The Charlie Kirk Show - The Myth of Draconianism with Pedro Gonzalez and Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft
Aired: 2023-03-11
Duration: 34:49


=== Why Prison Reform Fails (10:17) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk show, we have Pedro Gonzalez talk about crime, and then we have Attorney General Ashcroft from Missouri to talk about an election issue that is very important.
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[00:00:36]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:37]  Here we go.
[00:00:38]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:40]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
[00:00:42]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:45]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:48]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:50]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:51]  His spirit, his love of this country.
[00:00:52]  He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:00:59]  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.
[00:01:08]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:11]  Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
[00:01:20]  The consensus is that an indictment of Trump would not change your opinion.
[00:01:25]  But make no mistake, a lot of these lower-tier Republican candidates that are running for office, all of whom are welcome on the show at any time, they are betting on an indictment as some sort of political future for them.
[00:01:39]  It's their only hope, and I think they're wrong.
[00:01:41]  I think they're miscalculating it.
[00:01:43]  Joining us now is one of my favorite people to have on the program, very smart Pedro Gonzalez, who has an interesting new piece out for Chronicles magazine, the myth of draconianism.
[00:01:55]  Say that three times fast.
[00:01:57]  And it really kind of goes on to this theme of crime that I want to focus on and build out.
[00:02:02]  Pedro, welcome to the show.
[00:02:05]  Tell our audience about the article you wrote and the argument that you want to present.
[00:02:09]  Charlie, thanks so much for having me.
[00:02:11]  So the title kind of says it all.
[00:02:13]  The word Draconianism comes after an Athenian statesman slash tyrant named Draco.
[00:02:21]  But I'm going to defend tyranny here for a moment.
[00:02:23]  Draco is infamous because he, on the one hand, prescribed death for pretty much every type of offense in ancient Athens.
[00:02:31]  But on the other hand, he introduced the first written legal code to the city.
[00:02:36]  And you have to put Draco in the proper historical context.
[00:02:39]  At the time, the laws in Athens were, they were oral laws, and so they were subject to a lot of abuse and exploitation by capricious aristocrats.
[00:02:48]  So Draco comes in and says, high and low, you break the law, you die.
[00:02:53]  Here's a written legal code.
[00:02:54]  So there is no confusion.
[00:02:56]  And so that actually starts the wheels of reform.
[00:02:59]  And later, you get another statesman/slash quasi-tyrant named Solon, who comes along and, well, he pretty much repeals the vast majority of Rayco's Draco's legal code, but he keeps actually a homicide statute.
[00:03:14]  Draco innovated in the sense that he made a distinguish between essentially manslaughter and deliberate homicide.
[00:03:20]  But the point is, is that whilst Solon has become a kind of byword for political wisdom and Draco's name became the root of unduly harsh punishment, you actually needed Draconianism to get to Solon.
[00:03:34]  In other words, you needed the sword to get political stability in order.
[00:03:40]  And so my piece concludes with that, but it starts with the story of today and crime and punishment in the United States.
[00:03:47]  And in a nutshell, despite what we've been told, we actually don't punish people harshly enough, and specifically the right kind of people.
[00:03:56]  We're told that the United States has way too many people in prison.
[00:04:02]  And the vast majority of people are in prison or they're there because they jaywalked, they got caught with like a doobie or something like that.
[00:04:08]  Just this kind of ridiculous sentimental narrative of just mass injustice, right?
[00:04:14]  Well, that's not actually true.
[00:04:16]  I mean, if you look at state prisons, the vast majority of people who are in state prison are there for serious crimes.
[00:04:22]  Around 60% are in for things like rape and murder and things like that.
[00:04:26]  And most of the people that are in for drug-related crimes, it's not just because they caught with like a single joint or something like that.
[00:04:33]  They're usually involved in trafficking or dealing or things like that.
[00:04:37]  And I really rely a lot on a professor of criminal justice named Barry Latzer.
[00:04:44]  And his book is called The Myth of Overpunishment.
[00:04:46]  So you can kind of see where I got my title from.
[00:04:50]  And so I using Latzer's research, the book was published last year.
[00:04:54]  It flew under the radar.
[00:04:55]  I really recommend it.
[00:04:56]  It's super informative.
[00:04:57]  Latzer brings tons of data to bear.
[00:05:00]  He also has some conclusions.
[00:05:01]  He tries to propose things that we can all agree on.
[00:05:03]  Maybe there are some things that we should reform with the criminal justice system.
[00:05:07]  But the basic central narrative of incarceration today is that we have too many of the wrong people in prison.
[00:05:13]  Latzer says, actually, we don't put the right people, the right type of person in prison and keep them there.
[00:05:20]  And we actually give them too many opportunities to get out.
[00:05:23]  So, Pedro, that's really smart.
[00:05:24]  I said a couple of weeks ago, we do not have enough people in prison, and Media Matters came after me immediately.
[00:05:30]  But when you look into the statistics, and I was challenged by a friend of mine about five years ago, because I too used to repeat this lie: like, oh, our prison population is so big.
[00:05:39]  But if you look at, for example, the average rapist will spend between three to five years in prison, and that's a rapist with DNA evidence convicted by a jury of his peers.
[00:05:50]  I mean, that alone should at least animate some of the more left-wing kind of social justice groups.
[00:05:55]  I want to play cut 119, where the average, the murderer in D.C. has been arrested 11 times before.
[00:06:03]  11 times before.
[00:06:05]  And so the argument Pedro is making that really people should think about: is it time for us to get harsher on crime to become more draconian?
[00:06:15]  I certainly resonate with that.
[00:06:16]  Play cut 119.
[00:06:18]  Guns off the street.
[00:06:19]  What we got to do if we really want to see homicides go down is keep bad guys with guns in jail because when they're in jail, they can't be in community shooting people.
[00:06:28]  So when people talk about what we're going to do different or what we should do different, what we need to do different, that's the thing that we need to do different.
[00:06:35]  We need to keep violent people in jail.
[00:06:37]  Right now, the average homicide suspect, the average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide.
[00:06:46]  That is a problem.
[00:06:48]  That is a problem.
[00:06:50]  11 times.
[00:06:51]  So, Pedro, first, that is from Robert J. Conti III, chief of D.C. Metropolitan Police.
[00:06:57]  He was ridiculed by the BLM groups, but I really appreciate his mental clarity, moral clarity and mental clarity, but obviously moral clarity on the issue.
[00:07:06]  But Pedro, I want to ask a question, though, which is, doesn't that also show that the harsher you are for some of the smaller little things, it could actually prevent some of the more gruesome and cruel and irreversible crimes from happening?
[00:07:22]  For example, shouldn't we say, hey, if you're going to carjack, it should be a slap on the wrist.
[00:07:27]  You should get serious prison time.
[00:07:30]  Is that a reasonable and statistically based argument, Pedro?
[00:07:34]  Yes.
[00:07:34]  And Latzer shows that people that commit these other crimes that aren't as bad as murder, generally, that's the type of person who will eventually get to that point unless they're incapacitated.
[00:07:45]  And that he also shows that the attempts to basically rehabilitate people by getting them out of prison before they should be out and then kind of putting them through these social programs and employment programs, things like that, that oftentimes these people tend to reoffend.
[00:08:00]  Basically, the worst offenders are also repeat offenders and they'll just continue offending and offending and offending until they're incapacitated.
[00:08:08]  And the U.S. Sentencing Commission published a study in the last year or so.
[00:08:16]  It's a decade-long study on recetivism, which is just recetivism means the likelihood that someone relapses into criminal behavior.
[00:08:24]  And so there are programs that we have that are intended to shave off a felon or an inmate's prison time through different types of things like employment, like prison industry things or educational programs.
[00:08:39]  Like you behave well, you participate in making things like washing dogs, making license plates, whatever, and you can shave off prison time and get out sooner.
[00:08:50]  Well, the sentencing commission found that there's statistically no difference between someone who participates in these educational and employment programs while in prison.
[00:09:01]  There's no statistical difference between them and someone who doesn't participate in them when it comes to reoffending.
[00:09:07]  It's moot.
[00:09:08]  In other words, we're shaving off prison time for people who are just as likely to reoffend when they get out as someone who doesn't go through those programs.
[00:09:18]  And the sentencing commission also found that actually the biggest factor when it comes to reducing recetivism, reducing the likelihood that when someone gets out, they're going to do it again, is longer prison sentences, which is, of course, the one thing that we're not doing anymore.
[00:09:33]  And Republicans and Democrats have both agreed: well, that's the, you know, long prison sentences are bad.
[00:09:38]  We basically need to find ways to shorten them.
[00:09:40]  Interestingly, the results were more positive when it comes to, I think, drug-related rehabilitated programs and I think religious programs as well.
[00:09:50]  Why is it Republicans have really sold out their voters in this desire or goal to try to win over minority voters?
[00:10:00]  I actually think it's the opposite.
[00:10:01]  I think it's right.
[00:10:02]  You actually are trying to win over white liberals.
[00:10:04]  I think minority voters actually want harsher sentencing, more police, and safer streets.
[00:10:10]  I think white liberals are the ones that are fascinated with some of this criminal justice stuff.

=== The Melatonin Sleep Solution (02:10) ===

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[00:10:19]  Probably not.
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[00:10:23]  The problem with sleep is many of you probably say, I want to go to bed at nine, but I don't fall asleep till 11:30.
[00:10:30]  What if I told you that if you wanted to go to bed at nine, you could be asleep by 9.05?
[00:10:33]  Daisy, who works on our team, I said, Look, you got a big problem.
[00:10:37]  You're not having enough magnesium, right?
[00:10:38]  True story.
[00:10:40]  And she tried it and she came back to work the next day and she said, Charlie, I don't even remember going to sleep.
[00:10:46]  Boom, you fall asleep.
[00:10:47]  Now, look, many of you guys probably say, but Charlie, I take melatonin.
[00:10:51]  Well, there's an issue with melatonin.
[00:10:53]  It's not altogether bad.
[00:10:54]  Huberman believes it actually could increase symptoms of depression.
[00:10:57]  But the problem with melatonin is that the body adapts and you need to take more and more of it and it becomes less effective.
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[00:11:43]  I know many of you say, Charlie, I want to go to bed at 10 o'clock, but then I end up falling asleep and I end up groggy and then I got a lot of coffee and the cycle continues.
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=== Cleaning Up Voter Rolls (14:22) ===

[00:12:28]  Help me understand, because I am genuinely curious, why so many Republicans flirt with this criminal justice reform movement and goal?
[00:12:44]  Why is it so many Republicans go along with it or become sponsors behind it?
[00:12:49]  Yeah.
[00:12:50]  Well, I think one aspect of this is the fact that the criminal justice reform movement, this is a euphemism for jailbreak, but the movement is really well funded.
[00:13:00]  At the end of the day, we often find little difference between what George Soros wants and what the Cokes want when it comes to crime.
[00:13:10]  By the way, the Cokes are actually not bad on foreign policy.
[00:13:13]  Believe it or not, the Cokes actually fund a lot of restraint foreign policy projects.
[00:13:19]  But on immigration and crime, there is really little difference between what they want and what George Soros wants.
[00:13:24]  I think that's really important.
[00:13:25]  Why?
[00:13:26]  Because we associate George Soros with the Democrats and obviously the Cokes with the Republican Party.
[00:13:32]  But again, on that issue, there's very little difference.
[00:13:35]  And obviously, these are two people with a lot of money.
[00:13:38]  They're not the only two people that are funding this movement and all of these various initiatives and projects that are either affiliated with one or the other political party.
[00:13:47]  But this is a very well-funded, very effective movement.
[00:13:53]  And it's on the Republican side, it's managed to infiltrate the GOP.
[00:13:59]  And if you follow me, you know that I've been railing against its influence on the new rights, on the populist right, whatever you want to call it, where you basically have these Coke-funded organizations like the people who have different views about the Texas Public Policy Foundation, but it's just a fact that they get money from the Cokes and they have an initiative called Right on Crime, which everyone knows is backed by the Cokes.
[00:14:25]  And a lot of the policies that the TPPF has cooked up have been transplanted into other populist think tanks or so-called populist think tanks like the America First Policy Institute.
[00:14:37]  That is just a fact.
[00:14:38]  It's the same people that are just wearing MAGA hats.
[00:14:40]  And that influence is really pernicious because these policies have resulted in the case of Texas in prisons being shut down.
[00:14:48]  Again, as part of this whole agenda of, you know, we have too many people in prison, right?
[00:14:53]  We have fewer prisons now at the same time that things like homicide are reaching record highs.
[00:15:00]  And just because you put a MAGA hat on that doesn't change the fact that it still sucks.
[00:15:05]  It's still bad policy that makes us all less safe.
[00:15:08]  So I think the organizational aspects of it, the funding aspect is one part that's really important: following the money.
[00:15:15]  Sure.
[00:15:15]  So another part of it.
[00:15:16]  But Pedro, help me understand and help the audience understand, help what is it that they think they're trying to accomplish, right?
[00:15:25]  What is it that they think they're doing?
[00:15:27]  And I want to contrast that with what we know to work in CUT 120.
[00:15:32]  So just understand, just help build out the distinctions.
[00:15:35]  Let's play CUT 120 and then answer the question.
[00:15:38]  Just a few years ago, El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world.
[00:15:41]  MS-13 and drug cartels controlled land all over the country, terrorizing people, carving them up with satanic bloodlust.
[00:15:51]  The people were crying out for help, and a new president rolled in, President Naeb Bukele.
[00:15:56]  And so instead of defunding the police, President Bukele is giving the cops more money.
[00:16:00]  He's rounding up every gangbanger in the country and throwing them in a mega prison.
[00:16:05]  What you're seeing is 2,000 vicious criminals being transported to El Salvador's new mega prison.
[00:16:12]  This is why crime in El Salvador has dropped like a rock.
[00:16:16]  President Bukele said the country hasn't had a murder in a week.
[00:16:19]  And what do the people in El Salvador think?
[00:16:22]  They love it.
[00:16:24]  High approval rating, crime is down 90%.
[00:16:27]  So Pedro, contrast that with what some of the groups, what are they trying to accomplish?
[00:16:32]  I don't understand.
[00:16:33]  So you're talking about the ideological aspect, and I was going to get to that.
[00:16:37]  Basically, I think it's a kind of pathological softness to use a term that Nietzsche used himself.
[00:16:43]  That basically we've arrived at a point where we really seem to care more about the criminal, the victimizer, than the victim.
[00:16:53]  And that's a really scary place to be because it means that, I mean, until you're perhaps confronted with being mugged yourself, you're not going to change your mind.
[00:17:02]  But I actually think we've reached a point where there are people that are pushing this stuff in the United States who could be mugged more than once and still say, you know what, we need less people in prison.
[00:17:13]  And in fact, you see that.
[00:17:14]  I mean, there was a, I think, a tweet a few years ago from Seth Rogan who said his car had been broken into multiple times.
[00:17:20]  And then one time he found a knife in one of his car seats, which he thought was like, I think he referred to it as a nice tweet.
[00:17:26]  And he was responding to someone who had complained about how I think it was in California.
[00:17:31]  This person had said that it's become really unsafe in this previously safe neighborhood.
[00:17:34]  And Rogan's response was like, well, actually, I don't mind having my car broken into over and over.
[00:17:39]  And so take that mentality and apply it to the political.
[00:17:42]  And that's where we're at in the United States.
[00:17:44]  Got to run.
[00:17:45]  Pedro Gonzalez, check out Chronicles magazine.
[00:17:47]  Check out his latest article.
[00:17:48]  It's terrific.
[00:17:49]  We're out of time.
[00:17:49]  Pedro, thank you so much.
[00:17:53]  Look, it is time to consider a rollover of that 401k into an IRA.
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[00:18:21]  Text Charlie to the number 74868.
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[00:18:33]  So take out your phone, text Charlie to the number 74868 for biblical responsible investing.
[00:18:39]  Text Charlie to 74868.
[00:18:44]  Joining us now is Secretary of State from Missouri, Jay Ashcroft, who is helping lead an effort of Missouri, Florida, and West Virginia out of ERIC, which is a very important story here.
[00:19:00]  Secretary of State Ashcroft, welcome to the program.
[00:19:03]  What is ERIC or ERIC?
[00:19:06]  And they say it's bipartisan, but what is the truth?
[00:19:09]  Please explain.
[00:19:10]  Thanks for having me.
[00:19:12]  Eric was supposed to be an organization run by states that would share election data and use that to clean up their voter rolls and look for people that were trying to vote in multiple states or did vote in multiple states.
[00:19:25]  I joined Eric with that goal in mind.
[00:19:28]  And about a year ago, I realized that there were some things wrong with it.
[00:19:31]  They weren't requiring states to share data that would help us find people that were voting in multiple states.
[00:19:38]  They were requiring us to try to get people registered to vote that had already said they didn't want to be registered to vote instead of just cleaning up our voter rolls.
[00:19:46]  They were restricting how we could use the data that we got from them inside our state to make the best use of the people's money.
[00:19:53]  And of course, many states that surround Missouri, we have eight states that surround us.
[00:19:58]  Five of them weren't a part of ERIC.
[00:20:00]  So it really just didn't make sense for us to stay in it.
[00:20:03]  And I think what really should be talked about is why wasn't Eric willing to focus on going after vote fraud, making sure that the rolls were clean.
[00:20:13]  Why weren't they willing to make those necessary changes?
[00:20:16]  Sure.
[00:20:17]  So CNN claims that it's bipartisan.
[00:20:20]  Give us some background.
[00:20:21]  Who started Eric?
[00:20:22]  Where did this come from?
[00:20:23]  Typically, when they say things are bipartisan, I get a little uneasy.
[00:20:26]  Tell us about it.
[00:20:28]  Well, probably bipartisan means it's the worst of both worlds.
[00:20:32]  You know, there's bad stuff with one party, good stuff with the other.
[00:20:35]  When they agree, it's really bad.
[00:20:36]  This was started by the Pew Foundation.
[00:20:39]  I believe there was money from the Soros Foundation that came into it.
[00:20:43]  It was started by about seven states that wanted to get together, both Republicans and Democrats.
[00:20:49]  But for me, it's not about who started it.
[00:20:51]  It's not about, frankly, it shouldn't be bipartisan.
[00:20:54]  It should be nonpartisan.
[00:20:55]  The administration of elections should be like a good basketball referee that runs a good game and you never notice the referee because what you're focused on is the game and it's running well.
[00:21:06]  This should be an organization that's wholly focused on making sure that we have good election registration rolls.
[00:21:14]  They're clean.
[00:21:14]  We send people to the right polling place.
[00:21:17]  And if people do cheat and vote multiple times, we can come after them with the big stick of government.
[00:21:22]  They didn't do that.
[00:21:23]  They're not willing to prioritize that.
[00:21:25]  In fact, there's a gentleman on the board named David Becker that's a hyper-partisan lefty.
[00:21:30]  He's not even a voting member.
[00:21:32]  And what I suggested was, why don't we get rid of non-voting members?
[00:21:36]  And some of them said, well, you can have a hyper-partisan conservative on there.
[00:21:40]  I said, no, that's not the point.
[00:21:42]  The point is not to be partisan with the administration of the elections.
[00:21:45]  The point is for us to run good, non-partisan elections and let the people decide as they wish.
[00:21:52]  So I'm looking at the website here, the Electronic Registration Information Center, and it says that there's a lot of misinformation being spread about ERIC, ensuring the efficiency and integrity of America's voting roles.
[00:22:06]  But I'm curious, you know, many of these states haven't cleaned up their voter rolls in years.
[00:22:13]  This doesn't make any sense to me.
[00:22:15]  Many of these states don't clean up their voter rolls, and somehow they need this kind of coalition of many states participating.
[00:22:23]  I don't quite understand their goal here.
[00:22:25]  It feels very sinister or that there might be another agenda beneath the surface here.
[00:22:31]  Explain and build that out for us.
[00:22:33]  Well, I think one of the big concerns is what happens with the data that's sent to Eric.
[00:22:39]  I've seen the SOX level audits that make me feel good that they haven't been sending the data over to third parties that would be nefarious.
[00:22:48]  But when I approached them and said they should tighten up their governing documents so it's explicit that they can't share that data outside of ERIC, that Missouri's data can't be sent outside of ERIC to be used in a nefarious way, they weren't in favor of doing that.
[00:23:04]  So I couldn't feel safe and I couldn't feel confident in telling the people of the state that their data wouldn't be misused.
[00:23:12]  There are 20 some-odd states that are not part of ERIC.
[00:23:16]  They clean their voter rolls.
[00:23:18]  Missouri cleaned its voter rolls before there was an ERIC system.
[00:23:22]  We will continue to do that.
[00:23:24]  And I think there's also a secondary consideration here that technology's improved.
[00:23:29]  Whereas maybe 10 years ago, five years ago, there was a need for a big database to do this.
[00:23:36]  I know Missouri, Florida, West Virginia, we're all going to look for ways to do this internally so we don't have to create another massive government database because we know that, frankly, China always ends up getting all that data.
[00:23:48]  Yeah, that's needless to say.
[00:23:50]  So talk about some of the other states and the conversations that you're having.
[00:23:54]  It looks like Florida is also joining you.
[00:23:58]  How serious do you think this will be and how widespread do you think this movement will actually become in resisting the participation in ERIC?
[00:24:07]  Well, one of the reasons why Florida, West Virginia, and I, we talked about it, we tried to make the changes and then we left together was because we wanted to make a statement.
[00:24:16]  And the statement is not that we don't want to have clean voter rolls, we don't want to have secure elections.
[00:24:21]  Those are three states that lead in running good elections.
[00:24:25]  But we wanted to make a statement that Eric wasn't doing and wasn't willing to make the necessary changes that it should.
[00:24:31]  Since we came out, there was a public letter from Secretary of State Frank LaRose of Ohio, where he has now put out three or four points.
[00:24:41]  And he says if they're not corrected at the next ERIC meeting, it looks like Ohio will come out.
[00:24:46]  And he says there are five other states that he's talking with about that.
[00:24:50]  I think we're really seeing states deciding that if Eric won't make the necessary changes, states will work together to figure out ways they can do it individually.
[00:25:00]  We're seeing third parties and concerned citizens with technological know-how that are reaching out to secretaries of state.
[00:25:07]  I really do think that, frankly, Eric is in trouble.
[00:25:11]  And it's because Eric refused to do what it should have done.
[00:25:14]  And it's why my exit from Eric was very simple, because they didn't do what they needed to do so that the people of my state could have confidence in it.
[00:25:23]  And I think we're going to see great innovation and we're going to see states individually figuring this out and maybe sharing far lesser amounts of data when we're going after people that are voting in multiple states in the same election.
[00:25:35]  We've been able to do that with Florida and the Federalists.
[00:25:37]  I think there's a place.
[00:25:39]  Do you think there's a place for a replacement organization that is doing this across state lines?
[00:25:43]  Or as Secretary of State, do you think that it is better that every state kind of does this independently and monitors their own voter rolls?
[00:25:53]  You know, I think with regard to cleaning up voter rolls, taking dead people off the rolls, looking for people that have moved using national change of address information, I think it's good to focus on how states can individually do that themselves.
[00:26:07]  I love the idea of states being laboratories of democracy.
[00:26:11]  I think there's been way too much effort to move elections to the federal level instead of understanding that states are responsible for that.
[00:26:19]  If you read the United States Constitution, states are responsible for registration of voters.
[00:26:26]  They determine those other than a couple of constitutional amendments.
[00:26:29]  We need to make sure that states are doing that.
[00:26:31]  I think there may be means where states are working together, either in pairs or in a small group, to share minimal data, looking for people that are voting multiple times in different states.
[00:26:43]  But I really want to be pushing for how can individual states do this themselves and do the best job possible at it.

=== Women Win Fewer Awards (02:39) ===

[00:26:51]  Well, very good.
[00:26:51]  Well, thank you for the moral clarity on this.
[00:26:54]  And it's very important.
[00:26:56]  And thank you, Mr. Ashcroft from the great state of Missouri.
[00:27:01]  We deeply appreciate it.
[00:27:02]  And we're going to be following the story closely.
[00:27:04]  Thank you so much.
[00:27:04]  Thank you.
[00:27:05]  Thank you.
[00:27:05]  Everybody, email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:27:09]  You can't make this stuff up.
[00:27:12]  The International Woman of Courage Award of the Year, given by the White House, was given to a man.
[00:27:19]  When I had a pastor recently that told me, oh, Charlie, this wokeism stuff is overblown.
[00:27:24]  It's not that bad.
[00:27:25]  The International Woman of Courage Award of the Year was given to a biological man masquerading and pretending to be a woman.
[00:27:36]  Play cut 82.
[00:27:37]  In Argentina, Alba Ruada is a transgender woman who was kicked out of classrooms, barred for sitting for exams, refused job opportunities, subjected to violence, and rejected by her family.
[00:27:50]  But in the face of these challenges, she worked to end violence and discrimination against the LGBTQI plus community in Argentina.
[00:28:00]  LGBTQIA plus community.
[00:28:04]  When you have, I mean, what's so amazing is why are biological women putting up with this?
[00:28:10]  Well, the answer is because women are more agreeable than men.
[00:28:13]  And the answer is also because men have become so weak and so feminized that they no longer are standing up for women.
[00:28:21]  For a biological woman to say with a straight face, I'm going to have a man win the International Woman of the Year Award, it's really something.
[00:28:33]  And it just kind of shows the state of circumstance that we're in.
[00:28:36]  Not to mention the Toronto Raptors come out and they say, yeah, only women can have babies.
[00:28:43]  And they have to issue an apology for even saying that.
[00:28:47]  Alba Rueda is the International Woman of Courage Award winner, a man.
[00:28:51]  Rachel Levine is the USA Today Woman of the Year, a man.
[00:28:56]  Leah Thomas is the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year nominee, a man.
[00:29:01]  Faye Johnstone, Hershey's International Woman's Day honoree, a man.
[00:29:07]  For all the arguing against the patriarchy, all that the trans movement has done is only elevate men over women in all of these female competitions.
[00:29:19]  It shows the utter fraud that modern feminism is.
[00:29:24]  The one thing they used to actually fight for was that there were biological differences between men and women.

=== The Ukraine War Machine (05:18) ===

[00:29:30]  That was one of their big arguments.
[00:29:32]  We're different.
[00:29:33]  We need things to be calibrated in that way.
[00:29:36]  And now when it actually matters, the feminists are nowhere to be found.
[00:29:44]  You see, we're receiving a lot of emails in our inbox here about Ukraine and about what's happening there.
[00:29:50]  Unfortunately, the war is intensifying and is heating up.
[00:29:56]  I get asked questions a lot where they say, Charlie, how are we going to get Washington, D.C. to agree on things?
[00:30:00]  And as we have said repeatedly, neoliberalism is the consensus in Washington, D.C. D.C. was in full agreement that Tucker Carlson, making sure you could see the January 6th footage, was wrong.
[00:30:14]  They were in agreement with that.
[00:30:16]  They are in agreement about Ukraine.
[00:30:18]  They're in agreement about the deindustrialization of America.
[00:30:21]  They're in agreement about open borders.
[00:30:24]  They're in agreement about vaccine mandates.
[00:30:27]  And Hillary Clinton, the warmonger herself, is saying we need to increase the amount of military support that we give to Ukraine.
[00:30:36]  Play cut 105.
[00:30:37]  We've had an opportunity to understand just what democracy and freedom means at home.
[00:30:46]  And now we look to what's happening in Ukraine.
[00:30:50]  How inspiring is that to you?
[00:30:52]  It's so inspiring to me.
[00:30:54]  And I hope it is inspiring to every American, particularly those in positions to make decisions, because we have to continue, and I would even argue, increase the military support that we give to the Ukrainians sooner.
[00:31:10]  Geez.
[00:31:11]  I mean, first of all, what a softball question.
[00:31:13]  Hillary Clinton, what ice cream do you like?
[00:31:18]  I mean, it just, it really is something, but it shows, I mean, is that Joe Scarber?
[00:31:23]  I can't see the clip because I'm traveling.
[00:31:24]  To hear his voice.
[00:31:25]  I think that's Joe Scarborough.
[00:31:27]  And yeah, I'm sure it was.
[00:31:28]  So Scarborough's having a dialogue with Hillary Clinton.
[00:31:32]  And it shows that the position of the Uniparty is perpetual war.
[00:31:37]  I feel as if there is an alternate universe that I live in where I just keep on asking a simple question.
[00:31:46]  Why are we not pushing for peace?
[00:31:51]  Why are we not trying to broker a peace deal?
[00:31:55]  Why are the Americans not coming in and trying to say, here's our demands to try to make sure that Ukrainians don't keep getting slaughtered and Russians don't get keep and slaughtered?
[00:32:06]  What are the American conditions for peace?
[00:32:09]  Do we have a position?
[00:32:10]  Are we even entertaining that topic?
[00:32:13]  Since we are the underwriters, upwards of $100 to $200 billion of this effort, of the entire conflict here, which is just ridiculous to me, why are we not saying, can we stop the killing?
[00:32:28]  In fact, the intelligence apparatus is saying that we need to liberate Crimea.
[00:32:34]  That's what they say.
[00:32:35]  They're not saying that we're not going to stop until we liberate Crimea.
[00:32:39]  It seems like our only demand is regime change in Russia and retaking Crimea.
[00:32:46]  And I have asked this question before.
[00:32:49]  How do we know when we have won?
[00:32:50]  What does success look like?
[00:32:52]  And to the great credit of this program and to our team and the people that work so hard to make this podcast and this radio program and this television show happen, we have asked the question since day one, what does success look like?
[00:33:05]  What does success look like?
[00:33:07]  And everybody has a different answer.
[00:33:09]  Lindsey Graham says we need to displace Vladimir Putin.
[00:33:12]  We need to take Putin out.
[00:33:14]  So is success peace?
[00:33:17]  Is it okay if Eastern Ukraine is part of Russia?
[00:33:19]  They say, no, we need to reclaim all of Ukraine.
[00:33:22]  But you're talking about multiple trillions of dollars, maybe Ukraine, maybe American forces on the ground.
[00:33:27]  If only our own country didn't have any issues.
[00:33:31]  And by the way, that was never the original aim.
[00:33:34]  I said, oh, we have to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine.
[00:33:37]  Okay, so now you want to then reliberate Crimea?
[00:33:41]  Or you want to liberate Crimea and then you want to displace Vladimir Putin?
[00:33:47]  It only makes Putin stronger the more you talk like that.
[00:33:52]  The war machine sees a massive opportunity here.
[00:33:54]  And Hillary Clinton, isn't it interesting how Hillary Clinton and Mitch McConnell are in complete agreement on what to do in Ukraine?
[00:34:03]  That Hillary Clinton and Mitch McConnell see it exactly the same way.
[00:34:10]  No difference at all whatsoever.
[00:34:13]  If we weren't $31 trillion in debt, if we didn't have an invasion on our southern border, if we weren't draining our military stockpiles, if we weren't losing 100,000 plus people to drug overdoses, then maybe I could entertain something.
[00:34:26]  Why don't you use the Constitution and go through Congress?
[00:34:29]  This is a continual outrage to all of us.
[00:34:35]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:34:36]  Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:34:39]  Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
[00:34:44]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.