All Episodes Plain Text
Feb. 24, 2022 - The Charlie Kirk Show
34:52
Cutting Through the Fog of War In Ukraine with Alex Marlow
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Filling In For Charlie 00:04:10
I'm Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News and host of the Breitbart News Daily podcast.
And I'm the author of the book Breaking the News.
And I'm filling in for Charlie Kirk today as he does me the solid of participating in a CPAC panel celebrating the life of Andrew Breitbart, my boss and mentor.
It is a huge news day as we're recording this with Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and the entire world is freaking out over it.
And I'm joined by international reporter for Breitbart, John Hayward, and we give you all the details you need to know about what this means, why it's happening, and where we're likely to go from here.
So, as Charlie likes to say, here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
Turning point USA.
We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
That's why we are here.
Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.
This is the Charlie Kirk Show, and I'm Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News.
And I'm filling in today for Charlie.
I'll be here for a couple hours.
We do have a good show lined up for you today.
You'll hear from some of our reporters at Breitbart News.
John Hayward, who's one of our international reporters and really one of the smartest guys in all of media.
He'll join me in just a little bit.
But we're going to have to start today, of course, with a quick introduction from me, and then we'll dig into the latest headlines.
Those of you who are unfamiliar with me, I was the first employee of Breitbart News.
And if you are not familiar with Charlie's whole story, Charlie really got his start sort of from Breitbart.com.
We're very proud of that.
In the spirit of Andrew Breitbart, Charlie sent in an idea for an article for us to write about 10 years or so ago on the school systems and how there is some level of indoctrination where he was.
And what we suggested is actually, why don't you just write it yourself?
And Charlie was shocked, but he decided it was a good idea.
And the story got a mind of its own.
It landed him on Fox and he kind of got the news bug and then the conservative movement bug.
And then lo and behold, here we are with Charlie being one of the biggest podcasters around and has been a good friend to us at Breitbart for a while.
And the reason why Charlie's not in today is because Charlie is doing a panel on Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew Breitbart passed away almost exactly 10 years ago.
And we'll have some major commemorations at Breitbart.com that I hope all of you check out, which is our home base.
And you'll see some of the tributes that are going to be pouring in and they're unbelievable.
So keep an eye for that next week, March the 1st, is that date.
And Charlie is at CPAC right now, where he's on a panel with James O'Keefe, Matt Boyle from my team, Larry O'Connor, who's a well-known broadcaster, and Charlie himself, all talking about the life and legacy of Andrew Breitbart.
Where Andrew hired me about 15 years ago when I was a student at UC Berkeley.
I did go there to cause some trouble.
I think I caused a little bit, probably learned a little bit more in the process.
And we started trying to build a conservative media empire to bring the conservative movement into the digital age.
And I think we've been wildly effective looking back on 10 years after Andrew's death.
So I can talk about Andrew all day, but I do want to first note a couple of places to find me online and then we'll dig into the headlines.
I've got a daily news podcast called Breitbart News Daily, and it is available wherever you get your podcasts.
And it's pretty new and it's growing.
And it is thanks to people like those in the audience who want to support what we do.
It's pretty simple format, headlines and a little bit of analysis at the top, and generally a pretty compelling guest after that.
And then occasionally a caller of the day because we do like to interact with the people at Breitbart News Daily.
Yesterday's guest was Mike Pompeo, so we pull in some big names and we cover a lot of ground.
So if you would like a new news podcast to check out, then I highly recommend that.
Always breitbart.com.
I'm also the author of a recent New York Times best-selling book called Breaking the News, which I think is more prescient than ever because it lays out this sort of democrat media complex that involves the media.
The Biden Role in War 00:15:44
And I think the media is part of the reason we are in this mess right now with Ukraine and Russia.
Not to say the United States per se is in the mess, but the world community, whatever that is, the feckless world community is in this mess.
And partially it is because people just are generally addicted to war.
And it's not just the contractors who stand to make money.
It's not just the politicians who stand to gain power and can usurp more power and have the ability to become more authoritarian.
It is also those in the media business who make their bones walking around with their flak jackets and their helmets on and acting as though something is entirely unprecedented when perhaps similar things have been going on for a long time or worse things are going on in other parts of the world.
Now, I don't mean to be overly judgy.
I mean, everyone's got to make a living, but war is good business for a lot of people.
And I think that is part of why over the last two weeks, we have seen the descent of Ukraine and Russia go from something that was somewhat familiar, those of us who have tracked this, as we do at Breitbart.com, over the last eight or so years to something that now does look quite a bit different with last night, Vladimir Putin dropping bombs all over Ukraine.
25 or so targets so far have been counted up as we're recording this.
I'm sorry, 7 plus military targets around 25 cities.
And Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, has said that serious losses have been suffered, though we don't have a clear idea of what those losses are at this time.
But it is certainly going to be some levels of casualties that we've seen.
And this escalation, I do think, is largely because of the hype that came from the West, it came from Europe, that came from the big Joey Biden administration in our American media.
And the reason why I think that is the case is because they did so much talking, they did so much egging on of Putin.
They did so much to marginalize Zelensky in Ukraine.
And they have proven that they don't really have a major ability to push back on Vladimir Putin, or at least they're not willing to do so.
With all the tough talk and all the threats, there are so many empty gestures made.
And I think that, first of all, I want to break down a couple of the details about what's gone on, and then I will give you why I think the West is somewhat culpable for this.
And there's not a lot of good solutions.
And at a minimum, we're going to be distracted from so many of our problems that are here in the United States.
I would still submit that what happened with the Canadian trucker convoy, which is now coming to the United States, and the authoritarianism and the massive usurpation of power of China file, Justin Trudeau, in Canada, is one of the most shocking stories of our time.
The Bidenflation, a term we coined at Breitbart, the sort of trans conversion therapy that is essentially happening in so many of our school systems, which we track on a daily basis, as does Charlie.
All of these are arguably much bigger issues for the United States at this time.
The kitchen table issues, the gas prices, which will, of course, be affected by the trouble in the region with Russia because Russia is such a big producer of energy.
But all that is arguably bigger stories for people in this audience, but we are forced to confront this.
And largely, it is because of the fecklessness of our own leaders who were not able to navigate the situation.
And it's not lost on us that President Trump for four years, basically, despite being called Putin's puppet over and over and over again, was largely able to keep Putin at bay.
So anyway, a few of the details.
Putin announced that there's a special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazification of Ukraine.
Pretty striking because remember, all of you in this audience are called Nazis for whatever reason.
And there's lots of people who have ancestry that were victimized by in the Holocaust in the Ukrainian halls of power.
It doesn't make a difference.
You just call them Nazis.
And that is the tactic du jour, even with Putin.
And he said many times that Ukraine has crossed a red line.
And he's even announced that there are two new republics, republics that did not exist just a day or two ago.
Putin has created them and they're being acknowledged, I guess, by Assad in Syria, but that's pretty much it.
I don't think anyone else is acknowledging that these things are new, but that is the plan that Putin does.
It's what he does.
He just announces these things.
And then we're all supposed to just accept them or not accept them.
There is, of course, a level of trolling that does take place whenever it comes to getting attention on the world stage.
But he says Russia cannot feel safe and develop and exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine.
Now, here is the history.
In a couple of these regions that have been disputed, Russia and Ukraine have been contesting those boundaries for eight years.
And this has gone on.
And over the last couple of weeks, we've seen Russia move troops, some of them in uniform, some of them not in uniform, sometimes increase troops, sometimes pull troops back a bit, sometimes roll a tank around.
And the whole world gas in fear that, oh no, Putin is moving troops, acting as though this hasn't been happening, but actually has been happening over the last eight years.
But now, when he saw that the moves that the world, who was so outraged, they did not have the ability to make major moves, or at least they weren't willing to do so.
And I'll break that down.
I'll explain how big Joey Biden's reaction, which I do think there might be deep connections to some of Big Joey's past.
His moves were so weak that I think that this is part of the reason why Russia felt compelled to escalate the situation to where we are today.
If you haven't heard, the world premiere of Daily Wire Shut In has reached over half a million views.
That's more than a Don Lamont episode and currently has an audience score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Daily Wire worked night and day, not just to make this film, but to make it one worth watching, and they did.
While being directed by DJ Caruso, the Daily Wire produced a film and it's really, really good.
The film is now exclusively streaming for Daily Wire members.
And if you're not one, then you're missing out.
Support conservatives making movies, support movies without a woke agenda, and support the Daily Wire and head to dailywire.com/slash subscribe.
Dailywire.com/slash subscribe and get a membership today.
Use code Charlie for 25% off your new membership.
The Daily Wire has some great friends of mine, Candace, Ben, Michael Knowles, Matt, Walsh, and more.
DailyWire.com/slash subscribe, promo code Charlie.
And this might be their first original production, but it will not be their last.
The Daily Wire also released a new trailer for HyperIons, the anti-superhero movie starring Carrie Elves, which comes out in a few weeks.
Terror on the Prairie, our new Western, starring the uncancelable Gina Carano coming this summer.
So check it out right now, dailywire.com/slash subscribe.
Use promo code Charlie for 25% off.
We were just talking about what's going on with Ukraine and Russia, full-scale invasion as Russia attempts to colonize parts of Ukraine, if not all of it.
As I've been saying on our show, Bright Burton News Daily, that if Vladimir Putin is breathing, he is thinking about the rekindling and the recreation of the Soviet Union.
Now, he's a pretty savvy wielder of power, and he's not prone to make huge mistakes on the world stage.
Other than perhaps Xi Jinping, he's probably the person who wields power the savviest at this time.
I would not include Joe the Biden in that group personally.
That's just me.
And not say I'm any fan of Putin, or we are nowhere a fan of his.
Bright Party's a bad guy, obviously a bad guy.
But he is to be taken seriously.
And when he's making these moves, he's playing a chess game.
And this chess game is about taking back Ukraine if he can, and on a timetable that he deems possible.
And he started by declaring the Donetsk and Luhansk as two new republics.
And this is part of the Donbass region.
There is no international right for him to do this.
This is highly illegal, and no one will recognize it aside from Putin sycophants.
Yet that is what's happening.
He has launched attacks generally around urban centers.
It seems like the take on why he's targeting urban centers is to create a level of fear, to create a level of demoralization in the sense that a Russian victory in whichever war takes place is inevitable.
And this is probably designed to undermine Vladimir Zelensky.
So if Zelensky, who is trying to rally his people and he has even tried to distribute guns, try to get guns in the hands of people so that they will fight back.
And he's made pretty great statements that I do like about how if you come to us, you will see our fronts and not our backs, meaning they won't be running away.
They will be standing up to the Russians.
But still, this could be perhaps wishful thinking as Putin could use shock and off to demoralize the citizenry.
And I think this could, he views this as the best way to try to drive a wedge between Zelensky and his people to a quick victory to war here.
There is now fights breaking out at Chernobyl, the power plant, famous for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which is in Ukraine.
And Russia, of course, would like to get that.
And that seems to be where they're at now.
And there are so many people who are responsible for getting us where we are.
And the list is so long.
Comically, in the dark sense of the word, the UN comes to mind first, perhaps, where Russia is currently the head of the UN Security Council.
So they're having their turn, not just as a permanent member, but they were actually in charge of it right now.
So they've had to have emergency meetings on Russian aggressions headed up by the Russian Federation.
Kind of amazing, right?
Ukraine, which is not part of NATO at this time, is also an interesting factor.
NATO is a factor here too, because what will the NATO countries do, which are largely sympathetic to Ukraine?
And Ukraine, I think a lot of people would like for Ukraine to be in NATO.
Perhaps Ukraine would like to be in NATO and get that protection, but they're not in it yet.
So what does that mean for countries like the United States?
Well, I think the United States will certainly support Ukraine, but does this oblige us to go into some kind of a war?
Probably not.
And I think that listeners to Charlie's show probably are among the group, which is, I would consider a consensus at this time, that does not have an appetite for a hot war where America goes around the world and tries to defend places that are trying to be democratic elsewhere around the world doesn't directly affect them.
And I think Ukraine is trying their best.
I think this is pretty clear.
I think they're trying very much to be a democracy and to try to create that opportunity for their people.
But it is an uphill slog in many ways.
And it is very difficult, as the United States proved with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to export democracy.
So we can be supportive, but ultimately, I think it will be up to the Ukrainian people whether or not they're able to fight back.
Joe Biden has a big role in this.
I think Joe Biden has a, he is someone who has marginalized Zelensky.
He has ignored Zelensky.
He will not reach out to Zelensky.
And he seems to have been very hostile to him over time.
And if you're thinking about the Hunter-Biden connection, where a lot of that sweet, sweet burism of cash dried up right as Zelensky was coming into power, I think that is weighing on Joe Biden's mind, at least to some degree.
I don't know how much, but at least to some degree, I think I would surmise that is a very fair guess at this time.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
The left is waging a war on free speech with the help of big tech and the United States government.
Thankfully, there are still companies that believe in our constitution.
That's why I'm proud to partner with Patriot Mobile, America's only Christian conservative cell phone provider.
They offer broad nationwide coverage because they use the same towers as the major carriers.
Get the same great service that funding the major carries who donate to leftist causes.
Patriot Mobile has plans to fit any budget, and their U.S.-based customer support team provides exceptional service.
I know the CEO of Patriot Mobile, Glenn.
He's amazing.
And Patriot Mobile shares your values and supports organizations fighting for religious freedom, constitutional rights, and the sanctity of life.
Make the switch today.
Go to patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot.
Get a free activation with the offer code Charlie.
They also have special discounts for our veteran and first responder heroes.
Vote with your dollars.
Switch to Patriot Mobile.
It's patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call 972 Patriot, patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie.
If you like what you're hearing and you want to support Breitbart, our latest initiative is the Breitbart News Daily podcast.
Whenever you get your podcast, daily news podcast, typically with a guest or two, sometimes some of the best in the game.
Charlie's been on a couple of times and is a lot of familiar names and a lot of names that are unfamiliar to you, who I think are pretty brilliant.
One person, perfect example of this, is John Hayward, who is an international reporter for us at Breitbart and really one of the brightest guys in all of media.
And he's on the line with me now to talk about what's going on in Russia and Ukraine.
John, it's great to have you on.
And I was talking just before you joined me about America's role in this and Joe Biden's role in this.
And I do want to trace it back to Hunter and the perhaps a burisma connection and some bitterness about Zelensky from Biden.
But in particular, I want to focus before maybe we go back quite that far to a statement that Joe Biden made, a musing really during a press conference a couple of weeks ago, that I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades.
And it depends on what it does.
It's one thing if it's a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.
That to me, John, translated is we're not sure we're going to do anything.
And that, if I'm Vladimir Putin, I'm hearing that and I'm thinking, green light, I can do whatever I want, and there's no guarantee that anyone's going to stand up to me.
Well, it's a remarkable moment of ambivalence.
It was immediately recognized as a gaffe.
The White House frantically scrambled, backpedaled, basically said he didn't mean it.
Don't listen to him.
And it's hard not to see it as a green light.
He literally said a limited incursion would be okay.
And Vladimir Putin is out there today saying it's a limited incursion.
It's not.
I mean, he's shelling Kiev, but he's saying that we're just going to secure these two independent republics and maybe a little buffer zone around them.
And we're good.
Then he said we're going to denazify Ukraine and chase all the Nazis out.
He's talking in a way that's consistent with what Biden said.
I think that was maybe the fifth of a series of green lights that were given to Russia.
My favorite one, and the one nobody remembers now, was all the arms control concessions.
Biden showered Russia with arms control concessions, with sanctions being lifted.
When he first came into office, it was a bonanza, and the Russians were stunned.
I mean, they couldn't believe what Biden was giving them for free.
And that had to get the Kremlin's wheels turning and thinking this is not an administration serious about stopping us.
They might talk about it, but they don't really mean it.
And we've got room to maneuver here.
And I think that's when these plans were begun to be late.
It is something where you could, if you took a very cynical and very anti-Biden approach to it, you could almost see it as an invitation.
I'm not personally going quite that far, John.
I'm just saying that you could see the fact pattern and you could see that and think that it's almost like he wants it.
And here's the thing: if you look at the way the American media has behaved, if you look at some of the fetishizing of war that we've seen, the enthusiasm for war, even though they don't like Putin, they don't seem to be overly fond of Ukraine.
And I think they do like the idea of us going to war and having to talk about war and having us think about war and having us think about Joe Biden's leadership and not think about the stuff that's really affecting us at home.
The destruction of our cities, the crime waves, the transist area, the oil prices, the Biden inflation, all the things that are affecting our families day to day.
Now, all of a sudden, and even we have to do it on this show because I want people to know what to talk about if they're water coolers.
It's we're talking about Ukraine and Russia.
Right.
Germany's Energy Dependency Trap 00:06:55
And Biden is the kind of politician, and his advisors are the kind of people that very much do think a war is just what you need to perk up your flagging approval ratings.
They think that's what the Bushes did.
This is powerful Democrat mythology.
They think that both of the Bushes started wars just to get their approval numbers up.
And they think the Bushes instantly got this huge pole bump from the rally around the flag effect.
The elder George Bush had something like 90% approval ratings at one point.
So, yeah, Biden and his brain trust are exactly the kind of people that would think, sure, we need a nice foreign crisis.
And then we can start screaming that everybody who criticizes Joe Biden is a traitor and you're pro-Putin and you love the Russians and you're a monster and on and on and on.
You're hearing it already.
You've been hearing it all week and you heard it double in volume 10 seconds after the first Russian missile let fly.
They really think an event like this will pump up his poll numbers because it will end criticism of the president and rally everybody around the White House.
And lest people think that I'm purely anti-Biden and trying to rag in our own country, the world community, so to speak, has been utterly pathetic in all this per usual.
The UN is feckless as always.
NATO is not doing anything.
The Boris Johnson in the UK, tough talk, but no real substantial action.
But I want to take a look at Germany in particular.
Germany made the most newsworthy move by shutting down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline development.
But the problem is, John, from my vantage point, and you know this issue even a bit better than I do, the real problem is Germany becoming overly dependent on Russian energy over the years and basically propping up Putin by doing so much business with them so that they're utterly dependent.
And it makes some of these moves just, it makes you want to roll your eyes at them in some ways.
But give us the details behind it.
Well, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, just a couple of days ago, he snorted with derision and said, let's see how Germany likes paying huge amounts of money for their gas throughout a number.
He knows he's got them, you know, by the short hairs.
The Russians know that.
They know we're not in a position to keep these sanctions on them in the way that we're talking about and win an economic stare done with them.
And remember, it's a one-two punch.
Not only did Russia have Nord Stream 2 and its energy dominance in Europe, but Joe Biden strangled the American energy industry.
It was literally the first thing he did when he got into office.
He made sure that Vladimir Putin would become a dominant energy power.
And Biden and his Democrats locked shields like the 300, like the Spartan soldiers, to rally around Vladimir Putin's pipeline.
Just this is recent.
This is a couple months ago.
They used the filibuster and stopped every effort to put sanctions on Vladimir Putin's gas pipeline.
So Putin got every signal in the world that he was going to be left in a dominant energy position.
And with that out of the way, what else is there to discuss?
Whether the sanctions doesn't really have to worry about in any kind of a long-term problem, a few minor annoyances.
The Russians are saying they gamed all that out and they're ready to deal with it.
There's more policies from the Biden administration in particular that are connected here.
I think that the fact that we've shut down gas lines, the fact that we've stopped drilling, the fact that we are doing everything we can to not harvest our own natural resources, aside from, of course, the magical wind and solar, which will save us all, John.
It seems like all of this makes it so that there'll even be more of a squeeze at home if we want to do anything to perhaps push back on Putin that might affect us in our pocketbooks.
And that has not stopped Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to multiple times say Americans will feel pain over this crisis, which I don't really want to feel pain over this crisis, John.
I feel pain for the, I feel literal pain, you know, emotionally for the Ukrainian people.
But just about that, I don't want to feel any pain from this.
And Biden and Kamala Harris are saying it must be so.
You must feel the pain over this.
And the more darkly conspiratorial critics will tell you this is what they really want.
This is their excuse to crank gas up to $8 a gallon, like Barack Obama used to dream about.
And then we can all be forced into the green energy future and blah, blah, blah, which means we're all going to be buying solar panels from China, Russia's friends, Russia's partners, China, are the dominant force in solar energy and all of that.
So we'd all become even more dependent on China than ever in the future that these Democrats are envisioning.
This is lunacy.
We need to slam on the brakes as fast as we can, spin this whole thing around, start becoming energy independent again, develop our gas resources, take away Russia's power, and stop listening to the climate change cult.
They're killing us.
They're destroying us.
They're rearranging the world order.
And they're making the worst people in the world, Russia and China, more powerful.
This is objectively true.
Absolutely true.
Climate change has nothing to say about China.
They couldn't care less.
And China just signed a deal with Russia to import more of their coal for their giant coal-burning power plants that are blotting out the sky with greenhouse gases.
And meanwhile, the climate change guys are just yelling at you and me and telling us we need to ride around in crappy electric cars.
They are objectively making the authoritarian powers of the world more powerful and influential with their agenda.
One other thing that's quite frightening to me is looking at how the world props up climate change hysterics, and they love to do it.
Of course, St. Greta Thunberg comes to mind, who is a Swedish girl who dropped out of high school.
But then she went back to high school for anyone in the SOAS-funded freaks monitoring the show.
She did go back.
So, but she, her, Al Gore, others who have lobbied the world to try to not have as much fossil fuels, they've all ignored Russia and China because they can't do anything because China and Russia don't care about Greta Thunberg.
They don't care about Al Gore.
And this has just made them more powerful.
It's made the OPEC nations more powerful.
They were flexing on Joe Biden last week, also controlling their supply and going against the wishes of Biden.
And this is one of these things where to think that some of this is because of all of these climate nut jobs is very bothersome to me, John.
But am I taking it too far?
Or is there really literally a connection to the Gretas and the Al Gores of the world to this crisis?
Sure, there's a connection.
The Chinese and the Russians are very savvy about these things.
The Chinese particularly, they know what the climate change movement means to them.
It's useful to them.
They've ridden it like a horse to get where they want to go.
And at every turn, China baffles the climate change people.
They do exactly what they're not supposed to do.
We caught China pumping gigantic amounts of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
There was like a giant pool of it floating over China a couple of years ago.
They're building coal plants like they're going out of style.
They're buying more coal to shovel into the plants.
And then China will send a representative to a global warming confab.
And they say, you know what, we believe in climate change.
We're totally with you.
And in 30 years, we're going to start cleaning up our act.
And in the meantime, capitalism sucks.
And all the climate change people just applaud yay for China.
And that's it.
They have nothing else to say.
To her credit, Greta Thunberg did try to criticize the Chinese mildly last year.
They literally told her to shut up.
They called her a bunch of nasty names and they bounced her out of the country.
And that was the end of it.
She has nothing more to say about China.
They know they have no influence over these authoritarian states.
Their focus is on us.
And the authoritarians find that very, very useful to their agenda.
John, I want to ask you about what this would look like if President Trump was president.
I spoke to Secretary of State Bright Pompeo about this on our show, Breitbart News Daily yesterday.
Climate Change and Capitalism 00:03:14
He kind of gave me some of his insight.
But, you know, as much as everyone said, Trump was Putin's puppet.
Well, Trump kept Putin from making these types of moves.
And I think that what resonates with the Russians is strength, that they're not the sort of, let's say, Joe Bidenification of Foreign Balsy does not mean much to them.
But can you strike the contrast to me?
Yeah, I think President Trump had a very blustery verbal style, as we all know, with Twitter and his public pronouncements.
But his White House was pretty focused on things it wanted to get done.
And people like Pompeo were very good at going to the Russians and the Chinese and others and saying, this is what we really care about.
And sometimes it wasn't popular.
Remember, President Trump criticized NATO.
He told them they had to step up and start paying more of their fair share and become a more credible deterrent.
And all the smart people, all the Democrats said, oh my God, this is a nightmare.
He's going to destroy the NATO alliance.
Well, does anybody in the world now doubt that he was absolutely correct?
I mean, could there be any more said or seen to see that he was right about NATO?
They went to places like China.
And although the rhetoric was often very confrontational and alternately very flattering, we know that that combination that President Trump does behind the scenes, his administration was pretty good at saying, we're serious about this.
This is a realistic goal of ours.
Here's what we're prepared to do to achieve it.
This is what we want out of you.
That's not what you get out of the Biden team.
The Biden team has all the polished rhetoric and the things that all the professional media loves.
But behind the scenes, they're very chaotic.
They're cross-purposes with each other.
They're not clear on American national interests.
They tend to ask for a lot.
They vastly overestimate their ability to get what they want through diplomacy.
They believe their own press.
They read the New York Times and the Washington Post, and it says Joe Biden's the adult in the room in foreign policy is back.
And they go off and they do these incredibly stupid things.
It's a non-stop dumpster fire because they're reading American media, not reading our enemies.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
As you know, Mike Lindell has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of your life.
He created the Giza Dream bedsheets.
They look and feel great, which means an even better night's sleep for me.
Mike found the world's best cotton called Giza.
Mike's latest incredible deal is the sale of the year.
For a limited time, you'll receive 60% off the Giza Dream Sheets that come with a 60-day money-back guarantee and a 10-year warranty.
You receive a set for as low as $39.99 for a limited time with a purchase.
You will receive Mike's soft cover book free when you use promo code Kirk.
Go to mypillow.com and click on the Radio Listener Square and use promo code Kirk.
Along with this offer, you also get deep discounts on all MyPillow products and MyPillow talent sets and so much more.
Call 1-800-875-use promo code Kirk on mypillow.com.
That's promo code Kirk.
I just bought a dog bed.
It's amazing.
Check it out right now, mypillow.com, promo code Kirk.
Mike Lindell is a great American.
He sits on the Turning Point USA Advisory Board.
Go to mypillow.com, promo code Kirk, mypillow.com, promo code Kirk.
I'm getting real-time updates from Charlie's performance, both his solo speech and his Andrew Breitbart panel at CPAC.
And I'm told Charlie's doing a great job.
I'm told he's quite eloquent.
That's what people are saying to me.
And I believe it.
I do appreciate Charlie as well as producer Andrew letting me fill in today.
Taiwan Endgame Scenarios 00:04:48
First one, it does seem like Putin's got a playbook here.
And this is the Georgian War from 2008.
It seems like he's following it almost to a T. Can you explain what that means and what you think this could mean for the next few days?
Well, in the case of Georgia, Russia was doing exactly the same thing they're doing now with a region called South Ossetia, which is very similar to these new independent republics that Putin claims exist in Ukraine.
And the Russians did the same exact steps.
They held huge military exercises.
They massed troops.
And right before the invasion began, they were criticized for this.
And it was asked, why are you doing all these troop maneuvers?
Get these troops out of there.
And they did the exact same thing.
The Russians said, we're pulling them back right now.
They're heading home as we speak.
Ha ha, you paranoid Westerners.
And then a couple of days later, they attacked with them.
They just marched across the border and did the exact same thing that they're doing now.
And they justified it in exactly the same way.
They said they had to move into South Ossetia because the ethnic Russians who lived there were being oppressed and could be subjected to genocide if Russia didn't move in and protect them.
That's exactly what they're saying now with respect to the Ukraine.
And it's also what they said in 2014 when they went after Crimea.
The cause supposedly for annexing Crimea was that ethnic Russians living there were being oppressed by the mean Ukrainians and the Russians had to move in and take the area to protect their rights and their interests.
And here we are.
They're just doing the same thing.
And I got to tell you, there's a lot of ethnic Russians living in a lot of Eastern Bloc countries.
So this is a playbook they could do again and again and again if they want to.
What's the end game for Putin?
It seems like the endgame would be, I think, I guess ideally short term would be to get a puppet in there instead of a Zelensky who doesn't like Putin very much and is an opponent of Putin's.
And this seems like something that can be done because it seems like people who stand up to Putin end up rotting in jail.
And if you're at all connected to the former Soviet Union, and those who are Putin puppets seem to have a nice long life being an oligarch.
I strongly suspect that is the endgame.
I think the way Putin wants this to end, since he and his people keep saying they're not going to occupy Ukraine, I don't think they will in the traditional sense.
They're going to knock off the Ukrainian government.
They'll either kill him or they'll drive him out of the country.
They'll replace them with a Putin-friendly puppet, like the one who used to be the president of Ukraine before the Euromaidan revolution.
And then Putin will call that a win.
And he'll look to the international community and say, who are you to punish us now?
The facts on the grounds have changed.
Ukraine has a government.
It's more honest.
It's not Nazis anymore.
They're not oppressing Russians anymore.
And so stop the sanctions back down.
I've done something constructive here.
I really think that's the most likely endgame.
You know, one thing that's also a parallel with 2008 is the Olympics were that year in Beijing, as they were this year, the Genocide Games, refer to them at Breyport News.
China is a big player in this, and they might not be all that happy with their usual allies in Russia.
What's going on with China here?
It's not a perfect friendship.
There are tensions between China and Russia.
There are ways they could come apart at the scenes in the near future, quite a few of them.
But for right now, China has a very great interest in making sure that sanctions are no longer an instrument of foreign policy.
They endly criticize the Western world for using them for human rights and so forth.
They want to dismantle the sanctions weapon.
And this is a perfect way for China to do that by backing up Russia, by having their six covered on this.
And whatever sanctions damage Russia takes, China will work deals with them to compensate it.
One of the sanctions being discussed is blocking Russia out of SWIFT, the international financial transaction system.
If we do that, Russia and China might team up and create an alternative to it and start inviting all the bad actors of the world to be in that financial system instead of ours.
That's the kind of leverage China, because they've become rich from globalism over the last 30 years, can bring to the table.
It really blunts our advantage in economic warfare, and Putin knows it.
A lot of people have their mind on Taiwan, whether or not this could be a playbook for an invasion of Taiwan from Beijing.
Do you see that?
Or is that something that is perhaps getting ahead of ourselves?
I do see it.
I think the Chinese are probing Taiwan.
They've been doing it for a long time.
There are reports that they did it again today.
They fly planes near Taiwan, just enough to be annoying and alarm the Taiwanese and force them to respond.
They've been thinking about taking Taiwan by force for a long time.
They're often looking for a cause, a reason.
Much like Putin will claim genocide and he has to stop it.
The Chinese will say the Taiwanese are about to secede and we had to move in and stop them.
They can pull that trigger anytime they want to.
And the only thing that's ever really been stopping them is their sense that the international community would not let them get away with it.
It would make them pay too high a price.
Well, they're about to find out whether it can be done.
And if territorial conquest by force is back on the table, why shouldn't China play?
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
If you want to support our show, go to charlikirk.com slash support.
Thank you so much for listening.
God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.
Export Selection