Transcript of Dennis Kucinich Interview: Tucker Carlson Show

No.

The $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget

And even more important is this. The National Defense Authorization Act authorizes $1.5 trillion annually. 80% of the discretionary budget of the United States of America is now going for military. I mean, that’s horrific to begin with.

TUCKER CARLSON: 80% of America’s discretionary budget, total discretionary budget is going to the military?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, the discretionary budget of the United States of America is about $1.9 trillion. We can spend money on education, we can spend money on healthcare, we can spend money on food nutrition programs.

TUCKER CARLSON: Infrastructure.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Infrastructure, yes. Or we can choose to spend money on a military. And President Trump has made his own case that, well, we’ve got to protect our country, but there’s questions as to whether this is in our national security interest.

And $1.5 trillion annually, that is a 67% increase over the previous year. The budget was $900 — $600 billion. Now it’s $1.5 trillion. Think of that increase of $600 billion in one year. Plus we now have a Department of War. Plus Israel would then have access not just to the $4 billion that we give them in military assistance, they have access to the whole Megillah, to everything. We will be opening up the possibility of Israel having influence over a $1.5 trillion annual budget.

TUCKER CARLSON: I feel sick hearing this. First of all, we just lost a war with Iran, right? Which has an economy the size of an American state. Okay, so you would think at that point someone would say, let’s not continue feeding a system that is failing. Let’s stop and assess where the money went the first time before we upped the budget, right? I mean, clearly what we’re doing is working, right?

DENNIS KUCINICH: You would think.

TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. And this would give Israel influence over that entire — over 80% of America’s discretionary spending.

Technology Sharing and the Risk of Espionage

DENNIS KUCINICH: Again, let’s look at counter drones, anti-tunneling, directed energy, AI, autonomous weapons, cyber technology, electronic warfare, the national security architecture of the future, the future. Here it is. We’re going to share it. Really?

And also you have to remember that Israel was a conduit for taking technology from America and sending it to China. There’s no guarantees in this agreement that they can’t—

TUCKER CARLSON: And the Soviet Union.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yes.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, Jonathan Pollard’s secrets, which he stole from the United States military, from the Navy, wound up in the hands of our arch rivals, the Soviets, because they were at the table too.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you don’t have to spy or steal if everything’s open and you have a seat at the table, do you? And then as you pointed out earlier, Tucker, ethnic cleansing, genocide — these are partners? Because we’re not just taking in their IDF, let’s say. We’re taking in the values that we’ve seen demonstrated, or lack of values on moral law, international law. What does it say about us as a country if we want this kind of a partnership in the largest expenditures of US tax dollars of any single area, especially with respect to our defense?

Congressional Oversight: Gone After One Vote

TUCKER CARLSON: I think the majority of Americans agree with you. I think the polling shows that attitudes on Israel are changing dramatically because of the fact they’re committing genocide. That tends to lower your approval rating. But this vote would, as you said, be the last vote. So Congress wouldn’t have to be on the record supporting Israel after this vote because it would all be handled by the Pentagon Procurement Office.

DENNIS KUCINICH: That’s right. And the procurement — I mean, it’s very significant. So that’s why I’m saying there’s a limited amount of oversight that occurs then.

You have to remember, when I first got to Congress, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense said that there was over $1 trillion in accounts that could not be reconciled. That was in 1997. They couldn’t keep track of over a trillion dollars. Today, it’s multiple trillions. They had like 1,100 different accounting systems in the Pentagon. It’s engineered to where money might just disappear.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s engineered to evade oversight. There’s no way to even know what’s happening.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Right now it is. So this time, if we bring Israel into the picture and create this merger at the top of the most sensitive aspects of our national security, our national defense, where’s that going to go?

So you’re merging, you’re integrating, you’re eliminating duplication, in the context of a country that’s involved in genocide and ethnic cleansing. So what do they gain from this? They gain weapons endurance, okay? Because they get these weapons systems which they may not have access to right now. They’ll have intelligence depth that they don’t have right now. They’ll have AI targeting capacity that they may or may not have right now.

There’s no diplomatic deterrence, right? Because the game’s going to be led by the Department of Defense, but the Department of State is going to be further diminished by this for sure.

Who Approved This? And What Are the Consequences?

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait, can I just ask, what about the Secretary of War, the Secretary of State, cabinet secretaries, House and Senate leaders, everyone in the White House — like they’re all on board with giving a foreign country control over our military?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Who knows who’s on board? It’s in the legislation now and they vote for it. It’s law. This entangles our military in whatever Israel chooses to do. They want to go to war against Egypt. They want to go to war against Turkey as part of this Zionist expansion. Hey, we’re pulled right along with it. Our country then becomes a target. Our country then becomes vulnerable based on anything Israel chooses to do because we are partners then and we have no control over that.

We don’t have any control over what they’ll do. That’s like a fantastic thinking that we can bring them into the military and all of a sudden we’re going to control them. No, the way you control them is to keep the IDF at bay and try to work out some kind of diplomatic relations, which really aren’t working out right now because otherwise why would you have so many dead people in Palestine? And in Lebanon. There is no diplomacy going on. It’s basically a license to kill that Israel has.

TUCKER CARLSON: Paid for by us.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, absolutely.

Why Is the US Spending 80% of Its Discretionary Budget on Defense?

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I just go back? I have too many questions. To your description of the US defense budget is 80% of discretionary spending, which I didn’t know, which is hard to believe. The United States is prosperous largely because it’s isolated from threats by the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. Basically, the United States, the threats that it faces were going to come from Canada or Mexico, really. And those are not existential at the moment. So why would the United States spend 80% of its discretionary budget on defense? That’s crazy.

The Cost of Militarization: Gutting America’s Social Programs

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, it undermines, I think, the constitutional imperative of the United States, We the People of the United States, you know, it laid out certain purposes of governance. Provide for the common defense, but that wasn’t the only thing, okay? Promote the general welfare. Ensure the blessings of liberty. We’re moving away from that. If it all becomes about defense, what happens? And what is happening now, there’s specific things have happened. We’ve seen healthcare—

TUCKER CARLSON: Can I correct you and say it’s not defense anymore? It’s war. It’s not the Department of Defense, it’s the Department of War.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Thank you. Because I mean, that’s right. It is.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because if it’s about defense, the United States is defended by geography mostly. It’s defended by oceans, by its lack of physical proximity to people who hate it. So we’re pretty safe, always have been, probably the safest country in the world. But it’s not about defense, it’s about war.

DENNIS KUCINICH: And because it’s more about war than ever, how do you measure that? You measure that by how much money you allocate. Again, $900 billion were allocated in 2000 for the 2026 Department of Defense, now War. This year, $1.5 trillion, and it constitutes 80% of discretionary spending.

So what’s happened? We’ve seen cuts in healthcare. They’ve cut back administration of the Affordable Care Act. They’ve cut back, the CDC lost about $3, $3.5 billion. The education has just been wrecked, the kind of benefits that were out there.

In the education department, we saw the work study program. I took a work study program when I was just starting my college career. I worked at a plane dealer in Cleveland for a while and went to Cleveland State. They cut this funding 90%. So all these young people who want to get educational experience and work at the same time, they’re not going to be able to do that.

There’s programs that affect the poor, that would enable young people to reach up and get an education, that they’ve cut their specialized education funds. They cut out whole divisions. There’s a lot of programs that have been cut in education. They’ve cut job training programs, Tucker. And all this goes, you know, by, I think it was job training is about $3.7 billion they’ve cut from that.

They’ve cut nutrition program, you know, feeding people, feeding the food stamp program, which largely has kept a lot of Americans fed. They’ve cut that by about $6.3 billion. And then with that, there’s reductions in the Women’s and Infant Children’s Nutrition Programs.

What are we becoming as a nation when we arm ourselves to the teeth, inevitably benefiting all these defense contractors, and leave the American people defenseless at home, defenseless against poverty, defenseless against ill health, defenseless against being ill-educated. That’s the real strength of our country. We’re letting that go.

And so my sense is that it’s bad enough that $1.5 trillion is going to go primarily to these arms manufacturers, okay? Because those are capital-intensive expenditures. And at the same time, here comes Israel right inside the Department of Defense at the most sensitive technological areas, most sensitive security issues, and they’re right there helping to direct what America does.

TUCKER CARLSON: At exactly the moment when the American public has made it very clear we don’t want this.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Right.

Israel’s Influence and the Erosion of American Sovereignty

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s hard to imagine a less democratic, more authoritarian response to public opinion polling. It’s like your job, you served in Congress. Your job is to represent the people who put you there, right? So you look at the opinion polling and you say, you see, people don’t want this, right? And so that’s the first thing you do, something they don’t want? Like, how is that a real system? How is that a representative government?

DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s not. It reflects a level of control that already exists. I mean, let’s be clear, you know, this objection that is being raised here is cognizant of the fact that we’ve had a relationship that goes back at least to 1948, you know, to 1948, and then going forward from there.

And more recently, you know, Israel saw it to their advantage to encourage the United States to go to war against Iraq. I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu sat in front of me in a government oversight committee and articulated reasons in September of 2002 why the United States should go to war against Iraq. And he also said, I asked him, who else would you attack? And he said, Iran and Libya in committee. You can go to the internet and find that.

There’s a different imperative that Netanyahu has than what our aspirations are for our country. The people of Israel have to make their own decisions, but they cannot decide for us. We have to have autonomy here. We have to have sovereignty. And I fear for the future of our country if we bring in this genocidal group that has shown no compunction about murdering children, shooting them in the head and the chest, laughing about it, celebrating their dominance over defenseless people. It goes beyond being heartbreaking. It’s insane.

And we need to push back. People should be calling their congressmen and saying, “Do not vote for this bill. Force an amendment to be made to take it out, take that provision out of the bill. And if they won’t do it, vote against the bill.”

I mean, I would vote against the bill anyway. I voted against almost every single expenditure for these kinds of things when I was in Congress, Tucker, ’cause I knew it was a scam. I knew the people of the United States were getting hosed by these defense contractors and it became a racket. You know, Smedley Butler said it years ago, “War’s a racket.” So this is a racket.

We got pulled into one war after another we didn’t have to be in and Israel was coaxing it all along. And the Middle East region is going to end up in a worse conflagration if they come inside because they’ll be leading the dance when it comes to making strategic decisions in that region. That’s just, it’s happening right now. They have that kind of influence, but this locks it in. This is formal, this is the law.

And what happens to our country? My concerns about America, I don’t, you know, I consider myself a citizen of the world, but I am an American and I don’t want anybody trying to influence our country to do one thing or another. We make our own decisions here. Not anymore though. Israel has too much influence already. And through AIPAC and other groups, they have engaged in a kind of subterfuge over what the interests of the American people are.

And it’s not in our interest to be merging a military with a military that presents a clear and present danger to our own country. I don’t want to hold hands with somebody who has blood on their hands. No.

TUCKER CARLSON: I think all people are capable of evil. I certainly am. And I think all of us are capable of genocide. I believe that because I know what human nature is. But there’s only one country committing it right now. I mean, we don’t need to guess. Is the Israeli government evil? Yes. I mean, obviously murdering children is evil no matter who does it, period. They don’t get a pass. It’s a universal standard. So the idea that we would merge with that of all militaries.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, again, I agree with that, Tucker. And, you know, my, I wouldn’t want to merge with any military. I don’t even like NATO for that matter.

TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Because I don’t want anybody acting and trying to drag us into conflicts. You know, our founders warned, “Beware of foreign entanglements.” Yes. We were warned about that. And they had the vision to understand that the United States needed to protect its independence, to protect its sovereignty by not getting drawn into conflicts in other countries on behalf of other nations, not on behalf of ourselves.

I’m for defending our country, but now where we’re at is that we’re on the threshold of forever wars. I don’t think Donald Trump went into office with the idea that we’re going to have more wars. He promised no more wars. He made that promise, but he couldn’t keep that promise because of the influence of this particular group. And that’s really sad. It’s really sad.

Who Is Behind the Provision? Netanyahu Takes Credit

TUCKER CARLSON: I saw it firsthand. It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen in public life, for sure. Who are the people pushing this?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, you know, it’s very interesting. There was an iteration of this bill that was introduced into Congress by two members. Didn’t get much attention. But this was folded into the bill. Nobody knows who put it in. That’s number one. Number two, no hearings on this part alone. There’s been no hearings and no real discussions about it.

I mean, you and I could talk for an hour or so easy on this. Between us, there’s more discussion that’s occurred on this bill than any place in DC by far. They don’t want to talk about it. They just want to quietly slip this provision into a bill without debate.

Remember, they shut off any hope in the Rules Committee of a debate over an amendment by Tom Massie and Ro Khanna. They had an amendment up. They didn’t even include it in the list of amendments that would be made in order when they go to the floor. There was no debate in the committee over this.

And so, you know, when it gets to the floor, then there won’t be any debate over this provision. Unless somebody gets up and says, “Well, this provision,” but there won’t be an effort, an amendment to strike it is not in order. So it stays in the bill. People have to understand this is being engineered quietly, but no more, hello, to try to just slip it in, make it an accomplished thing, and then all of a sudden here we are. And the thing that—

TUCKER CARLSON: And we don’t know who pushed it?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, we know whose idea it was. Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s taking credit for this.

TUCKER CARLSON: He has?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Oh yeah, he says it’s his idea. Yeah, this, and why would Netanyahu want this? Because Israel is going to have every possible advantage they could possibly have in terms of weapons enhancement and AI targeting and lower operating costs, right? You get to offload your operating costs down to the US. They can entangle the US into things. All of a sudden, you want to fight me, buddy? Here’s me, buddy, you know? And you’re off to the next war.

TUCKER CARLSON: Without the Congress ever debating it, no one going on the record to support it, it would just all of a sudden become part of the system. It’s embedded in the way the US government operates. They just can effectively control 80% of our discretion.

DENNIS KUCINICH: No committee hearings, no debate, in the bill. There you have it. One of the most serious changes in American sovereignty in the history of our country would occur without any debate at all. It just folded into a bill that’s probably close to 1,000 pages.

The NDAA Vote: What Happens Next

TUCKER CARLSON: Could this happen soon?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, here’s what’s going to happen. The Congress comes back on July 13th. The Rules Committee will try to meet again. The reason why it didn’t get voted on this last time is there was a dispute. The White House wanted the SAVE Act that deals with curtailing certain voter registration privileges. They wanted the SAVE Act folded into the National Defense Act. And so they pushed the House leadership to combine that.

And in order to make that happen, the House has to first pass a rule. Every bill can have its own rule. It’s like, what are the rules of debate for this particular bill, this piece of paper? So they create the rule and the rule said it did not include that amendment that would amend out this Section 219. But what it did do, it’s combined the SAVE Act and the NDAA, so it gets—

TUCKER CARLSON: You don’t get voter ID unless you hand the military to Israel.

DENNIS KUCINICH: No, that’s an interesting reduction. No.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, everything’s reduction in politics.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: But they can make that case.

Stopping the Bill: Calls to Action

DENNIS KUCINICH: That’s interesting. But let me just say that it didn’t — the rule was voted against because 14 Republican members didn’t like the way the thing was set up. So the rule went down, which meant they couldn’t get to the bill. So there was no vote a week or so ago. So they’ll go back to the drawing board, they’ll go back to the Rules Committee and come up with a rule. Will they include an amendment that could be voted on to determine whether or not Israel and the US military should merge? I doubt it. It’ll go to the floor again. So people are going to be faced with an up or down vote. That would be my guess. It’s a guess. An up or down vote on the bill itself. I mean, I’d recommend voting against it and keep voting against it until they take that provision out.

TUCKER CARLSON: But that could pass this month.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, absolutely.

TUCKER CARLSON: How do you stop it?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, votes. I mean, people have to—

TUCKER CARLSON: But if you’re not in Congress, we just, I mean—

DENNIS KUCINICH: People have to call. This is where we’re not helpless. People, voters who are watching this from across the country, call your congressmen or congresswomen and say, look, we don’t want to merge the military. Vote against the bill or take it out of the bill. That’s it. I mean, as I said, I wouldn’t vote for this bill anyway because of how it vitiates — but it’s treason.

TUCKER CARLSON: It’s literally treason. You’re handing your government to a foreign government against the will of your own people who pay for everything. I mean, my view is if there was ever a justification for shutting down Washington, it’s this. And yet it doesn’t seem like there’s any way to stop it. Call your congressman? Does that matter?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Sometimes, yeah, sure. I mean, if the people get enough calls, they get nervous. And when they start getting nervous and there’s a slippage in votes, yeah, I mean, it can make a difference. Absolutely. Sure, it can make a difference. Now, given AIPAC’s influence, will it make a difference? I don’t know, but I’ll check.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you won’t need AIPAC after this.

DENNIS KUCINICH: No. I mean, well, I mean, yeah, one way.

TUCKER CARLSON: The humiliating control and all that, I get it. But as a practical matter, it’s done.

The Real Cost: Military Spending and Israeli Influence

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, wait a minute, this is interesting. There are people who are now talking about, well, we’re going to cut, we won’t give Israel any military funding. They don’t need any military funding. They’re on the inside now. They can direct the expenditures of over $1 trillion. What do they need a tip of $4 billion for when they can have influence over $1.5 trillion? Watch that. You’ll encounter people who will tell you, “Oh, we’re going to eliminate the military spending to Israel.” Really? And you’re going to bring them into the decision-making position in the Department of Defense for the most sophisticated spending that exists for the future national security and future defense of the United States of America.

TUCKER CARLSON: So that’s why you see these Israelis and their agents in the United States saying on television, maybe we should stop taking military aid from the United States.

DENNIS KUCINICH: There you are. There you have it.

TUCKER CARLSON: The lying is just — it’s like every word is a lie.

DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s called Hasbara, right? Yeah. I mean, what does the poet say? “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” And there’s deception everywhere here. And they’re trying to deceive the American people as to where their interests lie.

But when we keep seeing more and more of the resource of the United States going for wars, and then we get the country that’s committing genocide and ethnic cleansing, bring them into the top echelons of decision-making in the Department of Defense on a formal agreement, Tucker, that would affect a merger. Now people are saying, “It’s not a merger.” Well, okay. Integration, eliminate duplication. It is a merger. You can call it what you want, but they’re going to be sitting there making decisions.

And another thing is it’s going to affect defense, not just production where things are made, but Israel — we’ve had Buy America provisions in our contracting. This legislation, I think, would enable Israel to preempt those Buy America provisions. Oh yeah, it’s just going to cost US jobs too. I mean, that’s another thing, that’s another argument.

TUCKER CARLSON: So typically when the US government buys equipment for the US military, it is generally from American suppliers.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Generally, not always, but generally.

TUCKER CARLSON: But the idea is, the concept is you should buy American.

DENNIS KUCINICH: You buy from your own.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: But this would allow purchases from Israel basically to count as purchases from America because they’re—

DENNIS KUCINICH: Right, it’s a procurement thing. The procurement becomes a fact of life that we’ll be procuring more and more from Israel and Israel will be able to set up production in the US. This is really crazy. I mean, we do not — this is such a giveaway on so many different things. You use the word treason.

TUCKER CARLSON: It is treason and everyone involved in it should be charged.

The Human Cost: Gaza, the West Bank, and American Complicity

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, but that won’t happen. But it’s true. And I just — it’s not lost on any of us. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t think about the people in Gaza and the West Bank and South Lebanon and what they’re living through. Their children being killed right in front of them. Their whole family’s being blown up in some cases. Journalists killed, healthcare workers murdered, ambulance drivers murdered, double, triple tap to cynically just kill everything and everybody, drones flying everywhere.

How in the world can anybody with a heart look at this and say, well, it’s okay, it’s happening over there? No, no. If you’re a witness, you have to take some responsibility for that morally.

TUCKER CARLSON: If you’re the funder of it, which we are.

DENNIS KUCINICH: We are the funders. But we, the American people, are witnesses, and it’s time to say, look, we cannot support this. We should really be standing up and defending the people of Palestine against these attacks. That’s my feeling. We cannot be in a position where we’re seeing hundreds of thousands of people killed. For what? For some fake interpretation of the Bible that somebody says, “Well, this is my land, this is my home, this is my property.” Really? Really?

Somebody knocks on your door and says, “Give me your house.” In America, we’d go bonkers over that. We’d say, “You can’t do that. Get out of here.” That’s what’s happening every day. And it’s happening in South Lebanon now. Settlers are coming in and are protected by the IDF. The IDF has demonstrated itself to be just a group of psychopathic killers. I mean, you can’t call it anything else.

TUCKER CARLSON: No, you can’t.

DENNIS KUCINICH: And so the question though isn’t who they are, it’s who are we as Americans? What do we stand for? We just celebrated our 250th anniversary of our independence and we need to regain our independence. We need to regain what it really means to be an American. We’ll help anybody around the world. We’ve got big hearts as Americans, but we also need to stand up for the abuse of the resources that we give to another country that are being used to kill people and kill them en masse.

The Corruption of American Values

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, it’s just been so corrupting. It’s been so corrupting of the United States, corrupting of Christianity to see good people, ministers get up and defend genocide as if Jesus is in favor of killing kids. Been corrupting of politics, the conservative movement, which doesn’t obviously exist anymore, but I’ve been a part of it for 40 years.

And one of the basic foundational ideas was property rights. Property rights. Lecture you for hours. I’ve given those lectures. Property rights is the basis of liberty and of a functioning economic system. And then all of a sudden they’re supporting stealing people’s lands — well, actually, yeah. And then killing anyone who gets in the way. What about property rights? I thought we were for property rights.

Free speech, the foundational freedom of this country. All of a sudden, you’re not allowed to criticize a foreign country. You can’t boycott a foreign country. It’s illegal. It’s totally corrupting of who we are. That’s my problem with it. I don’t think Israel’s uniquely evil. I think everybody is evil in his heart. Of course, I’m a Christian. Of course I believe that. But what they’re doing is evil completely. There’s no euphemism that describes it more precisely than that. And we become evil when we participate in it. What the hell?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, it’s exactly what the hell is the mode.

What Drives Lawmakers to Support the Bill

TUCKER CARLSON: So you served in the Congress, you got there 30 years ago, you know a lot about the Congress. What would inspire a lawmaker to get on board with this?

DENNIS KUCINICH: You have to go back to the Holocaust. You really do. I mean, in order to understand the thinking about Israel. Jewish people suffered horribly in the Holocaust. It is a level of cruelty that the world could not have imagined prior to that. And so Israel began with a great deal of sympathy that people had. But then as you start to unwind—

TUCKER CARLSON: Including from me, by the way.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, of course. And from myself. Yeah. But as you unwind the history and you see where the Balfour Declaration went and how in 1948 the founding of the state of Israel was not supposed to mean the subjugation of the Arabs or the Palestinians. There was somehow supposed to be an agreement worked out. It was airy-fairy in some ways.

But what’s happened is that there’s been a murderous oppression of Palestinians that goes back generations now. And so Israel evolved into something that no one I think counted on, at least except the Zionists maybe, who believe that we have a greater destiny and it’s not just this land, but as the chosen people, we are going further and beyond it.

And that’s unfortunate because what they’ve done — Zionism has hijacked Judaism. My life has been guided by people who happen to been Jewish. And I think that’s true of a lot of people. I mean, greatly influenced. And when you understand the meaning of charity, of caring, of giving, throughout my life, I’ve always associated that with people who happen to be Jewish. I’ve seen that. I’ve experienced it.

TUCKER CARLSON: I have experienced it also.

Zionism, Judaism, and Tikkun Olam

DENNIS KUCINICH: But then when you take Zionism and a particular virulent strain of Zionism as is practiced by people like Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, as well as Netanyahu, it has created such sorrows, if you could call it that, for people who happen to be Jewish in this country and worldwide. And that’s not what many of us understood Judaism to be about and still isn’t. But Zionism has hijacked that.

And in service of a political agenda, they’ve basically jettisoned spiritual principles that, in my view, were always about what’s called tikkun olam. The healing of the world. That’s a principle that comes from Judaism, tikkun olam — heal the world. So it’s not destroy the world, heal the world. And so it’s heartbreaking, really. I mean, we’re looking at an immense human tragedy here, Tucker.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, that’s just beginning because everyone who committed genocide or supported or excused it or denied it — the genocide deniers, and there are many in the United States — they’re all going to suffer, and I feel bad for them. Some of them I like personally, but they’re all going to suffer because there’s justice. And if you got behind the genocide in Gaza, you’re going to suffer for that. So I feel sorry for them.

American Independence Under Threat

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, again, I call it a great human tragedy, but here we are just after we celebrated our independence. 250 years. How do we remain independent? And this proposal to merge, integrate the US and the Israeli military is a direct attack on American independence, a direct attack on American sovereignty, a direct attack on the United States Constitution, which keeps us sovereign.

I’m concerned — how drones are hunting people in Gaza and West Bank and even South Lebanon now. That’s going to come home.

TUCKER CARLSON: Of course it will.

America First: Sovereignty, Freedom, and the Military Merger Debate

DENNIS KUCINICH: Does anyone think that if we enrich this partnership with Israel formally, that we’re not going to be seeing these drones patrolling the United States? Of course we are.

TUCKER CARLSON: Soon.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, we’re looking at dystopia here. We’re looking at Minority Report, another version. Who are we? Again, ask the question, who are we as a nation? I want to reclaim what it means to be an American. I want to reclaim what it means to be free, to be independent, to be sovereign, to be able to make our decisions without any undue influence from any other country in the world. And certainly not to be holding hands with people that are genocidal, with genocidal intent.

So this is ultimately about freedom. Our whole experience, our constitutional experience about freedom. We’ve seen our freedom of speech undermined in the last few years. College campuses notably, okay? You can’t criticize a certain group because if you do, you could lose your scholarship, you could get expelled. You can’t protest on college campuses, which were the cradle of the rebellion against the war in Vietnam.

The Fourth Amendment, the idea that Americans can be free in their homes from unreasonable search and seizure. The idea that you look at ICE and how they’ve moved in to just knock down doors. We’re seeing our basic constitutional liberties undermined.

Here in this country right now, we’re celebrating the 4th of July, but our liberties can’t go up like in the smoke of a disappearing firework. We really have to look at each and every area where our liberty is under attack and our freedom is under attack, and it is under attack with this proposal to merge the US and the Israeli military.

TUCKER CARLSON: But if you’re a member of Congress, what are you thinking? Why would you sign on to this?

DENNIS KUCINICH: What’s a constitution among friends?

TUCKER CARLSON: But you know that every public appearance that you have, every town hall that you do, you’re going to get asked about this. People are getting pretty radically anti-Israel, way more than I am. I feel like I’m pretty moderate compared to the public on this question all of a sudden. And you’re going to have to live with that, but you’re doing it anyway.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, look, politically, it’s hard to figure out. One does not need to be anti-Israel. We need to be pro-human.

TUCKER CARLSON: I agree.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Pro-peace.

TUCKER CARLSON: Pro-America.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Pro-America. Yeah, really. I mean, this thing about America first, that’s okay with me. That doesn’t mean we’re not citizens of the world, but we have an obligation to take care of our own people. Tucker, I’m in Cleveland. I see people begging for food at freeway exits.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I do too.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Some of them are veterans. What are we doing with our country here? So this debate over this section in the National Defense Authorization Act really provides an opportunity for a deeper reflection about who we are as Americans. What do we stand for? Where are we going as a country? Where do we want to go as a country? How do we avoid future wars? How do we avoid wars that could end it all?

It wasn’t too long ago that Joe Biden was rattling sabers against Russia.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I know.

DENNIS KUCINICH: And now we’re seeing more attacks on Russia. We could see another war, but if we’re not—

TUCKER CARLSON: —easily, easily see a real war with Russia soon.

DENNIS KUCINICH: But we need to pay attention to what our government’s doing and demand that we stop these wars and demand that we not bring in the one country that’s hell-bent on war everywhere they turn in order to feel protected. I mean, what a paradox. That you’re protected by killing more people.

Netanyahu, Turkey, and the Cost of Endless War

TUCKER CARLSON: Netanyahu is destroying Israel. And if allowed, I think, and not just Netanyahu, his coalition of religious extremists — he was on Fox News today, which shamefully gives him a platform at every opportunity, saying we need to go fight Turkey, our NATO ally to whom we’re bound by treaty. We have to have a war with Turkey now.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Because you said that this morning. I didn’t know. Well, that’s why when I look at this agreement, it is about war with Turkey. It’s about war with Egypt. It’s about war, war, war on our dime. Their policy? No, stop it.

America, remember who you are. We are supposed to be that shining city on a hill. We’re supposed to be the unfolding of a patriotic dream. We’re supposed to be the country that is the beacon for the entire world. The huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We need to reconnect with what it means, the deeper meaning of what it means to be an American. That this journey that began 250 years ago that gave America this ability to adapt to and dream to a future.

We need to reconnect with this advancing tide of creativity and freedom and democracy and really let freedom ring, really let it ring. But we’re not there right now. We’re in a different space and we need to begin anew to challenge any effort that would attack our sovereignty, undermine our independence.

TUCKER CARLSON: You just saw a number of Democrats lose in primaries on the question of support for Israel. It’s such a cliché, I hate even to use the word, but it’s toxic among Democratic voters.

DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s true.

TUCKER CARLSON: Toxic. And good for them, by the way. It should be toxic. It’s totally unacceptable. You’re pro-Nazi? No, you’re not allowed to be pro-Nazi. Well, you can’t be for the genocide in Gaza. I mean, I don’t see the difference. But how can Democrats vote for this?

The Legislative Trap: Burying the Merger in a 1,000-Page Bill

DENNIS KUCINICH: I think a number of them will vote against it. But some of them with some difficulty. And the this that we’re talking about is this proposal to merge the militaries of Israel and the United States. It should be an easy vote for many members of Congress, but they’re not going to get a chance to vote on just that because it’s folded into a 1,000-page bill.

So what you have is a circumstance where most members will know this is in the bill. There’s been enough commotion about it. How can they vote for it? Because they’ll say, “Well, I voted so that our district could get X number of dollars for this defense contractor, which is providing hundreds of jobs in our district.” That’s the logic, okay?

TUCKER CARLSON: There’s a logic there.

DENNIS KUCINICH: You need to understand, and people need to understand, that every single member of Congress has a defense contractor in the district. And these contractors, in order to pass the bill, they go and visit the member of Congress and they say, “Look, we make this material for the Department of Defense, and we need you to vote for this, so that our area can have these jobs.”

And some of them may have been around a while, some of these businesses. So the member is moved by people from the district who want them to support this program, which may be millions of dollars, including a $1.5 trillion bill. So members have a motivation to vote for it.

Now, I didn’t vote for it because I knew it was going to go for war and I’m opposed to that. But members have jobs at stake, so they want to vote for the bill. That’s how that happens. Lobbyists are there from the district.

So then you put this provision in the bill, which is really a poison pill if you want to call it that, and members then have to look, well, how am I going to vote? Because they’ll be attacked if they vote against something for their district, right?

This is a diabolical construction that’s occurring here legislatively. You put a bill to defend the country, which is excessive to the nth degree, and you fold into it this proposal for a merger. Members are going to be hard-pressed with a vote on this.

But the ultimate issue is if you give up sovereignty, if you give up independence, that is the overarching concern, not where does this money go? Because once you give up what it means to be an American and to be able to make your own decisions, everything else doesn’t matter.

TUCKER CARLSON: Who thought up this system where you don’t vote on specific legislation or issues, but you wrap all these different notions into one 1,000-page bill and vote up or down on it?

DENNIS KUCINICH: Yeah, yeah.

TUCKER CARLSON: Well, from that came the aphorism, “Never ask how laws or sausage are made.” But that seems designed to hurt the country and to make a mockery of the legislative process.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, the way the bill is crafted, groups of people get together, various interest groups, they go to the committee, they give their ideas of what they want, and a bill is produced. And somebody came in with this thing — ah, let’s put this merger in.

TUCKER CARLSON: But why not just vote on that? And why not just vote on—

DENNIS KUCINICH: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: —changes to voter registration or ID requirements or what weapon system we should fund? And they’re supposed to.

DENNIS KUCINICH: They’re supposed to, except the rule permits them to do it. They change the rules. The rules are always there to be changed. There’s a rule against legislating on an appropriation. Doesn’t matter. You can have a rule that says all points of order are waived. So nobody can get up, “Mr. Chairman, point of order.” No, it’s not happening.

So this system, people are going to start to pay a little bit more attention to a system which is serving a very small group of people at the expense of everyone else. And right now it’s not working for the people of the United States of America. And it hasn’t. It doesn’t matter if someone is a Democrat, Republican, who’s in the White House. That system has a specific gravity and a specific momentum that keeps moving forward inexorably to replicate itself. It just keeps going.

TUCKER CARLSON: Nicely put. That’s right.

Data Integration and the Point of No Return

DENNIS KUCINICH: And that’s what happens. And that’s why once something like this merger’s in the bill, forget about it. It’s just going to keep going and going. They’ll develop data integration. That’s another big thing. That’s a merger, data integration. We’re going to be operating out of the same fundamental math of what it means to operate the nation’s defense. Yeah, that’s how dangerous this is, Tucker.

TUCKER CARLSON: So there’s kind of no disentangling at that point without hurting the US military.

DENNIS KUCINICH: That’s exactly right. It is the ultimate entanglement that we’ve been warned against. It’s an entanglement in the most granular details in every sophisticated area of defense of our country, of the future national security policies of the United States of America. We are becoming entangled to the nth degree. And as a result, our nation and our sovereignty is at risk.

TUCKER CARLSON: Have you seen anyone defend this explicitly? No.

DENNIS KUCINICH: That’s interesting. It’s an interesting question. If you find somebody, it’d be great to have that person on your show so that you could ask them about the benefits of this. No.

TUCKER CARLSON: They’ll just scream about antisemitism and refuse to come on. I’ve tried.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, antisemitism’s become a canard. It lacks meaning anymore. It’s just being used to try to deflect attention to something that’s going on that’s beneath the dignity of human beings.

TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah, I’ve noticed. Do you think there’s any chance the president would veto this?

Netanyahu’s Defiance and the Cost of Forever Wars

DENNIS KUCINICH: It’s an interesting question because Netanyahu has basically discounted the authority of the president of the United States. He’s done that when President Trump was trying to end this war against Iran that was started at the behest of Netanyahu. And what did he need? One of the things he needed was for Israel to stop attacking South Lebanon. That was one of the conditions that Iran asked for. Didn’t happen. And Netanyahu publicly defied the President of the United States. As if he, as head of a nation of 9, 10 million people, is superior to a man who’s head of a nation of 340 million people.

I mean, this is, you have to look at this. This is so weird that Israel could be actually jeopardizing an agreement that would end a war that has resulted in not just 168 children being killed and the leader of Iran whose funeral is still ongoing right now as we speak, but also had a devastating effect on our economy. And that war’s going to cost, just that war’s going to cost about $1 trillion to taxpayers. Most of it’ll go to national debt, which is a whole nother story because the more debt we’re in, the more vulnerable we are because we have to make the interest payments. And that means we have less money to take care of things we need right now.

Yeah, America’s in a trap right now. We’ve dug ourselves a hole, and the only difference between a hole and a grave is in the dimensions. And I don’t want to have this merger lead America to its own destruction. And we’re not in good shape right now. And when the president of the United States can be told by some guy who’s just a hustler who is trying to finagle his way through another election to survive so he doesn’t go to jail. I mean, let’s be real about this. Netanyahu’s facing jail. And so his policies are aimed at keeping himself out of jail. He didn’t care about the United States. He sure didn’t care about what President Trump wants. All he cares about is staying out of jail and staying in power if he can.

And so what does that mean? Attack South Lebanon, forget whatever America wants to do in ending the war in Iran. And everyone’s going to pay for it. The people are going to pay for it in South Lebanon with their lives, and people around the world are going to pay for it with damage to the world economy. I mean, lives, I’ll put that superior to every other concern. But the fact is, we all know about the knock-on effects of the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz or Bab-el-Mandeb, or anything that interferes with the flow of energy is going to cause the price to go up. Americans have experienced that, and we’re going to keep experiencing that because the opportunity for peace keeps ebbing away.

And we’ve learned recently that Israel was planning to kill Iran’s peace negotiators, right? There was an assassination plot to kill the principal representatives of Iran because it’s not in Israel’s interest to have peace. They don’t know what peace looks like. They think peace is a threat to their existence. And so when you get that kind of an equation, you’re going to have forever war. And we bring them into the Department of Defense, we have forever war. What about America? Why aren’t we having discussions about what America’s interests are here.

TUCKER CARLSON: Because that’s antisemitic. Nationalism is a moral crime. No, we’ve been hearing that for 10 years, and I thought Trump would be strong enough to stand up to it, but he turned out to be weak. But it’s not just Trump. It’s the system itself is just not working in any way. How would you fix it?

Rebuilding America: Ending Wars and Restoring Civic Life

DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, we know that if someone becomes president and he is determined to fix the system, drain the swamp, he’s going to run into problems no matter what his politics are. Yeah, real problems. Yeah, real problems. Or he could get assassinated. Yep. I mean that, but we have to look at, follow the policy back to whose interests are threatened and would want to kill our leaders.

How do you cure it? First of all, it starts with America’s international policy. We have to stop these forever wars. We have to start protecting our economy and rebuild relationships with people so they still use the dollar. Because the elasticity in our economy depends on the petrodollar. Of course. The more people that jettison it, whether we’re talking about Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, and others, the less trade that happens in dollars, that is a compounding economic problem for the United States of America. People are getting rid of our treasuries. They’re dumping our treasuries, okay? So higher interest rates, burden on the US economy. Hey, that relates to our ability to make our own decisions so that we don’t become a vassal of a future IMF or something.

A president has to have a Congress that closes ranks on these issues of sovereignty, on the issues of expenditure. We really are in need of, I come from a discipline of the old FDR New Deal, rebuild America, rebuild the infrastructure, keep building, building, building, create, teach entrepreneurship, teach people how to create things and make things. We have that capacity. We’re not doing it.

So how do we get out of it? It’s to stop the wars first of all. Stop the wars. Stop holding hands with a country who’s forever on a warpath. Must stop that. And then we start to rebuild diplomatic relations with countries knowing that we can be friends, but don’t try us. But let’s try to find a way to work together and use our resources to build, to show that America can be a friend again, not just a feared foe.

We need to go back to the basics, which are education. Public education has fallen apart. We need to give people a chance to have a way of learning so that they can make a contribution to our society. Now personally, I’m for healthcare for all. We shouldn’t have these big corporations cashing in on the health misery of the American people. We should have jobs for all. We need to have an opportunity for every person who’s able-bodied to be able to make a living, make a contribution to society. We need to protect our air and our water. Our water right now ends up being a bargaining chip for these new data centers. Why should we be sacrificing the water that people need to survive just to say, well, we’re going to be smarter because we use more AI?

And you know where it all goes back to? Here we are in Maine. New England had those town hall meetings some years ago. Norman Rockwell, that painting of the man standing up, freedom of speech, okay? You go back to the town hall, literally, not just figuratively on the internet. You go back to the town hall where people are meeting each other and they talk about what they want out of a country. And then you require people who want to be a representative to meet with those groups and to hear what people have to say about what are their aspirations, what are their dreams for America?

It’s a rebuilding that has to happen. It has to happen from a neighborhood all the way up, Tucker. We have to re-excite our civic soul. We have to learn what it means to be a citizen again in a democracy that we can, or a republic as I would like to refer to it as. We need to refresh that republic with our own civic involvement. And if we fail to do that, then America gradually fades away into the pages of history. We’re not guaranteed this country. Eternal vigilance truly is the price of liberty. And this discussion today is about being vigilant. It’s about understanding at every turn where America’s interests might be harmed.

The Call for National Protest Against Section 219

TUCKER CARLSON: I think the first expression of civic engagement might be national protests against this bill.

DENNIS KUCINICH: I agree. Yeah, I agree. People should be going to their town halls. And first of all, you can type in Section 219 NDAA and get a copy of the bill. You understand what it means. But this discussion today, I’ve given you some content of what the specifics are, because there’ll be people arguing specifics and what the cost is and what Israel has to gain and what America has to lose. And when you’re talking about merging the most sensitive areas and you’re talking about giving away American jobs, you’re talking about America plus Israeli technology equals genocide now? Well, wait a minute, and with no serious discussion about it and no legislative review, this is just going to happen?

Sure, people need to go to their town halls and start saying stop, but this is happening. This thing is an express train. It’s coming down the tracks, Tucker. Congress comes back on the 13th of July and they’re going to try to grease the wheels to make sure this thing moves through. Who are they? They are the people that are running the government internally and externally to push legislation, not just for $1.5 trillion for more wars, but to make sure we bring Israel into the decision-making process formally in the Department of Defense through this Section 219, which merges the defense capabilities and integrates the defense capabilities and eliminates duplication. You’re talking about eliminating duplication. You’re together, you’re one, you’re a single unit then.

Accountability and the Moment of Truth for America

TUCKER CARLSON: At some point we’re going to get, because nothing is hidden forever, we’re going to find out exactly how many women and children, noncombatants Israel murdered in Gaza and Lebanon and the West Bank. And public opinion in this country will join the rest of the world in revulsion and horror, and Israel will suffer the same fate that Germany has suffered for 80 years, which is having to publicly confront what you did, because all countries have to confront what they do. And I just think anyone who’s on board with something like this now, these are like the last moments where you could vote for this with a straight face. After this, every person who votes for this is going to have to answer for it in this life and the next.

DENNIS KUCINICH: I think not only are you correct, Tucker, but the consequences of this are going to be felt for the foreseeable future. And this is really a moment of truth for America.

TUCKER CARLSON: You’ve really added so much to this. Dennis Kucinich, thank you very much. And I hope this makes some small difference.

DENNIS KUCINICH: Thank you, Tucker. Appreciate it.

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