00:01:00.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:12.000Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.
00:01:15.000For personalized loan services, you can count on.
00:01:17.000Go to andrewandtodd.com, the wonderfulandrewandtodd.com.
00:01:24.000I'm Alex Marlow, and this is the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:27.000Charlie and I are good friends, and I'm the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News.
00:01:30.000And I think probably you've heard me on the show a couple of times, but Charlie's been kind enough to allow for me to fill in.
00:01:34.000And I've been kind enough to fill in on Charlie's request because Charlie do me a solid right now.
00:01:38.000He's currently at CPAC doing a tribute to my boss and friend, Andrew Breitbart, who hired me 15 years ago to be his first employee of his news Empire, which really was, I believe, the catalyst for the conservative, the modern-day digital conservative movement, of which Charlie, of course, is a major part.
00:01:54.000And we're still a major part of Breitbart, and as is Salem Radio Network and all the great podcasts that we do.
00:02:00.000And it is a very cool moment, I think, to be a right-of-center person in media.
00:02:04.000And it's all thanks to Andrew, who passed away about 10 years ago.
00:02:46.000And my favorite thing is talk about what's cutting edge and what's coming up.
00:02:49.000And I don't like when the establishment media kind of dictates what we talk about.
00:02:53.000But yet, that is the situation we are in today because of the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and Russia.
00:03:01.000A lot has changed over the last couple of weeks.
00:03:04.000It did look like a couple of weeks ago that the movement of Russian-backed rebels was pretty much in the same pattern that we've seen over the years in an eight-year-long conflict that's been going on with Russia and Ukraine with these disputed Donbas regions, which are internationally recognized part of Ukraine.
00:03:22.000Russia disagrees and has long since disagreed.
00:03:25.000And Russia has now declared two regions there to be new republics and an airstrike rocking some 25 cities last night.
00:03:34.000We're starting to get some casualty counts.
00:03:38.000At least 40 Ukrainians and 50 Russian mercenaries died during the attacks yesterday.
00:03:43.000Russia is at this time attempting to seize the Chernobyl power plant through recording this, which is quite scary, but yet probably to be expected.
00:03:51.000Ukraine's declared martial law and is giving citizens guns to try to defend their country.
00:03:56.000We have all the latest info at Breitbart.com, which I do believe is the best source for news.
00:04:01.000We're also tracking oil prices, which are at $105.
00:04:04.000That is the highest in at least nine years or so.
00:04:06.000It's not quite the highest ever due to inflation, but we might literally see the highest numbers that we've ever seen.
00:04:12.000And sadly, so much of this is because of the West, because of the mistakes the West made.
00:04:18.000And we all know everything about Vladimir Putin.
00:04:26.000All of that we know, but we also know that the West and our priorities have just been so backwards.
00:04:33.000And it starts with the green stuff, the obsession with climate change, and it starts with the denial that there is evil in this world that walks among us.
00:04:41.000And we do need to be vigilant in opposing it.
00:04:45.000And occasionally with force and occasionally with strength.
00:04:48.000And Donald Trump's peace-through-strength foreign policy was pretty much A-plus.
00:04:53.000And people who are familiar with me, I'm not a Trump sycophant.
00:04:56.000I'm pretty willing to criticize President Trump on my show, Breitbart News Daily, which is a podcast and also on Sirius XM, every morning, 6 a.m. Eastern Live.
00:05:05.000And but I'll tell you one thing where it's very hard to criticize him: his foreign policy.
00:05:09.000And despite all of the talk that he was Putin's puppet, he kept Putin at bay easily, it seems, for four years, with simply because he was, I think, a force of nature.
00:05:22.000Joe Biden has broadcast clearly to the world he does not have any formal plan to sanction Putin, to push back on Putin, and there's very little he intends to do if Putin invades Ukraine.
00:06:45.000Some of that is baked in, though, because remember, the top stop stock traders really are, some of the top stock traders really are savvy on this stuff and they see this stuff coming a mile away.
00:06:56.000So some of the stock prices are down, but maybe not down as much as you think, because I think they people saw this coming and people saw that there was at least a potential for chaos in the region.
00:07:07.000But when you have countries that are so dependent on Russia, like Germany is for energy, and they've basically crafted their whole economy dependent on Russian buying energy from Russia, then you know you're going to be incredibly vulnerable and you're not really going to be able to do all that much to push back against Russia should they make moves aside from the most absolutely severe moves.
00:07:32.000There's so much else going on in the world that we just cannot dig into in adequate amount of time, which is one of the things that I find so frustrating about this Russia-Ukraine news cycle is we are forced to talk about it for better or for worse.
00:07:46.000Republicans are pushing right now for transparency in the classroom.
00:07:49.000I think this has been one of the silver linings of the horrific coronavirus pandemic that we've had that China brought upon us.
00:07:56.000And it is that parents who are looking over their kids' shoulders, watching them get educated on Zoom, realized they weren't getting reading, writing, and arithmetic.
00:08:04.000They weren't getting the wisdom of our founding documents and our founding fathers.
00:08:07.000They weren't getting Judeo-Christian principles and the underpinnings of our society.
00:08:16.000They were getting a lot of Ibram X Kendi and anti-racism and wokeness and critical race theory and all that stuff and the trans ideology, which has just been so rampant.
00:08:26.000And so parents said, wait a minute, this is bogus.
00:08:43.000Every one of them should be recorded and good for parents for standing up.
00:08:46.000And that is one of the few silver linings of the coronavirus.
00:08:49.000One of the things that's not a silver lining, one of the brown linings, I guess that's the opposite of silver, is the CDC withholding COVID news, the amount of faith lost in Americans' central institutions, in which I have very little faith anyway in a lot of these places.
00:09:03.000The CDC has just disgraced itself, every sense of the word.
00:09:07.000Throughout the whole pandemic, they're now withholding essential information.
00:09:12.000The United Kingdom now believes it was the lab that created the coronavirus.
00:09:15.000So it came from the lab after all, after years of everyone denying that that was even a possibility, shaming people who thought perhaps that, you know, that coronavirus virology lab right there in Wuhan might somehow be connected.
00:09:27.000It wasn't when a pangolin made love to a turtle and then ended up in a soup and the soup was undercooked and then people ate it.
00:09:34.000That wasn't the nature of the pandemic.
00:09:36.000It might have just been the manipulation of coronavirus in that lab.
00:09:39.000Well, now the UK is saying that's a possibility.
00:09:41.000And why did we cover this up for so long?
00:09:43.000To protect China, unfortunately, because we have so much big business tied to China and we don't get to spend adequate time on that.
00:09:50.000We will today with Peter Schweitzer, with Peter on the show.
00:09:53.000And it is something that it is worth emphasizing over and over and over again.
00:09:58.000That those of you who have a family member who will still go to school today with a stupid mask, a made-in-China face diaper made of cloth or paper that does absolutely nothing, or for the Source Fund of Freaks monitoring show, close to absolutely nothing.
00:10:15.000It's a these sort of torture that is done to our young people.
00:10:21.000All this is because of China, and we've completely ignored this.
00:10:24.000And now we will spend a bunch of time focused on Putin and Russia.
00:10:27.000And I'm not saying we can't talk about it.
00:10:29.000I'm not saying we can't talk about it at all.
00:10:30.000But the fact of the matter is there's a genocide going on in China and we can't talk about that because we're doing the Olympics there and we're focused on Putin.
00:11:00.000Rockauto.com is a family auto parts business company founded by automotive engineers over 20 years ago.
00:11:05.000They had two goals: give customers direct access to all the information hidden behind the traditional part store counter and make auto parts affordable so cars of all ages can be kept reliable and fun to drive.
00:11:16.000Today, rockauto.com ships thousands of parts from hundreds of manufacturers to millions of customers all over the world.
00:11:21.000Rockauto.com's online catalog keeps expanding, but remains remarkably easy and fun to use.
00:11:27.000Their prices are always reliably low, and same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.
00:11:31.000If you need to replace just about any part that wore out, got smashed, or fell off, rockauto.com is the place to go.
00:11:36.000Get the correct parts to maintain your car or truck at rockauto.com.
00:11:40.000When you check out, write Kirk in their How Do You Hear About Us box so they know we sent you rockauto.com, promo code Kirk.
00:11:49.000All right, Peter Schweitzer is on with me.
00:11:51.000Red-handed is the book now, sadly, nearly number two in the New York Times bestseller list.
00:11:56.000Down after three weeks of number one, Peter, congratulations on all the success with the book.
00:12:01.000But I've been talking a little bit about today with Andrew Breitbart.
00:12:05.000And you've been a longtime contributor to Breitbart.
00:12:07.000And one time, you were a big piece editor where you actually headed up our national security and foreign policy coverage.
00:12:15.000And it's such an amazing tie-in today with what's going on with Russia and Ukraine, because I do think that we can kind of talk a little bit about the news of the day and then segue into the book.
00:12:26.000I'm just going right off the top with the big one.
00:12:28.000Is there any chance there's a Hunter Biden connection to all of this?
00:12:32.000I think there is a Hunter-Biden connection in a lot of respects.
00:12:36.000If you look at the fact that when Joe Biden was vice president, Hunter Biden's entire business model was predicated on collecting money from this veritable United Nations of corrupt people.
00:12:50.000Some of those oligarchs are close to Vladimir Putin.
00:12:54.000Certainly the money that came from Ukraine, $4 million, certainly the money from China.
00:12:59.000And the idea that somehow Joe Biden is going to detach himself from the fact that his son is vulnerable, that there is this leverage that these oligarchs have over him, and he's not going to take that into account is just ridiculous.
00:13:12.000And let's stop pretending that these events are not connected in some way.
00:13:16.000And it would make Joe somewhat superhuman.
00:13:19.000That's why it's not a conspiracy theory, Peter.
00:13:20.000It's just that if your son is as deeply tied and just deeply implicated with the foreign government and you have the power to single-handedly change our policy with that government, of course you're going to consider it.
00:13:41.000And I do want you to go through the timeline of when Hunter was making most of his money in Ukraine and then when Zelensky came into power and why this did not bode well for the Hunter Biden business operations within Ukraine and how this is something that's probably a level of bitterness.
00:13:58.000And there's lots of evidence that Big Joey Biden is bitter about this, the big guy as he is known.
00:14:02.000I think the evidence is crystal clear in this front because you see that Big Joey won't even talk to Zelensky, won't even talk to him on the phone.
00:14:10.000He basically acts like he doesn't exist.
00:14:12.000And even though I do think the United States will do something to support Ukraine in general, it won't be enough.
00:14:21.000Being an entrepreneur and running a business are not for the faint of heart.
00:14:24.000There's a lot of stress when everything is on your shoulders.
00:14:26.000If you're not careful, that stress can take the toll on your body, raising your blood pressure, making it hard to sleep, draining you of vital energy, and making you more irritable.
00:14:34.000I discovered magnesium, and it's amazing.
00:15:03.000In fact, magnesium is involved in more than 300 chemical processes inside your body.
00:15:07.000So a lot of different things can start to go wrong when you're deficient.
00:15:10.000The good news is that you can experience a number of positive health benefits from just getting enough magnesium, including better sleep, more energy, healthy blood pressure, less irritability, a calmer mood, stronger bones, reduced muscle cramping, and even fewer migraines.
00:15:22.000But to experience these health benefits, you have to get the right kinds of magnesium.
00:15:26.000Truth is, most magnesium supplements you'll find in health stores use only the two cheapest synthetic forms, and they're not full spectrum.
00:15:32.000And they won't fix your magnesium deficiency or to do much to your full health for your health.
00:15:37.000There are actually seven unique forms of magnesium.
00:15:39.000You must get all of them if you want to experience its calming stress-relieving effects.
00:15:43.000That's why I recommend magnesium breakthroughs by Buy Optimizers.
00:15:46.000It's the only full organic, full spectrum, fully organic, full-spectrum magnesium supplement that includes seven unique forms of magnesium for stress relief, better sleep all in one bottle.
00:15:55.000Simply take two capsules before you go to bed and you'll be amazed by the improvements in your mood or energy levels and how much more rested you'll feel when you wake up.
00:16:02.000For an exclusive offer for my listeners, go to magbreakthrough.com slash Kirk or use Kirk10 during checkout to save 10% and get free shipping.
00:16:15.000We were talking about Hunter Biden's perhaps his connection to what's going on with the Russia-Ukraine conflict right now, whether or not he might be influencing President Big Joey.
00:16:25.000And it was very striking to me how Big Joey, who has announced America's back, has had no ability to navigate the situation diplomatically.
00:16:32.000Seems like everything he said thus far has egged Putin on and not shown adequate support to Ukraine and not sent the signal to the world.
00:16:40.000America is a strong player here and is one where you can't help but think of Hunter.
00:16:46.000Talk about what you're observing as an expert researching the subject matter.
00:16:52.000I mean, the problem is, is that Joe Biden's handling of the situation goes beyond incompetence, if that's possible.
00:17:01.000And part of the problem are, I believe, these entangling relationships.
00:17:05.000So look at, for example, his response with these sanctions that have been proposed.
00:17:11.000They're really not something that Russia is particularly concerned about.
00:17:16.000The challenge that we're facing is that this war has been started by one man, Vladimir Putin.
00:17:22.000He's the one that made this decision, not the Russian state, not the Russian government, Vladimir Putin.
00:17:27.000And so what you want to do is you want to punish Putin.
00:17:30.000You don't want to just try to punish the Russian government because that really means you're just punishing the Russian people.
00:17:36.000The problem is, is that we know that Hunter Biden has received millions of dollars from Russian oligarchs, some of whom are connected to Vladimir Putin.
00:17:45.000The most effective way you could hamstring Putin would be to put sanctions on Russian oligarchs, those that have massive holdings in the West.
00:17:58.000Everybody who observes and follows Russia knows those oligarchs are holding money for Vladimir Putin.
00:18:06.000You need to seize the assets of these pro-Kremlin oligarchs that are operating out of London, the United States, Israel, Western Europe.
00:18:14.000The problem is, I don't think we're going to slap sanctions on those people because some of those people have done business deals with Hunter Biden.
00:18:21.000And they no doubt probably have very embarrassing material on Joe Biden's one and only living son.
00:18:29.000And this is so remarkable because I think that Putin, who is a much better chess player geopolitically than pretty much anyone other than perhaps Xi Jinping at this point, which again, I'm not complimenting either policies.
00:18:41.000I detest them as human beings, but I'm just saying in terms of the realities of how power is wielded on this planet, they're much better at it than anyone in this country at this moment.
00:18:51.000And I do see when Joe Biden makes statements like that, it's one thing if it's a minor incursion and then we might end up having a fight about what to do or not to do.
00:19:11.000We don't have contingencies in place, let alone the EU and the UN and NATO, which are all, I mean, one of the UN ambassadors was saying for Putin to give peace a chance.
00:19:49.000I mean, the two fatal flaws in, and there are others, but two that I will mention in the communication strategy of Joe Biden in this is number one, the vagueness.
00:20:00.000He's been vague from the beginning, just talking in general terms that people aren't going to like it if you go into Ukraine.
00:21:19.000Same thing when he was vice president.
00:21:20.000And it's important to point out here on this, the vagueness for all the criticism that people could level at Donald Trump and the things that he would tweet about and the things that he would say.
00:21:32.000Let's note, Vladimir Putin has moved into Ukraine under two administrations, the Obama administration in 2014.
00:21:40.000He skipped the Trump administration and now with the Biden administration as well.
00:21:45.000And the reason is for any criticism you want to lodge against Donald Trump, he emitted strength.
00:21:51.000And even if there was a certain unpredictability with what he would do, the fear was that unpredictability could mean he would really go after you aggressively.
00:22:07.000And it is striking to see how Biden has been kind of a hard nose on Ukraine, not on Russia over the years.
00:22:15.000And again, Trump was portrayed as Putin's puppet, but look at what happened with Putin under with the Trump regime or the Trump administration.
00:22:23.000It's a, you know, Trump deserves lots and lots of credit for his foreign policy, as I've been saying on the show.
00:22:30.000It is striking, though, that this media that is starting to increasingly fetishize authoritarianism when it comes to China, and you write about this deeply in red-handed, one of the most horrifying themes throughout the book, among many themes, is how a lot of our oligarchs here in America, namely big tech and Hollywood, they're very impressed with how Xi Jinping wields power and how efficient he is.
00:22:53.000Well, that's the nature of dictatorships.
00:22:55.000We're noting here, Peter, as we're having this conversation live, that there's hundreds of protests that are breaking out in Russia to protest war because they don't really want to go to war right now.
00:23:04.000The people don't necessarily want to do it.
00:23:52.000And this is a guy, by the way, who in the past has said doing climate deals with China might be easier than it would be with other countries because it does have a dictatorial regime.
00:24:03.000But they're falling into this common trap, which is they feel like somehow Vladimir Putin and President Xi of China have common values with them.
00:24:15.000They, John Kerry, is concerned about climate change.
00:24:19.000Putin says he's concerned about climate change.
00:24:22.000Ergo, he's going to act on climate change.
00:24:26.000As Ukraine should show us, these guys lie.
00:24:29.000They lie all the time because they don't have political opponents and they don't have an independent media to hold them in check.
00:24:36.000But they don't seem to learn that lesson.
00:24:39.000And what we have to be cognizant of now is the very real reality that this may be an opening for China to potentially move on Taiwan or take other aggressive actions.
00:24:50.000They see, they smell the weakness in the air and they may see this as an opportunity.
00:24:55.000You know, and it's also notable that they moved on Hong Kong just because we were all distracted by the coronavirus and we all kind of just watched it happen and we watched it play out and we were horrified and nothing was done.
00:25:05.000And of course, China has designs on Taiwan.
00:25:10.000And one of the things that bothers me the most is how interconnected we all are.
00:25:16.000Because when the globalist experiment gets extended to its logical end, when we have this sort of one world system that we increasingly have, it really does favor the people who are the most ruthless with power.
00:25:32.000And when you've got Putin and Xi Jinping cutting deals around the world, Xi Jinping is essentially colonizing Africa right now.
00:25:39.000And we're not only letting them do it, Bill Gates is actively helping.
00:25:42.000You write about this very powerfully and red-handed.
00:25:44.000But look at what Putin's doing is Putin, do you think he's intimidated by Russia shutting down?
00:25:48.000I'm sorry, by Germany shutting down a pipeline temporarily?
00:25:53.000The German people will be so frustrated with their own government if they get the Russian energy slowed, the delivery to Germany.
00:26:01.000Yeah, I mean, this is a brilliant point that you're making that we have to highlight because the whole premise behind globalism was if we are engaging in trade and commerce, these sort of semi-rogue or rogue countries like Russia or China will become more wedded towards us.
00:26:24.000Look at the situation in Europe right now.
00:26:26.000So the idea is we're going to wed Russia to Europe by setting up these gas pipelines and creating this lucrative European market for Russia.
00:26:35.000The theory is this is going to mean Russia is not going to want to invade because they don't want to lose the market.
00:26:47.000It has deterred the weak European democracies from taking strong action when they need to.
00:26:55.000So, you know, they send a couple of helmets to Ukraine rather than military equipment because they don't want to have the gas shut off.
00:27:01.000Or now they say we're going to delay the Nord Stream pipeline, which, by the way, isn't supposed to be certified till this summer anyway.
00:27:08.000So all that this globalism has done is given these autocrats, these authoritarians, leverage over these weak, vassal democracies in the West that are fearful of doing anything of offending these powers.
00:27:23.000Globalism has not only failed, it's ended up doing the opposite of what it was supposed to do.
00:27:31.000Look, everybody, I know you love freedom and you want to defend it.
00:27:35.000It's a beautiful document, and so do I.
00:27:38.000And it's the same with Hillsdale College, the best liberal arts college in America.
00:27:42.000Hillsdale's mission is pursuing truth and defending liberty.
00:27:45.000It gives its undergraduate and graduate students the best education and is working to make this education available to all, from offering free online courses to helping support K through 12 schools.
00:27:56.000But today I want to tell you about Hillsdale's amazing free monthly digest of liberty.
00:28:47.000Check it out right now, charlieforhillsdale.com.
00:28:52.000And I want to ask you about Andrew Breitbart, who you were one of the first employees, at least first 10 employees.
00:28:58.000I was the first, of course, which will be on my epitaph, I'm sure, at some point.
00:29:04.000But tell me about what drew you to Andrew, because you are, you do have a great sense of humor and you're a fun guy, but you're a very serious journalist.
00:29:13.000And Andrew was, you know, half jocularity, half righteous indignation.
00:29:18.000It is, you're generally neither of those things.
00:29:21.000And what made you think this is the guy I want to ride this horse into the sunset?
00:29:25.000And you have just really done an amazing job taking the baton from him in a lot of ways.
00:29:33.000I mean, I look at the success that I've had and a lot of it, I think, was something that Andrew really made happen because I learned a lot from Andrew.
00:30:25.000When he hired me to handle Big Peace and National Security, I remember him telling me now, let's just be clear, that's not a strength of mine.
00:30:32.000So I'm expecting you to kind of run with the baton.
00:30:35.000Very few people that are editing publications that big will be that candid with you, but Andrew was like that.
00:31:00.000And the Government Accountability Institute is doing, I believe, the most important research in the world right now.
00:31:06.000And you are taking on targets that a lot of people would be afraid to take on.
00:31:12.000Not just, you know, Mitch McConnell and people like that who are wield unfathomable amounts of power and also deep ties to China, but also people who are kind of who are throughout the Republican establishment and people who could otherwise be friends of yours and perhaps give you donations, Peter, to support your research.
00:31:28.000But you take these people right on because they deserve it.
00:31:31.000And this is exactly the integrity the conservative movement needs.
00:31:35.000And it does, frankly, start with Andrew.
00:31:38.000And in fact, that reminds me of another thing that Andrew offered me insight to, which I thought was very powerful, is I haven't lived in Washington, D.C. since the mid-1990s.
00:31:48.000And of course, Andrew always lived in LA.
00:32:04.000So if he was your friend, you know, he would be torn up if you were doing something that he, so his way of avoiding that was, I'm just not going to really be friends with a lot of people in the political class.
00:32:32.000And that's one of the things that Andrew, you know, taught me as well.
00:32:35.000Peter Schweitzer, The Drill Down Podcast, The Red Handed Book, any of Peter's books are must reads, and most of them are bestsellers.
00:32:41.000And the most recent few have been number one bestsellers.
00:32:44.000My book is Breaking the News, also a New York Times bestseller.
00:32:46.000If you guys want to check that out, I think it provides a lot of detail around what is happening throughout the country at this time in terms of our media missing so many of the big stories and continue to try to convince the public to follow their agenda and not actually report what really matters.
00:33:01.000To all of you, Breitbart.com all day, every day.
00:33:03.000Share our content all over the social web is a big help.
00:33:06.000And thanks again to Charlie Kirk for letting me fill in.
00:33:08.000I'm Alex Marlow and thanks for listening.
00:33:13.000For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.