Does Putin Want Peace...And What If He Doesn't? ft. Raheem Kassam
President Trump has made a big push to bring a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine. But that will only happen if both belligerents want peace as well, and right now Trump is in a feud with Vladimir Putin over his conduct. Is it possible that the only way to end the war is for America to signal it's ready to keep it going? Raheem Kassam weighs in. Plus, South African businessman Robert Hersov tells the real story about what has happened to the white minority of his country. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
What is happening in South Africa?
Kill the boar.
An amazing conversation with Robert Herzog, one of the best conversations that we have had about what's happening in South Africa.
It will blow you away.
And then Raheem Kassam on what the heck is Putin doing, we explain.
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What is going on in South Africa?
You see, we've been covering what is happening in South Africa, but we're told by the media that it's not happening, but it's good that it is, that we need cultural context to understand the kill the boar chant.
Well, in South Africa, they're doubling and tripling down on the kill the boar chat.
This is now becoming global and international news.
Joining us now is a very accomplished businessman from South Africa, Robert Hersov.
Robert, great to see you.
Thank you for joining the show.
Please introduce yourself and tell us what is happening.
Charlie, thanks for that.
An honor to be on your show.
So I'm a 64-year-old South African businessman, fifth generation, born in South Africa, spent 31 years of my life living in America, Europe, and the UK, and I went back in 2017.
And in 1994, the African National Congress, the ANC, got elected.
White minority rule ended, and we had democracy.
And for the first...
But from 2008 until today, our country has gone backwards, has de-industrialized, the economy is falling apart, and the ANC government has been introducing anti-white racist laws, socialist policies, and have basically been breaking and stealing the economy.
And the reason they thought they could get away with it is because we had a miracle solution in 1994 with Nelson Mandela, and the whole world went, we've sold South Africa, let's go look elsewhere.
And the ANC government has used that as an excuse to bring in kleptocracy, inectocracy, and break and steal the country.
It is in very, very bad shape.
And thank you, Donald Trump.
And thank you, America, for pointing it out.
So let's get into the facts here.
I am told by the American media that there is no anti-white, anti-boar, anti-farmer sentiment, that no one is actually dying.
What is the truth on the ground in South Africa from the race politics that the major South African political parties are demonstrating against South African white farmers since 1994, 140.
114, 114, anti-white, anti-coloured, anti-Indian.
Coloured is a mixture of black and white.
114 anti-white, coloured and Indian race-based laws have been introduced in our country.
114 of them.
There's black economic empowerment, which every year gets extended, not just from companies doing business with the government, but now any company over.
50 people.
There is an act that's gone, been signed into law called expropriation without compensation.
Just think about those words.
Would you invest in a country that had a law, expropriation without compensation?
Not just farms, banks, mines, the watch of your wrist.
But worse than that, there's an extreme left party called the Economic Freedom Fighters.
Think of the brown shirts in Germany in 1933.
These guys wear red berets, 100,000 of them jumping up and down in a football stadium, shouting, kill the boer, kill the farmer.
One settler, one bullet.
And that fellow you're showing on the screen, Julius Malema, in an interview, said that they're going to slit the throat of whiteness, but not yet.
And the media...
Donald Trump used the word genocide.
He said there's a genocide taking place in South Africa.
The media threw their hands in the air and said, there's no genocide, but genocide isn't just extermination.
There are ten elements to genocide.
There's classification, persecution, organization, denial, leading to extermination.
And with laws like expropriation without compensation, and all the pieces being put in place, and these crazy guys with the red hats jumping up and down, there is, in process, a potential genocide.
And if I may give you one more important statistic.
There are so many farmers in South Africa that have been attacked, murdered, and of those murdered, 20% have been tortured.
And raped.
If you take the number of people, farmers murdered in South Africa, as a percentage of the 30,000 commercial farmers, extrapolate that as a pro rata number to the 3 million commercial farmers in America, from 2020 to today, 235,000 American farmers would have been killed.
Holy crow.
And you'd tell me there's nothing happening in South Africa?
That almost takes your breath away when you think about that.
Is it black people that are going and hunting down white farmers?
And are white farmers hunting down black people?
Because it would be a national news story if white farmers were going after black individuals.
Which way is it?
So it's not just white farmers.
The black colored Indian farmers being attacked too.
But the vast majority have been white farmers.
And it is...
You don't torture someone unless there's a hatred of some sort, which is racial.
And this Julius Maleman is EFF jumping up and down saying, kill the Boer.
Boer means farmer.
One bullet, one settler is inciting that sort of anger and horror.
But there are no white people hunting down black people.
Nothing.
It is a one-way street.
So the entire world basically came to a standstill and we had massive civil unrest in America with the drug overdose of George Floyd.
And now we are seeing in South Africa a pattern where you say if you extrapolate that to America, 235,000 American farmers.
But we're told that it's not happening.
The media is insistent.
How many of these white farmers and these boars now want to come to America?
If things were wonderful, then they would stay there.
That is the evidence that they own the land, their parents were there.
Yet, how many of them want to actually now come to America?
So there have been 13 generations of Afrikaners.
An Afrikaner is a white African.
There have been 13 generations of Afrikaners in South Africa.
The first Dutch settlers escaping persecution, Huguenots, came to the Cape in 1652.
I think Mayflower was 1620.
So if the white Africans are going to get kicked out of Africa, I mean, you want to kick all the Americans out of America?
It makes no sense.
We're African.
We grew up there.
It's our country as much as anyone else's.
So I think there's not going to be a flood of refugees to America because – And, you know, usually when a country's melting down and you can see persecution taking place, it's usually against the Jews and the Jews leave.
When the Jews start leaving, you know, a country's in trouble.
But they can go to Israel.
The Afrikaners have got nowhere to go.
South Africa's their land.
It's my land.
Why should we leave?
So what Donald Trump's done, which is incredibly intelligent, he used the word genocide.
Which the left hates.
It's supposed to be their word they can throw against other people.
And genocide, even though extermination is not happening, there is too many elements of it being put in place where it could happen.
So there won't be a flood of refugees to America.
But I must praise America and Donald Trump for mentioning the word genocide, putting a spotlight on South Africa, and offering people refugee status because he's brought the world's spotlight onto.
The evil that the ANC and the two hard-left parties are perpetuating on our country.
When I was at Oxford last week, this came up repeatedly.
In fact, a young man, we had a 20-minute debate on this, where he's like, you know, I don't like the kill the boar thing, but we really should take the land from the white farmer.
And I finally got him, and I can't wait for this video to be published.
I finally got him to say, let me understand, under your moral worldview, I said, under what dimension is that morally fair?
This intergenerational sin.
Every toxic idea that has infected America is on full display in the race politics of South Africa.
From critical race theory, from confiscation of land, from the revenge for the ancestor actions.
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Let's just remind you what they are chanting in South Africa.
Play cut 182.
Play cut 182.
Just an entire stadium raving, kill the boar.
With gunshot noises.
But Robert, I am told by our media we are lacking cultural context.
What am I missing here?
You're missing nothing.
The left wing, the mainstream media, believe we deserve it.
We deserve it.
That's how sick the left is.
This is a terrifying situation.
The economy is broken.
A million South Africans have emigrated, have left.
The white population of South Africa is 7%.
It used to be 20%.
And listen to these statistics.
Our unemployment rate is 40%.
And our youth unemployment rate is 60%.
So the ANC government has destroyed the economy, broken all the state-owned enterprises.
And now, after 31 years, because they've failed, what are they using as the excuse?
Colonialism.
Whiteness.
Apartheid.
And they're trying to do that to reclaim the ability to steal from this country.
But on the far left, you have these guys, the economic freedom fighters, who ought to be jailed, and if not jailed, sanctioned.
And I'm hoping Donald Trump's administration, and it's very easy, there's a list of 2,348 names of people, hate speech, criminality, anti-Americanism, that ought to be put on those lists.
Because we can't fix this country internally.
We can't shift the country to free markets, democracy, rule of law.
It's falling apart.
And the West has looked the other way.
Britain and Europe have been pathetic, thinking soft diplomacy works.
And America's been just as bad until the arrival of Donald Trump.
So we have one chance only to save this country.
And unfortunately or fortunately, it's coming from you.
American left wing race hustlers are very quick to try and distort what is happening in South Africa.
Listen carefully.
This is the celebration parallax, as the great Michael Anton would say.
It's not happening, but it's good that it is.
Play cut 203.
And there is no confiscation of land.
Half of South Africa is white-owned farms, essentially.
Even though the white population is only 7%, what the government did do that really caught Trump's eye this year was a measure.
Wait, what?
In one clip, he says there's no confiscation of land.
At the end, he says there's a measure that would take land without providing compensation.
Talk about the ideology of resentment, of race politics, that all of the kill the boar is a result of the envy and the greed of – So here's an interesting thing, Charlie, which no one knows.
88% of South Africans are Christians, conservative, and they want the same thing all South Africans and all Americans want, a better life.
Safety, security, basic services, opportunity for a job and dignity, and a better life for their children.
The vast majority of South Africans want that.
But it's the ruling party who are the gangsters, who want to stay in power, and who, in a malevolent and pernicious way, want to keep people poor, homeless, hopeless, unemployed, and uneducated.
So that they can bribe them with social grants.
28 million South Africans, 28 million out of 60 survive on social grants.
Our economy is growing at 1%.
Our population growth at 2%.
So it's not the mass of South Africans that are anti-whites.
It's the government and these nasty two parties on the left, supported by...
Robert, in closing here, what would you say in about 30 seconds is the call to action for America to stand up against what's happening in South Africa?
America, thank you for taking notice.
We're going to keep the spotlight on the bad guys.
An incredible congressman like Ronnie Jackson are putting a bill into Congress and into the Senate that would identify the individuals in South Africa.
That are creating hate speech, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and destroying our economy.
Sanction them.
Put them on the Magnitsky list.
SDN them.
Pick on the individuals, but please try not to pick on the country because our economy is on its knees.
Thank you, America.
Robert, God bless you.
And thank you for your courage speaking out on this on this issue.
Thank you.
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Joining us now is Rahim Kassam, editor-in-chief of TheNationalPulse.com.
That is TheNationalPulse.com.
Rahim, great to see you.
Rahim, it's with great confusion that we are looking at what's happening with Russia and Ukraine.
President Donald Trump...
What's going on here?
Yeah, thanks, Charlie.
Thank you for having me.
You know, a story that somehow became very close to my heart since I was in the Medan Square during the revolution in the latter days of 2013 and early 2014.
And looking down the pipeline at everything that could have happened there, you know, talking about the And obviously, now we're talking about Vladimir Putin, given his kind of this inability that he finds himself in now to row back from from this war.
I think we need to go back about 10 days.
I think it was when the vice president was in a gaggle on a plane with reporters and he said, look, He doesn't actually know how to get out of this amongst his own people.
And those are, you know, the people are immediately around him, the generals, the oligarchs.
But it's also the Russian people.
What does he take to the Russian people now and say that he got, that he extracted, that he won from all of this process?
And increasingly, as we look at him How does he sell a piece?
Now, President Trump has tried, you know, But now you can see that the tone is shifting.
And there are two tacks that he's taking.
They're very familiar to people who know President Trump, but obviously it leaves the mainstream media scratching its heads because they never listen to him anyway.
So the two tacks of this, what we saw this weekend, which is the volley fire of rhetoric to say, you know, hey...
We need you at the table.
You need to be at the table.
What have you done?
Lost your mind.
And the other one is the carrot, right?
Which is the economic exposure.
Welcome back to the G8.
We'll have you at all the conferences.
You know, we can move past this.
We can invest in Russia and have Russia invest in the Western world again.
And that is something that we're seeing now, I guess.
In the last seven days that has now become the tactic for the Trump administration.
It's certainly been a longer and a harder slog towards peace than I think almost everyone had hoped.
But we can still see that there are weapons in the arsenal of peace here.
So I have several thoughts here.
Number one, what is Russia and Putin's calculus here?
Why are they bombing cities in the midst of these peace negotiations?
And do you think Russia wants an end to this war?
I'll take the second question first, if you don't mind.
I think yes.
And I think yes, because the war hasn't extracted for Russia what it necessarily wanted.
They didn't go far enough, I think they would say.
In the early days of the war, they failed to secure the capital.
They failed to decapitate the leader of the government there at the time.
And so this slow trudge hasn't really worked out the way they wanted it to work out.
Look, I think...
And Zelensky has this problem too, by the way.
There's nothing really that either of those leaders can take back to their public and say, ah, look, we achieved this, that and the other for all of this blood that's been shed and for all the money that we've spent on this and for the livelihood that you have lost in the time being.
Right?
There isn't that.
And so it's this weird logjam, which brings me on to the first part of your question, which is, we are actually probably at the most dangerous part of the war since it started, because neither of these two men want to give up any face.
Neither of those two armies want to be the first to be seen to back down.
But also they recognize that without bearing further teeth, they can expect no further concessions.
My analysis of it is there will be no further concessions.
Where you land now is where you land after any given peace deal.
I would counsel both of them to just get their pens on paper.
And so that's the first thing.
So the second part is that is there any appetite within the Trump White House or the broader, let's say, Republican coalition to continue sending armaments to Ukraine if Russia wants to continue proactively?
Yes, yes, there is.
And an increasing one at that as well.
And I say that as somebody who fundamentally opposed involvement from the outset, I can see on Capitol Hill, I can see within the defence establishment now, them sort of It's not their preferred route.
Right now.
The preferred route right now actually we'll see the fruits of in the next couple of days.
What's going to happen in the next couple of days is European nations are going to decide and announce whether or not they're increasing their percentage share of GDP into the NATO budget.
Remember, it typically been 2%.
Just about nobody was reaching that in the first instance.
Trump comes along in 2016.
About half of NATO members go, OK.
We're going to do it.
About half of the half ended up doing it.
Now President Trump has been talking about upping that to 5%.
And the rumor mill is such that across Europe, a lot of these governments now are about to say, you know what?
Yes, it's high time we do this.
and announce an increase to 5% GDP spending for defence.
That will be...
It will actually be somewhat of a sea change, not just for the way that Europeans regard their own defence spending, but actually how external adversaries to Europe, especially Russia, perceive European military capabilities.
So that is coming in the next few days, we think.
We'll see how that goes because that could change a lot.
And so just kind of one final question then is what if we then start sending more armaments to Ukraine, how do we reconcile that with a lot of our position, which is that we have no business in this war.
We've said this for quite a while.
I suppose Russia, if they're willing to keep on sacrificing so many of their citizens, do they think they have the West over the barrel because we don't have Yeah,
well, unfortunately, the role of a global hegemon, whether you like it or accept it or not, doesn't necessarily mean you have a part of every war, but it certainly means you have a part of every peace that is negotiated around the world.
I mean, whether it is India and Pakistan, whether it is in Eastern Europe.
People will look to the global hegemon for guidance, leadership, and underwriting of any peace deal that is put together.
So I take your point entirely.
I feel exactly the same way.
I don't feel that even my country, the United Kingdom, necessarily has a role to play in that war, in that climate.
But we have to also remember that And when those promises didn't come true, and not that I'm saying they should have come true, but necessarily when they didn't come true.
This war broke out as a result, and you had a number of leaders that were replaced there, again, European and American efforts.
So, yeah, we don't want to be a part of this, but unfortunately, we're tidying up the messes made by the Obama-Biden administration and, indeed, the previous leadership of the European Union.
I think I said it at the beginning of this administration, back in January.
I said, look, if they don't have a peace settlement on the cards by summer, something drastic is going to change.
Yeah, and again, the big fear here is how can you broker peace if one of the sides do not want peace?
And if Russia really does not want to have peace and they're willing to keep on throwing hundreds of thousands of their own young men as just a meat grinder, then the question is what do we in the West actually do?
And reconciling that with the question of what is the domestic appetite in America.
About one minute remaining, Rahim.
Does Russia really want all of Ukraine?
I think the prevailing consensus within Russia's military establishment and political establishment would say yes.
I don't think public sentiment in Russia tracks the same way.
This is what I mean when I talk about how Putin is looking at a legacy at this point.
He knows he's not going to be in power probably in five to ten years' time, and he probably knows that the country is going in a very different direction after he leaves office.
So can he bring the Russian people to him on this issue?
I don't think he can, in which case I think he is literally just clinging on to a losing battle here now.
This is a tough one.
Because I think everyone in this audience wants to see an end to this war.
We believe that the NATO expansionism and the saber-rattling from the West largely provoked Putin.
Did not excuse it, but it provoked him into invading.
But now we're in kind of the trenches of this, where both sides have become blinded by their own fanaticism, convinced that they need more land as a way to save face.
This is a toughie.
And also, I want your thoughts, freedomatcharliekirk.com.
Email me right now, freedomatcharliekirk.com.
If that happens, do you support sending more money and more weapons to Ukraine?
Email me, freedomatcharliekirk.com.
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Okay, so Rahim, when I was in Cambridge, a professor came up.
And he thought it was laughable that Crimea would even be in contention to be Russia's.
Regardless of the fact that they've annexed it, that Russian wine is from there, that the Russian Navy was headquartered from there.
I mean, a lot of different aspects and elements to this.
Is part of this also the West's fault for our inability to give any concessions to Putin through this process?
Yeah, I think that's probably a fair analysis of it.
Look, I think it's less of a fair analysis about the official class of negotiator.
I think actually, while they probably won't want to tell you this, most things are on the table to bring that war to an end.
And we discussed in the last segment what is on the table in terms of war making to perhaps bring Putin to the table.
But also, you're right to point out different areas of what were historically both Ukraine and Russia over the last several decades being up for negotiation.
The problem is not that.
The problem is exactly of which you speak.
It's the academic class.
It's the op-ed writers.
It's the media class.
And what the Russian apparatus and the Russian elites see We don't recognize you.
We don't recognize Putin as the leader.
And actually, none of that is coming out of officialdom.
It's all coming out of, you know, the New York Times and the Washington Post and these guys.
And, you know, that's not to say that they can't have their opinions on such things.
But you have to understand, media works a very different way in somewhere like Russia than it does in midtown Manhattan.
For a major publication that is seen as all the news that's fit to print in Russia to be publishing things like that, that would almost have to get a tacit wink and a nod from the establishment to allow that to happen.
And a lot of them interpret what the media class and the academic class And the think tank class in the United States are saying is with a nudge and a wink from officialdom.
And that is simply not the case.
You can listen to all manner of podcasts and shows, as I do, by the way, from across the liberal elite sphere, because I love to know what they're saying.
It's usually opinion driven nonsense.
And you could be mistaken into thinking that this was the view Turns out some source was, you know, an intern who worked in a subsidiary department at State, you know, 1500 miles away somewhere, trying to trying to clout chase or get or get their opinion taken seriously.
Coming back to the to the to the point about about that.
Look, what?
This isn't new to them.
They don't have a feeling like we do, of necessarily war-weariness like we do.
But they also don't have democratic institutions like we do.
They don't have their voices represented at every level of government as we're supposed to, by the way.
They don't have their voices represented in their media class as we're supposed to, by the way.
And so for them, there's this giant chasm between the leadership right now, which I won't say they're not searching for a way out, but they're searching for a way out that saves them face and public will.
Which is really not on the side of continuing this conflict.
Check out thenationalpulse.com.
Raheem, thank you so much.
Great analysis.
I want to hear from you.
Freedom at charliekirk.com.
If this war is ongoing, do you support sending more money and arms to Ukraine?
