The Charlie Kirk Show - Why Tulsi Gabbard Left The Democrat Party
Aired: 2022-10-20
Duration: 35:47


=== Why Tulsi Left Democrats (09:34) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody.
[00:00:00]  Today, the Charlie Kirk Show, Tulsi Gabbard joins us.
[00:00:03]  That's right, the new defector from the Democrat Party.
[00:00:05]  I'd love to hear from you as always.
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[00:00:33]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:34]  Here we go.
[00:00:35]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
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[00:01:20]  You probably saw the news.
[00:01:22]  You probably saw some clips of Joe Rogan or some announcement videos of Tulsi Gabbard saying she is no longer a Democrat.
[00:01:33]  It's fascinating.
[00:01:34]  And she joins us right now.
[00:01:36]  Tulsi, welcome to the program.
[00:01:38]  I've been admiring you from afar for years on your courageous stances against the Democrat Party and recently more and more so.
[00:01:45]  So you've left the Democrat Party.
[00:01:47]  Tell us about that.
[00:01:48]  Thanks, Charlie.
[00:01:49]  It's good to talk to you finally.
[00:01:50]  I feel like we've been around a lot of the same people for quite a while, but this is the first time we're connecting.
[00:01:56]  So thanks for having me on.
[00:01:58]  Yeah, look, there's a number of big issues that drove me to this point increasingly over time, seeing how today's Democrat Party is not the Democrat Party I joined 20 years ago when I ran for state house in Hawaii.
[00:02:13]  You know, at that point, I was 21 years old, really passionate about protecting the environment.
[00:02:18]  I come from a beautiful place and wanted to preserve it and be in a position to make that change.
[00:02:23]  And so as I was looking at, you know, which party I wanted to affiliate with at that time, I was inspired by leaders like Reverend Martin Luther King, President JFK, a Democratic Party that was truly a big tent party that was very inclusive, that stood for kind of those traditional liberalism principles of respect for individuals, kind of a live and let live approach,
[00:02:51]  championing civil liberties and freedom and all of these things.
[00:02:55]  That party is, it just doesn't exist today.
[00:02:57]  Today's Democratic Party is controlled by just so-called woke radical ideologues who are really fanatical in whatever the issue or narrative of the day is that they choose.
[00:03:11]  And, You know, fine, okay, they can push their policies, but what they're actively doing is trying to undermine everyone's freedom of speech, trying to tell us what we're allowed to say, what we're allowed to think, what is information versus disinformation, you know, being actively hostile towards undermining our fundamental freedoms.
[00:03:33]  And, you know, I, for that and many other reasons, could no longer associate myself with the Democrat Party and am independent.
[00:03:41]  Well, it takes a lot of courage to do what you did.
[00:03:43]  I find it fascinating because we on the right have been kind of joking around for years that if there was any kind of organization that's defending some semblance of liberal values, it'd be portions of the right because at least we have disagreement and dialogue and we invite it.
[00:04:00]  And I don't get that at all from the left.
[00:04:02]  So it's refreshing to hear somebody else agree that has kind of been on the left.
[00:04:07]  So when did that change, I guess?
[00:04:09]  You got elected in Congress in 2012.
[00:04:12]  Was 2012?
[00:04:14]  Yeah.
[00:04:14]  So did Trump have something to do with this?
[00:04:17]  Was it because the kind of woke elements were always there?
[00:04:20]  I mean, critical legal theory, postmodernism, but it always kind of just stayed on the fringes and the edges.
[00:04:26]  I mean, I grew up in an America where the most vocal defenders of civil liberties were always on the left, always.
[00:04:32]  And I don't know what's happened to that.
[00:04:34]  That's disappeared.
[00:04:35]  Did Trump change things or do you think it's deeper than that?
[00:04:39]  I don't know.
[00:04:40]  You know, I'm not enough of an expert on kind of the political history in the Democratic Party.
[00:04:45]  And frankly, haven't analyzed all the different elements.
[00:04:48]  But obviously, President Trump getting elected was certainly a turning point for the Democrat Party.
[00:04:54]  It was something I experienced myself: how in 2016, just a couple of weeks after Trump got elected, I was asked to go and talk to him about foreign policy, which I did.
[00:05:08]  We had a great conversation for about an hour going in depth into the challenges, specifically in the Middle East and dealing with terrorist jihadi groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda.
[00:05:19]  It was a really good, constructive conversation.
[00:05:22]  For having the audacity to sit down and meet with the next commander in chief, I was excoriated by the Democrat Party accusing me of legitimizing him or legitimizing the fact that he had won that election.
[00:05:38]  And there were a number of things that happened since then, I think, looking at how throughout his term, leaders in the Democrat Party, instead of looking for ways to actually solve problems, looking for ways to find, hey, common ground there, trade, for example, was an issue I applauded Trump on for canceling the destructive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and others, you know, infrastructure.
[00:06:04]  There were opportunities to be able to find common ground and work together.
[00:06:08]  But unfortunately, the leadership of the Democrat Party just couldn't focus on anything else other than President Trump.
[00:06:17]  And the essence of my question isn't even about Trump the person or the political thing.
[00:06:20]  I'm just looking at a moment in time where the liberal kind of coalition just disappeared.
[00:06:26]  I'm wondering just kind of what caused that because I find it fascinating.
[00:06:30]  Because now when I go to college campuses, and it's always been around, it's speech is dangerous to people, and which is hilarious because they say that physical violence is not necessarily dangerous, but that's a whole separate issue.
[00:06:43]  But speech could actually harm somebody.
[00:06:45]  And so kind of walk us through, you know, the last couple of years.
[00:06:49]  Have you changed at all?
[00:06:50]  Or, I mean, have you gone through any metamorphosis?
[00:06:53]  Or is it just the conditions of the party and the country have changed?
[00:06:57]  I think both.
[00:06:59]  It's hard to disconnect the two.
[00:07:02]  There's no question that I have been very disheartened and discouraged by the direction that the Biden administration has taken since that 2020 election, going against everything that he promised he would do as president and trying to bring the country together and find ways that we could work together.
[00:07:22]  But instead, he and his administration and their allies in Congress have done the exact opposite.
[00:07:29]  And they're trying to tear us apart.
[00:07:31]  They're finding ways both directly and indirectly to undermine our fundamental freedoms, working with big tech to do so, deciding whose voices get to be heard and whose don't.
[00:07:43]  And using the rule of law to do so.
[00:07:47]  I think that that is one of the most dangerous things.
[00:07:50]  It's one thing to say, okay, we can disagree on policy, but for them to be in power across the board in the House, Senate, and the White House, they are actively using our institutions like the Department of Justice, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, go down the list to force their positions on the American people with the threat of if you don't comply, then you will be targeted.
[00:08:16]  I think the recent example of what they're trying to do with backdooring, changing the definition of monumental legislation in Title IX, rather than going to Congress and putting their position before the American people and telling Congress to take action on it, they're backdooring this rule change, saying, no, it's no longer going to be about the definition of sex, that there are biological differences between male and female, the male and female sex.
[00:08:41]  Instead, they're saying they want to include gender identity.
[00:08:43]  So anyone can be whatever they want to be and telling schools if you don't comply with this rule change, not something that was done by Congress, but a rule change, then we're going to take federal funding away from kids who are hungry, kids who apply for and are eligible for free and reduced lunches in our schools.
[00:09:01]  So it's one of many examples of a lot of different things that have pushed me to the edge.
[00:09:07]  Probably the biggest one is the issue of war.
[00:09:12]  I know this is something you've been outspoken on, but for the Biden administration, again, to make all of these promises through his campaign to end these destructive counterproductive wars, he's pushed us rapidly into the most dangerous of all in this proxy war against Russia, using Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as their proxies.

=== The War Issue Drives Me (02:36) ===

[00:09:34]  It's one of the dumbest to the point where it's dumb, but we are at a closer risk of nuclear war and nuclear catastrophe now than we ever have been.
[00:09:43]  And they're not talking about it.
[00:09:45]  You know, they've got their bunkers.
[00:09:47]  They've got a safe place to go.
[00:09:48]  Meanwhile, you've got this crazy PSA in New York City telling people: if we have a nuclear attack, get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.
[00:09:58]  That's it.
[00:09:59]  It's insulting and it's dangerous to the American people what this administration is doing.
[00:10:05]  And the fact that President Biden seems to acknowledge it, his comment about nuclear Armageddon, but he's not doing anything to end the war and bring about peace.
[00:10:15]  Of all the topics that are out there, the one that has been the most fascinating to see the left just become basically George W. Bush and Dick Cheney light has been the issue of war.
[00:10:29]  I mean, there is no daylight between the modern Democrat Party and kind of the neoconservative consensus in Washington, D.C. I'm just fascinated how that happened.
[00:10:38]  I have my theories, but it's something else.
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[00:12:06]  So, Tulsi, you know, I grew up in the kind of early 2000s.

=== Leaders Who Put People First (15:41) ===

[00:12:10]  My earlier memories were 9-11, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, and all the repeated foreign policy blunders of kind of the attempted Bush empire of invading sovereign countries and displacing leaders and then leaving them worse off than we found them and spending trillions of dollars and lots of American lives lost.
[00:12:29]  As I got older, I got more and more vocal kind of against what are we doing here?
[00:12:34]  What is the purpose?
[00:12:35]  And not being, you know, necessarily reflexively a dove.
[00:12:38]  I think we should find terrorists and kill them if it makes sense, but nation building in far off distant lands is just so foolish and wrong and stupid and silly.
[00:12:45]  You were always a leading voice on that.
[00:12:47]  And kind of Ron Paul, you know, in the 2008, 2009 was a big voice on it.
[00:12:51]  But kind of explain to me why is it that there was not a single Democrat senator that decided to challenge the vote, the idea of sending money to Ukraine.
[00:13:05]  How is that possible?
[00:13:07]  The Democrat Party is firmly within the grips of the military-industrial complex.
[00:13:13]  You're right.
[00:13:14]  There is no daylight or difference between the Democrat Party and the Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, neolib, neocon mindset and ambition.
[00:13:26]  And this is something that is such a stark difference from what maybe not the entire Democrat Party, but at least there were voices in the Democrat Party traditionally who have been voices for peace, who have been voices of reason saying, hey, we shouldn't be just writing blank checks out to the military industrial complex.
[00:13:45]  We shouldn't be going and launching regime change wars around the world and trying to be the policeman of the world.
[00:13:50]  That's changed.
[00:13:51]  Like you said, both in the House and the Senate on that first big vote to send $40 billion to Ukraine.
[00:13:59]  There wasn't a single Democrat that voted against it.
[00:14:02]  Bernie Sanders didn't vote against it.
[00:14:03]  AOC didn't vote against it.
[00:14:05]  None of these people who claim to be so-called progressives had anything to say.
[00:14:10]  And they silently voted against it and went along with those who were stoking the fires of this proxy war against Russia, nuclear armed power.
[00:14:19]  Of course, we know Rand Paul was excoriated when he had the audacity just to question, hey, let's appoint a special inspector general just to make sure we know where this money's going.
[00:14:30]  Because guys, we just got out of Afghanistan.
[00:14:33]  Things didn't go so well over there as far as accountability for our taxpayer dollars, nor did they go so well when you're looking at what did we do there over the last 20 years?
[00:14:43]  What was actually accomplished when you look at the lives that were lost and the taxpayer dollars that were spent, especially when you compare that to the very real needs that people have right here in our country right now.
[00:14:57]  Yeah, I so at least some people in the Republican Party were challenging it, which gave me some optimism.
[00:15:04]  There were 66 people.
[00:15:05]  There were 66 people, and I was very pleasantly surprised by that.
[00:15:08]  And like you, it gave me some hope that there are still people in Congress who have courage to speak up against this insanity.
[00:15:16]  So I want you to explain for our listeners a little bit more about this kind of neoliberal, neoconservative regime that has existed for a couple decades, where there is no difference between Hillary Clinton and George Bush on invade the world, invite the world.
[00:15:31]  And there have been kind of dissident voices on the left.
[00:15:34]  Dennis Kucinich comes to mind, you know, who I thought was always really honest, a little quirky, but I kind of liked him.
[00:15:41]  And, you know, kind of these anti-war Democrats.
[00:15:44]  And now they're completely gone.
[00:15:46]  I mean, so let's give one example, Bernie Sanders.
[00:15:49]  I know you previously endorsed him when America was a lot different, but you endorsed him.
[00:15:53]  And he's okay now with arming Ukrainian Nazis.
[00:15:58]  Where's good old Bernie?
[00:16:00]  Yeah, the irony is when I endorsed Bernie, it was against Hillary Clinton in that primary.
[00:16:05]  And the reason that I endorsed him was because of the stark difference on foreign policy.
[00:16:11]  Obviously, Hillary Clinton being the queen of war mongers, the central war hawk in Washington, and Bernie Sanders at least having more of a non-interventionist approach.
[00:16:23]  It really disappointed me and made me sad to see that not even Bernie Sanders stood up against that.
[00:16:30]  All of these people failing to recognize the cost and consequence of their decisions, failing to ask the most simple questions.
[00:16:37]  Totally.
[00:16:38]  How is this best serving the safety, security, and freedom of the American people?
[00:16:41]  Or what does success look like?
[00:16:43]  Why do we trust these people?
[00:16:45]  Is Zelensky really a good person?
[00:16:47]  Is our CIA involved on the ground?
[00:16:49]  What if an American gets killed by an errant bullet or missile?
[00:16:51]  What does that, what do we do then?
[00:16:53]  Like, what if a government?
[00:16:54]  This is exactly the problem, Charlie.
[00:16:56]  They've created this culture of fear that anyone, don't, I'm not even saying oppose.
[00:17:03]  Anybody who asks a question, anyone who dares to challenge, like, hey, maybe this isn't the smartest approach.
[00:17:09]  Maybe this isn't going to end well.
[00:17:11]  They're immediately labeled as traitors.
[00:17:14]  You're a Russian asset.
[00:17:15]  You're a Putin propagandist.
[00:17:17]  All of these things that allow them to not debate the substance and instead undermine the credibility of anyone who asks a question.
[00:17:24]  That is eerily similar to how they talk about the issue of race.
[00:17:28]  You're a racist.
[00:17:29]  You can't talk.
[00:17:29]  That's all true.
[00:17:30]  It's exactly the same thing.
[00:17:31]  But it does require people to challenge kind of that neoliberal, neoconservative consensus.
[00:17:38]  And I think the American people are actually with us.
[00:17:41]  And that's what's so interesting is that the regime in D.C., they're really worried about proxy wars, but polls are now showing, and the latest poll shows that a majority of Americans think we've spent too much aid to Ukraine.
[00:17:53]  They're wondering, you know, what exactly are we doing here?
[00:17:56]  And so Tulsi, talk about how we end the war in Afghanistan rather clumsily.
[00:18:01]  It needed to be ended, but not that way.
[00:18:03]  It was awful.
[00:18:03]  It was a disgrace to the country.
[00:18:05]  And then we just kind of reassign all of our focus to now not fighting, you know, the Taliban, but now fighting a nuclear armed power with 140 million people.
[00:18:17]  You mentioned the military-industrial complex.
[00:18:20]  Explain to us what that is and how real that is in Washington, D.C.
[00:18:24]  Well, first of all, I think it's important, as you mentioned, to recognize our military has a very clear function, purpose, and mission.
[00:18:32]  I still serve in the United States Army Reserves and I'm proud to wear the uniform and stand ready to defend and secure the American people and our country.
[00:18:41]  When there is a threat to our nation, this is why our military exists.
[00:18:46]  Our military does not exist to serve the military-industrial complex, which is essentially all of these big, massive defense contractors who make billions of dollars off of sending our men and women to go off and fight in wars that have nothing to do with defending the security and freedom of the United States.
[00:19:05]  We are often labeled as isolationists or pacifists, which is nothing further from the truth.
[00:19:12]  What I say is, yes, we should build relationships with other countries.
[00:19:16]  For war hawks in Washington to say the only way we can relate to other countries is by going to war with them is offensive to who we are as a country.
[00:19:25]  We should not be going and trying to be the policemen of the world.
[00:19:28]  And I think this is one of the worst things about what they do is they play on the kind and compassionate hearts of the American people, saying, well, if you want to go and help these people who are suffering in another country in the world, we've got to go to war to protect them.
[00:19:46]  But what they're failing to tell the American people is the more we escalate this war, proxy war against Russia and Ukraine, for example, we are putting not only the Ukrainian people at risk as we get closer to the precipice of nuclear catastrophe.
[00:20:04]  We're putting the American people and people of the world at risk.
[00:20:06]  If we want to help the people of Ukraine, our president should be exercising his leadership to negotiate a peaceful end to this conflict.
[00:20:15]  But this is something that we see around the world.
[00:20:17]  We see them trying to gain more power or more profit and saying, well, we're going to go overthrow a dictator in this country.
[00:20:24]  We're going to overthrow this terrible leader in that country.
[00:20:26]  And they do it in the name of humanitarianism.
[00:20:29]  But what do they leave behind?
[00:20:31]  Death, destruction, and suffering.
[00:20:34]  And mass displacement.
[00:20:36]  And so what do you think our posture towards what's happening in Ukraine should be?
[00:20:39]  I mean, maybe asking for having some elections in eastern Ukraine?
[00:20:44]  I mean, trying to have peace?
[00:20:45]  I mean, what a concept, right?
[00:20:46]  How does sending more missiles get us closer to peace?
[00:20:50]  It doesn't.
[00:20:51]  It is escalating this war as it has from the beginning.
[00:20:55]  You know, of course, Putin should not have invaded Ukraine.
[00:20:58]  There were attempts at negotiations.
[00:21:00]  Both Ukrainian and Russian officials were sitting down and having negotiations, I think, within a month after this war started.
[00:21:07]  And instead of encouraging that, instead of strongly supporting those negotiations so that war could end as quickly as possible, the United States put their muscle in and told Zelensky, don't negotiate.
[00:21:20]  Don't have a seat at that table.
[00:21:22]  And where there have been pivotal opportunities for a negotiated peaceful end to this war to occur, President Biden and his administration have discouraged any attempts at making that a reality.
[00:21:35]  That is what needs to happen.
[00:21:37]  Both sides are going to have to give some things up, as happens in any kind of negotiation.
[00:21:42]  Neither side is going to walk away happy.
[00:21:44]  Both will walk away feeling like they lost something.
[00:21:47]  But that is what must happen in order to stop the suffering and destruction that's occurring for the people of Ukraine right now, as well as to walk us back from the brink of nuclear disaster.
[00:21:58]  So since you've made your announcement of leaving the Democrat Party and talking about this, have you received, I'm just curious, notes, messages, texts from other Democrats that are thinking similarly, especially kind of on this issue of war and freedom of speech and dialogue?
[00:22:14]  You know, I have actually received a few, not many, but I have received a few of my former colleagues.
[00:22:20]  All right.
[00:22:21]  But I've received a lot of feedback from people across the country, both in person where I've been and others just saying, you are saying what we are thinking and feeling.
[00:22:31]  You know, we've been too afraid to stand up and speak for ourselves.
[00:22:34]  Now with the coming election, people really have an opportunity to let their voices be heard through their votes.
[00:22:40]  And it's why I'm in Illinois right now.
[00:22:43]  I'm campaigning for a great candidate here.
[00:22:45]  I was with Don Boldick in New Hampshire.
[00:22:47]  I'm going out and trying to help get great people like to Congress so we can bring about some real change and hold this administration accountable.
[00:22:55]  So I also find that fascinating.
[00:22:58]  The people you're endorsing.
[00:22:59]  So you endorse Carrie Lake.
[00:23:01]  You know, obviously foreign policy is a major focus of yours.
[00:23:05]  I pray Carrie Lake doesn't have a foreign policy portfolio anytime soon.
[00:23:08]  If she does, then we're in serious trouble.
[00:23:10]  Well, you know, what was interesting, what was interesting, just mentioned that because it's something that caught my attention about her even before I talked to her was back in 2008, because she was so disgusted with George W. Bush continuing to put us in a state of war.
[00:23:26]  She was opposed to the Iraq war.
[00:23:28]  She voted for Barack Obama in the hopes that he would end it.
[00:23:31]  And I think that says a lot about her character.
[00:23:33]  A lot of people, I mean, remembering the context of Obama in 08, I mean, he was running up against the grand marshal of the warmongers, McCain, right?
[00:23:41]  And he was a lot of the energy and the enthusiasm from the younger generation that showed up in huge numbers was an anti-war referendum.
[00:23:49]  Was why are we doing these sort of war games abroad?
[00:23:52]  And so you came to Arizona for Kerry Lake.
[00:23:54]  Tell us about that.
[00:23:56]  That was great.
[00:23:57]  We had a great conversation on the phone prior to my going out there.
[00:24:01]  And I respect her courage.
[00:24:03]  I respect that she has a strong backbone and that she has stood up not only to the Democrats and the Democrat establishment in Arizona, but she stood up to the Republican establishment in Arizona as well.
[00:24:17]  You know, I have said what I've said about the Democrat Party.
[00:24:21]  There are issues with the Republican Party leadership as well.
[00:24:24]  There's a lot of people who are not.
[00:24:24]  And I think people like Carrie, I think people like Carrie, it's important for the American people in this moment to hear from leaders who are willing to call it straight and who are going to put the interests of the people first, not the interests of the party.
[00:24:39]  I've always hated this saying, Charlie, I've heard over and over by Democrats say, vote blue no matter who.
[00:24:44]  Vote blue no matter who.
[00:24:46]  Nobody should be voting straight party line.
[00:24:49]  Look for those strong leaders who are going to, who are actually committed to putting the Constitution first and fighting for the people.
[00:24:56]  And Carrie's made clear through her platform what her priorities are.
[00:25:01]  So I want to play a piece of tape here.
[00:25:02]  I know you commented on this on Jesse Waters' program of AOC getting heckled at her town hall.
[00:25:08]  And I see the energy against AOC and it gives me a little bit of a glimmer of hope in the sense that this is what I've always been expecting of kind of Democrats holding Democrats accountable, at least on some issues.
[00:25:21]  I don't know that our whole civilization is at stake around, like, I don't know, not having nuclear Armageddon.
[00:25:26]  And the kind of Democrat grassroots, I'll be very honest, the Democrat Party's become so boring.
[00:25:32]  And years ago, it was interesting in the sense that you have this remarkably, unspeakably corrupt and evil woman, Hillary Clinton, running against kind of a guy that never grew up from the Bolshevik Revolution, right?
[00:25:46]  Bernie Sanders.
[00:25:46]  You might love him or hate him.
[00:25:47]  It's just he was just kind of really interesting, right?
[00:25:49]  He promised everybody something, and there was energy and there was grassroots and there was a lot of small dollar donations.
[00:25:55]  The Democrat Party's become so sterile and synthetic and plastic and boring and manufactured and corporate.
[00:26:02]  And the one person that I always thought at least was somewhat interesting was AOC.
[00:26:07]  And she's become synthetic and sterile and boring.
[00:26:09]  So I want to play this piece of tape 93.
[00:26:11]  I want to get your reaction.
[00:26:12]  Congresswoman, none of this matters unless there's a nuclear war, which you voted to send arms and weapons to Ukraine.
[00:26:20]  There will be no neighbors if there's a nuclear bomb.
[00:26:24]  You voted to mobilize and send money to Ukrainian Nazis.
[00:26:28]  You're a coward.
[00:26:29]  You're a progressive socialist.
[00:26:31]  Where are you against the war mobilization?
[00:26:34]  I believed in you and you became the very thing you sought to fight against.
[00:26:40]  Sounds like a clip out of Star Wars.
[00:26:42]  Your thoughts, Tulsi.
[00:26:43]  Yeah, I mean, I've seen that clip a few times and it gives me goosebumps every time.
[00:26:48]  Uh, just hearing the anguish, uh, the pain, and um, you know, the disappointment in their voices in someone who maybe they once believed in, uh, but now who has become part of this war machine in Washington.
[00:27:06]  Um, this is exactly the problem and why it's essential that we need strong leaders now, not those who are going to cave in the interest of advancing their own personal political ambition.
[00:27:17]  It's why most people in this country are not affiliating with either party and instead looking at, okay, what is most important to me and my loved ones, whether it's closing the borders to stop this flood of those crossing into our country illegally, or it's the fact that Democrats are saying, hey, we need to defund the police.
[00:27:37]  We need to let criminals out of jail, making our streets less safe.
[00:27:42]  Education, I mean, there are so many, so many of these issues that are not some kind of like theoretical esoteric issue that are really impacting people every single day.

=== MyPillow Promo Code Kirk (02:50) ===

[00:27:52]  And I think we hear that in the anguish in those guys' voices when they're looking at the prospect of literally nuclear holocaust.
[00:28:02]  As they said, there will be no neighbors.
[00:28:03]  There will be no tomorrow.
[00:28:05]  And her refusal, Charlie, her refusal to address that and her response is, you're being rude.
[00:28:12]  Are you freaking kidding me?
[00:28:14]  You're being rude.
[00:28:15]  Now is not the time to sit there and say, okay, well, politely talk to me about how we're facing the end of the world because of a vote that I took.
[00:28:23]  You know, it's also the AOC that said that tweeted out that protesting is all about making people uncomfortable.
[00:28:29]  I don't know, AOC, when New York was burning during Floyd Palooza, was that rude, AOC?
[00:28:35]  I don't know.
[00:28:35]  I'm disagreeing with you about saying, I don't know, hey, New York is just running PSAs about nuclear war.
[00:28:42]  You look at these PSAs for our audience that hasn't seen it.
[00:28:45]  They said, hey, the big one has hit.
[00:28:48]  And, you know, go take a shower or something.
[00:28:51]  Yeah, it's really not going to matter.
[00:28:53]  Yeah.
[00:28:53]  Yeah.
[00:28:54]  And she's got the actor.
[00:28:55]  I'm assuming it's an actor they hired.
[00:28:57]  She's got a big smile on her face.
[00:28:59]  As you said, the big one has hit.
[00:29:01]  You might be wondering, what should I do?
[00:29:04]  It's, it's like, I, every time I see it, I just, I can't believe that anyone who is serious actually produced that thinking it was a good idea.
[00:29:12]  Yeah, they're not serious.
[00:29:13]  It's a war machine, no different than a lot of other corporate interests.
[00:29:16]  And that's just, I want Democrats at least to be a little bit consistent.
[00:29:20]  And you obviously are doing a phenomenal job of leading because I hear all the time from Democrats, Charlie, Wall Street's the worst thing ever.
[00:29:28]  You know, all these companies, they're making us, you know, fatter and sicker and poor.
[00:29:31]  Like, okay, whatever.
[00:29:32]  But how about the ones that are selling the missiles?
[00:29:34]  How about Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin?
[00:29:36]  I mean, do you think they might have a vested interest?
[00:29:38]  I don't know, to blow up the entire Western order?
[00:29:40]  Oh, no, no, no.
[00:29:41]  We got to stand with Zelensky, right?
[00:29:43]  Okay.
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[00:30:39]  Telesi, before we go any further, tell us about your new podcast.

=== Demands That Backfire (05:04) ===

[00:30:42]  Yeah, I started the Tulsi Gabbard show really out of a frustration with the mainstream media.
[00:30:48]  You know, I'm grateful when people ask me to come on their shows.
[00:30:51]  I get four and a half minutes to talk about really, really big and important issues and always found myself like looking at my five pages of notes and trying to distill that down to like three sentences or three points to get across.
[00:31:04]  As you know very well, having these platforms allow us the opportunity to really get into different issues.
[00:31:11]  Uh, for me to be able to share, you know, my perspective, my background on it on, or my view on a particular thing, and then have some, have some conversations with interesting people who I may agree with or I may not agree with, but really furthering um, what we're talking about is we should have a strong marketplace of ideas in this country.
[00:31:29]  We should be having good, uh constructive dialogue uh, because it's how we grow, it's how we learn, it's how we move forward as a people and as a community.
[00:31:38]  So um, we put out a new episode every tuesday.
[00:31:42]  Uh, this one I just put out onto this last tuesday is exactly about the topic we're discussing uh, the issue of nuclear war, Russia and Ukraine.
[00:31:50]  And uh, my guest on that episode is professor Jeffrey Sacks.
[00:31:54]  Uh, he is one of those traditional, uh liberalist, uh democrats.
[00:31:59]  Uh, I think he is, uh considers himself a true progressive, not a so-called fake progressive, and he has been very outspoken, given his history of actually serving as an economic advisor for Boris Yeltsin and Gorbachev as you know, they were making this transition from the Soviet Union into Russia and how, even back then, he was shut down by the White House, saying that they didn't want uh, they didn't want there to be any relationship with Russia other than an adversarial one essentially.
[00:32:28]  But uh, it's a really interesting conversation and he's got a lot of background on it and encourage people to go and subscribe and take a listen and i'd love to hear your thoughts.
[00:32:37]  Tulsi Gabbard show, check it out.
[00:32:39]  And so there's House leader, House minority leader, Kevin Mccarthy just signaled a little bit that there might be some challenge to Ukrainian aid, which I find to be promising, and then immediately there's this story, it's just so on the Financial Times Ukrainia, Ukrainian officials shocked as Republicans threaten tougher line on aid.
[00:32:59]  Where do these foreigners get off thinking that they get our money?
[00:33:04]  I mean exactly, they're shocked like, go figure out your own business.
[00:33:09]  Right, that they are.
[00:33:10]  It is, it has been striking throughout this entire thing, the demands yeah, the demands, demands that they are placing on us, listing, well, we need a hundred tanks, we need this, we need that.
[00:33:21]  You must, you must deliver, or else what?
[00:33:24]  And I I go back to the Biden administration and leaders in Congress who have kowtowed uh, to these demands coming from another country uh, essentially ceding our sovereignty and our taxpayer dollars and our future to this other country.
[00:33:39]  When president Biden is asked, you know, how does this end?
[00:33:42]  What is our objective?
[00:33:44]  At what point do we say, okay well, we've done enough, this is it.
[00:33:48]  His answer is one form or another of saying, well, that's up to Putin.
[00:33:53]  Putin gets to Dictate this thing goes and how long we are involved, which is just, it makes me angry.
[00:34:02]  It should make every American angry.
[00:34:04]  And their backlash, you know, one of the things I've seen a lot of backlash to Kevin McCarthy's hinting at starting to rein in the money that they've been sending to Ukraine.
[00:34:14]  The backlash that I got from Democrats and talking heads when I left the Democratic Party last week is, oh, good.
[00:34:21]  Now she can go be with those anti-war nationalist Republicans.
[00:34:26]  Oh, obviously she's left because she doesn't support continuing this war, different versions of that.
[00:34:32]  It's just, it's crazy that we've gotten to this point where there's this rush to war, this fervor for war that leaves room for nothing else other than those who just walk in lockstep.
[00:34:45]  So we're going to have to have you back on.
[00:34:48]  I have a working theory that a lot of the wokeism is one of the reasons it keeps the Democrat activists at bay because they say, oh, no, don't worry.
[00:34:55]  Like we're doing all the trans stuff in the military, so you don't have to get really upset about things.
[00:34:59]  It's kind of this alliance that happened post-2008.
[00:35:02]  They took over Wall Street with it.
[00:35:03]  They've taken over sports with it.
[00:35:05]  But I'm telling you, there is a mass consensus that will eventually show itself that will materialize against this nation building abroad while our own country crumbles.
[00:35:14]  It's going to be messy.
[00:35:16]  It might be murky.
[00:35:17]  It might take years.
[00:35:19]  We have to find the right leaders, but it is popular.
[00:35:22]  People do not want to see an invasion of America on the southern border and be like, oh, actually, we got to go send another $100 billion to Ukraine.
[00:35:28]  It's insane and it's immoral and it's wrong.
[00:35:29]  Tulsi, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:35:31]  Thanks, Charlie.
[00:35:32]  Great job.
[00:35:33]  Thank you.
[00:35:33]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:35:35]  Email me or FoxZoysFreedom at CharlieKirk.com.
[00:35:38]  Thank you so much for listening.
[00:35:39]  God bless.
[00:35:43]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.