Jeffrey Sachs

He displayed that in the first term, and he said that repeatedly now. This is the best thing we have going for us. Now, in his first term, he hired a lot of very irresponsible people. that like war or that like duplicity or that like the deep state or that like accountability, unaccountability, like John Bolton, one of my least favorites among all of these. Fair. And Trump hired them.

So the question now is probably not his deep sense which I think is absolutely right. But now his tactical sense inside the US government, please don't let the deep state continue on a path that it's been on and don't let the normal hardliners because Washington is filled with people who have been on the payroll of the military industrial complex their whole careers.

Don't let them dominate policy. And the incoming administration is such a mix right now. And we see that the clarity of those who want to control this, how hard they're being, you know, how harshly they're being opposed, like Tulsi Gabbard. Or let me say Bobby Kennedy, though. His department is health, but... He understands this peace side as well very clearly.

These are the ones that they're fighting because we have been for... I'd say again, 30 years at least, and arguably basically 80 years since the end of World War II on a particular JAG, which at least Mitch McConnell does us the service of naming by its name, which is Primacy. And if we continue on that course, Trump will fail and the United States will be gravely endangered.

And if he reverses that course, he stands to be a great and historic president.

I think there's no doubt that they've used assassinations at home. I'm of the view that JFK was the first clear case of that at home. This is a long, long story, and some people roll their eyes at it, but I've spent... much of my life reading, studying, examining this. I think it's quite arguable for Bobby Kennedy the same way.

And I don't think that there have been scruples inside about keeping prerogatives. At the same time, the situation is better now in one regard. 30 years of failure so it's not as if the course that we're on is giving us these great benefits the united states needs to change course for our own security we need to change course for our own finances we're not in good shape in this country yes when

75% or so of Americans repeatedly say America's on the wrong track. They're correct at that. And they say that now. That's the latest Gallup article. And they're completely right. So this is not the exuberance and I would say the hubris of 1991.

And I was there then as an economic specialist and an advisor, unpaid and informal, but an advisor to President Gorbachev and an advisor to President Yeltsin and an advisor to Ukraine's President Kuchma. on how to stabilize their desperately destabilized economies and how to move to market systems. And the United States was not interested in peace.

We had this hubris that history had ended, we had won, and now America would run the show. The difference today is that We're 33 years after the end of the Soviet Union. We tried the neocon approach for 30 years now. We have engaged in all of Netanyahu's wars. We went to war in Ukraine. Everything that was predicted has been proved wrong. The neocons failed time and again.

They didn't remake Afghanistan. They didn't remake Iraq. They did not remake the Middle East. They did not call Putin's bluff. enter Ukraine with NATO. They did not enter Georgia with NATO. They completely misjudged how we would push the rest of the world into unity, as I mentioned with Zbigniew Brzezinski saying Russia will never side with China on this. Well, of course, he got wrong.

The most fundamental diplomatic change of our age, the rise of China and the creation of a group that does not want U.S. hegemony and a group that is increasingly integrated in production and military and security and diplomacy. We are at a time where the failures are self-evident if people open their eyes, and the American people know it, in fact.

So it's not even convincing the American people, oh, it's worse than you think. No, they know. They want their own problem solved. How about jobs, some housing, reduce crime in my neighborhood, keep the inflation down? Could you keep the debt from destroying American public finances? They're not interested in Mitch McConnell's primacy continuing. He's an octogenarian, go, done, you're done.

It's time for something different. So in this sense, it's really possible for this administration, this incoming administration, to change course because it doesn't require a massive public education. It requires honesty. It requires seeing down the deep state internally. It requires making sure that the key appointments that want competence, honesty, and security for America actually get the job.

And, of course, it requires President Trump's Following through on his profound main insight, which is that there is no reason for war with Russia. There's no reason for war with China. And I want him really to know, really to know there's no reason for war with Iran.

I don't know if those Fox reporters have the chance to speak with the Iranian senior officials or Middle East officials. I do. I do all the time. I am able to ask. questions, to check facts, to understand circumstances. I speak to lots of people engaged all over the Middle East on these questions, and it's simply not true.

So the first thing one should do, period, in this world is talk to the other side. And if Donald Trump has that this would be the farthest reach, but if he has that impulse with Iran too, he will be perhaps amazed, perhaps gratified, but he would do a huge service for the American people, huge service for the American people.

There's nothing inevitable till it happens.

Thank you. This is extremely important. A war with Iran will be World War III. So that's the point. Iran is not alone, and it will not remain alone. And so if we go to war with Iran, we are expanding the war with Russia. With Russia, we are at a possibility of peace, but we're also at a possibility of nuclear war. They're both very close.

And if we go to war with Iran, we make the war, nuclear war, all the more likely.