Rick Sanchez: Fired and Threatened With Jail for Refusing to Spout Zelensky’s Talking Points

Rick Sanchez, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for doing this. Oh, it's a pleasure.
How did you wind up at RT and what did you think? Larry King gives me a call one day. Come on.
Larry King. By the way, Larry's a great man.
I totally agree. I love Larry.
He was kind. He says, Ricky, you ought to really look at this.
And I'm thinking, Larry, the Russians? I mean, come on, man. I was born in Cuba.
It's a communist country. I mean, just in case he wants to, you know, but he, but Larry says to me, let me tell you something.
Ricky, let me tell you something. This is the way Larry would say it.
Sounds so...

That is... Cuba.
It's a communist country. I mean, just in case he wants to, you know, but he, but Larry says to me, let me tell you something, Ricky, let me tell you something.
This is the way Larry

would say it. You know, they don't tell me what to say.
They don't tell me what to do.

They don't tell me who I have to interview. They let me be in control of my show.
And I guarantee

you, uh, they really like you. They really want you.
If you come here and do this show that they

want you to do, they're going to do that for you as well. And I said, really, Larry, you sure?

And finally, I went to Miami. I decided to leave television altogether, television news.
And at the time I was, I had started a new healthcare company in South Florida, which we took public for a couple billion dollars. And it was a great story.
But as that company was growing, I started thinking to myself, you know, I miss my calling. My calling is this, what you do.
Plus, it's fun. I love to tell stories.
I like finding out things that I didn't know, and I love sharing them. And doing that for a living, I think, is just a wonderful thing.
I totally agree. So because I was kind of missing that when I got a call one day from an agent saying, you know, there's this group that wants to hire you, and they're a real network.
Would you come up and talk to them? And then subsequently I had the call with Larry King. I said, you know what? I might want to do this.
Sat down with my wife and my family and I said, you know what? I'm going to put the healthcare company aside and I'm going to go back to what I really want to do. So I joined RT.
I said yes. What year? That was five years ago.
Yeah. Yeah.
Five years ago. 2020.
Yeah. Way before 2019.
2019. Way before like this war and everything else.
And the footing between the United States and Russia at the time was not hostile. It wasn't necessarily overly friendly.
It was just kind of in the middle. Muddy, exactly.
Yeah, at the time. So what was it like? It was everything Larry King said it would be.
Really? Surprisingly so. I'm not surprised, but I think others would be surprised.
Like you, I like dominion of my product, right? Of course. I want to be a writer.
I want to be able to talk to my producers. I want to know who my other writers are.
Yes. And so I picked my staff.
I wrote my entire show. I picked my topics.
I led the editorial meeting every morning discussing what was going to be on our news agenda of the day. And can I tell you something? I never had that opportunity at CNN or Fox or NBC.
I'm sorry to say this. I've worked at all three and I can confirm that.
Yeah. I mean, you do have some sense or some liberty or journalistic independence when you work at those places, but not like this.
I'll just say right now, and I hope I'm not breaking anybody's heart out there who's a big CNN fan or any cable news fans out there, but if you decide you want to interview somebody and he's not on their list of okay interviewees, they're not going to let you interview him. And if you want to go down a certain path- He's banned.
He's banned. Oh, I've run up against that many times.
And you're saying, this is a good man with interesting things to say. Or he's in the news.
Like, this is a relevant person. Our viewers need to hear about this.
Sure. The Jeffrey Sachs of the world, the Mearsheimer's of the world, the Colonel McGregor's of the world, they're not allowed to be on those networks.
Rats a rock. Right? It's crazy.
So I started seeing some of these things when I was at CNN. I saw them as well at NBC and Fox, you know, to be fair, maybe sometimes coming from a different direction.
And sure, I was allowed to have some, you know, say in the editorial decisions, but not as much. Can I just ask, since I worked at the same three companies that you worked at.
You and I worked at CNN together. Exactly.
I would say the one thing, so people look at CNN and MS are on the left. Yeah.
Fox is on the right. But there's also this sense that like, wait, maybe they're telling versions of the same story.
Yes. And I found over 25 years that the one thing that none of those networks would accept was anybody who questioned the Neocon storyline.
So I actually did have Doug McGregor to Fox's great credit. They allowed me to have him on.
But I think that I don't think he's been on since I left. And I think they hated him.
But I think Doug McGregor is as offensive to Fox executives as he is to CNN executives as he is to MSNBC executives. You think that's fair? I think it's very fair.
And kudos to you for being the first person to put his thought process. Yeah, well, I mean, it was— So different.
It was—and that is really—the credit goes to the Murdochs who let me do that. You know, a lot of things to criticize, but they did.
And your message was simple. We're being told we're winning this war in Ukraine.
We're not. Yes.
And here's a man who's going to

take us through this. I don't want to make it about me.
I just want to say, I think we had the

same experience, which is the red line at all three channels is exactly the same question,

neocon foreign policy, and we're done. So as a journalist working at RT,

going back to your question, was almost nirvana for me. Yes.
It was fantastic. I reveled in this opportunity.
I would get up with a little skip in my step every day, thinking about what we can talk about and how we're going to explain it and who we're going to talk to. As difficult as it was, because a lot of guests wouldn't want to come on because it was RT, you know.
But it was really a great experience, especially comparatively speaking to what I had experienced in the past. And my old friend, Larry King was right.
They generally did not mess with me. And when they did, when we had normal editorial arguments, which happened in every newsroom and should, we would talk it out.
And sometimes I would win and sometimes I would lose, but it would be a discussion. It wouldn't be like, this is what you're doing.
So it's a great experience. So you felt that RT from, you know, internal editorial perspective, obviously you're the anchor.
So you, you see what happens. You felt that it was freer than Fox, NBC or MS.
I wrote my entire show from top bottom, and nobody looked at it until it went on the air. Okay.
How's that? There you go. There you go.
Can I, you know, is there anything more than that? Nobody looked at my script before I went on the air, except me and some of the editors who had to put pictures. Of course.
Right. Yeah.
But nobody was looking at it. Aha, no, this goes out.
You can't say this. You can't say that.
That's amazing. Because they trusted me.
I mean, look, man. I mean, I've got, I've been a part of two Peabody award-winning teams.
I've got a DuPont. I've got five Emmys.
I've interviewed four U.S. presidents.
I've sat down with Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev. And yet there's not a single entity in the United States who seems to be interested in hiring me.
Why? Well, now I would say, I mean, there may be a lot of reasons, but now that you've worked at RT, I think it's illegal to hire you, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, it's something.
So how long were you there? I worked for the first three years and then left prior to the invasion because my friends back in South Florida who were now building this $4.4 billion healthcare company, and I was one of the original partners of it, said, can you come back and help us handle the marketing? I mean, we need you to just jump back in there and there's some things we want you to fix. And I was like, ah, yeah.
So I left and I said, okay, I'm going to go back and go back and do the job building back this healthcare company that I had built with my friends. And while I was doing that, I then got a call from another dear friend, Ben Swan, who's a really good journalist.
And he said, you want to do a show? I said, oh, my God, I'd love to do a show. I miss doing a show.
So after taking a little hiatus for about a year and a half, I went back and started doing a show. He said, it's not allowed to air in the United States, but you get to produce your own show and they air it all over the world.
And you get to do it in Spanish and in English. So suddenly I started doing the show again, Tucker.
And— When was—that was after the Ukraine war started?

That was after the Ukraine war started.

Correct. How was—I mean, that must have been—because that was the moment when—well, the Ukraine war is not a Ukraine war.
It's a war against Russia led by the United States. Yeah.
And you're working at RT, Russia Today. Yeah.
So, what was that like? It was tough. It was tough.
But after reading enough and knowing enough and hearing some of the people that we aforementioned, McGregor's and Sacks,

and I started thinking to myself, you know, I should do this because we need to have a conversation with these people. Exactly.
We need journalists and others and academics and whoever to start engaging with the journalists and the academics over there so we can have discussions and work out a solution before we start another freaking world war here i mean so this will be a good thing that i can make the world a better place by having a show from the united states that shares the american perspective from a person who loves america. A guy who was born in a communist country and spent all his life listening to his parents say, we're in the greatest nation on earth, and sharing that with people around the world.
And RT was going to give me an opportunity to do that. They weren't asking me to be a Russian.
They were asking me to be a journalist who happened to be American. And why wouldn't I tell that kind of story? I totally agree.
And that's what we grew up with. I remember as a kid watching Phil Donahue interview Brezhnev in New York, surrounded in a studio.
When Brezhnev would go to the UN, he would interview him. And here he was in the studio with all these women asking this man questions.
I remember, that was Phil Donahue. I remember Ted Koppel once a week having a Soviet reporter on.
His name escapes me, but he became very famous at the time. Yes.
And they would go back and forth and debate ideas. Suddenly, we're living in an era where our president hasn't spoken to their president for almost four years.
This isn't right. It's lunacy, and we're so diminished by it actually and imperiled by it i would say i've had every thought that you've had that's why i've been to russia a couple times for that exact reason as a proud american who's never leaving doesn't have another passport hasn't served in anyone else's military i've never been to russia right well you should go it's a wonderful place but but it doesn't make me less american i i love my country more than anything but anyway the point is i can understand and empathize with and so strongly agree with everything you said but i wonder for that first year or two years um you know the anti-russian hysteria in the united states was that like a comical pitch like i i don't think the u.s open put russian names on the screen of the players like people were not not allowed, Russians weren't allowed to compete in sports.
It really became pretty evil, actually, I would say. And, but you signed back up with RT.
Like, what was that like with people you know? Like, what did they say to you? I tried not to bring it up in polite conversation. It would get in polite really fast.
It's like, you're doing what? I would know people would ask me i say oh my god rick sanchez i grew up watching you on tv you know in miami yeah yeah where i used to be on local television and they say so what are you doing now i'd say well i'm doing a bunch of global stuff because you just unless unless the person happens to be if i recognize that it's someone who's astute and has some kind of geopolitical observations or knows the world or is kind of smart, then I tell them and they go, oh, man, that's cool. That's great.
But you just don't want to, you know, have an argument with people during the day. What did your kids say? They were perfectly fine with it.
Oh, good. Yeah.
They totally understood. We've taught them.
Suzanne and I have really taught, well, she's a much better parent than I am, but I've done my part as well in making the kids understand that we live in a world where there's a lot of different opinions and a lot of different ways of looking at things. That's right.
So you couldn't talk to my kids and come away thinking, oh, they're liberal, oh, they're conservative, or they're this, or they just, they're smart enough to understand and recognize things for what they are. Yes.
And I think that's important. It sounds like you've done a great job.
I couldn't agree more. She did.
She did. I believe you.
Was there blowback though at all to your personal life? Yeah. Not to mention you always felt like if ever you wanted to do something outside or let's suppose Fox News would call, one of your ex, you know, colleagues would call and say, hey, Rick, we were thinking about inviting you because remember you used to talk about such and such and they'd want to book you and you'd think they were booking you for something and you go, sure, I'd love to come on.
And then all of a sudden you get that famous phone call that all bookers had to get. We're going in a different direction.
Yeah, we've changed the show. We're not going to do that story.
And actually was, they found out that you work at RT. Of course.
And now they're not going to have you on simply because you work at RT, which is so prejudicial. It's also so small minded and childish.
Like these are children who don't know anything about the world at all. Rick Sanchez, we want you to talk about the new elections in mexico but we're not going to get you on because you work at rt what the hell does one thing have to do with the other well of course and by the way let me just back up a bit you said that by the time um so you were there from i'm roughly speaking like 2019 to late 21 end of 21 or something like that and then you in, say, 22 or 23.
Correct. After the war begins.
Yes. But by that point, you can't watch RT in the United States? RT is not available in the United States.
It was totally banned. So the problem there, it's not really about Russia who owns RT or its agenda.
It's about the United States, which has a Bill of Rights. The first right enumerated is the right to free speech, the right to see, hear, and say whatever you choose.
That had already been gotten rid of. You're not a slave.
You're a free man. So no one can control what I hear or what I think, right? How did they ban a TV network in the United States? When did that happen? After the war in Ukraine, they decided that no one in the United States should have the right to understand the perspective other than the Ukrainian perspective.
Therefore, RT, which was possibly going to share the Russian perspective, should not be allowed to continue to operate in the United States. But how did that happen? Oh, they just put out an edict, I think.
I think it went through the Treasury Department once again. But what happened like— Your license is revoked, and this particular entity is not allowed to operate in the United States.
But what about civil liberties? Aren't Americans allowed to hear whatever they want to hear? Well, that's what I thought, right? Congress shall pass no law. Freedom of speech, all that jazz.
Where'd it go? But then Biden doubles down, right? And that— do you want me to share the phone call? Yeah, I want to know everything. I mean, this is, but I just want to set the context.
This is pure craziness. And they can say, Russia, bad, Russia, bad, Putin agent, all they want.
I don't care personally. But what they can't do is end the constitution, because that's not their right.
It pre-exists their rule, and it will, I hope, endure after they're long gone. So, like, I don't really know the part where they ended the First Amendment.
I don't really understand that. You know, it's really weird because if you watched my show, and many people did, and some Americans were watching the show because they'd, you know, back-channel it somehow through the internet or something.
My show was very, very popular in Latin America, one of the most popular shows in Latin America, huge in India and in different parts of the world because RT happens to be one of the most respected journalistic networks, content creators in the whole world. It's a very viable, they put a lot of money and they've got a lot of smart people working there.
And I think they generally do a pretty good job with their product. I will say this, I'm not allowed to watch it.
So obviously I haven't seen it that much as an American. It's forbidden for me to have those ideas or that information.
But to the extent I have seen it, super interesting. Yeah.
Super interesting. It's not just news on a loop like the channels that we worked at are.
It's like, here are the eight stories of the day. We're just going to flog the shit out of them and you can't hear anything else.
They have tons of interesting stuff. Yeah, and my show was not necessarily every day about the Ukraine war, nor was it about Putin, nor was it.
It was U.S. politics.
It was a little bit of India. It was about the South China Sea.
You know, we covered all the interesting things that were going on out there with interesting people from around the world who would love to come on and talk to us. And a lot of people found it invigorating and interesting to watch a perspective that was different than the normal perspective you get here in the United States all the time.
I totally agree. And to hear an American perspective, which as an American you brought, is, I think, really cool and important.
And it's good for us. And it's good for it's good for them and it's good for just talking.
And by the way, even if it's not good or you think it's not good, you're not allowed to get in the way of it because that's against our constitution, which is the basis of our civilization. So back off.
A government is not allowed in this country, or so we're told, to tell us who we can work for, who we can watch, or what news entities can deliver news and which can't. You probably haven't forgotten the image of empty grocery shelves during COVID.
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That's 1-800-780-8888. Tucker says it best.
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not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com So then, I just wanted to get that as a sort of foundation for the story you were about to tell.
So then what happened? So this last year, sometime around August, I come home and I'd had a great newscast. Last year, so 2024.
Correct, 2024. So right in the middle of a presidential campaign.
That's correct. Okay.
In the middle of a presidential campaign, keyword presidential campaign. I get this interesting phone call.
I had just come home from work and I get a phone call and it's an old friend who used to work with me in mainstream news. He was a manager at CNN, as a matter of fact.
Ricky, what's going on? Yeah, hi. Oh, my God.
What are you doing calling me? He goes, I just wanted to check up on you, see how things are going. I said, good, Jim.
Things are going pretty well. He says, just calling to let you know that I'm now working somewhere else.
I'm no longer in news. I said, oh, okay.
And where I work, a lot of people

are talking about you. And I said, well, cool.
That's neat. Who are you working? He says, like, the State Department, kind of? Oh, come on! I'm like, no.
I'm like, oh, wait. You work at the State Department.

Who knows? USAID.

Or other

agencies. Yes.

And... You work at the State Department.
Who knows? USAID. Or other agencies.
Yes. And the guys are talking about you.
I said, well, good. What are they saying? Well, your show is very popular.
So come on. Yeah.
I said, well, what do you think? He goes, well, they don't necessarily like some of the things that you're saying. And I said, okay.
And I said, well, they're welcome to come on and tell me, whoever they are. Tell me.
I mean, we could have them on as a guest and we can discuss whatever it is. But throughout the conversation, he was very evasive, but was letting me know that I guess he was letting me know that I was being watched.
And that was part of his mission.

And not only was he telling me that I was being watched,

but he would kind of hope that I would somehow change what I was saying.

But he wasn't coming out and exactly saying it.

So when we were done with the conversation,

I remember I hung up the phone and I thought,

what the hell was that?

Was that a warning or a threat? I'm not sure. Or maybe both.
And then three weeks later, all of a sudden, I'm hearing, and then it happens. The Biden administration has decided to go through the Treasury Department, this little agency called OFAC that most people have never heard of, which controls what businesses in the United States are allowed to exist and which ones aren't.
And they shut down the place where I worked. And not only that, they passed a measure within that provision that seemed to say, and I'm not a lawyer and I'm not an expert on it, but it seemed to say that any American working for this entity will go to jail or be fined if they continue working for that entity.
And that's what happened. And the next day, man, I was on the street.
That's absolutely mind-blowing. So let's just back up.
You say three weeks later, the State Department shut down the place where you work. What does that mean?

That means that they officially announced that RT as an entity and anybody associated with media in Russia, I think is the way they wrote it, is not allowed to hire or even contract anyone in the United States. I, Rick Sanchez Productions, my show, had been hired by an entity to do a show that was airing on RT.
I didn't work directly for RT, but I worked for a U.S. company that was doing shows.
They sold the shows, and they sold this show to RT. So my show ended up being on RT.
Well, they back-channeled the Treasury Department under Mr. Biden, decided to follow all those little loopholes or whatever, and they went all the way back and said, not only can RT not exist in the United States, RT is not allowed to pay money to anybody in the United States for any product.
They can't buy a product. They can't contract anybody.
Nobody can work for anybody who contracts through RT. And if any of those people are caught in the United States somehow contracting or working for RT, I don't care if you're a janitor or a carpenter or a plumber, you will be fined or even go to jail.
That's the new law, according to Mr. Biden, three weeks afterward.
And they said something in the dicta, in the explanation about why they were doing this, that they thought that the Russians were once again preparing to interfere in our election, as they had before in the case with Mr. Trump.
So they were shutting down RT and anybody who could be in any way associated with RT, even though I wasn't doing pro-Trump stuff. In fact, I was criticizing Mr.
Trump during the campaign for certain things that he did, just like I was criticizing Kamala Harris. It was totally unfair that here I am just doing a basic newscast every day, sharing it with them.
That was getting, garnering tens of millions of people around the world. And a lot of people thought it was fair and it was sharing a perspective that Americans needed to hear.
And the Biden administration said, no, you cannot practice your craft as a journalist if you're in any way associated with those people. But it wasn't airing in the United States.
No, it wasn't. That's just pure craziness.
Well, that's what happened. And it happened in America.
And it hurts being a guy who was born in a communist country and has spent his whole life saying we are so different than the rest of the world because we allow people to say and think and work wherever they want and all of a sudden here i was being told i couldn't work or think or or or say whatever i wanted that's that's like unbelievable did anyone from the u.s state department reach out? No. No.
Did you speak again to the sinister CNN colleague who called you from the State Department after this happened? He sent me a Christmas card recently. Did he leave like a horse's head on your bed or anything like that? He did.
We did have your, no, actually we did have a mafia behavior.

I mean,

we did have a secondary conversation. And interestingly enough,

he suggested that he would help me if I wanted to maybe go to work,

like at Fox or someplace like that,

that they could make some phone calls.

Oh,

he could.

So we'll welcome you back into neocon world. If you'll just bow before the throne.
Isn't that kind of a feeling you get? Is that what they were saying? I don't know. It's all so damn coded, man.
It's coded, but the message is clear. When you're living it and you're experiencing it, and thank God, you know, we've done well and Suzanne and I are, you know, there's other people who are affected by this, you know, guys who were producers and writers.
All Americans. They hired teams of people all over Washington and New York, and they're good people, people who worked with you at Fox and people who worked with me at CNN and people who worked in local news.
They're just regular American people, writers, producers, you know, and they're all out on their ass simply because Mr.iden thought that the russians might be mean to him and you know but not even in the united states exactly i will say one of the smartest people i've ever met in my long life um and most patriotic american i've ever met in my life certainly up there uh worked at rt just a fact and i i met on a on a news assignment in a foreign country years ago, and just a truly brilliant person. But anyway.
I found the Russians in general to be, and have found them to be since I've been working with them, to be extremely transactional and extremely honest. Sometimes, you know, more so than we are.
Yeah, well, blunt, yeah. They say what they think.
you know more so than we are yeah well blunt yeah they they they say what they think you know what they want and when you talk to them they're very exact about what they want and i kind of find that admirable it's a it's a it's a it's a you know we're talking in generalities here hasty generalizations are never good there's all kinds of of Russians, just like there's all kinds of Americans. But generally speaking, I found their mannerism to be very easy to work with and for.
So I thought I grew up in a country that took the Second World War seriously and its lessons. Our whole civilization in the US was based on the lessons we learned in World War II from the Nazisis that that's the country i grew up in and one of the main you know so what were the lessons we don't judge people on the basis of their appearance racism is bad right eugenics and all that garbage we're against that and number two we don't demonize whole groups of people if an individual does something bad we can say that and we can punish that individual but we can't punish his his parents or his children or his neighbors because they didn't do anything.
We don't believe in collective punishment. That's immoral.
It's anti-Christian, but it's also the lesson of the Second World War. And so I totally buy that.
I still believe that. Truly, like in my heart, I believe that.
Call me liberal. But it's so crazy to see like our whole society doing that.
And it's like, you don't like Putin, that's fine.

You've got all sorts of like things you don't like that he's doing.

You want to do things he's preventing you from doing.

I get it.

But to turn around and say 150 million Russians are evil or Russia is a gas station with nuclear weapons like that low IQ buffoon McCain used to say and all the other low IQ buffoons in the US Senate, which is like 95% of them, it's a gas station with nuclear weapons. Really? Have you ever read Tolstoy? Have you ever been there? Like, you may hate Russia, but to say it's a gas station, you're an idiot, actually.
And to hurt like professional tennis players because they have Slavic last names. Like, I don't want to live in a country that does that.
Do you know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. I thought it was first they came for the so-and-so, then they came for the so-and-so, and I said nothing.
It's like, that extends to all human beings. If they did that to the Malaysians or the Chinese or anybody, it doesn't matter.
The Belgians, you can't collectively punish people. Right? And we did.
Since you made the historical reference to world war ii last time i checked and there's no american who knows this unless we as parents tell them but i hate to break it to you but the french were not the reason that hitler was defeated i'm aware i know we think this and i know every year or every couple of years we have this, you know, celebration. The French Resistance did it, yeah.
Yeah, Normandy thing where we invite everybody but the Russians. And the French president, whoever he happens to be at the time, whether it's Macron to Mitterrand, sits there and says, oh, look what we did in Europe.
Look what we did? Really? No, I know. You lasted five minutes, dude.
But yeah, yeah. Part of the story.

It's just that impulse, the impulse of the crowd to call someone unpopular and then lynch him. Like, that's a human impulse.
All people have that impulse. It's incredibly ugly.
Civilization exists to keep it in check. That's why we're against lynching.
That's why we're against war crimes. That's why we're against, like, mob behavior in general.
and to see the U.S. government encouraging that,

whether it's against people who don't get vaccinated or Russians or just pick a group, I don't care who it's against. I'm opposed to that.
Right? Just know this, Tucker. And I think you do.
Every time a bullet is spent, every time a helicopter crashes, every time a fighter plane goes down, somebody somewhere in the United States says cha-ching. I hate that.
I mean, you're right. I know that you're right.
Fortunately, wars and enemies are chosen for a specific reason. And more often than not, it has to do with financial reasons.
And it has nothing to do with the good people of this country. Right.
Just like there are good people in Wisconsin who don't want to share their communities with tons of immigrants.

And it's not because they're bad people or dislike immigrants. And they're not the ones who started the problem in Honduras or Guatemala that caused 500,000 people to leave the countryside and come to the United States.
Completely agree. So there are some people in our – I love the United States.

But there are some people in our government who do some very nefarious things, who create bad results that make the rest of us feel it and look bad. That's the shit we got to take care of.
And hate each other, too. They inspire hate.
I don't like that. I don't think a government should ever whip its population into a frenzy of hate.
I think it's really scary. Right.
Even against the Russians. So I'm hardly an expert on Russia.
I've been there a couple times that don't speak Russian. I don't, you know, I'm not Russian.
I'm from La Jolla. But my- I've come to understand their perspective and I think it's a fair perspective.
Well, you worked with them. So that's my question.
You know more about Russians than I do just because you worked with a lot of them. What was their perspective on the war? Their perspective on the war was quite simple.
It goes back decades where it seemed to them that NATO and the United States, which many people would argue NATO has really run out of Washington, have for years broken their promises. It's almost this simple if we were trying to explain it in very simple terms.
After the Soviet Union broke apart, they were desperate for a friend. And we said we would be their friend.
And we would show them how democracy and capitalism works. And we sent the brightest minds in America.
And we even had James Baker say to them, don't worry, because you're no longer our enemy, we're not going to encroach on you. We're not going to point missiles at you.
We're not going to continue NATO expansion all the way up to your border. We're just not going to do that.
We promise we're not going to do that. And then they found out over the years that that wasn't true, that every single thing that we said we would not do, we actually did.
And if you actually looked at Russia and then you looked at NATO now, it's almost like they're feeling a little bit surrounded. Well, because the point of NATO is to surround them.
Yeah, from Estonia to Latvia and there's missiles pointed there and they started getting feared. So now you have this here, which is Ukraine, which is almost the end of the encirclement, and they finally thought to themselves as citizens, and their president said, guys, this is too much.
I mean, now you want to take Ukraine? We got a 4,000-year history here, going back to Catherine the Great. And it's, now you say not only do you want to take NATO, but you're already putting military hardware in there.
And then there was this thing, which they believe is very true, which our government, under a woman named Victoria Nuland in 2014, helped to foment, along with Mr. Biden, who was vice president, a coup in Ukraine that caused a

democratically elected president to be removed simply because he was friendly to Russia.

He wasn't necessarily a Russian, but he was friendly to Russia.

In other words, he wanted to have good relations with Russia.

It's one of the world's great powers right on his border.

Correct.

Be like, is the president of Mexico generally friendly to the president of united states yeah yeah no choice right not on everything but they're gonna have relations we decided it was wrong for the president of ukraine to have relations certainly not friendly relations with russia so we went in and we started a coup which we're we've been known do, as you know. And as a result of that coup, we had the guy essentially eventually removed.
And that finally was the last straw. That's where the Russians, their mindset, their president, their politicians said, this is too much.
This just cannot continue. And that's what led to this war.
So that's their way of looking at it like they were being encroached is it right is it wrong do they have a right to think that way it's not for me to decide maybe historians can decide that but there's another story besides one day the russians just got angry and decided to go after ukraine for no reason whatsoever because they're rebuilding the soviet union and they want to take Poland. And it's like the dumbest storyline I've ever heard.
And there's nothing factually to back that story up in any way. I'm aware.
I'm aware. They have been losing territory, not gaining territory, and they're fine with it and they don't want to go.
They don't want to. I don't think the Russians want to run Ukraine.
Do they need more land with the Russians? No, but part of Ukraine is Russian.

No, I'm aware.

But I'm just saying the idea that they want Eastern Europe. The largest country in the world.
That's like extremely complicated to run. Yeah.
What I have noticed, and that makes me sadder even than anything, because ultimately I care about what happens in my country because my kids live here. And so watching the style of debate in america change to you know a system an age-old system a western system where you know you think one thing i think another we like talk it through the guy with the best point wins right to a system where we just create a villain and if we don't like what the other person is saying, we tie him to the villain and it ends the conversation.

Shut up, Rick Sanchez.

You're a Putin puppet.

Correct.

You took money from Putin.

Correct.

Why should I listen to you?

Yeah.

And it's like,

at first when this started happening,

it started happening a while ago,

I was like, that's so childish.

I'm not even going to acknowledge it.

And then it spread,

like the stage four cancer that it is.

And all of a sudden,

everybody thinks like that. Everybody thinks like that.
that it's like you're connected to russia the latest is qatar which is a country of 300 000 people it's like oh qatar is running our american media it's like so floridly insane but also so like unimpressive like do you really think like that there's something that bothers me so much lately. I created- Kitar! I just, well, because I'm bored and I created a new podcast.
It's called Journalistically Speaking. And I named it Journalistically Speaking for a reason.
I got a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota. I've practiced journalism most of my life.
I feel good about it. I think it's an honorable profession.
But I'm kind of trying to stick it in the eye of the other people who call themselves journalists who work at all these places today. I started looking around and looking at MSNBC and CNN and Fox.
How the people who work at these places were former spokespersons for the Pentagon or the State Department or President Bush or President this or President that. And I'm thinking, and they say, Russians are state TV? We've got literally the person who spoke for the President of the United States is now the anchor at such and such a network.
Oh, I agree. And they're all over the place.
And what is more state TV than that? And most of them didn't even study journalism and have never covered a story and wouldn't know what it looks like if it hit him in the ass so funny and so there's this one chick on msnbc who i knew and i can't remember her new last name it was deb nicole devonish nicole wallace is her name yeah and she was jeb bush's like coffee girl and flack kind of like in the 90s. And I covered Jeb Bush.
I remember her very well. She's totally incompetent then.
But she was incompetent in this very specific way that people in Washington are. She was totally obedient to the message.
Yes. No creativity, no independent thinking, pretty low IQ, nasty.
But man, if you told her to say something, she would just say it. it yeah and it's so sad to see someone like that rewarded in this great country which I guess she has been I think she's a tv show still right Nicole Wallace Nicole Wallace yes yeah yeah they're still on the air she worked for McCain I think she ultimately worked for McCain but I knew her when she worked for Jeb Bush and but I just couldn't believe like she's a journalist yeah like are you joking she's like a flack and not even a good one they're either but obedience was her main yeah and that's how they keep their jobs and that's why the rick sanchez's of the world get fired from those places and the tucker carlson's of the world get fired oh i'm so grateful there was to, you know, I shouldn't even ask you this in the middle, you know, on camera.
Cause I don't know, no idea what your answer is going to be, but there was a guy. Um, well, you don't know what any of my answers are.
No, but this could be, but Dylan Rattigan. Yes.
Okay. So I think I was at NBC.
Brilliant guy. Exactly.
Yeah. And he was on the left.

And I remember thinking, oh, he's like some liberal.

He was not a liberal.

No.

He was on the, like, traditional.

He was like free thinking left guy.

Right.

And he started saying stuff.

I think I was, worked there when this happened.

And he went from being like, oh, liberal guy, whatever, abortion, abortion, abortion, to

being like, hey, why don't we pay people fair wages?

Which is a real thing, as far as I'm concerned. And all of a sudden, he disappeared.
We never heard from him again. Whatever.
And so I thought he was impressive, but I knew that his brand of politics was not acceptable. Whatever happened to him? They did the same thing with him that they did with me.
I mean, you know, they said, look, I know you've got a new contract you signed just a little while ago. So we're going to continue to pay you for the next two and a half or three years.
And the only thing is you can't say anything bad about us. And you can't really take another job unless it's more money.
And, you know, it's crazy. I don't know where they get the money, but they have a lot of money those places.
Oh, I know they do. Because they just hand it out.
And they told Dylan Rattigan, no, we don't want you working here anymore. And it was like they did it from one week to the next, and he was gone simply because he was challenging the status quo.
And he was. And I remember, like, I didn't pay any attention to Dylan Radigan at all.
But then one day I heard him say something. I was like, well, that's, I don't even know if I agreed with it or not, but it was interesting.
And I could tell that Dylan Radigan was actually thinking for himself, and he's smart. I totally agree.
I don't know him. But I remember thinking, this guy's smart.
Yeah. And then he was gone.
Yeah, I got that same feeling at CNN. As soon as I started challenging certain principles, criticizing, for example, certain things, then the elders at CNN, those people who were in that, the row, they called it.
Oh, I remember.

They had this thing called the row.

And it was like five, six, seven, eight older guys who decided what stories went on the

air, why they went on the air, when they should go on the air.

And I remember I wanted to start doing certain stories about some of the mistakes and foibles

that we had made in Latin America, for example, that were causing this immigration thing that was going on. And they said, no, no, no, we're not reporting that.
I said, what do you mean we're not reporting that? I said, you know, to a certain extent, we kind of started a civil war in Guatemala that ended up in the deaths of 200,000 people. And we removed a democratically elected president back in the 1950s, which has led to the problems that have gone into Honduras.
And as the only Hispanic

anchor in America working at your network, I'd like to tell some of these stories,

not to be critical, so we can learn. We make mistakes.
It's okay.

They said, no, you will not do that story, period. Why?

I guess it made certain people in the neocon establishment look bad,

and they were trying to move.

That foreign intervention, especially in a country you don't understand, has massive consequences, generational consequences.

Exactly.

Right.

Have some humility when you act.

Like you bomb somebody's country.

Everyone's like, oh, just bomb the country.

Okay, fine.

You bomb the country, kill a bunch of people, take out a nuclear site.

But like what happens then? Yeah, yeah. And maybe there was a good explanation for it.
I agree. There was something that was going to lead, but you can't just say, well, the guy seemed to have some leftist tendencies, so we took him out.
What? I mean, you know. Especially since he was interesting.
And it does make you wonder, like, the people who remain, and I like them perfectly fine. I have nothing.
I always like Wolf Blitzer. Always got along with Anderson Cooper.
There are a ton of people like that who've just, like, kind of been there forever at all the networks, not just CNN. And I never had any problem with any of them.
Wolf was always nice to me, for example. Yes, Wolf's a really nice guy.
Yes, totally. I completely agree.
And Anderson Cooper never had any problem with him at all. Not a little weird, but he's a nice guy.
He's weird. I never got any kind of human warmth sense from him, but whatever.
But in order to stay at a channel like that for that long, the number of deep moral compromises you have to make is crazy. Don't you think? Is that fair? I was watching you and Cuomo the other day and I thought, wow, the questions that you guys were going back and forth on, I was thinking, does he really not know? Does he really think, for example, not to bust his chops, because I think he's a good guy and generally does a good show.
He's inquisitive enough to ask good questions, but guys like him who you think, this guy is really smart, and when he's kind of defending Zelensky as some kind of novel, perfect leader, I'm thinking, dude, really? I mean, the information's out there if you just want to look for it, or do you not want to find it? I don't know. Of all the New Year's resolutions you're likely to put off, the one you're most likely to put off and keep putting off is buying life insurance.
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What is that? Do you think that it is a kind of instinctive deference to true power that keeps people in line? Is there some kind of conference call I've never been invited on? Like, how does everybody know what the red line is? When you are hired in the United States of America as a communicator, one of the first things you adhere to is the principle of power. So having access, if you're a local reporter in Wichita, to the police chief so that you can go out on the by-busts that they're going to do or the investigation on a local politician, you yearn for that connection.
Somewhere along the line, that never seems to be broken for some people. It's like, all I got to do to be a good communicator is get tight with the mayor's office, the police chief, and then as you grow, maybe you end up at CNN.
Now it's the State Department. No, it's totally right.
The CIA.

As a journalist, I represent power.

And somewhere along the line,

somebody needs to slap the shit out of all of us and say, no, you don't.

No, you don't.

Your job is not to represent.

Your job is to represent the people down there,

the workers, the people who pay the taxes.

Yeah, and your audience.

Those people.

Yes.

They are the people you need to work for.

Your audience, the average American.

And they're not.

There's a lot of people who are not. pay the taxes.
Those people, they are the people you need to work for. Your audience,

the average American,

and they're not. They're like,

the average American's here,

but the people that I really want to impress are over here because that's what gives me access, and access is

everything. Access is growth, and it gives me the next

job. And that's a strange

little thing that we've developed in this country.

Did you ever know Jen Griffin at Fox?

The Pentagon reporter?

I think I may have met her,

but no. I don't want to single her out.

I'll see you next time. little thing that we've developed in this country.
Did you ever know Jen Griffin at Fox? The Pentagon reporter? I think I may have met her, but no. I don't want to single her out.
She's perfectly nice. That's not true, actually.
Pentagon reporters are usually salutes. Whoa.
Whoa. And what's interesting is she just carries the...
She lies, and she carries the Pentagon line, not the kind of top... You know, not the defense secretary line.
He's a political appointee, but the permanent Pentagon, the interests of this agency, the largest government agency. And she just carries her on no matter what, no matter what.
It doesn't matter how implausible it is. And it's a neocon line.
And when you challenge her when she's on your show, which I'm sure you had this happen because I had this happen in CNN. I'd have the Pentagon reporter on and I'd challenge her on a question.
She would complain to management and then management would call me in and say, hey, take it easy with your questioning and what you were doing. Are you serious? Oh, I remember John Klein calling me the president of CNN.
You remember John? Do I remember John? Yeah. We want to go into a rabbit hole here? No, I'm not going to.
But John would call me and say, Rick, such and such says you got to really back off on this stuff. It's like, why? It's a perfectly legitimate question.
Well, she's upset. John Klein was a test of my personal decency and religious principles because I was so mistreated by John Klein in the most dishonest.
No one's ever been that dishonest with me ever in my life that when John Klein got fired,

which was of course inevitable from CNN,

I called him to say,

I heard you get fired

and I'm just so grateful that you did get fired

because you deserve it.

Did you say that?

I didn't.

So I called him on a cell.

This was years later.

He picks up and then I was like,

that's really, don't do that to somebody. I'm a Christian.
Don't act like that to somebody. You know, kick him when he's down.
Don't do that. So I just hung up.
He's like, hello, Tucker? Hello? And I hung up. And that was the best I could do.
What I should have done as a Christian has called him and said, you know, John, we had problems between us, but I know what it feels like to be fired. I'm really sorry wasn't man enough to do that but I did pull back what a moment that half a second on the phone of silence I don't want to be that person I don't want to kick the suffering man I'm glad about your cancer diagnosis I don't want to be that person but boy I was tempted because I mean John Klein I've never dealt with anybody that dishonest like literally I resigned my job at CNN I went to lunch with my brother at the Palm on 19th street I'll never forget this was like back when you didn't check your cell phone all the time I get back to my office and I have a call from Dave Bowder at the AP is the AP writer and he's like call me back right away he's like um I'm sorry you just got fired from CNN we have a statement from John Klein I was like what do you mean fired I resigned this morning I didn't get fired what are you talking about he said no no John Klein called me why was at lunch oh my god I was like are you kidding so I called John Klein I was like is this real and he said and I'm quoting as God watches he goes it's just business it's just business I don't know why I'm telling told that story to anybody, but that was, yeah.
That's a great story. So John, no, but that's how the business runs.
Sounds a little like the mafia. Well, it totally is, and I'm sorry that I...
It's just business. No, you and I have had interesting careers.
25 years later, it's like, of course that's what happened. It doesn't bother me at all.
And we're both better for it. Oh, I completely agree, and anyone who's shocked by that kind of stuff is naive.
And I don't want to be naive. So I'm totally stepped on over your story because you triggered me with John Klein.
Well, here, let me help you. So after the Biden administration decides that they think this entity, which they really don't even understand, but apparently they thought my show was too popular.
And they didn't want me to be popular on a network other than the BBC or CNN. And so they essentially shut it down, thereby shutting me down by penalty of imprisonment.
And I was a little angry about it, so I went around and I started telling people about it all. Anybody who would listen, I would say, look, this is the situation I'm in in and it's very bothersome.
And I got a lot of people, including the Society of Professional Journalists, who said, look, in a country like ours, the government doesn't get a chance to decide who are the winners and losers, who can report and who can do anything else. So they've invited me to actually speak at one of their forums, which I thought was cool.
And then a very large newspaper here in the United States, in Washington, no less, decided they were going to run a story on this. And essentially, they wrote a story that essentially says the headline of, you know, Rick Sanchez, former CNN reporter, challenging the Biden administration, hoping that the new Trump administration will change this law.
And it was a legitimate story, telling the story that I've been telling you, that one day I was working and suddenly this was taken away from me and it was unfair. Perfectly legitimate story.
And it was about to air, or pardon me, be published the very next day, and I get a phone call. Remember we talked earlier about a mysterious phone call? Yeah.
Now there's this young journalist, nice young man, worked hard on the story, smart kid.

And he says, Mr. Sanchez, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but the story that was going to come out tomorrow that you and I were both excited about it, it's been killed.
They're not going to run the story. I said, why wouldn't they run the story? They said, well, because our managing editor, not my boss, his boss, apparently got a call last night from somebody and they convinced him in that phone call that we should kill this story.

And I said, can you give me more details?

Do you know why?

He goes, no, I don't even know who the person was who called him.

And I don't usually work with the guy at the top.

I usually work with my regular editor.

I'm just a reporter, but I've never even heard of a phone call coming from the very top like that and canceling the story. So now, not only did I get a mysterious call that led to me losing my job at RT, now my just trying to share my story with people was being killed by another mysterious phone call.
Well, it was a neocon publication so i'm from dc you're not so i'm um i happen to know the publication very well and um it's a neocon publication and we don't want to say it because we're a young man i don't want whatever it's not my it didn't happen to me so i don't have the right to to divulge it but it's a publication in washington dc that is resolutely neocon and they're like no this is contrary contrary to the story that we're telling. So what you're telling me and what we're coming to realize in this conversation, you and I, is that the State Department, who I know reached out to me when I was working at RT to kind of threaten or warn me not to work at RT, which is my choice and was taken away from me, also then followed up by calling an American newspaper to tell them not to cover me or tell my story based on what they needed as well.

Of course. This is crazy.
It is crazy. This is crazy.
And by the way, I don't know anything about the mechanics of what actually happened. But I can say that there is a conspiracy of temperament and worldview that is not explicit.

And I doubt it's even like a true conspiracy in that.

I don't know if there's. that there is a conspiracy of temperament and worldview that is not explicit.

And I doubt it's even like a true conspiracy in that.

I don't know if there's communication between the parties,

but the people who work at the state department,

the people who work at the Washington post,

the people who work at,

you know,

every big news organization in DC and New York have the same worldview.

And so they know that,

you know,

telling your story,

explaining how your first amendment rights as an American were violated by the U.S. government is contrary to their interests as cheerleaders of the war against Russia.
It'll help Putin. So we can't say it.
It's like, I mean, that seems like deep. And all we want to do is engage.
I mean, I am not here, you know, being a cheerleader for Russia or any other country.

We are allowed to be.

We're not at war with Russia, by the way.

So we are, in fact, waging a war against Russia and have been hundreds of billions of dollars later. To a proxy.

You know, more than a million people dead later, you know, we're losing.

But, and it's all very sad.

But the truth is we're not actually at war with Russia. Congress has not declared war in russia so you've got every right to go to russia to take russia's side if you want i mean i don't think you are to you haven't been to russia and you're not taking russia's side but just to be clear you have a right to do that and it's an inalienable right as a journalist it's my responsibility to represent their point of view of course to put a microphone in front of them and say, what is your opinion of this situation?

And then report back.

But we're not allowed to do that.

I'm being told you're not allowed to get that side of the story.

And if you report that side of the story,

we're going to put you in jail.

So I do think that most journalists obey

because they fear social sanction.

They fear someone saying,

you're a Putin puppet or whatever.

Oh, I hate that.

But in your case,

you actually saw an administration try to apply the force of law. Like, we'll put you in jail.
So that's what I think is different about your story. It's not just like people are embarrassed to be seen as pro-Russia.
They were like, no, you violate the order and you're going to prison. That's a different level now.
And I'm challenging it. As an American, first of all, just from a constitutional standpoint, I think I have a right to challenge it.
And I've talked to enough people in the legal community who are helping me with this, who are saying, if you want to continue doing that, you have a right to petition to continue doing that in the United States. And now that the Trump administration is there, we're getting some friendly responses from people in the Trump administration who are saying, why is Rick Sanchez not allowed to work?

I know. No.
And I can't say definitively yet that the Trump administration will undo this because, you know, things are moving and there's negotiations now with Russia. And I understand the Trump administration is trying to remove some of the silly sanctions that we have on them that are just ridiculous.
But the reason it's so hard to do any of that is because of the leash that remains in place,

which is the fear people have, good people, patriotic Americans have, of being tied to Russia.

So, so total has been the propaganda victory.

You're connected to Putin, Putin's bad.

Pull 100 Americans, 99 will tell you Putin is evil, which you may be.

I mean, I don't know. Yeah.
More evil than like a lot of our allies probably not but but whatever i'm not defending he happens to be the president of a country and they have something to say and we should report it yeah but like it's gotten to the point where that kind of lynch mob mentality is so entrenched in the united states that even to suggest that someone is close to this boogeyman is enough to shut it down. But here's what...
And that's a leash. What they're doing is controlling your behavior.
You're absolutely right. But even on a more pragmatic standpoint, I looked this up the other day.
I said, how much money did we spend to rebuild Europe after World War II? $140 billion in today's money. Yeah.
We've spent over $200 billion in Ukraine.

To destroy Ukraine.

To destroy Ukraine.

Well, that's the difference, right?

Think about that.

If you ask the average American, back then, we spent $140 billion to rebuild Europe after the Nazis destroyed it.

Was that okay?

I think 99% of us would say, yeah, we needed to do that, and I'm glad we did it.

If you went around America and you said, $200 billion of your tax money has been spent in Ukraine,

And then you said $200 billion of your tax money has been spent in Ukraine, and then you said, can you find it on a map? What would you get? And what could you do to Gary, Indiana and Baltimore and Detroit and Minneapolis, like with that money? In general, I think the destructive impulse is satanic. And I think it really is a dualism, either you're creating or you're destroying.

And if you look around and you're like,

the outcome of all these different adventures is just purely destruction,

I think you can say you're serving evil.

I think it's honestly that God creates,

Satan destroys.

I'm sorry to get all heavy on you,

but I think it's just very basic.

Yeah.

Right, isn't it?

Not only that, but I think it's all about engagement, and I keep going back to this idea that I keep having, call me crazy, that my calling is sharing stories. And I want the right to be able to share stories.
And my parents told me one day when they brought me to America from a communist country that this was a unique place where I would always be able to share any story. And I'm being told that I can't share stories.
And if we don't engage with Russia, if we don't talk to Russia or any other country for that matter, even Iran or whatever other countries out there that are supposed to be the boogeymen, if we don't engage with those countries, we're creating a path which is going to be so dangerous that we're not going to be able to come out from it. And that's my fear.
Well, I mean that, right. From a geopolitical standpoint, we've really, really squandered American power to the point where we have less power than most Americans understand.
And it's really scary. I want America to be powerful.
I want us to be able to project power if we need to. I want us to be able to protect our interests.
I want us to stay prosperous and free. And the degree to which we've like kind of wrecked ourselves is not obvious to people.
And it makes me want to cry when I think about it. And how is it that we can continue to convince Americans of these things that aren't true and have them buy it? Are they just too busy? Is the money too big? Is the media too- It's the power of propaganda.
It's how the State Department or your CNN former colleague calls you up. It's like, no, what the, okay.
The people in charge are terrible at building things. They've built nothing.
Our country's collapsing. Our infrastructure is garbage.
Our population is dying. Okay, that's just a fact.
Yeah. I grieve over that.
I want this country to be

prosperous, free, and happy. I want people,

I want my kids to get married and be able to afford

houses. I want them to have my grandchildren.

I mean, these are like basic desires.

The people running it have no ability

to do any of that, to

help with any of that, to actually help the population

of the United States. All they can do is destroy.

And how do they pull that off

without like sparking a revolution, a much-ne needed revolution in their country? They do it through propaganda. And I have been an instrument of that throughout my life unknowingly, a propaganda that lies to people in a way that's so aggressive and all encompassing.
You don't know that it's dark because there's no light. You have nothing to compare it to.
You have no idea. Your worldview is so controlled that you have no freaking idea what reality is.
You know, I was just thinking something which is really interesting and that is comparable almost. I was thinking to myself, you had the number one show in the United States of America at the number one network, and somehow that was taken away from you.
I happen to have a pretty darn good show that was seen by also tens of millions of people, but mine didn't air in the United States. It aired around the world.
Both of us seem to have that show kind of taken away from us one day. And I think, if I'm not going too far on the perch here, that it happened as a result of the same thing and was caused by probably the same people.
Well, of course. I mean, of course.
Interesting. I was so grateful, by the way, because I will always, you know, give Fox the credit.
It deserves a lot of credit for being kind to me, which they always were, of not really getting in my business and of, you know, giving me all that freedom for so long. And I'm grateful to the Murdoch family for that.
But, you know, clearly foreign policy, neocon foreign policy is the red line. They don't care what your views on transgenderism are.
Yeah. Abortion or gun control or tax policy.
All that stuff that we claim is important. They don't think that's important.
Go ahead and do that. Go ahead and do that.
Fight amongst yourselves. Yeah, exactly.
You know, have a race war. You know, great.
You know, you should have a race war. Oh, that's so true.
No, it's totally true. Have another race war.
And they just don't care. What they do care about is the ability to keep the money flowing and, you the coffins filling like they they love to kill and they love they worship money and death and that's just a fact and i know them because i'm from there so uh anyway i i came to this very slowly just being involved in public policy debates my entire life i realized oh the only thing they really care about is the foreign policy stuff and um so I got fired.
And that was like totally inevitable. I knew that it was going to happen at some point.
It was a shock that morning, but like not a shock, big picture. And I was so grateful for it and have woken up happy every single day for two years because of that.
So I'm not complaining. No, I know.
But you're absolutely right. It's the same thing.
That's the red line. There's so many fake red lines out there.
Like, oh, you know, anyone who's... Like, the race stuff was like, most Americans do not hate each other because of race.
Despite the best efforts of our leaders to get us to hate each other, man, they have tried so hard. And most Americans don't want to hate Russia.
At all. Right.
Again, it's North Korea. But it's like, you have to.
You don't even know what you don't know. Right.
And I didn't even know until, like, I'm a huge believer in, like, just looking at stuff and, like, smelling stuff and, like, what's the obvious reality? You can tell me any story you want, but let me go see it. And that's why I've traveled so much.
And it was just so clear when I went to Moscow, like, I don't want to move there or whatever. I'm not Russian.
not Russian but like you've been lying to me about this in a really big way and if you've lied to me about that what else have you been lying to me about anyway whatever I but we should and I now feel compelled and that's one of the reasons I'm telling this story I don't need it's an amazing story I don't need to work because thank god I've done fine and, you know, I'm in a good place. But I want the opportunity to continue to help engage and tell the stories that bring us together as a people.
Russia's story, the American story can be one story. We can share our stories.
We can disagree. We can hate each other.
We can love each other. But this whole idea that we have to be like this is just crazy.
And it's going to lead to a bad thing. Well, it's just so.
And Trump's instincts are correct on this. I hope he can fulfill them.
And the real battle that has, you know, it's never changed for the last 2,000 years was between East and West. It's between worldviews.
And you have the Christian West and you've got the non-Christian East. And the truth is Russia is really part of the Christian West.
And so anyone who's trying to make Russia into the main enemy of the United States is trying to divide and destroy the Christian West. That's just a fact.
So I don't know why people don't say that. It took me a long time to figure it out, but it's just so obvious.
And isn't that funny? We, you know, like Le Mans, the BBC, all these people. I hear these people, my friends say, oh yeah, I don't trust American newspapers or American media.
So I watched the BBC. I said, dude, it's the same damn thing.
No, you need to watch maybe a little India or a little Russia or a little Brazil or just get, if you want to get into a perspective, you want to go to the global South country. It's so funny.
Of course. Al Jazeera.
I mean, just read, watch it all, read it all. Disagree with him, whatever.
But the funny thing is, that's such like the upper middle class, half-wit lady with the beach novel thing to say. You know, I really, I watch the BBC because it's just more.
I don't trust CNN. I watch the BBC.
It's the same damn thing. I've heard that so many times.
Really, it's the BBC.

It's like, oh my gosh.

So true.

Anyway, Rick Sanchez, it is wonderful to see you after all these years.

And thank you for your amazing story.

And thank you.

Thank you.

And for your resilience through many different jobs.

I do respect that.

You just keep on fighting.

Amen.

Amen.

Dale, vamos.

Thanks, man.

My pleasure.

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Thanks for watching. Time for another true life Alp story.
I got a call from a friend of mine yesterday, honestly, true story, who said his girlfriend had just broken up with him over Alp. He wouldn't stop.
And I thought to myself, that's kind of sad. And he said, no, it's not sad.
Imagine if I'd married her. Now I know I was saved.
Then the next day, this same friend is driving at twice the speed limit through a major American city, pulled over by a cop in a speed trap. Cop takes his license registration, goes back to the patrol car, runs him, comes back, looks in the window and sees a tin of ALP on the dashboard, pauses, stunned, says to my friend, use ALP.
Yeah, I do, says my friend. So do I, says the cop, we all do.

He looks at my friend thoughtfully and goes, drive safely, sir, and hands back his license

and registration.

No ticket.

So in two days, he's saved from a tragic marriage to a girl who doesn't like Alp and a speeding

ticket.

All true.

It's more than a nicotine marriage.

In an age of 350 million people are guessing there are about 350 million Alp stories.