In this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, host Charlie and his co-host Blake discuss the new peace deal between Ukraine and the EU. They discuss the details of the deal and what it means for the future of Ukraine. They also answer listener questions.
00:00:59.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:13.000So we are going to do something fun here, backed by Popular Demand.
00:01:16.000I actually missed the first time that we did this, but I loved the idea of it.
00:01:22.000Charlie had to get out of the chair super quickly one day, and I was like, Blake, explain everything that Charlie just said to me because I don't know what we're talking about.
00:01:57.000We've talked about Ukraine a lot this week, but we wanted to hit, just actually lay out what everyone is talking about.
00:02:04.000And I especially wanted to, because I think this peace deal you've heard about is one that Charlie would have liked a lot and he would have been a big fan of it.
00:03:31.000And so what it would do is those areas in red are roughly match places that are currently held by Russia that America, the international community have considered part of Ukraine.
00:03:43.000And these are the places they've captured.
00:03:44.000Crimea in the south, which is now covered by our Chiron, but Crimea was taken about a decade ago.
00:03:51.000These others were taken during the invasion.
00:03:53.000This would formally cede them to Russia.
00:04:46.000Russia's stated intention for invading Ukraine was to denazify it.
00:04:50.000They claimed Ukraine was run by Nazis.
00:04:53.000That is highly debatable as an assertion at minimum.
00:04:58.000But it does seem their initial plan, they did, they attacked directly towards Kiev, the nation's capital.
00:05:05.000They literally had paratroopers land at the airport of the city.
00:05:09.000They seemed to believe that Ukraine was a very weak country and would just collapse almost instantly once attacked.
00:05:16.000And in fact, if you follow the news story, then a lot of Americans expected the same thing.
00:05:20.000The Biden administration seems to have offered, oh, Zelensky, you can flee the country and just come to America.
00:05:28.000And Zelensky, I will say to his credit, did not do that.
00:05:31.000I know Charlie Mani has had a lot of criticism of Zelensky on justified grounds, but he did not.
00:05:37.000And they fought a lot harder than they expected.
00:05:40.000So I think one reason Charlie would support this deal is he would probably believe Russia would be inclined to respect a final peace settlement because this war has been a lot longer, a lot bloodier, a lot more expensive, a lot rougher on everyone than was expected.
00:05:59.000So is this a win for either party or is this a pretty mutual compromise?
00:06:05.000I'll try to take the Charlie thing and say the biggest winners of all would be the Ukrainian people who are not conscripted and fed into a meat grinder so that Washington can feel good about themselves and how they're fighting Russia and being tough on Russia.
00:06:19.000You know, we don't need to kill a bunch of Ukrainian 18-year-olds so Lindsey Graham can feel tough.
00:06:25.000Having said that, the peace deal would be seen, I would say, as a victory more towards Russia because it is better for Russia than the deal that was on the table before the war began, that Russia was offering to us.
00:06:40.000Russia's deal that they were proposing in early 22 was essentially: if you agree that Crimea is part of Russia, because they'd already occupied that, if you agree not to admit Ukraine into NATO and not position certain military forces close to Russia, they were proposing a peace deal along those lines.
00:07:00.000So it would have had them have less land and it just would have involved fewer concessions than this agreement would have.
00:07:08.000Why does Russia not want Ukraine and NATO?
00:07:12.000So the most helpful way to think of it is Ukraine, from the Russian perspective, is like the has long been a part of their country.
00:07:21.000That Russian culture began in Kiev and it was part of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years.
00:07:29.000You're reminding me of Tucker's interview with Putin.
00:08:06.000And then imagine China came along and was suddenly cultivating New England as an ally and talking about adding them to the Chinese Belt and Roadblock.
00:08:15.000And, you know, maybe we should put some military forces in New England.
00:08:18.000We can maybe put a nuclear missile there.
00:08:20.000And I think even though we would see a lot of political differences with New England, oh, it's full of all these insane libs and commies, we would still be really upset by that.
00:08:34.000No, but Cuba being so close to us, we had this Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s because Russia was positioning arms right on the in Cuba, which is what?
00:08:46.000Like, what's the 90 miles to 40 miles before?
00:08:50.000And that was a huge, huge geopolitical issue of the time.
00:08:54.000This is when kids were in schools were learning to get under their desks and having to do these nuclear fallout drills.
00:09:02.000So, you know, the boomer generation remembers this.
00:09:04.000And so it's sort of akin to that, where, you know, you could imagine having a hostile military force, NATO, which is considered one of the most robust, well-funded military alliances in the world.
00:09:17.000Having that at your doorstep is not a very promising or delightful idea for the Russians.
00:09:22.000So when they say that they are basically they're covering all, I think you said, conflicts over the last 30 years, putting those to rest, that means then that Russia, they would be at peace with the parts of Ukraine that they have gotten back.
00:09:43.000And they would be saying we will not demand anything more, and we in return would end the sanctions.
00:09:49.000We reintegrate Russia into the global economy.
00:09:52.000The objective of the peace deal would be a true peace deal, not just a ceasefire, not just we stop shooting, that this is considered the resolution of the conflict.
00:10:02.000And I know Charlie very badly wanted that.
00:10:05.000He thought it was dumb that we were in this new Cold War with Russia going on forever when we have conflicts with China, for example.
00:10:13.000I think he viewed this as a distraction and a product of Washington being unable to move on.
00:10:19.000An absolute waste, by the way, of American taxpayer dollars and munitions.
00:11:52.000So, what we just talked about, America paying for a lot of this war.
00:11:58.000I know that we've obviously been doing that for a long time.
00:12:01.000That's been a huge topic of conversation, especially on this show.
00:12:05.000My question is: why are we the ones that presented this peace deal?
00:12:10.000Like, are we just the first ones to come up with these ideas that, hey, you guys could have this?
00:12:16.000So, the war is between Russia and Ukraine, but certainly from Russia's perspective, their argument is that Ukraine is just a puppet state of America.
00:12:24.000And also, America is, it is America that keeps the war, that makes it so Ukraine can fight the war.
00:12:30.000We've given them hundreds of billions of dollars in munitions, in economic aid.
00:13:30.000Okay, that makes sense because we, which I do have another longer question about this once we come back from break about America and Ukraine being allies, but it makes sense that we have been aid to Ukraine and then Russia, which was a big part of Trump's election.
00:13:58.000We're the only country that seems serious about it.
00:14:00.000A very frustrating thing that's happened over and over is Europe, which is not contributing as much as America, has gotten much more interested in keeping the war going forever.
00:14:10.000And what Charlie would complain about is they want the war to go forever.
00:14:13.000They want people to keep dying, but they have no serious plan to make the situation better for Ukraine.
00:14:20.000Why is no one reporting or talking about Ukrainian corruption?
00:14:24.000Currently, many scandals, stolen money, blowing up pipelines, killing Christians, biolabs, and human sex trafficking.
00:14:31.000Why no investigations into who all is getting kickbacks?
00:14:34.000Well, you know, what's funny, this is actually that popped up as part of the peace deal because I believe the original proposed peace plan has an aspect to say, oh, and as part of the peace deal, we'll do an audit for financial stuff because that's important to Trump to make sure the money was used well.
00:14:50.000And the revised peace plan that was promoted by the Europeans tweaks this to there shall be a full amnesty for all actions during the war, which I think a lot of people who have seen how much corruption there is, there are people in Ukraine who, while their country's been fighting, have become centimillionaires off of aid money.
00:15:10.000It's always been a very corrupt country.
00:15:12.000It's one of the worst things about it.
00:15:13.000Well, and I know that there's been a little kerfuffle and a fallout with MTG, but I will say MTG was very good on this particular issue.
00:15:20.000She was demanding full accountability and a full accounting of where all of America's dollars have gone.
00:15:26.000Daisy, you have a long one that you would like to ask.
00:15:28.000Well, I think it's going to be a longer explanation, but we were talking about why the U.S. is the only country that's positioned to present this peace deal to Ukraine and Russia.
00:15:38.000My question, and I don't think this is a dumb question specifically.
00:15:42.000I think that a lot of people my age would have this question because growing up, you hear a lot about who our allies are.
00:15:51.000There are so many conflicts that we've gotten in that haven't made sense, but it's like, okay, we do have a long-standing agreement or relationship with this country that it makes sense that we're in these conversations.
00:16:02.000I was not aware, and I don't really know why we are allies with Ukraine until this all started happening in 2021.
00:16:10.000So, the question is: why are we allies with Ukraine?
00:18:23.000And instead, what we did is we, after the war, almost from a fit of just like idealism or because it was sentimentalism, like, oh, these new countries are democracies.
00:18:33.000It'd be cool if they could join our cool democracy club.
00:18:40.000We add all these countries in Eastern Europe that used to be communist and allied with the Soviets.
00:18:44.000And if you're Russia, the only possible justification for this is, oh, you're expanding your anti-Russia military alliance to be closer to Russia.
00:19:10.000And so we've cultivated, because of this, we've cultivated Ukraine as this anti-Russian country.
00:19:16.000And Ukraine has differences with Russia on a whole bunch of things.
00:19:18.000There's reasons they're in conflict with each other.
00:19:21.000And that's, we basically, why are we allies with Ukraine?
00:19:23.000We're allies with Ukraine because we are not friendly with Russia is the biggest reason.
00:19:28.000You have to also understand that one of the key motivators for Vladimir Putin, who came of age when the USSR fell, is that he sees that as a really giant mistake, that it was allowed to fall.
00:19:40.000So all of those countries right there that were allowed to basically become independent and secede from Russia or the USSR.
00:19:48.000And so he is, a lot of people suspect, one of his key drivers is that he wants to reunite the lost pieces of the USSR.
00:19:55.000And he sees Ukraine as the apple of Russia's eye.
00:19:59.000Okay, so then that leads into my next question.
00:20:02.000What makes Ukraine different than any of these other countries that I'm looking at on this map?
00:20:06.000Like, are they going for Ukraine and then they're going for the other ones next?
00:20:09.000That's what people who don't like Russia would say.
00:20:12.000What I think Charlie would argue, and I would agree, is Russia has made it clear they view Ukraine as different.
00:20:48.000And in fact, it still says you can treat it as a violation of NATO's self-defense if we invade Ukraine again, but you just can't have them join.
00:20:55.000Well, I think that's something Charlie would say.
00:20:57.000I think that makes it really key is Crimea, which we can explain in just a second.
00:21:03.000This is Lane Schoenberger, chief investment officer and founding partner of YReFi.
00:21:07.000It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.
00:21:13.000His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.
00:21:19.000Now, here Charlie, in his own words, tell you about YReFi.
00:21:23.000I'm going to tell you guys about whyrefi.com.
00:23:05.000And so Russia fights wars against the Muslims.
00:23:08.000finally conquer it and what's very important about this is it's legally was part of ukraine even like when so it wasn't even first of all it was originally part of russia It was just a part of Russia.
00:23:21.000And it was settled by Russians because originally it was just a Muslim territory.
00:23:24.000So you just have to bring in new people to settle it.
00:24:15.000I don't know the exact year, but that's around when he did it.
00:24:18.000And it would have never mattered, except then the Soviet Union breaks up and they break up exactly along their internal lines within the USSR.
00:24:26.000So Crimea is a region of Ukraine, but it has no ethnic Ukrainians.
00:24:36.000And if you're Russia, your attitude is this Russian place is part of Ukraine for no reason other than Nikita Khrushchev being this dumb guy who wanted to make a sentimental gesture.
00:24:47.000And so they were really upset about that.
00:24:50.000So when there was previous political turmoil in Ukraine where a pro-Russian government got overthrown, a pro-U.S. government came in instead, Russia freaks out and says, all right, we're just taking this.
00:25:54.000So they were saying, like, if you try to attack Crimea with land troops, we will use nuclear weapons the way we would if you attacked Moscow or St. Petersburg.
00:26:02.000This is what they project power into the entire Mediterranean, the Middle East, Africa.
00:27:03.000And then he said, Crimea formerly part of Russia as it's been since 1783 until Khrushchev's mistake.
00:27:08.000So literally, we could have, we're basically going to end in the same place, but instead of UN supervision of these elections, we're just giving them to Russia now, is essentially what we're going to do.
00:27:18.000But we just have a million casualties and billions of dollars wasted.
00:27:22.000This was always where this was going to end.
00:28:16.000And my best to Erica and all of the team there at Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action.
00:28:24.000My question is this, and the cities of Seattle, Washington, Memphis, and all cities where Trump is sending the National Guard, what happens when the National Guard leaves and we have a corrupt city council, mayor, police chief, etc.
00:28:46.000Thank you, and God bless you for all you do.
00:28:54.000What I think I would point out is even in D.C., a lot of what the National Guard has done has primarily been, I think you'd agree, symbolic.
00:29:04.000It's having, you have the image of people maintaining order in big, prominent public places.
00:29:25.000Murder rates go up 30% overnight, not just in places where there's riots.
00:29:30.000They go up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
00:29:32.000We had 19 murders that year, a huge increase from others.
00:29:36.000It was like the country had this psychotic break where it was more okay with committing crimes.
00:29:41.000People were more violent and police were less willing to stop them.
00:29:45.000And what Trump's doing with the National Guard deployments, it's less that the guard are literally arresting people and literally stopping crimes.
00:29:53.000And much more, it's a bid to say crime is unacceptable in America, especially in our best cities, in our capital.
00:30:00.000And we are going to treat it as a problem that must be resolved.
00:30:03.000And if not, there will be consequences.
00:30:06.000And you're trying to shift, Charlie loved that word, the Overton window towards crime is a serious thing, you must stop.
00:30:13.000And away from what we routinely see, where city officials just don't view crime as a problem.
00:30:18.000They want to dismiss charges, throw out charges.
00:30:22.000We had that case, I believe it was in Chicago, where this guy set a woman on fire and he had, what, 50 prior arrests, 100 prior arrests?
00:31:44.000And you would agree with this, I believe, Blake, within especially the legal system where we started basically treating crime as, well, what race are you?
00:31:59.000You just straight up had actually, I think in Washington state, a court said, oh, you actually just have to consider what race someone is in terms of how much you punish them for committing crime.
00:32:08.000Because there was a lot of hocus pocus going on with the data, right?
00:32:10.000Because they would essentially say, well, look at too many black people are incarcerated versus their white counterparts or their Hispanic counterparts.
00:32:18.000Well, and the truth, sadly, is, and I actually was tweeting about this.
00:32:22.000Elon gave me a quote tweet this morning because I said, We don't have enough people in prison and we don't have enough capacity either.
00:32:31.000But, anyways, there's this hocus-pocus, this kind of woo-woo going on with the numbers saying, Well, then black people must be over-policed.
00:32:37.000Well, the truth is, is that unfortunately, a lot of black people tend to congregate in the urban core, and there's more crime in the black community.
00:32:44.000This is something Charlie was unafraid to address head-on and directly, and he took a lot of flack for it, but it's just the case.
00:32:50.000And so, we stopped policing, we stopped punishing, and we started letting people off.
00:32:55.000And guess what happens when you do that?
00:32:57.000You get a spike in crime, and we've had that spike in crime since George Floyd.
00:33:01.000Now, a lot of people will then say, Well, look at DC, Blake, crime was down 35%.
00:33:07.000Well, it turns out that they were cooking the books.
00:33:10.000There was a big investigation that was ongoing within the MPD, within the DC police department, where supervisors were going around telling police officers to downgrade serious felonies, violent felonies, so they didn't show up on the FBI crime statistics.
00:33:25.000So, my belief is that this is a national epidemic, that they're doing this in cities all across the country.
00:33:30.000They're downgrading serious felonies so that the crime rate looks artificially low.
00:33:36.000And you get this vibe from places like Chicago and Memphis and D.C., where they will tell you crime may be going down statistically, but I don't feel safer.
00:33:46.000I don't feel the crime rate going down.
00:33:48.000Yeah, and so much of this is the word you'd use is disorder, which is it's not just the literal violent crime, it's these casual seeding of the public space to anti-social elements.
00:34:01.000So, that's what you know, tent cities of homeless guys just kind of moping about, or even this is actually a very mild one.
00:34:07.000But for example, in on subways and in public buses, you're not supposed to play loud music, just you know, blast your phone on speakerphone.
00:34:17.000And what is a 100% known phenomenon is that there will be young men who just go and, as a performatively hostile act, they'll blast their music really loud.
00:34:28.000And you, everyone just has to put up with it because, okay, if it's like if it's a young, if it's a young black man, a 55-year-old guy is not going to go up, or a young woman is not going to go up and say, turn your music off, that's inappropriate.
00:34:40.000Because we'll be frank, they'll be worried they'll get killed or assaulted or something really horrible.
00:34:46.000Or someone will record them on their cell phone and blast this Karen on TikTok.
00:34:52.000And the way you have to stop that is you actually have to have authorities, the authorities punish this.
00:34:57.000Or think of something that's non-violent: turnstile jumping.
00:35:00.000How demoralizing is it for you to be this, you know, this sucker who has to pull out, who's pulling out your card to pay $3 to ride on the subway train, and then you see teenagers jump over it, get on, no one stops them.
00:35:14.000You have to stop these low-level things.
00:35:16.000That is so important to the public's morale since they live in a successful society.
00:36:30.000I just actually believe that if you incarcerated, let's say there's probably 500,000 people in this country that deserve to be imprisoned that are not.
00:36:37.000Let's just say maybe that's a low number.
00:36:39.000But if you got rid of the career criminals, you would see crime dry up really quick.
00:36:52.000As a voter in Iowa, home to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, I want to ask your view on how that committee's delay and rigid adherence to the outdated blue slip process contributed to this week's outcomes regarding James Comey and Letitia James.
00:37:11.000So, my question before we get to his question is: I don't know.
00:37:16.000I don't even know what he asked because I don't know the blue slip committee.
00:37:51.000And by tradition, when you've nominated judges to serve on these district courts in a specific state, it's been with some approval of the senators from that state.
00:38:05.000And so, what that has meant, for example, is you get more conservative judges, even under Democrat administrations, in red states, and you get more liberal judges in blue states because they're going to have these blue senators who will not allow you to just appoint whoever you want.
00:38:21.000And this has, I guess, you could say the upside of this would be you get you have judges who are a little more in line with their states, but the downside is obvious.
00:38:28.000A lot of our most important jurisdictions, New York City, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, they're in these blue states that are just going to have blue judges.
00:38:38.000And you get more liberal rulings as a result when, okay, we've had these Republicans in office for so long with the Senate.
00:38:44.000Why don't we have more conservative courts that are delivering conservative rulings on things?
00:38:49.000How much is this playing a role in things?
00:39:27.000South Carolina's two senators in 94 were Strom Thurman, a Republican, and Ernst Hollings, a Democrat.
00:39:34.000And both the Republican and the Democrat gave a positive blue slip on that particular norm.
00:39:40.000An important thing, the blue slip is a thing, and we probably should move on from it and get actual conservatives in court.
00:39:47.000But there's so many other things, and one of those is just we have to be really good about who we're putting in courts because conservatives have for a long time lagged on treating these as hugely important ideological actions to get really conservative people with good values into court positions.
00:40:03.000All right, let's throw up that image 273 when you guys have it.
00:40:07.000This is Judge McGowan, Cameron McGowan.
00:40:10.000So she has been around since the 90s being a federal judge.
00:40:15.000And so, listen, you would probably say, Blake, that you were a little skeptical of Lindsey Halligan's appointment, right?
00:40:44.000We could appoint someone else, and we're just not.
00:40:46.000That's also clearly what's driving President Trump on the filibuster.
00:40:49.000I think he says he's the kind of guy who will say, oh, we have this thing where we can't pass legislation because we need 60 votes, but we can get rid of it.
00:40:59.000That's how Trump approaches a lot of these things.
00:41:01.000And so similarly with this Halligan thing is this is where you have a real tension in the system because the president can appoint U.S. attorneys.
00:41:09.000He can fire U.S. attorneys, but they're supposed to be Senate confirmed.
00:41:13.000And there's a law that says a judge can appoint an interim one, but the president can fire them too.
00:42:23.000What I'm trying to do is I am trying to be fair-minded.
00:42:26.000So I've repeatedly referenced what Russia's perspective on it would be, what those opposed to Russia's perspective on it would be, because that is what is dictating things.
00:42:36.000I assure you, I'm not a neo- Are you unaware that the state of Ukraine and its borders were arbitrarily made by Lenin and Stalin in 1922 as one of the USSR's Soviet republics?
00:43:04.000I told you it was a national phenomenon because you had the spike after George Floyd, and all these blue cities wanted to be like, it's not, we're not crime-ridden here.
00:43:22.000Yeah, let's just listen to it and then I have something to say.
00:43:26.000Hello, this is Ben from Central Florida.
00:43:28.000Wondering what the administration is going to do about what's going on in Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria, with all the Christians being persecuted and being killed.
00:43:38.000Would love to know what Trump plans on doing and helping.
00:43:43.000Okay, so one, I think this is a really good question.
00:43:45.000But two, I want everyone to know the reason I know about this situation is from Nikki Minaj, who has been talking about it everywhere.
00:45:45.000Nigeria should probably be several countries.
00:45:46.000Maybe the Nigerians will get angry about this, but it's, you have, I mean, some estimates place it at almost 125,000 Christians have died between 2023 and 20, I'd be on the high level.
00:46:28.000So it has a lot of civil strife and Christians get caught in the crossfire.
00:46:31.000And certainly we're seeing that our administration has at least adopted it as something worthy of interest for us to care about the fate of Christians around the world.