The Charlie Kirk Show - The Ukraine Well is All Tapped Out

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's been Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:01.000 We talk about Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness or his attempt to do so in Ukraine.

00:00:06.000 David Sachs joins us for excellent Ukraine commentary.

00:00:09.000 It's really amazing.

00:00:11.000 Subscribe to our podcast, get your friends who do the same and get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com and become a member to listen to all of our episodes advertiser-free.

00:00:20.000 It's members.charliekirk.com.

00:00:23.000 That is members.charlikirk.com.

00:00:26.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:28.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:29.000 Here we go.

00:00:30.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:32.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:34.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:37.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:41.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:42.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:43.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:44.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:50.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:00:51.000 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.

00:01:00.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:03.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

00:01:13.000 Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.

00:01:20.000 That is noblegoldinvestments.com.

00:01:22.000 It's where I buy all of my gold.

00:01:24.000 Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.

00:01:29.000 Reminder: We'll see you tonight in Omaha, Nebraska, as we are going to encourage the special session to get called.

00:01:36.000 As we had a wonderful conversation this morning with the governor's team, we're going to stay on it.

00:01:39.000 We're going to make sure it becomes a reality, but they're very focused and they're passionate about getting this done.

00:01:44.000 And great credits to the audience.

00:01:46.000 We're going to talk more about student loans here.

00:01:48.000 Joining us now is Rebecca Monsour, who has a great piece for Breitbart.com: Conservatives Can Seize the Student Debt Issue.

00:01:56.000 Rebecca, welcome to the program.

00:01:58.000 I tend to agree with this hypothesis.

00:02:01.000 Walk us through it, please.

00:02:02.000 Thanks so much, Charlie.

00:02:03.000 Actually, the hypothesis is really simple.

00:02:05.000 This is a major American issue.

00:02:08.000 This is not going away.

00:02:08.000 The Democrats are using this for a reason.

00:02:11.000 This impacts so many American lives from all income levels, really.

00:02:16.000 When you look at the fact that since from 1981 until 2021, there has been a 360% increase in the cost of tuition for a public institution, a public college.

00:02:29.000 Just think about that.

00:02:31.000 This has become completely unaffordable.

00:02:34.000 And we are saddling young people with basically a lifetime of debt as an indentured servant, basically, to this education cartel.

00:02:42.000 And at the same time, we were telling them that a good education is very completely necessary for a good job.

00:02:50.000 I mean, which it is still.

00:02:52.000 It is still the gateway to a good job.

00:02:55.000 So, when you're living in a situation where education is completely unaffordable, but it is still necessary for a good job, and people are coming out of these institutions often with degrees that are not necessarily effective in getting a job.

00:03:10.000 This is just becoming this terrible cycle of debt that's going to cost them, you know, basically a lifetime of productivity.

00:03:19.000 They're no longer able to have family formation.

00:03:21.000 They're no longer able to buy a home.

00:03:25.000 It's the root of so many of our problems, too.

00:03:27.000 I mean, they come out of these institutions just woke zombies.

00:03:31.000 Okay, so how are we going to address this?

00:03:33.000 It's not enough just to ignore it.

00:03:35.000 It's not enough just to say, oh, well, don't go to college.

00:03:38.000 We need actually trained people that have to have a college degree.

00:03:42.000 I mean, we can't have lawyers and doctors without colleges.

00:03:45.000 So, how do we address this issue?

00:03:48.000 That's what this piece was getting at.

00:03:50.000 was offering some ideas, basically, you know, saying we as conservatives need to think about this because right now what Joe Biden is doing is essentially he's offering student loan forgiveness now, but he's not addressing the problem.

00:04:03.000 And so there's just going to be another student loan forgiveness and another one and another one.

00:04:07.000 And they're going to use this as a vote buying tactic again and again and again until we address the root issue.

00:04:14.000 It's sort of like basically what Ronald Reagan did when he granted an amnesty in the 1980s, but he didn't seal the border.

00:04:20.000 He didn't deal with that.

00:04:21.000 So now we have more amnesties and more amnesties, okay?

00:04:24.000 You can't just have a student loan forgiveness without actually addressing the root cause here.

00:04:31.000 And there is a root cause.

00:04:32.000 And if we just ignore it, we just say, well, we're against student loan forgivenesses.

00:04:35.000 We're ceding that issue to the Democrats and they're going to take it.

00:04:39.000 And they're going to have a whole constituency based on that issue because people are really suffering because of all these loans.

00:04:45.000 So how do you deal with it?

00:04:46.000 We offered some suggestions.

00:04:48.000 We suggested one, that you basically target the endowments, tie these unsustainable degrees or these degrees that don't have jobs to the endowments, make these universities basically start to cough up.

00:05:02.000 You know, we also talked about block granting.

00:05:05.000 If you're going to do a student loan forgiveness, okay, then let's totally change the way that we distribute federal student loans.

00:05:11.000 Let's block grants and let's basically offer two-year associate degree programs.

00:05:17.000 And I know that people are going to scream, oh my God, it's socialism.

00:05:19.000 You summon Bernie Sanders.

00:05:21.000 But when you think about it, associate's degrees now are basically essentially what a high school diploma once was.

00:05:26.000 Okay.

00:05:27.000 Paying for a high school education is not socialism.

00:05:30.000 That is educating a citizenry, which is what is necessary.

00:05:34.000 Okay.

00:05:35.000 If you have control over this situation, better control over it, you're able to regulate it.

00:05:41.000 You know, conservatives talk about the free market and regulation and all that.

00:05:44.000 Now regulation will hurt a business.

00:05:47.000 Well, education, it's become an education cartel.

00:05:49.000 It's a business now, essentially.

00:05:51.000 Let's hurt their business by regulating the heck out of them.

00:05:54.000 Okay.

00:05:55.000 You know how we have these parents that are now at all the school board meetings, they've become really active because they started to see what their kids were learning during the COVID lockdowns and basically said, oh my God, we now have to get active.

00:06:08.000 So they're all showing up at the school board meetings.

00:06:10.000 Well, guess what?

00:06:11.000 As a taxpayer, when you start to have ownership of what these public institutions of higher education are teaching because we are paying for block grants for them or something like that, then we start to have a say in what they're doing. 0.96

00:06:24.000 And we can basically regulate the heck out of what they're doing, make sure that their degree programs aren't stupid.

00:06:30.000 The other thing that we can do is by tightening their belts, by forcing them to live within whatever we're giving them instead of just an open-ended student loan where they are able to jack up the tuition price because they know that the student loan industry will subsidize whatever tuition price they choose.

00:06:47.000 If we block grant, these universities are going to have to start making very serious decisions about what they can afford.

00:06:53.000 Suddenly, the liberal arts schools are going to have to stick to Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Milton instead of all these goofy, weird, woke, nonsense things that they teach now.

00:07:04.000 They're going to have to get back to the basics.

00:07:06.000 And they're also going to have to make really serious decisions about whether they want to have an engineering department or whether they want to have a gender studies, you know, blah, blah, blah department.

00:07:14.000 So this is how you can change the situation.

00:07:17.000 And we have to change the situation, frankly.

00:07:19.000 That's sort of my take on it.

00:07:20.000 But I'm always interested to hear what other people have.

00:07:23.000 And I know that you have done absolute work on this, obviously, Charlie.

00:07:26.000 A whole book on this.

00:07:27.000 I've been laboring in these fields for quite some time.

00:07:30.000 I want to get to this.

00:07:32.000 I want to focus on the endowments.

00:07:34.000 How large are the endowments in this country?

00:07:37.000 And why do we treat them largely tax-free?

00:07:40.000 I think Congress did like a 3% excise tax maybe on overages a couple years ago, but they're largely untaxed, $40, $50 billion.

00:07:48.000 There's a ton of money there.

00:07:49.000 Walk us through it.

00:07:50.000 There's a huge amount of money.

00:07:52.000 Let me just, let's talk about Harvard.

00:07:55.000 I used to work for Harvard a long time ago.

00:07:57.000 Harvard, their endowment is larger than some small countries' GDP.

00:08:02.000 Okay, it's massive.

00:08:07.000 Their fundraising operation is one of the greatest in the world.

00:08:10.000 Yeah, these are largely tax-free.

00:08:13.000 These endowments aren't touched.

00:08:14.000 And the reason why is because we want these institutions to last in perpetuity.

00:08:19.000 And also, we do have, I have to say, the greatest research institutions in the world in this country.

00:08:25.000 We have research institutions in this country, our universities, that are the envy of the world.

00:08:30.000 So we don't want to, you know, kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

00:08:36.000 Okay.

00:08:38.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:08:39.000 But we do, I'm not suggesting, although my co-author on this, Emma Joe Morris, who's wonderful, she probably will be like, yeah, you're going to take the hell out of destroy them.

00:08:50.000 I kind of am a little bit nervous about that because I do want these institutions to stay around forever.

00:08:55.000 I just basically want them to be more responsible in what they're doing here.

00:09:00.000 It is irresponsible for them to be sending, putting these kids into lifelong debt for degrees that they know are completely ridiculous in terms of jobs, in terms of actually having a career.

00:09:16.000 That's sort of my take on it.

00:09:18.000 But in terms of how much we're talking about with these endowments, you're looking in the billions and billions.

00:09:25.000 Our top universities have enough money, frankly, where they wouldn't even have to charge tuition.

00:09:31.000 Harvard, their endowment is so large that every undergrad there could go there for free, frankly.

00:09:38.000 But that's Harvard.

00:09:40.000 That's a private, by the way, private institution as well.

00:09:43.000 But at any rate, these are all things that are up for grabs.

00:09:47.000 My attitude towards the endowments is that they should be held responsible.

00:09:50.000 If they're putting out a number of young people who are completely unable to pay off these loans, they should be held responsible and they will become more responsible if you do that.

00:10:00.000 In 45 seconds, can you capture if we don't address this politically, what do you think that will mean?

00:10:05.000 It means that you're going to have a constituent, you're handing over constituents to the Democratic Party for in perpetuity.

00:10:10.000 Because, you know, when people are strapped for life with this kind of debt and they can't get out of it, when somebody says, hey, I'm going to forgive that for you, you're going to vote for them.

00:10:21.000 It's just it.

00:10:22.000 You're going to vote for them.

00:10:23.000 I mean, Charlie, if somebody says, I'm going to free you from a debt slavery, you're going to vote for them.

00:10:29.000 You're going to be like, yeah, here's my vote.

00:10:31.000 So unless the Republicans get serious about this issue, they are handing over generations of voters to the Democrats.

00:10:39.000 Rebecca, thank you so much for your commentary and really appreciate it.

00:10:43.000 Thank you so much.

00:10:46.000 Folks, so many people I know are disheartened that our country seems to have forgotten the importance of citizenship and they wonder how a strong sense of citizenship might be revived.

00:10:56.000 That's why my friends at Hillsdale College have produced a free online course on this topic, American Citizenship and Its Decline.

00:11:03.000 Taught by historian Victor Davis Hansen, the course traces the history of citizenship and explains how it is undermined in America today by open borders, by identity politics, by the administrative state, and by globalization.

00:11:15.000 Americans taking the course will gain a deeper insight about the connection between citizenship and freedom, an insight they can share with their family members, friends, and neighbors.

00:11:25.000 Hillsdale's free online courses are an important component of Hillsdale's mission to reach and teach increasing millions of people on behalf of liberty and the American way of life.

00:11:34.000 So sign up today for Hillsdale's free online course, American Citizenship and Its Decline, by visiting charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:11:42.000 That is charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:11:45.000 Start your free course today at charlie4hillsdale.com.

00:11:51.000 Tonight we will be in Omaha, Nebraska, keeping the pressure on.

00:11:54.000 Let's play Cut 48, please.

00:11:56.000 Well, let's get started.

00:11:57.000 We have time here, Nebraska.

00:11:59.000 This election can be decided by one electoral vote, and that one electoral vote may be in Nebraska.

00:12:04.000 Former President Donald Trump and Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen are calling on the state's legislature to change the way Nebraska dolls out that electoral college vote.

00:12:13.000 That is, to get it back to winner-take-all.

00:12:16.000 But despite the pressure from Republican heavy hitters, the push could fall short as the legislature draws close to a close after previously introduced bills languished unnoticed before the sudden rush of attention.

00:12:30.000 Levin continued last night on his The Great Ones program to endorse winner-take-all in Nebraska, the growing support of national figures, Donald Trump, Mark Levin, and many others.

00:12:46.000 It is a growing and growing list.

00:12:48.000 So we're going to keep you updated on that.

00:12:51.000 There's a lot happening with Ukraine, a lot happening right now in Congress, including 702 FISA reauthorization.

00:13:01.000 We plan to do an entire program on FISA tomorrow as this comes up for a debate and a vote.

00:13:09.000 There's no reason why we should reauthorize FISA, period, let alone reauthorize Pfizer, FISA, Pfizer, FIS.

00:13:16.000 It's like FISA, FISA, Pfizer, FISA without significant changes.

00:13:23.000 702 is a statute that allows the federal government to spy on people domestically without a warrant.

00:13:30.000 It's very simple.

00:13:31.000 If you want to spy on people domestically, just get a warrant.

00:13:34.000 They don't want to get a warrant.

00:13:35.000 They say, oh, well, it keeps us safe.

00:13:37.000 It is under national security.

00:13:39.000 You have lost more freedoms and liberties under the guise of national security than anything else in the last couple of decades.

00:13:50.000 The Patriot Act created these secret FISA courts that allowed the federal government the ability to spy on all of your communications, to track and monitor your internal political chatter.

00:14:02.000 The FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, this is mainly an FBI tool, and they say it is necessary for national security.

00:14:11.000 If that really is true, then go in front of a judge and get a warrant.

00:14:17.000 This document, the United States Constitution, and more specifically, the Bill of Rights, was written for a reason.

00:14:23.000 And allow me to read this.

00:14:25.000 The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.

00:14:37.000 And no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, support by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized.

00:14:48.000 We don't talk about this enough.

00:14:50.000 And in the great, the legendary 1984 book by George Orwell, he demonstrated this very well.

00:14:57.000 You cannot be free if you don't have privacy.

00:15:02.000 That privacy and freedom are linked together.

00:15:07.000 You cannot have a free society if you do not have the ability to have anonymous speech, thoughts to yourself, and not be monitored, viewed, or spied upon by the Leviathan.

00:15:22.000 The Founding Fathers understood this, which is exactly why in the greatest political document ever written, they wrote the need for you to have a natural right to your own effects, your own thoughts, your own papers, that the government does not have the right to trample in and to take your private details.

00:15:43.000 So now there is going to be a vote in front of the U.S. Congress.

00:15:47.000 What is the actual date of expiration, guys?

00:15:49.000 I think it's coming up either tomorrow or later in the week.

00:15:52.000 Speaker Johnson could get this done if he teamed up with Democrats, if he teamed up with Democrats to get this done, which I fully support.

00:16:02.000 AOC, Rashid Talib, Elon Omar.

00:16:05.000 It is time to form an alliance.

00:16:06.000 This transcends politics.

00:16:10.000 He might, you know, interestingly, They say, we don't have the votes.

00:16:13.000 We don't have the votes.

00:16:15.000 Well, in this case, you actually might have the votes.

00:16:17.000 Now, there are a fair amount of neocon Republicans and neocon Democrats that want to keep on giving the FBI the ability to spy on domestic political chatter, but this is a constitutional defining issue.

00:16:30.000 FISA was used to spy on Trump, was used to spy on allies of Trump.

00:16:34.000 It was used by the deep state regime to threaten and intimidate political adversaries and opponents.

00:16:41.000 You should not give this power to the government.

00:16:46.000 It is unconstitutional.

00:16:48.000 It's unnecessary.

00:16:49.000 It does not keep Americans safer.

00:16:51.000 Absent major changes.

00:16:53.000 FISA should not be reauthorized.

00:16:55.000 They want a 10-year reauthorization.

00:16:57.000 Take a hike.

00:16:59.000 Get a warrant.

00:17:03.000 Debt.

00:17:03.000 It keeps you tossing and turning at night.

00:17:05.000 You can't get away from it.

00:17:06.000 But the truth is, the system is designed to trap you in debt.

00:17:10.000 Insanely high interest rate credit cards and loans make it nearly impossible to pay off your debt.

00:17:15.000 There's a new way out of the debt trap, pivotal debt solutions.

00:17:18.000 Pivotal debt solutions isn't like the old school debt relief companies that string your debt out for years.

00:17:24.000 They have new aggressive strategies that can end your debt faster and easier than you thought possible.

00:17:29.000 With pivotal debt solutions, you can cut or even eliminate interest, find programs to write off your balances so you owe less, stop these threatening phone calls, and without bankruptcy and without a loan.

00:17:40.000 Bottom line is they find every solution possible to end your debt permanently.

00:17:44.000 Before you do anything, contact Pivotal Debt Solutions first to talk to them for free.

00:17:48.000 Find out how fast they can get you out of debt.

00:17:50.000 Visit zapmydebt.com.

00:17:52.000 That is zapmydebt.com, zapmydebt.com.

00:17:58.000 Email us freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:18:00.000 Joining us now is a legend, someone who I love following on X.

00:18:05.000 He is the, I think, the number one, like the thought leader on the Ukraine topic from a pro-American reasonable standpoint.

00:18:13.000 It's David Sachs.

00:18:13.000 David, welcome back to the program.

00:18:15.000 Good to be here.

00:18:15.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:18:16.000 So David, let's kind of set the table.

00:18:18.000 You do a wonderful job on the all-in podcast talking about this.

00:18:21.000 Why is this week the week where people are discussing Ukraine so much?

00:18:26.000 What is going on in Congress?

00:18:28.000 What are the stakes?

00:18:29.000 Oh, well, I mean, Speaker Mike Johnson is going to be bringing up the funding bill for Ukraine.

00:18:35.000 This is, I guess I should say, the next funding bill for the $61 billion that the Biden administration has been asking for.

00:18:40.000 This is on top of the $113 billion they previously passed.

00:18:44.000 So I think you're hearing an amping up of the rhetoric in order to try and justify this bill.

00:18:51.000 So we're being told that if you dare oppose more funding to Ukraine, then you are a Russian asset and saying that Russian propaganda has infected a portion of the GOP.

00:19:06.000 Here is Mike Turner saying this, CUT 43.

00:19:09.000 We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.

00:19:19.000 I mean, there are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which of course it is not.

00:19:26.000 Now, to the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle, which is what it is.

00:19:36.000 President Xi of China, Vladimir Putin himself have identified it as such.

00:19:40.000 We need to stand up for democracy.

00:19:41.000 We need to make certain that we know that authoritarian regimes never stop when they start in aggression.

00:19:48.000 Ukraine needs our help and assistance now, and this is a very critical time for the U.S. Congress to step up and provide that aid.

00:19:54.000 Are you parroting Russian propaganda, David Sachs?

00:19:57.000 Well, what you're hearing there is pretty par for the course.

00:19:59.000 Basically, our political discourse, especially on the Ukraine question, is just drenched in McCarthyism.

00:20:05.000 I mean, anybody who brings up any, you know, any argument that's not in favor of unlimited funding for Ukraine is basically a foreign agent.

00:20:14.000 This is the claim.

00:20:16.000 According to neocons, everything bad that happens in the world is because America wasn't involved and didn't appropriate enough money.

00:20:23.000 And therefore, we need to keep funding these causes, whether it's futile or not, whether it's likely to succeed or not.

00:20:31.000 And anyone who dares oppose that funding at any point is working for the enemy.

00:20:38.000 So this is an argument that we heard with the Iraq war, with the Afghanistan war.

00:20:44.000 I mean, these people never wanted to leave, even after 20 years of total futility.

00:20:50.000 And they cannot define what success looks like.

00:20:52.000 Let's go into Mike Turner's statement, though.

00:20:54.000 He said, it's not about NATO, even though we are told that Ukraine is potentially going to be part of NATO sometime soon.

00:21:02.000 So of course it's about NATO.

00:21:04.000 But secondly, he says that this is about democracy versus authoritarianism, which I always laugh, which is that the American foreign policy of the last 30 years has been far more adventurous than the authoritarian regimes that we criticize.

00:21:19.000 We've invaded more countries.

00:21:21.000 We've broken more societies.

00:21:23.000 Just look at Libya, look at parts of the Middle East, look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan.

00:21:27.000 And yet we're the ones that are all of a sudden the ambassador of democracy.

00:21:30.000 It's somewhat laughable, not exactly the best of that.

00:21:32.000 But are we essentially being blackmailed right now by the Zelensky regime?

00:21:38.000 Zelensky has said for a while that, and he said this, that the West should be thankful that Ukrainians in Europe have behaved well.

00:21:48.000 He said it would not be a good story for Europe if you push these people into a corner.

00:21:54.000 Are we being blackmailed by Zelensky?

00:21:56.000 There is that undertone to his comment.

00:21:58.000 It is a strange comment.

00:22:01.000 But to go back to your point about what this war is really about, this is a war for NATO expansion.

00:22:06.000 The Biden administration had the opportunity to prevent this war.

00:22:10.000 The Russians explained in 2021 very clearly that bringing Ukraine into NATO was a red line for them.

00:22:17.000 They viewed it as an existential threat to have American troops, weapons, and bases, including potentially nukes, under a NATO flag on their most vulnerable border.

00:22:27.000 They made it clear, and they've been making that clear since 2008, that that is completely unacceptable to them.

00:22:33.000 Biden had the chance to take that issue off the table.

00:22:35.000 Instead, he persisted with it.

00:22:37.000 And now we know that in the first month of the war, there was a peace deal available at Istanbul that the Zelensky regime was interested in.

00:22:44.000 And what it required was not Ukraine giving up its freedom or even giving up territory to Russia.

00:22:52.000 It merely had to agree to neutrality.

00:22:54.000 The Russians did not want the American military alliance directly on their border.

00:22:59.000 And it was the Americans and the British via Boris Johnson who conveyed the message, we do not want to make a deal with Putin.

00:23:06.000 We want to pressure Putin.

00:23:08.000 And they plowed ahead with this war.

00:23:09.000 They thought that they would win based on sanctions and arming Ukraine. 0.82

00:23:13.000 And look where it's got us.

00:23:14.000 We've already spent over $113 billion, just the United States, with the EU a lot more on top of that, in trying to prepare the Ukrainians to fight the Russians.

00:23:24.000 And they are getting destroyed.

00:23:25.000 They are losing.

00:23:26.000 And the $61 billion is more of the same.

00:23:28.000 It's not going to change the dynamic.

00:23:30.000 It's not going to change the situation on the ground.

00:23:32.000 The Ukrainians have run out of or are running out of artillery, air defense, manpower, and we don't have more to give them. 1.00

00:23:42.000 We are tapped out.

00:23:43.000 It's going to take us years to replenish our stockpiles of Patriot air defense, of stingers, of javelins, of 155 millimeter artillery shells.

00:23:52.000 We simply don't have the weaponry to give them anymore.

00:23:56.000 On top of that, Israel, our ally in the Middle East, is also clamoring for those same weapons.

00:24:02.000 We're at a point now where we need to make trade-offs.

00:24:05.000 And the $61 billion funding bill doesn't recognize that fact.

00:24:09.000 So this is basically, it's fundamentally a futile endeavor.

00:24:16.000 It's not going to prevent Ukraine from losing this war.

00:24:20.000 And the best thing we could do is to engage in diplomacy to try and reach a negotiated settlement.

00:24:25.000 And that is the one thing the Biden administration has absolutely refused to do since the beginning of this conflict.

00:24:30.000 Yeah.

00:24:30.000 And David, I want to zero in on something you said that I hope gets more attention.

00:24:34.000 It was my hope, and we haven't done this yet, that we would have hearings about the details regarding the blowing up of the peace deal in Istanbul.

00:24:42.000 My belief is this is one of the most evil and sinister things the American foreign policy regime has done in the last couple of decades, if not the most evil.

00:24:50.000 And so, David, I'm going to ask you the question that many lawmakers cannot answer that Tucker tweeted about, which is how many Ukrainians have died in this war so far?

00:25:00.000 Well, the estimates I've seen are that the Ukrainians are losing about 1,000 troops a day.

00:25:08.000 That probably includes wounded as well as KIA, so it's total casualties.

00:25:14.000 But the numbers I'm seeing are somewhere in the 20 to 30,000 range per month.

00:25:20.000 And it's hard to get exact numbers because the Ukrainian government doesn't provide them.

00:25:24.000 We actually have much better numbers for Russian casualties.

00:25:28.000 On the Russian side, there's a BBC-related outlet called MediaZona, which has been carefully compiling the number of casualties based on obituaries and social media profiles.

00:25:38.000 But there has been no analogous effort on the Ukrainian side.

00:25:41.000 And I think this is for a reason.

00:25:42.000 I mean, the Zelensky government, if it were to be honest about the number of casualties that have taken place, it would be obvious to their allies and to the Ukrainian people that they are suffering horrific casualties.

00:25:55.000 And again, I think it's going to be north of half a million already.

00:25:59.000 You know, one point on this, one further point I should say, is that in a war like this, most of the casualties are caused by artillery.

00:26:08.000 That artillery is the main cause of death and serious wounding.

00:26:14.000 Who has more artillery in this war?

00:26:16.000 Finally, the mainstream media is reporting the truth on this.

00:26:18.000 I've seen estimates that the Russians have a five-to-one artillery advantage, seven to one, 10 to 1.

00:26:24.000 So if the Ukrainians are being pounded by the Russians, again, by a, let's call it 7 or 10 to 1 artillery ratio, and that's causing most of the deaths, what do you think the casualty exchange ratio is?

00:26:36.000 So in any event, to answer your questions, I think the bottom line is at least half a million.

00:26:41.000 I mean, that's an extraordinary number, David.

00:26:44.000 How many Americans do you think can even comprehend that?

00:26:46.000 And it has kind of been this lacking component in the media coverage.

00:26:51.000 And for what?

00:26:52.000 So David, for what?

00:26:54.000 Have they moved the line significantly one way or the other?

00:26:57.000 Or is it five miles here and five miles there?

00:26:59.000 And five, this is the closest to World War I trench warfare I think we have seen in 100 years in the sense where it's basically an impasse with a ton of suffering.

00:27:08.000 Am I analyzing that correctly?

00:27:10.000 I think you're analyzing it correctly.

00:27:14.000 But also I would point out that with World War I, there was three years of this sort of stalemate trench warfare, but then the line suddenly broke.

00:27:22.000 The Germans became exhausted and they became brittle.

00:27:25.000 And then all of a sudden the Allies started making rapid advances.

00:27:28.000 I think that's the stage we're at now is that the remember, we armed the Ukrainians in 2022 for this 2023 summer counteroffensive. 0.93

00:27:40.000 And the idea here was that the Ukrainians would basically charge these Russian lines, the so-called Serebikan lines.

00:27:48.000 They would be like a blitzkrieg, and they would punch through and pierce those lines and create a land bridge to Crimea, meaning they would sever this sort of northern and southern parts of the territory that the Russians had held.

00:28:00.000 And we heard generals like Petraeus and Hodges tell us this would be successful.

00:28:04.000 And within a few days or weeks, we would see major progress.

00:28:08.000 Well, that summer counteroffensive completely failed.

00:28:11.000 It was a defeat.

00:28:12.000 The Ukrainians were absolutely destroyed. 0.90

00:28:14.000 All this equipment that we gave them ended up in smoking runes in minefields that the Russians had created. 0.97

00:28:20.000 In fact, the Ukrainians didn't even make it to the first Serovican line.

00:28:24.000 Their troops and their equipment that we had provided them was basically destroyed in the gray zone.

00:28:29.000 In any event, it completely refuted the idea that the Ukrainians could take back this territory, as desirable as that may have been. 0.81

00:28:36.000 And since then, the Russians have just been pounding Ukrainian positions.

00:28:41.000 The latest way they've been doing this is through air power.

00:28:45.000 And the Ukrainians are basically out of air defense. 0.82

00:28:48.000 Zelensky just asked for more patriots, but we don't have more to give him.

00:28:52.000 And the Russians have been dropping these enormous bombs called FABs on them, 1,500-pound bombs, 2,000, 3,000-pound bombs.

00:29:00.000 And they've been absolutely destroying the Ukrainian lines.

00:29:03.000 Think about it like shock and awe.

00:29:04.000 The Russians have air superiority.

00:29:07.000 The Ukrainians are basically out of air defense.

00:29:10.000 And the Russians can destroy pretty much any position they want. 0.93

00:29:16.000 And that's what's happening in this war.

00:29:17.000 So the Russians are pounding. 1.00

00:29:19.000 The Ukrainians are softening them up. 1.00

00:29:21.000 And I think most military experts are expecting a Russian offensive this summer in the next couple of months when the ground dries over there.

00:29:31.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:29:33.000 What an unbelievable start to 2024.

00:29:35.000 We had last month saving babies with pre-born by providing ultrasounds.

00:29:39.000 And we're doing again this year what we did last year.

00:29:41.000 We're going to stand for life because remaining silent in the face of the most radically pro-death administration is not an option.

00:29:46.000 As Sir Edmund Burke said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, and we're not going to do nothing.

00:29:52.000 Your gift to pre-born will give a girl the truth about what's happening in her body so that she can make the right choice.

00:29:58.000 $280 can save 10 babies.

00:30:00.000 $28 a month can save a baby a month all year long.

00:30:04.000 And a $15,000 gift will provide a complete ultrasound machine that will save thousands of babies for years and years to come.

00:30:10.000 And will also save moms from a lifetime of pain and regret.

00:30:13.000 Call 833-850-2229.

00:30:16.000 That's 833-850-2229.

00:30:19.000 Or click on the pre-born banner at charliekirk.com.

00:30:22.000 That is charliekirk.com and click on the pre-born banner.

00:30:24.000 Also, save moms from a lifetime of pain and regret.

00:30:27.000 I'm a donor of this organization.

00:30:28.000 They're terrific.

00:30:29.000 Go to charliekirk.com, click on the pre-born banner.

00:30:34.000 Elon Musk tweeted back in October of 2022, Ukraine-Russia peace, redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision.

00:30:42.000 Russia leaves, if that is the will of the people.

00:30:44.000 Crimea, formerly part of Russia, as it has been since 1783, until Khrushchev's mistake.

00:30:49.000 Water supply to Crimea assured, and Ukraine remains neutral.

00:30:53.000 The people did not like this at the time, David, but Elon then said this is highly likely the outcome in the end.

00:30:58.000 Just a question of how many die before then.

00:31:00.000 David, your reaction.

00:31:01.000 Well, the outcome is going to be much worse than what Elon proposed because Ukraine now is going to lose all of the territory that he mentioned.

00:31:11.000 It's not only going to lose the Donbass, it's going to lose the four territories that Russia has already annexed.

00:31:16.000 And this war is not over yet, and the Russians are gaining ground. 0.94

00:31:20.000 So, you know, what we could end up with here is a landlocked rump state where Ukraine loses access to the Black Sea.

00:31:29.000 It's, again, over the, like I said, last year and a half since he posted that, they've lost something like 10 million people, women and children who have fled the country and may never come back.

00:31:40.000 They've lost something like half a million men, casualties in this war.

00:31:44.000 So since Elon posted his poll, things have only gotten much worse for Ukraine.

00:31:49.000 And you'll remember that no less a figure than Zelensky himself denounced Elon's proposal and called it pro-Russian.

00:31:56.000 But the reality is that was the best deal the Ukrainians were ever going to see. 0.99

00:32:01.000 So David, I got in a discussion or a debate, I should say, with, let's say, a regime ruling class member who came to me and he was very upset with my stance on Ukraine.

00:32:11.000 And he said, it's the most important thing happening in the world.

00:32:13.000 And he says, we can't give Putin a win.

00:32:16.000 We can't give Putin a win.

00:32:19.000 I wasn't even sure how to respond to that.

00:32:21.000 I just kind of more listened.

00:32:22.000 And this is an older gentleman.

00:32:23.000 You would know the name, very wealthy, very influential, doesn't like my stance on this.

00:32:28.000 And I said, well, what do you mean, give him a win?

00:32:31.000 I said, he's going to get Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. 0.66

00:32:33.000 And then all of a sudden, the insanity revealed itself.

00:32:36.000 He said, oh, no, no, no.

00:32:37.000 We can't let him have Crimea either. 0.94

00:32:40.000 David, I mean, I just, it's hard to even grapple with an uneducated opinion.

00:32:44.000 Again, I'm not like a foreign policy expert, but I mean, you can't, you can barely win a turf war right now over five miles.

00:32:51.000 You're not going to liberate Crimea.

00:32:52.000 David, your thoughts?

00:32:53.000 Right.

00:32:54.000 That's right.

00:32:55.000 It's completely futile.

00:32:56.000 I mean, this is what the summer counteroffensive was all about, was basically creating a land bridge to Crimea, and they would isolate Crimea and cut it off from the Russians. 0.54

00:33:02.000 And this is why they keep trying to bomb that Kerch bridge is they think they're going to isolate and cut off Crimea.

00:33:07.000 It's an absolute obsession of the neocons and the Zelensky regime to try and retake Crimea.

00:33:13.000 I think there's a sort of a history to this idea.

00:33:17.000 The Russians have a very important naval base at Sevastopol within Crimea.

00:33:22.000 It's the home of the Black Sea fleet.

00:33:25.000 It's been owned by the Russians since 1783.

00:33:28.000 Catherine the Great established it.

00:33:30.000 And it is basically the home of their power in the Black Sea.

00:33:35.000 And I think some of these people have had, on the neocon side, have had this crazy idea that if Ukraine can retake Crimea, they'll kick the Russians out.

00:33:46.000 And then we will be able to raise a NATO flag over Sevastopol.

00:33:52.000 And instead of being owned by the Russians, the Black Sea will now become a NATO lake. 0.60

00:33:58.000 I mean, this is a crazy idea, but it's been written about by neocon think tanks like ISW.

00:34:05.000 So I think exactly.

00:34:07.000 Yes.

00:34:07.000 Sorry to interrupt.

00:34:09.000 Yeah.

00:34:09.000 So I think this is part of their fanaticism about Crimea.

00:34:12.000 Of course, it's completely unrealistic.

00:34:14.000 I think the other thing one could say about this is why does NATO need to take the Black Sea?

00:34:20.000 The Russians consider this absolutely existential for them.

00:34:23.000 It's existential for their security to hold on to Crimea, to hold on to Sevastopol, and to maintain their naval power in the Black Sea.

00:34:31.000 We do not need to get into World War III over this.

00:34:35.000 It's never been important to American security or even to NATO security for us to have this presence in the Black Sea.

00:34:44.000 Elon Musk, I think, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for thwarting the Ukrainian sabotage.

00:34:50.000 Can you walk our audience through that there was some sort of like a Starlink-assisted drone attack that wanted to happen in Crimea?

00:34:56.000 It very well could have prevented a nuclear war.

00:34:58.000 Yeah, this is in the Walter Isaacson book is that Elon got a call in the middle of the night from Ukrainian authorities who were demanding that Elon turn on Starlink that they were using over Crimea and over these sort of Russian areas.

00:35:15.000 And again, Crimea has been under Russian control since 2014.

00:35:18.000 And Elon refused to do it because he felt like this could create war three.

00:35:23.000 And this is not the purpose of Starlink.

00:35:25.000 Starlink was never meant to be a military system.

00:35:27.000 He donated it to them for humanitarian purposes.

00:35:30.000 At the same time, Elon said that if he had received a call from the American president, then he would have done it.

00:35:36.000 But he got a call in the middle of the night from Ukrainian authorities telling him to do this highly risky thing.

00:35:40.000 And I hope people understand that, that Elon very well, if he didn't, if Elon would have been agreeable to the powers to be, we could have seen a nuclear war.

00:35:48.000 It's not an exaggeration.

00:35:50.000 Elon's an American citizen and SpaceX was Jones Starlink's an American company.

00:35:54.000 You know, he doesn't respond to the military chain of command of Ukraine.

00:35:57.000 He said he would be responsive to the American president.

00:36:01.000 If he had gotten a call from the White House, he would have done it as a patriotic American.

00:36:04.000 That's not what happened.

00:36:05.000 And he was lambasted for this.

00:36:07.000 I guess it's also worth pointing out that the only reason why the Ukrainians were using Starlink is because Elon donated to them at the beginning of the war.

00:36:15.000 And somehow they thought they were entitled to essentially unlimited use, including using Starlink as a weapon, which was not part of the deal.

00:36:23.000 It was not part of the terms of service.

00:36:24.000 If I can make just one final point.

00:36:26.000 The terms of service.

00:36:28.000 Yeah, I mean, if I can make just one final point on Crimea, something like 80% of the people living in Crimea are ethnic Russians and want to be part of Russia.

00:36:38.000 And they have voted that way.

00:36:40.000 And in addition to that, even if you think somehow the elections are rigged, polling by Western firms has shown that they want to be part of Russia.

00:36:49.000 What happened to the principle of self-determination?

00:36:51.000 Why are we so hell-bent on trying to pry away this territory?

00:36:56.000 Because that, hold on, neocons never want the will of the people to ever be factored in.

00:37:02.000 It's we know better.

00:37:04.000 It doesn't matter that, yes, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, but generally popular and cut three warring factions, the Sunni, the Shia, and the Kurds, living in relative harmony.

00:37:14.000 It doesn't matter that Qaddafi was actually rather well liked in Libya, albeit not a good person.

00:37:20.000 The neocons don't care about self-determination.

00:37:24.000 And I think that's the answer to your question is that the neocon project is hubris and pride to parachute in to another country and tell them how to live their life. 0.66

00:37:34.000 It's an imperial project that doesn't care about the wishes of the citizens who actually live in these places.

00:37:40.000 The majority of people living in Donbass or living in Crimea want to go with Russia.

00:37:45.000 What business is it of ours to tell them that that should not happen?

00:37:49.000 It's well said.

00:37:50.000 David, thank you so much for joining us today.

00:37:51.000 Hope to have you on again soon.

00:37:52.000 Thank you.

00:37:55.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:37:57.000 Everybody, email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.

00:37:59.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

00:38:04.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 09, 2024

The Ukraine Well is All Tapped Out

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript