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Good morning, Welcome to Counterpoints. Ryan. How are you doing.
I'm doing great. How about you?
I'm doing well.
We've got a big show, including a very interesting conversation that you set up with Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Tayeb tell us a little bit about what we can expect from this.
Yeah, this is going to be good.
So we had Matt Tayube on the show a month ago or so, and Matt and I both made some gently disparaging remarks about Jeffrey Sachs the old jobs, as one does from the eighties or nineties, But we were both kind of going off what we understood from the time about the reporting at the time about what he'd been doing in the Soviet Union and into the transition
from the Silvit Union into Russia. He reached out and added some fascinating context to what we'd been talking about, and I asked him if he'd be willing to write what he said for a drop site news and then come back on the show and talk about it with Matt.
So we're going to add some.
I think genuinely new historical context to our understanding of the US Russian relationship since the breakup of the Soviet Union and leading all the way up to the war in Ukraine, in which we have some news from there, vladimart Zelenski insisting that he is not leaving Russian territory, which of course that's what you would say. You're not going to start out your negotiation by saying that you're about to walk out.
Foreign minister resigned overnight as well. That's breaking as we're recording this. So lots of Ukraine used to get to We will get to that in the show. We're going to start with Donald Trump doing an interview with Lex Friedman. There's a lot to break down from how they had that conversation, what they talked about, what they didn't talk about, and all that good stuff. AOC and Jill Stein are at war for one reason or another. So we're going
to dive into all of that. It's actually pretty interesting conversation, especially given the RFK junior context. He is remaining on the Michigan ballot, it appears, So let's talk about there and some updates of course from Israel as well, Ryan, because just yesterday we got some statements out of the Biden administration that add to this discussion.
So, yeah, Biden administration is saying that they're going to offer a take it or leave it deal to both Israel and Hamas right at the same time that Israel is now leading its biggest invasion into the West Bank since two thousand and two.
It drops out.
We have a reporter who's on the ground there who said a dispatch last night that we can talk about.
Yeah, no, excited to talk about that.
Also, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets in Israel, so a lot of pressure on Net and yahou. Let's start with Donald Trump on Lex Friedman's show. We're going to play this first st where Lex Friedman pushed him. This was the most Lex Friedman pushed him in their forty five minute cumbers station on voting irregularities in the twenty twenty two election. Alleged voting irregularities in the twenty twenty election. Lex Friedman said he's independent. His friends are independent.
They like what Trump says about a lot of things, but it's just the twenty twenty election lies that gives him pause.
So here's how Donald Trump responded to that.
I became president. Then the second time, I got millions of more votes, and I got the first time, I was told if I got sixty three million, which is what I got the first time, you would win.
You can't not win.
And I got millions of more votes and that and lost by a whisker.
He lost by a whisker.
Whisker, The way he said was so good. Yeah, he paused before he said it. He's like, well, he did not want to admit that he actually lost. And then, to his great credit, he said he lost by a whisker. Yes, also, whoever told Here's what he doesn't understand, and which is so fascinating. Why did so many more people vote in twenty twenty than voted in twenty sixteen and voted in any presidential election in American history? A Obviously populations higher
in twenty twenty than it was in nineteen twenty. But why did so many millions more people come out in twenty sixteen to vote against Donald Trump after he was in the office for four years. He can't he just can't seem to stumble on the answer that a lot of people were just motivated to come out and vote against him.
Well, he animated millions of people to.
Get off the sidelines, register to vote and just come out and say I do not like this man.
I mean, it's it's interesting because the cope has some truths wit in this case, which is there was this massive, multi hundred million dollar effort to make voting really easy during COVID And yeah, so that's I mean, he's not wrong about that. But he also on the one hand, when Lex Friedman says, a lot of people will call you what authoritarian or fascist or something, I actually thought the most interesting part of the interview was that exchange.
Lex Friedman says, I don't think Kamala Harris is a communist and Donald Trump is basically like, well, they call me authoritarian, so you know I can call her a communist.
I have to fight fire with fire.
That's hugely significant because it's such a Trumpian moment. It is so rare that you see the candidate admitting that their political.
Spin is a lie.
Ran you just don't ever that is an unspoken fact. Everybody knows it, but nobody ever says it. And he said it right there, and he's like so trumping and completely honest about it.
Right.
On the one hand, during this interview, he says, the thing about running for president is you have to not care what people say about you, because it's it takes a lot of courage to get into the ring, and if you care, you're going to choke. On the other hand, he cares very clearly, cares very deeply, and is wounded by all the things that people say about him, particularly when they call he talked about I never said that,
you know, World War One soldiers were suckers and losers. Yeah, Like, he has a lot of things that he's has grievances about that he thinks he was unfairly maligned or that were attributed to him in an unfair way. One of them X people says, well, they call you a fascist, and he's like, right, that's why I call her a communist and she you know, they can dish it, but they can't take it. So it was it was clear that, yeah,
he doesn't really think she's a communist. No, they said her father's a Marxist, right, and Freedman's like, oh, that's true.
Yeah, but he said it's important to fight fire with fire, meaning if they call me one thing, I have to respond. And that's to your point about just to get back to the voting thing for a moment.
Yeah, that's also a part of his cope.
That you know it's and there's some truth to it as well, that he's the people have lied about him and hyperbolized about him for so long that obviously if the people knew the truth, they would love me. Just not necessarily true, but that's probably how he sees it. And Lex Friedman always reminds me of James Lipton from Inside the Actor's Studio, Actually Will Ferrell's impression of James Lipton from Inside the Actor's Studio, where he's just like, if Heaven is real, what do you want to hear
God say to you when you get there? Just trying to open up this part of Donald Trump that hasn't quite been unlocked.
And Trump is just so good at not really answering those questions.
You know, he's so good at just totally running out the clock and saying nothing. He's better than Kamala Harrisons saying nothing.
Yet also letting you know kind of what he's thinking about sometimes, even if he's trying to conceal it or trying to say it in a way that you can't kind of tie him to a layer.
Well, let's talk about that, because here's Lex Friedman pushing Donald Trump on whether or not he would release files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
So here's the clip.
But a lot of big people went to that island, but fortunately I was not one of them.
It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
Yeah, it's very interesting, isn't It Probably will be.
By the way, So if you're able to, you'll be Yeah.
Certainly take a look at it now. Kennedy is interesting because it's so many years ago. You know, they do that for danger too, because you know, endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera. So Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing. But yet I'd be inclined to do the Epstein I'd have no problem with it.
He really didn't want to talk about Epstein to the point where he pivoted Jfkenny, like, if the Kennedy assassination is your crutch to get out of an uncomfortable situation.
That's your easy question, right And for people who don't have the background, Roger Stone is one of the people who is Trump's best friend. Has been pushing for the CIA is Kennedy documents to be released basically his entire life.
Roger Stone had one job as friend of Donald Trump, and that was to get your friend the president to declassify all of the JFK documents while he was president, and they were due on schedule court ordered to be declassified under the Trump administration, and he buckled to Mike Pompeo and pressure from the CIA to withhold an enormous number of those documents towards the end of his tenure.
And now he's saying that he will he'll do it this time if he goes back in, and he's also saying has no problem he's going to do the Epstein ones. But Trump is not good at hiding his body language. He was so uncomfortable talking about Epstein there.
Uncomfortable but almost like bemused when Friedman was like a lot of people went to that island. And you can see the look of on Donald Trump's face where he says, fortunately.
It wasn't me.
Yeah, elsewhere he says, yeah, it wasn't.
There's this incredible video of Trump and Epstein right like yeah, like aling women at a at a party and like laughing. And Trump tells Epstein some joke and Epscene doubles over laughing.
Uh, like Lix. Freedman asks him why why.
Did people why was he so effective at insinuating himself into people's lives and and Trump says, what he was a hailty Well fellow, and he had a lot of assets Blake and island when he would use to attract people. But yeah, he at first he does not seem interested at all in releasing those names or in really talking about it at all, but then by the end he says, Okay, I'll do it.
Roger also friends with Howard Hunt's son, So just so much to unpack.
In the drum.
Yes, and Howard Hunt's son is the one who claimed that Howard Hunt on his deathbed, Yes, confess that there was a c I A, uh, there was a CIA conspiracy. If you listen into the tapes, it's not quite like, it's not really quite there. Any kind of leads me, and it's not clear how how there Howard Hunt is. But yes, Howard Hunt's son is speak because yes, Rogerstone is. If there was a guy who was going to convince his friend to release the documents, it was Rogerstone.
You'd think you'd think, Well, let's hear how Trump responded when Lex Friedman pressed him on Project twenty twenty five.
This is the clip.
Let me ask you about Project twenty twenty five. So you've publicly said that you don't have any direct connection to nothing.
I know nothing about it, and they know that too, Democrats know that. And I purposely haven't read it. Because I want to say to you, I don't. I have no idea what it's all about. It's easier than saying I read it, and you know all other things. No, I purposely haven't read it, and I've heard about it. I've heard about things that are in there that I don't like, and there's some things in there that everybody would like.
Oh, that was sort of a useless exchange. I felt it was sort of.
Just like Donald Trump in any kind of mainstream interview being asked about Project twenty twenty five.
I don't know what did you make about that?
Right?
He didn't press any further on it, right, and he didn't talk about what's in it, right, It just which is that's the like what's good about alternative media is when it gets into the specific somebody at least he had the thing up on the side it said, you know, firing fifty thousand that are workers is one of the things in Project twenty twenty five. There's a lot of other cultural stuff in there. That's the stuff that Trump
is running from. You know, I haven't read the exact details of what it says around abortion and IVF, but it's not going to be it's not going to be popular. It's not going to be the remotely moderate stuff, right, Yeah, So, I mean what else in there do you think that he's right?
Is he running from.
And on Project twenty five five? I mean, I think he just is running from the image that Democrats have successfully created of it being a boogeyman that you can kind of because there are things that are not in Project twenty twenty five, that the Harris campaign is pretty successfully just getting to associate with Project twenty twenty five, and they've already associated Project twenty twenty five with Trump.
It's been like this brilliant.
Marketing effort, pr effort to build something out of just the name Project twenty twenty five, which is so broad that you can kind of project onto it, what do you want to project onto it? So I think he's running away from Project twenty twenty five itself entirely. And that's why the Trump campaign has started to put out its own sort of policy plans so that they can say, this is what he want to do, has nothing to do with what like you can compare and contrast, But
they don't own our plans. We thoroughly own what our
policy plans are going forward. And to the extent that the Trump campaign does own Project twenty twenty five, it's just because there would be I think overlap in staffing that there there would actually be a lot of people who were involved with Project twenty twenty five who would end up working in a Trump administration like that's and they have ideas that they've put on paper about what some of the policies are that they'd want to implement.
But it's you know, that's why the Trump campaign is running from the whole thing.
From my perspective.
Yeah, and it seems fair to ask Trump to actually put out some policies like he gets he gets a pass from that from the media because I think he's Trump and there's something almost absurd about him, even like having detailed policy. Like when he said I haven't read it because I wanted to be able to say to you that I have nothing to do with it, It's like, well, yeah, you also didn't read it because you just don't read
stuff like you didn't. You didn't need a reason not to read a long document like we've all read the reporting, like the military like draws pictures and stuff.
Because he has a very short attention.
Listen, I don't think anybody wants to read Project twenty twenty five because it's so long.
I haven't read it.
Yeah, it's I've looked at it, but I haven't like read it all the way.
So I'm like, yeah, so I should. I'm not doing my job here.
Well.
Uh.
Trump was also asked by Lex fre about basically how he posts on truth social that I did find useful and interesting in the sort of James Lipton inside the Actors studio sense, because he said that he posts from bed and that sometimes you know.
If you run sleep much, right, He's not one.
He's not one for sleeping something like this.
So let's roll this clip of Donald Trump talking about reposts on truth social.
I'd love to get your psychology about behind the tweets and the posts on truth. Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative or are you just speaking your mind? And are there times where you regret some of the truths you've posted?
Yeah?
I do, I mean, but not that often. Honestly, you know, I do a lot of reposting. The ones you get in trouble with are the reposts because you find down deep they're into some group that you're not supposed to be reposting. You don't even know if those groups are good, bad, or indifferent. But the repot so the ones that really get you in trouble. When you do your own words, it's sort of easier, but the reposts go very quickly.
And if you're gonna check every single little symbol and uh, I don't know, it's worked out pretty well for me.
I tell you, it's.
Truth is it's the reposts.
It's the repost that gets you.
Mm hmmm.
No.
True.
The hair is Champagne is not wrong. So the Hair's campaign took that video and tweeted. Trump asked about reposting QAnon a misogynistic content quote, I do a lot of reposting.
It's worked out very well.
Yes, he did. He in the end, he's like, yeah, it worked out great for me.
So this brings us full circle too. I know, we're breaking down real quick.
The reason it works out well for him is that he can dog whistle to these groups. So like he's like, oh, there's some symbol that I didn't realize what that symbol was. Well, it's on truth social and it's controversial. It's some type of white nationalist symbol that he's referring to in general. And so he retruths that or whatever his word.
And what is like, what is the you means something specific?
You mean no?
No.
The way that he said it was like, you don't look all the way down at the bottom of the post that you're reposting and there's a there's some symbol there that represents some group that you didn't know about, and it's controversial and you reposted it, and now you're tagged with associating with that group, Like Q and stuff did happen ninety percent of the time you're talking q and on stuff or white Nash.
So where we go on we go all hashtags.
Stuff like that exactly or fourteen words or like something that's like So, what he gets is to give a little bit of a love to those groups while maintaining plausible deniability because he genuinely, I think probably Off in many cases, doesn't know what that what that symbol is, but he knows that there's a bunch of stuff he doesn't know, and he knows the direction it's going.
So he's like, he's like, oh, I can.
Be clever here, Well, I can show them that I'm on their side, while being like, oh, geez, it's just fourteen words. I didn't know what fourteen words meant.
Which I mean plausible deniability on that one for the first time. Yeah, But I mean also that's sort of like the typical politician as gatekeepers.
Right, but exactly, and it also shows to his people that he's not a typical politician.
But I think he not.
What it shows is he knows what he's doing because in the end, he says, it works out really well for me.
He so, and this brings us, I think to the thirty thousand foot view of Donald Trump doing an interview with Like Friedman, they talked about whether he would.
Do an interview with Joe Rogan. He said, I don't really know Joe Rogan.
I see him when he walks into the arena with Dana White and Alex Friedman pushed him a little bit and said, there's some tension between you and Joe Rogan because he, you know, said he really likes RFK Junior.
And Trump was like, I don't think there's really any tension. I don't really know the guy. I don't know if i'd do a show, I'd probably do.
A show, but I'm not going to ask him, he says. I haven't been asked, but I'm not going to ask him.
He said, and he said he seemed like a liberal guy, which I wish.
The left could understand.
Yes, yes, like Trump is right, like Rogan does have like post twenty twenty when he got completely destroyed for endorsing Bernie Sanders.
I think he's drifted.
Right in some cultural ways, but in general he's he has a lot of like left wing instincts, hirement and wage, supports unions, you know, supports Medicare for all, endorsed Bernie Sanders. There's a reason Trump says that he seems like a liberal guy, right, because he has a lot of liberal impulses.
Yeah, almost, I mean, yes, he's in Bernie Sanders. He likes Tulsia Gabber, he likes you know, I don't know where he stands on Tulsia Gabbert now, but obviously he likes RFK Junior.
And yes.
So all that is to say, though, Donald Trump has been on this tour of alternative media podcasts and it's pretty interesting as a political strategy. Sometimes Alex Friedman gets a little bit of or Theovon is a good example. I thought Theovonne got more out of Trump psychologically than Lex Friedman did, just because they were talking, and you know, it's Donald Trump having a long form conversation with a comedian.
It becomes interesting in ways nobody expects. But Lex Friedman I think got some genuinely interesting stuff out of Donald Trump. On the other hand, that's not like Trump sitting down with you know, Katie Kirk.
In some ways that are good in some ways that are bad. I don't know.
It's it's as a campaign strategy. Pretty interesting, he talked. This was one of the most compelling parts of the interview as well. Trump talked about why you need to do new media. He was like, maybe it's more powerful than TV. And hearing that from Trump is so interesting because this is a man who like mastered the use of television before he became a political candidate and when he became a political candidate. So there's something going on. I think that was a window into the way he's
thinking about it. He talked about how Elon had him on a spaces and got, you know, more listens than anyone. There's something going on, or he's starting to reckon with the alternative media or the old media, the gatekeepers having less and less power, which is interesting to watch him reckon with that in real time because he was a huge Like he's the one that poured the fuel on the fire of people starting to question the gatekeepers more
than they ever have before. I mean, it was him coming out in twenty fifteen and sixteen talking about fake news and baiting the media into kind of exposing itself again for better or worse. I think for better when it comes to having transparency about how awful the media is. But to see him sort of not look at himself as a main character, and that was interesting as well.
When's he going to come on here? What are we doing wrong?
That's right? An invitation? Are what are we doing wrong? Probably said all kinds of things. He would consider things that we're doing wrong.
Does he take that personally? He said, Hey, you have to not care.
I'm sure likex Friedman has some interesting stuff too.
I'm sure he has.
Yeah, So anyway, it's it's smart. I mean, Kamala Harris, we're not asking him.
He's not going to ask us. So well. Kamlin Harrison.
Probably she did Charli Maine and just Face Planet on Charli Mane if I'm remembering correctly.
I remember seeing some clips from it, which is not good.
Right, But hey, they should both they should both get even more comfortable with new media. But you know, I'll take one candidate becoming comfortable with new media because and.
Jade Vance he's been here.
Yeah, I reach I did reach out to the Walls camp and say, look, Jadie Vance comes on these.
Shows, you might as well too. Hey, that's right, he's not here yet.
Let's move on to this feud between Alexandria Kazio Cortes and Jill Stein. Ryan, do you want to set the table for us on this because it's sort of straight.
Out of your book.
Well, so AOC was doing in Instagram live and taking questions from her audience, and one of them was basically, what should I say to my friends who are considering voting Green Party or thinking about voting for for Jill Stein?
Let's roll the AOC clip that kicked this off.
You are the leader of your party, and if you run for years and years and years and years and years in a row and your party has not grown, and you don't add city council seats, and you don't add down vallet candidates, and you don't add state electeds,
that's bad leadership. And that, to me is what's upsetting, because if you have been your party's nominee for twelve years in a row, four years ago and four years before that and four years before that, and you cannot grow your movement pretty much at all, and can't pursue any successful strategy, and all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off. But you're just showing up once every four years to do that. You're not serious, you're not authented.
To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory. I'm sorry, I'm just saying it.
And let's roll Jill Stein's response from an.
Airport here still here.
I'm about to board, but very quickly. I just wanted to thank AOC Pelosi so very much for her very authentic concern about growing green power. Clearly, AOC is the attack dog d joure and the Democrats are running scared, and they should be, because who wants to support a genocide?
Who wants to vote for a genocide? And if there's anything that's predatory here, it's saying that your candidate is working tirelessly for a ceasefire, when actually they are actively funding and arming genocide and actually refusing to even consider an arms embargo, which would bring the genocide to a
screeching halt. AOC, who's supposed to be in leadership of the Democratic Party, it's amazing if she doesn't know about the anti Democrat tactics and strategies that the Democratic Party uses to crush and silence political opposition, and.
To take it to another level.
The DNC is now attacking Jill Stein if you can put up this element here. So Jill Stein went down to support three black nationalist activists who are charged with acting as agents of Russia.
She went down to support them.
The DNC spokespresident said, Jill Stein is a useful idiot for Russia. After parrotying Kremlin talking points and being propped up by bad actors in twenty sixteen, she's at it again. Jill Stein won't become president, but her spoiler candidacy that both the GOP and Putin have previously shown interest in,
can help decide who wins. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump, which is that is the like that's the oldest line in the book from mainstream parties towards third party candidates, that a vote for X is actually vote for Why, as somebody on the outside, when you.
Watch these those three different clips, what was your reaction to him?
I mean, I think Jill Stein got the better of AOC in that exchange because on the question of like, they're both talking about what they believe is genocide, So it's pretty black and white when you can spit back at AOC that she's on the side of the party that's saying Joe Biden is working tirelessly or Kamala Harris
is working tirelessly for a ceasefire. I mean, that felt like kind of a slam dunk, even though obviously Jill Stein AOC is correct that Jill Stein has not found much of a constituency over her many years in politics. But where it's somewhat I don't know if disappointing is the right word, but somewhat frustrating to hear from AOC who I disagree with on most things but so thoroughly enjoyed her defeat of Joe Crowley. Is you know, that's
not all for That's not all Jill Stein's fault. There are a lot of other forces that AOC should theoretically be opposed to that were gatekeeping Jill Stein. I don't think Jill Stein is like a brilliant once in a generation politician, or is anyone that could turn out to be like a Ross Perot level third party candidate. I just don't find her that compelling. I don't think a lot of other people find her that compelling. There are many people who do, but not enough to obviously become viable.
There are a lot of gatekeepers that are pushing to ensure people like Jill.
Stein aren't viable.
And you'd think AOC would have some sympathy because her entire sort of Instagram video, her entire argument, and that Instagram video was sort of saying if you're not finding it was kind of smug, right, It's like, if you're not finding a constituency, then that's on you. It's like, well, it's probably also on a lot of the factors you say you don't.
Like too it is, but you have to you know, if you're one person you work with the world. You've got one correction on to AOC's argument there. It's actually Howie Hawkins, who was the Green Party nominee in twenty twenty. If you remember Howie Hawkins, No, which goes to the point like nobody even knows who the Green Party nominee was, for instance, in twenty twenty. Yeah, like we know Ralph Nader in two thousand is a Green Party nine.
Pretty much the last time they were kind of relevant.
So it's Jill Stein in twenty sixteen out Hawkins in twenty twenty Hawkins. A lot of Greens were upset with Hawkins because they thought that he didn't kind of challenge the duopoly enough and kind of made way in different
states for Biden to take on Trump. Because there's this there is this perennial concern that as a third party does better, let's say, like the Greens in two thousand, a substantial number of those voters then get concerned, Oh, we did better, the party did not improve, did not move our direction, and now we're getting blamed for spoiling the election, and then it drains support from them again in the future. I've got my own complicated Green history. I was actually a Green Party member.
Least surprising I've received.
In New York shout out to Paul Gilman, who invited me to join the Queen's Green Party back in nineteen ninety nine to two thousand. I even went to on a like a with a convay of buses.
I literally went to the Green Party.
Convention just Doc Martins everywhere.
Two thousand door knocking, like volunteered this Madison Square Garden rally where he packed the entire event. So every single argument that anybody could make for the Green.
Party, you're sympathetic too.
I made myself in a louder and more obnoxious way many many times over. And the basic arguments are, there's no difference between the two parties. And then the second argument is, by building third party power, you're going to kind of force the Democrats to move better, to move in your direction, and we can take each one of those, you know.
Two thousand argued.
So the Greens also have this thing that they do where they say, and I did it myself.
That okay.
Look if you say, look Ralph Nader got x thousands of votes in Florida and that swung the election to Bush the Greens, and go scroll down to the comment section, you'll see him doing it right now. The Greens will say, that's absolutely not true. That they were registered Democrats who ended up voting for George Bush, and that's the fault of Democrats. Those were like, but those are Southern Democrats like who were actually Republicans who were always going to
vote for Republicans. There were definitely, like, it's five hundred and thirty seven votes in the end separated Gore and Bush. Like you just have to say, like, okay, there there were tens of thousands of people who voted for Nator, who if he wasn't running, they would.
Have voted for al Gore. Like, that's just a fact.
And to me, as a third party supporter, the proper answer is not to like split hairs about this and argue that, no, it didn't actually have an effect.
You have to own it.
Yeah, right, because it's your argument. That's your argument.
There's no difference, yeah, and it's and it's good like whatever, like we're we're going to vote for this person, come what may, and there's no difference anyway. And then as soon as it has some impact on the real world, they run from any responsibility from it. And so then a couple things happen after two thousand and one.
Which implies you don't like the consequences, right, although you were threatening those very consequences as a good.
Thing, right exactly.
So I have much deeper respect for the argument that, yeah, that's right, it did cost him, and you know what, Democrats should have been a better party, and if they were a better party, then we wouldn't have run, and he wouldn't have gotten as much.
Support or a should have earned those votes.
Nobody is like, nobody's born with the right to have having you vote for them, Like, those are better arguments to me on a moral level. That's a great point than to say I didn't actually And so you get this from Greens all the time.
Actually it didn't matter.
Like the thing that I talk about all the time, you know, my choice to vote third party doesn't actually mean anything. They're like, well, why are you talking about it constantly?
It didn't actually mean anything.
So after two thousand you get September eleventh happens, Bush is in office, he invades a Raq, and so a lot of people, including myself, were confronted with the question, now I voted in New York didn't matter.
Well, also there's the question, would al Gore have done the same thing?
Right?
I think the answer is no.
I think in order to for the US to invade Iraq, you need the Neocon in positions of power.
I mean, he's been those levers.
I mean the Georgia bubush, going from saying we're going to end Middle East interventionism to you know, championing Middle East right.
But it was his vice president Dick Cheney and his uh you know, Secretary of Events down On Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and like tho that that clack of people really kind of did a lot of internal organizing to make sure that that happened. You can read Bob Woods's
book about nine to eleven. Like within a day or two of the attack on the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld is saying, we need to invade Iraq because there aren't enough targets in Afghanistan and the and they immediately start laying the groundwork for that, and that this was a particular set of people who had a particular vision it is.
It was the neo conservatism gets thrown around a lot, but it is a very specific like in its literal sense, there is a very specific sort of group.
Of people that are referred These were the intellectual leaders of it, and they were in the exact right positions of power to kind of jam it into happening.
That said, the Greens, like yourself at that very moment, may have had a good case to own. Frankly, that personnel and an al Gore administration continued from the Clinton administration could have made some of the very same errors.
I'm not saying that's absolutely accurate. I'm just saying there was the green case that both parties are the same through the lens of the or the response to nine to eleven not a terrible argument, because there is some overlap between Clinton neo conservatism and ultimately what became Bush neo conservatism. Some important differences too, but it's yeah, it's hard to.
Say yeah, And that gets to the more difficult question of today, because I think, yes, yes, I think back then it was clear the Republicans were much more both part like this is a America. Both both parties have like enormous numbers of warmongers in them on the scale of warmongers, and two thousand Republicans had the had the neo cons they had the they had the aggressive militarism of Reaganism still kicking, and uh, Democrats had like, say,
let's say half of that. Today, I think if if it's a if you're asking about workers, unions, on the economy, on domestic policy, I genuinely do think Democrats are better for workers than Republicans are today when it comes to American militarism abroad and foreign policy.
I can't say that for sure.
And don't you think AOC is saying that, I mean, is a Democrat like that?
And she's saying Democrats are better than Republicans, and any Democrat ought to say that. But when it comes to foreign policy, Trump could be a complete madman his second term.
Who knows.
But we know that Democrats have embraced a militarism and a hawkish foreign policy that that is frightening, and.
Does it, from that perspective make them better?
So then you're asking yourself a real question.
It's a lesser of two years of two you've got two parties, which one is better or worse on the particular issue that I care about more like if I think it's clear, if it's domestic policy, it's Democrats, Like, I don't think there's any question about that.
Right now.
This realignment is fascinating. Four years, eight years from now, we might have a different answer to that question foreign policy. They might be better, but they might not. It's like, it's not as obvious a question to me. Yeah, I agree as it as it used to be because.
There are wars happening in both parties right now over who gets to control foreign policy.
Yeah, it's yeah, it's clearly happy.
I think it's more interesting right now on the Republican side because there are people who have genuinely heterodox views on foreign policy that are starting to look like they're coming out ahead in tug of war. Jd Vance is one of them that doesn't seem like it's happening as much on the left, although Ilhan Omar is someone who's certainly ascendant and has staked out a position actually directly during DNC week against AOC.
And to me, those are the real questions that you have to ask yourself. And if you notice what's not in there, this is the third party stuff, right, or in particular the Green Party. The Green Party has just done a deplorable job of growing power at the local level and at the state and at the federal level.
But some of that is clearly the fault of gate keeping on behalf of vicious the DNC operatives and the media. And I mean, like they're not entirely wrong about being marginalized by you know, the pro lowercase D democracy factions in American factions.
But people kind of sometimes make the mistake of assuming that a political party that is named the Democrats would support democracy.
Big mistake, big mistakes.
But they don't.
They support the Democratic Party, and so yes, whatever is in the interest of the Democratic Party, that's what they're going to do, and if that means trying to kick the Greens off the ballot, it's awfully hypocritical, but it's exactly what you would.
Expect of them.
The fundamental problem that any third party has is the system that we have, which is this it is not parliamentary in Europe and some other places around the world. You win seven percent of the vote, you get seven percent of the seats in parliament, and then you join a coalition and then you can use that's that's the leverage that you have here are coalitions are formed ahead of time and then it's a first past the post. Whoever gets not even a majority, whoever gets more votes.
That's why like Bill Clinton could win with thirty percent one percent whatever he had in nineteen ninety two because Ross pro drained out nineteen percent. And so that means that a voter going into the polls, by the time they get into the booth knows it's either going to
be this person or this person. And so all of the different law fare and legal challenges and gatekeeping that the media does to the Greens and to other the Libertarians and other third parties, even RFK Junior like that that hurts them a lot, but nothing hurts them more than just the fundamental design of the system we have because people because people go in and they want their vote to count between one party or the other.
Yeah, And that's what's interesting about Alexandria Kazu Kortez's response. She could have said, she could have expressed any sort of empathy for that perspective and went, I think instead with the sort of smug dunk, which I get because to the point that you're making, and as we're talking about this, I find it so interesting. There are you know, there's a real blame on the Greens for not being more compelling to the average American voter that you know,
they're there's something that they haven't tapped into it. There are real failures on their part. There are things that they and do better.
I get that.
I just would think, as somebody who's sort of sympathetic to the anti establishment movements on either the left or the right, that you would be your priority would be saying like, hey, I hear you.
Agree with you.
Well, she did say at the beginning, which we didn't play on that clip. She said, at the beginning, Look, I'm not talking about the people themselves who are considering voting for Jill Stein. She's like, look, I get that, because the parties suck and frankly like, she went up on stage and said, Kamala Harris working tirelessly to end of Ce's fire, while to Kamala Harris's administration is sending weapons to Israel yep.
And while net Nyaho is using.
The Biden administration's support of net Nyahu to fight off pressure from his own coalition to reach a deal, we are actively thwarting a deal, not working tirelessly to get one. So yeah, we can all understand why somebody would not want to vote for one of these these two parties. So she's not talking about those voters themselves. She's saying that people like Stein herself are the ones that are
being predatory. Well, and one other point on the Greens, Yeah, ask yourself, why did Cornell West run for the Green Party nomination, spend about three weeks looking at the mess that the Green Party had become and decide that he wasn't going to run anymore?
Like this is And we can say, Okay, maybe it's not their fault, etc.
Because of all the structural problems that they have anybody who's active in the Green Party knows the Green Party is a mess.
It's a complete and total mess.
It's the same thing with the Libertarians. I mean it's and both of us know this.
It's like their fringe political movements are often led by eccentric characters who are already fighting the Sissifian battle against the system that is designed to crush them. But anybody who is willing to expend the like tireless effort that involves to fight that's the Sisciphian battle, more often than not as eccentric and more often than not not the
like best organizer in the world. It's like a lot of like very interesting, you know, principled people on in Green circles and libertarian circles, and those spaces get really really messy.
I mean the on the libertarian side.
It's the same that it becomes a lifestyle for people that it is a social thing. Comes now it's not a lot of Democrats, like the ones who go to the conventions as like delegates, same thing. That's a lifestyle thing for them too. They just like being democrats. They go to the county meetings like that's it. This is
it's what they do for their community. The difference there is that you know, they might win some elections sometimes where Greens Libertarians, it just becomes like this is this is my identity, this is the thing I do.
Yeah.
And so as we're saying this, Robert F. Kennedy Junior is staying on the Michigan ballot, which is actually fairly huge news because there were a lot of voters that he appealed to. I mean, we're getting in a night
or territory potentially with something like Michigan right now. There are a lot of voters he appealed to who will not be persuaded to vote for Donald Trump because they were double haters and they're not going to you know, sort of along the lines of what we talked about with you in the debate we hosted with Michael Tracy and our Kidjunior field organizer former last week. There's just a whole lot of people that cannot be persuaded to vote for Donald Trump. They are the sort of RFK
Junior Green equivalent. You know, both parties are the exact same thing. And when you are in a race that could get you just what was up five hundred and something votes in Florida in two thousand, when you're in a race that could be just as close as that one and the electoral College is on the line in states like Michigan, having his name on the ballot is for people who you know, don't pay super close attention to politics and just want to cast a protest vote.
That's really dangerous of the Trump campaign. And Mark Cuban tweeted, you know who helped pay for the lawsuit that got RFK Junior Cornell West on the North Carolina ballot?
Me?
He said, I help fund voter choice.
I'm not a fan of the two party system, and voter tchoice helps get candidates on the ballot, and we're good at it. His North Carolina organization came to us for help. We helped no cost to them, So I don't feel bad that he can't get off the ballot. So Cubans are taking a victory lap on that one, because the RFK Junior campaign was trying really hard to get on the ballot in all of these states, and then when you flip for Trump, you can't get off of it because it's late in the game. I could
really I think that could really really hurt Donald Trump. Yeah, hard to think of a Yeah.
I think that's absolutely right.
Yeah, because if you go in because his job, he's not going to make himself more popular or Trump.
He's going to make com Lris more less popular. That's his goal.
And you know she's try to tear him down, but you know, views are kind of baked in on him. So by the time people go into the booth a lot and we're going to hate both. And if RFK Junior's name is there, then maybe right.
Well, when we're planning the show, just a little inside baseball here, we come up with topics that we think, you know, we'll make good blocks for fifteen minutes something like that. And we just turned a block on an Instagram post from Alexandra Acasio Corotez into like ecologies, half our discussion about Ryan's history of the Green Party, which was so interesting.
Actually, and four well, yeah, it's all gone, you'll never.
See it, all right, Ryan, Let's move on to the Middle East. Now, there's a story up on drop site right now with some important reporting.
Tell us what's going on.
Yeah, we throw this element up on the screen so that Israel's launching its biggest invasion of the West Bank since two thousand and two. I'll just read from a note that Jeremy Scahill attached to this article that we published yesterday.
He wrote, a.
Few days ago, we reached out to Pali City and journalist muja Ahead Alsadi for coverage from the ground on the target of Jeanine's hospitals by the Israelian military. A reporter from Jeanne who covered the region since twenty twelve, Alsadi is no stranger to the dangers. In twenty twenty two, he was just a few feet away from his friend and colleague Scherin Abu Akhla, the legendary Al Jazera correspondent,
when an Israeli sniper shot and killed her. When we can put this vo up on the screen in the second element here, Jeremy goes on, you can hear the gunshots here from the IDF and on Monday, as he was reporting this story, Alsati was among a group of journalists who came under attack by Israeli forces and bulldozers while they were covering the destruction of a roundabout and surrounding shops in downtown Jeanine.
The soldiers opened fire on them Injuring two, while the.
Bulldozers drove at them at high speeds, forcing them to take cover inside shops. It's quite terrifying to have the bulldozer rush at you, for them to shoot at you, he told us. They were trying to revent us from doing our coverage. The next day, Palstinian journalists Amon al Nubani and Mohammed Monsur were shot and injured by Israeli forces in the village of caffd Dan, west of Jeanine.
So this story was commissioned for us by Sharif abdel Cadus, who legendary correspondent from the from the Least who uh is working with us now. He edited and translated this this report from from Arabic.
You can check check it out. There's some harrowing details in it.
One of them, among them, among the many, has details on how much how many sewer lines have been ripped up, you know, the extensive damage to the infrastructure. But then some of the personal details he got are intense. One about a mother of three who took two of her children to a doctor's appointment in a hospital in Janeine last week, left her five month on five month old home with family, and that's when the assault happened, and
she has been trapped in this hospital ever since. Just trying to imagine like taking my kid to the dentist and then all and then then then you're surrounded for days and you're can't even get you know, the cell phone line has been cut, like there's no internet, can't even get in touch. You don't even know, like is my family still okay? When am I ever going to leave this? Like are they getting attacked?
And so?
And this again is this is the West Bank, this is this is not Kaza, this is UH right, and it's and it's unfolding with exponential force.
It seems like you day after day. Meanwhile, all while.
The US net Yahoo and and AMAS kind of jockey over the terms of a potential UH cease fire deal, we have we have net Yahoo delivering a press conference recently where he laid out some of his conditions.
Let's roll.
Nen yago I was asked whether.
Israel as not I'm not doing enough to the release of hostages. Well, I want to set the record straight. On August twenty eighth, that's five days ago. Five days ago, deputies CIA director said that Israel shows seriousness in the negotiations now Tramas must show the same seriousness. I want to ask you something. What has changed in the last five days.
What has changed?
One thing? These murderers executed six of our hostages. They shot them in the back of the head. That's what's changed. And now after this, we're asked to show seriousness, We're asked to make concessions. What message does this send Tramas.
It says, kill.
More hostages, murder more hostages, you'll get more concessions.
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, in a briefing with reporters, who said the opposite of what Nanyahu has been saying.
We can put up this Times of Israel article.
It quotes that quotes Kirby here he says, the deal itself, including the bridging proposal that we started working with, includes the removal of IDF forces from all densely populated areas in phase one, and that includes those areas along and adjacent to that quarter.
He's talking about the Philadelphia Quarter.
And this is yesterday, right, yes, And that's he says, that's the pro that's the proposal that Israel had agreed to. So Israel had previously agreed to a proposal that would remove IDF troops from the Philadelphia Corner, which is in Dan and Rafa, the border between Israel and Egypt. Nennyah, who is now saying that he has American support not to do that is a complete public Disagreement's play. We can play a little more net Yahoo, just to show how just stark this divide is.
The Philathic Crridle, which separates Egypt from the Guzza Strip, will not be evacuated. If Israel will give up control of it. Guzza will become an enclave of terror. When Ira designed from the government, when I realized that they were going to do the disengagement and they were going to break up these Jewish communities, I gave a mindative resignation to Prime Minister Sharon and I said in it that the minimum requirement of mine was to leave the Philadelphia Corridle in Israeli control.
So in that press conference Emily and he said to he said, sinowar, it's not going to happen, ye like he was. It's like I am not leaving the Philadelphic Corrider, Like he's not going to agree to anything that requires idea of troops to leave. Meanwhile, you have the US saying that he has agreed to that, and the US wants him to do that, and you have nt Yahoo telling his cabinet.
Barack Revied reported this, He's like, the.
US has agreed to let them stay. Why are you trying to get us the cave? What kind of like incompetent incoherence are we witnessing here?
Like what's the US policy?
What's at least nat Yahu's policy seems well, I mean he's incoherent to because he previously approved a plan and a deal that would see Israeli troops leave the Philadelphia corridor.
Now he's saying that he won't sure.
And your colleague Jeremy Skhill has talked to at Drop site people on the Hamas side about what these negotiations have looked like. There isn't a lot of that reporting in mainstream media, which makes it kind of difficult to weigh competing claims, which is something that we're doing, for example, between Ukraine and Russia right now. You can sort of weigh the competing claims and try to get a window into these negotiations that are happening.
Right Russia says this. Ukraine says this.
Right, and some of it is you know, they're both.
Some of the spin is obviously different than what's being said behind closed doors, and some of it is what's said in public to pressure the other side is different, or to pressure people in your own country is different than what's being said behind closed doors.
So I guess right, I'm curious for.
What your sense is is about if there's similar incoherence that because if you're fighting incoherent demands from one side with incoherent demands from another side, that makes mediation extraordinarily difficult, obviously, But what's your sense Having worked with Jeremy and red Thot reporting.
HAMAS has actually been incoherent in its response to the killing of the hostages, you had a beta basically confirming that Hamas as the result of a new directive given to guards of hostages. After so, if you remember back in June, there was a hostage rescue operation that was successful, but that led to more than two hundred Palestinians being killed, like entire neighborhoods, strafed and bombed. And after that they said they put in a new order that if that happens,
execute the hostages. That pretty clear confirmation that they had done it. You had, and you can find this on our Twitter account else where. You had a political bureau spokesperson go on Al Jazeera last night.
And say, well, maybe.
They died and crossfire and like throwing a lot of like kind of mud and dust up in the air and saying, you know, who knows exactly what happened. It's like, wait a minute, You're your people on ground basically confirmed it yesterday, two days ago.
Now you're saying that who knows.
So there is there does seem to be a serious divide between the political bureau Hamas types who were like in Doha and the and the people still on the ground in Gaza.
But when it comes to the ceasefire.
Negotiations there there's coherence from Hamas. They are saying that their terms are very clear. Israel has to leave Gaza like that, that's pretty and then the war has to end like that.
Those are their demands and Nanyas.
Had previously agreed to that, and they the Hamas is saying, we just implement that previous agreement that they laid out, that is real laid out and that Biden made public.
Just do that.
Andya was saying, no, we're not doing that one anymore.
Let's look at this map. So this is C five. If we could put this.
Up on the screen, Ryan, can you explain what we're what we're looking at, especially for people who are listening to because this is fairly interesting.
Yeah.
So this is Nanyahu during his very long press conference the other day where he's laying out his position on uh not being willing to leave the Rafa border crossing, and anybody with any familiarity of the region, we can look at that and be like, seems to be something missing there.
Entire West Bank, entire West Bank.
Right before October seventh, he gave a present at the UN where he put up a similar map that didn't even have Gaza. Then like that one, at least this one, I guess has has the Gaza strip still there? It has to because he's talking about the Gaza strip.
But that is the Like.
What what critics have said is that this map represents Netnyahu's vision, and in fact, the vision of greater Israeli extends even further, goes back like there there are still huge factions within Israeli body politic that think that giving back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in the seventies was a mistaken that they still need to like that's that.
Deep into Lebanon.
And Syria, that this is all you know, greater Israeli, you know, territory by just God given writer, natural writer, whatever it is. So yeah, so when when people saw him put up another map after taking so much heat internationally for the last one, then he put up that didn't include either the West Bank or Gaza. This one he puts up doesn't include West Bank or like God.
Meanwhile, here in the States, it's the first day, or was the first day of classes at Columbia University, obviously the center of the widespread campus protest. Really it was the center of the momentum as protests fanned out across campuses. And we can start rolling this clip that if you're listening to it, what you're going to see is the alma mater statue at Columbia University being drenched in red paint meant to look like blood. And this is going
to play out in some interesting ways. I'm very curious how this plays out in the fall, because to the conversation we were just having, there is really no light at the end of this tunnel and there's really no end in sight. There seems like there's no path to cease fire in sight, no matter how much the Biden administration. Biden insists that we're getting closer and closer. We've been hearing that, obviously, over and over again for months, so
this could take off. And the other news to mention we can put C seven up on the screen is in the United Kingdom amid pressures, not unlike pressures from the left in the United States, they have decided to suspend some arms to Israel.
That's what the Reuter's headline says.
UK decision to suspend some arms for Israel frustrates both sides, and it's pretty apparent why that would frustrate both sides. So, Brian, this is the way that this is playing out in the West, as we keep hearing we're just centimeters away from a ceasefire, and everyone kind of is calling bs on that.
I mean, everyone kind of knows that.
And if you look at the right.
The reporting out of Israel's at Naniaho is genuinely starting to feel some pressure. If you look at his public statements, he doesn't seem like he's willing to bend on this. It's also September, so we're now two months away from a presidential election, in which he might think, who knows, now it's you. You know, he's one of those politicians you live to see another day. Now he's two months away from a who knows moment? So at that point you think, well, why why I greet anything now?
Yeah?
If I can just slow walk it into November totally.
I mean, the way that these external pressures are affecting negotiations, we don't have super clear information on yet, but we can guess, you can sort of surmise what might be affecting it. And obviously Netanyahu Christlin Sager covered this, but hundreds of thousands of people general Stike strike in cities like Tel Aviv, taking to the streets, similar crowd. This was either I read this in another ap R Reuters.
I thought this was an interesting bit of information. Pretty similar crowd in terms of overlap between people who were trying to protest his were protesting his attempt at judicial reform, So anti net and Yahoo people, but the anti net and Yahoo people after October seventh were not immediately.
Still anti yes, that's for sure.
So pressure is certainly looming over his decision making too. Yeah, all right, Ryan, you have some reporting to share.
Let's get to that.
So after the IDF discovery of six hostages who'd been killed in a tunnel in Gaza, Hamas released a video of Idan Yuroshami speaking to the camera. It was a cold display of cruelty to Adon's loved ones, who were only beginning to process her tragic and needless death. In the video, which is undated, Dan tells her family how much she misses them and Lambastnyahu for the relentless bombing
campaign and for failing to free the hostages. The New York Times rightly cited human rights groups in condemning Hamas's production of the hostage video, writing quote, rights groups and international law experts say that a hostage video is by definition made under duress, and that the statements in it are usually coerced. Israeli officials have called the video a form of quote, psychological warfare, and experts say their production can constitute a war crime unquote.
I agree.
Now, let's take that moral clarity and apply some moral consistency. Earlier this year, former Facebook executive Cheryl Sandberg produced a documentary that was screened at the White House and on Capitol Hill last.
Year, Hamas committed horrific acts of sexual violence. Cheryon, I thank you for all your work to bring to light the horrors of this issue, and for your film about what happened on October seven.
The way that Sandberg proved her case shockingly was significantly through the use of coerced interrogation videos. Tom The documentary, of course, won praise in the pages of the New York Times and is to this day sitting on the White House website. The White House website now says quote Preventing and responding to conflict related sexual violence is a top priority for President Biden and Vice President Harris. Since October seventh, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and our entire
administration have consistently condemned hamas horrific sexual violence. June seventeenth, the Vice President hosted an event at the White House which included a panel discussion and remarks by advocates and survivors of crs FEE from around the world, and a partial screening of Sheryl Sandberg's documentary Screens Before Silence on
Hamas's sexual violence. On October seventh, now AMC International, a human rights watch, bets Salem, and Physicians for Human Rights Israel all rejected the use of hostage interrogation videos in the months after October seventh, and most news outlets chose to reject their use as well, citing the likelihood the confessions were extracted by torture. Eryl Sandberg, the White House, and Hamas have all gone a different direction. The innocent
people caught in the middle deserve so much better. And Emily, it was so infuriating to me to see Hamas post those photos of the hostages after they were killed and post the video as well, And then it reminded me that the New York Times, the White House and others, as CNN has had Sandberg go one to talk about this documentary, has said absolutely nothing about the fact that she so prominently relied on these coerce interrogation videos and Coerce is doing a lot of work there in euphemistically
describing what bets Aalem, the Israel Human Rights Organization calls, you.
Know, hell on Earth, like their.
Recent report on Israeli detention centers is called Welcome to Hell, and it describes the systematic torture and sexual violence that is doled out to policity and detainees to then while they're still in custody, to use interrogations of them. And also, by the way, the press has tried to follow up on a lot of these quote unquote confessions that were produced by these IDF videos, and even the ones that have extraordinary amounts of detail, they have never been able
to find any remote substantiation. I like, if the story is told by those men and those coerced confession videos were true, you would think you'd be able to find a victim that somewhat matches the descriptions because the descriptions are so clear and precise and nothing. And so that's why human rights groups and the media in general don't rely on these and it's why Hamas should never have posted that video, and it's why the White House should be deeply ashamed of itself.
From my perspect of playing those playing those videos.
Of having played the Sandberg, Yeah, yeah, I struggle with this a lot, a lot, because, on the one hand, I mean, maybe it's okay to just not have a strong opinion on this, because I'm not sure that I do, and it's very.
You're forgiven for that you.
But no.
I mean the reason I say that is I almost feel like, I'm curious what you think about this. The Hamas videos and the confession videos, the alleged confession videos are apples and oranges, if that makes sense, that like what Hamas did with this is so different than even if like totally as, I do accept the argument that those may well have been coerced out of torture, I still feel like Hamas is publishing of the hostage videos before they killed these people that they had taken hostage.
It just seems to me like they're different things. But I don't know, I'm curious what you think about that.
Maybe not.
We don't know without seeing evidence and without a trial, whether the people, the Palestinians and those videos had anything to do with Hamas or pij.
They might, but they also might not.
They may they may well have done all of those. They may well drivers Because one thing we know.
Is that there were absolutely inexcusable and reprehensible, disgusting acts of violence on October seventh. Then maybe those guys were part of that.
But that's so crazy. There was horrific violence on October seventh, that.
Is on camera.
Yeah, innocent civilians were slaughtered. The need to ratchet up to something different is something that I never quite understood. It's like, it's horrible.
And there's always some thing to there's always something to.
Upholding these standards of decency and civilization and morality that are then undermined consistently by countries in the West. Or the quote that I've always gone back to since October seventh has nothing to do with it, is that Ollie North quote in his memoir where he talks about and actually the Israelis are involved in it, where he talks about how, you know, the worst thing for him was that the US was doing exactly what it was telling other countries not to do and was.
Saying that it wasn't doing right.
And now Israel's is caught in this like public debate with defending the use of sexual violence by IDF soldiers against Palestinians in prisons. Yes, it's an incredible general round.
Yeah, absolutely agree on that part.
No, it is a Sheryl Sandberg documentary about that yet.
Not yet, but just a very like I know that I said, I don't have a super opinion on this, but I think there's a really provocative and worthwhile point, and I'm glad that you caught it so we could talk about it all right.
Up next, we're gonna have Jeffrey Sachs and Matt Tayibi in what is sure to be a fascinating conversation about the roots of the Ukraine conflict.
Absolutely well, for.
What is sure to be a fascinating segment, Ryan and I are excited to be joined this morning by Jeffrey Sachs, the one and only Ryan.
What are we gonna be talking about today?
So first of all, we're gonna start start with Ukraine, and then we're going to back up into how we
got to the situation that we're in now. People may remember a couple of months ago, uh, Matt Tayibi was on the program, and in a kind of offhanded way, Matt and I were talking about the role that we understood that doctor Jeffrey Sachs had played in the in the Soviet Union, in the post Soviet Union, a transition into Russia derogatory terms, and said, what a remarkable kind of journey it had been for doctor Sachs to have gotten to kind of where he is now, somebody who's
often challenging power, and that was that that was from what we understood, just from the kind of pop culture that we were raised in at the time. I'm glad that Professor Sachs reached out and said, look, I'm happy to come on and talk about what actually happened during that time. We're hopefully going to be joined by Matt Taib as well, who lived in Russia at that time, has done enormous amount of writing on that question. Doctor Sax has written an essay for us over at drop
site News, which we'll be publishing later today. It will also be published over at Matt Tayeb's Racket. But we want to start with the latest in Ukraine because this is related to everything that we're talking about. So we
can put this first element up on the screen. That you've got Ukrainian President Vladimore Zelenski condemning Russia for a strike killing more than fifty and meanwhile saying that the Ukrainians have no designs whatsoever on leaving Russian territory that they have recently conquered.
Let's roll this clip from Zolanski.
Now you've captured this territory in Russia, so the big question is what do you plan to do with it Narisk territory.
We don't need the Russian territory. Operation is aimed to restore our territorial integrity. We capture Russian troops to replace them with the Ukrainian We tell them, you know, we need our military soldiers in exchange with the Russian. The same attitude is to the territories, we don't need their land.
Is the plan to take more territory?
I will not tell.
Sorry, I can't speak about it.
Is it's like the beginning of hour this course operation.
With all the respects, I can't speak about it.
I think that the success is very close to surprise.
But conceptually you have this territory. Now you say you don't want to keep it long. Conceptually we will hold it. Conceptually we will hold it.
And meanwhile there's a split screen going on on the front line. If we can put up this third element from the economists, they say, even as it humiliates Russia, Ukraine's line is crumbling in the domebos chock rate inside Kursk has not distracted the Kremlin from advancing. So you've got Russia advancing in ways that we have seen them over the past year. Even as this incursion is succeeding
gaining ground inside Russia. So, Professor Sachs, what is yours, somebody who's been following this extraordinarily closely, what is your assessment of where we are today?
Ukraine is losing on the battlefield. Zelensky's government is in its last legs, maybe even its last moments actually, because the contact line, the front line, is in a state of collapse for Ukraine. Not surprisingly, this whole war was misconceived and generally falsely reported by the mainstream Western media because Ukraine could not win this war, and it is in fact losing one to two thousand soldiers every day now to death or serious wounds.
This is a disaster underway.
It's hidden from view by the official narratives of the US government and the British government, especially by NATO spokespeople. But this is a disaster, and it's a disaster that was largely caused by the United States. Logically, again, basic facts that are hidden from view. But the US walked Ukraine into this disaster, and some of us have been saying this for years, and now it's becoming a plain as day as Russia advances on the battlefield. So Zelenski,
he's either delusional or just doing what he does. He's an actor who plays his part.
That's probably a great time to start looking back, because actually, I imagine you have a lot of thoughts on the days after the fall of the Soviet Union, how poorly Western media reported on it, and how poorly they sort
of understood what NATO and others were doing at the time. So, doctor Sex, I guess maybe one good place to start on that question is what does Western media get wrong and why are they so bad at reporting the truth, the reality of what happens between Russia and now other countries in Eastern Europe.
Well, what Western media, in the mainstream do is report the official narrative. So the question really is what is the US government get so wrong? And then why is it parroted by the New York Times or the Washington Post or the other mainstream media. What the US government has gotten wrong all along since nineteen eighty nine, or I would say since nineteen forty five, is the idea that there could be peaceful relations with Russia, just normal, cooperative,
peaceful relations. But from the first moments after the defeat of Nazi Germany in nineteen forty five, the US government did prepare for war with the Soviet Union, turned on what was an ally during the war and made it to the Great Enemy. We came close to global annihilation between nineteen forty five and nineteen eighty nine. In the Cold War, I played a role as a much younger economist in the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties.
As the Cold War was ending, or so I thought, I advised the Polish government, I advised the Gorbachev the government, his economic team. I advised the ELTs In government, I
advised the Kuchma government of Ukraine. So I was there during that period front row seats at least, and what I saw was that the United States was eager to cooperate and to support the lights of Poland, for exams ample, or the Central European countries that had been under the Soviet sphere and Soviet domination, but when it came to the Soviet Union and then later to Russia, that remained an enemy even at the end of the Cold War, completely contrary to what I saw, what I understood, what
I believed till today, that what Gorbachev and Yeltsen were offering was normalcy, peace, cooperation, the chance for a very different and vastly safer world. Well, the United States would have none of it. In fact, what the US wanted was domination. It wanted hegemony, it wanted full spectrum dominance.
As the Defense Department famously put it, what the US wanted was expanding NATO, even breaking apart Russia, because that was a part of the CI ideas that we can intervene in the periphery of Russia and perhaps break it apart on ethnic lines, just like the Soviet Union had broken apart. So this is what I did not understand as I was trying to give economic advice at the end of the nineteen eighties and early nineties. My advice
was help help the Soviet Union, help Russia. Help because that's what I understand good economics and good geopolitics and security to be. But all my recommendations were rejected. Basically, whenever I said help the Soviet Union or help Russia, no are you kidding, No way we're going to do that. And I didn't quite believe them that they would be so blind to the usefulness of this.
But you know, if you look back and.
Now, with a lot of documents that are have been exposed, and explained we never ended the Cold War in nineteen ninety one, we continued to prosecute the war against Russia. Already, by nineteen ninety four, in the Clinton administration, the decision was taken that NATO would enlarge, contrary to promises solemnly given in nineteen ninety to Gorbachev and to the Russian leaders, to Yeltsin and others, that we would not move one
inch eastward. Nineteen ninety four, Clinton already agrees not only will NATO move eastward, it will move to Ukraine, to the two thousand, one hundred kilometer.
Border with Russia.
And that is the provocation that has gotten us into this mess.
And this period to me, nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety four or so is to me one of the great hinge moments in world history, because you can quite easily imagine a world in which the United States has a relationship with any country that is similar to that that we have would say Germany or Japan. I mean, we're in a cataclysmic world war with Germany and Japan.
And here we are, you know, some.
Decades later, you know, there's some tensions here and there when it comes to trade and other foreign policy. But in general we're allies with those countries. There's no there's no chance we're really going to war with either it at any time soon.
So welcoming. You know, Matt Taibe, who was a journalist in.
So materialized out of thin air the time.
So I know that you lived through this period and you were equally fascinated by this, this piece that Professor Sachs has written for us. I woantn't to ask you if you wanted to ask him to tease a few parts of it out or yeah.
First of all, hello, professor, and thanks for coming on joining us, of course with this discussion. I was really amazed by some of the things in this essay. Could you talk first about you know, you advised Yegor guy Dar I believe he was still the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union at the time.
Now he was Prime Minister of Russia.
Guidark I advised Lynsky earlier, who was the economic advisor to Gorbachev.
Right, and I'm sorry, okay, this was in November ninety one, but you advised him to go to the G seven and ask for debt stabilization. What happened when he did that.
Basically, you know, when I was asked to come help, why would they ask me for all the you know, for God's sake? And the answer was that I knew something about the financial stabilization and financial crises, and I had a view that by the way, went back to John Maynard Keynes, who was the great British economist who was involved in the Versailles negotiations after World War One. He said, don't make a harsh settlement. You'll pay for
that later. Very prescient, very powerful analysis. I was very much influenced by that as a young economist, and I said, don't make a harsh piece and don't let the Soviet Union or Russia spiral into a deep financial crisis. Well, they had a deep financial crisis, that's why things were falling apart. And they asked me help us get out of this financial crisis. And I took the normal tools of the trade, for example, saying you need to not pay the debt temporarily at least maybe permanently, but you
need a debt standstill. In other words, you're running out of money. You're in the deepest crisis. This is a historic moment of profound significance. I'm talking about nineteen ninety one. Russia is about to become an independent and wants to be a democratic country. My god, this is phenomen so, this is a big deal. So get some space on your debt, because you don't have financial reserves. You're in
deep financial crisis. That's what I suggested to Yegor Gaidar, who was then the head of the economic team for Boris Yeltsen, who was about to become president of an independent Russia. And it was the kind of advice I had given to Poland two years earlier, which had worked to stabilize Poland's economy, and the kind of advice I had given a few years earlier than that to help end a hyperinflation in South America.
Now I gave it to Guidar.
I sat in the Anti Anti room as he walked into meet with the so called G seven deputies, that means the finance ministry deputies are, in the case of the US, the US Treasury under secretary or Deputy secretary.
On finance.
And this was a key meeting in November nineteen ninety one, and I sat in the ante room, and he came out ashen face and yegor what happened, he said, They told me, you pay every penny of interest as it falls due, or we stopped the shipments of food on the high seas that are coming as emergency relief for you. Unbelievable, but that's actually the advice.
That's what they did.
By the way, they continued to pay until they went into default early in nineteen ninety two because they literally ran out foreign exchange reserve, so they went to zero. And then massive crisis came and the US is just sitting there. I thought sucking its thumb was even worse than that. It was watching a crisis unfold with no real intention to do much about it.
As far as I'm concerned.
Because nobody I thought it was ignorance, delay, bureaucratic ineptitude. But it turned out to be a persistent policy that the US was just not going to help. What it was going to do was build US power in the region. It was going to expand NATO, it was going to make its demands. It was going to tell Russia, yeah, you can be a player, listen to us, join our team,
do what we say, don't complain. That was the idea of US foreign policy beginning in nineteen ninety one ninety two, but it was in a way a continuation from nineteen forty five. Interestingly, and I need to men back in nineteen forty five we were allies with the Soviet Union against Hitler, and the Soviet Union had lost twenty seven
million people. This unbelievable disaster had borne the brunt of defeating the German army, and within weeks or months of the end of World War Two, we started to hire German Nazi scientists, those of course who had made the two missile systems, German warfare specialists who had tortured inmates and killed inmates and concentration camps, done human experiments.
We took them on.
Because the idea already in nineteen forty five, and then it just built in forty six, in forty seven and forty eight was the next enemy is the Soviet Union. We need to prepare for total war. So this idea is very deep seated in America. But I thought, hey, I could not have been more thrilled in nineteen eighty nine ninety ninety one to be witnessing the birth of worldwide peace in front of my eyes.
But we just wouldn't habit the end.
Of his story and one of the So there's kind of multiple layers of the scandal and the way that the Western world treated Russia. One of those is the macro level that you talked about kind of driving them into one of the greatest you know, maybe the greatest financial collapse in world history.
I wouldn't say that, but a big one, big, a big one.
This is a big one, very big one.
But then the second one is on the micro level, the extraordinary theft and corruption around the around the privatization of national industries. And you've gotten lumped into that sometimes because the Harvard Institute for International Development, which you were involved with, had some of its members involved with that.
So can you talk.
About that connection, like who was involved with that? And I know you're write in the essay that anyway, just you go ahead and tell them.
Yeah, just very very briefly. My gig and my side of the work was finance and macroeconomics. I'm an international finance economist by training. I had stopped the hyperinflation, I had helped cancel debts, I had helped Bolivia to get back on its feet. I was asked to help bring in Western money to help stabilize the situation in the Soviet Union in nineteen ninety ninety one. That didn't work because the White House turned it down flat, the whole idea.
And then again for Yelson, where I thought this is a slam dunk. Now we have an independent Russia, post communists, democratic, all the rest.
I thought it was slam dunk. They turned that down again.
I was not part of privatization and I was not asked to be frankly, because there were other people involved to didn't really even want me to be involved.
Okay, that's fine.
So I was doing my thing, not succeeding because I couldn't convince Washington about any of this, by the way, which was really strange for me, because what I had recommended in Poland had worked, and so I was saying, it's the same, multiply by four, you know, it's bigger country. But they said, no, no, we're not doing that.
No, we're not doing that. It was very strange.
Now on the privatization, I was not part of strategy or even asked. I had my own views which were very very different, but it wasn't my BAILI wick I actually after a year of trying to help yelts and I told him I can't help you know, they're not interested.
I can't be helpful for you.
I can't bring any money to Russia to help the stabilization. A new finance minister was appointed at the end of nineteen ninety two, and he begged, a very nice person named Boris Fyodorov, who died young.
He begged me, please stay, please help.
So I stayed another year, completely ineffectually, because the Western idea was quite different the US government idea of the imf ID and so forth. So I stayed and then I resigned at the end of nineteen ninety three. The big things that created the oligarchs were things like eight Shares for Loans scandal of nineteen ninety five ninety six, which by the way, was also part of financing Yeltsin's re election campaign at that time. So I was nowhere nearby at all in any of that, except that I
knew the people and the players. One of them described to me laughing how the whole Shares for Loan's thing had gone down, and I found it disgusting, corrupt, gross. So I called US government officials and imf and World Bank officials. I said, well, maybe it's like the line in Casablanca. There's corruption going on in this place. There's ampling going on in this place. But I was serious, you know, you really need to look into that, and I just got blank stares back, because of course they
knew what was going on, but they weren't interested. Well, I took a lot of shit for that, if I can say that on your show.
Four years completely the opposite.
I was the one trying to say stuff, but of course I wasn't on the inside.
I wasn't anywhere near.
But I was trying to push the USG and World Bank and IMF to stop it then. And I actually don't want to go into details because it's thirty years later and its personalities and so forth. But some of my colleagues didn't do the right thing at Harvard and they messed up, and its public record and people can look it up, and it was an unpleasant experience. It was part of my responsibility to tell them that they were in trouble, but it wasn't my responsibility to do
anything about it. But again, I was a very known person, and so I was lumped together as the Harvard boys do Russia. Okay, you know this is media. You guys are the world's authorities on this media. Once you got the media, you can't fight the media when you get the waves of slogans that are so good. So truly, let me say two things. The big part of this story is that the US didn't want to help and didn't help in the nineteen nineties on the economic side.
But there's a second part of this story which is more important, which is that even with that, even with the financial crisis that Russia went through, which was very painful, even with the default of nineteen ninety eight that Russia went through, which was very painful. Putin was not anti American or anti West or anti Europe when he came to power.
He wasn't in.
Love with the US, let me put it that way, but he wanted normal relations even then. This did not set things in an inevitable course.
It didn't help. But the real.
Changes that put things in a disastrous course were on the security side, first the expansion of NATO, then the bombing of Belgrade in nineteen ninety nine, seventy eight straight days of some hair brained, terrible scheme of Madeline Albright, and to break apart Serbia, which was Russia's ally, and create Kosovo and put the largest NATO military based Bonda Skiel in Kosovo to cover Southeast Europe.
Okay, Putin watched that. He didn't like that at all.
Then came nine to eleven and Putin said, okay, we want to cooperate with you, we can help, we also face insurgencies.
We don't like this.
The US more or less brushed Russia off at that point. In two thousand and two, the US did something even more provocative and profound, which was to abandon the Anti.
Ballistic Missile Treaty.
This for Russia was a first class security disaster because the ABM treaty was viewed as a protection against the US nuclear first strike. And this was viewed in an incredibly harsh way by Russia, and it is a massive danger. Then immediately in two thousand and three came the Iraq invasion over Russia's absolute objections, over the UN Security Council
absolute objections. Then in two thousand and four came a NATO enlargement to seven more countries, including the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, including two Black Sea countries. Bulgarian Romania and including two Balkans countries, Slovakia and Slovenia. So one thousand and seven, then the temperature was up to hear and President Putin gave at the Munich Security Conference a very strong message stop this, stop this. You are pressing right up against our red lines.
Do not go further.
And then famously, in two thousand and eight, the US announced a policy that had actually been adopted fourteen years earlier, but it made it public, which was the demand that NATO would enlarge to Ukraine and to Georgia.
In the Caucuses. And this for Russia was unbelievable.
Now Russia would be surrounded by NATO in the Black Sea region, and European leaders at the time called me privately. I had long conversations, what is your president doing? This is so reckless, so provocative. By the way, many of these same leaders now are completely mum, we love the United States. This has nothing to do with NATO. This war, of course, it's about NATO. The whole thing is about NATO.
It's always been about NATO. And this was true in two thousand and eight, and then quickly to bring this story up to date in twenty eleven. Again, these neocons doubled down. We're going to overthrow Syria, where Russia happens to have a naval base. We're going to overthrow Libya, where Russia has an ally. And we then took steps and in twenty fourteen overthrew the government of Ukraine. Victorianikovich February twenty second, twenty fourteen. This was a coup in
which the US played a significant role. Sad to say, I saw some of it with my own eyes, which I did not want to see, but I did see some of it with my own eyes.
The US was up to its neck in that coup, and of course the Russians knew it.
They even did us a favor of intercepting Victoria Newlan's phone call with the US ambassador to Ukraine, Jeffrey Piat, who's now a senior State Department official. Victoria Newlan's my colleague at Columbia University.
Unbelievably, and.
Our guy call with that, that's the yachts is our guy call.
That's the yachts is our guy call.
And the reason I saw some of it is that yachts yachtsanook who became the US installed prime Minister called me said I want you to come talk to me about this economic crisis.
I mean, oh my god.
Well I knew Ukraine, I had advised Kuchma, I did not understand exactly what had happened by any means. So when Yachtsanook asked me to go there, I flew there and this was just I don't remember exactly a day or a few days after my dawn after the violent coup. And when I got there, American or somebody representing an American NGO said, you want to go see the Maidan because we have a few hours before the meeting with
the Prime Minister. And when we went to the Maidan, they explained to me how much American money had gone into pumping up the Maidan. You know, I saw it. Literally, we gave fifty thousand to this one, five thousand of this one. So forth, this NGO extraordinarily unpleasant. I got the hell out of there that night. And this is the reality. So where did this war come from? It came from the fact that the US was we call it now Cold War two point zero, but it's really
the same Cold War. It never really stopped. The US had a campaign well Russia is going to be second rate or maybe divided or decolonized, use a favorite word in Washington. But we're going to continue this effort because they're on the other side. You know, it turned out didn't have anything to do with Bolshevism, didn't have anything to do with communism, didn't have anything to do with democracy or not democracy.
The US did.
Not want a big power there except one completely subservient to the US.
When do you think the Russian government figured that out? I mean, I know from living there at the time that sort of the ordinary person in Moscow or Saint Petersburg. Right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a lot of hope and enthusiasm that there was going to be this glorious partnership with the United States. And you mentioned your hopes that there would be kind of
a new Marshall Plan. I know that there were people in Russia who were kind of hoping the cavalry would come and help stabilize their economy and there would be this, you know, this new flower of a relationship. But it sounds like what you're saying and what you've written is that there was never any intention to really integrate Russia as any kind of democratic partner. I know, when the ordinary Russians started to feel that that that was going to not happen. I think Serbia was really a breaking
point for them. But when do you think the Russians figured it out? Was it, you know, by the time Putin came to power, or before that, or when the relationship turns now or finally.
I think, Look, the situation was very tough economically throughout this whole period. Gorbachev was reviled because of an economy that was in collapse already in the late nineteen eighties. Shortages were everywhere, prices were sore, and living standards were falling,
so and there was tremendous disarray. When the Soviet Union ended, another dimension of disarray came because now you had fifteen success or states that couldn't even manage the mechanics of trade among each other, even though they were deeply interconnected in physical supply chains that used to be on the basis of orders from ghost plant from the State Planning ministry, but now that didn't exist anymore. So there weren't even mechanisms for trade. So for the person in the street,
this was a terrible period. Very difficult, very dark from the start. Maybe they hoped the US would do something, and Bill Clin did smile a lot and did toast Yeltsin and so forth, but I don't think anyone felt too warmly about the United States. I thought it was inevitable that we would help, because how could we not. The opportunity was so great, And so I said to President Yeltson in December nineteen ninety one, of course, we're going to help. He said, we want to be a
normal country, we want to have good relations. I said, of course, and we're going to help. It's going to be wonderful, so I thought. And I'm a little slow to learn, because I thought it was so right to do. I kept thinking, in twenty nineteen ninety two, they'll figure it out. In nineteen ninety three, Clinton's now and they'll figure it out. No, well they never figured that part out.
What I did not know, of course, and didn't pay attention to at the time, was the NATO side that already basically they're planning the NATO enlargement, and now we
know a lot more about the actual timing of that. Interestingly, as usual, there's a very pointed article by his big Brzinski in nineteen ninety seven published in Foreign Affairs magazine, where it's called a Strategy for Eurasia, and he lays out a timetable for NATO enlargement to Ukraine, which he says will be two thousand and five to twenty ten. Now it's clear he was reporting actual policy. He wasn't
just putting forward a Brushinsky plan. He was reporting what Washington had settled on in fact.
So I think things took time.
But yel, I know that Putin was still optimistic about normal relations, good relations with Europe when he came to power, and even in the early two thousands. You know, he's a cynical guy for understandable reasons. And maybe he never expected, like I did, that the West would actually help.
But he thought, okay, we could still live together.
And I know many Western European leaders, like a wonderful Romano Proty, former Prime Minister of Italy and and former President of the European Union, who had very good relations with Putin, and Putin reciprocated the good relations, and it seemed just natural even in the early two thousands that things would be okay. And remember then in two thousand and three with the Iraq War, which the Russians hated. Of course, many European countries were at that point ready
to express opposition to the US. France and Germany said no, this is a bad idea. So that was siding on the Russian side in a way. Now we have a full block where the US has put its foot down and every word you hear from Western European politicians is yes, NATO, yes, NATO, Yes, United States. But it wasn't like that in the early two thousands. So things got worse and worse overtime.
And before you go, I wanted to get you to respond to the left wing critique of your time as an economists, both in Bolivia, Poland and beyond. Shock therapy became the name for this kind of series of neoliberal reforms that were applied to kind of run hyper countries that were facing hyper inflation. The argument being was too harsh, that it cut out too many government subsidies, that it broke the backs of kind of the stability that people
needed and fueled inequality. That's the kind of Naomi Klein critique of shock therapy would be along those lines. What's your response? What was response at the time, how do you look back on it now?
Well, my response at the time was, and it's fun for me to look back to an interview that I gave.
To Lawrence Weschler Ran Weschler.
In the New Yorker in nineteen eighty nine when I was advising Poland, and he asked me, you know, what are your views? I said, look, you know my favorite country, Sweden. I'm a social democrat. I have been a social democrat all along. So just to understand where I come from and what I advocate and what I believe today, I'm a kind of center left social democrat in the Scandinavian style. That's always been my economic approach and economic philosophy, and
it was true then. I'm a specialist, was then and had some good results in ending hyperinflations. You don't end a hyperinflation by going from twenty four thousand percent this year to twelve thousand percent next year, to six thousand percent the year after, to three thousand percent.
The year after.
You actually it immediately, by the way, and not because it's draconian. Actually ending the hyperinflation is the basis for the society surviving. So by the time I got to Bolivia, there had been six years of utter chaos, and in the twelve months preceding my arrival, the inflation rate was twenty four thousand percent, which at the time was the
seventh highest hyperinflation in world history. And I helped to end it, not by brutal means, but actually by the most normal way within a week, simply stopping a shambolic, disastrous mispricing of their one government resource, oil which was being given away to rich people, which was being exported on barges across Lake Titakaka, and the hyperinflation came to an end immediately. And to show you my philosophy and
my belief, they had defaulted on their debt. This was a completely bankrupt country and the IMF said, okay, now you start paying your debts.
And that's where I said.
No way, this country is going to get debt cancelation. This is a poor country. It needs help urgently. This is not neoliberalism, excuse me. This is trying to help save a country that had fallen into one of the worst deepest crises.
Of peacetime in history. And it worked.
By the way they got the debts canceled. I will pat myself on the back to an important extent on that. And if you look at afterwards, I told them, you'll go from an impoverished country in disarray and hyperinflation to just an impoverished country, and then you have to start economic development after that. But that's the first step, is
get out of this complete chaos. And in Poland, I was truly a social democrat in that they had and I expected afterwards they would have a more public health system than the United States, they would have a more public education system than the United States, they would have more social protection.
Than the United States.
But they were in a collapse. So they needed debt cancelation, which I helped them arrange. They needed an emergency stabilization, they needed a way out of a completely collapsed economy. And if you look at the results over the thirty years from nineteen eighty nine onward, I was only involved for the first three or four years, but it set the stage for the fastest economic growth in the history
of Poland. And essentially, if you want one measure of that, one basic measure, look at Poland's per capita income compared to Germany in nineteen eighty nine. Poland's per capita income was about one third of the German level. Now it's about seventy percent of the German level. In other words, it didn't close the gap with Germany, but it substantially closed the gap. That's what you want, That's what I said.
That's what you could hope for in economic development, that you will not only have stability, but a normal economy. It is, by the way, essentially a social democratic economy because national income going to government outlays for social protection, for health, for education, so forth, and for other purposes. Around forty percent of GDP, higher than the United States. So this is not the things that were said. By the way, I like Naomi Client a lot. I admire
her work a lot. And what she wrote about the shock doctrine of the US, which is we're going to run the world and we're going to run it our way, I think it's accurate. I don't think she understood exactly what I was saying in trying to do in terms of macroeconomics. So I never really very much liked the confusion, but I appreciate your asking about it gives me the chance to explain. But I explained it back in nineteen eighty nine, I'm a social democrat. Then I'm pretty stubborn.
I'm still a social.
Democrat nowt I know you got to run pretty soon matter. Emily, any final questions or thoughts.
I was just going to ask.
Matt, reflecting even on our initial conversation in which you were reflecting on your experiences with your own front row seat to a lot of this that was transpiring in the nineties, if you have any thoughts on what we've heard from doctor Sachs during this conversation.
Yeah, I guess I just have a general question, because I mean, when I was there for the whole decade of the nineties, and by the end of it, I know a lot of people in the expat community journalists were saying, you know, this Seis policy towards Russia so strange. It's almost like they're trying to screw things up, or that they're trying to destabilize this country. But it sounds like that might have actually been a plan security wise, or at least that they were indifferent to the consequence
of policies within Russia. I mean, do you think it's logical to draw a straight line between what's going on right now the complete tension between these two countries, and you know, us being essentially, you know, in a proxy war with Russia to the end of the Soviet Union when we decided we were going to adopt this posture towards Russia. I mean, was there at any time a moment where we were actually trying to bring them in And you know, as any kind of partner.
At first, We're not in a proxy war with it. We're in a hot war. We're in a real war. We are not only providing the weapons, the financing, the munitions, the targeting, the intelligence, but we have we have our personnel in Russia and Ukraine fighting this war also, not the soldiers in the uniforms and the boots on the ground, but there are a lot of US weapons systems that have the US support. We're in this war. The Russians know it. They say so every day.
It is a terrible risk for the world that this is the case. It is so.
Wrongheaded, unnecessary, and threatening that the United States is provoking directly militarily with attacks, a war with the only other nuclear superpower. The only thing that can threaten the United States and its security is nuclear war, which can end everything and everybody and we should understand respect some red lines of your nuclear superpower counterpart. So we don't get that until today. We're still playing chicken. We're still playing games,
We're still making lies. Now, what was the US intent? Us intent was not per se to destabilize Russia. The US intent was US unipolarity. That the US will be the most powerful country in the world. It will have no rivals, it will have only essentially obedience to the US demands.
That was the goal. It was thought through.
Already by Cheney and Wolfowitz in the Defense documents of early nineteen ninety two, and it never really changed. The idea is full spectrum dominance, unipolarity, liberal hegemony terrible term because nothing liberal about it. Hegemony by the United States. So Russia, okay, maybe divided. I'm pretty convinced that the US has supported Chechen rebels, for example, to eat away at the Russian soft underbelly in the late nineteen nineties
and early two thousands. The Russian say so, and I see a lot of evidence for it, because we had a lot of fancy people who were on the Czechshnia Committee. What do they know about Czechnia, Nothing except that they know that it is against Russia, and so we played a lot of dangerous games, mainly for what Brashinsky wanted, which was for Russia to be a second rate country, to stop being a superpower. And that was the gambit all along, because the United States in this so called
unipolar moment, wants to rule alone. It's a madness and it's a delusion when you're talking about huge, powerful countries with thousands of nuclear warheads. But the US wanted its way, that's the point. It wanted to do what it wants to put its military, where it wants to get the resources, where it wants to be able to dictate foreign policy as it wants. And that is the whole story, from
beginning to end. It did not want the nukes going off, It didn't want to bring Russia into such disarray that there would be disaster. But it did not want a strong competitor. It wanted a unipolar world.
Well, Jeffrey Sachs, Matt Tayib, fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for joining us, and thank you, I just I for reaching out and for writing little.
You guys do such great work. I'm really delighted to be together with you and we'll.
Be able to read that in Dropsite and Racket and Racket, which Matt Tayeb's outly you'll be able to catch that at both of those.
Thank you guys so much for joining us. We'll see you next time.
Thank you to be with you.
Thanks.
I feel like I need a cigarette after that.
I don't even smoke what you think you feel like any ten cigarettes? After that? It was Sager's nicotine gum under here.
That was interesting stuff, just.
Casual anecdotes about what he was telling Boris Yeltz in the nineteen ninety New One. Incredible, incredible, I mean, such a window into history.
We threatened to.
The Russian people were starving to death, literally and the only thing they were surviving on was the humanitarian aid and getting sent in, and we threatened to turn the ships around unless they paid every dollar of their debt financing, which all macroeconomics economists understood at that time was the wrong thing to do in that circumstance, even from the US's perspective, like the shock therapy that the US wanted to apply to Poland, to Bolivia and or elsewhere around Latin America, but not.
Even that for Russia.
But you know, what was really interesting to me is that as we're having this conversation about malign actors with I think lacking lacking long term consequence and lacking a view of potential long term consequences, are failing to take seriously what we are now looking back at. You had
people like Jeffrey Sachs. You had other people. If we had more time, I wanted to ask him about this, who were sincere, Who were you know, maybe talking to people like Yeltsin and actually were there to do what they thought was who.
Had read the economic consequences of the piece by Kain's right, the forecast that if you.
Do this treaty, you're going to get World War two out.
Of it, right.
And so there are people who are on the ground, representing the West, representing American interests, who genuinely wanted to have this partnership for the best of both countries, for the best of both the United States and Russia and the West and these former Ukraine, these former Soviet block countries, and they were learning the lessons of history and trying to implement them. It's that there are people behind the scenes.
And one question I would have for him going forward is what the breakdown was, you know.
Is.
Because he's basically then acting as a tool of these malign interests, is what he's saying in retrospect, So how many people were also in that same position, because it just gets the duality of the United States that like, in the aftermath of the Cold War and the aftermath of actually, I should just say in the aftermath of World War Two, there are a lot of you know, actual small l liberals who worked genuinely had the values of decency, trying to use the power and the muscle
of the United States for good and in some ways that turned out to be foolish, but in some ways that were genuine and could have borne better fruit if they hadn't been undermined by people who had, you know, no interest in other powers potentially rising to challenge the United States. So it's sort of an enduring mystery of American history. I guess we'll probably never have the answer
to it. But there are a lot of There's been a lot of good and there have been a lot of good actors in the United States.
It's just they've been undermined by bad actors.
Yeah, quite a history, dark timeline we're on By the way, no Friday show this week, but consider that your Friday show, this long form. Rewatch it on Friday, because this is the kind of thing I'll rewatch because I bet there's a bunch in there.
Yeah, there's a lot to absorb.
Also, the question about track therapy and Bolivia, I mean interesting stuff. It's so interesting, especially in light of Melee and everything going on now, so that.
That's got to count as a Friday show.
There you go, exactly all right, So I'm back for Breaking Points tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll see you guys next week.