean they’re they’re going to overthrow me okay sorry to be so naive as I am I said no we’re going to make this work you know this is uh we’re going to make this work no no no they’re going to take me out I said no no I’m going back to Washington we’re going to help with the interamerican development bank and World Bank and IMF and oh I’m so naive so of course then and they decide to take him out uh and the way they do it is destabilize the country so the first thing is close down the IMF close down the World Bank close down the interamerican Development Bank squeeze squeeze squeeze the next thing is you send in some mercenaries who are going to create trouble come over the border from Dominican Republic the last thing was rather remarkable which was the US ambassador showed up at his door literally one day and said Mr President you have to flee we have a plane waiting for you otherwise your life is in danger and they led him to a plane with an unmarked tail and 23 hours later he was in Central African Republic so this is what’s called a coup a coup in broad daylight Central African Republic absolutely I thought he went to Joe Berg I don’t know why no no no he went afterwards but the first The Landing was Central African Republic if I remember correctly so I what do I do what can I do well I call I called up the New York Times Reporter on the beat and I said there’s been a coup on broad daylight I don’t you know you got to cover this the reporter told me my editor is not interested all coup in our hemisphere all the News That’s fit to print so I I have wanted it’s amazing so I I wanted to ask you about that I mean you said there had been no correctly there have been no real oversight hearings into the Intel agencies in 50 years yes but you know the congressional committees are only one part of the oversight the Constitution prescribes and the other part of course is the media right supposed to provide oversight uh oversight of government and I one of the moment I really wanted to speak to you was the day that I saw the clip of you on Bloomberg News I think you were one of my favorite moments and you just describe and it was within hours of this massive natural gas pipeline Nord uh disintegrating can you describe what happened yeah so uh you know the US blew up nordstream as it promised to on probably dozens of occasions but the most recent of those occasions was uh President Biden uh said I think it’s February 7 2022 I may have the date a little bit off but he said in a statement to the Press if the Russians invade Ukraine nordstream is finished uh and uh the reporter who asked him the question I think from Germany but an international said well Mr President um how how can you say that how could you do that and uh he looks and he says very Gravely believe me we have our ways okay so this is uh and then you can go back and find a thousand Clips of Victoria newand and Cruz and everyone saying this must stop this must stop we’ll never let it happen it will be destroyed it will be ended okay so then it’s blown up okay and you and and then the America you know well before we get to that I was on Bloomberg uh soon afterwards I don’t remember whether it was the next day or the day after and I said uh you know I think the US did this uh Mr Sachs how can you how can you say that uh and I said well for the president said he was it was going to be over and then there’s actually you know some readings of uh planes in the vicinity and so forth and and and uh there was the Tweet by the former and now current foreign minister of Poland thank you USA with a picture of uh of of the uh the water bubbling over the blown up pipeline rodic sakori his tweet and there was and apple bomb’s husband there there was a bit of evidence that well yes the United States had done this thank you very much they said they would and they did it um I was yanked off the air within 30 seconds I could watch I could imagine cuz he was listening to Something in the earplug which I could only imagine get that son of a off the air and they just dis interview is over you know and he stopped uh and then uh the another anchor bered me for a few minutes uh few minutes after that and um okay that was the last time I had a word on mainstream media I have to tell you seriously yeah yeah uh but you’ve been um famous I because I live in this country I know you’ve been famous for decades yeah I was on everything MSNBC yeah a lot constantly but it’s so interesting that your sin was saying something true right that the media really should be on I mean this is the largest Act of industrial sabotage in my lifetime it’s the largest it’s a big deal carbon emission yeah ever you know it’s a look it’s it’s a big deal it’s an AC of War uh it helps to understand what this Ukraine war is all about it helps us to understand that this is a war between the United States and Russia fought on on many means it’s important to understand it uh it also uh has a deeper economic significance because it’s part of a longstanding uh us idea of not letting Germany and Russia ever get too close together economically so there’s a lot to that story and should be covering that look if you can kill a president in broad daylight uh and get away with it for 61 years if you can uh walk a president of a neighboring country out to an unmarked plane uh and not have it covered uh if you can have a quote unprovoked war that you provoked over a 30-year period you can do lots of things and um this is just one of the things that you could do and I discovered that uh some of our press like the New York Times which opined after the blow up that looks like Russia did that you know to their own to their own infrastructure they’re reporters so they’re top reporters know better they tell me yeah Jeff of course of course but they don’t cover it because we’re living in an environment where the people in power think it’s a game and they think that it it’s not their job to tell us they’re they’re playing risk with our lives they’re playing risk with Ukrainian lives they don’t have to tell us the truth truth we don’t have to have any serious discussion we don’t have to call anyone for a real hearing or even much less a congressional investigation we’re not living in that kind of world we’re living in a world where it’s almost daily that the government says what it wants Kirby at the White House says it with that damn smart MK of his uh and uh pretty much everyone knows it’s lies but why haven’t it’s just interesting because you’re from a very specific class you know yeah well-known academic Economist Diplomat frequent TV guest and you know there are a bunch of other people in that world but you were pretty much the only person to say no that’s a lie and I’m not going along with it why why you why didn’t you do what all of your peers did I do it because it it came uh as part of my life course working mostly internationally talking with the leaders abroad I care about my credibility a lot which is you know I’m not always right but I try to always be right yes uh and I have a lot of discussions every day with foreign ministers or with senior diplomats or with heads of state and for me I I don’t hold an office I I don’t do anything other than try to have reasonable ideas and speak as truthfully as possible so it’s kind of a a career approach which is I’m trying to be accurate right but there should be a lot of people like you in your world yeah I know for me I’m not interested I and I would not take a job in the US government for example I couldn’t anyway you know with all the things I’ve said I can imagine the Congressional hearings it would be did you say that about the US government did you say that about the US government but in any event I’m not looking for a job uh I’m not looking for a usaid grant I’m not looking for a US government grant so in that sense also I’m not um I’m not part I’m not exactly I hope trapped in in that way I’m just trying to be accurate and what I’m really really trying is to help the United States government understand they’re operating on dangerous dangerous trajectories and with a lot of delusions and it’s very risky for everybody and I also have a big measure of resentment I don’t like the risks that were being put under Tucker yes I I agree with that I don’t like it you got children this is not a game I got grandchildren and I really care about this and I don’t like the games and I want people to tell the truth and we if we told the truth we could actually stop the wars today I don’t mean that sounds crazy it’s not crazy if we told the truth about Ukraine if Biden called Putin and said that NATO enlargement we’ve been trying for 30 years it’s off we get it you’re right it’s not going to your border Ukraine should be neutral that war would stop today oh there’d be lots of pieces to figure out where exactly will the borders be how will it go I don’t I don’t say that there won’t be issues but the fighting would stop today if the government of Israel either were told or said there will be a state of Palestine and we will live peacefully side by side the fighting would stop today these are basic facts basic matters of truth that if we actually spoke them if we actually treated each other like grown-ups we would resolve what seem to be these you know insurmountable uh insurmountable crises they’re not at all insurmountable they just require a measure of truth how have you been treated by your peers for saying things like I hear what you just said and I think it’s it’s disputable it’s also very honorable um you seem to be acting out of the best motives traditional American motives I would say yeah I I like so I admire you for saying that how have your peers responded to you they think I’m a little crazy I think what what would be crazy about what you just said well you know uh when I said uh that this war has a reason that it’s not that Putin’s evil that uh we provoke this and that it could stop uh I got most of my remaining interlocutors saying Jeff what is the matter with you you’re Putin apologist you know how dare you when I say this about Israel I lose another another group but because there are things you’re supposed to say here you’re because this idea of us hegemony this idea of us dominance it’s pretty deep in uh American Academia also I mean I don’t it’s not a shock to tell you but all of these uh um uh special uh organiz the think tanks or university uh um special uh departments or uh or research units they’re funded by the US government they’re funded by the security state they’re funded by large donors that are all part of this story so it’s not absolutely simple to get out of that I think Mark Twain I think he was the one that said it it may have been manin but I think it’s attributed to Twain that that said uh it’s impossible to convince a man of something when his job depends on On Believing the other uh and I think that’s true of a lot of people which is I I can’t really say that I don’t know if it’s true but anyway why are you sticking your head out so much I I got to ask you about first of all thank you I think that was that’s the crispest and I think most honest description I’ve ever heard of the leadup to what’s happening in Ukraine right now so thank you for that um so given the credibility that you’ve just gained by that explanation where do you think Co came from Co um the question is which lab and in which way uh it almost surely did not come out of nature uh it almost surely came out of uh a deliberate research project that had a core idea which was to take a natural virus and make it more infectious and uh we have one major blueprint of that which is a uh research proposal called diffuse uh which was submitted to the Department of Defense uh to the unit called DARPA in 2018 and it is a kind of cookbook for how to make the virus that causes covid-19 and the virus is called SARS Cove 2 and what’s distinctive about SARS Cove to is that it has uh something called a proteolytic cleavage site uh and specifically something called a furin cleavage site and it’s just some pieces of The genome that make this thing damn infectious and what’s interesting about it is that for this class of bat viruses which are called beta Corona viruses which is what SARS comes from and what covid-19 comes from for that class of viruses and there are several hundred known none of them in nature ever had that particular piece of the genome called none none other than SARS Cove 2 and that piece of the genome the fur and cleavage site was an object of research attention from 2005 because it was understood that if a virus were to have that it would make the entry of the virus into human cells easier and would make the virus therefore infectious for humans SARS one which is the first outbreak of a virus like this in 2003 in Hong Kong was most likely a natural virus that came from a farm animal and it was not so infectious it it killed some thousands of people but with SARS one you got very very sick for weeks before you were infectious to someone else and that meant that it was not so hard to stop stop by isolating people who had the symptoms with SARS Cove 2 you are infectious even without any symptoms sometimes you’re completely asymptomatic so what’s the difference of SARS one and SARS Cove 2 the fur and cleavage site and in 2005 already so almost 20 years ago that experiment was done that said oh take SARS one add in a few in cleavage site this thing becomes really infectious and there are series of experiments 2005 2009 2001 that are called gain of function experiments where you deliberately manipulate the virus to make it more infectious by 2015 we had a full-blown research program funded by ni by Tony Fouch unit on beta Corona viruses all ready with the lead scientists uh focusing on this fur and cleavage site it’s starting to get ah so they’re starting to do more and more targeted experiments may I ask why why would you want to take a virus like that and make it more infectious there the overarching answer is called biod defense and the and then the real question which I don’t know the answer to Is that biowarfare or is that true defense NIH starting in 2001 became the defense Department’s Research Unit so remember the anthrax attack that came after 91 yes after that I’m sorry to ask you question do we know or are you satisfied you know what that was that probably came out of AMD it was probably a us uh you know some us science to either for sure Pro provoking or doing some crazy things or disgruntled or boosting up the dod budget I don’t know I don’t know the answer to that I know that after that DOD put its budget through Tony fouche’s unit which suddenly became the largest unit of NIH and fouchi became the head of what is politely called biod defense but one only suspects that it is we’re not supposed to do biowarfare it used to be called germ warfare right right and I don’t know and they say well it’s it’s for vaccines against biowarfare it’s to defend against it it’s to defend against Natural outbreaks but what it is is a tremendously dangerous research program that involves a lot of manipulation of very dangerous pathogens and by 2015 the ability of scientists to manipulate these viruses was reaching astounding proportions and we’ve got a Real Genius who was part of this group named Ralph barck at University of North Carolina who is a genius and what he could do was if you gave him uh 30,000 letters of the DNA code AG CC GA a and so forth and I mean give him the letters he’ll turn that into a live virus I think that’s pretty damn remarkable in other words you give him the designer virus he’ll give you the live virus uh and he created what’s called a reverse genetic system to make these viruses and to put in pieces into the viruses uh with a technique which he also called no seeum uh meaning you suture in a part but you do it in a way that you can’t identify that it was put in in the last so it’s without the fingerprints as it were and it’s clear that this area of research picked up a tremendous amount of steam because a lot of American scientists were shouting this is so damn dangerous stop it and fouchy was saying No this is important this is really crucial we’re going to continue to do this there was a brief moratorium uh during at the end of the Obama period and then the moratorium was lifted during the Trump Administration and even during the moratorium period we know that the research continued on many grants it’s clear when you look closely at this that they were getting closer and closer to this insertion of the fur and cleavage site into SARS like viruses now in 2018 came this proposal as always this was a highly classified proposal we only learned about it after the fact by a whistleblower we never even would have learned about it even in all of the commotion of the pandemic but for a whistleblower a brave whistleblower in the Department of Defense who said the public needs to see this and when you look at the diffuse proposal really you say holy because on page 10 it says we have collected more than 180 previously unreported beta Corona viruses and on page 11 it says we’re going to test them for whether they have a proteolytic cleavage site which is a fur and cleavage site and if they don’t we’re going to insert a fur and cleavage site into them it’s the goddamn cookbook for how to make this virus so here comes the the defense department turned it down supposedly I mean probably did and then comes the question well so what happened well the people that wrote that little cookbook said not us we didn’t do anything like that no it got turned down nothing to look at here and um there are all I know because people have told me oh Jeff it’s not just that it got turned down they had done the work even before they submitted the grant proposal that’s not uncommon in science which is you do a lot of the work beforehand so I’ve heard that on good authority I can’t verify it personally um and there are so many strands now that say yeah something really screwy was going on for example there’s a very weird paper weird to me by uh baric and the head of what’s called Rocky Mountain laboratory which is a NIH laboratory under fouche’s Authority that reports this completely bizarre uh finding and the finding is sounds very technical but it says the Wuhan Institute of virology type one virus does not infect Egyptian fruit bats okay that’s the the title so you say so what the hell is that what that is is that obviously in 2019 and 2018 they were doing experiments using viruses from Wuhan in the Rocky Mountain Labs with their collection of bats okay so one Theory and the bats in uh Rocky Mount Labs is is called an Egyptian fruit bat it’s not the kind of bat that carries this virus in China which is in Yan which is a different kind of bat but they tried it in Rocky Mountain Lab I scratched my head and said what the hell we have Rocky Mount lab doing experiments with Wuhan viruses in Montana in NIH Labs with Ralph baric who is one of the principal investigators of the insert the fur and cleand site into the virus I’d like to know more about that thank you isn’t that curious then there are other scientists that have pieces of this puzzle so the answer is we don’t know exactly one theory is that it was concocted in the US and sent over to Wuhan to this Wuhan Institute of Urology for testing in their bat in their bat collection which is the Chinese bats rather than the Egyptian fruit bats that’s plausible that’s one person’s Theory there are other theories that even a related research group uh German and Dutch may have played a role because they have in Wuhan research but when the virus broke out in that uh period at the end of uh 2019 early 2020 there’s commotion among the scientists what the hell is this where’ this come from oh my God did we do this how’d this Escape or whatever nobody knows of course so they start having secret calls and one of the most uh uh important of these calls was on February 1st 2020 that was then uh uh memorialized by one of the participants in a long memo all of which became public through a Freedom of Information Act subsequently because our government has lied to us about every single moment of this from the start hasn’t told us anything about any of this it’s all whistleblowers or Freedom of Information Act that’s the only way we know any of what I’m describing to you right now no one has told the truth at all so uh on the February 1 call the scientists say oh God this looks like a lab stuff one of them says I can’t figure out how this could have ever come out of Nature and they’re all looking at the fur and cleavage site because they know this group of scientists knows that’s the object of research that’s the goal it’s never been seen before in in a virus like this it’s you know it’s it’s the signature right there I did this and uh four days later that group authors the first draft of a paper called the proximal origins of s Cove 2 that says it’s a natural virus the same people wrote it the same people who privately said it’s uh out of a lab most likely so it’s just that is provably a coverup then that’s a coverup this paper is a fraud it has not been retracted until today it’s a fraud where did it run it ran in nature medicine in March 20 which I think is is considered one of the most credible medical journals right I read it when it came out it was I think the most cited paper in biology or in Medicine by far in 2020 everyone wanted to know where this virus came from uh I read it and I went around knowingly telling everyone oh it’s not a it’s natural you have to read proximal origins of SARS Cove to because it never occurred to you they would lie in nature medicine because this is the top of the Heap of the scientific journals and the scientific establishment the top nature you know there are two great science magazines in the world that have a a history that is so deep one is science that’s the US one and the second is nature which is the British one and nature uh is uh the one that uh originally published Darwin and it’s you know it’s so illustrious and I was so smart you know oh you didn’t read nature SARS Cove 2 proximal Origins because you believe that stuff when it’s written there it’s a fraud that paper and it it stands to this day to this day they have not retracted it there is last week a call by several scientists to the editor a very clever one calling for its retraction because this is interesting uh all in the weeds but it’s like everything we’re talking about the the the non-stop line the paper was to as an important extent honcho by somebody named Jeremy Farrar who at the time was the director of British welcome trust which is a huge uh Foundation that supports biomedical research and Ferrar was working with fouchy uh to make it look like nature uh and so so he was part of this uh he was part of this group but he’s not a named author and at the bottom of the article this more details than you want to know but at the bottom of the article thanks welcome trust well under the rules of Science and under the rules of a journal if there’s an a contributor uh who financed the thing but is not mentioned as a contributor to the article that is per se a violation of uh of uh conflict of interest standards uh and that wasn’t revealed so just last week a group of very illustrious virologists called for the retraction of this I’ve called for the retraction of it because it’s an outright fraud because we have slack messages and other email messages and uh other uh other e- messaging that says I don’t really believe this or you it’s in other words it’s clearly it’s clearly a fraudulent paper but they they’re not moving to this moment but how can you so there’s a lot of debate about a pandemic treaty who is course pushing it lots of countries are as well as you well know how can you prepare for a new pandemic without establishing the origin of the most recent pandemic and and more than that we’re going to have another pandemic if it came out of a lab they’re still doing this work it’s not as if they said oh oh my God we really blew it now we stop gain of function research there’s gain of function research going on all over the place and and interestingly Tucker you know last year uh almost almost like Monty Python I mean but it’s so serious uh Boston University put out a paper based on gain a function for manipulating s SARS 2 and uh and NIH says uh you didn’t ask for approval before doing that experiment and and Boston University says we don’t have to ask for approval it’s not on your Grant we just we’re doing it like we want and it shows we got a show going on in this country right now if a university thinks it can do whatever it wants and if IH has a different opinion and we have no rules and they’re doing work on dangerous pathogens yeah we’re going to have another pandemic if even if this one didn’t come from it we’re this this line of work is really dangerous and who’s watching it well we don’t know because it’s DOD because it’s confidential because no one tells us anything and interestingly you know now the house uh investigation committees trying to get at some of this the Democrats completely surrounded fouchy and so we don’t want to have a look at this and said this is Republican Grand standing it’s nuts what could be less partisan than where this virus came from and we can’t even get Democrats in the house now I think a few of them are coming along but for a time it was complet completely partisan the Republicans could investigate in the house but in the Senate where the Democrats are controlled they were saying no and uh Rand Paul asked me to come in and meet his counterpart uh who was the chair of the committee uh Peters and I did and now by the way they are moving in the Senate because you got these bright red lights flashing holy hell let’s find out what happened is it strange to uh I’ll wake up one day and all of a sudden see like actual threats to the existence of humanity right there nuclear war biow Warfare um possibly AI yeah uh but just right there I mean what what big picture what is this did you ever think you would after living in the most prosperous country in the world your entire life find yourself in a place where the country you live in is basically causing um you know the potential Extinction of of humanity you know I think it’s it’s really uh true and important to understand that since 1945 we’ve been living this way and we don’t know it uh we’re barely aware of it but the ability to screw things up in this world is very high the ability to have terrible access oops I where did that virus come from yeah the ability to have a nuclear war by even by accident but much less when you’re in the face of your opponent and talking about defeating them and so forth a war between two nuclear superpowers that we have normalized yeah oh we’re not at War we’re just feeding them all the weapons and they can and the British who are the worst at this yeah they can use the weapons wherever they want uh you know no no constraint no control we’ve been living this way but we don’t know it because like everything else The Narrative doesn’t permit it one day uh Biden uh said in I think it was the fall of 2022 uh you know this is pretty dangerous we could be on a path to nuclear Armageddon he didn’t say that in a speech spech to the American people because he doesn’t give speeches to the American people he doesn’t talk to the American people he doesn’t have press conferences he said it at some fundraiser as usual and then someone reported it what was the reaction of the press the next day almost to a paper the reaction was how dare he say these things how dare he scare the people how dare he say a word like Armageddon uh there was I think an editorial in the Wall Street Journal if I remember correctly you know that this unforgivable this kind of slip of the president of the United States so that’s disgusting Biden for a moment blurted out the truth no doubt by accident no doubt because he was in some fundraiser probably trying to impress some donor uh but the reaction wasn’t oh my God what does this mean how do we consider this let’s go back and think about unprovoked unprovoked unprovoked and maybe we could decide how to step a little bit back from from the CLI and um no absolutely the opposite completely the opposite and I’ve seen I mean not only the you could have a pandemic that kills an estimated 20 million people and not really care to find out where it came from you can be on the brink of nuclear war we can have Ukraine shelling the Zaria nuclear power plant do you know our newspapers won’t say that it’s Ukraine shelling the power plant all they will and Ukraine is shelling the nuclear power plant I can reveal uh as if it’s a as as if it’s a surprise because the Russians are inside the power plant and the ukrainians are trying to take back the power plant and so these shells come to the nuclear power plant and then our lovely our lovely newspapers say each side accuses the other of shelling the nuclear power plant and I happen to know for you know the reasons that I know some of these things that the of course it’s Ukraine shelling a plant that the Russians are inside of not Russians shelling the plant that they but you can’t get officialdom to say this you can’t get the newspapers to say this that’s pretty serious to be shelling a nuclear power plant I mean are you out of your I put that on the list that we’ve been adding to are you out of your mind right don’t do that but they’re doing it in in the country in the world that has actually had a profound nuclear accident already exactly you might mention that maybe they would know something about it that there would be some rence about so that leads to my last sincere question which you may or may not answer but um you know you’re telling the truth about things that are big thing they’re big things like the biggest things and in a world where you’re just absolutely as you’ve noted repeatedly and correctly you’re just not allowed to do that and you’re telling the truth about people who don’t care about the deaths of millions who have cause the deaths of millions so are you worried because you do have credibility you’re not a crank and your job and your career give you just prime a facial credibility it’s a big thing for you to say these things are you worried about the risks to you really I’m worried about the risks to me of a nuclear war for sure I really am I I spend a lot of time with diplomats I really like diplomats by the way it’s even when you know countries hate each other at War good diplomats smile and talk to each other and one could say you know oh how cynical or but it’s actually quite nice I believe the human touch is what can Keep Us Alive actually I don’t think it’s a naive idea uh it it’s actually a quite deep idea Russia has one of the greatest diplomats I’ve ever seen I think lavro is absolutely remarkable and I’ve known him for 30 years have you really yeah it’s he in a in a fair World in a ocratic world he’d be very famous even if you disagree with everything he said cuz he’s so obviously smart he’s a astoundingly smart and astoundingly capable uh and uh and he’s astoundingly someone that we should be speaking with to find an answer to this so the thing that um makes it if I were you know shouting in the wilderness and uh just felt it’s insane no one’s listening I’d have a very different reaction from the one that I actually carry day by day almost everyone I talk to around the world is worried shares the things we’re talking about understands the risks makes you feel completely normal not abnormal in any of this says please keep doing this can you find a way to talk here or there I’ve spoken twice in the UN Security Council or testified twice in the UN Security Council in the last two years I want to make the diplomacy work because our lives depend on it and we we stopped all diplomacy in the United States all of it except what we call speaking with our friends and allies but diplomacy is not speaking with your friends and allies diplomacy is speaking with your counterparts even your adversaries that’s what diplomacy is and we’ve got to get it back do you think the average I said that was my last question but I do have one more do you think the average American even sort of informed people has any sense at all of how close we are to Annihilation I think people are worried and uh people are not happy campers and people do not agree with the foreign policy of this Administration but people are also very confused because we don’t hear anything clear uh except when you interview President Putin and we get to hear what he says and and uh think of I mean that was a Monumental occasion Tucker and an extraordinarily important one but how rare it is and that’s what made it also so extraordinary because you’re not supposed to do that we’re not supposed to listen to that so I think Americans are uh they know that something’s wrong they don’t know exactly how could they know uh what exactly is wrong the level of trust in government is extraordinarily low that low trust has been uh unfortunately uh amply deserved because our government lies and lies and lies and it doesn’t even try to tell the truth anymore it tries to make a narrative uh so I think people uh people sense something seriously wrong but God I hope uh you know our lives are in the hands of a few people uh and uh they better learn some Prudence because they have not had it for a long time uh and they don’t even understand what it is to talk to a counterpart and my uh absolute uh core bottom line is until Biden speaks directly with Putin and starts talking our lives are deeply at risk uh and uh it’s unimaginable to me that we are in open War as we are and we’re not even trying to find the path to peace right now and we have crazy statements that the president of Finland said uh the path to peace is through the battlefield these people don’t understand anything and uh I was just going to mention two quick things uh in closing you know one I spent a lot of my life studying the Cuban Missile Crisis and its aftermath and I wrote a book about Kennedy’s peace initiative in 1963 uh which was remarkable because he actually in the height of the Cold War reached a the partial nuclear testband treaty with Kev and they both knew we had to pull back from the brink because they both had had advisers that would have led us to nuclear Annihilation and they were just completely completely shocked as the two people who had saved the world but just barely how close we had come but one of the things that most people don’t know about the Cuban Missile Crisis is that even when Kennedy and kushev had reached an agreement we almost had nuclear war after that event because of the disabled Soviet submarine do you know this event because it’s it’s one of the most remarkable little known uh facts of modern history um and it’s worth understanding after Kennedy and kushev reached the agreement to end the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy uh removing the nuclear weapons from turkey and Soviet Union removing the nuclear weapons from Cuba and the US promising never again to try to invade Cuba uh there was a disabled Soviet sub at the bottom of the Caribbean that had been sent over during the crisis and it uh blew a gasket as it were and temperatures inside 120 degrees and the sailors uh uh the the Sailor fainting and uh the ship deeply disabled and this was 1962 so the communications did not exist the ship was out of communication they had no idea what was going on so they decided to surface and as they surfaced uh American Navy Pilots were dropping charges on the sub and it’s not absolutely sure but one story is that uh that the uh Navy Pilot One navy pilot for fun was dropping live grenades on the sub as it was surfacing rather than depth charges and the uh pilot thought that they were under attack and that there was a war above the surface now this was a a the lead sub of a squadron of seven in the Caribbean and it was the one sub in that Squadron that had nuclear tip submarines uh nuclear tip Torpedoes excuse me and under us Doctrine any attack by a nuclear weapon was to be met by the full force of the US nuclear Arsenal with an attack on across the Soviet Union China and all of the Eastern European countries estimate 700 million Dead uh and that was to happen with any nuclear attack and Curtis lame was the uh was the uh head of the US Air Force at the time and he couldn’t wait I I think it’s fair to say yes it’s fair to say so what happened was this Skipper uh the commander of the vessel ordered the nuclear to torpedo into the torpedo Bay to be fired because he thought the ship was under attack and by Miracle a guy named aripov who was the person who saved the world whose name nobody knows and I’m pretty sure I have the name right uh was a party official that had a higher rank than the uh the the ship’s captain and said I don’t think that’s a good idea I think we should surface and he countermanded the order at the last moment and the ship surfaced and they found out there was no war and no crisis and that was the end of it and we came within a moment of a full nuclear Annihilation now that’s a true story if people want to read about it in detail the most remarkable book about this is a book by the late historian Martin Sherwin called gambling with Armageddon which is a absolutely phenomenal work and Martin Sherwin some people may recall as the historian who’s the co-author of Oppenheimer which became the yes the screenplay he’s a wonderful historian who died a few years ago and he tells this story in unbelievable uh riveting detail now I take this not only as a literal event but as a metaphor for our reality which is something can always go wrong stay away from the cliff exactly stay away from the cliff this is how close we are talk to President Putin negotiate with China make a two-state solution uh to stop the war in the Middle East stop carrying on like you run the world because you don’t thank you for this and I hope that you are heard everywhere well thank you thanks for all your great leadership in this Tucker cuz you’re playing a huge huge role just bumbling along but that that that’s the greatest account I’ve ever heard so thank you thanks for watching our YouTube channel we hope you subscribe to it and by the way you can hit the little Bell on there and get notifications every time we produce a video we hope you’ll do that also

Video Tags: tucker carlson,jeffrey sachs,tucker carlson putin,jeffrey sachs 2023,tucker carlson tonight,jeffrey sachs china,jeffrey sachs interview,tucker carlson monologue,jeffrey sachs ukraine,tucker carlson interview putin,tucker carlson monologue tonight,piers morgan jeffrey sachs,tucker carlson network,tucker carlson in moscow,professor jeffrey sachs,tucker carlson yearbook,tucker,tucker carlson interview,tucker carlson january 6 footage

Video Duration: 02:24:29