Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson argued against the possibility of engaging in an armed conflict with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Russian forces are positioned along the Russia-Ukraine border, making some draw the conclusion Russia is poised to move into the former province of the Soviet Union.
Carlson told his viewers he saw no upside to the United States being involved.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Here is something all of us need to begin to internalize. Just because something seems farfetched or it seems crazy or it seems totally destructive to core American interests doesn’t mean the U.S. government won’t do it. That’s the main lesson of the moment we are leaving in.
So with that in mind, do not discount no matter how farfetched it may seem a hot war with Russia. Yes, that is a lunatic idea. There is nothing we could possibly gain from a military confrontation with Vladimir Putin and there is very much we could lose, including of course many thousands of American lives, but that doesn’t mean Joe Biden won’t do it.
Biden is unpopular. He is incompetent and he is desperate, but more than anything Joe Biden is weak. He is a pawn of his staff and the hard-eyed ideologues who surround him. Russia is currently involved in a border dispute with neighboring Ukraine, and many of Biden’s closest aides are pushing the United States to get involved militarily.
Now among the many, many ironies here is that the Ukraine crisis was largely created by Joe Biden’s own aides and many people like them throughout all levels of the U.S. government.
So here is the Russian position. For Russia, the core question is NATO. NATO is the post-war military alliance created in 1949 to keep the Soviets from invading Western Europe, and it worked pretty well for about 40 years. But the Soviet Union has not existed in more than three decades. It is part of history now, and yet NATO very much lives on, better funded than ever. It is an Army without a purpose.
So at this point, NATO exists primarily to torment Vladimir Putin who whatever his many faults has no intention of invading Western Europe. Vladimir Putin does not want Belgium, he just wants to keep his western border secure, that’s why he doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO and that makes sense. Imagine how we would feel if Mexico and Canada became satellites of China, we wouldn’t like that at all.
In Russia’s case, this is an existential question. A NATO takeover of Ukraine would compromise Russia’s access to its Sebastopol Naval Base. That’s the site of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and one of the country’s only connections to international waters.
In the words of Russia’s scholar, Richard Sakwa, if Russia lost the Sevastopol Naval Base, it would be quote, “The biggest military geopolitical defeat of Russia in the last thousand years.” So for Vladimir Putin, that’s unacceptable, it is a disaster. He cannot let it happen, he will not let it happen.
But for the United States and this is the main point here, there would be no benefit either. The United States would gain precisely nothing from taking over Ukraine. Why would we want to do that?
At best, we’d be driving Russia and we are in fact deeper into the arms of the government of China, and that would be a disaster for the United States and a disaster for the world. So why are we doing this? Why is the U.S. government pushing Ukraine to join NATO?
Well, God knows why. But we are doing this, both parties are doing this. The neocons around Joe Biden are for it of course as they are for every sinister and stupid idea, but so is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a smart man, so is Ohio Senator Rob Portman, so are many Republicans. So, this is a bipartisan sort of insanity.
The question is, can Joe Biden stand up to it? And the answer is: Come on, Biden has always been more lobbyist than leader. He says what he is told to say.
Once it was the credit card companies in Delaware that wrote his scripts; now, it is the neocons of the State Department. It is the same idea.
Biden spoke today with Vladimir Putin by video call and according to the White House, he informed the Russian leader that the United States plans to control Ukraine no matter what. The Secretary of State and struggling pop musician, Tony Blinken repeated that message. He threatened to send American troops there.
Here is Tony Blinken’s spokesman.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NED PRICE, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: If Russia chooses to fail to de-escalate, if Russia chooses to move forward with any plans it may have developed to continue its military aggression or to aggress militarily upon Ukraine, to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty, its independence, its territorial integrity, we, and our allies would be prepared to act. We would be prepared to act resolutely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: These are such children. Ukraine’s territorial integrity — that’s the concern. That’s what this is really about, they are telling us, because if there is one thing the Biden White House cares about, it is secure borders, at least in Eastern Europe where borders are not racist.
Ukraine’s borders must be defended. It would be immoral to open those borders to the world and allow say tens of thousands of unemployed Haitians to pour across. We can’t allow that. In fact, we will send American troops to Ukraine to prevent that.
Open borders are only permitted in Texas, Arizona, and California, and anywhere else the potential Democratic voters might arrive uninvited from the third world, but Ukraine, no. Ukraine is a God-given right to territorial integrity and American soldiers will die to defend that territorial integrity. That’s our official position as a country.
Now, according to CNN, we must stop these Russian attacks on the sacred borders of Ukraine because if we don’t stop them, what we could have here is what CNN is calling a dire security situation.
Now, that phrase apparently comes from Joe Biden’s Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, who according to CNN gave a quote, “gloomy briefing” to U.S. Senators last night.
Victoria Nuland is strongly in favor of war with Russia. What’s amazing is that anyone, anywhere is still listening to her. No serious person could take Victoria Nuland seriously. She is a joke.
Not only is she obviously unimpressive as a person, ask anyone who knows her, and she is not especially pro-American by the way, she was one of the architects of the disaster in Iraq. So why is Victoria Nuland still talking about foreign policy? Is the guy who designed Chernobyl still building nuclear reactors? Probably not.
Only in Washington where failure is assiduously rewarded could someone like Victoria Nuland still wield power which she absolutely does. It’s scary when you think about it.
Victoria Nuland is driving our Ukraine policy, which of course is being justified by our broader support for quote “democracy.” Now keep that in mind as you listen to this. This is the same — the same Victoria Nuland who was caught on tape several years ago scheming about how to end democracy in Ukraine.
Here is Nuland in a leaked audio recording plotting the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President. Listen as Nuland rattles off a list of potential puppets to install in place of the democratically elected President.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
VICTORIA NULAND, UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS OF THE UNITED STATES: I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He is the — you know, what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know.
I just think Klitsch going in, he is going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk. It’s just not going to work.
GEOFFREY PYATT, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE: Yes, no. I think that’s — I think that’s right. Okay.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CARLSON: “It’s just not going to work.” What about the voters of Ukraine who thought they were engaged in democracy? Nope, there is Tori Nuland working to overthrow democracy.
Keep in mind, if they’ll do it there, they will do it here.
You’re hearing the same State Department goon who worked to organize a coup in Ukraine telling us we need to go to war with Russia to preserve democracy in Ukraine. These people have no shame.
So the question is, what is this really about? Of course, it is not about democracy, for which they have zero respect. Well, in part, it is a hangover from the lunatic Russia hoax that absorbed Washington for three years. Everything about Vladimir Putin is bad, therefore, let’s have a war with him. A lot of people think that.
But there is also a deeper cause here that’s rarely noted.
For years, Ukrainian interests have pumped millions of lobbying dollars into Washington, D.C. to change American foreign policy in the region. At one point, as you may have heard, they employed the President’s own son to repeat their talking points. So tens of thousands of dollars a month to tell us that Russia is bad and we need to stand with Ukraine because democracy even as we work to overthrow democracy in Ukraine.
So with that in mind, now that you know that, maybe you were not so surprised when Joe Biden concluded that Vladimir Putin doesn’t possess a soul.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS HOST: You said you know he doesn’t have a soul.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I did say that to him, yes. And to — and his response was, we understand one another.
I wasn’t being a wise guy. I was alone with him in his office, that’s how it came about. It was when President Bush had said, I’ve looked in his eyes and saw a soul. I said, I looked in your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul, and looked — and he said, we understand each other.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you know Vladimir Putin, you think he’s a killer?
BIDEN: Yes. I do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: These people are children. Again, children pretending to be leaders. Vladimir Putin is a killer, presumably unlike every other head of state on Earth through all human history. But honestly, that is not the relevant question. Vladimir Putin’s soul? Who cares? We can leave that to his priest, assuming he has one.
The only question that matters, the only question is how does intervening in Ukraine help the core interests of the United States? And of course, that is the one question no one in Washington is asking.
Watch The Pentagon’s obedient little flack, a man with so little dignity he’ll say whatever he is told to say, brag about how much military equipment we are now sending to Ukraine and notice as you watch this tape that he never even thinks about explaining why we would be sending that military equipment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY (RET.) PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: We have provided millions of dollars’ worth of lethal and non-lethal assistance to Ukraine in just the last, you know 10 months or 11 months.
Nothing has changed about our commitment to making sure that Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So, say what you will about Donald Trump and his Twitter account, maybe you liked him, maybe you’re appalled by his personal style, but in retrospect if there is one thing that Donald Trump deserves eternal credit for is keeping idiots like that in their box for four years. There were no pointless wars under Donald Trump.
That is not a small thing in recent American history, in fact, it’s rarely happened over the past century, but through unwavering determination for which he has not gotten credit, if there’s one thing he deserves credit for, it’s this — Donald Trump pulled that off. He resisted again and again when Members of Congress and guys from Raytheon, when all the interested parties pushed him to go to war here, there, and everywhere, Donald Trump resisted that.
And in Washington, above all, they hated him for that. In the end, they impeached him for it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): As one witness put it during our Impeachment Inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Really? We’re going to fight Russia here, are we, Adam Schiff? Adam Schiff, of course, a dumb person and a partisan Democrat.
But what is so interesting and it ought to make you sit up and pay attention is suddenly, partisan Republicans are making identical noises.
Just this afternoon, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi — not a genius, famously, but still a sitting Republican senator went on FOX News to say, we may need to send American troops to Ukraine and possibly because this isn’t insane or anything, think about the use of nuclear weapons. Got that in our back pocket. Nuclear weapons.
Roger Wicker, sitting U.S. Senator. No one in Washington laughed at Roger Wicker. This is so crazy that no one seems aware of how crazy it is. They’re all just sitting back and listening to Victoria Nuland tell them what we need to do.
How much has this penetrated the psyche of Washington, D.C.? Well, here is a sad piece of tape. This is Joni Ernst who is totally affable, nice Republican, sort of reasonable in most things from the Midwest suddenly sounding like a bloodthirsty warmonger, sounding a lot like actually, Adam Schiff when she talks about that dastardly Vladimir Putin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JONI ERNST (R-IA): He needs to say to Vladimir Putin that we are no longer going to allow you to continue with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. We need you to know and understand that we will defend Ukraine and we will provide them assistance. He needs to make that very clear.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Putin is so bad we’re going to cut off natural gas to Western Europe in retaliation against him in December. We’re going to freeze Germany and Luxembourg and that’s going to teach Vladimir Putin.
Again, what you just saw there is a child who has no idea what she is talking about, but keeps talking anyway. “We will defend Ukraine,” says Joni Ernst. Remember this is a Senator from Iowa. So what happens if we don’t defend Ukraine, Joni Ernst? Will kids in Des Moines grow up to speak Russian?
No one asked her that question. She has never thought about it, for a moment, but all is reading from the same talking points from Adam Schiff to Roger Wicker to Joni Ernst. It turns out that foreign lobbying campaigns work pretty well and that’s what the Ukrainians pay for when in Washington.
So where is all of this going exactly? What can we expect over the next month or two?
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor