The Ukraine Leak Power Grab + The RESTRICT Act Revisited with Senator Kevin Cramer
The Ukraine war leaks have badly embarrassed the American military establishment, but they're already planning how to take advantage, by expanding online surveillance and censorship. Another move to look forward to: A renewed push to pass the RESTRICT Act to increase federal power to regulation the Internet. Charlie debates with Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer, who gives his reasons for backing the bill.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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The Leaker vs America00:10:23
Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Senator Kramer joins us as we have some polite disagreement on the Restrict Act and Ukraine.
We talk about the leaker.
There's got to be more to this story.
And I think what has been leaked is far more important than the leaker himself.
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Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
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We're getting asked, you know, people are emailing us, Charlie, do you think this leaker is a hero or a villain?
Well, maybe there's a third choice.
I mean, generally, I'm not a huge fan of leaking for leaking sake.
Certainly didn't like the leaking of the Dobbs decision, didn't like the leaking of Donald Trump's tax returns, but there is a place for leaking.
I never liked a lot of the anti-Snowden treatment.
At the same time, I think that some of the information that Snowden made public was a little reckless and put some people's lives in danger, including current operations.
Julian Assange, largely, I think, did a good thing, but he also did a lot of things that I wouldn't support.
So it's a messy situation.
I don't think you're ever able to look at a leaker in glowing binary terms.
You have to look at it with some nuance.
And so you have to start to ask some questions.
So here's what we know.
This guy's 21 years old, air National Guardsman from Massachusetts.
Apparently, this information is spread out to 3 million people.
Comes out weekly.
It's like a pseudo newsletter, apparently.
If 3 million people get it, I mean, that's more people than read the New York Times every single day.
It's really extraordinary.
So 3 million people have access to this briefing.
It comes out weekly.
This young man, 21 years old from Massachusetts, decided to take the contents and put it on a Discord server.
So you have to ask the question, did the leak harm someone's immediate life?
Did you interfere with a mission that would be moral and necessary for the nation?
Did you leak more than you had to?
Did you leak for the right reasons?
These are the questions that you should ask whenever you come across some of these messy situations of leaks.
Because of course, on the media, too many Republicans, my goodness, I was just watching television this morning.
I was like, my goodness, you've got to be kidding me.
They, over and over again, they said, this is reprehensible.
How dare he do this?
And at the same time, there's other people that say this man is a patriot is a great thing ever.
I mean, maybe there's something in the middle.
Maybe it's he's not a patriot.
He's not a villain.
And then the other question is, did you do it for the right reasons?
And that's where this thing really starts to fall apart, honestly.
Is that all evidence shows that this young man did not leak this information to try to challenge the regime or expose the illegal war in Ukraine?
He did it to try to impress friends on a Discord server.
Now, maybe that's not correct.
We'll learn as time goes on.
But that is an important component.
But it's very telling how the media is treating them.
Because, look, this 21-year-old from Massachusetts, they're going to try to lock him up for the rest of his life, Espionage Act, all that.
What's more importantly is the content of the leaks.
It's amazing to see the media talk about this.
This is treason.
This is terrible.
This is helping our enemies.
How about you talk about what actually came out in the leaks, such as America's at war with Russia?
We are at war with Russia.
And how many people, how many members of Congress voted for that?
The answer is zero.
They voted for weapons.
They voted for munitions.
They voted for support.
It is the content of the leaks that are very telling.
We're spying on some of our closest allies.
The most important part of the leaks shows that NATO special forces are inside Ukraine and showing that our intelligence estimates are way more pessimistic on Ukraine's military than we said publicly.
And again, having a nuanced view on this and just talking about the messiness of the situation, this young man revealing it, that's a good thing.
I'm glad we're learning that.
I'm glad that we are learning that our government is lying to us.
I laugh.
I chuckle when the government uses this type of language.
Listen to Cut 88.
They say this was a deliberate criminal act.
Play Cut 88.
I would say, though, that it is important to understand that we do have stringent guidelines in place for safeguarding classified and sensitive information.
This was a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines.
A deliberate criminal act?
Do you know what a deliberate criminal act is?
A deliberate criminal act is waging an illegal proxy war in a country 5,000 miles away.
I'm much more concerned about what our government is doing in Ukraine than allegedly what some 21-year-old did when he leaked documents.
That's a much greater concern to me.
The contents matter a lot more than what this young man did or did not do.
But the media is trying to make it all about him.
They're trying to do a whole kind of thing, put him on display, almost Soviet show trial.
They're putting the focus on the leaker to avoid talking about the lies that the leaks actually exposed, the crimes that our own government is committing.
When our own government lies to us, we act as if it's totally normal.
Oh, yeah, we're spying on our allies.
We have illegal forces in Ukraine.
No one voted for it.
The Ukrainian force is actually dwindling.
Russia is doing better than they could tell us.
This guy is guilty of trying to be cool when he should have just kept his mouth shut.
Whatever.
Let's put the leaker aside.
Can we just focus on a second that we are in a war with Russia?
And almost nobody cares.
Congressional War Authorization, War Powers Act.
People are just kind of shrugging their shoulders.
And if you watch the Mockingbird media networks, one after the other, they show the arrests.
They show the young man in his red shorts, you know, hands.
National Guard, they're arraigning him.
They show his parents.
They show all this.
And you say, okay, got that.
Thanks.
That takes about 30 seconds.
Can you all of a sudden now just talk about the contents of the leaks?
Where we now have troops in a kinetic war zone where we did not vote on this.
We didn't authorize it.
We weren't notified.
You guys lied about it.
You guys told us the opposite.
Let me tell you.
So let me get this straight.
When we lie to the government, we could go to jail.
If you lie to the government, you can go to jail.
But when the government lies to us, everything is just perfectly fine.
And let me prove it to you.
Joe Biden was asked in February 2020, he said he would never send American troops to Ukraine.
He said he would never send U.S. special forces to Ukraine.
This young man exposed Joe Biden to be a liar.
Play cut 62.
We are not seeking direct confrontation with Russia.
Though I've been clear...
Russia targets Americans in Ukraine.
We will respond forcefully.
While I will not send American...
We have supplied the Ukrainian military with equipment to training and advice.
That's Joe Biden saying that I would never send American troops to Ukraine.
Well, we have troops in Ukraine.
This is America versus Russia.
And if that's the legacy of what this young man has leaked, that's a very helpful thing to know.
Where are the Republicans on this?
Oh, they support it.
That's what.
And I just seen one after the other, after the other, after the other on TV.
This is reprehensible.
How is this possible?
How did he get the hands-on information?
How about you guys press pause and stop defending the American war machine and ask a question of why are we fighting Russia?
Why do we hate Russia as much as we do again?
You just got to keep reminding me.
And I asked that question.
Oh, it's because of, oh, the Cold War.
Because we got muscle memory from the ghosts of the Cold War past.
Not a fan of Russia.
Not a good country.
I don't want to live there.
You shouldn't want to live there.
They're not a free society.
They lock up political dissidents.
Well, we do that too.
They lock up journalists they don't like.
Well, we do that too.
Well, they, I guess they shut up protesters.
Well, we do that too.
They clamp down on the opposition political party.
Well, we do that too.
Anyway, so of course, you know, Russia, we criticize Russia of all those things.
Of course, we would still do all those things.
But at the same time, Russia does not have the Constitution that we do.
They don't have First Amendment rights, private property rights.
They don't have the same sort of tradition we have.
Not a fan of Russia.
I don't really think highly of the country.
At the same time, every country that might not exactly be your own flavor of self-government and liberty does not mean you have to go to war with them.
In fact, they could be very helpful.
They could be an ally.
They could be in a place of neutrality.
You do not have to fight every country that you don't like.
Same time, we are told time and time again, well, Charlie, one of the greatest threats to America is Russia.
How and why?
You're making Russia one of the biggest threats.
You have created Russia as one of the biggest threats to America.
It wasn't the biggest threat to America before you guys started to fund a proxy war in Ukraine.
Now Russia actually is a threat to us.
You have projected this into reality.
Russia was just trying to reclaim Ukraine, Eastern Border Dispute, a country that used to be under their own borders.
But it's up to us to police the borders of Europe, but not police our own borders.
Got it.
Message received.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
Russia as the Threat00:03:34
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They're going to try to use this as an excuse to restrict our speech.
They're starting to talk here.
They're saying, well, now we need to police more of these social channels.
They're going to use this as a prerequisite for censorship.
This is how the regime works.
They are coming after our dissident social media platforms.
It's one of the reasons why we oppose the Restrict Act, Telegram, Rumble, now Twitter, Getter, Truth Social, Discord, I guess.
I mean, I don't use Discord.
I don't know how helpful it is.
NBC News says U.S. Intel agencies may change how they monitor social media chat rooms after missing leaked U.S. documents for weeks.
Oh, so they might monitor our Telegram chats now?
By the way, this is one of the reasons that the Restrict Act says, oh, if you have connections to Russia, we could get ready.
Well, Telegram was founded by a Russian.
And Discord is very similar to Telegram.
It's a messaging service.
We use Telegram for all our communications on the show.
It's a really good platform.
I encourage people to find a better messaging platform for high-frequency file sharing and for being able to get lots of different channels and feeds.
The user interface is the best, I think.
But they would love to be able to go after it.
They've talked about how Telegram is fomenting places for white nationalist tape.
They basically say they plan to scrub Discord from now on, basically announcing they plan to spy on the entire thing.
Use the Patriot Act.
Use Edward Snowden's, what Edward Snowden used to work on the National Security Agency to go after all of our online chatter.
So their response to this is not, hey, maybe we shouldn't be funding an illegal war in Ukraine and having U.S. troops in Kyiv.
No, no, no.
Instead of acknowledging that they are in error and deceit and that they are lying, they want to clamp down on the citizens.
Instead of saying, well, maybe we should be more honest with you and we're sorry about that.
When was the last time anybody said sorry in our government?
When was the last time we ever received an apology?
Did we receive an apology for 15 days of slow to spread?
How about an apology for the mRNA gene-altering vaccine?
Apology for the open borders?
Apology for the debacle out of Afghanistan.
Apology for the closed schools, mask mandates, churches being closed and strip clubs remaining open, marijuana dispensaries remaining open.
Where's the apology, the admission?
How about the apology from saying that the virus came from a bat in the Himalayan mountains or funding gain of function research and still doing gain of function research?
Where's the apology for any of that?
Where Is the Apology00:02:24
No, no, no.
An apology requires introspection, humility, and some form of goodness.
Our ruling regime has none of it.
But the BLM rioters, the arsonists, and the BLM terrorists in New York City, they got an apology and they got $21,500 per person.
So we don't get an apology from our own government.
No, no, no.
Instead, they want to clamp down more on us.
If we actually had a functioning government, which we do not, if we had a group, if we had an opposition party in the Republican Party that cared about us, here's what they would say.
They would say, okay, this guy should not have leaked the information.
But honestly, we should be more honest with you guys.
This is not good.
No, instead they say, this is perfectly normal.
Go after the 21-year-old.
Keep on showing it on TV.
Show him being arrested.
Chill the speech.
Chill it.
Instead, it's like, oh, hold on.
You do realize that this young man might be in error, that we don't like to overly sensationalize leakers for many reasons.
But are we at war with Russia?
And why aren't we having a robust discussion about that?
Or at least a debate on the House floor, Senate?
Can we have a little bit of back and forth?
What are the pros and cons?
Do we vote for that?
Play cut 90, this is Tucker Carlson saying this war is a violation of American law.
It is a crime.
That's exactly right.
So the bigger crime here is not leaking information.
The real crime is the American government violating the War's Powers Act and getting involved in a soon-to-be hot and kinetic war with a nuclear-armed power, Russia, completely unnecessarily for a country that is not a threat to the United States.
They're making it a threat.
They're poking the Russian bear so much, they have created Russia into an enemy.
This is of the making of the Central Intelligence Agency.
This is a creation of Langley, Virginia.
Play cut 90.
The United States is a direct combatant in a war against Russia.
As we speak, American soldiers are fighting Russian soldiers.
So, this is not a regional conflict in Eastern Europe.
This is a hot war between the two primary nuclear superpowers on earth.
And yet, this war has never been formally declared.
It has not been authorized by Congress.
And for that reason, this war is a violation of American law.
It is a crime.
I would love to see Congress vote on it.
Why do we have U.S. troops in Kyiv?
I don't know.
Protecting American Freedom00:16:09
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Thrilled to have us and thankful to have the good senator from the great state of North Dakota, Senator Kramer, rejoin the program.
Senator, thank you for making time.
Senator, let's dive right into it.
You're co-sponsor of the Restrict Act.
Tell us why.
Sure.
A couple of things, Charlie.
I'm like a lot of conservatives wondering what's the right touch on how you deal with all things China and, of course, our other adversaries.
How do we protect our young people?
How do we protect our secrets?
How do we protect data from bad actors?
And do you just ban TikTok and Huawei and then ban them as they come?
Or can we put some guardrails up front and some authorities that prevent these investments from taking place prior to them becoming, you know, prior to 150 million users in the United States downloading an app?
And I think it's an honest discussion.
And I think there's somewhere in all of this, there's hopefully the right path.
The Restrict Act, to me, seems like a pretty good starting point and a good place to start the discussion, at least, and see where it leads.
So do you think the bill is being currently misunderstood by critics such as myself?
And if so, what do you think are the big misconceptions that people are leveling towards this potential piece of legislation?
Yeah, I do think there's some misunderstanding, but at the same time, Charlie, I'm always open to misunderstood people correcting me.
I think it'd be arrogant for me to just say you're all wrong and we're the good guys and we're right.
And that's why what I like about this bill, I expect that there'll be a lot of debate.
There'll be amendments offered and there should be.
I actually think there could be a few more guardrails put in place, a couple more restrictions, particularly on the executive branch.
But one of the things, one of the, what I think is a misconception is that this is similar to the Patriot Act, that it's a dragnet to catch Americans and all of those things.
And we tried really hard in the bill.
And I use the term weed loosely, by the way.
This was largely authored by Mark Warner and John Thune.
And they're on the Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over telecommunications.
And so it's really a hardware, more of a hardware bill.
It doesn't go after VPNs.
We're really not interested in content.
We're not interested in individuals.
It's really companies from specific adversarial countries.
Again, trying to stop the actual apps and the hardware from getting in place in our country rather than waiting till after the vaccine.
So I think the biggest misconception, and by the way, it's an earned misconception, just if I might be honest, anything that we do in our country can be used against us.
Abraham Lincoln warned about that prior to becoming president, dealing with our military and our, I think you call them shining seacoasts and bristling seacoasts and shiny armaments.
So anything can be used against us.
And we have a government that has from time to time demonstrated that their willingness to do that.
That's why the one thing about this bill that sort of hooked me, Charlie, is that it puts Congress sort of in the middle of it along with the executive branch with veto powers, with the ability to turn back bad decisions made by the executive branch.
This is largely the Trump rule that he issued as a rulemaking using existing powers, emergency powers.
I use the term emergency loosely because, again, there's plenty of evidence of abuse by presidents when it comes to, quote, emergency powers.
But he issued the rule in an effort to ban TikTok, and then, of course, was overturned in court.
This codifies the rule, puts a few more of these guardrails.
I keep using that term, but it's the best term I can think of, guardrails in place to prevent the very thing that you rightfully fear.
Yeah, and I'll be honest, you know, when you say that most of the work was done by Senator Warner, I find that not to be very persuasive.
I certainly don't trust him, nor do I think he wants what's best for American liberty.
Maybe this might be an exception to that.
I don't think so.
But one of the issues, though, Senator, that emerges in the bill is that it seems to be more than just China.
It loops in Russia, for example, which might sound good, but a very popular application is Telegram, and that was founded by a Russian.
Rumble was founded in a foreign country, albeit Canada, so that's not in the bill.
But I suppose one of the concerns is that giving the Secretary of Commerce czar-like cyber war power, if it's about the CCP or about TikTok, maybe we could just focus on that and make it a very focused bill.
Because the skepticism that I have and the audience has is it seems to be a pattern of DC and people that don't share the love of the Constitution you and I have.
They seize on something that might be popular and a problem.
Of course, TikTok's a problem.
It's digital heroin.
I completely agree.
And then we turn around and all of a sudden we're less free and we have this basically immovable leviathan.
What do you think about that?
Well, again, I think those are well-earned concerns.
And I will say this for Mark Warner.
He is chairman of the Intelligence Committee and he was very helpful to me in trying to stopping the Fufang investment in Grand Forks.
And we can go, that's another whole story.
And I'm still trying to get some sort of a post-mortem on the failures of the CIFIA process.
But that's part of what motivates me is that our existing institutions and systems aren't working very well on the one hand, to keep the federal government in check, on the other hand, to protect Americans' freedom.
So Mark Warner was very helpful to me on that.
The second thing, though, I think back to I'm a 14th and 15th generation pilgrim.
My ancestors came on the Mayflower.
William Bradford was my 10th great grandfather.
And when he wrote the Mayflower Compact, while it's only 200 words, the reason he was compelled to write it was because several people on the Mayflower were already discussing how great it would be to not have to be governed by anybody.
And they said, no, wait a minute, freedom doesn't mean license.
And so I think the struggle for America over the decades and the centuries, and probably always will be, will be the very discussion you and I are having.
The unfortunate thing is there are bad actors both abroad and domestically who would like to take advantage of these opportunities.
And that's why, and by the way, Charlie, what I love about this is that here we are, two conservatives, having this discussion.
This is largely a discussion within the conservative family.
As you know, you have, on the one hand, you have, you know, my friend Josh Hawley wanting to ban TikTok, TikTok.
I've not gotten on that bandwagon yet, although I probably will.
But on the other hand, do we wait again for 150 million Americans to be downloading the app or telecommunications companies applying Huawei or technologies and then finding out later we shouldn't have allowed that and then rolling it back.
So again, it's finding the balance that people like you and your listeners are going to help us find.
I'll give one example.
One of the things about the six countries, we can debate whether Russia should be on it or not.
We probably don't have to debate whether Iran or North Korea should be on the list.
All of those things.
I'm not really sure why Cuba has to be on the list, for example.
And Cuba is one of the countries on the list.
I think these are the exact conversations.
The other one thing about it that I'm a little concerned about, I would expect that we could have some amending to would be giving the Secretary of the Interior complete authority to add to that list and then having Congress respond to that.
I'm not sure that we want that authority.
I think that authority should have to get Congress's permission rather than a veto, for example.
Just they seem like little things, but I think they're important.
And those are just a couple of the discussions that I've been having with friends.
Yeah, and so I guess you're a co-sponsor of the bill.
I would challenge, though, why not just say this is probably too far-reaching and the Patriot Act comparison, I think, is fair because some of this is loosely written.
Now, maybe this will be cleared up, but Senator, in all fairness, I don't have a lot of faith in Congress always limiting legislation.
Usually it increases.
It's kind of like a bacterial infection at times where it starts at 100 pages and ends up at 1,000.
But I mean, some of the language, and again, this is open for debate and for amendment because it's not law yet, is very open, right?
It says it governs transactions, which it defines as any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or any use of information.
I find one thing interesting, Senator.
You said you're not on board for the banning of TikTok.
So is the spirit of this, in your opinion, less about TikTok and more about Huawei and just foreign actors in the social media space, more broadly telecommunications?
Because I think that's where some people are getting confused because we have the TikTok hearings that seem to build consensus.
Or do you think the TikTok one is not even as big of an issue as the critical infrastructure piece, which I agree is tremendous?
Yeah.
So really important distinctions, Charlie.
I'm very concerned about TikTok, but TikTok is the example of what happens if you don't put in some barriers up front to bad actors, adversarial countries and their companies, particularly adversarial countries that are very capable of and have proven and demonstrated strong desire to both steal and manipulate people on their platforms or on their hardware, whether it's, like I say, a Huawei or whether it's an app like TikTok.
Remember, the four apps that most Americans downloaded in the last month in the United States are all four owned by Chinese corporations.
So it is largely China and it is largely TikTok.
At least that's the context.
What I think what the bill is trying to do is we're trying to sort of head those things off before it becomes a TikTok or a Huawei.
And again, this is a little bit why I'm not quite yet on the TikTok thing.
I probably, like I said, I'll probably get there, but I don't want to play whack-amo every time 150 million more Americans get on an app.
I'd like to prevent that from happening in the first place.
But with regard to the process as well, Charlie, you're exactly right.
This is a 55-page bill.
Congress has a tendency to grow the bills as amendments come up.
But this is a bill that is two things.
One, it is, in fact, bipartisan.
It's not the Inflation Reduction Act.
It's not American Rescue Plan.
It starts out bipartisan, which means you'll have a better process.
It's not universally loved.
There are a lot of questions, which means we will likely have lots of amendments.
And it's also in a committee, the Committee of Jurisdiction.
Where Congress really blows things up is with things like omnibus spending bills and these, you know, like my previous examples when you're using budget reconciliation, when there's very little to no discussion.
That won't be able to happen in this case.
But that said, again, we've seen it happen too often.
I get go back to the Mayflower Compact.
It was 200 words.
The Constitution's a couple thousand words.
You know, God gave us 10 commandments after Israel gave us 66 rules.
And then Jesus boiled it down to love your neighbor as yourself and love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
So we haven't improved on any of those in the centuries since.
So I think, again, focused.
I think you're right.
Maybe it just becomes China focused, but I do think that we want to head off other really bad actors before it becomes much more difficult to do it.
Or you have to unwind things, which is exactly what we're dealing with now when it comes to China in this country.
I mean, they're embedded in so much of our supply chain.
Another whole show, I know, but I have lots of concerns about how we screw them out.
I will tell you my piece on this.
When I hear that it's bipartisan, that makes me even more skeptical because at times it seems as if that's when the biggest power grabs occur.
And I know our audience certainly feels that way.
When Republicans see it always seems as if we're pandering to the Democrats, the Democrats don't ever come over to our side.
We can agree to disagree on that, but it certainly seems that's been the pattern over the last decade.
Our founders made it hard on purpose.
They made it hard, and that's why I like the Jeffersonian posture in most of these bills.
Just vote no and go back to your home state.
Senator, we have learned because of these leaks that we have U.S. troops in Ukraine, albeit a small force of special forces.
Would you support a war powers vote authorization in the United States Senate so that Congress could actually weigh in on this now soon-to-be kinetic conflict of America fighting Russia?
I don't know that it's going to be soon-to-be kinetic conflict with Americans fighting Russia.
Obviously, we have troops that protect our embassy.
That's true in every country in the world.
And I would hope that we wouldn't have an embassy if we couldn't have troops there to protect our people.
I mean, we've seen enough examples, bad examples of that.
In addition to that, by the way, they are the ones holding Ukraine account for the weapons systems that are being sent already to them that have been approved by Congress and being doled out now by the president, albeit, in my view, far too slowly.
With regard to war powers, as you probably know, I was one of the Republicans that voted to repeal the AUMFs from the Iraq wars.
Both of them older than most of the people that are in Iraq on our behalf right now.
And so I don't know that we're at a point where we need a War Powers Act vote in the United States Senate if the War Powers Act's even constitutional, which is arguable.
But before we would send troops there, or at least within the War Powers Act parameters, you'd have to come to the United States Congress for authority if we're going to be fighting there.
Because, again, unless they were to attack us specifically, I don't think the president would have that authority.
So, Senator, at this point, we're now over a year into this conflict.
Anywhere between $100 or $200 billion have been spent.
At this point, do you think we've spent too much money?
What do you think is the limit?
And what does success look like in your calculation?
So the last question is the most important one because the dollar amount, well, it's significant.
It's about, I think, $113 billion.
I think there's probably $40 or so billion that has not been spent, but you're right, it's been authorized and appropriated.
Part of my struggle with this is that I don't think that this administration was serious enough about helping Ukraine win with those dollars.
Instead, they've been doling them out so slowly that Ukraine has just had a long, slow, hopefully victory.
Defining Success in Ukraine00:02:52
And I say hopefully because you don't know.
I think had they been better equipped with half as much money early, they very well could have been more successful by now.
That said, I'm not going to discuss what I think the limits are publicly as much as people love to have me do that.
And I know you do, because if you did that, then Russia just has to go, okay, we'll just wait till that number is used up and then we'll attack.
I don't think it's good to discuss those things in the public sphere.
But I do hope our embassy stays safe, and I'm glad to have some special forces there to keep them safe as well as to account for the money that's already been appropriated and spent in Ukraine to make sure it's being used for the right purposes.
Do you think we're accompanied?
What is the mission?
What do you think we could say?
Okay, we've accomplished success.
Sure.
So I think there are a couple of things, Charlie.
I mean, first of all, ultimately, our success would be determined by what success is for Ukraine, and that would be to get the parameters that the agreed upon in the Budapest memorandum agreed upon borders of Ukraine.
That's what America pledged when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.
And we said we'd be the nuclear umbrella largely in Europe as well as similarly in the Pacific.
And all of that's being challenged.
But I don't, again, if it was just you and me discussing it, and we'll just pretend there aren't lots of people listening right now.
I would expect at some point this gets to the place where there'll be a negotiated settlement.
But, you know, even me saying that out loud gives Vladimir Putin some hope that Zelensky is going to have to cave at some point.
And right now, I think Ukraine's doing well enough to expect that they should be able to push Russia out of their country and would go back to Budapest memorandum borders.
But again, I'm a realist.
Super quick.
Only 30 seconds.
Do you mean out of Crimea as well?
Because that's debated.
It's debated.
And if I was the negotiator, Crimea might be on the table.
But I think for now, our position is that Crimea belongs to Ukraine.
And that was one of the agreements at the time.
But Charlie, again, without debating every detail of it, for now, Crimea would be included as far as I'm concerned.
No, I only ask because that would probably make it another decade because that's not going to fall anytime soon.
Senator Translation.
But this is why I want to do this on air.
It's always my pleasure.
Thank you.
Okay, Charlie.
Thank you, Senator.
Thanks so much.
Email us freedom at Charlie Kirk, everybody.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us your thoughts.
It's always freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
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