00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, the great Newt Gingrich joins us as we go through the latest news out of Ukraine and Russia.
00:00:06.000Newt has a very wise take and also agrees that our skeptical posture is warranted and in fact healthy.
00:00:15.000I have a lot of respect for Newt Gingrich.
00:00:17.000He is one of the smartest, one of the most well-informed and patriotic minds that we have with us.
00:00:23.000It's an honor to be able to have him join our program and to be able to comment on what's happening.
00:00:28.000I think you'll really be blessed by what he has to say.
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00:02:11.000Starts actually on the first page of the Wall Street Journal here this morning.
00:02:16.000Which it's hard not to admire the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their home against the Russian aggression.
00:02:24.000Ukrainian town deals Putin one of his most decisive routes.
00:02:30.000A Kalushnikov rifle slung over his shoulder.
00:02:33.000Mikhailo Semarenko spent this Tuesday driving through fields and forests picking up dead Russian soldiers and taking them to a freezer railway car piled with Russian bodies.
00:02:45.000A rapid Russian advance into the strategic southern town of 35,000 people, a gateway to the Ukrainian nuclear power station and pathway to attack Odessa from the back would have showcased the Russian military's ability and severed Ukrainians' key communication lines.
00:02:59.000Instead, the two-day battle of Vosenesik, details of which are now only starting to emerge, turned decisively against the Russians.
00:03:10.000Judging from the destroyed and abandoned armor, Ukrainian forces, which comprised local volunteers and professional military, eliminated most of the Russian Battalion Tactical Group March 2 and 3.
00:03:26.000Now, I'm going to continue to read this story here.
00:03:34.000It's pretty awesome to see people rise up and defend their home, I have to say.
00:03:38.000The Ukrainian defenders' performance against a much better armed enemy in an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking region was successful, in part because of the widespread popular support for the Ukrainian cause, one reason the Russian invasion across the country has failed to achieve its principal goals so far.
00:03:55.000Ukraine on Wednesday said it was launching a counteroffensive on several fronts.
00:03:59.000Quote, everyone is united against the common enemy.
00:04:02.000So the 32-year-old mayor, a former real estate developer, turned wartime commander, who, like other local officials, moves around with a gun.
00:04:14.000This isn't going according to plan for the Russians, it seems.
00:04:20.000Now, the Russians have a history of messing up wars very early on and winning them only through will, tenacity, and throwing so many bodies at a conflict that it's almost overwhelming.
00:04:34.000The Russian military certainly isn't as, let's say, sharp, isn't as precise, isn't as strong as one once thought.
00:04:48.000Now, Russians are still poised to win because I think they are more than likely to throw what is necessary to still win this battle and win this war.
00:05:00.000Yesterday, there was a kind of conflict when it came to describing Vladimir Putin.
00:05:09.000Cut 79, Joe Biden labels Vladimir Putin a war criminal.
00:05:17.000You asked me whether I was warned of war criminals.
00:05:26.000Now, if this story is true, again, if, because there's been a lot of misinformation and disinformation around this topic, it's hard to disagree with the statement saying that Putin is a war criminal.
00:05:40.000Now, I think he misheard somebody, or I don't, I don't know, his aides corrected him on this.
00:05:45.000But there's this story that is coming out in the last couple of days about this bombing campaign of this Maripol theater.
00:05:54.000Quote, children were spelled out on two sides of the Maripol theater before bombing, satellite images show.
00:06:02.000Basically, they wrote children on both sides of the theater.
00:06:06.000Now, this might be a true collection of events, or it might be another snake island of ghost of Kiev.
00:06:14.000New satellite images from Maxar Technologies show that on Monday the word children was spelled outside of the theater, that the Maripol City Council was bombed on Wednesday.
00:06:24.000The city council said that on Wednesday, the Russian forces had, quote, purposefully and cynically destroyed the drama theater in the heart of Maripol.
00:06:32.000The plane had dropped a bomb on a building where hundreds of Maripol residents were hiding.
00:06:38.000So I don't really see how anyone could see that and not believe that is not just immoral, but what a war criminal would do.
00:06:54.000Says here in the Wall Street Journal: Russian forces retreated more than 40 miles to the southeast where other Ukrainian units have continued pounding them.
00:07:02.000Some dispersed in nearby forests where local officials said 10 soldiers have been captured.
00:07:06.000Now, this is good news for the Ukrainian people.
00:08:14.000By expanding my nation's lands, relentlessly, expanding through almost an imperial mindset, colonizing new areas, giving the purpose of the people in the Soviet Union, their purpose needs to be the further strengthening of the homeland.
00:08:35.000Now, this is now popping up here, which is some people say, well, what happens if the Russians lose?
00:08:46.000It scares me that if the Russians are going to start to not get everything they want, which is obviously a desirable outcome in the immediate, are they going to go to even more dramatic means?
00:08:58.000Are they going to bomb even more civilian centers and civilian stations?
00:09:02.000I have not really heard a piece of commentary that makes sense to me on the mind of Vladimir Putin.
00:09:17.000But it is an open question of what is the strategy exactly.
00:09:21.000Now, without a full understanding of Russian military tactics, it's hard to understand that.
00:09:26.000The Russians do not fight war like we in the West do.
00:09:30.000They do slow, methodical movements, trying to almost use their army as a blunt force object, going block by block and street by street, not having a preference on technology or speed or precision, but instead on brute force.
00:09:46.000Quote, this is what observers are saying.
00:09:49.000The Russians are executing a standard mechanized warfare maneuver in line with their goals, attacking from Belarus to link up with the forces attacking northward from Crimea.
00:09:58.000When they link up south of Kiev, Ukraine, it will be split in two.
00:10:01.000Kyiv may be bypassed or it may be destroyed, but that is secondary to the larger strategic maneuver.
00:10:07.000Another Russian thrust from east to west seeks to cut the nation into quarters so Ukrainian forces cannot reinforce one another.
00:10:16.000What does all this mean for the United States?
00:10:19.000What does it mean for what our reaction should be?
00:10:43.000On Saturday, my administration authorized another $200 million to keep a steady flow of weapons and ammunition moving to Ukraine.
00:10:52.000Now I'm once again using my presidential authority to activate an additional security assistance to continue to help Ukraine fend off Russia's assault.
00:11:03.000An additional $800 million in assistance.
00:11:06.000That brings the total of new U.S. security assistance to Ukraine to $1 billion just this week.
00:11:13.000$1 billion to a foreign nation just this week.
00:11:18.000Now, as this conflict continues to develop, as this conflict continues to grow, it's a question of what should the United States' continued response be here.
00:11:32.000Now, to say that Russia is inevitably going to win is probably right, but Russia has lost wars of attrition before.
00:11:54.000Now, they're going to probably continue to throw millions and millions of people at this situation, thousands and thousands of people at this situation.
00:12:03.000So, some Americans support a no-fly zone, but support of the no-fly zone declines once they know what it is.
00:12:14.000Postmillennial.com, American support for no-fly zone rapidly declines once they know what it is.
00:12:21.000So, recent polling on whether or not Americans should have a no-fly zone over Ukraine has shown favor in that idea until people know what it actually is.
00:12:30.000Supporters of the no-fly zone were 40% of those polled, while opponents were at 25%.
00:12:37.000The numbers switched once respondents were told that a no-fly zone means that NATO would engage with war with Russia, shooting down their planes over the Ukrainian airspace.
00:12:45.000Support for the measure dropped to a mere 23%, while opposition rose to 43% once Americans learned that a no-fly zone would mean war with Russia.
00:12:54.000Much of this shift came from Republicans poll who went from supporting a no-fly zone by a 22-point margin to opposing it by a 38-point margin.
00:13:04.000Polling changes dramatically once people see that there will be a cost to that.
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00:14:31.000What would your response to that be if you were Speaker of the House of Representatives, and what should the Republican response be as after hearing that address?
00:14:41.000Well, I think I would draw a very sharp line between giving the Ukrainians as much help as we can to defeat the Russian invasion, but not committing America to any kind of war.
00:14:56.000I think that if we provide enough equipment and we provide enough training, which could be done outside of Ukraine, I think there's a very high likelihood they're going to defeat the Russians.
00:15:09.000And part of it's because, you know, dying for Putin is not a particularly exciting idea, whereas defending your own country is a very exciting idea.
00:15:19.000And I think many of the so-called analysts, including our own intelligence services and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, were just plain wrong.
00:15:27.000They all assumed, if you just looked at the numbers, that the Russians would roll over Ukraine, that the Ukrainians would collapse.
00:15:34.000Well, the Ukrainians stood up for freedom.
00:15:37.000I think there are two practical reasons for helping them.
00:15:40.000One is specifically to help people who want to be free and who are prepared to risk their lives to be free.
00:15:48.000But the other is to send a signal to dictators around the world that you can't just go and basically attack your neighbor.
00:15:56.000This is very similar psychologically to the rise in violent crime in the United States, where we elected a series of George Soros-financed district attorneys who basically said, you know, you can steal, you can rob.
00:16:13.000We're going to put you back on the street.
00:16:15.000In some of these cities, we're not going to have bail no matter how often you do things.
00:16:21.000And so you end up with some guy with 16 different crimes on his record, killing a 24-year-old college student while she's working at a store, or you end up with a person who is clearly mentally deranged, stabbing two people at a museum.
00:16:38.000And I think similarly, you have a very similar pattern in international relations.
00:16:44.000If it was easy for Putin to take Ukraine, the chance of Xi Jinping deciding to occupy Taiwan would go up dramatically.
00:16:52.000Now, I do believe we should avoid using American forces.
00:16:56.000We should avoid getting involved in a war.
00:16:58.000But I think where I'm different from some of my friends, the problems on the southern border aren't money.
00:17:05.000Problems on the southern border are President Biden and woke Democrats who want an open border.
00:17:12.000The problem of dealing with fentanyl is one of actually enforcing the law and enforcing control of the border and, frankly, raising the price on the only place that produces it, which is China.
00:17:25.000We've allowed them to wage war on us in terms of basically addiction and get away with it without us responding aggressively to the kind of things they're doing.
00:17:39.000You can't have a dictatorship, the intensity of Xi Jinping's dictatorship, and then turn around and say, oh, gee, we really don't know where that particular factory is.
00:17:52.000And so, Mr. Speaker, my one concern, though, and I share some of the kind of just kind of reluctance to want to send American troops into another combat theater.
00:18:03.000My concern, though, is does our military currently have the ability or the capacity to pull this off?
00:18:12.000After Afghanistan, after we left $85 billion in the country and the debacle that ensued, I don't know if I have a vote of confidence for Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin.
00:18:22.000Do you think that should factor in to our calculus when we entertain intervention in this conflict?
00:18:29.000Well, you know, I don't have not heard the Secretary of Defense, Austin, be quite as totally wrong as Milley.
00:18:38.000I mean, I think Milley's the worst chairman of the Joint Chiefs in American history.
00:18:42.000I think he should be fired today, preferably.
00:18:47.000But if you ask at the lower levels, and I just spent time with about a dozen major generals last week at Maxwell Air Force Base talking about these kind of ideas, when you get down to the lower levels that have not yet been totally politicized, that we're still extraordinarily competent.
00:19:04.000And again, I would emphasize delivering the weapons, for example, to Poland, Romania, Moldova, having the Ukrainians pick them up there and taking them into Ukraine, training Ukrainians in Poland, Moldova, Romania, not in Ukraine.
00:19:21.000I think there we still have a very great capacity to get things done.
00:19:27.000I do believe the whole effort to create a woke American military is crazy.
00:19:31.000I hope if the Republicans take over the House and Senate next year, that they will hold very tough hearings and they will rewrite appropriations bills to kill a bunch of this stuff and simply say you can't spend any money on it.
00:19:44.000Something they should be doing right now about the Iranian negotiations, which are, I think, stunningly dangerous for America and for Israel.
00:19:53.000But I wouldn't, I don't want to get involved in a war because it could get very uncontrollable.
00:20:01.000And I don't want to rely on the Russians showing self-restraint if they're directly fighting.
00:20:06.000Remember, we contained them from 1946 to 1991 when they collapsed without having to fight a major war.
00:20:17.000It's the sort of goal we ought to have again to say we can, in fact, protect a country like Ukraine that's willing to fight for itself by giving it the weapons and the training.
00:20:29.000And we can, in fact, find ways to coerce the Russians.
00:20:33.000I mean, it starts with the simplest thing where, again, it's not because they're dumb, it's not because they're incompetent.
00:20:43.000Joe Biden hates the American oil and gas industry.
00:20:47.000He just gave a speech to a Democratic National Committee fundraiser, and in the entire speech, he has one sentence about Ukraine and Russia.
00:20:57.000And that sentence basically says, boy, if we had enough green technology, things would be much better.
00:21:04.000He said nothing in the entire speech on the 14th of March about this huge fight that's underway, the role of NATO, the importance of the United States.
00:21:17.000And frankly, you look at Russia, you look at North Korea, you look at China.
00:21:22.000We'd better rethink the military and the intelligence community.
00:21:26.000And the other point I'd make, having once helped found the military reform caucus under Reagan, the degree to which our intelligence services are just plain wrong is an argument for dramatically overhauling them.
00:21:50.000And I think we ought to really look at: are we really making policies based on an intelligence system that's just out of touch with the real world?
00:22:01.000Yeah, and I share that concern, Mr. Speaker.
00:22:03.000And I've been sharing that on our program, which is, you know, I really don't trust our current security apparatus who told us that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and they told us we didn't need Bagram Air Base, you know, to pull off these very complicated and complex measures.
00:22:21.000I think it's fair, you know, what you're saying that we could, you know, supply weapons in neighboring countries.
00:22:27.000I just, I'm afraid that that could potentially escalate us into further involvement, almost similar to what we saw in other chapters of American history, Vietnam, for example.
00:22:40.000What would give you peace of mind that wouldn't further embroil us?
00:22:43.000Well, look, I think you have to frankly recognize that what you just said is real.
00:22:51.000The question is: if you don't stop Putin in Ukraine, and then he decides to shift to Finland or Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and you decide not to stop him there, now you are recreating the sort of Adolf Hitler late 1930s problem.
00:23:11.000Again, I think we have the capacity to get him equipped.
00:23:16.000I know we have a lot of countries helping us.
00:23:18.000In that sense, this has really been, to me, remarkable.
00:23:22.000When you see Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, virtually all of these countries, Great Britain, France, all these countries piling on, the instinctive sense that allowing Putin to openly invade a neighbor means everybody's at risk.
00:23:43.000Now, it's the same problem you have with policing.
00:23:46.000You know, if you go out and you're dealing with bank robbers who are armed, there's a real risk for the police.
00:23:53.000Every year, policemen get shot just for stopping a car because it was a car that had somebody in it with a gun.
00:24:02.000That doesn't mean you don't recruit policemen, train them, try to get them to wear their vests, but recognize it's really dangerous.
00:24:10.000Well, you ask them to do really dangerous things.
00:24:14.000I don't want us to pick a fight with Putin, but I do think as a historic matter that if we refuse to support Ukraine, we are going to then have to say, is there, where do you draw the line?
00:24:31.000Because there's no reason to believe if Putin thought he could get away with it, there's no reason to believe he would stop just with Ukraine.
00:24:39.000I'll be honest, Mr. Speaker, I struggle with that question as well.
00:24:42.000I really do, especially with what we saw after Afghanistan.
00:24:47.000And I think it shouldn't be a debate that this is an act of a war criminal when you see hospitals and maternity wards bombed.
00:24:55.000At the same time, I don't know if I trust the top levels, Millie in particular, if this were to escalate and get into that conflict.
00:25:04.000Just really quick, what is your opinion on how this is impacting domestic politics?
00:25:10.000Do you think that this is helping Biden maybe talk less about some of his domestic failures?
00:25:15.000No, I think that it hurts Biden because he looks weak.
00:25:25.000Kamala Harris was such a huge embarrassment when she went to Poland and Romania that it was an enormous hit, I think, for the administration.
00:25:34.000And I think that, you know, they also just can't get away with the core reality.
00:25:40.000Every time you fill up your car or your truck, you're reminded that Joe Biden did this to you.
00:25:48.000The policies of Joe Biden, who hates oil and gas if it's made in America, loves it if it's made in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or Iran, but hates it if it's made in Texas or Oklahoma or North Dakota.
00:26:02.000Those policies, I think, are biting him.
00:26:05.000They're going to bite him more and more.
00:26:07.000And I think that he has a huge problem domestically.
00:26:11.000And I don't think the Democrats can solve it.
00:26:15.000Now The Economist, Financial Magazine and newspaper, has said the stock market lost over a trillion dollars so far this year.
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00:27:10.000Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a growing divide on the right, where I would say that a vast majority of people on the right do want some form of military intervention, some a no-fly zone in Ukraine, and some are saying that we should not get involved at all.
00:27:22.000I'm more in the camp of being skeptical about military intervention.
00:27:26.000You've lived through these kinds of debates over the last couple of decades of kind of the more hawkish wings of the party versus the more kind of skeptical to be involved or intervene.
00:27:35.000Can you help us navigate this and how what could possibly unite all these camps in the conservative movement?
00:27:41.000I think what would unite them probably would be a genuine direct Russian assault on a NATO member.
00:27:50.000I think at that point, there'd be a sense that he, Putin, isn't giving us any choice.
00:27:57.000But look, I think people have every right to be skeptical.
00:28:00.000You look at our record from Vietnam, where we lost 55,000 young men and women while losing the war and learned nothing.
00:28:11.000You look at our record, frankly, in Afghanistan, where we had 18 years to win the war and didn't.
00:28:20.000I don't think people have any obligation automatically to assume that the current leadership of our national security system is competent.
00:28:29.000And then you look at decisions like leaving the border open.
00:28:36.000This is an administration dedicated to having about as many illegal immigrants last year as there have been refugees in Europe from Ukraine.
00:28:46.000And then, frankly, flying them in at night or busing them in at night without telling local communities.
00:28:53.000It's the most astonishingly dishonest system.
00:28:57.000And I'm hoping that next year, if there's a Republican Congress, and I think there will be, I hope they're going to be very aggressive about taking apart how many really sick things have been done.
00:29:08.000But I would say to everybody, it's perfectly reasonable to challenge and question everything.
00:29:16.000One of the purposes of freedom and of having the right of free speech is so that you have the right as an American to raise questions.
00:29:25.000You know, Reagan, in his very first meeting with Gorbachev, used humor to try to communicate that he knew what the Soviet system was really all about.
00:29:35.000And he told the story of the man who said, I'm as free in Moscow as I am in Washington.
00:29:41.000And the reporter said, How can you say that?
00:29:45.000I can go stand in front of the White House at Jackson Square and I can say, Ronald Reagan is crazy, and nothing will be done to me.
00:29:53.000They said, Yes, he said, and I can go and stand in front of the Kremlin and I can say, Ronald Reagan is crazy, and nothing will be done to me.
00:30:03.000So you have to start with the idea as free people, we ought to carefully think through using our military.
00:30:12.000I frankly think the Congress should play a much larger role on the decision to use the military, not on how to implement it.
00:30:19.000I think you have to have a commander-in-chief once you move.
00:30:22.000But we've gotten into this very sloppy pattern that we send people all over the planet without congressional authorization.
00:30:29.000We get them engaged in all sorts of firefights.
00:30:31.000I mean, if you looked at the number of places where there are small skirmishes over a year or two involving Americans, it's astonishing how widespread we are.
00:30:41.000And I think at one level, it means that we're not doing enough to train local people and help local people help themselves.
00:30:50.000I don't want to see us in 20, 30, 40 skirmishes around the world.
00:30:55.000And I don't want us slipping into some kind of a war that nobody has thought through, nobody has debated, nobody has defined the end game.
00:31:05.000I want to know how we're going to get out before I decide to go in.