The Charlie Kirk Show - Tucker Carlson vs. The Czar

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:02.000 We have a really incredible story for you here with Derek Evans, who's running for Congress out of West Virginia's first district.

00:00:10.000 He was there on January 6th.

00:00:12.000 He served prison time in federal prison, and he has a piece of video that you're not going to want to miss.

00:00:19.000 We talk about it.

00:00:20.000 Why haven't we seen this before?

00:00:21.000 Who is this person?

00:00:22.000 It's from January 6th.

00:00:24.000 It's kind of a bombshell, and he's exposing it.

00:00:27.000 As he's running for Congress, as we talk about we need better Republicans.

00:00:31.000 This guy has a spine of steel.

00:00:33.000 I'll tell you what, you're not going to want to miss it.

00:00:34.000 Then we welcome Kurt Schlichter to the show to unpack the Putin interview with Tucker Carlson.

00:00:40.000 Why are we pushing Russia away?

00:00:42.000 Why did we not welcome them after the Cold War?

00:00:45.000 Did Tucker do a good job?

00:00:46.000 Did you do a bad job?

00:00:47.000 Can we trust Putin?

00:00:49.000 We break it all down here with Kurt Schlichter, who is a cold era soldier.

00:00:53.000 He has literally been trained on how to defeat Russian battalions.

00:00:56.000 So it's a fascinating conversation.

00:00:58.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:00:59.000 Blake Neff joins us as well to participate in that conversation.

00:01:04.000 Buckle up.

00:01:04.000 Here we go.

00:01:05.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:07.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:09.000 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, Turning Point USA.

00:01:26.000 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.

00:01:35.000 That's why we are here.

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00:02:04.000 I'm actually really excited about this guest that we have coming onto the show right now.

00:02:08.000 His name is Derek Evans.

00:02:09.000 He's running for West Virginia's first congressional district, if I'm not mistaken.

00:02:15.000 And he was at the Capitol on J6, and he has a very interesting story to share with us today.

00:02:21.000 Derek, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:24.000 Hey, Andrew, thank you so much for having me on, man.

00:02:25.000 Really appreciate it.

00:02:26.000 Yeah, I'm very fascinated about this.

00:02:29.000 I was diving into this yesterday with some friends of yours who were telling me about it.

00:02:33.000 And I was like, this is actually really fascinating for a couple of reasons.

00:02:37.000 And I'm going to play, you've created a video that I think I'm going to kick things off with here just because it does a really good job of sort of laying out all of the different pieces of this story.

00:02:49.000 It's clip 143 if you get that ready.

00:02:51.000 But, you know, one of the things that we often talk about on the right is that, you know, if this was an insurrection, you know, and you're dealing with a bunch of 2A loving, gun-toting Americans, like you would have seen some guns.

00:03:04.000 And actually, you have footage of a guy with a gun, but a real big question emerges from this footage of whether he was really, if he's really one of us, if that makes sense.

00:03:14.000 Let's go ahead and play cut 143.

00:03:18.000 At the outset of the video, you can see that the crowd is peaceful.

00:03:22.000 There are no foughts and there's no damage to property.

00:03:25.000 There are some protesters climbing scaffolding to wave flags and basically make their voices heard.

00:03:31.000 And you'll note that once they get up on the top of the scaffolding, they stay there.

00:03:36.000 And that's important context for the rest of this video because this kind of goes on for about a minute and a half.

00:03:41.000 And once again, you can watch all of this over at j6footage.org.

00:03:45.000 But for now, I'm going to fast forward here to the, at about the one minute and 24, 25 second mark, a Hispanic male on the younger side decides to scale the scaffolding, turns around, brandishes a firearm, aims the firearm into the sky, and fires off two rounds.

00:04:08.000 Let's roll the tape.

00:04:13.000 Did you all see that?

00:04:14.000 Let's rewind it and watch again.

00:04:21.000 It's very interesting footage that I had not seen before.

00:04:25.000 So I have so many questions, Derek.

00:04:28.000 You were there on J6.

00:04:29.000 You ended up serving time.

00:04:31.000 You were prosecuted.

00:04:33.000 Tell us about that, your own experience.

00:04:35.000 And then I want to get into this guy.

00:04:37.000 Do we know who he is?

00:04:38.000 How did you get this footage?

00:04:39.000 Was he ever prosecuted?

00:04:41.000 The floor is yours.

00:04:42.000 Yeah, so I was previously elected to the West Virginia State House in 2020.

00:04:47.000 It's an important context for my story.

00:04:49.000 I was the first Republican to win my district in over 98 years.

00:04:51.000 I wanted a landslide victory.

00:04:53.000 So I went to the Capitol that day to exercise my natural God-given rights of free speech, not only for myself, but for the roughly 50,000 people who just elected me.

00:05:01.000 I was on the east side of the building.

00:05:03.000 It was completely peaceful, nonviolent, non-destructive.

00:05:06.000 People would watch my video.

00:05:07.000 It's been at the top of my social media feeds.

00:05:08.000 I walked through an open set of doors.

00:05:10.000 I immediately go over to a police officer.

00:05:12.000 It's on video.

00:05:13.000 I say, thank you for your service.

00:05:14.000 God bless you.

00:05:15.000 He gives me a friendly fist bump inviting me into the building.

00:05:18.000 I spent less than 10 minutes inside the public rotunda area, walked out the same set of doors I entered, and ultimately the same weaponized deep state going after President Trump came to my house, ripped me away from my wife and my four young children, threw me in prison, held me hostage.

00:05:32.000 I believe that they came after me so hard because I was the highest ranking government official, one of the only Republicans they could get their hands on.

00:05:38.000 Fascinating.

00:05:39.000 So how long did you serve?

00:05:41.000 Or how long did you, your sentence?

00:05:45.000 Yeah, so I was one of the first people arrested.

00:05:48.000 I was arrested January 8th, two days after January 6th, because I live streamed the entire event.

00:05:52.000 I had an 18-month legal battle, which pretty much bankrupted our family, ended up doing three months in federal prison.

00:05:57.000 And I did eight days of that in solitary confinement because I refused the vaccine while they were holding me hostage.

00:06:03.000 No kidding.

00:06:05.000 All right.

00:06:06.000 So I'm sorry that happened to you.

00:06:09.000 I'm sorry that, you know, our government is more fixated on charging people like you than people who are beating up people on the streets or cops in New York, what have you.

00:06:20.000 But I mean, this is what's fascinating to me about this story.

00:06:24.000 How did you get the footage?

00:06:26.000 And why have we not seen this before?

00:06:28.000 Tell me the story there.

00:06:30.000 And then tell me what we know about this guy who brandishes the firearm, as you say, and then fires two shots in the air.

00:06:36.000 And later in this same video that you've put together, you note that he immediately comes back down off the scaffolding.

00:06:42.000 And so I think those are interesting clues as we're trying to put together who this person was.

00:06:47.000 Yeah, well, you know, I travel all over the country sharing my January 6th story, just trying to get the truth out there for people.

00:06:52.000 And after every single time that I speak, there's people who come up to me and share their own January 6th story and want to show me videos.

00:06:59.000 And, you know, a lot of times it's things I've already seen, but I don't tell them that.

00:07:02.000 You know, I try to, and most of the time, it's people who are fearful.

00:07:04.000 They were just there and they were so scared of the government going to knock their door down just for being there that day.

00:07:10.000 And so this kind of the same situation.

00:07:12.000 And someone showed me this video and I said, oh, my goodness, I don't think anybody's ever seen this before.

00:07:17.000 And so I started asking around to people who I know are very well connected in the J6 community, do a lot of great work in terms of checking out footage and releasing footage.

00:07:26.000 And none of them had seen it before either.

00:07:28.000 So we immediately got to work and tried to get this out there.

00:07:31.000 We attempted to identify the guy.

00:07:33.000 I think I know who it is at this point.

00:07:34.000 I didn't know when I made the video, but I'm not 100% sure.

00:07:38.000 So I don't want to say somebody's name and it be wrong.

00:07:40.000 What we do know is that, to your point, you would imagine that the government has some sort of footage of this guy.

00:07:48.000 You would imagine that the media does.

00:07:50.000 It's very fascinating to me that they have not went after this guy in any way.

00:07:55.000 I mean, they're going after people who just had walking sticks that day and trying to claim that that was a weapon.

00:08:00.000 So they've done everything they could to, I mean, we got January 6th political prisoners sitting in prison right now.

00:08:06.000 Some of them just had a gun in their holster.

00:08:07.000 They didn't realize it was illegal to have it in D.C.

00:08:10.000 They made a big deal out of that.

00:08:11.000 And then here you have a guy who actually pulls it out and fires it off into the air and nothing's been done to this guy.

00:08:16.000 So I think it leaves a lot of questions.

00:08:18.000 Yeah.

00:08:18.000 And so there's also, it seems like this guy has been given some talking points, right?

00:08:25.000 I don't know how we know that.

00:08:27.000 That's just, I'm just reading some of the background story here that was given to me.

00:08:31.000 Something about, you know, I just do what Donald Trump tells me to do.

00:08:37.000 Has this individual said that to authorities or do we have a tape of this?

00:08:43.000 There is, there's some people on Twitter.

00:08:45.000 Once again, I haven't independently confirmed this, but there's a, I can't remember, I'll try to get his name in just a second, that they're claiming that it is.

00:08:52.000 And if so, there was a video of him in a, in a Vice video right after NBC's reported on it and stuff in I think 2022.

00:09:01.000 And they're claiming this is the same guy, but in the pictures they have, he has different clothes on.

00:09:05.000 So I'm not 100% sure if it is that guy.

00:09:08.000 But look, here's the thing.

00:09:09.000 This guy is not a Trump supporter.

00:09:10.000 I don't care what he says.

00:09:12.000 Trump supporters were not there to do to do anything like this.

00:09:14.000 Trump supporters are there to peacefully and patriotically protest, which is why there was a million plus people there.

00:09:19.000 And by and large, that's what we all did.

00:09:21.000 Obviously, there were infiltrators there.

00:09:23.000 There were government provocateurs.

00:09:24.000 Congressman Clay Higgins has pointed out there were hundreds of paid government agitators in the crowd.

00:09:29.000 We know that there were some Antifa people who went in the crowd.

00:09:32.000 This guy is not a Trump supporter by any means.

00:09:36.000 Yeah, I mean, Clay Higgins has really done fantastic work on this.

00:09:39.000 And he's actually exposed as well that some of the FBI agents or assets were inside group chats ahead of January 6th, and they were stirring up trouble then and trying to instigate aggressive actions on the ground.

00:09:54.000 He's, I mean, it's over 200.

00:09:56.000 We have Steven Sun from the chief of police, the Capitol Police, who has also said there was a lot of federal activity on the ground there.

00:10:03.000 Whether this guy was an actual Fed or maybe, like you said, could have been Antifa, some other group.

00:10:08.000 It has all the hallmarks of somebody that's stirring up trouble and trying to pin this on Trump.

00:10:13.000 It feels like an op, right?

00:10:15.000 He's saying, we're just doing what Trump's telling us to do.

00:10:18.000 Well, I'm sorry, but Trump did not say go, you know, climb the scaffolding, shoot two shots in the air and then quickly climb down and sort of pin it on the rest of the people that were there.

00:10:28.000 And I think you would agree that if you broke the law, if you did violence on that day, you should be prosecuted, right?

00:10:35.000 Now, absolutely.

00:10:37.000 Go ahead.

00:10:38.000 Yeah.

00:10:39.000 I'm just going to agree with you.

00:10:40.000 Absolutely.

00:10:41.000 Anybody who did that, I mean, that's not why we were there that day.

00:10:43.000 We were there to, once again, peacefully and patriotically, that's what President Trump said to do, was to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

00:10:50.000 And that's what we did that day.

00:10:51.000 Anyone who were doing these sorts of activities, I don't believe they were Trump supporters, but even if they were, that's not what we were there for, and they need to be held accountable.

00:10:59.000 Absolutely.

00:11:02.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:11:03.000 Mike Lindell and MyPillow employees want to thank my listeners for all your continued support.

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00:11:54.000 I think so highly of Mike Lindell.

00:11:56.000 He's a great patriot.

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00:12:04.000 I want to talk about your race.

00:12:06.000 You are, I mean, this is a brave thing you're doing.

00:12:09.000 And the two pieces of this conversation are tied together in my mind.

00:12:13.000 And I'll tell you why, because talking about J6, exposing what happened that day, and I think the government's flagrant abuse of so many decent and normal patriots who just love this country, love their families, love their God.

00:12:29.000 And then you come out here and you're running for West Virginia's first.

00:12:33.000 Tell us about that race.

00:12:35.000 I mean, is this story been waking up and they see your bravery on that day as far as your bravery to expose what's happened after what happened to you?

00:12:46.000 Is it a scarlet letter?

00:12:48.000 Are they inspired by it?

00:12:49.000 Tell us what's going on.

00:12:51.000 Well, I'll tell you, Andrew, this is one of the reddest districts in the entire country.

00:12:55.000 So the jokes on the federal government and the deep state who try to come after me, we have not spent a single dollar in our campaign yet in terms of voter outreach.

00:13:02.000 And the last poll that came out a few months back, we were at 45% against a six-year Rhino incumbent, which is the closest race in the country for someone challenging an incumbent in the primary.

00:13:13.000 So we're polling great.

00:13:14.000 We're getting endorsements from like General Flynn, Mike Lindell, veterans for Trump.

00:13:18.000 We've got over 5,000 donors.

00:13:20.000 We're raising money.

00:13:20.000 I mean, we raised over $300,000.

00:13:22.000 We fundraised our opponent last quarter.

00:13:25.000 So things are rocking and rolling over here, man.

00:13:27.000 I think the deep state's starting to get a little nervous realizing that this is a very winnable race for us.

00:13:31.000 Yeah, tell us about your competitor here.

00:13:34.000 You called, you said Rhino.

00:13:38.000 Trump endorsed.

00:13:39.000 What's the story there?

00:13:41.000 Trump is not endorsed in this soccer so far.

00:13:44.000 Obviously, we're hoping to get the Trump endorsement.

00:13:46.000 I think that President Trump's looking for loyalty, and I believe that I've definitely been loyal in that regard.

00:13:51.000 But I'm going to support President Trump regardless of who he endorses because he's the only person who can save our country and fix everything.

00:13:56.000 But my opponent refused to endorse President Trump when DeSantis first announced that he was running for president.

00:14:03.000 She was asked on local radio.

00:14:04.000 She refused to endorse President Trump, decided to stay out of it.

00:14:07.000 She has voted to send billions and billions of our tax dollars to Ukraine.

00:14:12.000 She voted to force our military members to receive the COVID vaccine if they wanted to continue their career in the military.

00:14:18.000 I mean, this is just, I mean, supported all the lockdowns and mandates.

00:14:21.000 This is, once again, one of the reddest districts in the country.

00:14:24.000 We deserve a Freedom Caucus member from this district, someone who's going to stand on the national stage and beat the drum of freedom, not only for Southern West Virginia, but for all conservatives across this country.

00:14:32.000 And that's exactly what I'm going to do.

00:14:34.000 How can people get behind your campaign, Derek?

00:14:36.000 I mean, this sounds like a kind of a no-brainer.

00:14:39.000 I appreciate that.

00:14:40.000 Yeah, they can go to Evans4WV.com.

00:14:43.000 That's Evans4WV.com.

00:14:45.000 You can go over there.

00:14:46.000 Like I said, we're not backed by big pharma.

00:14:46.000 You can click to donate.

00:14:48.000 We're not backed by the military-industrial complex.

00:14:51.000 We're backed by blue-collar, everyday, hard-working Americans who are chipping in because this is, I tell everyone, this is not my campaign.

00:14:58.000 This is a campaign of the American people.

00:15:00.000 If you've ever, and I mean, if you've ever wanted to send a message to the deep state, you can do so by helping elect a former January 6th political prisoner into Congress.

00:15:08.000 That would send the ultimate message to the deep state.

00:15:11.000 And once again, I've already been elected here.

00:15:12.000 I mean, I've already, I've already, people know who I am.

00:15:15.000 We're polling great.

00:15:15.000 We're raising money.

00:15:16.000 So head on over there to Evans4WV.com.

00:15:18.000 Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that we've got Lankford negotiating a border betrayal bill from one of the reddest states in the country.

00:15:28.000 And we've got people that are unwilling to endorse President Trump in one of the reddest districts of the country.

00:15:34.000 Charlie tweeted this out earlier.

00:15:36.000 He said, we need better Republicans, and I couldn't agree more.

00:15:40.000 We need people with a spine, with a backbone, and that love this country, that are loyal to this country, not to special interests, not to big money, big pharma.

00:15:48.000 So, God bless you, Derek.

00:15:50.000 And we wish you well.

00:15:51.000 And we'll talk to you again soon.

00:15:52.000 Thanks for your story.

00:15:53.000 Thank you guys for having me.

00:15:54.000 Appreciate it.

00:15:57.000 For years, I've been talking about how our nation's public schools have been captured by progressive ideologues, especially true if you're a Christian family.

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00:16:27.000 Portions of the Charlie Kirk Show are brought to you in part by the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation.

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00:16:35.000 We're going to be talking about more into the Tucker Carlson interview.

00:16:38.000 I said earlier, I watched it three times, which, you know, I didn't watch it on normal speed.

00:16:42.000 I have to say, I watched it on like 1.5, 175, but it was just such a deep, rich, interesting conversation.

00:16:49.000 I couldn't help myself.

00:16:50.000 And we're going to go through it with none other than Kurt Schlichter, senior columnist at Town Hall.

00:16:57.000 Welcome to the show, Kurt Schlichter.

00:16:59.000 Thanks for having me.

00:17:01.000 Well, thanks for being had.

00:17:03.000 So, Kurt, initial reaction to this, you know, Blake said before in the show that polling his friend audience, that there's kind of a wide array of reactions to this.

00:17:15.000 Some said he did really bad.

00:17:16.000 Some said he did really well.

00:17:19.000 A lot of fascination with the way Tucker, with Putin specifically, how he approached this global audience he knew he was going to have.

00:17:27.000 What was your takeaways?

00:17:28.000 Well, look, from what I saw, I was distinctly unimpressed by Putin.

00:17:33.000 Putin is a communist apparatchik.

00:17:35.000 He's a scumbag dictator.

00:17:37.000 He's a murderer.

00:17:38.000 He's a bad person.

00:17:41.000 I, you know, and I've always had my suspicions of the Russians back from when I was in the Cold War, learning to kill them.

00:17:50.000 But I think the bigger issue is in what Putin had to say.

00:17:53.000 Because Putin, you know, Putin's a dictator.

00:17:55.000 Putin's a liar.

00:17:56.000 Putin is the KGB colonel and acts exactly like that.

00:18:01.000 The more important thing is not what he says, but the fact that he beheard.

00:18:05.000 And the giant conspiracy to prevent us from hearing what Vladimir Putin had to say is one of the most atrocious things I've heard in recent days.

00:18:16.000 And you know all the atrocious things that have happened in recent days.

00:18:20.000 Yes.

00:18:21.000 Andrew, the presumption of these little mini fascists whose resemblance to Putin is much closer than they'll ever want to admit.

00:18:32.000 The presumption that they can tell me who I can and can't hear, that I'm not allowed to hear from Vladimir Putin if I want to.

00:18:43.000 Now, I don't like Vladimir Putin.

00:18:45.000 I think he's a bad guy.

00:18:46.000 He's an enemy of the United States.

00:18:48.000 And I think a lot of what he says is nonsense once you sift through it.

00:18:54.000 On the other hand, I'll do the sifting things.

00:18:57.000 I don't need a bunch of Democrat apparatus telling me what I can and can't hear.

00:19:02.000 And the idea that Tucker Carlson is some sort of traitor for going and talking to one of our enemies and getting his point of view.

00:19:12.000 You know, are they terrified that Putin's going to say something that's going to convince people?

00:19:18.000 They probably, I don't know, maybe they are.

00:19:20.000 Or maybe they just like having a monopoly on information.

00:19:23.000 Either way, I'm going to listen to whoever I want.

00:19:27.000 I'm going to think whatever I want and I'm going to say whatever I want.

00:19:30.000 And if they don't like it, well, I'm going to try and keep it SCP.

00:19:35.000 Thank you for that.

00:19:36.000 Yeah, we got the dump button on standby every time you come on, Kurt.

00:19:40.000 I'm kidding, you haven't actually violated that rule, although some have.

00:19:44.000 So, I mean, Tucker brought up a lot of stuff with Putin.

00:19:48.000 And what really struck me was that, yes, I think it's true to say that Putin seems wounded by the left or by the by the by the West.

00:20:00.000 And if not wounded, bitter towards him.

00:20:02.000 I think Tucker used the word bitter at one point.

00:20:04.000 He said, I'm not bitter.

00:20:05.000 It's fine.

00:20:05.000 You know, whatever.

00:20:06.000 But I was struck by the fact that it felt like a sparring match, very, like a very almost like British subtext.

00:20:17.000 You know, it was like, it's so subtle, but these little jabs come out.

00:20:21.000 The way he phrases things is very specific.

00:20:24.000 I mean, you know, you could tell when he was trying to jab at Tucker, jab at the West, place all the blame on the West.

00:20:31.000 And the way he framed the 2014 Maidan coup, and then, you know, which was a color revolution.

00:20:38.000 I think that's safe to say.

00:20:40.000 I mean, CIA's hands are all over that.

00:20:42.000 But the way he presented what he did in 2022 as a, as a to finish the war, to protect our people that was started in 2014, we're trying to bring justice for the Eastern Ukrainians at the very least, Crimea.

00:20:57.000 I thought, I mean, it was just fascinating to watch this sparring match happen.

00:21:02.000 It was almost a one-sided sparring match, and Tucker was trying to press him.

00:21:05.000 But I mean, I think my big takeaway was: if you are wounded by the West, if you distrust the West, you're bitter at the West, and you look across the table and you see Vladimir Putin there, you realize that you cannot trust this man.

00:21:19.000 I think that's what I watched it three times, Kurt, and I was like, you cannot trust this man.

00:21:24.000 He's too cagey.

00:21:26.000 No, he look, he's a Russian.

00:21:29.000 Look, the Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the guys who kind of wanted to be closer to the West, they are the exception.

00:21:35.000 Russia has always been terrified of the West.

00:21:39.000 It's partly connected to it.

00:21:40.000 But Russia has always been out there in Asia.

00:21:43.000 It was fighting Mongols.

00:21:45.000 It was, you know, fighting barbarians back in the day in ways that Western Europe wasn't.

00:21:51.000 But it's never been part of Western Europe the way, say, you know, Germany or France are.

00:21:56.000 So, and it has suffered unimaginably from Napoleon, World War I, World War II, especially.

00:22:05.000 So, you know, there is a Russian psychology.

00:22:08.000 I mean, I'm not sympathizing with it, but I think it is vital that we understand our opponents.

00:22:16.000 Not understanding your opponents and what they actually think always ends badly.

00:22:22.000 Ended up badly yesterday at the Supreme Court because it didn't seem like the Colorado lawyers really understood the position of those opposing, throwing a president's opponent off the ballot.

00:22:37.000 And he wasn't capable of answering basic questions from the justices.

00:22:42.000 You have to understand what Putin thinks.

00:22:44.000 And moreover, you have to credit him with actually thinking some of it.

00:22:50.000 He has a completely different perspective.

00:22:52.000 Now, I spent a lot of time in Ukraine as a soldier.

00:22:56.000 And I have some understanding of Russia from being a soldier during the Cold War and studying them up on them.

00:23:03.000 And the Ukrainian situation is not the perfect black and white good versus evil situation we've been told.

00:23:12.000 Again, I am on the Ukrainian side.

00:23:15.000 Vladimir Putin should not have invaded.

00:23:17.000 He should not be killing a bunch of people.

00:23:19.000 It's bad.

00:23:20.000 I get it.

00:23:21.000 Yes.

00:23:22.000 But the Russians have a point of view, and it's very hard to engage someone or deal with someone unless you understand what they're thinking, what their intent is in a military operation.

00:23:36.000 One of the things that we do is we have a group of people whose entire purpose is to figure out what the enemy is thinking and what it does and why, because it helps us win.

00:23:45.000 But we don't do that when we have this propaganda, and it is propaganda that, oh, you know, Putin, Putin's just bad, and that's why he does these things.

00:23:54.000 Okay, Putin's bad.

00:23:56.000 I get it.

00:23:57.000 But there are reasons he's doing these things.

00:24:00.000 You might not like them.

00:24:01.000 You might not be convinced by them, but you should probably try and understand what they are, even if you display.

00:24:07.000 Well, and I, and Blake, I want to bring you in on this part of the conversation too.

00:24:12.000 You know, I call Blake our resident historian.

00:24:14.000 He knows far too much about European history than a normal human being should.

00:24:19.000 But there, there, you know, and Blake used to work with Tucker over Fox, knows him well.

00:24:25.000 I mean, the piece of this that I think even Kurt, you, you probably would sympathize with, and Blake, I know that you do as well, is this idea of NATO expansionism and being sort of wounded by that.

00:24:37.000 Blake, do you have a take on that?

00:24:38.000 And I mean, yeah, we don't trust Putin, but NATO expansionism is certainly a very important through line here for the last couple decades.

00:24:48.000 It's sort of, it's been a consistent thing ever since the invasion happened.

00:24:52.000 It's that Russia has repeatedly said, both after the invasion, in the context of why they did it, and in the years before it, they talked about NATO expansion being something they strongly opposed.

00:25:04.000 It was a big red line to have Ukraine and NATO.

00:25:07.000 And it was always this sense in the West that, you know, State Department type people would just say that they were lying or exaggerating or not taking it seriously.

00:25:18.000 And then they go and invade Ukraine.

00:25:20.000 And I remember there was some journalist, I can't remember which, but she was, she was going on, I would just want to ask Putin, why, Putin, why?

00:25:30.000 She was having this Twitter breakdown.

00:25:32.000 And it was like, what else did you want him to say?

00:25:36.000 He said exactly why it was.

00:25:37.000 It's that we had this giant anti-Russian alliance that existed for half a century during the Cold War.

00:25:44.000 And then the Cold War ends.

00:25:46.000 And our response is to expand this anti-Russian alliance so it goes closer to Russia.

00:25:54.000 And now Putin says that he asked Clinton, Bill Clinton, hey, if we asked, if we were interested in joining NATO, would we be allowed to?

00:26:06.000 And he says that Clinton himself personally seemed open to it.

00:26:10.000 And then it was always, he would talk to his team.

00:26:12.000 He would talk to his foreign policy handlers and they would say, oh, no, no, you can't walk that back, walk that back.

00:26:18.000 And that's, if it's a lie, it's a lie that very much, it's a very realistic lie.

00:26:26.000 It captures the way we have this foreign policy apparatus that even tries to control what the presidents do.

00:26:32.000 And, you know, this is the group of people who are extremely traumatized by Trump, just winging it on NATO, coming in and saying, yeah, I might pull out of NATO if they don't pay more.

00:26:41.000 And they would come in and say, you're not allowed to say that.

00:26:42.000 You have to reaffirm our commitment.

00:26:44.000 And he'd say, nope, nope, they got to pay more.

00:26:46.000 And they did pay more.

00:26:48.000 And Kurt, what's your, what's, yeah, what's your reaction, Kurt, to that part of the conversation?

00:26:54.000 Well, look, anyone who knows anything about Russia understands that they are paranoid.

00:27:01.000 They got invaded by Napoleon.

00:27:03.000 They got brutalized in World War I.

00:27:06.000 And they got invaded in World War II, killed 20, 30, 40 million Russians.

00:27:11.000 Okay, there, you know, I know that we're not, I know, you and I know that NATO is not going to invade Russia.

00:27:19.000 Russia doesn't necessarily know that.

00:27:21.000 Russia has its concerns.

00:27:25.000 And you can dismiss them all you want.

00:27:29.000 But if you're surrounding Russia with NATO countries, it's going to react.

00:27:37.000 And it might not react the way that a bunch of Yale's and Georgetown brads down at Foggy Bottom want to.

00:27:46.000 Look, our foreign policy elite is garbage.

00:27:50.000 They've been an unmitigated disaster for the last 30 years.

00:27:54.000 Even though, even in light of Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan, I would still argue that the failure to bring Russia into the West after the end of the Cold War is our greatest foreign policy disaster of the last 30 years.

00:28:13.000 Maybe the last 50 years.

00:28:16.000 And it's not even close.

00:28:17.000 Imagine if we had engaged Russia, worked with Russia.

00:28:21.000 I don't think they'd ever be a close ally, a close friend.

00:28:25.000 They're certainly never going to be exactly like us.

00:28:28.000 But gosh, I sure wish I had them on our side against China right now.

00:28:32.000 Yeah, I mean, I think you're right.

00:28:33.000 I think a lot of people have pointed that out that, you know, we are driving Xi and Putin into closer and closer relationship.

00:28:41.000 BRICS is another part of this story.

00:28:45.000 And yeah, they threw down their guns.

00:28:47.000 They wanted to be part of the West, and we pushed them aside.

00:28:53.000 Blake, you've got a point on BRICS and the de-dollarization to make from the Tucker.

00:28:58.000 One of the most fascinating things in the interview is Putin gives this extremely lengthy explanation of why the big sanction attack on Russia was not bad for Russia.

00:29:08.000 He says why it was bad for the United States.

00:29:12.000 It's a very long answer, so I'll just summarize it.

00:29:14.000 He points out the dollar is the cornerstone of U.S. power.

00:29:17.000 It's used everywhere in the world.

00:29:19.000 That's why we can get so much debt and why we can just print so many dollars without our inflation rate going to 100%, 500%.

00:29:27.000 We can keep it, you know, 10% is really high for us, even when we print like crazy.

00:29:31.000 He points this out.

00:29:32.000 And then he continues where he says, it wasn't us who banned the use of the U.S. dollar in Russia.

00:29:39.000 We had no such intention.

00:29:40.000 It was the decision of the United States.

00:29:43.000 I think it is complete foolishness from the point of view of the interests of the United States.

00:29:49.000 It damages the U.S. economy, undermines the power of the United States across the world.

00:29:55.000 Our transactions in Yuan accounted for about 3% before the war.

00:29:59.000 Today, 34% of our transactions are made in rubles and about 34% in Yuan.

00:30:07.000 Why did the United States do this?

00:30:09.000 My only guess is self-conceit.

00:30:12.000 They thought it would lead to full collapse, but nothing collapsed.

00:30:17.000 And it's just very funny to have a rival of the United States, the focus of all this energy, come out and basically give a, as far as I can tell, very fair critique of America's strategic decision making.

00:30:31.000 You guys have the dollar.

00:30:33.000 It's so strong.

00:30:34.000 It's the bedrock of why the U.S. is such an economic superpower.

00:30:39.000 Why did you guys go and use it as this kind of one-time use weapon?

00:30:44.000 And the thing he doesn't bring up is this is what's driven the growth of the power of BRICS is countries like India or Brazil have looked and seen, wait, are we going to be the next Russia?

00:30:54.000 We don't know what it could be.

00:30:56.000 We might be friends with the U.S. now, but will we be in 15 years?

00:31:00.000 Do we need to start undermining the dollar now?

00:31:02.000 And it's just funny that Putin has to come out and say this for us.

00:31:05.000 Kurt, your reaction.

00:31:07.000 Well, look, a lot of people have been saying it, but Putin's right and he's rubbing our face in what's obviously true.

00:31:14.000 You know, the use of the The dollar is a weapon is really risky because of exactly this response where people say, wait a minute, wait a minute, I can't trust the Americans.

00:31:29.000 Who knows what they're going to choose next as their line in the sand?

00:31:35.000 So propaganda is most powerful when there is an element of truth to it.

00:31:41.000 Now, Putin wants to manipulate us.

00:31:43.000 He wants to raise his stature in the West.

00:31:47.000 He likes people cheerleading him.

00:31:48.000 He likes people going, well, man, that guy makes a lot of sense.

00:31:52.000 But he's not making sense.

00:31:54.000 What he's doing is copying what Western critics of the West have been saying all along.

00:32:01.000 So it's not like Putin's some special genius who figured these things out.

00:32:05.000 We all knew these things.

00:32:07.000 He's just using them against us.

00:32:10.000 And, you know, he's right.

00:32:13.000 We ought to be more circumspect in how we exercise our power.

00:32:17.000 And if the fact that this communist dictator, because I don't think he ever stopped being a communist, if this communist dictator is pointing it out, well, maybe that's a lesson.

00:32:33.000 We shouldn't be doing dumb things.

00:32:35.000 Well, yeah, and I think that's right.

00:32:36.000 I mean, and you know, he sort of says, well, look at you put all these sanctions on us and they don't work.

00:32:41.000 We're now the number one economy in Europe.

00:32:43.000 Well, I mean, yeah, Moscow might be really pretty, but if you go outside of Moscow a few miles, you'll see the dilapidation and the decay of the Russian countryside, really.

00:32:56.000 I mean, it's really, it's St. Petersburg and it's Moscow and everywhere else is essentially a wasteland.

00:33:02.000 And so, I mean, nobody should be looking at this interview with rose-colored glasses and thinking that Putin is some genius.

00:33:09.000 He's blessed with a ton of natural resources under his feet.

00:33:12.000 And he is savvy.

00:33:14.000 He is savvy.

00:33:14.000 But yes, he is using our own critiques of ourselves against America.

00:33:19.000 But, you know, all of this can change in about nine months.

00:33:23.000 So let's see how the world turns.

00:33:25.000 Last thoughts, Kurt, you got 30 seconds.

00:33:28.000 I would like to see America come to a reproach mode with Russia.

00:33:34.000 I think too much of the Russia hate lately.

00:33:36.000 And again, I literally know how to destroy a Russian motor rifle division.

00:33:41.000 I mean, I was a Cold War soldier.

00:33:44.000 Okay, I have no illusions about Russia.

00:33:45.000 I'm an American, and I think it's in American interest that Russia, if not be an ally, at least not be an outright enemy allied with Xi.

00:33:55.000 I think the next administration needs to somehow come to some arrangement with Russia.

00:34:00.000 It's imperfect.

00:34:01.000 It's dangerous.

00:34:03.000 But I'd rather have it not shooting at him.

00:34:06.000 Thank you, Kurt.

00:34:07.000 Excellent, as always.

00:34:11.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

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The Charlie Kirk Show - February 09, 2024

Tucker Carlson vs. The Czar

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