The Charlie Kirk Show - February 19, 2024


The Biggest Free Speech Case of Our Lifetimes


Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

177.62518

Word count

6,208

Sentence count

484

Harmful content

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

30

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Sen. Eric Schmidt (D-Missouri) joins us to talk about censorship and the dark web, and we reflect on the Munich Security Conference, and a suggestion for Trump's VP that you probably haven't heard of.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, it's in Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:01.000 Senator Schmidt joins us, and also we reflect on the Munich Security Conference and a suggestion for someone to become Trump's vice president that you probably haven't heard of.
00:00:10.000 Well, you've heard of, but you probably haven't thought of it.
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00:00:31.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:32.000 Here we go.
00:00:33.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:34.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:37.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:40.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:43.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:44.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:45.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
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00:01:31.000 Joining us now is Senator Eric Schmidt from the great state of Missouri.
00:01:36.000 Senator, thank you for taking time.
00:01:38.000 Senator, there's been a lot of talk about censorship and the censorship industrial complex.
00:01:43.000 When you were attorney general, you filed the Missouri v. Biden case and you exposed a vast censorship enterprise.
00:01:51.000 Please tell us all about that.
00:01:52.000 I think it's very timely right now.
00:01:54.000 Yeah, so we filed that lawsuit when I was attorney general almost two years ago now.
00:01:58.000 And what we sought out to prove, which we have, is that two of the more corrupt institutions, big government, big tech, were in cahoots to censor millions of Americans.
00:02:08.000 And so we were able to get discovery early on that showed reams and reams of emails, tens of thousands of pages of emails and text messages, just to show the links that they went to censor people.
00:02:19.000 And there are probably two big buckets, Charlie.
00:02:22.000 First was the Hunter Biden laptop story.
00:02:26.000 You know, that was pre-bunked.
00:02:29.000 The FBI, Elvis, Elvis Chang was the guy that briefed Silicon Valley over and over tone.
00:02:37.000 It was a Russian hack and leak operation.
00:02:40.000 And then on the COVID, on COVID, whether it was on the vaccine mandates or the mask mandates or the lab leak theory, government was working hand in hand with big tech to censor Americans.
00:02:50.000 I just think it's incredibly scary the links that they went to to silence Americans.
00:02:57.000 And so that lawsuit was filed.
00:02:58.000 It brought all this to light.
00:02:59.000 Then, of course, Elon Musk, thankfully, buys Twitter.
00:03:02.000 Then you have the Twitter files, and all this stuff is out in the open.
00:03:05.000 If those two things didn't happen, if we didn't file the lawsuit and he doesn't buy Twitter, this stuff would still be in the shadows and would still be happening.
00:03:12.000 But thankfully, we're able to expose it and we got to make sure this never happens again.
00:03:15.000 So I'm sure you've seen bits and pieces of the Mike Benz interview talking about the interconnectedness of the censorship regime.
00:03:23.000 What is your reaction to that?
00:03:25.000 And how should we proceed?
00:03:26.000 Yeah, I would encourage everybody if they haven't.
00:03:29.000 Tucker Carlson interviewed Mike Benz, who has really made a career now of exposing sort of this enterprise, this censorship enterprise.
00:03:38.000 It's an hour long, but get some popcorn and some Kleenex maybe for the tears that may come because it's scary stuff.
00:03:45.000 It's scary stuff.
00:03:46.000 And I would say the last 20 minutes or so, Mike does an incredible job of talking about how these agencies, CISA, for example, which no one's ever heard of, was part of this scheme.
00:03:56.000 But you also had, you know, Jen Masaki, Charlie, I think it's important to point out, was at the podium talking about how we're flagging posts.
00:04:04.000 I mean, they weren't hiding this.
00:04:06.000 You had the disinformation governance board stood up by DHS, Department of Homeland Security.
00:04:11.000 And Mike goes into that of how they didn't want to have the FBI do this.
00:04:15.000 They didn't want to have the CIA do this.
00:04:16.000 So they turned it over to DHS and CISA to essentially try to censor Americans.
00:04:21.000 So it's scary stuff.
00:04:24.000 It's vast.
00:04:26.000 It crosses a number of different agencies.
00:04:28.000 But I think what people need to understand is that they had weaponized these agencies of government to suppress dissent.
00:04:38.000 And in this country, we hold that in the First Amendment to be a really important concept, right?
00:04:43.000 This pressure release valve, people can speak their minds.
00:04:46.000 The government isn't in charge and shouldn't be responsible for what people can see or hear or say.
00:04:51.000 And that's what they want to do to control the narrative.
00:04:54.000 And you're going to see this play out again over this election, this current election cycle.
00:04:58.000 They're already talking about these threats to democracy that Donald Trump poses.
00:05:02.000 The real threat to democracy is trying to throw your opponents in prison for the rest of their life, censoring Americans.
00:05:07.000 I mean, that's the stuff the Biden administration is actually doing.
00:05:10.000 So they're accusing, of course, Republicans of doing the very things that they do.
00:05:14.000 Have we seen any evidence that they have suspended these censorship activities?
00:05:18.000 And what was amazing about the Mike Benz interview is that this was a national security playbook that was then inverted against the American people.
00:05:25.000 Is this ongoing?
00:05:27.000 Yeah, so we were able to get an injunction for a while, but they fought that, right?
00:05:30.000 So now the Supreme Court is hearing this case, oral arguments, actually a month from today at the Supreme Court.
00:05:37.000 So people will be able to tune in on that.
00:05:39.000 That case hinges essentially, it's illegal for the government to censor.
00:05:43.000 Okay, it's just, it's illegal.
00:05:45.000 We're alleging that they coerced the, they essentially outsourced that censorship to these big tech giants, some of the biggest companies in the history of the world.
00:05:53.000 So that case, we did a little bit different.
00:05:56.000 We didn't go after the social media companies.
00:05:57.000 We went after the government.
00:05:59.000 And so it's a really, really important case.
00:06:01.000 I think it's the most important free speech case in our nation's history, certainly in a generation, because the virtual town square is every bit of the town square now where people used to go out on the courthouse steps and speak their mind.
00:06:11.000 Now people are doing it online.
00:06:12.000 So it's a very important principle.
00:06:13.000 So they want to do this.
00:06:15.000 They're fighting it.
00:06:15.000 They've appealed it.
00:06:17.000 They claim that it's in, whether it's a national security interest or a threat to democracy or their interest in making sure people only hear what they want them to hear, they're in it.
00:06:26.000 I mean, they've appealed.
00:06:27.000 We won at the district court level.
00:06:29.000 They've appealed the Court of Appeals decision all the way to the Supreme Court.
00:06:32.000 So here we are.
00:06:34.000 Yeah, and that's what's really important is that they thought they could get cute by outsourcing the censorship to third party groups.
00:06:40.000 And they literally went through, well, we can't use the CIA, we can't use the FBI, so we're going to use the DHS disinformation governance board and go out to other partner 501c3s.
00:06:50.000 And I think we're still just trying to get an idea of the web.
00:06:56.000 I believe firmly it had a determinative impact on 2020.
00:06:59.000 My fear is that we have not done enough to fix it coming into this election year.
00:07:04.000 And they're going to have the censorship leviathan in full force.
00:07:10.000 According to Mike Benz, he says that the two most censored events in history were the 2020 election and COVID, and they were happening simultaneously.
00:07:19.000 And now they have broadened this to threats the democracy, threats the democracy.
00:07:25.000 Elon Musk liberating Twitter or X has been a massive and positive development in this regard.
00:07:33.000 Are there any action items for the U.S. Senate to work on this?
00:07:36.000 I suppose some sort of oversight, but that seems to be slow moving in the Senate.
00:07:42.000 Yeah, I've tried to carry that work into the Senate.
00:07:45.000 I just think that the First Amendment is foundational.
00:07:47.000 I mean, it is what it means to be an American to speak your mind.
00:07:50.000 Don't happen in other places of the world because tyrants since the beginning of time have tried to control what people can say and what they can hear, right?
00:07:57.000 We can't let that happen here.
00:07:58.000 America is supposed to be an exception.
00:08:00.000 It's one of the reasons why we believe in American exceptionalism, right?
00:08:03.000 And so I've got a couple of bills in the Senate.
00:08:05.000 One is on the social media side: look, if you're going to not be a platform and you want to be a publisher and you want to engage in this kind of activity, you lose your Section 230 protections.
00:08:14.000 You're no longer immune from lawsuits.
00:08:16.000 So that's one piece of it.
00:08:17.000 And then on the government side, I have a bill that would say: if you're an individual government bureaucrat and you've been involved in this, you individually can be sued.
00:08:27.000 So if Charlie Kirk, for example, were censored or whoever were censored, you can sue an individual government actor, like a Section 1983 claim.
00:08:37.000 That would be, you know, all of a sudden, these bureaucrats start weighing cost-benefit for themselves individually.
00:08:44.000 I think that would go a long way in curtailing this.
00:08:46.000 So those are two things, two ideas, certainly open to more, but this Supreme Court ruling will be really important.
00:08:51.000 But I think just exposing this, Charlie, because this would have been on the fringes, labeled a conspiracy theory by so many.
00:08:57.000 It's hard for the media to ignore this.
00:09:00.000 They're a part of it.
00:09:01.000 I mean, you just look at the Hunter Biden laptop story.
00:09:05.000 It was real.
00:09:05.000 The FBI had it in November of 2021.
00:09:08.000 They had it.
00:09:09.000 They knew it was real.
00:09:10.000 Yet we're still going to these social media companies saying, get ready.
00:09:14.000 There could be this BS story that's coming out. 0.69
00:09:16.000 And then when that happened, the pre-bunking of that, then you saw, you know, the sort of these former national security people, Anthony Blinken being one of them, saying this is ridiculous.
00:09:24.000 They were able to put that off.
00:09:26.000 People didn't see it before the election.
00:09:27.000 So I think we're going to see more of that.
00:09:30.000 But it's important, I think, for us to have structural reform in addition to the oversight and exposing it.
00:09:35.000 The table is being set right now for another censorship campaign that will begin in the summer and fall.
00:09:41.000 They have a deeply unpopular president.
00:09:43.000 They have an ascendant, dissident political movement.
00:09:46.000 They're not winning on issues that really matter.
00:09:48.000 They talk about defending democracy, which is their kind of code word for mass censorship.
00:09:53.000 Elon Musk has liberated Twitter and X.
00:09:56.000 I believe that if Twitter remains free, that we have a fighting chance coming in November.
00:10:02.000 I just, I really hope we're prepared for when they turn this machinery back on.
00:10:07.000 They're going to get desperate.
00:10:09.000 And around July and August, if we're able to call out their BS and really make this regime exposed, I think they're going to do 2020 again on steroids.
00:10:20.000 Hey, everyone, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:11:24.000 So, Senator, the irony is not lost on me that your name is Eric Schmidt and one of the great villains of the censorship industrial complex is also named Eric Schmidt.
00:11:34.000 Obviously, one of the Google people.
00:11:35.000 He spells it.
00:11:36.000 Yeah, he spells it DT though, and his bank in mine.
00:11:40.000 But yes, yeah, for sure.
00:11:42.000 It's phonetically very similar.
00:11:44.000 So, Senator, regardless of people's opinions on Ukraine, that's fine.
00:11:49.000 It just seems the fixation and the obsession is what is noteworthy that I want to talk to you about.
00:11:53.000 This is something that I know that you agree with.
00:11:57.000 Why is it the most important priority?
00:11:59.000 Where does that come from?
00:12:00.000 I know that you're new to DC.
00:12:02.000 Again, you might think that it's the most important thing ever.
00:12:05.000 That's fine.
00:12:05.000 But the fixation and the energy and the passion, the zeal for the Ukraine war is perplexing to me.
00:12:11.000 Help me understand.
00:12:13.000 It's hard to understand, Charlie, but I think that's right.
00:12:15.000 I mean, you just look at what happened over the last couple of weeks.
00:12:18.000 You know, we were demanding border security.
00:12:21.000 And by the way, the language that they came out with made things worse.
00:12:24.000 It essentially created an express lane for illegal immigration, deputizing these asylum agents to essentially give asylum at the border.
00:12:32.000 It took jurisdiction away from Texas.
00:12:34.000 The Democrats got everything they wanted.
00:12:35.000 The open borders crowd loved that.
00:12:37.000 And we rightfully said, we're not going to do that because Joe Biden has every tool that he needs right now to close the border.
00:12:43.000 He does.
00:12:44.000 He could reinstitute remain in Mexico.
00:12:46.000 He could stop abusing parole authority.
00:12:48.000 There's a lot of things that he could do, but he doesn't want to do it because that's actually not in their DNA, right?
00:12:53.000 So I'm of the belief that we ought to handle these issues separately.
00:12:57.000 And that's, guess what?
00:12:58.000 When that fell apart, what did we go to within hours funding for Ukraine?
00:13:02.000 It was always the center of gravity.
00:13:04.000 I think the border negotiations were merely to give sort of a fig leaf to people who wanted to vote for it.
00:13:10.000 It would make it a slightly better vote for them, but it turns out it was so bad, it made it a worse vote.
00:13:14.000 So they ditched that.
00:13:15.000 And then we ended up on Ukraine.
00:13:17.000 And I just, for me, cannot in good conscience send $61 billion on top of the $112 billion that's already been sent there when we're $34 trillion in debt and we have a wide open southern border.
00:13:28.000 And I think that's where most Americans are at, certainly where most Republicans are at.
00:13:32.000 But we ended up in a situation where they moved out of the Senate to do it.
00:13:35.000 I can't explain it.
00:13:37.000 I mean, I know the Democrats sort of blame Putin for Trump or something.
00:13:41.000 I don't know.
00:13:42.000 But the truth is we should have a debate about that.
00:13:46.000 But they basically call you a Putin lover if you want to have any conversation about, okay, what is the likelihood of success?
00:13:52.000 What are the goals here?
00:13:54.000 Does this actually accomplish what needs to be accomplished?
00:13:57.000 None of that stuff.
00:13:58.000 You can't even talk about it.
00:14:00.000 It just gets bulldozed by this desire to send more and more money.
00:14:03.000 And by the way, we've been briefed.
00:14:05.000 Another $100 billion is the next ask.
00:14:08.000 So I just think these blank checks for endless wars, people have had enough.
00:14:12.000 There's a generational shift happening, Charlie, too.
00:14:15.000 I tweeted this out or posted it on X that nearly every Republican under the age of 55 voted no.
00:14:22.000 I think we're learning things that have worked and haven't worked.
00:14:26.000 It doesn't mean we're, and I'm not an isolationist, but I think we ought to ask critical questions.
00:14:31.000 And by the way, while all this is happening, China continues to rise.
00:14:35.000 If you care about American national security, it's China and our southern border, and we ought to be focused on that.
00:14:41.000 So just really quick, I haven't seen that reported $100 billion being asked for next.
00:14:46.000 What is the timeline on that?
00:14:46.000 When?
00:14:48.000 That's going to make the total near $400,050 billion totally invested.
00:14:52.000 Yeah, right.
00:14:53.000 So when we were briefed last year, because remember, they were trying to get this on all these continuing resolutions.
00:14:57.000 They were trying to get 60 billion or something less than that of these continuing resolutions in 2023.
00:15:02.000 That didn't happen.
00:15:03.000 So all that got rolled over to 2024.
00:15:05.000 But what they were saying was later in 2024, there could be an ask for another 100 billion.
00:15:10.000 So what that tells me is there's not a plan.
00:15:12.000 And I just think as a senator for a state in the United States of America, that these are important questions to ask, but they don't have good answers.
00:15:21.000 They don't even want to acknowledge it.
00:15:22.000 I mean, Zelensky's been in, you know, I think he's come into the Senate and talked to us like two, maybe three times.
00:15:29.000 This is just, it is, it in our lunches.
00:15:32.000 It devours everything.
00:15:34.000 And I'm sitting there saying, why aren't we talking about things that affect the American people?
00:15:37.000 It's not to say that these issues around the world aren't important to talk about, but, you know, Israel's different than Ukraine and China is different than Ukraine, right?
00:15:46.000 Absolutely.
00:15:47.000 So, we ought to have these separate debates. 0.75
00:15:48.000 But what they do is they hold Israel hostage.
00:15:52.000 They hold the China stuff hostage because Ukraine, because Putin.
00:15:56.000 And there's really not a good explanation as to why this is such an upset.
00:15:59.000 No, instead, one of your colleagues from North Carolina said that you have to be a well-briefed senator, and there's no way our base can know the complexities of that.
00:16:08.000 Well, I'm speaking to a well-briefed senator, and just this, every time it's kind of this argument from elitism and just pomposity, I don't like that.
00:16:17.000 I think it's really destructive to the country.
00:16:19.000 If you have a good point, then let's hash it out.
00:16:22.000 That's what the Senate should be.
00:16:23.000 And it's a disappointment because the Senate should be this place of heated arguments and points and counterpoints.
00:16:29.000 And now it's just kind of thuggish tactics.
00:16:32.000 I don't like it at all.
00:16:33.000 Absolutely.
00:16:34.000 It's deadline.
00:16:35.000 Yeah, it's put it all together because guess what?
00:16:37.000 Our European allies should be doing more.
00:16:39.000 We should have more accountability.
00:16:40.000 The industrial base needs to be expanded, but all that stuff's taken out.
00:16:43.000 But you see this on these CRs and omnibus bills, Charlie.
00:16:46.000 They just mush it all together and try to jam it through.
00:16:48.000 We got to stop it.
00:16:48.000 Infuriating.
00:16:49.000 Senator, excellent work, even though you're a Cardinals fan.
00:16:51.000 I'm a Cubs fan.
00:16:52.000 You're excellent.
00:16:52.000 Sorry.
00:16:53.000 Oh, no.
00:16:54.000 See you later.
00:16:57.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:17:59.000 This last weekend was the, you could call it the CPAC of the globalists, kind of the main gathering of every single person that wants to continue the campaign in Ukraine.
00:18:14.000 It is called the Munich Security Conference.
00:18:17.000 The Munich Security Conference is a mixture of intellectuals and heads of state and U.S. senators.
00:18:25.000 The Munich Security Conference, the consensus is very unified.
00:18:32.000 They say that they have a debate, but it almost is never a debate.
00:18:36.000 However, there was a contrarian voice that was platformed this weekend at the Munich Security Conference.
00:18:44.000 The Munich Security Conference wrapped up yesterday.
00:18:46.000 It was three days.
00:18:47.000 And they say, quote, on their website, at the moment, there's a real risk that more and more countries end up in a lose-lose situation, which is no longer about who gains more, but about who loses less.
00:18:58.000 They have an entire exhibition.
00:19:00.000 U.S. senators go and they talk about the fight for democracy and shiring up our defenses.
00:19:08.000 The Munich Security Conference gave out a, this is to give you an idea of really the folk that go there, the John McCain dissertation award.
00:19:17.000 They have an award named after John McCain that they give out every single year.
00:19:24.000 This year, John McCain Award is awarded to this woman, I don't know her, Sarah Denise Rosenblaum and Moritz Grefoff.
00:19:32.000 Okay.
00:19:33.000 So at a conference where they literally have an award named after John McCain, was talking about how the most important thing happening on the planet is the war in Ukraine.
00:19:43.000 But there was a fascinating wrinkle, a wrinkle that we did not see in recent years.
00:19:49.000 And it goes to show how important it is to win these primary elections.
00:19:54.000 And I was very involved in this primary election.
00:19:56.000 And I remember we received some nasty emails and nasty emails.
00:20:00.000 And people said, oh, I like Josh Mandel.
00:20:02.000 And I said, no, no, JD Vance is the man.
00:20:04.000 And I said, just wait.
00:20:05.000 JD Vance will show you how terrific he is.
00:20:08.000 We held the line.
00:20:09.000 He won the primary, won the general.
00:20:12.000 And JD Vance was invited on a CODEL, which is a congressional delegation trip for senators.
00:20:17.000 And JD Vance was probably like, why not?
00:20:20.000 He has a completely different worldview, a completely different approach.
00:20:24.000 And he went to the Munich Security Conference to have a completely and 180 different perspective than the Munich Security Conference consensus.
00:20:38.000 Here's a little taste here.
00:20:40.000 While I'm watching it, I got to be honest, JD Vance would make a pretty good vice president for Donald Trump.
00:20:46.000 He's from the Heartland.
00:20:47.000 He's young.
00:20:48.000 He's still in his 30s.
00:20:49.000 He's a father.
00:20:50.000 He's a venture capitalist.
00:20:51.000 He wrote an incredibly powerful book.
00:20:54.000 He understands the working class very well.
00:20:56.000 He's well respected in the Senate, despite having rather contrarian views.
00:21:00.000 What were your thoughts of JD Vance for VP?
00:21:03.000 Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:21:05.000 Play cut 16.
00:21:06.000 I know people have heard what Trump said, and they've criticized it, and they've said, well, Trump is going to abandon Europe.
00:21:13.000 I don't think that's true at all.
00:21:14.000 I think Trump is actually issuing a wake-up call to say that Europe has to take a bigger role in its own security.
00:21:21.000 Germany, just this year, will spend more than 2% of GDP.
00:21:26.000 That, of course, is something that we had to really push for in the United States.
00:21:30.000 And it just now has finally cleared that threshold.
00:21:32.000 But it's not just about money spent.
00:21:34.000 How many mechanized brigades could Germany field tomorrow?
00:21:38.000 Maybe one, maybe one.
00:21:41.000 Okay.
00:21:41.000 The problem with Europe is that it doesn't provide enough of a deterrence on its own because it hasn't taken enough of a it hasn't taken the initiative in its own security.
00:21:53.000 I think that the American security blanket has allowed European security to atrophy.
00:21:58.000 And again, the point is not we want to abandon Europe.
00:22:01.000 The point is we need to focus as a country on East Asia and we need our European allies to step up in Europe.
00:22:08.000 That very crisply, just kind of neutral, steady opinion is considered to be bombastic at the Munich Security Conference, being that measured.
00:22:23.000 You're supposed to go there with pom-poms and cheerlead.
00:22:28.000 That's what you're supposed to do. 0.96
00:22:29.000 We want war.
00:22:31.000 More of JD Vance, play cut 15. 0.95
00:22:33.000 Germany is the one country, maybe, in NATO that did not follow the stupid Washington consensus and allow their country to be deindustrialized during the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
00:22:45.000 And yet at the very moment that Putin is more and more powerful, where the Russian army is invading European countries en masse, this is the point at which Germany starts to deindustrialize. 0.57
00:22:57.000 Look at the number of people working in manufacturing in Germany now versus 10 years ago.
00:23:02.000 Look at the critical raw materials produced in Germany now versus 10 years ago.
00:23:07.000 The energy dependence now versus 10 or 20 years ago.
00:23:10.000 We have got to stop deindustrializing.
00:23:14.000 We want Europe to be successful, but Europe has got to take a bigger role in its own security.
00:23:20.000 It can't do that without industry.
00:23:22.000 It is hard to put into words the psyche of a German citizen and German leader.
00:23:29.000 When confronted, and I had other friends at the Munich Security Conference texting me, and there was a consensus.
00:23:35.000 Anytime there was a private conversation about Germany restricting mass migration, Germany having its own armored divisions, Germany paying more for defense, it was always this hearkening back to, well, we can't repeat the mistakes of the 20th century.
00:23:50.000 As if there is no spectrum, that there is no middle ground, that it's so radical without any nuance whatsoever.
00:23:59.000 German leadership will say, well, we can't repeat the mistakes of the 20th century.
00:24:04.000 What they're trying to say, and they are fixated.
00:24:08.000 It dominates them. 0.82
00:24:11.000 And it's honestly intellectually lazy and it's driven by German guilt. 0.74
00:24:17.000 What Germany did in the 20th century and the German regime was one of the great evils in the history of the species. 0.73
00:24:24.000 I don't hold any of those people accountable for what happened in the mid-20th century. 1.00
00:24:29.000 Germans seem incapable of being moderate. 1.00
00:24:33.000 They have to conquer Europe or abolish Europe. 0.93
00:24:35.000 There's almost no middle ground.
00:24:37.000 That's the take of their leaders anyway.
00:24:39.000 Their government right now is talking about sweeping crackdowns on the AFD.
00:24:44.000 They're literally calling them Nazis.
00:24:47.000 The Germans are the most radical in the sense of either we are going to go full fascist like they did in the 1930s, 1940s, or we're just going to have no borders, no industrial capacity, and allow what Douglas Murray beautifully calls the strange death of Europe.
00:25:03.000 In Germany, they're talking about freezing bank accounts and banning far-right groups from traveling abroad, vastly more strict than what we even have here at our worst. 0.73
00:25:13.000 When the actual solution is very simple, just allow elections, don't ban parties, and let people oppose immigration.
00:25:20.000 So Germany had this Munich Security Conference, and JD Vance was very respectful, and he was one of the few voices that decided to push back against this.
00:25:29.000 But there is this timidity that is built into the DNA of European leadership where they are so afraid, they're so terrified that they might have to have their own army and defend themselves and have their own industrial and military capacity.
00:25:46.000 You want to truly stand up against Putin?
00:25:49.000 Build some form of a German standing army.
00:25:54.000 And this is one of the buried truths.
00:25:58.000 Again, college students don't get taught this about European socialism, is that American defense spending is a subsidy of European welfare state socialism.
00:26:09.000 Imagine how much money you could spend on benefits, pensions, paying people to stay at home, universal government welfare, if you don't have to spend a serious amount of money on military.
00:26:22.000 We spend around $850 billion a year on our military.
00:26:27.000 Some of it is about protecting Europe.
00:26:29.000 Now, remember, Munich is the city where Neville Chamberlain caved into Hitler. 1.00
00:26:35.000 Now Europeans carry on that tradition of being weak and pathetic. 0.99
00:26:41.000 And I want to kind of meet some of the neoliberals halfway. 0.99
00:26:46.000 They're so convinced that the post-World War II order is orthodoxy and cannot be challenged.
00:26:55.000 That all material wealth and success is a growth and extension of this World War II order, that America must defend every country, that we must have mass migration.
00:27:06.000 Here's JD Vance challenging this consensus, play cut 17.
00:27:10.000 It's very hard, the juxtaposition between the idea that Putin poses an existential threat to Europe compared again against the fact that we're trying to convince our allies to spend 2% of GDP.
00:27:22.000 Those ideas are very much intention.
00:27:24.000 I do not think that Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe.
00:27:27.000 And to the extent that he is, again, that suggests that Europe has to take a more aggressive role in its own security.
00:27:33.000 That's number one.
00:27:34.000 But again, I go back to this question about abandoning Ukraine.
00:27:39.000 If the package that's running through the Congress right now, $61 billion of supplemental aid to Ukraine goes through, I have to be honest to you, that is not going to fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield.
00:27:52.000 No one wants to acknowledge that reality.
00:27:54.000 All these other senators that are there, all these other neocons that are there.
00:27:59.000 They know that $60 billion is not even a start.
00:28:01.000 Not to mention, we as American taxpayers are going to be on the hook to rebuild Ukraine.
00:28:06.000 So it's not just a matter of breaking a bunch of stuff and using poor Ukrainian men and boys as human shields.
00:28:13.000 It's also a matter that we're going to be on the hook to rebuild Ukraine while our own country falls apart. 0.79
00:28:18.000 Winning wars requires going all out. 0.74
00:28:20.000 Russia is going all out. 0.56
00:28:22.000 Are we prepared for that? 0.93
00:28:24.000 Do we really want to?
00:28:25.000 And again, at what cost and what price?
00:28:29.000 I got in a debate the other day.
00:28:30.000 They said, we must stand with Ukraine.
00:28:32.000 I said, what does success look like?
00:28:33.000 They said, until all Ukraine is returned to Ukraine.
00:28:36.000 I said, does that include Crimea?
00:28:38.000 He said, of course. 0.65
00:28:39.000 That's deranged.
00:28:41.000 That is deranged.
00:28:43.000 Crimea, that Vladimir Putin annexed under Obama, and Obama actually did the right thing.
00:28:48.000 He kind of shrugged his shoulders, like, I don't want to go to nuclear war over what is rightfully Russia's, which is Crimea.
00:28:56.000 That's a much better argument, by the way, for Putin, Crimea being part of Russia than even eastern Ukraine is part of Russia.
00:29:02.000 It's literally where Russian wine is from.
00:29:04.000 Their naval ports were there.
00:29:07.000 World War II military installations.
00:29:11.000 For years, I've been talking about how our nation's public schools have been captured by progressive ideologues, especially true if you're a Christian family.
00:29:17.000 For those of you worried about the best educational path to your kids and grandkids, I want to tell you about how Turning Point Academy is working with the Herzog Foundation, how you at home can also benefit from it.
00:29:26.000 They have an online publication called The Lion, and also Making the Leap, the Herzog Foundation offers a wide range of advice and information for Christian parents to make the best education decisions for your kids.
00:29:35.000 Go to Herzogfoundation.com.
00:29:37.000 That is Herzogfoundation.com.
00:29:38.000 So check it out right now, Herzogfoundation.com.
00:29:41.000 Portions of the Charlie Kirk show are brought to you in part by the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation.
00:29:45.000 That is Herzogfoundation.com.
00:29:50.000 So understand this: that the great American empire that has existed in the post-World War II order, with the dollar as the world reserve currency status, with us paying for the defense spending around the planet, it can work.
00:30:05.000 It's made us very wealthy.
00:30:07.000 But there's a major issue, is that it requires perpetual saber rattling, and it requires villain creation.
00:30:18.000 Requires for us to create villains where they otherwise don't exist.
00:30:23.000 In the Tucker Carlson Vladimir Putin interview, it was really perfectly put. 0.71
00:30:29.000 There was a de-Sovietization campaign that was occurring in the late 90s, early 2000s, where we thought that Russia would become one of our allies.
00:30:41.000 Used to be where Americans could easily fly to Russia.
00:30:43.000 Americans used to visit Russia. 0.90
00:30:46.000 And Russia was still kind of run by gangsters and criminals.
00:30:50.000 So what changed?
00:30:52.000 Was it that Vladimir Putin wanted to wall himself off to the West?
00:30:56.000 No, what changed is the defense-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex.
00:31:05.000 They needed a very big and scary enemy.
00:31:10.000 And it couldn't be China because China was paying the bills.
00:31:14.000 Because China was paying the bills of the American ruling class, paying the bills of the bankers and private equity, the consulting class.
00:31:23.000 A lot of people are comparing 2024 to 1944.
00:31:28.000 And you're missing a key element.
00:31:31.000 We were allies with the Soviet Union to defeat the Nazis. 0.69
00:31:35.000 We were allies with these people that we are now supposed to hate to such an extent that they're going to roll through the plains of Europe and roll through the plains of Poland. 0.75
00:31:47.000 Is it in the best interest of the Russian Federation to want to reclaim Poland? 0.59
00:31:52.000 Why would they possibly do that?
00:31:54.000 Vladimir Putin wants to reconstitute parts and aspects of the Soviet Union.
00:31:59.000 He thinks it was one of the greatest mistakes in Russian history.
00:32:03.000 Why are we not trying to broker peace right now?
00:32:06.000 And the most important thing that I hope somebody can answer is why is it that the American government, via Boris Johnson and Tony Blinken in Istanbul, Turkey, obliterated a peace deal that could have prevented this conflict in the first place?
00:32:26.000 We are now about to enter what is called the thaw.
00:32:31.000 Temperatures are about to increase, and there's about a 90 to 100-day period where the killing is going to get horrendous. 0.99
00:32:40.000 Right now, it is major advantage Russia. 0.79
00:32:43.000 They are licking their chops. 0.93
00:32:45.000 And there will be tens of thousands, and God forbid, hundreds of thousands of more Ukrainian deaths.
00:32:55.000 So what? 0.92
00:32:55.000 So that we could advance the mile this way and advance the mile this way. 0.92
00:32:58.000 And oh, you go one mile this way?
00:33:01.000 TheGuardian.com, a lot higher than expected.
00:33:03.000 Russian arms production worries European war planners.
00:33:06.000 Moscow has massively ramped up its industry, giving its advantages in Ukraine and leading to a redistribution of wealth.
00:33:13.000 It turns out, this is what one of the great paradoxes is, by the way.
00:33:17.000 It's so interesting.
00:33:19.000 On one hand, the consensus in Washington, D.C. is that Russia is this unbelievable threat, this demon, this enemy that we must hate. 0.69
00:33:28.000 On the other hand, it's that they're like a paper tiger and they're not actually strong, and just another $60 billion is going to defeat the Russians.
00:33:35.000 So which is it?
00:33:36.000 Well, it turns out Russia has a lot of wealth, fair amount of people. 0.59
00:33:40.000 They've ramped up industrial war capacity, and we are not going to be able to meet it.
00:33:45.000 If we want to spend a couple trillion dollars, we might be able to get close.
00:33:49.000 Quote, as Ukraine has scrambled to source ammunition, arms, and equipment for its defense, Russia has presided over a massive ramping up of industrial production over the last two years that has outstripped what many in Western defense planners expected when Vladimir Putin launched his invasion.
00:34:03.000 Just as kind of a side note, have the American, have the Western planners been right about anything the last four years?
00:34:09.000 Whether it be COVID and masks and lockdowns, vaccines, stock market predictions, inflation, have they been right about anything? 0.58
00:34:17.000 Oh my goodness, Russia is a lot stronger than we thought. 0.74
00:34:21.000 So how much money is it going to take to defeat Russia?
00:34:23.000 We won't.
00:34:23.000 It's not going to happen.
00:34:26.000 Our Western leaders met in Munich under a delusion, a delusion that we can keep on pumping money, use Ukrainians as human shields, and somehow that's going to beat Russia and keep us safe.
00:34:44.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:34:46.000 Email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
00:34:48.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
00:34:53.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.