The Charlie Kirk Show - February 16, 2023


The World's Longest Pregnant Pause with Steve Cortes and Col. Douglas MacGregor


Episode Stats


Length

35 minutes

Words per minute

173.98305

Word count

6,159

Sentence count

472

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

16

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us to talk about what is really going on in Ukraine, and then we talk about the vaccine with Steve Cortez, and one of the more bizarre pregnant pauses in recent memory when it comes to interviews.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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.
00:00:00.000 Today, the Charlie Kirk Show, Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us to talk about what is really going on in Ukraine.
00:00:07.000 And then we talk about the vaccine with Steve Cortez and one of the more, let's just say, bizarre pregnant pauses in recent memory when it comes to interviews.
00:00:22.000 I would love your theories.
00:00:23.000 Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:25.000 Support our program, charliekirk.com/slash support.
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00:00:34.000 I want to name some of you off.
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00:00:51.000 I'm sorry, Emily from Arlington Heights, Illinois.
00:00:53.000 Not Emile, but I got the city right.
00:00:56.000 And Christina from Alabama and many others.
00:00:58.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
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00:01:01.000 And leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcast.
00:01:04.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:01:05.000 Here, we go.
00:01:06.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:01:08.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:01:10.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:01:13.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:01:16.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:01:17.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:01:18.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
00:01:26.000 Turning point USA. 0.65
00:01:27.000 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.
00:01:36.000 That's why we are here.
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00:01:51.000 Joining us now is Steve Cortez.
00:01:53.000 Steve, welcome to the program.
00:01:54.000 Steve, I caught you on War Room this morning with Bannon, and I wanted to just play this piece of tape here because I thought your take was so smart with DeMar Hamlin.
00:02:04.000 And in some ways, I'm kind of front and center of this entire story because I tweeted basically as it happened because I was watching it live on Monday Night Football.
00:02:14.000 People might not remember this was the New Year's Day observed when it happened.
00:02:19.000 This was right after the Rose Bowl, and it was airing on ABC, which is rare for Monday Night Football.
00:02:25.000 So that ABC took it as network programming in addition to ESPN.
00:02:29.000 So there were tons of viewers, and DeMar Hamlin collapsed.
00:02:33.000 And I tweeted out, I want to make sure the language is correct.
00:02:36.000 You know, this is a tragic site that is happening far too often.
00:02:39.000 Athletes dropping suddenly and the world goes nuts. 0.93
00:02:41.000 And Adam Kinzinger calls me human trash and just really got out of control. 0.84
00:02:46.000 And again, I never said the word vaccine and people thought I did.
00:02:49.000 Okay, but here's, I saw this interview with Michael Strahan, and I really respect Michael Strahan.
00:02:54.000 And I think he's a really fun person, but he was obviously out of his league here as soon as he was getting into kind of the third rail of politics where he didn't ask the appropriate follow-up question.
00:03:05.000 But you could see that someone didn't necessarily coach DeMar Hamlin.
00:03:08.000 I think they just assumed that these answers would be kind of boring and, you know, simple.
00:03:13.000 But the pregnant pause here, you could take a nap, fly to Europe, and return in the time it took for DeMar Hamlin to answer this question, PlayCut 66.
00:03:23.000 You're 24, peak physical condition.
00:03:26.000 Could run circled around me right now.
00:03:31.000 How did Doctor describe what happened to you?
00:03:47.000 That's something I want to stay away from.
00:03:50.000 I want to stay away from that.
00:03:52.000 Right.
00:03:52.000 Steve, how should we think about this?
00:03:54.000 Well, first of all, it's kind of hard to watch that clip, Charlie, isn't it?
00:03:58.000 I mean, the first time I saw it, it looked so awkward that I figured it was doctored.
00:04:03.000 So I made sure, and I, by the way, encourage everybody in the audience to do the same.
00:04:06.000 If something seems almost unbelievable, you know, check it out.
00:04:09.000 There's so many fakes online.
00:04:10.000 But the first time I saw it, I said, oh, that's got to be doctored.
00:04:12.000 Let me look at the original.
00:04:13.000 I did from GMA from Good Morning America.
00:04:16.000 No, that is in fact authentic.
00:04:18.000 Look, I don't know what's going on in his head.
00:04:20.000 And let me be clear: I'm not in any sense blaming DeMar Hamlin, who underwent a personal tragedy, a medical tragedy that he seems to be rallying from with gusto.
00:04:30.000 God bless him.
00:04:31.000 We don't know what kind of pressures are upon him, but we as a country and certainly NFL fans have a very significant interest, a material interest, right?
00:04:31.000 Okay.
00:04:42.000 Not just voyeurism, not just sort of morbid curiosity, a real interest in knowing what happened to him.
00:04:48.000 Because a 25-year-old, supremely fit athlete engaged in a pretty routine tackle by NFL standards.
00:04:56.000 That's correct.
00:04:57.000 Goes into massive cardiac arrest before, as you pointed out correctly, Charlie, before a giant national TV audience.
00:05:04.000 Okay.
00:05:05.000 And we're not supposed to ask the questions about what caused this.
00:05:09.000 And Michael Strahan asked the question, didn't get a satisfactory answer.
00:05:12.000 By the way, again, I don't want to put this on DeMar Hamlin.
00:05:14.000 The NFL owes us answers.
00:05:17.000 I think that the media owes us answers.
00:05:19.000 What to me is appalling is the total lack of media curiosity.
00:05:25.000 Michael Strahan didn't follow up, but more importantly, no one in the corporate media has followed up.
00:05:30.000 Why?
00:05:31.000 Well, I believe it's because they're scared of where the answers might lead.
00:05:35.000 And that doesn't mean, Charlie, I want to be clear here and careful.
00:05:38.000 I'm not saying that it was vaccine related, but a lot of people have suspicions that it is.
00:05:42.000 But wherever the answers and the investigation leads, we need to know why a man, very, very strong man, at the peak of his physical abilities, would go into that kind of cardiac arrest where he would have died in all likelihood had there not been expert medical care, thank God, right there to care for him.
00:06:03.000 You pinpointed the difficulty right now for the NFL.
00:06:08.000 So if they actually get pressure on this, which they won't, this is going to get memory hold and this is going to be forgotten.
00:06:13.000 The NFL, one of their talking points is like, well, you know, this actually happens all the time.
00:06:17.000 Like, well, it does?
00:06:19.000 Then NFL's not.
00:06:20.000 The football's not as safe as you say it is.
00:06:20.000 Wait, wait, hold on.
00:06:22.000 So they can't say that.
00:06:23.000 And so originally they said, well, it's a freak incident.
00:06:26.000 And that doesn't make any sense for a variety of different reasons.
00:06:30.000 And they can't say that it was the mRNA shot.
00:06:33.000 They can't say that.
00:06:34.000 But Steve, we're starting to see this is becoming too big to cover up, right?
00:06:38.000 No, wait, we had too big to fail.
00:06:41.000 This is too big to cover up.
00:06:42.000 This is caught on a hot mic.
00:06:44.000 World Series poker player Aaron Dusick caught on a hot mic.
00:06:48.000 I wish I never got the vaccine.
00:06:49.000 I've been having chest pains ever since I had that thing.
00:06:51.000 And remember, Nancy Mace last week said the same thing.
00:06:54.000 Congressman, memory hold, media didn't cover it. 0.76
00:06:56.000 Play cut 53.
00:06:59.000 I wish they would have never got the vaccine.
00:07:01.000 What's that?
00:07:02.000 I wish I never would have got the vaccine.
00:07:04.000 I never did.
00:07:04.000 I've been mad and chest pain ever since I had that thing.
00:07:07.000 Yeah.
00:07:07.000 Really?
00:07:08.000 Still, you're still having it?
00:07:09.000 Yeah, every time to time.
00:07:10.000 They're saying that you get hardens arteries.
00:07:13.000 Yeah.
00:07:14.000 So I need to go get it checked out.
00:07:15.000 I mean, but ever since, dude, it's just, that's horrible.
00:07:18.000 It's been weird.
00:07:19.000 I held out.
00:07:20.000 I held out until like a month ago, not even a month ago.
00:07:23.000 Why did you decide to get it all?
00:07:23.000 Is that right?
00:07:24.000 Someone to come play the World Truth?
00:07:26.000 They didn't have that guy like this right now.
00:07:28.000 Pardon me?
00:07:28.000 They didn't have that.
00:07:31.000 That other guy sounds Canadian.
00:07:33.000 I think he's saying he couldn't get to wherever they're having the poker game.
00:07:33.000 So I'm imagining.
00:07:36.000 Steve, your thoughts.
00:07:38.000 No, listen.
00:07:38.000 Yeah.
00:07:39.000 Here's the, I think all of us know somebody in our lives, right, who will tell a similar tale.
00:07:44.000 Now, that is anecdotal.
00:07:46.000 It's not proven yet that it's the vaccine, but there are valid reasons to be incredibly suspicious and incredibly skeptical.
00:07:52.000 And to this point of media and curiosity, you know what's not anecdotal?
00:07:56.000 is proven on the macro basis, Charlie, is the stubborn prevalence of excess deaths.
00:08:03.000 Meaning every single week in America in recent months, there are excess deaths over what would be forecasted.
00:08:10.000 And you can forecast deaths in America with actuarial precision in normal times.
00:08:15.000 Even taking aside COVID deaths, though, there are several thousand excess deaths per week.
00:08:21.000 Now, does that mean it's the vax?
00:08:23.000 No, it does not.
00:08:24.000 But it does mean that something incredibly unusual is going on outside of people who are suffering from COVID itself.
00:08:31.000 But again, in normal times, these are anything but normal, media would be all over the story trying to figure out what is causing people to drop dead at an alarming and consistent and stubborn rate.
00:08:43.000 What is going on here?
00:08:44.000 What caused DeMar Hamlin to collapse and nearly die in front of the nation and national television?
00:08:48.000 The incuriosity, I would argue, arises from a complete conflict of interest because for one thing, corporate media and especially sports media, the last thing they want to do is antagonize the NFL, right?
00:09:00.000 Which is one of the last live events that people really tune into TV for.
00:09:05.000 So they certainly don't want to antagonize the NFL.
00:09:08.000 I would also argue they certainly don't want to antagonize big pharma, one of the biggest advertisers on corporate media, particularly the news shows, if you notice, they're all right Pfizer constantly.
00:09:18.000 And then also, most of all, just in the macro sense, they don't want to disturb the narrative.
00:09:23.000 And the narrative is all of these public health mandates and tyrannies that were inflicted upon the country, they were all done because of science and they're good for you.
00:09:31.000 And we can't question any of that.
00:09:33.000 You got to wonder why DeMar Hamlin took 10 seconds to answer a very simple question.
00:09:38.000 Was he stewing on something?
00:09:39.000 Does he have a personal theory?
00:09:40.000 Does he have regret?
00:09:42.000 We'll never know because Michael Strahan didn't ask the obvious question like, dude, what?
00:09:47.000 Can you kind of like fill me in here?
00:09:49.000 Or maybe he did and it was edited.
00:09:52.000 Steve, have you ever, have you lived through an issue similar to this where the evidence is becoming so overwhelming and there is just a repeated media blackout?
00:10:03.000 Pfizer spent $110 million on television advertisements with the major networks last year, $110 million.
00:10:11.000 They also donate to candidates.
00:10:12.000 They get a lot of government money.
00:10:14.000 People sit on these boards.
00:10:16.000 But is this story, and I mentioned earlier, do you think it's becoming too big to cover up?
00:10:21.000 I hope it is, right?
00:10:22.000 Because it's too important for the American people.
00:10:24.000 And by the way, to that point about the massive advertising from big pharma, remember that these big pharma companies, they can't sell directly to consumers, right?
00:10:32.000 So they're not really paying so much to reach the consumer because these are all prescription-based.
00:10:37.000 What they are paying for is they're currying favor with these gatekeepers, with these news organizations.
00:10:43.000 I firmly believe that is the point of the massive amount of advertising that they do.
00:10:49.000 You know, but look, you know, as you alluded to earlier, the NFL is not just big pharma.
00:10:53.000 The NFL has a problem here too, because either it owes the public, it owes its fans an explanation of what happened to DeMar Hamlin, or if it says, hey, this is just a consequence of playing football.
00:11:04.000 We shouldn't be playing football.
00:11:04.000 Well, guess what?
00:11:06.000 Okay.
00:11:07.000 If it's that dangerous that a routine tackle can send a supremely fit athlete into a near-death experience, then football is not safe.
00:11:15.000 Now I think football is fine.
00:11:16.000 All right.
00:11:17.000 I'm a massive football fan.
00:11:18.000 I loathe the NFL, but I love football.
00:11:21.000 But more importantly, whether you're a sports fan or not, for all of society, this issue is not going away.
00:11:26.000 And let me give you a piece of news that folks out there may not be aware of.
00:11:29.000 The CDC just made it official, the committee voted weeks ago, but they just made it official a few days ago that the mRNA treatment, it's not really a vaccine, but what we call the vaccine is now on the official recommended list for children in the United States.
00:11:45.000 Now, you might say to yourself, oh, well, it's just a recommendation.
00:11:48.000 Does that impact me?
00:11:49.000 Yes, it's going to, especially in blue states and in blue jurisdictions, because that list from the CDC is not a recommendation to those governors and to those school districts and to those mayors.
00:11:59.000 It might as well be a papal bull.
00:12:01.000 Okay.
00:12:02.000 It is absolutely going to be the excuse they need to insist to mandate this vaccine for your children.
00:12:11.000 Believe me, that is coming your way.
00:12:13.000 Even though children are not statistically vulnerable to the dire effects of this virus, even though even if the vaccine is perfectly safe, it still shouldn't be administered to children.
00:12:22.000 The CDC, nonetheless, I believe, bowed to the pressure of big pharma and has officially added it to the vaccination schedule for children.
00:12:30.000 So this issue is hardly going away.
00:12:32.000 No, it's on the official vaccination schedule.
00:12:35.000 And praise God, we have a great pediatrician that is not forcing it.
00:12:40.000 What really I hear from parents all the time, they ask me, Charlie, who's your pediatrician?
00:12:43.000 All this.
00:12:44.000 And they say, our pediatrician makes us feel so bad and won't treat our six-month-old if we don't get every single vaccine when they want them on the schedule.
00:12:56.000 And you could space them out.
00:12:59.000 You could choose different ones.
00:13:01.000 But now it's on the official CDC vaccination schedule.
00:13:07.000 By the way, I want to clarify what I said.
00:13:08.000 The $118 million, that was just on the NFL.
00:13:12.000 That was not their cumulative ad budget.
00:13:14.000 That is just the National Football League ad spend, $118 million that Pfizer spent, $118 million.
00:13:22.000 They spend $2 billion on marketing.
00:13:25.000 It's so smart.
00:13:26.000 So they're basically, they have flawed products that variable might be doing damage to people.
00:13:32.000 You cannot sue them because they're basically indemnified thanks to Congress that passed a law in the 90s, one of the biggest mistakes Reagan ever made, which protected vaccine companies and manufacturers from being sued, happened in the 1980s.
00:13:46.000 And then they buy off every single major news outlet and the media conglomerates with highly priced advertisement.
00:13:54.000 So they have a business interest not to cover them.
00:13:58.000 Right.
00:13:59.000 No, and listen, and that is the reality.
00:14:01.000 So, you know, again, if you want to explain this complacency, this staggering incuriosity from corporate media, you know, look at where their incentives are.
00:14:11.000 They don't want to antagonize the NFL.
00:14:13.000 They don't want to antagonize big pharma.
00:14:16.000 They do want to support Joe Biden.
00:14:18.000 They want to support Anthony Fauci.
00:14:20.000 By the way, to circle back to the DeMar Hamlin issue and Anthony Fauci, remember that even though Anthony Fauci has never treated DeMar Hamlin, to my knowledge, he's never met DeMar Hamlin.
00:14:30.000 He went on national television after that incident and he declared definitively on CBS News.
00:14:35.000 I put the post up on my social media.
00:14:37.000 He declared definitively that it was comodiocortis, which became suddenly a common phrase that Americans had never heard of and suddenly knew.
00:14:44.000 But here's the problem.
00:14:45.000 If you look into it, that explanation doesn't hold water at all, that diagnosis, because comodiocortis is an extremely rare problem that results generally from teenage boys most of the time who are underdeveloped, don't have really strong chest bones and muscles yet, and take a shot from a high-speed projectile, often a baseball, to the chest, and it can cause massive cardiac arrest.
00:15:09.000 None of that happened.
00:15:10.000 None of that is the case with DeMar Hamlin.
00:15:12.000 Steve Cortez, check out his sub stack.
00:15:14.000 He does a great job, Steve.
00:15:15.000 Thank you so much.
00:15:16.000 You bet.
00:15:16.000 Thank you.
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00:17:57.000 Joining us now is Colonel Douglas McGregor.
00:18:00.000 Colonel, welcome back to the program.
00:18:02.000 Love having you on and our audience is just enthusiastic every time you come on because you're clear and also contrarian to the nonsense that we see on television from the military industrial complex.
00:18:12.000 What is the latest in Ukraine?
00:18:14.000 Is it true that Russia is likely planning a blitz or a major offensive in the coming weeks?
00:18:21.000 Well, I think the major offensive, Charlie, has actually already begun.
00:18:26.000 It's not beginning the way we would begin an offensive.
00:18:29.000 One of the things the Russians made explicitly clear is that they were not interested in this shock and awe business.
00:18:36.000 That's not how they do business.
00:18:38.000 So what we're watching at the moment are a couple of things that your audience needs to know.
00:18:43.000 First of all, the numbers of artillery strikes, rockets, missiles, hardshell artillery has risen dramatically.
00:18:50.000 Most of it, not all of it, but most of it is focused on destroying air defense, air defense radars, air defense capabilities.
00:18:59.000 And that is logical because once you've stripped away the air defense, then there is nothing to interfere with your own close air support as well as all your other standoff attack, missile, and rocket systems.
00:19:11.000 Secondly, they've marshaled an enormous number of forces down in the south of Ukraine on the east side of the Dnieper River and moving from left to right from Zaborosha, which is near the river, over to Bakhmut, which everybody's heard a great deal about, and then up to a place called Lima, near IMAN, close to the Oxal River.
00:19:35.000 That's about a four, three, four hundred kilometer stretch.
00:19:40.000 And they have marshaled roughly 250 to 300,000 troops there.
00:19:45.000 And then in the western part of Russia, another 100,000.
00:19:49.000 And what we're seeing is an incremental rollout of these forces.
00:19:53.000 These are many of them mobilized forces.
00:19:56.000 They are led by combat experienced commanders.
00:19:58.000 But many of these troops have not seen combat to this point.
00:20:02.000 And they're being positioned to break through and then head north and west to essentially recapture all of eastern Ukraine.
00:20:13.000 Do you think it's likely that Russia will be able to accomplish that before the mud season kicks in? 0.99
00:20:21.000 I think it's possible.
00:20:23.000 I think they're less concerned about the mud season at this point, simply because once you are north of the line that I just described, it's fairly open rolling terrain, which makes it easier for you to control what moves in it.
00:20:39.000 You have no difficulty finding targets that you want to destroy, and your forces don't have much trouble moving.
00:20:46.000 If they were still down in the Donbas to the south, then that would be a larger consideration.
00:20:52.000 So I would say certainly within the next 30 to 60 days, I would expect what I just described to happen.
00:20:57.000 What do you think is Russia's overall goal with the war at this point?
00:21:01.000 It seems that they're willing to continue to escalate this, send more troops.
00:21:07.000 And so what does success look like right now for the Kremlin?
00:21:11.000 Well, I think success for the Kremlin would be an end to this war, to be blunt.
00:21:15.000 I think both the Russian people and the government would like to see this thing end.
00:21:19.000 They'd like to negotiate an end to it, but they're certainly not going to walk into a negotiation where they're told, well, you have to accept guilt, quote unquote, for the war, which they really didn't start.
00:21:31.000 And then they're not going to give up all the terrain that they've already seized, which was largely occupied by Russians. 0.92
00:21:38.000 Remember, their initial demands, if you will, were pretty modest.
00:21:42.000 You give these two republics in the Far East autonomy.
00:21:47.000 You give neutrality to Ukraine and ultimately recognize that Crimea is ours.
00:21:53.000 They're not going to fall back on those now.
00:21:54.000 They're going to demand neutrality for whatever form of a Ukrainian state exists, but it's going to be significantly reduced in size in a territorial sense.
00:22:05.000 The problem is that we don't seem to be interested in negotiating.
00:22:08.000 And so the other fallback position for the Russians, and a gentleman just came back from Moscow told me this very recently.
00:22:16.000 The Russians are prepared for a 30-month war with us. 0.98
00:22:20.000 In other words, they've amassed all the ammunition, the equipment, and the capabilities they need to fight us for two and a half years.
00:22:28.000 They don't want to, but they're prepared for it.
00:22:31.000 Can you just go a little deeper on that, on how Russia views war versus how the West views war, views war?
00:22:39.000 They have a different philosophy.
00:22:40.000 They're willing to sacrifice greater numbers.
00:22:43.000 They are willing to engage in a war of attrition.
00:22:46.000 This is a concept that a lot of Westerners, it's foreign to us.
00:22:50.000 Well, I think that's misleading, Charlie, to be frank.
00:22:53.000 I think they've been very economical with Russian lives. 0.77
00:22:56.000 All of the commanders have tried to maximize the use of standoff firepower, missiles, rockets, artillery, to do as much damage as possible.
00:23:07.000 And they've been very successful.
00:23:08.000 75% of Ukrainian casualties have been caused by those systems.
00:23:13.000 So they have had great success in restricting the exposure of their troops to close combat.
00:23:22.000 Now, that won't be possible in the future once the breakout occurs.
00:23:25.000 It'll be more difficult.
00:23:27.000 But the Russians have never taken the heavy casualties that the West insists they've sustained. 0.63
00:23:32.000 The West is running around with some crazy number of 200,000 casualties, pure nonsense.
00:23:37.000 I'd be surprised if they had 50,000 to 60,000 casualties and more than 20,000 dead.
00:23:43.000 It's the Ukrainians that have suffered terribly.
00:23:46.000 So I think on the one hand, yes, attrition is part of this, but the attrition is focused on the Ukrainians.
00:23:54.000 And the maneuver will follow the attrition.
00:23:56.000 Once it becomes clear that the Ukrainians are completely broken, and they're pretty close to it right now, and they fall apart, then the maneuver will commence. 0.98
00:24:05.000 Now, how far will they go?
00:24:07.000 If they have to, they'll go all the way to the Polish border, all the way to Moldova, all the way to the Romanian border. 0.91
00:24:12.000 I don't think they want to.
00:24:14.000 They never did.
00:24:16.000 This whole thing has blown up to an extent that they did not anticipate.
00:24:21.000 And they're hopeful, I'm sure, that we will wake up and decide this is a bad idea.
00:24:27.000 There's no evidence for that, Charlie.
00:24:28.000 And I think the ball is ultimately in the court of the Europeans. 0.97
00:24:33.000 Excuse me.
00:24:37.000 Yeah, and thank you for clarifying and correcting me because, quite honestly, I hear repeatedly from people, it's just a matter of Russia throwing enough people at the front line.
00:24:48.000 For example, you know, this is General Milley.
00:24:52.000 I'd like to have you respond to this.
00:24:53.000 Cut 38.
00:24:54.000 Russia has the numbers.
00:24:55.000 They have the numbers several hundred thousand.
00:24:57.000 And then he continues, play cut 38.
00:24:59.000 They are attacking in the Donbass right now.
00:25:02.000 Their progress is slow.
00:25:03.000 It's a war of attrition.
00:25:04.000 They're taking heavy casualties.
00:25:05.000 Their leadership and morale is not great.
00:25:08.000 And they're struggling mightily.
00:25:10.000 However, they do have numbers.
00:25:12.000 And as you know, President Putin did a call-up of several hundred thousand, and those folks have been arriving on the battlefield.
00:25:20.000 So they do have numbers.
00:25:22.000 And whether or not they're successful in oppressing the fight, that remains to be seen.
00:25:27.000 But that fight has been going on.
00:25:29.000 What is your reaction to General Milley?
00:25:32.000 Everything that Milley said should be applied to the Ukrainians, not the Russians.
00:25:38.000 We estimate that as many as a million Ukrainians have been shoved in front of the Russians down in the Donbass.
00:25:46.000 Remember, they started with a regular army of about 450,000 with 200,000 trained reserves.
00:25:54.000 Most of that is either killed or wounded.
00:25:57.000 And then they've replaced them with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, frankly, who had little or no training and were forced into the front lines. 0.67
00:26:04.000 So everything he said applies to the Ukrainian side, not the Russian.
00:26:08.000 Russian morale is very good.
00:26:10.000 Russians are not suffering terribly at all.
00:26:13.000 All you have to do is look at the stuff that is posted online and you find plenty of confirmation for the good health and high morale of the Russians.
00:26:22.000 But the Russians naturally want an end to this.
00:26:24.000 That's true.
00:26:25.000 Every soldier who has to fight wants the war to end.
00:26:31.000 And you hear the opposite in the Western media repeatedly.
00:26:35.000 I want to play this here: 41.
00:26:38.000 NATO says Putin is not preparing for peace.
00:26:40.000 He's launching new offensives.
00:26:42.000 But he says the training of the Russians is not the same level as the Ukrainian forces.
00:26:46.000 When I heard this, I just failed to believe that somehow the Russian army is not as adequately trained as the Ukrainians.
00:26:56.000 It just doesn't make any sense.
00:26:57.000 It defies logic.
00:26:58.000 PlayCut 41.
00:27:00.000 Almost one year since the invasion, President Putin is not preparing for peace.
00:27:05.000 He's launching new offensives.
00:27:08.000 So we must continue to provide Ukraine with what it needs to win.
00:27:12.000 What Russia lacks in quality, they try to compensate in quantity. 0.96
00:27:18.000 The training doesn't have the same level as the Ukrainian forces, but they have more forces.
00:27:26.000 And the Russians are willing to send in those forces and take a higher number of casualties.
00:27:33.000 Colonel, your reaction.
00:27:36.000 This is a material that could be lifted from any history book about the Soviet army in 1942, 43, 44, where they very definitely did what Mr. Stoltenberg describes.
00:27:48.000 Doesn't apply today, not at all.
00:27:50.000 In fact, quite the opposite.
00:27:52.000 The second point is Mr. Putin cannot prepare for peace.
00:27:58.000 I'm sure that he would prefer to do so, as everybody involved in this would.
00:28:03.000 The problem is that we continue to promise more and more equipment, more ammunition, more tanks, better tanks, fighter aircraft, you name it, telling the Ukrainians to fight on to the bitter end. 0.88
00:28:16.000 Under those circumstances, what do you expect the Russians to do?
00:28:19.000 The Russians are doing what they know they have to do.
00:28:21.000 They have to destroy the Ukrainian armed forces.
00:28:24.000 That's what they're getting ready to complete right now.
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00:29:42.000 How do you think the West is going to respond if and when Russia is able to take more territory?
00:29:48.000 I think the West will scream and holler, but ultimately do nothing.
00:29:54.000 They understand the risks are enormous.
00:29:56.000 If we interfere with ground forces, air forces in the war in Ukraine, we will end up in a direct confrontation with Russia.
00:30:05.000 No one in the Department of Defense wants that, and everyone in the Department of Defense has warned the president we're not prepared for that confrontation.
00:30:13.000 That's fascinating.
00:30:14.000 I hope you're right, Colonel.
00:30:16.000 I hope that the West backs off and doesn't want to continue to escalate this.
00:30:22.000 I've not seen any evidence of that so far.
00:30:24.000 It seems that we're willing to send $100 billion in sophisticated armaments and weaponry.
00:30:31.000 And I sure hope that there's some sort of negotiated peace settlement and ceasefire.
00:30:36.000 What would a peace structure look like and who could negotiate that?
00:30:40.000 The first thing is there can be no preconditions to peace talks.
00:30:44.000 In other words, we've got to sit down with the Russians without any demands of any kind.
00:30:50.000 We've got to listen to them.
00:30:51.000 Then we have to respond and hammer out something that will ultimately serve everyone's interests.
00:30:58.000 And no one is going to come out of this with everything that they want.
00:31:01.000 One thing is absolutely certain, and that is that we have to sign up for neutrality for Ukraine.
00:31:09.000 That's absolutely non-negotiable.
00:31:12.000 And it's in our interest, Charlie, to do that.
00:31:15.000 A neutral Ukraine between Russia and NATO is a wonderful buffer that both sides can appreciate.
00:31:23.000 But other than that, when it comes to territory, that's going to be a give and take.
00:31:27.000 It's going to be determined, I suspect, in large part, by where the Russian forces are when we finally decide to negotiate.
00:31:34.000 And of course, that's a bad way to do business on our side because we have to expect that the Russians will ultimately roll everything up to the Nieper River. 0.87
00:31:44.000 I'm afraid that a lot of people are going to continually unnecessarily die, and it's only going to put us in a more and more precarious situation.
00:31:53.000 So, Colonel, I want to ask you about the unidentified flying objects.
00:31:56.000 What do you know about this, and how should we think about it?
00:32:01.000 Well, I wouldn't waste a great deal of time on it.
00:32:03.000 I think the whole balloon hysteria is coming unglued right now.
00:32:08.000 As I understand it, we're now close to admitting that we shot down a weather balloon that belonged to the U.S. Weather Service.
00:32:16.000 I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised. 1.00
00:32:19.000 One of my friends, a classmate from West Point, called me and said, you know, Doug, these people are so stupid. 0.99
00:32:24.000 We could buy a balloon online, fill it with helium, attach a teddy bear to it, put a Chinese flag in the teddy bear's hand, and they'd use a $400,000 missile to shoot it down. 1.00
00:32:35.000 I mean, this has reached the point of absurdity.
00:32:38.000 The Chinese have 300 satellites orbiting the planet.
00:32:43.000 At least a third of those have a military application.
00:32:47.000 They have access to the same technologies of intelligence collection that we do.
00:32:51.000 They can read the names on gravestones.
00:32:53.000 They can listen to whatever Dr. Jill says to President Biden tonight when they go to sleep.
00:32:59.000 So who are we kidding?
00:33:00.000 Why would they need a balloon to do anything?
00:33:04.000 I think this has been maybe at best a distraction and at worst an embarrassment.
00:33:09.000 So this weekend was the Super Bowl and the players' management, waste management, and I live nearby, and I saw the Goodyear balloon.
00:33:18.000 And then, right as the Super Bowl was beginning, there was a major flyover.
00:33:22.000 I said, they're going to shoot down the Goodyear balloon.
00:33:24.000 I know it.
00:33:25.000 They're going to shoot it down.
00:33:27.000 Well, I'm glad you mentioned the Goodyear blimp because for any of these balloons to carry a payload of technology that would actually provide the kind of surveillance that we're looking for or that the Chinese were looking for, it would have to be the size of a Goodyear blimp. 0.91
00:33:45.000 And these things have all been far, far too small to do that.
00:33:48.000 So do you think this is overblown?
00:33:50.000 Is it our own government being incompetent against itself as has been happening for some time?
00:33:55.000 Is this a threat to the homeland?
00:33:56.000 What's your conclusion of it?
00:33:59.000 I think someone in the Air Force saw this thing and said, well, it's probably a weather balloon or they're accustomed to it and did nothing.
00:34:08.000 And then we decided, and when I say we, I suspect the Biden administration to make something out of it.
00:34:15.000 Is it incompetence?
00:34:16.000 Probably some of that.
00:34:18.000 I don't think that the North American Air Defense Command is incompetent.
00:34:22.000 I don't think the commander is.
00:34:24.000 I don't think he reacted because we've seen lots of trash blow at 30,000, 40,000 feet along the jet stream from west to east for a long time.
00:34:33.000 Stomach decided to make this an issue and pin it on China.
00:34:37.000 There's a lot of Chinese hysteria in Washington right now, Charlie.
00:34:41.000 Sometimes I wonder since they've already made a mess of this war with Russia and the Russians are ultimately going to triumph and everybody here knows it. 0.99
00:34:49.000 Maybe now it's time to shift gears to China and start something else.
00:34:53.000 I hope not, but sometimes I get that impression.
00:34:55.000 The appetite for war never ceases in the kingdom of Washington, D.C. Colonel Douglas McGregor, thank you so much.
00:35:03.000 Excellent as always.
00:35:04.000 Thank you, Charlie, for all the great work you do.
00:35:07.000 Talk to you soon.
00:35:07.000 Thank you.
00:35:08.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:35:10.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:35:13.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
00:35:20.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.