The Charlie Kirk Show - Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump-Vance v. Zelenskyy

00:00:00.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:01.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:03.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:07.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:10.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:11.000 He's an incredible guy.

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00:00:29.000 That's why we are here.

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00:00:57.000 Hello, this is producer Blake.

00:00:59.000 We've got a lot going on right now.

00:01:02.000 So Charlie was recording earlier today, but we just had some very remarkable public diplomacy go down in the White House.

00:01:09.000 Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, was in Washington today to sign the rare earth minerals deal that he and Trump recently negotiated.

00:01:19.000 They held a public conversation with the press in one of the rooms of the White House and something none of us have ever seen before just happened.

00:01:30.000 First, let's welcome in who you actually just saw, Alex Marlowe, is rejoining us once again.

00:01:36.000 Are you there, Alex?

00:01:37.000 Yeah, I'm there, Blake.

00:01:38.000 It's absolutely incredible, incredible.

00:01:40.000 So again, to set this up, I was watching this.

00:01:43.000 A lot of the clips have been out of context, but what basically happened is Trump and Zelensky were talking out the deal.

00:01:50.000 Trump was saying, I want peace.

00:01:52.000 All of this.

00:01:53.000 And then J.D. Vance was there, Vice President Vance, and he talks about, okay, we're going to try to develop better diplomacy with Russia to work towards peace.

00:02:00.000 And something incredible happens where Zelensky, he basically picks a fight with Vance.

00:02:06.000 He says, he was going on, oh, we had these deals with Russia, and then Russia broke all these deals, so what kind of diplomacy do you want us to do?

00:02:13.000 He basically picks a fight with him, and it explodes.

00:02:18.000 It goes on for about...

00:02:20.000 Ten minutes.

00:02:21.000 Let's do clip 271. I'm talking about the kind of diplomacy that's going to end the destruction of your country.

00:02:28.000 Yes, but if you are not strong...

00:02:30.000 Mr. President, with respect, I think it's disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media.

00:02:35.000 Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems.

00:02:42.000 You should be thanking the President for trying to bring an end to this conflict.

00:02:45.000 Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have?

00:02:48.000 I've actually watched and seen the stories, and I know what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President.

00:02:59.000 Do you disagree that you've had problems bringing people into your military?

00:03:03.000 And do you think that it's respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?

00:03:12.000 A lot of questions.

00:03:14.000 Let's start from the beginning.

00:03:15.000 First of all, during the war, Everybody has problems.

00:03:19.000 Even you.

00:03:20.000 But you have nice ocean and don't feel now.

00:03:23.000 But you will feel it in the future.

00:03:26.000 God bless.

00:03:26.000 You don't know that.

00:03:27.000 God bless.

00:03:28.000 God bless.

00:03:28.000 You will not have the war.

00:03:30.000 Don't tell us what we're going to feel.

00:03:31.000 We're trying to solve a problem.

00:03:33.000 Don't tell us what we're going to feel.

00:03:35.000 I'm not telling you.

00:03:36.000 Because you're in no position to dictate that.

00:03:38.000 Remember this.

00:03:39.000 You're in no position to dictate what we're going to feel.

00:03:43.000 We're going to feel very good.

00:03:45.000 We're going to feel very good and very strong.

00:03:49.000 You're right now not in a very good position.

00:03:51.000 You've allowed yourself to be in a very bad position, and he happens to be right about it.

00:03:57.000 You're not in a good position.

00:03:59.000 You don't have the cards right now.

00:04:01.000 With us, you start having cards.

00:04:02.000 I'm not playing cards.

00:04:04.000 I'm wearing serious, Mr. President.

00:04:05.000 You're playing cards.

00:04:07.000 You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

00:04:10.000 You're gambling with World War III. You're gambling with World War III. And what you're doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country.

00:04:20.000 It's back to you.

00:04:22.000 Far more than a lot of people said they should have.

00:04:25.000 Have you said thank you once?

00:04:26.000 A lot of times.

00:04:27.000 Even today.

00:04:29.000 Even today.

00:04:30.000 You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October.

00:04:34.000 Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who's trying to save your country.

00:04:42.000 So just a second.

00:04:43.000 So that recently wrapped up.

00:04:45.000 And then we had this statement just released from President Trump on Truth Social.

00:04:49.000 I'm not sure what the number is, but let's put it up if we can.

00:04:52.000 We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House today.

00:04:56.000 Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under such fire and pressure.

00:05:03.000 It's amazing what comes out through emotion.

00:05:05.000 I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for peace if America is involved because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations.

00:05:17.000 I don't want advantage.

00:05:19.000 I want peace.

00:05:21.000 He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office.

00:05:27.000 He can come back when he is ready for peace.

00:05:32.000 And a follow-up press conference between Trump and Zelensky, they are reporting, has been canceled.

00:05:38.000 Zelensky's motorcade pulled up to the White House.

00:05:41.000 I believe he may have already departed.

00:05:44.000 Alex, what do we make of all of this?

00:05:46.000 Yeah, it's very interesting to watch Zelensky kind of buckle under the pressure of the moment.

00:05:51.000 This was the moment for him to take his medicine, which is that he is vulnerable unless he has the backing of the United States or NATO countries.

00:06:00.000 He's not a NATO country.

00:06:01.000 The United States, especially President Trump, has been proactive about giving him weaponry.

00:06:05.000 He got javelin missiles from Trump proactively, which even Biden didn't do that.

00:06:09.000 Trump had been an ally of Ukraine.

00:06:11.000 And this has been a big myth I talked about with Charlie, people who are just tuning into the show on the pre-tapes.

00:06:16.000 I talked about how Trump had helped Ukraine immeasurably.

00:06:19.000 The American media had prevented the public from being aware of that.

00:06:23.000 And he comes in and he's essentially lecturing us on our emotions.

00:06:26.000 He's appealing to our emotions and how we feel about stuff because Putin invaded.

00:06:31.000 Buddy, we don't care who started this thing.

00:06:33.000 We just want it to end.

00:06:35.000 And that was the memo that Zelensky did not get.

00:06:37.000 And Vance made very good points about how Zelensky had come to Pennsylvania and campaigned on behalf of Kamala Harris and Democrats.

00:06:44.000 He'd come to campaign.

00:06:45.000 For the other guys.

00:06:46.000 And Trump is still trying to broker a peace so no more Ukrainians die.

00:06:49.000 The price of that peace is going to be he's going to have to share the rare earth with us.

00:06:52.000 That should be a good compromise to any good negotiator.

00:06:55.000 But Zelensky could not handle it.

00:06:58.000 He kind of freaked out there.

00:06:59.000 That was an unbelievable thing to scold the vice president and the president about our emotions in the Oval Office.

00:07:05.000 I admit, I've never seen something like that happen in the public.

00:07:08.000 It really is incredible.

00:07:11.000 Charlie tweeted just a few minutes ago that this is the most transparent display of diplomacy in history.

00:07:18.000 I literally cannot think of another example like it going all the way back.

00:07:23.000 You'll hear about arguments between world leaders that happen at summits, that happen in private, but nothing where an engagement that appeared to be polite, appeared to be...

00:07:35.000 Kind of a formality.

00:07:37.000 Explodes like that.

00:07:38.000 Goes on for several minutes.

00:07:40.000 And it looks like a lot of people are reacting.

00:07:45.000 They're saying Zelensky.

00:07:46.000 We have Mark Thiessen.

00:07:49.000 He was a former speechwriter for Bush.

00:07:51.000 He's kind of a more hawkish Republican.

00:07:53.000 He literally has Ukraine's flag in his profile name on X. And he says, this is entirely Zelensky's fault. 0.90

00:08:03.000 Trump greeted him graciously, was ready to turn the page, just said he wanted to get help, help Ukraine get its territory back.

00:08:11.000 And Zelensky comes in, gets into a fight in public.

00:08:15.000 I've never seen anything like it in my life.

00:08:20.000 Blake, can I add something here that I think is really important?

00:08:26.000 He's anticipating the American media is going to take his side.

00:08:29.000 And what does that say about the American press?

00:08:31.000 Zelensky is only doing this in front of the press because he thinks they're on his team, not the president of the United States team.

00:08:37.000 And I got to tell you, I bet he was correct to assume that.

00:08:41.000 Watch how the media reacts to this story because this one is a total Rorschach test.

00:08:45.000 If you're on the pro-America side, if you're on the America First side, you see what Trump and Vance did is defend our nation, our sovereignty.

00:08:51.000 What Zelensky did is attack us despite our graciousness and the fact that we've given them so much.

00:08:57.000 It is totally outside of the realm of possibility that this would have happened if we had oppressed that actually cared about this country more than Ukraine. 0.51

00:09:04.000 And it's such a bafflingly bad play to me because Trump has been the biggest guy in American politics for a decade.

00:09:11.000 And I think anyone who honestly looks at the way he is, you can kind of understand how you would appeal to Trump.

00:09:18.000 And if Zelensky came in and was just over the top, We're so grateful for the aid you've given.

00:09:25.000 We're so grateful for the aid.

00:09:26.000 You would have never let this war start, Mr. President.

00:09:28.000 The invasion didn't happen while you were president.

00:09:31.000 If he had that approach, I bet it would really win Trump over.

00:09:36.000 Trump would think, ah, I can work with this Zelensky guy.

00:09:38.000 We can get something going here.

00:09:42.000 Instead...

00:09:42.000 Throw in your lot to just assume, oh, well, the media, the same people who very badly failed at stopping Trump in 2024, they'll tear him down, they'll wreck his administration, and that will force him to give me more money to keep the war going.

00:09:58.000 I just, I really cannot figure out what was driving this to happen unless, maybe he just didn't expect it to blow up that way, but he should have...

00:10:07.000 He should have backpedaled once he saw what was going on, and instead they just escalated it.

00:10:13.000 I would say this is certainly the single most memorable moment of the new Trump administration so far.

00:10:20.000 Yeah, it's explosive.

00:10:21.000 The reaction online are unbelievable.

00:10:23.000 My newsroom at Breitbart is everyone is going absolutely nuts for this.

00:10:26.000 It's just people don't even know what to make of it exactly.

00:10:29.000 For some calamity like this to happen, it's got to be a multifactorial origin.

00:10:35.000 I think Zelensky probably has some language issues.

00:10:38.000 I bet he could have chosen better words if he was more of a native English speaker.

00:10:42.000 I think that's part of it.

00:10:43.000 I think he's completely arrogant because of the American media and the way they've treated him in the past and the Democrat Party that's welcomed him.

00:10:49.000 And flown the Ukraine flag.

00:10:50.000 And all these people, even establishment rhino-type neocons who have been so pro-Ukraine relentlessly.

00:10:57.000 I don't think he got a dose of reality.

00:10:59.000 I think this stuff that J.D. Vance was saying is all common knowledge to us.

00:11:03.000 People listen to Charlie's show.

00:11:04.000 People listen to my show.

00:11:05.000 They know that Zelensky went and campaigned for Democrats, which is election interference on behalf of the Democrats in our country.

00:11:11.000 They know that we'd given them over $100 billion and a lot of it had disappeared.

00:11:15.000 We don't know where it went.

00:11:16.000 Tucker says it went to ski resorts.

00:11:18.000 No reason to doubt him.

00:11:20.000 We don't like this guy that much.

00:11:22.000 I don't think he understood that.

00:11:23.000 I don't think he understood that he needed to come in there and he needed to say, hey, Trump, you're the man.

00:11:28.000 This is your moment.

00:11:29.000 This is your media now.

00:11:30.000 And I'm going to work with you to broker a peace.

00:11:34.000 That is the moment we're in.

00:11:35.000 And he couldn't do it.

00:11:36.000 He tried to save face in some way.

00:11:37.000 And it will go down as perhaps a historic failure for him and for his country.

00:11:43.000 Let's play another one of the clips here.

00:11:45.000 I think we can fit this one in.

00:11:47.000 Just to show what the vibe is, let's do a clip 260. This is another funny exchange.

00:11:51.000 Let's slow it.

00:11:52.000 She's asking what if Russia breaks the ceasefire?

00:11:55.000 What if they, what if anything? 0.95

00:11:57.000 What if a bomb drops on your head right now? 0.99

00:12:00.000 Okay? 0.99

00:12:01.000 What if they broke it?

00:12:02.000 I don't know.

00:12:03.000 They broke it with Biden because Biden, they didn't respect him.

00:12:06.000 They didn't respect Obama.

00:12:08.000 They respect me.

00:12:10.000 Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me.

00:12:12.000 He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.

00:12:18.000 You ever hear of that deal?

00:12:19.000 That was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam.

00:12:24.000 Hillary Clinton, Shifty Adam Schiff.

00:12:27.000 It was a Democrat scam.

00:12:29.000 And he had to go through that.

00:12:30.000 And he did go through it.

00:12:32.000 We didn't end up in a war.

00:12:34.000 And he went through it.

00:12:35.000 He was accused of all that stuff.

00:12:36.000 He had nothing to do with it.

00:12:38.000 It came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom.

00:12:41.000 It came out of Hunter Biden's bedroom.

00:12:44.000 We've been on this story so long, it's easy to forget sometimes.

00:12:47.000 This all kind of started with...

00:12:49.000 Remember, he gave Zelensky the call in 2018 or 2019, and then they said, we have to impeach him over that.

00:12:55.000 Hunter Biden, we've come a long way since then.

00:13:00.000 But, yeah, Alex, so how do we see this play now?

00:13:04.000 Let's assume Zelensky's correct that the media do take his side, and they'll say, Trump disgraced America with his bad diplomatic protocol or whatever.

00:13:14.000 How do you see that shaping out with the American public?

00:13:17.000 Yeah, this might be one where they might see the writing on the wall that they can't do that this time because you cannot come into our Oval Office, one of the hallowed grounds on American soil, and to be so spoiled.

00:13:28.000 He just comes off as a spoiled baby.

00:13:30.000 Trump was trying to be gracious, trying to help him, and I feel like it is going to be a big...

00:13:35.000 It's something that Zelensky certainly calculated he would have...

00:13:39.000 The people in the room, the press who were there, they would have his back.

00:13:42.000 But for him to come out and to suggest that Trump has been anything short of trying to broker a peace that provides a best-case scenario for Ukraine is just inaccurate.

00:13:52.000 And he needed to turn that page.

00:13:53.000 He needed to move on.

00:13:55.000 And he wants to go relitigate that Putin did invade his territory.

00:13:58.000 That's true.

00:13:59.000 But again, that is not the focal point right now.

00:14:02.000 The focal point now is not how this started.

00:14:03.000 It's how we bring it to a peace before things get worse.

00:14:06.000 It's noteworthy that the average age of the Ukrainian troops now is into the mid-40s.

00:14:12.000 They're mid-40s.

00:14:13.000 It wasn't how it was at the beginning of the war.

00:14:14.000 They've lost hundreds of thousands of people.

00:14:16.000 Russia, I think, has lost a million people.

00:14:18.000 It's time to end this thing for the good of humanity.

00:14:20.000 And anyone who is not prepared to do that is just going to be – it is not going to be welcome in the eyes of Trump, who wants this thing cleaned up so he can go back to focusing on his agenda.

00:14:30.000 And Vance jumping in there and defending our honor as a country after Zelensky wasted so much of our money and he went against Trump. 0.56

00:14:37.000 Despite how Trump was helpful to him when Trump was president.

00:14:41.000 And Zelensky knew it.

00:14:42.000 Zelensky didn't hate Trump before.

00:14:43.000 I don't think he hates him now.

00:14:45.000 It's one of these things where Vance was defending our honor and then Zelensky gets emotional about it like a baby.

00:14:50.000 Unbelievable stuff.

00:14:51.000 And I just don't know how the media spins it.

00:14:53.000 But they'll try.

00:14:54.000 They will try.

00:14:54.000 And I suppose the million, the hundred billion dollar question is, what is the impact of this on the actual war?

00:15:01.000 Does this somehow bring us closer to peace?

00:15:06.000 And I think...

00:15:06.000 The answer is we don't know.

00:15:09.000 I think I would consider it a tragedy.

00:15:11.000 Charlie would consider it a tragedy if that were to result in, you know, if this means there is no peace, Russia crushes Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people die.

00:15:22.000 I don't think that's what President Trump wants.

00:15:23.000 He genuinely does want peace.

00:15:25.000 We want peace, but we can only have peace if every party involved actually wants it to happen.

00:15:33.000 Today, it kind of did have the look that rather than pursuing peace, Zelensky wanted to pursue this dunk on Vice President Vance.

00:15:44.000 Why don't you give us your thoughts, Alex, on that part of it?

00:15:47.000 Are we closer to peace or farther away?

00:15:49.000 Yeah, Blake, one thing that's really interesting here that I was thinking about is that there's been a lot of back and forth about whether or not Ukraine has all these rare earths.

00:15:57.000 And the EU says that they've got all these rare earths.

00:15:59.000 They've got a lot of them.

00:16:00.000 They've got like 5% of the world's rare earths.

00:16:01.000 And there's been a lot of dispute about that.

00:16:04.000 Russian media says they don't have as much.

00:16:06.000 And, you know, I don't tend to trust Russian media at face value, but it's an interesting possibility that maybe Russia was right and the EU was wrong.

00:16:14.000 Again, all else being equal, I tend to trust the EU more than Russia, but...

00:16:18.000 Who trusts the EU that much?

00:16:20.000 Maybe there's something going on that maybe there aren't as many of these minerals that we thought we were going to get when we were brokering this piece.

00:16:25.000 And maybe that was part of the underlying thing.

00:16:27.000 Maybe that's why Zelensky was freaking out is that that could have been exposed.

00:16:30.000 So that's another thing because the deal was not signed.

00:16:33.000 So apparently Zelensky's left the White House, been kicked out of the White House now, so he's on his way home.

00:16:38.000 And if there's no deal signed yet, then what was this all about?

00:16:42.000 We kicked him out.

00:16:43.000 Wow.

00:16:46.000 Truly unbelievable.

00:16:47.000 Forget the most viral part of this Trump presidency.

00:16:52.000 This feels like a top five crazy moment in the entire Trump era.

00:16:58.000 Yeah, this is really exciting.

00:17:00.000 This is what we live for in the news business, and I love to see America defended by—it's a double whammy for me because it's America's first guy.

00:17:06.000 I love to see Vance and Trump defend America, and I just like the clarity with the way both of them spoke.

00:17:13.000 Zelensky, he's at a disadvantage because it's our home soil and he doesn't speak the language naturally, but Vance and Trump defending our honor was great to see.

00:17:22.000 I think it's a historic moment for both of those men, and I think the country will ultimately be grateful.

00:17:29.000 It's a new mode of diplomacy.

00:17:32.000 It's the most transparent diplomacy we'll ever see.

00:17:37.000 We actually have Andrew now.

00:17:38.000 Andrew, are you there to join us?

00:17:41.000 What's your reaction?

00:17:42.000 I think what you guys were just saying, I've never in the history of diplomacy, of White House visits, seen anything like this.

00:17:51.000 It's explosive.

00:17:52.000 It's unprecedented.

00:17:54.000 I don't know.

00:17:56.000 If anybody in the news media landscape knows where things go from here, other than the fact that Zelensky has left the White House, there's been no deal signed.

00:18:06.000 I mean, that is a complete devolution of that relationship.

00:18:11.000 And it is historic.

00:18:14.000 I mean, normally these things are scripted.

00:18:18.000 Everybody plays nice.

00:18:20.000 Everybody's on their best behavior.

00:18:22.000 The fact that J.D. Vance...

00:18:25.000 Blew all that up.

00:18:26.000 I mean, really, it was Zelensky, but the fact that J.D. Vance stepped in and, as Alex says, defended our country's honor in that moment was striking.

00:18:34.000 I think it says a lot about his courage. 0.98

00:18:38.000 We've been talking about Doge and big balls.

00:18:40.000 Well, I think we got another guy here that also exhibited a lot of courage under fire and a lot of gusto, and I'm really proud of J.D. for standing up for our honor. 0.55

00:18:52.000 He's going to get lambasted in the...

00:18:55.000 In the MSM and the legacy news media for breaking protocol, whatever.

00:19:00.000 I don't care.

00:19:01.000 Zelensky started this exchange and J.D. Vance wasn't going to sit idly by watching it happen.

00:19:07.000 I completely think that Zelensky comes out looking like the unhinged foreign oligarch that he is. 0.99

00:19:15.000 And I think people with eyes to see it are going to see it.

00:19:17.000 I think this changes dramatically, at least in the short run, the way that I see this.

00:19:26.000 It could very well mean that Zelensky is going to simply defy anything that the U.S. proposes, even if we try and broker a peace.

00:19:36.000 Zelensky could very well just try and thumb his nose at the Americans, which is, I would say, a political death sentence for him if he actually allows a democratic process to unplay.

00:19:51.000 We're in uncharted territory, but I absolutely, to your point, Alex, I think before, where you said he's never been confronted with the depth of his, just how unpopular he's become, and especially within conservative circles, And this was a come-to-Jesus moment for him that he simply refused to acknowledge because he's had smoke blown up, as you know what, for so long with, you know, Hollywood, the foreign press, our press in the United States.

00:20:20.000 So I couldn't be more stunned, shocked, surprised that this happened, but actually really grateful at J.D. Vann.

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00:21:33.000 I believe we have another guest.

00:21:35.000 We have Kurt Schlichter joining us from his automobile.

00:21:39.000 Are you able to hear us, Kurt?

00:21:41.000 I can.

00:21:41.000 How do you like?

00:21:42.000 Beautiful West Texas.

00:21:44.000 Oh, it looks very lovely.

00:21:45.000 God bless America.

00:21:47.000 I've been on that drive, Kurt.

00:21:51.000 It's one heck of a drive.

00:21:53.000 And the beauty of it is it's full of the kind of Americans that Zielinski never talks to.

00:21:59.000 Zelensky never sees.

00:22:01.000 Zelensky stays in the cities when he comes and doesn't understand that the people out here who have to pay for this in treasure and, if necessary, in blood are.

00:22:11.000 And I don't think he understands that when he runs his little foreigner mouth at the guy we just elected president and gets put in his place, which is subordinate to the United States of America, normal Americans are going to cheer. 0.71

00:22:25.000 And I want to tell you, I say that...

00:22:28.000 As a friend of the Ukrainians, I trained Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine when I was in the Army.

00:22:35.000 I deployed.

00:22:36.000 A Ukrainian unit was with us.

00:22:38.000 I sympathized with them.

00:22:40.000 I wish they could win their war.

00:22:43.000 I think they fought very bravely.

00:22:45.000 But we're not going to take a lot of gut from some foreign potentate.

00:22:49.000 That is not in the cards.

00:22:50.000 It's not happening.

00:22:53.000 You were right, Andrew.

00:22:54.000 They were blowing smoke up his fourth point of contact, and he got high on his own supply.

00:23:01.000 Couldn't agree more.

00:23:02.000 Couldn't agree more.

00:23:05.000 I'm told we haven't played this, so I apologize.

00:23:08.000 I'm coming in late.

00:23:09.000 I tried to schedule a doctor's appointment conveniently with other scheduling dynamics that we have.

00:23:15.000 Rushed back.

00:23:17.000 273. This is CNN Christiane Amanpour's reaction to what just transpired in the Oval Office.

00:23:23.000 273. Never in the history of modern diplomacy, war, peace, whatever, have I ever, ever, ever seen anything like it.

00:23:34.000 We just have to hope that for the safety of the free world and for the American people, for the European people, for the Ukrainian people, That these two presidents get out of breath and try to iron out their differences.

00:23:51.000 This was an entirely personal go-to with so many mistruths and misfacts.

00:24:00.000 Totally in line with what I was saying.

00:24:03.000 Nothing like it.

00:24:04.000 Yeah.

00:24:05.000 Who wants to take the mistruths and misfacts?

00:24:08.000 Well, look, I haven't had a chance to see the whole exchange.

00:24:11.000 I think you saw plenty right there.

00:24:14.000 It is personal, but it's more than just individuals.

00:24:17.000 It's about the United States of America, and that's why J.D. Vance did such a great job standing up for the country.

00:24:25.000 Our country's not going to take guff from little foreign boat dates anymore. 1.00

00:24:30.000 It isn't going to happen.

00:24:33.000 As for Christine Onanpour, you know, it would go a long way if every once in a while you took America's side in a fight.

00:24:40.000 It would have gone a lot, you know, you'd have done Zelensky a favor if you said, hey, normal Americans, the guys who drive trucks.

00:24:49.000 The guys who shoot guns, the guys who actually elected this president, have a lot of doubts about you, Zelensky.

00:24:55.000 They look at you.

00:24:56.000 They look at your background.

00:24:58.000 They don't trust you.

00:24:59.000 They think you're corrupt. 0.71

00:25:00.000 Maybe instead of presuming to lecture them from some sort of moral high ground, you were handed by a bunch of Hollywood halfwits and regime media superstars.

00:25:12.000 You came in and you made your case about how you're fighting for the freedom of your country against invaders and how you need America's help.

00:25:22.000 Please, please help us.

00:25:24.000 We're very, very brave.

00:25:26.000 And now that would have struck an entirely different chord and we'd be in a very different place.

00:25:34.000 But you know what?

00:25:35.000 We're not going to be ignored.

00:25:37.000 We're not going to be insulted.

00:25:38.000 We're not going to be treated like children.

00:25:44.000 Well, you know, Kurt, what strikes me here is that this could essentially force Zelensky to run into the arms of Europe, and Europe's talking tough on Russia still.

00:26:03.000 But here's the problem.

00:26:05.000 They have so, you know, they have so...

00:26:12.000 There's been a lack of investment in their own security defense because they've been leaning on the United States.

00:26:18.000 And so Trump had that one line where he said, you have no cards to play.

00:26:23.000 You have no cards to play.

00:26:24.000 His only card is to run into the arms of the Europeans. 1.00

00:26:27.000 But the Europeans are feckless, weak. 1.00

00:26:30.000 They have not invested in their own security. 0.83

00:26:32.000 And so is that even a card to play?

00:26:35.000 What does Zelensky do next?

00:26:37.000 Well, look.

00:26:39.000 Worst case, it's, you know, oh, please don't throw me in that briar patch.

00:26:43.000 What, he's going to show Trump by doing exactly what Trump wants him to do?

00:26:48.000 I mean, the Europeans have already tried that.

00:26:50.000 Well, we're just going to have to, you know, you're mad at us for not carrying our fair share of NATO, so I guess we're just going to have to show you by carrying our fair share of NATO. Oh, no, please don't do exactly what he wants.

00:27:08.000 There are no cards to play.

00:27:09.000 Look, I used to negotiate for a living when I was a full-time lawyer, and sometimes you walk in with nothing, and maybe you can bluff, maybe, but if you have a master negotiator like Donald Trump, are you going to bet on bluffing out bluffing him?

00:27:28.000 Come on.

00:27:29.000 Come on, that's crazy talk.

00:27:31.000 I totally agree.

00:27:32.000 Blake.

00:27:34.000 Is this a bluff from Trump, or was this like, he means business?

00:27:41.000 I feel like you can never know.

00:27:43.000 Trump is, he's very much in truth.

00:27:46.000 That's his genius.

00:27:47.000 Well, yeah, it's like, there was the famous, they called it the madman theory, where Nixon would act like he was very aggressive.

00:27:54.000 He would cultivate the idea that he could do anything so that people would respect him.

00:28:00.000 And Trump, the best way to actually...

00:28:03.000 Have people believe that about you is to actually be that way.

00:28:06.000 And Trump really can be a guy who can swerve very much.

00:28:10.000 He can seem this implockable enemy, and then he's actually very eager to make a deal.

00:28:14.000 But he can hold a grudge, too.

00:28:17.000 And so I think it's one of those things where when you're watching it, you're never quite sure what will happen.

00:28:23.000 But as we saw in the first term, it had this...

00:28:26.000 This pattern of eventually working out, that it would seem very chaotic, it would seem like it was causing conflict, and then actually, surprisingly, he'd get on really well with the Mexican president, who was this big left winger, and we'd remain in Mexico.

00:28:39.000 He would actually successfully renegotiate the trade deals.

00:28:43.000 He would go to North Korea.

00:28:45.000 There's this special thing with Trump where whatever he's doing ends up working out surprisingly well.

00:28:54.000 I don't know how this will fit into it.

00:28:56.000 We'll have to see what unfolds, to say the least.

00:28:59.000 I very much wonder if maybe what could happen is Trump will say, we're happy to make more concessions with Ukraine, make a better deal, but Zelensky specifically needs to resign.

00:29:11.000 And that would be an interesting way to get him out and also...

00:29:15.000 Make Ukraine a democracy again.

00:29:17.000 Say you guys have to hold an election.

00:29:18.000 We'll support a democracy if it's an actual democracy, not a sort of military dictatorship for the duration.

00:29:25.000 There's a lot of ways I can see this shaking out.

00:29:29.000 Yeah, and Kurt, I don't know if you saw the statement, because I know you're driving, but President Trump released a statement basically saying he's not ready for peace yet.

00:29:43.000 He disrespected us in our cherished Oval Office.

00:29:48.000 But here's how he ends it, Kurt.

00:29:50.000 He says he can come back when he is ready for peace.

00:29:54.000 Basically, Trump is saying there's no option to move forward.

00:29:58.000 We settle or you're on your own.

00:30:02.000 I think that's an excellent statement of the present situation.

00:30:08.000 And look.

00:30:09.000 Again, as I said, I sympathize with the Ukrainians, but I'm an American, and I believe an American interest is in America's interest for this war to end.

00:30:19.000 It's costing us money.

00:30:21.000 It's risking our lives.

00:30:23.000 It is not in America's interest for this Ukraine war to continue.

00:30:28.000 We have Zelensky leaving the White House early.

00:30:31.000 Apparently, the agreement they were going to sign has gone unsigned.

00:30:35.000 We saw a diplomatic deal collapse in real time.

00:30:39.000 I've been reacting here with producer Andrew, who had to leave the doctor's appointment early, as well as Kurt Schlichter.

00:30:46.000 We haven't played every video that we have available from this, so I kind of want to go back to play one of these, because they're pretty incredible.

00:30:55.000 This is a very interesting argument over basically saying the word thank you.

00:31:01.000 Let's play clip 272. It's going to be a very hard thing to do business like this, I tell you.

00:31:08.000 I said a lot of times to American people.

00:31:12.000 Except that there are disagreements, and let's go litigate those disagreements rather than trying to fight it out in the American media when you're wrong.

00:31:19.000 We know that you're wrong.

00:31:20.000 But you see, I think it's good for the American people to see what's going on.

00:31:24.000 I think it's very important.

00:31:25.000 That's why I kept this going so long.

00:31:28.000 You have to be thankful.

00:31:29.000 You don't have the cards.

00:31:31.000 You're buried there.

00:31:32.000 Your people are dying. 0.95

00:31:34.000 You're running low on soldiers.

00:31:36.000 Listen, you're running low on soldiers. 0.83

00:31:39.000 It would be a damn good thing. 0.84

00:31:40.000 Then you tell us, I don't want to cease fire. 0.96

00:31:43.000 I don't want to cease fire.

00:31:44.000 I want to go and I want this.

00:31:46.000 Look.

00:31:48.000 If you could get a ceasefire right now, I'd tell you you'd take it so the bullets stop flying and your men stop getting killed.

00:31:54.000 Of course we want to stop the war. 0.95

00:31:55.000 But you're saying you don't want a ceasefire.

00:31:57.000 I want a ceasefire.

00:31:58.000 With guarantees.

00:31:59.000 Because you'll get a ceasefire faster than an agreement.

00:32:01.000 Ask our people about a ceasefire.

00:32:03.000 What do you think?

00:32:04.000 It doesn't matter for you what it means.

00:32:07.000 That was with a guy named Biden, who was not a smart person.

00:32:11.000 That was with Obama.

00:32:13.000 Excuse me.

00:32:14.000 That was with Obama, who gave you sheets, and I gave you javelins.

00:32:18.000 I gave you the javelins to take out all those tanks.

00:32:22.000 Obama gave you sheets.

00:32:24.000 In fact, the statement is, Obama gave sheets and Trump gave javelins.

00:32:29.000 You've got to be more thankful, because let me tell you, you don't have the cards.

00:32:34.000 With us, you have the cards.

00:32:36.000 But without us, you don't have any cards.

00:32:39.000 Just one of several crazy exchanges there.

00:32:41.000 I want to get this.

00:32:42.000 This was just posted a short time ago by Jackie Heinrich with, I believe, Fox News, reporting out the story.

00:32:51.000 She says, White House officials tell Fox, first, Trump kicked Zelensky out of the White House.

00:32:57.000 He did not leave on his own.

00:33:00.000 Trump kicked him out.

00:33:01.000 It says the rare earths deal was not signed.

00:33:06.000 The White House claims that the Ukrainians were begging to reset And then she adds this.

00:33:34.000 this this is incredible when I went to the upper press to ask what was going on the lunch that Trump and Zelensky were supposed to be dining on and while talking was sitting out in the hallway I am told that White House press office staffers will be eating it so that's the current state of things Zelensky kicked out of the White House and told, come back when you're ready for peace.

00:33:58.000 Oh, man.

00:34:00.000 When have we ever seen anything like this?

00:34:02.000 And I gotta tell you, it's refreshing.

00:34:04.000 And Donald Trump did on purpose.

00:34:05.000 As he said, I want the American people to see what I'm dealing with.

00:34:09.000 Well, they have. 0.91

00:34:10.000 And I got to tell you, most normal Americans are going to go, damn right, Mr. President. 0.98

00:34:16.000 Damn right. 0.98

00:34:17.000 And you just watch for the people who side with the foreigner. 0.94

00:34:21.000 Just watch for the people who make excuses for the guy who hasn't held an election in years.

00:34:29.000 Watch.

00:34:30.000 Who sides with us and who sides with them?

00:34:35.000 I totally agree with this.

00:34:37.000 You know, I've been thinking about this clip a lot lately, Kurt.

00:34:41.000 It was that Jasmine Crockett.

00:34:44.000 I think she was talking about the hockey game with U.S. versus Canada.

00:34:51.000 And she was saying, I'm rooting for Canada.

00:34:53.000 I'm rooting for Mexico. 0.99

00:34:54.000 This is a sitting U.S. Congresswoman.

00:34:57.000 Who openly admits that she's rooting against her own country.

00:35:01.000 And yeah, we could say that that's just about a sports event.

00:35:05.000 But that mindset is emblematic across the political spectrum.

00:35:10.000 It doesn't matter if it's about negotiations with Ukraine, about Greenland, Panama, deporting criminals.

00:35:16.000 All of this, you've got one side of the country, let's call them 35%. 0.99

00:35:22.000 Maybe it's less, maybe it's more.

00:35:24.000 35%, though, is an incredible amount of people in this country that I guarantee you are rooting for foreign nations that are going to be siding with Zelensky.

00:35:33.000 And that 35%, when you take it to our press corps, is probably more like 85%, 90%.

00:35:38.000 So don't expect, you listening in the audience, for the U.S. media to look favorably on what just happened.

00:35:45.000 They're going to say this is blowing up norms, it's destroying the world order that's been led by America.

00:35:50.000 No.

00:35:51.000 I see it completely differently.

00:35:53.000 This is President Trump reasserting American dominance and American leadership in a pragmatic, realistic way on the global stage, telling our allies that they will not treat us like garbage anymore, and we're not your kicking post, and we're not your piggy bank, and we're going to assert our wants, needs, and desires, our interests, ahead of everybody else's, and to the extent that those align, fantastic, and to the extent they don't, too bad, so sad, get in line.

00:36:18.000 I want to play, since we're talking about the press's reaction, let's play another clip of their reaction we did CNN earlier.

00:36:24.000 Now we have MSNBC. Let's play clip 275. I certainly have never seen anything like what we just watched unfold between the president of the United States and the leader of another country.

00:36:36.000 Give me your take on what we've just witnessed.

00:36:42.000 We're on live TV, so I'm not going to speak in terms that I would speak if we were off the air.

00:36:47.000 But this was horrific.

00:36:49.000 This was a tragedy.

00:36:51.000 And a tragedy for American national security interests.

00:36:55.000 I want to really emphasize that.

00:36:57.000 And then another thing, let's put up 283 quick, just because Ryan found this.

00:37:04.000 This is apparently the Ukrainian ambassador or someone with their delegation, as this is happening, just sticking her face into her hands.

00:37:13.000 Oh no.

00:37:15.000 What is happening?

00:37:19.000 Man, it's amazing.

00:37:22.000 I wonder what words he wanted to use in private.

00:37:25.000 What's worse than horrific?

00:37:25.000 This was a genocide.

00:37:27.000 This was the end of humanity.

00:37:29.000 This is that meteor out in space hitting Earth and exploding.

00:37:33.000 There's a lot of hyperbole, I think.

00:37:36.000 Like I said, Trump can hold a grudge.

00:37:37.000 I wouldn't be surprised if Ukraine were to come back. 1.00

00:37:43.000 Very aggressively, very quickly, and say, this was extremely bad, and we are genuinely ready for peace.

00:37:48.000 Trump does like to make deals, but it's very remarkable, and I think we'll be seeing this shake out over the weekend, very much so.

00:37:57.000 I happen to think that Trump is the master.

00:38:00.000 The master at reading leverage and just intuitively understanding this.

00:38:05.000 And I think he's gamed this out.

00:38:06.000 Game theory in Trump's head has already played out in five different ways.

00:38:11.000 And I think he knows he's got this guy dead to rights.

00:38:13.000 I think he knows that he said it right there.

00:38:15.000 He said, you've got no cards without us.

00:38:17.000 With us, you've got cards.

00:38:19.000 So, you know, and I tend to believe the press statement from the White House saying he was begging for a reset.

00:38:25.000 Hey, everything's fine.

00:38:26.000 We argued it out.

00:38:27.000 What's a little fight tomorrow?

00:38:28.000 We'll, you know, we'll be bros again.

00:38:30.000 I think they're not playing around.

00:38:32.000 And I think this is years of being frustrated at the Biden regime's handling of this conflict.

00:38:39.000 And it just boiled over.

00:38:41.000 And I think Trump's already sized up the leverage.

00:38:44.000 Kurt, if you want to reply, you've got about 30 seconds until our break.

00:38:47.000 Look, I think that if you like Ukraine, if you truly like Ukraine, like the regime media pretends to, like the Democrats pretend to, they be honest and say, hey, Zelensky was totally out of line here.

00:39:02.000 Totally out of line.

00:39:03.000 Guys, go to your corners, fool off, get back in there, hug it out, work it out.

00:39:09.000 But they can't do that.

00:39:11.000 Yeah, so I was just thinking, as I watched that clip where, you know, what's his name on MSNBC was raving how horrific this is, I think it is worth pausing to reflect on what we've said a lot about the Ukraine war, which is, this is a war which 100% Did not have to happen.

00:39:30.000 If you followed the lead-up to that war in late 2021, early 2022, Russia was very, very, very straightforward about what their grievances were with the West.

00:39:43.000 They were angry about NATO expansion.

00:39:45.000 They wanted to negotiate.

00:39:46.000 They were saying, if we can make a deal on Crimea, if we can make a deal on leaving military assets away from the border, if we can make deals about who gets to join NATO and so on, They were ready to, they wanted some sort of negotiation.

00:40:02.000 And we would just refuse to do it.

00:40:04.000 We would howl about their buildup, but we would not negotiate.

00:40:07.000 And then they invaded Ukraine.

00:40:10.000 Hundreds of thousands of people from both countries are now dead because of this.

00:40:15.000 We have the evidence that a peace could have been negotiated within the first few days of the conflict, which would have been a much better deal than we are likely to get now.

00:40:26.000 It might have literally just been, We acknowledge Crimea and we acknowledge Donbass, which were two territories Russia already controlled at the time, that by all measurements appear to want to be a part of Russia anyway.

00:40:39.000 And they threw all of that out and they insisted on plunging an unfortunate country.

00:40:46.000 Ukraine is an unfortunate country.

00:40:48.000 It is probably the most...

00:40:50.000 It's the conflict-wracked of all of the former Soviet countries.

00:40:54.000 It's one of the poorest.

00:40:55.000 It is a tragic country that has had enough bad things happen to it.

00:40:59.000 And we had war hawks in Washington, war hawks in Brussels, push them into a war that they could not win without foreign support when we weren't willing to send our own troops to do it.

00:41:11.000 We had people saying, this is great because Ukraine is doing the dying for us to kill Russians.

00:41:19.000 And now all of these people are going to have this moral outrage because Trump got mad at Zelensky for not being grateful for the billions of dollars we've already sent him.

00:41:28.000 And I'm just in awe of how outrageous their moral posturing can be.

00:41:34.000 I just had to tee off on that.

00:41:36.000 Sorry, Andrew.

00:41:37.000 What do you have to think about it?

00:41:39.000 No, I mean, listen.

00:41:41.000 I just find the whole thing...

00:41:45.000 I just think it was a rebalancing.

00:41:48.000 I actually see Trump has gotten into worse fights with Marco Rubio in the past, in my opinion.

00:41:53.000 I see this as an opportunity for him to really let them know that he's not messing around.

00:41:58.000 He wants peace.

00:42:00.000 He wants this thing over.

00:42:01.000 He's not interested in Ukraine's, you know, trying to get the Donbass back or trying to fight for Crimea.

00:42:08.000 I mean, Ukraine's position is basically we want the entire... 0.95

00:42:12.000 You know, territorial integrity, pre-war, back in Ukrainian hands, probably back before 2014. That's not going to happen.

00:42:21.000 That's not going to happen for a lot of reasons.

00:42:23.000 First of all, Russia's not going to concede that.

00:42:25.000 Second of all, nobody can make them.

00:42:28.000 Third of all, they're not giving up Crimea. 0.51

00:42:30.000 Fourth of all, these are regions that want to be part of Russia.

00:42:37.000 Yeah, we've lost a generation of Ukrainian men.

00:42:40.000 They're going to fight it out to the bitter end.

00:42:41.000 That's a terrible strategy.

00:42:43.000 That's terrible leadership.

00:42:44.000 You've got to know when you've been beat, when you have reached a stalemate.

00:42:50.000 And the only sensible thing to do, I think Trump sees this, is to basically sue for peace.

00:42:55.000 That's the only sensible thing that is left on the table because we're not going to keep bankrolling this quagmire forever.

00:43:04.000 And on one level, and when we come back from the break, I'd love to get your opinion on this, Kurt.

00:43:09.000 I do feel bad for Ukraine on some level.

00:43:13.000 As Mersheimer said, and we're going to play this clip, they have been led down the primrose path by the West, saying that we were going to have their back to the bitter end.

00:43:24.000 It didn't matter what.

00:43:24.000 We're going to push off Russia, and we're going to bring you into the West.

00:43:28.000 We're going to let you join NATO. And basically, Putin called the West bluff.

00:43:33.000 And said, screw you, I'm going to invade. 0.98

00:43:35.000 Now, I don't like Putin. 1.00

00:43:37.000 Putin's not a good guy.

00:43:38.000 But how would we feel if the—and we got a taste of this with the Cuban Missile Crisis— if Russia was parked outside our doorstep, pointing nukes at us, pointing weapons at us, and advancing an alliance that they'd built closer and closer to our doorstep? 0.58

00:43:54.000 We wouldn't like it at all.

00:43:56.000 Now, I'm not saying we would go bomb Cuba, but that was on the table.

00:43:59.000 Kurt, you know, I'm not as good of a student of history as you.

00:44:02.000 But listen, I mean, we've got to understand that Putin is maybe a malicious actor, but he's not an irrational actor.

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00:45:20.000 This Trump press conference or press briefing with Zelensky ended with Zelensky departing, kicked out of the White House and told to come back when he is ready for peace.

00:45:33.000 I have a message from a friend of mine that I think is pretty insightful.

00:45:37.000 If I thought that my life and my country's survival depended on my ability to suck up to someone, I would just do it.

00:45:47.000 And it is...

00:45:49.000 To be more serious for a moment, it's sad to think, who are the people whose lives might end that didn't have to end because Zelensky couldn't help himself from picking a fight with the country that has bankrolled him more than any other country in the world?

00:46:07.000 It's sad to think about, and it's unfortunate that it came to this, but you also find yourself thinking, was this a necessary thing that had to happen to show that we are serious?

00:46:18.000 Yeah, I kind of fall in that camp.

00:46:21.000 Hey, Kurt, I'm going to play this John Mersheimer clip.

00:46:24.000 Famous clip.

00:46:24.000 I'm sure you've seen it before, but 285 and I'll get your reaction to it.

00:46:28.000 285. But I actually think that what's going on here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the Primrose path.

00:46:36.000 And the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked. 0.91

00:46:40.000 What we're doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. 1.00

00:46:46.000 We're encouraging...

00:46:47.000 The Ukrainians to think that they will ultimately become part of the West, because we will ultimately defeat Putin, and we will ultimately get our way. 0.94

00:46:56.000 And of course, the Ukrainians are playing along with this, and the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians, and instead want to pursue a hardline policy.

00:47:05.000 Well, as I said to you before, if they do that, the end result is that their country is going to be wrecked.

00:47:10.000 Kurt Schlichter.

00:47:11.000 Yeah, I'm not, look, to put it mildly, I'm not a fan of Mir Shiver.

00:47:16.000 But he's right there.

00:47:18.000 The West told Ukraine, hey, let you and him fight.

00:47:23.000 We got your back.

00:47:24.000 NN sort of had its back.

00:47:27.000 You know, Mearsheimer, for those who don't know him, he's a very esteemed foreign policy professor, written a lot of books about, you know, he's like considered basically the main guy in his branch of foreign policy studies, neorealism.

00:47:44.000 He's been very astute on this conflict for basically a decade now where he just makes the point.

00:47:50.000 And it was actually a point Obama made a decade ago is what's so funny about how it shows how fanatical the left has gotten, which is just Ukraine is next to Russia.

00:47:59.000 It has been a part of Russia for most of the past 500 years.

00:48:03.000 It is considered the cultural origination point of Russia.

00:48:08.000 If you read a history of Russia, it doesn't start with Moscow.

00:48:11.000 It starts in Kiev.

00:48:14.000 And Russia is just always going to care more about that country than we will. 0.83

00:48:18.000 And any diplomacy we're going to do has to account for that.

00:48:22.000 That they care more than we do.

00:48:24.000 Their ability to escalate or their willingness to escalate is greater than ours.

00:48:29.000 And there was just this total unwillingness in Washington to account for that.

00:48:35.000 And it's horrible to think that hundreds of thousands of people died because...

00:48:40.000 People in Foggy Bottom wanted to feel like they were tough guys.

00:48:44.000 Look, the Europeans and the alleged friends of Ukraine have really led Ukraine down the path. 0.91

00:48:51.000 At the end of the day, and you guys have it right, about all this inter-Slavic stuff. 0.94

00:48:58.000 And it's stuff that we can kind of know about, but we can't feel.

00:49:03.000 If you guys remember Goodfellas...

00:49:06.000 And how the mob said they were going to make Joe Pesci.

00:49:11.000 And instead of making him, they shot him in the back of the head.

00:49:14.000 And Robert De Niro and Henry Hill basically said, hey, we're not Italians.

00:49:23.000 We can't understand what went on with the Italians. 1.00

00:49:26.000 It's real Italian stuff.

00:49:28.000 Well, this is real Slavic stuff.

00:49:30.000 There's a lot of things going on there we don't fully get.

00:49:33.000 We can approach understanding it, but there's nationalist fires, religious fires, all sorts of things going on that make this very, very dangerous to interfere in.

00:49:49.000 and interference includes oh go ahead go ahead wave the red flag in front of the bull and maybe you'll scare the bull off or maybe the bull will charge uh unfortunately this bull charged and uh what we've had is a human tragedy unfolding for three years there's a way out and it's not going to be one like that ukraine likes but you know what it lost we have alex marlowe back He was speaking to us just a few minutes ago, and now he's back.

00:50:19.000 Alex, did you get a chance to see any of those clips we had of the media reaction?

00:50:24.000 We had MSNBC saying that this was, I think...

00:50:27.000 Horrific.

00:50:28.000 And that was the word he had to use because he was on television.

00:50:30.000 He couldn't say what he really thought.

00:50:32.000 I have not had a chance to see the clips because I was doing another hit that I had pre-scheduled.

00:50:37.000 So sorry to leave you guys for a little bit.

00:50:39.000 But I'm on the MSNBC homepage right now and it's...

00:50:42.000 Trump and Vance berate Ukraine's Zelensky in ugly Oval Office media, in ugly Oval Office meetings.

00:50:49.000 So it's exactly what I predicted an hour ago, Blake, to you, which is that the media was going to try to spin this as Zelensky's the victim.

00:50:56.000 And so I don't think all of them are going to be able to stick with this because it did look so bad.

00:51:00.000 And the points that particularly Vance was making were so salient and so resonant that Trump is not getting enough credit for all the good that he's done for Ukraine over the years.

00:51:09.000 years.

00:51:09.000 And I think that once people realize that that's what was going on and Zelensky was being ungrateful, they're not gonna be able to hang on to this.

00:51:15.000 I don't think for too long, but you knew they were going to try.

00:51:18.000 They have to try because remember everything Trump does is bad and everything Zelensky does is good in the eyes of our press.

00:51:23.000 Yeah.

00:51:24.000 And we have breaking news here, Let's go ahead and put up 288. So Zelensky has now gone on Twitter, X, and released the following statement.

00:51:34.000 He says, Thank you, America.

00:51:36.000 Thank you for your support.

00:51:38.000 Thank you for this visit.

00:51:39.000 Thank you, POTUS. Congress and the American people, Ukraine needs just and lasting peace, and we are working exactly for that.

00:51:47.000 Do we have the curb your enthusiasm music?

00:51:50.000 I feel like we've got the realization.

00:51:54.000 Yeah, it feels a little bit like, here's what's going to happen.

00:51:59.000 I can almost play out the next three steps, Alex, and I'm curious if you agree.

00:52:05.000 going to, it said, according to White House sources, he basically begged the White House for a reset.

00:52:11.000 Like, let's calm down.

00:52:11.000 Let's try this again.

00:52:12.000 Let's go.

00:52:13.000 Let's go.

00:52:13.000 So I don't think he's leaving DC.

00:52:15.000 I think what's going to happen is his people are going to reach out to the White House.

00:52:19.000 They're going to try and say, hey, let's do this behind closed doors.

00:52:23.000 There's going to be a, I'm sorry, let's get the deal done.

00:52:25.000 You're right.

00:52:26.000 We need America's support behind us.

00:52:28.000 I don't want to push you into Russia's arms here. 0.95

00:52:30.000 I don't want to push I don't want you to be working closer with Putin than with us.

00:52:33.000 I apologize.

00:52:35.000 Trump's gonna end up getting his deal And Trump's gonna then say, hey, Putin, we got the deal.

00:52:41.000 It was a little rough getting there, but we got there.

00:52:43.000 And we're on the same page now.

00:52:44.000 We need peace.

00:52:46.000 We're not gonna leave Ukraine hanging. 0.72

00:52:48.000 And he's gonna keep playing both sides in such a way until they both meet in the middle.

00:52:53.000 That's how I think Trump is playing this.

00:52:55.000 He's gonna use his leverage on each to get them into a position where he can use them.

00:53:00.000 Yeah, that's how Trump is playing it.

00:53:02.000 But who knows now?

00:53:03.000 Because this was so surprising that Zelensky, who you would think would be a pro by now, I know he was a comedian, but he's been president.

00:53:09.000 He was president of his country for four years, and then he's been a dictator of his country for the last year.

00:53:14.000 I say that only partially trolling.

00:53:15.000 He certainly has canceled elections and has a lot of the hallmarks of a dictator.

00:53:20.000 So he should be able to handle himself in these scenarios.

00:53:25.000 He couldn't.

00:53:25.000 He just completely, completely messed up here.

00:53:28.000 And so he does need a full mea maxima culpa.

00:53:31.000 And he needs to then sign the mineral deal.

00:53:34.000 But that's why I wondered in the last hour with you guys whether or not the mineral deal is even a real thing.

00:53:39.000 Maybe there's something else going on that we're not seeing, that we can't see quite yet, that maybe will come out later.

00:53:45.000 But if this really was just Zelensky freaking out and not handling himself like a diplomatic leader trying to lead a massively consequential negotiation, then he's just got to try to take a mulligan.

00:53:58.000 just say, "I'm sorry, let's sign the deal and let's move on." But can he do that?

00:54:02.000 Is he capable of doing that when all he wants to do is beat Putin?

00:54:05.000 I don't know.

00:54:06.000 Yeah.

00:54:07.000 I think that's been a really interesting dynamic here to the extent that Ukraine really wants to not have to make so many I mean, I think if you look at a map of Ukraine, Ryan, maybe you can grab that for us where the territorial expansion of the Russian forces into Ukraine has happened.

00:54:27.000 I think he's looking at that map and he's already piecing it apart.

00:54:31.000 He's saying, like, I'm going to give here, but I want that one.

00:54:33.000 And I can't come out losing all of it, essentially.

00:54:38.000 He's going to lose land.

00:54:40.000 He's going to lose land, particularly the stuff that Putin took under Obama, and the gravy train is going to slow down.

00:54:47.000 Knowing America is not going to completely stop, because unfortunately we keep sending money overseas at insane levels, but it's not going to be what it was, and there's going to be more accountability for everything that does get sent going forward.

00:54:58.000 And so he's not really looking forward to this.

00:55:01.000 He's choosing between bad options, and I don't think he likes the current slate of bad options that Trump has presented him, which is partially why he freaked out.

00:55:09.000 This is breaking in the last minute.

00:55:12.000 I just wanted to get Jackie Heinrich.

00:55:14.000 She has Senator Lindsey Graham just had lunch in the Oval Office.

00:55:17.000 Graham, of course, is a big Ukraine supporter.

00:55:20.000 Speaking from the White House, Graham tells Fox he is devastated.

00:55:25.000 My question is whether Zelensky is redeemable.

00:55:28.000 In the eyes of the American people, from what everyone saw, nobody including me would want him as our business partner.

00:55:37.000 Zelensky is going to have to fundamentally change or go.

00:55:43.000 Zelensky is going to be on your network tonight.

00:55:46.000 If I were him, I would apologize to the president and the American people.

00:55:52.000 So that is...

00:55:53.000 Lindsey Graham, one of the most pro-Ukraine Republicans, saying Zelensky has to make big changes or to leave.

00:56:00.000 And that's what we speculated an hour ago.

00:56:02.000 Maybe Zelensky himself is the price to reopen negotiations between our countries.

00:56:07.000 Can I just make an observation here?

00:56:10.000 And listen, Lindsey Graham is one of those guys that infuriates MAGA. He infuriates the base. 0.99

00:56:18.000 And many times...

00:56:21.000 We ask ourselves, why is he keeping this snake close to him, to Trump?

00:56:27.000 Why does Trump keep him close to him?

00:56:29.000 And then at a moment like this, you can almost guarantee the two men talked and Lindsey's like, oh, I got an idea.

00:56:36.000 I know how to shore this up.

00:56:39.000 I know how to bring this dog to heel.

00:56:42.000 I'm going to say I was disappointed that I obviously, you know, it's an amazing asset.

00:56:47.000 In Trump's back pocket to deploy Lindsey Graham at a time like this and get him on the same page.

00:56:53.000 And Lindsey's a shrewd politician. 1.00

00:56:56.000 He knows who butters his bread.

00:56:58.000 He knows he's got to stay in alignment with the president on this.

00:57:01.000 And so him coming out saying that is...

00:57:04.000 I mean, I'm looking at the reactions on social media.

00:57:06.000 It's like when you lose Lindsey Graham, you've lost everything, right?

00:57:09.000 It's an amazing card to play and it speaks pretty...

00:57:13.000 Pretty well to Trump's ability to use different assets and use different allies and keep them close for just such a time as this.

00:57:21.000 Andrew, can I add something, Blake, which is so good.

00:57:26.000 Going back to what we were talking about where I was half joking about him being a dictator, part of that is because...

00:57:32.000 He's losing popularity, and even before this happened, there's a very good chance he wouldn't win if he called an election, which is partially why he's not calling an election.

00:57:40.000 Now, his constitution does grant him the right to declare martial law, and thus he doesn't have to have an election.

00:57:46.000 So that's what he's doing.

00:57:48.000 But again, that basically gives him an indefinite, he could just declare he's at war for infinity and never call an election again, which is why I maintain he is a dictator.

00:57:57.000 But part of it is he thought he would win an election.

00:57:59.000 He probably would have called it by now to get himself another four-year runway.

00:58:04.000 He's not called it.

00:58:05.000 And stuff like this could make it even more likely that he would lose.

00:58:09.000 So maybe the move is if this thing does not get resolved very quickly, and Trump are the deal guys, so Trump knows how to negotiate this stuff better than I do.

00:58:16.000 But maybe the move is if Zelensky does not come right back there, sign that deal, the move is to say the Ukrainian people, they need to have an election right now, frame it up that way, and that could be a huge squeeze.

00:58:32.000 So we have a suggestion in our show chat that I think is amusing enough to read.

00:58:47.000 So Lindsey Graham says Zelensky has to fundamentally change what if he came out tonight on Fox and did every network deliver an apology?

00:58:59.000 Wearing a suit and tie.

00:59:03.000 I thought you were going a whole different direction there, Blake.

00:59:08.000 Yes.

00:59:08.000 What did you think I was going to say?

00:59:11.000 I don't know.

00:59:12.000 He's got to wear an Al Sharpton tracksuit.

00:59:14.000 He's got to get the Adidas tracksuit out.

00:59:15.000 He's got to get the big metal gold chain going.

00:59:18.000 What is with that look?

00:59:20.000 Can we retire that look, please?

00:59:21.000 I don't get as upset about it as...

00:59:24.000 I know Tucker Carlson complains about it a lot.

00:59:26.000 He said he wasn't going to wear a suit tight until the war was over.

00:59:29.000 I mean, whatever.

00:59:30.000 It doesn't bother me, but it doesn't bother a lot.

00:59:33.000 It's like semi-military-ish.

00:59:34.000 Yeah, it's like he's supposed to be this wartime leader.

00:59:36.000 I don't get worked up about it.

00:59:38.000 Maybe it's very meaningful to people in Ukraine.

00:59:41.000 Maybe they like it.

00:59:42.000 I don't get super irate.

00:59:45.000 We almost have the Graham clip.

00:59:47.000 Let me know when it's loaded, guys.

00:59:49.000 Top priority.

00:59:50.000 291. I believe it's loaded.

00:59:52.000 Go ahead and play it.

00:59:53.000 President Trump handled it in a fashion that if I'm China, I'm Iran, I'm any would-be adversary.

01:00:03.000 I'd be worried about right now.

01:00:05.000 He gave a master class in how to stand up for America.

01:00:10.000 Okay, so what we saw...

01:00:11.000 It wasn't exactly the clip we wanted, but it's a good clip.

01:00:16.000 And Lindsey Graham is out there defending President Trump quickly.

01:00:22.000 Alex, what do you make of Senator Graham's tone there?

01:00:26.000 Totally right, but Graham is a politician, so Graham's angling for something, and I don't have a total read on it right this second, but he is right.

01:00:33.000 I mean, that was, I thought, masterful by Vance and Trump, and it will go down in their historical canon as one of their best moments.

01:00:39.000 Defending America and doing it calmly and articulately, they presented great arguments.

01:00:44.000 Trump swooping in there and saying to Zelensky, you have no right to tell us how to feel.

01:00:49.000 It was so perfect.

01:00:51.000 It was such a classic where Trump just sees things so quickly.

01:00:54.000 That was the exact right response.

01:00:56.000 That was the moment of the day.

01:00:57.000 Yes.

01:00:58.000 Yeah, no, I totally agree.

01:01:00.000 To me, the most striking part about that exchange was Vance goes out on such a limb.

01:01:05.000 I mean, Vance was breaking the seal in a massive way.

01:01:09.000 We've never seen that.

01:01:10.000 The tearing of the veil.

01:01:12.000 He's the one who started it.

01:01:14.000 And Trump had an opportunity to either rein him back in and say, hey, everything's good, we're good.

01:01:19.000 But he didn't.

01:01:20.000 He took his side, had his back, and threw down the gauntlet.

01:01:24.000 It was amazing, amazing, quick thinking there by President Trump.

01:01:29.000 And we have the other Lindsey clip, right, Blake?

01:01:32.000 Yes, 292, I believe.

01:01:35.000 This is a missed opportunity.

01:01:37.000 And the question for me, for the Ukrainian people...

01:01:41.000 I don't know if Zelensky can ever get you to where you want to go with the United States.

01:01:46.000 Either he dramatically changes, or you need to get somebody new.

01:01:51.000 Senator, I don't know if you were in the Oval Office.

01:01:54.000 Go ahead, Blake.

01:01:57.000 Take us a break.

01:01:58.000 Again, I've said I don't dislike Zelensky as much as a lot of people on our side do.

01:02:04.000 I think he was dealt...

01:02:05.000 A very rough hand.

01:02:06.000 And he could have fled his country when they were attacked.

01:02:08.000 He could have set up a government in exile.

01:02:10.000 He could have gone full foreign oligarch.

01:02:12.000 And he didn't.

01:02:13.000 But he stepped in it today.

01:02:15.000 And we are seeing it.

01:02:17.000 And there's a lot of other things going on in the world, by the way.

01:02:19.000 I'm seeing breaking news now.

01:02:21.000 Pope Francis is on a breathing machine.

01:02:23.000 We'll see if anything happens there.

01:02:24.000 A lot is going on.

01:02:25.000 But right now, all of the eyes are on the Ukraine deal.

01:02:29.000 Which fell into a shambles on live TV. There is no deal currently.

01:02:34.000 It was not signed.

01:02:36.000 But sounds like Zelensky hasn't left the country yet.

01:02:40.000 We may see him try to do a whirlwind apology tour within the next matter of hours.

01:02:46.000 What do you think we're going to see, Andrew?

01:02:48.000 Do you think there's any hope for him?

01:02:50.000 Yeah, and I think Charlie would agree.

01:02:53.000 I know Charlie's been texting me.

01:02:55.000 He's on campus right now, but he's getting news of this blow up.

01:03:00.000 But yeah, listen, I think Trump...

01:03:02.000 I go back to something I said before.

01:03:05.000 I think Trump is a master at understanding leverage.

01:03:08.000 He's shown this.

01:03:09.000 Now, he pushes it really, really far to a point of risk that a lot of your punditry class are not comfortable with.

01:03:17.000 You know, one of the basic...

01:03:19.000 Pendulum spectrums that you can assess a human being on is their risk tolerance.

01:03:24.000 Trump has a very high risk tolerance.

01:03:28.000 And your punditry class does not have a risk tolerance.

01:03:32.000 And so that's why they go into punditry.

01:03:34.000 That's why they go and get jobs working for these outlets. 0.98

01:03:41.000 They're not entrepreneurs.

01:03:42.000 Trump is an entrepreneur.

01:03:43.000 He understands what it means to play high-stakes poker.

01:03:47.000 Yes, sometimes you're going to lose a hand or two, but I think Trump sized it up in an instant.

01:03:52.000 He understands that he has a lot more leverage in this poker game than Zelensky does, and he looked at him and he said, you got no cards.

01:04:00.000 Verbatim, he said, you got no cards.

01:04:02.000 Without us, you got no cards.

01:04:04.000 I think what's going to happen in the next 24 to 48 hours, I don't think Zelensky is leaving.

01:04:09.000 If he does leave, he's not leaving this conversation.

01:04:12.000 I think what he's going to do is he's going to backchannel with the White House and the staff.

01:04:16.000 And he's going to try and basically apologize, say things got too heated.

01:04:20.000 I apologize.

01:04:21.000 I didn't mean to disrespect you or your country.

01:04:24.000 You see that indication from his tweet saying thank you to America, thank you to POTUS, you know, and to Congress and the American people.

01:04:31.000 We need peace and we're going to work on that.

01:04:33.000 So he's understanding that our appetite for continuing to fund a kinetic war in Eastern Europe is about nothing.

01:04:41.000 Now, I think the American people...

01:04:43.000 Our sympathies still lie with Ukraine.

01:04:45.000 If you took the polling as a nation as a whole, our sympathies are with Ukraine.

01:04:50.000 I certainly feel sympathetic towards the Ukrainian people, less so towards Zelensky, who I think is an uppity foreigner, who has been swindling us out of a lot of treasure and his own people out of blood. 1.00

01:05:01.000 I have zero sympathy for him.

01:05:03.000 But at the end of the day, I think he's going to come back.

01:05:06.000 I think he's going to come back to the table and we're going to get this deal done.

01:05:09.000 That's what I think.

01:05:09.000 I think Trump wants this deal done.

01:05:11.000 And I think if he does it, if he signs it, if Zelensky moves forward with this, I think what you're going to see is you're going to see Trump come back into the side of Zelensky, use that as leverage against Russia, and they're going to hammer something out, and Ukraine's going to have to make some concessions.

01:05:31.000 There's no reality here where Ukraine does not make a lot of concessions, but they can get peace, they can get neutrality, they can get European troops on the border.

01:05:40.000 He can get security.

01:05:42.000 He can get lasting peace.

01:05:43.000 But, you know, this is a wake-up call for Vladimir Zelensky.

01:05:49.000 He does not have nearly the leverage or the star approval that he thought he did in this country, and that ultimately will be a good thing.

01:05:57.000 But I want to say this again, Blake.

01:06:00.000 Do not expect the pundit class to get this.

01:06:04.000 They are not going to understand this.

01:06:05.000 They are taught one speed, and the one speed is that you don't do this.

01:06:10.000 And Trump's saying, I'm blowing up the playbook.

01:06:12.000 We do whatever we need to do.

01:06:13.000 We're America, and I'm going to fight for the interests of this country, including getting our money back out of this conflict.

01:06:19.000 Yeah, I think with Trump, he cares about making deals.

01:06:26.000 That's very much how he perceives a lot of his success as president.

01:06:29.000 He cares about making deals, and he cares about being seen as the dominant player in any deal.

01:06:36.000 That happens.

01:06:37.000 He does not want to be seen as the guy who made concessions.

01:06:39.000 He wants to be seen as the one who is strong, that other people came supplicating themselves to.

01:06:45.000 And I think as long as he gets those things, he can be happy.

01:06:48.000 So I think if Zelensky really is apologetic, if he really does prostrate himself before Trump and apologize for this, and maybe offer...

01:06:59.000 You know, maybe some additional superficial concession.

01:07:03.000 I think Trump would be happy to make a deal because he does want to be the dealmaker.

01:07:07.000 Trump does not want to be the guy who just had Ukraine completely implode on him.

01:07:12.000 So I think we'll eventually see some sort of deal reach.

01:07:15.000 But we'll see how this unfolds over the coming weekend.

01:07:18.000 And Charlie will definitely have a lot to say about it on Monday.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 28, 2025

Don't Disrespect Our Oval Office — Trump-Vance v. Zelenskyy

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