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Oct. 9, 2023 - The Tucker Carlson Show
25:20
Tucker Carlson - Ep. 29  After the Hamas attacks, what’s the wise path forward?
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t
tucker carlson
07:30
v
vivek ramaswamy
16:40
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Speaker Time Text
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
No decent person can watch the video of young people being murdered at a music festival in southern Israel without feeling horrified.
It's awful, and there's no excusing it.
No matter what you think of Israel's policies in Gaza, you are not allowed to shoot people at music festivals.
That's a crime.
Israel has a right to respond to that crime and to defend itself.
No one seriously contests that.
The question for American policymakers, however, is what do we do next?
How do we represent the interests of the United States in this chaotic moment?
That's not a selfish question.
It's the whole point of making policy for a country to improve and protect that country.
If you serve in the US Congress or in the executive branch of government, you have a moral duty to think this way.
It's your job.
You serve the United States and its population.
You have no moral authority except to the extent that you represent your fellow Americans.
That's our system.
It used to be obvious, but it's worth remembering now because the conflict between Israel and Hamas could escalate into a war between Iran and its allies and the West.
Once a war like that starts, you could easily imagine the use of nuclear weapons and all that entails.
Millions dead, the collapse of the global economy.
At the very least, you could see an unprecedented energy crisis here.
Already gas in one Bay Area service station hit $7.29 a gallon over the weekend.
If that trend worsens and persists, the United States, which is already, technically speaking, bankrupt, would plunge into depression.
And no, it would not be like the 1930s.
Close to 10 million people have come here over the last three years from the poorest places in the world.
The overwhelming majority of them are on some form of federal subsidies.
You wonder how that's going to work out when the U.S. government runs out of money.
So there's a lot at stake in how we encourage Israel to respond to the horrifying Hamas attacks.
Wisdom and long-term thinking are essential, but you will not be surprised to learn that is not what we are getting.
Watch this person, for example, who happens to be the media's pick for President of the United States.
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This is not just an attack on Israel.
This is an attack on America because they hate us just as much.
And what we have to understand is this is the reason that we have to unite around making sure our enemies do not hurt our friends.
America can never be so arrogant to think we don't need friends, just like we needed them on 9-11.
That's why Ukraine needs us when Russia is doing this.
That's why Israel needs us when Hamas and Iran are doing this.
And I'll say this to Prime Minister Netanyahu, finish them.
Finish them.
Hamas did this.
You know Iran's behind it.
Finish them.
They should have hell to pay for what they've just done.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
This was an attack on America, she says, when in fact it was not.
And for that reason, we must, quote, finish Iran, a nation of nearly 90 million people.
What are we watching here?
This is not sober leadership.
She's a child, and this is the tantrum of a child.
Ignorant.
Cockshire, bloodthirsty.
Yet no one in Washington scolded her for it.
In fact, they aped her hysteria.
Here's fellow neocon Lindsey Graham just spelling it out and calling for the bombing of Iran.
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So I've been on the phone all day to the Mideast and I've told our allies and people with connections to Iran, what I would do, I would tell Iran that if Hezbollah attacks Israel, We're going to come after you, the Iranians, and have a coordinated effort between the United States and Israel to put Iran out of the oil business by destroying their refineries.
There are four major refineries in Iran.
They're fixed targets.
If Hezbollah attacks Israel, I would make Iran pay a heavy price.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
What exactly would happen to the United States if we declared war on Iran and started blowing up their infrastructure?
Lindsey Graham has no clue what would happen.
He hasn't thought it through.
He's almost 70 years old and he has no children.
He doesn't care.
But neither, amazingly, do most of his colleagues in Washington.
They're as reckless as he is.
Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw took to social media to call for what he described as a war to end all wars, as if there is such a thing.
But, of course, there isn't such a thing.
Wars beget more war.
The bigger the conflict, the uglier and longer-lasting the consequences.
See World War I for details.
These are not complex observations, but they seem lost on our leadership class.
Alone among candidates running for the Republican nomination for president, Vivek Ramaswamy dared to suggest that actually going to war with Iran might not be in America's national interest.
And for saying that, Mike Pence immediately denounced him as gutless and unpatriotic or something.
But we thought it might be worth hearing more.
Vivek Ramaswamy joins us now.
Vivek, thanks so much for coming on.
So if I'm reading this correctly, you suggested, while offering what seemed like real sympathy to the Israeli people, to the many murdered there two days ago, you noted that maybe it's not in America's best long-term interest to declare war on Iran.
Is that what you said?
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
I actually said this long before this crisis, when people were thinking clear-headedly.
And I just want to say a couple of things that are obvious but important, Tucker.
I mean, what happened against Israel?
You said it.
I believe it.
It is barbaric.
It is medieval.
It is wrong.
And Israel as a nation absolutely has the right to self-defense, to its own national existence.
And I think they should have our moral and diplomatic support as an ally.
But there's one element of this that nobody's talking about.
What the hell went wrong with U.S. and Israeli intelligence and the Israeli defense that allowed this to happen?
Everybody seems to be punting that as a question for later.
I think it's a question for now, if you're Israel.
I mean, look, I think that Nikki Haley, I disagree with you a little bit there.
I don't think she's a child.
I think that she is somebody who is, like many politicians, in a position to get wealthier from war, look at the military contracting business and otherwise.
But put that to one side.
The message that I would send would be very different.
Get to the bottom of what allowed this gaping hole of intelligence and defense to even happen before feeding that same beast.
If a doctor told you his job was to keep you from getting cancer and then you got that cancer, don't go.
Trust that same doctor to remove your tumor.
They don't let airplanes, when they crash, the pilots or the people who crash the airplane, that airliner is not the one who reviews the black box.
And so I think those answers have to come now.
That's not a question for later.
And I think one of the learnings for the U.S., I think there's a lot of learnings for the U.S., Tucker, but one of the learnings is if that establishment can get it wrong in Israel from a U.S. perspective, that could happen right here at home.
And if anything, as an ally, one of the things that we need to wake up to is that we're vulnerable here in the United States to the same.
And so we can do some things to prevent that, secure our border, stop funding.
I mean, I think one of the things that's been wrong in the US is we have a bad habit while we're bankrupt, funding both sides of wars that should have been avoided in the first place.
Look at the money that's indirectly found its way to Hamas, the $6 billion paid to Iran in the recent ransom.
That was a disaster.
Yet we're effectively now funding both sides of a war that we shouldn't have been in in the first place in places like Russia and Ukraine even.
Think about how we hampered oil production in the United States and then now has funding, US funding going to Ukraine in fighting back against Russia.
It's a bad habit in the United States and we need leaders here who will look after what advances American interests.
And I find what Dan Crenshaw said to be Cringeworthy.
It is shameful.
World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars that got us to World War II. That can't be the way that we run foreign policy.
The job of American leaders is to advance American interests.
And I think we support Israeli leaders asking what advances and defends Israel as we should, morally and diplomatically.
But leaders here need to look after American interests first.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
The conversation can't I mean, I don't think anyone defending the murder of concertgoers in the Negev two days ago is disqualified from being taken seriously.
Of course, that's wrong.
But it doesn't seem like any American policymaker Is even willing to entertain other questions like, what's in America's best interest?
What effect will this have on the global economy, on our economy, on energy prices?
These are not small things.
They should not be dismissed, but they are dismissed out of hand.
And you're some sort of quizzling if you even raise the question, why is that?
It seems crazy to me.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
Well, look, I mean, if you want to ask the question of right and wrong, then open that Pandora's box.
I don't favor doing this, but look at what's happening with Azerbaijan and Armenia.
You don't really hear much about that now.
Why?
Because Azerbaijan's lobby is about as effective as Ukraine's is in Washington, D.C. So this selective moral outrage, I do think is a problem.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
May I ask you to pause for just one moment there and just unpack that for viewers who are not aware of what you're referring to?
Armenia, Azerbaijan, what is happening?
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
I mean, what's happening is an atrocity.
I mean, you have people who are Armenians, largely Christians, six-figure numbers, 100, 120,000 being driven back to their country from a region that has long been a place they have called home.
A lot of atrocities that aren't even yet coming to light in Western media.
But Azerbaijan has a lobby, a powerful lobby in Washington, D.C. And I think a big part of what's wrong in the United States today, Tucker, and I don't.
I mean to toot my own horn, but it's why I'm coming in as an outsider to this nonsense, is you have a system that is bought and paid for, both for the people who run on the Democratic ticket, people who run on the Republican ticket, and people who make those decisions in Washington, D.C. that are effectively managed by, in this case, the Azerbaijan lobby that has a lid on discussing this conflict, which As you pointed out, most Americans haven't heard of, but you'll hear endlessly about Russia's incursion on Ukraine and having to stand on the right side.
That's a separate point where I reject that.
Ukraine is inherently good anyway.
But even if it were, a selective moral outrage in that case, but not another one in just a neighboring area that interfaces with Russia as well.
So open that Pandora's box around the world.
I mean, look at much of Africa.
Look elsewhere.
You're going to find ability to have selective moral outrage.
But you only hear about it in certain selective cases that the media and the existing establishment in both parties deem fit for the American public.
And what we need is Leaders in this country who are honest in calling out atrocities where they occur.
What happened in Israel was wrong.
I think we require leaders, some on the far left are too afraid to say it.
It was wrong.
But at the same time, we need leaders on the right who are willing to say it in other places too, like what's happening in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
But at the same time, to have the clarity and American-centric forethought to say what policy decisions we make.
Are separate from the moral judgments that we will pass.
So to say we will be with you diplomatically?
Absolutely.
To say you have our moral support?
Absolutely.
That we're not gonna get in the way of you defending your national boundaries?
Absolutely.
Even further, to say that in limited circumstances that advance US interests, we will provide munitions.
We can't do it across the board.
It's a zero-sum game when it comes to munitions between Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan next in the future.
In a limited way that advances US interests, that has to be the sole prism.
And that doesn't exist right now, Tucker, in the establishment of either political party.
And I think that the things that we're saying now to some may sound uncouth.
I don't think they should.
This is what the job of a national leader actually ought to be.
And that's how I'm planning to lead this country if I'm elected.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
I gotta say, you mentioned moral outrage and I thought the videos From southern Israel were morally outrageous, and I was offended by them and saddened by them.
Anyone who saw them, I think, was.
But you don't have to look far in the United States for moral outrages also on video.
There's not a city in this country, not just the big cities, but cities of 10,000 people.
I was in one yesterday.
It doesn't have some constellation of drug-addicted young people living outside.
We call them the homeless.
They're drug addicts.
And they're addicted to drugs that were imported across an open border, allowed by the Biden administration, and they're dying.
More than 100,000 a year.
Now, you can call it genocide.
You can call it whatever you want.
But it's the death of over 100,000 Americans a year and the living death of millions more who are living outside.
So I don't understand.
People are outraged by what happened in Israel.
And again, I want to add my voice to that because I'm a human being.
But the scale of the outrage among Republican presidential candidates was so much more intense.
One of them took to a bullhorn and started yelling about it.
I get it.
But no one would think to do that about the 100,000 American young people murdered every year, and they are murdered, honestly, by synthetic opioids.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
Give me a bullhorn for that one, Chuck.
I'll take my bullhorn for that one.
And let's just go a little bit deeper on that one.
This is the product of some intentional design.
I mean, there are literally synthetic precursors to make synthetic fentanyl coming from Wuhan of all places to Mexican drug cartels south of our own border, pumping that up.
And you want to just numbers to get the scale intact.
50 times the number of people who died on 9-11 are going to die this year as a consequence of fentanyl just crossing our southern border.
A couple days ago, I was actually at our northern border in the northern part of New Hampshire.
Totally wide open border.
I mean, to call this porous is an overstatement.
It's just an open border.
And there was enough fentanyl that crossed just last year, 2022. To kill three-plus million Americans, that was just the amount that was caught, let alone the amount that wasn't.
And so this is the product of intentional design.
People will say, is that because of a drug epidemic in demand?
You know, that's a separate debate, but a lot of that fentanyl is being laced into.
People who are taking it have no idea that they're taking fentanyl, taking other drugs that have fentanyl in it.
That's killing them on the spot.
That's closer to bioterrorism.
Nobody would call it an overdose if you put it in a Big Mac.
There is no level of moral outrage.
Forget the Democratic Party.
I've written that one off.
In the Republican Party, of the same scale of this incursion right here at home.
And so one of the things that allies do...
Is they learn from each other.
I think that intelligence sharing operations is critical with allies, with Israel and otherwise.
I think one of the things we can do is learn from both the successes and in this case a bad failure in the case of our ally.
To say if we have borders that are as open as ours, even Israel that had a border as tightly protected as its own saw this happen, we could have far worse or the equivalent happening right here at home.
I mean...
Other things that nobody's talking about, Tucker, is not just border defenses.
We don't have an iron dome in this country, yet we're vulnerable to nuclear missile attacks any given day, and we're marching closer into nuclear conflict in multiple parts of the world, most notably with Russia.
Think about cyber defenses.
And if that really was a cyber attack or whatever explanation it might be for why Israel was caught off guard, we're vulnerable to cyber attacks in this country.
Electromagnetic pulse attacks, nobody's talking about.
That could take out our electric grid, which, by the way, has 60 Chinese transformers in it.
You're gonna talk about space-based defenses, totally missing in the United States of America.
That's where my outrage is highest, is our own vulnerability.
Right here in the homeland.
And I do not think that it is crass.
I think it is the morally correct answer for leaders of nations to ask how they protect the interests of their nation.
That comes with allies.
And so I think that it is important not to create an equivalence between Hamas and Israel, as some on the American left and European left are trying to do.
It is wrong what happened to Israel.
And I call that out as a human being and as somebody who's on A belief of some people are on the right side and the wrong side of a conflict.
I think that that is far clearer here than it is, for example, in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or other areas where people have baked that cake.
But the selective nature of ignoring certain other conflicts, while even more importantly, ignoring the interests of the US right here at home, is what irritates the heck out of me out of the politicians in both parties.
And it is shameful.
And I think that there are Frankly, financial and corrupting influences that lead them exactly to speak the way they do.
That's just the hard truth.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
How could you pay for a much-needed defense system in another country but not in your own country?
I don't understand that.
How can you pretend to be a leader in your country if you're doing something like that?
It seems so immoral to me.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
Pretending is a good word to use.
I do think it's immoral, Tucker, to abandon, completely abdicate defending our own border, yet worrying about other people's borders more than we worry about our own.
That's not to legitimize anything that's happening in other parts of the world.
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world.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
Far from it.
It deserves to be condemned.
But start if you're the president of the United States.
Your obligation is to your homeland.
Defend your homeland.
People will say in response, and I get this, right, from the other presidential candidates, oh, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
You are neither walking nor chewing gum.
You are absolutely leaving our country vulnerable to every form of attack until it's too late.
But then it's one thing, Tucker, to say that, okay, people come to this conclusion if this is a new question.
This isn't a new question.
We spent $3 trillion.
In Iraq and in Afghanistan, to what end exactly?
Is the Taliban still in control in Afghanistan?
In Iraq, we still have hostile, effectively anti-American control, vulnerable to Iranian incursion as well while we're at it.
To what end?
And so if you don't learn from the mistakes of the past, it's not like we haven't had plenty of opportunities to reflect on that in the recent past.
If you don't learn from those mistakes in the past, you're destined to make the same mistakes in the future.
And right now we're in a position that's even more bankrupt, even more in the hole, $33 trillion in the hole than we were when we marched our way into those foreign wars last time around.
So I think it's important to be clear about what we will and won't do as the United States of America.
That gives clarity to our allies who deserve clarity from the United States.
That's the other dimension of this too, is by being vague about what that means, yelling, finish them, finish them, finish them into screen.
What does that actually mean?
By creating false equivalence between an attack on America, which thankfully we haven't had, and an attack on an ally of America, you create moral confusion in absence of hard red lines.
And I think that's what I'm worried about very much so in Russia.
There are no clear red lines when we're using a moral justification to advance a war that doesn't advance American interests.
The last thing is we need to repeat that same mistake in other parts of the world.
That's a formula for getting to World War III. And if you're someone like a Nikki Haley who is going to profit from World War III, I think you're disqualified from being the President of the United States.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
I feel so sorry for the Israelis and for the Ukrainians, for that matter.
I have no sympathy at all for our leaders.
I think they're disgusting.
So let me ask you just one last question.
So Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, this Crenshaw guy, probably the entire leadership of the Republican Party is effectively calling for war with Iran.
U.S. war with Iran.
What would that mean, do you think?
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
So I do not think that it is a good idea for us to enter war with Iran.
I think it would be good.
And the outcome that I expect is that Israel will be successful in defeating Hamas here.
In protecting its own homeland, they've done it countless times before.
I think they're going to do it again.
I think it is appropriate for the US to support Israel diplomatically at the UN when they're going to come after Israel or otherwise for the US to take a strong stand in favor of an ally that has been good and can continue to be good to the US. And I think that limited military support as well without using ground troops on the ground, military support without ground troops, that makes sense.
But I think for others who have refused to take I think we're doing a disservice to everybody, especially here in the United States.
And I do not think that right now, I mean, one of the things to remember, Tucker, is people at domestic policy will say it's the economy stupid.
Foreign policy, it's China stupid.
That's really what we need to remember.
Russia is being driven further into China's hands.
Iran is backed by China economically as well.
Sanctions and everything else.
Part of the reason why they haven't had the effect is that China's still got their back.
And so right now.
I mean, if you look at even the artillery shells that earlier this year, 300,000 to the tune of US artillery shells stored in Israel that we encouraged to send to Ukraine, it's a zero-sum game.
And so we're actually rolling out the red carpet, depleting multiple reserves between Ukraine and Israel.
I think we are paving the red carpet for China to annex Taiwan while we still depend on Taiwan foremost for our modern way of life in a way that we don't for Ukraine or other conflicts that we're marching our way into.
And so that's the way we need to look at this is what advances American interests?
Yes, stand firmly for what's right and wrong diplomatically and otherwise, but do it in a way that responsibly looks after American interests first.
And that's the real divide in the Republican Party.
I do think we have a real fundamental ideological divide in the Republican Party.
And we ought to be able to have that debate in the open.
I think we're not having it right now.
I, for my part, will be unapologetic in standing for putting the interests of this nation first because that happens to be the office that I'm running for while being crystal clear about the fact that what happened in Israel was wrong.
It was barbaric.
It was something that was inhumane.
And we have to provide the moral and diplomatic support that we need.
At the same time, the job of the US president is to stand for American citizens here in the homeland.
And that's how I'm planning to lead.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
Well, that's right.
They have no right.
Our leaders have no right except to act in the interest of the United States.
Anything outside that is immoral, and they have no authority to do it.
So anyway, I appreciate your willing to explain your views on this and to say something that was unpopular with the reckless morons running our country.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
If I was to just say one thing, Tucker, I was just thinking about the why, the why on this, right?
Because I think that for me, for a long time, looking at this from the outside, I'm not...
In the world of politics, or I'm in the world of politics now, but for like all the seven months.
Before that, I'm looking at it from the outside in.
You wonder why, right?
It's a bit of a mystery when you see the Lindsey Grahams or the Nikki Haley's or the John Boltons or the, you know, other people of this persuasion, the Mike Pence's, the Chris Christie wing of this party.
Being now in the sport.
I think I do have a much better understanding for why it's played the way that it is.
It comes down in most cases.
Some people do have ideological commitments that are outdated, that are earnest.
But a lot of it comes down to money.
The corrupting influence of super PACs on the process.
And I think that in the same...
Frame of putting American interests first in our foreign policy.
Even when you think about a left wing idea from 15, 20 years ago, heck, I'd embrace it now to say, get the influence of super PACs and mega money out of politics.
I would be happy to tell any super PAC backing me.
To give money back to those mega donors and that I want to show up at your events or whatever, as long as Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott and everybody else parading in a political race as standing for their own views does the same thing.
And that's not a panacea.
It's not a fix-all.
But when you understand that there are interests at work that go beyond just the earnest debate of differing views, that's really, I think, how we're going to get back to honest discourse in the Republican Party and in American politics is get the influence of mega money out of politics.
The super PACs are a cancer.
I'm happy to lead the way.
But without that, I think we're going to probably just be destined to expect more of the same.
That's just the hard fact.
tucker carlson ▲ ● ▼
How soulless would you have to be to take cash in exchange for wrecking your own country?
And by the way, the ones who are emotionally committed to it, the true warmongers, I know all of them.
And I can say this about them.
Not one of them has a normal sex life.
I'm just saying that.
That's true.
Whatever.
I'll leave that to you, Dr. Freud.
Anyway, Vivek, thank you so much for coming on.
Appreciate it.
vivek ramaswamy ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
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