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Transcript of Jeffrey Sachs’ Interview on The Tucker Carlson Show

Read the full transcript of American economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs’ interview on The Tucker Carlson Show episode titled “The Dark Forces Pushing Trump Into War With Iran, & Ukraine/Russia New Escalation”, premiered June 12, 2025.

The interview starts here:

The Peace Candidate’s Challenge

TUCKER CARLSON: Donald Trump ran as a peace candidate. He was going to end the Biden administration’s disastrous war in Ukraine, and he was going to bring peace to the Middle East. And for the past seven months, he’s been trying to do just that. We’re getting a lot closer, but we’re not quite there.

Why? Well, says Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia, who has been watching carefully and speaking to many people involved, because the intel agencies aren’t on board at all.

So almost three years ago, you got bounced off of Morning Joe after many years, basically shunned by the entire world that you occupied and had occupied for decades, simply for saying, hey, maybe the war in Ukraine’s not a good idea. So it’s been a number of years since that happened. And I wonder if you have thought about or answered the question, why is the Ukraine war so central to the people in charge of our society? Like, what is it about that that creates this very intense attachment? They, like, exile you for disagreeing over it.

The Failed Peace Agreement of 2022

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, let me start with the basic point. The war is not a good idea and it could have ended three years ago. This is yet another of the tragedies of the Ukraine war. On April 15, 2022, there was a draft agreement between Ukraine and Russia to end the war. The United States swooped in, told the Ukrainians, don’t do it, keep fighting. And three years on, Ukraine has lost perhaps more than a million young people to death and serious injury. It has lost territory, it has had the country destroyed, it has had its economy brought to ruins. Nothing of the last three years has been any help whatsoever to Ukraine.

So when I said three years ago, I also said it five years ago and before even Russia’s invasion in February 2022, that there didn’t have to be a war, that the war could easily be avoided. When I said in March and April of 2022, you could stop Russia right now and end the war, not only was that right, it was, if I could put it this way, pro Ukraine. Of course, it was attacked at the time as being anti Ukraine.

This is the craziest thing. The friends of Ukraine, so called, are the ones that are completely destroying Ukraine. The friends of Ukraine, so called, are the ones that tell Ukraine to fight on, to fight on. It’s like being, I guess the coach in a boxing match and your guy is being bloodied and being hit and being destroyed in the battle and you say, go, I’m on your side. Go out there and hit him again until they get smashed one more time. And they’re brought to their side of the ring and again you tell them, go out and fight. because I’m your buddy.

And this is the disaster that the so called friends of Ukraine, whether it is all that we saw during the Biden administration or that we hear every day from Starmer, the Prime Minister of UK or Merz, the new Chancellor of Germany, or Macron from France, and of course from Zelensky, who is now running, I’m sorry to put it this way, but a little dictatorship because he runs by martial law, he doesn’t run by public support. But they’re all the ones telling their young people, go out to the front lines, go get killed. And this has been going on for years.

The Real Target: Weakening Russia

So the question you ask is why? This isn’t for Ukraine, this is destroying Ukraine. So what is it for? Well, I think it’s quite obvious and it’s been obvious for many years, the American push to Ukraine to fight on, don’t accept neutrality and so forth. This has been a project of the American deep state of the military industrial complex dating back decades. And the target has nothing to do with Ukraine at all. Destroying Ukraine. The target is to quote, weaken Russia. This is the point.

TUCKER CARLSON: But why would you want to weaken Russia?

JEFFREY SACHS: That’s an even longer story.

TUCKER CARLSON: I mean no one wants to weaken India.

JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah, it’s a very good point. And someday when India succeeds, we will want to weaken India. So that’s probably sooner rather than later. It’s actually quite interesting. Maybe you’ll make me digress. Right at the start, in the early years of this century, in 2000, 2001, 2002, the US relationship with China was just kind of normal. Even keel, we had good business with China. And one of my dear friends, with whom I somewhat disagree on some things and agree vociferously on other things, John Mearsheimer, the great political scientist, wrote a famous book called the Tragedy of Great Power Politics. This is his magnum opus.

And in it he says at the beginning of the book, in around 2000, he said, the relations with China are quiet now, but when China gains power, we will go into conflict with China. And so this is to answer your question, why would John Mearsheimer say that? Not because of anything China would have done, but because a big power will generate a reaction from the United States. That’s his theory, that we’re on an almost inevitable collision course the great powers.

I’m not so pessimistic, although I’d say Mearsheimer is empirically more right in a way. So he somewhat accurately describes things, but he also labeled his book the tragedy of Great Power politics. And I don’t want tragedy all the time. I’d like a little comedy, actually. A little normal relations.

The Pattern of Great Power Opposition

So to answer your question, what do we have against Russia?