The Charlie Kirk Show - A Wise, Contrarian Take on War in Ukraine with Col. Douglas Macgregor
Aired: 2022-03-03
Duration: 37:13


=== Colonel McGregor's Distorted View (10:40) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, Colonel McGregor joins us.
[00:00:04]  He made headlines for his commentary on Russia, and we asked him about it.
[00:00:08]  And the Russian-Ukrainian dispute happening, he has a very specific opinion.
[00:00:13]  And I think it's really interesting to hear another side.
[00:00:15]  You've been only hearing one side of the Ukrainian situation.
[00:00:18]  He has a different one to offer.
[00:00:20]  Also joined by Jack Pesobic, who helps us unpack what is happening in Russia and Ukraine.
[00:00:25]  You guys can support our show at charliekirk.com/slash support.
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[00:00:51]  Very important episode.
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[00:01:03]  Here we go.
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[00:01:45]  In just a moment, we will be joined by Colonel Douglas McGregor.
[00:01:49]  Now, Colonel Douglas McGregor is an American patriot.
[00:01:52]  He served our country faithfully and loyally.
[00:01:54]  He's a very smart man and someone who should be taken very seriously.
[00:01:58]  Colonel Douglas McGregor went on television recently and had a contrarian opinion about the Russian-Ukrainian situation.
[00:02:05]  Now, we've commented on the Russian-Ukrainian situation in some great detail, but we're by no means experts.
[00:02:11]  I have not served in any capacity at all in the United States military in a combat theater.
[00:02:16]  Colonel Douglas McGregor knows geopolitics much better than almost anybody of the chattering class on television.
[00:02:22]  Colonel Douglas McGregor went on TV and made the argument that this is not America's fight, that we should allow Putin to do what he wants to do in Ukraine.
[00:02:31]  Now, I'm almost paraphrasing, but that was about the essence of what he said in his commentary.
[00:02:36]  In fact, we have him on in a second.
[00:02:37]  I want to play what he said while we're waiting to get him on here.
[00:02:42]  Let's play cut seven.
[00:02:43]  This is not the liberal democracy, the shining example that everyone says it is.
[00:02:48]  Far from it.
[00:02:48]  Mr. Zelensky has jailed journalists and his political opposition.
[00:02:53]  I think we need to stay out of it.
[00:02:54]  The American people think we should stay out of it.
[00:02:56]  The Europeans think we should stay out of it.
[00:02:58]  And we should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what is a hopeless endeavor.
[00:03:05]  So when you say stay out of it, you mean no sanctions, no military aid, just let Russia take the portion of Ukraine they want to take.
[00:03:15]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:03:16]  I see no reason why we should fight with the Russians over something that they have been talking about for years.
[00:03:22]  We simply chose to ignore it.
[00:03:24]  So that commentary right there of saying that this is not our fight, which again, we have a mixed position on that, but I think it's very well informed and I think it's very interesting, was met with such extreme backlash.
[00:03:39]  In fact, the media has categorized a United States colonel as, quote, a Putin apologist, is what the Independent said.
[00:03:47]  They said he's a Russian puppet.
[00:03:49]  Well, we're used to that kind of commentary and that sort of line of nonsense.
[00:03:55]  Now, this started this dispute on Fox News between Colonel McGregor and Jennifer Griffin, went back and forth and back and forth, kind of in a nonsensical way.
[00:04:05]  However, it does beg the question that when you have a very murky, smoggy, cloudy, and confusing situation, why is it that the single person that has a dissenting voice gets immediately attacked and receives backlash?
[00:04:21]  The dissenting voice in this particular situation is very rare to come across.
[00:04:26]  It seems that every single person coming on TV is in a competition to try to ramp up the conflict in Ukraine.
[00:04:34]  And again, that might be what some of you believe in.
[00:04:38]  You might say, you know what, we do need to ramp up the conflict.
[00:04:43]  Well, then go through Congress.
[00:04:45]  At least do it right.
[00:04:46]  Go through the congressional channels and the congressional protocol.
[00:04:50]  Don't just give Biden the power to be able to get us into this situation unilaterally without any sort of check or balance.
[00:05:00]  Going to war is a big deal.
[00:05:02]  And supplying weapons can very well lead you to war.
[00:05:06]  Congress has to be the vehicle and the way to be able to make that happen.
[00:05:11]  I want to play the response that Jennifer Griffin had, and she responded to Colonel McGregor.
[00:05:17]  And I'm going to ask him for his response of her response as he comes on here, which is cut nine, where Jennifer Griffin responds to Colonel McGregor right afterwards.
[00:05:26]  Play cut nine.
[00:05:28]  I just heard your last guess, and I feel like I need to correct some of the things that Colonel Doug McGregor just said, because, and I'm not sure 10 minutes is enough time to do so, because there were so many distortions in what he just said, and talking about the West and NATO vilifying Putin and sounding like an apologist for Putin.
[00:05:46]  So those, what he just said was so distorted that I do feel that our audience needs to know the truth.
[00:05:53]  She continued.
[00:05:54]  Let me see the other clip here that she was on here.
[00:05:58]  She continued by on cut 18.
[00:06:00]  Let's play cut 18, please.
[00:06:01]  And talking about how Putin he thinks he knows how far Putin wants to go.
[00:06:06]  I don't think anyone that I've spoken to here at the Pentagon or elsewhere in Western intelligence believes they know how far Putin wants to go.
[00:06:14]  And I think that the world has seen what Putin is capable of.
[00:06:18]  And to blame NATO membership for what we've seen Putin unleash, we've seen from Putin's own words that he is talking in czarist terms from a 18th, 19th century view of empirical, imperial Russia.
[00:06:34]  Debate is good in situations like this.
[00:06:36]  When there is a consensus that they keep on putting on television, you're not allowed to have any sort of nuance or any sort of difference of opinion.
[00:06:45]  And then that's usually when really bad things happen.
[00:06:47]  That's usually when you get situations like when you invade Iraq or when you lock down your entire country.
[00:06:53]  So with us right now is Colonel McGregor himself.
[00:06:57]  And I want to explore this with him.
[00:06:58]  Colonel, thank you so much for joining the Charlie Kirk show.
[00:07:01]  Charlie, thank you for inviting me.
[00:07:03]  So Colonel, we kind of went through some of your commentary that you had on Fox News that was, let's say, made headlines.
[00:07:12]  Walk us through your position on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and why you believe America should not intervene.
[00:07:19]  Well, first of all, I think it's very important that the president make it clear repeatedly that we will not intervene.
[00:07:26]  He said that early on, but some of his comments indicated that he was waffling.
[00:07:32]  And it got a little sticky yesterday because the polls thought that they could turn over several MiG-29 jets to the Ukrainians.
[00:07:41]  And finally, the Secretary General flew in to stop it.
[00:07:45]  First of all, you don't ever, ever want to challenge a major military power on that power's doorstep.
[00:07:52]  I mean, the worst possible place to take on Russian forces is on Russia's border.
[00:07:57]  It's just stupid.
[00:07:59]  You have no way to be successful.
[00:08:01]  Secondly, we are very dependent upon air power, and we are way behind in the air defense department.
[00:08:08]  We have not spent intelligently, and we have not created effective air defenses against missiles and aircraft for our forces on the ground.
[00:08:18]  So if we went into this, we risk being naked effectively in the face of air power.
[00:08:23]  And then our own air power would likely be shot to pieces by Russian air defenses, even though they won't admit it.
[00:08:31]  Truthfully, they know whether you're stealthy or not, they have extraordinarily effective air defenses and radars that will track and shoot us down.
[00:08:40]  So from a standpoint of capability, the best thing we can do is stay behind NATO's borders and effectively watch.
[00:08:48]  If the Russians were to advance towards the eastern border of NATO, then we could repel them in all probability.
[00:08:56]  But it's even questionable as to whether or not we could manage that, particularly on the border with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.
[00:09:04]  And then finally, none of this has anything to do with us except that tragically over the last 20 years, some would argue even longer, we have been trying to transform Ukraine into some sort of lethal instrument that can be used against Russia.
[00:09:20]  That's simply unacceptable to Mr. Putin, and he's made that clear repeatedly.
[00:09:25]  President Trump was very, very personally uncomfortable with the notion that we should aid the Ukrainians.
[00:09:31]  He felt it would set them up for failure, and they would be needlessly killed.
[00:09:35]  He was correct.
[00:09:37]  That is now happening.
[00:09:38]  And this Ukrainian state construct is not real.
[00:09:42]  It includes far too many people who are, frankly, not Ukrainian.
[00:09:45]  They're Russians and places that were never part of historic Ukraine.
[00:09:50]  The Russians have complained about this.
[00:09:52]  This is not something that we did.
[00:09:54]  It's a consequence of communist rule because remember, the communists, in order to rule, were always pitting people against each other.
[00:10:01]  So they would create these things in the hope that people would hate each other more than they hated Moscow.
[00:10:06]  The point is, we need to stay out.
[00:10:08]  This is not some sort of brilliant liberal democracy shining city on a hill somewhere.
[00:10:14]  Far from it.
[00:10:15]  Ukraine is actually more corrupt than Russia, more corrupt than most states in the world today.
[00:10:20]  It's a catastrophe.
[00:10:22]  We need to stay out, and we need to let the Russians and the Ukrainians sort this out.
[00:10:27]  I hope the Ukrainians will talk to the Russians and act in good faith because thus far they haven't.
[00:10:32]  Well, that's one of the smartest points I've heard anyone make, which is why would you fight a country right at their doorstep, 5,000 miles away from our country?

=== Ukraine Corruption and Lightway VPN (02:24) ===

[00:10:40]  That's really smart, and I haven't heard anyone say that on television.
[00:10:44]  And you're right.
[00:10:45]  Ukraine was a Petri dish for the global American empire via the State Department.
[00:10:52]  And they tried to do everything they possibly could to try to make Ukrainian government in the form and of the shape of whatever globalist project that they want to explore.
[00:11:05]  I think a lot of people agree with your commentary, but some people in America, and I think this is a good, I think it's a virtue of the American people, they don't like seeing injustice or bullies on the march while we sit and do nothing.
[00:11:21]  Look, I've been using ExpressVPN for about six years now, and it's the VPN that I trust.
[00:11:26]  And here's something that blows my mind.
[00:11:28]  These guys that actually engineered their own VPN protocol called Lightway to keep your data secure without sacrificing speed.
[00:11:35]  That's why I love ExpressVPN.
[00:11:37]  There are no trade-offs.
[00:11:38]  If you don't know what ExpressVPN is, well, it's a virtual private network.
[00:11:42]  That's what a VPN is.
[00:11:43]  ExpressVPN is an app that encrypts 100% of your network data and reroutes it through a secure and encrypted server.
[00:11:50]  This is especially important when you're on public Wi-Fi.
[00:11:52]  Not only can admins see everything you're doing, but hackers connected to that same network can also steal your account logins and financial details.
[00:12:00]  Because they engineered their own VPN protocol, all the other major VPNs use the same off-the-shelf protocol.
[00:12:06]  This level of bespoke technology is exactly what allows ExpressVPN to provide superior speeds and enhanced privacy and protection.
[00:12:13]  It's 2022, and you need a VPN every time you go online.
[00:12:17]  Use the VPN that I trust that I have on my phone right now.
[00:12:20]  It's expressvpn.com/slash Charlie, and you can get three extra months free.
[00:12:26]  That's expr ESSVPN.com/slash Charlie.
[00:12:32]  Expressvpn.com/slash Charlie.
[00:12:37]  Colonel, I'll be honest: you know, I don't like seeing a strong country invade a smaller country, albeit even though Ukraine is very corrupt.
[00:12:45]  I totally agree with that.
[00:12:47]  And I can understand, even though I have to stop myself of this, you know, of this impulse to want to help, to want to intervene, to want to try to help the quote-unquote good guys.
[00:12:58]  Why is that much more complicated than the cable news people are making it seem?
[00:13:02]  And why would that be a horrendous mistake?

=== Artillery Strikes on Civilian Cities (04:21) ===

[00:13:05]  Of course, millions of people inside Ukraine who are Russian, who speak Russian, are culturally Russian, who identify as Russian, have been forced over the last 10 years, increasingly, really forced physically to adopt Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture, and Ukrainian identity.
[00:13:25]  And they don't want it.
[00:13:27]  And this matter has not escaped attention in Moscow.
[00:13:31]  Moscow has pleaded with Kiev for more tolerance, a more tolerant approach to the Russians that live inside their borders who are simply not Ukrainian.
[00:13:40]  The Ukrainians have taken a very hard line on this.
[00:13:44]  When I say Ukrainians, you have to understand that these are some of the most radical elements, most of whom do not live in eastern Ukraine, but they are the ones who are by far the most violent and the most insistent on this Ukrainianization, if you will, of the Russians.
[00:14:00]  And during the Maidan Revolution in 2014, there was a lot of fighting in many places, and large numbers of Russians were simply murdered.
[00:14:08]  In fact, Odessa was the scene of some very horrific killings involving herding Russians into buildings and then destroying and burning the buildings.
[00:14:17]  All of these things left a permanent impact.
[00:14:20]  When you add to this the very high probability that we were planning to station forces in Ukraine, including missile forces, it was very obvious when Putin seized Crimea that we were going to try and use that naval base in the Black Sea for U.S. and NATO naval forces.
[00:14:37]  He also saw the presence of thousands of U.S. advisors, huge numbers of intelligence operatives moving into the country and taking control of particular facilities, all aimed at Russia, at subverting Russia, destabilizing Russia, because the biggest advocates for Ukraine are also the biggest advocates for regime change in Moscow.
[00:14:59]  It's no surprise at all what Putin did to put an end to this.
[00:15:04]  So this is by no means malevolent or malicious toward the Ukrainian population.
[00:15:09]  In fact, this could have been over, I would say, at least a week ago, except that Putin initially gave strict instructions to his officers that he did not want strikes from the air or massive rocket artillery strikes or artillery systems striking cities and settlements where civilians were and would be killed.
[00:15:30]  That really slowed everything down.
[00:15:32]  And they discovered that the Ukrainian forces, as they became more desperate because they couldn't operate in the open, they don't have any mobility.
[00:15:41]  They don't have any air defense.
[00:15:42]  They don't have real striking power in their artillery, limited firepower, no logistical infrastructure.
[00:15:49]  Naturally, they began to move into the big cities.
[00:15:52]  Now they've had to put the hammer down and say enough is enough.
[00:15:55]  So the cities are going to take some damage.
[00:15:58]  And I'm sure the Russians, like the Israelis, like us, will try not to murder civilians under any circumstances.
[00:16:05]  Try not to make them casualties.
[00:16:07]  But when you move into these dense areas, you have a choice.
[00:16:10]  You can sit around and try to starve them out.
[00:16:12]  And that takes a lot of time and causes enormous injury, or you go in and you end it.
[00:16:18]  They are in the go-in phase and ending it.
[00:16:21]  So I know you have to run, Colonel, but just really quick, what assurances do you have to try to believe that Putin won't try to invade other countries?
[00:16:31]  Moldova, Estonia.
[00:16:33]  Putin's army is only about 420,000.
[00:16:36]  It's smaller than the United States Army.
[00:16:38]  He couldn't possibly launch an offensive against the West.
[00:16:42]  It would be foolish and stupid, and he knows that.
[00:16:44]  There's no support in his population for that kind of action.
[00:16:47]  None whatsoever.
[00:16:48]  Finally, he is not interested in a nuclear exchange and never has been.
[00:16:52]  He's the last person to pull the trigger.
[00:16:55]  We don't want one either.
[00:16:57]  When you look at those factors, and then you also have to add in the economy, the Russian economy is not just a single commodity economy, not exclusively oil and gas, but very heavily dependent upon its export.
[00:17:09]  They produce about 10 million barrels of oil a day.
[00:17:12]  They export 5 million of them.
[00:17:14]  When you add to that timber, metals, rare earths, copper, aluminum, a number of other very, very important commodities, that's their livelihood along with agriculture.

=== Western Pressure to Intervene Now (14:37) ===

[00:17:26]  They don't produce anything per se.
[00:17:28]  They can't afford to stay in a war with NATO for any length of time.
[00:17:34]  They just can't compete.
[00:17:36]  Our economy is infinitely larger, as is Europe's several times the size of Russia's.
[00:17:42]  For him, this is an eternal affair.
[00:17:45]  He looks at this as a dangerous thing that he has to stop.
[00:17:49]  Thank you for that commentary.
[00:17:51]  And it's definitely contrarian.
[00:17:52]  And it's hard to disagree with a lot of that.
[00:17:54]  So, Colonel, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:17:56]  Hope to see you soon.
[00:17:57]  Thank you.
[00:17:58]  Thank you, Charlie.
[00:17:58]  God bless.
[00:17:59]  Thank you.
[00:18:02]  Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
[00:18:03]  If the truckers have taught us anything, it's that we are infinitely more powerful when we stick together.
[00:18:08]  The same goes for supporting businesses that we believe in this country and your right to live free.
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[00:19:05]  Jack Pisobic is very smart.
[00:19:07]  He runs Human Events Daily in a partnership with TPUSA, Turning Point USA.
[00:19:12]  And Jack Pisobic is here right now to help us unpack many different things.
[00:19:16]  Jack, how are you doing?
[00:19:17]  Oh, they always a pleasure.
[00:19:19]  So Jack, what is the latest on the ground in Ukraine?
[00:19:23]  Well, the latest that's on the ground is quite perplexing because if you've been watching most of the mainstream media coverage, they've been telling you that Russia's invasion has stalled, that it's collapsed, that it's a complete failure.
[00:19:36]  They're going to have to turn back to Moscow.
[00:19:37]  This is the end of it.
[00:19:39]  But if you actually look at the ground and you actually look at the terrain that's been taken by Russia, if you look at the cities and the territory that's been taken, they're up to now almost 20% of the Ukrainian homeland has now been essentially annexed or at least taken over, controlled by Russian forces.
[00:19:58]  And keep in mind, this is a massive, massive, we broke this down on the podcast today, a massive area of land.
[00:20:04]  You're talking, so from east to west Ukraine is as far as it is from New York City all the way to Chicago.
[00:20:10]  So Chicago would be essentially that Polish-Ukrainian border.
[00:20:14]  So you're talking about a huge swath of land and Russia isn't doing what we are doing.
[00:20:18]  And that's why the Pentagon is getting this wrong.
[00:20:20]  And that's why so much of the U.S. establishment is getting this wrong.
[00:20:23]  They're not trying to do these blitzkrieg tactics with massive air coverage all the way into Kiev.
[00:20:28]  No, it's slow, steady, calculated, intricate movements as they're winding their forces together, encircling Ukrainian forces, encircling anyone they can find that they break through, and then methodically making their way towards Kiev and these other major ports.
[00:20:45]  They almost have, with the exception of Odessa, which is the westernmost port of Ukraine on the Black Sea, they almost have complete control of the entire Ukrainian coastline at this point.
[00:20:55]  And we're only on day seven.
[00:20:57]  So, but why do the slow, intricate movements?
[00:21:00]  Why not the shock and all campaign?
[00:21:02]  I mean, Putin is losing money in this war.
[00:21:04]  There's public opinion that is coming against him.
[00:21:06]  What's the thought process behind that?
[00:21:09]  Well, this is Russian strategy.
[00:21:10]  I mean, keep in mind, Charlie, the Russian military fought over this very same terrain in this very same land just 80 years ago, not against the Ukrainians, but against the Germans to liberate it during World War II.
[00:21:22]  And I guarantee you, Russian generals study Marshal Zhukov and the fights that took place in that war from the Battle of Kursk to everything that happened through Crimea all the way down into Stalingrad.
[00:21:33]  Remember, Stalingrad, now that is to the east of this whole area, but of course is a strategic choke point on the Volga River, a strategic choke point for all of Ukraine.
[00:21:42]  So they understand this terrain very well.
[00:21:44]  They understand this area very well.
[00:21:46]  They don't fight like we fight.
[00:21:48]  They don't think like we think.
[00:21:49]  They don't go for these massive shock and awe tactics.
[00:21:52]  It's slow.
[00:21:53]  It's methodical.
[00:21:54]  And essentially, you know, when you think of it as an anaconda, it's slowly turning up the pressure until the victim breaks.
[00:22:01]  That's what they're doing.
[00:22:01]  So there is a Western narrative that says that Putin is losing his mind.
[00:22:05]  He's become maniacal and he doesn't know what he's doing.
[00:22:09]  What's your take on that?
[00:22:11]  Look, you got to understand this thing has been in the works for years and in many cases, months for just the final preparations.
[00:22:18]  I mean, when I see these sanctions that we're putting out, you know, they're banning the cats.
[00:22:22]  They're saying we can't have Russian cats.
[00:22:24]  They're banning disabled athletes from the Paralympics.
[00:22:28]  You're only hurting the people, right?
[00:22:31]  You're declaring war on an entire people, right?
[00:22:33]  Americans didn't get banned from things when we invaded Iraq unilaterally, by the way.
[00:22:38]  And so what you're doing is you're making every single person in the Russian, Belarusian, or Ukrainian, depending on what side you're on, sphere, just completely hate you.
[00:22:47]  You're making them all your enemy and you're punishing people that have nothing to do with this.
[00:22:51]  Look, the oligarchs, they were told about this months ago.
[00:22:54]  They were told about this last year.
[00:22:55]  You really think that those rich oligarchs and their kids don't have private homes and planes and mansions that are totally set up in foreign countries under separate names and everything.
[00:23:06]  Cut me a break.
[00:23:07]  You are not going to hurt anyone important with these sanctions.
[00:23:10]  All you're going to do is hurt the people.
[00:23:12]  That's number one.
[00:23:13]  Number two, when it comes down to it, Russia has done something that the United States doesn't.
[00:23:18]  What is that?
[00:23:18]  They've cornered the market on numerous examples of commodities and resources.
[00:23:24]  Number one, of course, being oil and natural gas.
[00:23:26]  And so much of this is being done because they have cornered the market for Europe when it comes to oil and natural gas.
[00:23:33]  And of course, Germany and other countries could have turned more towards nuclear, but they didn't want to do that.
[00:23:37]  They wanted to listen to a 16-year-old Swedish girl named Brett Thunberg and outsourced their entire energy policy to her and to this green movement, who, oh, by the way, we find out that the anti-fracking movement here in the United States was funded none other than by Russian gas companies like Rosneft and like Gazprom.
[00:23:54]  It's a complete ridiculous assertion that we've just essentially been playing along with all of these narratives while instead we were the ones actually getting played by the end of this.
[00:24:05]  So there is clamoring in the West and in America that we must get involved.
[00:24:10]  That some people are saying we must bomb the Russian convoy.
[00:24:14]  We should try to take out Vladimir Putin.
[00:24:17]  You know, Jack, if you are in charge, what's the response?
[00:24:20]  What do we do?
[00:24:20]  Do we sit and watch?
[00:24:21]  Do we supply weapons?
[00:24:22]  Do we cyber-attack Russia like Hillary Clinton has suggested?
[00:24:26]  What do we do?
[00:24:27]  Well, look, there's a two-pronged approach, right?
[00:24:29]  Because you have to understand when you're facing a nuclear power like Russia, Russia has the ability.
[00:24:34]  With nuclear weapons, it's like when you're fighting a guy who has got a grenade with a pin out, right?
[00:24:38]  Only that grenade is pointed at all of civilization itself.
[00:24:42]  They have the power to blow up everything.
[00:24:43]  What did Vladimir Putin say about nuclear war?
[00:24:45]  He said that from the Russian perspective, what good is it to have a world without Russia in it?
[00:24:50]  That means he is willing, or at least he's threatening to be willing to blow up all of civilization if Russia feels threatened.
[00:24:58]  So right there, he's telling you he's setting the stakes as high as they can be.
[00:25:00]  And keep in mind, the CCP is going to do the same exact thing when they make their move on Taiwan, which will be very, very soon.
[00:25:07]  What could the United States be doing?
[00:25:08]  Number one, obviously, why hasn't President Biden gotten on the phone with the president of Poland and said, how can we help you with these refugees?
[00:25:16]  What can we do with that?
[00:25:17]  That's number one.
[00:25:18]  Help the people.
[00:25:19]  Because we can point out the corruption in Russia.
[00:25:21]  We can point out the corruption in Ukraine, the corruption in the United States, but we should always be on the side of the people.
[00:25:26]  That should be first and foremost.
[00:25:27]  Second, you have to understand Russian strategy in all of this.
[00:25:31]  They think they can take the hit on the sanctions because why?
[00:25:34]  Because they have the financial and economic backstop of the One Belt, One Road, and all of these economic deals with China.
[00:25:40]  So turn around, look at it from another perspective.
[00:25:43]  If their backstop in all of this, if China is in the CCP are underwriting this entire thing, why not go after Chinese oligarchs?
[00:25:50]  Why not go after CCP officials?
[00:25:52]  Why not sanction them?
[00:25:53]  Why not raise tariffs?
[00:25:54]  Why not use economic leverage?
[00:25:56]  There's so many ways to look at this if you look at how to fight them indirectly that may actually be more effective in breaking up that alliance.
[00:26:04]  And I really do think that in the past 80 years, our policies of pushing China and Russia together, right, since, you know, since the Sino-Soviet split, we've decided that since, or I should say, since the fall of the Cold War, since the fall of the USSR, we've pushed them together, right?
[00:26:20]  We should be separating them at every turn.
[00:26:22]  We should be breaking up that alliance.
[00:26:23]  We should be using India to balance them out.
[00:26:26]  We should not be demonizing.
[00:26:27]  I've just heard they're talking about sanctioning India now as well.
[00:26:30]  Great.
[00:26:30]  So we go to our last remaining ally on the continent of Asia and we're going to go demonize them.
[00:26:36]  How could our leaders be any stupider than what they're doing right now?
[00:26:39]  So I suppose the concern that some people have, Jack, is this idea of domino theory, I guess you could call it, or the lack of deterrence.
[00:26:47]  Let's say we do what you ask and Putin takes Ukraine, which looks to be inevitable.
[00:26:52]  But I think a Ukrainian resistance could go on for years, a in the woods, a shadow resistance of, you know, just disagreeable Ukrainians that just don't like Russians, especially in the Western part.
[00:27:03]  But what's to say that Putin won't take Moldova next?
[00:27:06]  Or he might not go for Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania or Finland?
[00:27:14]  What gives you peace of mind that that won't be the next course of action?
[00:27:18]  Well, that's precisely what I'm talking about.
[00:27:20]  Look, countries choose war when they see the price of hostility as being lower than the price of non-aggression.
[00:27:27]  So what you need to do is you need to raise that cost.
[00:27:30]  And we've been trying some ways with these sanctions, but they essentially have been ineffective, as we've seen.
[00:27:36]  You've got to find ways to go around their backside and say, look, we know you want to build these pipelines across Siberia and across Mongolia from the Russian Far East into China towards Beijing.
[00:27:47]  We know that that's the plan here.
[00:27:48]  We know that you want to plug in and essentially be the fuel network for the entire one belt, one road system.
[00:27:54]  You break that up, and suddenly they lose their ability to do that.
[00:27:58]  But we aren't even talking about it.
[00:28:00]  You didn't even hear Joe Biden talk about that at the State of the Union.
[00:28:03]  He didn't talk about China.
[00:28:04]  He didn't.
[00:28:05]  You could have had an actual leader of the United States, leader of the free world, and say, Look, we know that China and Russia are doing this together, and we are going to break this up and we are going to punish both of them before this stops.
[00:28:17]  And that's what you need to do.
[00:28:18]  You need to actually raise the costs.
[00:28:20]  They don't care about their currency being completely devalued.
[00:28:23]  The oligarchs, the leaders of this entire situation, the elites in Russia, they know that they've got the resources.
[00:28:28]  They'll be fine.
[00:28:29]  And the people aren't going to do anything because they will crack down.
[00:28:32]  Again, it's Russia.
[00:28:34]  This is Putin's regime we're talking about here.
[00:28:35]  He doesn't care about how many people he has to throw in jail.
[00:28:38]  What we should do is turn around and focus on China and use the economic leverage against them to get it to the point where they won't even think about touching Latvia, Estonia, the Baltics, Moldova, or, God forbid, Poland.
[00:28:50]  So, a lot of what we've been talking about is what we should do, but let's be realistic.
[00:28:53]  What's actually going to happen here, Jack?
[00:28:54]  Play this out for us.
[00:28:55]  Okay.
[00:28:56]  We have what we have right now in front of us.
[00:28:58]  Emmanuel Macron, for goodness sakes, is the guy communicating on the West's behalf.
[00:29:03]  How does this play out?
[00:29:05]  Well, I think you're going to see a situation where, of course, you know, and we've certainly heard from Zelensky in Ukraine and from his backers that they are not going to negotiate a ceasefire.
[00:29:15]  They are not going to sit down and say and capitulate.
[00:29:18]  They are not going to surrender.
[00:29:19]  They want to fight to the last man.
[00:29:20]  And so, what does that mean?
[00:29:21]  That means that what you saw happen to that northern city of Kharkiv, that was a message, that was a warning to Kiev.
[00:29:27]  They say, if you continue down this path and if you keep putting your military assets in the cities, that we are going to come and we are going to come hard and we're not going to stop.
[00:29:35]  And I think that you're seeing a lot of these messages go out.
[00:29:37]  Now, we just saw some information that in this meeting that they had in Belarus in Beloverskaya Pusha, this ancient forest that's there, that they are talking about creating civilian corridors for refugees to be able to get out.
[00:29:50]  And so, if you are out there, get out of Dodge, get out of Kiev, get out of the entire East.
[00:29:55]  Look, I think that's what is going to end up happening.
[00:29:57]  It's very clear what Putin's plan is, what Russia's plan is here.
[00:30:00]  They are trying to split Ukraine right down the middle using that Dnper River, essentially to break it off into east and west.
[00:30:06]  He wants that buffer state.
[00:30:08]  He also understands, by the way, that he doesn't have the ability to occupy or hold Western Ukraine.
[00:30:13]  That's why you notice that a lot of the forces have not been going.
[00:30:16]  There's been some airstripes, there's been a few things that have gone on in the West, but the majority of the fighting has been in the East.
[00:30:22]  That's what he wants.
[00:30:23]  He wants to create a neutral buffer zone and potentially even a buffer state, actually divide Ukraine in two the same way that Germany was divided into during the Cold War.
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[00:31:48]  So Colonel McGregor was on Jack.
[00:31:50]  You heard his commentary with us, and he says we should do nothing.
[00:31:53]  And he has assurances that Putin is not going to go further, that he's going to stop, and he doesn't have the support of his own people to do so.
[00:32:02]  What do you think of that?

=== Nuclear Threats from China and Russia (05:08) ===

[00:32:04]  Well, look, it's no surprise that this is an extremely unpopular war back home for Russia.
[00:32:09]  The Russian people are not involved in this.
[00:32:11]  They don't want this.
[00:32:12]  They're being demonized left and right.
[00:32:14]  The Paralympics are now banning Russian and Belarusian contestants, going after disabled athletes, as if that's going to somehow stop Putin.
[00:32:24]  They're getting hit when it comes to banking.
[00:32:26]  Obviously, they're the ones who are facing the full brunt of the currency hit, and they are the ones who are being really just ostracized by the entire world.
[00:32:33]  That being said, Putin does believe, and he just gave a press conference, a security press conference, where he said, I'm doubling down on this.
[00:32:40]  I'm firm in my belief that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are one people, right?
[00:32:47]  And so that shows really that he's at least now operating.
[00:32:51]  You take him at his word.
[00:32:52]  So, you know, huge grain of salt there, that he's operating off a historical and cultural playbook, right?
[00:32:57]  You can't say that for the Latvians.
[00:32:58]  You can't say that for the Baltics.
[00:33:00]  You can't say that for the Poles.
[00:33:01]  You certainly can't say that for the Moldovans, right?
[00:33:04]  Those are very distinct areas, very distinct languages and cultures.
[00:33:08]  That being said, Ukraine and Russia do have a shared history, and he's banking on that as a way to sort of justify everything that's going on right now.
[00:33:16]  Now, does that mean he will not go further?
[00:33:18]  I firmly believe that if you do not want Putin to go further, of course, we don't want that, then you can't escalate this thing further.
[00:33:26]  You have to stop the escalation now, and you have to hold them where they are, contain this situation.
[00:33:31]  Because if you escalate, like they were talking about sending MiGs from Poland and Slovakia and some of these other EU countries, you know, sending jets in, that obviously would be a military act and a military escalation from NATO towards Russia.
[00:33:44]  And he doesn't want to go to war with Russia.
[00:33:46]  But at the same token, NATO doesn't want to go to war with Russia either, because that would lead potentially to a civilization-destroying event.
[00:33:54]  And I want to be very clear about this with everybody because I've seen talk now on Twitter, the Twitterati, the Blue Checks are saying, well, you know, maybe it would be a limited engagement between nuclear combatants, the skirmish, right?
[00:34:05]  No, do not play that out.
[00:34:06]  Look, at the end of the day, if you're looking at this, you're the president of the United States, you have to say, is it worth New York City?
[00:34:13]  Is it worth losing one of our major cities?
[00:34:15]  Is it worth San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, these West Coast cities that are closer to Russia, closer to China?
[00:34:21]  At the end of the day, we have to protect American cities.
[00:34:24]  We have to protect people here and do what is in their best interest.
[00:34:27]  Yeah, and I mean, we're not being serious.
[00:34:29]  We're not a serious country.
[00:34:30]  If we were serious, we would open up our LNG assets and we would provide Europe with their oil and natural gas needs.
[00:34:36]  And that would starve the beast of Russia quicker than anything else.
[00:34:38]  But we're not serious because we're captured by the environment.
[00:34:41]  And that was the plan.
[00:34:42]  You tease something.
[00:34:43]  You are an expert on China.
[00:34:44]  You served in that area in our wonderful military.
[00:34:47]  China, Taiwan, you think it's going to happen?
[00:34:49]  What makes you believe that?
[00:34:52]  Well, I think it does now because, of course, China is looking at it from their calculus, their strategic calculus.
[00:34:57]  And prior to this, you know, I had been one of those guys and I've been out there a long time saying that their current strategy is an osmosis strategy, bring them together.
[00:35:04]  But remember, under Hong Kong, right?
[00:35:07]  So they were trying to use Hong Kong as a test case for how they would reincorporate Taiwan into this sort of, you know, they call it the one China policy.
[00:35:14]  And so they were saying, look, it'll be this one country, two systems.
[00:35:17]  You can keep your system.
[00:35:18]  You can be the same way you are.
[00:35:20]  Well, in 2019, we saw the crackdown and we saw the freedom protesters and they were completely obliterated by the CCP and their forces.
[00:35:26]  They were cracked down on.
[00:35:27]  And since then, freedom and democracy have been completely stamped out in Hong Kong, in that entire province, that peninsula and that island.
[00:35:34]  Going forward, then it completely destroys their sales pitch for Taiwan because you are going to give all the money and all of the influence now to the separatists in Taiwan.
[00:35:45]  They are going to want to declare independence.
[00:35:46]  Now, it's a completely separate situation from Ukraine because, again, Taiwan is they currently claim to be part of China, right?
[00:35:53]  They just claim that they're the rightful government of the Republic of China and get into all the history there.
[00:35:57]  But if the CCP is looking at this from the perspective of nuclear power, if they put nuclear weapons on the table in a nuclear strike the same way that Russia has put them on the table, and keep in mind that even if we strike them first, right, I see people saying these ridiculous comments, they have nuclear-tipped submarines.
[00:36:15]  They can submarine launch.
[00:36:16]  So even if you take out Beijing and Shanghai, guess what?
[00:36:19]  They can still strike us back.
[00:36:20]  That's called second strike capability.
[00:36:22]  We have the same, we have to go back and relearn all this nuclear war stuff from the Cold War because it seems like people have completely forgotten how this all works.
[00:36:28]  They're going to do the exact same thing with Taiwan.
[00:36:30]  Now, Taiwan will be a harder target for them, but mark my words, they are going to go in and they are going to go in militarily.
[00:36:36]  What will America do?
[00:36:38]  What should we do?
[00:36:39]  That's the question.
[00:36:40]  Well, Jack, you know China better than anybody else.
[00:36:42]  You served in that area for quite some time.
[00:36:44]  We'll have to admit you back on.
[00:36:45]  Jack Basoba, Cuman Events Daily.
[00:36:46]  Go subscribe to it.
[00:36:47]  Does a great job with us at Turning Point USA.
[00:36:49]  Jack, thanks so much for joining us today.
[00:36:51]  Appreciate it, Charlie.
[00:36:52]  Always an honor.
[00:36:53]  Thank you.
[00:36:55]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:36:56]  Email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:36:58]  If you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support and get involved with turning pointusa at tpusa.com.
[00:37:04]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:37:05]  God bless.
[00:37:09]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.