Former CIA Russia expert, Ray McGovern, discusses with Robert Scheer the historic significance of President Trump’s latest efforts to end the war in Ukraine. McGovern compares the meeting that took place today between Russian and US representatives in Saudi Arabia to Nixon’s historic opening of negotiations with China which led to the end of the Cold War.

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Credits

Host:

Robert Scheer

Executive Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Video Producer:

Max Jones

Introduction:

Talia Mullin

Transcript:

This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer and I’m here in my weekly Tuesday session with Ray McGovern and it couldn’t happen at a more urgent, relevant news moment. Ray McGovern, I’m sure many people watching this know, was the CIA Russia expert, briefer to three American presidents, and that was Nixon, Ford and Reagan.

And we are at a moment, I think, comparable to when the president he briefed, Nixon, was dealing with going to China and changed the whole Cold War. Maybe ended the Cold War, not chronologically, but certainly took the emphasis out of the Cold War, which was this crusade or need to stop international communism.

Suddenly, Nixon had gone over there, had a meeting with what was the most fearsome communist in the world, Mao Zedong and everything changed. Even though we continued fighting in Vietnam in the name of stopping communism, still, once you go there and you drink with Mao, you can’t have the Cold War based on confronting Mao.

And as I read the news coming out of Saudi Arabia today in the meeting with our secretary of state, Rubio, and two other top people. And they invoked Donald Trump, they say this is what Donald Trump campaigned on. This is what he wants. We don’t have all the details. And his Russian counterpart said something very similar. He said, we are moving into a new era here. We want to stop these wars. We’re going to have to work out something where all the parties are satisfied with it.

We can’t just force them into this. He was very clear. But we’re entering a new era. And it is an era that alarms people who were used to the old era, even though, as he pointed out, Rubio, that hundreds of thousands of people have died. This is three and a half years of slaughter. so I love the idea that we have Ray McGovern here now, who probably I think is as familiar with the history as anyone alive and on the highest level. So tell us, is this like the Nixon going to China moment? Does this have the potential at least to change everything.

Ray McGovern: It does, Bob. And that’s the right question. This is a benchmark. This is the start of a revolution. We used to call it detente or rapprochement, where after a period of great hostility between Russia or the Soviet Union and the United States, there was a fall.

The ice broke and good things happened. Now, when you mentioned Nixon going to China, We were in on that. was chief of the Soviet foreign policy branch at the time at CIA and Nixon was going to play China off against Russia. And he asked, “Are Russians interested in strategic arms limitations? “

And we said, “Well, yeah, they don’t want to be outspent by you, you all. They’re afraid of them. And besides Mr. Kissinger, they’re afraid of your opening to China.” Now, Nixon and Kissinger played that to the hilt. Nixon went to China in January of 1971, and the SALT talks, the Strategic Arms Limitation talks, started to show real progress. Progress all over the place.

There was an agreement on Berlin, for God’s sake, that had been iced for decades.That happened after Nixon’s visit to China. We could say that the Russians were really interested not only in limiting arms, but preventing the Chinese from stealing a march from them in relations with the US.

So long story short, we had— my branch had three people dedicated to the talks, whether in Helsinki or Vienna or in headquarters. And I got to go to the final signing in May 1972 of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which gave solid, solid assurance that there could be no nuclear war for 30 years. I was elated.

I’m of the age where I hid behind my desk, right? I was just, I was, it was not only a professional, big deal, but personally I felt, well, wow, not only have we created a new stable environment strategically, but I had a small role in this. My God, you know!

Okay, that’s number one. Now, number two, when Reagan came in, we’re talking now the eighties, right? I used to brief Reagan’s people one-on-one in the morning from ‘81 to ‘85. When Reagan came in, he had all these troglodytes.

And they told him to say, “Russia’s got to be defeated, you know, Russia is a menace. Russia is the evil empire.” And so he said those things. He said them in 1983. What happens next? Whoa! KAL 007, the Korean airliner that wandered several hundred miles over Siberia is shot down.

Long story short. Did the Soviets shoot that down deliberately? Yes, they did. We know that from the intercepts, pilot to control tower. Did the Soviets know? Did the Soviets know that that was a passenger plane? No, we know that because we have those intercepts. Why is that important? Because we lied about that at the United Nations.

So if there was anything more irritating to the Russians, here they saw that we knew that they didn’t know it was a civilian aircraft. A military aircraft had been there just a couple hours before. They mistook it. It was dark. Anyhow, the Russians knew that we were just about to put them out of business. That’s September, early September 1983.

What happens next? A major strategic nuclear exercise called Able Archer. In which head people in these various countries, including the vice president of the United States were involved. The Russians thought it was the real thing. And it was due largely to one of my colleagues, Mel Goodman, who went to Bill Casey, head of the CIA and said, “Look, the Russians think this is the real thing. They’re warming up their nuclear armed fighter bombers in East Germany. Tell the White House to knock it off!”

And the White House knocked it off. Now that was 1983. We kept telling him — that’s the honest analysts in the CIA — kept telling Reagan, “Look, these people are serious, Gorbachev is not just a clever commie like Bobby Gates and Bill Casey tell you.” And Schultz and Vice President Bush, listen, they persuaded, they persuaded Reagan, “Look, we can deal with this guy.”

Long story short, 1987, the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces, which was even better than the SALT Treaty, the ABM Treaty, because this destroyed in place a whole class of intermediate and medium-range ballistic missiles on both sides, Russia SS-20s, Pershing IIs in Europe, okay? And it was verifiable.

My friend Scott Ritter was the first American inspector on the ground at a godawful place called Votkinsk, where he stayed for two years to make sure that the damn thing was verified. So all of a sudden, what happens to that? Well, Trump, in his wisdom in 2019, gets out of that treaty.

That treaty had been in place for 32 years, not just 30 as the ABM treaty. So does Trump recognize the error of his ways now? Does he give less credence to the military industrial complex and its power?

I dare say he does. Because now we have a situation where after Biden comes in and participates in causing, really, the Soviets or the Russians to do what they did in Ukraine, all of a sudden, after three years of carnage, there is a restarting not only of interests but of contacts.

And the first point that Rubio, assisted by Mike Waltz and Witkoff, the special negotiator… They’re in Saudi Arabia today and just three hours ago they gave a little thing and they said, “Look, we agreed on four principles…” I’ve got it written, I made notes here.

You won’t find this in the major media yet, Bob, because they’re trying to figure out how to report it! Much less analyze it. Here it is. “First, we’re going to reestablish diplomatic relations like we care about them, okay? Embassies in both countries are going to be set up. We’re going to undo the harm that Obama,” mentioned by name, did and Biden did in reducing to a skeleton force what representation the Russians have here and of course, reciprocally.

Second, Ukraine, we’re going to deal with that and we’re going to make progress. We’re going to do it realistically based on the factors on the ground. Three, well, this is going to be a wider thing. We’re going to do things economically. We have all kinds of potential to cooperate economically and we’re going to do that. We’re going be successful in this end. Translation? No more sanctions after a while. [Inaudible] heard it first.

Last one, fourth. Well, we’re just going to move ahead in a productive way. We’re going to meet periodically. We’re going to talk to each other as we have not talked to each other in three years, for God’s sake. And we’re going go… Now, the other thing is that Rubio, when he’s talking here, it’s just like the old Chinese. Bob, you’ll remember this well. Chairman Mao says this. Chairman Mao says this. And the last thing, Chairman Mao.

Now, Rubio is saying, “President Trump said this, President Trump promised this.” So it’s Trump that’s driving all this. He’s got a receptive ear on the part of Putin. And lastly, but not leastly, so to speak, I watched a three minute thing by Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister who’s been foreign minister for 100 years, and what he said was this.

“Look…”

Scheer: He said it in Russian and you are Russian speaking, right?

McGovern: Yeah, I don’t have any translation. It’s just my own translation here. But I thought that… I used to teach.

Scheer: I just want to say there aren’t too many talking heads on television these days that could say, “Yes, I did my own translation of the Russian and so forth.” Usually we don’t have that kind of expertise. And the fact is you have worked these issues, particularly in relation to Russia, both when it was communist and now when Putin, who won against the communist candidate and was favored by the United States after Yeltsin, which we also favored.

But you’re actually, you know, people claim expertise that they’re not entitled to. You know the language, you know the idiom, you follow the issues. And yet we have people right now saying, “Oh, we’re being tricked or it’s no big deal” or “Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing.” You’re telling me this is like the big game changer as the opening to China was.

And that the world may be ushering in an era of peace that seemed very distant just this morning before this meeting. Is that what you’re saying?

McGovern: Yes, Bob. Now, the caveat, of course, is that the Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Media Academia Think-tank, the “MICIMAT” has great power. So do the Europeans who have a very strong industrial capability to produce weapons and they want to reignite that. So there’s many a slip between cup and lip, but this is very serious.

This is a breakthrough and it’s the kind of thing that gives me not only enthusiasm but hope that the specter of a nuclear exchange, which was extant just three months ago for God’s sake, has disappeared with respect to Ukraine and what might fall out from that.

And on this language thing, just a little vignette that light things up a little. When Gorbachev came in, okay. Now, the name is Gorbachev. That’s the way you pronounce it. I won’t go through the orthography. It’s just that… okay.

So Vice President Bush says to me, “Ray, you know Russian, how do we say this Gorbachev thing?” I said, “Look, say garbage.” Bush says “Garbage.” “Now just say off.” “Off.” “Now say them together with the accent on the off.” “Gorbachev.”

“You got it, Mr. Vice President!” And he did get it. Okay” And you’re looking at speeches, “Gorbachev.” Okay. Now that’s a small thing, but take Lavrov. Lavrov is the way you say it, the foreign minister. What’s his name? The guy who is our secretary of state… Blinken never, never was able to get that. And here he is trying to conduct, anyhow.

There are certain niceties that mean a lot to the Russians, like being able to pronounce their name right. Bush got it right. Reagan tried. He got it sorta right. Anyhow, it does help to know Russian. This is what Lavrov said just two hours ago. His came after the first one.

“Look, the way we started out here,” says Lavrov, “is that Rubio, Secretary Rubio said, ‘We have our own national interests. And our national interests sometimes coincide with your national interests, but sometimes they don’t. And so we’re about trying to figure out how to manage when they don’t coincide.’” Now this is the first start where we’ve agreed on these principles, four of which I mentioned before, and Lavrov says “Our discussions were [speaking Russian] very [Russian] useful.”

This is big to say this. It wasn’t a common communique, but here is Lavrov saying this. He says, “We’re looking for a full expansion, not only of our diplomatic facilities, but in discussions about different parts of the world. And we’re really interested in the economic opportunities here.”

Again, read sanctions which I believe will be disappearing very soon. “The best thing is that we stay in touch with each other…” And I think that’s where it sort of peters out. It’s only three minutes, but that’s a big deal. Lavrov coming out and saying precisely what Rubio said in 10 minutes, Rubio with Waltz and a Witkoff. But it’s the same deal.

They’re both, they’re exuberant about moving… By the way, I should mention that Rubio and Waltz were careful to say, “Now everybody’s going to have to approve this. To make this sustainable, we’ll have to get Ukraine to approve and of course Russia to approve. And so, you know, we’re aware of all that. We’re going to talk with our European partners, but the horse has left the barn.” Okay? The European partners know now they don’t… They don’t stand for much. Now after this scheme…

Scheer: Let me ask for a second.

McGovern: Sure.

Scheer: What is it with the European partners? After all, the Greens that used to be a peace force in Europe are part of the German coalition that has power. They may not have power when their election is happening right now. And we don’t know.

But how did it get to be that Europe is hostile to a conservative American president who can be quite bombastic and frightens a lot of liberal people about whether he’s going to get us into bigger wars. And yet when he comes out and says, “What I said on the campaign trail, I’m going to do, and I’m going to end this war because it makes no sense. And so many people are getting killed.”

You would think that that would be a statement that the European governments that are sort of on the left and been open to peace negotiations and others, you know, that are not in the union or so forth, but Sweden and all these other things… You think they would be cheering this. Instead, they’re not. What’s going on?

McGovern: Bob, I lived in Germany for five years and I thought I could figure this out, but I just… beats the hell out of me. I don’t know what happened to the greens. It has to do with some of their other policies, I guess, but [Russian] its… not very smart. In other words, well, I have to choose my adjectives…

Scheer: What I’m getting at is, are they going to be an obstacle to this? I know you, I saw this clip where the German at the Munich meeting was crying and was he crying because this new Cold War might be aborted? You know, what’s going on? Why is Europe interested in continuing a war that’s killing so many Europeans?

McGovern: Because the German and other European elite are hacks. They are supported by the same kind of military industrial complex that many of our political hacks are. I think Max, do you have that little clip? It’s about a half a minute here, but it speaks volumes…

Because the head of the Munich Security Conference tried to end up things. There he is beginning to weep. And Mark especially, when he says, “Now let me conclude and this becomes difficult.” And he can’t conclude. Well, watch the clip, please. It’s only 49 seconds. So if you fall asleep, you’ll miss it.

Head of the Munich Security Conference: Let me conclude and this becomes difficult. It is clear that our rules-based international order is under pressure. It is my strong belief that this more multipolar world needs to be based on a single set of norms and principles. On the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This order is easy to disrupt, it’s easy to destroy, but it’s much harder to rebuild. So let us stick to these values, let us not reinvent them, but focus on strengthening their consistent application. Let me conclude and this becomes difficult…

McGovern: So let’s all clap…

Scheer: Let me just say, that’s bizarre. These people are crying at the possibility that peace might break out. And that these, you know, after all, the people dying, whether they’re Ukrainian or Russian, the Russians side, they’re conscripts. You know, they’re people who, you know, they’re not professional having to have war going on all the time.

You have the economies of Ukraine certainly destroyed. So there is a diplomat and he’s cheered for crying about the possibility of peace breaking out. This is one of the sickest moments in the history of the West and its illusions about standing for freedom and peace.

I just, I am dumbfounded, I had not actually seen the clip, I heard it referred to, but it’s bizarre. I mean, and then you think about it, people like myself who are on the left, we’re supposed to be afraid of Vance. We’re supposed to be afraid of Trump all the time. And there’s lots of things to be afraid of.

But the idea, this is like, I remember this, because when Nixon went to China, I actually had been there before. I encountered this. I watched this very carefully. And a lot of my liberal friends say, is a trick. Why is Nixon going to China? Well, for one thing, he could go because he wasn’t afraid of being red-baited. No one was going to attack Nixon in the way they might have attacked a Democrat if he went.

But the fact is, it was one of the most consequential and enlightening and progressive moments in American history. Without that, the war in Vietnam would have never ended. And the possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was very much in the air and with China increasingly moving in that direction.

And so if you look back on it, it was really the most significant break for peace in the entire post-World War II period. And yet at the time, there was all this skepticism. Now with Trump and, you know, hopefully his peace initiative in relation to Gaza and Israel will stick. We don’t know. I fear that Netanyahu will destroy it and maybe, and Trump is not the big peacemaker there, on the contrary.

But the fact of the matter is, this president, you know, and as they say, most of the people I know just dislike him every which way and fear him and talk about fascism and everything. Well, peacemaking, you know, it’s something we’re all supposed to respect.

And so we’re in for a weird period now. I mean, there are plenty of Republicans who support the war, the wars and so forth, you know. And are we really, I mean, I’ll draw on your expertise here. Are we witnessing this totally unexpected historical moment? Where the guy who is supposed to be threatening all of our sanity and decency, and he is in many ways, nonetheless is bringing peace? At least to a large part of the world, and the most dangerous point, of course, of nuclear war fighting. Is that happening?

McGovern: Well, let me go out on a limb and say, yes, that’s happening. Again, there are forces that will try to prevent this, but Trump has not only initiative, but he’s moved about 56 times faster than anyone ever had moved in the past. Talking with Putin on the 12th, sending our defense secretary to say those bitter things about, “No Ukraine in NATO,” for God’s sake, finally, on the 13th.

Sending Vance to talk about Europe, not having, not implementing the moral values that we all share, not letting other parties into the conference, just not measuring up. As a matter of fact, doing things that remind Vance of the Soviet Union, for God’s sake. All right. And then the next day.

Okay, the next day Rubio and Lavrov talk. And that set this whole thing up. They said, “Look, we have to repair our diplomatic relations. We have the people, our establishments, and we have to talk.” And that set up this under– referring to Trump and Putin, the meeting today in Saudi Arabia. Now what happened right after the Munich conference? Well, the Europeans didn’t know what to do.

And as most bureaucracies operate, when you don’t know what to do, you hold a meeting, right? So they held a meeting. The head of France said, “Come to Paris and we’ll all talk about this.” And the head of Britain that has no army says, “We’re going to send troops to, we’re happy to send troops to Ukraine.” A crazy notion. The others say, “No, can’t do it.” So there’s no unity. They’re just trying to figure out what to do.

So this is a major breakthrough.

Scheer: Why don’t they welcome? No, I want to push this. And know, first of all Rubio is a hawk and you know, these are not. And Trump is certainly capable of being very warlike, at least in his rhetoric and, you know, judgmental and so forth. But if there is, in fact, a possibility of a peace and they scored it, it’s not going to…

It has to be durable. They outlined those conditions. It has to be accepted by all sides. They’re not saying our way or the highway. They’re saying a real peace cannot be like the previous attempts, which, after all, preceded the Russian invasion. There were agreements. And then we know some of the European leaders said they were just playing for time and they didn’t really mean it and so forth.

But the fact of the matter is I still don’t understand how at a time when we’re worried about the world blowing up, as well as of course from natural causes or manmade climate change causes, but the real risk of nuclear war is like big now, huge.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says it closer than ever. And that we have the possibility of a breakthrough. And yes, everybody says “It could go awry, it could not work, it has to appeal to people who might not come to some ground.”

But I do not understand the initial reaction that you’re trying to get peace in that region. I don’t get it. And I think it will continue in terms of relations with China, because after all, Trump has said, “After this, we also want to deal with our China issue and work out how we can be better.”

Why in the world would not, would the mass media with these respected politicians, they could say, “We’re going to question, we’re going to have our concerns, we’re going to hold them accountable, verify, et cetera.” I’m dumbfounded by the militarism that is passing as logic and reason and sanity!

That if you are not making active war and killing hundreds of thousands of people, you’re not providing stewardship of the land and you’re not furthering democracy. It’s— correct me if I’m wrong…

McGovern: No, its great.

Scheer: Because I don’t want to exaggerate. But isn’t this a moment of really exposure of what our establishment traditionally during this period has been all about? That they actually want war?

McGovern: Well, you know, they always thought that they could stop short of real war, like a war that would affect the United States, you know. War, you know, up to nuclear war there, we could tolerate. As a matter of fact, we could encourage that if it weakens Russia. So we’ve had Russian experts, so to speak, telling various presidents that we could weaken Russia by trying to defeat them in a place where Russia could never be defeated.

And Obama said that. Obama said, with his reluctance to give offensive weaponry to Ukraine, he said, “Look, the worst thing we could do for the Ukrainians would be to give them the idea that they could ever prevail in a war against a much stronger Russia.” Well, he was right about that. Why did Biden reverse that? These clucks were Blinken, Sullivan.

These young kids with nice polished shoes don’t know a damn thing about Russia. Okay. Now it’s come full circle. Now, and an answer to your observation there, Bob, we didn’t say “It’s our way or the highway today,” but we did in Munich. We did in Brussels. We did the week before. In other words, the Europeans are gobsmacked.

They weren’t prepared for this. They profiteer on all this warmongering. They are the elite that knows what’s best and what’s best is all.

Scheer: Yes, yes and no, because in fact, Germany was doing— first of all, one thing we have to be very clear, because it’s lost in all the conversation. Putin, whatever his background and yes, he was in the military there, Putin is somebody who opposed Gorbachev. Putin is somebody who believed communism had to end.

He was a supporter… He was brought actually to Moscow by Yeltsin, who we favored. So Putin was somebody who was pro-US, was accepting of our leadership and so forth. Putin only becomes a problem where he says, “Wait a minute, we got to get something for Russia here.” Okay, we understand that. But I want to go to the heart of your question. Why do these people who claim to be enlightened, liberal, so forth, people not see that war is a bad thing?

That’s really what I’m trying to get at. Now I know in Germany, the people who make those cars that they have to sell in China, for instance, you know, Volkswagen and so forth, they don’t want a war with China. I doubt it whether Musk, Elon Musk wants a war with China, even though noises are there because he’s making up more than half of his Tesla there. And you could go down the line.

Who’s benefiting from this? Why in the world, and certainly not the Ukrainian people, why in the world would you say that the very idea of moving aggressively and at the same time, everybody’s agreed that this does not satisfy the concerns and needs of all the parties involved. Okay? And yes, you have to look critically at it. There’s room for debate.

What kind of deal, what is given up, what is accepted, we all know that. But I cannot understand how these respected enlightened politicians, and I’m not being sarcastic, people who parade that they don’t like Trump, he’s boorish, he’s crude, he’s untutored. The guy crying there in that thing, these are supposed to be the sophisticated, enlightened, liberal people. How in the world would you cry at the prospect of peace breaking out? This is an absurd moment. Do you see it differently? I don’t know.

McGovern: Well, Bob, you asked the usual.

Scheer: I’m being naive, right?

McGovern: No, no, you’re asked a pointed question here. Who profits from all this? Who could possibly profit from that? Well, it’s not naivete. It’s just that it’s not ordinarily inverted to when you’re thinking these things, but it’s the Military, Industrial, Congressional, Intelligence, Media, Academia, Think-tank Complex.

Scheer: I got that, I got that. And I’ve heard you give that speech, but I’m asking you a different question. Germany was successful without being militaristic. This, after all, this was the country that wasn’t even supposed to ever have an army, right? This is the country that had visited the worst havoc and nightmare and murder and killing that the world had ever seen.

So the idea, Germany was very prosperous when it pursued a path of peace, when they were forced for peace. And in fact, they were benefiting from their trade with Russia. They built the pipelines that the US was certainly aware were being blown up if we didn’t author it. Sy Hersh makes a compelling case that we did.

The fact of the matter is the German economy is suffering. The reason they may get a new right-wing government is because social democracy has been considered a failure. German people are not doing well. Same thing in France. You’ve got a leader there who’s a minority leader now, Macron.

They’re not benefiting from the profit of war and so forth. And now, Trump is even demanding they up their contribution to war. So yes, you can look for a profit motive. But I see this as a deeper irrationality that obviously these are smart people and they know that there’s a place for the European economy quite apart from manufacturing weapons.

And they’re rejecting that. This guy is crying. Imagine, I mean, he could say we have to be concerned, we have to be balanced, we have to make sure the Ukrainian people are not hurt. Those are all legitimate, understandable, necessary comments. But to cry at the possibility that you might have a negotiated agreement that ends the war and still produces stability and decency and saves lives.

I just don’t get it. I don’t get that video you showed. I just don’t get it. And he’s hugged, right, by another leader of the whole European thing, and the crowd is cheering. What are you cheering? That you want this madness of hundreds of thousands of ordinary, vulnerable citizens in the Ukraine and also the ones that are conscripted from Russia? And you’re cheering that somebody says, is what, bad thing to do?

McGovern: Bob, sociopath comes to mind. These elite people don’t give a rat’s patootie what happens to Ukrainians on the battlefield. That much is abundantly clear, okay? They are political hacks that bubble to the top with the patronage of the United States of America. And when Obama, in his wisdom, allowed Victoria Nolan and Kerry and the rest of them to do a revolution or coup in Kiev in February of 2014.

They all said, “Oh yeah, do you think we can weaken Russia this way? Oh yeah, maybe we can.”

Scheer: Why do they want to weaken Russia? Russia was their trading partner. Russia was giving them cheap oil.

McGovern: Because they’re stupid. See, I don’t agree that they’re the smartest people. I think they’re not the best and the brightest. They’re the worst and the dumbest. OK, look at these people. They’re all hacks. Macron. Scholz. Scholz stands there. Well, Biden says “Nord Stream 2 is not going to happen if the Russians go into Ukraine,” which he knew they were going to do the next week, for God’s sake.

When he’s asked to react, He says, “Well, we always do everything together. We do things together.’ And no one asks him in Germany, “Well, did Biden tell you that we were going to do this together or did he not tell you until he did it the following September?” Nobody asked because the press is part of the MICIMAT. The media is the cornerstone for the military industrial-rest -of-it complex.

So these people bubble to the top… they get associated with a doomed policy, even Obama pointing out how doomed it was to try to fight a much stronger Russia. And they’re hoisted by their own petard when all of a sudden they’re gobsmacked by people like Vance who say, “Look, you guys remind me of the old Soviets in prohibiting free speech and not letting parties participate in all that cancer. You ought to look to your own skirts, because I think the internal problem and not Russia or China is yours.”

So it’s gobsmacked is the word, I think, and they don’t know how to deal with it. Now, think, Bob, just to finish this little thing, I think that when somebody sensible gets up and says, “Hey, guys, don’t worry about it.” ”What do you mean don’t worry about it?”

“Don’t worry about it, because when Biden said the Russians are going to take over all of Ukraine and then Poland and then the… Maybe a little more of that. There’s nothing to substantiate that. Russians don’t want that. Why would they want that? Forget about it. The Russians aren’t a threat.” Okay. And Rubio and others are saying precisely that.

So there are ways we can put this house together, but you have to get rid of one, Trump derangement syndrome. And number two, the notion that Western European or Eastern European or whatever people, NATO, is inviolable and that NATO knows best because NATO is just pretty much wrecked.

Scheer: Okay, so let’s summarize and then we’ll end this and of course we can come back and talk about it as it develops, but it is, at the very least, probably the most profoundly confused moment in American politics and world politics, that you’re actually saying that for all of our fears, and I have a lot of fears about President Trump and his rhetoric and what he’s doing domestically and what’s happening with Elon Musk and so forth.

Nonetheless, when Trump does something that apparently, and I can’t see what the failing is here, I agree with Marco Rubio. I think… I very rarely agree with what he has said over the years. He seems to want to reclaim Cuba and so forth. Started war and a lot of these Republicans were clapping over everything that Netanyahu said when he came there and all that.

But nonetheless, we’re at a moment where, and this goes to your Trump derangement syndrome, and it was the same moment. I want to conclude this by what I began with at the beginning. It was very difficult for people to accept the idea that Richard Nixon might be doing the enlightened thing. I remember it very clearly. I found it hard to accept.

In fact, 10 years after he was in office, I did a long piece about how he came to do that. And he was the only person who liked my piece. He invited me to go talk to him and I did. Had a nice conversation, wrote a story about it. And the fact is Richard Nixon did. He did actually see the folly of war and where it was leading. And I give him more credit than I would even give Kissinger because he started that even before he became president and he hadn’t even mentioned it in his campaign that he wanted to change the relation to China.

Not in the way that Nancy Pelosi did by going to Taiwan and stoking that old dispute. But no, let’s see who we can do business with Mao. Well, Mao was a communist, was very fierce, was a revolutionary. Putin is not that person, right? Putin catered to the oligopoly in his country, catered to capitalism.

He’s not on the left, he’s on the right and so forth. Nonetheless, let’s conclude this if I understand this correctly. We are in a situation where the people who claim and okay, not the hacks, hacks, hacks, but people that I will run into today.

I haven’t done it yet, but when I run around today here in Los Angeles and I talk to people, I suspect that most of the people that I think of as enlightened and reasonable and pro-peace and so forth, will be looking askance at Trump having moved us somewhat closer.

We don’t know how far, we don’t know how determined, but certainly in the right direction of making peace with a nuclear power that has as many weapons as we do, and that if things go awry, they will use them just as we will use ours. So we are at a moment where there should be, I would think, some rejoicing, considerable rejoicing.

Yes, as is always used to say, you have to verify, you have to make sure the agreement makes sense for everyone, that the Ukrainian people who have suffered enormously, that they get out of this a sanity, a safety, and indeed a prosperity that they’re deserving.

Yes, but if that happens, this guy is going to be the first one given the Nobel Prize who actually deserves it, if he can pull that off. That doesn’t wipe out all the other stuff, any more than Nixon. I’m not saying then you say everything Nixon did was okay, it wasn’t, you know? But the fact of the matter is, Nixon’s achievement and ending the horrible world situation tense, a Cold War about to become a hot war with China, yes, that was world changing.

There is that potential in what Trump is now doing. And you know, the real problem is not just that these people are on the take or they’re hacks. Because not all the journalists at the mass media are hacks, although they have to report sometimes to hacks. The fact is people get hold of principles like this Trump derangement syndrome and they get invested in it. And the facts of what’s changing or what’s going on don’t even interest them that much.

They’re going to hold to their theories, you know? And yes, Trump is, in his first weeks in office, has done things that are actually quite despicable. But there is another side, and that other side is not chump change. It’s the ballgame. It’s the survival of humanity having peace. I’ll give you the last word, and then we got to end this. We never stick to the half hour. We always say we are. We’re now at 45 minutes and 28 seconds.

Take as much as you want to wrap it up and more satisfactorily than I just did.

McGovern: Who was the author who said “The problem is not what Americans know, it’s what they know that ain’t so.” This is the key here. Most Americans have been brainwashed and I use that term, an extreme term, advisedly.

Scheer: So you come from 27 years in an agency that did its fair share of brainwashing.

McGovern: That’s a different kind. What we have now is a mass media that has brainwashed everybody into thinking that number one, the Russians were single handedly responsible for Hillary Clinton losing the election in 2016, okay, and putting the hated Trump in office. Okay? There are Americans who believe that the Russians hacked into the DNC emails and use those so that Hillary Clinton would be discredited.

Of course, they were very discrediting, but that never happened. And we have court testimony disproving that under oath. So these Americans are conditioned. Okay? They’re conditioned to believing that Putin is evil and the Russians are trying to take over not only Ukraine, mind you, but Poland and the Baltics. And God knows they won’t stop.

Now, no American knows that… Guess what, folks? The Russians did stop. When did they stop? They stopped in March, April, 2022, six weeks after they started. What do you mean, McGovern? Nobody knows that Putin and his negotiators meeting with the Ukrainians came to a deal, a deal in Istanbul, where Ukraine would forswear any membership in NATO.

There’d be a ceasefire, there would be a deal where those Russian speaking provinces in Ukraine would remain in Ukraine and who put the kibosh on that but the US and the UK. So all I’m saying here is that once Americans can learn that they’ve been sold a bail of goods a bit… if they can learn that Rachel Maddow is not the person to execute truth on Russia…

Then they’re really like, my God, so have we… so the Russians don’t want to take over the rest of Europe? No, no, the Soviets did! But there was a… Soviet Union fell apart, people! And there’s no sign at all. A matter of fact, George W. Bush, for whatever else he was worth, said, “Look, the Russians are trying to build their society. So are the Chinese. We have nothing to fear from their attempts to build their own societies.”

George W. Bush! And then Obama and the rest of them come in there. And so what I’m saying here is that this is the first consequential thing. Now, the other consequential thing of what we call Russiagate is Trump. Trump has been traumatized. Trump, they tried their damnedest to make them lose the election in 2016 and then again this year or last year.

They didn’t… Well, they did everything they could. He knows chapter and verse. He’s going to get Kash Patel in his head of the FBI. Who knows where all those decrepit bodies like Bob Mueller and Jim Comey and James and John Brennan lie. OK, so what… He’s traumatized. He doesn’t want this to happen again. And he’s saying, “Look, you know, I don’t have to abide by this deep state anymore. I’m going to get people like Witkoff and people in from the outside and people who know what the score is, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, and I’m going to change all this.”

That’s a formidable task. Will he succeed? Well, I think in part it will depend on whether American people can see that the Russians don’t want to take the rest of the world over anymore and that this will become clear even to our European partners when they realize that look, we don’t have to worry about the Russians anymore.

And we sort of realized that all along, witness the fact that we didn’t build one five five millimeter shells that we would have to use against the Russians. We never built those because we never thought the Russians really would endanger Western Europe.

So once everyone kind of realizes… It’s going to take months, OK? Rachel Maddow is going to have to— her readership over this, her viewership will have to go down. But there is sense to all this and if Trump can come through on this, and it seems likely to me that he’d be able to do this, at least initially, I applaud him for doing it, and Putin as well.

Now, the last thing I’ll say is that we have to be careful here, because I hear my wife’s voice ringing in my ear, “Ray, for God’s sake, make sure they don’t think that you’re a Trump supporter.”

I’ve been saying I thought Trump was the worst president the US ever had until Biden came in. Now, I think it’s a close second, but I’m apolitical. What I recognize is that these Russiagate things are consequential, both in the sense that they get Americans to believe unbelievable things and in the sense that they motivate Trump now.

Trump, Russiagate, they motivate him to carry out what he wants to do and to hell with the deep state. I don’t know if he’s going to succeed about that. I wouldn’t give him better than a 50-50 chance, but he’s trying and I applaud him on Ukraine. I am disgusted by his by his attitude toward genocide in Gaza. Hopefully, that will change as well.

Scheer: Well, that is a good point on which to end. And yes, I obviously encounter the same thing also with my wife and other people. You know, don’t… you know why— But I remember my own mother when I wrote about Nixon and I did a retrospective 10 years he was in office and my mother read it. She was the first person to read it. She was already older than I am now, just about my age and 88 or so.

No, 85 when that happened. And she said, you know, her thing, “He needs you?” You know, like, why do you have to say a kind word about Nixon? And my answer as journalist. No, Trump certainly doesn’t need me. And I agree more forcefully, maybe than you expressed it, that what’s going on with Gaza and Israel is despicable, evil, you know, a support of genocide.

So I and I think a lot of what Trump’s domestic initiatives are atrocious, certainly his attack on the gender issue on people, their life choices, they’re trying to ease their suffering and pain, attack on the whole idea of government. But the very fact that one has to provide this evidence that you’re not a Trump supporter, you know, I didn’t have to…

You know, but if you said something kind about Obama, I actually contributed money to his campaign. And people say, but when Hillary Clinton went in there and they destroyed Libya and so forth, and I criticized, “Oh you can’t do that because that will give support to the enemy, the republicans.” That’s the end of reason. That’s the end of logic.

I can condemn Trump as forcefully as anybody, probably lose your job over it on what’s happening in Israel, giving Netanyahu a blank check, you know, and the idea to just displace all the Palestinians. I mean, it’s evil, vicious. But why do I have to even do that if I’m talking now about a peace initiative with the Ukraine? What is the loyalty test here? Why don’t we just try to pursue the truth and see how it affects ordinary people?

And the fact of the matter is there are a lot of people dying. Yes, they’re dying in Israel and in Gaza. They’re dying and peace has to come. And maybe Trump is not going to do the right thing. So far, it’s very worrisome. On the other hand, other innocent people are dying in very large numbers in the Ukraine and the peace of the whole world and Russian conscripts…

And the peace of the whole world is obviously threatened by nuclear powers going at each other in this irrational way, including some in Europe. They also have some nuclear weapons, know, in England and France and so forth.

But the fact of the matter is, if we can’t think rationally about it, and here you have a peace initiative and evaluate it for what it is and condemn it because it’s coming from the wrong guy that we’re not supposed to have a kind word to say, Trump, you would have said the same thing about Nixon. That’s why I began this with it.

It was very hard to accept what Nixon did. But what Nixon did could arguably have contributed more to the safety of the world and the survival of the planet since then than what anybody else did. Certainly was more effective than Truman dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was certainly more effective than Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson getting us into that war in Vietnam that never made any sense.

You know, and yes, Nixon did bad things. He did the bombing of Cambodia. Did a lot of things. But why do you always have to play this game? The fact of the matter is we’re now talking about a peace initiative towards Russia in regard to the Ukraine war. And hopefully it will work out. And the idea that we have to beg people to be rational about it is truly frightening. I’ll end on that note, and we’ll be back next Tuesday to check out whether the world’s still here and in what state it is.

See you next week. And that’s it for this edition of Scheer Intelligence. I want to thank Joshua Shear for being the executive producer, Diego Ramos for writing the introduction, Max Jones for doing the video and the JKW Foundation.

And then in memory of a very independent journalist and writer, Jean Stein for putting up some money to help us do this and Integrity Media from Chicago, Len Goodman’s group, providing additional funds as well as our readers. See you next week with another edition of Scheer Intelligence.