Playing President: ‘Biden’ Embraces WWIII at the DNC

By Ray McGovern and Robert Scheer / Original to ScheerPost

In this week’s episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with three presidents from Nixon to Clinton. In the universe of “Playing President,” however, Scheer is not a journalist, but instead plays the President of the United States attempting to navigate the geopolitical landscape of governance and media with the help of his trusty daily briefer from the CIA, Ray McGovern.

Transcript

White House Intern  00:00

Mr. President, Ray McGovern is here to brief you.

POTUS  00:05

Yeah, well, Ray, you know, sometimes that’s just you’re sort of– what do I think about my commie friend you… but he’s not a commie Putin. But you know, you’re the big Russia expert and everything. But anyway, I’ve known you a long time, and what we talk about stays here- okay, nothing stays everything leaks. But what a night, last night, the convention there, you know, you know. It’s a good thing it was, it’s Kamala, not Hillary. Hillary really would have totally stolen the show from beginning to end all the days and everything, uh, Kamala, she she stayed back. She was good. Maybe I went a little far saying appointing her was the biggest, best thing. I don’t know what the hell I said. I think I only had four or five flubs there, you know. And, yeah, you know, I still think I would have, I could have swept this election, but… It’s over now. But look, I got, I got, I need some advice here.

Now. I went out on a limb last night. Now I didn’t endorse a two state solution, even though that’s supposed to be our policy. But I want to, I want to keep the Israel – what you’re allowed to call it… It is Israel lobby. I know, I know how powerful they are. Got to keep them off my back. So I said, “Yeah, we got to be concerned about the Palestinians in Gaza.” I said that. But then right away, Netanyahu undermines me, he says, “Yeah, but no, no real truth, no permanent No, nothing, nothing.” So he’s stabbing me in the back again. And then, you know, I was strong there on Putin. We’re not going to bow to Putin then, oh, yeah, no, I got a good shot at China. They never going to replace us. We’re going to beat the hell out of them, you know. But what’s really going on? Did I did I approve this Kursk thing? Or where the hell is Kursk? Did I approve that? You know? Is this some CIA thing? Is this the Bay of Pigs all over again. What the hell is going on?

McGovern  02:04

Well, Mr. President, whether or not you knew about the Kursk thing is important, because it’s obvious that your advisors, and lots of NATO people know about it. Now, why the Ukrainians sent some of their best troops into Kursk, the oblast of the region, the province of Russia, where they had been occupying some 100 square kilometers for the last several days? Is a is a riddle. Is a mystery. Did they really think they could take that territory and use it as a bargaining chip? Well, I don’t know. Why is it the Russians didn’t immediately evict them? Well, I don’t know that either. What’s going to happen to those Ukrainian troops? I do know that they’re going to be slaughtered. They’re going to be slaughtered in next couple of days. Were they important? Well, yeah, that was the reserve they had. What’s happening in in the Donbas part of Ukraine? Well, the Russians are moving forward.

They’re about to take a very strategic point called [inaudible], and that will pretty much put them astride all the supply lines and enable the Russians to do what they’re doing very gradually, even more quickly. Putin himself has said that the invasion into Kursk has not only coughed up more reason- more enlistments in the Russian army than we can handle, but it also has impelled us to go 50% faster in the in the Donbas. So why? Why NATO? And it’s pretty clear from all the evidence now that NATO supported this invasion of Kursk, are people really trying to get us in a war with Russia? Now I’ll just finish by saying there are lots of differing opinions in government as to what the Russians are going to do.

The worst case is that the Russians consider this an act of war, and that they are war with the United States and with NATO. And what that implies is pretty disastrous. There are other people that say, “Well, no the Russians are not going to be provoked into doing something they hadn’t planned to do. They’ll just clean up the residue in Kursk, the Ukrainian residue, and they’ll proceed, and they’re not going to do much until the election in the United States.” I favor the latter view. But very, very serious analysts are saying that Putin is going to have to do something more, more definitive, more offensive than he has chosen to do in the past.

POTUS  05:04

You know, you watched my speech, right?

McGovern  05:07

 I did.

POTUS  05:09

And I looked at it after I got home, I went pretty far describing this as a victory for Ukraine. And I said this, you know, we defied the pessimists. You being the number one pessimist, even though you got 27 years in the CIA, you always seem to think that they screw up. Now you’ve been right. You know, you say to your CIA screws up, you’re always going to be right, I guess. But, you know, I went out on a limb there, and you’re telling me that in a matter of days, Zelensky is going to lose the best of his troops? What the hell does that say about all these new weapons we gave and the Brits gave them and the French and everybody giving them all these weapons? What the hell are we building all these weapons they can’t hold some a couple of bunch of miles there in the in Russia, there? What the hell are they- what’s going on?

McGovern  06:07

Well, Mister President, you know better than I that those weapons are being produced by our domestic arms industries. Those folks are making tons of bucks on this sort of thing. So when they finally arrive, the Russians will already have adopted countermeasures. The only thing that is really an incendiary point would be those F-16s… if they’re armed with these longer range missile, that’s trouble. There’s a chance, and some of my colleagues think there’s a really good chance, that the Russians will hit their airfields, whether they’re in Romania or Poland or Moldova or wherever, before they can get up in the air, because of the threat that they exist to inside Russia.

So with respect to who’s right and who’s wrong, well, I mean, you look at the record, and you know that the head of the CIA, Bill Burns and the military were all telling you that Putin had definitively lost in Ukraine. They told you that in the first part of July last year, so more than a year ago. And so did the Director of National Intelligence, she said that that Russia was running out of ammunition and that they had no indigenous capability to produce that information. So these people either are horribly naive, terribly misinformed, or they’re not telling you the truth. 

POTUS  07:40

Well, they say Putin’s in shock now. He hasn’t really… But I must say, run that by me again, about the F 16s, because that’s…. that… I am president for five more months. You know, I said yesterday, I’ve been around this a long time, and sometimes things get scrambled, but you’re telling me I may have to respond to attack they make on another NATO country? 

POTUS  08:14

If they make an attack with those F-16s in a NATO country, there’s no end to this, right?

McGovern  08:23

That’s correct. Mr. President.

POTUS  08:25

What are you telling me? I’m going to have 15 minutes to decide whether the world gets blown up.

McGovern  08:32

Mr. President, I mentioned that some people in the intelligence community consider it likely that the Russian will strike those airfields in Romania, Poland or Moldova, before those planes get up in the air. Why? Because those planes, if they’re armed with these latest US missiles, have the reach. They can stand off. They can step way back from from Russian air air defense, and hit targets within, within Russia. Now, the F-16s are a problem. They are nuclear capable. In other words, they could carry nuclear weapons, as well as these very long range missiles. Okay? So when this subject came up, and you’ll remember, Mr. President it was you, who raised it. You were out in Japan at a economic summit, and Zelensky had just lost Bakhmut. You know, eight, eight months of struggle, 100,000 plus Ukrainians dead because of trying to- at Bakhmut, trying to keep a hold on to Bakhmut. He came to Tokyo, and he said, “Mr. President, I’m sorry, but we lost Bakhmut.”

And all those signatures, remember when we we’re moving to Congress and and Pelosi and your vice president were really spying because we had signatures for the guys at Bakhmut? Well, they’re all dead now, what are we going to do? And now I don’t know if you had- I don’t know if Austin or any of your military advisers were with you, but you said to me, “Oh, we’re going to do seven- We’re going to do F 16s.” Now, whether F16s have any chance of turning, turning the trajectory of the war in Ukraine around is incredibly dubious. The only thing they could do is cause a [inaudible], so to speak, a reason for Russia to strike directly, not only at the F 16s if they fly over Ukraine, but the airfields from which they fly. And Putin two months ago, made that explicit, saying precisely that. So if you’re being advised to up the ante in Ukraine. Realize that Putin is sitting pretty. He’s got the upper hand.

He’s going to destroy those Ukrainian troops, the Cracker Jack Ukrainian troops in Kursk, and then he’s going to move slowly, probably, probably won’t take the rest of Ukraine up to the Dnieper River until he sees what happens in the election. But he’s capable of that, and you need to know that, because you’ve been very poorly advised. One year ago, we we had already won, and now all of a sudden, you know we’re about to lose. So well, one thing to do is…

POTUS  11:18

Ray, ray, wait a second. I’m going to get back to that 15 minutes. You know, you… I don’t want to somebody’s going to wake me up at three in the morning, and they hit Warsaw and took out F 16 in Warsaw. Have we assured Putin that there’s not any nuclear weapons going out on that? That they’re not aiming at nuclear targets? We got any understanding with Putin on that? I mean what the hell you guys do at the CIA? I know you’re not in the counter-terrorism, blah, blah, blah, but you know what? What the hell? What’s going on here doesn’t Putin know we’re not going to take out his nukes, that we’re not going to take out the Kremlin? What does he know?

McGovern  12:06

Well, he knows that we have a weaponry now going into Ukraine that can fly up in the air, stand off, and shoot deep, deep inside Russian territory, that those are the things that were just given Ukraine. He doesn’t think that we’re going to attack the Kremlin, but he thinks that there’s so much, so much at stake here. And you made it, you made it pretty succinctly last night, except, except I would, I would find fault with with your claim that Putin thought that he could take Kyiv in three days. Mr. President, with all due respect, that wasn’t Putin. That was all your generals. That were all the generals on CNN and MSNBC, they all said that. Putin never said that because he had no intention of taking Kyiv. He didn’t have enough troops in the fray to do that. What he wanted to do was scare the hell out of the Ukrainians.

He succeeded in doing that. Ukrainians came to the table. They agreed at the beginning of April to knock this thing off, have a ceasefire, and they agreed that Ukraine would not seek to join NATO. And that was all shoved down the road by Boris Johnson, sent to Kyiv on your behalf, really, and on the behalf of your advisors, and said, “No, you can’t do that. We got to fight on.” And the result is, you know, if you care about humans who suffer here, several 100,000 Ukrainian youth, many Russian youth, all because back in late March, early April – and this is documented now by the Ukrainian negotiators at the time – the deal was done. All that Ukraine had acknowledged was we don’t want to be NATO will be neutral.

And that fell apart under the pressure of the UK, working on behalf, as usual, of the US. So that’s the background for that. So the notion that Putin had set its side sites on conquering or taking Kyiv in three days, that actually comes from our cable channels. That comes from very wise former generals that are so frequent on those cable channels.

POTUS  14:28

Yeah but I always bring you back to reality here. I said, “We don’t bow down to Putin.” That’s one of the biggest applause lies I got last night. Ukraine is the good war. It’s the good war. We’re on the side of freedom. We’re against – well, it’s not much of an empire anymore – but the evil empire and not communist anymore. You know, I don’t know where communism comes in. That damn Trump keeps telling me, “Kamala.” He says, “Kamala,” the New York Post, “Kamala is a commie.” How the hell- what’s commie got to do? We like commies in Vietnam. We don’t like them in China. I don’t know.

The commie thing just played out too long. We don’t know what the whole thing Putin is anti-commie. Yeah. But anyway, the good boys when we got the Ukraine, Ukraine, because there’s no draft we don’t have protesters outside the convention. Boy, if we had draftees going into Ukraine that then the convention would probably, wouldn’t happen, it’d be Chicago to the 10th power. But anyway, we don’t have that. But Gaza, Israel. That’s my big nightmare. People picketing the convention. I had to even say, you know, I didn’t say I didn’t even bring up the two state, I can’t do that. I’ll lose a lot of lot of money support. And, I mean, I can’t do that. So I have to say, I’m against atrocities.

We’re going to have a ceasefire now. Netanyahu shoots me in the legs. You know, bunkers over there can’t even get a ceasefire. So you’re now telling me the good war in Ukraine is getting bad and could blow up the whole planet. And then what are you going to do? Tell me I got a take on Netanyahu in Israel, and how do we get a ceasefire? I promise we’d have some kind of ceasefire. Now, Hamas are not going to go along, because it’s a phony ceasefire, right? Get the prisoners out, and then what we go back to destroying every Palestinian there. You know, what do I got to pass a law saying you can’t use the word genocide. Could we do that? The English got that, right. I see they arrest people at the airport and everything. Could we do that? How would that play? 

McGovern  16:50

Well, we have a Bill of Rights, Mr. President. 

POTUS  16:52

Yeah, but genocide, genocides only… It can’t be only when the Germans do it, because we, like the Germans now, right, right? Used to be to say genocide meant the the Germans, they killed all the millions of people, Jews, and then a lot of other people. But, you know, we can’t- so genocides now, what anybody gives Israel a hard time? No matter what Israel does? That’s not genocide? It’s okay? 

McGovern  17:17

Well, genocide is codified in in law, Mister President, and it’s not that you have to kill off a whole tribe or a whole nation of people, a goodly segment of that destroyed because of racism and other isms is genocide, according to the the Rome Statute and the Royal Court. So let’s not well. Let me. Let me just cite something from a very liberal young, bright Oxford Yale, his name is Peter… 

POTUS  17:53

Alright. I know you went to Fordham, okay? I know that, Ray, don’t wear it on your shoulder. Working Class Bronx kid, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. Okay, don’t put down Yale and all the time, and Harvard everything. It’s getting old. Jesuits were not so great. Didn’t they get us into Vietnam? Fordham probably got us into Vietnam, right with Ngo Dinh Diem, wasn’t you on your faculty or something? 

McGovern  17:54

No 

POTUS  17:55

Seminary there? Yeah, people don’t even remember Ngo Dinh Diem. We had to hunt them down and kill him. You know, the great George Washington of Vietnam, your agency, yeah, CIA killed him.

McGovern  18:34

Well, Mister President, getting back to your we talk about here, genocide and so forth. This is Peter Beinhart, and I think you anticipated me in error here. I was going to praise his credentials, Yale Oxford and all those places. He’s Jewish and he’s a liberal, and what he said, even before your speech last night is is worth your knowing about okay? And I’m going to read just a sentence or two. Says Peter Beinhart, “I just don’t think that when you’re looking at the presidency or a person, you can’t sequester. You can’t rule out what’s happened in Gaza. I mean, if you’re a liberal minded person, you believe that genocide is just about the worst thing a country can do, and it’s just about the worst thing that your country can do if your country is arming genocide.”

Now, I picture Peter Beinhart looking at you last night and say, “Oh yeah, we’re going to really try to get a ceasefire.” Well, you can get that, but instead, a week before you gave Israel $20 billion more for arms to commit- well, if you want to say the word genocide. So it just doesn’t look very, very copacetic to people living looking on who know what the score is. It’s really surprising that Beinhart kind of noticed this beforehand and warned. “Look, if, if President Bush- President Biden, doesn’t say anything about genocide, and instead, sends more billions of dollars of aid, then one has to look at how sincerely he is.”

Mr. President, just in a word, sending Blinken to trot around that part of the Middle East. You know, it recalls one of his predecessors Condoleezza Rice. She did so much traveling in her last years in office that the Arabs got together and they said, “We figured out what Condoleezza means in Arabic, and what it means is perpetual motion, signifying the achievement of nothing.” That’s what Biden is doing. It’s a, what the British call a charade. It’s a charade, Mr. President. Now that you’re not the first president to have been kind of circumvented by his Secretary of State, I give you Biden. You know you were vice president, then you may remember this. Biden had been mousetrapped into into being forced by the powers that be, to make war, open war on Syria. Putin bailed them out. He said, I’ve just gotten Bashar Al Assad.

POTUS  21:32

Wait a minute, you just did, you had one of those senior moments that I have just now. What do you mean Biden?

McGovern  21:41

Oh, I meant Obama, yeah. 

POTUS  21:42

Oh, yeah, hey, you can’t just, you can’t run for president. No, could you give a speech like I gave last night? You couldn’t do that. 

McGovern  21:53

No.

POTUS  21:54

Just three or four screw ups, just three or four, very small. Got it together, but Jesus, you confused me, Biden? With Obama? You know, I was the vice president. I didn’t do that. Obama was the president, right, right? Am I forgetting this? Was I the- vice I was, I was the vice president. What? What were you elevating me to? What you think I had some influence in that administration. You know, Obama ever listened to a goddamn thing I ever said? Huh? You think… 

McGovern  22:28

Well, Mr. President, that’s beside the point. What happened here is that Obama goaded on by all his advisors, first and foremost, the Secretary of State, guy named John Kerry to make war, open war on Syria. Okay? He stepped up to that and Putin helped them by having Syria destroy all its chemical weapons. Now, what happened? It just happened when Obama was going up to St Petersburg for economic summit, and he got together with Putin said, “Look, I can help you here. I can pull your chestnuts out of the fire. You don’t have to make a war on Syria,” and that’s the way it worked out.

Three days later, in London, John Kerry is making a separate trip trying to get the British to support open war against Syria. And somebody asked him a question, “Mr. Secretary, is there nothing that that Syria could do to prevent the US making making war on it.” And Kerry says, “Well,” and this is quote, right? “Well, I suppose they could. I could, suppose they, they could give up their chemical weapons to be destroyed, but that’s that’s not going to happen. There’s no chance that’s going to happen.” End quote. Kerry gets on a plane. Obama calls him “Oh, John, it’s got to tell you, I made a deal with Putin. We’re not going to have to go to war. Sorry about that. We have a deal. It’s going to prevent the war.”

Okay, that is 2013, okay? Now, what’s my point? My point is that Kerry was undermining what Obama wanted to do, not only with the US Congress, but also with the people in London, everywhere else. And there are lots of examples of that the most, maybe the primary example, and you will remember this after Putin moaned and groan about these missiles that are already in Romania and Poland, which give him 10 minutes prior warning from launch to target, okay, and if they’re hypersonic missiles eventually with us, gets them five minutes, okay? He was forced by his military to give you a call. You may remember, was the end of the year, 2001 okay? December 3– 30th.

He said, “Look, Mr. President, can you at least promise not to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine? Could you do that please?” And you said, “Oh, okay.” How could you say okay? Because you were alone, you were in Delaware. For God’s sake. There was no Blinken. There was no Sullivan there to advise you otherwise. What happened two weeks later, Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia, raises this with Blinken in Geneva, and Blinken says, “Oh, that. Forgot about that. You know, we have the right to put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine. We’re willing to talk about how many would put everybody. No, no, forget about that.” In direct contravention…

POTUS  24:48

What you got me confused here? What was I doing? You said, 2001? 21?

McGovern  25:46

Yeah, this is yeah. This was when you were you were President, you still are President. This was the 30th of December 2001, two months before Putin sent his troops into Ukraine.

POTUS  26:05

2021? 

McGovern  26:07

Yeah, I’m sorry, 2021 

POTUS  26:08

God, you’re just as screwed up as I am, you know, maybe we both gotta retire. 2021 right? 

McGovern  26:17

Yeah. Sorry about that. 

POTUS  26:19

Well, you know, you’re, you’re, I thought you were a little younger than me, a little, you know, but let’s, but I don’t.. I don’t want to get lost in all these details. I’m stuck here now on, do I have 15 minutes at two o’clock in the morning to end life on this planet? Or not? That’s, is that what we’re talking about now? I mean, what’s going on here? People say, Don’t do anything to screw up Kamala’s chances. I mean, there won’t be any election. What do we- you know, those F 16 said they could. I mean, are you fear mongering? Or what the hell’s going on here Ray? How serious is this moment?

McGovern  27:01

I’m I’m saying, Mr. President, that you will have to respond to entreaties by your advisors. Things are going to go really downhill in Ukraine before the election. Okay? Now the Russians look at these F 16s and the new armaments that have been promised for them as a real threat to the Russian homeland. And so if they go up in the air with these new armaments, or God forbid, even nuclear weapons, tucked under their wings, they’re going to be shot down. And the Russians may not wait to shoot them down. Once they’re in the air, they may hit their bases. And if their bases are in Poland or Romania or Moldova, well, not Moldova, but Poland and Romania are members of NATO.

And then your advisors are going to say to you, “Oh, article five of NATO requires us to respond.” And you’re going to say, “Well, how can we respond?” And they’re going to say, mark my words, Mr. President, “Well, we have these tactical nuclear weapons. That’s about the only thing we have left on the shelf. And they’re they’re just low yield, and that would show the Russians that we mean business.” So that’s the decision you’re going to be faced with before the election and maybe even after the election, until the new inauguration. So, yeah, I’m kind of trying to make you sensitized to the fact not only that this is going to happen on the ground, but that your advisors, based on their past performance, are going to advise you.

“Look, you know, we may have to do these extraordinary things to prevent loss in Ukraine, loss in the election, and maybe loss of our own freedom, given the fact that that fellow at the orange hair has the book on, on you, on your son, on Blinken, on Sullivan. He knows, he knows how he was done in for four years. And you know, probably people have realistic expectation that he’ll be pretty vengeful. So that’s what at stake Mr. President. Yeah, if it’s 15 minutes to decide, then you’re going to have to decide whether you want to risk blowing up the rest of the world. Or whether you want to, here’s an idea…

Nobody is talking to Putin. Why don’t you do that now? Without Blinken, without Sullivan, turns out they weren’t with you in Delaware when you made that sensible commitment: “Alright, we won’t put any offensive strike missiles in Ukraine.” They double down and they double crushed you and the Russians are looking at they say, “Well, who the hell’s in charge in Washington?” So to make the point, Mister President, you can tell them who’s in charge. You can get in touch by all kinds of back channel routes and talk directly. You’re good talking directly to people, and I dare say you’re less under the sway of people who have a real personal stake in not losing the election and losing their freedom if that other fellow comes in. 

POTUS  30:15

Alright, let’s tie this up, Ray. Let’s tie this up. You say you listen to my speech last night. Believe it or not, I put a lot of effort into that, and I do know what I said. I know they think I’m some kind of old crony like you… you know. But I know, I know which end is up, you know. And I know what you’re saying. They’ll go after Hunter. They’ll go after me, and we’ve been rough on them. No question. They got what was that line? A lot of people liked it in that Kamala is a prosecutor and here’s a felon. We know what to do. Prosecutors know what to do with felons, you know? Well, you don’t got to be Donald Trump, crazy son of a bitch, but you don’t have to be him, you know, vengeful. Mean, anti- you know. I mean all that stuff. God damn Nazis, Nazis, you know. But the fact that about is we lowered the bar. We lowered I knew it when we were doing it. I knew it.

You know, you don’t go after ex presidents. You don’t, you don’t do that. You know, we did it. I mean shit. Nobody went after Nixon that way. Nobody went after… you could have gone after anybody. Well, we did it. So I know what’s at stake. And I know, and if they get to Congress, or any branch of Congress, and they got the White House, yes, there’s no legacy, they’ll destroy anything. I know, you know, then, yeah, democracy, the whole it’s terrible, but, but if I had a good line there. We didn’t bow down to Putin. Now I’m telling you, I do what you suggest and call Putin. Then Trump, he’s just an opportunist. Suddenly, he’ll say, No, you gotta kill Putin. You can’t talk to him, you know, he’ll say anything, anything. He’s a demagogue, right? A terrible ego maniac nut! I hate the guy.

So what’s he going to do with that? Oh, and now he’s crying uncle. He’s caving in. Finds an appeaser. You know? He wants to suck up the Putin. He says, I could end this war in 24 hours without sucking up to Putin. I just make him an off. He can’t refuse. I don’t know what that is. You know, I don’t like NATO anyway. Give up the NATO thing for Ukraine. Forget that, you know, works out now. So I can’t do that. I can’t make that phone call. I mean, I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you I can’t do it, and what I got to do is get my guys here and make sure we don’t put any nukes, nukes on those F sixteens, right? I mean, because then, then you pack Putin into that corner, he suddenly the great Russian czar, saving his people.

God knows what he’ll do, you know. And you know he’s also got his religion at Russian Orthodox, you know, I know we got a some fanatical religious people, mostly in the Republican Party, but they’re around, but Putin’s got that too. You know, they, they got their gods. You know, supposed to be a Christian God, but I never paid any attention to that. But I know he prays. He prays. You know that Russian orthodox prayer has something to do with Christianity anyway. Ray, it’s scary times, and you don’t give me any daylight here. Maybe that’s not your job, but I just don’t… yeah, so can we wrap it up? You got anything else? 

McGovern  34:01

Sure. No, I just comment, Mr. President, that the only thing missing is communication with Putin. As I read his objectives, he’s willing to talk as I read the objectives of the Ukrainians, egged on by your advisors, they want to prevent any talk. They just as soon have a direct clash with Russia, US, NATO, with Russia. As long as you’re aware of that, then it seems to me, you still have five months. You could reach out and just kind of put out some feelers. You don’t have to tell Blinken, you don’t have to tell Sullivan. Look what they did last time. When, when you told them, and they said, “Oh, you what?! You said, we wouldn’t put offensive strike missiles in Ukraine? What? Come on, Joe!” That’s what they said. And they went, they reversed that. The Russians didn’t like that at all, okay? So what I’m saying is, here, uh, look, um, you can do this in a personal way, just like Obama did to prevent an open war in Syria.

You could do it if you’re alone on the phone with Putin, without Sullivan and Blinken hanging over your shoulder, as you did when you were in Delaware on the 30th of December, 2021, okay? You could do those things because you’re still president. Now, I think one of the one of the tragic flaws here, and the Greeks used to call it hubris, if you will, is what you said a couple times during your speech last night. Let’s- “we have to lead. We have to lead the world.” Well, we can’t, I mean, I hate to break it to you, Mister President, we can’t lead the world anymore. The world is stacked against us. When Blinken and Sullivan told you three years ago that the Chinese and the Russians were loggerheads and the Russians will be squeezed by China on their long border and so forth. That was either terribly naive or just a bald-faced lie. Now they’re in an alliance. It’s two against one, and most, the majority of the rest of the world is on their side.

That includes Iran, which is now in BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The world has changed. I hate to say it, because I’m the American too. I like to see us in a leadership position, but that’s full by, as the Germans say, that’s gone. That’s history. And what you’re going to do is make, it seems to me, is to make sure that the next five months are used to useful purpose. You might want to, you know, I find out I’m we’re going to celebrate our 63rd wedding anniversary. Okay? Now you, Mr. Biden, not not quite so long, but a long time. I’ve learned in 63 years to listen to my wife and the New York Times had a peace in April saying that Jill had said, “Stop the war. Stop the war, Joe, stop the war in Gaza.” Now that makes good sense to me.

You have the power to do that. You can’t do that through Blinken and Sullivan. You need to get in touch with Netanyahu tell them what, what the deal is. You’re not going to support a wider war. You’re going to cut off. You’re not going to deliver that 20 billion that you just promised, okay? If he widens the war, okay? Now, then when you get his reaction in a thumbs his nose at you, as usual, then you go public with that. That’s the only thing that’s going to stop a wider war in that part of the Middle East? Mark my words.

POTUS  37:45

Ray, I don’t know if we’re going to be talking much about this stuff. I guess I always say I’m not going to talk… I like talking to you. Let me, you know, brains only take you so far. I’ll admit you probably had higher SA. Trump says he has. He’s a genius, you know. But I want to tell you something, you know. I look back at these other presidents and everything, and some of the people you thought were absolutely crazy, you know, like Nixon, you know, Reagan, or dumb, or whatever, if they were sitting in my position now, they put the responsibility humanity on their shoulders. Don’t you ever quote me saying this, Don’t you ever quote, okay? 

McGovern  38:40

Mr. President…. 

POTUS  38:41

Well, I’m going to finish, I just want to finish Ray, because sometimes, sometimes you see things very clearly. Now, why the hell did they have the strengths to be able to turn around and say, “No, we got to do this for peace. We have to support the time.” What Nixon did, you know, the fucking warmonger, anti communist everything… No, no. You gotta- even after he’s driven out of the White House, we got to have the [inaudible] we gotta… We can’t go all out war nuclear. Reagan embraces Gorbachev. He doesn’t feel the need to humiliate him. He doesn’t feel the need to liberate everybody in the world, expand NATO. Reagan! He does the human thing. You know, here I represent the Enlightened party of the Democrats. And this is just between us. It’s just between us. You know, if I had last night said, “Look, we’re not going to have World War Three over Ukraine. We are going to negotiate. We are going to try to find some way. We’re not going to let whatever you want to call it genocide or just overreach by Israel cause the– I would have reaffirmed the two state solution. I would affirm the the right of the Palestinians…”

I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. Ray, because our party, you’re in that party, I think I don’t know your civil service, I guess. But our party, they got their contradictions, and they got their dishes. The fact is, when it comes to war, they want it. They don’t really want war, and they don’t want the draft. They certainly don’t want their own children to go. But they like the tough war position. Look at Nancy Pelosi, for God’s sake, starting that old damn thing over Taiwan in the straits and screwing up decades of sane policy to China. No, she going to go over there, start a war with China. They like it. The Democrats, they like it. That’s my party. And you know what? I start doing this reasonable stuff you say, they’re going to say, I’m destroying Kamala Harris’s chance for success. That I’m just jealous, that I’m just being petty. You know what, Ray? A lot of what you tell me I know is true much more than you may think. You know what it’s it’s too good to check. It’s too good to try.

You know why? Because it destroyed me, destroyed the Democratic Party, and it gives Donald Trump open season, open season. He sails into the White House. He goes for the red baiting. He goes for the big let’s blast them, and we’re finished. Now I’m going to end this because I know your response, be rational, be logical, when the hell is being rational, being logical and factual and all that stuff we were taught in, you know, school, when the hell is that ever had anything to do with American foreign policy? Ever? But that’s just between us. I’ll give you the last word I see, you know, or you’re just saying me to shut up. Tell me the president to shut up, yeah.

McGovern  42:02

Thank you, Mr. President. Now I just wanted to say that if you look at Eisenhower, he had incredible experience with war and with the military industrial complex, and he had good advisors. Okay? Fast forward Nixon. He had really good advisors. Think what you want about Henry Kissinger, but in terms of detente, in terms of working out arms control agreements, and I was personally involved in the first one in 72 he had good advisors. Okay? Who else can we think of had had good advisors. 

POTUS  42:41

Reagan. Reagan shocks me. Reagan, nobody talked about blowing up the world when Reagan was in there. You know, that’s true. Reagan was a peacenik. Goddamn…

McGovern  42:52

That’s right. And Reagan had good advisors. Now I know from first hand experience how when he came into office, he had terrible advisors. Secretary of State was a general named Alex Hague that tried to get the intelligence community write a write a paper saying the Russians were behind all terrorism in the whole world. We wouldn’t do it, so they went to the Defense Intelligence agencies to do it. Okay? That’s the kind of advisors he had. Judge Clark, his his National Security Advisor. First time I briefed him, he couldn’t believe that I put Russia and reasonable in the same sentence.

It had to do with the the Intermediate Nuclear Forces arrangements, which turned out to to to have destroyed an entire class of intermediate range nuclear weapons. Okay? Now, what happened Weinberger! Weinberg was a rabid anti Soviet person. Schultz was smart. He bided his time. He joined forces with George HW Bush. They finally won the confidence of Ronald Reagan. And lots of good things happened, not only the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, Open Skies, lots of other things, which later the US left. My point is, what? You got Vice President Bush, you’ve got George Schultz, head of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a terrific guy. I’ll remember his name in a second. Oh, yeah. Well, anyhow, he was a brown shoe army guy from World War Two. So these people convinced Reagan by being sensible. Now… 

POTUS  44:39

Where does Schultz come in? Schultz was one, but nobody ever even talks about Schultz. Schultz was one of the guys that saved the world, isn’t he? 

McGovern  44:48

He is! 

POTUS  44:49

Yeah. What was his background? He was at Stanford, there. Well, he was at some business. 

McGovern  44:55

He went to Princeton, and he’s got a tiger on his rear end to prove that. Uh, not speaking out of school, I haven’t seen it, but others have. 

POTUS  45:04

But didn’t he end up at Stanford there, Stanford? 

POTUS  45:06

Yeah, right. That’s fantasy. The reality is, this nation, they like war. As long as they don’t have to fight in it. They love these surrogate wars. They love these surrogate wars. You know, you know, I gotta say one thing about that speech. Did I… what did I say about Agent Orange and then my son dying, and Agent Orange and the burn pits in Iraq and everything? 

McGovern  45:06

Yeah, yeah, well, that’s where I used to brief him when he was on vacation. Uh, yeah, really nice house at Stanford. Now he was the real deal. He would listen. He wouldn’t say a lot, but yeah, every now and then he would object to what, what my nominal boss, Casey or Bobby Gates, said, about how the Russians would never give out power without a terrible, terrible, terribly violent revolution. And I’d say this [inaudible] fella seems to be the real deal to us who are honest Soviet analysts. Why don’t you? Why’d you try it Mr. Mr. Schultz, why don’t you over there? You’re invited now. Go, go, take a look, see if he’s real, for real, and he was for real.

So what I’m saying here is there were good advisors. They won the the confidence of Reagan, and they won the confidence of Ike, who had lots of good confidence, a good experience in and of himself. And you know, you lack those. Well, look at their record. They say that Russia had already lost that was more than a year ago. They say the Russians ran out of ammunition Why don’t you know- one of the things that I think Trump really has a point with, and forgive me for saying it, is you never fire anyone. Now, if I permit me to say this, if I were president and somebody said the Russians had already lost in July of last year, they would be fired. If I had a Secretary of Defense that misled me into thinking the Ukraine had any chance of winning the war, I would fire him!

So just a word to the wise president as you go off for your for your little vacation. Now think about all this, please, and also please listen to Jill, as I say, the feminine input here I’ve learned in a long series of years, like 63, it’s it’s unique, it’s useful, and sometimes, often, it’s smarter than what you hear from your immediate advisors.

McGovern  47:39

Yeah. 

POTUS  47:40

Didn’t we make Agent Orange. That’s what we dropped on Vietnam, right? 

McGovern  47:44

Yeah, Agent Orange of course in Vietnam. This is more recent stuff, just burning up all these chemicals and all this stuff, these pits.

POTUS  47:52

I said in that speech at the convention, I said, Agent Orange. How did that get in there? Somebody put that in there. That’s what we did to Vietnam, right? 

McGovern  48:03

That’s correct, yeah, we deforested it, yeah… yeah. And you know, when you when you look at Vietnam…

POTUS  48:10

But that’s not what killed my boy, is it? Agent…

McGovern  48:14

Well, no, not Agent Orange… But let me make a point, a related point here. LBJ did not…

POTUS  48:21

Yeah, go ahead. We’re making too many points. The fact is, I’m holding the lousiest hand. I’m a lame duck. Nobody’s going to listen to me. I do the right thing. There goes my legacy. Then there might… No, nobody, anybody, no nowhere. You know who got else got a legacy, if we blow up the world, there’s no legacy. I don’t know what? Yeah, go ahead.

Last point, Ray. I gotta, I gotta get some sleep here. What is it about? 11 o’clock in the morning, I gotta get that morning nap. Now I don’t get that nap. I’m finished. You ought to have a nap too. Ray, you’re making the same kind of slips I’m making this age thing… Getting old sucks. Sucks. 

McGovern  49:03

Yeah, I’m just trying to make you feel better. Mr. President, my numbers get mixed up sometimes. Yeah, I’m in that same club. Listen, I guess what I’d say is this… you- in the vernacular of I come from in the Bronx, we would say you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. Okay? Now if more is at stake than winning money in a poker game, which, of course, is the case here with respect to Ukraine and Gaza, now we gotta, we gotta at least consider when to fold them. The point I was gonna make before you mentioned Agent Orange and Vietnam and all that stuff.

And I have been trying to make the point about good advisors and bad advisors, and contrast any ones you have with the ones that Ike had, that Reagan had. Okay? Now how about the ones that LBJ had? There were awful! They were terrible! They thought that they could lead the world in the fight against communism when they were dealing with a civil war between communists and others that we supported in Vietnam, it took years to realize that, and we killed 3 million Vietnamese. Okay? That was really bad advice. Now, who? Who are these people?

Oh, they’re the best and the brightest. Halberstrom wrote a book about them, and they were all McGeorge Bundy was the dean of what Harvard College, and all these guys that came out of the in the so-called enlightenment to the northeast, they were bad advisors. So you these guys that you have come out of the same schools, think that we’re still the the exceptional or the most exceptional and necessary person the country in the world. They’re wrong. They were wrong in Vietnam, and that was a long time ago. They’re really, really, wrong now. 

POTUS  51:04

Let me tell you, a serie I got, because I still, you know, I may not be some big intellectual, you know, but I see, I’ve seen a lot. What we got now, it’s not just that we think we’re exceptional. You got that sick ass bastards in Europe. And I mean all of them, the whole pack, from Putin to Schmidt, everybody, you know, I don’t know, all of them, even over to England. They still have fantasies of the old world. And then you got these new things, you know, in India, China, Brazil, all that stuff.

And they’re playing all these, they’re taking advantage of all this stuff, you know. And I just give you one example when I when I’ve been in government a long time, when we used to do some stupid stuff, you at least could count on the Swedes, you know, what the hell you call them, the Scandinavian countries, maybe Finland, you know, nuts. They’re not like that. But the same kind of they have, you know, same kind of dower disposition you could count on, neutralism. Germans, you know, [inaudible] and all that. Now the Swedish Prime Minister there, and the ex Prime Minister just yesterday, today, they want us to go for more against Russia.

You know, where is [inaudible] when you need him? You know, where they there are no neutralists left in Europe. Europe’s gone crazy, you know. And I was going to ask you, by the way, we’re taking too much time. But you know, as it’s turned out that that Sy Hersh, I can’t stand that son… But anyway, that he said we did that, blowing up the pipeline at Nordstrom. But now they’re saying this, the Ukrainians did it. So we did we give… did we do it? What is all that? That’s a whole nother briefing, or what’s going on, and everybody must know it, the Germans know no blew up their pipeline, right? You know? 

McGovern  53:06

Everyone who’s reasonable knows the wonder is that the Germans who suffered most from this just took it, acquiesced in it, and said, “Okay, well, if we have to pay six times as much as we used to for electricity and other fuels. And you know, that’s what we’ll do.” Yeah, you know, I don’t know what goes on on the other side of those turnstiles at headquarters CIA, but Sy Hirsch has this record, this incredible record, of breaking such stories and the detail into which he goes are very persuasive.

So, yeah, Putin has said he believes Hirsch in effect. And so what are they doing? What are these stories coming up about Zelensky? Or [inaudible]? All these guys doing… Well, I suggest that this is kind of one of the preliminary little stories that will ease Zelensky out when the US and NATO decide that he’s outlived his usefulness, that may come soon. And if you can blame the pipeline blow up on Zelensky or [inaudible] the rest of the Ukrainians, well, that could be used against him if you just want to ease them out, or if you want to just throw them out and let them go to one of his villas in the Mediterranean or wherever. 

POTUS  54:28

Alright, so let me ask you straight out. Was this Zelensky going into Russia to torpedo those talks we were trying to push? I know we sent some signals that we were willing to deal out here… Is this Zelensky’s way of making it impossible for us to cut some kind of deal and end this damn thing? The same way Netanyahu is preventing us from making some deal there in Gaza and get past that, and get past these two things before the election? Or what the hell? What’s going on? Was this just… were we tricked? Back, stabbed, screwed over, whatever the words give it to me straight, and that’s going to end this, by the way. Last word.

McGovern  55:14

Okay, here it is, straight, Mr. President. You have been misled by the New York Times and The Washington Post, at least so far as the Russians are concerned, Putin himself has said there were no such negotiations going on. This is, this is one of those stories that’s conjured up for for some purpose. So with respect to whether this had anything to do with Kursk or anything else, it was nothing to be it was a nothing burger.

Now, with respect to to Gaza, there’s nothing going on. Blinken is just there for charade, or charade of adopting the British usage here, it’s not going to help anything. And the only thing that will help something, the only thing and finish with this note, Mr. President, is for you directly, without advice from these other guys, okay? talk to Netanyahu and say, “Look, you’re on your own if you, if you participate in a wider war against Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran. You’re on your own. Okay?” And then if he says, “Well, we’ll see about that. We’ll see about that.” Then you announce that publicly, and you let the Israeli army know that there’s some doubt as to where the US will come in with both feet.

And the Israeli army does want to go into into Lebanon or elsewhere. So you have some cards to play. I don’t say you fold them on Israel. You left them to play- you put them into play, and you make sure that Netanyahu, and if necessary, the whole world knows that the United States is not going to get involved militarily if there’s a wider war in Israel.

POTUS  56:55

All right. Thank you for your service. What else can I say? 27 years? Did you ever think we’d end up this kind of a mess? No, be honest. 

McGovern  57:10

I’ve seen a lot of messes, but usually there are better advisors around. I would advise you, Mr. President, to think about that over your vacation time now and listen to Jill, I make bold to say. 

POTUS  57:24

Yeah, vacation time. Five months of hell in front of me. Whatever I do, I’ll be blamed. Whatever happens, I’ll be blamed. And then that son of a bitch gets in power probably try to put me in the slammer like I did him. You know, revenge, man, revenge, very dangerous… Alright, take care. See you next time, whenever that is.

McGovern  57:47

Thank you, Mister President.

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Ray McGovern

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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Robert Scheer

Robert Scheer, publisher of ScheerPost and award-winning journalist and author of a dozen books, has a reputation for strong social and political writing over his nearly 60 years as a journalist. His award-winning journalism has appeared in publications nationwide—he was Vietnam correspondent and editor of Ramparts magazine, national correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times—and his in-depth interviews with Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and others made headlines. He co-hosted KCRW’s political program Left, Right and Center and now hosts Scheer Intelligence, an independent ScheerPost podcast with people who discuss the day’s most important issues.

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