Tucker Carlson interviews Dennis Kucinich on a bill to merge the US and Israeli militaries
Tucker Carlson interviews former Congressman Dennis Kucinich about a provision in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.
Summary
Tucker Carlson interviews former Congressman Dennis Kucinich about Section 219 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which Kucinich argues would formally integrate the US and Israeli militaries at the most sensitive levels of national security. Kucinich contends this constitutes a de facto merger — and potentially an acquisition — of US military decision-making by Israel, bypassing the constitutional treaty process and eliminating meaningful congressional oversight. He argues the provision would give Israel influence over a $1.5 trillion annual defense budget, allow Israeli procurement to circumvent Buy American provisions, and entangle the United States in any future wars Israel chooses to pursue. Both Carlson and Kucinich describe the measure as an act of treason against American sovereignty, passed without hearings, without debate, and against the clear will of the American public.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: The NDAA provision to integrate US and Israeli militaries
Tucker Carlson: Dennis, thank you for doing this. A lot of us who've been paying half attention keep hearing that there's an effort in Congress to, in some basic sense, merge the US military with the IDF — with the Israeli military. Same with our intelligence services. It's hard to believe that could be true. Is it true? What do you know about it?
Dennis Kucinich: The National Defense Authorization Act of 2027, Section 219, has a provision that provides for the integration of the IDF and the US military at the topmost, most sensitive levels of our military operations. That is a fact. Now, when you have an integration and you say you're going to eliminate duplication, that's a merger. So they're merging the US military and the Israeli military.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah.
Dennis Kucinich: And in specific areas like artificial intelligence and autonomous functioning of vehicles — which will increase kill efficiency — quantum sensing, which deals with very sophisticated data and will blur the distinction between offense and defense, cyber and electronic warfare, missile defense, space defense, directed energy — there's a whole range of things — and biological technology, including potential biological warfare. What could go wrong, right?
I look at it this way, Tucker: the first issue is American sovereignty. I don't care if it's Israel or whoever. We need to maintain our sovereignty. We cannot allow another country to be involved in the decisions that relate to the national security of the United States of America. We have to be singular and solitary in that regard. Unfortunately, this provision in this bill throws all the safeguards out the window. It's essentially a merger, and one step from a merger is an acquisition.
And think about this too, in context. We had a kind of quasi practice run of this merger with Iran. Look what happened. The United States, at the behest of Israel, goes in and attacks Iran. We were working with Israel on this. It ended up being a disaster on so many different levels. That's what we've already found out from that kind of cooperation. Now imagine if you get two parties formally together and go forward from there. What could go wrong?
The United States must remain sovereign. We must not in any way cede this idea of Israel being integrated — the militaries of the US and Israel being integrated. The other thing is it's unconstitutional. They bypass the treaty mechanism. We joined NATO as a treaty. There's no treaty here. It's just in legislation. This should be going to the Senate at least for approval. They just put it in legislation and make it happen.
And also, people need to understand: the president is the commander-in-chief of US armed forces, each of whom take an oath to defend the Constitution. Israel doesn't have a constitution, and they're not taking any oath to the United States of America to protect our interests. So what is this about? Why are we becoming more vulnerable to a nation whose military values are so distinct from ours?
The sovereignty and constitutional implications
Tucker Carlson: Well, there are so many levels here. On just that point — of all the militaries you could merge with, why pick the only one on the planet that's currently committing genocide? It does seem grotesque. And it seems like this changes the dynamic between the United States and Israel completely, were it to become law. As it presently stands, the United States is Israel's benefactor. Israel can't fight seven wars — or however many fronts they have at any given time — without the United States paying for most of it, which we do. So we can withdraw support and thereby, at least theoretically, control Israel's behavior. We never have, but we could. This would, if it becomes law, integrate the militaries to such an extent that the United States would actually be at the mercy of Israel. Israel withdraws technology and the United States military is hamstrung. It would actually put Israel in the driver's seat.
Dennis Kucinich: That's right. One hundred percent correct. And as such, it's adverse to the national security interest of the United States of America. We cannot be in a situation where there's no oversight. Congress is out of the picture once this thing passes.
Tucker Carlson: What does that mean? How?
Dennis Kucinich: What it means is that this is run in the Defense Department with a coordinator, and just like the daily business of the Department of Defense moves on, this becomes part of the daily business. This integration, this coordination — no more votes on these matters.
And even more important is this: the National Defense Authorization Act authorizes $1.5 trillion annually. Eighty percent of the discretionary budget of the United States of America is now going for military. That's horrific to begin with.
Tucker Carlson: Eighty percent of America's total discretionary budget is going to the military?
Dennis Kucinich: The discretionary budget of the United States of America is about $1.9 trillion. We can spend money on education, healthcare, food and nutrition programs, infrastructure — or we can choose to spend money on a military. And President Trump has made his own case that we've got to protect our country, but there are questions as to whether this is in our national security interest.
And $1.5 trillion annually — that is a 67% increase. The previous year the budget was $900 billion. Now it's $1.5 trillion. Think of that: an increase of $600 billion in one year. Plus we now have a Department of War. Plus Israel would then have access not just to the $4 billion that we give them in military assistance — they have access to the whole thing, to everything. We will be opening up the possibility of Israel having influence over a $1.5 trillion annual budget.
Tucker Carlson: I feel sick hearing this. First of all, we just lost a war with Iran — which has an economy the size of an American state. You would think at that point someone would say, "Let's not continue feeding a system that is failing. Let's stop and assess where the money went the first time before we up the budget." Clearly what we're doing isn't working. You would think.
Dennis Kucinich: And this would give Israel influence over 80% of America's discretionary spending. Let's look at counter-drones, anti-tunneling, directed energy, AI, autonomous weapons, cyber technology, electronic warfare — the national security architecture of the future. Here it is. We're going to share it. And you also have to remember that Israel was a conduit for taking technology from America and sending it to China. There are no guarantees in this agreement that they can't do that again.
Tucker Carlson: And the Soviet Union. Jonathan Pollard's secrets, which he stole from the United States military — from the Navy — wound up in the hands of our arch rivals, the Soviets.
Dennis Kucinich: You don't have to spy or steal if everything's open and you have a seat at the table. And as you pointed out earlier, Tucker — ethnic cleansing, genocide — these are our partners. We're not just taking in the IDF; we're taking in the values that we've seen demonstrated, or the lack of values, on moral law and international law. What does it say about us as a country if we want this kind of partnership in the largest expenditures of US tax dollars in any single area?
The defense budget and domestic spending cuts
Tucker Carlson: I think the majority of Americans agree with you. The polling shows that attitudes on Israel are changing dramatically because of what Israel is doing — because of the fact they're committing genocide. That tends to lower your approval rating. And this vote would, as you said, be the last vote. Congress wouldn't have to be on the record supporting Israel after this vote because it would all be handled by the Pentagon procurement office.
Dennis Kucinich: That's right. And the procurement — that's very significant. That's why I'm saying there's a limited amount of oversight that occurs. You have to remember: when I first got to Congress, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense said that there was over $1 trillion in accounts that could not be reconciled. That was in 1997. They couldn't keep track of over a trillion dollars. Today it's multiple trillions. They had something like 900 different accounting systems in the Pentagon. It's engineered so that money might just disappear.
Tucker Carlson: It's engineered to evade oversight.
Dennis Kucinich: Right now it is. So this time, if we bring Israel into the picture and create this merger at the top of the most sensitive aspects of our national security and national defense — where's that going to go? You're merging, you're integrating, you're eliminating duplication in the context of a country that's involved in genocide and ethnic cleansing. So what do they gain from this? They gain weapons endurance — access to weapons systems they may not have right now. They'll have intelligence depth they don't have right now. They'll have AI targeting capacity. And there's no diplomatic deterrence, because the game is going to be led by the Department of Defense. The Department of State is going to be further diminished by this, for sure.
Tucker Carlson: Wait — what about the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, cabinet secretaries, House and Senate leaders, everyone in the White House? Are they all on board with giving a foreign country control over our military?
Dennis Kucinich: Who knows who's on board? It's in the legislation now, and if they vote for it, it's law. This entangles our military in whatever Israel chooses to do. They want to go to war against Egypt? They want to go to war against Turkey as part of this expansionist Zionist agenda? We get pulled right along. Our country then becomes a target, becomes vulnerable based on anything Israel chooses to do, because we are partners — and we have no control over that.
We don't have any control over what they'll do. It's fantastic thinking to believe that we can bring them into the military and all of a sudden we're going to control them. No. The way you control them is to keep the IDF at bay and try to work out some kind of diplomatic relations — which really aren't working out right now. Otherwise, why would you have so many dead people in Palestine and Lebanon? There is no diplomacy going on. It's basically a license to kill that Israel has.
Tucker Carlson: Paid for by us.
Dennis Kucinich: Absolutely.
Why the US spends 80% of discretionary spending on defense
Tucker Carlson: Can I just go back to your description of the US defense budget as 80% of discretionary spending, which I didn't know — which is hard to believe. The United States is prosperous largely because it's isolated from threats by the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. The threats it faces would really come from Canada or Mexico, and those are not existential at the moment. So why would the United States spend 80% of its discretionary budget on defense? That's crazy.
Dennis Kucinich: It undermines the constitutional imperative of the United States. "We the people of the United States" — the preamble laid out certain purposes of governance. Provide for the common defense, but that wasn't the only thing. Promote the general welfare. Ensure the blessings of liberty. We're moving away from that. If it all becomes about defense, what happens?
Tucker Carlson: Can I correct you and say it's not defense anymore — it's war.
Dennis Kucinich: It's the Department of War.
Tucker Carlson: Thank you. Because if it's about defense, the United States is defended by geography mostly — by oceans, by its lack of physical proximity to people who hate it. We're pretty safe. Always have been. Probably the safest country in the world. But it's not about defense. It's about war.
Dennis Kucinich: And because it's more about war than ever — how do you measure that? You measure it by how much money you allocate. Again, $900 billion was allocated for the 2026 Department of Defense. This year, $1.5 trillion, constituting 80% of discretionary spending.
So what's happened? We've seen cuts in healthcare. They've cut back administration of the Affordable Care Act. The CDC lost about $3.5 billion. Education has just been wrecked. We saw the work-study program — I took a work-study program when I was just starting my college career, working at a plane dealer in Cleveland while going to Cleveland State. They cut that funding 90%. So all these young people who want to get educational experience and work at the same time — they're not going to be able to do that.
There are programs that affect the poor and would enable young people to reach up and get an education — they've cut specialized education funds, cut out whole divisions. Job training programs — job training is about $3.7 billion they've cut from that. They've cut nutrition programs — the food stamp program, which has largely kept a lot of Americans fed — by about $6.3 billion. And with that, there are reductions in the Women, Infants and Children nutrition programs.
What are we becoming as a nation when we arm ourselves to the teeth, inevitably benefiting all these defense contractors, and leave the American people defenseless at home — defenseless against poverty, defenseless against ill health, defenseless against being uneducated? That's the real strength of our country. We're letting that go.
My sense is that it's bad enough that $1.5 trillion is going to go primarily to these arms manufacturers — because those are capital-intensive expenditures. And at the same time, here comes Israel, right inside the Department of Defense, at the most sensitive technological areas, the most sensitive security issues, helping to direct what America does — at exactly the moment when the American public has made it very clear: we don't want this.
How the bill works and who is pushing it
Tucker Carlson: It's hard to imagine a less democratic, more authoritarian response to public opinion polling. Your job — you served in Congress — your job is to represent the people who put you there. You look at the opinion polling, you see people don't want this, and so the first thing you do is something they don't want. How is that a representative government?
Dennis Kucinich: It's not. It reflects a level of control that already exists. Let's be clear: this objection that is being raised here is cognizant of the fact that we've had a relationship that goes back at least to 1948, and more recently, Israel saw to their advantage to encourage the United States to go to war against Iraq. Benjamin Netanyahu sat in front of me in a government oversight committee and articulated reasons in September of 2002 why the United States should go to war against Iraq. And I asked him, "Who else would you attack?" And he said, in committee, Iran and Libya. You can go to the internet and find that.
There's a different imperative that Netanyahu has than what our aspirations are for our country. The people of Israel have to make their own decisions. But they cannot decide for us. We have to have autonomy here. We have to have sovereignty. And I fear for the future of our country if we bring in this genocidal group that has shown no compunction about murdering children — shooting them in the head, in the chest, laughing about it, celebrating their dominance over defenseless people. It goes beyond being heartbreaking. It's insane.
People should be calling their congressman and saying, "Do not vote for this bill. Force an amendment to take that provision out. And if they won't do it, vote against the bill." I would vote against the bill anyway. I voted against almost every single expenditure for these kinds of things when I was in Congress, Tucker, because I knew it was a scam. I knew the people of the United States were getting hosed by these defense contractors, and it became a racket. As Smedley Butler said years ago: war is a racket.
This is a racket. We got pulled into one war after another that we didn't have to be in, and Israel was coaxing it all along. The Middle East region is going to end up in a worse conflagration if they come inside, because they'll be leading the dance when it comes to making strategic decisions in that region. That's just what's happening right now. They have that kind of influence. But this locks it in. This is formal. This is the law.
Tucker Carlson: We don't know who pushed this into the bill?
Dennis Kucinich: Well, we know whose idea it was. Benjamin Netanyahu. He's taking credit for this.
Tucker Carlson: He has?
Dennis Kucinich: Oh, yeah. He says it's his idea. And why would Netanyahu want this? Because Israel is going to have every possible advantage they could possibly have in terms of weapons enhancement, AI targeting, lower operating costs — you get to offload your operating costs down to the US. They can entangle the US into things all of a sudden. You want to fight me? Here's my buddy. And you're off to the next war without Congress ever debating it, no one going on the record to support it. It would just all of a sudden become part of the system. It's embedded in the way the US government operates. They can effectively control 80% of our defense decision-making.
No committee hearings, no debate in the bill. There you have it. One of the most serious changes in American sovereignty in the history of our country would occur without any debate at all. It's just folded into a bill that's probably close to a thousand pages.
The legislative timeline and how to stop it
Tucker Carlson: Could this happen soon?
Dennis Kucinich: Here's what's going to happen. Congress comes back on July 13th. The rules committee will try to meet again. The reason it didn't get voted on this last time is there was a dispute. The White House wanted the SAVE Act — which deals with curtailing certain voter registration provisions — folded into the National Defense Act. In order to make that happen, the House has to first pass a rule. Every bill can have its own rule — it's like, what are the rules of debate for this particular piece of legislation? So they create the rule, and the rule did not include the amendment that would have struck Section 219. But it did combine the SAVE Act and the NDAA.
Tucker Carlson: So you don't get voter ID unless you hand the military to Israel. That's an interesting reduction.
Dennis Kucinich: Well, everything's a reduction in politics, but they can make that case. The rule was voted against because 14 Republican members didn't like the way the thing was set up. So the rule went down, which meant they couldn't get to the bill. There was no vote. But they'll go back to the drawing board, go back to the rules committee, and come up with a new rule. Will they include an amendment that could be voted on to determine whether or not the US and Israeli military should merge? I doubt it. It'll go to the floor again. People are going to be faced with an up or down vote on the bill itself. I'd recommend voting against it and keep voting against it until they take that provision out.
Tucker Carlson: But that could pass this month.
Dennis Kucinich: Yeah, absolutely.
Tucker Carlson: How do you stop it? If you're not in Congress —
Dennis Kucinich: People have to call. This is where we're not helpless. People who are voters watching this from across the country: call your congressman or congresswoman and say, "We don't want to merge the military. Vote against the bill or take it out of the bill." That's it.
Tucker Carlson: But it's treason. It's literally treason. You're handing your government to a foreign government against the will of your own people who pay for everything. My view is if there was ever a justification for shutting down Washington, it's this. And yet it doesn't seem like there's any way to stop it. Call your congressman — does that matter?
Dennis Kucinich: Sometimes, yeah. If people get enough calls, members get nervous. When they start getting nervous and there's slippage in votes, it can make a difference. Absolutely. Now, given AIPAC's influence, will it make a difference? I don't know.
Tucker Carlson: But you won't need AIPAC after this.
Dennis Kucinich: Well, I mean — the humiliating control and all that, I get it. But as a practical matter, once it's done, it's done.
Dennis Kucinich: Wait — this is interesting. There are people now talking about, "Well, we're going to cut military funding to Israel." They don't need any military funding. They're on the inside now. They can direct the expenditures of over a trillion dollars. What do they need a tip of $4 billion for when they can have influence over $1.5 trillion? Watch that. You'll encounter people who will tell you, "Oh, we're going to eliminate the military spending to Israel." Really? And you're going to bring them into the decision-making position in the Department of Defense for the most sophisticated spending that exists for the future national security of the United States of America?
Israel's technology transfers and the genocide question
Tucker Carlson: That's why you see these Israelis and their agents in the United States saying on television, "Maybe we should stop taking military aid from the United States."
Dennis Kucinich: There you are. There you have it.
Tucker Carlson: The lying is just — every word is a lie.
Dennis Kucinich: Called Hasbara, right? What does the poet say? "What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." And there's deception everywhere here. They're trying to deceive the American people as to where their interests lie. But when we keep seeing more and more of the resources of the United States going for wars, and then we get the country that's committing genocide and ethnic cleansing brought into the top echelons of decision-making in the Department of Defense — on a formal agreement, Tucker, that would affect a merger — now people are saying it's not a merger. Well, okay — integration, eliminate duplication. It is a merger. You can call it what you want, but they're going to be sitting there making decisions.
And another thing: it's going to affect defense production — not just where things are made, but we've had Buy American provisions in our contracting. This legislation, I think, would enable Israel to preempt those Buy American provisions.
Tucker Carlson: So typically when the US government buys equipment for the US military, it's generally from American suppliers — the concept being you buy from your own. But this would allow purchases from Israel to effectively count as purchases from America because they're integrated?
Dennis Kucinich: Right. It's a procurement thing. The procurement becomes a fact of life — we'll be procuring more and more from Israel, and Israel will be able to set up production in the US. This is really crazy. This is such a giveaway on so many different things. You used the word treason.
Tucker Carlson: It is treason, and everyone involved in it should be charged.
Dennis Kucinich: Yeah. But that won't happen. And I'm just — not a day goes by where I don't think about the people in Gaza and the West Bank and South Lebanon and what they're living through. Their children being killed right in front of them, their whole families being blown up in some cases. Journalists killed, healthcare workers murdered, ambulance drivers murdered — double and triple tap to cynically just kill everything and everybody. Drones flying everywhere. How in the world can anybody with a heart look at this and say, "Well, it's okay, that's happening over there"? No. If you're a witness, you have to take some responsibility for that morally.
Tucker Carlson: And we're the funders of it, which we are.
Dennis Kucinich: We are the funders. And the American people are witnesses. It's time to say we cannot support this. We should really be standing up and defending the people of Palestine against these attacks. That's my feeling. We cannot be in a position where we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people killed. For what? For some fake interpretation of the Bible that somebody says, "Well, this is my land, this is my home, this is my property"? Really? Somebody knocks on your door and says, "Give me your house." In America, we'd go bonkers over that. We'd say, "You can't do that. Get out of here." That's what's happening every day. And it's happening in South Lebanon now. Settlers are coming in and they're protected by the IDF. The IDF has demonstrated itself to be just a group of psychopathic killers. I mean, you can't call it anything else.
Tucker Carlson: No, you can't. And so the question isn't who they are. It's who are we as Americans. What do we stand for? We just celebrated our 250th anniversary of our independence. And we need to regain our independence — regain what it really means to be an American. We'll help anybody around the world. We've got big hearts as Americans. But we also need to stand up against the abuse of the resources that we give to other countries that are being used to kill people — and kill them en masse.
It's been so corrupting. Corrupting of the United States, corrupting of Christianity — to see good people, ministers, get up and defend genocide as if Jesus is in favor of killing kids. It's been corrupting of politics, of the conservative movement, which I've been a part of for 40 years. One of the basic foundational ideas was property rights — property rights as the basis of liberty and of a functioning economic system. And then all of a sudden they're supporting stealing people's lands and killing anyone who gets in the way. What about property rights?
Free speech — the foundational freedom of this country. All of a sudden you're not allowed to criticize a foreign country. You can't boycott a foreign country. It's illegal. It's totally corrupting of who we are. That's my problem with it. I don't think Israel is uniquely evil. I think everybody is evil in his heart — I'm a Christian, I believe that. But what they're doing is evil, completely. There's no euphemism that describes it more precisely than that. And we become evil when we participate in it.
The historical roots and the corruption of Zionism
Dennis Kucinich: You have to go back to the Holocaust. You really do, in order to understand the thinking. Jewish people suffered horribly in the Holocaust. It is a level of cruelty that the world could not have imagined prior to that. And so Israel began with a great deal of sympathy that people had.
Tucker Carlson: Including from me, by the way.
Dennis Kucinich: Yeah, of course — and for myself. But as you unwind the history and you see where the Balfour Declaration went and how in 1948 the founding of the state of Israel was not supposed to mean the subjugation of the Arabs or the Palestinians — there was somehow supposed to be an agreement worked out. It was airy-fairy in some ways. But what's happened is that there's been a murderous oppression of Palestinians that goes back generations now. And so Israel evolved into something that no one, I think, counted on — at least except the Zionists, maybe, who believe that they have a greater destiny and it's not just this land but, as the chosen people, they are going further and beyond it.
And that's unfortunate, because what Zionism has done is hijack Judaism. My life has been guided by people who happen to have been Jewish, and I think that's true of a lot of people. I mean, greatly influenced. And when you understand the meaning of charity, of caring, of giving — throughout my life I've always associated that with people who happen to be Jewish. I've seen that. I've experienced it.
Tucker Carlson: I have experienced it also.
Dennis Kucinich: But then when you take Zionism — and a particularly virulent strain of Zionism as practiced by people like ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, as well as Netanyahu — it has created such a sore, if you could call it that, for people who happen to be Jewish in this country and worldwide. That's not what many of us understood Judaism to be about, and still isn't. But Zionism has hijacked that, and in service of a political agenda has basically jettisoned spiritual principles that, in my view, were always about what's called tikkun olam — the healing of the world. That's a principle that comes from Judaism. Tikkun olam: heal the world. Not destroy the world — heal the world. And so it's heartbreaking.
Tucker Carlson: That's just beginning, because everyone who committed genocide, or supported or excused it or denied it — the genocide deniers, and there are many in the United States — they're all going to suffer. And I feel bad for them. Some of them I like personally, but they're all going to suffer because there is justice. And if you got behind the genocide in Gaza, you're going to suffer for that.
Dennis Kucinich: I call it a great human tragedy. But here we are, just after we celebrated our independence — 250 years. How do we remain independent? This proposal to merge and integrate the US and the Israeli military is a direct attack on American independence, a direct attack on American sovereignty, a direct attack on the United States Constitution, which keeps us sovereign.
I'm concerned about how drones are hunting people in Gaza and the West Bank and South Lebanon. That's going to come home. Does anyone think that if we enrich this partnership with Israel formally, we're not going to be seeing these drones patrolling the United States?
Tucker Carlson: Soon.
Dennis Kucinich: We're looking at dystopia here. We're looking at a Minority Report scenario. Who are we as a nation? I want to reclaim what it means to be an American. I want to reclaim what it means to be free, to be independent, to be sovereign, to be able to make our decisions without any undue influence from any other country in the world — and certainly not to be holding hands with people who have genocidal intent.
This is ultimately about freedom. Our whole constitutional experience is about freedom. We've seen our freedom of speech undermined in the last few years — college campuses notably. You can't criticize a certain group because if you do, you could lose your scholarship, get expelled. You can't protest on college campuses, which were the cradle of the rebellion against the war in Vietnam. The Fourth Amendment — the idea that Americans can be free in their homes from unreasonable search and seizure. Look at ICE and how they've moved in to knock down doors. We're seeing our basic constitutional liberties undermined here in this country right now. We're celebrating the Fourth of July, but our liberties can't go up like smoke from a disappearing firework. We really have to look at each and every area where our liberty is under attack. And it is under attack with this proposal to merge the US and the Israeli military.
The political dynamics in Congress
Tucker Carlson: But if you're a member of Congress, what are you thinking? Why would you sign on to this? Every public appearance you have, every town hall you do, you're going to get asked about this. People are getting pretty radically anti-Israel — way more than I am. I feel like I'm pretty moderate compared to the public on this question all of a sudden. And you're going to have to live with that. But you're doing it anyway.
Dennis Kucinich: Politically, it's hard to figure out. One does not need to be anti-Israel. We need to be pro-human.
Tucker Carlson: I agree.
Dennis Kucinich: Pro-peace.
Tucker Carlson: Pro-America.
Dennis Kucinich: Pro-America. Yeah. This thing about America First — that's okay with me. That doesn't mean we're not citizens of the world, but we have an obligation to take care of our own people. Tucker, I'm in Cleveland. I see people begging for food at freeway exits.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah, I do too.
Dennis Kucinich: Some of them are veterans. What are we doing with our country? This debate over this section in the National Defense Authorization Act really provides an opportunity for a deeper reflection about who we are as Americans. What do we stand for? Where are we going as a country? How do we avoid future wars? How do we avoid wars that could end it all? It wasn't too long ago that Joe Biden was rattling sabers against Russia.
Tucker Carlson: Oh, I know. And now we're seeing more attacks on Russia. We could easily see a real war with Russia soon.
Dennis Kucinich: We need to pay attention to what our government's doing and demand that we stop these wars. And demand that we not bring in the one country that's hell-bent on war everywhere they turn in order to feel protected. What a paradox — that you're protected by killing more people.
Netanyahu is destroying Israel. He was on Fox News today — which shamefully gives him a platform at every opportunity — saying we need to go fight Turkey, our NATO ally, to whom we're bound by a treaty. We have to have a war with Turkey now.
Tucker Carlson: He said that this morning.
Dennis Kucinich: That's why when I look at this agreement, it is about war with Turkey. It's about war with Egypt. It's about war, war, war — on our dime, their policy. No. Stop it. America, remember who you are. We are supposed to be that shining city on a hill. We're supposed to be the unfolding of a patriotic dream. We're supposed to be the country that is the beacon for the entire world — the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We need to reconnect with the deeper meaning of what it means to be an American, with this journey that began 250 years ago that gave America this ability to adapt and dream its future. We need to reconnect with this advancing tide of creativity and freedom and democracy and really let freedom ring. But we're not there right now. We're in a different space.
You just saw a number of Democrats lose in primaries on the question of support for Israel. It's toxic among Democratic voters — and good for them, by the way. It should be toxic. It's totally unacceptable. You can't be pro-Nazi. Well, you can't be for the genocide in Gaza. I don't see the difference.
Tucker Carlson: How can Democrats vote for this?
Dennis Kucinich: I think a number of them will vote against it. But some of them will vote for it with some difficulty. This proposal to merge the militaries of Israel and the United States — it should be an easy vote for many members of Congress, but they're not going to get a chance to vote on just that because it's folded into a thousand-page bill. So what you have is a circumstance where most members will know this is in the bill — there's been enough commotion about it. How can they vote for it? Because they'll say, "Well, I voted so that our district could get X number of dollars for this defense contractor which is providing hundreds of jobs in our district." That's the logic.
Every single member of Congress has a defense contractor in the district. And these contractors, in order to pass the bill, go and visit the member of Congress and say, "Look, we make this material for the Department of Defense and we need you to vote for this so that our area can have these jobs." Some of them may have been around a while, these businesses. So the member is moved by people from the district who want them to support this program, which may be millions of dollars within a $1.5 trillion bill. Members have a motivation to vote for it. Lobbyists are there from the district.
So then you put this provision in the bill — which is really a poison pill, if you want to call it that — and members then have to look at how they're going to vote, because they'll be attacked if they vote against something for their district. This is a diabolical legislative construction. You put a bill to defend a country — which is excessive to the nth degree — and you fold into it this proposal for a merger. Members are going to be hard-pressed with a vote on this.
But the ultimate issue is: if you give up sovereignty, if you give up independence, that is the overarching concern — not where does this money go. Because once you give up what it means to be an American and to be able to make your own decisions, everything else doesn't matter.
Tucker Carlson: Who thought up this system where you don't vote on specific legislation or issues, but you wrap all these different notions into one thousand-page bill and vote up or down on it?
Dennis Kucinich: From that came the aphorism: never ask how laws and sausage are made.
Tucker Carlson: But that seems designed to hurt the country and to make a mockery of the legislative process.
Dennis Kucinich: The way the bill is crafted, groups of people get together, various interest groups, they go to the committee, they give their ideas of what they want, and a bill is produced. And somebody came in with this thing: "Ah, let's put this merger in."
Tucker Carlson: Well, why not just vote on that? Why not just vote on changes to voter registration requirements, or what weapons systems we should buy?
Dennis Kucinich: They're supposed to, except the rule permits them to do otherwise. They change the rules. The rules are always there to be changed. There's a rule against legislating on an appropriation — doesn't matter. You can have a rule that says all points of order are waived. So nobody can get up and say, "Mr. Chairman, point of order." It's not happening.
This system — people are going to start to pay a little bit more attention to a system which is serving a very small group of people at the expense of everyone else. And right now it's not working for the people of the United States of America. It doesn't matter if someone is a Democrat or Republican, who's in the White House. That system has a specific gravity and a specific momentum that keeps moving forward inexorably to replicate itself.
Tucker Carlson: Nicely put. That's right.
Dennis Kucinich: And that's what happens. That's why once something like this merger is in the bill, forget about it. It's just going to keep going and going. They'll develop data integration — that's another big thing. That's a merger. Data integration. We're going to be operating out of the same fundamental math of what it means to operate the nation's defense. That's how dangerous this is, Tucker.
Tucker Carlson: So there's kind of no disentangling at that point without hurting the US military.
Dennis Kucinich: That's exactly right. It is the ultimate entanglement that we've been warned against. An entanglement in the most granular details, in every sophisticated area of defense of our country, of the future national security policies of the United States of America. We are becoming entangled to the nth degree, and as a result our nation and our sovereignty are at risk.
Who is defending this provision?
Tucker Carlson: Have you seen anyone defend this explicitly?
Dennis Kucinich: No. That's an interesting question. If you find somebody, it'd be great to have that person on your show so you could ask them about the benefits.
Tucker Carlson: Don't just scream about antisemitism and refuse to come on. I've tried.
Dennis Kucinich: We understand that antisemitism has become a canard. It lacks meaning anymore. It's just being used to try to deflect attention from something that's beneath the dignity of human beings.
Tucker Carlson: I've noticed. Do you think there's any chance the president would veto this?
Dennis Kucinich: It's an interesting question, because Netanyahu has basically discounted the authority of the president of the United States. He did that when President Trump was trying to end the war against Iran that was started at the behest of Netanyahu. One of the conditions that Iran asked for was for Israel to stop attacking South Lebanon. That didn't happen. And Netanyahu publicly defied the president of the United States — as if he, as head of a nation of nine or ten million people, is superior to a man who's head of a nation of 340 million people.
This is so strange — that Israel could be actually jeopardizing an agreement that would end a war that has resulted in not just 168 children being killed and the leader of Iran whose funeral is still ongoing right now as we speak, but also had a devastating effect on our economy. That war alone is going to cost about a trillion dollars to taxpayers. Most of it will go to national debt, which is a whole other story, because the more debt we're in, the more vulnerable we are — we've got to make the interest payments, and that means we have less money to take care of things we need right now.
America's in a trap right now. We've dug ourselves a hole, and the only difference between a hole and a grave is in the dimensions. I don't want this merger to lead America to its own destruction. We're not in good shape right now. And when the president of the United States can be told by some guy who's just a hustler trying to finagle his way through another election to survive so he doesn't go to jail — let's be real about this. Netanyahu is facing jail. His policies are aimed at keeping himself out of jail. He doesn't care about the United States. He sure didn't care about what President Trump wants. All he cares about is staying out of jail and staying in power.
And so what does that mean? Attack South Lebanon. Forget whatever America wants in ending the war with Iran. And everyone's going to pay for it — the people of South Lebanon with their lives, and people around the world with damage to the world economy. We all know about the knock-on effects of blocking the Strait of Hormuz or Bab-el-Mandeb, or anything that interferes with the flow of energy — it's going to cause prices to go up. Americans have experienced that and we're going to keep experiencing it, because the opportunity for peace keeps ebbing away.
We've learned recently that Israel was planning to kill Iran's peace negotiators — there's an assassination plot to kill the principal representatives of Iran, because it's not in Israel's interest to have peace. They don't know what peace looks like. They think peace is a threat to their existence. So when you get that kind of equation, you're going to have forever war. And if we bring them into the Department of Defense, we have forever war.
Why aren't we having discussions about what America's interests are here? Because that's antisemitic. Nationalism is a moral crime. No — we've been hearing that for ten years. And I thought Trump would be strong enough to stand up to it, but he turned out to be weak. But it's not just Trump. The system itself is just not working in any way.
How to fix it — and a call for civic renewal
Tucker Carlson: How would you fix it?
Dennis Kucinich: We know that if someone becomes president and is determined to fix the system, drain the swamp, he's going to run into problems no matter what his politics are.
Tucker Carlson: Real problems. Yeah. Or he could get assassinated.
Dennis Kucinich: Yeah. But we have to follow the policy back to whose interests are threatened and who would want to kill our leaders.
How do you cure it? First of all, it starts with America's international policy. We have to stop these forever wars. We have to start protecting our economy and rebuild relationships with people so they still use the dollar, because the elasticity in our economy depends on the petrodollar. The more people that jettison it — whether we're talking about Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, and others — the less trade that happens in dollars, and that is a compounding economic problem for the United States of America. People are getting rid of our treasuries. They're dumping our treasuries. Higher interest rates, more burden on the US economy. That relates to our ability to make our own decisions so that we don't become a vassal of some future IMF or something.
A president has to have a Congress that closes ranks on these issues of sovereignty and expenditure. I come from a discipline of the old FDR New Deal — rebuild America, rebuild the infrastructure, keep building, teach entrepreneurship, teach people how to create things and make things. We have that capacity. We're not doing it. So how do we get out of it? Stop the wars, first of all. Stop the wars. Stop holding hands with a country that's forever on a war path. Must stop that. And then we start to rebuild diplomatic relations with countries, knowing that we can be friends — but don't try us. Let's try to find a way to work together and use our resources to build, to show that America can be a friend again, not just a feared foe.
We need to go back to the basics. Public education has fallen apart. We need to give people a chance to have a way of learning so that they can make a contribution to our society. Personally, I'm for healthcare for all. We shouldn't have these big corporations cashing in on the health misery of the American people. We should have jobs for all. We should have an opportunity for every person who's able-bodied to be able to make a living, make a contribution to society. We need to protect our air and our water. Our water right now ends up being a bargaining chip for new data centers. Why should we be sacrificing the water that people need to survive just to say we're going to be smarter because we'll use more AI?
And you know where it all goes back to? Here we are in America — New England had those town hall meetings from years ago. Norman Rockwell, that painting of the man standing up — freedom of speech. You go back to the town hall, literally, not just figuratively on the internet. You go back to the town hall where people are meeting each other and talking about what they want out of a country. And then you require people who want to be a representative to meet with those groups and hear what people have to say about their aspirations, their dreams for America.
It's a rebuilding that has to happen. It has to happen from the neighborhood all the way up. Tucker, we have to reignite our civic soul. We have to learn what it means to be a citizen again — in a democracy, or a republic as I would like to refer to it. We need to refresh that republic with our own civic involvement. And if we fail to do that, then America gradually fades away into the pages of history. We're not guaranteed this country. Eternal vigilance truly is the price of liberty. And this discussion today is about being vigilant — about understanding at every turn where America's interest might be harmed.
Tucker Carlson: I think the first expression of civic engagement might be national protests against this bill.
Dennis Kucinich: I agree. People should be going to their town halls. You can type in "Section 219 NDAA" and get a copy of the bill. Understand what it means. This discussion today — we've given you some content of what the specifics are, because there'll be people arguing specifics: what the cost is, what Israel has to gain, what America has to lose. When you're talking about merging the most sensitive areas, giving away American jobs, America plus Israeli technology equaling genocide — with no serious discussion about it and no legislative review — this is just going to happen.
People need to go to their town halls and start saying stop. But this thing is an express train. It's coming down the tracks. Congress comes back on the 13th of July and they're going to try to grease the wheels to make sure this thing moves through. They are the people running the government internally and externally — pushing legislation not just for $1.5 trillion for more wars, but to make sure we bring Israel into the decision-making process formally in the Department of Defense through this Section 219, which merges and integrates the defense capabilities and eliminates duplication. You're talking about eliminating duplication — you're together, you're one, you're a single unit.
Tucker Carlson: At some point — because nothing is hidden forever — we're going to find out exactly how many women and children, non-combatants, Israel murdered in Gaza and Lebanon and the West Bank. And public opinion in this country will join the rest of the world in revulsion and horror. And Israel will suffer the same fate that Germany has suffered for 80 years — having to publicly confront what you did, because all countries have to confront what they do. And I just think anyone who's on board with something like this now — these are like the last moments where you could vote for this with a straight face. After this, every person who votes for this is going to have to answer for it in this life and the next.
Dennis Kucinich: Not only are you correct, Tucker, but the consequences of this are going to be felt for the foreseeable future. This is really a moment of truth for America.
Tucker Carlson: You've really added so much to this. Dennis Kucinich, thank you very much, and I hope this makes some small difference.
Dennis Kucinich: Thank you, Tucker. Appreciate it.