Piers Morgan Uncensored - Tulsi Gabbard: Trump's Next Vice President?

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Tulsi Gabbard is an American political wayfarer. Having joined the Democratic Party in 2002, Gabbard rose through its ranks and became a well-known but divisive figure. She left the Democratic party in October 2022 saying it had changed dramatically, and has since become a conservative darling amongst Republicans. While discussing her new book, ‘For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind’ with Piers Morgan, Gabbard takes aim at her former colleagues with the bold claim that “the Democrats are undermining the rule of law” while also accusing President Biden of “not acting with strength”. YouTube: @PiersMorganUncensored X: @PiersUncensored TikTok: @piersmorganuncensored Insta: @piersmorganuncensored Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I see young students, some of them chanting death to America, when you hear that, what does that tell you? This radical Islamist ideology that has taken over so many of our schools. Vice President to President Trump, would you accept the job if you were offered it? I would. Come on, Tulsa, you're a smart person. You must accept President Trump is simply wrong. The election was not stolen by vote rigging.

When people raise concerns around the integrity of our election, they should not be so easily dismissed. I'm baffled why people like you seem to think it would be an inevitable thing to happen that Putin wins. I don't think that's an accurate characterization at all. What President Biden should have done from the very beginning was Broker of Peace deal.

If this was an attack on American soil, you would want every single inch that was taken. The feeling and the emotion is very different from the reality. is Tulsi Gabbard, have you ever killed a dog? She's an adult. She's a former member of Congress. She has the opportunity to make her case to the American people. You haven't actually answered that question.

Tulsi Gabbard has done it all. I'm not just talking about podcasts and the cable news circuit. She served the U.S. Army in Iraq. She's a vegetarian. She was vice chair of the Democratic National Committee until she backed socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. And she later ran as a Democrat presidential candidate herself before quitting the party altogether.

She's now backing Donald Trump. And many people want her to be his running mate. So is Tulsi Gabbard, the Across the Isles unifier that can power Trump back to the White House, or the ultimate political identity crisis? Well, she can tell me herself, because Tulsi Gabbard, author of the new book, The Love of Country, joins me now.

Tulsi, great to have you on our sensitive. Thank you so much. It's great to be here with you. That was quite an intro, because it's been quite a life. When you shut the last page of your book, what did you conclude about yourself? I know exactly who I am and my purpose, my purpose being to do my best to serve our country to try to live a life that's pleasing to God and make the most impact I possibly can to have that, to have that positive impact.

Our country, unfortunately, is in a state of crisis. We are far more divided than I've experienced in my life. lifetime and we're facing both domestic and foreign policy crises. Now is a time for us, and this is a message I'm carrying to voters across the country from all different political backgrounds, people who hold different positions and different views on issues, really reminding us all that we've got to remember the responsibility that our founders endowed upon us through our founding documents and principles and values, that we, the people, get to decide who serves in our government.

And if we are not happy with the direction our country is headed in, then only we can be that solution by holding leaders accountable and beginning to get our country back on track. That can only come together if we set aside our differences on some issues, but come together around the fundamental principles of freedom that define us as who we are as Americans and define our country. Talsy, the full title of your book is, for Love of Country, Leave the Democrat Party Behind. You were a very high flyer in that Democrat Party.

Was there one tipping point for you in the end that forced your decision to leave? Ultimately, peers, it came down to many, many years of unfortunately seeing how those in power in the Democratic Party were moving us in the wrong direction. When I first joined the Democratic Party, it was 2002. I was 21 years old, looking to run for a seat in our state legislature. I didn't come from a family that had deep political ties to one party or another. And certainly our parents were not telling us as kids. I'm the fourth of five, you must follow this party or that party. And so I really took a look both in our local politics in Hawaii and our history of the Democratic Party,

but also looking at some of the leaders, national leaders, that I was inspired by, President John F. Kennedy, Reverend Martin Luther King, people who to me embodied a true, true leadership that was focused on service. And what I saw in the Democratic Party at that time over 20 years ago was a party that celebrated free speech that was willing to defend the free speech and civil liberties of every American, even those who they may not agree with or who they may not be aligned with politically. and it was a big tent party that welcomed people with different backgrounds, religions, ideas, and celebrated those kinds of conversations that take place in these feisty and sometimes rowdy party gatherings, and just fought for the little guy. Those are things that resonated with me very much. I am a strong conservationist and environmentalist,

and I saw people who really cared about making sure we care for Mother Earth, and we are preserving the natural resources that we have available to us. Fast forward to where we are today, and that Democratic Party is wholly unrecognizable to me, and I know to a lot of Americans who feel politically homeless right now, who are frustrated at best, angered at worse, with the kinds of policies that today's Democrat elite are pushing that are undermining our fundamental rights

and freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and are really willing to destroy our Democratic Republic so that they can remain in power. So it got to a point, peers, where I could not align myself in any way with the political party that stood diametrically opposed to the oath that I swore, both as a soldier when I enlisted and as a member of Congress, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and to defend our freedom. There are lots of divisive issues at the moment, as you rightly say. One of the big ones is centered around Gaza, the Israel War on Hamas, following the terror attack of October the 7th. And in particular, the way that students have protested in America,

what do you make of what's been going on at particularly places like Colombia? When I see young students, some of them chanting death to America, or having Hamas or Hezbollah insignia, or chanting to Jewish students from the river to the sea, knowing what that means to a Jewish ear, or chanting interfaida, when the only two interfadres in my lifetime involving Palestinians and Israelis involved a lot of people dying,

when you hear that, when you see that, Right in the heart of America, what does that tell you? You know, it is a direct reflection of a failure of leadership across different administrations through both political parties to address what is at the heart of what is being manifested through these protests. There is, in Islamist terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, al-Qaeda, their goal is to wage this ideological warfare that they want to result in Islamic rule. That is the definition of radical Islamism.

They want to be able to rule the world based on their Islamic rule or law. And they've been waging this ideological warfare for hundreds of years. This is not anything new. But when we go back to the aftermath of the terrorist attack here in America on 9 11. And I remember President George Bush saying that we will defeat them militarily and ideologically. The reality is that the ideological part of that warfare never took place. The Islamist terrorist groups have been very consistent, strategic, and aggressive in pushing their ideology around the world. Meanwhile, leaders in the West, including in America, have not. And there's two reasons for that.

one is they are either intellectually incapable of making that argument of pointing out the difference between the religion of Islam versus radical Islamism, which is a political goal and a political agenda that stands directly against freedom and civilization. And also as we're seeing play out right now in our election here in this 2024 presidential race where President Biden, I mean, he was silent for nine days before he spoke out on these. you know, riots in some cases and protests and exactly what you explained are happening across our campuses. It took him nine days to address this to the country. And even then, as we've seen over and over, when these types of issues come up, he failed to directly call out the

cause of what we are seeing, which is this radical Islamist ideology that has taken over so many of our schools and people who claim to be standing for the Palestinian people and yet who are calling for genocide of Jewish people, calling for, as we saw in Columbia University, things like they hope October 7th happens 10,000 times over, blocking Jewish students and faculty from being able to enter the universities where they are studying or where they are working. And he's afraid of doing this because he's terrified of being called an Islamophobic. He is terrified of the pro-Hamas and the Hamas apologists that exist, some in Congress and some in different parts of the country for going after him. And when you think about our president and commander-in-chief being afraid to stand unequivocally and immediately and say, we stand for free speech and we will defend everyone's right to peacefully protest, to express themselves and exercise their right and freedom of speech, we stand against anti-Semitism.

and we stand against this radical Islamist ideology that we see taking over, not only what we're seeing in these campuses, but we've seen it happen, as you know, very well in different parts of Europe. That's the kind of leadership we need, and we are seeing the undermining of the rule of law, you know, the peace and order completely destroyed in so many of our communities. it comes down to these people who are in positions of power, President Biden being foremost among them, not acting with strength, being weak and failing to act because of fear. The story that got my attention this week, Tulsi, which I read a whole column about for New York Post, involved a guy called Andrew Dudden,

who turned out to be dud by name, dud by nature, as I put it, who's the CEO of Hymns and Hers. And he's the guy that decided, last Thursday, after these extraordinary scenes where Colombia, these students, you know, smashed their way into an historic building, Hamilton Hall, and then, you know, calls Mary Hell,

breaking all sorts of laws in the process. He decided to tweet this on X. Moral courage is greater than college degree. We're currently protesting against the genocide of the Palestinian people, and for your university's divestment from Israel, keep going. It's working. There are plenty of companies and CEOs.

eager to hire you, regardless of university discipline. And this, of course, led to a very familiar pattern after he did this, where there was understandable outrage. Then the stock price of his company collapsed by over 10% at one stage. And then came a groveling climb down. We didn't actually apologize. He just sort of mealy-moused his way through a kind of, I didn't mean what you all thought I meant, and I support peace and always have done.

And that made me think, I wonder what that guy posted after October the 7th. And I went back and checked his feed. And he posted precisely nothing, not a word demanding peace after October the 7th. In fact, he didn't post anything for three weeks. And when he did, it was to repost Amnesty International who were demanding an end of a genocide. So it turned out to be a very selective piece that he wanted. It didn't involve mass slaughter of Israel people. That was fine.

But actually, if it ever turned around that Israel responded and killed people, that was crossing a line for him. That to me, he talked about moral courage. That is moral cowardice, isn't it? And that's an American CEO. Yes. Yes, it's exactly that. It's moral cowardice. And it is a function of the increasing rise.

of anti-Semitism and the one-sided view that unfortunately too many people have as they're looking at this conflict. This is something that is more than just the latest fight between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people that has been going on for so long. The world should be taking notice of what's happening here in that this is the latest front in this war being waged by these Islamist terrorist organizations. We've seen other attacks happen in other parts of the world, obviously. Al-Qaeda's attack here on our country on 9-11. But this is a very concerted strategy that involves both kinetic warfare in the slaughter and rape and pillage of those, all of those Israeli people there on October 7th. Again, I was

deployed with the military. I'm still in the U.S. Army Reserve. I was deployed to East Africa and Somalia, and I've seen with al-Shabaab, the same kind of tactics and both kinetic and ideological warfare they are waging there. And that's really where on these, you know, when you hear the rhetoric coming from that CEO and you hear the rhetoric that's coming from some of these college campuses, it completely denies the reality of who Hamas is and what their objectives are. So you have people who claim to be calling for peace, who claim to be acting for the well-being of the Palestinian people. Hamas is using the Palestinian people. Hamas is using the Palestinian people to further their own objectives. They don't care about their lives. They don't

care about truly bringing about peace. If they did, there is a very clear path forward. Return the hostages, lay down your arms, bring about a true Palestinian authority that represents the interest of the Palestinian people and peace and security that can actually begin that process of achieving that objective. As long as Hamas is there, whose stated goal is the extermination of Jewish people and the destruction and elimination of the Israeli state,

to think that peace is possible for a terrorist organization and Islamist terrorist organization whose goal is that is naive at best. You see, I agree with almost everything you just said, certainly in relation to Hamas, and I absolutely understand why Israel is so deterrent.

to eliminate Hamas and stop them redoing what they did in October 7th, which is something they've stated they want to do. Where my concern is, and you mentioned this earlier about ideology, ideology, ideology, ideology. You can take out the current Hamas terror group, 25,000, 30,000 terrorists. And maybe Israel will achieve this by steaming through Rafah, which is a massive, at the moment, a massive refugee camp, albeit housing a bunch of terrorists, hiding amongst the civil, as they do. But if in the process, Israel kill another 10,000 civilians, which could easily happen,

and you start seeing a death toll of 40, 50,000 Palestinians in response to a death toll of 1,200 people, is that not going to fuel the ideology which led to Hamas in the first place? Does that not concern you? Well, the ideology that leads to Hamas is one that, again, goes back 100, and hundreds of years. And the ideology that fuels Hamas is no different from these other Islamist terrorist organizations that operate around the world.

Certainly, they are taking advantage of the Palestinian people and their plight, which is why this is a very complex environment, even from a warfare standpoint.

It is probably one of the most tough environments in the world when you have a terrorist organization that's using the Palestinian people to try to protect themselves and once again not caring how many Palestinians are killed in this war. You know, it is there it's a very, very tough road ahead, but it needs to be tackled on all fronts and recognizing that as you said, so long as Hamas is there, the goal of peace and security is going to be very, very difficult. It's going to be difficult no matter what.

It will be impossible so long as Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organization that is serving as the government for the people of Palestine. You're now a Donald Trump supporter. I've known Donald Trump nearly 20 years. As I'm talking to you, Stormy Daniels, has just been sworn in in this case in New York.

Again, I've written about this, and I feel that this case is, a travesty to drag a former President of United States through a criminal court in America over such a comparatively trivial matter, I think is really a shameful moment for America and for the justice system. How do they get to this? How do they get to a desire

to humiliate an American president in this way, do you think? You know, I started, I could not have foreseen this, but I started to see the signs of what has led us to this place after Donald Trump won in 2016. I was in Hawaii. It was election night. You know, the results were announced, and I thought, okay, well, I will go back to Washington in a few days. The Democrat caucus will meet in the House of Representatives. And I thought, you know, this could be an opportunity for party leaders to say, okay, we lost badly in this election. we need to go on on a listening tour and figure out what are we missing?

What are we doing wrong? What could the Democratic Party have done better to reach out to those Americans? Sometimes lifelong Democrats who left the party and went and voted for Donald Trump. None of that happened. It was immediately a blame game of fingers pointing in both directions. It's somebody else's fault. And their hysteria around Donald Trump just continued to grow and grow and grow so that there was, as long as Donald Trump's name was attached to anything, it was, it was heresy.

It was something that could not stand. Actually looking at policies or issues on substance just didn't occur. And so now when we look at why is this happening now, it's because Donald Trump is obviously the presumptive Republican nominee. And the dangerous thing is the Democrat elite, both those who hold office and those who don't, are so terrified that we, the American people may make the quote unquote wrong choice in this election, that they are willing to destroy our democracy in order to what they believe they are doing, which is to save the democracy, save our democracy from Donald Trump. They're willing to silence our voices.

and limit our ability to exercise our right to vote in order to pursue this righteous cause that they believe they're on. So as you said, they are undermining the rule of law. They are weaponizing the Department of Justice. They are doing everything they possibly can to keep Donald Trump locked up in a courtroom, draining him of time and resources, limiting his ability to go out and make his case to the American people

in the hopes that they will be able to remain in power. What my message peers to people I talk to across the country, the message in my book is, however you feel about Donald Trump, however you feel about Joe Biden, whatever party you may affiliate yourselves with, we as Americans have to take a step back in this moment and recognize this dangerous threat to who we are as a constitutional republic and a democracy. Because if we allow this to stand, then a new precedent and a new norm will be set where the next administration or the next administration, after that, whoever is the party in power, they will feel justified in going after their political opponent in limiting our free speech, limiting our democracy, because, hey, the other guys did it, we should do the same. Yeah, I completely agree. It's the precedent.

It's so extraordinary to me. I mean, yesterday, the judge in the case said that if Donald Trump speaks again outside the court in a way he doesn't like, he might jail him. And I thought, have you thought about this, Mr. Judge? Have you thought about the reality of putting a, very recent President of the United States into a prison cell because you don't like what he's saying about a case

which most Americans think is a stitch-up. And I also thought that actually if he went through with it, and if I was Donald Trump, I'd almost be advising him now to call the guy's bluff and be put in a prison cell. I couldn't think of a better vote winner for Donald Trump than to be sent to jail for speaking his mind about a case that he's so pathetic. Honestly, I couldn't.

Yeah, exactly. And that picture would be very stark, especially when you compare it to violent criminals being let out on our streets, even after being apprehended. When you compare that to, you know, the hundreds, thousands, millions of illegal immigrants streaming across our border, when you compare that to the resources the FBI is putting forward at the direction of the Department of Justice towards investigating our fellow Americans. because of, you know, they went and protested at a board of education meeting. It's just the bias is so brazen. The abuse of power has become so brazen. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. My hope is with my book and with everything that's happening that more Americans at least are opening their eyes to how dangerous this is

and the threat that it poses to all of us. If, as many people would like you to be, you end up being vice president to President Trump. I mean, first of all, would you accept the job if you were offered it? I would. I would. I'd be honored to serve my country in that way. There are so many challenges that we're facing here at home, domestic policies and domestic issues. There are obviously many challenges in the foreign policy front. when you look at conflicts in wars or proxy wars, new cold wars that are being escalated and waged in different regions in the world, multiple regions of the world, we're on the brink of World War III and never been closer to the possibility of a nuclear war, you know, with Putin just talking yesterday or the day before about his planning drills for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. We are facing a serious crisis on so many. fronts, I'd be honored to be in a position to start to tackle these challenges and to get our

country back on track and take the experience that I have peers of having worked in Washington for so long, of understanding not only how the system is supposed to work, but understanding how both on the political front from a politician and elected leader standpoint, but also when you look in our bureaucracies and kind of the administrative state, how laws are essentially being passed through administrative rules instead of going through our legislative processes they are supposed to, it's going to take people with courage

and a backbone and experience to be able to go in and actually start to fix things and get us back to where we need to be. I mean, talking of people who need courage and the backbone, you might have to have a difficult conversation with President Trump if he looks at you in the eye and says, well, Tulsi, do you think I had the 2020 election stolen? Yes or no?

There's so much that went into the rigging of that 2020 election that started in 2016. So I think whether it's he or others are looking at what happened in 2020, and I talk about this in the book is how investigations were launched based on no evidence, claims about Russian interference that were funded by Hillary Clinton. These things began during the 2016 election, and they didn't stop after he won. They continued throughout his presidency,

and what was essentially this slow-rolling coup that was, was trying to make him impotent as a president and unable to carry out the things that he ran on. And, you know, look, there were things I agreed on, things I disagreed on. That's not really the point here. The point is that in the protection of our democracy, we can't have people politicizing and weaponizing our own government

to try to manipulate the outcome of the election and not respect the wishes of the American people. But I would agree with you about the Russia collusion bullshit, which is what it was. I called that at the start. I called it during, I called it at the end. I thought the suppression of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop was an outrage

and a clear partisan outrage. There are many things I'm sure that I would agree with you about. But when I sat with President Trump for this show, and I said to him, look, there's just no actual evidence that to his central claim that there was vote rigging which cost him the election, that has not been proven. And we now know that is not the case.

You've had many Republican judges conclude the same thing. And people will ask you. They'll say, come on, Tulsa, you're a smart person. You've had a very wide and very career. You must accept, or maybe you don't, but I'll give you the chance to clarify. You must accept that on that, President Trump is simply wrong. The election was not stolen by vote rigging. There are other arguments that there was a narrative about Russia

and about laptops and so on, which had an adverse effect, and I totally accept that, but not on the vote rigging. Do you accept that? Yeah, and I think those issues that we're talking about, those bigger issues should be more of a focus and more of a concern because they had a much greater impact. I have not seen the evidence that you're talking about with regard to the 2020 election day results itself.

But I also think it's important to point out that there are valid concerns about election integrity that need to be a... addressed. When I was in Congress and I lived in Washington, D.C., every election day that came around, we bought our house from an estate. The former owners had passed away. And so every election day that came around, two years, four years, six years after we had already been living there, we got absentee ballots for the former owners who had passed away many years before. It would have been very easy to fill out those ballots and send them in. So when people,

I think it's important to point this out that when people raise concerns around the integrity of our elections, they should not be so easily dismissed. I introduced legislation when I was in Congress that would have mandated the use of paper ballots or a verifiable paper backup if you're using an cold electronic system not connected to the Internet in any way. unfortunately, leaders in Congress on both sides, they were unwilling to take action that would direct states to provide this auditable paper trail to ensure that we can increase the confidence of voters that the vote that they are casting is the vote that's being counted. A system can always be improved,

but the American electoral system is actually, I would argue, the most secure in the world and the best in the world. Obviously, everything can be improved. But I also think you need to talk, about integrity of elections, it's also important, I think, for any presidential candidate in America or someone aspiring as you did to be vice president of the country, that you've got to accept the peaceful transfer of power. You have to accept when you've lost. One of my big frustrations with Donald Trump is that there are many qualities that Donald Trump has. It's got an unbelievable

thick skin to better soak up all this stuff and keep powering on. I've never said anything quite like it. A lot of the policy stuff he did, I thought, was very effective. A lot of the Rhetoric less so, but he would argue, well, that's part of what he is, and I get that. But on this stolen election thing, which led, of course, to the terrible scenes on January 6th and so on, it is incumbent, isn't it, on all candidates and all people who want to be president or vice president, that you accept the result of an election? It is, and it is also incumbent upon, we have systems in place. if you have concerns about the validity of the outcome of a vote count in a certain state,

there are systems in place, as there should be, to ensure that those votes that were cast are actually being counted accurately. So, you know, the question being posed right now is, you know, to Donald Trump and others, will you accept the outcome of the 2024 election? It's legitimate to say, well, yes, however, if there are concerns, we have a system in place to check those concerns. And when those checks and balances have been done, the people's voices have been heard and you accept the outcome of that election. Yes, I'm glad you said that. A couple of questions before I let you go. I know you've been on one of the world's greatest book tools. You must be completely exhausted. First of all, the stamina required to be a top politician in America.

You know, you've been in war zones, literally. Does it compare to that? It's completely different. You know, it's different to operate in a war zone with fellow service members and people who you know and literally trust with your life, all working together towards that common cause to accomplish that mission and that task at hand, all wearing the same American flag on our uniform. It's a very different kind of pressure, I suppose, you could say, an environment here in American politics where, unfortunately, it's difficult to find people who you can trust, and it's difficult to find politicians who aren't making their decisions based solely on their political ambition or their partisan interests who are actually committed every day in a real way of putting our country in the interests of the American people first.

that's one of the problems with our political system in the way that it is. And it's what I encourage people to do. Look at the issues. Look at where your candidates stand on these issues and make those informed decisions accordingly. One of the things in the book which I passionately disagree with you about is Ukraine. I've been there. I've interviewed President Zelensky.

And I'm just surprised. I've been very surprised that a significant number of Republicans in the last two years have gravitated to a position, it seems to me, as saying, we should just let Putin take what he's taken. He should keep it. We should end this war by allowing him to keep all the land he's stolen with his murderous, illegal rampage of a sovereign democratic European country.

I never thought I'd hear Republicans make that argument. You yourself were in Iraq. You were there, actually, I think at the same time as my brother, who was a colonel in the Royal Welsh Regiment. So thank you for your service, as I always thank him for his. But you were in Iraq, which, you know, just to remind viewers was a war that was fought on an entirely false pretext, as it turned out, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Here, you've got someone who absolutely has weapons of mass destruction of Vladimir Putin. He's a ruthless Russian dictator.

He's illegally invaded a democratic country. And I'm baffled why people like you on the right on the Republican side of this argument, seem to think it would be by default, really, a good thing or a thing that has to happen, inevitable thing to happen, that Putin wins. I don't think that's an accurate characterization at all. Of course, it was wrong for Putin to invade Ukraine. My criticism of our American policy

and the Biden-Harris administration's leadership is on this that they should see the situation for what it is. not what they wished it to be. They should clearly have defined what does winning look like. If you ask 10 different people in Washington, D.C., this question, you'll get 10 different answers. You'll get different answers from the State Department versus our Department of Defense. You'll even get different answers within the White House.

All they say is, well, we will be there for as long as it takes. We will spend as much hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of American taxpayer dollars, whatever it takes as long as it takes, but not defining what that is and peers. It is because of my experience serving in different war zones in the military that I know that there are very simple questions that need to be asked and answered before committing American taxpayer dollars and our support to go and intervene. What is our objective? What are we trying to accomplish?

How does it serve the best national interests of the American people and our own countries security. What President Biden should have done from the very beginning was exercised his leadership to get Putin and Zelensky or their representatives across the table from each other to broker a peace deal. The details to say, well, we're just going to be in this until, you know, Zelensky's standard, which is they get every inch of Ukrainian territory back. How many Ukrainian lives are going to be sacrificed in the process? Hang on. Hang on. Tell us. As long as long as that goal. is peers. Right, but on that point, let me ask you, if this was an attack on American soil, you would want every single inch that was taken by Russia or whoever it may be back. And you would

join the fight to do it because you've served your country. And you would be absolutely outraged. Of course, but this is not. This is not, you can't make it. Yeah, but that's how Ukrainians feel about their land. They feel exactly the same way that you would or I would about our land. I understand the feeling. The feeling and the emotion is very different from the reality, that Ukraine is facing a much larger country with a much greater military force, with many more people and its own military industrial complex that has been able to reconstitute its hardware and its weapon systems far more quickly than even our American intelligence agencies thought that they would be able to. And oh, by the way, Putin also has both tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. There's a long history here. And I know you've gone into this with different guests over time.

We won't get into it now. But my view on foreign policy, I'm not an isolationist, I'm not a pacifist, I'm a realist, and understanding that it is not doing any good for the Ukrainian people. And I've been to Ukraine many times. Like you, I have many friends there. And it's heartbreaking to see what they are going through, continuing to fuel a war of attrition where you don't have a, it's not a peer-to-peer war that is going on there and an unwillingness by our leaders, to be honest with the American people about, number one,

how much further are we going to go into debt to go and fuel this proxy war? And number two, the reality and the honesty of the fact that as tensions continue to increase, we are pushing us closer to the possibility, whether intentionally or unintentionally, of a nuclear war being sparked off. The best thing would be, and our military leaders have said this for quite some time, the only way this war ends is through a brokered treaty, some kind of agreement where both parties are going to walk away, not happy. My position has been consistent throughout that this should have been done as quickly as possible after this war broke out, which could have saved so many people's lives and cost.

Let me end, if I may, with a very difficult question, because you're up against other people to be potential vice president, one of whom is Christy Noem, who's just got a new book out too. And my difficult question is this, is Tulsi Gabbard, have you ever killed a dog? No. Unequivocally. Do you think killing dogs and then boasting about it in your book disqualifies you to be a potential VP? You know, look, I've known Christy for a long time.

We served in Congress together. I haven't spoken to her about this. I've heard her argument for it. She made the decision to put this story in her book. She's talking about it. There are other things that are coming out in the news about it. Look, she is. She's an adult.

She's a former member of Congress. She's the governor of one of our 50 states. She has the opportunity to make her case to the American people. You haven't actually answered that question. What's that? Well, you haven't answered my question, whether it's disqualifying to go around murdering dogs. I think the American, no, I think the American people, really, that is my answer to your question, that this is my point. Voters get to choose.

Voters get to choose. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't go and kill a puppy named cricket. I just wouldn't do it. You know, I think you can do many things as a politician in America, but you can't kill dogs because the people won't wear it. Tulsi Gabbard, really enjoyed the book.

I actually always enjoy you on the airways. I think you're one of the more intelligent, thoughtful, and eloquent people in American politics. And I've watched your journey with great interest. So thank you for coming on our censored. I appreciate it. Thank you, peers. Look forward to meeting you in person. I would love that. Thank you.

Thank you.