The Charlie Kirk Show - The Case for and Against a Ukraine Proxy War with Sebastian Gorka
Aired: 2023-02-07
Duration: 38:57


=== Challenging the 1776 Comparison (14:57) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey, everybody.
[00:00:00]  An entire episode dedicated to Ukraine.
[00:00:04]  A great man, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, has a different opinion than I do on Ukraine.
[00:00:11]  And we discuss it.
[00:00:12]  We have dialogue.
[00:00:13]  We hear his position.
[00:00:14]  I express mine.
[00:00:15]  I believe I could have done a better job at the beginning talking about my personal opinion on the comparison of using the reference to 1776 repeatedly.
[00:00:27]  We talk a little bit about that.
[00:00:29]  I clarified at the end of the episode, so just know that going in.
[00:00:33]  I appreciate Dr. Gorka.
[00:00:34]  He has a very successful radio show.
[00:00:36]  I'm glad he came on, and we have a great conversation.
[00:00:38]  And I want your thoughts after you listen to it.
[00:00:39]  Freedom at CharlieKirk.com is how you email me.
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[00:01:02]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:01:03]  Here we go.
[00:01:04]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:01:06]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
[00:01:08]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:11]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:15]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:16]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:17]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:01:25]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:34]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:37]  Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
[00:01:40]  For personalized loan services, you can count on.
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[00:01:49]  I'm really excited for our conversation we're about to have here for somebody I really enjoy, and I go on his show quite often.
[00:01:55]  And we were thinking, we were planning out the show, and we said, we want to have some contrarian opinions on the Ukraine situation because it's such an important topic where we're spending a ton of money and somebody I have a lot of respect for, and we're definitely going to disagree on some.
[00:02:09]  And I'm going to learn throughout this conversation is Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
[00:02:13]  Dr. Gorka, welcome to the program.
[00:02:16]  Host of America First, author of The War for America's Soul.
[00:02:20]  And also check out Substack Dr. G's briefing at sebastiangorka.substack.com.
[00:02:26]  I think I got that all in there, Dr. Gorka.
[00:02:28]  You did, you did.
[00:02:29]  And I'm so excited.
[00:02:30]  I think I had this idea last year when we were on a stage together, and we had quite a heated but friendly debate.
[00:02:36]  And I said, let's do this on my show, your show.
[00:02:40]  And finally, we're doing it.
[00:02:41]  So I'm super excited, Charlie.
[00:02:43]  It was mostly peaceful, I have to say.
[00:02:45]  It was mostly peaceful.
[00:02:48]  So Dr. Gorka, I think the best way to start is the floor is yours.
[00:02:51]  Tell us your opinion, your stance on what's happening in Ukraine and how we should think about it.
[00:02:56]  Right.
[00:02:57]  So I don't want to disappoint you, but I'm not of the Lindsey Graham, you know, let's start World War III variety of people when it comes to Ukraine.
[00:03:05]  But for those who are not familiar with my background, I served as former strategist in the White House to President Trump.
[00:03:11]  I am a legal immigrant to the United States, but my parents lived under a communist dictatorship.
[00:03:17]  My father was actually betrayed by Kim Philby, one of the West's greatest double agents, arrested and tortured at the age of 20 and given a life sentence in a communist political prison.
[00:03:28]  He was liberated by freedom-loving revolutionaries in 1956 and escaped to the West.
[00:03:34]  So that's my perspective.
[00:03:36]  That's what I bring to the table.
[00:03:38]  But irrespective of that, let me be clear.
[00:03:41]  Russia has not been provoked into a war.
[00:03:45]  Russia hasn't been surrounded by NATO and has deployed to save ethnic Russians and destroy bioweapons labs.
[00:03:54]  Russia has been doing what it has always done, whether it was under the Tsars, whether it was the Soviet Union, or under a neophyte Tsar, and that is, of course, Vladimir Putin.
[00:04:06]  This is the aggrandizing territorially of the Russian Federation from a man who, by the way, is a former KGB colonel.
[00:04:14]  And I remember the good old days as a child of the Cold War when all conservatives hated all KGB colonels.
[00:04:21]  The idea that he is some champion for the West standing up against globalists is utterly asinine.
[00:04:27]  This is a man who persecuted Christians.
[00:04:30]  This is a man who is creating his own globalism, but under the fiat of the Kremlin.
[00:04:35]  And let's be clear here.
[00:04:37]  Russia is doing what it always does, violence against civilians to create larger amounts of Russian territory.
[00:04:44]  And for the record, and please, my former MOS in the British Army, I was in the reserves.
[00:04:50]  I was in an intelligence unit.
[00:04:51]  You can look it all up now.
[00:04:52]  It's unclassified.
[00:04:54]  Vladimir Putin, since he became president, has been giving speeches.
[00:04:57]  You can read in translation at the state, not only is Ukraine an illegitimate non-state, so are the Baltic states and so are Poland, which are, of course, NATO nations.
[00:05:09]  This isn't about some fight against Karl Schwab and the WF.
[00:05:14]  This is Vladimir Putin trying to recreate a stunted version of the Russian Empire.
[00:05:19]  Not even the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire.
[00:05:22]  And as conservatives, we should be on the side that is fighting the Russian KGB colonel.
[00:05:27]  By the way, that doesn't mean Kiev isn't corrupt.
[00:05:30]  That doesn't mean that sending pallets of cash to Kiev is stupid.
[00:05:34]  But if 1776 meant something to conservatives today, guess what?
[00:05:40]  This is Ukraine's 1776.
[00:05:43]  So I agree with a lot of that, but I want to challenge on that last one that I wanted to do during our last conversation, which is I think you would agree, Dr. Gorka, that there needs to be, though, a lot of work put in before a country is ready for a 1776 moment, right?
[00:05:57]  For example, Roger Williams, the people need to want self-government and they need to prioritize virtue and piety.
[00:06:05]  Do you get the sense that the Ukrainian government and people really have done the work that the American founders did leading into that with studying John Bloc and putting that into great thought of George Mason's Declaration of Rights and forming small governments of the colonies and then eventually having that boiling point over?
[00:06:25]  I only say that because I think that all people eventually can realize the promise of 1776, but I don't think all cultures or countries are ready to immediately teleport to that moment.
[00:06:36]  And I'm afraid that comparison, especially with Ukraine, is not exactly one-to-one.
[00:06:41]  No, I agree it isn't one-to-one because we are the greatest nation on God's green earth and we are the only nation that was founded on the individual liberties bestowed upon us by being made in the image of our creator.
[00:06:52]  There is, I mean, at that point, the analogy breaks down, but I'm not talking of the qualitative political economy or society or the volunteerism in Ukraine.
[00:07:03]  I'm talking about an independent state.
[00:07:04]  An independent state, by the way, that in 1995, the U.S. president, along with the British prime minister, vouched safe the independence of when we said, look, you may be now the third greatest nuclear power in the world with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but you don't need those nukes, Kiev.
[00:07:21]  Why don't you give those nukes back to the Kremlin and we will make sure you are safe?
[00:07:25]  That was America's promise to Ukraine.
[00:07:28]  And if Ukraine had those nuclear weapons today, there never would have been an invasion.
[00:07:34]  So, you know, there is also the idea that this is a nation that simply has lost its independence, irrespective of its political culture or whether they've read the Federalist Papers.
[00:07:43]  No nation, we shouldn't agree to any nation being invaded rapaciously by another one and saying, well, you know what?
[00:07:51]  They don't know the difference between Hamilton and Washington, therefore.
[00:07:56]  I think you would agree.
[00:07:57]  The contention I'm making is: I don't think the Ukrainian people are ready for self-government.
[00:08:01]  I don't.
[00:08:03]  I think that's I don't, we're not in the position to state that.
[00:08:08]  What allows me or you to say you don't deserve to have self-determination?
[00:08:11]  They don't deserve.
[00:08:12]  That's a different argument.
[00:08:13]  Morally, everyone deserves self-government.
[00:08:15]  You have to wait.
[00:08:16]  But they were a nation state, Charlie.
[00:08:18]  Right.
[00:08:18]  So why?
[00:08:19]  Just because somebody wants their terror.
[00:08:21]  If you have a neighbor who has an IQ of less than yours and hasn't gone to school and isn't mature and understands the Federalist Papers, do you get to take their house, Charlie?
[00:08:33]  Well, no, no, no, that's not the argument.
[00:08:34]  It's the argument is whether or not, first of all, the eastern part of Ukraine wants to be part of Russia, right?
[00:08:42]  Anything that has to do with polling in eastern Ukraine is absolutely garbage.
[00:08:48]  The idea that a nation that is under the control of Russian troops is going to have fair polling, especially after a million people have left that territory, you can't make those assertions.
[00:08:59]  But let's go back to your prior point.
[00:09:01]  Do they not have the right to self-determination as a nation that was independent?
[00:09:06]  Well, no, of course they do, but the eastern part of Ukraine wants to be part of Russia.
[00:09:10]  They speak about the USA.
[00:09:11]  But Russia gets to take it by force.
[00:09:14]  Well, was there not a peace deal in 2021 publicly put forward where Putin said we can have independent elections be part of that area, part of Russia?
[00:09:25]  The idea that we take on good faith anything a former KGB colonel says is risable.
[00:09:33]  I mean, this is where, you know, I have problems with people talking about we have to emphasize peace, we have to have an off-ramp, and we have to have negotiations.
[00:09:42]  Really?
[00:09:43]  You have negotiations with somebody who has not kept any promise from the Cold War, whether it was SALT I, SALT II, the Chemical Weapons and Biolabs Convention of 1972.
[00:09:54]  These are not good faith actors.
[00:09:55]  When I worked for the Defense Department, I used to tell the officers I was training, you need to know one thing about Moscow and the Kremlin, whether it's the Soviet Union, whether it's Putin today, this is an anti-status quo actor.
[00:10:10]  They're not interested in nice peace treaties in Geneva or Vienna and stabilizing the situation.
[00:10:17]  Why did they send 300 mercenaries to Syria when I was in the White House?
[00:10:21]  Mercenaries, by the way, that President Trump had killed, and which Putin didn't even mention afterwards because he was afraid of America then, because he wished to destabilize that part of the world and reap the benefits of that destabilization.
[00:10:35]  The idea that anything Putin does is done in, let's have a referendum, let's have the people vote.
[00:10:41]  What, as we're bombing the maternity clinics in Mariupol, it doesn't sit well.
[00:10:48]  What do you think success looks like at this point in Ukraine?
[00:10:52]  Yeah, let's start with, if you're not familiar with it, my favorite international podcast are a bunch of former left-wing stand-up comics who had enough with wokeness and have created something called trigonometry.
[00:11:04]  It's one of the best podcasts out there.
[00:11:06]  It's based out of the UK.
[00:11:07]  And one of the co-hosts is Konstantin Kissin.
[00:11:10]  And he is a Jew whose dad was Ukrainian.
[00:11:15]  His mom was Russian.
[00:11:16]  He has family in Ukraine.
[00:11:18]  He left the Soviet Union as a child.
[00:11:20]  And he was on somebody else's podcast, will remain nameless, who was lecturing him about the need for peace talks and off-ramps and stopping the war.
[00:11:30]  And this guy who's been to Ukraine recently, who's half Ukraine, married to Ukrainian, who's Russian Jewish, said, you can't have peace talks if both sides want to fight.
[00:11:40]  And that's the kind of razor clarity that we need right now.
[00:11:44]  You can't have any off-ramp or success in the classical Klausevitsian victory terms if both sides want to fight.
[00:11:54]  Now, that's just a statement of fact.
[00:11:55]  Ukrainians will fight not to the last man, Charlie.
[00:11:58]  They'll fight to the last 12-year-old who can hold an AK.
[00:12:02]  Why?
[00:12:02]  Because they remember what Russia did to them in the 20s and 30s, the Holomodor, 7 million Ukrainians starved to death by Stalin.
[00:12:09]  So they'll fight to the bitter end.
[00:12:11]  On the other side, you've got Vladimir Putin, who's got his reputation on the line, said that the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century was the loss of the Soviet Union.
[00:12:22]  So for various reasons, he's going to fight.
[00:12:25]  So right now, the best we can hope for, it's not victory, but the best we can hope for is the conflict de-escalates into what is called a frozen war, like Transdynistria, like South Ossetia, like Moldova, where the sides stop actively shelling each other every single day, but where there is no territorial gains made.
[00:12:46]  Sadly, for the time being, that's the best we can hope for.
[00:12:50]  Do you think us supplying weapons get us closer to that or get us more towards kinetic conflict?
[00:12:57]  So when it comes to supplying weapons, this is really, this is hugely important.
[00:13:02]  Right at the beginning of the war, I wrote an analytic piece.
[00:13:04]  I think it was for Breitbart.
[00:13:07]  And what I said back then, 10 months ago, hasn't changed today.
[00:13:11]  The idea that we should be sending, that anybody, the Germans, the Brits, or the Americans, should be sending Western weaponry to Ukraine and cash is insane.
[00:13:23]  This is a former republic of the Soviet Union.
[00:13:26]  What they need is Soviet-era equipment, which is standing in stockpiles in former Warsaw Pact nations like Hungary, like Poland, the Baltic states, and Romania.
[00:13:36]  They need to divest.
[00:13:37]  This is the Polish deal.
[00:13:38]  Remember the Polish deal?
[00:13:39]  Poland said, we've got MiG-29s.
[00:13:41]  We'll give them to Ukraine if America backfills them.
[00:13:44]  Biden says yes.
[00:13:44]  And then 48 hours later, because he's a feckless, senile old git, changes his mind.
[00:13:50]  So they should be supplied equipment they know how to use, not Abrams tanks that nobody in Ukraine has ever driven, that have 19 different types of oil to run them, and that need a resupply chain from America.
[00:14:02]  No, give them Soviet-air equipment that we don't want anyway.
[00:14:06]  Give them ammunition.
[00:14:08]  And lastly, just because we have a dominance in ISR in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance when it comes to military satellites, give them the target packets to hit the Russians that are on their territory where it hurts.
[00:14:22]  That's the best that we should do and let them fight their 1776.
[00:14:28]  No U.S. troops, no U.S. material, because it makes no strategic sense.
[00:14:33]  So, but we are sending tanks and we are sending weapons and funding.
[00:14:38]  And so your position is more nuanced that it should be we should try to do this prudently.
[00:14:44]  But I suppose, Dr. Gorka, one of the reasons I'm so entrenched in my position that we should have no involvement, no aid, is I don't trust any of the military elite right now.
[00:14:54]  Millie.
[00:14:55]  Yeah, that is very reasonable.

=== Prudent Aid Without Troops (04:38) ===

[00:14:57]  When you have an overweight chairman of the Joint Chiefs who has admitted calling up his counterpart in communist China General Li when we were in the Trump administration and saying, don't worry about my boss, the president.
[00:15:11]  If he does anything with China, I'll give you a heads up.
[00:15:13]  I mean, that's treason.
[00:15:15]  That man should be in the brig in shackles, not in the highest military position in the United States.
[00:15:20]  We've heard in the last 48 hours that of the balloon flights across America when we were in the White House, we weren't told either by Secretary Mattis or by Mark Milley.
[00:15:31]  Again, derelictions of duty.
[00:15:33]  So the lack of trust of our military above, let's be clear here.
[00:15:38]  I've worked with the U.S. military for decades.
[00:15:40]  Above the rank of 05 is warranted.
[00:15:44]  Anybody above 06, 05 is a problem.
[00:15:48]  But that doesn't mean that Russia invading other countries isn't a geopolitical problem that we are going to have to deal with.
[00:15:56]  That's what I want to pick up on after the break.
[00:15:58]  You know all about radio breaks, Dr. Gorka.
[00:16:01]  So I want to have you try to convince me why that is a geopolitical threat, why a border dispute thousands of miles away matters.
[00:16:09]  Not justifying Putin's invasion of a sovereign country, but why does that matter to our national security?
[00:16:17]  All right, everyone, listen.
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[00:16:40]  You might ask, why?
[00:16:41]  Come on, Charlie.
[00:16:42]  That's a big claim.
[00:16:43]  Well, look, it includes something that I'm a big believer in.
[00:16:46]  I've studied it.
[00:16:47]  The studies behind it are extraordinary.
[00:16:48]  In fact, I'm going to read you one of the studies.
[00:16:50]  And that is NADH and also a combination of NADH with marine collagen.
[00:16:56]  So Strong Cell is a breakthrough liquid supplement containing NADH.
[00:17:00]  Don't believe me?
[00:17:00]  Just go Google the powers of NAD.
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[00:17:09]  So listen to this study.
[00:17:10]  A 2015 study with 73 people showed that if you combine collagen, marine collagen, with NADH, you get a greater subjective increase in physical and cognitive function compared to a placebo.
[00:17:24]  The combined use of NADH increases ATP levels, which is your life source in the bloodstream.
[00:17:30]  Similar results were seen in a 2016 study from Spain in which NADH reduced post-malaise, PEM, a defining symptom of MECFS.
[00:17:40]  The CDC defines PEM as worsening symptoms following a minor physical or mental exertion.
[00:17:46]  So basically, this is a way for you to boost your life source.
[00:17:49]  Again, fact-check me.
[00:17:50]  Go look at what NAD can do for you.
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[00:18:15]  Look, I would not tell you guys to use this if I did not deeply believe in the power of NADH.
[00:18:22]  NADH can help you with cognitive function, memory recall.
[00:18:26]  We are just beginning to understand how the brain works.
[00:18:30]  Science can't agree on much, as we've learned from COVID.
[00:18:33]  In fact, there's all these sinister actors out there.
[00:18:36]  One of the few things that there's almost zero naysayers is the power of NAD.
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[00:19:18]  What have you done today or done recently to care for your brain?
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=== National Security vs Isolationism (12:50) ===

[00:19:35]  Make the case as to why this tangled and complicated dispute war is a pressing and urgent national security concern for our country.
[00:19:47]  First, before I do that, we don't get to do this often enough.
[00:19:50]  You know, I'll have Dennis on my show when he writes an amazing op-ed.
[00:19:53]  I'll have Dinesh if he does a new movie.
[00:19:55]  But we need to do this more often.
[00:19:57]  And whilst I am on your show, because it's easier for me to do it, everybody out there, I don't care who you are, where you live, you need to support Turning Point USA.
[00:20:06]  It is perhaps the most important organization in America that is taking back our high schools and our colleges.
[00:20:12]  So God bless you, Charlie.
[00:20:13]  And what you've done in the last eight years is remarkable.
[00:20:15]  Thank you.
[00:20:16]  Let me start with a question to you.
[00:20:19]  If this were 1940, would you have supported the lend lease to the Soviet Union?
[00:20:25]  No.
[00:20:28]  Really?
[00:20:28]  Which land?
[00:20:29]  I'm sorry.
[00:20:30]  Maybe the lend lease to the Soviet Union and the Brits.
[00:20:34]  So during World War II, we sent about $750 billion worth of weapons to the Soviet Union, which was not exactly a republic of representative democratic principles.
[00:20:51]  Did it make sense to stand up to a bully back in 1940?
[00:20:55]  So you're talking about empowering the Soviet Unions against Hitler?
[00:21:00]  The Soviets against Hitler?
[00:21:01]  Is that correct?
[00:21:02]  I'm not as familiar with that.
[00:21:04]  I'll be very honest.
[00:21:05]  Let me make it very simple.
[00:21:06]  I'm not familiar with this.
[00:21:07]  So let me make it very simple.
[00:21:10]  Why we do what we do today in the terms I discussed, I'm not talking about M1 Abrams and parrots of cash, but providing the means for the Ukrainians to fight for themselves.
[00:21:22]  Why that is actually a national security interest of the United States is very simply because of what you remember from your childhood at school.
[00:21:31]  If a bully is permitted to get away with bullying, they will proceed to keep on bullying.
[00:21:38]  You can remember a bully from the playground at school.
[00:21:42]  The only time a bully stopped bullying is when somebody stood up to them and gave them a bloody nose.
[00:21:48]  That's when a bully stops.
[00:21:49]  When you have somebody who is a remnant, a relic, a dinosaur of the Cold War, who says the loss of the Soviet Union is the greatest tragedy that we have faced, invades another country and then states repeatedly that the other countries bordering that nation are illegitimate, have no right to exist.
[00:22:09]  That is a state of affairs that America will not be able to stay out of, even if you believe in neo-Buchananite, Tucker-esque isolationism.
[00:22:20]  If they landlock the bottom, if Mariupol is landlocked across Russian-controlled territory and there is no way to actually send the goods from Ukraine to North Africa, then there will be an absolute disaster in terms of starvation on the African continent.
[00:22:40]  That will, again, be something America can't stay clear of.
[00:22:43]  It's like saying it doesn't matter to us.
[00:22:46]  These nations can collapse and there will be no consequences.
[00:22:50]  There will be consequences.
[00:22:51]  No, just to make sure I understand, because I don't think I totally know the issue as well as I probably should.
[00:22:57]  Can you just educate me on the lend lease you mentioned of who we lended weapons to and what was the context there?
[00:23:04]  So when we supported, for example, when we sent, we said we're not going to get involved in war, but we sent huge amounts of equipment.
[00:23:13]  Most of the trucks the Soviet Union used were from the United States.
[00:23:17]  And when we sent Tommy guns to the UK before Pearl Harbor, we were providing huge amounts of armaments to nations that were five, six, seven thousand miles away to fight a threat to them.
[00:23:32]  Was that wrong prior to Pearl Harbor?
[00:23:35]  No, no, but were we sending them to Soviet Russia?
[00:23:37]  Is that what you were saying?
[00:23:40]  We were sending arms to Soviet Russia.
[00:23:42]  Absolutely.
[00:23:43]  No, that's where I got confused because I said, aren't we now supposed to fight Russia?
[00:23:47]  No, the context is different because the enemy back then was the Third Reich.
[00:23:52]  Understandable.
[00:23:54]  But it amplifies the point.
[00:23:55]  Soviet Russia was not a democracy.
[00:23:59]  It's like, you know, Ukraine is corrupt.
[00:24:02]  I get it.
[00:24:03]  Well, wasn't the Soviet Union a little bit?
[00:24:05]  No, no, no.
[00:24:05]  I just want to try to understand.
[00:24:06]  So you're saying in some sense that Vladimir Putin is similar to the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
[00:24:14]  No, I'm saying that you supply aid to those who are being intimidated, bullied, and invaded, irrespective of the quality internally of those nations governments.
[00:24:25]  That's part of real politic.
[00:24:26]  I get that.
[00:24:29]  But didn't Lendlease didn't Lend-Lease eventually get us into the war?
[00:24:34]  Well, I think Pearl Harbor got us into the war.
[00:24:37]  Okay, so I think troops on the ground was when Imperial Japan killed Americans on U.S. soil.
[00:24:43]  But supplying weapons and getting involved, despite multiple provocations, Hitler declaring war in America, didn't it get us closer to getting involved?
[00:24:54]  Well, I think it was inevitable because when you're facing somebody who wants to have domination of the Eurasian landmass, America probably should be on a side of that that isn't supporting him.
[00:25:05]  So whether we gave one Tommy gun or a million Tommy guns is irrespective.
[00:25:09]  When you have a nation that says, I want to own the Eurasian landmass, if you read Spikeman, McKinder, The Rim Land, The Heartland, you know that there are certain actors whose actions will not touch upon American national interest in a way that is nuggetory.
[00:25:28]  So, you know, Hitler or the Soviet Union sooner or later will be America's problem.
[00:25:33]  And the last point that I'd make with regards to the Ukraine, and this is where I find it really galling that anybody who says they're a conservative says, we don't care, pull down the shutters on the Atlantic coast, pull down the shutters on the Pacific, and let the rest of the world rot in hell.
[00:25:48]  What would Ronald Reagan say about the Ukrainians fighting for their freedom?
[00:25:53]  If you look at his willingness to stand up to communism everywhere, you would say that Reagan wouldn't exactly call a KGB colonel a champion for, what, the West or anti-globalism?
[00:26:05]  So let's remember: if we are a shining city on a hill, we need to be a shining city on a hill at all times.
[00:26:12]  And also when it comes to external assistance to Ukraine, this nation, where I'm sitting right now, would still be part of the British Commonwealth.
[00:26:20]  It would be a colony of the UK if France hadn't assisted us.
[00:26:25]  The nascent revolutionary forces, if they hadn't been assisted by French naval blockades, 1776 never would have happened.
[00:26:33]  So the idea that helping another nation fight for its own territorial integrity is by dint of history not justified, America wouldn't have existed without assistance from the outside.
[00:26:45]  Do you think $100 billion has been too much?
[00:26:48]  Oh, I think it's insane.
[00:26:49]  I think it's utterly, utterly insane.
[00:26:52]  The fact that we have spent more on Ukraine than we have in Afghanistan since 9-11 is unconscionable.
[00:26:59]  And the idea, the broader point is, and this is one that you have hammered out on your podcast frequently.
[00:27:05]  There was no debate, Charlie.
[00:27:07]  How is it that, you know, Steve, I don't know if Steve coined the term, but we have a uniparty.
[00:27:12]  Apart from those 20 people around the speaker's debate, we have this massive, amorphous uniparty debate.
[00:27:21]  How much aid are we going to give?
[00:27:23]  Is nuclear war okay?
[00:27:24]  Is tactical nukes okay?
[00:27:26]  The idea there has narrowly been any debate in America is inexcusable.
[00:27:33]  So I think you can understand my position, though, Dr. Ruger, not just the incompetency of the military elite or brass, but I also have this bubbling up frustration of the pace, the focus that Congress puts on this particular border crisis and not our own, which does animate, honestly, some of my rejection to just want to get further involved,
[00:27:57]  which could end up being a quagmire because it seems like the foreign policy establishment wants to get involved in, let's just say, theaters of conflict that don't always have inevitable endings for profits or for whatever the reason.
[00:28:12]  But I suppose I just, I do want you to, without, you know, without mentioning the Lend-Least thing, I understand, but why is it an urgent national security threat to us?
[00:28:23]  And the bully argument, I got that, but why is Putin taking over Ukraine a threat to Rhode Island?
[00:28:31]  Because it won't stop with Ukraine.
[00:28:34]  And it will escalate to NATO nations.
[00:28:37]  NATO nations that, by the way, we helped create that club.
[00:28:40]  It is a club of free countries.
[00:28:42]  And the idea that Poland doesn't have a right to exist because a former KGB colonel says so, that's not something we can ignore.
[00:28:49]  Either we created NATO in 1949 as a club of Western civilization, of nations that agree together to stand together, or it was a con, it was a fraud, and we didn't mean it.
[00:29:01]  And the Soviet Union wasn't a threat.
[00:29:02]  I don't subscribe to the latter.
[00:29:04]  But your prior point is very well taken.
[00:29:06]  And I completely subscribe to the frustration that we can send hundreds of billions of dollars and it doesn't matter.
[00:29:14]  And we look at the fact that we are the only nation in the world today that has no border regime.
[00:29:19]  On my last Newsmax show, I did a very simple back-of-the-envelope calculation.
[00:29:24]  And I went to the official statistics.
[00:29:26]  Since World War II, if you add every combat fatality of the U.S. armed forces, so Korea, Vietnam, the GWAT, so every, you know, Afghanistan and Iraq, combined, every war we have fought in since 1945 has led to the deaths of 103,000 combat service men and women, 103,000 in 70 years.
[00:29:50]  In the last 12 months, 110,000 have died of fentanyl poisoning in America.
[00:29:56]  So yeah, I understand the frustration, but that doesn't mean Russia invading other countries on the periphery of our NATO that we helped create can be ignored.
[00:30:10]  That's all I'm asking for.
[00:30:11]  Sure.
[00:30:11]  No, and I make no question of the moral sense.
[00:30:15]  It's wrong for a strong country to invade a smaller country and a weaker one.
[00:30:20]  However, saying that it's an urgent national security threat.
[00:30:24]  And I guess the final point, though, Dr. Gorka, is if he wouldn't stop there, he's struggling to even take over Ukraine.
[00:30:30]  So what's to say that he would go to Warsaw?
[00:30:33]  Well, this is, you know, this is where I'm glad you said that because you had a guest on your show just a few days ago who said that Ukraine has lost already.
[00:30:42]  Ukraine is on the brink of collapse.
[00:30:44]  Yeah, let's be true.
[00:30:48]  Let's be factual about this.
[00:30:49]  Russia was ranked second in military power in the world before this war started.
[00:30:54]  Ukraine was ranked 22nd.
[00:30:57]  Thanks in part to our assistance and the Brits and the Germans.
[00:31:01]  They have pretty much managed to fight Russia to a standstill.
[00:31:05]  That doesn't mean he won't try.
[00:31:08]  The fact that it's been difficult doesn't mean he says, oops, sorry, I finally recognize the Baltic states and I recognize Poland.
[00:31:16]  If he can, he will, because that's the nature of a KGB colonel.
[00:31:20]  But at the end of the day, you're right.
[00:31:21]  You know, God bless the Ukrainians.
[00:31:23]  They've done pretty well.
[00:31:24]  Do you think Ukraine should be part of NATO?
[00:31:27]  No, I don't think they're ready for that.
[00:31:28]  No, no.
[00:31:30]  So NATO, the NATO accession principles are very clear.
[00:31:34]  Any nation that has representative government in the Eurasian region can join NATO if, if it has a functioning representative government and if the nation can contribute to the collective defense of the whole.
[00:31:49]  Ukraine doesn't satisfy either of those.
[00:31:52]  It doesn't have a well-functioning representative democracy and it doesn't have the capacity to substantively contribute to the collective defense of the North Atlantic Treaty area.
[00:32:04]  If it did, that would be another question, but it doesn't.
[00:32:07]  Dr. Sebastian Gorka, about 20 seconds.
[00:32:09]  Any closing thoughts?
[00:32:11]  Yeah, I'm so glad we did this.
[00:32:15]  I want us to have more sophisticated national security debates on the right.
[00:32:21]  It's not isolationism versus invade everywhere.
[00:32:24]  There is a happy medium.

=== Ignoring Black History in Debates (06:30) ===

[00:32:26]  Educate yourselves.
[00:32:27]  Read a bit of Klausevitz.
[00:32:29]  Read a bit of Sun Tzu.
[00:32:30]  And let's have a discussion on all platforms.
[00:32:32]  Dr. Gorka, God bless you.
[00:32:34]  Thank you so much.
[00:32:35]  God bless.
[00:32:39]  Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
[00:32:40]  2022 is history.
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[00:33:38]  Charlie4Hillsdale.com.
[00:33:44]  Just to complete the point, Dr. Gorka was saying, and this is an opinion held by a lot of people, that this is Ukraine's 1776 moment.
[00:33:52]  I don't agree with that.
[00:33:53]  And what I was trying to communicate, and I probably could have done a better job, is saying that 1776 in our history can't just be copy-pasted to every time a country quote-unquote fights for its freedom.
[00:34:07]  The reason being is 1776 was a very rare and exceptional moment in all of human history.
[00:34:14]  Yes, there are some comparisons that can be used.
[00:34:17]  However, the tradition that started with faith-centric colonists that experimented with all sorts of different types of government, the Pilgrims, from Roger Williams, to eventually the signers of the Declaration, not to mention the Black Robe Regiment and the First Great Awakening.
[00:34:40]  So to just say that 1776 appeared as if out of the sky, which I know was not the argument by Dr. Gorka, but that is the essence at times.
[00:34:49]  Ignores Jonathan Edwards.
[00:34:51]  It ignores the Black Robe Regimen.
[00:34:55]  It ignores Jonathan Mayhew.
[00:34:58]  It ignores some of the incredible amount of work that went into developing the fertile soil that eventually allowed 1776 to happen and then wrestling with the Federalist Papers and then finally landing on the Constitution in 1787 is that the Revolutionary War was more than a physical conflict because there's been physical conflicts for thousands and thousands of years.
[00:35:22]  No, it took many decades, in fact, 120, 130 years of work that I don't think Ukraine has gone through.
[00:35:31]  I do not think Ukraine has labored over a religious awakening focused on virtue and piety and self-government, which is exactly why I think we should push for peace.
[00:35:42]  And I think we should have Ukraine-Russia peace.
[00:35:45]  We should redo the elections of the annexed regions under UN supervision.
[00:35:48]  Russia leaves, if that is the will of the people.
[00:35:51]  Crimea should formally be part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 until Khrushchev's mistake.
[00:35:56]  The water supply to Crimea should be reassured, and Ukraine remains neutral.
[00:36:02]  This is Elon Musk's framework, and I think is rather rational.
[00:36:10]  Email us freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:36:14]  We're getting a fair amount of emails here.
[00:36:17]  I'm wondering what your guys' opinion is.
[00:36:18]  Should we get more involved?
[00:36:19]  Should we get less involved in Ukraine?
[00:36:21]  Should we focus on our own borders?
[00:36:24]  And I think we agreed on a lot as well in our conversation, which is I think we should obviously stop writing these blank checks.
[00:36:30]  We should focus on our own borders.
[00:36:32]  It doesn't have to be as black and white at times as people make it.
[00:36:36]  I do want to play a piece of tape here, though, that I think can be instructive, that I meant to play during our conversation.
[00:36:42]  It's Lindsey Graham saying we're going to play offense.
[00:36:45]  Play Cut 50.
[00:36:48]  Your fight is our fight.
[00:36:49]  2017 will be the year of offense.
[00:36:52]  All of us will go back to Washington and we will push the case against Russia.
[00:36:58]  Enough of a Russian aggression.
[00:37:00]  It is time for them to pay a heavier price.
[00:37:04]  And that was back in, I think, in 14 or 15, right on the border of Russia and Ukraine.
[00:37:10]  Another argument I wanted to make, and we'll have to have another conversation, is shouldn't Russia be a strategic partner in fighting the CCP?
[00:37:20]  Which I actually think plays into one of the arguments that Dr. Gorka was making about Lend-Lease.
[00:37:27]  I just misunderstood the question.
[00:37:28]  I didn't quite internalize it.
[00:37:31]  Which was supplying weapons to the Soviets so they could fight the Nazis.
[00:37:36]  Shouldn't there also be a lesson from there to say that we could partner with the Russians to defeat the Chinese Communist Party, which I think is a much greater threat than Russia?
[00:37:47]  I do understand the argument that says that people, that large countries should not invade smaller countries.
[00:37:54]  I think you can say that with moral clarity while also saying that doesn't mean we should get involved with military equipment, arms, $100 billion.
[00:38:06]  That will only further get us closer and closer to conflict.
[00:38:11]  Someone said here, I don't care if it's their 1776.
[00:38:16]  They are not America.
[00:38:18]  Yeah, and so the reason I just kind of latch onto that is I actually think repeating it's there 1776 over and over again is unfair, but also I think it's built to try to have Americans have more compassion for this cause when I don't think that our 1776 should be copy-pasted on every time a country says we want freedom.
[00:38:39]  I do think the cause can be universal, but the circumstances certainly are not.
[00:38:43]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:38:45]  Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:38:48]  Thank you so much for listening and God bless.
[00:38:53]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.