The Charlie Kirk Show - The Patron Saint of Homeschooling with Raymond Arroyo and Gen. Anthony Tata

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:01.000 Raymond Arroyo joins us to talk about the Catholic Church and also a new book he has out.

00:00:06.000 And then a general who served in the Trump administration talks about his latest book.

00:00:10.000 And also, I asked the question: why should we consider Russia to be an enemy?

00:00:14.000 Interesting discussion.

00:00:15.000 Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com.

00:00:21.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:22.000 Here we go.

00:00:23.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:24.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:27.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:30.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:33.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:34.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:35.000 His spirit is love of this country.

00:00:37.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:44.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:00:52.000 That's why we are here.

00:00:55.000 Brought to you by my friends, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage, 888, 888, 1172 or AndrewNTodd.com.

00:01:06.000 I have a lot of respect for our next guest.

00:01:08.000 It's very important to teach children history and to talk about the heroes of America.

00:01:17.000 And joining us now is Raymond Arroyo, one of my favorite people to see on television.

00:01:21.000 The unexpected light of Thomas Alva Edison by Raymond Aroro.

00:01:25.000 Raymond, welcome back to the program.

00:01:27.000 Great to see you so much, Charlie.

00:01:29.000 I'm delighted to be on the show.

00:01:31.000 So, Raymond, it's a very important topic, hilariously, because there's actually a campaign against Thomas Edison.

00:01:39.000 I'm sure you're aware of this to try to make it seem as if he stole his inventions and he wasn't all that smart.

00:01:45.000 Yes.

00:01:46.000 So, just can you address that out of the gate?

00:01:48.000 That's where my head went immediately before we get into that.

00:01:50.000 Yeah, well, no, no.

00:01:52.000 Look, I was just at the Edison Labs yesterday.

00:01:55.000 And again, my book, my focus here, this whole series, I call it turnabout tales, Charlie, because every one of us has, I think, a turnabout tale in their life.

00:02:05.000 And that's a moment when, usually in your youth, you face an obstacle or a crisis and a decision is made in that moment that not only changes and opens up your entire life, but changes all of history in some ways.

00:02:18.000 That is what happened with Edison.

00:02:20.000 That's what happens in many of these great American lives that for some reason people don't want to talk about or they don't want to revisit.

00:02:27.000 And I think we lose something when we do that or accept that.

00:02:30.000 I agree.

00:02:31.000 In the case of Edison, he was, and I think there's almost a discrimination of Edison because he was not university educated.

00:02:39.000 He was not lettered.

00:02:41.000 He was a kid, as I relate in the book.

00:02:43.000 His turnabout tale is he probably had ADHD, did not learn in the traditional way.

00:02:49.000 His mother, when he was thrown out of school at eight years old, she takes him home and says, I'm going to homeschool him.

00:02:55.000 And because they said he was adult-brained, couldn't be taught, she takes him home.

00:03:00.000 She homeschools him, gives him great books, feeds his scientific passions, his electrical passions with manuals and how-to guides.

00:03:09.000 And then she does something that I think not enough parents even today do.

00:03:13.000 She allowed him to experiment, to get messy, to make a mess, and to get his hands dirty.

00:03:19.000 So he was learning not only with his head, as Edison said, but with his hands.

00:03:23.000 And I think that is something all of us could profit from.

00:03:27.000 But I hear the complaints about he stole from Tesla and he stole from this one.

00:03:31.000 Look, Edison took the failures of others and he improved them.

00:03:35.000 He moved past the failure.

00:03:37.000 He tinkered until he broke the puzzle.

00:03:40.000 And then he was a great marketer, Charlie.

00:03:42.000 This guy had a combination of chutzpah with an amazing tenacity to find solutions where others had given up.

00:03:51.000 And some later said, oh, he was a genius.

00:03:53.000 Edison didn't like that term.

00:03:54.000 He said, genius is in sticking to it.

00:03:58.000 So it's staying in the puzzle, staying in the game and not giving up.

00:04:02.000 And he said, that's our greatest weakness.

00:04:04.000 We give up too soon.

00:04:06.000 You can always try one more time.

00:04:07.000 He also basically invented the modern research lab, which I think is really interesting.

00:04:14.000 And so just go through some of the inventions.

00:04:16.000 I mean, he just name them off.

00:04:19.000 How are life improved by him?

00:04:22.000 Well, look, everything we're doing right now, I'll just point out into the audience.

00:04:26.000 Everything you're seeing and hearing is thanks to Thomas Edison.

00:04:30.000 The microphone, the moving picture camera, the alkaline battery, which is really the precursor to the lithium batteries that all of our devices, including our cell phones, operate on.

00:04:41.000 Electrical communication.

00:04:42.000 You know, he improved telegraphing so four messages could be sent at the same time.

00:04:49.000 Again, a precursor to broadband.

00:04:51.000 All of the things in the modern age.

00:04:53.000 Oh my gosh, I'm blanking on them all.

00:04:57.000 The electric car, which people forget about.

00:05:00.000 Rubber, the manufacturing of rubber for tires.

00:05:04.000 All of that is Edison.

00:05:06.000 He was an amazing person who was deaf at 12, Charlie, which I didn't know.

00:05:13.000 And because of that, it afforded him, in his own retelling, the ability to read.

00:05:19.000 It drove him to books.

00:05:20.000 And it gave him the focus and the isolation to solve these big problems and see things others missed.

00:05:28.000 And you said he created the first research and development lab in the country.

00:05:31.000 I was there yesterday at the Edison Lab here in West Orange.

00:05:35.000 And I have to tell you, it's untouched.

00:05:37.000 It is just as it was at the turn of the century when he built it.

00:05:40.000 It's an incredible facility.

00:05:43.000 When you think, oh, the phonograph, I forgot to mention the phonograph, Charlie.

00:05:47.000 Minor detail.

00:05:48.000 Yeah, a minor, his big invention, the phonograph.

00:05:52.000 And he was really the first record label.

00:05:55.000 Edison in the upstairs part of his lab, the music room, he recorded hundreds and hundreds of bands and orchestras and singers of the day, which he released on disc.

00:06:07.000 And he, again, he wisely figured out what the public needed and then created it.

00:06:14.000 And when you go there and sit in the room, the two things that blew my mind.

00:06:17.000 One, he had a horn, an ear horn, because he was deaf.

00:06:21.000 That's how he heard the music.

00:06:22.000 And when that didn't work, when he really couldn't hear in his good ear, he would take a piece of wood and bite down on it, really forward-looking to those cochlear implants they put in the back of people's skulls where the sound reverberates.

00:06:36.000 He was using the wood to conduct the sound through his skull.

00:06:39.000 An amazing person, a light that continues to illuminate our modern age.

00:06:46.000 That would never have happened had it not been for the devotion of a mother who took Edison home and homeschooled him.

00:06:53.000 I say he should be called the patron saint of homeschooling.

00:06:56.000 And I hope we can restore him to that place.

00:06:59.000 Yeah, so let's go through some of the lessons that could apply today.

00:07:02.000 You mentioned several, allowing the kid to explore, allowing the, you know, the children to take risks, right?

00:07:09.000 What are some of the other lessons today?

00:07:11.000 I mean, and do you think that the current government progressive school system is maybe just tragically preventing the next Thomas Edison from finding that next innovation that could benefit humanity?

00:07:26.000 You know, I'll leave you with Edison's words.

00:07:28.000 We'll go to Edison himself, who said he hated the modern education system.

00:07:34.000 He said it's a one-size-fits-all bucket that doesn't allow the child or his ingenuity to grow.

00:07:42.000 And he preferred the Montessori approach, which was like the approach he was given.

00:07:47.000 Deep reading into multiple disciplines and then hands-on experimentation.

00:07:52.000 And most importantly, Charlie, and you do this every day.

00:07:55.000 I do this every day.

00:07:57.000 And I think great entrepreneurs do.

00:07:59.000 A sense of play in your work.

00:08:02.000 Edison didn't ever really create.

00:08:04.000 He had little groups, he called them muckers, his co-inventors, the people who worked in his shop and in his labs.

00:08:11.000 They had little units, and he would run from one to another, pollinating them, all encouraging them, challenging them, reshaping what they were working on and perfecting it.

00:08:20.000 But he said it was all play.

00:08:21.000 And these people were like his little playmates.

00:08:24.000 And when you get in that space, that creative space of play, whether you're in the theater or you're in a restaurant or you're doing a podcast or a television broadcast, that sense of play is infectious.

00:08:38.000 You can't fake it.

00:08:39.000 I think God creeps into those moments, into the space that you create, and you're in the zone, as some call it.

00:08:45.000 Edison lived there.

00:08:47.000 I'm not sure if the educational system today permits that kind of attention to the child to accompany the child in the best mode of learning for him or her, and then allowing that force of learning to proceed and grow.

00:09:07.000 The modern educational system is about checking boxes and fixed testing and memorization.

00:09:14.000 And that is why Edison was thrown out of school because he really couldn't memorize and he didn't want to answer the questions and he was bored to tears after the exploration and curiosity that I think that mind had absorbed as a child.

00:09:28.000 It's incredible.

00:09:29.000 And so let's just reiterate the name of the book.

00:09:31.000 And I'm going to buy it so I can read it to my daughter.

00:09:35.000 Oh, I hope you will, or I'll send you a copy.

00:09:37.000 Thank you.

00:09:37.000 The Unexpected Light of Thomas Alva Edison by Raymond Naroyo.

00:09:42.000 And you have a whole genre of these books, don't you, Raymond?

00:09:45.000 Well, this is the first.

00:09:46.000 This is the first in a series, but yes, I've written three others.

00:09:50.000 And again, they focus on great lives that I think had been neglected.

00:09:54.000 You know, everybody knows some of the things Edison did.

00:09:57.000 Few understand how the inventor got there.

00:10:01.000 And rather than a womb-to-tomb biography, these books, The Turnabout Tales, focus on, again, a crossroads, a crisis point in a young person's life, a person we all know.

00:10:13.000 And it shows that those obstacles are not really obstacles.

00:10:16.000 Those are portals to your future, portals to your vocation and your destiny.

00:10:21.000 And we need your contribution.

00:10:24.000 All of history, all of the country and the world may need that contribution.

00:10:29.000 Certainly, in the case of Edison, he himself said, if it hadn't been for his mother, he would not have done any of this.

00:10:36.000 And we'd probably still be in the dark and talking to each other via letter, Charlie, which would not be good.

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00:11:22.000 Okay, so Raymond, let me ask you about, there's been a fair amount of stories here about Pope Benedict reevaluating the celibacy vows for priests.

00:11:31.000 What are your thoughts on this?

00:11:32.000 Well, my first thought is the media love stories like this, Charlie.

00:11:36.000 And the reason they love them is Pope Francis will sit for these interviews and he allows himself to be led down garden paths.

00:11:45.000 And the media keeps asking this question because they'd like to see an end to priestly celibacy in the Western right.

00:11:52.000 Remember, the Catholic Church has two wings, if you will, the Eastern wing and the Western wing.

00:11:58.000 The Eastern Church, Charlie, allows marriage. 0.87

00:12:01.000 They have married priests.

00:12:02.000 So technically, the Catholic Church already has Catholic priests.

00:12:05.000 Pope Benedict also welcomed former Anglican priests into the Catholic Church.

00:12:10.000 They came with their wives and families as well.

00:12:13.000 So this whole question is a bit of a misnomer.

00:12:16.000 What they're asking is: is the discipline in the Western Church going to change?

00:12:20.000 What Pope Francis said is it's a temporal discipline and it's not an eternal one.

00:12:26.000 Well, that doesn't mean he's going to open up and change the discipline.

00:12:30.000 He's just stating a fact, which is it is a discipline on earth and not for all time.

00:12:36.000 But it mimics Jesus Christ.

00:12:37.000 Jesus Christ did not have a wife, did not date around.

00:12:41.000 He was a man who gave up his sexuality, if you will, for the good of his flock.

00:12:46.000 And so he could be a father to his spiritual children.

00:12:49.000 That's the thinking behind it.

00:12:51.000 And even Billy Graham many years ago wrote that there may be something to celibacy, he said, because he felt the conflict between his flock and his family.

00:13:00.000 You know, later in life, he wrote in his biography that bought.

00:13:03.000 And so it has wisdom all around.

00:13:06.000 It leaves a man free to be fully available to his people and to be a spiritual father to many more than you could father in life.

00:13:14.000 Pope Francis also has come out and said that gender ideology is one of the most dangerous ideological forces and colonizations of the day.

00:13:22.000 Your thoughts?

00:13:24.000 Yeah, well, the Pope's been very articulate and forthright on this issue of trans rights and he called it, I think, a cultural colonization. 0.61

00:13:38.000 It's interesting that that headline gets no coverage, Charlie, while the changing of the celibacy discipline gets all the front page news.

00:13:48.000 Whenever you're dealing with a figure, particularly like a Pope, it's important, I think, to report them in their complexity and in the totality of their comments, because it tends to all fit together.

00:14:00.000 Now, Pope Francis does freelance at times, and he likes to give interviews and say things in passing, which can be misinterpreted or open to misinterpretation.

00:14:09.000 But so far, he really hasn't changed anything, but he's talked many times about revisiting certain things that have been already closed, certain questions, female ordination, for instance.

00:14:24.000 But no changes have really happened.

00:14:26.000 So that's my general thought on that.

00:14:29.000 On the issue of life, on the issue of man and woman and the genders, he's been very clear on that.

00:14:36.000 So, and then finally, there was a memo, a disturbing memo, a couple of weeks ago that came out that said the FBI is trying to infiltrate Latin Mass.

00:14:44.000 This is extraordinary.

00:14:46.000 Are you one of those pre-Vatican II people, Raymond?

00:14:50.000 Well, I have been known to frequent the Latin Mass from time.

00:14:53.000 You're a troublemaker.

00:14:55.000 In fact, the Latin Mass brought my wife into the Catholic Church.

00:15:00.000 We don't go as frequently as we once did.

00:15:02.000 But here's the point.

00:15:04.000 If you go to those Masses, they are populated, Charlie, with young people.

00:15:09.000 That's very fervent, newly married people with little babies.

00:15:13.000 I mean, the church is full.

00:15:15.000 The pews are packed.

00:15:16.000 Why anyone would have a problem with that?

00:15:18.000 I don't know.

00:15:19.000 But as you know, Pope Francis recently outlawed and tightened the noose on the ability to celebrate that old Latin Mass, which I really don't understand.

00:15:28.000 It makes no sense.

00:15:29.000 It's a break with tradition.

00:15:31.000 But again, that's a discipline.

00:15:32.000 He does have the right to do it.

00:15:34.000 Whether it's right or not is a different question, but he has the right to do it.

00:15:37.000 But for the FBI to then use the type of worship you want to frequent as a believing Christian, to use that as a means of targeting you with a list, that is really beyond the beyond.

00:15:52.000 They claim these people were domestic terrorists or domestic terrorists in training or radicals.

00:15:57.000 That it was apparently out of the field office in Virginia, and that individual has been reprimanded.

00:16:02.000 But there should be an investigation into who did this, why, and at whose behest, Charlie.

00:16:09.000 This all seems rather convenient to me.

00:16:11.000 Check out Raymond's latest book.

00:16:13.000 It's really great about Thomas Edison.

00:16:15.000 And appreciate it, Raymond.

00:16:16.000 It's Thomas Alva Edison, the name of the book by Raymond Arroyo.

00:16:20.000 Thank you so much.

00:16:21.000 An expert on all things from Catholicism to Edison.

00:16:24.000 That's pretty important.

00:16:25.000 I don't know about that.

00:16:26.000 Both can be electric at times and can burn you.

00:16:28.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:16:29.000 They have other similarities as well, but we won't go there.

00:16:31.000 Raymond, thank you so much.

00:16:36.000 Hey, everybody, this is Charlie Kirk.

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00:17:38.000 Joining us now is General Anthony Tata.

00:17:42.000 Hope I said that right.

00:17:43.000 And you did.

00:17:44.000 Author of Total Empire.

00:17:46.000 Welcome to the program.

00:17:47.000 Great to be with you, Charlie.

00:17:48.000 Thank you.

00:17:49.000 Tell us about your book, Total Empire, which is technically fiction, but feels more like reality every single day.

00:17:56.000 Well, you know, with all the breaking news today, Charlie, about China and Russia forming an alliance, well, Total Empire is all about China's ascendancy to global hegemony and their drive to do so at all costs. 0.87

00:18:09.000 And so the protagonist, which is a recurring series protagonist with Macmillan San Martin's Press, my publisher, Garrett Sinclair, finds himself chasing down his goddaughter in the Eye of Africa, which is an obscure terrain feature in Mauritania near Morocco in the Western Sahara and the annexed area of Western Sahara and Morocco.

00:18:38.000 And so what they end up doing is finding a Chinese hypersonic weapon in this area.

00:18:47.000 And of course, then it's a race to prevent hypersonic nuclear vehicles from attacking the United States.

00:18:55.000 And importantly, whenever I have a book that I'm writing, this is my 15th novel.

00:19:01.000 It's always what's that inspiration.

00:19:03.000 I was reading the article a couple of years ago about hypersonic weapons.

00:19:07.000 And if you put these on space shuttles, essentially, in orbit, we lose our ability to track ballistic signature, which is how we defend against nuclear threats.

00:19:18.000 So it's a big deal.

00:19:19.000 And so when you say Total Empire feels more like fact than fiction, there's a lot of that in there.

00:19:25.000 So, yeah, the book is Total Empire, and people encourage people to check it out.

00:19:28.000 And so, one of the dynamics in the book, and also something you dealt with, you know, serving in the Pentagon was this idea of obviously the two powers of Russia and China that under President Trump were they were friendly, but they were not as close as they are now.

00:19:44.000 Putin is now flaunting an alliance with Xi as dear friends.

00:19:47.000 How should we think about this?

00:19:49.000 Yeah, it's a rather breathtaking event that took place today.

00:19:53.000 Of course, the corporate media will give all the top cover to the current administration that they need.

00:19:59.000 And so, there won't be any real examination, except for venues like your show and other outlets that take a serious, hard-nosed look at this type of journalism.

00:20:10.000 And so, really, what we have happening is Russia being backed now by China makes this Ukraine fight infinitely harder because we thought that Russia,

00:20:25.000 we could do some economic sanctions, starve them off a little bit, use our ability to provide weapons into Ukraine and resources to allow them to defend themselves and then death by a thousand cuts on the Russian front there in Ukraine and let the Russians wither as they impaled themselves on the Ukrainian defenses.

00:20:50.000 That was the general strategy.

00:20:53.000 And now what we're seeing is that ostensibly China could be backstopping Russia to be able to buy more equipment, have better training, et cetera, et cetera.

00:21:07.000 And so it really makes it problematic.

00:21:09.000 And if you walk this all the way back, Charlie, this whole Russian invasion of Ukraine stemmed from the Biden administration's fumbling of the Afghan withdrawal and fractured NATO.

00:21:24.000 And that's another thing the corporate media didn't really cover.

00:21:27.000 NATO was fractured seriously because when I would see performing the duties as under Secretary of Defense for policy, we had a, you come into NATO, or NATO comes in together into Afghanistan, NATO adjusts together, and we're going to leave together if we left.

00:21:45.000 And the Biden administration just lit a fuse and said, hey, we're leaving.

00:21:49.000 And there was no lateral coordination.

00:21:52.000 There were 30 some countries in there with everything from 20 person provincial reconstruction teams all the way up to battalion size combat teams.

00:22:02.000 And so Putin saw that message, that strategic failure message to our enemies, we are not competent at foreign policy.

00:22:15.000 And that lit the fuse on what's happening today in Ukraine, our two biggest adversaries today forming an alliance under the strategic agreement.

00:22:26.000 It's rather breathtaking.

00:22:28.000 This will get painted over by the corporate media, and they'll blame, figure out a way to blame Trump, of course.

00:22:35.000 But this level of incompetence is breathtaking.

00:22:38.000 Antony Blinken, probably the most incompetent Secretary of State we've ever had in the history of this country.

00:22:43.000 He's messing up.

00:22:44.000 Just absolutely breathtaking what's happening today.

00:22:49.000 Yeah.

00:22:49.000 And so I'm losing confidence in our ability to do the most basic things.

00:22:54.000 You're not exactly restoring it, which is fine.

00:22:56.000 It's just the way it is.

00:22:58.000 I mean, Tony Blinken running the State Department right now is a total joke.

00:23:03.000 And so I want to get your thoughts on the Russia-Ukraine thing.

00:23:07.000 I mean, I'm sure you've seen or somebody told you.

00:23:10.000 I mean, I don't understand why Russia should be considered an enemy of the United States at all.

00:23:16.000 I'm just curious, what is the argument for that?

00:23:20.000 Well, so in our national defense strategy, which is predicated on our vital U.S. national interests, we list China and Russia as our primary adversaries, and then Iran and North Korea.

00:23:34.000 It's Russia's tendency for hegemony, at least in Europe, and their mischievous nature of poisoning their foes and try to put a stick in the eye of NATO. 0.97

00:23:53.000 That's a fundamental reason is they have illusions of grandeur beyond the current Putin at least has that beyond the current Russian border.

00:24:02.000 And we have NATO.

00:24:04.000 NATO's been a very effective alliance for us.

00:24:07.000 They don't pay their fair share and they're using Russian oil, two things that President Trump harped on and got improvement in, quite frankly.

00:24:18.000 But the alliance and NATO is an important alliance to our country because if you remember, it was predicated on the Marshall Plan that created the foundation for democracy in the wake of World War II and capitalist markets in the wake of World War II.

00:24:39.000 Sure, there are some socialist countries in there, but by and large, the European Union and NATO are a good trading partner with the U.S. Same with Japan.

00:24:50.000 And you saw the ascendancy out of the ashes of World War II.

00:24:53.000 And it's important that we keep that relationship.

00:24:58.000 And so I think from a military standpoint, the rotational brigades coming in to demonstrate U.S. resolve to NATO have been a good response.

00:25:09.000 I think diplomacy has been anemic and ineffective to the extent that there's been any tribe.

00:25:16.000 The economic sanctions are economic sanctions.

00:25:18.000 They rarely, if ever, work.

00:25:20.000 And then, you know, thinking of all the levers of national power, the information campaign has been rather anemic as well.

00:25:28.000 So when I think of diplomacy, information, military, economic, the real key levers of national power in our response to this, let's recall, Charlie, the Biden administration's first instinct on the eve of the war was to offer Zelensky a ride out of Ukraine.

00:25:48.000 Now, think about that.

00:25:50.000 They offered, President Biden and Anthony Blanken offered to decapitate the Ukrainian government in preparation for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

00:26:01.000 Think about that.

00:26:02.000 That would be the headline if Trump had done that.

00:26:05.000 But the corporate media washed over that.

00:26:08.000 They got it completely wrong.

00:26:10.000 And it builds no confidence in our intelligence agencies that fed this wrong information.

00:26:16.000 And I was one of the few people on Newsmax, Fox, and others saying, we're going to be here a year from now.

00:26:23.000 Everybody, if you recall, was saying this is going to be a 36, 72-hour war.

00:26:28.000 And I said, no, you know, the Russian soldier is not 10 feet tall.

00:26:31.000 We learned that during the Cold War.

00:26:33.000 And essentially, I've commanded Ukrainian troops in combat in Kosovo.

00:26:40.000 And I had a West Point classmate who was Ukrainian.

00:26:43.000 And they're very passionate people.

00:26:46.000 So to the extent that getting to your original question, why do we care about Ukraine?

00:26:52.000 It's sort of like the Kuwait deal without the oil.

00:26:55.000 I asked, why is Russia considered a threat?

00:26:58.000 And you're right.

00:26:59.000 It is that the consensus is Russia and China are a threat, but why?

00:27:04.000 I get they poison their dissidents.

00:27:05.000 I don't like them, but I don't consider they've never attacked us, have they?

00:27:11.000 Well, I think going back, growing up in the Cold War and being a military officer, we had proxy wars with all the Soviet satellite nations, many of them.

00:27:26.000 It was constant push and pull.

00:27:29.000 And remember, they have a rogue leader, and then they have the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

00:27:37.000 And so it merits for us.

00:27:40.000 I think that would be a reason for us to not have them as an enemy.

00:27:45.000 Well, I think it's a reason for us.

00:27:47.000 I don't see that they view us, the United States, as long as we support NATO and we're involved in NATO, which is very important to our vitality as a nation.

00:27:59.000 I don't think that they would welcome any kind of outreach from us because think about it.

00:28:08.000 They were abandoning Open Skies Treaty.

00:28:12.000 They were violating the Open Skies Treaty.

00:28:14.000 They were violating the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty.

00:28:18.000 And President Trump wisely said, look, if you're not going to play by the rules, we're not going to play by the rules.

00:28:24.000 And again, the corporate media said, you know, Trump pulls out of these agreements.

00:28:28.000 Well, why should we let them see our training exercises if they don't let us see their training exercises?

00:28:34.000 So there's been some malintent on Putin's part.

00:28:39.000 I think the President Trump's effort to open a dialogue and have transparency with Putin and Helsinki was important, but that the undermining of the Trump administration by the corporate media and the left has had very serious national security consequences for our country.

00:28:59.000 And this idea that you should, you know, it's all important to destroy Trump irregardless of what happens to our national security, what happens to our allies and partners.

00:29:13.000 That's the burn, the house down strategy that I see in the left right now as a lifelong foreign policy and defense official.

00:29:24.000 It's a very frightening time in our country right now.

00:29:26.000 I encourage you to check out the book.

00:29:29.000 It is important, Total Empire, and it's very important.

00:29:33.000 Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and the Department of Defense and Deputy Commander in Afghanistan.

00:29:38.000 So, General, I want to ask you, I'll just read a couple of headlines here.

00:29:41.000 Military enrollment is down record numbers, 25% short in the Army.

00:29:46.000 Every branch fails to meet their recruitment and their enrollment goals.

00:29:50.000 Why do you think that is?

00:29:52.000 Yeah, I think there's this two real issues that have plagued recruiting.

00:30:00.000 One is, of course, the COVID vaccine issue, which did not resonate well with a lot of the typical population that would join the military.

00:30:11.000 And the second is this drive toward, you know, some people call it wokeism or, you know, whatever you want to call it, this, I call it a lack of focus on warfighting.

00:30:24.000 We should be recruiting and signing into service men and women that want to defend this nation.

00:30:33.000 And we should teach them the combat skills to do so, whether that's bayonet training or communications training and everything in between.

00:30:42.000 And that's really the net of it.

00:30:46.000 But we've really gotten sidetracked here with all this focus on things that divide us instead of unite us.

00:30:52.000 And we are a very divided nation right now.

00:30:54.000 And third, I think the Democrats have done a really good job of making people in general in this nation feel that this is not a great nation, that we've got a terrible history, that we're bad people.

00:31:07.000 We've done bad things.

00:31:09.000 And so there's this lack of value that people, well, why would I want to defend a nation that you're telling me is horrible?

00:31:17.000 So I'm going to go do something else with that.

00:31:19.000 So I think it's really those three things.

00:31:22.000 So, yeah, is there from any of your colleagues that are still in the Pentagon, do they think that maybe running transgender PSAs for Marines is probably not a good idea?

00:31:32.000 I mean, these people have no shame.

00:31:35.000 Yeah, I think, you know, they get told what to do.

00:31:38.000 But they're in charge.

00:31:39.000 Who's telling them what to do?

00:31:40.000 Yeah, right.

00:31:41.000 Well, the political appointees come in and, you know, tell the generals in large part what to do.

00:31:51.000 And, you know, you're confronted with that age-old decision.

00:31:55.000 Do you throw your stars on the table and leave and say in protest?

00:31:59.000 Or do you try to do the best you can and continue to serve the people that you swore that you would serve, the Constitution and the people?

00:32:07.000 So at the end of the day, what we have in this country is the corporate media telling us how bad we are.

00:32:17.000 Meanwhile, you have all these people with blue and yellow flags on their social media profiles and wanting World War III, essentially.

00:32:26.000 And at the end of the day, they're not sending their kids clearly to this fight that they're doing.

00:32:34.000 Many of them don't have kids, but yeah, that's right.

00:32:36.000 Right, right.

00:32:38.000 Yeah.

00:32:39.000 So it's really bothersome because, you know, recruiting and retention is a real barometer of the health of the nation.

00:32:49.000 And what a 60 to 70% recruiting number tells you is we're not a healthy nation right now.

00:32:55.000 And it's the lack of leadership from the very senior levels of the chain of command with the commander in chief that I think has made us unwell.

00:33:08.000 It's tragic.

00:33:09.000 I don't know why the military leadership is putting up with this stuff.

00:33:14.000 But I mean, I see one announcement after the other of diversity, equity, inclusion.

00:33:19.000 I mean, there are announcements where the military says it's one of our top goals to make the military more diverse.

00:33:23.000 They can't even hit their enrollment targets, let alone get them towards an ability to win a war.

00:33:28.000 But we're out of time.

00:33:30.000 So General, thank you for the time and I encourage everyone to check out the book right now, Total Empire.

00:33:36.000 Thank you so much.

00:33:37.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:33:38.000 Appreciate it.

00:33:39.000 Thank you.

00:33:40.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:33:41.000 Email me your thoughts.

00:33:42.000 It's always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:33:44.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:33:46.000 God bless.

00:33:49.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - March 22, 2023

The Patron Saint of Homeschooling with Raymond Arroyo and Gen. Anthony Tata

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