WHEN: Tonight, Thursday, March 10 at 7pm ET
WHERE: CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” tonight at 7PM ET. Following is a link to the video of the interview: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/03/10/this-time-no-one-believes-whats-coming-out-of-the-kremlin-says-retired-lt-general-ben-hodges.html.
All references must be sourced to CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”
SHEPARD SMITH: Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges now. Former commanding general of the US Army and Europe. General, Russia is attempting a global disinformation campaign in broad daylight about their bombing of that hospital and so much more. How should the United States and the West respond to this?
LT GENERAL BEN HODGES: Well Shepard, of course, this time, nobody in the world believes the disinformation that’s coming out of the Kremlin. in the past they might have gotten away with it or people might have given them the benefit of the doubt, but their style, the approach, the attempts to use disinformation have been exposed by the administration –
SMITH: Sure, but not to the Russians. How do you get the word to the Russians? Because if the Russians learn, maybe they rebel.
LT GENERAL HODGES: Well, that’s exactly what we should be doing. An information campaign on the scale of a presidential election campaign aimed specifically at the 130,000 families in Russia that are about to have to send their son to conscription centers in April. Tell them your son is going to be cannon fodder in Putin’s war in Ukraine. And if only a portion of them resist, that would be an earthquake inside of Russia.
SMITH: Sure. Think Radio Free Europe. But in this day, how do you do it? Is there a plan?
LT GENERAL HODGES: Well, I don’t know that there’s a plan yet. Certainly today, I had the chance to speak to members of the National Security staff and encourage this. It’s got to be comprehensive. Everybody in Ukraine knows somebody or has family that lives in Russia. So all of them have got to be working. But I think the United States and the UK in particular, we have the technology that can bypass the blackout that the Kremlin has imposed on social media, for example, inside Russia.
SMITH: You know, this talk of diplomacy seems fairly ridiculous. I mean, they’re demanding a full surrender. That’s not happening. Is there an off ramp you can think of or that anyone’s discussing for Putin to end this?
LT GENERAL HODGES: Well, of course, I think all of us would like an off ramp that doesn’t give away Ukrainian sovereignty, but I don’t get the feeling that anybody in the Kremlin is thinking like that. Today when Mr. – came out of those talks, he said that we – Russia will decide Ukraine’s future. So I mean, this is what we’re dealing with. And I think they need to be honest with ourselves. Of course, we want to keep the door open. Of course, diplomats need to keep talking. But I think at the end of the day, this is going to be about the perseverance of Ukraine. And by the way, I do believe Ukraine is going to win and their Russian forces are going to culminate. It’s going to take continuous support by us in the West. But it’s going to take this organic upswell of pressure from inside Russia. Those three things is what’s going to bring it about.
SMITH: You were in charge of NATO Allied Land command back in ’14 when Putin annexed Crimea. If he takes all of Ukraine, do you believe in a word – do you believe he’ll stop with it?
LT GENERAL HODGES: No.
SMITH: Well then if he’s not going to stop with Ukraine, why not stop the murder of women and children now? If we’re going to have to do it later – and from the way his military’s, you know, performing – we can clearly do it with NATO’s help. Why not stop it now? That’s what Zelensky is asking. I’m not saying we should. I’m asking why we’re not.
LT GENERAL HODGES: Well, I think we are, actually. I do think we are. Look, the Russians are going to run out of time, they’re going to run out of ammunition and they’re going to run out of people. And I think that what we’ve got to do is keep pushing, in fact, accelerate the support we’re giving them to the scale of the Berlin Airlift, but especially give them the capability to go after these rocket launchers and artillery. The ones that are causing the most –
SMITH: So this is a proxy war now, right? I mean, it’s a proxy war. We’re giving them the weapons, they’re doing the fighting. It’s another U.S. proxy war, no?
LT GENERAL HODGES: Shepard, no. That’s not right.
SMITH: How is it not a proxy war if we’re providing them with the method and the means to stop the war so that we don’t have to stop it later? Because you already said if they get Ukraine, they’re not going to go farther. They will go farther.
LT GENERAL HODGES: I think you try to give it a name like a proxy way that cheapens the effort of what’s being done. Look, this is about more than Ukraine. This is about NATO.
SMITH: Right, so why not stop it now? That’s my only question. And it is certainly building. I certainly am not advocating for any position, but I do hear Zelensky and I do see dead children who were just piled into a ditch where they will lay with their pregnant moms who were also laying dead and wonder how many more do we have to see dead? Is it thousands? Is it tens of thousands? Does it stop there for chemical weapons? Does it stop after he lays siege to Kyiv? Or does it stop when he goes to a Balkan nation or when he goes to Poland? Because you’ve already said if he gets it, he will.
LT GENERAL HODGES: Yeah, well, I think that what we’re trying to do is make sure that we can in fact stop Russia without this getting into escalation of something a whole lot worse. I think that’s completely different from calling it a proxy war.
SMITH: It’s so sad and so frustrating.
LT GENERAL HODGES: It is. It is frustrating. It’s terrible to see what is happening.
SMITH: And what we all want and can’t achieve is peace. General, for your time and your patience, I thank you and for your service forever grateful.
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