The Charlie Kirk Show - Antifa's War on Cops and the Brazilification of America with Lee Fang

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 Today at the Charlie Kirk Show, Lee Fong joins us to talk about Radicals vs. Atlanta, the global left's violent rage over a police academy, that and so much more.

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00:00:23.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:24.000 Here we go.

00:00:25.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:27.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

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00:01:07.000 Welcome back, everybody.

00:01:08.000 Email us freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

00:01:11.000 Really excited for our guests this hour.

00:01:13.000 Lee Fong joins us, who has been doing some great reporting and honestly has a super interesting story.

00:01:19.000 I'm going to get into his background later, though.

00:01:21.000 I want to first lead with his excellent story here that is Radicals versus Atlanta, the global left's violent rage over a police academy meant to prevent killings.

00:01:32.000 You guys can find it at leifong.com.

00:01:35.000 That's L-E-E-F-A-N-G.com. 0.99

00:01:38.000 Lee, excellent piece.

00:01:40.000 I want to explore this with you.

00:01:41.000 Welcome to the program.

00:01:42.000 Tell us about it.

00:01:44.000 Hey, Charlie, thanks for having me.

00:01:46.000 You know, this piece looks at a couple of different issues.

00:01:49.000 You know, in America, we have a crisis of police training.

00:01:53.000 Police are not very, they don't have a very large training requirement, especially compared to other wealthy industrialized countries.

00:02:02.000 You know, it takes a minimum of about three months to four months of training to become a police officer in many jurisdictions in the United States.

00:02:10.000 Compare that to Finland, Germany, Denmark, and other countries where it takes at least three years.

00:02:16.000 Stressed out cops, cops without proper training are more likely to injure civilians and themselves, more likely to escalate violent situations.

00:02:26.000 There's just so much social science, criminology, and other research that shows better trained police are better at preventing crime, are better at de-escalating and dealing with mental health emergencies, better at policing in general.

00:02:41.000 Yet, despite this kind of clear fact of the matter, the new cause du jour on the far left, the radical left, is going after police training.

00:02:52.000 There's a view that any type of training, any type of investment in preparing police is some kind of violation of defund the police, abolish the police principles, that it's somehow dangerous for society.

00:03:06.000 And we're seeing protests all over the country of various police training centers.

00:03:10.000 But the biggest kind of rallying cry is a proposed police training center in Atlanta that will be primarily for Atlanta police, but for Georgia police overall.

00:03:21.000 Police in Atlanta are, you know, they're forced to train in a very decrepit building where the roof is literally caving in.

00:03:29.000 Firefighters will also use the same training center.

00:03:32.000 They're using an ancient abandoned elementary school.

00:03:35.000 And this is something that the unions, that community leaders, that the entire city council, that community leaders have demanded for decades, and now it's finally happening.

00:03:45.000 And the global left, I mean, people are flying in from France, from the UK, from Canada to protest this center, to engage in violence, to attempt to burn it down and attack it.

00:03:55.000 It's kind of the rallying cry for protesters around the world in San Francisco and Brooklyn and Paris and other places.

00:04:00.000 You see, stop cop city.

00:04:02.000 They've kind of branded it as a supposed cop city and made it their rallying cry.

00:04:09.000 And it's kind of led to these escalating violent tensions in Atlanta that is very unusual for the city.

00:04:16.000 This is a city with a long history of nonviolent civil rights protests, very kind of gradual, moderate reform.

00:04:23.000 It's not known as a hotbed of radicalism, yet anti-faw and anarchists from around the country are swarming to the city and encamping and attacking construction workers and police officers as they attempt to build this training center.

00:04:36.000 So I have several thoughts.

00:04:38.000 I think you've pinpointed the first perfectly, which is for years, as I do these campus events, I'm told by anti-police BLM activists, the key is training, that we need to train police better, that we need to make sure they're better equipped, that they're not overwhelmed, that when they get in a situation, for example, they don't mistake their taser for their firearm, right?

00:05:00.000 Which is a situation we saw recently that ended tragically.

00:05:04.000 Now, that seems to just be an excuse, right?

00:05:08.000 That doesn't seem to be legitimate.

00:05:09.000 Maybe by some people it is.

00:05:10.000 But this activist base is going after the actual training centers themselves.

00:05:15.000 Now, our audience probably remembers, and Lee, I want you to correct me if I'm in error here, but this felt like a coordinated attack.

00:05:23.000 It felt like as if there was communication channels, time, date, place, and manner to go after this construction site of well over, it seemed to be between 50 to 100 people is my estimation.

00:05:34.000 Walk us through that day that went viral, where these Antifa folks gathered with, I guess you could say, weapons, or I don't know if it was Molotov cocktails.

00:05:43.000 Tell us the details of when they decided to actually try to damage the training center in Georgia.

00:05:52.000 Well, you know, to your first point, there's been a great division within the criminal justice reform movement.

00:05:58.000 There are many well-meaning people, well-intentioned people who see police abuses, who see issues between police and civilians as an opportunity for reform, for greater investments in body cameras and civilian oversight and better training and working closer with police and violence interrupters to deal with all the kind of issues that we have in this country when it comes to crime and policing.

00:06:22.000 But there's another side that's overwhelmingly kind of dominated by upper class activists, by foundation-funded activists, by kind of highly educated left-wing anarchists, for lack of a better term, who see this opportunity, see these kind of moments of police misconduct or viral moments you see in the news around policing as an opportunity to burn it all down, to kind of confront police, to engage in rioting and violence.

00:06:48.000 And that's what we've really seen with this public safety training center in Atlanta.

00:06:53.000 Back in December, you had a number of activists, almost all of whom who were at least arrested, were from out of state.

00:07:02.000 And once you look at the arrest records, in one of these confrontations where protesters brought weapons, knives, small-top cocktails, even firearms, in one case, 27, I believe, were arrested.

00:07:14.000 Only two were from Georgia.

00:07:16.000 In another case, where there's another violent confrontation, every single individual was from outside of the state.

00:07:24.000 And there's sometimes kind of a cliche that any of these violent protests are outside agitators.

00:07:31.000 And I think you should always view some of these claims with skepticism.

00:07:34.000 But the proof is right there.

00:07:36.000 I mean, these violent protesters who are bringing weapons into Georgia and at this training center, the arrest records show that they don't live from the state.

00:07:45.000 I mean, it's become a global rallying cry.

00:07:47.000 So people are flying in.

00:07:49.000 And you listen to the last city council member hearing on this training center from earlier this summer, and people at least identify themselves.

00:07:56.000 They said, look, I flew in from Los Angeles.

00:07:59.000 I flew in from New York, and I'm just so opposed to police training that I use my own resources and my time to come protest.

00:08:06.000 It's become very fashionable.

00:08:08.000 It's kind of the bandwagon effect.

00:08:09.000 It's the mimetic power of the internet.

00:08:12.000 When people see these kind of very emotional causes, they get so invested.

00:08:16.000 And if they have the time and resources, they will literally fly to a place like Atlanta and engage in these protests.

00:08:22.000 And it hasn't been a meaningful back and forth.

00:08:24.000 You know, there are, you know, there are claims that this is a militarization center, that this is going to be used for training alongside Israeli special forces to terrorize minorities.

00:08:35.000 There's no proof of that.

00:08:37.000 But you can understand if you did believe that, that might be kind of a galvanizing reason to go and protest.

00:08:43.000 But there's just been such a big separation between those who are very eager to jump on a bandwagon and those who are actually dealing with the facts of the matter for this training center.

00:08:52.000 How much damage did they do to the construction site?

00:08:55.000 And do you think this training center will actually get to completion?

00:08:59.000 Well, they've destroyed multiple bulldozers and construction materials.

00:09:03.000 They went to the Alabama home of one of the construction executives and attempted to intimidate him.

00:09:09.000 They just destroyed and burned several police motorcycles at the center.

00:09:13.000 They've attacked ATT workers who are setting up some of the telecom equipment.

00:09:17.000 I don't think there's been a full kind of exhaustive list of all the damage they've done, but they keep attacking the workers, the police, and destroying all the equipment as they come and develop the center.

00:09:26.000 And will it happen?

00:09:27.000 I don't know.

00:09:28.000 This is now, there's a fight.

00:09:29.000 There's lots of kind of far-left money flowing into the city to put the issue to referendum.

00:09:34.000 So there will be a yes or no vote in Atlanta that has not qualified yet.

00:09:39.000 They're still gathering signatures, but it's still CBD.

00:09:42.000 You know, there's a lot of money coming in, and this is an off-year election.

00:09:46.000 So, you know, for an off-year election, if it qualifies for this November, it's really, you know, for those types of elections, the most eager and enthusiastic voters can have a lot of sway.

00:09:56.000 I just want everyone to just take a second here.

00:10:01.000 Is this in Fulton County, Lee?

00:10:03.000 Is that correct?

00:10:04.000 I think it is.

00:10:05.000 Yeah, I believe so.

00:10:06.000 So you have the Fulton County DA who's about to indict a former president because of a phone call.

00:10:13.000 And then you simultaneously have a taxpayer-funded police training center of people flying in from all over the world attacking it.

00:10:21.000 Something here doesn't fit.

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00:11:29.000 So, Lee, you mentioned that this is funded by nonprofits or other groups.

00:11:36.000 Can you add some detail to that, please?

00:11:39.000 Sure.

00:11:39.000 You know, I've been doing a little bit of writing on this one kind of billionaire-backed foundation called Solidaire.

00:11:47.000 They're funded by many different kinds of wealthy heirs and tech executives.

00:11:51.000 Even Mark Zuckerberg, you know, co-founder of Facebook, he's given quite a bit of money to Solidaire.

00:11:57.000 This is a group that's a main funder of several of the activist groups in the kind of Atlanta area that are engaged in this public safety training center, including one of the groups, this movement builders, that's kind of spearheading the push to stop this project.

00:12:15.000 This foundation is one of several different kinds of Silicon Valley-based groups, backgroups.

00:12:23.000 Another one is the Schmidt Foundation, the former CEO of Google.

00:12:27.000 They've provided a significant amount of money.

00:12:30.000 And there's an heir to a billionaire fortune, the Cox Media Enterprises, James Fergie Chambers.

00:12:36.000 He's promised $600,000 to this effort to stop the police training center.

00:12:41.000 So it's a lot of billionaire money, a lot of tech money, a lot of California money flowing to this effort.

00:12:46.000 Well, so Lee, just for the kind of everyday listener in our audience, help them understand why a plutocrat oligarch like Mark Zuckerberg, who factually does spend $3 to $4 million on private security a year.

00:13:01.000 That's a fact.

00:13:02.000 Okay.

00:13:02.000 Every time he goes, it's more than that.

00:13:04.000 Oh, he's like $10 million.

00:13:05.000 Okay.

00:13:05.000 Every time he goes jogging in Rome or London, he has buff veterans jogging alongside of him.

00:13:13.000 So what is the motivation, if you were to speculate a little bit, Lee, why someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who does not have a moment without armed security to fund the destruction and or the challenging, let's just be fair, challenging of a police training center?

00:13:31.000 I think there are a couple of explanations.

00:13:33.000 One is that some billionaires, I've done some reporting on this, like Piero Midiart, founder of eBay, he's a big funder of abolish and defund the police groups.

00:13:43.000 He is also an investor in private security startups, including a company that's like an Uber.

00:13:48.000 Now that's private security.

00:13:50.000 That is more cynical than I expected, Lee.

00:13:52.000 I thought it would be an ideological answer.

00:13:53.000 That's just awful.

00:13:55.000 Well, I think it's mostly ideology.

00:13:58.000 I'm going to square that away.

00:14:00.000 That's one conflict of interest that is interesting.

00:14:02.000 And I think there are a few others in that regard.

00:14:04.000 But overall, why do these billionaires in California and New York fund these abolish the police, defund the police efforts?

00:14:11.000 It's a lot about social signaling.

00:14:13.000 It's about employee relations.

00:14:16.000 Some of these workplaces in Silicon Valley are very left-wing.

00:14:21.000 It's about kind of showing, for lack of a better term, virtue signaling and showing that they have all the right bona fides in terms of being in the good graces of progressives.

00:14:32.000 But it's deeply ironic and cynical in another way, because look at Mark Zuckerberg's foundation.

00:14:38.000 He's providing money to the group that sponsors defundpolice.org.

00:14:42.000 He's providing money to Solidaire, which is providing training for activists to fight to abolish police and fight this police training center.

00:14:50.000 But look at another donation from the Zuckerberg Foundation.

00:14:54.000 He's providing money to the Redwood City Police Foundation.

00:14:59.000 So he's defunding police all over the country, except for the police department near the Facebook headquarters.

00:15:05.000 So it's for me, but not for thee, that type of thing.

00:15:08.000 Yeah, and I just, that's an unbelievably accurate yet simple talking point I hear so often.

00:15:14.000 And it's also, I think, unbelievably evil to say that I'm okay with protecting myself, but I have to be lectured by Zuckerberg types about marginalized communities where violent crime is going up.

00:15:27.000 I mean, it's going up in D.C., it's going up in most urban areas, at least over the last couple of years.

00:15:32.000 And I mean, I'm just visiting this website, Lee, right now.

00:15:34.000 By the way, I just have to comment.

00:15:36.000 There are so many left-wing 501c3, 501c4 social welfare NGO groups.

00:15:41.000 I'd lose track of them.

00:15:42.000 It's hundreds of different URLs.

00:15:46.000 So, defundthepolice.org, a one-stop shop for organizers and advocates looking for tools, resources, and trainings to divest from policing and to build safer communities.

00:15:58.000 And it has legislative resources, budgeting tools, organizing resources, trainings, and events.

00:16:03.000 And so, you're telling me Mark Zuckerberg is funding this organization.

00:16:07.000 Yeah, he funds the sponsor of that organization.

00:16:09.000 And look, even though this is draped in egalitarian language about helping all of society, the actual net effect is the Brazilification of America, more inequality, that the rich will have private security, gated communities, the poor won't have anyone to call when there's crime.

00:16:24.000 Yeah, and if you want to be extremely cynical, then politically you're able to control the masses permanently because the middle class is in disarray and criminality is widespread. 0.58

00:16:34.000 That's only if you're super cynical, which I reject wholeheartedly.

00:16:40.000 Do you know that the average American spends about 20 years in retirement?

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00:16:46.000 And we want to make sure you enjoy every moment of it and don't outlive your money.

00:16:50.000 Retirement is about more than just investments.

00:16:53.000 It's about living your best life.

00:16:54.000 Let's not retire.

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00:17:21.000 So, Lee, I want to ask just about your background to further introduce you to our audience.

00:17:26.000 I find it super interesting.

00:17:27.000 First of all, you're reporting this first class and you're intellectually honest, which is very hard to find.

00:17:32.000 But you're liberal by background.

00:17:34.000 You ran the Maryland College Democrats.

00:17:36.000 Tell us your story.

00:17:37.000 I think it's fascinating.

00:17:39.000 Sure.

00:17:39.000 You know, I'm a millennial growing up in the DC area.

00:17:43.000 I grew up kind of east in the suburbs east of D.C.

00:17:47.000 And I was very motivated and shaped and influenced by the war on terror, the war in Iraq.

00:17:53.000 You know, I watched as smoke billowed out of the Pentagon just to kind of see the rush to war, the rush to kind of separate everyone between the Manichaean worldview between good and evil.

00:18:07.000 I was kind of alarmed by efforts to privatize Social Security, and I saw tax cuts that seemed very unfair, that seemed weighted towards the upper income side of the equation.

00:18:18.000 And it kind of galvanized me.

00:18:19.000 You know, we live in a winner-take-all system.

00:18:21.000 So we basically have a two-party system.

00:18:23.000 And it pushed me towards the Democrats early in life.

00:18:26.000 Did a lot of activism in college on the war, joined college Democrats and like engaged in a lot of primary stuff, getting out, you know, who I perceived as conservative, pro-corporate Democrats out of the party, engaging in a lot of those primary fights.

00:18:42.000 Joined a think tank tied to Obama and the Obama White House, the Center for American Progress, did a lot of investigative reporting and journalism that was, you know, I'm proud of most of that work, but having a little bit of a partisan edge, kind of supporting certainly more Democrats.

00:19:01.000 I became a little bit jaded, though.

00:19:02.000 You know, I saw a lot of the corrupt deals in the Obama administration that were very pro-corporate, the kind of dirty deal with Google to like, you know, refuse to enforce any of the antitrust or privacy regulations on this company because it became so close to the Obama administration.

00:19:18.000 You know, the refusal to get out of Afghanistan, you know, instead Obama surged the number of troops there and breaking his promise.

00:19:26.000 You know, just kind of as I grew older, maturing and seeing the realities of politics, you know, you can't be wedded to one partisan side or even one ideology.

00:19:35.000 People are tribalistic.

00:19:36.000 You know, if you want to be an independent journalist, if you want to understand the way the world works, you can't be connected to any team.

00:19:43.000 You know, you got to view everyone with skepticism.

00:19:46.000 You got to view everyone with some degree of scrutiny.

00:19:50.000 And as I've moved a little bit to the more progressive left, you know, I worked for a number of different magazines.

00:19:57.000 I ran my own anti-corruption website.

00:19:59.000 Eventually, I worked at The Intercept, this billionaire-funded left-wing investigative site.

00:20:05.000 You know, I did a lot of journalism there that I'm incredibly proud of.

00:20:09.000 And there are still some good reporters there.

00:20:11.000 But, you know, it has some of the different trappings of ideology and partisanship that when it comes to just seeing the world as it is on policing, on identity, and being bare-minded around these issues, it's impossible for the kind of radical left.

00:20:28.000 They see these issues in their own kind of manichean, good versus evil, just as the Bush administration saw the war on terror in a similar way.

00:20:36.000 You're either with us or you're against us.

00:20:38.000 And if you do anything that's perceived as against us, we're going to destroy you personally.

00:20:43.000 I come from a more old school view on identity.

00:20:46.000 I want to view people on their, judge people on their character, on what's in their heart, not their skin color or their race.

00:20:54.000 And that's not popular anymore on the radical left.

00:20:57.000 In fact, if you view the world through that lens, you're seen as a racist.

00:21:00.000 You're seen as a bigot.

00:21:02.000 And, you know, that's a fundamental disconnect I have with sites like The Intercept and other kind of progressive movements and protests and media kind of academic.

00:21:13.000 There's a whole kind of sphere of the radical left where identity politics reigns supreme over every other issue.

00:21:20.000 And it's made me uncomfortable.

00:21:22.000 How have your relationships been since you've, let's just say, dissented from the party line as you say, hey, maybe it's not a good thing that we riot or maybe we shouldn't have black-only dormitories? 0.91

00:21:37.000 I don't know.

00:21:37.000 How have your relationships and friendships been just on a personal level?

00:21:40.000 I'm curious.

00:21:41.000 That's a good question.

00:21:43.000 It's certainly harmed several personal and professional relationships.

00:21:47.000 That being said, it's also opened the door to exponentially more relationships.

00:21:52.000 When you tie yourself too deeply to an extremist ideology, which really at the end of the day, it is, even though it's the dominant ideology, this kind of far left identity politics is dominant in certain spheres of the media and academia, regular people are not down for it.

00:22:08.000 People who work nine to five regular jobs, whether that's in tech or in the service sector, if they're driving a bus or driving Uber or working in a hospital, they don't share these views around violence.

00:22:23.000 They don't cheer riots.

00:22:25.000 They don't say, hey, we've got to segregate people by their skin color and put them in different HR trainings and say you're inherently an oppressor or inherently a victim based on the pigment of your skin.

00:22:34.000 That's actually not normal.

00:22:36.000 Once you reject that ideology, you realize that, look, you can actually have more common cause with ordinary Americans.

00:22:43.000 Yes, it will harm some of your relationships in the elite with these billionaire foundations, with a lot of journalists and activists.

00:22:52.000 But look, those people don't speak for most Americans.

00:22:55.000 So it certainly has kind of disconnecting from that world has harmed a few relationships, but it's also opened me to many new relationships.

00:23:03.000 I think that's beautiful the way you put that.

00:23:06.000 And the divide in America is both ideological and class.

00:23:10.000 And so it tends to be that the wealthiest of the wealthy have these they're subsidizing, but also they might not believe it, but that's why I want to ask you some of this stuff.

00:23:22.000 I mean, I'm looking at Pierre Omadar's example, right?

00:23:25.000 French-born Iranian-American billionaire, technology entrepreneur, helped start, you know, obviously he started eBay and some people call him the next George Soros and Sergey Brin or Larry Page and Lorene Powell Jobs and Mackenzie Bezos.

00:23:39.000 There's a community of plutocrats that are wealthier than anything that we could comprehend, right?

00:23:44.000 Multiples of multiples wealthier than the ordinary person.

00:23:47.000 Yet they are the driving force.

00:23:49.000 And Lee, what I find fascinating about what we are living through is we think of, let's just say, radical revolutions usually as being bottom-up, as being the workers revolting against the capital class, right?

00:24:02.000 This is different.

00:24:03.000 This feels like a top-down revolution that is driven by Aspen and Sun Valley and Martha's Vineyard and Kenny Bunkport.

00:24:10.000 Help me make sense of that.

00:24:12.000 Well, I mean, I would disagree just slightly about the nature of revolutions.

00:24:16.000 We've seen all throughout history.

00:24:18.000 Radical movements are often elites galvanizing the working class for their own interests.

00:24:24.000 You know, the communists were elites, you know, who galvanized the working class.

00:24:28.000 Fascists were elites who galvanized the working class.

00:24:31.000 And we see that kind of similar dynamic happening in America, where we have a very elite class of people at major corporations who have inherited incredible amounts of wealth who are hoping to galvanize the working class for their own pet ideology.

00:24:44.000 And in many cases, this is essentially class war, but not in the sense, not in the kind of like standard left-wing way of viewing the world.

00:24:54.000 In many cases, it's creating an ideology, a value system that gives the perception of doing good for society, but really entrenches a very rigid class system.

00:25:07.000 And we see that certainly with public safety issues, where, as we just discussed, the only people who benefit from a completely divided system where only the people with private security and gated communities can live safely are the very, very wealthy.

00:25:24.000 And the people who are suffering from these policies are the working class, the middle class, who can't afford this type of security, who can't just flee their community because they're grounded in something real.

00:25:34.000 They work at the storefront.

00:25:35.000 They work at a place where they can't just go on their laptop and hide in their house all day.

00:25:39.000 If you have to commute to work, if you actually have to go into the streets, you aren't afforded the luxury of an abolish the police ideology.

00:25:47.000 Yet we see where does the money come from from this movement?

00:25:50.000 It comes from the very upper echelons of society.

00:25:53.000 I have no idea how you're going to answer this question, but I'm genuinely curious.

00:25:56.000 As a free thinker and someone that probably hears one side is extreme, other side is extreme.

00:26:02.000 What do you think currently in today is a greater threat to American liberty, like the MAGA base, or let's just say the prevailing dogma of the American Democrat Party?

00:26:15.000 That's a really hard question to respond to because it's, I think, just this general dynamic where we have these two warring tribes that can't see each other and understand their commonality.

00:26:27.000 I think essentially, if you just wipe away the labels, the social media hate, people basically want the same thing.

00:26:36.000 They want good jobs.

00:26:37.000 They want good housing.

00:26:38.000 They want a good education.

00:26:40.000 They want to retire with dignity.

00:26:41.000 They want to live in safe communities and breathe in clean air and drink clean water.

00:26:48.000 These aren't radical ideas.

00:26:49.000 We might have different ideas of paths to get there, but there's not that much that separates us in terms of what we want at the end of the day.

00:26:58.000 And I think it's dangerous that the prevailing norm now in the Democratic Party is valorizing everything the FBI does and cracking down on having the government crack down on public debate and speech.

00:27:12.000 I think that's dangerous.

00:27:13.000 And I think we disagree here.

00:27:15.000 I think it's also dangerous that we're such a weaponized country that everyone's getting guns and arming themselves for some potential conflict down the road.

00:27:22.000 I think that's creepy too.

00:27:24.000 I could see a very negative consequence of that as well.

00:27:27.000 And I think we all just need to kind of tone down the temperature and understand and respect each other.

00:27:34.000 So, Lee, the issue of war, just riff a little bit.

00:27:38.000 There's mass kind of political confusion.

00:27:41.000 Some people on the right, I mean, the majority of the people on the right are against what's happening in Ukraine, but prior it was the other way around.

00:27:47.000 Republicans were the biggest neocons and cheerleaders.

00:27:51.000 Just add your thoughts or some clarity to, are we seeing a realignment when it comes to foreign policy?

00:27:58.000 We are seeing a realignment.

00:27:59.000 Look at some of the latest votes.

00:28:01.000 You know, every two years, the budget for the Pentagon has to be reauthorized.

00:28:07.000 That's an opportunity for Congress to kind of tinker with some of the provisions and shape foreign policy kind of from the sidelines.

00:28:14.000 You know, the president has incredible power, but this is the one check that Congress has really on shaping military foreign policy.

00:28:22.000 Look at the last few votes when they were happening in July.

00:28:26.000 It was actually the far left, a lot of the squad members, and the Freedom Caucus coming together to say, hey, we've got to actually have a special inspector general to oversee the $117 billion Congress has allocated to Ukraine.

00:28:41.000 You know, we have no special inspector general, a special inspector general for TARIP, for the bank bailouts, for Afghanistan, for Iraq, but no one, kind of, no special IG for Ukraine.

00:28:52.000 It's kind of crazy.

00:28:54.000 A check on cluster bombs, on better oversight on how casualties are reported.

00:29:01.000 These were interesting votes where it didn't cut between Democrats and Republicans.

00:29:07.000 It was establishment versus populace, where you saw Freedom Caucus and squad members coming together, even members who I think truly hate each other.

00:29:17.000 Marjorie Taylor Greene and Corey Bush famously kind of yelling at each other, hating each other.

00:29:22.000 They were voting for each other's bills, which I give both of them credit for.

00:29:26.000 Reflecting on our earlier conversation, this is one of my kind of mea culpas, but maybe Black Pill moment.

00:29:34.000 Growing up in the shadow of the Iraq war, I obsessively hated the mainstream media.

00:29:39.000 I thought this was an institution that worked with the Pentagon, worked with political leaders to manufacture consent for the war.

00:29:47.000 They were fundamentally lying to us.

00:29:49.000 They got us into war without asking the right questions about weapons of mass destruction and other claims that the Bush administration was making.

00:29:56.000 And that we needed independent and especially social media.

00:29:59.000 The internet would give us freedom.

00:30:01.000 The internet would give us the ability to criticize our leaders, our policymakers, the war planners.

00:30:07.000 And look where we are today with Ukraine.

00:30:09.000 We have more access to the internet than ever.

00:30:11.000 We have more people using social media than ever.

00:30:14.000 I think we actually have less questions today about the war than we did back in 2003, 2004.

00:30:18.000 Why do you think the internet has not helped?

00:30:21.000 The internet has actually made us more obedient.

00:30:24.000 Yes, it has.

00:30:26.000 I think it gives the illusion of freedom.

00:30:29.000 You know, it's great for a few outsiders like me and potentially you and a few other content creators.

00:30:35.000 You know, we're able to make things work.

00:30:37.000 But most people, you know, for lack of a better term, the masses, you know, they're logging into Facebook.

00:30:43.000 They're logging in to Twitter.

00:30:45.000 You know, these are platforms that have drained the ad revenue from quality media outlets.

00:30:51.000 So you have less reporters doing their job.

00:30:54.000 You know, Baltimore Sun, you know, I grew up in Maryland, the Baltimore Sun used to have foreign correspondents all over the world.

00:31:00.000 Now they barely have enough reporters to cover what's going on in Baltimore.

00:31:04.000 So you have less of these, less legacy talent.

00:31:07.000 You have more social control centralized at these social media platforms that are working with the government to curtail speech.

00:31:16.000 These disinformation debates, the government is very clearly working with the big platforms to shape the type of content we see, what discussions are allowed, what's shadow banned, what's banned.

00:31:27.000 And at the end of the day, because of these factors and others, there's less scrutiny.

00:31:32.000 There's less of a public debate about the war in Ukraine.

00:31:35.000 fact, there are these propaganda accounts that are constantly cheering on NATO and exaggerating.

00:31:40.000 I mean, look at what all of these pro-NATO accounts were saying earlier this year that Ukraine had this huge opportunity to seize Crimea and make gigantic gains in the war.

00:31:50.000 It's just been a meat grinder.

00:31:51.000 You know, this has not been the case, but we have this very powerful war propaganda that's actually amplified through social media and the internet.

00:32:00.000 And, you know, again, like I'm wrong, I'd hope for a completely different dynamic with the rise of the internet back in 2004.

00:32:07.000 If anything, it's gotten worse.

00:32:09.000 Yeah, and it also makes you wonder, this is a topic for a different time, how talented the intel agencies are at actually manipulating our algorithms and puppeteering our tech companies because they are actively involved in the propaganda networks.

00:32:22.000 And it's no different.

00:32:23.000 The same way that they used to tell CNN, hey, we need more eyeballs to support the surge.

00:32:28.000 They just do it differently.

00:32:29.000 They just use Google's SEO.

00:32:30.000 I'm convinced of it.

00:32:31.000 Lee, great job.

00:32:32.000 Thank you so much.

00:32:33.000 We'll have you on.

00:32:34.000 Again, thank you.

00:32:35.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:32:36.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:32:40.000 Thank you so much for listening and God bless.

00:32:48.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 10, 2023

Antifa's War on Cops and the Brazilification of America with Lee Fang

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