Rick Sanchez

And I think they generally do a pretty good job with their product.

Yeah, and my show was not necessarily every day about the Ukraine war, nor was it about Putin, nor was it, it was US politics, it was a little bit of India, it was about the South China Sea. You know, we covered all the interesting things that were going on out there. I totally agree. And to hear an American perspective, which, as an American you brought, is, I think, really cool and important and

I decided to leave television altogether, television news. And at the time I was... I had started a new healthcare company in South Florida, which we took public for a couple billion dollars. And it was a great story. But as that... Als das Unternehmen wuchs, dachte ich mir, ich verliere meinen Anruf. Mein Anruf ist das, was du tust. Es ist Spaß. Ich liebe, Geschichten zu erzählen.

A government is not allowed in this country or so we're told to tell us who we can work for, who we can watch or what news entities. can deliver news and which can't.

That's correct. In the middle of a presidential campaign. Keyword, presidential campaign. I get this interesting phone call. I had just come home from work and I get a phone call and it's an old friend who used to work with me in mainstream news. He was a manager at CNN, as a matter of fact. Ricky, what's going on? Yeah, hi. Oh my God, what are you doing calling me?

Ich liebe, Dinge zu finden, die ich nicht wusste. Und ich liebe, sie zu teilen. Und das für ein Leben zu tun, finde ich, ist eine wundervolle Sache. Ich stimme total dazu. Would you come up and talk to him? And then subsequently I had the call with Larry King. I said, you know what, I might want to do this.

He goes, I just wanted to check up on you, see how things are going. I said, good, Jim, things are going pretty well. He says, just calling to let you know that I'm now working somewhere else. I'm no longer in news. I said, oh, okay. And where I work, a lot of people are talking about you. And I said, well, cool, that's neat. Who are you working? He says, like the State Department, kind of.

Oh, come on. I'm like, no. I'm like, oh, wait. You work at the State Department. Who knows? USAID.

Yes. And the guys are talking about you. I said, well, good. What are they saying? Well, your show is very popular.

Ja, I said, well, what do you think? He goes, well, they don't necessarily like some of the things that you're saying. And I said, okay. And I said, well, they're welcome to come on and tell me, whoever they are, tell me. I mean, we can have them on as a guest and we can discuss whatever it is. But throughout the conversation, he was very evasive.

but was letting me know that, I guess he was letting me know that I was being watched. And that was part of his mission. And not only was he telling me that I was being watched, but he would kind of hope that I would somehow change what I was saying. But he wasn't coming out and exactly saying it.

So when we were done with the conversation, I remember I hung up the phone and I thought, what the hell was that? War das eine Warnung oder eine Bedrohung? Ich bin mir nicht sicher. Oder vielleicht beide. Und dann, drei Wochen später, plötzlich höre ich, und dann passiert es, die Biden-Administration hat entschieden, durch die Treasury-Departement zu gehen, dieses kleine

agency called ol fact that most people have never heard of yes which controls what businesses in the united states are allowed to exist and which ones aren't and um and they shut down the place where i worked and not only that they passed a measure within that provision that seemed to say and i'm not a lawyer and i'm not an expert on it but it seemed to say that any american working for this entity will go to jail or be fined if they continue working for that entity

So and that's what happened. And the next day, man, I was on the street.

That means that they officially announced that RT as an entity. Und jeder, der mit Medien in Russland verbunden ist, glaube ich, ist das, wie sie es geschrieben haben, nicht ermöglicht wird, oder sogar niemanden in den Vereinigten Staaten zu verabschieden. Ich, Rick Sanchez Productions, mein Show, wurde von einer Entität verabschiedet, um ein Show zu machen, das auf RT gedreht wurde.

I didn't work directly for RT, but I worked for a US company that was doing shows. They sold the shows and they sold this show to RT. So my show ended up being on RT. Well, they backchanneled the Treasury Department under Mr. Biden, decided to follow all those little loopholes or whatever. And they went all the way back and said, not only RT, Can RT not exist in the United States?

RT is not allowed to pay money to anybody in the United States for any product. They can't buy a product. They can't contract anybody. Nobody can work for anybody who contracts through RT. And if any of those people are caught in the United States somehow contracting or working for RT, I don't care if you're a janitor or a carpenter or a plumber, you will be fined or even go to jail.

That's the new law, according to Mr. Biden, three weeks afterward. And they said something in the dicta, in the explanation about why they were doing this, that they thought that the Russians were once again preparing to interfere in our election, as they had before in the case with Mr. Trump. So, they were shutting down RT and anybody who could be in any way associated with RT.

Even though I wasn't doing pro-Trump stuff. In fact, I was criticizing Mr. Trump during the campaign for certain things that he did. Just like I was criticizing Kamala Harris. It was totally unfair that here I am just doing a basic newscast every day, sharing it with them. That was garnering tens of millions of people around the world.

Sat down with my wife and my family and I said, you know what, I'm going to put the healthcare company aside and I'm going to go back to what I really want to do. So I joined RT. I said yes. What year?

And a lot of people thought it was fair and it was sharing a perspective that Americans needed to hear. And the Biden administration said, no, you cannot practice your craft as a journalist if you're in any way associated with those people. But it wasn't airing in the United States. No, it wasn't. That's just pure craziness. That's what happened. And it happened in America.

And it hurts being a guy who was born in a communist country and has spent his whole life saying we are so different than the rest of the world because we allow people to say and think and work wherever they want. And all of a sudden here I was being told I couldn't work or think or say whatever I wanted.

He sent me a Christmas card recently.

He did, we did have, no, actually, we did have a... That's such mafia behavior, I mean... We did have a secondary conversation and interestingly enough, he suggested that he would help me if I wanted to maybe go to work like at Fox or someplace like that, that they could make some phone calls.

Isn't that kind of a feeling you get? Is that what they were saying?

When you're living it and you're experiencing it, and thank God, you know, we've done well. And Suzanne and I are, you know, there's other people who are affected by this. You know, guys who were producers and writers.

They hired teams of people all over Washington and New York. And they're good people. People who worked with you at Fox and people who worked with me at CNN and people who worked in local news. Just regular American people. Writers, producers, you know. And they're all out on their ass simply because Mr. Biden thought that the Russians might be mean to him.

I found the Russians in general to be and have found them to be since I've been working with them to be extremely transactional and extremely honest. Sometimes, you know, more so than we are.

Sie sagen, was sie denken. Sie wissen, was sie wollen. Und wenn du mit ihnen sprichst, sind sie sehr exakt darüber, was sie wollen. Und ich finde das sehr bemerkenswert. Wir sprechen hier über Generalitäten. Schlechte Generalitäten sind nie gut. Es gibt alle Art von Russen, es ist, als ob es alle Art von Amerikanern gibt.

Aber generell gesagt, habe ich ihren Mannerismus sehr einfach mit und für gearbeitet.

2019.

Weit vor dieser Krieg und allem anderen. Und die Strecke zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und Russland war damals nicht hostile. Es war nicht unbedingt überlebt. Es war nur ein bisschen... Müde. In der Mitte. Müde. Genau. Ja, damals. Ja. Also was war es so?

I know we think this and I know every year or every couple of years we have this, you know, Normandy thing where we invite everybody but the Russians and the French president, whoever he happens to be at the time, whether it's Macron to Mitterrand, sits there and says, oh, look what we did in Europe. Look what we did. Really? No, I know. You lasted five minutes, dude. But yeah, part of the story.

right just know this tucker and i think you do every time a bullet is spent every time a helicopter crashes every time a fighter plane goes down somebody somewhere in the united states says to ching i hate that and i mean you're right i know that you're right fortunately wars and enemies are chosen for a specific reason and more often than not it has to do with financial reasons and it has nothing to do with the good people of this country right just like

There are good people in Wisconsin who don't want to share their communities with tons of immigrants. And it's not because they're bad people or dislike immigrants. And they're not the ones who started the problem in Honduras or Guatemala that caused 500,000 people to leave the countryside and come to the United States. So there are some people in our country. I love the United States.

But there are some people in our government who do some very nefarious things, who create bad results that make the rest of us feel it and look bad.

Of course. I want to be a writer. I want to be able to talk to my producers. I want to know who my other writers are. Yes. And so I picked my staff. I wrote my entire show. I picked my topics. I led the editorial meeting every morning, discussing what was going to be on our news agenda of the day. And Kann ich dir etwas sagen? Ich hatte nie die Möglichkeit bei CNN oder Fox oder NBC.

Their perspective on the war was quite simple. It goes back decades where it seemed to them that NATO und die Vereinigten Staaten, von denen viele Leute sagen, NATO ist wirklich aus Washington ausgegangen, haben seit Jahren ihre Voraussetzungen verschlossen. Es ist fast so einfach, wenn wir versuchen, es in sehr einfachen Terminen zu erklären. Nachdem die Sowjetunion zerbrochen wurde,

They were desperate for a friend. And we said we would be their friend. And we would show them how democracy and capitalism works. And we sent the brightest minds in America. And we even had James Baker say to them, don't worry, because you're no longer our enemy, we're not going to encroach on you. We're not going to point missiles at you.

We're not going to continue NATO expansion all the way up to your border. We're just not going to do that. We promise, we're not going to do that. And then they found out over the years that that wasn't true, that every single thing that we said we would not do, we actually did.

And if you actually looked at Russia and then you looked at NATO now, it's almost like they're feeling a little bit surrounded. Well, because the point of NATO is to surround them. Yeah, from Estonia to Latvia, and there's missiles pointed there, and they started getting feared.

So now you have this here, which is Ukraine, which is almost the end of the encirclement, and they finally thought to themselves as citizens, and their president said, guys, this is too much. I mean, now you want to take Ukraine? We got a 4,000-year history here, going back to Catherine the Great.

Now you say, not only do you want to take NATO, but you're already putting military hardware in there. And then there was this thing, which they believe is very true, which our government, under a woman named Victoria Nuland in 2014, helped to foment, along with Mr. Biden, who was Vice President, a coup in Ukraine that Ja, ja. Genau. Not on everything, but they're going to have relations.

We decided it was wrong for the president of Ukraine to have relations, certainly not friendly relations with Russia. So we went in and we started a coup, which we've been known to do, as you know. And as a result of that coup, we had the guy essentially eventually removed. And that finally was the last straw.

That's where the Russians, their mindset, their president, their politicians said, this is too much. This just cannot continue. And that's what led to this war. So that's their way of looking at it. Like they were being encroached. Is it right? Is it wrong? Do they have a right to think that way? It's not for me to decide. Maybe historians can decide that.

But there's another story besides one day the Russians just got angry and decided to go after Ukraine for no reason whatsoever.

And there's nothing factually to back that story up in any way.

They have been losing territory, not gaining territory, and they're fine with it, and they don't want to go. I don't think the Russians want to run Ukraine. Do they need more land, the Russians?

Ich bin sorry, dass ich das sage.

Ja, ich meine, du hast einen Sinn oder eine Freiheit oder journalistische Independence, wenn du an diesen Orten arbeitest, aber nicht wie dieses hier. I'll just say right now, and I hope I'm not breaking anybody's heart out there who's a big CNN fan or any cable news fans out there, but if you decide you want to interview somebody and he's not on their list of okay interviewees...

Es ist etwas, was mich so oft verärgert. Katar! I just, well, because I'm bored and I created a new podcast. It's called Journalistically Speaking. And I named it Journalistically Speaking for a reason. I got a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota. I've practiced journalism most of my life. I feel good about it. I think it's an honorable profession.

But I'm kind of trying to stick it in the eye of the other people who call themselves journalists, who work at all these places today. I started looking around and looking at MSNBC and CNN and Fox. How the people who work at these places were former spokespersons for the Pentagon or the State Department or President Bush or President this or President that.

And I'm thinking, and they say, Russians are state TV? We've got literally the person who spoke for the President of the United States is now the anchor at such and such a network.

And they're all over the place. And what is more state TV than that? And most of them didn't even study journalism and have never covered a story and wouldn't know what it looks like if they hit him in the ass. So funny. There's this one chick on MSNBC who I knew, and I can't remember her new last name.

Yeah, and that's how they keep their jobs. And that's why the Rick Sanchez's of the world get fired from those places and the Tucker Carlson's of the world get fired from those places.

They did the same thing with him that they did with me. I mean, you know, they said, look, I know you've got a new contract you signed just a little while ago, so we're going to continue to pay you for the next two and a half or three years. And the only thing is, you can't say anything bad about us and you can't really take another job unless it's more money. And, you know, it's crazy.

They're not going to let you interview him. And if you want to go down a certain path... He's banned.

I don't know where they get the money, but they have a lot of money, those places.

Because they just hand it out and they told Dylan Rattigan, no, we don't want you working here anymore. And it was like... Sie haben es von einer Woche bis zur nächsten gemacht und er ist weg. Nur weil er die Status Quo ausübt.

Und dann war er weg. Ja. Yeah, I got that same feeling at CNN. As soon as I started challenging certain principles, criticizing, for example, certain things, then the elders at CNN, those people who were in that, the row, they called it. Oh, I remember. They had this thing called the row.

Und es waren fünf, sechs, sieben, acht ältere Leute, die entschieden haben, welche Geschichten auf dem Boden waren, warum sie auf dem Boden waren, wann sie auf dem Boden gehen sollten.

Und ich erinnere mich, dass ich anfangen wollte, bestimmte Geschichten zu machen, über einige der Fehler und Verletzungen, die wir in Lateinamerika gemacht haben, zum Beispiel, die dieses Immigration-Ding, das da war, verursacht haben. Und sie sagten, nein, nein, nein, wir veröffentlichen das nicht. Ich sagte, was meinst du, wir veröffentlichen das nicht?

I said, you know, to a certain extent, we kind of started a civil war in Guatemala that ended up in the deaths of 200,000 people. And we removed a democratically elected president back in the 1950s, which has led to the problems that have gone into Honduras.

And as the only Hispanic anchor in America working at your network, I'd like to tell some of these stories, not to be critical, so we can learn. We make mistakes.

They said, no, you will not do that story.

Why? How? I guess it made certain people in the neocon establishment look bad.

Ich meine, weißt du, was...

Sure, the Jeffrey Sachs of the world, the Mearsheimers of the world, the Colonel McGregors of the world, they're not allowed to be on those networks.

I was watching you and Cuomo the other day and I thought, wow, the questions that you guys were going back and forth on, I was thinking, does he really not know? Does he really think, for example, not to bust his chops, because I think he's a good guy and generally does a good show.

He's inquisitive enough to ask good questions, but guys like him who you think, this guy is really smart, and when he's kind of defending Zelensky as some kind of, you know, novel, perfect leader, I'm thinking, dude, really? I mean, the information's out there if you just want to look for it. Or do you not want to find it?

It's crazy. So I started... seeing some of these things when I was at CNN. I saw them as well at NBC and Fox, you know, to be fair, maybe sometimes coming from a different direction. And sure, I was allowed to have some Ja, genau.

Wenn du als Kommunikator in den USA gehörst, ist eines der ersten Dinge, zu denen du gehörst, das Prinzip des Machts. Also, wenn du ein lokaler Reporter in Wichita hast, hast du Zugang zu dem Polizeichief, damit du rausgehen kannst auf den Busse, die sie machen werden, oder die Investition auf einen lokalen Politiker. Du brauchst diese Verbindung.

Somewhere along the line, that never seems to be broken for some people. It's like, if all I got to do to be a good communicator is get tight with the mayor's office, the police chief, and then as you grow, maybe you end up at CNN. Now it's the State Department.

CIA. As a journalist, I represent power. And somewhere along the line, somebody needs to slap the shit out of all of us and say, no, you don't. No, you don't. Your job is not to represent. Your job is to represent the people down there, the workers, the people who pay the taxes. Those people, they are the people you need to work for. Your audience, the average American. And they're not.

They're like, yeah, the average American's here, but the people that I really want to impress are over here, because that's what gives me access, and access is everything. Access is growth, and it gets me the next job. And that's a strange little thing that we've developed in this country.

Pentagon reporters are usually salutes.

And when you challenge her, when she's on your show, which I'm sure you had this happen, because I had this happen at CNN. I, you know, have the Pentagon reporter on and I challenge her on a question. She would complain to management and then management would call me in and say, hey, take it easy with your questioning and what you were doing. Are you serious?

Oh, I remember John Klein calling me, the president of CNN. Do you remember John? Do I remember John? Yeah. Do we want to go into a rabbit hole here?

But John would call me and say, Rick, such and such says you got to really back off on this stuff. It's like, why? It's a perfectly legitimate question.

Well, that... That little moment, that half a second on the phone of silence must have been... I don't want to be that person.

Sounds a little like the Mafia.

No, you and I have had interesting careers.

And we're both better for it.

Well, here, let me help you. So after the Biden administration decides that they think this entity, which they really don't even understand, but apparently they thought my show was too popular and they didn't want me to be popular on a network other than the BBC or CNN. And so they essentially shut it down, thereby shutting me down by penalty of imprisonment.

And I was a little angry about it, so I went around and I started telling people about it all. Anybody who would listen, I would say, look, this is the situation I'm in and it's very bothersome. And I got a lot of people, including the Society of Professional Journalists, who said, look...

In a country like ours, the government doesn't get a chance to decide who are the winners and losers, who can report and who can do anything else. So they've invited me to actually speak at one of their forums, which I thought was cool. And then a very large newspaper here in the United States, in Washington no less, decided they were going to run a story on this.

And essentially they wrote a story that essentially says the headline of, you know, Rick Sanchez, former CNN reporter, challenging the Biden administration, hoping that the new Trump administration will change this law. And it was a legitimate story, telling the story that I've been telling you, that one day I was working and suddenly this was taken away from me and it was unfair.

Perfectly legitimate story. And it was about to air, or pardon me, be published the very next day and I get a phone call. Remember we talked earlier about a mysterious phone call? Yeah. Now there's this young journalist, nice young man, worked hard on this story, smart kid.

And he says, Mr. Sanchez, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but the story that was going to come out tomorrow that you and I were both excited about it, it's been killed. Sie werden die Geschichte nicht veröffentlichen. Ich sagte, warum würden sie die Geschichte nicht veröffentlichen?

Sie sagten, weil unser Managing Editor, nicht mein Boss, sein Boss, apparently got a call last night from somebody and they convinced him in that phone call that we should kill this story. And I said, can you give me more details? Do you know why? He goes, no, I don't even know who the person was who called him. And I don't usually work with the guy at the top.

I usually work with my regular editor. I'm just a reporter, but I've never even heard of a phone call coming from the very top like that and canceling the story. So now... Not only did I get a mysterious call that led to me losing my job at RT, now my just trying to share my story with people was being killed by another mysterious phone call.

Do you think that's fair? I think it's very fair. And kudos to you for being the first person to put his thought process, which is so different.

And we don't want to say it because we're a protected young man.

So what you're telling me and what we're coming to realize in this conversation, you and I, is that Das ist verrückt. Es ist verrückt.

And all we want to do is engage. I mean, I am not here, you know, being a cheerleader for Russia or any other country.

Als Journalist ist es meine Verantwortung, ihre Sicht zu repräsentieren. Natürlich. Um ein Mikrofon vor ihnen zu stellen und zu sagen, was ist deine Meinung auf diese Situation? Und dann zurück zu informieren. Aber wir dürfen das nicht tun. Ich werde gesagt, du darfst nicht auf diese Seite der Geschichte kommen.

And your message was simple. We're being told we're winning this war in Ukraine. We're not. Yes. And here's a man who's going to take us through this.

Und wenn du auf diese Seite der Geschichte reportierst, werden wir dich in den Gefängnis bringen.

Und ich ermutige es. Als Amerikaner, erstens, nur aus der konstitutionellen Sicht, denke ich, ich habe das Recht, es zu ermutigen. Und ich habe genug Leute in der legalen Gemeinschaft gesprochen, die mir mit dem helfen, die sagen, wenn du das weiter tun willst, hast du das Recht, eine Petition zu machen, in den USA. Und jetzt, dass die Trump-Administration da ist...

Und wir bekommen einige freundliche Antworten von Leuten in der Trump-Administration, die sagen, warum kann Rick Sanchez nicht arbeiten? Ich weiß. Nein. Und ich kann noch nicht definitiv sagen, dass die Trump-Administration das verhindern wird, weil, du weißt, Dinge gehen. Und es gibt nun Negotiierungen mit Russland.

Und ich verstehe, dass die Trump-Administration versucht, einige der dummen Sanktionen, die wir auf sie haben, zu entfernen, die einfach verrückt sind.

You're absolutely right. But even on a more pragmatic standpoint, I looked this up the other day. I said, how much money did we spend to rebuild Europe after World War II? $140 billion in today's money. We've spent over $200 billion in Ukraine.

Well, that's the difference, right? Think about that. If you ask the average American, back then, we spent $140 billion to rebuild Europe after the Nazis destroyed it. War das okay? Ich denke, 99 Prozent von uns würden sagen, ja, wir mussten das tun und ich bin froh, dass wir es getan haben.

Wenn du um Amerika gingst und gesagt hattest, 200 Billionen Dollar deiner Taxen haben in der Ukraine gespart und dann sagst du, kannst du es auf einem Map finden? Was würdest du tun?

So as a journalist, working at RT, going back to your question, was almost nirvana for me. Yes. It was fantastic. I reveled in this opportunity. I would get up with a little skip in my step every day, thinking about what we can talk about and how we're going to explain it and who we're going to talk to.

Not only that, but I think it's all about engagement. And I keep going back to this idea that I keep having, call me crazy. dass mein Anliegen es ist, Geschichten zu teilen. Und ich will das Recht haben, Geschichten zu teilen.

Und meine Eltern haben mir eines Tages gesagt, als sie mich aus einem kommunistischen Land nach Amerika gebracht haben, dass das ein einzigartiger Ort war, wo ich immer eine Geschichte teilen kann. And I'm being told that I can't share stories.

And if we don't engage with Russia, if we don't talk to Russia, or any other country for that matter, even Iran or whatever other countries out there that are supposed to be the boogeymen, if we don't engage with those countries, we're creating a path which is going to be so dangerous that we're not going to be able to come out from it. And that's my fear.

And how is it that we can continue to convince Americans of these things that aren't true and have them buy it? Are they just too busy? Is the money too big?

You know, I was just thinking something which is really interesting and that is comparable almost. I was thinking to myself, you had the number one show in the United States of America at the number one network and somehow that was taken away from you. I happen to have a pretty darn good show that was seen by also tens of millions of people, but mine didn't air in the United States.

As difficult as it was, because a lot of guests wouldn't want to come on because it was RT, you know. But it was really a great experience, especially comparatively speaking, to what I had experienced in the past. And my old friend Larry King was right. They generally did not mess with me.

It aired around the world. Both of us seem to have that show kind of taken away from us one day. And I think, if I'm not going too far on the perch here... dass es aufgrund der gleichen Sache geschehen ist und wahrscheinlich von den gleichen Leuten verursacht wurde.

And most Americans don't want to hate Russia. At all.

And when they did, when we had normal editorial arguments, which happen in every newsroom and should, we would talk it out and sometimes I would win and sometimes I would lose. But it would be a discussion. It wouldn't be like, this is what you're doing. Das ist faszinierend. Es war eine tolle Erfahrung.

But we should. And I now feel compelled and that's one of the reasons I'm telling this story. I don't need to. It's an amazing story. I don't need to work because thank God I've done fine and, you know, I'm in a good place. But I want the opportunity to continue to help engage and tell the stories that bring us together as a people.

Russlands Geschichte, die amerikanische Geschichte, kann nur eine Geschichte sein. Wir können unsere Geschichten teilen, wir können uns unterscheiden, wir können einander hassen, wir können einander lieben. Aber diese ganze Idee, dass wir so sein müssen, ist einfach verrückt. Und es wird zu einer schlechten Sache führen. Und Trumps Instinkte sind richtig daran. Ich hoffe, er kann sie erfüllen.

And isn't that funny? You know, like Le Monde, the BBC, all these people. I hear these people, my friends say, oh yeah, I don't trust American newspapers or American media, so I watch the BBC. I said, dude, it's the same damn thing. No, you need to watch maybe a little India or a little Russia or a little Brazil. If you want to get their perspective, you want to go to the global south countries.

Ich habe mein ganzes Show geschrieben, von oben bis unten, und niemand hat es gesehen, bis es auf die Luft ging.

Da hast du es. Da hast du es. Kann ich, weißt du, ist da etwas mehr als das? Nobody looked at my script before I went on the air, except me and some of the editors who had to put pictures. Of course, right. Yeah. But nobody was looking at it. Aha, no, this goes out. You can't say this. You can't say that. That's amazing. Because they trusted me. I mean, look, man.

I mean, I've got, I've been a part of two Peabody award winning teams. I've got a DuPont. I've got five Emmys. I've interviewed four US presidents. I've sat down with Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev. And yet there's not a single entity in the United States who seems to be interested in hiring me.

The Russians? I mean, come on, man. I was born in Cuba. It's a communist country. I mean, just in case he wants, you know. But Larry says to me, let me tell you something. Ricky, lass mich dir etwas sagen. Das ist so, wie Larry es sagt. Sie sagen mir nicht, was ich sagen soll. Sie sagen mir nicht, was ich tun soll. Sie sagen mir nicht, wer ich interviewen muss.

Yeah, yeah, it is. So how long were you there? I worked for the first three years and then left prior to the invasion. Because my friends back in South Florida, who were now building this $4.4 billion healthcare company, and I was one of the original partners of it, said... Kannst du zurückkommen und uns die Marketing handeln? Ich meine, wir brauchen dich, um einfach wieder da reinzukommen.

Und es gibt einige Dinge, die wir dir fixieren wollen. Und ich war so, ah, ja, ja. Also bin ich weg. Und ich habe gesagt, okay, ich werde zurückkommen und zurückkommen und die, du weißt, die, äh, die Arbeit, diese Gesundheitsfirma zurückzubauen, die ich mit meinen Freunden gebaut habe. Und, äh, und während ich das machte,

Ich habe dann einen Anruf von einem anderen lieben Freund, Ben Swan, der ein wirklich guter Journalist ist. Und er hat gesagt, willst du ein Show machen? Ich sagte, oh mein Gott, ich würde gerne ein Show machen. Ich verliere es, ein Show zu machen. Also nach einem kleinen Hiatus für etwa ein Jahr und ein halbes Jahr, ging ich zurück und begann ein Show zu machen.

Er sagte, es ist nicht erlaubt, in den Vereinigten Staaten zu airen, aber du kannst dein eigenes Show produzieren und es wird überall auf der Welt airt. Und du kannst es in Spanisch und Englisch machen. So suddenly I started doing this show again, Tucker. That was after the Ukraine War started? That was after the Ukraine War started, correct.

It was tough. But after reading enough and knowing enough and hearing some of the people that we aforementioned, the McGregors and Sachs, I started thinking to myself, you know, I should do this because we need to have a conversation with these people.

We need journalists and others and academics and whoever to start engaging with the journalists and the academics over there so we can have discussions and work out a solution before we start another freaking world war here. I mean, so... This will be a good thing.

I can make the world a better place by having a show from the United States that shares the American perspective from a person who loves America. A guy who was born in a communist country and spent all his life listening to his parents say, we're in the greatest nation on earth. Und das mit Leuten weltweit zu teilen. Und RT hat mir die Möglichkeit gegeben, das zu tun.

Sie haben mich nicht zu einem Russen gefragt. Sie haben mich zu einem Journalisten gefragt, der amerikanisch ist. Und warum würde ich nicht diese Art von Geschichte erzählen? Ich stimme total zu. Und das ist das, mit dem wir gewachsen sind. Ich erinnere mich, als ein Kind, als Phil Donahue Brezhnev in New York interviewte, in einem Studio. Als Brezhnev in die UN ging, interviewte er ihn.

And here he was in the studio with all these women asking this man questions. I remember that was Phil Donahue. I remember Ted Koppel once a week having a Soviet reporter on. His name escapes me, but he became very famous at the time. Yes. And they would go back and forth and debate ideas. Das ist nicht richtig. Ja.

Sie lassen mich in der Kontrolle meines Shows sein. Und ich garantiere dir, dass sie dich wirklich lieben. Sie wollen dich wirklich. Wenn du hierher kommst und dieses Show machst, das sie dir machen wollen, werden sie das auch für dich machen. Und ich sagte, wirklich, Larry, bist du sicher? Und endlich kam ich zu den Terminen. You know, at the time I'd been fired by CNN. I went to Miami.

It would get in play really fast. It's like, you're doing what? People would ask me, I'd say, oh my God, Rick Sanchez, I grew up watching you on TV, you know, in Miami and stuff, where I used to be on local television. And they'd say, so what are you doing now? I'd say, well, I'm doing a bunch of global stuff.

Because you just, unless the person happens to be, if I recognize that it's someone who's astute and has some kind of geopolitical observations or knows the world or is kind of smart, then I tell them and they go, oh man, that's cool. That's great. But you just don't want to, you know, have an argument with people during the day. What does your kid say? Yes. And I think that's important.

She did, she did.

Yeah, not to mention you always felt like if ever you wanted to do something outside or let's suppose... Fox News would call. One of your ex-colleagues would call and say, hey Rick, we were thinking about inviting you because remember you used to talk about such and such. And they'd want to book you. And you'd think they were booking you for something. And you'd go, sure, I'd love to come on.

And then all of a sudden you get that famous phone call that all bookers had to get.

Yeah, we changed the show. We're not going to do that story. And actually was, they found out that you work at RT. Of course. And now they're not going to have you on simply because you work at RT. Which is so prejudicial.

Rick Sanchez, we want you to talk about the new elections in Mexico, but we're not going to get you on because you work at RT. What the hell does one thing have to do with the other?

End of 21 or something like that.

RT is not available in the United States. It was totally banned.

That had already been...

When did that happen? After the war in Ukraine, they decided that no one in the United States should have the right to understand TV.

the perspective other than the ukrainian perspective therefore rt which was possibly going to share the russian perspective should not be allowed to continue to operate in the united states that happened like oh they just put out an edict i think they just i think it went through the treasury department once again but what happened like your license is revoked and this particular entity is not allowed to operate what about civil liberties aren't americans allowed to hear whatever they want to hear well that's what i

thought, right? Congress shall pass no law. Freedom of speech, all that jazz. Where'd it go? But then Biden doubles down, right? Do you want me to share the phone call?

You know, it's really weird, because if you watched my show, and many people did, and some Americans were watching the show because they'd, you know, back-channel it somehow through the Internet or something.

My show was very, very popular in Latin America, one of the most popular shows in Latin America, huge in India and in different parts of the world, because RT happens to be one of the most respected, you know, journalistic networks, content creators in the whole world. It's a very viable, you know, they put a lot of money and they've got a lot of smart people working there.