Newsmax contributor Dick Morris, a former presidential and political strategist, Wednesday doubled down on comments he made in a column concerning Fox News' Tucker Carlson, calling him the "new Neville Chamberlain" in a comparison to the British leader who infamously appeased Adolf Hitler's moves to seize Europe.
"If Vladimir Putin is the new wave of Hitler gobbling up country after country and threatening everyone else, then Tucker Carlson is the new Neville Chamberlain, the appeaser who makes excuses for him and undermines the will of the democracy — which is to stand up against him," Morris said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
Morris on Wednesday said that Carlson had commented on his primetime Fox News program that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is "tormenting" Putin and that the Russian president "felt surrounded."
In essence, "he said, What would happen if Mexico and Canada were satellites of China, how would the U.S. react?" said Morris. "The answer is very simply — NATO is a defensive alliance. Its only provision is that if one member is attacked, the others respond."
He stressed that NATO does not take an offensive stance against other countries.
In the case of Russia, Ukraine is not a NATO member and is not included in the alliance's collective defense pact, but Putin is pushing hard to keep it that way.
But even so, "what's wrong with having a country on Russia's border that, if attacked, the other allies come to its defense?" asked Morris.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has threatened to place strict economic sanctions on Russia should Putin order troops to invade Ukraine, and Morris said the president's major threat could be to block Putin's use of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system to transfer funds.
"It is the international system that all interbank transfers have to go through," said Morris. "Putin is sitting on vast personal wealth by corruption, and he can sleep on it, but the gold brick is a hard pillow. He can't wire it. He can't use it. He can't write a check on it."
Russia, China, and Iran combined a few years ago to set up a rival system to SWIFT that would not be subject to control by the United States, but "nobody put their money in it," said Morris.
"Most of Putin's wealth is in London," he said. "He gives it to the oligarch friends and says, Here's $100 billion. Give it back to me when I need it, and they then move to London because he wants to live in Moscow."
But the U.K. is saying that if Putin invades Ukraine, "they're going to order these oligarchs and go through their accounts and seize anything that they consider laundered money from Putin," said Morris. "That is a dire threat. So anti-war people, people who are trying to scare us into appeasing Ukraine — like Carlson — are all saying that, Hey, we don't want to send troops. Why sacrifice American sons and daughters for that?"
But if the United States and other countries deny Putin the use of SWIFT and impose other sanctions, "Russia can't invade Ukraine," said Morris. "The SWIFT banking system is such a potent weapon that it deserves to have attention called to it because it'll scare the hell out of Putin."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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