Title: The JK Report
Show: The JK Report
Date: 2026-07-01
URL: https://youtu.be/0PpseUAcs-I
Duration: 40:00

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[00:00] Donald Trump is one of the most overtly activist presidents in American history. He takes positions on major issues that many of us might deem to be unprecedented or even extreme. And he does that on purpose. He wants to shake up the status quo. He wants to keep his domestic political opponents and even foreign leaders on their heels. And he's serious when he says America first. It's not just a slogan with him. But with that said, he is willing to be convinced when the facts of an issue that he doesn't fully understand are put before

[00:30] him. That is exactly what our guest today has done. Dr. Peter Kuznick is a professor of history at American University here in Washington, D.C. And he's the founder and director of the award-winning Nuclear Studies Institute. He's the author of many books including The Untold History of the United States, which along with writer, director, and producer Oliver Stone, he turned into a 10-part Showtime series. He's also a lifelong activist in support of peace and human rights. Peter, thanks so much

[01:00] for joining us. It's always great to have you. >> Always good to be with you, John. Thank you. >> Well, there are about a dozen different places to begin, but I think I'd like to start with your most recent interview because you covered so many critically important issues in it. You and Oliver Stone appeared on the Tucker Carlson show to discuss US relations with Russia or the lack of US relations with Russia. You spoke about the war in Ukraine. You spoke about prospects for nuclear confrontation. So, I'd like to begin with that. I'm going to ask you the same

[01:31] question that Tucker Carlson asked you. How close do you think we are to nuclear war? >> I guess that depends which day you ask me that question. We were on with Tucker back in, I guess, December. And then he didn't play it for 4 weeks. And by then the world had changed a little bit. I mean, >> [clears throat] >> and I and I say that because under Biden I was scared shitless, really. And I was

[02:02] very, very worried under Biden. Not because Biden wanted a nuclear war or anybody sane wants a nuclear war. There are have been, as we could discuss, some some people in positions of authority who have wanted a nuclear war over the years. Uh and and even now I So somebody like Keith Payne who headed the writing of the nuclear posture review during Trump's first term

[02:34] back in the '80s Keith Payne was writing that we could fight and win a nuclear war. We'd probably lose 20 million people, but it might be worth it to eliminate communism, the Soviet Union. And so now he's still there and he's still influencing Trump. Or at least he was during the first term. So there are people out there who are pathological insane and do welcome a nuclear war. But that's not Biden, that's not Putin, and

[03:06] it's not Xi or any of the other people in charge of the nuclear arsenals now. But under Biden, what got me so worried is each time Ukraine wanted a new weapon system Biden's immediate response was no, we can't do that cuz it'd be too dangerous a provocation. It would cross Russia's red lines and for either potentially force an increased Russian response or the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. And so Biden would would refuse

[03:38] it. The pressure on him would increase and he'd always cave in. Much like Obama would always cave in to the pressure. Biden caved into the pressure, whether it was the F-16s or the HIMARS or the ATACMS each time, you know, and the thing about throwing red lines like Putin has done is that you can do it once and ignore the provocation. Maybe you could do it twice and ignore the provocation. But you know, if you repeatedly draw red lines and don't act when they're

[04:09] crossed, then you lose all credibility at home and internationally. And the Americans were banking on the idea that we had pushed them pushed the red line time and again and Putin had not acted, so we had could do anything we wanted and Putin would not act. When you're dealing with a nuclear armed world, you can't play that kind of game of chicken. And that's what the US was doing under Biden. But I knew and I said it on Tucker Carlson, for example, that Putin

[04:41] had shown restraint. And that was partly because he knew that the new administration was coming in and that he had a friendlier relation with Trump and that Trump was more appreciative not of the dangers of escalation and had warned about the threat of nuclear war, but also about that he that he was hoping for a better relation, a reset with Russia. He said, of course, you know, why shouldn't we be friends with Russia? It'd be in everybody's interest.

[05:11] So, when Putin came when Trump came in, I was hopeful that we were a little less close to nuclear war than we had been under Biden. However, Trump's early actions and statements have undermined my hope that we are actually moving in the right direction. Trump, you know, and and again, my people I I deal with who like Trump always say, "Well, take what Trump says

[05:41] seriously, but don't take him literally." You know, and I I I try to exercise that that you know, rationality when when in dealing with with Trump because you know, the things that come out of his mouth are so absurd often and so little connection to reality because he's a mafia boss. He's a liar. He He boasts, you know, he's a bully, you know, and and he's not a normal statesman, politician, certainly not a normal president, I don't think a normal

[06:13] human being. So, so you know, I have to try to restrain myself, but the threats he's making already to Putin you know, not only saying of course peace would be in Russia's interest which it's in everybody's interest to end this damn war. It should never have started. And you know, we could have so easily been avoided if we had any real statesmanship or leadership. But at this point when he's making threats to Russia as if his bullying mafia tactics are

[06:44] going to work with Putin you know, the world is different now. It is a different world, even a different world in 2017. We've got this new these new and much stronger alliances between Russia and China Russia and North Korea, even Russia and Iran, although it's not a military alliance. I mean that that the old game plan does not work and and it doesn't work with Russia, this kind of threatening and bullying saying that if Russia doesn't agree to a settlement on the terms that Trump

[07:16] wants, we're going to increase the sanctions, give more arms to Ukraine, and Putin's going to pay the price. That is not going to work. You know, so we always say that Trump is transactional, that he wants to cut deals, that he wants but but it's not from the standpoint the Chinese like to talk about win-win diplomacy. I like the idea. It's the old Henry Wallace concept, >> [snorts] >> Franklin Roosevelt concept of diplomacy. The The American approach has always been zero-sum game. We win and you lose.

[07:48] And that is much more Trump's mentality. And so when he talks about making cutting deals or having friendly relationships, I was on Chinese TV a couple nights ago. And it was interesting because we were talking about US-China policy. And of the four guests on this Chinese TV show, I was the only one who held out even a modicum of hope that relations with China can improve under Trump. The other three guests, two of whom were in in China, had no hope at all.

[08:20] And as one of the the guests said that Trump has two ways of dealing of approaching other countries. Uh either they're enemies or they're vassals. You know, it's not as if he can deal with other people as equals, but he admires strong people. He admires autocrats. >> Yes. >> Xi Jinping, Putin. So I I I'm hopeful that the transactional side of him uh could be willing to find mutually beneficial

[08:50] resolutions. But you know, even Tucker expressed openly his fear of what Trump is doing. That Trump's surrounding himself with all these neoconservatives. >> Yes, yes. >> You you look at his his nominees and his appointees. And there's almost nobody who's got a peaceful diplomatic win-win approach to the world. They're the worst of the neocons. >> They really are. >> I mean this but this whole

[09:21] administration, there was that popular term in the 19th century of a cacastocracy. Government by the [clears throat] worst people. >> That's right. >> And which was the case in the late 19th century and it's the case again. I mean the only thing that these people he's put in there can do is blow up the government, make government non-functioning, make it a punitive weapon to a cudgel to beat people down, uh and and to dismantle the federal government. Linda McMahon in charge of education?

[09:52] I mean, not only is she a fool, but she also doesn't believe in public education. You see, so these people can dismantle these agencies, but I think that Trump's base is in for a very, very rough time, as all Americans are going to be. >> Peter, uh I want to ask you a question about recent history. As you know, I spent many years at the CIA. I was a Middle East specialist, not a Russia specialist, but one thing that always struck me about my colleagues who were working on Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union

[10:23] was that their marching orders were not to change CIA policy at all. Russia was seen as the same enemy that it always had been as the Soviet Union during Cold War. And except for this very brief period during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, this is in the late 1990s, US foreign policy didn't change at all toward Russia. Why did relations not improve between the US and Russia when the Soviet Union fell apart? >> Well, uh the morning the afternoon that Oliver and I were on Tucker Carlson,

[10:56] he interviewed my friend Jeff Sachs in the morning. And in Untold History, Oliver and I took Jeff Sachs personally to task because you know, he's been identified as the person who headed the Harvard team who was brought in by Yeltsin to reform the Russian economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. To put effectively through shock therapy.

[11:26] And after Untold History came out, Jeff emailed me and he said, "Peter, you guys really raked me over the coals in untold history." He said, "I understand that, but it's not wasn't fair." Uh and he went on to this lengthy defense of himself. And he said that the Russians rejected his advice over and over again, that he wasn't responsible for the shock therapy. Cuz we know that the life expectancy in Russia dropped from 67 for 66 down to 57.

[12:00] They were impoverished. The economy shrunk to the size of the Netherlands. Poverty was rampant. I mean, they overnight they some a lot of the people they had what they called gangster capitalism. And some people were able to get rich overnight, but the overall majority of Russians were devastated during the 1990s, the Yeltsin period. So, the US seeing that Russia was so weakened, H. W. Bush and and

[12:30] and uh Clinton, uh they could be very on one hand they could be very have a certain largesse toward Russia, but on the other hand they were privately gloating over the fact that the former US adversary throughout the Cold War uh was so weakened, devastated, humiliated. And then in 1997, when it looked like Yeltsin had no chance of getting reelected, the US moves in and the US provides this

[13:02] support in the media and the and the advisors and they get him narrowly reelected in 1997. But even when Putin came in, he bent over backwards to be friendly toward the United States. I mean, he even talked about the Russia joining NATO at one point or thinking about it. >> to ask you about that. He did ask about the prospects of Russia joining NATO. >> after 9/11, he was the first foreign leader to get in touch with George W. Bush to offer support, offer sympathy

[13:33] for what happened to the United States. And then he assisted us initially in the invasion of Afghanistan. But what does the US do? In 2002, we pull out of the ABM Treaty, which was very important to the Russians. Uh in 2003, we invade Iraq, which the Russians were adamantly opposed to. Uh and even before that, the bombing in former Yugoslavia, which 95% or more Russians thought was a war crime. Uh I mean, so the United States was the

[14:05] hegemon. We were the unipolar power. And we were going to act with impunity. In 1990, when it looked like the Soviet empire was collapsing, uh Charles Krauthammer issued a statement saying that this is America's unipolar moment. Uh nobody can resist us anywhere on the planet. We are the total hegemonic force. We can do what we want. And nobody's going to be able to challenge us for another 30 or 40 years. And then the United States had that

[14:37] decade. First, you have the Defense Planning Guidance in '92 and '93, which lays out explicitly this hegemonic vision. And it was so stark that they had to pull it back and say, "Oh no, this is not our policy." And in 1997, they formed the Project for New American Century, which talks about total American domination. This is Kristol and Kagan's idea. And all the other neocons signed on. It was the neocon Super Bowl. They were in charge. They loved it. And then they issued a report in 2000 saying

[15:08] that we have to dramatically increase our military spending. However, we can't do it overnight like we want to unless we have a new Pearl Harbor. Uh and they also that that that from the beginning, they kept saying, "What we have to do is finish what we started in Iraq and we have to overthrow Saddam Hussein." That was their game plan from the beginning. And then they get their new Pearl Harbor on 9/11 and they jump into action immediately. And then in 2002, after we've invaded Afghanistan

[15:39] and initially looked like we were succeeding there, Crowdhammer revisits his 1990 statement and said, "I was wrong in 1990 about this being the unipolar moment. It is actually the unipolar era. It's not going to last 30 or 40 years, it's going to last indefinitely, indefinitely into the future. Nobody can challenge us anywhere on the planet." In 2003, in 2002, in 2003, then they're feeling their oats, they're so powerful and they then January 5th, 2003, the New

[16:12] York Times headlines in Sunday magazine section, "American Empire, get used to it." >> Mhm. >> You know, and they were they were bragging they were bragging. They were out front. All of the neocons were out front about it and talking openly about American Empire, the strongest empire ever seen in the world. And but until things unravel in Afghanistan and Iraq and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, says that the gates of hell are open in Iraq. And

[16:43] it was. And they had no planning, they had no idea what to do. They thought they were going to be greeted as liberators like Brezhnev thought they'd be greeted as liberators in Afghanistan would be over in a month and 10 years later it's still going on. Well, it's even worse in Afghanistan and Iraq. And so they and Crowdhammer even in 2006 revisits his buoyancy and says, "Well, the apogee of American unipolarity is over." >> Yeah. >> And but that doesn't stop them cuz in

[17:15] 2007, at when Putin is at the NATO meeting, the they begin talking again openly about expansion of NATO. We enter the whole NATO expansion because it was you know, very, very reckless and stupid and backfired or in some ways backfired. And then in 2008, George W. Bush says we want to put Ukraine and Georgia on fast track into NATO. And that was crossing a red line that Putin was not

[17:46] willing to cross. And then we saw what happened in Ukraine and we see the position we're in now. So to get back to your question about well, nuclear war and the whole question of US-Russian relations, I mean, it has been a mess since 1917 when the US sent troops to join the British and the French and the Japanese and all the other European troops in Russia to try to curb the Russian Revolution. You know, Wilson was not willing to go as far as Churchill was in terms of actually intervening to overthrow, defeat the

[18:18] Bolsheviks. Wilson turned Churchill down. Churchill said we need to strangle Bolshevism in the cradle. And but that was the idea that the Brits had. The Americans were not quite willing to go there, but they were furious with the Soviets for pulling out of World War I and they were more furious when the Bolsheviks went into the Foreign Ministry and showed all of the secret treaties and agreements and deals that the British and the French and the Tsarist Russians had concluded for dividing up the world after World War I was over and we're living with the

[18:50] effects of that in the Middle East, the region that you know even even better. So, the Sykes-Picot stuff and means So, when Russia pulls out, the the West was furious because Russia was providing the cannon fodder for a lot of the fighting in World War I as they're going to do again in World War II. So, the US has not recognized Russia till 20 till 1933 when Roosevelt comes to office.

[19:20] And then then when the Germans invade the Soviet Union in 1941, then Roosevelt figures out how to provide lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union. And they're our close ally in fighting the Germans. And after they turned back the German incursion into in Moscow in late 1941, uh then in 1942, it's clear the US is giving some material, some military aid,

[19:51] and some some necessary armaments, and the Russians are resisting, but Stalin was making three demands. One was for the same boundaries that they had in in the Nazi-Soviet Pact, which is mostly getting back what they had lost after World War I. >> Mhm. >> Uh secondly, they wanted more more material and military support, which the US was way behind on its promises, but the most important thing that they wanted was a second front. What most

[20:23] Americans don't know is that throughout the war, while the US and the Brits were confronting 10 German divisions between us, the Soviets were confronting more than 200 German divisions, which is why, you know, I ask my students who won World War II, and if they even know it that there was a World War II and what side people were on, they say the Americans won it. But the Europeans say that the Brits and the Brits won it, the Europeans won it. According to the latest surveys that I've read, 17% of the Europeans credit

[20:56] the Soviets with playing a major role in defeating Germany in World War II. Churchill even admitted. He said the Red Army tore the guts out of the German war machine. And and if you look at American coverage of so of World War II and the Soviet role, the New York Times in 1942, their articles saying that if we saved the world from fascism, it's because of the heroic Soviet sacrifice. We knew it. And so then in May of '42, Roosevelt

[21:27] writes to Stalin and he asked Stalin to send over Foreign Minister Molotov and a trusted general to Washington. He does. They meet in in Washington, D.C. And during that meeting, Roosevelt turns to General Marshall, Chief of Staff Marshall, and says, "Can we open up the second front? Can we promise to open up the second front before the end of this year, before the end of 1942?" And Marshall says, "Absolutely." He and Eisenhower had already drawn up plans for the US invasion in Western Europe.

[21:58] However, uh Churchill sabotaged it. He had some good reasons and a lot of bad reasons. Uh from the Russian standpoint, it looked like they wanted the Soviets to be bled white uh and to suffer and to be weakened and defeated like many Americans might want to see today. Uh and so the Soviets largely, not single-handedly cuz they had support and help, but they played the key role in driving back the

[22:31] Germans. They defeated them at Stalingrad. They finally overcome the horrific Blitzkrieg in Leningrad in which Putin's father was badly wounded. Putin's younger brother died during that siege as did maybe a million people in Leningrad, in the siege of Leningrad, when they were eating the wallpaper, you know, the glue off the wallpaper, try and make soup out of that. They were desperate beyond belief. Uh and so and that's what the that's the history that

[23:01] the Russians know. The Americans have never had that kind of history and that kind of knowledge. And then the but the other key turning point that Americans have no clue about was Roosevelt chose Henry Wallace as vice president in 1940 because Wallace was the leading anti-fascist uh in the New Deal administration. >> That's right. >> He was the leading visionary as secretary of agriculture, which was key to the New Deal recovery. And hated

[23:31] fascism, was an anti-racist, exemplary. And Roosevelt knew in 1940 that we were gearing up for a war against fascism, uh Japanese militarism and imperialism and and German fascism. And he wanted a real anti-fascist on the ticket as vice president. But the Democratic Party did not want to put Wallace on. >> Mhm. >> Partly because Wallace comes from a Republican farm family. His father had been secretary of agriculture under

[24:01] Harding and Coolidge. His grandfather was mooted as secretary of agriculture back in the 19th century. And so Wallace comes from Iowa and party bosses didn't trust him cuz he didn't become officially a Democrat until into the 1930s. But Wallace was also too radical. And so they refused to put him on the ticket. And Roosevelt writes this extraordinary letter to the Democratic Party Convention in 1940 saying, "We already have a conservative Wall Street

[24:32] finance-dominated party, the Republicans. If the Democrats aren't going to be a progressive liberal party fighting for social justice, then the Democrats have no reason to exist and I'm not going to run as a candidate on that ticket." He He said wrote a letter he was going to deliver turning down the nomination in 1940. >> Wow. >> But before he did that, Eleanor Roosevelt went to the convention, the first time a first lady had been there, and made clear to them that he was serious and he was going to withdraw his candidate if they didn't put Wallace on

[25:02] his vice president. So, they begrudgingly did that in 1940. And as vice president, Wallace, after Henry Luce writes his editorials and speeches that the 20th century must be the American century, that the US is going to dominate the world in every way, financially, militarily, culturally, intellectually, Wallace refutes that and says, "No, the 20th century must be the century of the common man." He says, "We need a worldwide people's revolution in

[25:33] the tradition of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the German Revolutions of 1848, Latin American Revolutions, and the Russian Revolution." And he calls for an end to imperialism, an end to colonialism, spreading the fruits of science and technology all over the world. I mean, this is the vision that Wallace had. And so, the party bosses decide they have to oust Wallace in '44. Get him off the ticket. They know that Roosevelt is sick, and he's not able to run another

[26:04] campaign, and he's never going to survive another 4 years in the presidency. So, whoever is vice president is become the next president. And they know that Wallace is this visionary who understands a better world, wants to work with the Soviets to create that better world. And this he was the person who the Soviets trusted, he and Roosevelt were the ones they trusted. But, the party bosses said, "Well, we need to find an alternative." And they chose Harry Truman. Not because he was smart enough, not because he was worldly enough, not because he was knowledgeable enough, but because he

[26:34] didn't have any real enemies. Now, Truman, I mean, I don't know if you want me to go into any of this. >> I I want to I want to add something. I want to add something real quickly. When you and I first met, I had just watched this episode of of The Untold History of the United States. I was always a fan of Henry Wallace. I did not know the details of what in my mind was a coup against Wallace at the 1944 Democratic National Convention until I saw your show. This is to me one of the most

[27:04] fascinating episodes in recent American history and it changed the course of the world. >> It did. I mean, you know, Wallace was just I'll do a quick version. Yeah. You know, July 20th, 1944, the day the Democratic Party convention began in Chicago, Gallup released a poll of potential voters asking them who they wanted on the ticket as vice president. 65% said they wanted Wallace back as

[27:35] vice president. He was the second most popular man in America behind Roosevelt. 2% said they wanted Harry Truman as vice president. Unless I did the math, 65 is bigger than two. But we weren't a democracy and the Democratic Party is not not a democracy. And so, uh the party bosses had the whole thing cooked for Truman beforehand. But the first night of the convention, Wallace makes a seconding speech for Roosevelt and the place goes wild. There's a spontaneous demonstration led by among

[28:07] others Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey and it goes on for an hour. In the middle of it, Claude Pepper, who's then the senator from Florida, realized that if he could get to the podium and get Wallace's name in nomination, Wallace would sweep the convention, defy the bosses, be back on the ticket as vice president. Uh and so he fights his way through the crowd. The party bosses led by Chicago Mayor Frank Kelly see what's happening. They start rushing to the podium. Sam Jackson was chairing the session. Uh Sam Jackson later said he

[28:37] had orders not to let Wallace get nominated. Kelly starts screaming, "It's a fire hazard. I adjourn this immediately." And Jackson says, "I have a motion to adjourn. All in favor say I. Maybe 5% say I. All opposed, nay. Everybody yells out nay. He says, motion adjourned. The eyes have it. At that point, Pepper was 5 ft from the microphone. Had Pepper gotten 5 more feet to the microphone, he'd get Wallace the Democratic nomination, there would have been no atomic bombings in World War II, possibly and likely no Cold War

[29:10] because Wallace had a whole different vision. But Wallace agreed to stay on as Secretary of Commerce. And from that position, he fought for the next year and a half against Truman and the Cold War and the arms nuclear arms race until finally he's the last new dealer left, the last one who's got a vision for peace, the last one who wants to get along with the Soviets and make the world a better world, the last one who embraced that vision that that Roosevelt expressed in '42. Roosevelt

[29:41] also said in '42 that what we need now is four policemen. We need China to police Asia, Russia to police that region. He said Britain to police Europe and the United States to police the rest of the world. And these four policemen can bring peace and stability to the post-war world. Truman's vision was very, very different. Truman did not like the Soviets. He did not trust the Soviets. Truman was a little man. And Truman would was like Trump in some ways. Like

[30:13] Trump, people tell me Trump listens to the last person in the room. And Truman would always do that. And Wallace could convince him. And and Truman would say, oh, I don't mind, you know, Stalin reminds me of Boss Pendergast in Kansas City. I can deal with him. We'll get along with them. But then he goes and he listens to his hardliners. And Wallace was fighting a lonely fight in 1945 and 1946. And so we have that whole horrible history of the Cold War

[30:44] in which we're lucky to have survived. And as you know very well, there were several times in which it looked like we weren't going to survive. We came very close to nuclear war either by accident or by stupid policies and during the Cuban Missile Crisis and many times afterwards when we would get false intelligence that there was an incoming missile attack on the United States or they would get false intelligence through computer failures or satellite failures there was an incoming missile attack against the Soviet Union. And but

[31:15] since we didn't have AI in the loop for nuclear deployment, we had human beings who were hesitant to respond the way they were supposed to respond and they didn't give the order to launch. But we came very close on numerous occasions including 1989, 1995 on both sides. And and so you know, I guess the long-winded answer to your question about why US Soviet and then US Russian relations have been so bad

[31:46] and that's partly because the US approach was based on this idea of American exceptionalism or American unipolarity or America is the indispensable nation or America is the hegemon or now America is the bully and we were going to impose our will and dominate the world. Let me take it back to a very crucial memo which most 99.9% of Americans never read or heard of and that was George Kennan the architect of the Cold War wrote a secret memo in 1990

[32:17] 1998 actually 1948 48 in which he says we have 6.3% of the world's population yet we control 50% of the world's wealth. The challenge ahead of us is to maintain this position of disparity. We're not going to do that with ideological slogans. He said, "We can't help to be the envy of the object of envy and resentment." >> Mhm. >> And we're not going to maintain this position by idealistic slogans and

[32:49] freedom and democracy and human rights, but by dealing with cold, hard power concepts. >> That's right. >> And that's what the Cold War was about. And that's, you know, in in the nightmares of the Cold War, the worst of which, of course, was the US invasion of Vietnam. >> That's right. >> Uh you know, and we like to see ourselves, the idea that I grew up with and you grew up with, that America was different from all other countries. That America was better. That all other countries were motivated by wanting land or want or by greed or geopolitics,

[33:22] but the US only wanted to spread freedom and democracy. >> Mhm. >> I grew up with that. You know, and it took took, in some ways, Vietnam to knock that out of me. And you know, it was the air we breathed growing up in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. By the '70s, people were not believing it. Uh but this is what American policy makers act on, the idea of impunity. As Madeleine Albright said, uh you know, if we use force, it's because we're the United States of America.

[33:52] We're the indispensable nation. We stand taller and see farther into the future than other countries. And and uh Hillary Clinton echoed that. Obama echoed that. This idea that we're the indispensable nation. Well, the world has passed us by in a lot of ways. And, you know, Trump now threatening 100% tariffs on the BRICS nations if they try to replace the dollar. You know, that I mean, the stuff that's go that's being said and done is so stupid,

[34:22] so parochial, so out of touch with reality in the world, that I'm afraid that if Trump acts on some of his threats, that we're back in the position of threatening World War III and creating a world in which the US is increasingly isolated with some European allies. You know, because even question I guess raised all the time about why didn't the global South go along with the sanctions against Russia? >> Right. >> And I think that

[34:53] you know, with the global South was the saw the hypocrisy. They saw all the years of US invasions over and over and over again. US intervention, US overthrowing foreign governments and foreign leaders who opposed US policy, even if they were popularly elected, democratically elected, even if they had the support like Mosaddegh. The US ambassador in Iran in '53 wrote back that Mosaddegh has the support of between 95 and 98% of the Iranian people. We gave a right? And so we

[35:24] over the CIA overthrows him anyway. >> Yep. >> You know, and the same thing in in Guatemala uh with Arbenz, you know, Allende, we in over and over again. And and so uh the London Economist wrote a few years ago that to Biden and the US, this looks like a fight between uh autocracy and democracy. Remember Biden kept saying that. He's but the London Economist said to the rest of the world, it looks like a fight between autocracy and hypocrisy. And that's why they

[35:56] refused to go along. >> That's right. >> Jimmy Carter recently passed. >> Yes. >> and you know, Oliver and I were really hard on Jimmy Carter. >> Yes. >> Uh because he came to office with idealistic vision. Uh but was a product of the Trilateral Commission. It was handpicked by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski. >> susceptible to Brzezinski's constant propagandization. >> Uh uh and Brzezinski, I mean, you know, given your CIA background that the CIA

[36:28] always gave the president's daily briefs. >> Yes. >> But Carter appointed Brzezinski national security advisor. And Brzezinski insisted from day one giving the president briefing by himself with nobody from the CIA present and nobody else present. And in his memoir, Brzezinski is open about it. He said that after a period of time, I heard my words coming out of Carter's mouth. He said, "I was shocked by the extent to which he was repeating and thinking in

[37:01] terms of the ways that I had implanted in his head." And and the Carter presidency, which in some ways, you know, we just had Trump's monosyllabic moronic, boring inaugural address. I was actually on CBS, you know, and and and what I said was that this is the worst, most visionless inaugural address I've ever heard or read. And I've read them all going back to 1793, George Washington's inaugural address was 135 words long. Right? But

[37:32] we know them all and they mostly have soaring visions. I said this was either the product of a diminished mind or diminished oratorical skills. It was embarrassing how how mundane, stupid, prosaic, boring, visionless this inaugural address was. As well as self-contradictory, as we can talk about. Um but Jimmy Carter, I saw that But I But Oliver and I said he was a failed president, but was a wonderful example, a moral paragon as an ex-president. You know, the best

[38:04] ex-president we've ever had. >> Best one. >> And Jimmy Carter said in 2019, he was addressing the congregation in his church in Plains. And he said, "I was on the phone last night with Donald Trump. And Trump was expressing his deep concerns about China." And Carter said, "I I them I don't fear the Chinese century, I welcome it. He said, "Do you know how many times China's been at war since 1979? Zero." >> Zero. >> And he said, "While our country has been constantly at war." He said, "Since the

[38:37] founding" this was 2019 he said, "in the 242 year history of the United States, we've only had 16 years of peace." Uh he said that we're the uh biggest the most he said, "We're the most in the history of the world." While we've been fighting wars, spending trillions of dollars on these wars, the the Chinese have invested in high-speed railway and infrastructure. He said, "They've got 18,000 square 18,000 miles of high-speed railway. We've got zero."

[39:09] He said, "Our bridges are collapsing, our roads are collapsing, our schools are collapsing. If we had put that money instead of into these wars, constant wars, endless wars, forever wars, the country would be so much richer, the people would be so much happier." He had that vision, you know, but Trump doesn't have that vision. You know, the best I can hope for with Trump is a kind of transactionality, that he'll see that it's more in America's interest to support peaceful resolution than not, but I you know, but and I was hopeful. And Oliver and I were

[39:40] hopeful on Tucker's show, and Tucker was hopeful. Uh but then you see who Trump appointed, and you see the things they've been saying, and you listen to Marco Rubio's testimony, you know, and this was a warmonger testimony. Yeah, he's he's >> longtime foreign policy hawk. You know, and before I let you go, I want to I want to encourage everybody who's watching watching this to go to YouTube and to type in
