Working at RT was ‘almost nirvana’ for me – Rick Sanchez to Tucker Carlson

American news personality and former RT host Rick Sanchez has been interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Released on Monday, the interview touches on Sanchez’s experience with the Russian broadcaster RT and how the administration of former President Joe Biden forced him to stop working with it.

Sanchez had worked with RT since 2019 but was ultimately forced to cut ties with the broadcaster last September. The ex-host revealed that his departure was preceded by an “interesting” phone call from an “old friend" who he used to work with in mainstream news.

“He was a manager at CNN, as a matter of fact,” Sanchez told Carlson. “He says, just calling to let you know that I’m now working somewhere else. I’m no longer in the news.”

His acquaintance revealed that “a lot of people” at his new workplace had taken an interest in his RT show and “don’t necessarily like some of the things that you’re saying.” The “old friend” did not specify where exactly he now worked but implied it was a government agency – “kind of” State Department – Sanchez recounted.

“And I said, well, they’re welcome to come on and tell me, whoever they are, tell me. I mean, we could have them on as a guest and we can discuss whatever it is. But throughout the conversation he was very evasive,” he said, adding the conversation rang off as “a warning or a threat,” or “maybe both.”

READ MORE: US journalist urges Trump to drop sanctions against RT

Three weeks after the cryptic phone call, Sanchez was forced off the air by the US government. This happened despite the fact that RT had already been banned in the US, his show was not airing in America, and Sanchez himself was not working for RT directly but through a company contracted to produce the show.  

“All of a sudden I’m hearing and then it happens the Biden administration has decided to go through the Treasury Department – this little agency called OFAC [Office of Foreign Assets Control] that most people have never heard of, which controls what businesses in the United States are allowed to exist and which ones aren’t, and they shut down the place where I worked,” Sanchez said, adding that a special provision “seemed to say that any American working for this entity will go to jail or be fined.”

“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,” the Cuban-born journalist added.

Speaking of his experience with RT, Sanchez described it as “almost nirvana,” and added that the broadcaster is unmatched by mainstream outlets in terms of editorial freedom.

“It was really a great experience, especially comparatively speaking, to what I had experienced in the past. They generally did not mess with me. And when they did, we had normal editorial arguments, which happen in every newsroom and should of course,” he said. “I wrote my entire show from top to bottom and nobody looked at it until it went on the air. How’s that?”