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March 16, 2022 - The Charlie Kirk Show
39:32
Zelenskyy Addresses Congress
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Turning Point USA Announcements 00:02:52
Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, Zelensky addresses Congress.
We go through his speech, which objectively was a phenomenal address from a presentation standpoint.
Should America get involved?
Can we handle it?
Can our leaders pull it off?
These are questions that we explore.
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Zelensky's Leader of Peace Claim 00:07:31
Just a couple minutes ago Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, addressed Congress.
This is the number one news story right now, really in the world, where Zelensky, who was under siege from the aggression of Vladimir Putin, addressed Congress.
Now we're going to go through his speech, we're going to play some tape from it, and But it was an objectively phenomenal performance.
It's almost as if Zelensky was an actor or something in a previous life.
Whoever wrote his speech, they knew exactly how to weave in the emotion of American history, the diction and the syntax of how to try to motivate a response.
So we're going to go through that.
We're going to judge it fairly, but it still begs the question of what should we do in response?
What is the prudent course of action?
And also the argument we've continued to make here, which is do you trust our leaders to be able to do highly complicated tasks when the stakes are so high?
Now, some of what Zelensky said in his speech when he was speaking to Congress was obviously wrapped in hyperbole.
However, I'm going to give Zelensky a little bit of a hall pass here.
Again, I'm no fan of Zelensky.
I have said before that he's awfully corrupt and has done many things in the past that I disagree with and was probably implemented in an undemocratic way and silences his political opponents.
However, I'm going to give him a pass because when your country is under siege and you engage in some hyperbole, who wouldn't do that in a situation like that?
Zelensky says, look, this is a terror that Europe has not seen for 80 years.
He says, is it too much to ask for to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine to save people?
Is this too much to ask?
Now, we have not focused a lot on the no-fly zone question.
Creation of a no-fly zone is an act of war.
Basically, it would be policed by the greatest Air Force the planet has ever seen, the United States Air Force, and the consequences would be that we will shoot down any Russian jet if it dares fly over Ukraine.
If that were to happen, well, then we might be stumbling towards something I don't think any American wants to happen.
Now, let me say this: that looking at this speech and watching it, I can understand the impulse to want to get engaged and involved.
However, we must not only make decisions with our emotion, but we also must make them rationally and empirically and game them out.
We went into great detail, and I encourage you guys to check out the podcast on how, because of what's happening in Ukraine, that is actually unraveling the petrodollar and the United States as the world reserve currency.
You see, a mature foreign policy understands how one thing can lead to the other.
We would call it a kind of domino theory, but that's been used, unfortunately, 80 years ago.
Let's play Cut 60.
This is a terror that Europe has not seen, has not seen for 80 years, and we are asking for a reply, for an answer to this terror from the whole world.
Is this a lot to ask for to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine to save people?
Is this too much to ask?
Humanitarian no-fly zone.
So, asking for a no-fly zone sounds pretty simple, right?
It sounds like, hey, we're just going to kind of put a TFR, a temporary flight restriction over LAX or over O'Hare or over JFK.
It doesn't work like that.
It has to be policed.
And so, therefore, if a Russian jet were to fly into Ukraine, we'd have to do something about that.
And if we were to shoot down that Russian jet, what would be the response?
A full-fledged NATO kind of reaction.
Now, some people are beginning to say, you know what, Charlie?
It's better to go to war against Putin in Ukraine right now than in Warsaw or in Paris.
I think that's foolish.
I think that would result in an unraveling of civil society as we know it.
Zelensky continues in Cut 61, where he says, Look, Joe Biden, you are the leader of your nation.
I wish for you to be the leader of the world.
Being the leader of the world means being the leader of peace.
Now, that's an interestingly constructed sentence.
Joe Biden was not elected to be leader of the world.
He was elected to be leader of America.
He's not even doing that.
However, what Zelensky is trying to do, and this is something that is very effective in messaging to Americans, is basically playing into the desire that Americans have to be the leader of the world.
And we are the leader of the world.
Now, it's interesting where he says we want to be the leader of peace.
That's an interesting sentence.
Now, there might be some translation misfitting here.
There might be some translation difficulties.
Probably not.
The stakes are too high for a translator to not get the words totally precise.
I'm not suggesting the translator is getting the words not correct.
I'm saying sometimes there's not a great word to fit in the language.
You see this a lot in ancient Hebrew.
There just sometimes are not words that fit in the English equivalent.
You have to find synonyms.
They're not the exact perfect fit.
But I'm not suggesting the translator got anything wrong.
But this is what basically Zelensky said is being the leader of the world means you must be the leader of peace.
I agree.
So how does establishing a military enforce no-fly zone or sending more weapons, how is that going to get us peace?
That will probably prolong the conflict.
What is the off-ramp to peace?
And can you trust the person under siege to be the brokering or be the communicator of what peace could potentially be?
Play Cut 61.
At the leader of my niche, I'm addressing the President Biden.
You are the leader of the niche of the Operation.
I wish you to be the leader of the world.
Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.
To be the leader of peace.
Well, in order to broker peace, we need to have some sort of an idea of what success could potentially look like.
What would success look like at this particular moment?
The peace talks between Russia and Ukraine continue.
They don't seem to be bearing much fruit as the killing and the slaughtering continues.
Zelensky continues on Cut 62 saying to Congress, remember Pearl Harbor.
Remember September 11th.
Our country experiences this every day, right now at this moment, every night for three weeks now.
Obviously using imagery in American history to try to prove his point.
Play Cut 62.
Remember Pearl Harbor terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you.
Just remember it.
Remember September the 11th.
Our country experience the same every day, right now, at this moment, every night for three weeks now.
That is very effective, but it is designed to guilt you into action.
It is created to try to motivate you as the American citizen to want to fully get into a conflict into Ukraine.
Now, it's very dangerous to want to get into some of these situations if you are not willing to see it all the way through.
Emotional Appeals to Guilt Americans 00:02:15
And some lawmakers are saying, look, we need a no-fly zone.
We need troops on the ground.
We might as well go to war right now.
Could not disagree more.
Could not disagree more that getting involved in a messy and murky situation in Ukraine against a nuclear armed power, just as we finally have been able to get out of all of this COVID tyranny and now we're going to turn the page and get full-fledged into potential kinetic war with the Russians in the mud season of winter in Ukraine.
That is really what he's asking for.
He's not that blunt.
Zelensky basically was able to camouflage his direct ask.
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Zelensky addressed the Congress of the United States.
Zelensky obviously was engaging in emotional arguments to try to get people to help him out.
You can't blame him for that when your country is under attack.
The question is, how do you receive it?
And it seems as if Congress received it enthusiastically.
Many members of Congress are now ready, willing, and able to give Zelensky whatever he wants.
Now, I guess all Donald Trump had to do to get the southern border wall built, I guess, was do a Zoom call to Congress and ask for it and could have got a standing ovation.
Video Montage Shows Destruction 00:02:15
It's just very interesting to me, isn't it?
How the Uniparty in Washington, D.C. is enthusiastic to stand with applause with a foreign president, which very well might be the right thing, all the while never actually prioritizing so many of our own domestic problems, so many of them that they completely and totally ignore.
Obviously, the one that we talk about is our porous invasion of the southern border, our drug addiction issue, the sprawling urban crime problem.
It's very telling.
Let's go to Cut 65.
I need to protect our sky.
I need your decision, your help, which means exactly the same.
The same you feel when you hear the words, I have a dream.
Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Ukraine is grateful to the United States for its overwhelming support.
So he is using the Martin Luther King speech to try and motivate you to create a no-fly zone.
Seems to be a little bit of a jump, a little bit of a, let's say, unrelated situation there.
Zelensky also showed a movie that was screened for the U.S. Congress, a featurette, PlayCut 66.
This is a kind of montage of a video that shows the destruction and the suffering in Ukraine.
That was a video that kind of shows the destruction what's happening in Ukraine.
Very emotional.
So it continues to be the question of what should America's response be.
Even the most enthusiastic neoconservatives can't quite answer that question.
What gets us to the ceasefire?
Do we want to ceasefire?
Do we want to get to a place of peace?
Invading a Country Requires Winning 00:02:49
It sure doesn't seem that way.
It seems as if the only way we're going to get this over with is to try and defeat the Russians once and for all.
I'm reading that the Russian army logistics are very poor, very bad.
They have about another one to two weeks of supplies remaining.
And so who knows where the kind of situational, let's say, the situational advantage is.
So Zelensky has an upper hand in one way, that for every mile the Russian army gets further away from Moscow, they have to build supply lines.
They also will lose troops and they have to resupply those troops.
It is 10 times as hard to invade a country than it is to defend a country.
To defend a country, you just basically have to not lose.
To invade a country, you have to win.
In order to not lose, you can lose almost battle after battle after battle as long as you don't lose the war.
For the invading country, they can win every single battle, but if they're not able to break the resolve, if they're not able to break the back of the invading country, well, then the war continues.
This is very similar to the American Revolution.
But the question is, does a prolonged conflict in Ukraine, one that goes on for another couple months or another couple years, does that help the United States?
Does it help the people of Ukraine?
And I find it interesting that there is NATO.
There is an entire European conglomerate.
Yet it falls on the Americans to try to get engaged and involved, which again, we signed up for.
We are the leaders of the free world.
But I find it interesting that if there were to be intervention in Ukraine, it has to be kind of solely on the back of the American foreign policy apparatus or the American military.
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Deterrence Must Be Front End 00:14:52
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So I want to kind of build out, reinforce an argument we've made.
So Congress is enthusiastic about sending weapons and sending military aid.
However, the stakes are really high, and the chance of failure is much higher than the chance of success.
And so we all want to avoid a war with Russia, except, of course, the neoconservatives that have wanted to have a war with every major country.
Just get it over.
A war to end all wars.
Right, sure.
Look, you cannot have two nuclear powers having a skirmish between our fighter jets.
And so a no-fly zone is a very dangerous idea, despite Zelensky's well-tailored arguments in front of Congress.
Very effective arguments, I might say.
It's a really bad idea.
Now, I would say maybe and maybe only Donald Trump, when he was president and his phenomenal national security team, I'm talking about people like Rick Grinnell and others, maybe they could have pulled this off.
But our current commander-in-chief, Joe Biden, no way would he be able to pull this off.
We do not trust Biden to oversee a no-fly zone.
Why?
He couldn't get our own citizens to fly out of Kabul.
If we can't get our own citizens to fly out of Kabul, why should we be able to pull off a no-fly zone in Ukraine?
And so, this is the point that I keep on making, and I'm just waiting for other people on television to bring this up, which is: okay, Zelensky, best guy ever.
Fine.
I don't think that.
We've gone into great detail of Azov Battalion and the money laundering and the corruption and the World Economic Forum ties and all that stuff.
Whatever.
That's obviously not resonating with people.
People think Zelensky's the next Churchill, which is insane, but whatever.
Fine.
I'm going to leave that argument aside.
Zelensky, let's pretend he's Nelson Mandela and Churchill, and he's being compared to Queen Esther.
I saw that article this morning.
Today is Purim for all of our Jewish friends.
Have a wonderful Purim.
And so, which I think, of course, is obviously equally as insane to compare Zelensky to Esther and to compare Zelensky to Churchill and Nelson Mandela, but I'm seeing it all.
Okay.
That argument obviously is resonating with people.
People want heroes.
And obviously, Vladimir Putin is a villain.
People don't like the idea that there might be a villain and a corrupt government fighting one another.
They don't like the idea of corrupt versus evil, but whatever, fine.
A sophisticated military maneuver, if done incorrectly, could result in the unraveling of decent and civil society.
And so, for everyone out there that is saying, we got to get involved, we got to get there.
You have an open line to me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
What gives you the confidence and the assuredness, the peace of mind, that it can be done?
That the people in charge will not be too corrupt or too ideologically captured by some sort of group or too incompetent to mess this up.
Now, you might say, well, Charlie, how could you mess up a no-fly zone?
I'll give you an example.
Okay?
Let's say you shut down a Russian civilian airliner.
The Russians are known for playing games.
So let's say that we institute a no-fly zone.
We're doing a no-fly zone, according to Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.
So what would you do if you were the Russians and you wanted to push the boundaries of the West?
It's very simple.
You would load up a civilian airliner and in a deceitful and evil way, you would fly it right on the boundary of the no-fly zone and make it indistinguishable from a military aircraft.
If you were the Russians, you'd pull off a false flag, is what I'm saying.
Not that the Americans would, but then what if all of a sudden the Americans shut down a civilian airliner?
What would that mean?
That would give the Russians all of their domestic support that they would need to go full-fledged into this.
These things could get messed up really quickly.
Let's listen to some of the congressional response after Zelensky's speech.
No one remembers how incompetent our military was.
Not our military on the bottom, of course, not the boots, but I'm talking about the suits of Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin.
Seems as if they have the full confidence now.
It's like, hey, they're the best, even though we can't get the Americans out of Kabul.
13 Marines died doing, unfortunately, traffic duty.
We gave up Bagram Air Base.
It was one of the great disasters of American military history.
And somehow a couple months later, we're like, yeah, now we could take on the Russians on their own border.
Mitt Romney, he is leading the parade to make sure your grandson gets drafted.
Play Cut 70.
Like many of you, I had the occasion to listen to President Zelensky just a few moments ago, and I came away, one, very moved, a very heroic, monumentally courageous man.
At the same time, I feel fully committed to doing everything in our power to help defend the people of Ukraine against the monstrous actions of Vladimir Putin.
Cut 671, Kevin McCarthy was asked about implementing a no-fly zone, and Kevin McCarthy said Ukraine should just implement their own no-fly zone.
That's a wise take by Kevin McCarthy.
He has some very, let's say, he's wise in his approach in answering this.
Play Cut 71.
Scenario where a no-fly zone, the no-fly zone that he requested would be supported by you and by the United States.
Look, I think right now, provide them the MIGS that they can create a no-fly zone.
The entire time speaking with those in Ukraine and the president himself, he's never asked for American men or women to be in a battle.
All he's ever asked for is give us the opportunity to defend ourselves.
Don't let us fight with sticks.
Cut 72, McCarthy attacks Biden for not providing Ukraine with more military aid.
Play Cut 72.
I've had conversations with the president long before this moment came.
My advice to him was provide them the armament earlier to deter Putin from ever making these decisions.
And the entire time, President Biden always said it would be the sanctions afterwards.
And then when the sanctions came, he said he'd take months to work.
Ukrainian people cannot wait months.
The world cannot wait months if we sit by and watch innocent people being murdered.
With that, let me turn it over to our wick.
That's a smart point.
So what Kevin is saying there, and I think this deserves a little bit of time to dive into, is that if you actually want to have a successful policy of deterrence, the penalty must be on the front end, not on the back end.
And so Biden's entire portfolio proposal was like, okay, Putin, if you do this, then I'm going to sanction you on the back end.
Well, Putin's like, all right, well, I'm going to do it because you're probably going to sanction me anyway.
Where Donald Trump was like, hey, you dare cross a line?
Not only will I engage with you diplomatically, not only are we going to be energy independent, not only are we going to crater the price of oil to help American consumers and destroy the Russian petro currency, but not only will there be sanctions on the back end, you're not going to like what happens next.
And just as a little bit of history, Trump provided the Ukrainians with lethal weapons.
But Trump was smart.
Despite all of the mockery and all of the backlash, we had better relations with Russia.
China was finally on defense.
Iran was not able to enrich uranium or try to develop a nuclear weapon.
And one of the reasons why Russia was not empowered to try to go invade any other countries was that as soon as America became energy independent, that which fuels your entire civilization, it became a lot harder to justify a ground invasion.
They didn't have the dollars to do it.
Trump was always on an offensive posture.
And what's the best way to have an offensive posture?
When your economy is roaring, when your people are behind you, when you have a strong economy domestically and you put your own house in order, you're able to have an offensive posture.
One of the great stories is when Donald Trump was having chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago with Xi Jinping, and he turns to Xi Jping and he says, oh, by the way, I just put airstrikes in Syria because they crossed a red line.
Now, at the time, I was very nervous.
I'll be very honest.
When the airstrikes happened in Syria, I was super nervous.
I thought that was going to result in an escalation with Vladimir Putin.
But Trump knew what he was doing, and Xi Jinping and Putin feared Donald Trump.
They feared that he was going to be willing to do what was necessary.
Taking out El Baghdadi via a drone strike, taking out, I'm sorry, taking out Qassam Solomoni, taking out El Baghdadi via a military operation.
All of these things sent messages, small strategic strikes, and Donald Trump being prudent did everything he possibly could to make us avoid long, prolonged ground wars.
And this is the other thing that I'm trying to say about this current situation in Ukraine, is that our current military bureaucracy, the people at the top, they know no different other than 20-year conflicts.
President Trump is like, wait a second, if I could just drop a bomb or do a drone strike or engage in diplomacy or do preemptive sanctions, we can avoid getting into these countries altogether and building bridges and trying to have literacy sites and all this nonsense.
When you're not captured by ideology or defense contractors, then you're able to make decisions in an unpredictable and nationalistic way, nationalistic in a good way.
You remember when Donald Trump dropped the Moab, the mother of all bombs?
He did that intentionally.
That was a public spectacle of deterrence.
We are not in a position right now at all.
Deterrence has passed, by the way.
So you're in different stages.
The stage of deterrence is over.
And so now my fear, and I have yet to have anyone be able to respond to this, is what's going to prevent an escalation.
And I do want to say something, though.
I find a massive, let's say, issue with some of the generational divide behind this.
I can just tell you this, that almost all of our younger listeners, all of our younger students, all of our younger commentators, all of our younger influencers, all of our younger business owners and moms that listen to our program, they're very much on the side that we've been taking, which is we need to stay out of this.
But I'll be very honest.
Our listeners over 50 are enthusiastic about bombing Russian military assets, sending troops to Ukraine.
We get the emails.
I get emails.
Charlie, it's time for Ukraine, for us to go to war against Russia.
And I don't want to say anything on too shaky ground here, but it does seem the generation that wouldn't be drafted at this current moment is super excited to go get into a war with Russia.
Not all of them, by the way.
Not every person over 50 wants that.
That's a generalization, obviously.
I'm just saying, just kind of reading between the lines, and I guarantee you, the polling would reflect this as well.
I guarantee it.
In fact, we could probably find some polling, Connor, that would reflect this.
I know young people are war fatigued.
We know nothing but it.
Since I was eight years old, we had a nonstop perpetual occupation of Afghanistan only to be humiliated by our withdrawal, which was nothing less than a defeat.
Yeah, I just want to reinforce this generational thing.
And I'm not saying that anyone's wrong.
I just find it interesting.
I mean, I obviously have my own opinions here.
We got an email here from somebody, and they said, Charlie, your position on Ukraine is making me sad.
You're coming across like a guy whose neighbor's house is on fire.
The family is inside likely to burn, and you don't want to participate in helping put out the fire because they didn't join the Neighborhood Block Association, or because some reason you don't like the dad.
Hold on a second.
Is Ukraine our neighbor?
Is Ukraine Mexico?
No.
Also, how exactly could I put out the fire in Ukraine right now?
What could we do?
Bombs are going to put out the fire in Ukraine?
Right.
Additionally, this is very likely to be another one of those situations where Despot goes from country to country, taking them over, gathering strength as he goes, and later on we look back in shame for what we didn't do.
We can all find kinds of reasons why we shouldn't help and what could go wrong, but we're allowing a horrible thing to happen.
Okay, so should we stop every time a horrible thing happens?
Because there's a civil war happening in Yemen.
Why don't we get emails about the civil war in Yemen?
That's weird.
Or how about the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria?
Huh.
Putin isn't worrying about whether or not his actions will bring on a larger war, but aside from sending a few pieces of armament, we'll sit back and watch him do it.
I'll become far less proud to be an American.
That's really interesting to me.
I find that fascinating.
That the lack of an involvement in a foreign theater makes you less proud to be an American.
That's interesting to me.
I just, I find my pride of being an American is not solely rooted in our ability to intervene in foreign conflicts.
But I just view it differently.
Someone says, Charlie, just heard you suggest a significant portion of your listeners over age 50 are in favor of striking Russian assets.
I'm 66 and I do not know a single person in my age group in favor of direct engagement with the Russians.
Well, good.
That's great.
I appreciate that.
We're getting lots of people that want that.
I'm just saying one thing about the generational divide, and it's real, is that there is a narrative, especially for people that are over the age of 50, and the polling shows it.
It's not just anecdotally.
We've seen some of this.
That we need to get involved.
And if you want to send MiGs, why wouldn't you send U.S. troops then?
Half-measures?
Do you not care enough?
I mean, the house is on fire, I thought, right?
Why don't you just go send 100,000 Marines?
Let's get it over with, right?
Oh, you don't want that.
But then I thought you said you cared.
You don't care enough to end the war.
So you care enough to send virtue.
You're like, oh, I want a virtue signal.
I want to go send, you know, planes and weapons.
And you're not willing to see it all the way through.
Virtue Signaling Without Commitment 00:06:37
These things can be very complex.
Not to mention, do we have any problems here at home?
Is everything great?
It's amazing to see how the media continues to kind of be a 24-7 network around this.
We're not getting calls back from the Saudis.
We're asking Venezuela for oil.
Macron is meeting with Putin, not Biden.
Iran is wiping the table with us in the JCPOA 2.0 talks.
We have 100,000 dead, mostly young people from fentanyl.
Our southern border is wide open.
We have double-digit inflation minimum.
24,000 homicides last year.
24,000 homicides happening in our inner cities.
Our educational literacy rates are going down.
It's the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol, alcohol-addicted, drug-addicted, anxious, and Medicaid generation in history.
Yet I have to be lectured about our leaders that the American thing to do is to go enforce a no-fly zone 5,000 miles away because something bad is happening.
I get it.
Something's bad is happening.
Vladimir Putin is evil.
I agree.
Something bad is happening here as well.
Why are our priorities so upside down?
Why do we get out of our chair enthusiastically and go buy a Ukrainian flag to go fly outside of our home?
And yet, the kind of destruction and deterioration of our own citizens just kind of makes, whatever, kind of scoff at it.
The same Americans, by the way, the same leaders, by the way, who just lectured us the last two years, it's the American thing to go get vaccinated and go stay at home and be locked down.
Why do we want to ignore our own problems?
And you put all of that together.
No one has yet to answer the question: okay, the house is on fire.
Fine, I'll take the analogy.
We don't know what we could do about it, but do we even have the competent fire department to put out the fire?
No.
You know what they would do?
The house is on fire.
The fire department that we are calling, they bring out their hose, they open it, and out comes gasoline, not water.
That's who's running our country.
So I want to read one of these emails here that we got, freedom at charliekirk.com.
And I just want to say I love our listeners.
You guys are so smart.
And you guys can listen to all of our podcasts on the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page.
Here's one that says, Charlie, we are watching the modern-day Hitler, and you're taking a stand that appears to be okay with what's happening, which is not your intent.
Your optics are horrible.
You are providing reasons to not care, and it looks bad on you.
We all get the no-fly zone, but making decisions on MiGs because Putin says it will be met with war, et cetera.
He has said that about any aid.
He's blowing up women and children right in front of us.
There's a lot of history that says we should stop this.
So Hottent Cliff said this.
So, but wait a second.
You don't want the no-fly zone.
You don't want troops.
If it really is Hitler, if Putin is legitimately Hitler, wouldn't you go to war to try to prevent that?
There's a lot of flaws in that argument, obviously.
You're providing reasons not to care.
I never said not to care.
We should care, obviously.
The question is: should we act?
That's unclear.
And then can we act, which we absolutely know that the people in charge of our country will probably be unable to do something as complex and consequential as pulling off a military operation all the way in Ukraine.
And I remain this, and anyone can email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
I remain with this argument, I should say.
If you don't trust our leaders, if you think the deep state is wicked and evil and corrupt, if you think the deep state that was full of James Comey and all of these criminals and these charlatans are rotten to the core, what gives you the shot of confidence, the boost of affirmation that suddenly these people will be able to do this right?
Because the downside is pretty significant.
If you don't trust Mark Milley, why would you make Mark Milley more powerful?
And that's really what we're talking about here.
Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin are the big winners in this entire equation.
So if you don't like that Mark Milley testified in front of Congress saying that white rage is the greatest threat in our military, the greatest threat to national security, if you support Ukrainian intervention, he's your player, whether you like it or not.
He's on the roster.
You've got to deal with the roster that you have in front of you.
That should be part of your calculus and your decision.
If you don't like what's happening in Ukraine, no one likes what's happening in Ukraine.
So then what do you want to do?
What do you do about it?
Do you want an escalated conflict?
Are we willing or able to be able to engage in that?
Let me read another email here.
Hi, Charlie.
I'm a 66-year-old retired police officer and was once an enthusiastic supporter of yours.
Therefore, it pains me to say goodbye to you forever.
Okay.
Your characterization of those over 50 as being warmongers and neocons or simply because our desire to defend a sovereign country against evil murdering despot is not only insulting, but erroneous as well.
First of all, I didn't say that.
It's ridiculous.
I said that over 50 tends to want more military intervention than under 30.
And I said that's a generalization, but it's not a rule.
Whatever.
He said, quote, if Russian warships or submarines parked off the coast of Florida started lobbying shells around your condo in Florida, killing innocent people, wouldn't you want someone with the power to come and defend you to your aid?
Of course I'd like that.
We also have a United States military to try to prevent against that.
That's not the point.
I'm sure the Ukrainian people want support.
I'm sure the Yemenese people want support.
I'm sure the Nigerians in Africa who are being slaughtered want support.
I'm sure the Iranian people want support.
There's a lot of corners of the world where we can make arguments for military intervention.
He says, quote, how dare you compare the invasion of our southern border to the death, destruction, and suffering taking place in an already war-ravaged Ukraine?
Wait a second.
What's happening on the southern border is worse than what's happening in Ukraine.
Over 100,000 people have died from fentanyl that came across our southern border.
100,000 people have not died in Ukraine yet.
I hope it doesn't get to that.
It's also, what country does this listener think that we run?
The United States Constitution, does it give the limits of us to run the entire world?
At times we can intervene if it's in our national interest, but the entire country is on fire right now.
The invasion of the southern border is resulting in death, destruction, lower wages, crime.
He says, you need to get your priorities right, pal.
Actually, my priorities are right.
My priorities are to put the American people first.
That's what we're sworn to do.
It says in the Bible that you should care about the nation that you are in because your nation is tied to your nation's welfare.
If we can't even get our own country in order and our own deep state elites are now going to go run some war game in Ukraine, we can't even get $85 billion of our own weapons out of Afghanistan and we're supposed to overly involve ourselves in Ukraine.
Get Your Priorities Right 00:00:17
I'm not buying it.
Thank you so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com and support the Charlie Kirk show at charliekirk.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.
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