Pod Insights The Tucker Carlson Show Jeffrey Sachs: Tulsi Gabbard’s Confirmation, and the Dangerous Global Chess Game Trump Is Winning About this episode Can Donald Trump actually end the Ukraine war? Jeffrey Sachs thinks he can.
(00:00) Jeffrey Sachs’ Story on How He Met Viktor Orban
(02:55) Bill Clinton’s Shadowy Deep State Project
(11:05) The Three Most Important Things Donald Trump Has Done So Far
(14:55) Why Can’t We Have Rational Conversations Anymore?
(23:55) The Global Chess Game of American Dominance
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:32 Tucker Carlson? Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce someone who I consider one of the smartest people I know and whose understanding of the world is matched only by his ability to synthesize huge themes and illustrate them with precise detail. Someone who's traveled the world for 40 years, a man who not only writes about leaders of the world, but knows them personally, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
1:03 Speaker 02 Thanks.
1:04 Tucker Carlson? Thank you.
1:08 Tucker Carlson? Thank you very much, Jeff.
1:10 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:11 Tucker Carlson? So how long, you were telling me backstage, I didn't realize this. For those who enjoyed Prime Minister Orban, I'm one of them. Tell us when you first met the Prime Minister.
1:22 Speaker 02 We met 46 years ago, 36 years ago, sorry, 36 years ago, 1989.
1:29 Tucker Carlson? He was just getting out of jail at that point?
1:31 Speaker 02 No, yeah, they were just opening up and this young guy was starting a political party. And he gave me a call and we sat in my backyard in Boston for a few hours. And I thought, okay, this guy's going to be Prime Minister for most of the next 36 years. It's very impressive then and very impressive now.
1:52 Tucker Carlson? So you said that you saw in him, and it's not just about him, but it's about what are the markers of enduring leadership? What makes this politician impressive while most of them are not impressive? What did you see in him? What do you see in leaders like him who have been successful?
2:09 Speaker 02 This was 1989.
2:13 Speaker 02 It was even before the Berlin Wall fell, but Hungary had cut the barbed wire. So people were, that was the beginning of the end in 1989 of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. And this young guy said, "I'm gonna make a political party and I'm gonna be a leader and I'm gonna make a new Hungary." And what he showed was vision, that, "Look, we're a great country. We've been held back for the last 45 years. I'm gonna help lead the way." And it was Fidesz, Young Democrats, I think was the translation of it. And he just had the idea, "We're gonna move forward." He was a kid. And we were all kids then.
2:58 Speaker 02 And you could see that there was energy, vision, foresight, and it proved right.
3:06 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, and a toughness. So you heard his analysis, I think, of where we are with the war in Ukraine, election of Trump, on the basis, in part of, you know, his promise to try to end this if he can. You saw the new Secretary of Defense say, "No, we're not gonna support Ukraine's entry into NATO." Where are we now?
3:27 Speaker 02 You know, yesterday was the most important day for peace in maybe decades, actually. This war in Ukraine resulted from a very bad idea of the United States, taken in 1994. It's a project. The project was a project to expand NATO forever, anywhere. Just keep moving east. Keep moving not only to the first wave, which was the prime minister's country, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, but then move eastward, closer to the former Soviet Union,
4:12 Speaker 02 into the former Soviet Union, surround Russia in the Black Sea region, go all the way to a little country in the South Caucasus, Georgia.
4:24 Speaker 02 It was mind-boggling. Clinton signed on to that in 1994. It became what we call the "deep state project", meaning it didn't really matter who the president was. Each president would come and basically would be informed. NATO's moving eastward, you're a part of that process. So Clinton started it in 1994. And as Prime Minister Orban said, he mentioned briefly, in 1990, on February 9, 1990, in unequivocal, clear-as-can-be terms, the United States had said to President Mikhail Gorbachev, "NATO will not move one inch eastward."
5:09 Speaker 02 And if you have any doubt about it, all the documents are now online, available. You can scrutinize everything. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the German Foreign Minister, said the same thing, same day. He's on tape, actually, explaining, "No, no, I don't just mean within Eastern Germany, I mean anywhere to the east." Clinton, being Clinton, and the US deep state, being the US deep state, started this project in 1994. They already had the idea, by the way, in 1991, '92, as soon as the Soviet Union ended. "Aha, now we move. Now we move eastward. Now we control everything.
5:52 Speaker 02 Now we are the sole superpower." So this has gone on for 30 years. And each president got into it. Under George Bush Jr., seven more countries were added: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, in 2004. Then in 2007, President Putin said, at the summit that's taking place right now, the Munich Security Summit, said, "Stop. You told us no expansion, not an eastward expansion, even an inch, you said. You've now done 10 countries."
6:37 Speaker 02 ¡Detente! Perfectamente razonable, ¡detente! No creo que nuestro presidente Donald Trump quiera mucho ver a China y Rusia construyendo sus bases militares desde América Central. Sachs, así es como los rusos lo vieron. ¿Por qué vienes a nuestra frontera cuando nos dijiste que no ibas a moverte? Y había otra cosa que era muy importante en esto, que es probablemente la cosa más decisiva y casi no se reconoce. En 2002, Estados Unidos hizo algo realmente, realmente, realmente destabilizante. Y eso es que deshizo unilateralmente el Tratado de Misiles Anti Balísticos.
7:23 Speaker 02 Esa fue una estrategia central para detener una guerra nuclear entre las dos superpoderes. Porque lo que ABM había hecho durante 30 años era decir: "Cada uno de nosotros tiene detención". Si nos atacan, podemos atacar. "Vamos a limitar nuestros misiles anti balísticos para que ambas partes mantengan detención". En 2002, Estados Unidos, unilateralmente, sin provocación, salió de ABM y dijo: "No, no, no lo vamos a hacer más. Vamos a poner sistemas de misiles anti balísticos en los territorios fronterizos de Rusia".
8:08 Speaker 02 Los rusos dijeron: "¿Estás bromeando?". Estados Unidos dijo: "¿Cuál es tu problema? Hacemos lo que queremos". Así que en 2007, Putin dijo: "¡Detente ya!" En 2008, George Bush Jr. dobló la mano, como lo hacen los estadounidenses típicamente, y dijo: "OK, ahora nos estamos moviendo a Ucrania y a Georgia". Eso fue por lo que ocurrió esta guerra. Pero Ucrania tenía una más de vida. Y eso fue que electaron un presidente en 2010 que no quería ser parte de la OTAN. Y el público no quería ser parte de la OTAN. ¿Por qué? Porque sabían que esto era muy peligroso.
8:51 Speaker 02 ¿Por qué entrar en esta situación provocadora? Su nombre era Viktor Yanukovych. Americans don't like neutrality, but Yanukovych was trying to be neutral between the two sides. And the US played a rather unfortunate role on February 22, 2014, in a violent overthrow of this person. And that's when the war started. And it's been now 10 years, and no president has told the truth until yesterday, by the way. Yesterday is a historic day.
9:30 Speaker 02 Because a call took place between President Putin and President Trump. It was the first call. We don't know if there had been a short call beforehand between the two of them, but there was no call by Biden and Putin. With war going on for three years, no call. And now there was a call. And the readout from the American side was excellent. What President Trump said in the call was, "We respect Russia. We hear Russia's concerns. We fought on the same side in World War II." Nice point, by the way. True.
10:15 Speaker 02 Russia lost, Soviet Union, lost 27 million people in World War II and was an ally of the United States. A fact that wasn't mentioned for years and years and years by President Biden. And then the Defense Secretary, Hegseth, the new Defense Secretary, said yesterday, "The truth, for the first time, that Ukraine is not going to join NATO." This is the basis for peace. This is absolutely the basis for peace. And they couldn't tell the truth for three decades. They could not admit what any of us knew,
10:58 Speaker 02 because I've been around this region for 36 years in detail. I sat with Boris Yeltsin, I sat with Mikhail Gorbachev. But the Americans would not tell the truth publicly until yesterday. That this was so provocative, it was a game. They thought they'd win the game. I don't know how many people here play or played in their childhood the game of Risk. The game of Risk was a big game for me. You wanted your piece on every part of the world map. That was the game. When you took over the whole world, world hegemony we now call it, you won.
11:41 Speaker 02 They're playing that game until this administration. So the two most important, three important things have happened in my view in this administration so far. First, our new Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the fundamental truth. We are in a multipolar world. First time the sentence was uttered, he told the truth. What does it mean? The American mindset for 30 years was, "We run the show." Marco Rubio said, "Well, we don't run the show. We live with other powerful countries." Great start. Second and third were the two events yesterday. So I'm feeling about peace
12:27 Speaker 02 that this is really something that happened yesterday. If they follow through, we know what Washington is like. There's every crazy idea swarming still. A project of 30 years doesn't go down necessarily in one phone call or one statement by the Secretary of Defense. But it's pretty important that it was said so publicly and so visibly. And of course, Europe is in a tizzy because Europe signed on to the U.S. project. All these politicians in Europe are there where they are because they were part of the U.S. project.
13:12 Speaker 02 And now the U.S. is reversing its project. And you didn't tell us, and you didn't... What are we supposed to do? We're way out there. And so they're completely befuddled. And I have to say, I told them personally, many of these leaders, and I mean personally, one by one, for years, you are going to get trapped this way because this project doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. It's a game for the Americans, but it's life and death for the Russians. So it cannot be won. By the American side, it's impossible. And I tried to tell them, and nobody in Europe either had the clarity or the guts to see it,
13:56 Speaker 02 except the person that preceded me in this seat, Prime Minister Orban, because he was completely clear about this from the first day. Now others are starting, but even till today, the Europeans can't get it because they're so deeply invested in something that makes no sense. They should have said, Russia's big, it lives near us, let's cooperate. That's how you do it.
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16:14 Tucker Carlson? So most people don't wake up in the morning and decide to feel horrible, exhausted, foggy, disconnected from themselves. But it does happen and it happens slowly. You're working hard, you're showing up and then your energy disappears by midday. Your focus is dull, your weight won't move. A lot of people are told, "That's just getting old." That's what it is, but that's not actually true. For many men and women, these are not personal failures. They are signals tied to your metabolism, your hormones, and nutrient imbalances that go undetected for years. You don't even know you're deficient. And that's why we're happy to partner with Joy and Blokes, a company that was built for people who are all done guessing and ready to figure out what exactly is going on. And that starts with comprehensive lab work
16:57 Tucker Carlson? and a one-on-one consultation with a licensed clinician. An actual human being explains what's happening inside you and builds a personalized plan, which includes hormone optimization, peptide therapy, targeted supplements. So don't settle. Go to joyandblokes.com/tucker. Use the code TUCKER for 50% off your lab work and 20% off all supplements. That's joyandblokes.com/tucker. Use the code TUCKER. 50% off labs, 20% off supplements. Joy and Blokes. Get your edge back. I think one of the reasons we wound up in this position, we meaning the United States, but also Europe, is there's a habit of speech which reflects a habit of mind, which is an unwillingness to engage with ideas
17:39 Tucker Carlson? and instead resort immediately to attacking the other person on the basis of motive. And you saw this with Orban, you're a Russian stooge or whatever, and it was especially hilarious as he explained. No, he's the opposite of a Russian stooge, of course, lifelong. His country was occupied by the Russians. But you do see it also in the United States and it makes it kind of impossible to have a rational conversation about it. And I know you've been the butt of this too, not whining about it, but it's like...
18:06 Tucker Carlson? Is there even a culture in our foreign policy establishment of having rational conversations? The point where we can solve problems like this?
18:14 Speaker 02 You know, we've talked about, I think, an uncle of yours, who's one of my favorite politicians of American history, J. William Fulbright. And he wrote a book in the 1960s called "The Arrogance of Power." And I was a kid then, and I read that book like it was the coolest thing imaginable. This was the chairman of the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee saying, "We're too arrogant to think clearly." That was amazing. He was an amazing person. Now, I think that's the fundamental problem. I'm not sure we're properly over it,
18:55 Speaker 02 but I have to say that in 1990, 91, we had the chance for global peace, really for global peace. That doomsday clock of the atomic scientists, which I like to refer to so much, which measures how close or far are we from nuclear war, was the farthest away it was ever in its history because the Cold War had ended. So I was there as a young economist who actually knew something about economic stabilization. And I made proposals. And interestingly, just as a footnote,
19:40 Speaker 02 I advised the Polish government in 1989. I just, long story, but suddenly, as a kid, I happened to be there and I helped write their plan. And I, everything I recommended for Poland was immediately accepted by the White House. It's a very odd thing. In fact, I went one day. I had an idea of mobilizing some finance to help Poland stabilize. And I called the Polish Finance Minister, said, "Do you mind if I try to raise a billion dollars for you today?" Which was a lot of money in those days. And he said, "If you raise a billion dollars, that would be great." So I called Bob Dole, our Senate Majority Leader,
20:25 Speaker 02 whom I knew because of the Poland work that I was doing. And he invited me immediately into his office. And he said, "Come back in an hour." So I came back in an hour. This was September 1989. And who was sitting there? General Brent Scowcroft. Okay, he was the general who was our national security advisor. I was a kid. So it was a little bit interesting moment. And he, Senator Dole, said to me, "Explain to General Scowcroft your idea." So I handed him the paper. "This is how you do financial stabilization, and here's how you stabilize the currency." And Scowcroft looked at it and said, "Well, will this work?"
21:09 Speaker 02 And I said, "General, this will work." And Dole led me out of the office and said, "Call me back later in the day." So at 5:00 PM, I called. And Dole said, "The White House has called. You have, tell your friends you have the 1 billion." So I raised a billion dollars that day. It was good. No, no, no. It had nothing to do with me. Because it was the right idea. The Polish zloty stabilized. I did a good, I did a good thing. I was a technically equipped, sophisticated manager of a financial stabilization, or not manager, but advisor on the financial stabilization. Okay.
21:53 Speaker 02 Then, in 1991, I recommended the same thing for Gorbachev and for this creaking, collapsing Soviet Union. Gorbachev wanted to have elections in all of the republics, and he wanted to democratize and stabilize. So, okay, I know something about that, Mr. President. And so we met in the Harvard Kennedy School. And there were... One, two, three, four, five of us, a little team. One of them was the chief economic adviser of Gorbachev, Grigor Ivelinsky.
22:38 Speaker 02 One was the dean of the Kennedy School. One became a very senior diplomat, Bob Blackwell, that I deal with. One was a very senior economist at MIT, Stanley Fisher. We wrote a plan for how the Soviet Union could stabilize. And I did the chapter on the financing, basically the same thing that I had said for Poland. Okay. It was completely rejected within about 12 hours in Washington. Okay.
23:08 Speaker 02 I hated this for the next 30 years, I have to tell you, because we just could not take yes for an answer. Couple of months ago, someone sent me from the archives, the first time that I'd ever seen it, the National Security Council minutes rejecting the proposal. Fascinating to read, because that's your life before your eyes, watching this. There was a guy named Dick Darman, who was a former colleague of mine. The technical term, I don't, I don't think I can say it, a mixed company, actually. So I, I won't say what I would say about him.
23:48 Tucker Carlson? But it's an unpleasant English word.
23:50 Speaker 02 It's really nasty. Too nasty for polite company. He says in this thing, "We should do the minimum necessary so that there's not a collapse, but nothing more." And he quotes Machiavelli, and, you know, "We're not interested, and we're not going to do this." And it's, it's really watching stupid people taking important stupid decisions. Fools. By the way, they never called to say, "Can we discuss stabilization?" This guy knew nothing. They don't understand anything, they don't care. So what were they doing?
24:35 Speaker 02 They actually reached a conclusion at the end of the meeting. "We're going to do the minimum possible." I mean, minimum, minimum. "It's not our business to help, we're not going to do any of that." That's arrogance of power. We don't have to do anything. Why? We're the United States. We don't have to do anything. They didn't even... Look, the stakes for the world were very high. You could have a 30-minute phone call to understand financial stabilization. You could say, "In history, when countries are destabilized this way, here's how stability has worked." That was my specialty.
25:19 Speaker 02 That's what I knew and taught at Harvard and knew a lot about. But they're so arrogant that it's not even to discuss for a half an hour any of this. And they didn't, and they took a terrible decision. And by the way, my point is not that that led on to this and this and this. No. They took terrible decisions for the next 35 years. This could have been stopped at any moment. Not one thing led to the next thing. No. One stupid decision, then the next one, then the next one, then the next one. You have to learn to behave. The way you behave in this world is mutual respect. The way you behave is thinking you're not going to be more secure
26:05 Speaker 02 if they're completely destabilized. That's what you have to understand. And that is not so hard to understand. We teach it to our kids. At age four, we start teaching that. And then, suddenly, if you want your passport to Washington, you have to forget it at age 40 or something. And that's how they behave. So that's my feeling about this, that it's just a kind of arrogance. And you can see it in this writing, which I find fascinating, to go back and watch this tragedy unfold.
26:43 Speaker 02 1997, another wonderful moment if you want to just watch hubris and tragedy. Very good book. Good in that it's insightful.
26:57 Speaker 02 Terrible book in that it's all wrong by S. B. Brzezinski. And many of you have probably read it called The Grand Chessboard. And he could have called it The Game of Risk. It would have been a little bit more accurate. But it was about how to make American dominance in the world. And he has a chapter about expanding NATO to Ukraine. Exactly that. And he talks about Europe and NATO expanding eastward. And the question that he asked in 1997 is, what can the Russians do about it? Because they're weak. And he answers meticulously.
27:39 Speaker 02 He considers, would Russia ever ally with China? Impossible, he considers.
27:46 Tucker Carlson? That'll never happen.
27:47 Speaker 02 That'll never happen. Could Russia ever ally with Iran? No, impossible. That will never happen. So you watch, like we watch now ChatGPT thinking out loud. It's all there. It's all wrong. And it was all American policy for the next 25 years. That's tragedy.
28:09 Tucker Carlson? May I ask a question, though? Like a kind of thematic, fundamental question. So a great empire, one of it, you know, empires tend to be arrogant. I do think that's a feature of empires.
28:18 Speaker 02 That is it.
28:20 Tucker Carlson? But an enduring empire sows stability. Its goal is stability. Because it understands exactly what you said, I thought, so nicely. It doesn't help you if your neighbors are in chaos. It doesn't help you. It's against your own interests. So that's such an obvious insight. The Roman Empire was based on it. The British Empire was based on it. Ours is the only empire I'm aware of that has kind of intentionally sowed chaos. And I don't understand where that thinking comes from. Leaving aside the moral questions, is it right or wrong? It doesn't work for you. So why have we done it?
28:54 Speaker 02 You know, the Roman Empire is always a great story for us. And I compare the Ukraine war to the Battle of the Teutenberg Forest, which is AD 9. Yep. And in AD 9, the Roman Empire reached its limits on the Rhine. It never, it tried to conquer the Germanic tribes in 9 AD. They were defeated under Augustus. And there were sporadic border things from then on, but they never tried again. They had hundreds of years where that just wasn't, wasn't their business.
29:39 Speaker 02 It was very, very smart. Hadrian, in the first, second century AD, was the emperor at the maximum extent of the Roman Empire. And he basically wanted stability across the borderlines. And this was the prudence of the empire. It wasn't, Alexander, you know, was very different 300, 400 years earlier. He wanted to conquer the whole world. There was no limit. Finally, his soldiers told him, if you go any further, we're killing you. We've got to go home because they were already at the, beyond the Indus River.
30:24 Speaker 02 But the Romans said, no, we're going to put some boundaries. We're going to keep the borders and we're going to not go beyond our means or our needs.
30:38 Speaker 02 I hope what happened yesterday was a good example of that. What Trump and Hegseth did yesterday, if they follow through, if the deep state doesn't undermine it, if some crazy thing doesn't happen, said, we don't need to be in Ukraine with NATO.
30:59 Speaker 02 We don't need to be. It's for us, it's nothing. And it doesn't mean that Russia's now going to invade Western Europe. That's crazy. This was a project going the other direction. So it's basic prudence. And that's what a great power should show. Prudence.
31:20 Tucker Carlson? What are the chances that, you said, unless the deep state doesn't make some crazy thing happens? I would note that for a good part of the presidential campaign, the deep state was telling the candidate Donald Trump that the state of Iran is trying to kill you, which as far as I know is totally untrue, by the way. But they were telling him that in order to prepare him to attack Iran, which they're still trying to do. So we know that this kind of deception is just a feature of it. How hard will people invested in the Ukraine war go? To what lengths will they go to continue this, do you think?
31:55 Speaker 02 First of all, the main job of a US president, of a successful US president, is to put the foot on the brake. This is, if you look in history, the good presidents know when to stop. Eisenhower was such. Kennedy was such. Reagan understood this. And all our recent presidents did not, up until now, basically.
32:24 Tucker Carlson? Well, Truman in Korea, George H.W. Bush in Kuwait, I mean, also true.
32:30 Speaker 02 No, that they fought too many wars, in my.
32:33 Tucker Carlson? Yeah, but they did stop.
32:34 Speaker 02 No, but they stopped, but they made too much Iraq 2003. I mean, there were just too many wars. So the question is, can we learn? And can the president keep the foot on the brake? If he does, he will have an extremely successful administration.
32:58 Speaker 02 He, I think, understands that all of Netanyahu's pleading, and this has been 30 years also, this is another project, for the US to go to war with Iran is just the worst idea imaginable. Would be a disaster. And so I think President Trump understands that. I think he understands that a war with China would be a complete disaster, which it would be, though there's a lot of war party around on that. The funny thing about our time right now, not funny, the wonderful thing about our time right now
33:42 Speaker 02 is that we're in the midst of the biggest technological boom in the history of the world. So, so many good things could happen in the next 10 to 20 years. President Trump has used the expression, which I fully subscribe to, "A golden age." We could have it. A golden age is not war. A golden age is investing in all this wonderful technology so that we can have healthcare that works, education systems that work, infrastructure that works. It would be nice if the United States even had 1 km of fast rail, just saying.
34:23 Speaker 02 China just completed its 50,000th km of fast rail. We don't have one. I can't even take the train reliably from New York to, actually, from Washington to New York. Last time I took the Exela, it broke down in the middle. And I had to change to a local in New Jersey, which does not happen between Shanghai and Beijing, by the way, just saying.
34:48 Tucker Carlson? But you miss the countryside. I mean, that is part of it, though.
34:51 Speaker 02 That's it.
34:52 Tucker Carlson? Not a lot of incentive to stop in New Jersey, and now they're giving you one.
34:55 Speaker 02 There I was, I felt so privileged.
34:58 Tucker Carlson? Right.
34:58 Speaker 02 And there was the local right on the next track waiting for us.
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35:06 Speaker 02 You count your blessings, right?
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36:49 Tucker Carlson? It does feel, I'm glad that you are saying this because it does feel like we're not even a month into the Trump administration. I don't think anybody agrees with, you know, everything of anyone else's program, but clearly, this is a massive departure from what we had, much more than I thought. I feel like I watched pretty closely. I'm amazed by the ambition of what they're doing, and it does feel like the only way to stop this, Tulsi Gabbard just confirmed yesterday, is the director of
37:17 Speaker 02 That's a very big deal.
37:19 Tucker Carlson? It's unbelievable.
37:20 Speaker 02 It's a very big deal.
37:21 Tucker Carlson? Tulsi Gabbard's writing the President's Daily Brief. Tulsi Gabbard is in charge of a lot of declassification efforts. Like, the whole thing is unbelievable. The only way to stop this is with a war. I mean, that's my kind of simple reading of it. Do you agree with that?
37:33 Speaker 02 I think that is exactly, entirely, the point. And if, and we had news today, please, Inshallah, that the ceasefire will continue on Saturday because more hostages will be released, more exchanges will take place, and there won't be a return. Really, Inshallah, if it happens, and an outbreak of war is stopped, because it has to be stopped, this will be such a blessing, not only for this region, but I have to say for our country too, the United States.
38:17 Tucker Carlson? I agree.
38:18 Speaker 02 And so, this is really the key moment, and I think Trump's instincts are there. And what he says, we didn't even hear Biden or other presidents say. President Trump said many times about Ukraine, "Too many people are dying." You didn't even hear those words. I mean, the idea that war involved
38:47 Speaker 02 By the way, maybe a million Ukrainians dead or seriously wounded. We're going to find out in the next months because finally we'll see what reality is, not what the propaganda is, but it's horrible what's happened. So that instinct is essential. And there are several places where everything could be derailed. This region is one of them. Ukraine is another. South China, East China Sea is the third. And if the president gets it and has the basic idea, we live together in respect with
39:31 Speaker 02 other countries, the golden age will come.
39:35 Tucker Carlson? I think, and I'd love your view of this. I think of all the amazing things I've seen in the last three and a half weeks, maybe the most amazing is the emergence of Steve Witkoff, who I will say I know personally and like enormously, but he was a real estate guy. Okay. All of a sudden, Trump appoints him an envoy sort of over and above massive stable diplomats. We have professional diplomats at the State Department to go do, you know, effect a ceasefire here in this region and then sends him over to Russia and he winds up meeting with Putin, apparently for several hours. And then all this stuff happens. You've been around diplomats your entire life. You've functioned as a diplomat. What do you think of that?
40:18 Speaker 02 Look, he did the single coolest thing since this administration started, I have to say, which was Trump made this ceasefire. There's no question about it. Biden would never, I mean, he didn't make the ceasefire because we don't know where Biden was mentally anyway, but his team was completely incompetent. Horrible. I'm sorry to say it. It's very terrible.
40:48 Tucker Carlson? A lot of the rest of us did notice that.
40:51 Speaker 02 Yes, it wasn't a completely, it wasn't a completely closely held secret, let's say. So.
41:00 Speaker 02 Trump said, "We gotta have a ceasefire before my inauguration." And he sent Whitkoff. And Whitkoff said to Netanyahu, "I'm coming to meet you tomorrow." And Netanyahu said, "No, no, no. Tomorrow is Saturday. I can't meet you." And Whitkoff said, "I'll be in your office tomorrow at 1:00." And told him, "I don't care. Anything. I'm there. We're gonna have a discussion." And out of that meeting came the ceasefire.
41:39 Speaker 02 Now, the ceasefire looks, maybe, like it will hold this weekend. Believe me, in Israel, they want war. Everywhere, for a lot of reasons. But the president's job, from my point of view, of American interest and the world interest and this region's interest, everybody's interest, no more war. Stop this now. So if Whitkoff can keep that track record, that would be the heroic success.
42:12 Tucker Carlson? But what does it tell you that Steve Whitkoff, who I will say, again, I'm biased because I really like him, he's got a great personality, super energetic, very straightforward, believable, but zero training in any of this, like not. He's a real estate guy. And he pulls this off? Like, what does that tell you about a professional diplomatic corps?
42:31 Speaker 02 I'll tell you one thing it tells you. Trump can make peace if he wants to make peace. I mean, he needs a capable guy that can go and read the riot act and say, "This is no joke, and we're gonna have it." And that is basically what good diplomacy is.
42:53 Speaker 02 Again, in the US system, of course, we've got the deep state who tell presidents what to do. We've got lobbies, we've got all, all sorts of things, but a president's true job is to lead. And if you don't have a president compass mentis, like I think we didn't have in the United States, you get war breaking out everywhere like we had in the last two years. Or if you have a president that is poorly directed, or poorly, you know, really doesn't get it, and Clinton was an inconsequential president, in my opinion, because he is so
43:36 Speaker 02 easily swayed, he lets, he, he just made so many lousy decisions. George Bush Jr. listened to Cheney, who was really a non-stop warmonger, and so on. If a president gets the idea, "I want peace because this war is really destructive of everything else I'm trying to do," then you can have peace, actually. It's possible. No one is going to attack the United States. So, peace depends on us. No one is attacking us. China is not about to invade the United States. Russia's not going to attack the United States.
44:21 Speaker 02 Mexico and Canada are not going to attack the United States. Panama's not going to attack the United States. Greenland's not going to attack the United States. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm sorry to make, I don't want to go the whole list, but I'm just confident about this. So, if the president wants peace, he'll get it. If he gets peace, believe me, he'll get all the other things that he wants, like low inflation, being able to pass the budget that he wants, getting his tax policies that he wants, but if there's war, he ain't gonna get any of it. That's the basic point. And, you know...
45:06 Speaker 02 I voted Democratic in 2020. I voted for Biden. And Biden, I've had a lot of experience with governments over the last 45 years. So I watched them and I think I understand a lot of them. And Biden, in the first days, said stupid things about foreign policy.
45:32 Speaker 02 "The world is divided between this and this and blah, blah, blah." And you say, "Oh, my God, what is... The guy doesn't get it." And in fact, he didn't get it at all. And I told many Democratic leaders when they still talk to me. Now, if they don't talk to me and I don't talk to them,
45:55 Speaker 02 you're gonna do something completely, almost impossible in American politics, which is you're gonna lose on the basis of foreign policy. Because Americans don't vote on foreign policy.
46:09 Tucker Carlson? No.
46:09 Speaker 02 And I said, "Your foreign policy is so bad, this is gonna bring you down." And in fact, the Democrats lost their heads in this. And they were so intent on defeating Trump that no matter what Biden said, "Well, we have to back him up 100%." As he led them off to war and complicity in the war here, in the Ukraine war and tensions with China and all the rest. And they created a milieu of so much unhappiness in the United States, anxiety, higher inflation, big budget deficits, that the public said, "No, we don't like this."
46:52 Speaker 02 So they did really the impossible.
46:55 Tucker Carlson? But they brought Liz Cheney over to the coalition?
46:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And then, what's ironic is, you know, this wonderful person who was...
47:06 Speaker 02 Confirmed yesterday for the head of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who's really smart, by the way, very honest, very meticulous. I know her extremely well over many, many years. Totally up and up, so I'm delighted she's going to be briefing the President each day. I couldn't think of a better person. All the Democrats voted against her. This is crazy. She was their colleague for decades. She stood up for things that they should be applauding her for. Every one of them voted against her.
47:48 Tucker Carlson? She was the Vice Chairman of the DNC.
47:50 Speaker 02 Exactly.
47:51 Tucker Carlson? Seven, eight years ago.
47:53 Speaker 02 Exactly.
47:54 Tucker Carlson? So, I guess the question is, the opposition, you've alluded to the deep state, but there's also the out-in-the-open state. You know, the Congress, for example, the other party, the Democratic Party. Does Trump's success, not just in the election, winning the popular vote, but in affecting peace, which is actually popular with people, does that change their views on foreign policy? Like, does he bring people with him? Or does he stand alone between the two parties as he did in the first term?
48:26 Speaker 02 Look, this is very early days, because we're just a little over three weeks into this. But if yesterday turns into policy, which it could, and the Ukraine war ends soon, which it could, you're going to see everybody changing their views. "Oh, I didn't support that. Peace is great." The European leaders are going to be saying the opposite of what they're saying right now. Look, in a hundred politicians, anyway, three think. The rest line up somewhere, tactically. So, yes, they will change their view. They'll complain about other things, that's their job, they're in the opposition.
49:08 Speaker 02 But this war was a disastrous, stupid project that went awry, should have ended, makes no sense. And if Trump pulls it off, as he can, if he's resolute now and clear-minded, and Whitkoff does his work, because he'll be the one to do it, it looks like, and he does his work, then this won't be talked about or complained about. This'll... Passed into history is just another one of those blunders. I mean, we don't talk about the 2003 Iraq war, the 20 years waste in Afghanistan, or so many Libya, so many completely ridiculous projects that America's been involved in
49:51 Speaker 02 for no conceivable reason, other than these weird game of risk ideas. We gotta own that space on the board. Turns out, the world and that game board are rather different. But if Trump pulls this off, what he needs, I think, and what we need to understand is the American scene, it ain't great in general. The budget deficit is enormous, the fragility of society is actually quite significant. There is lots of depression, lots of violence, lots of problems that haven't been addressed
50:35 Speaker 02 for 30 years. Big, big budget deficit, huge, can't be solved. With all due respect to Elon, it's not, the budget deficit has very little to do with the size of the civil service. That's not where the budget deficit comes from, that's not where the spending comes from. Spending comes from 750 overseas military bases, from wars, from massive outlays, of course, on pensions, on healthcare, on interest payments, on the debt, and so forth. So, war derails all of that.
51:16 Speaker 02 We're not with a buffer, we're not where the US dollar is king forever. It's almost the opposite, by the way, although it's not so clear to people. But 10 years from now, it's gonna be completely different international monetary scene from the one that we have now, because the renminbi's gonna play a completely different role, and the way that international settlements will be done is completely different. You can, if you watch like I do, you see all of the stitching together of a new system taking shape. So the US does not have this great room for maneuver, and it's all a game, and we can do this, and we can do that. The president needs to be...
52:00 Speaker 02 Really accurate right now, really accurate. And understand also not, don't overplay the hand. The world's not desperately waiting to get into the US market as I think he thinks that these tariffs give all this leverage. No, the US is not the big deal that maybe some people imagine right now. So we gotta get our act together and you can't get your act together in war. That's, that's the bottom line.
52:31 Tucker Carlson? Professor Jeffrey Sachs, thank you very much. Great to be with you. Thanks. Thank you. That was great. Thanks.
52:45 Tucker Carlson? So in September, we went across the country, coast to coast, 17 different cities on a nationwide live tour and it was amazing. We brought the entire staff with us like we always do because we all work together for so long and enjoy traveling together. And one of our producers is a documentary filmmaker and so he decided to make a documentary film about our trip, a full month across America with some of the most interesting people around. Different people join us every single night. Gino and Russell Brand and Bobby Kennedy and JD Vance and Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera. We had the best time and the fruit of that is a documentary called On The Road, The Tucker Carlson Live Tour, which is available right now on TCN. On The Road, Tucker Carlson Live Tour is hilarious. You will like it.
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