The Charlie Kirk Show - January 07, 2024


America First, or World War 3? with Vivek Ramaswamy


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

201.60493

Word count

3,266

Sentence count

273

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Vivek Ramaswamy joins the show to talk about his campaign and why he's running for President of the United States in 2020. He also talks about his views on foreign policy and how to deal with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's And the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:01.000 Vivek Ramaswamy joins the program.
00:00:03.000 Email us as always, freedom at CharlieKirk.com and subscribe to our podcast.
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00:00:15.000 Here we go.
00:00:16.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:18.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
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00:01:14.000 Joining us now is Vivek Ramaswamy running for President of the United States.
00:01:20.000 Vivek, welcome.
00:01:22.000 Foreign policy is in the news.
00:01:24.000 There are some not-so-covered angles of what's happening globally right now.
00:01:28.000 You've been mentioning them, including Venezuela, Cuba, China, and Azerbaijan.
00:01:35.000 Tell us about it.
00:01:36.000 Well, look, I mean, for all the people who are talking about Russia's good versus evil battle in Ukraine, invading regions of the Donbass, and I reject that characterization of good versus evil.
00:01:48.000 Just because Putin is bad doesn't mean Ukraine is good.
00:01:50.000 But one of the things that I've called out in the hypocrisy of the media and the political class chattering about this is their total silence on Azerbaijan's incursions into the Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Armenian Christians have lived for a long time, since 1994 has been internationally recognized as a boundary, driving them out.
00:02:09.000 Charlie, this isn't some time in the distant past.
00:02:11.000 This is last month, in the month of September, where you don't hear a peep about it.
00:02:16.000 And the reason I think is clear.
00:02:17.000 I mean, there are certain groups that are politically popular, certain ones that aren't.
00:02:20.000 And right now, Christians aren't a popular group.
00:02:22.000 So that's a region, certainly with the media.
00:02:25.000 It's not an area that they decide to pay attention to, even as they'll talk endlessly about Ukraine, which happens to be a nation that, who would have guessed, is also persecuting Christians.
00:02:34.000 And so I tend to focus on areas where others aren't focused.
00:02:38.000 I tend to hate saying things when others are already saying them.
00:02:41.000 Yes, I wrote Woke Inc. at a time where no one was talking about those issues.
00:02:44.000 Now every Republican candidate wants to have a pissing contest over who's more anti-woke, and that's fine.
00:02:49.000 I share my convictions, but I don't like to repeat what others are repeating.
00:02:54.000 When it comes to foreign policy, it's the same way for me is that let's talk about what nobody else is talking about.
00:03:00.000 Now, I also have different views on how to deal with brewing conflict in the Middle East, how to bring the Ukraine war to a close.
00:03:08.000 My view is there's no point in just saying what everybody else is saying.
00:03:10.000 Let's talk about actual dimensions that get us to truth.
00:03:13.000 So let's play Cut 8.
00:03:15.000 You made some news at the Republican Jewish Coalition.
00:03:17.000 Let's play Cut 8.
00:03:18.000 I would love nothing more than for the IDF to put the heads of the top 100 Hamas leaders on stakes and line them up on the Israel-Gaza border as a sign that October 7th, 2023 will never happen again. 0.74
00:03:32.000 And then to use all of those saved resources to build the border defenses of the future.
00:03:37.000 But that is Israel's decision to make, not ours.
00:03:40.000 That is what David Ben-Gurion would tell Israel to do.
00:03:43.000 That is what George Washington would tell the United States to do.
00:03:46.000 Elaborate more, Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:03:49.000 So I am all in for Israel pursuing an Israel-first agenda. 0.96
00:03:49.000 Yep. 0.96
00:03:53.000 And the U.S. job as an ally is to make sure that Israel has a diplomatic iron dome protecting them from the U.N. or anybody else, stopping them from doing what they need to do to defend their own country. 0.58
00:04:06.000 Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East.
00:04:09.000 It is also not our 51st state.
00:04:11.000 And my view is that it's the U.S. job to, yes, keep our pre-existing commitments.
00:04:16.000 I will always stand by our commitments, the $3 plus billion dollars per year in aid that we send to Israel.
00:04:21.000 But I do not want to get involved, the U.S. involved militarily in this war either.
00:04:26.000 My ultimatum to Iran would be, you stay out, we stay out. 1.00
00:04:29.000 The IDF can get its job done.
00:04:31.000 And yes, I'm rooting for Israel's success.
00:04:33.000 What Hamas did to Israel was subhuman.
00:04:36.000 It was medieval.
00:04:37.000 Israel is our friend and ally in the Middle East, and we support them as a friend and ally diplomatically and intelligence sharing and otherwise.
00:04:44.000 But I don't want to get us, the United States of America, if I'm the president, that's where my moral obligation is, into another prolonged no-win war in the Middle East. 0.64
00:04:53.000 And Charlie, what I see in the GOP today is it's Dick Cheney 2.0 all over again, trying to take this party over again.
00:05:00.000 And in many ways, it's Dick Cheney 2.0 and the Republican Party that's even worse than some of the Democrats.
00:05:05.000 So forget the partisan filters.
00:05:07.000 They took us, and it's people my age that went and died, thousands of them, in Iraq and Afghanistan, to what end?
00:05:14.000 It's the Taliban still in charge 20 years later, for God's sake, a hostile anti-American regime in Iraq.
00:05:20.000 $7 trillion of our $33 trillion national debt today to be borne by the next generation due to those two wars alone.
00:05:27.000 So no, that's not going to happen on my watch.
00:05:29.000 And I think that's the actual choice in this GOP primary.
00:05:33.000 Do you want to go the way of the past?
00:05:34.000 Do you want Dick Cheney 2.0 escalating in this case potentially to World War III because we got Russia-Ukraine going on at the same time while Russia and China are in military alliance with one another?
00:05:43.000 Do you want World War III?
00:05:44.000 Do you want to be taken there by people like the Nikki Haleys of the world who will make money doing it?
00:05:48.000 The bombs explode, their bank account grows.
00:05:51.000 Do you want to go that direction of the past?
00:05:53.000 Or do you want to go the direction of the future, which I think is America first that is far bigger than just the Republican Party and excludes much of the Republican Party in it too, which is why I could care less for the Republican versus Democrat debate on this issue.
00:06:07.000 Yeah, the consensus in the Republican primary absent Donald Trump is invade the world, invite the world.
00:06:14.000 And Nikki Haley is clamoring to get us into another war with Iran. 1.00
00:06:18.000 You have been morally clear with the Russian-Ukrainian war.
00:06:23.000 And so, Vivek, you've been more and more vindicated with that as we continue onward.
00:06:28.000 It is a tragedy and honestly a slaughter of the Ukrainian people. 1.00
00:06:33.000 I don't know if you saw the recent Time magazine piece, Vivek.
00:06:37.000 It's sad and depressing and really heavy, what is happening in Ukraine, all preventable. 0.66
00:06:45.000 Talk about the contrast between your vision for America First foreign policy and the other people running for the presidency, absent Donald Trump, that want more money, more arms.
00:06:55.000 In fact, even Mike Pence, before he dropped out, he visited Ukraine, a meat grinder basically for nothing. 1.00
00:07:02.000 Yeah, so I think there's two America First candidates in this race, and we can talk about distinctions there.
00:07:07.000 But the real deep divide in the GOP is Donald Trump and myself are America First candidates.
00:07:12.000 Everybody else is a neocon looking for Dick Cheney 2.0.
00:07:16.000 And it's a worldview that's different.
00:07:18.000 So I'm not just going to criticize it.
00:07:20.000 One worldview is that it's America's job to be a hegemon, and part of being a hegemon means that you have to make moral judgments elsewhere and use the U.S. military to enforce those moral judgments.
00:07:31.000 That's a neutral description.
00:07:32.000 That's what they would say.
00:07:33.000 That's a view I disagree with.
00:07:36.000 My view is different.
00:07:37.000 I'll give you an analogy.
00:07:38.000 I have two sons.
00:07:38.000 I'm a father.
00:07:39.000 My moral obligation as a father is to my family, period.
00:07:43.000 My moral obligation as the next president is exclusively to the citizens of this country.
00:07:49.000 Period.
00:07:50.000 That's it.
00:07:51.000 Not some other country, not some other nation, not some nebulous global citizenship.
00:07:54.000 It is to this nation, the citizens here in our homeland, the United States of America.
00:07:59.000 And so, my view is I look at every conflict differently through that prism.
00:08:03.000 The Ukraine conflict doesn't advance that interest.
00:08:05.000 It's not advancing any U.S. interest.
00:08:07.000 It's driving Russia further into China's arms. 0.93
00:08:10.000 I don't think we should be sending more money to Ukraine.
00:08:12.000 I think it is a kleptocracy.
00:08:14.000 The irony now is it's not even helping the objectives that we said it was helping.
00:08:17.000 Some mid-level Ukrainian bureaucrats able to buy a bigger house because we sent money over there.
00:08:22.000 That's what we're now seeing: it's a total kleptocracy.
00:08:24.000 We knew it beforehand.
00:08:25.000 Now we know it on our own dime.
00:08:27.000 And then the irony is, even for the good versus evil crowd in Ukraine, and I think that's different in the Hamas versus Israel conflict.
00:08:33.000 I think there is a right side and a wrong side of this.
00:08:36.000 On the Ukraine version of this, just because Putin is bad doesn't mean that Ukraine is good, some paragon of democracy.
00:08:42.000 It's not.
00:08:43.000 It's a country that's banned 11 opposition parties.
00:08:46.000 The leader celebrates Nazis in his own ranks, goes after Christians in his own country, says he won't hold elections this year unless the U.S. forks over more money, consolidates all media into one state TV media arm.
00:08:58.000 Anybody ever asked the question of why Russia had such an easy time in eastern Ukraine, but not other parts of Ukraine?
00:09:03.000 Because the parts of eastern Ukraine that they occupy in the Donbas are Russian-speaking regions that haven't been represented in the Ukrainian parliament for nearly 10 years, so there was no counter-resistance.
00:09:15.000 So these are hard facts in the Russia-Ukraine case that make that one easy.
00:09:19.000 In the Israel case, what Hamas did to Israel absolutely, I do think, is an example of good versus evil, evil versus good. 0.80
00:09:25.000 Hamas's attack on Israel was subhuman.
00:09:29.000 And I think we should diplomatically, absolutely stand with Israel in intelligence sharing and keep our prior pre-existing commitments.
00:09:36.000 But through an America-first lens, I think it's wrong.
00:09:40.000 If you're going to call that an attack on America, as other politicians have, if you don't know what an attack on America is, you have no business being in the leadership of America because when those kind of people lead America, that's exactly when you are going to get an attack on America.
00:09:54.000 We need to use that as a reminder to protect our own homeland because if that can happen in Israel, that can happen here in the United States too, especially when you have leaders who are asleep at the switch that are in charge focused on other conflicts except for our own homeland here at home.
00:10:08.000 So that's the way I look at it.
00:10:10.000 It is a deep divide in the GOP today.
00:10:12.000 It is the defining divide.
00:10:14.000 Everything else, you know, everybody agrees that guys shouldn't be competing with women in sports competitions. 1.00
00:10:18.000 Great.
00:10:19.000 Got that.
00:10:20.000 I'm on board for that too.
00:10:21.000 I was early in talking about those issues.
00:10:23.000 Fine.
00:10:23.000 We got that.
00:10:24.000 Let's talk about where we actually disagree.
00:10:26.000 And I do think it's on the vision for America's role and the use of American resources and lives in the world.
00:10:32.000 And I think we have a deep divide and we need to sort it out.
00:10:34.000 Okay, Vivek, I got to play a piece of tape.
00:10:37.000 One of my favorite guys out there, Patrick Bett David, is going viral.
00:10:42.000 He's trying to get down to the heart of the matter here.
00:10:45.000 Play Cut 46.
00:10:46.000 I'm sure your marketing team points out how they're trying to troll you in the marketplace.
00:10:51.000 Okay, I'm sure they're doing that.
00:10:52.000 Can you bring this one clip?
00:10:54.000 I know you were on, what do you call it?
00:10:56.000 On what was it?
00:10:58.000 Bill Maher.
00:10:59.000 And Bill Maher talked about the boots.
00:11:00.000 I've seen you walk with these boots.
00:11:02.000 Go ahead and play this clip.
00:11:03.000 This on TikTok went viral.
00:11:05.000 It doesn't have a million views.
00:11:06.000 It doesn't have, you know, 10 million views.
00:11:09.000 This thing's got 1.2 million likes.
00:11:11.000 And some people are wondering, how do they?
00:11:14.000 I haven't seen that.
00:11:14.000 I don't even understand.
00:11:16.000 They've not shown this to you.
00:11:17.000 Okay, what they're trying to say with this is that in your boots, you have heels.
00:11:22.000 No, no, no, no.
00:11:24.000 Those are just standard, off-the-rack.
00:11:26.000 Lucchese.
00:11:27.000 How tall are you?
00:11:28.000 How tall are you, Governor?
00:11:29.000 How tall?
00:11:30.000 5'11?
00:11:30.000 Okay.
00:11:32.000 Why don't you wear tennis shoes and dress shoes?
00:11:35.000 That is Ron DeSantis and Patrick Bett David.
00:11:38.000 Vivek, have you noticed something recently?
00:11:40.000 Well, I mean, I wasn't going to bring this up myself, but I did get a kick out of it when I saw that video.
00:11:47.000 I did notice that Ron had certainly different shoes when I saw him at the debate stage than I'm accustomed to seeing normally.
00:11:55.000 So I will just say it stood out to me, but I chose not to comment on it.
00:11:58.000 It's not typically my style.
00:12:00.000 Focus on the issues is where I go.
00:12:02.000 But yeah, I think that I thought he grew a little bit since I had seen him a couple of years ago.
00:12:08.000 But I leave each person to make their own sartorial choices to themselves.
00:12:12.000 I have a lot of criticisms and differences on policy, but that wasn't one of the places where I was going to hit him.
00:12:16.000 A late bloomer.
00:12:18.000 So, Vivek, talk about the race.
00:12:20.000 How are you feeling?
00:12:21.000 The field is narrowing.
00:12:23.000 You know, the message, you have been very precise on America First type mantras and policies.
00:12:30.000 There's a debate coming up with NBC, and I know you're going to handle it, but it drives me nuts that the RNC is doing something with NBC.
00:12:37.000 Why wouldn't they have a debate, I don't know, with Steve Banner or Tucker Carlson or Megan Kelly?
00:12:41.000 So I want you to comment on that, Vivek, because you'll be fine.
00:12:44.000 You'll joust great with Kristen Welker and Lester Holt and Hugh Hewitt, who's a great friend.
00:12:48.000 I'm glad he's involved, so I exempt Hugh from that.
00:12:50.000 Hugh's amazing.
00:12:51.000 But the NBC is a complete waste of time.
00:12:53.000 Vivek, how's the race going?
00:12:54.000 And your thoughts on the enemy, NBC News, moderating a debate?
00:12:58.000 I think it's good.
00:12:58.000 It's thinning out.
00:13:00.000 I think it's a good thing that Mike Pence is out.
00:13:02.000 Frankly, if you want the old version of the neocon worldview, there's plenty of choices in this race.
00:13:08.000 Pence was there.
00:13:08.000 Scott, Christie, Haley could go straight down the list.
00:13:12.000 I don't think people need four or five or six of those choices.
00:13:15.000 One is plenty.
00:13:16.000 One of those choices in the race is probably plenty of representative.
00:13:19.000 And so I think that Mike Pence did a good thing for the country by getting the heck out of the race.
00:13:23.000 And I think that others could probably do well to follow his lead.
00:13:27.000 My view on the debate is: look, they've been pretty lame so far in the way they've been done.
00:13:32.000 And I hope a thinned field allows me to really ask the questions that nobody else is asking.
00:13:38.000 If the moderators aren't going to do it, I'm going to get in there and do the job myself of smoking out where this deep ideological divide is on whether we want to send our sons and daughters to fight other people's wars and rack up national debt doing it or not.
00:13:50.000 And I hope it's not some sort of virtue signaling fest where we're all just competing on who's actually saying the easy thing we all agree on in a more indignant way.
00:13:59.000 No, I think that the other candidates deserve to be held account to account.
00:14:02.000 I want to talk about corruption in politics.
00:14:05.000 That's something that we don't talk about enough.
00:14:07.000 And the Republican Party, I think, frankly is not that much better than the opposition here.
00:14:12.000 I think the Republican Party has gotten in the way of actually having open debates.
00:14:17.000 You know, when I was called to spar with Chris Christie, I said I would do it.
00:14:20.000 If I want to spar with RFK or a different candidate, I'm happy to do it.
00:14:24.000 But the Republican Party's gotten in the way in saying that the rules don't really apply to allowing for inter-candidate debates.
00:14:30.000 I just don't think that's productive.
00:14:32.000 And frankly, I'm going to check out how this one goes, and then I'll make decisions about future debates after that, whether it's useful.
00:14:37.000 I think Tucker would be an awesome moderator.
00:14:40.000 I think it's a great idea.
00:14:41.000 I mean, again, the RNC is a good idea.
00:14:42.000 I think you and Tucker.
00:14:42.000 Well, you and Tucker should do one of the debates.
00:14:44.000 Actually, why not?
00:14:45.000 You're very kind, buddy.
00:14:46.000 Two generations.
00:14:46.000 Yeah, what I told you.
00:14:48.000 Sounds good to me.
00:14:48.000 What I told the RNC is: listen, guys, instead of this NBC thing, okay, turning point action, they don't want to work with us, obviously, but they can't stand us.
00:14:55.000 But I said, listen, you know, we come in, we have Bannon or Bongino, Walz.
00:15:00.000 Yeah, it'd be good too.
00:15:01.000 You know, whatever.
00:15:02.000 You could have different flavors.
00:15:03.000 You could have Shapiro, who's great, but more neoconservative than I am on foreign policy stuff.
00:15:08.000 But that's fine.
00:15:09.000 But why don't you have, I just, I don't understand.
00:15:11.000 You have a Republican primary.
00:15:14.000 Why don't you have leading media figures, Glenn Beck, any one of these people, right?
00:15:19.000 And you have a series of these forums or debates.
00:15:22.000 I don't care what Lester Holt has to say.
00:15:25.000 Final thoughts, Vivek.
00:15:27.000 So, look, I actually think that you raise a pretty interesting point where we should have multiple perspectives across the conservative movement challenging candidates.
00:15:35.000 That's the point.
00:15:36.000 And I do think that the real issue that I have with it narrowly is the last debate from the Reagan Library, the way that was hosted versus the next one.
00:15:45.000 The candidates aren't really being challenged on the one wedge that matters, which comes down to foreign policy.
00:15:50.000 Do you believe in these foreign wars and World War III or not?
00:15:53.000 So you basically have a pro-war establishment.
00:15:55.000 Of course.
00:15:56.000 Even the conservatives doing this and it's wrong.
00:15:57.000 Neoliberals from the Baker are doing great.
00:15:59.000 Thanks so much for listening.
00:16:00.000 Everybody, email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
00:16:03.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
00:16:07.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.