The Tucker Carlson Show - Ben of Ben & Jerry’s Exposes the Motives Behind War With Russia & the Politicians That Sold Out

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Ben Cohen moved to Vermont in 1977 and co-founded the world’s most liberal ice cream company. You may think you disagree with him on everything. But take a second and hear him out on the Ukraine war. (00:00): Introduction (01:03) The Russia/Ukraine War Is Totally Unnecessary (12:24): Weapons Manufacturers Lobbying Congress (46:00): The Pro-War Propaganda (56:52): Why Is This How Cohen Chooses to Spend His Time? Paid partnerships with: Policygenius: Head to at https://Policygenius.com/Tucker to see how much you could save PureTalk: Go to https://PureTalk.com/Tucker to make the switch Tecovas: Get 10% off at tecovas.com/tucker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ben Cohen became famous for his liberal political activism. The ice cream was great. His political opinions were deeply offensive to most conservatives. Fast forward to 2022, and Ben Cohen was one of the only liberals in the United States to come out against the war in Ukraine. It seems like a good moment to pause and reconsider whether some of Ben Cohen's views on war are maybe not insane. Maybe they're worth hearing. Here's Ben Cohen. so that you brought a book um by smedley darlington butler the most decorated marine world one he's a marine general he won Medals of Honor. And he wrote a book called War is a Racket. And for some encapsulates what's been going on in terms of how our military has been used. And, you know, he's been there, done that.

That's for sure. And I think about it a lot in terms of, you know, all these refugees, immigrants that are trying to get to the U.S., and why are they trying to get to the U.S.? A lot of times it's because the U.S. at some point in history overthrew or invaded their government or, well, I'll tell you what Smedley says here. Can I quote? Please.

So he says, I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period, I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street, and the bankers. Butler wrote in 1955. then he goes on, in short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for national city bank boys to collect revenues.

I helped in the raping of a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped set it up so that Standard Oil went on its way unmillested. Looking back on it,

I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents. So this was a major general in the United States Marine Corps, the single most decorated Marine when he wrote that. And I think he's pretty much forgotten now. Yeah. And he was much maligned after he said that yeah very much so you think i guess another way of saying you think that our military heroes are the most revered people in our country you can't you can't criticize a man who's received two medals of honor and yet he crossed the line and they hated him for that yeah Yeah, but he told the truth.

So how do you, how is that relevant to right now? to essentially run the world in a way that benefits the elites in the United States ends up causing a lot of resentment, ends up being the cause of a lot of wars, ends up being the cause of a lot of immigration and people trying to flee countries that are economically or politically unlivable. And if you go back to the root causes, you find out that there were, you know, some great liberation struggles in these countries and the U.S. was on the other side. Yes. What's interesting is that Spendley but general butler wrote that you know years after he left the marine corps um he was a hero in world war one when we were

you know working to stop the kaiser you know many americans killed to stop the kaiser no one even remembers what a kaiser is but that was a war the first world war was a war. The First World War was a war for democracy and freedom. It didn't work, of course, but we're hearing the same slogans now with Ukraine. And as then, a lot of really decent, good-hearted people with the right motives are buying it completely. It's not just warmongers who are in favor of these wars.

It's like your next-door neighbor who's a good person. Yeah, I think that's really true. The way a lot of people see it is, you know, this little country, Ukraine, got invaded by this big giant Russia. But I think what you need to understand is what provoked that war and how it could have been prevented. You know, at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. made promises to Russia that they're not going to expand NATO eastward. And then we proceeded to expand NATO eastward. And then we proceeded to expand NATO eastward. As a matter of fact, you know, there was, the government was not going to do that until the weapons manufacturers set up this committee to expand NATO, which was essentially the CEOs of the weapons manufacturers lobbying Congress to expand NATO.

So, I mean, geez, if you're a weapons manufacturer and you expand NATO, they're going to buy a lot of your stuff. Why would the, well, first let me ask, do you think it's a reasonable request by Russia not to have NATO expand to its borders? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the same way that, you know, the United States says that, what, here's our sphere of influence. You know, I remember learning about this in, what was it, elementary school or middle school uh that uh the monroe doctrine yes uh it's our divine right from god to control our hemisphere to control our hemisphere

and it sounded crazy to me then and you know i i can see making sure that there's not enemies right on your borders. But in terms of controlling the whole hemisphere, I don't buy it. And the U.S. has now expanded its sphere of influence to include the entire world. I mean, it's amazing. We have military commands that cover every portion of the globe, and we have 800 military bases around the world. You know, when I was growing up, you know, I heard we had a bunch of overseas bases. I figured, you know, that's cool. You know, every country must have overseas bases. And then, you know, I find out that the country who has the next most overseas bases has like five. I mean, it's the U.S. that is using its military power to control the world.

And the fact of the matter is that the United States is 5% of the world population. So having 5% dominate the world militarily, that doesn't sound democratic to me no um and it doesn't sound like it helps the united states very much no i think it i think it's incredibly harmful to the united states uh first of all we're not we're making a lot of enemies people don't like us uh being the big bully uh on the hill uh telling all these other countries what to do uh and it sucks a huge amount of money out of our country it's stuff that can be used for things that people really want and need. You know, we could have more affordable housing. We could make it so that the American dream could actually still happen, that people could afford a house, that you can get a decent education,

and that you can get child care, that it doesn't have to cost you so much money to go to college. I mean, these things can all be done. And, you know, most other developed countries are providing that for their citizens. But the U.S. chooses to spend. I mean, look at this. This is a chart of the federal discretionary budget. That's the amount of money that Congress has each year to allocate to the various departments. So the big red one on top, that gets over half.

That's the Pentagon. And these little slivers are like, you know, USAID, the education department, the health department, community development, whatever else the country does. But in terms of stuff that would actually be helpful to people living in their daily lives, it's all sucked out by the pentagon i you know martin luther king gave this speech and he talked about uh the pentagon being this huge demonic sucking tube that sucks out the the lifeblood of things like housing, schools, you know, everybody's school budget is always in the red or can't raise enough money, got to get rid of teachers or whomever. I think that's when they shot him is when he said that. The race stuff was fine. That was no problem. But it was toward – That's true. it is true it was that was the end of his he was assassinated a year to the day after he made that speech so a year to the day to the

day april 4th 1967 he must have given that speech amazing wow that's amazing yeah he it's one you know the people in charge i am convinced would would like Americans to hate each other on the basis of race. They don't want you to talk about the banks or the Pentagon. I think that's really true. an association of weapons manufacturers that were lobbying Congress to expand NATO. That seems, it seems a little bit crazy that weapons manufacturers would be allowed to dictate foreign policy because the conflict is so obvious. Well, it's just money, you know, so they're lobbying, they're giving political donations to the legislators, legalized bribery. And yeah, it's definitely a conflict of interest. So that, the pie, if I were to look at, if you didn't tell me what country that was, and you said, here's a country that spends more than half of its entire discretionary budget on weapons and troops,

I would imagine a small country surrounded by enemies. I would not imagine a continental-sized country with independent resources, enough energy, enough food, doesn't really need anything, that's separated from the rest of the world by the two biggest oceans. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense, actually. No, it totally doesn't. Has the U.S. been invaded before by a foreign army since 1812?

I don't think so. No? No. Yeah. It's a little weird. Yeah. I mean, and they keep on justifying these huge expenditures by coming up with enemy after enemy after enemy. So, you know, first it was the Soviet Union. So the Soviet Union collapsed.

And, I mean, Gorbachev said at the time, we will deny you of an enemy. And, you know, I assumed that the Pentagon budget was going to, you know, drop hugely because that was the whole justification for it. But what the Pentagon did was that they came up with what was called the two-war scenario. So now, instead of the Pentagon budget being structured to defeat the Soviet Union, now what they said is it needs to be structured to fight two medium-sized wars in two different places at the same time. And what do you know, that's going to cost just as much as we were spending on preparing to fight the Soviet Union. Who are the wars going to be with? Well, I think at the time there was the Axis of Evil. What was that? Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba. Probably another one. Yeah, it's interesting because Russia collapses,

the Soviet system collapses after seven years in 1991, the summer of 91. And I kind of assumed, I think everyone assumed that we would take the win. Like we were having this Cold War all these years and they collapsed, we won, and then we could be friends and move forward because there are no more Soviet communists left.

They're gone. Right. And they wanted to be our friend. I mean, I was walking on the Arbat in Moscow. People were joyful And they wanted to be our friend. I mean, I was walking on the Arbat in Moscow. People were joyful, and they were all wearing these pins that showed a U.S. flag crossed with a Soviet flag. They wanted to be friends. Why didn't that happen? happen because our cold warriors uh who for their whole life you know fighting the soviet union that's that's what they were about they wanted to continue the cold war they wanted to continue Continue having Russia as this enemy. So fast forward to 2022, February, and the conflict in Ukraine starts.

And we're told that this is just like out of nowhere, like who could have known? And Putin wants to expand the Russian border, you know, all the way to Vienna or all the way to London or who knows, but he's just an expansionist power. He's Hitler and Ukraine is like the backstop against his expansionism and we need to fight Russia. You're saying that that's not actually what happened? Right. You know, starting with the end of the Cold War, there was a promise made to Russia that kind of in exchange for I think it was taking down made that promise. And and then we proceeded to expand it eastward. There was one tranche of countries and And Russia was up in arms, objected in the most strenuous language. And, you know, there might have been a few more. And then there was a statement that Ukraine was going to become part of NATO. And Russia objected in the most strenuous language. And then Russia started gathering some troops on the border and again said in the most strenuous language that we will not tolerate having Ukraine part of NATO. We want to negotiate. They sent overtures to the U.S. I think the U.S. did not respond. We ignore you if we don't like you. We don't talk to you if we

don't like you. And then they invaded. And, you know, I don't think they anticipated that they were going to end up in a proxy war with the united states and and what's crazy about it what what drives me crazy is that this is war war i mean we're you know i'm shooting my machine gun at you you you're dying, you're dead. Hundreds of thousands of people on both sides have died in this war. For what? I mean, eventually the war is going to be over and there's going to be some settlement. And why can't we just skip to that stage? Well, because you don't expend missiles doing that like i i i really do think that's what it's about i you know that's what smedley butler came up with yeah i mean you read the whole rest of his book and he says at the end uh you know i i you know these anti-war protesters, they're really good people, but you're never going to stop the military-industrial-congressional complex until you take the profit out these corporations are making on making weapons which are more and more lethal.

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I think he first gave that speech 1935-ish. And he was later kind of lumped in with bad people as somehow pro-Nazi. You must be for Hitler. You know, it was like the worst slander you could level against somebody. And that's why he's forgotten now. Something very similar seems to be going on, where if you say what you just said, you're pro-Putin. Yeah, which is bullshit. I'm not pro-Putin. Yeah, which is bullshit.

I'm not pro-Putin. I'm not pro-Zelensky. I'm pro-peace. I'm pro-ceasefire. I'm pro-stop killing each other. So you've been that way. I mean, we're coming from different points of view, but I agree strong with everything you've said. But you're the one who's been saying the same thing

for a long time, like ever since for the 40 years I've been eating your ice cream, which is fattening. Sorry, I hate to say it. Thank you for consuming. You wear it well. I've got to stop eating that stuff. You know, they always say,

never trust a skinny ice cream. Excuse me. So I've been, you know, listening to your views on this for a long time, and they haven't changed. Do you think your views have changed? No, my view hasn't changed, and Bernie's views certainly haven't changed. I've been listening to him for a long time. I tell you, it is the same freaking speech. Yeah. People say you should change your speech. He says,

when the country finally acts in a decent way, I'll change my speech. So, but Ukraine feels a little different. Like, all of a sudden, you know, there was always this persistent, enthusiastic anti-war caucus on the left where you're coming from um not quite mainstream democrat but sort of moral fashion democrat they like evaporated maybe chris hedges jeff sacks jeffrey sacks you like where's everybody else yeah it really it really split uh i guess people i mean you're talking about people on the left i guess we could talk about people on the left i mean anti-war people in general uh yeah whatever i think right i don't know yeah i think there's people like that on the left right right, and center. That's 100% true.

You're exactly right. And in fact, there are a lot of them on the right, whatever that is. I don't even know. Those are fake categories at this point. It really is. Well, let's say it was 1985, okay? It was 40 years ago, or 1988 when I lived in Burlington. That was considered like a lefty view.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so you're saying, right. So some of that group is, you know, behind Ukraine, let's defend Ukraine. And some of that group is saying, no, we shouldn't be involved in this war. You know, I think the people who are saying, let's define, let's defend Ukraine, I can certainly understand it from their point of view. And their point of view is that Russia made an unprovoked invasion and Russia therefore started this war. And they're trying to take over this country and we should defend that country. But people don't understand what led up to it.

I mean, as a matter of fact, with the Eisenhower Media Network, this group of retired admirals, generals and colonels, we took out a full page ad in the New York Times at the very beginning of that war, calling for a ceasefire. And the headline of the ad was supposed to be, the US provoked the war in Ukraine. And the New York Times would not allow us to run it as an ad. What? They would not allow us to use that headline. Why? But it's an ad. Right. It doesn't seem right.

But, I mean, so that was on that thing. But, I mean, in the run-up to the— Wait, Cass, wait. So this is another, like, I don't think North Korea has a propaganda initiative as comprehensive and aggressive as the one I saw after the Ukraine war started. Like, it was just like, you know, the New York Open was taking Russian names off the scoreboard. New York Times was editorializing in other people's advertisements. Like, what was that? Yeah. War fever? in other people's advertisements like what was that yeah war fever i mean the reality is that uh

you you can kind of control what the population thinks by the information that you give to them. So, you know, the U.S. is propagandizing its own people. You know, every country does that. But, you know, there's a lot of sins of omission in terms of the news that people get. And you never hear Russia's point of view. I mean, it's amazing to me. You know, they wouldn't let us hear what Osama bin Laden was saying after, you know, 9-11. I noticed. I mean, they don't let us hear what the people in China are saying. I mean, I, you know, so I dug around. A friend of mine sent me, you know, a speech by the defense minister of China. And he's saying, we're not looking to be enemies with the U.S. We're looking to develop our country and grow, and we can

peacefully coexist together. The world is big enough for both of the U.S., but the explicit policy of the United States, if you read these, I mean, I don't know, what the hell is this ice cream guy doing reading these national security documents? I don't know what that word meant uh but it's the policy of the u.s that if any country begins to develop economically or socially uh you know toward the level that the u.s is at that is that country is by definition an enemy the policy of the.S. is that we must have full spectrum dominance. And why should 5% of the world control what's going on in the world? The Eisenhower Institute. Eisenhower Media Network. Media Network.

My apologies. So I've never heard of it. Yeah, I didn't think you had. Well, I sort of pay attention to this. That's okay. Mosthower Media Network. Media Network. My apologies. So I've never heard of it. Yeah, I didn't think you had. Well, I sort of pay attention to this. That's okay. Most people haven't. No, I'm admitting that both because I want to be honest, but also because it tells you a lot. So this was a group you were involved in that had flag officers and had you know generals admirals other officers right who worked to the pentagon worked the military right and i've never heard of it that's kind of interesting what was their what what kind of people were in it what was the goal well uh originally uh during the cold war and after there was was the Center for Defense Information, which was a home for retired high-level military officers that were critical of the Pentagon. hard times and kind of twittered away so uh myself and a veteran danny serson uh decided to start up

the eisenhower media network as a as a home for higher level uh former military people to use their credibility uh on the issue of critiquing the Pentagon, because what usually happens when you critique the Pentagon is that you don't have the credentials. You know, you say that, well, the Pentagon is doing this weird thing or that screwed up thing. And, you know, and then the Pentagon, you know, general gets up there in uniform with all his medals and stuff and says, you know, those guys have no idea what they're talking about. I'm the military expert. So the idea of Eisenhower Media Network is to have those military experts that can support a different point of view than what the Pentagon is putting out. What kind of response have you had from the media?

You know, those guys are in the media sometimes, but they're certainly not in the media, despite our efforts, as much as the former high-level military guys that are now being paid by weapons manufacturers. I mean, so they're brought on these TV shows, TV talk shows as experts, and they're never identified as in the employ of essentially war profiteers. Is that, that's actually happened? That, I speak of the truth. I shit you not. I mean, that's actually happened? That, I speak of the truth. I, I, I shit you not. I mean, that's disgusting. Yes, sir. Huh. I've known a number of them, of course, because I worked at a TV channel. I worked at a bunch of TV channels with a bunch of retired military officers, um, you know, on the air,

lending their expertise to this or that. And some of them are impressive. Some of them are utterly fraudulent and stupid. Well, I'm thinking of one in particular who doesn't know anything. I don't know how he was a general, but sorry, I didn't realize they were being paid by defense contractors to do that. That's really- Yeah, and it's not revealed.

Well, I didn't know i mean and i know them right right huh so who was in the eisenhower media network or is in it uh what kind of people uh larry wilkerson he was a former assist assistant to colin powell uh remember him well matthew dennis fritz was uh he was the head of Space Force actually for a while. Are these older guys, younger guys? We have a range. Yes. I'm happy to say.

How hard is it for them to join a group like that? Because it seems like one of the structural problems is that you know if you're a one star and you fail to make two star you just like seamlessly move over to the defense industry to a weapons manufacturer there's like a place for you yeah i mean especially for the guys with even more stars exactly right so the higher you go the more you make when you leave so the incentive doesn't end with your military service. You get paid after you leave. Exactly. And you get paid by the corporations whose contracts you were supposedly supervising when you were in uniform.

So when you were making ice cream, would you ever allow a contract set up like that to exist in your company? Never, never. I mean, the conflicts of interest that go on in terms of our government are, you know, would be illegal in a publicly held corporation. They'd be illegal. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm asking these dumb questions because I feel like i may be missing something so it must so the guys who are have signed up the retired officers who signed up for the eisenhower media project are turning down a lot of money in order to do that yeah yeah absolutely huh and what's their view, would you say? Do they believe that these conflicts are driven by profit? Well, they're driven by profit. Sometimes they're driven by politicians not wanting to appear so-called weak on defense.

Right. And the only way we judge whether a politician is weak on defense or not is how much money they are willing to give to the Pentagon. So you have two politicians that are running for election and uh usually they're trying to out-compete the other guy in terms of who's trying you know who's who's willing to raise the pentagon budget because i'm strong on defense and uh and that's so this is like the one area of bipartisan agreement. Let's give more and more money to the Pentagon. And, you know, there's this other aspect of so-called political engineering that, you know, earlier, you know, I don't know, back in the 90s, I guess, you know, military contractors would, these weapons manufacturers would deliberately spread out the jobs for a particular weapon system in as many congressional districts as possible. And so, you know, that creates jobs.

And, you know, the politician from that area, that's what they, you know, that gives them a lot of credit. Of course. I brought jobs to my district. Of course. which John McCain said it was the worst thing he ever saw, you can't stop it because they've politically engineered it. So if you, I don't know, that's kind of how it works. So when you tried to put this ad in the New York Times, or did put the ad but with a different headline, by the way, what did they change the headline to?

I don't remember. But something that didn't tell the truth about how this war started. Yeah. Well, the body did. Yeah. The body copy. Yeah, they're assuming most people read the headline. Right, right, right.

Nobody was saying anything like that then. That's right. I know. I was saying it. Got in a lot of trouble for it. All right. Yeah, it just seemed obvious to me. But very few people were saying anything like that.

What kind of response did you get from people you know? Mostly positive. And there were a bunch that disagreed. Uh, you know, I, I actually have my, my wife, uh, was born in Kyrgyzstan, uh, which is one of the countries that the U that, that the Soviet union had kind of taken over. Uh, she's never lived in russia but she's a russian speaker yes and uh she lost some friends uh because of the stand that i took uh against that war in in ukraine really because they were offended yeah yeah that you know i I think for countries that live, you know, that are located around the borders of the Soviet Union, countries that had been invaded by the Soviet Union. And mistreated.

Right. They are really down on Russia. For sure they are. And they're very down on socialism and they're very down on – and they believe – you know, they have a history. They've been invaded and they're scared that, you know, that they're going to get invaded. And, you know, and, you know, their feeling is, you know, if we just let Russia go in and have its way with with Ukraine, that, you know, they're going to be next. Of course. And I don't I don't think there's any truth to that. I think, you know, clearly,

Putin is not doing very well, you know, invading one country. I don't think he's looking to go invade another one. He already runs the biggest country in the world. So, yeah. No, I agree with that. It's not, you know, praise putin to note that there's no evidence he wants territorial expansion at all um were there any politicians so that was like in the

first few months after the war started that you said this yeah were there any politicians who were saying anything like that that you saw ah that's interesting. Because a lot of the- I don't really remember any politicians being on our side. No, including ones you knew personally and had supported in the past. They weren't saying that. Yeah. So that raises the question.

And some of those politicians, because you've always been against war since for the 40 years I've paid attention, you were supporting anti-war politicians but they made an exception for ukraine yeah that's true what i noticed what was that about maybe because there was there was so much public um kind of empathy for for the people in Ukraine. And I think that a lot of it has to do with what information do people have? Yes.

The only information people had is Russia came in and invaded with its army. And they didn't hear what happened before, what led up to it. And they didn't think about, you know, which this ad that we ran did, what would the U.S. do if there were Russian missiles lined up along the Mexican border aimed at the U.S.? I mean, it is the same situation. Of course it is. And I've got no question that the U.S. would invade and get rid of them. Of course. We'd be occupying Tijuana right now.

Yeah. And I can see why, by the way. You don't want other people's missiles aimed from your border. That's pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to think something bad is going to happen, but you've got to take precautions in case it does. And that's why you insure your car and your phone and, of course, your house.

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since the end of the cold war yes you know i'm so i yeah so i i where do i get the information? Well, the stuff about the committee to expand NATO, that was in the mainstream press. But you already had the framework for understanding this because you've been paying attention to this issue. Yeah. And, you know, you think about, you know, most people, it's kind of a luxury to have the time to pay attention to an issue like this. I mean, most people are, you know, focused on the day-to-day. Yeah. You know, just trying that you get are essentially the messages that the government wants you to get. Man, that was not the way it was supposed to work. No, it wasn't.

We were supposed to have freedom of the press but i mean even even when there i guess even when there was a free press it it was still very controlled i mean so i say there was a free press not not that free uh you know there's the i think a lot of times the press is self-censoring yes I don't think you can. You know, you get a very different perspective if you read the news in the U.S. versus if you read the news in some other country in the world, you know, talking about the same situation. So we get a U.S.-centric view. U.S. government-centric. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, I don't personally know anyone who's volunteering to fight Russia in Ukraine. I don't personally know anybody, I've never met

anybody outside of D.C. who wants another Middle Eastern war. So, in other words, the priorities of the government bear no resemblance to the priorities of the population. of what do regular old people in the country want versus what does the country do? And they're not congruent very much. Then you look at the line of what do the elites want? What do the really wealthy people and corporations want? And what does the country do? And it's much more aligned. So on Ukraine, your position, I'll just be totally blunt, is like totally unfashionable. It's like the least fashionable position you could ever take.

Yeah, well, I was never really a fashion maven. But this is anti-fashion. This is a way to get called really pretty slanderous names. It's a way to break up friendships. As you said, your wife lost friends over this. So it's like, why would you do that? Why not just sit this one out? Do I want? Well well i don't know it's it's about standing up for what you believe in uh i mean i'm for a ceasefire i'm for you know you would think i most people would be in favor of a ceasefire.

I mean, we don't want to keep on killing people. I'm not a Putin supporter. I'm not a Zelensky supporter. not killing each other and not using our resources to have actual wars, to supply weapons for wars, or to settle our problems through that means. I mean, why can't we cut to the chase and assume the war's over and have a negotiated settlement? Why do we have to kill a few hundred thousand mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters in the process? There's also a sense in which there's like a suicidal impulse at work here because for most of three years we were closer than we've ever been to a nuclear conflict. Like an exchange of nuclear warheads where most of the Earth's population dies.

That's factually true, I think. And I think planners of the Pentagon understood that and they pressed forward anyway. Do you think that the average American understands how close we have been to nuclear war? No. I think they've heard that we've been close, but they don't have the details. Why do you think that people who plan these things and push these things don't seem to care about the risk of annihilating everyone on the planet? I think most people involved in the process are playing little roles in the process. They're just trying to do their small part well. Yes.

And they're not, you know, they're not looking at the bigger picture. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. They're just cogs. Yeah. But the machine itself is moving towards something awful, but they don't have that picture. They just know their role. Yeah. Huh.

Who do you, you said there are no politicians who are saying what you believe. Is there, whose opinion on this do you respect on the Rushie Crane question? Larry Wilkerson,ff sacks yes um i guess those are the those are the two that come to mind um given that you were i think we're right about russia ukraine clearly there been a ceasefire in the spring of 2022 you know probably a million people would still be be alive and Ukraine wouldn't be destroyed and we'd still be in the same place. So, like, why didn't we do that?

Given that you called that correctly, I think, where do you think we're going on Iran? It sounds like we're kind of headed toward war. Why do you think that is well I there seems to be some kind of Israel and the U.S. were, I don't know, Israel now has the U.S. supplying weapons for its genocide, and what I'm told is that Israel wants some concept of greater Israel. I mean, I don't really know much about that. Do you think the U.S. faces a threat from Iran? No, I don't.

No, I think that's absurd. I think, you know, Iran has a Pentagon budget. Well, not a Pentagon. Their military budget is like $7 billion. Our Pentagon budget is darn close to a trillion. So I don't think that, I mean, what, is Iran going to invade the U.S.? I don't think so. Why?

You sold your company. It was bought by Unilever, I think, like 25 years ago. Yeah. Did you consider buying a vineyard? No. No. How about you? I can't afford a vineyard.

No vineyard. I don't even drink, so kind of out of the vineyard business. But why did you decide to spend the last 25 years on the issue of kind of the spirit and the soul of our country. You know, there was a pope who said that even if the weapons are never used, the arms race kills the poor by causing them to starve. I'm amazed at how much money the United States has. We have a shitload of money. Is that a technical assessment?

Yeah. We have enough money to solve health problems for people in our country and all over the world. We have enough to end hunger in our country and all over the world. We have enough to get rid of lead poisoning. Uh, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the gargantuanness of the amounts of money that we have, you can't fathom it. And, uh, we're choosing to spend it on creating more and better ways to kill more and more people. It's such an incredible waste. It's, uh, you know, I, I believe that we are all interconnected as we help others we actually help ourselves uh and all this money that's going into the pentagon is sucking money out of things that people really want and need it could be improving your libraries, your schools, your sports arenas. It could be paying for college for your kids, trade school for your kids. You have a better car.

I mean, what is it that people want? It's not more weapons. No, it's not. And our country needs to start measuring its strength by how many people it can help as opposed to how many people it can kill. And I would say it would actually make our country more secure. Okay, so it's time for an intervention. All your loved ones are here. We're here to tell you it is time

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we actually benefit from sending billions to Ukraine because that money goes first through American companies. Right. I've heard politicians say that, yeah, this is great, man. We're employing our people, we're keeping our weapons production lines humming, and we're degrading the military of our enemy, Russia. And it is such a sacrilegious reasoning. You need to think about our spirit and our soul, what it means to be an American. You know, right now, what it means to be American is that we are the world's largest arms exporter. We have the largest military in the world. We support the slaughter of people in Gaza. If somebody protests the slaughter of people in Gaza, we arrest them. What does our country stand for? Uh, I don't know.

I mean, you know, people say the budget is a moral document. Uh, see where you're, see where you're spending your money. And that's what your values are. Uh, it hurts me to say that the values of our country seem to be military domination. Well, that's it. The impulse that drives this is money, right?

People want money. So you're an interesting person to ask since, you know, you didn't grow up rich. You've had times when you were poor, then you got rich, selling the best ice cream there is. So you've kind of seen the money thing from both ends. Do you think that people put too much emphasis on money? like $300 million, $500 million, a billion, $100 billion, $800 billion. Nobody has any idea what the size of that is. It's just like more money than you could ever imagine. Yeah, I have no perspective at all on that and and so

when ben and jerry's was sold it had uh it it came up to a level of 300 million dollars in sales and so i started having a feeling for how much money that is and then I realized that three times that, that's about a billion. And so I vaguely got a handle on what quantity that is. And, you know, a billion is an unfathomably large number. If you counted every second since you were born, you would be 32 years old before you'd lived a billion seconds. It is a lot of seconds. And that's just $1 billion. So the Pentagon budget generation of fighter jets, whatever, whatever. But in regular speak, here's a good example. I thought you might be asking. There was recently a fighter jet that fell off an aircraft carrier. So it was a $70 million fighter jet. So, you know, that sounds kind of dramatic that, you know, a $70 million fighter jet fell off an aircraft carrier. But if you think about the Pentagon budget as a box of Cheerios, that $70 billion would be one-tenth of one Cheerio, which is enough money if you

take it out of the Pentagon to build two new hospitals in West Virginia. So what's crumbs to the Pentagon can really provide some real stuff that we need here in the U.S. Why? I mean, so you're describing a system that like basically can't be changed because I don't know. No, I'm in the process of changing it. Okay. So you think that democratic levers still work in a non-democratic system well i think that the only lever that works is uh public opinion so uh i'm in the process of

starting up a campaign which is called common sense defense at the moment we're going to get a flashier name later but right now it's common sense that's pretty flashy thank you common sense defense yeah be a nice change uh and uh and it is a campaign that's aimed just directly at the public we're not trying to lobby congress We're not trying to influence that. We're trying to change public opinion in terms of what we want our government to be spending its money on, or at least not spending its money on excessive weapons. Yeah, so, yeah, I believe that the thing that can change it, and, you know, and this is from my experience of my time going around lobbying on Capitol Hill about this issue.

You know, I think that's hopeless. I mean, I think all we can do is... Well, you think it's hopeless to lobby the Congress. Yeah. You know, hopeless for a guy who's not handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars. What was your experience? You actually went to Washington and talked to him?

I went to Washington and I talked to those politicians. You know, they smile and they say nice things and they take a picture and then they just vote and rubber stamp whatever Pentagon bill comes in because they don't want their opponent to call them weak on defense. Hmm. So there were none that you would trust? I wouldn't say that uh you know i think i think there's a guy you know there's there no i wouldn't say there's none i mean i i think there's i don't know 20 30 yeah do you think that part of the problem with the Ukraine war was Trump was against it? And that made it hard for people who hated Trump to say I'm against it too? I don't really know about that. I mean, I didn't, I wasn't conscious of that myself.

I mean, I know that, you know, I know that for some Democrats, you know, anything that Trump supports, they don't. Yeah. But I'm not aware of that as being an issue related to the Ukraine war. You were saying that you think there's something sacrilegious about basic and economy on weapons? Yeah, I really do. So are you driven by your spiritual beliefs? Uh, I'm mostly driven by, uh, you know, just, just, just a concern for people. Uh, I mean, I, I don't, in terms of a spiritual belief, I mean, I don't practice a religion. I was born a Jew.

I love Jesus Christ. I think the words that he said are wonderful, are amazing. uh you know i'm i'm kind of distressed that uh a lot of organized christian religions are not really um i don't know abiding by the words of jesus christ uh i am too i'm i'm friends with uh a guy named shane clayborne who's a uh a theologian and he, you know, a Christian, well, he calls himself a red-letter Christian, and he's got a group called red-letter Christians. There's other theologians. Red letters refer to the red letters of the New Testament connoting Jesus' words. Exactly. And, you know, he lives and works in an inner city Philadelphia in a really low income area. And he's, you know, think about the Sermon on the Mount and, you know, take his words seriously. We wouldn't be doing the stuff we're currently doing. No. I don't know if I can improve on that.

Ben Cohen, thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Tucker. We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor. Hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter.

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