The Charlie Kirk Show - Has NATO Outlived Its Purpose? with Vivek Ramaswamy and David Bahnsen

00:00:00.000 Hey 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.

00:00:12.000 Then we have Avek Ramaswamy running for president.

00:00:15.000 We talk about his plan for Ukraine and also what is he going to do differently to revive the promise of America.

00:00:24.000 Email me as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:00:40.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:41.000 Here we go.

00:00:42.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:44.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:46.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:50.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:53.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:54.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:55.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:57.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:01:02.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:01:03.000 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.

00:01:12.000 That's why we are here.

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00:01:24.000 There are a lot of questions about this debt bill and just all the economic impacts.

00:01:30.000 No better guest to help us navigate it than Dave Bonson from the Bonson Group.

00:01:34.000 Dave, welcome to the program and thank you for making time.

00:01:38.000 I want to read this article here and you can explain it to me.

00:01:40.000 Debt ceiling prompts Uncle Sam to refill its vast bank account.

00:01:45.000 And the buried lead in this article, again, this is not my area of expertise.

00:01:50.000 It says this could cause, whether it will morph into a mere challenge or whether it will make banks to a place of unsustainability.

00:02:02.000 Basically, they're talking about a mass deluge of treasury bills.

00:02:06.000 What's going on here, Dave? 0.92

00:02:08.000 Yeah, like a lot of things that come from Axios and other left-wing news publications, it's a pretty economically ignorant proposition.

00:02:17.000 Essentially, 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.

00:02:29.000 And I think it kind of reflects a lack of understanding of how the bond market works.

00:02:33.000 The demand that was suppressed because they weren't issuing new bonds was sort of in limbo.

00:02:39.000 Now all of a sudden there's a lot of new bonds being bought.

00:02:42.000 Markets fully priced for it.

00:02:43.000 You can see the stock market hasn't responded.

00:02:45.000 The bond market volatility is actually lower, not higher.

00:02:49.000 So I just think it's sort of a distraction from Axios on the real issue underlying what's going on.

00:02:56.000 So what is your general opinion about the culture of debt that Washington, D.C. has embraced?

00:03:03.000 What does it mean economically?

00:03:05.000 Were you impressed with the debt ceiling bill?

00:03:08.000 Were you underwhelmed with it?

00:03:10.000 And do you think it actually did what was necessary to address our fiscal issues in our country?

00:03:16.000 You know, Charlie, one of the things conservatives like you and I believe in is that things have to be compared against something.

00:03:22.000 We can't compare something against utopia because utopia is a myth.

00:03:27.000 Nirvana is a fallacy.

00:03:29.000 And 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.

00:03:47.000 But do I believe compared to some of the alternatives, we made incremental progress?

00:03:52.000 Well, sure, I do.

00:03:54.000 But 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.

00:04:04.000 The 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.

00:04:13.000 And I think our government is spending too much, which makes it borrow too much.

00:04:17.000 And my argument as a conservative against this culture of debt is not merely that we can't afford it.

00:04:24.000 It's that it comes from a government that is just too large and self-government that is too small.

00:04:30.000 Yeah.

00:04:30.000 And everyone wants to be a fiscal hawk until their pet program might be brought into focus.

00:04:35.000 Like Lindsey Graham talks good game, unless you might have to find some inefficiency about the military industrial complex.

00:04:43.000 So 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.

00:04:52.000 What would have materially occurred if we would have defaulted?

00:04:57.000 What would that have looked like?

00:04:58.000 Big deal, not a big deal, or an unknown?

00:05:01.000 We wouldn't have defaulted.

00:05:02.000 So that's the biggest issue is there would have been no reason to default on the debt.

00:05:07.000 That would have been a decision made by the Biden administration, by the Treasury Department, and they wouldn't have made that decision.

00:05:16.000 So the biggest issue is that we're stuck with an entire process driven by a lie that was more or less exacerbated by the media throughout.

00:05:25.000 The government has ample cash flows, trillions of dollars of cash flows that come from tax revenue.

00:05:32.000 The debt service is 8% of federal outlays.

00:05:37.000 So unless cash flows became over 92% depleted, then we would have continued to be able to service our debt.

00:05:47.000 Now, if they couldn't borrow new money, they would have had to reprioritize other payments.

00:05:53.000 That is not, which has happened dozens of times.

00:05:57.000 I don't like it.

00:05:57.000 I think it's irresponsible.

00:05:59.000 I think that we should be paying for the things we committed to, but there would not have been a debt default.

00:06:05.000 And there was a shameful amount of dishonesty going on in this conversation.

00:06:09.000 Do 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?

00:06:23.000 Well, look, there's a couple of categories here, Charlie.

00:06:25.000 I mean, the political side of this traditionally has not gone well for Republicans.

00:06:31.000 And what Speaker McCarthy did here brilliantly is pass his own bill.

00:06:35.000 He raised the debt ceiling, and the Biden administration had not raised it.

00:06:40.000 And he raised it with spending cuts and other forms of what I thought were pretty reasonable expectations.

00:06:46.000 And 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.

00:06:55.000 The hysteria didn't help, but it was part of the reality.

00:06:59.000 But 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.

00:07:06.000 I agree.

00:07:06.000 No, the track record and the behavior of Republicans the last couple of decades on spending has been insulting.

00:07:15.000 And it's both parties.

00:07:18.000 And I even think people say, oh, COVID, oh, stop it.

00:07:20.000 There was no reason to spend the way that we needed to during COVID.

00:07:23.000 You should have opened up the country.

00:07:24.000 That would have been a far greater stimulus than spending $6 trillion that we don't have.

00:07:30.000 But 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.

00:07:40.000 That's the number one thing.

00:07:41.000 And so it was almost this built-in operating assumption, right?

00:07:46.000 It was a built-in thing that if we do not raise the debt ceiling by the 1st of June, the dollar will basically be just a piece of paper.

00:07:54.000 What you're saying is, well, not really.

00:07:56.000 The market might have gone down a little bit, but we wouldn't have seen kind of apocalypse, is what you're saying.

00:08:04.000 Right.

00:08:05.000 And so two things can be true at once.

00:08:07.000 If 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.

00:08:17.000 But the reason I can say that and not be inconsistent with what I just said is it simply wouldn't have happened.

00:08:23.000 It was never going to happen.

00:08:25.000 And so that threat of someone standing in front of a truck when we all knew they were going to move out of the way.

00:08:31.000 Well, if you ask me, is it a truck hitting someone going to kill them?

00:08:35.000 The answer is yes.

00:08:36.000 But yeah, the person's pretty much going to move out of the way.

00:08:39.000 So we're wasting our time.

00:08:41.000 Ultimately, though, all of it is very effective at avoiding the real conversation.

00:08:45.000 I think Speaker McCarthy played the best cards he could.

00:08:48.000 We got a pretty decent movement on work requirements for food stamps, $20 billion less funding for IRS, some spending freezes.

00:08:56.000 None of it's going to change the world, but it was better than what we had before that bill.

00:09:00.000 That's sometimes what politics is.

00:09:02.000 But ultimately, we need a conversation about the size of government and the funding of government.

00:09:07.000 And we have $31 trillion of debt that is a weight on future economic growth, and nobody wants to talk about it.

00:09:13.000 And 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.

00:09:23.000 We have to have an honest conversation about these things, period.

00:09:26.000 Including foreign policy, which is a major anchor of the budget, which Republicans are awful.

00:09:32.000 They're terrible on some of these uniparty deals.

00:09:36.000 Tell us about the Dividend Cafe and the things you write there, Dave.

00:09:40.000 Yeah, dividendcafe.com.

00:09:42.000 I write a free weekly macroeconomic commentary because I want to talk about public policy.

00:09:48.000 Because I own my own business, it's a multi-billion dollar wealth firm.

00:09:51.000 I can talk about whatever I want.

00:09:52.000 I don't have, I used to be a managing director at Morgan Stanley and I could be censored and canceled.

00:09:58.000 Now, of course, owning my own firm, Charlie, I can say whatever I want.

00:10:01.000 So 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.

00:10:12.000 So dividendcafe.com is a good source, I think, for a lot of economics juxtaposed with public policy.

00:10:17.000 Check it out.

00:10:18.000 Dave, thank you for your commentary.

00:10:20.000 Very fair and wise, as always.

00:10:22.000 Thank you so much.

00:10:22.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:10:25.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:10:27.000 Every day, the parallel economy grows bigger and bigger.

00:10:29.000 It's powered by everyday Americans who are sick and tired of all the woke nonsense being jammed into every product they consume.

00:10:36.000 Big mobile companies are no different.

00:10:38.000 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.

00:10:45.000 But there is.

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00:10:50.000 They proudly offer dependable nationwide coverage on all three major networks.

00:10:54.000 Stop using woke wireless as they fund Pride Month and all this stuff.

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00:11:07.000 They're 100% U.S.-based customer service team, make switching easy.

00:11:10.000 Just go to patriotmobile.com/slash Charlie or call 878-PARTIOT, get free activation today with the offer code Charlie.

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00:11:22.000 PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie or call them at 878-PATRIOT.

00:11:29.000 We have been warning about the vanity project for consultants.

00:11:33.000 I received some information last night.

00:11:34.000 I 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.

00:11:51.000 This 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.

00:11:58.000 And I was talking through somebody, and I said, Well, did you challenge that donor about early state infrastructure?

00:12:04.000 Because this particular person I was talking to is very aware about our ballot harvesting issue, signature verification issue, all this sort of stuff.

00:12:14.000 And 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.

00:12:27.000 I am not going to spend a dollar on the general election if Donald Trump is the nominee.

00:12:31.000 We have to do everything we possibly can to defeat him.

00:12:35.000 Now, 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.

00:12:43.000 This person has sent some pretty big checks in the past, so there's definitely some firepower there.

00:12:51.000 They're putting their money where the mouth is, but you have to just, it flabbergasts me, and it infuriates me.

00:12:58.000 The Democrats are investing in technology, they're investing in data, they're investing in voter registration, they're investing all across the board.

00:13:06.000 And one of the biggest donors out there is saying, I don't care about any of that.

00:13:12.000 On the right, I just want $50 million minimum to go against Donald Trump.

00:13:20.000 And there are probably at least 15 to 20 other donors that are going to do this.

00:13:26.000 I need to update something I said about a month ago.

00:13:31.000 I do believe Donald Trump will win the nomination.

00:13:34.000 I used the word easily a month ago.

00:13:38.000 I don't think that is still the case.

00:13:41.000 I think this is going to be much tougher than I thought.

00:13:44.000 He's going to rip his opponents to shreds.

00:13:46.000 He has the people.

00:13:47.000 He has a track record.

00:13:49.000 But what I'm seeing right now on the horizon, I see it looming.

00:13:53.000 And quite honestly, not enough people are talking about it.

00:13:56.000 I see a massive lawfare operation.

00:13:59.000 DOJ probably going to file two separate indictments.

00:14:02.000 The more serious one will be incitement towards insurrection, or Blake can find up the exact criminal code.

00:14:08.000 They're going to go as high as they can.

00:14:11.000 Fannie Willis in Georgia.

00:14:14.000 You already have New York with Alvin Bragg.

00:14:16.000 You have Gene Carroll and this ridiculous civil lawsuit.

00:14:21.000 And 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.

00:14:29.000 Chris Christie is going to have $100 million behind him.

00:14:31.000 Tim Scott will have $250 million behind him.

00:14:34.000 Ron DeSantis will have $500 million behind him.

00:14:38.000 And then Donald Trump is going to have some money.

00:14:40.000 He'll be able to raise some money.

00:14:42.000 But then he's going to have the people.

00:14:45.000 Yeah, this is going to be brutal.

00:14:47.000 I'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.

00:14:56.000 You have to always be saying, okay, that was true then.

00:14:58.000 What is true now?

00:15:00.000 This thing is going to be an absolute melee.

00:15:03.000 This will make the Roman Coliseum gladiator games look like rock, paper, scissors.

00:15:11.000 I'm seeing it in the chatter.

00:15:12.000 I'm seeing it in the online disgusting back and forth between some Trump influencers.

00:15:18.000 And I don't like any of it, DeSantis influencers, the whole thing. 0.74

00:15:20.000 It's a bloodbath.

00:15:22.000 And we have not even yet had a debate.

00:15:26.000 Are we going to have debates?

00:15:27.000 We don't know.

00:15:28.000 But the news I have to share with you with the information I have provided is just one donor, one person, $50 million minimum.

00:15:34.000 And 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?

00:15:47.000 No, I don't care about that.

00:15:49.000 So this is going to be like a Soviet arms race. 0.51

00:15:52.000 Donald 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.

00:16:01.000 It'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.

00:16:13.000 But that barricade is already being built.

00:16:14.000 It's not speculation.

00:16:15.000 It's not guesswork.

00:16:16.000 I could tell you on good authority, you're going to start to see this in FEC filings.

00:16:20.000 You're going to start to see this in 527s and super PACs and 501c4s.

00:16:23.000 You're going to see this crowing mountain.

00:16:26.000 Because remember, some of the billionaire class that hates Donald Trump, they're almost three times richer than they were in 2016, 17.

00:16:34.000 You might not be richer.

00:16:35.000 You might be in debt, but plutocrats and oligarchs are richer than any other time.

00:16:39.000 Their wealth has increased because of the cheap money policies, low interest rates.

00:16:44.000 They care obviously more about Trump personally than actually saving the country.

00:16:49.000 That is where we are at.

00:16:50.000 I'm going to keep updating you in real time as we go towards a 2024 apocalypse.

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00:17:03.000 I try to take care of myself.

00:17:04.000 I try to eat right.

00:17:06.000 And I love fruits and vegetables.

00:17:07.000 I'd rather have them than anything else, but I know I don't get nearly enough.

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00:17:14.000 If it doesn't work after that, then let's try it and at least I know.

00:17:18.000 Within two weeks, I noticed a huge difference in my energy, sleeping better at night, and just energy.

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00:18:01.000 Joining us now is someone that I am glad is running for the presidency.

00:18:05.000 I say that even as a Trump supporter.

00:18:06.000 He is moving the Overton window.

00:18:08.000 He's doing a great job.

00:18:09.000 He's been very focused on the issues, and I think he's really starting to gain some traction.

00:18:13.000 Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:18:14.000 Vivek, welcome back to the program.

00:18:16.000 Charlie, good to see you.

00:18:17.000 Vivek, I want to play a piece of tape here of you in Iowa, PlayCut 52.

00:18:21.000 This is our moment to ask conservatives as Americans to rise to that occasion and say we're done running from something.

00:18:30.000 Now we got to start running to something.

00:18:34.000 What does it actually mean to be an American?

00:18:38.000 That is what we need to answer in our movement.

00:18:41.000 What does it mean to be an American?

00:18:43.000 It means we believe in the individual, the family, the nation, and God, the things that actually made this country what we really are.

00:18:52.000 Merit and the pursuit of excellence.

00:18:54.000 That you get ahead in this country, not on the color of your skin, but on the content of your character and your contributions.

00:19:02.000 That is what it means to be an American.

00:19:04.000 Vivek, you're ready to unveil a big policy proposal, the top three priorities as a nationalist American, just like George Washington.

00:19:12.000 Tell us about it.

00:19:13.000 Well, I am a George Washington America First Conservative, Charlie.

00:19:16.000 And people forget this about Washington.

00:19:18.000 He was actually the OG of the America First Movement.

00:19:22.000 You want to put America first?

00:19:24.000 We have to rediscover what America is.

00:19:27.000 So what did he stand for?

00:19:28.000 He said that we believe in self-governance, that there are three branches of government, not four.

00:19:33.000 Wanted to declare independence from a foreign autocrat, saying we don't depend on foreign autocrats.

00:19:39.000 At the same time, he was against foreign entanglements that don't advance the American interest.

00:19:44.000 And you know what he said?

00:19:45.000 He said that these are the best ideals that formed a nation in human history.

00:19:48.000 That's what American exceptionalism is all about, that we believe that.

00:19:52.000 So, Charlie, I'm going to say I'm thinking ahead to what I want to deliver when I leave office.

00:19:56.000 Say I'm elected in 2024.

00:19:59.000 When I leave office in January of 2033, what are the things that I will have accomplished?

00:20:04.000 What can I pledge to say that I'm actually going to deliver?

00:20:07.000 I think it's just three simple things.

00:20:09.000 First 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.

00:20:20.000 Second is declaring independence from China, that we are not a nation that relies on a foreign autocrat for our modern way of life.

00:20:29.000 We will no longer be dependent on our enemy for the shoes on our feet or the phones in our pockets.

00:20:35.000 And 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.

00:20:49.000 I think, Charlie, if I'm looking at two terms in January 2033, I don't make false promises.

00:20:55.000 But 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. 0.54

00:21:03.000 And by the way, this includes ending the war in Ukraine and pulling Russia out of China's back. 0.86

00:21:08.000 That's what it's going to take to do that.

00:21:10.000 And 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.

00:21:28.000 That I think will have been a success.

00:21:30.000 And I'm going to be talking about that more in the campaign trails.

00:21:32.000 So far, I've given you the high-level vision of national identity.

00:21:35.000 I'm an unapologetic American nationalist, though.

00:21:38.000 And what that actually means is reviving what it actually means to be an American.

00:21:43.000 That's how we're going to do it tangibly.

00:21:45.000 Vec, today is the 79th anniversary of D-Day.

00:21:48.000 What can we do legislatively to get that country back?

00:21:51.000 We're a less free country.

00:21:54.000 We are celebrating the wrong things.

00:21:56.000 We have a whole month dedicated to pride and whatever the heck that means in the LGBT mafia running our country. 1.00

00:22:03.000 What can we do actually legislatively?

00:22:05.000 What can a president do to lead the country back to the greatness that we saw 79 years ago today?

00:22:11.000 So I think a lot of that falls in that category of reviving civic pride, civic identity, national identity itself.

00:22:17.000 A lot of this is ending this identitarian vision of identity politics and affirmative action in America.

00:22:24.000 It was created.

00:22:25.000 Actually, you don't need legislation to do this one, Charlie.

00:22:27.000 Affirmative action was created by executive order.

00:22:30.000 Lyndon Johnson signed it into law by executive order, 11246.

00:22:35.000 Every president since Johnson could have taken a pen and crossed it out.

00:22:38.000 None of them has yet had the courage to do it.

00:22:40.000 One 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.

00:22:52.000 I 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.

00:23:15.000 We're going to apply these standards even-handedly without apologizing for it.

00:23:20.000 And 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.

00:23:28.000 Take the climate cult.

00:23:30.000 That's what it's all about.

00:23:32.000 The climate cult has nothing to do with the climate.

00:23:34.000 It has to do with apologizing for our success and who we really are.

00:23:38.000 And this, too, the president can do by just crossing a line through other presidentially signed regulations that were never passed into law.

00:23:45.000 I've said we're done measuring carbon emissions.

00:23:47.000 Why would we measure that instead of actually measuring what affects how Americans live with prosperity here at home?

00:23:53.000 So that just gives you a taste.

00:23:54.000 I 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.

00:24:01.000 It just requires a president with a spine who's actually willing to put this country first.

00:24:07.000 Domestically, that's what I'm going to do.

00:24:09.000 And 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.

00:24:17.000 Let's talk about that.

00:24:18.000 So, 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.

00:24:27.000 Let's talk about Ukraine.

00:24:28.000 I think Ukraine has been one of the sloppiest projects handled by the federal government.

00:24:34.000 We shouldn't send a penny over there.

00:24:36.000 It's a major mistake.

00:24:37.000 One of the people that is also running for the presidency, I think, is contrast of your views.

00:24:42.000 I want to play her on CNN, Nikki Haley.

00:24:44.000 And I want you not just to respond, but also just to show how different your worldview is and how you would approach this.

00:24:51.000 She is not an America first nationalist.

00:24:53.000 I 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.

00:24:59.000 She said it's in the best interest to give Zelensky whatever he needs, play cut 15.

00:25:04.000 President Trump has refused to say whether he believes Russia should win the war.

00:25:08.000 Ron DeSantis referred to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a quote territorial dispute.

00:25:13.000 What do you think of that?

00:25:15.000 I think that that's a mistake that too many have made.

00:25:17.000 That's exactly what got the Europeans in this position with Russia in the first place.

00:25:21.000 And for them to sit there and say that this is a territorial dispute, that's just not the case.

00:25:26.000 To say that we should stay neutral.

00:25:28.000 It is in the best interest of America. 0.74

00:25:30.000 It's in the best interest of our national security for Ukraine to win. 0.85

00:25:34.000 Vivek, 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?

00:25:43.000 I have a fundamentally different worldview on this than Nikki Haley.

00:25:47.000 Frankly, the one thing that the host there got wrong is actually Ron DeSantis' position.

00:25:51.000 I know he told Tucker that within hours or a few days, he also changed that position.

00:25:55.000 That's right.

00:25:56.000 Which shows how powerful the donor interests are in the Republican Party.

00:25:59.000 And 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.

00:26:12.000 That's fine.

00:26:12.000 I'm independent on this.

00:26:14.000 We need to end this war.

00:26:16.000 And I'm going to tell you, I have actually a vision of how to do it.

00:26:19.000 I'm going a little further than President Trump here, Charlie, and offering specifics.

00:26:22.000 And this is going to make a lot of people mad, but made ABC mad when I was on Sunday with them.

00:26:26.000 Here's how we got to do it: I'm going to make major concessions, yes, to Putin.

00:26:30.000 I'm going to call that what it is.

00:26:31.000 We'll freeze the current lines of control.

00:26:33.000 Not another dime of support goes to Ukraine.

00:26:36.000 And I'm willing to make a permanent commitment that Ukraine will not join NATO.

00:26:40.000 I think NATO expansionism has been a disaster.

00:26:43.000 You're right.

00:26:44.000 George Kennan, he was the major architect of actually Cold War deterrence against the USSR before he died in the late 90s.

00:26:51.000 He called NATO expansionism the biggest mistake.

00:26:53.000 NATO has expanded more after the fall of the USSR than ever it did during the USSR.

00:26:58.000 But I'm not going to do that for free.

00:27:00.000 I'm about advancing American interests.

00:27:02.000 What I get back from Putin is he exits his military alliance with China.

00:27:07.000 The Sino-Russian military alliance is the number one threat that the United States faces.

00:27:14.000 And 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.

00:27:21.000 That's the real threat that we face.

00:27:24.000 And so, if we can use the Ukraine war to pull Russia away from China, kind of like Nixon did with Mao. 0.67

00:27:31.000 We didn't worship Mao, but we said that the real threat back then was the USSR. 0.93

00:27:35.000 So, we're going to open relations with China at least for 10 to 20 years.

00:27:39.000 That was a decent decision that went south after that.

00:27:42.000 This is the reverse of that, except Putin is the new Mao.

00:27:45.000 So, do I trust Putin?

00:27:46.000 Am I some Putin sympathizer?

00:27:47.000 No, 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.

00:28:04.000 And also achieve an actual U.S. objective to say that NATO, I think, has largely outlived its purpose.

00:28:10.000 By 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.

00:28:20.000 Its purpose was to supposedly deter nuclear aggression from the USSR.

00:28:25.000 NATO is now increasing the risk of nuclear war with Russia.

00:28:29.000 And so, I think we can get major things out of this.

00:28:31.000 What 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.

00:28:42.000 These are other major concessions that he gets in return.

00:28:44.000 He gets to freeze the current lines of control.

00:28:46.000 We commit not to support Ukraine. 0.99

00:28:48.000 We 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.

00:28:59.000 Well, now we actually advance American interests and recognize that pull Russia out of China's camp, then we've actually made major progress.

00:29:07.000 And Charlie, I do think it takes an outsider.

00:29:08.000 I'm not a professional politician.

00:29:10.000 I'm not beholden to the donor class.

00:29:12.000 I do think it takes an outsider to see this with clarity and to say it out loud.

00:29:19.000 Okay, I'm curious, Vivek, you mentioned something.

00:29:21.000 I first want to commend you for your courage and clarity on Ukraine.

00:29:24.000 But why would Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager, care so much about Ukraine?

00:29:29.000 Help me understand this.

00:29:31.000 And look, I'm not criticizing him personally, Charlie.

00:29:34.000 It 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.

00:29:49.000 I just think that's the backwards way of looking at it.

00:29:51.000 Now, 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.

00:29:59.000 That'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.

00:30:06.000 George Washington would have been rolling over in his grave about Iraq as much as he is now watching our military engagement in Ukraine.

00:30:14.000 But 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.

00:30:26.000 It's like the administrative stated here at home.

00:30:28.000 It should be a task force instead of a permanent body.

00:30:31.000 Once the purpose of that body is gone, when the USSR fell, you know what?

00:30:35.000 That was the end of the actual true need for NATO in the first place.

00:30:39.000 Instead, what did we do?

00:30:40.000 We reneged on a lot of our commitments.

00:30:43.000 James Baker promised Gorbachev in 1990 or 1991 that none of the old Warsaw Pact countries would actually join NATO.

00:30:51.000 Now those countries have joined NATO.

00:30:53.000 NATO 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.

00:31:06.000 That's backwards.

00:31:07.000 And it's doing, you know, who's laughing at this?

00:31:08.000 It's China because this is now driving Russia into a more dependent relationship on China, which puts Xi Jinping in a stronger position, vis-à-vis the United States.

00:31:19.000 And keep in mind that it's Xi Jinping's country that we depend on shamefully for the way we live our lives as Americans.

00:31:25.000 And 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.

00:31:36.000 But that's not just a slogan.

00:31:37.000 There's going to be a clear plan for delivering it.

00:31:38.000 And one of the things I'm going to need to do is make sure we dissolve that Sino-Russian alliance. 0.98

00:31:44.000 And the Ukraine war, if you want to see one silver lining in it, this gives us our chip to actually deliver that.

00:31:49.000 Because 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.

00:32:14.000 I think that's actually a good thing.

00:32:15.000 So Vivek, I want to address just two things here, one of which I'm completely behind.

00:32:20.000 I think is really interesting.

00:32:21.000 The 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.

00:32:29.000 The second one is trans and military.

00:32:31.000 I think that transnies have no place in the U.S. military. 1.00

00:32:34.000 You have some nuance on this, and we're getting some emails on it.

00:32:36.000 Talk about those two issues.

00:32:38.000 Yeah, they actually go together, and there's a reason why.

00:32:41.000 So what I've said in this country is voting age is 25, but you get to vote at 18 if you serve the country.

00:32:46.000 That's a longer conversation, Charlie.

00:32:48.000 But I think we need to revive civic duty and make citizenship actually mean something.

00:32:53.000 But if that's where I'm coming from, and that's a nationalist position, I have to be consistent in what I say.

00:32:58.000 So I am against, I'm with you, against any trans military members on the front lines in combat roles. 1.00

00:33:06.000 So we share a view on banning it in combat roles.

00:33:09.000 However, 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.

00:33:28.000 I think the real problem with the trans movement, Charlie, is trans is a mental health epidemic in our country. 0.94

00:33:34.000 Part of the mental health epidemic comes from our hunger for cause and purpose and meaning that's unfulfilled by faith, patriotism, and hard work.

00:33:43.000 So 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.

00:33:50.000 Forget that.

00:33:51.000 That's the job of actually fighting the enemies and keeping this country strong.

00:33:55.000 But 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.

00:34:09.000 I'm fine with that, but get rid of the woke indoctrination.

00:34:11.000 And I've been the hardest line on that.

00:34:13.000 And you're also been very clear about accommodations, right?

00:34:15.000 No special surgeries, no bathrooms, none of that nonsense.

00:34:18.000 Where I disagree is that they should have no place in the military on paperwork or whatever. 0.89

00:34:23.000 You don't let schizophrenics or people with serious mental disorders get near a nuclear arsenal.

00:34:27.000 But we could talk about that another time.

00:34:28.000 Vivek, great job.

00:34:29.000 Thank you so much.

00:34:30.000 And come back soon.

00:34:31.000 The Ukraine stuff right on point.

00:34:33.000 Excellent courage and clarity.

00:34:35.000 Thank you.

00:34:38.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:39.000 Email us your thoughts.

00:34:40.000 As always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:42.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

00:34:47.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - June 06, 2023

Has NATO Outlived Its Purpose? with Vivek Ramaswamy and David Bahnsen

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