The Charlie Kirk Show - December 10, 2024


Stay Far Away From the Syria Quagmire


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

173.25276

Word count

5,495

Sentence count

464

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

24

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss why we should get involved in Syria and why we shouldn't. We explain the Syria conflict from our analysis, then bring in KT McFarland to talk about why we need to get involved.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's on The Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:01.000 Syria, why are we getting involved?
00:00:03.000 Well, we shouldn't.
00:00:03.000 We explain the Syria conflict from our analysis, then bring in KT McFarland as well.
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00:00:20.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com or turningpointaction at tpaction.com.
00:00:26.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:27.000 Here we go.
00:00:28.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:30.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:32.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:35.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:38.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:39.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:41.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
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00:01:26.000 It was a remarkable weekend here in beautiful Palm Beach.
00:01:30.000 We had over a thousand of our top donors here and great friends.
00:01:34.000 We raised a record number and very, very thankful for all of you who contributed.
00:01:39.000 Just blown away, actually.
00:01:41.000 blown away by the generosity, by the spirit, by the commitment.
00:01:47.000 You know, some people would say that there would be kind of a retreat, that people would rest on their laurels.
00:01:54.000 We did not get that sense at all.
00:01:55.000 Instead, our donors and our top friends and supporters doubled and tripled down on the effort on saving the country.
00:02:02.000 They are more emboldened than ever before.
00:02:05.000 So we just want to say for all of us at Turning Point USA, thank you for digging deep and continuing to pour into our efforts on our high school campuses, our college chapters, TPUSA Faith, Blexit, Turning Point Academy, and then of course on the Turning Point Action side, continuing with the Chase the Vote initiative, voter registration.
00:02:25.000 We went through a whole presentation for our top investors, and they seem to receive it rather favorably.
00:02:31.000 So thank you so much for all of you listening.
00:02:33.000 I know many of you guys listen to the podcast.
00:02:35.000 All the gifts were greatly appreciated.
00:02:37.000 And now we are thrilled to also report at Turning Point we have over 400,000 donors.
00:02:42.000 400,000 people that donate.
00:02:45.000 So very, very big and substantial gifts, but also people giving $5, $10, and $15.
00:02:50.000 So this weekend was just remarkable and gives us the ability to sprint into 2025 uninterrupted and continue to grow and to scale all of the necessary programming so that we can reclaim our republic.
00:03:04.000 Some remarkable news happened this weekend.
00:03:06.000 While we were doing our event at Mar-a-Lago and presenting to donors, I was keeping an eye on this story that I've cared about for the last decade.
00:03:14.000 Now, I'm by no means an expert, but It doesn't require expertise to necessarily understand this from at least a 30,000-foot view, which is Syria has fallen.
00:03:24.000 And for those of you that remember, back almost 14 years ago was the beginning of the Syrian Civil War.
00:03:30.000 That was during the Arab Spring.
00:03:33.000 And the Syrian Civil War received a lot of attention.
00:03:36.000 Bashar al-Assad was especially cruel in how he would fight the Syrian Civil War against the rebels.
00:03:45.000 And this was going on for years and years.
00:03:47.000 And they said, oh my goodness, is Assad going to fall?
00:03:49.000 Is the regime going to topple?
00:03:52.000 And of course, Russia would come in, the very, very close to Syria for pipeline reasons and many others, and would always have Bashar al-Assad's back.
00:03:59.000 And there were many moments throughout the last 14 years where it looked as if Bashar al-Assad was on shaky ground.
00:04:06.000 But the last five to six years...
00:04:10.000 It seemed as if the Syrian civil war has kind of become a cold war.
00:04:14.000 The rebels were largely in exile, that they didn't have a lot of gusto, they didn't have really what it took to be able to eventually topple the Assad regime.
00:04:26.000 Now remember, the Assad regime is a family dynasty dating back 50 or 60 years.
00:04:31.000 It is a total dictatorship.
00:04:33.000 Now, by no means am I a fan of Bashar al-Assad, nor are you.
00:04:39.000 You must understand that these rebels are not exactly the most admirable people that you could be supporting.
00:04:45.000 In fact, you could make a very, very good argument that the rebels are worse than Bashar al-Assad.
00:04:53.000 And this weekend, the regime of Assad has fallen and the rebels took over.
00:04:57.000 Now, we have Casey McFarland joining us to kind of go through some of the details associated here.
00:05:02.000 But the first takeaway is, is there a good guy and a bad guy in this equation?
00:05:07.000 Like so much of the warmongering in the Middle East, it's actually far murkier than the people in Washington, D.C. would tell you.
00:05:15.000 The new rulers of Syria are a radical Islamic terror group We're good to go. 1.00
00:05:37.000 Now, these are the new leaders of Syria.
00:05:40.000 And we've seen a pattern.
00:05:42.000 We saw this largely in Iraq.
00:05:44.000 We saw this in Libya.
00:05:45.000 And we're probably going to see this in Syria, where the equation is something as the following.
00:05:50.000 You have a strongman, brutal dictator like Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, and the West doesn't like that person.
00:05:59.000 Fair enough.
00:06:00.000 However, when you replace that person, what do you get from?
00:06:07.000 Well, with Saddam Hussein, you got the rise of ISIS and, of course, American taxpayers that had to pour hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq and didn't even do a good job of that.
00:06:18.000 In Libya, we got a Libyan civil war.
00:06:21.000 And now in Syria...
00:06:24.000 What is going to replace it?
00:06:25.000 Well, the leader of this new group, this new government, is Abu Muhammad al-Julani.
00:06:31.000 He was a member of al-Qaeda in Iraq when they were blowing up US troops.
00:06:36.000 Now, there's several operative questions here.
00:06:40.000 The most important and most significant is, is this a concern to the United States of America?
00:06:46.000 Is it really matter who is controlling Syria for our immediate interests, for what we care about?
00:06:52.000 While our own border is open, our currency is being jeopardized, as American strength is being put in large question.
00:07:00.000 And why are some people in Washington DC, including the Biden administration, trying to favor the rebels over Bashar al-Assad.
00:07:11.000 And the reason is they have this romantic idea that anybody but Assad would be better.
00:07:17.000 And that is not the case.
00:07:19.000 Instead, you have two ugly forces that are fighting it out in Syria, and Christians are now in a lot of trouble in Syria.
00:07:27.000 The Christian population is going to be targeted. 1.00
00:07:30.000 They are going to be largely massacred.
00:07:33.000 Al Juwini has made some maneuvers to represent himself as a moderate.
00:07:38.000 Now, if that's correct, great.
00:07:40.000 However, we should be clear.
00:07:42.000 This man is a lifelong terrorist who has migrated from country to country for the sake of terrorism and Islamic extremism. 1.00
00:07:51.000 And now he finds himself in Syria.
00:07:53.000 And even some members of the U.S. Congress, including Republicans, are celebrating that this terrorist is now controlling a rather major country.
00:08:06.000 I mean, Syria is a big, big country.
00:08:08.000 With a lot of Christian history, with a significant Christian population, yet we were told for years by Lindsey Graham and by John McCain and the warmongers in the Republican Party that the rebels are the best people ever, the Kurds are wonderful, and that we need to give them armaments, and that as long as we fight Assad, things are great.
00:08:28.000 It's not that simple.
00:08:30.000 The D.C., Uniparty warmongering machine oversimplifies highly complex tribal histories, cultural battles, to try to make it seem as if it is a black and white, good versus evil circumstance, when in reality, the truth in foreign policy is almost always found in the nuance.
00:08:54.000 Our support for Syrian rebels caused Christians to fall from about 10% of Syria's population to just about 2% of Syria's population due to the ethnic cleansing and genocide.
00:09:07.000 Syria is one of the oldest Christian communities on the planet, and now it's on the brink of extinction.
00:09:13.000 So be very careful which side you are cheering for here.
00:09:17.000 Again, nobody here is pro-Assad.
00:09:19.000 He's cruel.
00:09:20.000 He probably used chemical weapons.
00:09:22.000 Not a good guy.
00:09:24.000 However, these situations tend to get us overly involved because of the mythologies that are told by our politicians.
00:09:34.000 So they put forward a myth on cable news.
00:09:38.000 Bad guy falls, good guys rise.
00:09:42.000 We feel as if we need to send armaments, money, support.
00:09:46.000 What I'm telling you is it's not our problem.
00:09:50.000 It's not.
00:09:51.000 It's a tragedy that...
00:09:53.000 A lot of Christians are going to be hurt and we should try through any way possible of rescue efforts and getting them out. 0.99
00:09:59.000 However, it's not our role to involve ourselves militarily.
00:10:06.000 Every war in the Middle East is longer, more complex, more expensive, and more morally fraught than the people in DC will tell you.
00:10:15.000 So we should stay out.
00:10:17.000 And maybe...
00:10:18.000 Instead of hubris and pride, the correct and the necessary attitude is a little bit of humility.
00:10:27.000 We don't know.
00:10:28.000 We don't know how to fix it.
00:10:30.000 We don't know who's better.
00:10:32.000 We don't know who's worse.
00:10:33.000 And maybe we should put our own citizens first instead of a conflict that we can't even properly articulate.
00:10:39.000 The last couple of years have been very tough on people economically.
00:10:45.000 A lot of good folks have gotten into horrible debt just to survive.
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00:11:33.000 So this guy I think I've met before, can we get that picture of Joe Wilson from South Carolina?
00:11:38.000 I mean, I'm sure he votes in ways that I would like, but you must call out nonsense and quite honestly BS in your own party when you see it.
00:11:48.000 So Joe Wilson, next to an American flag and a Ukrainian flag, separate issue.
00:11:53.000 I mean, when Blake sent this to me last night, I was...
00:11:57.000 Speechless would be one word for it.
00:12:00.000 So this is Joe Wilson, who puts on social media, not just mentioning it, but he's holding up the rebel flag, saying, celebrating December 8th as the day the brutal Assad regime fell.
00:12:16.000 Hashtag free Syria.
00:12:18.000 With a photo of him with the flag.
00:12:22.000 And you have to just wonder.
00:12:24.000 Again, I've met Joe Wilson before.
00:12:26.000 Nice enough guy.
00:12:27.000 Obviously, much more of a neoconservative than I ever would have thought.
00:12:31.000 And it's just the arrogance it takes to do something like this.
00:12:35.000 He also tweeted this over the weekend.
00:12:37.000 He's getting a lot of attention.
00:12:38.000 The Assad crime family has terrorized the people of Syria for over 50 years. 0.99
00:12:42.000 Their reign of terror is over.
00:12:44.000 Okay.
00:12:44.000 I agree.
00:12:45.000 They probably are a crime family.
00:12:46.000 I mean, almost every single...
00:12:49.000 Dictatorship in the Middle East has some sort of mafioso tendencies.
00:12:52.000 But no one's debating that.
00:12:54.000 That's a completely separate issue.
00:12:57.000 The road ahead will not be easy, but the Syrian people have shown tremendous perseverance and hope from the beginning, even as the world failed them.
00:13:03.000 Okay, this is...
00:13:05.000 Again, I didn't go to college, but you just have to pay a little bit of attention to have the fundamental misunderstanding.
00:13:12.000 The equation in the Middle East, whether it be what we did in Iran to displace the Shah, again, Saddam Hussein in Libya, is typically this.
00:13:21.000 And there's almost not been an exception.
00:13:23.000 The strong man falls because we want to spread democracy.
00:13:27.000 The radical Islamic factions are more willing to use outforce terror, brute force, intimidation, and they tend to be very, very charismatic.
00:13:38.000 Like, very charismatic.
00:13:40.000 And so they use Wahhabism or some sort of sister of that, of extremely radical Islamic interpretation of theology to rally the masses, and you get something way worse than what you had before. 0.86
00:13:55.000 And so I'll be honest, Joe Wilson, your tweet here is not going to age well.
00:14:00.000 And you're a Republican.
00:14:01.000 Again, I'm sure you vote for stuff I like, but acting as if with 100% guarantee You can know what is coming next is going to be good.
00:14:13.000 Not only is there no evidence of that, there's evidence to the contrary.
00:14:17.000 And we go further into more and more of these social media postings of people calling for increasing military action.
00:14:24.000 Remember, Trump won based on America first, not Syria first.
00:14:28.000 I'm going to pull up Donald Trump's Truth Social here, which, by the way, he was in Europe when he offered this.
00:14:34.000 And I bet a lot of people were in his ear trying to say, you know, we got to get more involved in Syria.
00:14:39.000 We got to get more involved in Syria.
00:14:40.000 We got to get more involved in Syria.
00:14:42.000 I'm going to read Donald Trump's Truth Social here.
00:14:45.000 He was very busy this weekend.
00:14:46.000 I'm going through this.
00:14:48.000 A lot of memes.
00:14:50.000 Here it is.
00:14:51.000 This is one of a couple.
00:14:53.000 He says, Where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead in a war that should never have started.
00:15:10.000 Now, let me just say, Donald Trump mentioning how many Russians have died is actually rather morally courageous in D.C. because everyone seems really afraid to say that both sides are losing human beings.
00:15:20.000 Anyway, I found that to be noteworthy.
00:15:22.000 Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now.
00:15:25.000 One, because of Ukraine and a bad economy, and that is actually true. 1.00
00:15:28.000 One of the reasons why Assad fell is because of how Russia, Iran, and Syria's economy has fallen apart.
00:15:35.000 Likewise, Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal to stop this madness. 0.87
00:15:38.000 They've ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers and many civilians.
00:15:41.000 That's a million people unnecessarily that have died.
00:15:44.000 There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin.
00:15:46.000 Too many lives are being needlessly wasted.
00:15:48.000 Too many families destroyed.
00:15:49.000 The world is waiting.
00:15:50.000 He also posted previously, even beyond that, more forcefully, I'm trying to find it here, when he said, this is not our fight.
00:15:56.000 And he's right.
00:15:57.000 It's not our fight.
00:15:59.000 And the president understands that That you must prioritize the homeland here.
00:16:06.000 Actually, here it is.
00:16:07.000 Thank you.
00:16:07.000 It's very, very long.
00:16:08.000 But he said, look, let me kind of capture this.
00:16:11.000 The United States should have nothing to do with it.
00:16:14.000 This is not our fight.
00:16:15.000 This is all caps.
00:16:16.000 And when Donald Trump goes in all caps, listen carefully.
00:16:18.000 Let it play out.
00:16:19.000 Do not get involved.
00:16:22.000 He says here, opposition fighters in Syria made an unprecedented move.
00:16:26.000 Outskirts.
00:16:27.000 Because Russia's tied up in Ukraine, Obama didn't force the red line in the sand, but now, like possibly Assad himself being forced out, do not get involved.
00:16:34.000 Everybody, that is a phenomenal sign for this incoming administration.
00:16:37.000 Because you better believe there's clamoring neocons on Capitol Hill that want Donald Trump to say that we're going to have airstrikes and all sorts of military intervention.
00:16:46.000 President Trump says, no, this is not our fight.
00:16:48.000 President Trump is showing the promises he made on the campaign trail are things that will be acted into policy.
00:16:55.000 This is not our fight.
00:16:58.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:18:00.000 Okay, everybody.
00:18:01.000 We have now KT McFarlane with us.
00:18:03.000 I've known KT for quite a while.
00:18:05.000 KT, welcome to the program.
00:18:07.000 It's been too long since we had an opportunity to chat.
00:18:10.000 So KT, I would love your opinion on what's happening in Syria and whether or not you believe America and our government, our military should get involved.
00:18:19.000 For that sakes, no.
00:18:20.000 I mean, President Trump had it just right.
00:18:22.000 Let this play out.
00:18:23.000 And, you know, the people whispering, the military-industrial complex neocons whispering in Joe Biden's ear.
00:18:29.000 I don't know if he's even paying attention.
00:18:31.000 But they're now bombing.
00:18:32.000 They're trying to bomb ISIS. Come on.
00:18:34.000 We don't belong in the middle of anybody's civil war, and we sure don't belong in the middle of a multi-sided civil war.
00:18:41.000 Let this play out.
00:18:43.000 See where the opportunities and the dangers are.
00:18:47.000 Help our friends Israel.
00:18:49.000 Let Turkey know, which is probably the big outside player in this, that we're ready to talk if that's an opportunity that comes along.
00:18:56.000 And then when President Trump comes into office, continue to pressure Iran economically.
00:19:02.000 Iran is now pre-wounded, as President Trump said.
00:19:05.000 They've lost Hezbollah.
00:19:06.000 They've lost Hamas.
00:19:08.000 Their economy is not great.
00:19:10.000 It wasn't great before.
00:19:11.000 It's going to be a lot worse now.
00:19:13.000 Because President Trump's energy policy will push the price of oil down, which is their major revenue source.
00:19:19.000 And then he's going to reimpose the sanctions on Iran.
00:19:22.000 So Iran will be really wounded, economically particularly.
00:19:26.000 And Iran has a great population, well-educated, internet savvy.
00:19:31.000 And the population of Iran, every 10 years or so, pops up and tries to overthrow the mullahs.
00:19:37.000 And the Obama administration and then the Biden administration, oddly enough, sided with the mullahs.
00:19:41.000 I think President Trump will side with the people of Iran.
00:19:44.000 I do think that Iran's leaders have to look at what's just happened to Haibas al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad.
00:19:51.000 They've been toppled in a matter of minutes because their own people didn't stand up to them, stand up for them.
00:19:57.000 And you've got to think that the mullahs look at that and think, yikes, could we be next?
00:20:01.000 So, can you explain for the audience, because I want to make sure we don't pass over this, can you just explain what you mean by a multi-sided civil war, Turkey's involvement, who are the rebels, who are the Kurds, who is Assad?
00:20:15.000 Take a little bit of time here just to educate our audience.
00:20:18.000 I mean, most Americans would struggle to probably Find Syria on a map and even, you know, know Damascus versus Aleppo.
00:20:27.000 I mean, even a presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, didn't know Aleppo.
00:20:32.000 So just kind of take some time.
00:20:34.000 What is the significance of Syria?
00:20:36.000 How did Assad get into power?
00:20:38.000 What on earth is a NATO country, Turkey, doing involved in this?
00:20:42.000 What is Russia's involvement?
00:20:43.000 All of that.
00:20:44.000 Please, KT, educate our audience.
00:20:46.000 Okay, this is a really complicated chess game, and it's been going on for 50 years.
00:20:51.000 Russia, go back to the Soviet Union and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
00:20:55.000 Russia was all over the Middle East. 0.90
00:20:57.000 They were the major dominant player in the Middle East.
00:20:59.000 With Syria, they had relationships with all the Arab countries.
00:21:03.000 Russia leaves.
00:21:04.000 We kick them out.
00:21:05.000 The countries kick them out during the 1973-4 shuttle diplomacy negotiations of Henry Kissinger.
00:21:12.000 I was working for Henry at the time.
00:21:14.000 And at that point, Russia got pushed out of the Middle East.
00:21:16.000 United States became the major power affecting events.
00:21:20.000 We had relationships with Egypt, obviously with Israel, with the Saudis, with Jordan.
00:21:25.000 And so Russia's been out in the cold for 50 years.
00:21:28.000 When that happened 50 years ago, Bashar al-Assad's dad, Haifas al-Assad, he was head of Syria.
00:21:35.000 And Kissinger negotiated with him.
00:21:37.000 He negotiated with the Egyptians and the Jordanians and the Saudis and the Israelis.
00:21:41.000 Assad in Syria was always the toughest because Syria has not just one ethnic group.
00:21:46.000 They've got a lot of ethnic groups.
00:21:47.000 They have Christians.
00:21:48.000 They have various kinds of Christians.
00:21:50.000 They have Muslims, various varieties of Muslims.
00:21:52.000 They have just a lot of people there.
00:21:55.000 Now, that was 50 years ago.
00:21:56.000 Fast forward to today, what's in Syria?
00:21:59.000 Well, Russia's in Syria. 0.69
00:22:00.000 It got back into Syria and an involvement in the region, and Russia cares about it because Russia's been using Syrian ports and airfields To do the Russian operations coming out of Africa.
00:22:12.000 So Russia has an interest in it.
00:22:15.000 But at the same time, Russia's had to prop up a corrupt incompetent leader, Assad. 0.59
00:22:20.000 And the Iranians have an interest too, because they've used Syria as their transshipment point to get weapons from Iran into Hezbollah to kill Israelis and try to destroy Israel. 0.95
00:22:33.000 So Russia and Iran Outside powers have an interest in Syria.
00:22:38.000 They don't care about Syria, but they care about the real estate in Syria.
00:22:42.000 So they've cropped up this corrupt incompetent leader, Bashar al-Assad, for years.
00:22:49.000 Now Russia's weakened because Russia's preoccupied.
00:22:52.000 In Ukraine.
00:22:54.000 So Russia's pulled out troops.
00:22:55.000 It's pulled out equipment that's been propering up Assad. 0.53
00:22:59.000 The Iranians, they're really weakened too.
00:23:02.000 Why?
00:23:02.000 Because of Israel.
00:23:03.000 Israel has gone after Hezbollah and Hamas, the Houthis.
00:23:08.000 And so Iran is weakened in the region, and Iran is economically weakened.
00:23:13.000 Now, when Trump was in office the first time, he understood the power of economics.
00:23:18.000 And he understood if you could bankrupt Iran, if you could get them to the point where they have no real money, they won't have any money to pay for wars against Israel.
00:23:27.000 They won't have money to pay for terrorists, and they'll have a hard enough time staying in power and keeping their own jobs, some of us, because they have to feed their own people.
00:23:35.000 So if you look now, where is Iran, where is Russia?
00:23:37.000 Russia's preoccupied with Ukraine.
00:23:40.000 That's why President Trump over the weekend said, Russia's weakened, we could do a negotiation on Ukraine.
00:23:47.000 And at the same time, Iran is weakened for the same reasons.
00:23:51.000 Economically weakened and also thanks to Israel. 1.00
00:23:54.000 So the chess pieces are moving all around the Middle East.
00:23:57.000 Russia's going to be out of there. 0.52
00:23:59.000 We don't belong in the middle of the Civil War because there's a lot of different sides still fighting each other.
00:24:05.000 And who knows who comes out on top?
00:24:07.000 It could be a pro-Turkey group.
00:24:09.000 It could be an ISIS-Al Qaeda group.
00:24:11.000 It could be, I don't know, maybe there's Jeffersonian democracy.
00:24:14.000 I don't think so.
00:24:15.000 But it could be any one of a number of groups who are going to probably now fight it out.
00:24:19.000 And who knows who comes out on top?
00:24:21.000 Wait and see.
00:24:22.000 So that's a really important point that I want to emphasize here, which is the way the media is framing it is, okay, the government fell and now this new group controls all of Syria.
00:24:30.000 But that's not correct.
00:24:32.000 I mean, there's different pockets, right?
00:24:33.000 Different cities, different regions.
00:24:35.000 I mean, if you look at it, it's incredibly sporadic, right?
00:24:39.000 One group controls like 10% of the territory here and 5% here.
00:24:43.000 It's not as if just like one regime goes here.
00:24:45.000 It's very fluid and Can you help explain that?
00:24:49.000 How many groups are there?
00:24:50.000 Three, four? 0.63
00:24:51.000 And then there'll probably be subgroups and subterritories.
00:24:53.000 I mean, a very messy and fluid situation.
00:24:57.000 Yeah, I mean, probably one of the major groups is the one supported by Turkey, who says, well, we used to be al-Qaeda, but we're not really al-Qaeda anymore.
00:25:04.000 And then there's some...
00:25:05.000 Look, it's tribes.
00:25:06.000 They've been...
00:25:07.000 These tribes have been fighting each other since... 0.63
00:25:10.000 You know, before Islam. 1.00
00:25:11.000 I mean, there are tribal wars in the Middle East.
00:25:14.000 There always have been tribal wars in the Middle East.
00:25:16.000 We should not be in a position of trying to say, well, we like this one, we don't like that one.
00:25:20.000 We don't belong there.
00:25:21.000 Let them work it out.
00:25:23.000 You know, one of the reasons, if you go back again 50 years, why did we care about the Middle East in the first place?
00:25:28.000 Well, we cared about the oil.
00:25:30.000 We needed access to their oil.
00:25:31.000 And so for access to their oil, we had to pick and choose countries that we liked and didn't like in the Middle East.
00:25:36.000 If you fast forward today, we don't need their oil.
00:25:40.000 America, because of American resources and really technological entrepreneurial capabilities, we've realized that we have oil and natural gas in the rocks right under our feet.
00:25:51.000 And we have more oil and natural gas than any other country in the world.
00:25:55.000 We can power the world for hundreds of years just using our oil and natural gas.
00:26:02.000 And we can produce it cheaper, simpler, easier, safer, cleaner, better than any other country.
00:26:09.000 So our interest in the Middle East is no longer we need their oil for our economy.
00:26:14.000 Well, in fact, our interest should be we'll replace the Middle East as the world's hub of energy. 1.00
00:26:20.000 We'll not only have our own and be energy independent, but if you listen to President Trump, he keeps saying this word energy dominant.
00:26:26.000 Nobody's really picked it apart.
00:26:27.000 What he means by that is that we will be the world's major supplier of energy, not only for ourselves, but export it to all the world.
00:26:35.000 So our interests in the Middle East have now changed.
00:26:37.000 We care about Israel.
00:26:38.000 We sure want peace.
00:26:40.000 The Abrahamic courts are the way to go, which is peace between Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs.
00:26:46.000 Maybe that peace gets bigger under President Trump.
00:26:49.000 I do think so it will.
00:26:51.000 The thing about the Middle East, you think you know it, you don't know it because there's so many different tribes.
00:26:54.000 Well, no, that's exactly right.
00:26:56.000 And it's the more you know, the more you realize how little you know when you thought you knew it all.
00:27:00.000 So that could best summarize Middle Eastern tribal politics.
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00:28:06.000 KT, you've been wonderful.
00:28:07.000 Thank you.
00:28:07.000 I do want to ask you, though, about Iran and something that you said.
00:28:11.000 I'd love to just address some concerns that I would potentially have and work through it, which is, if the current Iranian regime falls, do we have guarantees that what will come after would necessarily be better?
00:28:25.000 I only say that because it seems in the Middle East, whatever is replaced is not always better. 0.99
00:28:28.000 It seems to get more radical, not more Western.
00:28:31.000 Please, your thoughts, KT McFarlane.
00:28:33.000 Yeah, I mean, the one thing we've learned from the Middle East is dictators get replaced, and it doesn't necessarily get better. 0.92
00:28:38.000 It usually gets worse, and various radical groups.
00:28:42.000 What happens in Iran?
00:28:43.000 Who knows what happens in Iran?
00:28:44.000 I've got to assume that if Israel was clever enough to do the attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas leadership, but particularly Hezbollah leadership in downtown Tehran, that they have sufficient connections with the underground in Iran of the people who want the pro-democracy movement, the that they have sufficient connections with the underground in Iran of the people who want the pro-democracy movement, the And so maybe that helps.
00:29:08.000 We do not belong with troops on the ground anywhere near this stuff.
00:29:12.000 And we should not be picking winners and losers.
00:29:14.000 So what happened, whether it was in Iraq or Afghanistan, go back to Vietnam. 0.94
00:29:18.000 Every time we get in the middle of somebody else's civil war and start picking winners and losers, we're always the losers.
00:29:23.000 We're not good at this.
00:29:25.000 And so if the Biden administration thinks they want to get in the middle of Syria now and somehow affect that outcome, don't do it.
00:29:30.000 And if anybody is saying, well, maybe we should go bomb Iran while they're weak, don't do that either.
00:29:36.000 Let regime change happen because the people of those countries want the regimes to change.
00:29:42.000 And that's what the argument should be with Iran. 0.61
00:29:45.000 You know, President Trump understood why Iran was powerful and how you diminish Iran in the first term.
00:29:51.000 He understood, again, it's all about oil, natural gas, revenues.
00:29:55.000 Once Iran, at the end of Trump's first term, Iran was broke.
00:29:59.000 They weren't giving money to Hezbollah and Hamas.
00:30:01.000 They were having enough trouble feeding Iran people.
00:30:03.000 When Trump took office on January 20th of 2017, the price of oil It was about $140 a barrel, $120 a barrel.
00:30:12.000 When Trump left office four years later, the price of oil was $40 a barrel.
00:30:18.000 So if you're Iran, you're Russia, your money comes from selling oil at those high prices.
00:30:23.000 All of a sudden, your revenue stream has been cut in half, cut by two thirds.
00:30:27.000 They didn't have the money to go to war in Ukraine.
00:30:30.000 Or they didn't have the money to go to war against Israel in the Middle East.
00:30:33.000 It's the same problem, whether it's Russia, Iran, Ukraine, Middle East.
00:30:38.000 It's all about the oil money.
00:30:39.000 And President Trump, one of the reasons he keeps saying drill, baby, drill, is he's going to take the price of oil, which is now, what, about $80 a barrel, thanks to Biden?
00:30:48.000 Donald Trump is going to unleash the American energy industry.
00:30:51.000 Oil and natural gas prices will go way down.
00:30:54.000 Iran is going to be broke. 0.98
00:30:56.000 At which point, let the Iranian people decide for themselves what kind of a government they want.
00:31:01.000 Chances are there's not much, I guess, worse than what they have now.
00:31:05.000 But maybe.
00:31:06.000 But let them decide.
00:31:07.000 It's their decision.
00:31:08.000 It's not our business.
00:31:09.000 I think that's prudent.
00:31:11.000 And we must remember that the Iranian mess that we have right now was brought to you by British and American intelligence. 1.00
00:31:17.000 We displaced a democratically elected Yes.
00:31:23.000 Masagde and put the Shah in, which then, of course, he was sick and unpopular.
00:31:27.000 And then we get the Ayatollah regime that we have right now.
00:31:32.000 KT, thank you so much.
00:31:33.000 Excellent.
00:31:33.000 And I hope to see you again soon.
00:31:35.000 Thank you.
00:31:36.000 Thank you, Charlie.
00:31:37.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:31:38.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:31:41.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.