2/23/26: Tucker Vs Huckabee On Israel, Sachs Flames Trump On Iran And Tariffs

14:31Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, and the best part, Crystal, is later on he goes, okay, do the Irish people have a right to Ireland? He's like, there is no right. It's by conquest. And you're like, well, hold on a second here. You know, what are we talking about? By the way, this has sparked a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Let's go ahead and put A2 up there on the screen just so you all see the map of greater Israel and part of the project, if you will. And you can see exactly what he's talking about, including vast swats of Saudi Arabia. And, you know, you even had a huge diplomatic statement. You know, congratulations.

15:05Saagar Enjeti:Only Mike Huckabee could unite the entire Middle East. Many of these countries do hate each other. They hate each other with the fire of a thousand suns. And yet they all had to come together to issue a big diplomatic statement. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. They say the ministries of all of these different countries, I'm going to read them, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, Qatar, Lebanon, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bahrain, Oman, Palestine and Syria, plus the OIC, the Arab League and the Gulf states all say they unequivocally condemn the greater Israel endorsement there of the ambassador, Mike Huckabee.

15:42Saagar Enjeti:This is the humiliation ritual is that we have this special country. It has a right to exist because of Genesis. If you're Ireland, screw you. It's about your right to conquest. It's the only country in the whole world, apparently, where the right to conquest does not apply. And that's the madness through which our policy is currently flowing. And I actually think that the next one on genetics makes it even crazier, Crystal.

16:09Jeffrey Sachs:Well, I mean, just to pause on this one, because, Sagar, people like you and I who have been talking about the Greater Israel Project and saying, hey, guys, look at the number of countries that they're bombing. Look at the maps that they put. Look at what they taught. Listen to the settlers, because they're the ones who will say it outright. They're serious about this thing, okay? We were treated like kooks, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, et cetera. This is the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Is this U.S. policy? Yes. Is this what our policy is? Because that seems like an important question to ask and know the answer to.

16:45Jeffrey Sachs:And then the other thing I have to pause on here as we're potentially heading into war with Iran, you know, one of the things that we hear all about the Iranians is they're so irrational because they're these religious zealots and they're this, you know, theocratic authoritarian regime. And so, you know, they can't be reasoned with because they're irrational because of these, you know, this extreme religious religiosity that they rule the country with. Like, what the fuck is this? I mean, what do you call this? We're using biblical scripture to erase international law, certainly to erase the borders of nation states.

17:22Jeffrey Sachs:I thought this was an administration that cared an awful lot about borders. Turns out, when it comes to Israel's ability to invade and, you know, brutally take over whatever areas they feel like, that's no problem whatsoever. So an extraordinary and very significant moment, which, again, has major spillover effects as, look, these countries, they're genuinely pissed off right in the region for understandable reasons. And it may end up that this comment from Huckabee helps to forestall war with the run because we need a bunch of these countries cooperation for, you know, for launching attacks, for defense, a bunch of bases located in the region, etc.

18:04Jeffrey Sachs:And so if you have them pissed off ahead of this action, you know, you're not going to get the level of cooperation that perhaps you would need for the grand scale that Trump is is potentially planning. Now, I'm not going to place all my hopes in that bucket, but certainly like a truly significant development that the Iranians, by the way, are already talking about and already mentioning to say, look, see, this is that it's the Epstein class driving us towards war. The Greater Israel Project is real. Like, come on, Arab states, you really want to be part of this coalition? Is this what you've signed on for?

18:37Saagar Enjeti:I wouldn't be surprised if they still did sign on for it, considering their own humiliation ritual. But it is instructive and illustrative of the current relationship and the sure, you know, psychopathy of the people who are in charge. This next one on genetics is equally revealing. It is an entire challenge about who has the right to the land based on their blood. And, you know, Mike Huckabee seems completely unable to grapple with, let's say, Eastern European, you know, Eastern European descendants who are living in Israel versus Palestinian people who have been present on the land for some thousands of years.

19:17Saagar Enjeti:and whether or not they have rights to exist on that land by their logic. Now, again, this is their internal logic about blood and soil inside the country of Israel. But here's Mike Huckabee literally speechless on the question regarding Bibi Netanyahu and others. Let's take a listen.

19:33Krystal Ball:Dodging a very obvious question, which is where does this right come from? And the reason it's meaningful is because there are a lot of people in the territory that Israel controls today, particularly in the West Bank, who through genetic testing, we can know their families have been here for thousands of years. We don't know whether they practiced Judaism, whether they were Samaritans, pre-Islam. We don't know that. A lot of them we know have been Christians for 2 ,000 years. They have less of a right to the land than someone whose ancestors, the only thing we know about them is they lived in Latvia or Poland.

20:13Krystal Ball:They're Eastern European. Ian, how does that work? They're Jewish. By what definition? They're Jewish by their ethnicity. But how do we know they have any connection to the Jews of the Bible? They're Jewish by their faith. They're Jewish by the connection to the language. Jewish by the connection to the Torah. But how do we know that Bibi, specifically Bibi's ancestors, ever lived here? How do we know that? I'm not sure if I understand your question. How do we know if the prime minister of Israel's ancestors ever lived? Maybe I could ask you, how do we know they didn't? Well, it's on the basis of the claim that they did that all kinds of things happen.

20:51Krystal Ball:People are displaced. There's a money flow. I mean, it's a big question. A lot hangs on this. It's not some theoretical thing like, oh, you know, do my grandparents do this or do that? It's like, no, no, no. We have a right to be here because my ancestors were here. Okay, how do we know they were here?

21:07Krystal Ball:I'm totally unable to process what you're trying to get at. I think I know what he was trying to get out there a little bit.

21:17Saagar Enjeti:And I think Mike Huckabee knows what he's trying to get out, too. I think Mike Huckabee knows it, too.

21:19Jeffrey Sachs:He just doesn't want to grapple with it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've said this before. You know, my children's father is Jewish and they have, you know, more of a right by Israeli's views to live there and have the land than people who have lived there for genuinely thousands of years. Now, obviously, I'm a leftist. I believe in universal rights. I don't subscribe to this blood and soil view of a nation. But as you said, Sagar, this is their justification. They are claiming these ancestral ties to the region. So it's entirely legitimate to say, OK, well, let's tease this out a little bit. Because I think most people thinking about, like, you know, somebody who lives in Brooklyn and just going over and, like, stealing land from a family that's been there, you know, hundreds if not thousands of years would say this is not really fair.

22:09Jeffrey Sachs:This is not really moral. This is not really logical. So completely fair to to push on that. And especially, you know, Huckabee also talks about how there's not just Jewish people coming from Eastern Europe with that ancestry. There's also people who are indigenous to the region. That is certainly the case. But we also know in this part of what we learned in the Epstein files, that there is a deeply racist system, even of, you know, amongst different Jewish people within Israel. Yeah. Go ahead.

22:39Saagar Enjeti:Ayud Barak laid it out there. He's like, oh, we don't want the right type of Jew. We want the right type of Jew coming into Israel. We don't want these. What did he say? Mizrahi Jews coming in.

22:48Jeffrey Sachs:He said we did. We had to take the ones from Africa early on. But now we could pick the right type of Jew. And he preferred people who were new converts in Russia who have, you know, then probably zero ties to the land over those, you know, you know, people that we had to take in from these other regions that we look down upon. So, yeah, pretty disgusting.

23:10Saagar Enjeti:Now, I guess, you know, at the very least, now turning to our own country, perhaps the most important question. Why did the U.S. ambassador invite convicted spy Jonathan Pollard into the U.S. embassy? Mike Huckabee claims it was a 30 minute meeting that was scheduled just so Pollard could thank Huckabee for being nice to his then deceased wife. But here's the drawdown really into the logic of inviting Pollard into the embassy in the first place. Let's take a listen. So this was the most profound betrayal of the United States in my lifetime.

23:45Krystal Ball:Why advocate for that guy's release before he serves his full sentence? If that were the case in 2011, it would have been because I had a number of friends that suggested that he had more than served time and he didn't want to live in the U.S. anymore. He wanted to live in Israel. But my association with him, again, I had never met him until I met him in Jerusalem at a hotel. That was the first time I had ever encountered him. Why meet with him in the U.S. Embassy? Your colleagues said they were shocked. They said... Who were the colleagues that said they were shocked? Quoted on background in the New York Times.

24:20Krystal Ball:I think the meeting was in August. This could all be fake. That's why I'm asking you. Well, the same New York Times said it was a secret meeting. And I'm telling you, there's no such thing as a secret meeting in the U.S. Embassy. Do you see why the U.S. ambassador hosting a convicted betrayer of his own country who's encouraging Americans to continue to betray their country would seem shocking? Well, I would say that it wasn't that I you make it sound like I'm hosting a meeting. I simply met with him. I meet with people all the time. So I can just walk in without a. No, they have to have an appointment.

24:52Krystal Ball:Of course they do. Oh, so it is hosting him that I think. Well, I don't know if it was hosting, but it was certainly he was able to come to the U.S. Embassy to have a meeting at his request. I did. And frankly, I don't regret it.

25:05Saagar Enjeti:I don't regret it, whether he hosted him or look at this little weasel trying to get out of the fact that he did host him. And, you know, at this point, I don't even expect anything more from Mike Huckabee. This is the humiliation ritual of this administration who is tolerating this behavior. They're putting people in charge over at the U.S. embassy who do not see any issue with literally inviting a convicted spy back onto U.S. soil. And Jonathan Pollard, let's not forget, not just his original crime, which was heinous. And as Tucker pointed out in the interview, passed on information, which was then passed on to the Soviet Union.

25:41Saagar Enjeti:He has since encouraged all Jews in the United States to spy for the state of Israel. He has said publicly that Israel should threaten nuclear weapons against the against the United States if we encourage them to do a ceasefire. He attacked, by the way, even in terms of MAGA logic, he hates Trump for forcing the first ceasefire on Israel in the early days of the administration. This is who this guy is. It is as clear cut dual loyalty or I know, sorry, single loyalty as it gets to this, you know, to this state. And you're inviting this person who you advocated for their release. And even in the beginning, he's like, oh, well, many people said he shouldn't have to serve such a law.

26:23Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, those people are all bought off by Israel, by the Israel lobby. Real intelligence officials said you cannot pardon this guy ever. You cannot release him early. You have to send a message that we treat all spies the same. He's the only spy that anybody did. Anybody try to get Aldrich James out of prison early? No. Or I'm forgetting the guy from the FBI's name. But I mean, both of these guys, they rotted and died in prison. Good. And then with this person, you know, oh, and he gets facilitated to Israel, gets like special treatment, released from his parole by the Trump administration in the first term.

26:56Saagar Enjeti:And now this is just too much like the humiliation ritual all around here. It disgusts me as an American.

27:03Jeffrey Sachs:It's kind of amazing to me, too. I mean, Huckabee does not dispute any of Tucker's characterization of who Pollard is, of what he said, of the fact that he continues to advocate for Jews in this country to betray this country. He doesn't dispute any of that. he decides that his best defense is to quibble over the terminology of whether or not he hosted him at the embassy. It's like, or whether it was really technically a secret meeting or not, as if that makes any difference whatsoever to the reality of what unfolded here. And, you know, it surprises me that he doesn't have a better defense, given the fact that this was actually the spark of the, you know, the sort of like war of words between him and Tucker Carlson.

27:44Jeffrey Sachs:This was really a genesis of it. So he surely knew that he was going to be questioned about it, But I guess the answer is there really just isn't a good defense. The best you can do is say, well, I didn't really host him. I mean, we had a meeting, but I wouldn't call it hosting him. And then it's like, well, you can't just show up at the embassy and get a meeting with him. Yeah, host me, Mr.

28:03Saagar Enjeti:Ambassador. Let's do it. Right. All right. I'll fly tomorrow, brother.

28:08Jeffrey Sachs:so um yeah and you know clearly he thinks that his little trick of being like oh well it was the fake new york times on background blah blah blah uh might work it might do enough to muddy the waters but tucker very cleverly is like okay well maybe it's all lie you could tell me like tell me what actually happened let's let's get into it we don't have to take the new york times word for it you're sitting right here so disgusting last one this one look this is a common talking point i

28:35Saagar Enjeti:hear from the IDF defenders in the United States. It never fails to disgust me more. You can say a lot about the United States military. Hundreds of Americans died to protect Iraqi and Afghanistan lives in the war on terror. Now, we shouldn't have been there in the first place. I want to be clear. We should never have been there. They should never have been put into that position. But once they were, their lives were on the line. And in many cases, they died to prevent civilian casualties and to try at many times, sometimes, yes, failing, but oftentimes living up to the expectation that we will not conduct war in a certain way.

29:10Saagar Enjeti:So when I hear this bullshit from senior American officials, every U.S. service member, if you're listening to this, he insulted you. He insulted your command. He insulted every GWAP veteran when he said that the IDF is more humane than the United States military. Let's take a listen.

29:26Krystal Ball:Israel goes to links that no other country, including ours, goes to in the middle of an urban war. And yet Israel ended up with fewer civilian deaths in an urban war than any urban war of record. You said you didn't know how many civilian deaths there were. So how can you say that? If you took Gaza's numbers, Hamas's numbers. You said you didn't know what the numbers are. We don't. You just told me that. Then how can you say it's a lower number? But if you took the largest numbers that have been reported out of Gaza by Hamas. Yes. Let's assume they're true. That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying they are true, but assume they're true.

30:02Krystal Ball:Let's just take them at their word. Then you still have a lower number of civilians killed than in any urban warfare environment in modern history. Fact. Is that a fact? Yes. What are you comparing it to? To any urban warfare. Name one. Iraq. Where in Iraq? Afghanistan. And you pretended or alleged that somehow I'm not loyal to this and I'm criticizing my own country and I'm not. You just said they did a better job than the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I said, what are the numbers? And you said, I don't know. So on what basis are you making the claim that the IDF in Gaza spared more civilians than the U.S.

30:43Krystal Ball:Army and Marine Corps did in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why are you saying that? Like, on what basis are you saying that? from the conversations that I've had with the people who fought there. And I don't have the exact numbers for you.

30:56Jeffrey Sachs:Imagine making that claim and then not even having some bullshit numbers. Yeah, you didn't have the numbers.

31:01Saagar Enjeti:Look, you know, Tucker, if you watch the interview, I actually recommend you watch the entire segment because it's not just the interview. He does a good preamble. First of all, he dispels that bullshit myth about the detention. It was an actual detention. If you listen and they haven't even disputed, They were asking the producers where they work, who they work with, who they text. They took their passport. They're menacing them. I mean, this was serious. It was an actual like intelligence gathering operation. And remember, none of that is disputed currently by IDF authorities. They're saying, yeah, it's routine.

31:33Saagar Enjeti:We always harass international journalists. Remember that. So the description, not only of the interview itself, but he said his main takeaway, this man is not working for the United States. He was like, when I interviewed this person, he is controlled. Every answer was sensitive, and he seemed to be working on behalf of the Israeli government. I don't think that you could come away with a different conclusion. And the only conclusion is if that's the case, what does that say about our government, about the people that are supposed to serve us? I mean, again, I want to say, how can you let us spy on U.S.

32:04Saagar Enjeti:soil and keep your job? It's insane. How can you as the ambassador do an interview where you spark a diplomatic crisis with all of these Middle Eastern countries and keep your job? How can you insult the United States military and keep your it's like over and over and over again? You are working on behalf of this foreign country. It's like you're a PR agent for this foreign country. And his tweets after have just been absolutely batshit crazy. Like, let's go and put some of these on the screen, guys. We have the VO like he's tweeted like dozens of times about Laura Loomer.

32:42Jeffrey Sachs:Endlessly coping. It's just endless cope on the time. Which tells you how he knows that this interview went for him. Because if you have one side in the interview that's having to just like endlessly cope and put this statement in that statement. and amplify this person or that person who said something positive about their side of the interview, you know they're trying to overcome something that went very poorly for them.

33:06Saagar Enjeti:Can we talk about the Olympics? You know, we talked about the Olympics. He, you know, is making the Jewish ancestry of one of the guys who scores the goal in Team USA's game. He goes, what? The guy scoring goal for first USA gold medal is a Jew? Oh, my. I'm sure the Jew haters will say Mossad was behind it. I just say celebrate the incredible victory for USA and be grateful for his love for the USA and his team. Dude, you're the one making it about him being Jewish. I didn't even know he was Jewish. Did anybody know he was Jewish? Nobody even cares if he's Jewish.

33:39Jeffrey Sachs:Some of us do not have our minds so warped that we are constantly fixated on various identity or sectarian differences. I mean, woke does not hold a candle to Zionists and the way that they view the world through this hard sectarian lens. And this whole interview with Huckabee just really underscores the fact that the firmest, the most fervent supporters of whatever Israel wants, Israel gets, are Christian Zionists. So, you know, for all the people who want to say like, oh, you're anti-Semitic if you criticize, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, this is Israel is directly linked to Jewish people and only Jewish people.

34:22Jeffrey Sachs:And that's, you know, if if you are criticizing Israel, criticizing Jewish people. No, like look at the actual coalition of supporters here. Right. Right. Christian Zionists genuinely, if you pull the Jewish population, yes, there's a significant attachment to Israel, but it is far from lockstep, especially if you look at younger generations. And, you know, the last thing I do want to say about like the most moral army thing is like, I feel like Israelis don't even claim that anymore. It's so ridiculous at this point. Right. Put it put aside. You know, the civilian death ratios are very contested in both places.

34:56Jeffrey Sachs:I think the clearest numbers say it was overwhelmingly civilians who were mass slaughtered in Gaza. But even if you don't want to believe those numbers, look, Abu Ghraib was a scandal in the U.S. And the reason it was a scandal is because we actually expected something more from our soldiers, from our military. Whereas in Israel, they had protests over the right of IDF soldiers to rape their prisoners. OK, that is a very clear moral contrast. And I am a vociferous critic of the way we conducted of the wars themselves and the way we conducted ourselves in those wars. But we didn't institute a complete and total siege.

35:37Jeffrey Sachs:We didn't brag about how we're going to starve people to death if they didn't comply. We didn't do we didn't destroy routinely. There were hospitals that were destroyed, but we did not make it a policy of mass destroying hospitals, churches, schools, all of civilian infrastructure. Sure. OK, so I don't know. It's incredible to me that he's even still pushing that narrative because I don't even think is real. I don't even hear Israelis talking about that anymore.

36:03Saagar Enjeti:It's all just complete nonsense. OK, we've got Jeffrey Sachs standing by. Let's get to it.

36:08Tucker Carlson:Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

36:38Mike Huckabee:To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

36:47Tucker Carlson:The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy?

37:16Saagar Enjeti:Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.

37:19Tucker Carlson:Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either.

37:33Jeffrey Sachs:Okay, I don't think that's true.

37:35Tucker Carlson:I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:09Tucker Carlson:For decades, people traveled across the world to see John of God. Desperate for cures no doctor could offer. And when they arrived, they saw things they couldn't explain. This is real. This guy's actually doing surgery and it's a miracle. I never believed that miracles were real until that point. But behind those adoring crowds was something much darker. One of the reasons why I never went to the police is because I saw at least five or six men with guns everywhere he went. That was clear to me, like, close your mouth, don't open your mouth, don't say anything. I'm your host, Martina Castro. And in the podcast Two-Faced, John of God, we'll look back on a man who claimed he could perform miracles and got people from all around the world to believe him.

38:57Tucker Carlson:From Exactly Right and Adonde Media, this is Two-Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:10Saagar Enjeti:Joining us now is Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a great friend of the show, to discuss the ongoing situation with Iran, maybe some tariffs. Sir, thank you so much for joining us again. It's good to see you.

39:19Mike Huckabee:Great to be with you. Thanks a lot.

39:21Saagar Enjeti:Well, let's kick it off. Unfortunately, we just did a long segment about Ambassador Mike Huckabee. But one of the more consequential answers was on war with Iran, even though the American people opposed this war. And he says that, yes, you know, we do live in a democracy and our peon brains, they do matter somewhat. But also policy considerations cannot be conducted by Paul. Let's take a listen to that. We'll get your reaction and get into all the details.

39:47Krystal Ball:How much does it matter what Americans think? Well, it matters every bit what Americans think. That's why Americans vote. It's why Americans have the opportunity to have free speech. We want them to have that. OK, so what percentage of Americans support a war with Iran? I don't know. Do you know? I do. I think it's around, I saw the numbers yesterday, I think it was like 21%. Okay. Is that enough to have a war with Iran? We don't live in a world where you have a poll taken to find out whether our policy should be a particular direction. I thought you just said that we vote. No, we care deeply about it.

40:24Krystal Ball:But on the other hand, do we make the decisions of foreign policy and even domestic policy based on what the latest poll number is? We care deeply about it in what sense?

40:32Saagar Enjeti:So we don't actually care about it, Professor. So our very own interests and thoughts on the matter don't appear in our own government. Just give us your general reaction here to the ambassador potential now war with Iran and the destabilization to our world order.

40:49Mike Huckabee:Well, in general, Huckabee should resign immediately, not for the segment that you played, but for the segment that if Israel takes over much of the Middle East, that's just fine. The United States government should immediately repudiate what he said. I think that every Arab nation in the Middle East that has been subject to Israeli-U.S. war since Netanyahu came to office in the mid-1990s should call in the U.S. ambassador immediately and ask if this is U.S. policy. By the way, it may well be U.S. policy because U.S. policy is dictated by the Zionist lobby. And this is not an outrageous statement.

41:37Mike Huckabee:This is a literal statement. This is – and Huckabee, by the way, is a core part of that lobby. He is the quintessential Christian Zionist biblical fundamentalist who wants to determine American policy not by what Americans think, not by international law, not by American security, but by his reading of a biblical passage from 2 ,500 years ago. The man needs to leave his job immediately. He's a disgrace. But worse than that, what he said needs to be repudiated by the United States government immediately. Is that our policy? If it is our policy, state it so. Then the American people won't know that we are led by the most dangerous kind of delusion imaginable.

42:29Mike Huckabee:If that is not our policy, state it that it is not our policy.

42:34Saagar Enjeti:Yeah.

42:34Jeffrey Sachs:Let's go ahead and put the latest at New York Times. We're reporting up here on the screen about whether or not we are headed to war with Iran, their attempt to divine the latest sinking from Trump. The headline here, Trump considers targeted strike against Iran, followed by a larger attack. So I guess we're in for two wars instead of one now. They say in part here, President Trump has told advisors if diplomacy or any initial targeted U.S. attack does not lead Iran to give in to his demands that it give up its nuclear program, he'll consider a much bigger attack in coming months intended to drive that country's leaders from power, people briefed on internal administration deliberations said.

43:10Jeffrey Sachs:In addition, in this article, they lay out one potential proposal to allow Iran to have some limited enrichment program for purposes of research alone. And they're sort of holding this out like maybe that would be face saving for both the Iranians and the Americans. You know, what is your sense of how real this diplomacy is and how likely we are to be headed back into war with Iran?

43:34Mike Huckabee:Again, this is like being in a delusional dream world. Iran has said that it does not want a nuclear weapon, and it has said so for decades, and it has negotiated in that point for decades. And everybody watching should appreciate that an agreement was reached in 2015 called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, which was reached in 2015 and unanimously adopted by the United Nations Security Council. It's an agreement of the P5, the permanent five members of the Security Council, the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China, plus Germany, in which the International Atomic Agency would rigorously monitor any activities of Iran's nuclear program to ensure that there was no nuclear weapons program.

44:36Mike Huckabee:exactly what Iran has said, that it is its policy, and which agreed to rigorous monitoring. Now, what happened? Well, Trump, because he is a pawn of Netanyahu, ripped it up when he came into office. Trump did the bidding of the Israeli government. Why did the Israeli government want this ripped up because this has never been about nuclear weapons. This has been about Israel's regional hegemony in the Middle East. Israel wants to topple the Iranian regime, period. It has said so. This is not a mystery. This is not my claim. This is Israeli policy repeated year in, year out. The whole idea that Trump is negotiating to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Duh.

45:32Mike Huckabee:That was negotiated. Trump ripped it up. The Iranians have come back every year to say, we don't want a nuclear weapon. We want negotiations. The United States does not accept yes for an answer because it works for the government of Israel. This is the point. Why does it work for the government of Israel? It's a little hard to understand. Maybe because it's of Mike Huckleby's parishioners, because of people who read the Bible and say, okay, that's our foreign policy. That's possible. It may be because of what's in the Epstein files that haven't been released. It may be blackmail. It may be corruption.

46:15Mike Huckabee:It may be many other things. But it is not about America's interests. We have no interest whatsoever in going to a war with Iran right now. If there is such a war, it's a war because Israel has told the United States what to do. And that raises a question. Why has the United States done what Israel has told the United States to do for 30 years? And I don't just mean about Iran. I mean, across the Middle East. Why did the United States bomb Libya in 2011? Why did Obama make a presidential finding that the CIA should topple Bashar al-Assad in 2012 Operation Timber Sycamore? Why did the United States follow Netanyahu's lead to attack and invade Iraq in 2003?

47:07Mike Huckabee:Not on wrong premises, but on false pretenses. Because Israel has had the policy that the United States should clear the way of any government in the Middle East that opposes Israel's hegemony. Is that our policy? It should not be our policy. That's a policy of endless war. That's a policy that has cost Americans$7 trillion in wars that never had to take place. And that's the policy that is pushing us to war with Iran right now. Why do you think Bibi Netanyahu showed up again in the White House just a few days ago? He had to make sure that his vassal, Mr. Trump, would do the right thing in in in BB's terms.

48:02Mike Huckabee:That is by that. I mean the wrong thing. Right.

48:05Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. Professor, I do want to get your reaction. You're just talking about false pretenses. We have a new false pretense. We have the supposed negotiator who I had some initial high hopes for Steve Wyckoff, who is now turned into a complete disappointment, took to the American airwaves and is now claiming that despite Operation Midnight Hammer some seven months ago, where we supposedly wiped out Iranian capabilities, they are now close to, quote, an industrial grade bomb. Matt, can we go ahead and cue that one up? We're still trying to figure out what industrial grade bomb means. Let's take a listen.

48:39Saagar Enjeti:We have red lines here from the U.S. How about over with Iran?

48:42Krystal Ball:The president asked me that this morning, and he's I don't want to use the word frustrated. It's almost because he understands he's got plenty of alternatives. But it's curious. He's curious as to why they haven't, I don't want to use the word capitulated, but why they haven't capitulated. Why under this sort of pressure with the amount of sea power, naval power that we have over there, why they haven't come to us and said, we profess that we don't want a weapon. So here's what we're prepared to do. And yet it's hard to sort of get them to that place.

49:17Saagar Enjeti:So he's saying they're weeks away from an industrial grade bomb, and we just are so frustrated. Why won't they capitulate? You know, why they refuse to capitulate?

49:25Mike Huckabee:First of all, they don't want a weapon. They want to negotiate a solution. They want to negotiate a solution with the International Atomic Energy Agency rigorously monitoring what they do. That has been true for 15 years. This is just nincompoops, honest to God. What do they think they're doing? By the way, I spoke to someone that is extremely knowledgeable about these negotiations, and there is no expert in the room in the U.S. side, nobody that knows what they're talking about. No nuclear experts, no one that is involved at a level of understanding what this is really about. Now, in terms of substance, what is true is that the bombing last summer did not stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon if it wants one.

50:21Mike Huckabee:So all of the bravado of Trump That oh yes, we ended their nuclear program This is the greatest thing since the history of the world began This is total Trump BS from beginning to end That's the world we live in It's all BS, morning till night No, it didn't stop anything It was a useless attack that made the world a lot more dangerous Could Iran get a nuclear weapon? Yes, it could get a nuclear weapon if it wanted one. Could it be stopped from getting a nuclear weapon? Yes, under its own volition, it doesn't want one. And it has said, we agree to all of the monitoring. We agree to the international controls.

51:11Mike Huckabee:Trump is the one that ripped up that agreement. This is so confused, so upside down completely. It's hard to even begin to understand any of this. But I just credit Tucker Carlson with exposing one piece of this, how utterly bizarre the politics are at the top of the U.S. government. Completely bizarre, delusional. So that's where we are.

51:43Jeffrey Sachs:Do you think those comments from Huckabee saying, yeah, I'm good if Israel pursues greater Israel based on biblical prophecy or biblical promises.

51:52Mike Huckabee:As he reads it, yes.

51:54Jeffrey Sachs:Yes, exactly. As he reads it. Do you think that has any significant impact on some of the U.S. allies in the region who would be implicated by those comments?

52:07Mike Huckabee:it's sad uh the arab world has been beaten down so long and so hard for centuries by the way first by the ottomans then by the british then by the americans then by the israelis so they are so beaten down that when they see something like this they complain but they should do more than the complaint. It's actually a little bit sad if the lead American representative in Israel says, yeah, if Israel wants to take over most of the Middle East, that's good with us. That's not a matter for complaint. That is a matter for an emergency UN Security Council session. That is a matter for this person to be relieved of duty immediately.

52:57Mike Huckabee:That is a matter for the United States government to repudiate those words. That's a matter for the Israeli government to repudiate those words, though, unfortunately, there are people in the Israeli government that have that insane grandiosity that's going to get us all into World War III if we continue on this path. So, yes. I do want to ask you. So, just to answer your question, Crystal, still, they're very concerned. But there's so much under the hammer all the time. They're really concerned about a war starting tomorrow. They're really concerned about any kind of retribution. This is the sad point.

53:38Mike Huckabee:It makes no sense in terms of security, peace, honesty, what either side is saying. Just one more point. Marco Rubio said about 10 days ago, well, we don't want to just have negotiations about nuclear weapons. This has to be about a whole range of issues. And the Iranian foreign minister, Aragji, gave a speech a couple of days later in Doha, a very fine speech, by the way, that said, yes, we could have regional peace. And here's a path to regional peace. And he laid out the two-state solution. He laid out mutual security in the region. The U.S. didn't pick it up at all. The mainstream media in the United States didn't even cover it.

54:20Mike Huckabee:I went to the New York Times reporters are going to mention the speech. It was after Rubio said we should have this. Then the Iranians responded. As far as I know, they never even wrote about the speech. So we're in a kind of game, bizarre, delusional, dangerous world with the Mike Huckabees. Oh, my God, this is the world we're in. Yeah.

54:46Saagar Enjeti:And, Professor, that's what I was really going to ask you about is this, you know, they like you're talking about The New York Times. They present it as normal. We'll do a small attack followed by a larger attack if it doesn't work. And you're like, wait, what? So you get two wars for the price of one, a small attack. And if it doesn't work, what does work even mean? Like that they're going to agree to what they've already agreed to and they continue to say that they will. The only thing they don't want to give up is their ballistic missiles for good reason so that they don't become an Israeli rub state, which is what they want.

55:14Mike Huckabee:And when they're told, yes, we're going to kill you, we're going to destroy you, we're going to overthrow you, you have to disarm. If you don't want to be killed, destroyed, overthrown, you have to disarm. So then we can kill you, destroy you, and overthrow you. Of course, the whole thing is so absurd. And let me add another level of absurdity. The New York Times, which just distinguish itself every day in the propaganda and the falsity of its reporting, I'm sorry to say, every day reports about the protests on the streets because of the economic suffering of the Iranian people. But they didn't report that our own Treasury Secretary, Besant, on January 20th in Davos, in a nonchalant interview with Fox Business, said that it was America's policy to crush the Iranian economy, to destroy the currency, to create a dollar shortage, to create a shortage of imports.

56:19Mike Huckabee:so that people would go out onto the streets. And then with a little smirk on his face, he says, we call this economic statecraft. And he says, it's going in a very good direction. You'd think someone would ask a question, maybe even write an editorial. Is this our statecraft to destroy other economies? Right. Especially ones that are saying they want to negotiate with us. And Mr. Whitcoff said, It's about capitulation. Well, come on. What a world. Sorry. This is so dangerous for us. And the American people know it.

57:00Jeffrey Sachs:Well, speaking of Scott Bessett, and by the way, I learned from you that the way that he gained his wealth and prominence was from attacking currencies. So he is the man for the job there.

57:12Mike Huckabee:He knows nothing about being a treasury secretary. He's there to destroy the Iranian currency.

57:19Jeffrey Sachs:Well, let's go ahead and turn to what's going on here in the U.S., which obviously also has major global implications, which is we got a Supreme Court ruling striking down some of the tariffs authorized under IEPA that Trump has been using as a cudgel in various negotiations and threats around the world. First of all, just your reaction to the significance of this decision, given that Trump is already saying, well, I'm going to use other authorities to try to accomplish the same thing.

57:47Mike Huckabee:It's very significant because the Supreme Court did not buckle to the stupidity and the bullying that now guides America. When Trump launched the so-called reciprocal tariffs, I had two reactions within the first minute. First, that the actual application of some stupid formula by our international trade representative was so primitive, you would not have thought a first year student would come up with something so idiotic. So the incompetence was stunning. But the second point was, I said, this is illegal. This is ridiculous. He doesn't have the authority as one person to revamp the American tariff system.

58:39That is Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which says that the right to levy duties and taxes belongs to Congress.

58:47Mike Huckabee:That's why we created our country, by the way, in a protest about one person making taxation for the American colonies. It was obvious that what Trump was doing was illegal. It was obvious that it was stupid and that it would accomplish nothing if these people knew anything about international economics, by the way. And our deficit in goods went up in 2025. The employment in manufacturing went down by 83 ,000 workers in 2025. In other words, even on their narrow terms, whether it was legal or not, it was a complete failure. But it was predictably so. The only thing I couldn't predict is whether the Supreme Court would cave in.

59:37Mike Huckabee:But they did a very good job. And I salute the Chief Justice John Roberts, who's a classmate of mine, for his very clear, correct, bold opinion. Bravo. Now, there's another issue. Trump took from us illegally$140 billion. I want my part back. You should want your part back. They can't just say, oh, well, isn't that something? We're just going to continue. They owe us$140 billion illegally taken through a brazen grab of power. He stole from us, returned the money. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles.

1:00:23Tucker Carlson:I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma manta, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black History, Martin Luther King Sr., and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

1:00:50Mike Huckabee:To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

1:01:00Tucker Carlson:The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:01:43Tucker Carlson:What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either.

1:01:46Jeffrey Sachs:Okay, I don't think that's true.

1:01:48Tucker Carlson:I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman. And had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02:22Tucker Carlson:For decades, people traveled across the world to see John of God, desperate for cures no doctor could offer. And when they arrived, they saw things they couldn't explain. This is real. This guy's actually doing surgery, and it's a miracle. I never believed that miracles were real until that point. But behind those adoring crowds was something much darker. One of the reasons why I never went to the police is because I saw at least five or six men with guns everywhere he went. That was clear to me, like, close your mouth, don't open your mouth, don't say anything. I'm your host, Martina Castro. And in the podcast Two-Faced, John of God, we'll look back on a man who claimed he could perform miracles and got people from all around the world to believe him.

1:03:10Tucker Carlson:From Exactly Right and Adonde Media, this is Two-Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:03:22Saagar Enjeti:To that point, sir, the Secretary of the Treasury is saying, no, we're not going to return the money. Matt, can we go ahead and cue up D1 so that the professor can listen to Secretary Scott Besson, who you said there, who's like, no, we're not returning. There will be no refunds and all of this will be litigated in court. Let's take a listen.

1:03:39Tucker Carlson:Will you refund the roughly$134 billion in revenue taken by these emergency tariffs?

1:03:48Mike Huckabee:Well, Dana, that's not the big question. Let's just level set here. What the Supreme Court did was a very narrow reading of the president's authority under the IEPA tariffs. We have other tariff authorities which have been functioning, Section 232 tariffs, Section 301 tariffs. And, Dana, when you say it's a big question, that's bad framing because the Supreme Court didn't even address that. The Supreme Court remanded it down to a lower court. And, you know, we will follow what they say, but that could be weeks or months when we hear them. So the Supreme Court did not address refunds.

1:04:25Tucker Carlson:Sure. They didn't address refunds. That is clearly going to be up to you, which is why it is.

1:04:31Mike Huckabee:No, no, no, Dana, it is not up to me. Not you. Not you. It is not up to the administration. It is up to the lower court. Let's just be clear on that. He's such a creep. You don't even know where to start. You stole$140 billion. Give it back, Besant, or just leave your job. You're not our treasury secretary. You're a thug to bring down the Iranian government. Come on. You stole the money. You did it illegally. It was a brazen grab for power. Take some responsibility, please.

1:05:03Jeffrey Sachs:Let's go and put D4 up on the screen, because one of the other questions is like, OK, in the context of all of these threats of very high tariffs using this authority, there are a bunch of countries that did some sort of deal with the Trump administration. And now they're wondering what this means for them and those deals. I'm sure they're probably also having some potential buyer's remorse giving into these threats, given that this authority has now been deemed illegal and unconstitutional. So two questions really for you here. reflect a bit on these countries that did make deals. And then also, how much does this neuter Trump's ability to act like the mob boss and the thug around the world since these tariffs were one of the things, tools in his toolkit for behaving that way?

1:05:49Mike Huckabee:Great questions. First of all, the authority that Trump is using right now is also illegal. He's claiming a section 122 of the Trade Act, which says that in the context of a balance of payments emergency, that tariffs can be put on for 150 days up to 15%. We have no balance of payments emergency. He's doing it again. This is a brazen abuse of power. This should be understood. This isn't just a technical workaround that, oh, I have five ways to do it. He has maybe five ways to cheat. But he's cheating again, and he's deepening the mess. So this is the first point. What he's doing is illegal. We have no balance of payments emergency.

1:06:44Mike Huckabee:I taught balance of payments economics at Harvard for 20 years. I can tell you, we have no balance of payments emergency. So what he's doing is not legal. Now, again, you can't predict what the Supreme Court will do, though we have more hope this time around that they'll again say you can't do this. But of course, it's deepening the mess, the confusion. Trump keeps stealing our money. This is another point people should understand. I think that they do intuitively. Trump says that the other countries are paying. This is absurd. This is money coming out of your household income. And it's an average of$1 ,000 per household that was taken in this first round of illegal power grab.

1:07:40Mike Huckabee:This isn't coming out of foreign countries. This isn't, oh, we're going to find another way to make them pay. This is the American people paying for this, not foreigners. And this is demonstrated all over the place in careful analysis. because the Americans paid the tax because the foreign exporters to the U.S. didn't cut their prices to keep the price the same. The prices went up. Duh. That's how it works. And so this is Trump stealing from us and Besant stealing from us and his nonchalance. I don't care. That's a small deal. Yeah,$140 billion may be a small deal for you, but it's not a small deal for the American people and for people that can't pay their bills.

1:08:28Mike Huckabee:Now, as for the other countries, they should say everything stops. Are you kidding? We got bamboozled. We got threatened. We got blustered. As Trump said, he liked how the countries came to kiss his ass. That's a quote. And of course they should say no, no deals. What deal? You lied to us. You cheated. Your Supreme Court tells you, tells us you don't have this power. No deal. All on false pretenses, period. So the New York Times agonizing about this. My God, how weird is that? Who are these people? Honestly.

1:09:10Saagar Enjeti:We're with you, sir. We're with you.

1:09:12Jeffrey Sachs:I'm sure you know a few of them. Yeah, I know a few too.

1:09:14Saagar Enjeti:I'll often ask, sometimes even they ask that question. Can we put D2 up here on the screen because I'm curious for your reaction. The only statutory authority they have now is about this 15 percent global tariff, which will be in place. That's what I was just mentioning. Right. Of course. But and, you know, you've talked there about the illegality. But how are just the other countries? You think about Japan, South Korea, Britain, the EU, they came here. They made these fake promises to spend five thousand trillion dollars and invest And none of it will actually come to pass. But now you have this 15 percent tariff.

1:09:53Saagar Enjeti:It was raised from 10. It only has 159 days, I believe. Sorry, 150 days to be put into place. And yet we could potentially have 15 percent global tariff. But how would that even affect the negotiation power? Like, that's my curiosity.

1:10:09Mike Huckabee:Yeah, he has no negotiating power because this is not what he was doing before, which was like a madman throwing, you know, lightning bolts down from Mount Olympus saying, I punish you. I punish you. I don't like the ad being run in Ontario. I don't like the lawsuit against former President Bolsonaro. I don't like you doing this. He was acting as if he just can punish and crush anyone he wants. Now, this is completely different. This is not emergency powers that he claimed that he never had. This is about a balance of payments crisis that actually doesn't exist. So he can't bludgeon and threaten other countries.

1:10:58Mike Huckabee:and the other countries should say, well, excuse me, that was a bad year. You did a lot of bad things to us. You made a lot of threats that you didn't have the power to make. Let's just take a pause. Everything is set aside.

1:11:14Jeffrey Sachs:Yeah. And I think, you know, that it is a significant decision also, too, through Trump's reaction. He was lashing out at the justices, et cetera, and apparently exploded when he learned the news. The last question I had for you is a specific one vis-a-vis Mexico and Cuba, actually, this tariff threat was one of the ways that Trump was trying to coerce the Mexican government to abide by this oil embargo that the U.S. is imposing on Cuba to keep them from sending oil to the island, which is deeply suffering now due to our economic warfare against them. Do you think this changes the calculus at all for the Scheinbaum government?

1:11:53Mike Huckabee:I hope that it does. What Trump is trying to do to bring down Cuba in a regime change operation is also extraordinarily illegal and cruel and an act of war, actually. It's a quarantine around Cuba and it's absolutely unacceptable. And I hope that there is a solution because, again, economic statecraft should not mean the suffering of other people. It should not mean a Middle East that's aflame from Libya to Iran. If we had any decency at all, which I'm not sure is a term that can apply to our current administration or our deep state, for that matter, we would not be doing the things that we're doing.

1:12:43Wow.

1:12:43Saagar Enjeti:Well, we always appreciate your analysis, sir. Thank you so much for joining us.

1:12:47Mike Huckabee:Great to be with you. Hope we do it again soon. Oh, always. Thanks.

1:12:52Saagar Enjeti:All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We should be back in studio tomorrow as long as all the roads, electricity, and all of that cooperates. And of course, we're going to have our great State of the Union live stream. So we'll see you all then.

1:13:17Tucker Carlson:On the Adventures of Curiosity Cove podcast, what if there's more to the story than we've been told? This Black History Month, Adventures of Curiosity Cove invites families into a playful mystery that blends history, science, and imagination.

1:13:36Tucker Carlson:As Ella and her friends investigate a missing peanut butter case, They uncover the legacy of a brilliant innovator. George Washington Carver? And learn how curiosity fuels creativity. In this Black History Month adventure, Adventures of Curiosity Cove shows kids that asking questions, thinking creatively, and imagining what's possible can lead to amazing discoveries. Because history isn't boring. It's full of surprises.

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1:14:08Tucker Carlson:Listen to Adventures of Curiosity Cove every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying. And drugs. So no, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast.

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