00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk show, we start with Senator Josh Hawley and then we talk about Beethoven and your take on Lindsey Graham getting behind Donald Trump.
00:00:08.000As always, you can email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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00:01:27.000Batting first in the lineup today, right off the bat, batting leadoff, you could say, is the great senator from Missouri, Senator Josh Hawley, joins us right now.
00:01:46.000You have an America-first approach to what's happening in Ukraine.
00:01:52.000And I want your opinion of what is the Washington, D.C. consensus right now.
00:01:57.000The Uniparty seems to want to escalate what's happening in Ukraine.
00:02:01.000How should we think about what's happening in Ukraine?
00:02:03.000Well, what we should think about is the trade-offs, what it means for America.
00:02:06.000And what we should be doing, first of all, Charlie, is prioritizing America's national security, America's standing in the world, America's prosperity.
00:02:17.000So listen, here's how I think about Ukraine.
00:02:19.000We can continue writing blank checks to Ukraine, which is what the establishment of both parties in Washington want to do, or we can secure our own border.
00:02:29.000And when it comes to overseas threats, we can do what we need to do to counter China, which is our number one foreign threat.
00:02:35.000Our number one foreign threat is not in Ukraine.
00:02:37.000Our number one foreign threat is in Asia.
00:03:39.000Well, I mean, I don't know what that means.
00:03:41.000I mean, listen, I've got no love for the Russians.
00:03:43.000I mean, I'd love to see the Russians lose.
00:03:45.000I mean, you know, anything we could do to bleed Vladimir Putin is totally fine by me.
00:03:49.000I mean, I think the guy's a bad actor, but let's look at this through a realistic lens that puts American interests at the top of the list, that puts America first.
00:03:58.000If you do that, you say we cannot nation build in Ukraine, write blank checks to Ukraine, fight a proxy war in Ukraine, and do the other things, Charlie, we have to do to keep this country safe.
00:04:10.000So my view is that I'm a nationalist when it comes to foreign policy.
00:04:14.000I evaluate everything that's happening overseas and in the world through the lens of what makes America strong, what keeps the American people safe and prosperous.
00:04:23.000And I can tell you that writing blank checks to Ukraine and fighting a proxy war there is not the answer.
00:04:41.000And I, I mean, first I want to applaud you for your courage and your clarity on this.
00:04:45.000It's super rare to have actually somebody that comes out in the U.S. Senate and says, I don't think this Ukraine thinks makes any sense at all.
00:05:04.000I'm not telling anybody what stocks to buy, but if you were to buy Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, I can't imagine you'll do poorly even in a recession.
00:05:31.000We've gone through in the first 10 months of the war, five years worth of production on javelin anti-tank missiles, and we've gone through 13 years worth of Stinger production.
00:05:40.000So it's going to take us some time to catch up.
00:05:44.000And I mean, it's great for business, obviously, for Raytheon, Senator, but that's not good for our national security.
00:05:50.000No, it's terrible for our national security.
00:05:52.000And what it's really terrible for is our effort and our desperate need, Charlie, to deter China.
00:05:57.000If you think about our foreign policy threats here, where is our greatest foreign policy threat?
00:06:02.000It is an imperialist China that wants to dominate our supply chains, that wants to shut down our ability to trade on fair terms, that wants to steal our jobs and steal our technology.
00:07:29.000I mean, I see Lindsey Graham, one of your colleagues, go to Ukraine and just talk about raising the temperature while flanked by the two most liberal senators in the Senate.
00:07:39.000Why is it that the consensus in DC is not talking about some sort of resolution here?
00:07:46.000I mean, it's puzzling when you have such a high-stakes conflict, the proxy war, where Germany says a NATO country, we're involved in this.
00:07:55.000Are there active peace talks that are being facilitated by the Americans, Senator?
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00:12:33.000Senator, you have recently introduced a piece of legislation to make sure we no longer have people like Nancy Pelosi making all this money on alleged insider trading or congressional deals.
00:12:46.000I am curious, though, and perhaps you can help me understand.
00:12:50.000Wasn't there a piece of legislation that was signed into law back in 2012 called the Stock Act, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act?
00:13:06.000Yeah, so the old law, Charlie, just requires members of Congress to disclose when they trade stock.
00:13:12.000It doesn't prohibit them from owning individual stock, doesn't prohibit stock trading, but it says when you do it, you've got to disclose it within a certain number of days.
00:13:19.000And of course, it reiterates with already the law for everybody, which is that insider trading is illegal.
00:14:01.000That's what most Americans do with their savings, but you shouldn't be buying up stock in individual companies.
00:14:06.000And you shouldn't be doing what Nancy Pelosi and her family have done, which is making millions off of their position on the stock market.
00:14:12.000And so, Senator, is it fair to say that Pelosi and her husband or just kind of all their friends that they'll go into a committee, sometimes with classified information, and then sell or buy stock, acting on the information?
00:14:27.000How is that not, forget the congressional side of it?
00:14:30.000How is that not a blatant violation of the Security Exchange Commission's rules on trading on non-public information?
00:14:39.000Well, you've seen multiple members of Congress of both parties, I have to say, investigated for this, Charlie, just in the last few years.
00:14:45.000There were a flurry of trades around COVID, you might remember, where a whole bunch of reps and senators who got briefings, right, all of a sudden North Carolina.
00:15:14.000But what happens is experts gather that and present it all to the member of Congress in a way that it's pretty hard for a member of the public to get it.
00:15:24.000But has any member of the public served it up on a silver platter and given all of the implications and said, you know, here's what we think is going to happen.
00:15:31.000Did they have access to these same so-called experts?
00:15:52.000And, Senator, but it's even worse than that because then there are people that then advocate for pieces of legislation that then help their portfolio.
00:16:01.000So, for example, it just so happens Nancy Pelosi bought Tesla stock while simultaneously advocating for the infrastructure bill that heavily subsidized electric vehicles.
00:16:13.000So, that's not even necessarily add that that's not trading on non-public information.
00:16:18.000That's trying to steer the public treasury to benefit your personal portfolio.
00:16:27.000It's another reason why members shouldn't own individual stocks.
00:16:30.000And by the way, just in case people are saying, oh, well, what about you, Josh?
00:16:33.000My wife and I made the decision before we even got elected to the Senate when I first ran.
00:16:37.000We just said, you know what, we're going to put all of our savings for our kids' college and for our retirement.
00:16:41.000We're just going to put them into broad-based mutual funds.
00:16:43.000I mean, for this reason, so there'll be no appearance of conflict.
00:16:46.000And so we won't ever have anybody come to me and say, well, what about this piece of information or that?
00:16:51.000Like, no, Let's just, let's, let's sell all of the stock and let's just put it in mutual funds.
00:16:56.000And that's what everybody should do and be required to do by law in order to avoid conflicts of interest so that no member is ever tempted to think like, oh, well, I have a lot of money in this particular industry.
00:17:08.000It sure would be good for this industry if I supported this bill.
00:17:12.000If you have broad-based mutual funds, you're not going to be concerned because by definition, you don't have any holding big enough in any one industry or any one company to have it have an effect.
00:17:22.000You know, that's why that's the value of a broad-based mutual fund.
00:17:25.000Let's do that and take away the conflict of interest.
00:17:28.000Senator, thank you for your courage in the Senate for picking the tough fights and winning.
00:17:32.000I believe you are in cycle this election season.
00:17:51.000And we're going to be behind you, Senator, and make sure that you are well supported and you have a good platform to share your message because you've been fighting for all of us.
00:19:06.000Beethoven's Fifth, one of the greatest pieces of classical music ever composed.
00:19:12.000Yesterday, we were talking and having a dialogue with Heather McDonald.
00:19:18.000And I closed the interview by saying, show me anything the third world that the third world has produced that is nearly as beautiful as Beethoven's Fifth.
00:19:28.000And obviously, the apparatchiks in the media didn't like that because you're not allowed to say that certain cultures are better than others.
00:19:46.000The culture that gave us Beethoven, we should probably understand why you were able to get that incredible amount and mark of brilliance.
00:19:56.000And obviously, the third world has produced many beautiful things, just nothing close to Beethoven, especially in the music realm.
00:20:04.000Nothing close to Shakespeare, nothing close to the great works that have built the basis of the West.
00:20:10.000So, why is it that we should appreciate Beethoven?
00:20:12.000He's going to teach our children this.
00:20:14.000And do I absolutely believe that Beethoven and his Fifth Symphony and his works, and not just Beethoven, but the canon of classical music, Mozart, the Bach, but in particular, Beethoven.
00:20:30.000Look, this is not something that I just pulled out of nowhere.
00:20:32.000Beethoven is probably the single most important figure in the history of music, period.
00:20:36.000He basically created the modern symphony: the instruments that are used, how they're structured, and how ambitious they can be.
00:20:45.000Before Beethoven, composers might write a couple dozen symphonies.
00:20:49.000After Beethoven, even excellent composers would just write a handful in their entire lives because Beethoven upped the game so much.
00:20:57.000It was like everyone else was doing drawings in crayon, and Beethoven then invented painting.
00:21:03.000Now, everyone has known this from Beethoven's life to today.
00:21:07.000Franz Schubert, or Schubert, himself, one of the greatest composers ever, said after hearing a Beethoven quartet, quote, after this, what else is there left for us to write?
00:21:17.000Or after this, what left is there for us to write?
00:21:20.000When Beethoven was first performed in America, he was declared an equal of Shakespeare, and his popularity has never declined.
00:21:28.000According to music professor Michael Broils of Florida State, Beethoven single-handedly made Americans see classical music as something possessing moral and spiritual value, not just aesthetic value.
00:22:01.000I mean, I just said this is kind of a flippant comment, but I didn't, I meant it deeply.
00:22:06.000It matters because as we're trying to save Western civilization, we should appreciate the giants, the legends, the titans that have produced art, art which is the celebration of the divine that transcends our existence.
00:22:21.000And boy, did Beethoven do a good job of that.
00:22:24.000You see, in the modern era, we're supposed to believe that all art is equal.
00:22:29.000This is one of the fallacies of postmodernism.
00:22:33.000For example, they put a crucifix in a jar of urine and they call it the piss Christ, and that's supposed to be art.
00:23:10.000Art used to glorify the divine, literally.
00:23:15.000I'm not sure if Beethoven did this, but I do know for certain Bach and Mozart did, is they used to write in Latin, glory be to God, on the top of all of their music.
00:23:46.000And so, when you say something as clear as Beethoven's music is better than anything the third world has produced, the left has to lose their mind because for them, they do not believe in a hierarchy of culture.
00:23:58.000No culture could be better than the other.
00:24:00.000And actually, we should defend Western culture.
00:24:03.000We should defend the culture that protects children from predators, defend cultures that understand God-granted natural rights, that appreciate the moral premise behind separation of powers or consent of the governed.
00:24:15.000We should appreciate the idea of private property and commerce and free enterprise.
00:25:01.000Roger Scruton is one of the most articulate, talented, wise, accomplished writers in recent memory that really understood the Western canon and made very clear arguments about how our society was becoming uglier for consumerism and was really turning its back on this idea of glorifying the divine, the truth, the goodness, and beautiful.
00:25:21.000Okay, let's get into this topic that I introduced briefly yesterday.
00:25:26.000Lindsey Graham endorsed Donald Trump this last weekend.
00:25:30.000As someone who enthusiastically supports Donald Trump in 2024 for 2024, this makes me concerned.
00:25:39.000And I'm curious how you feel about it.
00:25:42.000Lindsey Graham, who seems to want perpetual war in Ukraine, who said last week, flanked by two of the most liberal senators in the U.S. Senate, that we're going to play offense in Ukraine.
00:26:00.000This is Lindsey Graham endorsing Donald Trump play cut 18 this last weekend.
00:26:07.000There's one thing I want to talk to you about.
00:26:12.000How many times have you heard we like Trump policies, but we want somebody new?
00:26:20.000There are no Trump policies without Donald Trump.
00:26:25.000Now, did you hear a little bit of that heckling at the beginning?
00:26:28.000This is the buried lead that no one talked about.
00:26:30.000These are Donald Trump supporters in this small room heckling Lindsey Graham, calling him a rhino, saying, get off stage, you're a rhino, you're a moderate.
00:27:22.000If you're running for president and you're going to have a highly consequential South Carolina primary and Nikki Haley's probably running, you probably want to get more people, not less people, to endorse your campaign.
00:27:34.000At the same time, has Lindsey Graham been consistent to the Trump agenda?
00:27:43.000Has Lindsey Graham been a fighter to secure the southern border?
00:27:47.000Has Lindsey Graham been a fighter to try to bring American manufacturing back domestically?
00:27:53.000Has Lindsey Graham had a heart and a passion for de-escalating foreign quagmires and wars?
00:28:00.000Has that been the track record of Lindsey Graham?
00:28:04.000I'm a little concerned that Lindsey Graham entering into the Trump campaign orbit this early might actually defang the populist nationalist impulses that Donald Trump, who we all love and adore, naturally has.
00:28:33.000But it does make me pause and be concerned that if President Trump is going to be at least giving a platform to the foreign policy views of Lindsey Graham, I don't think that's where his base is at, especially based on the emails I received on Ukraine earlier.
00:28:51.000I'd love your thoughts on that, especially many of you who are Donald Trump supporters.
00:29:04.000Or are you worried that this might be another character in the never-ending chapter of people you should not trust that get too close to Donald Trump's orbit?
00:29:19.000What I would have loved to have seen President Trump do this last weekend when he had Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, say, yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks, Lindsey, for the endorsement.
00:30:06.000His constituents in Ukraine, specifically the Ukrainian government, they're thrilled that he made the trip.
00:30:12.000Play Cut 48 of Lindsey Graham, next to the two most liberal senators that you could find in the U.S. Senate, talking about how we need to drive those Russians out of Ukraine.
00:31:19.000I don't think that I think you could learn a lot from how personnel is policy and how, especially with COVID, that's not exactly a shining success.
00:31:32.000Someone says here, Charlie, I actually love Lindsey Graham.
00:31:35.000He's a true conservative, and I'm really glad to see Donald Trump finally having true conservatives around him.
00:32:53.000This disgusts me with Ronna Romney, and I will never give a penny to the Republican National Committee.
00:32:59.000It's hard to believe that President Trump is supporting these rhinos, but unfortunately, they're in power, and at some point you have to utilize them for what you can get out of them and disregard them when you actually get back in.
00:33:17.000Is your support for Trump changing or constant or questioned because of this?
00:33:23.000No, I support him 100% because he's gone through the fire.
00:33:26.000He stands up for us, and I just hope he makes better decisions in positions of power.
00:33:33.000You and I are both supporting the same man.