Impeachment Looms Over Trump After the Pentagon’s Leaked Nuclear Plans. Joe Kent on What Comes Next.

**Tucker Carlson** (0:04)
There's something about catastrophe that's very difficult for the human brain to process. Something terrible happens, and most people refuse to acknowledge it as it begins. Talk to anybody who's seen a shooting, for example, and they'll tell you, most of them will tell you, if you interview them, I thought it was fireworks or a car backfiring. Most people perceive a house fire in the first moments as burning toast. Again, there's something about people that pushes away evidence of disaster. And so with that in mind, how would the average person assess the risk of nuclear war? Which to state the obvious or what used to be obvious, is the worst possible thing. A nuclear war ends inevitably in the destruction of all human life on the planet. So there's nothing worse than nuclear war. Ask your average American, are we close to nuclear war? And I haven't seen polling on it, but 9 out of 10 would almost certainly say, well, no, of course not, because it's just not imaginable.
And let's hope it remains unimaginable. But the evidence is mounting that some people are imagining it, and therefore we are moving much closer to it. What's the evidence? Well, it's all around us. And it's only our unwillingness, our native hesitancy to add it all up and it prevents us from seeing that. But here are a couple facts that might be worth considering if you're trying to assess, are we actually close to a nuclear war? Russia has revised its nuclear doctrine. Nuclear doctrine is exactly what it sounds like. It's the rules that a country sets for itself about when and under what circumstances it will use nuclear weapons. Most countries that possess nuclear weapons, not all, but most, have what's called a no first use policy. Meaning they pledge to the world, and also to themselves, we will not be the first to press the button. We will use nuclear weapons in defense only. Notably the United States and Israel do not have a no first use policy. They have reserved the right to use nuclear weapons offensively if they so desire. But until very recently, no one imagined that the United States or Israel or any country would ever launch nuclear weapons unless nuclear weapons have been launched against them. And that's why, for over 80 years, nuclear weapons have basically preserved the peace. Horrifying as they are, or perhaps because they are so horrifying, we haven't had a global war since 1945 Because the idea is nobody would win. Mutually assured destruction is the phrase that people often used for this.
And so it's a big change when states start to think about using nuclear weapons in the same way that you would use, say, artillery, or bombs, or missiles.
That has never been considered before. But now clearly it is under consideration by a couple or maybe several different countries. And those would include Russia, the United States and Israel. Again, how do we know that? Well, Russia has revised its nuclear doctrine. The United States is now in the process of revising its nuclear doctrine. As for Israel, well, the government of Israel and successive governments of Israel have over more than 50 years at various points threatened the use of offensive nuclear weapons. So we sort of know that Israel is capable of that, at least if you take them at their word. But the United States is a country most Americans never imagined would seriously consider lobbying nukes into another country unless it was attacked first. But it is a fact that that is now under consideration. And not just under consideration, it has been proposed in writing within the Pentagon. Reports in the last two weeks indicate that during meetings within the Pentagon about how to respond to Iran in that current war, the possibility, the option has been floated of using what are called tactical nuclear weapons, which are just nuclear weapons, detonated at a higher altitude or at a lower strength. But they're still nuclear weapons.
That discussions about their use have taken place in the Pentagon. And we're here to confirm that that is absolutely true. And not only have there been discussions about the use of nuclear weapons, tactical nukes against, say, Karg Island or Pickaxe Mountain or various spots within Iran, those discussions have included slide decks, which is to say, somebody wrote down on a computer screen, hey, maybe we should use nuclear weapons in this war, this war of choice, this war that we started for objectives that have nothing to do with America's national security or national interest.
Now, you would think at that point, the meeting would stop and the person in charge of the meeting would say, who wrote that? Who's suggesting that? Who actually put on a screen in letters in English the idea that we would use nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf? And the person running the meeting would find out that he would call the president. And then legal proceedings, criminal proceedings, would begin against the person who wrote that down. Because anyone who suggests the use, the voluntary use, the offensive use of nuclear weapons is putting at risk the life of every person on the planet. And that would include your children and grandchildren and you. That person is by definition a lunatic, a dangerous lunatic, who should not only be removed from any decision-making authority, but probably should go to jail. Like immediately, especially in a country that routinely puts people in jail for, I don't know, tax evasion. The guy who suggests ending life on this planet probably should face some kind of sanction. And the rest of us should join in, in saying that's not acceptable. And again, anyone who suggests that is dangerous, is a crazy person, is in fact a criminal, because that's true. People who suggest killing every human being are criminals.