What would Ronald Reagan do right now?
He would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets.
>> What would Ronald Reagan do?
Good question, Senator Graham Ronald.
Reagan's two term presidency was notable for
the fact that he did not declare war on the Russian Air Force.
And therefore, the United States did not go to war with Russia and
millions of lives were saved as a result.
>> You just watch Tucker Carlson attack Lindsey Graham for openly calling for
war with Russia over the fact that a Russian plane collided with a US drone.
Now, luckily the United States has responded to people questioning whether
we're gonna escalate war with Russia.
And General Mark Milley is like incidents happen and no, we are not gonna do that,
[LAUGH] Which is the right way to go.
But what Tucker failed to mention in his monologue there is that Graham
made those comments on Sean Hannity's show, his colleague on Fox News.
And Tucker's colleague,
Hannity was incredibly receptive to that pro-war message.
Fox News now stands divided on the issue of how to respond to Russia,
which is fascinating.
You have Tucker Carlson, taking a more for
lack of a better word populist approach with the story.
And if you look at the voter base for the Republican Party,
there's a slim majority that's still supportive of the US, supporting Ukraine.
51% in recent polls wanna continue providing aid to Ukraine.
But that number has gone down considerably when you compare it to where Republican
voters minds were at in the very beginning of that war.
So my view of this is that Tucker Carlson is just following where the voter base is,
and he's pandering to them.
I don't really think he has a genuine ideology on this issue, but
it doesn't matter.
For the sake of this conversation, let's pretend like he does, okay?
Hannity and Brian Kilmeade though, openly cheerlead for
the United States to engage in a hot war with Russia.
So let's watch Senator Lindsey Graham's full comments followed by the rest
of Tucker Carlson's commentary.
>> They shot down our drone, what should our answer be?
>> Well, we should hold them accountable and say that if you ever get near another
US-asset, flying in international waters, your airplane would be shot down.
What would Ronald Reagan do right now?
He would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets.
>> Ronald Reagan's two term presidency was notable for
the fact that he did not declare war on the Russian Air Force.
And therefore, the United States did not go to war with Russia and
millions of lives were saved as a result.
It's not a small thing but one in the Reagan win column there,
another president they told you was a crazed warmonger, who actually kept us
out of war but won the Cold War anyway, and how did Reagan do that?
Was simple. He kept the American economy strong,
do you remember that?
Seems like a long time ago.
It's pretty much the opposite of the approach being pushed right now by
Lindsey Graham and his friends in the war party.
Their plan is to ignore our borders in the United States, but to defend Ukraine's.
There are even funding the Ukrainian pension system,
not kidding as our own American banks collapse.
What would Ronald Reagan do?
He'd probably vomit if he saw it.
We're glad Ronald Reagan is not here to watch Lindsey Grant invoke his name to
justify anti-American stupidity.
>> So while you have Tucker Carlson taking a clear anti-war approach to this issue
and clearly calling out a Republican senator for his views on it.
Behind the scenes, you have Hannity, yucking it up with Senator Lindsey Graham
on this issue and essentially, cranking up the militarism to 11.
Let's watch.
>> Now, Putin's thugs as we talked about last night,
they took down a US Reaper drone over international waters,
which in most cases, most presidents would view as an act of war.
There would be some military response.
What did Biden do in response?
Pretty much nothing, actually worse than nothing.
The White House started to make excuses for Putin's risky behavior.
Now, get this.
Russia is now attempting to retrieve our drone from the Black Sea
that they took out of the sky before our navy can get to it.
Where is the pushback, Joe?
Where are you?
You're the commander-in-chief, where is American leadership?
Why are you going to take this?
>> Can I just ask you guys something real quick because this is a U S
drone off the coast of Russia.
What would the United States do if there was a Russian drone
off the coast of the United States?
Just a genuine question, hoping for a genuine answer.
And I think you guys know what the answer is, okay?
I think we'd go even further than Russia did in this case of not shooting down but
colliding with a U S drone.
But nonetheless,
you also have Brian Kilmeade who backed Sean Hannity's calls for an escalation.
And he did so in an interview with Republican Representative August Pfleuger
or Pflueger.
Let's watch.
>> People say, well, we don't want World War III, who does?
But with the Russians weakness, get you there quicker.
They cannot afford to confront us, they cannot handle the Ukrainian army.
Do you think they can handle NATO?
Why don't we think boldly and strongly?
>> You're exactly right.
The only thing that Russians respect is strength, and
this is the thing that our foreign policy starts at the top.
We should have a strong approach in every aspect of foreign policy.
And now, you see the weakness that's coming out of the response here.
>> The Russians respect strength, how so?
The Ukrainian response to Russia's invasion has been incredibly strong and
Russia doesn't appear to respect it.
I mean, it's just incredible to me how these neocons have learned no lessons
from all of our foibles or foreign policy foibles over the last several decades,
and they just want more war.
But here's the thing.
You'd be naive to think that this is what they have organically come up with,
that they've done their due diligence, and they've read all the details,
they've researched the matter, they're getting briefed on the matter.
They really, really care on it, they know what they're talking about.
No, don't be naive.
Let's go to the representatives, campaign contributors in this case.
And if you look at the defense industry,
one of his top donors when it comes to defense.
So even if the issue has to do with escalating war with a nuclear power,
I don't know if people really fully understand that.
Okay, mutually assured destruction is
a possibility if you ramp up war with a nuclear power.
But since their campaign donors demand them to escalate the situation,
they're going to do it, they're gonna do it, knowing full well that it could
lead to the destruction of the United States through the use of nuclear weapons.
It is out of this world, it is insane, they don't care.
When you're greedy, you're willing to destroy anything for that money, anything,
including the country you live in.
It really is amazing to watch it.
So we'll see how this disagreement within Fox News is gonna play out.
It really is fascinating to watch but I do agree,
I can't believe I'm saying this, with Tucker Carlson's take on this.
We absolutely should not escalate war with Russia over one of their planes
colliding with one of our drones off the coast of Russia, it's insane.