Jeffrey Sachs the Reality of our Imperial Neocons

Tucker Carlson did a great 2 hour 24 minute interview with Jeffrey Sachs.
https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-jeffrey-sachs

Voice typed 40 minutes

Meet you nonstop. 9 or 10 cups a day. It’s good. I like coffee. Yeah. And I drink it straight until minutes before bed. I do too. Ohh. Do you? Yeah. I will never drink as much as Voltaire. Drink. Yeah. Yeah. Ohh. Is that right? Like 40 cups? Yeah. Is that right? Ohh. Yeah. And it worked.

OK, 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

Russian militaries began a brutal assault.People in Ukraine.Without provocation. Through 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 and unjustified attack on Ukraine.

Russia conducted an unprovoked war. Aggression against Ukraine

was unprovoked.Russian war of aggression has got to be met with strength.

Vladimir Putin.Decided.Unprovoked.To start this war.

Tucker:
So.was it unprovoked

Jeffrey Sachs:well we did hear that a lot of times I I actually asked a research assistant of mine to count how many times we heard that in the New York Times in that first year from February 2022, February 2023. In their opinion, comes was 26 times unprovoked. Of course things aren’t unprovoked. It’s actually brand name unprovoked invasion. It’s it’s the lazy person’s dodge for actually trying to think through what’s going on. And it’s, and it’s very dangerous because it’s, it’s wrong. It gets the whole story completely wrong.And it misunderstands the trap that we set for ourselves as the United States to push Ukraine deeper and deeper and deeper into this hopeless mess that they’re in right now.

Tucker:
In what sense was it provoked? Like what started this?

Jeffrey Sachs:
Basically, it started very simply, which is that the United States government was. Let’s not call it the US people. They had nothing to do with this, but the US government said we’re going to put Ukraine on our side and we’re gonna go right up to that 2100 kilometer border with Russia and we’re going to put our troops in NATO and maybe missiles or whatever, because we are.The sole superpower of the world, and we do what we want. And it goes back, actually.A long way it goes back 170 years. The Brits had this idea first surround Russia, Black Sea region, Russia’s power anymore. And that was a Lord Palmerston’s idea in the Crimean War 1853 and 1856.And the bridge taught us what we know about empire, and they basically taught us the ideas. You know, it needs an outlet. It needs an outlet to the Middle East. It needs an outlet to with the Mediterranean. You surround Russia in the Black Sea.Uh, you have rendered Russia a second or third rate country

and.And speak bridging Ski I, one of our lead Geo strategists of the current era, wrote in 1997. Let’s do this. Let’s make sure that we basically surround Russia in in the black.The region, they got this idea that we’ll expand NATO so that every country in the Black Sea around Russia is a NATO country right now. Well, back then Turkey was a NATO country, but we said, OK, we’ll get Romania and Bulgaria and we’ll get you.Crane and we’ll get Georgia now Georgia you know not not our Georgia Atlanta, GA Georgia of the Black Sea we used to call it Soviet Georgia yes Soviet Georgia if you wanna call it that home of Stalin it it it it’s not NATO N Atlantic it’s it’s way out there in the eastern edge of of the Black Sea region people.Look at a map. But we said, yeah, we’ll make Georgia part of NATO too.

And the reason was very clear and and speak was very explicit about it that this is our way to basically dominate Eurasia. If we can dominate the Black Sea region, that Russia’s nothing. If we make Russia nothing, then we can basically control Eurasia, meaning all the way from Europe.Central Asia and through our influence in East Asia do the same thing. And that’s American unipolarity. We run the world. We are the hegemon. We are the sole superpower. We are unchallenged. So that’s the idea. It’s it’s

Tucker:
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’s, it’s, it’s,

Jeffrey Sachs:
it’s not about Russia, it’s about the US. It’s, it’s about Britain before that I think is. It’s a little bit like that old game of Risk. I don’t know if you played yet as a kid, but you the idea was have your piece on every place in the world. You know that that was the game. And you read the American Strategist, whether it’s Big Bridge, Anski, although he’s a very moderate, or the neocons who have run US foreign policy.For the last 30 years, US 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 it’s quite a load for US American people. What they say is we are going to be the Constabulary. Constabulary duty holder would fancy word for saying will 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. In 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 worth 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, we can surround them and.The Russians said 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.The US,

I was around in those years, involved in in Russia and in Central Europe. the US was we don’t hear you. We don’t.We 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 we told Gorbachev that. We told Yeltsin we weren’t going to expand it all. Yeah, come on. The Soviet Union’s done. We could do what we want with the sole superpower. Clinton bought into that.That was Madeleine Albright’s line.NATO enlargement started and our most sophisticated.Diplomats who 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?He was outmaneuvered diplomatically by Richard Holbrooke and by Madeleine Albright and Clinton never thought through anything systematically in my opinion.

And so they decided OK, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, first round and then Brezinski. In the 1997 article in Foreign Affairs magazine, which is kind of the bellwether of yes, Foreign Policy wrote A Strategy for Eurasia where he laid out exactly the timeline.For this US expansion of power and he said late 1990s will take in Central Europe, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic. By the early 2000s we’ll take in the Baltic states. Now that’s getting close to Russia. By 2005 to 2010, we’ll invite.Ukraine to become part of NATO.

So this wasn’t some flippant thing. This was a long term plan and was based on a long-term geostrategy. Now the Russians are saying, are you kidding? We wanted peace. We, we ended the Cold War Two. You didn’t just defeat us. We said no more. We disbanded the Warsaw Pact, that 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 Gorbachev wanted, what Yeltsin 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 wanna be normal economy. We wanna be normal society, connected with you, connected with Europe, connected with Asia.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 gonna go.

So in the early 2000s.Putin comes in first.First business for Putin was good cooperation with Europe. Yeah. You go back to the early 2000s again. I know the people I watch closely. I was a participant in some of it. Putin was completely pro Europe, yes, the and, and pro US, by the way, you 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.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, Absolutely. We bombed a capital of Europe for 78 days.

Tucker:
What was looking back, what was the point of that?

Jeffrey Sachs:
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 Southeastern 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.I I 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 ideas 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, with the advanced positioning of our military everywhere in the world. So they wanted a big base in 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.They divided the country 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.

Tucker:
So that was 1999, to save the oppressed Muslim population.Excuse me, it wasn’t.And to save the oppressed Muslim college,

Jeffrey Sachs:
it was very, very much to save the military industrial complex, to have a nice. Location in southeastern Europe.

Tucker:
It killed all those people, wrecked the city.

Jeffrey Sachs:
you You know, it was a little bit sad, but we do lots of.Sad things and lots of destructive things. Lots of wars were the country of perpetual war. We don’t look back. We’re not even supposed to talk about this because 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 and was one of the stabilizers of the the global nuclear situation, which is absolutely dangerous and the US unilaterally started putting.Aegis missiles into first Poland and Romania, and the Russians are saying that, wait a minute, what do we know? You’re putting in this your 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, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia now.Starting filling in the Black Sea, Romania, Bulgaria, suddenly they are now N Atlantic countries. But it’s all part of this design, all spelled out, all quite explicit or 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.Gentlemen.You told us in 1998 a would never enlarge. That was the promise made to President Gorbachev, and it was the promise made to President Yeltsin. 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, as you know in 1000 archival site, so it’s easy to to verify all of this. James Baker, the third 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 Dentrix.Enhance Etrigan, the foreign minister of Germany. Same story. The Germans wanted reunification, Gorbachev 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 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 2100 kilometer border. This is absolutely part of the integrated economy of this region that don’t even think about 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 from our current CIA director, Bill Burns that he wrote a.Very eloquent, impassioned, articulate, clear.Secret, as usual, men.Uh, which we only got to see because WikiLeaks showed to the American people would maybe we would like to know once in awhile, but yeah, we’re never like what our government is doing, what they’re doing and how they’re putting us at nuclear risk and other things. Yeah, OK, This one did get out. It’s called me yet No means no.And what what Bill Burns very perceptively, articulately conveys to Condoleezza Rice and back to the White House in 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 umm. We think it would be great to have Chinese military bases on the Rio Grande, but we can’t see why the US would have any problem with that. Of course, we would go completely insane, but when 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 if what I’m told by European leaders and by long, detailed discussion.Bush.Junior says to them, no, no, no, it’s OK. Don’t, don’t, don’t worry. I hear you about Ukraine. And then he goes off for the Christmas holidays and comes back.Whether it’s Cheney, whether it’s Bush, whatever it is says yeah, NATO’s going to enlarge too crazy.And the Europeans are shocked. Missed. What are you doing?

Tucker:
You may have come to the obvious conclusion that the real debate is not between Republican and Democrat or socialist and capitalist. Right, left and the real battles between people who? 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 I created this network of 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 when only an iPhone is running? tuckercarlson.com/podcast. You will not regret it.

Mixed voices:
Bush did not make that decision.Bush did not make the decision, right? I mean, it’s if I’m hearing what I’m saying, yeah, no, Bush did make this OK, but no. What I’m saying is he had told the Europeans, I hear you. I’m not gonna do it, but it sounds like he was.Influenced by the people around him. Ohh. No, that could be, yeah.

Jeffrey Sachs:
I don’t know what it was, CIA or whether someone explained to him or whether someone said, George, Mr. President, this is a longstanding project that, you know, it’s not something for 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.we’re we’re doing it they said no no no no we’re not doing it and thenAnd then they had the NATO summit in Bucharest, and this was 2008.And the Europeans?A Chancellor, Merkel, I 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 OK. 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.Go 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 they’re 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 long standing. Palmerston Brezinski yes.If you reach this. This isn’t just haphazard. Ohh. Why don’t we take Georgia? This is a plan, OK? The Russians understand every single step of this.

So another thing goes awry.What goes awry? 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 Yanukovych, Yes, a president that says we’ll just be neutral.And that’s absolutely.The US is ohh what the hell is this, Ukraine? They don’t have any choice either so.Yanukovych becomes the enemy of the neocons, obviously,

So they start working, of course, the way that the US does. We gotta get rid of this guy. Maybe you will 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 an insurrection and then becomes a coup. And I know again.From first hand experience, the US was 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, get, how would we like it if the, if, if Chinese leaders came and said, you know, we, we were with you 100%.American senators standing up in Kiev saying to the demonstrators, we’re with you 100%.

Victoria Newland 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 Yanukovych 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 started in 2014. That was the outbreak of the war was a violent coup that overthrew the 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 her keep and then flew onward to Russia. That day, the US immediately, in a nanosecond, recognized the new government. None of this is a coup.

This is how the CIA does its regime change operations. 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 Sebastopol, has been there since 1783 and now Putin saying.Our NATO’s gonna 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.

Do not with this new post coup government, an outbreak breaks out in the eastern provinces, which are the ethnic Russian provinces in the Donbass, in the Donbass and Lugansk and Donetsk.End.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 wanna 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 and 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 agreement. The Minsk 2 agreement was backed by the UN Security Council and it said that we’ll make peace based on autonomy of the Donbass region. Now very interesting, the Russians.We’re not saying that’s ours. We want that. All the things that are claimed everyday 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 U.S. government attitude? U.S. government attitude was to say to the Ukrainians.Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. You keep your central state. We don’t wanna see Ukraine weakened at all. We just wanted 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.Anyway, which is, you know, par for the course. Ohh 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. We.They have so many NATO LED wars of choice in between. I didn’t even mention in Syria CIA attempt to overthrow Assad in Libya and so forth and we blow off the Minsk agreements.

Had actually Anglo Merkel explained it 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, 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 gonna do that anyway. That was at gunpoint, but 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 after a huge army 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.In 2021, Putin met with Biden.and then after the meeting he put on the table a draft russia US West 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 wouldn’t negotiate.I thought the core of it was stop the NATO enlargement.And I called the White House myself at that point and.I said.Don’t have a war over this. Who’d you talk to? I talked to Jake Sullivan and they said don’t, don’t have a war over this. We don’t need NATO enlargement for US security impact. It’s countered to US security.

US should not be right up against the Russian border. That’s how we trip ourselves into World War 3.No, Jeff, don’t worry no more. There’s not going to be a war. Don’t worry, we we’ve got a diplomatic approach, said Jake. This is a basis for diplomacy. Negotiate.Well.B. 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 wanna put Chinese military bases on the Rio Grande, the United States has no right to interfere.No interest in it, no interest in it and no bilateral. And this was the formal US response in January 2022.

So unprovoked? Not exactly. So can I 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?Suitcase go back.1212, I guess 22 years.

Tucker:
Putin told me, and I checked. I think it’s true that he and Clinton’s final days at.Asked Clinton if Russia could join NATO.Which seems almost by definition like a victory. You know, native exists as a bulwark against Russia. Russia wants to join the alliance they don’t want, right? Why would why would the US government have turned that offer down? And do you think that was that is real?

Jeffrey Sachs:
Russia and actually Europe. Wanted used to want before Europe was completely a kind of vassal province of the United States. Government wanted what they call collective security, which was we want security arrangements in which one country security doesn’t ruin the security of another country.And there were two paths to that, basically 3 paths. Let’s say. One path was what they called the OSCE, the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, really a good idea. It was its 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 workout a collective security arrangement.

Tucker:
I liked it and hit this is what Gorbachev was saying. We don’t want war with you. We don’t want conflict with you. We want collective security.

Jeffrey Sachs:
2nd 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.Gorbachev disbanded the Warsaw Pact. We should have disbanded, Maddox said. NATO was there to defend against a Soviet invasion. There’s not gonna 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, right? So I did it continue after Gorbachev and Yeltsin, 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’s, not even protecting us. This is hegemony. We need our pieces on the board. Natos are pieces on the board European.

Tucker:
Why would Germany allow foreign troops Garrison, Garrison on the soil for 80 years? I don’t understand why would European country allow that. Would you want foreign troops in our town?

Jeffrey Sachs:
Tucker, when, when, when 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. You just broken by war guilt as it masochism I mean.Honestly, it’s not masochism. It’s not war guilt. There is. There are basic mechanisms 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. In other words, the Germans are not.That they’re not free actors in this. That’s the point.

Tucker:
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?

Jeffrey Sachs:
It’s probably true, but you know you’re you’re. Question of why would the Germans want this?It’s the same question of after the US blew up the Nord Stream pipeline.Why wouldn’t the Germans have said before or after, umm, why did you do that? This is our economy you just blew up. But they don’t. And so there’s 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 are 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 be. 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 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.Just help. Ohh God, don’t tell me that you’re a leader of in Europe and we’re occupying their country with soldiers and guns. How could we take them seriously? There are 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 first point. It’s destroying Ukraine’s doing a lot of damage to to Europe. It’s wasting a hell of a lot of lives and money in the United States, which the neocons don’t count.Umm, and almost nobody stands up and talks about it. And your first question about being unprovoked? We even have a story about it.

But it’s the stories complete bull. It’s complete nonsense. It’s for people who.Don’t want or don’t remember, don’t want to remember anything before February 24th the 2022. 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.

Tucker:
Do you think that’s the number?

Jeffrey Sachs:
I think that’s probably the number, yeah, that’s the best number that I know.

Tucker:
I mean, we talked about this at 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 work going with U.S. tax dollars, how many of your beloved Ukrainians have been killed, they have no idea.

Jeffrey Sachs:
They no interest in knowing, and they don’t care at all. And sometimes they say they don’t care, Mitt Romney said. You know, it’s greatest bargain, no American lives. **** Blumenthal said the same thing basically, this is a great part and no American lives they

Tucker:
doesn’t that evil. I mean at some point it would certainly have a critical they’re telling us we’re doing this for Ukraine, for our friends in Ukraine, the standard bearers or democracy, but also don’t you have an obligation to kind of care about the people you kill

Jeffrey Sachs:
I.I think so. You think so? I think Americans think so. I don’t think that the security apparatus thinks so because the security state, you know, you gotta be tough to play that game of risk. You gotta know, is there going to be some collateral losses? Some millions of people have died in American wars of choice. But if you’re a big boy, you can’t let that deter you.so i think it’s pretty deeply in

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Google Voice Typed
Chris Williamson:
Who actually runs the government in your experience,

Tulsi Gabbard:
not who you think it is. It’s and and and and in many cases, especially recently. Uh, the, the troubling part about all this is it’s not even people who we vote for.When you look at.What happened when President Biden had that infamous debate with President Trump?It exposed the reality that many of us have known for a long time, which is that President Biden has not been the guy calling the shots. He has not been the guy making the decisions. Nor has it been Kamala Harris, for that matter. Nor will it be if she is elected president.

It is this cobal of.You know, the Democrat elite, the the woke warmongers made-up of the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and, you know, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan and, you know, people who.Are in the military industrial complex. We grew profit from us being in a constant state of war. It is those in the administrative state and national security state who derive more authorities and ability to take away our liberty when we are in a heightened state of crisis. More, it is the the their friends and billionaires and people in media who all derive their power from being able to have a figurehead that essentially they can control.

And the most troubling part about there’s so many things wrong with this, of course, but really?At the most fundamental level, you look at.You know our country is the oldest democracy in the world. But Reality of a truly functioning and thriving democracy that has brought to life the vision that our founders have for us, that we really have a government of, by and for the people, and that we have the ability and responsibility for that matter.To ensure that the government we have only exists with the consent of the governed.That becomes very hard to do to hold people accountable when the person that you voted for is is certainly not the one making the decisions.

Chris Williamson:
How long has that been the case? Was it ever the case that the president ran the country? When was the inflection point?

Tulsi Gabbard:
I don’t, I don’t know that there is one specific. I mean, there, you know, personalities come in and shift here and there. I would say the answer to that has probably changed, but in the election that we are facing here very shortly in the United States.Um.It’s our opportunity to hit the reset button and you know, however people feel about the choices and the options that we have and they’ve changed a little bit recently, but really it’s only the phases that have changed, the stakes have not changed and and the choices between.The Democrat elite, and I’ve been saying this for months, like, hey, guys, don’t because it’s like, ohh, is Biden gonna stay or is he gonna go? And who’s he they gonna replace him as a Gavin as it can all of these different theories.They make for good chatter, I guess, on cable news.

But I’ve been telling people all along, don’t be distracted. You know, you take one horse out, you put another horse in, you’ve got the same people who are running the show and. And it is. It is between the Democrat elite.Will be Kamala Harris on the ballot and and?Those calling the shots behind the scenes, continuing to remain in power versus Donald Trump, who has a record of, I mean, the reason why they’re doing all they can to destroy him is because he won’t bend the knee.To this Washington establishment, which is, which is made-up of people in both political parties. By the way,

Chris Williamson:
what makes you think that a Trump presidency would be anymore inoculated against this nefarious behind the scenes control than the one that we have at the moment? Surely you’re just if the people out front don’t make any difference because it’s people behind the scenes that are changing.Then what makes Trump any better than what we’ve got at the moment?

Tulsi Gabbard:
It’s not that anyone who’s put out front doesn’t make a difference. It is specific to in this, in this world that we’re living in now, specific to.President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and, and the reason why they’ve been doing all they can to try to keep Trump off the ballot in over 32 states, all of the court cases and lawsuits and everything that the media is thrown out of. The reason why they’re doing that is because you may agree or disagree with his decisions or.Policies are the way that he talks about things.But he is.He is not beholden to those same establishment interests that so many of these establishment politicians are.

And so, you know, he’s, he’s not going in and saying, ohh, gosh, well, I gotta do what this person says. I gotta do what that person says. I think oftentimes even his own staff doesn’t know what decision he’s going to make or what position he’ll, he’ll put forward. And and that is, to me, that’s the clear choice. You have a choice between those who believe that, that government.It was better for us than we do. That their power is more important than our freedom, That their power in many cases derives from being in a constant state of war that undermines our national security versus Trump, who has the ability to and frankly the backbone to say yeah.No, I’m not gonna go down that road or we’re going to take a different path or we shouldn’t be an unnecessary, counterproductive regime change wars. We should focus on investing in our country and try to work towards a future of of peace and freedom and prosperity.

Chris Williamson:
If that’s correct, if it is the case that this sort of limp, flaccid Democratic Party has permitted people behind the scenes to come and basically run, puppeteer people that are out front, that’s happened very quickly because it was not that long ago that we had the very guide. You’re saying we’ll sanitize.This thing in office, so is it going to then take a long time for that to be cleaned up and also.How do we know that some of this didn’t already exist?

Tulsi Gabbard:
It did already exist,

Chris Williamson:
OK.

Tulsi Gabbard:
It did already exist because the party elite itself has been very powerful for a long time, so that that hasn’t come around very quickly. Umm.And you know, I think I think one of the the.The problems when President Trump was elected last time was and, and he’s talked about this himself. He came in and you know, he didn’t he never worked in Washington before and he had a bunch ended up with a bunch of people around him who were a part of this establishment, this Washington establishment.

Chris Williamson:
Do you think he didn’t really have?Much of A plan. Do you think it was a surprise to him that he got in?

Tulsi Gabbard:
In some ways it I I don’t know for sure, but it certainly seems that way yeah. And. And, you know I mean there and there were. Or and and they come is interesting because the conversations that I’m hearing coming from even establishment Republicans right now are very similar to the ones that I heard in 2016 when Trump was elected, which was OK, like.We gotta we gotta like balance the scales in their words by surrounding Trump with people who hold completely opposing views than he does to try to mitigate what they view as the the quote UN quote threat that he poses to not the country.

Chris Williamson:
Who is it that’s saying that we need to surround?

Tulsi Gabbard:
Ohh I mean there’s it. It’s basically like the neo con warmongers even within the Republican Party. So.

Chris Williamson:
What, what do they see as the position he holds that they’re trying to count about

Tulsi Gabbard:
that He and and he’s been pretty vocal about this. Like he’s like, no, we’re not gonna wage more stupid wars. And we’re going to put America first in his words. And we will achieve that through by piece, through strength.

Chris Williamson:
Who wants war and why?

Tulsi Gabbard:
They would be shocked by how many people do, and they won’t say I want war.Or I like to see more people dead. Of course you know they won’t use those words. But there are are.The politicians who are beholden to the big defense contractors who are making billions and trillions of dollars.And they are their political donors and their supporters and their friends and and ultimately it’s those politicians whose knee jerk reaction to any challenge or situation in the world instead of choosing diplomacy and seeing war as the last resort.Once you pick sauce at all other means understanding how costly it is both in in lives.And in taxpayer dollars, it’s just, hey, we gotta go and punish this bad guy, topple this regime, you know, wage this modern, modern day siege through economic sanctions and warfare, all of the tools that they have at their disposal.Without thinking through what the costs and consequences of those actions and policies are.

Chris Williamson:
Presumably on the ground and also economically, Domestically too.

Tulsi Gabbard:
Both.Umm.It seems that these people and it’s by the way, it’s not reflective of I think especially over these last 20 plus years.The. The vast majority of Americans, regardless of political party, are sick and tired of this. So their view is not reflective. They’re not just like, oh, well, this is what the the quote UN quote people want. It is ultimately it goes back to this kind of cabal of power that they’re trying to hold on to.

Chris Williamson:
Do you think that those people get I struggle?To find or meet people that are genuinely evil. There’s people that have got goals and then they’re kind of.Risky and frivolous on route toward getting those goals. You think oh this is just collateral damage? Who really cares, I’m getting my backhander from Raytheon or whoever the ****. But.

It seemed surprising to me that someone would think I want to go to war. So do you think that these people that are pushing for it genuinely believe that it’s in the best interest of the country? Have they been able to gaslight themselves this Stockholm syndrome from whoever is sort of continuing to fund them?Or is it something a little bit more malicious that they actually sort of trying to land grab or or this sort of odd power game that imagine, I imagine it feels powerful for you to be America and for you to have a foothold here and have a foothold there. If you got any idea what kind of motivates these people?

Tulsi Gabbard:
I think they tell themselves whatever they need to tell themselves to sleep at night. But as someone who’s been, you know, I still serve in the Army today. I’ve been deployed to war zones in different parts of the world.Uh, seeing and experiencing first hand the the harsh ugliness and realities of war and the costs.Um.The people who are so quick to go to war and see that as the first response rather than the last.Number one, they, they don’t have any excuse. I, I, I don’t believe everybody should know it’s mandatory to serve them. I’m not, I, I, I don’t advocate for that, but.You you. If you are in a position to make these decisions about war and peace, you need to be very responsible and do your due diligence to actually truly understand what the consequences of those decisions will be. Might be worth a quick visit to the front lines. Maybe they do those all the time for photo OPS.

II.Saw this while I, while I was deployed and I’ve, I’ve seen a bunch even when I was in Congress for eight years. Or, you know, we’ll go and they’ll do like we’ll stop here in this war zone for 12 hours and hop off the, the private plane and take some quick photos and you know, wear your Flack vest and the, and the helmet, you know, for the picture, but it’s, you know.It visually impressive, but like, realistically unimpressive. Yeah. I mean, it looks really goofy to me. But, you know, for them, they tell us the good to take apart, too. I’ve heard that, like, I’ve been to Iraq 27 times.

It’s like, OK. Like air conditioned yet? And yet and yet. Even those who are saying this are some of the very same people who are saying like we should just go bomb this country to smithereens.Like, OK, like there’s maybe a really problem, a real big problem that we’re dealing with here.But is that really, is that really the right answer? Is that the best answer? What what happens as the second and third and 4th order of effects after we do what you’re proposing? What will the costs and consequences be again in human lives and the economy and then all of these other ramifications that are responsible leader should be considering?Before you go and advocate for such a serious thing.

Chris Williamson:
So it seems like you’ve got Democratic Party not happy with Trump generally some factions of the Republican Party not happy with Trump. So it seems like you know,

Tulsi Gabbard:
and Nikki Haley, you know, just to put a name to Nikki Haley is. Is one of kind of the the figureheads of that faction within the Republican Party. Hmm. So Nikki Haley is driving forward this neo con.

Tulsi Gabbard:
Yeah. Very much so. Warmongering,

Chris Williamson:
Yeah.How come she’s still there?

Tulsi Gabbard:
because there are people with a lot of money Uh.Who?Make money.From that position or supporting that position.And they see again, they, I, I don’t know what they tell themselves to be able to sleep at night and be comfortable with what they’re doing, but.Umm.They they have convinced themselves that this is the way things should be. That’s what makes me think that it is.Self convention as opposed our self conviction, as opposed to leading this sort of double life where you know that it’s wrong and then you go out front because the level of certainty that you need to be able to step out in front of the camera. We should do this, we need to do that. You go home and you drink yourself into a hole because there would be.

Chris Williamson:
But for me, the, you know, just straight up.Multiple personality disorder that I’d have to go through would break my brain in half.

Tulsi Gabbard:
I think that you’re a good person.

Chris Williamson:
And well, other people would would disagree,

Tulsi Gabbard:
but yeah, I, I know you mean like it’s just, but it’s like, OK, well, I, I get what you’re, I get what you’re what you’re driving at and. And, and you know, like, OK, well, how do you define someone who was evil or driven by evil intent? I would argue that that even if there’s not like some Jekyll and Hyde situation going on.Uh, I would define that evil intent as someone who cares more about their position, their political position or their power or their influence. And, and, and it definitely in certain cases. And This is why Kamala Harris would be so dangerous as president, commander-in-chief, because I’ve no doubt in my mind.She would immediately feel the need to exert strength and to assert her position and prove that she is a truly strong and powerful commander in chief of the United States of America’s military.

And what better way to do that? What more effective way to do that than to actually use our military and go out and, and, you know, commit an act of, of war? So that sort of need to prove yourself makes you quite easy to manipulate. In some ways. It makes you fragile, yes, especially when you have so many interests. And this is.Not new. This is, you know, you heard Eisenhower warned about the military industrial complex and they’re. Our influence and their cozy relationship with members of Congress.

You go back to President John F Kennedy and his brother Bobby Kennedy, who were battling against, even for sarge, generals and civilians who are beating the war drums and go to war, go to war, go to war. You know President Kennedy’s compelling speech.At American University about peace and the hard work that it takes towards peace was the pushback against that. And that that is not that doesn’t only exist today. It’s far more, far more powerful today than even it was back then.

Google Voice Typed
@MrWinMarshall
Do you not think America should have supported Ukraine in?

Mike Benz
Umm.It’s a good question.Umm.It’s it’s strange for you know, if, if I’m hesitating, it’s because.To answer that question, there are so many layers that come before it that I haven’t even really honestly had to think about where I actually fall on the underlying issue because the process is so corrupted, which is to say that anybody who is against it is targeted by the state it’s effectively.We something called FISA, which has been joked by one of our senators as being, you know, the.Federal investigators stalking Americans. It’s basically a way that we live through Russia. Gate this thing where anybody who supported a day taunt with Russia.Um, was, you know, was effectively deemed to be a Putin puppet. And then you could watch a federal investigation, you could bring in indictments and domestic spy craft on, you know, Trump’s whole campaign because of his policy of neutrality with, with Russia effectively and or his in his NATO skepticism. They were.Able to argue, you know, that he was effectively a Russian puppet so they spied on his campaign.

@MrWinMarshall
These five things happening today in Britain with Nigel Farage is a speech that’s emerged from.Emerged from that he made after the Maidan coup.Uh, back in 2014, saying that we, there will be a war with this is provocative. There will be a war and all, all the mainstream media is coming out after him and saying he’s a Putin apologist and he’s even outright condemned Putin.Very much anti Putin, but because of him making this prediction, he’s been called the Putin apologist. I think it’s a continuation of

Mike Benz
it’s it’s the same. Thing and so I think the way I would answer the question is.If you took the gun off of my head, where, where, where the state, the regime, the NGO’s, the cut outs, the media, the, the lawyers, the federal investigators all said, hey, you know what? If you don’t, you know, if you have your own opinion on the Ukraine war, I’ll put the gun down.Then maybe I’d think about it, say, OK, well maybe, maybe we can now talk about whether or not it actually redounds to US interests to try to secure these $12.4 trillion in in the natural resource. Whether it redounds to our benefit to have this elaborate CIA State Department operation to kill Gazprom and pry all the profits off with this endogenous.You know Ukraine.Petro industry and lifeline by all these, you know, U.S. oil and gas companies, British companies like Shell maybe.But the answer is a hard no while they still have a gun to my head. Because you can’t.you can’t do that

@MrWinMarshall
OK OK, so let’s say there’s no gun to your head.Like let’s say you were.Running the country. You were president when that happened. What would your decision have been to do?

Mike Benz
Feel like that is a.Irresponsible.For in my position, that feels like a hypothetical that is kind of irresponsible for me to indulge in because.The the there is got to my head.

@MrWinMarshall
OK. And so the point of the question is it’s.Easy to criticize and criticize and criticize, but practically speaking.There has to be like, what would have been the better thing to do there, there, there has to be some sort of alternative, right?

Mike Benz
Well, if there’s not so.The censorship industry runs through through the story in a huge way. The censorship industry grew out of Ukraine that the whole.Infrastructure of censorship that Americans live under.And inherited during the 2016 election. Presidential election cycle came from the 2014 US UK overthrow of the Ukrainian democratically elected government when when we orchestrated that coup when the head of the US embassy was personally handing out cookies and water bottles.To the January 6th style protesters surrounding the parliament building pumping them full of money. When our own senators like John McCain were there on the ground calling for a transition of the government.

When we overthrew that government and then did not expect the blowback, did not expect the counter coup when the entire eastern side.Of of Ukraine broke away and declared himself a breakaway state.In 2014 and when Crimea voted in its referendum to formally join the Russian Federation, this set off a total crisis across NATO and it and called for a fundamental reimagining of how NATO understood warfare. This gave rise to something which I’ve talked a lot about, you know, first was called the Trump Doctrine and it was called hybrid warfare, and now it’s sort of.Shark power.

But it was essentially this idea that NATO could no longer just be a military alliance, had to expand his mandate. And this is a direct quote from Jen Stellenberg, from tanks to tweets. The reason that we lost in Ukraine was because we lost the information war. We’ve lost. We lost to Russian propaganda infecting the minds of Ukrainians.And it was Russian propaganda was infecting the minds of Germans because at the time the German Afd party was on the rise.

They were running on restoring gas relations with Russia because they were, you know, mostly a sort.Working class, sort of like Trump. Trumpism they were running on sort of.You know, because the sanctions that the US State Department and UK Foreign Office effectively imposed on all these different other European countries after Crimea to sanction Russian gas, which was the cheapest gas.

The alternative was LNG, liquefied natural gas harvested in Houston liquefy ship 5000 miles across the Atlantic.You know delique fied and ports and Portugal or and through the Baltic straight into Poland. You know deliquency transported that that’s.Orders of magnitude more expensive than Russia, which means the industry suffer, which means the middle class suffers the the the welfare safety net suffers.

So ASD was running on restoring gas relations with Russia with Russia Marine Le Pen was was running on the same in from from.From France, so is the box party in Spain and so NATO is saying Oh my God these right wing populist parties are all, you know, running on this.Economic nationalist, what’s best for us don’t care what the US or UK says about, you know, being a good global citizen and sanctioning Russia. We wanna do what’s economically best for our own middle class citizens. And so our intelligence state, the the trans military alliance of NATO at that point in 2014 declared this hybrid warfare.Doctor and said war is actually not about tanks anymore, it’s about tweets. It’s about control over social media because we lost to Russia without Russia firing a bullet.

Crimea voted itself to join the Russian Federation. So.That you can win a you know, it’s the same thing as if they enrolled into Crimea with tanks and submarines. They now control it because they elected, you know, because of the referendum of the people or where they getting their information, they’re getting it through online news sites, they’re getting it through RT and Sputnik and through social media and through Telegram and so.It’s so all war is now more about who’s got the best.You know missiles and who’s got the best anti aircraft.

They were talking in 2017 in your in in NATO periodicals that the age of conventional warfare was ended forever. Frankly, I think this move into control over information actually left them under prepared for what happened in 2022 because they were talking like war will never happen again because at the time NATO had never had to fire her.Support ever ever since 1949 it had only been offense in 1995 with the Islamia 1999 Libya 2011/2013. And so.It from 2014, 2016, because of what happened in Ukraine, NATO began to establish these censorship cells from all stretching all the way from Germany to Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia,

these, they call them centers of excellence for strategic communications. They had all these fancy names, but they were censorship coordinating.Where they work with YouTube, they work with Facebook, they work with Twitter, they brought them all in they fill these social media companies up to the brim with CIA intermediaries, with British intelligence intermediaries and they developed this censorship technology these these these NLP, these AI censorship techniques to be able to scan the Internet at scale and look at what.You know, people were saying on the inner part of the trending narratives, and it was then when Brexit happened in June 2016 and the Trump election happened in November 2016, that this censorship architecture coming out of their loss of Ukraine was grafted onto U.S. citizens.

And you know that history is unforgivable.I cannot entertain while the gun is still to my head and to all of my friends heads and all my colleagues heads and half of Congress’s heads and the end of the, you know, the current winning in the polls presidential election.The cancer has spread in our body because they’ve held that gun to our heads for so long. They have effectively ended the 1st amendment in my country using using this Ukraine excuse.

They the right now the Biden administration is arguing to our Supreme Court that the 1st Amendment is effectively outdated, needs to be wholesale reimagined.Because just as the Second Amendment did not envision assault rifles, democracy did not envision in our First Amendment social media, the power of everyone to be our own publisher undermines US National Security and prohibits the federal government coordination

@MrWinMarshall
This month in Missouri,

Mike Benz
yes, yes, they are making this argument that that the.The crisis of democracy from, you know, from Ukraine into COVID into into into presidential elections now requires government control over the information ecosystem, or at least.Government influence on it in order to quarterback what the what the independent media does. So it’s not independent. The quarterback with the civil society institutions are doing the quarterback with the technology companies are doing well guess what you call that and you know.Five years ago we called that North Korea.

That is government control of the information ecosystem. This is the same thing our State Department passed sanctions on North Korea for doing in 2017, past sanctions on Iran for doing. We don’t recognize elections as being free and fair unless there is a free and open independent media ecosystem. That is one of our seven measures for determining.Whether we would we formally acknowledge the results of an election Now, of course, this is a cynical because.That’s when a government, you know, does not allow our CIA or State Department US aid or ND backed groups to be able to spread their propaganda.

And I don’t even mean that majoritively. I mean, that’s the utility of this thing is that we built free speech as an instrument of statecraft in order to.Bolster support for political movements. But what I’m driving at here is.I will not even entertain because my, my answer is a hard no. I do not support the the US agenda on, on Ukraine and infinite monopoly money, you know, unaccountable or even with a, with a, with a fair amount on it. While our entire censorship industrial complex, while the entire finances of the censorship industry is built on the.back of it. You can ask me that question again once that whole system is dismantled.

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