00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, we have Dave Bonson who talks about the debt ceiling bill and our fiscal irresponsibility that is plaguing our nation.
00:00:12.000Then we have Avek Ramaswamy running for president.
00:00:15.000We talk about his plan for Ukraine and also what is he going to do differently to revive the promise of America.
00:00:24.000Email me as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:01:03.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:08.000Yeah, like a lot of things that come from Axios and other left-wing news publications, it's a pretty economically ignorant proposition.
00:02:17.000Essentially, Charlie, they're suggesting that because we went a period of time not adding new debt issuance, that now all of a sudden there will be such a glut of new T-bill purchases that it will overwhelm the markets.
00:02:29.000And I think it kind of reflects a lack of understanding of how the bond market works.
00:02:33.000The demand that was suppressed because they weren't issuing new bonds was sort of in limbo.
00:02:39.000Now all of a sudden there's a lot of new bonds being bought.
00:03:29.000And so I don't look at the debt ceiling bill and say, wow, this really addresses everything we need.
00:03:36.000$31 trillion of debt and one to two trillion dollar annual deficits are now suddenly rectified because they're most certainly not and it's not even close.
00:03:47.000But do I believe compared to some of the alternatives, we made incremental progress?
00:03:54.000But when you say the culture of debt and indebtedness and it coming from Washington, I think my point would be that the culture of indebtedness is sadly coming from the people.
00:04:04.000The people say government spends too much money, but then when you go to talk about what you want to cut, nobody seems to want to cut anything.
00:04:13.000And I think our government is spending too much, which makes it borrow too much.
00:04:17.000And my argument as a conservative against this culture of debt is not merely that we can't afford it.
00:04:24.000It's that it comes from a government that is just too large and self-government that is too small.
00:04:30.000And everyone wants to be a fiscal hawk until their pet program might be brought into focus.
00:04:35.000Like Lindsey Graham talks good game, unless you might have to find some inefficiency about the military industrial complex.
00:04:43.000So let me take a step back here and get your opinion because there were a lot of abstractions and threats and people that were not clear because this is going to come up again.
00:04:52.000What would have materially occurred if we would have defaulted?
00:05:59.000I think that we should be paying for the things we committed to, but there would not have been a debt default.
00:06:05.000And there was a shameful amount of dishonesty going on in this conversation.
00:06:09.000Do you think that dishonesty drove us towards a sense of panic that did not allow us to think clearly about the fiscal cliff that we're driving towards?
00:06:23.000Well, look, there's a couple of categories here, Charlie.
00:06:25.000I mean, the political side of this traditionally has not gone well for Republicans.
00:06:31.000And what Speaker McCarthy did here brilliantly is pass his own bill.
00:06:35.000He raised the debt ceiling, and the Biden administration had not raised it.
00:06:40.000And he raised it with spending cuts and other forms of what I thought were pretty reasonable expectations.
00:06:46.000And so it forced the Biden administration to do what they said they were not going to do, which was negotiate on reasonable and quite small incremental reforms.
00:06:55.000The hysteria didn't help, but it was part of the reality.
00:06:59.000But Charlie, if I'm being candid, the thing that hurt the most is that we had always raised the debt ceiling as Republicans under the Trump administration.
00:07:18.000And I even think people say, oh, COVID, oh, stop it.
00:07:20.000There was no reason to spend the way that we needed to during COVID.
00:07:23.000You should have opened up the country.
00:07:24.000That would have been a far greater stimulus than spending $6 trillion that we don't have.
00:07:30.000But what you are talking about here is that, because when I was speaking to lawmakers, again, I'm not an economist, senators were telling me, Charlie, we can't default.
00:08:05.000And so two things can be true at once.
00:08:07.000If the U.S. were to literally default on debt, I think it would be totally inexcusable and catastrophic for financial markets and future financial stability.
00:08:17.000But the reason I can say that and not be inconsistent with what I just said is it simply wouldn't have happened.
00:09:02.000But ultimately, we need a conversation about the size of government and the funding of government.
00:09:07.000And we have $31 trillion of debt that is a weight on future economic growth, and nobody wants to talk about it.
00:09:13.000And we will never talk about it if we don't start talking honestly about entitlements, our transfer payment commitments to Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, Medicaid.
00:09:23.000We have to have an honest conversation about these things, period.
00:09:26.000Including foreign policy, which is a major anchor of the budget, which Republicans are awful.
00:09:32.000They're terrible on some of these uniparty deals.
00:09:36.000Tell us about the Dividend Cafe and the things you write there, Dave.
00:09:52.000I don't have, I used to be a managing director at Morgan Stanley and I could be censored and canceled.
00:09:58.000Now, of course, owning my own firm, Charlie, I can say whatever I want.
00:10:01.000So at dividendcafe.com, I like to think we give pretty good investment advice, but the more important part is we're giving perspective and commentary without fear of what others may have to think about it.
00:10:12.000So dividendcafe.com is a good source, I think, for a lot of economics juxtaposed with public policy.
00:10:27.000Every day, the parallel economy grows bigger and bigger.
00:10:29.000It's powered by everyday Americans who are sick and tired of all the woke nonsense being jammed into every product they consume.
00:10:36.000Big mobile companies are no different.
00:10:38.000For 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.
00:10:46.000Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative wireless provider.
00:10:50.000They proudly offer dependable nationwide coverage on all three major networks.
00:10:54.000Stop using woke wireless as they fund Pride Month and all this stuff.
00:10:58.000When 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.
00:11:07.000They're 100% U.S.-based customer service team, make switching easy.
00:11:10.000Just go to patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call 878-PARTIOT, get free activation today with the offer code Charlie.
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00:11:22.000PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie or call them at 878-PATRIOT.
00:11:29.000We have been warning about the vanity project for consultants.
00:11:33.000I received some information last night.
00:11:34.000I promised that I would not say the name, but there is a donor out there, and many of you might be able to guess, that is putting together already the money is set aside, $50 million minimum, $50 million just to go against Donald Trump in the primary.
00:11:51.000This is not in public reporting yet, so it's not Steve Cohen who's going to do the Chris Christie thing or some of these other guys.
00:11:58.000And I was talking through somebody, and I said, Well, did you challenge that donor about early state infrastructure?
00:12:04.000Because this particular person I was talking to is very aware about our ballot harvesting issue, signature verification issue, all this sort of stuff.
00:12:14.000And the conversation was, yeah, I mean, talked about Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, and this donor who's now going to put $50 million minimum, upwards of $200 million, said, I don't care.
00:12:27.000I am not going to spend a dollar on the general election if Donald Trump is the nominee.
00:12:31.000We have to do everything we possibly can to defeat him.
00:12:35.000Now, this is one donor, one, and this will be made public, I'm sure, at some point, and you'll see what super PAC it goes to and all that.
00:12:43.000This person has sent some pretty big checks in the past, so there's definitely some firepower there.
00:12:51.000They're putting their money where the mouth is, but you have to just, it flabbergasts me, and it infuriates me.
00:12:58.000The Democrats are investing in technology, they're investing in data, they're investing in voter registration, they're investing all across the board.
00:13:06.000And one of the biggest donors out there is saying, I don't care about any of that.
00:13:12.000On the right, I just want $50 million minimum to go against Donald Trump.
00:13:20.000And there are probably at least 15 to 20 other donors that are going to do this.
00:13:26.000I need to update something I said about a month ago.
00:13:31.000I do believe Donald Trump will win the nomination.
00:14:14.000You already have New York with Alvin Bragg.
00:14:16.000You have Gene Carroll and this ridiculous civil lawsuit.
00:14:21.000And then he's going to have to go into a primary campaign that is going to have a bunch of one percenters that all have like $100 million super PACs.
00:14:29.000Chris Christie is going to have $100 million behind him.
00:14:31.000Tim Scott will have $250 million behind him.
00:14:34.000Ron DeSantis will have $500 million behind him.
00:14:38.000And then Donald Trump is going to have some money.
00:14:47.000I'm telling you right now, I do believe Donald Trump will win the nomination, but I need to update you things in real time because new information comes in.
00:14:56.000You have to always be saying, okay, that was true then.
00:15:28.000But the news I have to share with you with the information I have provided is just one donor, one person, $50 million minimum.
00:15:34.000And when asked, hey, can you spend at least 10% of that, 20% of that, on ballot chasing, early state infrastructure, lawsuits to fix some of the stuff that even Professor Clements was talking about on Steve Bannon's program?
00:15:49.000So this is going to be like a Soviet arms race.
00:15:52.000Donald Trump is going to have, I don't know the degree of difficulty, but it's going to be, it's going to be a journey.
00:16:01.000It's going to require an incredible amount of grit and perseverance and fortitude, of which he will be ultimately successful after, as we talk about the billion-dollar barricade.
00:16:13.000But that barricade is already being built.
00:19:59.000When I leave office in January of 2033, what are the things that I will have accomplished?
00:20:04.000What can I pledge to say that I'm actually going to deliver?
00:20:07.000I think it's just three simple things.
00:20:09.000First is actually shutting down the administrative state itself, making sure that by the time I'm done, we have, yes, three branches of government rather than four.
00:20:20.000Second is declaring independence from China, that we are not a nation that relies on a foreign autocrat for our modern way of life.
00:20:29.000We will no longer be dependent on our enemy for the shoes on our feet or the phones in our pockets.
00:20:35.000And third is reviving civic pride in our country, that actually the citizens of this country will again be proud of actually being a citizen because they have duties that come with citizenship, not just privileges that they inherit.
00:20:49.000I think, Charlie, if I'm looking at two terms in January 2033, I don't make false promises.
00:20:55.000But if there's a lot else I could do, but the three things I want to deliver: drain the administrative state, shut it down, actually declare independence from China.
00:21:03.000And by the way, this includes ending the war in Ukraine and pulling Russia out of China's back.
00:21:08.000That's what it's going to take to do that.
00:21:10.000And third, actually reviving civic pride in this country by making sure that people don't just automatically even inherit their voting rights, but that they're actually fulfilling their civic duties to know something about the country, to serve the country as a way of earning their civic privileges, including even voting.
00:21:28.000That I think will have been a success.
00:21:30.000And I'm going to be talking about that more in the campaign trails.
00:21:32.000So far, I've given you the high-level vision of national identity.
00:21:35.000I'm an unapologetic American nationalist, though.
00:21:38.000And what that actually means is reviving what it actually means to be an American.
00:21:43.000That's how we're going to do it tangibly.
00:21:45.000Vec, today is the 79th anniversary of D-Day.
00:21:48.000What can we do legislatively to get that country back?
00:22:25.000Actually, you don't need legislation to do this one, Charlie.
00:22:27.000Affirmative action was created by executive order.
00:22:30.000Lyndon Johnson signed it into law by executive order, 11246.
00:22:35.000Every president since Johnson could have taken a pen and crossed it out.
00:22:38.000None of them has yet had the courage to do it.
00:22:40.000One of the first things I can do, day one, end identity politics in this country, saying that, you know what, if you want to do business with the federal government, you no longer have to adopt racial or gender quota systems.
00:22:52.000I believe in a civil rights revolution in our century, Charlie, making political expression a civil right, to say that if you're going to actually be unable to fire somebody or deplatform somebody for being black or gay or Muslim or white or Jewish or whatever, that you should not be able to fire somebody or deplatform somebody for expressing their political viewpoints either.
00:23:15.000We're going to apply these standards even-handedly without apologizing for it.
00:23:20.000And then I think part of this is unshackling ourselves from these constraints that we've applied to ourselves to apologize for who we really are.
00:23:32.000The climate cult has nothing to do with the climate.
00:23:34.000It has to do with apologizing for our success and who we really are.
00:23:38.000And this, too, the president can do by just crossing a line through other presidentially signed regulations that were never passed into law.
00:23:45.000I've said we're done measuring carbon emissions.
00:23:47.000Why would we measure that instead of actually measuring what affects how Americans live with prosperity here at home?
00:23:54.000I could probably go on for an hour, Charlie, but those are examples of some of the things that I'm going to plan to get done, many of which don't even require legislation.
00:24:01.000It just requires a president with a spine who's actually willing to put this country first.
00:24:07.000Domestically, that's what I'm going to do.
00:24:09.000And I could be happy to talk to you about, from a foreign policy perspective, how the president could also end the war in Ukraine and start reprioritizing American interests here at home again.
00:24:18.000So, as an America first nationalist and the traditional George Washington, who I agree, I think we need more Washington and a lot less of the kind of modern presidential tradition.
00:24:37.000One of the people that is also running for the presidency, I think, is contrast of your views.
00:24:42.000I want to play her on CNN, Nikki Haley.
00:24:44.000And I want you not just to respond, but also just to show how different your worldview is and how you would approach this.
00:24:51.000She is not an America first nationalist.
00:24:53.000I think she's running for chairman of the board of Boeing or chairman of the board of Northrop Grumman, definitely not President of the United States.
00:24:59.000She said it's in the best interest to give Zelensky whatever he needs, play cut 15.
00:25:04.000President Trump has refused to say whether he believes Russia should win the war.
00:25:08.000Ron DeSantis referred to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a quote territorial dispute.
00:25:28.000It is in the best interest of America.
00:25:30.000It's in the best interest of our national security for Ukraine to win.
00:25:34.000Vivek, is it in the top priority of our country while we're being invaded by 10,000 people to worry about which thug will control eastern Ukraine?
00:25:43.000I have a fundamentally different worldview on this than Nikki Haley.
00:25:47.000Frankly, the one thing that the host there got wrong is actually Ron DeSantis' position.
00:25:51.000I know he told Tucker that within hours or a few days, he also changed that position.
00:25:56.000Which shows how powerful the donor interests are in the Republican Party.
00:25:59.000And Charlie, I get calls from donors all the time, actually, one of whom disavowed his support for me, publicly previously endorsed me, multi-billionaire Bill Ackman, who actually said that, among other reasons, it was my lack of support for Ukraine that caused him to change his position.
00:26:44.000George Kennan, he was the major architect of actually Cold War deterrence against the USSR before he died in the late 90s.
00:26:51.000He called NATO expansionism the biggest mistake.
00:26:53.000NATO has expanded more after the fall of the USSR than ever it did during the USSR.
00:26:58.000But I'm not going to do that for free.
00:27:00.000I'm about advancing American interests.
00:27:02.000What I get back from Putin is he exits his military alliance with China.
00:27:07.000The Sino-Russian military alliance is the number one threat that the United States faces.
00:27:14.000And it's shocking that neither the Democrats nor the neocons in our party or the neocons in the Biden administration are talking about that actual threat.
00:27:47.000No, but I do trust Putin to follow his self-interest, and he can trust us to follow ours, which is to say that we're going to use our own money not to secure somebody else's border halfway around the world, but to secure our own southern border where I would station our U.S. military instead.
00:28:04.000And also achieve an actual U.S. objective to say that NATO, I think, has largely outlived its purpose.
00:28:10.000By the way, Charlie, I would support creating PATO, Pacific American Treaty Organization, to deter Chinese aggression sooner than I actually support the continued existence of NATO.
00:28:20.000Its purpose was to supposedly deter nuclear aggression from the USSR.
00:28:25.000NATO is now increasing the risk of nuclear war with Russia.
00:28:29.000And so, I think we can get major things out of this.
00:28:31.000What I would ask Putin to do, demand that Putin do, is remove nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, which borders Poland, get the military, Russian military out of Cuba, Venezuela, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
00:28:42.000These are other major concessions that he gets in return.
00:28:44.000He gets to freeze the current lines of control.
00:28:48.000We commit that Ukraine will never join NATO, which is what Putin asked for before he invaded, that we refused to give him after Angela Merkel spouted off about the fact that the Minsk agreement was just about actually biding time.
00:28:59.000Well, now we actually advance American interests and recognize that pull Russia out of China's camp, then we've actually made major progress.
00:29:07.000And Charlie, I do think it takes an outsider.
00:29:31.000And look, I'm not criticizing him personally, Charlie.
00:29:34.000It is just the establishment view in both parties right now, a belief that the United States, for a low ROI, can actually still get a great return on its investment by helping Ukraine win this war.
00:29:49.000I just think that's the backwards way of looking at it.
00:29:51.000Now, I think that there are also separately other people at military contractors and otherwise that are making a lot of money off of this war.
00:29:59.000That's a separate answer here in the United States, which I think is real, which drove us into other foreign wars that we should not have been entangled in.
00:30:06.000George Washington would have been rolling over in his grave about Iraq as much as he is now watching our military engagement in Ukraine.
00:30:14.000But there's a deeper flaw here in our foreign policy itself, Charlie, which is when an institution like NATO has outlived its purpose, as I believe it has, it should not continue to exist.
00:30:26.000It's like the administrative stated here at home.
00:30:28.000It should be a task force instead of a permanent body.
00:30:31.000Once the purpose of that body is gone, when the USSR fell, you know what?
00:30:35.000That was the end of the actual true need for NATO in the first place.
00:30:53.000NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR and is now purposefully taking steps that knowingly increase the risk of nuclear war with the very country that NATO was formed to deter that nuclear war with.
00:31:07.000And it's doing, you know, who's laughing at this?
00:31:08.000It's China because this is now driving Russia into a more dependent relationship on China, which puts Xi Jinping in a stronger position, vis-Ã -vis the United States.
00:31:19.000And keep in mind that it's Xi Jinping's country that we depend on shamefully for the way we live our lives as Americans.
00:31:25.000And so for me, this is a sweeping foreign policy vision, Charlie, that defects from the establishment of both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, saying that declaring independence from China is my top objective.
00:31:37.000There's going to be a clear plan for delivering it.
00:31:38.000And one of the things I'm going to need to do is make sure we dissolve that Sino-Russian alliance.
00:31:44.000And the Ukraine war, if you want to see one silver lining in it, this gives us our chip to actually deliver that.
00:31:49.000Because frankly, it does not matter to the United States whether the Donbass region, which by the way, from much of human history has been part of Russia as colloquially understood, the Russian-speaking region, et cetera, that doesn't matter to us compared to actually achieving this American objective of pulling Russia away from China, move from a bilateral international order that favors China to a trilateral one where the three nuclear powers are not immediately aligned with one another.
00:32:21.000The one that I think we need to have you have a chance to talk about, 25-year voting age, which has gone totally viral, raising the voting age.
00:32:38.000Yeah, they actually go together, and there's a reason why.
00:32:41.000So what I've said in this country is voting age is 25, but you get to vote at 18 if you serve the country.
00:32:46.000That's a longer conversation, Charlie.
00:32:48.000But I think we need to revive civic duty and make citizenship actually mean something.
00:32:53.000But if that's where I'm coming from, and that's a nationalist position, I have to be consistent in what I say.
00:32:58.000So I am against, I'm with you, against any trans military members on the front lines in combat roles.
00:33:06.000So we share a view on banning it in combat roles.
00:33:09.000However, I think where we might have a difference of opinion is that I can't be in the position where I'm calling on more service in the country, even as a precondition to vote, to say that in non-combat roles where it doesn't present that same risk, if there's somebody who wants to serve the country, that we're going to be in a position to say that in an administrative role or a legal role, that we're going to say no.
00:33:28.000I think the real problem with the trans movement, Charlie, is trans is a mental health epidemic in our country.
00:33:34.000Part of the mental health epidemic comes from our hunger for cause and purpose and meaning that's unfulfilled by faith, patriotism, and hard work.
00:33:43.000So I believe as a humane person that we need to help people who have mental health illnesses, not by putting this country at risk, not by putting them in combat roles.
00:33:51.000That's the job of actually fighting the enemies and keeping this country strong.
00:33:55.000But I have to be consistent on principle to say if somebody wants to serve the country in a legal administrative role as a fire, as an administrative role in a police office or in a JAG office or in a legal role in the military, keep in mind most roles actually aren't even combat roles.
00:34:09.000I'm fine with that, but get rid of the woke indoctrination.
00:34:11.000And I've been the hardest line on that.
00:34:13.000And you're also been very clear about accommodations, right?
00:34:15.000No special surgeries, no bathrooms, none of that nonsense.
00:34:18.000Where I disagree is that they should have no place in the military on paperwork or whatever.
00:34:23.000You don't let schizophrenics or people with serious mental disorders get near a nuclear arsenal.
00:34:27.000But we could talk about that another time.