The Charlie Kirk Show - Cutting Through the Fog of War In Ukraine with Alex Marlow

00:00:00.000 I'm Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News and host of the Breitbart News Daily podcast.

00:00:04.000 And I'm the author of the book Breaking the News.

00:00:06.000 And I'm filling in for Charlie Kirk today as he does me the solid of participating in a CPAC panel celebrating the life of Andrew Breitbart, my boss and mentor.

00:00:14.000 It is a huge news day as we're recording this with Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine and the entire world is freaking out over it.

00:00:21.000 And I'm joined by international reporter for Breitbart, John Hayward, and we give you all the details you need to know about what this means, why it's happening, and where we're likely to go from here.

00:00:30.000 So, as Charlie likes to say, here we go.

00:00:32.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:34.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:36.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:40.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:43.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:44.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:45.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:52.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:00:53.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:02.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:05.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.

00:01:14.000 This is the Charlie Kirk Show, and I'm Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News.

00:01:19.000 And I'm filling in today for Charlie.

00:01:20.000 I'll be here for a couple hours.

00:01:21.000 We do have a good show lined up for you today.

00:01:24.000 You'll hear from some of our reporters at Breitbart News.

00:01:26.000 John Hayward, who's one of our international reporters and really one of the smartest guys in all of media.

00:01:30.000 He'll join me in just a little bit.

00:01:32.000 But we're going to have to start today, of course, with a quick introduction from me, and then we'll dig into the latest headlines.

00:01:38.000 Those of you who are unfamiliar with me, I was the first employee of Breitbart News.

00:01:42.000 And if you are not familiar with Charlie's whole story, Charlie really got his start sort of from Breitbart.com.

00:01:48.000 We're very proud of that.

00:01:49.000 In the spirit of Andrew Breitbart, Charlie sent in an idea for an article for us to write about 10 years or so ago on the school systems and how there is some level of indoctrination where he was.

00:02:02.000 And what we suggested is actually, why don't you just write it yourself?

00:02:06.000 And Charlie was shocked, but he decided it was a good idea.

00:02:08.000 And the story got a mind of its own.

00:02:10.000 It landed him on Fox and he kind of got the news bug and then the conservative movement bug.

00:02:14.000 And then lo and behold, here we are with Charlie being one of the biggest podcasters around and has been a good friend to us at Breitbart for a while.

00:02:22.000 And the reason why Charlie's not in today is because Charlie is doing a panel on Andrew Breitbart.

00:02:27.000 Andrew Breitbart passed away almost exactly 10 years ago.

00:02:30.000 And we'll have some major commemorations at Breitbart.com that I hope all of you check out, which is our home base.

00:02:37.000 And you'll see some of the tributes that are going to be pouring in and they're unbelievable.

00:02:42.000 So keep an eye for that next week, March the 1st, is that date.

00:02:45.000 And Charlie is at CPAC right now, where he's on a panel with James O'Keefe, Matt Boyle from my team, Larry O'Connor, who's a well-known broadcaster, and Charlie himself, all talking about the life and legacy of Andrew Breitbart.

00:02:58.000 Where Andrew hired me about 15 years ago when I was a student at UC Berkeley.

00:03:03.000 I did go there to cause some trouble.

00:03:04.000 I think I caused a little bit, probably learned a little bit more in the process.

00:03:08.000 And we started trying to build a conservative media empire to bring the conservative movement into the digital age.

00:03:15.000 And I think we've been wildly effective looking back on 10 years after Andrew's death.

00:03:20.000 So I can talk about Andrew all day, but I do want to first note a couple of places to find me online and then we'll dig into the headlines.

00:03:27.000 I've got a daily news podcast called Breitbart News Daily, and it is available wherever you get your podcasts.

00:03:33.000 And it's pretty new and it's growing.

00:03:35.000 And it is thanks to people like those in the audience who want to support what we do.

00:03:38.000 It's pretty simple format, headlines and a little bit of analysis at the top, and generally a pretty compelling guest after that.

00:03:44.000 And then occasionally a caller of the day because we do like to interact with the people at Breitbart News Daily.

00:03:50.000 Yesterday's guest was Mike Pompeo, so we pull in some big names and we cover a lot of ground.

00:03:54.000 So if you would like a new news podcast to check out, then I highly recommend that.

00:03:58.000 Always breitbart.com.

00:03:59.000 I'm also the author of a recent New York Times best-selling book called Breaking the News, which I think is more prescient than ever because it lays out this sort of democrat media complex that involves the media.

00:04:10.000 And I think the media is part of the reason we are in this mess right now with Ukraine and Russia. 0.87

00:04:15.000 Not to say the United States per se is in the mess, but the world community, whatever that is, the feckless world community is in this mess.

00:04:22.000 And partially it is because people just are generally addicted to war.

00:04:27.000 And it's not just the contractors who stand to make money.

00:04:32.000 It's not just the politicians who stand to gain power and can usurp more power and have the ability to become more authoritarian.

00:04:39.000 It is also those in the media business who make their bones walking around with their flak jackets and their helmets on and acting as though something is entirely unprecedented when perhaps similar things have been going on for a long time or worse things are going on in other parts of the world.

00:04:54.000 Now, I don't mean to be overly judgy.

00:04:56.000 I mean, everyone's got to make a living, but war is good business for a lot of people. 0.55

00:05:00.000 And I think that is part of why over the last two weeks, we have seen the descent of Ukraine and Russia go from something that was somewhat familiar, those of us who have tracked this, as we do at Breitbart.com, over the last eight or so years to something that now does look quite a bit different with last night, Vladimir Putin dropping bombs all over Ukraine.

00:05:22.000 25 or so targets so far have been counted up as we're recording this.

00:05:27.000 I'm sorry, 7 plus military targets around 25 cities.

00:05:31.000 And Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, has said that serious losses have been suffered, though we don't have a clear idea of what those losses are at this time.

00:05:41.000 But it is certainly going to be some levels of casualties that we've seen.

00:05:46.000 And this escalation, I do think, is largely because of the hype that came from the West, it came from Europe, that came from the big Joey Biden administration in our American media.

00:05:57.000 And the reason why I think that is the case is because they did so much talking, they did so much egging on of Putin.

00:06:03.000 They did so much to marginalize Zelensky in Ukraine.

00:06:07.000 And they have proven that they don't really have a major ability to push back on Vladimir Putin, or at least they're not willing to do so.

00:06:14.000 With all the tough talk and all the threats, there are so many empty gestures made.

00:06:18.000 And I think that, first of all, I want to break down a couple of the details about what's gone on, and then I will give you why I think the West is somewhat culpable for this.

00:06:29.000 And there's not a lot of good solutions.

00:06:31.000 And at a minimum, we're going to be distracted from so many of our problems that are here in the United States.

00:06:36.000 I would still submit that what happened with the Canadian trucker convoy, which is now coming to the United States, and the authoritarianism and the massive usurpation of power of China file, Justin Trudeau, in Canada, is one of the most shocking stories of our time.

00:06:51.000 The Bidenflation, a term we coined at Breitbart, the sort of trans conversion therapy that is essentially happening in so many of our school systems, which we track on a daily basis, as does Charlie.

00:07:02.000 All of these are arguably much bigger issues for the United States at this time.

00:07:06.000 The kitchen table issues, the gas prices, which will, of course, be affected by the trouble in the region with Russia because Russia is such a big producer of energy.

00:07:15.000 But all that is arguably bigger stories for people in this audience, but we are forced to confront this.

00:07:18.000 And largely, it is because of the fecklessness of our own leaders who were not able to navigate the situation.

00:07:25.000 And it's not lost on us that President Trump for four years, basically, despite being called Putin's puppet over and over and over again, was largely able to keep Putin at bay.

00:07:34.000 So anyway, a few of the details.

00:07:36.000 Putin announced that there's a special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazification of Ukraine.

00:07:43.000 Pretty striking because remember, all of you in this audience are called Nazis for whatever reason.

00:07:48.000 And there's lots of people who have ancestry that were victimized by in the Holocaust in the Ukrainian halls of power.

00:07:55.000 It doesn't make a difference.

00:07:56.000 You just call them Nazis.

00:07:57.000 And that is the tactic du jour, even with Putin.

00:08:01.000 And he said many times that Ukraine has crossed a red line.

00:08:04.000 And he's even announced that there are two new republics, republics that did not exist just a day or two ago.

00:08:12.000 Putin has created them and they're being acknowledged, I guess, by Assad in Syria, but that's pretty much it.

00:08:16.000 I don't think anyone else is acknowledging that these things are new, but that is the plan that Putin does.

00:08:21.000 It's what he does.

00:08:22.000 He just announces these things.

00:08:23.000 And then we're all supposed to just accept them or not accept them.

00:08:26.000 There is, of course, a level of trolling that does take place whenever it comes to getting attention on the world stage.

00:08:33.000 But he says Russia cannot feel safe and develop and exist with a constant threat emanating from the territory of modern Ukraine.

00:08:40.000 Now, here is the history.

00:08:41.000 In a couple of these regions that have been disputed, Russia and Ukraine have been contesting those boundaries for eight years.

00:08:49.000 And this has gone on.

00:08:50.000 And over the last couple of weeks, we've seen Russia move troops, some of them in uniform, some of them not in uniform, sometimes increase troops, sometimes pull troops back a bit, sometimes roll a tank around.

00:09:01.000 And the whole world gas in fear that, oh no, Putin is moving troops, acting as though this hasn't been happening, but actually has been happening over the last eight years.

00:09:12.000 But now, when he saw that the moves that the world, who was so outraged, they did not have the ability to make major moves, or at least they weren't willing to do so.

00:09:20.000 And I'll break that down.

00:09:21.000 I'll explain how big Joey Biden's reaction, which I do think there might be deep connections to some of Big Joey's past.

00:09:29.000 His moves were so weak that I think that this is part of the reason why Russia felt compelled to escalate the situation to where we are today.

00:09:40.000 If you haven't heard, the world premiere of Daily Wire Shut In has reached over half a million views.

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00:10:34.000 And this might be their first original production, but it will not be their last.

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00:11:00.000 We were just talking about what's going on with Ukraine and Russia, full-scale invasion as Russia attempts to colonize parts of Ukraine, if not all of it.

00:11:08.000 As I've been saying on our show, Bright Burton News Daily, that if Vladimir Putin is breathing, he is thinking about the rekindling and the recreation of the Soviet Union.

00:11:17.000 Now, he's a pretty savvy wielder of power, and he's not prone to make huge mistakes on the world stage.

00:11:24.000 Other than perhaps Xi Jinping, he's probably the person who wields power the savviest at this time.

00:11:30.000 I would not include Joe the Biden in that group personally.

00:11:33.000 That's just me.

00:11:34.000 And not say I'm any fan of Putin, or we are nowhere a fan of his.

00:11:37.000 Bright Party's a bad guy, obviously a bad guy.

00:11:40.000 But he is to be taken seriously.

00:11:42.000 And when he's making these moves, he's playing a chess game.

00:11:45.000 And this chess game is about taking back Ukraine if he can, and on a timetable that he deems possible. 0.91

00:11:52.000 And he started by declaring the Donetsk and Luhansk as two new republics.

00:11:58.000 And this is part of the Donbass region.

00:12:00.000 There is no international right for him to do this.

00:12:03.000 This is highly illegal, and no one will recognize it aside from Putin sycophants.

00:12:09.000 Yet that is what's happening.

00:12:10.000 He has launched attacks generally around urban centers.

00:12:13.000 It seems like the take on why he's targeting urban centers is to create a level of fear, to create a level of demoralization in the sense that a Russian victory in whichever war takes place is inevitable.

00:12:26.000 And this is probably designed to undermine Vladimir Zelensky.

00:12:30.000 So if Zelensky, who is trying to rally his people and he has even tried to distribute guns, try to get guns in the hands of people so that they will fight back.

00:12:39.000 And he's made pretty great statements that I do like about how if you come to us, you will see our fronts and not our backs, meaning they won't be running away.

00:12:50.000 They will be standing up to the Russians. 0.83

00:12:51.000 But still, this could be perhaps wishful thinking as Putin could use shock and off to demoralize the citizenry.

00:12:57.000 And I think this could, he views this as the best way to try to drive a wedge between Zelensky and his people to a quick victory to war here. 0.94

00:13:07.000 There is now fights breaking out at Chernobyl, the power plant, famous for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which is in Ukraine.

00:13:13.000 And Russia, of course, would like to get that.

00:13:15.000 And that seems to be where they're at now.

00:13:17.000 And there are so many people who are responsible for getting us where we are.

00:13:20.000 And the list is so long.

00:13:22.000 Comically, in the dark sense of the word, the UN comes to mind first, perhaps, where Russia is currently the head of the UN Security Council.

00:13:30.000 So they're having their turn, not just as a permanent member, but they were actually in charge of it right now.

00:13:34.000 So they've had to have emergency meetings on Russian aggressions headed up by the Russian Federation.

00:13:40.000 Kind of amazing, right?

00:13:42.000 Ukraine, which is not part of NATO at this time, is also an interesting factor.

00:13:46.000 NATO is a factor here too, because what will the NATO countries do, which are largely sympathetic to Ukraine?

00:13:52.000 And Ukraine, I think a lot of people would like for Ukraine to be in NATO.

00:13:56.000 Perhaps Ukraine would like to be in NATO and get that protection, but they're not in it yet.

00:14:00.000 So what does that mean for countries like the United States?

00:14:03.000 Well, I think the United States will certainly support Ukraine, but does this oblige us to go into some kind of a war?

00:14:08.000 Probably not.

00:14:09.000 And I think that listeners to Charlie's show probably are among the group, which is, I would consider a consensus at this time, that does not have an appetite for a hot war where America goes around the world and tries to defend places that are trying to be democratic elsewhere around the world doesn't directly affect them.

00:14:28.000 And I think Ukraine is trying their best.

00:14:30.000 I think this is pretty clear.

00:14:32.000 I think they're trying very much to be a democracy and to try to create that opportunity for their people.

00:14:40.000 But it is an uphill slog in many ways.

00:14:43.000 And it is very difficult, as the United States proved with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to export democracy.

00:14:50.000 So we can be supportive, but ultimately, I think it will be up to the Ukrainian people whether or not they're able to fight back. 0.59

00:14:55.000 Joe Biden has a big role in this.

00:14:57.000 I think Joe Biden has a, he is someone who has marginalized Zelensky.

00:15:02.000 He has ignored Zelensky.

00:15:04.000 He will not reach out to Zelensky.

00:15:05.000 And he seems to have been very hostile to him over time.

00:15:10.000 And if you're thinking about the Hunter-Biden connection, where a lot of that sweet, sweet burism of cash dried up right as Zelensky was coming into power, I think that is weighing on Joe Biden's mind, at least to some degree.

00:15:22.000 I don't know how much, but at least to some degree, I think I would surmise that is a very fair guess at this time.

00:15:30.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:15:31.000 The left is waging a war on free speech with the help of big tech and the United States government.

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00:16:32.000 If you like what you're hearing and you want to support Breitbart, our latest initiative is the Breitbart News Daily podcast.

00:16:37.000 Whenever you get your podcast, daily news podcast, typically with a guest or two, sometimes some of the best in the game.

00:16:43.000 Charlie's been on a couple of times and is a lot of familiar names and a lot of names that are unfamiliar to you, who I think are pretty brilliant.

00:16:50.000 One person, perfect example of this, is John Hayward, who is an international reporter for us at Breitbart and really one of the brightest guys in all of media.

00:16:57.000 And he's on the line with me now to talk about what's going on in Russia and Ukraine.

00:17:01.000 John, it's great to have you on.

00:17:02.000 And I was talking just before you joined me about America's role in this and Joe Biden's role in this.

00:17:08.000 And I do want to trace it back to Hunter and the perhaps a burisma connection and some bitterness about Zelensky from Biden.

00:17:16.000 But in particular, I want to focus before maybe we go back quite that far to a statement that Joe Biden made, a musing really during a press conference a couple of weeks ago, that I think what you're going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades.

00:17:30.000 And it depends on what it does.

00:17:31.000 It's one thing if it's a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.

00:17:39.000 That to me, John, translated is we're not sure we're going to do anything.

00:17:42.000 And that, if I'm Vladimir Putin, I'm hearing that and I'm thinking, green light, I can do whatever I want, and there's no guarantee that anyone's going to stand up to me.

00:17:51.000 Well, it's a remarkable moment of ambivalence.

00:17:53.000 It was immediately recognized as a gaffe.

00:17:55.000 The White House frantically scrambled, backpedaled, basically said he didn't mean it.

00:17:59.000 Don't listen to him.

00:18:00.000 And it's hard not to see it as a green light.

00:18:02.000 He literally said a limited incursion would be okay.

00:18:05.000 And Vladimir Putin is out there today saying it's a limited incursion.

00:18:09.000 It's not.

00:18:09.000 I mean, he's shelling Kiev, but he's saying that we're just going to secure these two independent republics and maybe a little buffer zone around them.

00:18:16.000 And we're good. 0.69

00:18:16.000 Then he said we're going to denazify Ukraine and chase all the Nazis out. 0.69

00:18:19.000 He's talking in a way that's consistent with what Biden said.

00:18:23.000 I think that was maybe the fifth of a series of green lights that were given to Russia.

00:18:27.000 My favorite one, and the one nobody remembers now, was all the arms control concessions.

00:18:31.000 Biden showered Russia with arms control concessions, with sanctions being lifted.

00:18:36.000 When he first came into office, it was a bonanza, and the Russians were stunned.

00:18:39.000 I mean, they couldn't believe what Biden was giving them for free.

00:18:42.000 And that had to get the Kremlin's wheels turning and thinking this is not an administration serious about stopping us.

00:18:48.000 They might talk about it, but they don't really mean it.

00:18:51.000 And we've got room to maneuver here.

00:18:52.000 And I think that's when these plans were begun to be late.

00:18:56.000 It is something where you could, if you took a very cynical and very anti-Biden approach to it, you could almost see it as an invitation.

00:19:03.000 I'm not personally going quite that far, John.

00:19:05.000 I'm just saying that you could see the fact pattern and you could see that and think that it's almost like he wants it.

00:19:11.000 And here's the thing: if you look at the way the American media has behaved, if you look at some of the fetishizing of war that we've seen, the enthusiasm for war, even though they don't like Putin, they don't seem to be overly fond of Ukraine.

00:19:24.000 And I think they do like the idea of us going to war and having to talk about war and having us think about war and having us think about Joe Biden's leadership and not think about the stuff that's really affecting us at home.

00:19:35.000 The destruction of our cities, the crime waves, the transist area, the oil prices, the Biden inflation, all the things that are affecting our families day to day.

00:19:45.000 Now, all of a sudden, and even we have to do it on this show because I want people to know what to talk about if they're water coolers.

00:19:51.000 It's we're talking about Ukraine and Russia.

00:19:54.000 Right.

00:19:55.000 And Biden is the kind of politician, and his advisors are the kind of people that very much do think a war is just what you need to perk up your flagging approval ratings.

00:20:04.000 They think that's what the Bushes did.

00:20:06.000 This is powerful Democrat mythology.

00:20:08.000 They think that both of the Bushes started wars just to get their approval numbers up.

00:20:12.000 And they think the Bushes instantly got this huge pole bump from the rally around the flag effect.

00:20:17.000 The elder George Bush had something like 90% approval ratings at one point.

00:20:21.000 So, yeah, Biden and his brain trust are exactly the kind of people that would think, sure, we need a nice foreign crisis. 0.95

00:20:26.000 And then we can start screaming that everybody who criticizes Joe Biden is a traitor and you're pro-Putin and you love the Russians and you're a monster and on and on and on. 0.96

00:20:35.000 You're hearing it already. 0.96

00:20:36.000 You've been hearing it all week and you heard it double in volume 10 seconds after the first Russian missile let fly.

00:20:41.000 They really think an event like this will pump up his poll numbers because it will end criticism of the president and rally everybody around the White House. 0.51

00:20:48.000 And lest people think that I'm purely anti-Biden and trying to rag in our own country, the world community, so to speak, has been utterly pathetic in all this per usual.

00:20:58.000 The UN is feckless as always.

00:21:00.000 NATO is not doing anything.

00:21:01.000 The Boris Johnson in the UK, tough talk, but no real substantial action.

00:21:06.000 But I want to take a look at Germany in particular.

00:21:08.000 Germany made the most newsworthy move by shutting down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline development.

00:21:14.000 But the problem is, John, from my vantage point, and you know this issue even a bit better than I do, the real problem is Germany becoming overly dependent on Russian energy over the years and basically propping up Putin by doing so much business with them so that they're utterly dependent.

00:21:29.000 And it makes some of these moves just, it makes you want to roll your eyes at them in some ways.

00:21:33.000 But give us the details behind it.

00:21:34.000 Well, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, just a couple of days ago, he snorted with derision and said, let's see how Germany likes paying huge amounts of money for their gas throughout a number.

00:21:45.000 He knows he's got them, you know, by the short hairs.

00:21:47.000 The Russians know that.

00:21:48.000 They know we're not in a position to keep these sanctions on them in the way that we're talking about and win an economic stare done with them.

00:21:54.000 And remember, it's a one-two punch.

00:21:55.000 Not only did Russia have Nord Stream 2 and its energy dominance in Europe, but Joe Biden strangled the American energy industry.

00:22:02.000 It was literally the first thing he did when he got into office.

00:22:05.000 He made sure that Vladimir Putin would become a dominant energy power.

00:22:08.000 And Biden and his Democrats locked shields like the 300, like the Spartan soldiers, to rally around Vladimir Putin's pipeline.

00:22:15.000 Just this is recent.

00:22:16.000 This is a couple months ago.

00:22:17.000 They used the filibuster and stopped every effort to put sanctions on Vladimir Putin's gas pipeline.

00:22:22.000 So Putin got every signal in the world that he was going to be left in a dominant energy position.

00:22:28.000 And with that out of the way, what else is there to discuss?

00:22:30.000 Whether the sanctions doesn't really have to worry about in any kind of a long-term problem, a few minor annoyances.

00:22:37.000 The Russians are saying they gamed all that out and they're ready to deal with it. 0.94

00:22:40.000 There's more policies from the Biden administration in particular that are connected here.

00:22:44.000 I think that the fact that we've shut down gas lines, the fact that we've stopped drilling, the fact that we are doing everything we can to not harvest our own natural resources, aside from, of course, the magical wind and solar, which will save us all, John.

00:22:59.000 It seems like all of this makes it so that there'll even be more of a squeeze at home if we want to do anything to perhaps push back on Putin that might affect us in our pocketbooks.

00:23:10.000 And that has not stopped Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to multiple times say Americans will feel pain over this crisis, which I don't really want to feel pain over this crisis, John.

00:23:18.000 I feel pain for the, I feel literal pain, you know, emotionally for the Ukrainian people.

00:23:23.000 But just about that, I don't want to feel any pain from this.

00:23:25.000 And Biden and Kamala Harris are saying it must be so.

00:23:27.000 You must feel the pain over this.

00:23:29.000 And the more darkly conspiratorial critics will tell you this is what they really want.

00:23:33.000 This is their excuse to crank gas up to $8 a gallon, like Barack Obama used to dream about.

00:23:38.000 And then we can all be forced into the green energy future and blah, blah, blah, which means we're all going to be buying solar panels from China, Russia's friends, Russia's partners, China, are the dominant force in solar energy and all of that.

00:23:48.000 So we'd all become even more dependent on China than ever in the future that these Democrats are envisioning.

00:23:53.000 This is lunacy.

00:23:54.000 We need to slam on the brakes as fast as we can, spin this whole thing around, start becoming energy independent again, develop our gas resources, take away Russia's power, and stop listening to the climate change cult.

00:24:06.000 They're killing us.

00:24:07.000 They're destroying us.

00:24:08.000 They're rearranging the world order.

00:24:09.000 And they're making the worst people in the world, Russia and China, more powerful. 0.99

00:24:13.000 This is objectively true.

00:24:15.000 Absolutely true.

00:24:16.000 Climate change has nothing to say about China.

00:24:18.000 They couldn't care less.

00:24:19.000 And China just signed a deal with Russia to import more of their coal for their giant coal-burning power plants that are blotting out the sky with greenhouse gases.

00:24:27.000 And meanwhile, the climate change guys are just yelling at you and me and telling us we need to ride around in crappy electric cars.

00:24:32.000 They are objectively making the authoritarian powers of the world more powerful and influential with their agenda.

00:24:38.000 One other thing that's quite frightening to me is looking at how the world props up climate change hysterics, and they love to do it.

00:24:46.000 Of course, St. Greta Thunberg comes to mind, who is a Swedish girl who dropped out of high school.

00:24:51.000 But then she went back to high school for anyone in the SOAS-funded freaks monitoring the show.

00:24:55.000 She did go back.

00:24:56.000 So, but she, her, Al Gore, others who have lobbied the world to try to not have as much fossil fuels, they've all ignored Russia and China because they can't do anything because China and Russia don't care about Greta Thunberg.

00:25:09.000 They don't care about Al Gore.

00:25:10.000 And this has just made them more powerful.

00:25:12.000 It's made the OPEC nations more powerful.

00:25:15.000 They were flexing on Joe Biden last week, also controlling their supply and going against the wishes of Biden.

00:25:21.000 And this is one of these things where to think that some of this is because of all of these climate nut jobs is very bothersome to me, John.

00:25:29.000 But am I taking it too far?

00:25:30.000 Or is there really literally a connection to the Gretas and the Al Gores of the world to this crisis? 0.90

00:25:36.000 Sure, there's a connection.

00:25:37.000 The Chinese and the Russians are very savvy about these things.

00:25:40.000 The Chinese particularly, they know what the climate change movement means to them.

00:25:44.000 It's useful to them.

00:25:45.000 They've ridden it like a horse to get where they want to go.

00:25:47.000 And at every turn, China baffles the climate change people. 0.95

00:25:51.000 They do exactly what they're not supposed to do.

00:25:53.000 We caught China pumping gigantic amounts of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. 0.88

00:25:57.000 There was like a giant pool of it floating over China a couple of years ago.

00:26:00.000 They're building coal plants like they're going out of style.

00:26:03.000 They're buying more coal to shovel into the plants.

00:26:05.000 And then China will send a representative to a global warming confab.

00:26:09.000 And they say, you know what, we believe in climate change.

00:26:11.000 We're totally with you.

00:26:12.000 And in 30 years, we're going to start cleaning up our act. 0.98

00:26:14.000 And in the meantime, capitalism sucks. 0.82

00:26:16.000 And all the climate change people just applaud yay for China. 0.99

00:26:19.000 They have nothing else to say.

00:26:19.000 And that's it.

00:26:21.000 To her credit, Greta Thunberg did try to criticize the Chinese mildly last year. 0.55

00:26:26.000 They literally told her to shut up. 1.00

00:26:27.000 They called her a bunch of nasty names and they bounced her out of the country. 1.00

00:26:30.000 And that was the end of it.

00:26:31.000 She has nothing more to say about China.

00:26:33.000 They know they have no influence over these authoritarian states.

00:26:36.000 Their focus is on us.

00:26:38.000 And the authoritarians find that very, very useful to their agenda.

00:26:42.000 John, I want to ask you about what this would look like if President Trump was president.

00:26:46.000 I spoke to Secretary of State Bright Pompeo about this on our show, Breitbart News Daily yesterday.

00:26:50.000 He kind of gave me some of his insight.

00:26:52.000 But, you know, as much as everyone said, Trump was Putin's puppet.

00:26:55.000 Well, Trump kept Putin from making these types of moves.

00:26:57.000 And I think that what resonates with the Russians is strength, that they're not the sort of, let's say, Joe Bidenification of Foreign Balsy does not mean much to them.

00:27:10.000 But can you strike the contrast to me?

00:27:13.000 Yeah, I think President Trump had a very blustery verbal style, as we all know, with Twitter and his public pronouncements.

00:27:18.000 But his White House was pretty focused on things it wanted to get done.

00:27:22.000 And people like Pompeo were very good at going to the Russians and the Chinese and others and saying, this is what we really care about.

00:27:29.000 And sometimes it wasn't popular.

00:27:31.000 Remember, President Trump criticized NATO.

00:27:33.000 He told them they had to step up and start paying more of their fair share and become a more credible deterrent.

00:27:38.000 And all the smart people, all the Democrats said, oh my God, this is a nightmare.

00:27:41.000 He's going to destroy the NATO alliance.

00:27:43.000 Well, does anybody in the world now doubt that he was absolutely correct?

00:27:46.000 I mean, could there be any more said or seen to see that he was right about NATO?

00:27:50.000 They went to places like China.

00:27:52.000 And although the rhetoric was often very confrontational and alternately very flattering, we know that that combination that President Trump does behind the scenes, his administration was pretty good at saying, we're serious about this.

00:28:03.000 This is a realistic goal of ours.

00:28:04.000 Here's what we're prepared to do to achieve it.

00:28:06.000 This is what we want out of you.

00:28:08.000 That's not what you get out of the Biden team.

00:28:10.000 The Biden team has all the polished rhetoric and the things that all the professional media loves.

00:28:14.000 But behind the scenes, they're very chaotic.

00:28:17.000 They're cross-purposes with each other.

00:28:18.000 They're not clear on American national interests.

00:28:21.000 They tend to ask for a lot.

00:28:22.000 They vastly overestimate their ability to get what they want through diplomacy.

00:28:26.000 They believe their own press.

00:28:27.000 They read the New York Times and the Washington Post, and it says Joe Biden's the adult in the room in foreign policy is back. 1.00

00:28:33.000 And they go off and they do these incredibly stupid things. 0.99

00:28:35.000 It's a non-stop dumpster fire because they're reading American media, not reading our enemies. 1.00

00:28:42.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:29:35.000 Mike Lindell is a great American.

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00:29:46.000 I'm getting real-time updates from Charlie's performance, both his solo speech and his Andrew Breitbart panel at CPAC.

00:29:54.000 And I'm told Charlie's doing a great job.

00:29:56.000 I'm told he's quite eloquent.

00:29:57.000 That's what people are saying to me.

00:29:58.000 And I believe it.

00:30:00.000 I do appreciate Charlie as well as producer Andrew letting me fill in today.

00:30:04.000 First one, it does seem like Putin's got a playbook here.

00:30:07.000 And this is the Georgian War from 2008.

00:30:09.000 It seems like he's following it almost to a T. Can you explain what that means and what you think this could mean for the next few days?

00:30:17.000 Well, in the case of Georgia, Russia was doing exactly the same thing they're doing now with a region called South Ossetia, which is very similar to these new independent republics that Putin claims exist in Ukraine.

00:30:28.000 And the Russians did the same exact steps. 0.90

00:30:30.000 They held huge military exercises.

00:30:32.000 They massed troops.

00:30:33.000 And right before the invasion began, they were criticized for this.

00:30:37.000 And it was asked, why are you doing all these troop maneuvers?

00:30:39.000 Get these troops out of there.

00:30:41.000 And they did the exact same thing.

00:30:42.000 The Russians said, we're pulling them back right now. 1.00

00:30:44.000 They're heading home as we speak. 0.75

00:30:45.000 Ha ha, you paranoid Westerners.

00:30:47.000 And then a couple of days later, they attacked with them.

00:30:48.000 They just marched across the border and did the exact same thing that they're doing now.

00:30:52.000 And they justified it in exactly the same way.

00:30:54.000 They said they had to move into South Ossetia because the ethnic Russians who lived there were being oppressed and could be subjected to genocide if Russia didn't move in and protect them.

00:31:04.000 That's exactly what they're saying now with respect to the Ukraine.

00:31:07.000 And it's also what they said in 2014 when they went after Crimea.

00:31:11.000 The cause supposedly for annexing Crimea was that ethnic Russians living there were being oppressed by the mean Ukrainians and the Russians had to move in and take the area to protect their rights and their interests.

00:31:21.000 And here we are.

00:31:21.000 They're just doing the same thing.

00:31:23.000 And I got to tell you, there's a lot of ethnic Russians living in a lot of Eastern Bloc countries.

00:31:27.000 So this is a playbook they could do again and again and again if they want to.

00:31:30.000 What's the end game for Putin?

00:31:32.000 It seems like the endgame would be, I think, I guess ideally short term would be to get a puppet in there instead of a Zelensky who doesn't like Putin very much and is an opponent of Putin's.

00:31:42.000 And this seems like something that can be done because it seems like people who stand up to Putin end up rotting in jail.

00:31:47.000 And if you're at all connected to the former Soviet Union, and those who are Putin puppets seem to have a nice long life being an oligarch.

00:31:55.000 I strongly suspect that is the endgame.

00:31:57.000 I think the way Putin wants this to end, since he and his people keep saying they're not going to occupy Ukraine, I don't think they will in the traditional sense.

00:32:04.000 They're going to knock off the Ukrainian government. 0.74

00:32:06.000 They'll either kill him or they'll drive him out of the country. 0.94

00:32:08.000 They'll replace them with a Putin-friendly puppet, like the one who used to be the president of Ukraine before the Euromaidan revolution. 0.98

00:32:15.000 And then Putin will call that a win.

00:32:17.000 And he'll look to the international community and say, who are you to punish us now?

00:32:21.000 The facts on the grounds have changed.

00:32:22.000 Ukraine has a government.

00:32:24.000 It's more honest.

00:32:24.000 It's not Nazis anymore.

00:32:26.000 They're not oppressing Russians anymore.

00:32:28.000 And so stop the sanctions back down.

00:32:30.000 I've done something constructive here.

00:32:32.000 I really think that's the most likely endgame.

00:32:34.000 You know, one thing that's also a parallel with 2008 is the Olympics were that year in Beijing, as they were this year, the Genocide Games, refer to them at Breyport News.

00:32:44.000 China is a big player in this, and they might not be all that happy with their usual allies in Russia.

00:32:49.000 What's going on with China here? 0.64

00:32:50.000 It's not a perfect friendship.

00:32:51.000 There are tensions between China and Russia.

00:32:54.000 There are ways they could come apart at the scenes in the near future, quite a few of them.

00:32:57.000 But for right now, China has a very great interest in making sure that sanctions are no longer an instrument of foreign policy.

00:33:04.000 They endly criticize the Western world for using them for human rights and so forth.

00:33:07.000 They want to dismantle the sanctions weapon.

00:33:10.000 And this is a perfect way for China to do that by backing up Russia, by having their six covered on this. 0.82

00:33:15.000 And whatever sanctions damage Russia takes, China will work deals with them to compensate it.

00:33:19.000 One of the sanctions being discussed is blocking Russia out of SWIFT, the international financial transaction system.

00:33:25.000 If we do that, Russia and China might team up and create an alternative to it and start inviting all the bad actors of the world to be in that financial system instead of ours. 0.57

00:33:34.000 That's the kind of leverage China, because they've become rich from globalism over the last 30 years, can bring to the table.

00:33:39.000 It really blunts our advantage in economic warfare, and Putin knows it.

00:33:43.000 A lot of people have their mind on Taiwan, whether or not this could be a playbook for an invasion of Taiwan from Beijing.

00:33:49.000 Do you see that?

00:33:50.000 Or is that something that is perhaps getting ahead of ourselves?

00:33:54.000 I do see it.

00:33:54.000 I think the Chinese are probing Taiwan.

00:33:56.000 They've been doing it for a long time.

00:33:58.000 There are reports that they did it again today.

00:33:59.000 They fly planes near Taiwan, just enough to be annoying and alarm the Taiwanese and force them to respond. 0.96

00:34:05.000 They've been thinking about taking Taiwan by force for a long time.

00:34:08.000 They're often looking for a cause, a reason.

00:34:10.000 Much like Putin will claim genocide and he has to stop it.

00:34:13.000 The Chinese will say the Taiwanese are about to secede and we had to move in and stop them.

00:34:17.000 They can pull that trigger anytime they want to.

00:34:20.000 And the only thing that's ever really been stopping them is their sense that the international community would not let them get away with it.

00:34:25.000 It would make them pay too high a price.

00:34:27.000 Well, they're about to find out whether it can be done.

00:34:29.000 And if territorial conquest by force is back on the table, why shouldn't China play? 0.94

00:34:36.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:38.000 Email us your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:40.000 If you want to support our show, go to charlikirk.com slash support.

00:34:44.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:34:45.000 God bless.

00:34:48.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 24, 2022

Cutting Through the Fog of War In Ukraine with Alex Marlow

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