The Tucker Carlson Show
Rick Sanchez: Fired and Threatened With Jail for Refusing to Spout Zelensky’s Talking Points
Mon, 17 Mar 2025
Rick Sanchez spent a lifetime in television before becoming one of the highest rated anchors at RT. Last summer, the Biden administration forced him out of his job and threatened him with jail for refusing to repeat Zelensky’s talking points. A case study on the death of free speech. (00:00) Advice From Larry King (04:27) The Neocon Chokehold on Corporate Media (08:48) What Was It Like Working for a Russian-Owned Network During the War? (13:51) Are We Seeing the Death of Free Speech in America? (36:06) The Russian’s Perspective on the War Paid partnerships with: MeriwetherFarms: Visit https://MeriwetherFarms.com/Tucker to receive 10% off and free shipping on new monthly subscription boxes Policygenius: Head to at https://Policygenius.com/Tucker to see how much you could save Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What advice did Larry King give Rick Sanchez?
The Russians? I mean, come on, man. I was born in Cuba. It's a communist country. I mean, just in case he wants, you know. But Larry says to me, let me tell you something. Ricky, lass mich dir etwas sagen. Das ist so, wie Larry es sagt. Sie sagen mir nicht, was ich sagen soll. Sie sagen mir nicht, was ich tun soll. Sie sagen mir nicht, wer ich interviewen muss.
Sie lassen mich in der Kontrolle meines Shows sein. Und ich garantiere dir, dass sie dich wirklich lieben. Sie wollen dich wirklich. Wenn du hierher kommst und dieses Show machst, das sie dir machen wollen, werden sie das auch für dich machen. Und ich sagte, wirklich, Larry, bist du sicher? Und endlich kam ich zu den Terminen. You know, at the time I'd been fired by CNN. I went to Miami.
I decided to leave television altogether, television news. And at the time I was... I had started a new healthcare company in South Florida, which we took public for a couple billion dollars. And it was a great story. But as that... Als das Unternehmen wuchs, dachte ich mir, ich verliere meinen Anruf. Mein Anruf ist das, was du tust. Es ist Spaß. Ich liebe, Geschichten zu erzählen.
Ich liebe, Dinge zu finden, die ich nicht wusste. Und ich liebe, sie zu teilen. Und das für ein Leben zu tun, finde ich, ist eine wundervolle Sache. Ich stimme total dazu. Would you come up and talk to him? And then subsequently I had the call with Larry King. I said, you know what, I might want to do this.
Chapter 2: How did Rick Sanchez's career at RT begin?
Sat down with my wife and my family and I said, you know what, I'm going to put the healthcare company aside and I'm going to go back to what I really want to do. So I joined RT. I said yes. What year?
Das war vor fünf Jahren.
2020.
2019.
Weit vor dieser Krieg und allem anderen. Und die Strecke zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und Russland war damals nicht hostile. Es war nicht unbedingt überlebt. Es war nur ein bisschen... Müde. In der Mitte. Müde. Genau. Ja, damals. Ja. Also was war es so?
It was everything Larry King said it would be. Really? Surprisingly so. I'm not surprised, but I think others would be surprised. Like you, I like dominion of my product, right?
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Chapter 3: Why did Rick Sanchez feel more journalistic freedom at RT?
Of course. I want to be a writer. I want to be able to talk to my producers. I want to know who my other writers are. Yes. And so I picked my staff. I wrote my entire show. I picked my topics. I led the editorial meeting every morning, discussing what was going to be on our news agenda of the day. And Kann ich dir etwas sagen? Ich hatte nie die Möglichkeit bei CNN oder Fox oder NBC.
Ich bin sorry, dass ich das sage.
Ich habe alle drei gearbeitet und ich kann das bestätigen.
Ja, ich meine, du hast einen Sinn oder eine Freiheit oder journalistische Independence, wenn du an diesen Orten arbeitest, aber nicht wie dieses hier. I'll just say right now, and I hope I'm not breaking anybody's heart out there who's a big CNN fan or any cable news fans out there, but if you decide you want to interview somebody and he's not on their list of okay interviewees...
They're not going to let you interview him. And if you want to go down a certain path... He's banned.
He's banned. Oh, I've run up against that many times. And you're saying, this is a good man with interesting things to say. Or he's in the news. Like, this is a relevant person. Our viewers need to hear about this.
Sure, the Jeffrey Sachs of the world, the Mearsheimers of the world, the Colonel McGregors of the world, they're not allowed to be on those networks.
Right?
It's crazy. So I started... seeing some of these things when I was at CNN. I saw them as well at NBC and Fox, you know, to be fair, maybe sometimes coming from a different direction. And sure, I was allowed to have some Ja, genau.
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Chapter 4: What led to Rick Sanchez's departure from RT?
Ich habe dann einen Anruf von einem anderen lieben Freund, Ben Swan, der ein wirklich guter Journalist ist. Und er hat gesagt, willst du ein Show machen? Ich sagte, oh mein Gott, ich würde gerne ein Show machen. Ich verliere es, ein Show zu machen. Also nach einem kleinen Hiatus für etwa ein Jahr und ein halbes Jahr, ging ich zurück und begann ein Show zu machen.
Er sagte, es ist nicht erlaubt, in den Vereinigten Staaten zu airen, aber du kannst dein eigenes Show produzieren und es wird überall auf der Welt airt. Und du kannst es in Spanisch und Englisch machen. So suddenly I started doing this show again, Tucker. That was after the Ukraine War started? That was after the Ukraine War started, correct.
How was, I mean, that must have been, because that was the moment when, well, the Ukraine War is not a Ukraine War, it's a war against Russia led by the United States. Yeah. And you're working at RT, Russia Today. Yeah. So what was that like? It was tough.
It was tough. But after reading enough and knowing enough and hearing some of the people that we aforementioned, the McGregors and Sachs, I started thinking to myself, you know, I should do this because we need to have a conversation with these people.
We need journalists and others and academics and whoever to start engaging with the journalists and the academics over there so we can have discussions and work out a solution before we start another freaking world war here. I mean, so... This will be a good thing.
I can make the world a better place by having a show from the United States that shares the American perspective from a person who loves America. A guy who was born in a communist country and spent all his life listening to his parents say, we're in the greatest nation on earth. Und das mit Leuten weltweit zu teilen. Und RT hat mir die Möglichkeit gegeben, das zu tun.
Sie haben mich nicht zu einem Russen gefragt. Sie haben mich zu einem Journalisten gefragt, der amerikanisch ist. Und warum würde ich nicht diese Art von Geschichte erzählen? Ich stimme total zu. Und das ist das, mit dem wir gewachsen sind. Ich erinnere mich, als ein Kind, als Phil Donahue Brezhnev in New York interviewte, in einem Studio. Als Brezhnev in die UN ging, interviewte er ihn.
And here he was in the studio with all these women asking this man questions. I remember that was Phil Donahue. I remember Ted Koppel once a week having a Soviet reporter on. His name escapes me, but he became very famous at the time. Yes. And they would go back and forth and debate ideas. Das ist nicht richtig. Ja.
As a proud American who's never leaving, doesn't have another passport, hasn't served in anyone else's military. I've never been to Russia.
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Chapter 5: How did US government actions affect RT and Rick Sanchez?
It would get in play really fast. It's like, you're doing what? People would ask me, I'd say, oh my God, Rick Sanchez, I grew up watching you on TV, you know, in Miami and stuff, where I used to be on local television. And they'd say, so what are you doing now? I'd say, well, I'm doing a bunch of global stuff.
Because you just, unless the person happens to be, if I recognize that it's someone who's astute and has some kind of geopolitical observations or knows the world or is kind of smart, then I tell them and they go, oh man, that's cool. That's great. But you just don't want to, you know, have an argument with people during the day. What does your kid say? Yes. And I think that's important.
Sounds like you've done a great job. I couldn't agree more.
She did, she did.
I believe you. Was there a blowback though at all to your personal life?
Yeah, not to mention you always felt like if ever you wanted to do something outside or let's suppose... Fox News would call. One of your ex-colleagues would call and say, hey Rick, we were thinking about inviting you because remember you used to talk about such and such. And they'd want to book you. And you'd think they were booking you for something. And you'd go, sure, I'd love to come on.
And then all of a sudden you get that famous phone call that all bookers had to get.
We're going in a different direction.
Yeah, we changed the show. We're not going to do that story. And actually was, they found out that you work at RT. Of course. And now they're not going to have you on simply because you work at RT. Which is so prejudicial.
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Chapter 6: What is the Russian perspective on the Ukraine conflict?
That's absolutely mind blowing. So let's just back up. You say three weeks later, they the State Department shut down the place where you work. What does that mean?
That means that they officially announced that RT as an entity. Und jeder, der mit Medien in Russland verbunden ist, glaube ich, ist das, wie sie es geschrieben haben, nicht ermöglicht wird, oder sogar niemanden in den Vereinigten Staaten zu verabschieden. Ich, Rick Sanchez Productions, mein Show, wurde von einer Entität verabschiedet, um ein Show zu machen, das auf RT gedreht wurde.
I didn't work directly for RT, but I worked for a US company that was doing shows. They sold the shows and they sold this show to RT. So my show ended up being on RT. Well, they backchanneled the Treasury Department under Mr. Biden, decided to follow all those little loopholes or whatever. And they went all the way back and said, not only RT, Can RT not exist in the United States?
RT is not allowed to pay money to anybody in the United States for any product. They can't buy a product. They can't contract anybody. Nobody can work for anybody who contracts through RT. And if any of those people are caught in the United States somehow contracting or working for RT, I don't care if you're a janitor or a carpenter or a plumber, you will be fined or even go to jail.
That's the new law, according to Mr. Biden, three weeks afterward. And they said something in the dicta, in the explanation about why they were doing this, that they thought that the Russians were once again preparing to interfere in our election, as they had before in the case with Mr. Trump. So, they were shutting down RT and anybody who could be in any way associated with RT.
Even though I wasn't doing pro-Trump stuff. In fact, I was criticizing Mr. Trump during the campaign for certain things that he did. Just like I was criticizing Kamala Harris. It was totally unfair that here I am just doing a basic newscast every day, sharing it with them. That was garnering tens of millions of people around the world.
And a lot of people thought it was fair and it was sharing a perspective that Americans needed to hear. And the Biden administration said, no, you cannot practice your craft as a journalist if you're in any way associated with those people. But it wasn't airing in the United States. No, it wasn't. That's just pure craziness. That's what happened. And it happened in America.
And it hurts being a guy who was born in a communist country and has spent his whole life saying we are so different than the rest of the world because we allow people to say and think and work wherever they want. And all of a sudden here I was being told I couldn't work or think or say whatever I wanted.
Das ist unglaublich. Hat jemand aus dem US-Staat-Departement nach dir geholfen? No, no. Did you speak again to the sinister CNN colleague who called you from the State Department after this happened?
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