Jeffrey Sachs

Could we actually look at something where a pandemic took perhaps 20 million lives worldwide? Where'd that come from? Especially since the evidence is now overwhelming that it was a laboratory creation with US scientists and US funding playing a huge role in this.

No. Snowden is a remarkable person. I don't know Julian Assange. I do know Edward Snowden. And he is an absolutely remarkable person. And yes, he is a hero because he told us what the government was actually doing towards us. And of course, the security state, which really runs America, therefore immediately branded him as the worst villain.

We found out more from Snowden about the risk to our freedom than from just about anybody else. And Julian Assange, you know, I almost every day I invoke a memorandum that he enabled me to see and you to see and all of us to see that explains just

the ukraine war better than anything else and julian assange deserves all of the credit for this and it's also an interesting story if i may just say in one minute uh our current cia director william burns in 2008 was the u.s ambassador to russia And when he was U.S. ambassador to Russia, he understood completely, perfectly that the U.S. push to expand NATO to Ukraine was disastrous.

Pure provocation, crossing Russia's red lines, likely to create a civil war inside Ukraine and a possible war between the United States and Russia. And he wrote a memo back to Condoleezza Rice, our Secretary of State. And the memo said that the entire Russian political class opposes NATO enlargement and for real reasons. And that memo famously became known as Nyet means Nyet. No means no.

Don't play games with this. This is real. This is a red line. Okay, something like this should be understood by the American people. We've just spent around $200 billion. We've just caused deaths of perhaps six or 700,000 Ukrainians. On completely false pretenses. On false pretenses that, as the New York Times has wrongly stated unendingly, that the war in Ukraine was, quote, unprovoked.

Not only was it provoked, the U.S. provoked it. And not only that, our senior diplomats knew that. Knew that at the time and wrote about it. Now. This memo makes this perfectly clear. Anyone can go online and type William Burns, Nyet means Nyet, cable, and you will come up with this cable, and then you can read why in 2008 we knew

that the deep state push for nato enlargement was mind-bendingly stupid dangerous provocative and likely to get us into disaster which it did how do we even see that memo do you think that a congressional committee called condoleezza rice and said could we have the documentary evidence to understand the choices you're making of course not there's no oversight when it comes to security issues.

We are already in a security state that has no resemblance to democracy whatsoever. But Julian Assange, enabled us to see it. So we have to express gratitude for that. This is the truth. If you don't want leaks, don't have a world run where every consequential fact is hidden from the American people and it enables one disaster after another. And just to make clear how disastrous this is,

Bill Clinton, who was, in my view, a completely ineffectual president and a long list of ineffectual presidents, came to office in 1993 when the doomsday clock was at 17 minutes from midnight, meaning that it was the farthest away from nuclear war in the whole history of the nuclear age. Every single president, starting with Clinton, brought the doomsday clock closer to Armageddon.

So we went from 17 minutes to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight with no accountability or explanation at all.

Well, I think that they may just be ignorant or don't understand or maybe they're New York Times readers. In other words, there are a lot of people who really don't understand pardons. the situation right now don't understand how dangerous it is, don't understand how lawless it is, don't understand how we're driven by these long-term aims that are absolutely disastrous.

I thank Mitch McConnell, by the way, for writing his essay that the goal is primacy. Too late. If our goal is primacy and we pursue that like this octogenarian who can barely function anymore says we should, we'll all get blown up. We'll move from 90 seconds to midnight to 60 seconds to midnight to 30 seconds to midnight and goodbye.

Because we can't have a world where the United States says we're in charge of everything. If you aim that way, we will end up with nothing.

You could know back in 2014, don't overthrow the Ukrainian government. You could know in 2015, honor the Minsk agreement that would end the war. You could know in 2021, negotiate with Russia because actually Ukraine, I won't even say Ukraine, the United States cannot win a war in Ukraine against Russia. We knew that. But these are not clever people. Jake Sullivan's not a clever person.

They don't understand. They're like terrible poker players that somehow are sitting at the Grand Slam of poker. They don't know what they're doing. And they're bluffing and they're betting and they're doubling down with our money, by the way. You know, and so... Yes, you could know this primacy thing. Come on. What does it even mean in a world of multiple nuclear superpowers? That's right.

What does it even mean? It means we just ignore all of that till we're all blown to smithereens? No. But, you know, Mitch McConnell's... barely functions anymore. But he's got the big story in foreign affairs about how we need to preserve primacy. So there's a lot of momentum and ignorance and deep state arrogance. Who the hell are you to tell us you don't even read the secret files, you know?

This is really where we have been for a very long time. Since 1991, The deep state, the CIA and others have been trying to defeat Russia. Since 1991, Netanyahu's been with American military remaking the Middle East. It's been a disaster on both fronts. It's made America drastically less secure. But they continue this group in power. And there's a chance. that President Trump could change this.

This is the most promising single reality of his government if he chooses rightly. He has to understand he's got a completely divided And he's got a completely divided landscape in Washington. And I think he knows the deep state is not going out with a whimper. It's going to fight for its prerogatives. Are people you know worried about a terror attack in the U.S. ? I don't know.

They don't tell me. And I'm frankly myself more worried about World War III.