MSNBC "Tucker" - Transcript

Interview

MR. SHUSTER: Without a typical political machine, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas has seen his campaign raise millions of dollars from tens of thousands of Americans inspired by his self-described devotion to the U.S. Constitution. Among the tenets of his beliefs is a non-interventionist foreign policy.

Joining us now with his reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan is Republican congressman and presidential candidate from Texas Dr. Ron Paul.

Mr. Paul, what is your reaction?

REP. PAUL: Well, I think it's utter tragedy; I mean, what a mess over there for the people of Pakistan to have to suffer through. But my reaction is, hopefully they'll sort it out quickly and hopefully we will know what kind of a stable government they have there so that we can deal with the government.

But I'm not surprised that these kind of problems happen, because, you know, we have been on the side of supporting Musharraf, who is a military dictator. He's not an elected leader. He was receiving only 8 percent of the support of the people. So it's not too surprising what has happened.

MR. SHUSTER: Well, on that very point --

REP. PAUL: I'm just disappointed.

MR. SHUSTER: On that very point, you said earlier today that, as you just said again, civil unrest is partly the result of U.S. policies. I wonder if you would quantify that for us. To what degree would you hold United States foreign policy responsible for what happened today?

REP. PAUL: Well, zero. I mean, the people who commit the murder are 100 percent responsible. But we create an environment that becomes anti-American and anti-Musharraf, because he was our puppet government. And this means the radicals have an excuse for saying, "Well, we have to deal with him."

And then our CIA goes in and we, behind the scenes, encourage Bhutto to come into the country, and then our CIA is always involved in picking the government because we always want to have our friends there. And it just cost us $10 billion to prop up Musharraf and it didn't work very well. He was supposed to help us get Osama bin Laden, and Osama bin Laden has been in Pakistan. I think that's a bad investment.

So I'd hate to see us get further mired down in another civil war. We're already in Iraq. We're in Afghanistan. We've threatened Iran, and the Turks are attacking northern Iraq. And now I'm worried that we're going to get involved in another civil war in Pakistan. We don't need another civil war involvement in that region.

MR. SHUSTER: Mr. Paul, one of the great fears that I'm sure you share is that somehow the nuclear weapons that Pakistan's government has somehow get out of their hands because the government collapses. If you were president in January of 2009, what would you do to try to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear weapons?

REP. PAUL: Well, it's too bad we didn't do a lot less a lot sooner, because that is where the problem is. But we should be worried about the nuclear weapons floating around the old Soviet system in Central Asia. There's a lot of those weapons that haven't been accounted for. So it's a serious problem.

MR. SHUSTER: Right. But regarding Pakistan -- I appreciate your point on the loose nukes that Russia had. But regarding Pakistan and the situation today, what would you, President Ron Paul, do about Pakistan's nukes?

REP. PAUL: A lot less, a lot sooner. We don't need that as an excuse to march in and say that we're going to claim those weapons. Right now they're under the control of Musharraf. We shouldn't be undermining his government, as bad as they are, but we shouldn't be supporting them.

We only have two choices so frequently. It's either subsidize somebody in a militant dictator, that this stirs up the fires of civil unrest, or then, if not, then we try to get rid of these guys and we start bombing these countries. I'm arguing the case for non- intervention, minding our own business, and not get the American taxpayer and the American soldier endlessly involved in these conflicts.

MR. SHUSTER: So just to be clear, real quickly --

REP. PAUL: We've had too many. Enough is enough.

MR. SHUSTER: -- and we're running out of time -- I just want to give you an opportunity to clarify. Specifically, is there anything specific you would do, or would you just say, "You know what? Leave it to Pakistan. Let them sort it out themselves. Let's not worry about it." Clarify it for us.

REP. PAUL: I think that is what we did with the Soviets, and they had 40,000. We didn't invade them. We didn't try to go in and save ourselves by trying to get control of the 40,000 weapons that the Soviets have. So I would say the less involved we are, the better off we are. We don't need another excuse to intervene and go into nation- building and controlling another nation.

MR. SHUSTER: Ron Paul, Republican presidential candidate, thanks for coming on. We appreciate it.

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