Read the full transcript of ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen’s interview on The Tucker Carlson Show titled “Ben of Ben & Jerry’s Exposes the Motives Behind War With Russia & the Politicians That Sold Out”, premiered on May 5, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
Introduction
TUCKER CARLSON: Ben Cohen moved to Vermont in 1977 and co-founded an ice cream company that bears his name, Ben and Jerry’s. They made great ice cream. They still do. Ben Cohen became famous for his liberal political activism. The ice cream was great. His political opinions were deeply offensive to most conservatives. Fast forward to 2022 and Ben Cohen was one of the only liberals in the United States to come out against the war in Ukraine. It seems like a good moment to pause and reconsider whether some of Ben Cohen’s views on war are maybe not insane. Maybe they’re worth hearing. Here’s Ben Cohen. So that you brought a book by Smedley Darlington Butler, the most decorated Marine in World War I. He’s a Marine general, he won two medals of honor and he wrote a book called War is a Racket. And for some reason it’s not the most famous book ever written in English, but it probably should be. War. What is that and why’d you bring it?
War as a Racket
BEN COHEN: Well, I’ve been kind of inspired by this quote of his. I think he encapsulates what’s been going on in terms of how our military has been used. He’s been there, done that, that’s for sure. And I think about it a lot in terms of, you know, all these refugees, immigrants that are trying to get to the US and why are they trying to get to the US. A lot of times it’s because the US at some point in history overthrew or invaded their government. Well, let’s… I’ll tell you what Smedley says here. Can I quote, please?
So he says, “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers.” Butler wrote in 1955. Then he goes on, “In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for National City Bank boys to collect revenues. I helped in the raping of a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped set it up so that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”
TUCKER CARLSON: So this was a major general in the United States Marine Corps. The single most decorated Marine when he wrote that. And I think he’s pretty much forgotten now.
BEN COHEN: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And he was much maligned after he said that.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, very much.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, so you think, I guess another way of saying you think that our military heroes are the most revered people in our country. You can’t criticize a man who’s received two medals of Honor and yet he crossed the line and they hated him for that.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, but he told the truth.
The Relevance Today
TUCKER CARLSON: So how is that relevant to right now?
BEN COHEN: I think that those actions that the US has done over the years back in his time and pretty much continues to do to essentially run the world in a way that benefits the elites in the United States, ends up causing a lot of resentment, ends up being the cause of a lot of wars, ends up being the cause of a lot of immigration and people trying to flee countries that are economically or politically unlivable. And if you go back to the root causes, you find out that there were some great liberation struggles in these countries and the US was on the other side.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. What’s interesting is that Smedley, General Butler wrote that years after he left the Marine Corps, he was a hero in World War I when we were working to stop the Kaiser. Many Americans killed to stop the Kaiser. No one even remembers what a Kaiser is. But that was a war. The First World War was a war for democracy and freedom. It didn’t work, of course, but we’re hearing the same slogans now with Ukraine. And as then a lot of really decent, you know, good hearted people with the right motives are buying it completely. It’s not just warmongers who are in favor of these wars. It’s like your next door neighbor who’s a good person.
Understanding the Ukraine Conflict
BEN COHEN: Yeah, I think that’s really true. The way a lot of people see it is, you know, this little country, Ukraine, got invaded by this big giant Russia. But I think what you need to understand is what provoked that war and how it could have been prevented. You know, at the end of the Cold War, the US made promises to Russia that they’re not going to expand NATO eastward. And then we proceeded to expand NATO eastward. As a matter of fact, you know, there was, the government was not going to do that until the weapons manufacturers set up this committee to expand NATO, which was essentially the CEOs of the weapons manufacturers lobbying Congress to expand NATO. So, I mean, geez, if you’re a weapons manufacturer and you expand NATO, they’re going to buy a lot of your stuff.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why would the… Well, first, let me ask.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the same way that, you know, the United States says that… What? Here’s our sphere of influence. Yes. You know, I remember learning about this in… Was it elementary school or middle school that the Monroe Doctrine had…
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s our divine right from God to control our hemisphere.
BEN COHEN: To control our hemisphere. And it sounded crazy to me then. And, you know, I can see making sure that there’s not enemies right on your borders, but in terms of controlling the whole hemisphere, I don’t buy it. And the US has now expanded its sphere of influence to include the entire world. I mean, it’s amazing. We have military commands that cover every portion of the globe, and we have 800 military bases around the world. You know, when I was growing up, you know, I heard we had a bunch of overseas bases. I figured, you know, that’s cool. You know, every country must have overseas bases. And then, you know, I find out that the country who has the next most overseas bases has like five. I mean, it’s the US that is using its military power to control the world. And the fact of the matter is that the United States is 5% of the world population. So having 5% dominate the world militarily, that doesn’t sound democratic to me.
TUCKER CARLSON: No. And it doesn’t sound like it helps the United States very much.
The Cost of Military Dominance
BEN COHEN: No, I think it’s incredibly harmful to the United States. First of all, we’re making a lot of enemies. People don’t like us being the big bully on the Hill, telling all these other countries what to do. And it sucks a huge amount of money out of our country. It’s stuff that can be used for things that people really want and need. You know, we could have more affordable housing. We could make it so that the American dream could actually still happen. That people could afford a house, that you can get a decent education and that you can get childcare, that it doesn’t have to cost you so much money to go to college. I mean, these things can all be done. And, you know, most other developed countries are providing that for their citizens, but the US chooses to spend…
I mean, look at this. This is a chart of the federal discretionary budget. That’s the amount of money that Congress has each year to allocate to the various departments. So the big red one on top, that gets over half, that’s the Pentagon. And these little slivers are like, you know, USAID, the Education Department, the Health Department, Community Development, whatever else the country does. But in terms of stuff that would actually be helpful to people living in their daily lives, it’s all sucked out by the Pentagon. You know, Martin Luther King gave this speech and he talked about the Pentagon being this huge demonic sucking tube that sucks out the lifeblood of things like housing, schools. You know, everybody’s school budget is always in the red or can’t raise enough money, gotta get rid of teachers or whomever.
TUCKER CARLSON: But I think that’s when they shot him, is when he said that. The race stuff was fine, that was no problem. But it was true. It is true. That was the end of his story.
BEN COHEN: He was assassinated a year to the day after he made that speech.
TUCKER CARLSON: So a year to the day?
BEN COHEN: To the day.
TUCKER CARLSON: April 4, 1967. He must have given that speech. Amazing. Wow, that’s amazing. Yeah, it’s one, you know, the people in charge, I am convinced, would like Americans to hate each other on the basis of race. They don’t want you to talk about the banks or the Pentagon.
BEN COHEN: I think that’s really true.
The Military-Industrial Complex
TUCKER CARLSON: I think it is true. Okay, so back to Ukraine. You said that there was an association of weapons manufacturers that were lobbying Congress to expand NATO. That seems, it seems a little bit crazy that weapons manufacturers would be allowed to dictate foreign policy because the conflict is so obvious.
BEN COHEN: Well, it’s just money, you know, so they’re lobbying, they’re giving political donations to the legislators. Legalized bribery. And yeah, it’s definitely a conflict of interest.
TUCKER CARLSON: So that the pie… If I were to look at, if you didn’t tell me what country that was and you said, here’s a country that spends half of more than half of its entire discretionary budget on weapons and troops. I would imagine a small country surrounded by enemies. I would not imagine a continental sized country with totally independent resources, enough energy, enough food, doesn’t really need anything that’s separated from the rest of the world by the two biggest oceans. Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense, actually.
BEN COHEN: No, it totally doesn’t.
TUCKER CARLSON: Has the US been invaded before by a foreign army? Since 1812?
BEN COHEN: I don’t think so.
TUCKER CARLSON: No. Yeah, it’s a little weird.
Manufacturing Enemies
BEN COHEN: Yeah. I mean, and they keep on justifying these huge expenditures by coming up with enemy after enemy after enemy. So, you know, first it was the Soviet Union. So the Soviet Union collapsed. And I mean, Gorbachev said at the time, “We will deny you of an enemy.” And you know, I assumed that the Pentagon budget was going to drop hugely because that was the whole justification for it. But what the Pentagon did was that they came up with what was called the two war scenario. So now instead of the Pentagon budget being structured to defeat the Soviet Union, now what they said is it needs to be structured to fight two medium sized wars in two different places at the same time. And what do you know that’s going to cost? Just as much as we were spending on preparing to fight the Soviet Union.
TUCKER CARLSON: Who are the wars going to be with?
BEN COHEN: Well, I think at the time there was the axes of evil. What was that? Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, probably another one.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, it’s interesting because Russia collapses, the Soviet system collapses after seven years in 1991, the summer of 91. And I kind of assumed, I think everyone assumed that we would take the win. Like we were having this Cold War all these years and they collapsed. We won and then we could be friends and move forward because there are no more Soviet Communists left. They’re gone.
BEN COHEN: Right. And they wanted to be our friend. I mean, I was walking on the Arbat in Moscow, people were joyful and they were all wearing these pins that showed a US Flag crossed with a Soviet flag. They wanted to be friends.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why didn’t that happen?
BEN COHEN: Because our cold warriors, who for their whole life, you know, fighting the Soviet Union, that’s what they were about. They wanted to continue the Cold War. They wanted to continue having Russia as this enemy.
The Truth About Ukraine
TUCKER CARLSON: So Fast forward to 2022, February, and the conflict in Ukraine starts and we’re told that this is just like out of nowhere, like, who could have known? And Putin wants to expand the Russian border, you know, all the way to Vienna or all the way to London or who knows? But he’s just an expansionist power. He’s Hitler. And Ukraine is like the backstop against his expansionism. And we need to fight Russia. You’re saying that that’s not actually what happened.
BEN COHEN: Right. You know, starting with the end of the Cold War, there was a promise made to Russia that kind of, in exchange for, I think it was taking down the wall in Germany, that we’re not going to expand NATO eastward.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
The Expansion of NATO and Russia’s Response
BEN COHEN: And I think it was James Baker, the Secretary of State, that made that promise. And then we proceeded to expand it eastward. There was one tranche of countries and Russia was up in arms and they objected in the most strenuous language. But we did it. And then we added more countries a bunch of years later and Russia was up in arms, objected in the most strenuous language and you know, there might have been a few more. And then there was a statement that Ukraine was going to become part of NATO. And Russia objected in the most strenuous language.
And then Russia started gathering some troops on the border and again said in the most strenuous language that we will not tolerate having Ukraine part of NATO. We want to negotiate. They sent overtures to the U.S. I think the U.S. did not respond. We ignore you if we don’t like you. We don’t talk to you if we don’t like you. And then, and then they invaded.
And you know, I don’t think they anticipated that they were going to end up in a proxy war with the United States. And what’s crazy about it, what drives me crazy, is that this is war. War. I mean we’re, you know, I’m shooting my machine gun at you. You’re dying, you’re dead. Hundreds of thousands of people on both sides have died in this war. For what? I mean, eventually the war is going to be over and there’s going to be some settlement and why can’t we just skip to that stage?
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, because you don’t expend missiles doing that.
BEN COHEN: Like I really do think that’s what it’s about. I, you know, that’s what Smedley Butler came up with. Yeah, I mean you read the whole rest of his book and he says at the end, you know, I, you know, these anti war protesters, they’re, they’re really good people. But you’re never going to stop the military industrial congressional complex until you take the profit out of it. That’s what’s driving all this shit is the profit that these corporations are making on making weapons which are more and more lethal.
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So Smedley Butler. I know you know this. I think he first gave that speech 1935ish and he was later kind of lumped in with, with bad people as somehow pro Nazi. You must be for Hitler. You know, it was like the worst slander you could level against somebody and that’s why he’s forgotten. Now something very similar seems to be going on where if you say what you just said, you’re pro Putin.
Being Pro-Peace, Not Pro-Putin
BEN COHEN: Yeah. Which is bullshit. I’m not pro Putin. I’m not pro Zelensky. I’m pro peace. I’m pro ceasefire. I’m pro stop killing each other.
TUCKER CARLSON: So you’ve been that way. I mean, we’re coming from different points of view, but we agree. I agree strongly with everything you’ve said, but you’re the one who’s been saying the same thing for a long time. Like ever since, for the 40 years I’ve been eating your ice cream, which is fattening.
BEN COHEN: Sorry, I hate to say thank you for consuming. You wear it well. You know, I gotta stop eating that. You know, it is. Never trust a skinny ice cream.
TUCKER CARLSON: And. Excuse me. So I’ve been, I’ve been, you know, listening to your views on this for a long time and they haven’t, they haven’t changed. Do you think that your views have changed?
BEN COHEN: No, my view hasn’t changed and Bernie’s views certainly haven’t changed. I’ve been listening to him for a long time. I tell you, it is the same freaking speech.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
BEN COHEN: People say you should change your speech. He says when the country finally, finally acts in a, in a decent way, I’ll change my speech.
TUCKER CARLSON: So what? But Ukraine feels a little different. Like all of a sudden, you know, there, there was always this persistent, enthusiastic anti war caucus on the left where you’re coming from. Not quite mainstream Democrat, but sort of more old fashioned Democrat. They like evaporated. Maybe Chris Hedges, Jeff Sachs. Jeffrey Sachs. You like, where’s everybody else?
BEN COHEN: Yeah, it really, it really split, I guess. People, I mean, you’re talking about people on the left. I guess we could talk about people on the left. I mean, anti war people in general.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, whatever. Left, right. I don’t know.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, I think there’s people like that on the left, right and center.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s 100% true. You’re exactly right. And in fact, there are a lot of them on the right, whatever that is. I don’t even. Those are fake categories at this point.
BEN COHEN: It really.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, let’s say it was 1985. Okay. It was 40 years ago or 1988 when I lived in Burlington. That was considered like a lefty view.
Media Censorship and War Propaganda
BEN COHEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so you’re saying. Right, so, so some of that group is, you know, behind Ukraine, let’s defend Ukraine. And some of that group is saying, no, we shouldn’t be involved in this war. You know, I think the people who are saying, let’s define, let’s defend Ukraine, I can certainly understand it from their point of view. And their point of view is that Russia made an unprovoked invasion and Russia therefore started this war and they’re trying to take over this country and we should defend that country.
But people don’t understand what led up to it. I mean, as a matter of fact, with the Eisenhower Media Network, this group of retired admirals, generals and colonels, we took out a full page ad in the New York Times at the very beginning of that war calling for a ceasefire. And the headline of the ad was supposed to be, “The US provoked the war in Ukraine.” And the New York Times would not allow us to run it as an ad.
TUCKER CARLSON: What?
BEN COHEN: They would not allow us to use that headline.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why? But it’s an ad, right?
BEN COHEN: It doesn’t seem right. But I mean, I, So that was on that thing. But I mean, in the run up to the.
TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, wait, what? So this is another, like, I don’t think North Korea has a propaganda initiative as comprehensive and aggressive as the one I saw after the Ukraine war started. Like, it was just like, you know, the New York open was taking Russian names off the scoreboard, New York Times was editorializing in other people’s advertisements. Like, what was that?
BEN COHEN: Yeah, war fever. I mean, the reality is that you can kind of control what the population thinks by the information that you give to them. So, you know, the US is propagandizing its own people. You know, every country does that, but, you know, there’s a lot of sins of omission in terms of the news that people get and you never hear Russia’s point of view.
I mean, it’s amazing to me, you know, they wouldn’t let us hear what Osama bin Laden was saying after 9/11.
TUCKER CARLSON: I noticed.
BEN COHEN: I mean, they don’t let us hear what the people in China are saying. I mean, I, you know, I, so I dug around. A friend of mine sent me, you know, a speech by the Defense Minister of China. And he’s saying, we’re not looking to be enemies with the US we’re looking to develop our country and grow and we can peacefully coexist together. The world is big enough for both of us.
But the explicit policy of the United States, if you read these, I mean, I don’t know, what the hell is this ice cream guy doing reading these national security documents? I don’t know. But anyhow, I read them and it is the policy of the US to maintain hegemony, and I didn’t know what that word meant, but it’s the policy of the US that if any country begins to develop economically or socially, you know, toward the level that the US is at, that country is by definition an enemy. The policy of the US is that we must have full spectrum dominance. And why should 5% of the world control what’s going on in the world? The Eisenhower Media Network.
The Eisenhower Media Network
TUCKER CARLSON: Media Network, My apologies. So I’ve never heard of it.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, I didn’t think you had.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I sort of pay attention.
BEN COHEN: That’s okay. Most people.
TUCKER CARLSON: No. Well, just. No, I’m admitting that, both because I want to be honest, but also because it tells you a lot. So this was a group you were involved in that had flag officers and had generals, admirals, other officers.
BEN COHEN: Right.
TUCKER CARLSON: Worked at the Pentagon, worked in the military.
BEN COHEN: Right.
TUCKER CARLSON: And I’ve never heard of it. That’s kind of interesting. What was their MO? What kind of people were in it? What was the goal?
BEN COHEN: Well, originally during the Cold War and after, there was the Center for Defense Information, which was a home for retired high level military officers that were critical of the Pentagon. And that organization kind of fell on hard times and kind of withered away. So myself and a veteran, Danny Sjursen, decided to start up the Eisenhower Media Network as a home for higher level former military people to use their credibility on the issue of critiquing the Pentagon.
Because what usually happens when you critique the Pentagon is that you don’t have the credentials. You know, you say that, well, the Pentagon is doing this weird thing or that screwed up thing. And you know, and then the Pentagon General gets up there in uniform with all his medals and stuff and says, you know, those guys have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m the military expert. So the idea of Eisenhower Media Network is to have those military experts that can support a different point of view than what the Pentagon is putting.
TUCKER CARLSON: What kind of response have you had from the media?
BEN COHEN: You know, those guys are in the media sometimes, but they’re certainly not in the media despite our efforts as much as the former high level military guys that are now being paid by weapons manufacturers. I mean, so they’re brought on these TV shows, TV talk shows as experts and they’re never identified as in the employ of essentially war profiteers.
TUCKER CARLSON: Is that that’s actually happened, that I speak of truth.
BEN COHEN: I shit you not.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, that’s disgusting.
BEN COHEN: Yes, sir.
TUCKER CARLSON: Huh. I’ve known a number of them, of course, because I worked at a TV channel. I worked at a bunch of TV channels with a bunch of retired military officers, you know, on the air, lending their expertise to this or that. And some of them are impressive. Some of them are utterly fraudulent and stupid. Why? I’m thinking of one in particular doesn’t know anything. I don’t know how he was a general, but. Sorry, I didn’t realize they were being paid. Yeah, by defense contractors to do that.
BEN COHEN: That’s really. And, and, and it’s not revealed.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I didn’t know. I mean, and I know them.
BEN COHEN: Right, right. Huh.
TUCKER CARLSON: So who was in the Eisenhower Media Network or is in it? What kind of people?
BEN COHEN: Larry Wilkerson. He was a former assistant to Colin Powell.
TUCKER CARLSON: I remember him well.
BEN COHEN: Matt Hoh, Dennis Fritz was, he was the head of Space Force actually for a while.
TUCKER CARLSON: Are these older guys, younger guys?
BEN COHEN: We have a range, yes. I’m happy to say.
TUCKER CARLSON: How hard is it for them to join a group like that? Because it seems like one of the structural problems is that, you know, if you’re a one star and you fail to make two star, you just like seamlessly move over to the defense industry to a weapons manufacturer. There’s like a place for you.
BEN COHEN: Yeah. I mean, especially for the guys with even more stars.
The Revolving Door Between Military and Defense Contractors
TUCKER CARLSON: Exactly. Right. So the higher you go, the more you make when you leave. So the incentive doesn’t end with your military service. You get paid after you leave.
BEN COHEN: Exactly. And you get paid by the corporations whose contracts you were supposedly supervising when you were in uniform.
TUCKER CARLSON: So when you were making ice cream, would you ever allow a contract set up like that to exist in your company?
BEN COHEN: Never. Never. I mean the conflicts of interest that go on in terms of our government are, you know, would be illegal in a publicly held corporation.
TUCKER CARLSON: They’d be illegal.
BEN COHEN: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: It, yeah, I’m just, I’m asking these questions, dumb questions because I feel like I may be missing something. So it must. So the guys who are, have signed up, the retired officers who signed up for the Eisenhower Media Project are turning down a lot of money in order to do that.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
TUCKER CARLSON: Huh. And what’s their view, would you say? Like what do they believe that these conflicts are driven by?
The Political Economy of Defense Spending
BEN COHEN: Well, they’re driven by profit. Sometimes they’re driven by politicians not wanting to appear so called weak on defense.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right.
BEN COHEN: And the only way we judge whether a politician is weak on defense or not is how much money they are willing to give to the Pentagon. So you have two politicians that are running for election and usually they’re trying to out compete the other guy in terms of who’s willing to raise the Pentagon budget. Because I’m strong on defense and that’s. So this is like the one area of bipartisan agreement. Let’s give more and more money to the Pentagon. And you know, there’s this other aspect of so called political engineering that you know, earlier, back in the 90s, I guess.
TUCKER CARLSON: You.
BEN COHEN: Know, military contractors would, these weapons manufacturers would deliberately spread out the jobs for a particular weapon system in as many congressional districts as possible. And so you know that creates jobs and you know, the politician from that area, that’s what they, you know, that gives them a lot of credit. Of course I brought jobs to my district and so you know, for say the F35, you know, it’s probably made in over 400 congressional districts. And you know, if you say something, if you try to say this is a shitty airplane, which, you know, John McCain said it was the worst thing he ever saw, you can’t stop it because they’ve politically engineered it. And so if you, I don’t know, it’s kind of how it works.
Media Response to Anti-War Messaging
TUCKER CARLSON: So when you tried to put this out in the New York Times or did put the ad but with a different headline, by the way, what’d they change the headline to?
BEN COHEN: I don’t remember.
TUCKER CARLSON: But something that didn’t tell the truth about how this war started.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, well, the body did. Yeah, the body.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. They’re assuming most people read the headline.
BEN COHEN: Right? Yeah. Right.
TUCKER CARLSON: Nobody was saying anything like that then. I mean.
BEN COHEN: That’s right.
TUCKER CARLSON: I know I was saying it got in a lot of trouble for it.
BEN COHEN: All.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right. Yeah. It just seemed obvious to me. But, but very few people were saying anything like that. What kind of response did you get from people?
BEN COHEN: Mostly positive. And there were a bunch that disagreed. You know, I actually have. My wife was born in Kyrgyzstan, which is one of the countries that the Soviet Union had kind of taken over. She’s never lived in Russia, but she’s a Russian speaker.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
BEN COHEN: And she lost some friends because of the stand that I took against that war in Ukraine.
TUCKER CARLSON: Really? Because they were offended.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, yeah. That, you know, I think for countries that live, you know, that are located around the borders of the Soviet Union, countries that had been invaded by the Soviet Union and mistreated. Right. They are really down on Russia.
TUCKER CARLSON: For sure. They are.
BEN COHEN: And they’re very down on socialism and they’re very down on. And they believe, you know, they have a history. They’ve been invaded and they’re scared that they’re going to get invaded and, you know, and their feeling is, you know, if we just let Russia go and have its way with Ukraine that, you know, they’re going to be next.
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course.
BEN COHEN: And I don’t think there’s any truth to that. I think, you know, clearly Putin is not doing very well. You know, invading one country. I don’t think he’s looking to go.
TUCKER CARLSON: No.
BEN COHEN: Invade another one.
TUCKER CARLSON: He already runs the biggest country in the world, so. Yeah, no, I agree with that. It’s not, you know, praise of Putin to note that there’s no evidence he wants territorial expansion at all. Were there any politicians. So that was like, in the first few months after the war started that you said this.
BEN COHEN: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Were there any politicians who were saying anything like that that you saw?
BEN COHEN: Ah, that’s interesting, because a lot of. I don’t really remember any politicians being on our side.
TUCKER CARLSON: No. Including ones you knew personally and had supported in the past? They weren’t saying that. Yeah.
BEN COHEN: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: So that raises the question. And some of those politicians. Because you’ve always been against war since, for the 40 years I paid attention, you were supporting anti war politicians, but they made an exception for Ukraine.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, that’s true.
TUCKER CARLSON: What I noticed. What was that about?
Public Perception and Information Control
BEN COHEN: Maybe because there was. There was so much public kind of empathy for the people in Ukraine. And I think that a lot of it has to do with what information do people have?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
BEN COHEN: The only information people had is Russia came in and invaded with its army.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
BEN COHEN: And they didn’t hear what happened before, what led up to it, and they didn’t think about, you know, which this ad that we ran did. What would the US do if there were Russian missiles lined up along the Mexican border aimed at the U.S. I mean, it is the same situation.
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it is.
BEN COHEN: And I’ve got no question that the US would invade and get rid of them.
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course we’d be occupying Tijuana right now.
BEN COHEN: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And I can see why, by the way, you don’t want other people’s missiles aimed from your border. That’s pretty close.
BEN COHEN: Yeah. Yeah.
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TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting. So did you have access to information other people didn’t?
BEN COHEN: Well, because you said that, I mean.
TUCKER CARLSON: Most people had this view because they didn’t know better, because they didn’t have access to other perspectives, to the truth, to the history of this. What were you reading that they weren’t?
BEN COHEN: I just been following the issue over time since the fall of the, you know, since the end of the Cold War. Yes. You know, so I, yeah, so I, where do I get the information? Well, this, the stuff about the Committee to Expand NATO, that was in the mainstream press.
TUCKER CARLSON: But you already had the framework for understanding this because you’ve been paying attention to this issue.
BEN COHEN: Yeah. And you know, you think about, you know, most people, it’s kind of a luxury to have the time to pay attention to an issue like this. I mean, most people are focused on the day to day.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
BEN COHEN: You know, just trying to get through the day. And, you know, the messages that you get are essentially the messages that the government wants you to get.
TUCKER CARLSON: Man, I, that was not the way it was supposed to work.
BEN COHEN: No, it wasn’t. We were supposed to have freedom of the press. But I mean, even when there was a free press, it was still very controlled. I mean, so I say there was a free press, not that free. You know, I think a lot of times the press is self-censoring.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
BEN COHEN: I don’t know.
TUCKER CARLSON: How can you have a democracy without access, free access to information?
Democracy and Information Access
BEN COHEN: Yeah, I don’t think you can. I mean, now, you know, with the Internet, I mean, you could say that there is free access, but you really need to kind of dig and you know, you get a very different perspective if you read the news in the US versus if you read the news in some other country in the world, you know, talking about the same situation. So we get a US centric view.
TUCKER CARLSON: US government centric.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know. I don’t personally know anyone who’s volunteering to fight Russia in Ukraine. I don’t personally know anybody. I’ve never met anybody outside of D.C. who wants another Middle Eastern war. So in other words, the priorities of the government bear no resemblance to the priorities of the population.
BEN COHEN: Yes, there are well-done, rigorous studies on that issue that, you know, you look at the line of what do regular old people in the country want versus what does the country do? And they’re not congruent very much. Then you look at the line of what do the elites want, what do the really wealthy people and corporations want? And what does the country do? And it’s much more aligned.
TUCKER CARLSON: So on Ukraine, your position, I’ll just be totally blunt, is like totally unfashionable. It’s like the least fashionable position you could ever take.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, well, I was never really a.
TUCKER CARLSON: Fashion maiden, but this is anti fashion. This is like, this is a way to get called really pretty slanderous names. It’s a way to break up friendships. As you said, your wife lost friends over this. So it’s like, why, why would you do that? Why not just sit this one out?
BEN COHEN: Do I want. Well, I don’t know. It’s about standing up for what you believe in. I mean, I’m for a ceasefire. You know, you would think most people would be in favor of a ceasefire. I mean, we don’t want to keep on killing people. I’m not a Putin supporter, I’m not a Zelensky supporter. I’m a supporter of not killing each other and not using our resources to have actual wars, to supply weapons for wars, or to settle our problems through that means. I mean, it just. Why can’t we cut to the chase and assume the war’s over and have a negotiated settlement? Why do we have to kill a few hundred thousand mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters in the process?
The Risk of Nuclear War
TUCKER CARLSON: There’s also a sense in which there’s like a suicidal impulse at work here because for most of three years we were closer than we’ve ever been to a nuclear conflict. Like an exchange of nuclear war hits where most of the Earth’s population dies. That’s factually true, I think, and I think planners, the Pentagon understood that and they press forward anyway. Do you think that the average American understands how close we have been to nuclear war?
BEN COHEN: No, I think they’ve heard that we’ve been close, but they don’t have the details.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why do you think that people who plan these things and push these things don’t seem to care about the risk of annihilating everyone on the planet?
BEN COHEN: I think most people involved in the process are not playing little roles in the process. They’re just trying to do their small part. Well.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
BEN COHEN: And they’re not looking at the bigger picture.
TUCKER CARLSON: I think that’s exactly right. They’re just cogs. Yeah, but the machine itself is moving towards something awful. But they don’t have that picture. They just know their role.
BEN COHEN: Yeah.
Respected Voices on Foreign Policy
TUCKER CARLSON: Who do you, you said there are no politicians who are saying what you believe. Whose opinion on this do you respect on the Russia, Ukraine question?
BEN COHEN: Larry Wilkerson, Jeff Sachs?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
BEN COHEN: I guess those are the two that come to mind, given that you.
TUCKER CARLSON: I think, were right about Russia, Ukraine. Clearly, if there had been a ceasefire in the spring of 2022, you know, probably a million people would still be alive and Ukraine wouldn’t be destroyed, and we’d still be in the same place. So, like, why didn’t we do that? Given that you called that correctly, I think. Where do you think we’re going on Iran?
BEN COHEN: It sounds like we’re kind of headed toward war.
TUCKER CARLSON: Why do you think that is?
BEN COHEN: Well, there seems to be some kind of strange relationship between Israel and the US where, I don’t know, Israel now has the US supplying weapons for its genocide. And what I’m told is that Israel wants some concept of Greater Israel. I mean, I don’t really know much about that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think the US faces a threat from Iran?
BEN COHEN: No, I don’t. No. I think that’s absurd. I think, you know, Iran has a Pentagon budget. Well, not a Pentagon. Their military budget is like $7 billion. Our Pentagon budget is darn close to a trillion. So I don’t think that. I mean, what, is Iran going to invade the US? I don’t think so.
From Ice Cream to Activism
TUCKER CARLSON: Why? You sold your company. It was bought by Unilever, I think, like, 25 years ago.
BEN COHEN: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Did you consider buying a vineyard?
BEN COHEN: No.
TUCKER CARLSON: No.
BEN COHEN: How about you?
TUCKER CARLSON: No, I can’t afford a vineyard. I don’t even drink, so. Kind of out of the vineyard business. But why did you decide to spend the last 25 years on the issue of war?
BEN COHEN: It’s more on the issue of kind of the spirit and the soul of our country. You know, there was a pope who said that even if the weapons are never used, the arms race kills the poor by causing them to starve. I’m amazed at how much money the United States has. We have a shitload of money.
TUCKER CARLSON: Is that the technical assessment?
BEN COHEN: Yeah. We have enough money to solve health problems for people in our country and all over the world. We have enough to end hunger in our country and all over the world. We have enough to get rid of lead poisoning. The gargantuan-ness of the amounts of money that we have. You can’t fathom it. And we’re choosing to spend it on creating more and better ways to kill more and more people. It’s such an incredible waste.
You know, I believe that we are all interconnected. As we help others, we actually help ourselves. And all this money that’s going into the Pentagon is sucking money out of things that people really want and need. It could be improving your libraries, your schools, your sports arenas. It could be paying for college for your kids, trade school for your kids. You have a better car. I mean, what is it that people want? It’s not more weapons.
TUCKER CARLSON: No, it’s not.
BEN COHEN: And our country needs to start measuring its strength by how many people it can help as opposed to how many people it can kill. And I would say it would actually make our country more secure.
Understanding the Scale of Military Spending
TUCKER CARLSON: You saw people, you know, just as recently as a few months ago say we actually benefit from sending billions to Ukraine because that money goes first through American companies.
BEN COHEN: I’ve heard politicians say that. Yeah, this is great, man. We’re employing our people. We’re keeping our weapons production lines humming, and we’re degrading the military of our enemy, Russia. And it is such sacrilegious reasoning. You need to think about our spirit and our soul, what it means to be an American.
You know, right now, what it means to be American is that we are the world’s largest arms exporter. We have the largest military in the world. We support the slaughter of people in Gaza. If somebody protests the slaughter of people in Gaza, we arrest them. What does our country stand for? I don’t know. I mean, you know, people say the budget is a moral document. See where you’re spending your money, and that’s what your values are. It hurts me to say that the values of our country seem to be military domination. Well, that’s it.
TUCKER CARLSON: The impulse that drives this is money. Right. People want money. So you’re an interesting person to ask since, you know, you didn’t grow up rich, you’ve had times when you’re poor, then you got rich selling the best ice cream there is. So you’ve kind of seen the money thing from both ends. Do you think that people put too much emphasis on money?
BEN COHEN: Well, part of what got me interested in this issue is that, you know, you talk about these large numbers, like 300 million, 500 million, a billion, a hundred billion, 800 billion. Nobody has any idea what the size of that is. It’s just like more money than you could ever imagine.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I have no perspective at all on that.
BEN COHEN: And so when Ben and Jerry’s was sold, it had, it came up to a level of $300 million in sales. And so I started having a feeling for how much money that is. And then I realized that three times that, that’s about a billion. And so I vaguely got a handle on what quantity that is.
And you know, a billion is an unfathomably large number. If you counted every second since you were born, you would be 32 years old before you’d lived a billion seconds. It is a lot of seconds. And that’s just 1 billion. So the Pentagon budget is now a trillion. A thousand billion.
You know, when you in Pentagon speak. Well, I don’t know, it’s a few aircraft carriers, it’s another fighter jet generation. Fighter jets, whatever, whatever. But in regular speak, here’s a good example. I wrote it down because I thought you might be asked. There was recently a fighter jet that fell off an aircraft carrier. So it was a 70 million fighter jet. So you know, that sounds kind of dramatic that you know, $70 million fighter jet fell off an aircraft carrier. But if you think about the Pentagon budget as a box of Cheerios, that $70 billion would be 1/10 of 1 Cheerio, which is enough money if you take it out of the Pentagon to build two new hospitals in West Virginia. So what’s crumbs to the Pentagon can really provide some real stuff that we need here in the U.S.
Working for Change
TUCKER CARLSON: Why? I mean, so you’re describing a system that like basically can’t be changed because I don’t know.
BEN COHEN: No, I’m in the process of changing it. Okay.
TUCKER CARLSON: Do you think that democratic levers still work in a non-democratic system?
BEN COHEN: Well, I think that the only lever that works is public opinion. So I’m in the process of starting up a campaign which is called Common Sense Defense at the moment. We’re going to get a flashier name later, but right now it’s Common Sense Defense.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s pretty flashy.
BEN COHEN: Thank you. Common Sense Defense. Yeah. Be a nice change. And it is a campaign that’s aimed just directly at the public. We’re not trying to lobby Congress. We’re not trying to influence that. We’re trying to change public opinion in terms of what we want our government to be spending its money on, or at least not spending its money on. Excessive weapons. Yeah. So, yeah, I believe that the thing that can change it. And, you know, and this is from my experience of my time going around lobbying on Congress, on Capitol Hill about this issue. You know, I think that’s hopeless. I mean, I think all we can.
TUCKER CARLSON: We think it’s hopeless to lobby the Congress.
BEN COHEN: Yeah. You know, hopeless for a guy who’s not handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars.
TUCKER CARLSON: Did. What was your experience? You actually went to Washington and talked to them.
BEN COHEN: I went to Washington, I talked to those politicians. You know, they smile and they say nice things and they take a picture, and then they, and then they just vote and rubber stamp whatever Pentagon bill comes in because they don’t want their opponent to call them weak on defense.
TUCKER CARLSON: So there were none that you would trust?
BEN COHEN: I wouldn’t say that. You know, I think, I think there’s a guy, you know, there’s, There. No, I wouldn’t say there’s none. I mean, I think there’s, I don’t know, 20, 30.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Do you think that part of the problem with the Ukraine war was Trump was against it? And that made it hard for people who hated Trump to say, I’m against it, too.
BEN COHEN: I wasn’t, I don’t really know about that. I mean, I didn’t, I wasn’t conscious of that myself. I mean, I know that, you know, for, I know, I know that for some Democrats, you know, anything that Trump supports, they don’t. Yeah, but I’m not aware of that as being an issue with, related to the Ukraine war.
Spiritual Motivations
TUCKER CARLSON: You were saying that you think there’s something sacrilegious about basic, an economy on weapons.
BEN COHEN: Yeah, I really do.
TUCKER CARLSON: So are, are you driven by your spiritual beliefs?
BEN COHEN: I’m mostly driven by, you know, just a concern for people. I mean, in terms of a spiritual belief. I mean, I don’t practice a religion. I was born a Jew. I love Jesus Christ. I think the words that he said are wonderful, are amazing. And you know, I’m kind of distressed that a lot of organized Christian religions are not really, I don’t know, abiding by the words of Jesus Christ.
TUCKER CARLSON: I am too.
BEN COHEN: I’m friends with a guy named Shane Claiborne who’s a theologian and he, you know, a Christian, well, he calls himself a red letter Christian and he’s got a group called Red Letter Christians. There’s other theologians.
TUCKER CARLSON: Red letters refer to the red letters in the New Testament connoting Jesus’s words.
BEN COHEN: Exactly. And you know, he lives and works in a, in an inner city Philadelphia in a really low, low income area and he’s, you know, that’s his work. He’s working to help people there. But yeah, I think if we could follow the words of Jesus Christ and think about the Sermon on the Mount and, you know, take his word seriously, we wouldn’t be doing the stuff we’re currently doing.
Conclusion of the Interview
TUCKER CARLSON: No, I don’t know if I can improve on that. Ben Cohen, thank you very much.
BEN COHEN: All right, thank you, Tucker.
A Message About YouTube Suppression
TUCKER CARLSON: So it turns out that YouTube is suppressing this show. On one level, that’s not surprising. That’s what they do. But on another level, it’s shocking. With everything that’s going on in the world right now, all the change taking place in our economy and our politics, with the wars we’re on the cusp of fighting right now, Google has decided you should have less information rather than more. And that is totally wrong. It’s immoral.
What can you do about it? Well, we could whine about it. That’s a waste of time. We’re not in charge of Google. Or we could find a way around it, a way that you could actually get information that is true, not intentionally deceptive. The way to do that on YouTube, we think, is to subscribe to our channel. Subscribe, hit the little bell icon to be notified when we upload and share this video. That way you’ll have a much higher chance of hearing actual news and information. So we hope that you’ll do that.
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