The Charlie Kirk Show - July 17, 2023


Facing the Dragon with Vivek Ramaswamy and Rich Baris


Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

188.61496

Word count

6,809

Sentence count

504

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Vivek Ramaswamy and Rich Barris join us to discuss the latest in the race for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination, and why they think Ron DeSantis is the best chance to beat Hillary Clinton in 2020.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Vivek Ramaswamy, who is surging into second place in the Republican field.
00:00:04.000 And Rich Barris join us.
00:00:05.000 Subscribe to our podcast by opening up your podcast app and type in Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:09.000 Email me as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:12.000 Getting involved, get involved with turning pointusa at tpusa.com.
00:00:16.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:17.000 Start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com.
00:00:21.000 Turning point usa is the way we stop the cultural revolution is with turningpointusa at tpusa.com.
00:00:28.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:29.000 Here we go.
00:00:30.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:32.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
00:00:34.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:37.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:41.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:42.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:43.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:51.000 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.
00:01:00.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:03.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
00:01:13.000 Joining us now is Rich Barris.
00:01:16.000 He has a lot of polling that he wants to discuss from the People's Pundit Daily.
00:01:23.000 Rich, you were watching the response, the ACT conference.
00:01:28.000 What is your response to it?
00:01:30.000 Did you learn anything?
00:01:31.000 Does it confirm some other big trends that you are seeing?
00:01:34.000 Rich Barris.
00:01:35.000 You know, Charlie, I was actually just saying yesterday, and as always, thanks for having me on.
00:01:40.000 You know, in the 2022 primaries, there was already this fight between the Trump wing, the turning point base, right?
00:01:50.000 The war room crowd.
00:01:52.000 You put it all together.
00:01:54.000 And the traditional wings of the party, or I hate saying traditional, it's just how the media phrases it.
00:01:59.000 And they lost.
00:02:00.000 And I'm not sure that you can win a presidential nomination by ignoring the young base of the party.
00:02:10.000 So it did.
00:02:11.000 You know, the energy confirmed it.
00:02:14.000 The Turning Point Straw Poll confirmed it.
00:02:18.000 I really think that was a mistake by Governor DeSantis not going there, especially considering they had the summit with evangelical leaders with Bob Vanderplatz.
00:02:29.000 Trump did not go to that, and the media made a lot of hay about that.
00:02:33.000 But in truth, I thought it was a bigger mistake for Ron DeSantis not to go to an event in his own state where the real base of his party is.
00:02:43.000 And he wants to be president of Iowa, I guess.
00:02:46.000 You cannot win a nomination by being the president of Iowa.
00:02:50.000 But we just polled that state, Charlie.
00:02:52.000 And as you can see from what I sent you, that doesn't even look like that's going to happen.
00:02:56.000 So you needed to appeal to a greater number of people.
00:02:59.000 I've been saying this for a while.
00:03:00.000 MAGA is younger.
00:03:01.000 MAGA is more diverse.
00:03:03.000 MAGA is the future.
00:03:04.000 And you cannot win a Republican nomination doing what Ron DeSantis is doing, which is running a 1990s, 2000-style Republican campaign.
00:03:16.000 So, Rich, it's confusing to me, and I want to make sure it's clear.
00:03:20.000 I get hate mails for saying this, but Ron DeSantis is a great governor.
00:03:24.000 Some people, you know, are trying to rewrite history.
00:03:27.000 We're honest on this show.
00:03:28.000 He's not a good candidate.
00:03:29.000 He's not going in a good direction, presidential candidate.
00:03:32.000 He's running a poor campaign, but he's been a terrifically conservative governor.
00:03:38.000 And Rich, I'm confused.
00:03:40.000 What is the internal strategy around there?
00:03:43.000 What is the calculation?
00:03:45.000 If you don't want to talk to 6,000 voters, just walk me through it.
00:03:51.000 I mean, I'm a Trump guy, but I'm also an interested patriot who doesn't want to see a conservative governor become so deeply unpopular that it's going to turn Florida blue.
00:04:00.000 I'm not kidding.
00:04:02.000 What am I missing here, Rich?
00:04:03.000 Because it seems to be a pattern of mistakes, Rich Barris.
00:04:08.000 Yeah, it's a tragic story.
00:04:11.000 It's one we've seen a lot on the Republican side, unfortunately, where they take somebody with a bright future and they being the consultant class.
00:04:19.000 They take somebody with a bright future.
00:04:21.000 They see dollar signs around these people, Charlie.
00:04:24.000 The filings just came out, and people like me, even from NBC News to the Washington Post to the New York Times, I hate to say it, but they all see what I see, which is what you and I have been talking about for months.
00:04:37.000 This is a donor's you-know-what dream.
00:04:40.000 This is not a campaign for the people.
00:04:42.000 This is not a campaign to reach the future of the party.
00:04:46.000 And by the way, it might have been 6,000 people in attendance at the turning point, but action conference, but how many people watched online?
00:04:53.000 How many people watched speeches online, clips online?
00:04:56.000 It circulated a lot more than that.
00:04:58.000 I mean, you know those numbers better than I.
00:05:00.000 Yeah.
00:05:00.000 You know those numbers better than I, Charlie.
00:05:02.000 A lot more than the Bob Vanderplatz event.
00:05:05.000 Give me a break.
00:05:06.000 It was unbelievable.
00:05:08.000 He was obviously told by consultants not to go there because he was afraid of the reception that he was going to get, which, by the way, if you're afraid of turning point activists, how are you going to fare in front of Vladimir Putin?
00:05:20.000 How are you going to fare in front of Xi Jinping?
00:05:23.000 You can't stand up to the base of your own party?
00:05:26.000 I just, it's sad because it's really worse than people are saying when I'm looking at these numbers.
00:05:32.000 I'm looking at a lot of consultants getting rich.
00:05:34.000 I'm looking at a lot of vendors who have failed Republican campaigns time and time again, getting rich.
00:05:40.000 I'm looking at millions upon millions of dollars that could have been spent at vote, you know, some more sophisticated get out the vote operation being spent on making them rich.
00:05:49.000 Meanwhile, his poll numbers just completely tank.
00:05:52.000 IBD Tip out today, we took a lot of flack because we were the first ones to put him in the teens.
00:05:57.000 Well, at least we still have him at 17.
00:05:59.000 IBD and TIP have him at 14 nationally now.
00:06:02.000 He was 19% in our poll in Iowa.
00:06:04.000 I got to tell you, that stunned me, Charlie.
00:06:07.000 He spent, that campaign has spent a lot of money in Iowa.
00:06:10.000 And I was thinking anywhere this guy's going to be at 30, 32%, it will be the state of Iowa.
00:06:16.000 He was not.
00:06:16.000 The entire strategy is built around evangelicals.
00:06:19.000 And Trump had a 31-point lead with evangelicals in Iowa.
00:06:23.000 So overall, Trump was ahead 51 to 19.
00:06:26.000 And we put out that map.
00:06:27.000 And it's just, again, it's tragic.
00:06:30.000 It's a tragic story because I don't know a young governor his age as successful as he was.
00:06:36.000 I don't know that anyone couldn't have looked at him and said he had a bright future.
00:06:39.000 Why would you do this?
00:06:41.000 And the truth is, look at the FEC filings, and then you'll see clear as day why it was easy to convince him to do this and why people tried to convince him.
00:06:49.000 What is it?
00:06:50.000 So hold on.
00:06:51.000 Hold on.
00:06:52.000 Hold on.
00:06:52.000 What is the S what were what are what are in the files?
00:06:54.000 Because people have been, there's been a lot of cattlewalling around it.
00:06:57.000 We were running an event and dealing with all sorts of stuff.
00:07:00.000 Tell us about the filings, Rich.
00:07:01.000 A lot of people don't know about it.
00:07:02.000 His burn rate is through the roof.
00:07:04.000 A burn rate is basically the ratio of how much have you got coming in versus how much you're putting out.
00:07:10.000 They're churning and burning through the money he's raised.
00:07:12.000 And he has nowhere to go to get more money because not only have people maxed out, most of his vast majority of his donations not only came from big donors who are maxed out and cannot come back, but not just for the primary, Charlie, but most of them have even maxed out for the general election.
00:07:31.000 And then the one out of six that he has remaining cash on hand, which is about $21 million, is actually not really the case because one out of six dollars of that $21 million can only be used in a general election.
00:07:44.000 So the truth is, Trump outraised him on what can be used before Iowa and New Hampshire.
00:07:51.000 So again, no low-dollar contributions.
00:07:54.000 No, and to be fair, every non-Trump candidate is having problems with low-dollar contributions.
00:08:01.000 But why does this matter?
00:08:02.000 No matter how much money DeSantis' PAC brings in, a PAC cannot run a campaign.
00:08:08.000 There are jobs that need to be run through the campaign.
00:08:10.000 There are not even jobs like, I'm talking about people taking roles.
00:08:17.000 There are things, there are operations that only a campaign can do.
00:08:20.000 You cannot coordinate with the super PAC.
00:08:22.000 So all that will do is make the consulting class even more rich while the campaign flounders. 1.00
00:08:28.000 That's why Hillary Clinton had such a hard time shaking off Bernie Sanders. 1.00
00:08:31.000 He had low-dollar contributions coming in and revitalizing his campaign.
00:08:36.000 Trump has always been a low-dollar bull when it came to raising money.
00:08:41.000 So he never had this problem of his donors maxing out.
00:08:44.000 So he's really, and there's been a lot of comparisons made in the last couple of days looking at these reports to Scott Walker in 2016.
00:08:54.000 This is the same warning signs we saw flashing with Scott Walker and his money situation.
00:08:59.000 And he didn't even make it to a single state, Charlie.
00:09:02.000 So this is very real.
00:09:04.000 This is a very real problem.
00:09:05.000 However, remember, again, the consultants, they're millions richer.
00:09:12.000 Millions richer.
00:09:13.000 The vendors, millions richer.
00:09:15.000 It's tragedy.
00:09:17.000 I love the framing of the tragedy because in some ways, you know, there's, we want everyone to be the best version of themselves.
00:09:25.000 He has a terrific record.
00:09:27.000 And so then, you know, I was chatting with somebody and texting who is a DeSantis person. 0.89
00:09:33.000 And they said, oh, Charlie, you know, I would have given the same advice for Ron DeSantis not to show up, which is just so silly.
00:09:39.000 And they said, they said, what would you have expected him to do?
00:09:42.000 I'd say, look, just take a little bit of a pay.
00:09:44.000 I mean, obviously they don't listen to people like me because they think they know better.
00:09:48.000 But when you have a problem confronted, or just do an open mic and say, if you disagree, let's chat.
00:09:54.000 Do you understand the virality, Rich, that would have been?
00:09:57.000 Right?
00:09:58.000 I mean, you have 6,000 grassroots activists, and honestly, Ron DeSantis is a smart guy.
00:10:03.000 If I were advising Ron DeSantis, I'd look him in the eyes, be like, you're tough.
00:10:07.000 You're smart.
00:10:08.000 Lean in, man.
00:10:10.000 Have a viral grassroots moment.
00:10:12.000 Listen to people.
00:10:13.000 Clarify the misconceptions.
00:10:16.000 And you're in a dominance.
00:10:19.000 You're in a dominance struggle with an alpha beast.
00:10:23.000 You don't do that by avoidance.
00:10:24.000 You don't do that.
00:10:25.000 And you're right, Rich.
00:10:26.000 Now that his campaign is going down, people don't want to give money.
00:10:29.000 He's laying off staff and it's going down.
00:10:33.000 He's going down to the polls.
00:10:37.000 All right, I got an important thing to share with you.
00:10:39.000 You are probably tired about all these left-wing progressive companies.
00:10:43.000 And you're probably exhausted with trying to keep up with all their virtue signaling and their woke nonsense.
00:10:49.000 It's a question, right?
00:10:50.000 Why has corporate America decided to say we hate you to their customers?
00:10:55.000 I mean, I see Adidas.
00:10:56.000 Adidas might as well have a big sign that says, we hate you.
00:11:02.000 Look, progressive left-wing companies are taking over the market, and it's time for us to fight back.
00:11:08.000 I want to tell you about a company I really care about, run by a friend of mine who's a great American, and they're growing, and they need your help, and it's very important, okay?
00:11:17.000 Look, we don't have to fund these companies, the left-wing companies.
00:11:20.000 We finally have an alternative, public square.
00:11:24.000 We have a solution.
00:11:25.000 I hear from people all the time, Charlie, how do we fight back?
00:11:28.000 Charlie, where are the options?
00:11:29.000 It's very simple.
00:11:30.000 It's publicsq.com.
00:11:32.000 Join the movement of millions of patriotic Americans who love truth, our country, and our Constitution at publicsq.com.
00:11:40.000 I use this app all the time when I'm traveling and also my local neighborhood.
00:11:43.000 It's an app and a website where you can get connected to tens of thousands of businesses from all different industries that share your values like life, family, and freedom.
00:11:53.000 Michael, who runs Public Square, does a fabulous job.
00:11:56.000 And it's free to join as a consumer or a business owner.
00:11:59.000 And you can get started today at publicsq.com.
00:12:02.000 Download the app now.
00:12:03.000 That's publicsq.com.
00:12:05.000 How are we going to fight woke capital? 0.93
00:12:07.000 How are we going to fight these progressive companies?
00:12:09.000 How are public square?
00:12:11.000 They do a fabulous job.
00:12:12.000 I think the world of them, they're in the arena fighting back.
00:12:16.000 If you are a business owner, download the app.
00:12:20.000 If you are interested in supporting companies who aren't woke, download the app.
00:12:24.000 If you are traveling, you want to find a coffee shop that is not woke, download the app or go to publicsq.com.
00:12:30.000 I'm 100% behind them.
00:12:32.000 You're going to hear me talk about them a lot.
00:12:34.000 It's time for us to join forces and build the parallel economy.
00:12:39.000 Public Square, I have vetted them.
00:12:40.000 I've got to know them really well.
00:12:42.000 I've looked at the company deeply.
00:12:43.000 Fabulous people, ethical Christian, strong conservatives.
00:12:48.000 Publicsq.com.
00:12:49.000 Go there right now.
00:12:51.000 Download the app.
00:12:52.000 It is free.
00:12:52.000 It's a free app.
00:12:53.000 Free to join, especially if you're a business owner.
00:12:55.000 Go to publicsq.com.
00:13:00.000 So, Rich, 95% of turning point action attendees of all ages, backgrounds, and income levels say that we should not send money to Ukraine.
00:13:09.000 Yet 99% of Republican politicians are enthusiastic to spend $200 billion.
00:13:17.000 We've spent $200 billion.
00:13:18.000 You know, it's so funny.
00:13:19.000 I'm here in Wisconsin.
00:13:21.000 And a year ago, Rich, I did a podcast here in this very room with Senator Kramer from North Dakota.
00:13:28.000 And at the time, we'd spent $40 billion.
00:13:31.000 And I said, well, you know, what if we end up spending $130, $150?
00:13:34.000 And I was almost dismissed as if that would be an unconscionable amount of money.
00:13:38.000 We're at $200 billion now, Rich Barris.
00:13:40.000 One year later, I hate to say we were right and the experts in DC were wrong.
00:13:44.000 We're on pace for a trillion.
00:13:46.000 I think we're going to do a trillion.
00:13:47.000 Rich Barris, why are Republican politicians so hostile out of touch with their voters?
00:13:55.000 Yeah, I think that's going to come to an end here soon, Charlie.
00:13:59.000 You know, I sometimes wonder about the future of the Republican Party because any time in American history a party has not been responsive to their voters, it does not last.
00:14:09.000 You know, the Republican Party does not have some kind of like special sticker stuck to it where it's going to be exempt from the rules of history.
00:14:17.000 I think they're going to have a reckoning this cycle.
00:14:19.000 I really do.
00:14:21.000 You know, it's funny because just to go back, what we're saying the last segment, immediately that poll that did come out today, which JD Vance, someone who has been pushing back on Ukraine spending, he commented on it.
00:14:34.000 And it's like this inability for these people.
00:14:37.000 They don't have the ability to listen to criticism, Charlie, or they tune it out. 0.89
00:14:42.000 They're like petulant little children.
00:14:43.000 They stick their fingers in the ear and la la la la instead of paying attention to what people are saying and giving them the respect they deserve, that their grievance may be legitimate. 0.77
00:14:56.000 They feel that they could just ignore it and go on and continue to ignore it.
00:15:00.000 And still somehow their condition will improve.
00:15:03.000 That's not how it works.
00:15:04.000 Over time, there has to be this release valve, Charlie, where anger and frustration with your politicians not listening to you.
00:15:12.000 Eventually, something releases.
00:15:13.000 Otherwise, it gets to a boiling point.
00:15:15.000 And I think this election, I think a lot of Republicans are going to hit a reckoning because there will be, it's still early in the cycle.
00:15:28.000 And there will be people who rise to make some of these people answer or be accountable for some of these votes.
00:15:35.000 It has been very clear for a year or more that Republicans didn't want anything to do with this, especially the base.
00:15:43.000 They wanted nothing to do with this, and yet they wasted all of this money.
00:15:46.000 And then they want to argue that they're the fiscally conservative one.
00:15:50.000 It doesn't work.
00:15:51.000 It doesn't jive.
00:15:52.000 It's a big part of the Republican identity crisis.
00:15:54.000 And one way or another, that crisis is going to get solved because it will be hammered out one way or another.
00:16:00.000 So, Rich, in closing here, Vivek Ramaswamy won 50% of our second choice.
00:16:06.000 Yeah.
00:16:07.000 I believe he's going to pop into second place as a contender above Ron DeSantis, which is amazing because Vivek Ramaswamy started basically at zero.
00:16:15.000 He is not the governor of a major swing state.
00:16:18.000 He's not a governor who has done amazing things like Ron DeSantis.
00:16:22.000 And so it goes to show that the Republican base, it really is an open question.
00:16:28.000 So Vivek Ramaswamy, what do you attribute all this to?
00:16:32.000 He's played a lot of these key issues very, very smart, from Ukraine to the indictments.
00:16:37.000 And that I think was a major problem with DeSantis, which is just as voters were looking at him as when he made a mistake with Tucker over Ukraine.
00:16:45.000 Just when voters were giving him the most scrutiny, the most, you know, they were giving him a look.
00:16:51.000 Just as he did that, he made the wrong decision with how he handled the indictments.
00:16:55.000 Vivek has always been very smart with this.
00:16:57.000 And the new line of attack this week, seeing that Vivek is coming up on their heels, Team DeSantis wants to point to some of the things Vivek had done during the pandemic.
00:17:06.000 And that's not going to land, Charlie.
00:17:08.000 And I'm going to tell you why it hasn't hurt Vivek so far.
00:17:11.000 Because the truth is everyone fell for the pandemic nonsense.
00:17:14.000 Everybody at some point fell for the lockdown.
00:17:16.000 Everyone at some point fell from, or mostly everybody.
00:17:20.000 And those who didn't were not politicians or not political figures, right?
00:17:24.000 They were private people.
00:17:25.000 They were pundits.
00:17:26.000 They were show hosts, right?
00:17:28.000 Most of the politicians, the only question is, how quick did you come out of your days?
00:17:34.000 That has always been the real question.
00:17:37.000 So it doesn't land because it's not honest.
00:17:40.000 So when they dig up old tweets of Vivek and they put them out there, it's not honest because we all saw the governor, you know, appraising the jab and how readily available they were for the elderly in Florida.
00:17:50.000 It's not going to work.
00:17:51.000 You mean he fundamentally misread the electorate.
00:17:55.000 Vivek has never tried to make an enemy of the majority of the primary vote.
00:18:01.000 And that is what not just Ron DeSantis' campaign, but a lot of these campaigns have done.
00:18:06.000 Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, even to some extent, Nikki Hilly, you got to give her credit.
00:18:12.000 She is what she is and she never tries to be anything different, right?
00:18:15.000 You have got to give her credit for that. 0.63
00:18:17.000 Well, the rest of them, you know, tried to make enemies out of the majority.
00:18:21.000 Can't do it.
00:18:21.000 Can't win an election like that, Charlie.
00:18:23.000 Rich Barris, check out People's Pundit and Big Data Poll.
00:18:26.000 Rich, thanks so much.
00:18:29.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
00:18:31.000 Every day, the parallel economy grows bigger and bigger.
00:18:33.000 It's powered by everyday Americans who are sick and tired of all the woke nonsense being jammed into every product they consume.
00:18:40.000 Big mobile companies are no different.
00:18:42.000 For years, they've been dumping millions into left-wing causes, and we had to take it because you need a cell phone and probably thought that there was no alternative.
00:18:49.000 But there is.
00:18:50.000 Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative wireless provider.
00:18:54.000 They proudly offer dependable nationwide coverage on all three major networks.
00:18:58.000 Stop using woke wireless as they fund Pride Month and all this stuff.
00:19:02.000 When you switch to Patriot Mobile, you're sending a message that you support free speech, religious liberty, the sanctity of life, Second Amendment, and our military veterans and first responder heroes.
00:19:11.000 They're 100% U.S.-based customer service team, make switching easy.
00:19:14.000 Just go to patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call 878-PARTRIOT, get free activation today with the offer code Charlie.
00:19:21.000 Ask about their coverage guarantee while you're there.
00:19:23.000 Get the same dependable service and take a stand for your values and make the switch today.
00:19:26.000 PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie or call them at 878-PATRIOT.
00:19:33.000 All right, with us now is Vivek Ramaswamy, who got 50% of the second choice for president.
00:19:40.000 Vivek was kind enough to come down to our event.
00:19:43.000 He gave a barn burner speech.
00:19:45.000 He then had an influencer reception afterwards.
00:19:48.000 And I believe he'll be rewarded by the 6,000 MAVENs that we had in the room, super activists, and the well over 50 million people that saw clips or part of the event.
00:19:58.000 Vivek Ramaswamy, tell us how you believe the campaign is going.
00:20:02.000 I see real momentum for you.
00:20:04.000 Yeah, thanks, Charlie.
00:20:05.000 The campaign's going really well.
00:20:07.000 Frankly, I'm sticking to the same strategy we started with, which is speak the truth without apology.
00:20:14.000 Don't poll test things.
00:20:15.000 In fact, there are some of the things that I've said that before I was actually planning to say them, some of the policy proposals I've adopted, my campaign team insisted on poll testing them.
00:20:25.000 They didn't do that well.
00:20:26.000 And I still come out with my own convictions anyway.
00:20:29.000 That's actually been working well for us because I think voters can tell the difference between somebody who's just trying to pander and tell them what they want to hear versus somebody who actually tells them and gives them their true beliefs.
00:20:42.000 And so I'm going to stick to that strategy.
00:20:43.000 It's working well for us so far.
00:20:46.000 I do think that there's something that I'm trying to bring to this campaign, Charlie, that's a little bit different, which is that I am genuinely an optimistic person and push come to shove.
00:20:55.000 I'm actually optimistic for our nation.
00:20:58.000 But I'm not a big believer in kumbaya, it's morning in America again, until we have reconciled ourselves with the truth of what happened in the last eight years, in the last four years in particular, even the touchy subjects of 2020 in particular. 0.58
00:21:14.000 And so I think that combination of my willingness to unsparingly recognize the truth about COVID, about the election, about exactly what happened with censorship in this country, about what's happening in Ukraine now.
00:21:28.000 But on the other side of that, to say that if we get this right, we can still be in our ascent.
00:21:32.000 That is my true belief.
00:21:34.000 I think there's something about that message that's really landing with people.
00:21:37.000 I'm grateful for it.
00:21:38.000 And I think we're just getting warmed up.
00:21:40.000 One of the most insightful things you said, Vivek, I want you to walk through it in great detail.
00:21:43.000 We have some time here, is your diagnosis on January 6th, which makes so much sense.
00:21:49.000 And you repeated it at the Turning Point Action Conference.
00:21:52.000 This is considered to be a heresy in the mainstream narrative because the only acceptable narrative on January 6th is that this was a rebellion insurrection brought to you by Donald Trump to try to overthrow our government.
00:22:06.000 You have a different take on it, which I think is an incredibly important contribution to the Zeitgeist.
00:22:14.000 How should we think about January 6th, Vivek Ramaswamy?
00:22:17.000 First of all, Charlie, I don't think we can really move forward and heal as a country until we come to terms with exactly what happened, not just on January 6th, but in the year 2020 leading up to it.
00:22:30.000 I think January 6th was the culmination of what you see when a culture censors people from speaking, when a government repeatedly tells people, and I'm talking about the administrative state here, not the elected government, tells people to shut up, sit down and do as they're told.
00:22:46.000 That's what happened in the year 2020.
00:22:48.000 Think about that.
00:22:48.000 That was the 12 months leading up to January 6th.
00:22:51.000 We had lockdowns in this country.
00:22:52.000 Told you had to hide in your basement, stay locked down while BLM and Antifa roamed the cities of this country freely, burning many of them to the ground.
00:23:01.000 You were told that you had to take a vaccine when normally, and by the way, I've been in biotech.
00:23:06.000 You have to take 10 years to develop a medicine for the public to believe that it's safe and effective.
00:23:10.000 You can't even choose to take one that hasn't been through that.
00:23:13.000 And yet here, something that went through the process in less than one year, you couldn't choose not to take it.
00:23:19.000 You were told that all of this, all of the grievances and vengeance that you wanted to get up on the table, you could do that through an election, through the democratic process.
00:23:28.000 And yet, on the eve of that election, the most damning story about one of the two candidates, Biden, his son, and being compromised financially by our enemies from Ukraine, from China in the case of an enemy to Ukraine in the case of a corrupt actor, is had to be suppressed.
00:23:44.000 You couldn't even send that on your social media accounts to individual people without being silenced.
00:23:49.000 So, if you think about the systematic silencing, using tech companies to silence anti-lockdown speech through the back door that government could not censor through the front door under the Constitution, you have a repeated pattern of telling people they can't speak.
00:24:02.000 Then, when they step up and start to protest in various civil ways across the country, now you tell them they can't scream.
00:24:09.000 Well, if you tell people they can't speak, that's when they scream.
00:24:12.000 And what I said on stage at the conference is you tell people they cannot scream.
00:24:17.000 That is when they tear things down.
00:24:19.000 And my concern, Charlie, is unless we reconcile ourselves with what the truth of the matter was that led to January 6th, that's really just going to be a friendly preview of what's to come in this country.
00:24:30.000 I don't want to see a national divorce.
00:24:32.000 I want to see a national revival, one nation under God, e pluribus unum from many one.
00:24:39.000 I long for one nation, one America.
00:24:43.000 But we're not going to get there by just saying, hey, we're going to sweep all of that under the rug and just move on to be a shining city on the hill, claim it's morning again in America.
00:24:51.000 We can't get there without being honest about the truth of how we got to where we are.
00:24:57.000 And I think it is so easy to point the finger at one man and say, oh, you were responsible for what happened on that day.
00:25:03.000 And we're going to be sanctimoniously indicting one individual without actually taking a long, hard look in the mirror.
00:25:12.000 And I didn't say this part on the stage, but I think it's true, Charlie, is I think every American has to look, especially much of the left in this country that denounces January 6th and the supposed threats to our democracy.
00:25:24.000 Everyone in this country has to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves what role each of us played in getting to that day.
00:25:32.000 And once we're honest about that, then we've had all of our cards on the table.
00:25:36.000 We can then have a conversation about how we heal and move forward as a country, which I care about, but we're not going to get there without honesty.
00:25:44.000 Well, but the regime doesn't want healing, Vivek.
00:25:47.000 I do.
00:25:47.000 You do.
00:25:48.000 I'd love to have the country I grew up in.
00:25:50.000 I'd love to be able to go to a sports game and not care about the politics of the person next to me.
00:25:56.000 I actually think that's really healthy in a beautiful country.
00:25:58.000 I would love not to have to think about politics every single day.
00:26:01.000 There's a lot of depths in life that I think we're missing out on because we're on the surface level of a power struggle.
00:26:07.000 Totally necessary.
00:26:09.000 I'm not saying it's inconsequential.
00:26:12.000 It's totally what we need to be doing.
00:26:14.000 But I think you would agree, Vivek, that there is a beauty of life that is outside of just which side is going to then be able to call the shots.
00:26:23.000 We need to because the godless Marxists are destroying the country.
00:26:27.000 So, Vivek, speak a little bit then also about the Ukrainian issue.
00:26:30.000 You had a very good interview with Tucker Carlson.
00:26:34.000 I think you won that whole thing.
00:26:36.000 The neocons were out in full force, kind of fine, like they were basically trying to compete who could send the most cluster bombs to kill the most amount of civilians and children in eastern Ukraine.
00:26:48.000 America has no business involving ourselves in a thuggish border dispute between two bad actors.
00:26:54.000 Vivek, how should we think about Ukraine?
00:26:57.000 The way we should think about it is protect American interests.
00:27:00.000 We should not use our money to protect somebody else's border when we could use that same money and that same military to protect our own southern border and a conversation that doesn't get talked about enough, Charlie, our own northern border eventually, too.
00:27:14.000 It's like a hydraulic pump.
00:27:15.000 You squeeze it in one place, it's going to show up in the next place, too.
00:27:18.000 So that's where I think our focus ought to be.
00:27:21.000 But on Ukraine in particular, it's actually staggering.
00:27:24.000 In that lead up to 2020, what was in the Hunter Biden laptop?
00:27:28.000 $5 million payment to Hunter Biden, the part of the Biden family, that's now using $200 billion of American taxpayer money to that same nation.
00:27:38.000 These things are not unrelated.
00:27:40.000 I think they're deeply related.
00:27:42.000 Now, my view is that we should end the Ukraine war with a clean peace treaty that advances an American interest.
00:27:49.000 I would freeze the current lines of control.
00:27:51.000 I would further make a hard commitment that NATO should not admit Ukraine.
00:27:56.000 This is not some paragon of democracy.
00:27:58.000 This is a country where you have a leader in power that is going after churches and pastors in his own country, that has shut down 11 opposition parties in his own country, that has consolidated media into one state media arm.
00:28:11.000 So, this idea that Zelensky is some model for democracy is a joke.
00:28:15.000 It's laughable.
00:28:16.000 But anyway, that's beside the point.
00:28:18.000 We shouldn't admit them to NATO.
00:28:20.000 And what I would say to Putin in return is: we're doing a deal.
00:28:23.000 You get that out of this deal.
00:28:24.000 Here's what we need.
00:28:25.000 You exit your military partnership with China.
00:28:28.000 I do worry about the China-Russia military alliance.
00:28:31.000 I don't think that we want two allied nuclear superpowers in the form of Russia and China.
00:28:35.000 And I think that's a deal that Putin would do if we also reopened economic relations with Russia, which I would favor as part of this deal.
00:28:42.000 And I think it is disastrous, Charlie, that NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than ever did during the USSR's existence when supposedly the purpose of the institution was to deter the USSR.
00:28:57.000 Now NATO is taking us closer to nuclear war with Russia.
00:29:01.000 I think this is a disastrous mistake.
00:29:03.000 I would end it.
00:29:04.000 And I am disappointed, Charlie, that most of the Republican Party, nearly the entire Republican field, save for Trump and myself, is on the same side of this issue as Joe Biden is.
00:29:16.000 And so this is probably the most important foreign policy issue of our time.
00:29:20.000 Foreign policy is, I think, arguably the top priority of the U.S. president, certainly on the global stage.
00:29:26.000 And yet, nearly the entire Republican Party and Republican field of presidential campus is locked stock and barrel with from Joe Biden to Liz Cheney.
00:29:35.000 Who needs them when you have the existence of the rest of that Republican field?
00:29:38.000 And so that's why I'm particularly vocal and passionate about this topic.
00:29:42.000 And the idolatry of NATO, I think it's probably been a good idea, but when an alliance drags you into wars, they've gone seriously awry.
00:29:52.000 It's just incredible.
00:29:54.000 Vivek, your moral clarity on this is great.
00:29:56.000 The only thing I think, Ukraine itself has become something of a religion.
00:30:00.000 NATO should have been a task force.
00:30:02.000 And the problem is whether it's here at home or WHO or the UN, things that should have been task forces outlive their purpose.
00:30:09.000 And then that's when they become corrupt.
00:30:11.000 So that's my view on it.
00:30:12.000 No, they are.
00:30:13.000 It's a religion of neoliberalism.
00:30:15.000 And Ukraine is the like holy ark of the covenant of modern neoliberalism.
00:30:24.000 You cannot criticize it.
00:30:26.000 You must protect it at all costs.
00:30:28.000 I don't love doing this, but I do love your attitude.
00:30:31.000 You want to lean in to any of the whispers of the chatter?
00:30:34.000 And Vivek, I got a lot of emails about this, and I think you've addressed it before, but look, you know, politics is not a fair sport.
00:30:41.000 People are saying you have World Economic Forum or George Soros ties or connections.
00:30:46.000 Vivek, the floor is yours, uninterrupted.
00:30:49.000 What is the truth?
00:30:51.000 That's what the whole campaign's about, Charlie.
00:30:53.000 And my view is, you know what?
00:30:55.000 If I were somebody else sitting on the outside who had never heard of me, and there's this guy who's suddenly surging out of nowhere, I would have the same questions.
00:31:04.000 And so I'm asking people to elect me as their president.
00:31:07.000 Yes, I should be vetted and we should have it out in the open.
00:31:11.000 Let me address the World Economic Forum allegations first.
00:31:16.000 So what happened was a few years ago, the World Economic Forum asked to give me an award as a young global leader, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and others show up on the list of people who have received this award.
00:31:28.000 This was mysterious because I have been one of the biggest critics of not only ESG, but the entire World Economic Forum agenda.
00:31:36.000 No bigger critic of it from Woking to my most recent book, criticizing the ESG movement.
00:31:41.000 And so this was a bit of a mystery.
00:31:42.000 So I declined the award.
00:31:44.000 I said, our values do not match.
00:31:45.000 I respectfully decline.
00:31:47.000 I'm always open to debate our views in the open, but I declined the award.
00:31:51.000 A few months later, I get a phone call saying from a bunch of people saying, oh, congratulations, you've been named as a young global leader for the World Economic Forum.
00:31:59.000 I said, this must be a mistake.
00:32:01.000 I call the contact.
00:32:02.000 What the guy says is, oh, no, no, Vivek, you don't understand.
00:32:05.000 This is going to open up so many more connections for you.
00:32:07.000 And here's all the great people who have won this award in the past.
00:32:11.000 And so I said, I told you clearly, I declined the award.
00:32:14.000 I decline it now too.
00:32:16.000 Take me off your site.
00:32:17.000 I don't want the award.
00:32:18.000 And I'm going to be very clear about that as I was before.
00:32:21.000 Put it in writing both times.
00:32:23.000 They refused to take my name off.
00:32:25.000 Now, what they now say is that that was them being dilettantes around this or whatever.
00:32:29.000 They kept doing it over a period of a couple of years.
00:32:33.000 So I sued them.
00:32:34.000 I filed a landmark lawsuit in litigation against the World Economic Forum because I don't believe in perpetuating lies.
00:32:42.000 And to be honest with you, if they can do it to me, they can do that to anybody.
00:32:46.000 So it makes me wonder about some of those other people whether they consented as well.
00:32:50.000 From actually Elon Musk to even Glenn Beck, who I was talking to, said he was named on something by them without his consent either.
00:32:56.000 And so my bet is that Glenn Beck, he certainly told me he didn't consent to it either.
00:33:00.000 But even Elon Musk suggested that he wasn't consenting to it either, yet still being named on their list.
00:33:05.000 But in my case, I wanted to take further action.
00:33:07.000 Charlie, as you know, I like to act on my convictions.
00:33:10.000 I sued them.
00:33:11.000 And I believe that this is exactly how we deliver accountability.
00:33:14.000 Now, here's what I've seen more recently.
00:33:16.000 And people should be skeptical of what they see on the internet.
00:33:19.000 So there's been an article now circulating recently.
00:33:22.000 This might be what some of your listeners were responding to, saying that, no, no, no, how could Vivek be doing this?
00:33:26.000 Because he's attended the World Economic Forum of Davos in all of these years.
00:33:30.000 And I was like, that's really weird because I never have.
00:33:32.000 Turns out that was generated by ChatGPT, AI, okay, an AI-based made-up article that literally on the internet, you couldn't tell if somebody took a screenshot of it.
00:33:43.000 Nobody can find the original article, but there's screenshots of that now circulating the internet, literally made by ChatGPT.
00:33:50.000 Totally false.
00:33:51.000 Never been to the World Economic Forum, never been on any of their committees, things that it says in there.
00:33:56.000 And I just think it says, unfortunately, in the modern era, you have to be skeptical of everything you hear.
00:34:02.000 Well, it turns out a lot of that is outright false.
00:34:05.000 So that's on the World Economic Forum.
00:34:06.000 Well, and I would be thinking about it.
00:34:08.000 I want to defend you here, Vivek.
00:34:10.000 No, I want to defend you in this way, because look, getting started in politics and all this, the World Economic Forum, especially six or seven years ago, was not exactly exposed in the mainstream of conservatism.
00:34:23.000 I was never specifically invited, but there was kind of like, oh, I'm going to Davos, going to Switzerland, good networking and panels and all this.
00:34:30.000 The World Economic Forum largely revealed their agenda post-COVID.
00:34:36.000 And it's also, I want to be very precise, everybody.
00:34:40.000 It's understandable to have skepticism about it, but also, let's pretend Vivek did go to Davos, which he didn't.
00:34:46.000 What did he do there?
00:34:46.000 What did he say?
00:34:47.000 What was his tone?
00:34:49.000 Just merely showing up to something does not necessarily, it's like saying, you know, Charlie, you went and showed up at Brown University.
00:34:57.000 Well, yeah, I debated with them for the entire time, right?
00:35:00.000 And so merely showing up to something or merely being in the kind of proximity of somebody, how did, by the way, Trump went to Davos too.
00:35:08.000 How did you act?
00:35:09.000 What did you say?
00:35:09.000 What do you believe?
00:35:10.000 Vivek, we have 20 seconds.
00:35:11.000 Please sum it all up.
00:35:13.000 Yeah, so the bottom line is in this particular case, I actually didn't.
00:35:17.000 And there's not everything I'm going to take credit for being early on, Charlie, but this is one of them.
00:35:21.000 Before anybody was talking about stakeholder capitalism or woke capitalism or anything else, I actually did believe in indicting the World Economic Forum for their agenda.
00:35:29.000 That's what my whole first book was about.
00:35:31.000 But in this case, I think it's good for people to be skeptical.
00:35:34.000 I'm asking people to be the next president.
00:35:36.000 Very similar situation.
00:35:37.000 If we have time to address it now, Charlie, I don't know, with people talking about a scholarship that I won, which was, yeah, but we'll talk.
00:35:43.000 The good news is stay skeptical.
00:35:45.000 I love it, guys.
00:35:46.000 Vivek, we're going to have a long form interview with you.
00:35:48.000 I think it'll be the most interesting that we have in some time.
00:35:51.000 Keep surging, Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:35:53.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:35:54.000 Email us your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:35:58.000 Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.
00:36:02.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.