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April 9, 2024 - The Charlie Kirk Show
38:08
The Ukraine Well is All Tapped Out
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Student Loans and Gold IRAs 00:01:46
Hey everybody, it's been Charlie Kirk show.
We talk about Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness or his attempt to do so in Ukraine.
David Sachs joins us for excellent Ukraine commentary.
It's really amazing.
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Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie.
He's an incredible guy.
His spirit, his love of this country.
He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
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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.
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Reminder: We'll see you tonight in Omaha, Nebraska, as we are going to encourage the special session to get called.
As we had a wonderful conversation this morning with the governor's team, we're going to stay on it.
We're going to make sure it becomes a reality, but they're very focused and they're passionate about getting this done.
And great credits to the audience.
Education Endowments and Tuition 00:11:04
We're going to talk more about student loans here.
Joining us now is Rebecca Monsour, who has a great piece for Breitbart.com: Conservatives Can Seize the Student Debt Issue.
Rebecca, welcome to the program.
I tend to agree with this hypothesis.
Walk us through it, please.
Thanks so much, Charlie.
Actually, the hypothesis is really simple.
This is a major American issue.
This is not going away.
The Democrats are using this for a reason.
This impacts so many American lives from all income levels, really.
When you look at the fact that since from 1981 until 2021, there has been a 360% increase in the cost of tuition for a public institution, a public college.
Just think about that.
This has become completely unaffordable.
And we are saddling young people with basically a lifetime of debt as an indentured servant, basically, to this education cartel.
And at the same time, we were telling them that a good education is very completely necessary for a good job.
I mean, which it is still.
It is still the gateway to a good job.
So, when you're living in a situation where education is completely unaffordable, but it is still necessary for a good job, and people are coming out of these institutions often with degrees that are not necessarily effective in getting a job.
This is just becoming this terrible cycle of debt that's going to cost them, you know, basically a lifetime of productivity.
They're no longer able to have family formation.
They're no longer able to buy a home.
It's the root of so many of our problems, too.
I mean, they come out of these institutions just woke zombies.
Okay, so how are we going to address this?
It's not enough just to ignore it.
It's not enough just to say, oh, well, don't go to college.
We need actually trained people that have to have a college degree.
I mean, we can't have lawyers and doctors without colleges.
So, how do we address this issue?
That's what this piece was getting at.
was offering some ideas, basically, you know, saying we as conservatives need to think about this because right now what Joe Biden is doing is essentially he's offering student loan forgiveness now, but he's not addressing the problem.
And so there's just going to be another student loan forgiveness and another one and another one.
And they're going to use this as a vote buying tactic again and again and again until we address the root issue.
It's sort of like basically what Ronald Reagan did when he granted an amnesty in the 1980s, but he didn't seal the border.
He didn't deal with that.
So now we have more amnesties and more amnesties, okay?
You can't just have a student loan forgiveness without actually addressing the root cause here.
And there is a root cause.
And if we just ignore it, we just say, well, we're against student loan forgivenesses.
We're ceding that issue to the Democrats and they're going to take it.
And they're going to have a whole constituency based on that issue because people are really suffering because of all these loans.
So how do you deal with it?
We offered some suggestions.
We suggested one, that you basically target the endowments, tie these unsustainable degrees or these degrees that don't have jobs to the endowments, make these universities basically start to cough up.
You know, we also talked about block granting.
If you're going to do a student loan forgiveness, okay, then let's totally change the way that we distribute federal student loans.
Let's block grants and let's basically offer two-year associate degree programs.
And I know that people are going to scream, oh my God, it's socialism.
You summon Bernie Sanders.
But when you think about it, associate's degrees now are basically essentially what a high school diploma once was.
Okay.
Paying for a high school education is not socialism.
That is educating a citizenry, which is what is necessary.
Okay.
If you have control over this situation, better control over it, you're able to regulate it.
You know, conservatives talk about the free market and regulation and all that.
Now regulation will hurt a business.
Well, education, it's become an education cartel.
It's a business now, essentially.
Let's hurt their business by regulating the heck out of them.
Okay.
You know how we have these parents that are now at all the school board meetings, they've become really active because they started to see what their kids were learning during the COVID lockdowns and basically said, oh my God, we now have to get active.
So they're all showing up at the school board meetings.
Well, guess what?
As a taxpayer, when you start to have ownership of what these public institutions of higher education are teaching because we are paying for block grants for them or something like that, then we start to have a say in what they're doing.
And we can basically regulate the heck out of what they're doing, make sure that their degree programs aren't stupid.
The other thing that we can do is by tightening their belts, by forcing them to live within whatever we're giving them instead of just an open-ended student loan where they are able to jack up the tuition price because they know that the student loan industry will subsidize whatever tuition price they choose.
If we block grant, these universities are going to have to start making very serious decisions about what they can afford.
Suddenly, the liberal arts schools are going to have to stick to Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton instead of all these goofy, weird, woke, nonsense things that they teach now.
They're going to have to get back to the basics.
And they're also going to have to make really serious decisions about whether they want to have an engineering department or whether they want to have a gender studies, you know, blah, blah, blah department.
So this is how you can change the situation.
And we have to change the situation, frankly.
That's sort of my take on it.
But I'm always interested to hear what other people have.
And I know that you have done absolute work on this, obviously, Charlie.
A whole book on this.
I've been laboring in these fields for quite some time.
I want to get to this.
I want to focus on the endowments.
How large are the endowments in this country?
And why do we treat them largely tax-free?
I think Congress did like a 3% excise tax maybe on overages a couple years ago, but they're largely untaxed, $40, $50 billion.
There's a ton of money there.
Walk us through it.
There's a huge amount of money.
Let me just, let's talk about Harvard.
I used to work for Harvard a long time ago.
Harvard, their endowment is larger than some small countries' GDP.
Okay, it's massive.
Their fundraising operation is one of the greatest in the world.
Yeah, these are largely tax-free.
These endowments aren't touched.
And the reason why is because we want these institutions to last in perpetuity.
And also, we do have, I have to say, the greatest research institutions in the world in this country.
We have research institutions in this country, our universities, that are the envy of the world.
So we don't want to, you know, kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Okay.
Don't get me wrong.
But we do, I'm not suggesting, although my co-author on this, Emma Joe Morris, who's wonderful, she probably will be like, yeah, you're going to take the hell out of destroy them.
I kind of am a little bit nervous about that because I do want these institutions to stay around forever.
I just basically want them to be more responsible in what they're doing here.
It is irresponsible for them to be sending, putting these kids into lifelong debt for degrees that they know are completely ridiculous in terms of jobs, in terms of actually having a career.
That's sort of my take on it.
But in terms of how much we're talking about with these endowments, you're looking in the billions and billions.
Our top universities have enough money, frankly, where they wouldn't even have to charge tuition.
Harvard, their endowment is so large that every undergrad there could go there for free, frankly.
But that's Harvard.
That's a private, by the way, private institution as well.
But at any rate, these are all things that are up for grabs.
My attitude towards the endowments is that they should be held responsible.
If they're putting out a number of young people who are completely unable to pay off these loans, they should be held responsible and they will become more responsible if you do that.
In 45 seconds, can you capture if we don't address this politically, what do you think that will mean?
It means that you're going to have a constituent, you're handing over constituents to the Democratic Party for in perpetuity.
Because, you know, when people are strapped for life with this kind of debt and they can't get out of it, when somebody says, hey, I'm going to forgive that for you, you're going to vote for them.
It's just it.
You're going to vote for them.
I mean, Charlie, if somebody says, I'm going to free you from a debt slavery, you're going to vote for them.
You're going to be like, yeah, here's my vote.
So unless the Republicans get serious about this issue, they are handing over generations of voters to the Democrats.
Rebecca, thank you so much for your commentary and really appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
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Tonight we will be in Omaha, Nebraska, keeping the pressure on.
Let's play Cut 48, please.
Well, let's get started.
We have time here, Nebraska.
This election can be decided by one electoral vote, and that one electoral vote may be in Nebraska.
Former President Donald Trump and Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen are calling on the state's legislature to change the way Nebraska dolls out that electoral college vote.
That is, to get it back to winner-take-all.
But despite the pressure from Republican heavy hitters, the push could fall short as the legislature draws close to a close after previously introduced bills languished unnoticed before the sudden rush of attention.
Levin continued last night on his The Great Ones program to endorse winner-take-all in Nebraska, the growing support of national figures, Donald Trump, Mark Levin, and many others.
It is a growing and growing list.
So we're going to keep you updated on that.
Unlimited Funding for Ukraine 00:15:17
There's a lot happening with Ukraine, a lot happening right now in Congress, including 702 FISA reauthorization.
We plan to do an entire program on FISA tomorrow as this comes up for a debate and a vote.
There's no reason why we should reauthorize FISA, period, let alone reauthorize Pfizer, FISA, Pfizer, FIS.
It's like FISA, FISA, Pfizer, FISA without significant changes.
702 is a statute that allows the federal government to spy on people domestically without a warrant.
It's very simple.
If you want to spy on people domestically, just get a warrant.
They don't want to get a warrant.
They say, oh, well, it keeps us safe.
It is under national security.
You have lost more freedoms and liberties under the guise of national security than anything else in the last couple of decades.
The Patriot Act created these secret FISA courts that allowed the federal government the ability to spy on all of your communications, to track and monitor your internal political chatter.
The FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, this is mainly an FBI tool, and they say it is necessary for national security.
If that really is true, then go in front of a judge and get a warrant.
This document, the United States Constitution, and more specifically, the Bill of Rights, was written for a reason.
And allow me to read this.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.
And no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, support by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.
We don't talk about this enough.
And in the great, the legendary 1984 book by George Orwell, he demonstrated this very well.
You cannot be free if you don't have privacy.
That privacy and freedom are linked together.
You cannot have a free society if you do not have the ability to have anonymous speech, thoughts to yourself, and not be monitored, viewed, or spied upon by the Leviathan.
The Founding Fathers understood this, which is exactly why in the greatest political document ever written, they wrote the need for you to have a natural right to your own effects, your own thoughts, your own papers, that the government does not have the right to trample in and to take your private details.
So now there is going to be a vote in front of the U.S. Congress.
What is the actual date of expiration, guys?
I think it's coming up either tomorrow or later in the week.
Speaker Johnson could get this done if he teamed up with Democrats, if he teamed up with Democrats to get this done, which I fully support.
AOC, Rashid Talib, Elon Omar.
It is time to form an alliance.
This transcends politics.
He might, you know, interestingly, They say, we don't have the votes.
We don't have the votes.
Well, in this case, you actually might have the votes.
Now, there are a fair amount of neocon Republicans and neocon Democrats that want to keep on giving the FBI the ability to spy on domestic political chatter, but this is a constitutional defining issue.
FISA was used to spy on Trump, was used to spy on allies of Trump.
It was used by the deep state regime to threaten and intimidate political adversaries and opponents.
You should not give this power to the government.
It is unconstitutional.
It's unnecessary.
It does not keep Americans safer.
Absent major changes.
FISA should not be reauthorized.
They want a 10-year reauthorization.
Take a hike.
Get a warrant.
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Joining us now is a legend, someone who I love following on X.
He is the, I think, the number one, like the thought leader on the Ukraine topic from a pro-American reasonable standpoint.
It's David Sachs.
David, welcome back to the program.
Good to be here.
Thanks, Charlie.
So David, let's kind of set the table.
You do a wonderful job on the all-in podcast talking about this.
Why is this week the week where people are discussing Ukraine so much?
What is going on in Congress?
What are the stakes?
Oh, well, I mean, Speaker Mike Johnson is going to be bringing up the funding bill for Ukraine.
This is, I guess I should say, the next funding bill for the $61 billion that the Biden administration has been asking for.
This is on top of the $113 billion they previously passed.
So I think you're hearing an amping up of the rhetoric in order to try and justify this bill.
So we're being told that if you dare oppose more funding to Ukraine, then you are a Russian asset and saying that Russian propaganda has infected a portion of the GOP.
Here is Mike Turner saying this, CUT 43.
We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.
I mean, there are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not.
Now, to the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is.
President Xi of China, Vladimir Putin himself have identified it as such.
We need to stand up for democracy.
We need to make certain that we know that authoritarian regimes never stop when they start in aggression.
Ukraine needs our help and assistance now, and this is a very critical time for the U.S. Congress to step up and provide that aid.
Are you parroting Russian propaganda, David Sachs?
Well, what you're hearing there is pretty par for the course.
Basically, our political discourse, especially on the Ukraine question, is just drenched in McCarthyism.
I mean, anybody who brings up any, you know, any argument that's not in favor of unlimited funding for Ukraine is basically a foreign agent.
This is the claim.
According to neocons, everything bad that happens in the world is because America wasn't involved and didn't appropriate enough money.
And therefore, we need to keep funding these causes, whether it's futile or not, whether it's likely to succeed or not.
And anyone who dares oppose that funding at any point is working for the enemy.
So this is an argument that we heard with the Iraq war, with the Afghanistan war.
I mean, these people never wanted to leave, even after 20 years of total futility.
And they cannot define what success looks like.
Let's go into Mike Turner's statement, though.
He said, it's not about NATO, even though we are told that Ukraine is potentially going to be part of NATO sometime soon.
So of course it's about NATO.
But secondly, he says that this is about democracy versus authoritarianism, which I always laugh, which is that the American foreign policy of the last 30 years has been far more adventurous than the authoritarian regimes that we criticize.
We've invaded more countries.
We've broken more societies.
Just look at Libya, look at parts of the Middle East, look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan.
And yet we're the ones that are all of a sudden the ambassador of democracy.
It's somewhat laughable, not exactly the best of that.
But are we essentially being blackmailed right now by the Zelensky regime?
Zelensky has said for a while that, and he said this, that the West should be thankful that Ukrainians in Europe have behaved well.
He said it would not be a good story for Europe if you push these people into a corner.
Are we being blackmailed by Zelensky?
There is that undertone to his comment.
It is a strange comment.
But to go back to your point about what this war is really about, this is a war for NATO expansion.
The Biden administration had the opportunity to prevent this war.
The Russians explained in 2021 very clearly that bringing Ukraine into NATO was a red line for them.
They viewed it as an existential threat to have American troops, weapons, and bases, including potentially nukes, under a NATO flag on their most vulnerable border.
They made it clear, and they've been making that clear since 2008, that that is completely unacceptable to them.
Biden had the chance to take that issue off the table.
Instead, he persisted with it.
And now we know that in the first month of the war, there was a peace deal available at Istanbul that the Zelensky regime was interested in.
And what it required was not Ukraine giving up its freedom or even giving up territory to Russia.
It merely had to agree to neutrality.
The Russians did not want the American military alliance directly on their border.
And it was the Americans and the British via Boris Johnson who conveyed the message, we do not want to make a deal with Putin.
We want to pressure Putin.
And they plowed ahead with this war.
They thought that they would win based on sanctions and arming Ukraine.
And look where it's got us.
We've already spent over $113 billion, just the United States, with the EU a lot more on top of that, in trying to prepare the Ukrainians to fight the Russians.
And they are getting destroyed.
They are losing.
And the $61 billion is more of the same.
It's not going to change the dynamic.
It's not going to change the situation on the ground.
The Ukrainians have run out of or are running out of artillery, air defense, manpower, and we don't have more to give them.
We are tapped out.
It's going to take us years to replenish our stockpiles of Patriot air defense, of stingers, of javelins, of 155 millimeter artillery shells.
We simply don't have the weaponry to give them anymore.
On top of that, Israel, our ally in the Middle East, is also clamoring for those same weapons.
We're at a point now where we need to make trade-offs.
And the $61 billion funding bill doesn't recognize that fact.
So this is basically, it's fundamentally a futile endeavor.
It's not going to prevent Ukraine from losing this war.
And the best thing we could do is to engage in diplomacy to try and reach a negotiated settlement.
And that is the one thing the Biden administration has absolutely refused to do since the beginning of this conflict.
Yeah.
And David, I want to zero in on something you said that I hope gets more attention.
It was my hope, and we haven't done this yet, that we would have hearings about the details regarding the blowing up of the peace deal in Istanbul.
My belief is this is one of the most evil and sinister things the American foreign policy regime has done in the last couple of decades, if not the most evil.
And so, David, I'm going to ask you the question that many lawmakers cannot answer that Tucker tweeted about, which is how many Ukrainians have died in this war so far?
Well, the estimates I've seen are that the Ukrainians are losing about 1,000 troops a day.
That probably includes wounded as well as KIA, so it's total casualties.
But the numbers I'm seeing are somewhere in the 20 to 30,000 range per month.
And it's hard to get exact numbers because the Ukrainian government doesn't provide them.
We actually have much better numbers for Russian casualties.
On the Russian side, there's a BBC-related outlet called MediaZona, which has been carefully compiling the number of casualties based on obituaries and social media profiles.
But there has been no analogous effort on the Ukrainian side.
And I think this is for a reason.
I mean, the Zelensky government, if it were to be honest about the number of casualties that have taken place, it would be obvious to their allies and to the Ukrainian people that they are suffering horrific casualties.
And again, I think it's going to be north of half a million already.
You know, one point on this, one further point I should say, is that in a war like this, most of the casualties are caused by artillery.
That artillery is the main cause of death and serious wounding.
Who has more artillery in this war?
Finally, the mainstream media is reporting the truth on this.
I've seen estimates that the Russians have a five-to-one artillery advantage, seven to one, 10 to 1.
So if the Ukrainians are being pounded by the Russians, again, by a, let's call it 7 or 10 to 1 artillery ratio, and that's causing most of the deaths, what do you think the casualty exchange ratio is?
So in any event, to answer your questions, I think the bottom line is at least half a million.
I mean, that's an extraordinary number, David.
How many Americans do you think can even comprehend that?
And it has kind of been this lacking component in the media coverage.
And for what?
So David, for what?
Have they moved the line significantly one way or the other?
Or is it five miles here and five miles there?
And five, this is the closest to World War I trench warfare I think we have seen in 100 years in the sense where it's basically an impasse with a ton of suffering.
Am I analyzing that correctly?
I think you're analyzing it correctly.
But also I would point out that with World War I, there was three years of this sort of stalemate trench warfare, but then the line suddenly broke.
The Germans became exhausted and they became brittle.
And then all of a sudden the Allies started making rapid advances.
I think that's the stage we're at now is that the remember, we armed the Ukrainians in 2022 for this 2023 summer counteroffensive.
And the idea here was that the Ukrainians would basically charge these Russian lines, the so-called Serebikan lines.
They would be like a blitzkrieg, and they would punch through and pierce those lines and create a land bridge to Crimea, meaning they would sever this sort of northern and southern parts of the territory that the Russians had held.
And we heard generals like Petraeus and Hodges tell us this would be successful.
And within a few days or weeks, we would see major progress.
Crimea, Starlink, and War 00:09:59
Well, that summer counteroffensive completely failed.
It was a defeat.
The Ukrainians were absolutely destroyed.
All this equipment that we gave them ended up in smoking runes in minefields that the Russians had created.
In fact, the Ukrainians didn't even make it to the first Serovican line.
Their troops and their equipment that we had provided them was basically destroyed in the gray zone.
In any event, it completely refuted the idea that the Ukrainians could take back this territory, as desirable as that may have been.
And since then, the Russians have just been pounding Ukrainian positions.
The latest way they've been doing this is through air power.
And the Ukrainians are basically out of air defense.
Zelensky just asked for more patriots, but we don't have more to give him.
And the Russians have been dropping these enormous bombs called FABs on them, 1,500-pound bombs, 2,000, 3,000-pound bombs.
And they've been absolutely destroying the Ukrainian lines.
Think about it like shock and awe.
The Russians have air superiority.
The Ukrainians are basically out of air defense.
And the Russians can destroy pretty much any position they want.
And that's what's happening in this war.
So the Russians are pounding.
The Ukrainians are softening them up.
And I think most military experts are expecting a Russian offensive this summer in the next couple of months when the ground dries over there.
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Elon Musk tweeted back in October of 2022, Ukraine-Russia peace, redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision.
Russia leaves, if that is the will of the people.
Crimea, formerly part of Russia, as it has been since 1783, until Khrushchev's mistake.
Water supply to Crimea assured, and Ukraine remains neutral.
The people did not like this at the time, David, but Elon then said this is highly likely the outcome in the end.
Just a question of how many die before then.
David, your reaction.
Well, the outcome is going to be much worse than what Elon proposed because Ukraine now is going to lose all of the territory that he mentioned.
It's not only going to lose the Donbass, it's going to lose the four territories that Russia has already annexed.
And this war is not over yet, and the Russians are gaining ground.
So, you know, what we could end up with here is a landlocked rump state where Ukraine loses access to the Black Sea.
It's, again, over the, like I said, last year and a half since he posted that, they've lost something like 10 million people, women and children who have fled the country and may never come back.
They've lost something like half a million men, casualties in this war.
So since Elon posted his poll, things have only gotten much worse for Ukraine.
And you'll remember that no less a figure than Zelensky himself denounced Elon's proposal and called it pro-Russian.
But the reality is that was the best deal the Ukrainians were ever going to see.
So David, I got in a discussion or a debate, I should say, with, let's say, a regime ruling class member who came to me and he was very upset with my stance on Ukraine.
And he said, it's the most important thing happening in the world.
And he says, we can't give Putin a win.
We can't give Putin a win.
I wasn't even sure how to respond to that.
I just kind of more listened.
And this is an older gentleman.
You would know the name, very wealthy, very influential, doesn't like my stance on this.
And I said, well, what do you mean, give him a win?
I said, he's going to get Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
And then all of a sudden, the insanity revealed itself.
He said, oh, no, no, no.
We can't let him have Crimea either.
David, I mean, I just, it's hard to even grapple with an uneducated opinion.
Again, I'm not like a foreign policy expert, but I mean, you can't, you can barely win a turf war right now over five miles.
You're not going to liberate Crimea.
David, your thoughts?
Right.
That's right.
It's completely futile.
I mean, this is what the summer counteroffensive was all about, was basically creating a land bridge to Crimea, and they would isolate Crimea and cut it off from the Russians.
And this is why they keep trying to bomb that Kerch bridge is they think they're going to isolate and cut off Crimea.
It's an absolute obsession of the neocons and the Zelensky regime to try and retake Crimea.
I think there's a sort of a history to this idea.
The Russians have a very important naval base at Sevastopol within Crimea.
It's the home of the Black Sea fleet.
It's been owned by the Russians since 1783.
Catherine the Great established it.
And it is basically the home of their power in the Black Sea.
And I think some of these people have had, on the neocon side, have had this crazy idea that if Ukraine can retake Crimea, they'll kick the Russians out.
And then we will be able to raise a NATO flag over Sevastopol.
And instead of being owned by the Russians, the Black Sea will now become a NATO lake.
I mean, this is a crazy idea, but it's been written about by neocon think tanks like ISW.
So I think exactly.
Yes.
Sorry to interrupt.
Yeah.
So I think this is part of their fanaticism about Crimea.
Of course, it's completely unrealistic.
I think the other thing one could say about this is why does NATO need to take the Black Sea?
The Russians consider this absolutely existential for them.
It's existential for their security to hold on to Crimea, to hold on to Sevastopol, and to maintain their naval power in the Black Sea.
We do not need to get into World War III over this.
It's never been important to American security or even to NATO security for us to have this presence in the Black Sea.
Elon Musk, I think, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for thwarting the Ukrainian sabotage.
Can you walk our audience through that there was some sort of like a Starlink-assisted drone attack that wanted to happen in Crimea?
It very well could have prevented a nuclear war.
Yeah, this is in the Walter Isaacson book is that Elon got a call in the middle of the night from Ukrainian authorities who were demanding that Elon turn on Starlink that they were using over Crimea and over these sort of Russian areas.
And again, Crimea has been under Russian control since 2014.
And Elon refused to do it because he felt like this could create war three.
And this is not the purpose of Starlink.
Starlink was never meant to be a military system.
He donated it to them for humanitarian purposes.
At the same time, Elon said that if he had received a call from the American president, then he would have done it.
But he got a call in the middle of the night from Ukrainian authorities telling him to do this highly risky thing.
And I hope people understand that, that Elon very well, if he didn't, if Elon would have been agreeable to the powers to be, we could have seen a nuclear war.
It's not an exaggeration.
Elon's an American citizen and SpaceX was Jones Starlink's an American company.
You know, he doesn't respond to the military chain of command of Ukraine.
He said he would be responsive to the American president.
If he had gotten a call from the White House, he would have done it as a patriotic American.
That's not what happened.
And he was lambasted for this.
I guess it's also worth pointing out that the only reason why the Ukrainians were using Starlink is because Elon donated to them at the beginning of the war.
And somehow they thought they were entitled to essentially unlimited use, including using Starlink as a weapon, which was not part of the deal.
It was not part of the terms of service.
If I can make just one final point.
The terms of service.
Yeah, I mean, if I can make just one final point on Crimea, something like 80% of the people living in Crimea are ethnic Russians and want to be part of Russia.
And they have voted that way.
And in addition to that, even if you think somehow the elections are rigged, polling by Western firms has shown that they want to be part of Russia.
What happened to the principle of self-determination?
Why are we so hell-bent on trying to pry away this territory?
Because that, hold on, neocons never want the will of the people to ever be factored in.
It's we know better.
It doesn't matter that, yes, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, but generally popular and cut three warring factions, the Sunni, the Shia, and the Kurds, living in relative harmony.
It doesn't matter that Qaddafi was actually rather well liked in Libya, albeit not a good person.
The neocons don't care about self-determination.
And I think that's the answer to your question is that the neocon project is hubris and pride to parachute in to another country and tell them how to live their life.
It's an imperial project that doesn't care about the wishes of the citizens who actually live in these places.
The majority of people living in Donbass or living in Crimea want to go with Russia.
What business is it of ours to tell them that that should not happen?
It's well said.
David, thank you so much for joining us today.
Hope to have you on again soon.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
Everybody, email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.
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