The Charlie Kirk Show - April 23, 2024


Wait, Why is Russia Our Enemy? (Ft. David Sacks)


Episode Stats


Length

44 minutes

Words per minute

167.55057

Word count

7,456

Sentence count

559

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

39

sentences flagged


Summary

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

What kind of government do we really have in the USA? What role does the military-industrial complex play in our foreign policy decisions, and why is it so important to have a strong government? What role should the United States play in the Ukraine crisis, and what role should it play in supporting it?

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 A thoughtful and deep conversation with David Sachs about Ukraine.
00:00:04.000 What kind of government do we have and more?
00:00:06.000 Email me as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:09.000 Become a member today to listen to all of our episodes advertiser-free and to go deep into these ideas and to ask me questions every Friday, members.charlikirk.com.
00:00:19.000 That is members.charlikirk.com.
00:00:22.000 And as always, you can email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:26.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:27.000 Here we go.
00:00:28.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:30.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:32.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:35.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:39.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:40.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:41.000 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.
00:00:49.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:00:58.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:01.000 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.
00:01:11.000 Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:18.000 That is noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:20.000 It's where I buy all of my gold.
00:01:22.000 Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:26.000 One of our favorite guests joins us for this hour.
00:01:29.000 It's David Sachs, who is from the All-In Podcast.
00:01:32.000 I love listening to the All-In podcast.
00:01:33.000 It's super analytical and really fair.
00:01:35.000 David, welcome back to the program.
00:01:37.000 Yeah, good to see you, Charlie.
00:01:38.000 David, you remain one of the most important and contrarian heterodox voices on the Ukraine consensus.
00:01:46.000 This was an incredibly frustrating weekend.
00:01:48.000 The first part I want to unpack with you is what form of government do we really have here?
00:01:53.000 The majority of Americans are at least skeptical with the amount of money that we're sending to Ukraine.
00:02:00.000 They certainly want the homeland prioritized above foreign wars.
00:02:05.000 And totally, a majority of Republicans, like 70 to 80% of Republicans, yet we get opposite action.
00:02:13.000 Why do you think that is?
00:02:15.000 Well, because we're not a democracy, we're an oligarchy.
00:02:18.000 I mean, the country is run by a collection of very powerful interest groups.
00:02:23.000 And the donors of the Republican Party, the neocons, and the military-industrial complex all support this war, and they're completely bought into the narratives underlying it.
00:02:35.000 So I tend to think that's why you have this large majority of Congress supporting these endless appropriations, even though the majority of the country does not.
00:02:45.000 Were we a democracy any time in your lifetime or representative government?
00:02:50.000 Well, I think, you know, I think our government contains elements of democracy.
00:02:56.000 It also contains elements of oligarchy.
00:02:58.000 And I mean, this was somewhat by design of the framers.
00:03:03.000 But so, I don't want to say it's like not democratic at all, but the reality is, is that the government's actions are strongly guided by interest groups and donors have a massive outsized say in what happens.
00:03:20.000 And I don't really understand why the donors are so obsessed with this Ukraine project.
00:03:26.000 I don't even know that it's necessarily that good for them, but I think they're completely bought into this ideology that undergirds it.
00:03:35.000 No, that's exactly right.
00:03:36.000 So, David, we recently had a fundraiser for Turning Point.
00:03:39.000 We raise a lot of money, and we have very strong opinions that are not neoconservative ones, but people still support us for obvious other reasons, other value alignment.
00:03:47.000 But the issue of foreign aid in Ukraine came up, and it's not, there wasn't a single defense contractor in the room.
00:03:53.000 There wasn't somebody that was going to make money off of the war effort, but they're ideological adherents.
00:03:58.000 And it goes something like this, which is 70 or 80-year-old wealthy business person believes firmly in the rules-based international order that was established in post-World War II, and that we must be a bastion of freedom and democracy abroad.
00:04:15.000 And that if America is not the superpower doling out cash to fight against authoritarianism, then all the gains of their lifetime will be lost.
00:04:24.000 And this is kind of a boomer proxy war.
00:04:27.000 And I don't mean that pejoratively, but if you look at who is primarily the most enthusiastic for what's happening in Ukraine-Russia demographically, it's people over the age of 65 because they still look at Russia as the Soviet Union, as the evil empire that Reagan warned against.
00:04:41.000 And there is some fear that if Ukraine collapses, that the entire political project of their life will basically be for naught.
00:04:50.000 Does that make sense?
00:04:51.000 Do you see something similar?
00:04:53.000 Yes.
00:04:54.000 I mean, I think globalist is kind of a nice word for imperialist.
00:04:58.000 I think that somehow this globalist project is basically a, it views America as a globe-spanning empire.
00:05:07.000 Yes, of course.
00:05:08.000 And I think that's basically, I think what happened is that FDR gave us a new form of government in the 1930s, 1940s.
00:05:16.000 America basically took over the world and became a globe-spanning empire.
00:05:20.000 We don't administer different countries directly.
00:05:24.000 We don't have, unlike the Roman Empire or the British Empire, we don't have governors who kind of rule foreign peoples.
00:05:31.000 We simply regime change those rulers and we don't like them.
00:05:36.000 But in any event, since World War II, America has basically been in charge of the world minus the Soviet bloc. 0.74
00:05:43.000 And then, of course, once that fell in 1991, you had this unipolar world order and this instinct to kind of take over the world went into hyperdrive.
00:05:52.000 You had all the forever wars of the Middle East. 0.98
00:05:55.000 And obviously, it's all blown up in our faces.
00:05:57.000 But yet this instinct and this imperial desire to impose American style rule over the whole world, I think remains this very compelling desire and motive for a certain class of people.
00:06:13.000 And it's really fundamental to their view of America.
00:06:18.000 I mean, they fundamentally view America as an empire.
00:06:21.000 I mean, again, they don't use that language, but they don't see it as a traditional republic anymore.
00:06:26.000 They see it as more of this woke empire.
00:06:29.000 Yeah, and it's the irony is that the more that you push abroad, the more it actually undermines the dollar and destroys U.S. economic hegemony.
00:06:39.000 And so you're actually destroying, if you want us to be an empire, you're actually destroying any ability for us to be strong at all.
00:06:47.000 I mean, we canceled Russia in response.
00:06:48.000 Saudi Arabia joined BRICS, so on and so forth.
00:06:51.000 And we've seen this cascade of effects because of our attachment for Ukrainian democracy.
00:07:00.000 Yeah, I mean, look, every part of this story is basically either a hoax or a narrative mirage.
00:07:06.000 I mean, Ukraine isn't really a democracy in the way that we portray it.
00:07:12.000 I mean, they've banned opposition political parties.
00:07:14.000 They've banned critical media.
00:07:16.000 You have to get a license from the government if you want to be a reporter.
00:07:20.000 Gonzalo Lira was imprisoned for basically thought crimes, for posting YouTube videos that were critical of the government.
00:07:26.000 And he was essentially killed in prison or at least neglected to the point where he died in prison.
00:07:34.000 Religious figures who are part of the Russian Orthodox religion have been systematically repressed by the Zelensky government.
00:07:43.000 They've canceled elections.
00:07:45.000 So, you know, this whole idea that we're standing up for democracy, it's not really, again, a democracy in the way that we would expect.
00:07:53.000 It's more of a American client government.
00:07:56.000 Then you've got the whole narrative around Russia's motivations.
00:08:02.000 I mean, we can go into this, but I just fundamentally don't believe in the whole Hootler narrative that Putin's really the second coming of Adolf Hitler.
00:08:10.000 If we don't stop him in Ukraine, he's going to take over all of Europe. 1.00
00:08:13.000 That's, you know, that's a good idea.
00:08:15.000 I think it's insane.
00:08:16.000 Where does this come from?
00:08:17.000 I mean, it almost is if World War II is the only form of history that can apply to today.
00:08:22.000 It's so overused.
00:08:23.000 And I don't think it's...
00:08:25.000 It should never be used, but it's either everything is Auschwitz, everyone is Hitler, and everyone I don't like is a Nazi.
00:08:32.000 Well, yeah, I think this is the neocon frame on everything: the year is always 1938, and the enemy is always Hitler, and any use of diplomacy is always appeasement.
00:08:43.000 And again, I think it's because this American empire was birthed in World War II.
00:08:47.000 And so it's almost like we're stuck in that founding moment of the American empire.
00:08:54.000 So, you know, yeah, I think that that whole thing is a narrative mirage.
00:08:58.000 And then, of course, the whole thing is blowing up in our faces.
00:09:00.000 I mean, you mentioned BRICS and the, let's not say the decline, but the risk to the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency.
00:09:13.000 I mean, that is clearly, we are clearly catalyzing global opposition to the U.S. through this war and through our other actions, our other foreign policy.
00:09:26.000 And of course, it's bleeding our treasury.
00:09:29.000 I mean, you have to see this as of a peace with all the forever wars that we've been involved in.
00:09:34.000 So, of course, it's backfiring horribly, but yet we're still somehow stuck on this project.
00:09:41.000 I think, by the way, I think this whole idea was really epitomized by, I think it was a Democratic congressman who said that Ukraine is our border.
00:09:52.000 No, we have that.
00:09:53.000 No, we have Jerry Connolly.
00:09:54.000 We'll play that where Jerry Connolly starts screaming like a lunatic, saying that Ukraine is our border.
00:09:59.000 I must have missed the 51st and 52nd senator from Ukraine.
00:10:04.000 I just, but they do look at, so please finish your thought, David.
00:10:08.000 Well, the thought is just they don't see any national border to be defended.
00:10:13.000 I mean, these very same people are doing nothing to defend the U.S. border, but yet they see Ukraine as literally a part of our border.
00:10:25.000 And the only explanation for this is, again, they only see an imperial border to be expanded, not a national border to be defended.
00:10:33.000 When you're within the sort of globalist sort of territory, they don't see any interior borders to that.
00:10:41.000 There are no national borders.
00:10:43.000 It's just part of the empire.
00:10:44.000 And so, again, the only border they see to be defended is this, it's sort of the edges of the empire.
00:10:52.000 I want to play this.
00:10:53.000 It's the aforementioned clip, play cut 14, please.
00:10:56.000 Some say, well, we have to deal with our border first.
00:10:59.000 The Ukrainian-Russian border is our border.
00:11:04.000 It's the border between depraved autocracy and freedom-loving people seeking our democratic way of life.
00:11:13.000 Do we have a stake in that outcome?
00:11:15.000 Yes.
00:11:17.000 Undeniably, yes.
00:11:20.000 Will we rise to the occasion?
00:11:23.000 Will we stand shoulder to shoulder with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters?
00:11:30.000 Your reaction.
00:11:31.000 Well, Ukraine's become the central obsession of our ruling elites.
00:11:37.000 It's almost bizarre.
00:11:38.000 I mean, if you go back to, I don't know, 2020 or 2021, was anyone focused at all on Ukraine?
00:11:46.000 Most people, most Americans couldn't find it on a map.
00:11:49.000 I still don't think they can.
00:11:50.000 And yet, it has become the central obsession.
00:11:53.000 It is more important.
00:11:54.000 Defending Ukraine's border is actually more important than defending the U.S. southern border.
00:11:59.000 They literally don't see a U.S. southern border.
00:12:02.000 They can only see the border of, again, of this imperial project that we're on.
00:12:07.000 What, I mean, you've spent a fair amount of time among the elites, David.
00:12:11.000 How do you get to this viewpoint?
00:12:12.000 I mean, our audience, it's so foreign to the working men and women of this country, like teachers, parents, police officers, plumbers, welders, veterans.
00:12:21.000 How does one come to such an outrageous view?
00:12:24.000 Well, I think the narrative or the frame they've convinced themselves about is that the U.S. is bound up in this war of democracy versus autocracy, and that we're in this manichean struggle for survival between the free world and again, these autocracies.
00:12:44.000 And it's kind of like a warmed-over rehash of Cold War thinking.
00:12:50.000 But it's fundamentally false.
00:12:53.000 I mean, authoritarianism is undeniably an unattractive feature of governments, but it's a spectrum condition.
00:13:01.000 I mean, different governments have different amounts of authoritarianism, and it's unattractive when it occurs in places like Brazil or in the Middle East.
00:13:11.000 But plenty of our allies are authoritarian.
00:13:14.000 And in fact, you know, the Biden administration is making the United States more authoritarian.
00:13:19.000 So this is an unattractive feature of government, but it's not something that requires us to be in a state of war against some of these countries.
00:13:29.000 And it's very dangerous for us to be in a proxy war with Russia.
00:13:34.000 Even if you don't like Russia, there's simply no reason for us to be at war with them, even via proxy.
00:13:42.000 They've got thousands of nuclear weapons.
00:13:44.000 It's a very powerful country.
00:13:46.000 And fundamentally, you know, our realist foreign policy interests would dictate in favor of making peace with Russia in order to focus on China to essentially do a mirror image of what Kissinger and Nixon did with China when we basically sought a reconciliation with China in order to isolate the Soviet Union.
00:14:09.000 You know, our foreign policy interest is to do something similar here in reverse.
00:14:13.000 So, you know, in a whole bunch of different ways, this is just not in our interest.
00:14:18.000 It's really lazy and sloppy, shallow thinking from people who are paranoid or drunk on power or who just want to feel important or heroic.
00:14:26.000 That is really the summary.
00:14:27.000 And David, in the next segment, yeah, please.
00:14:30.000 Well, yeah, I think there's one other aspect to it as well, which is the whole Russiagate hoax that I think our domestic politics spilled into our foreign policy there.
00:14:39.000 Well, and understand that if it was like Belgian Gate, no one would have really cared.
00:14:44.000 The fact that Trump colluded with Russia, they built this up as the adversary of the West.
00:14:51.000 But the question is, is it really?
00:14:55.000 Are you ready to lose weight, but not sure where to start?
00:14:57.000 I understand.
00:14:57.000 I was right where you are two years ago.
00:14:59.000 Let me tell you why I chose the PhD weight loss and nutrition program.
00:15:02.000 First, Dr. Ashley Lucas has her PhD in chronic disease and sports nutrition.
00:15:06.000 Her program is based on years of research and is science-based.
00:15:09.000 Second, the PhD program starts nutrition.
00:15:11.000 There's so much more.
00:15:12.000 They know that 90% of permanent change comes from the mind, and they work on eliminating the reason you gain this weight in the first place.
00:15:18.000 There's no shortcuts, pills, or injections, just solid, science-based nutrition and behavior change.
00:15:22.000 And finally, probably most importantly, I lost 30 pounds.
00:15:25.000 Look, they're amazing.
00:15:26.000 If you want to lose weight, you've got to go to myphdweightloss.com.
00:15:28.000 I was just texting with Dr. Ashley Lucas today.
00:15:30.000 If you're ready to lose weight for the last time, call 864-644-1900.
00:15:35.000 Go online at myphdweightloss.com.
00:15:37.000 Do what I did.
00:15:38.000 And what hundreds of my listeners have done and called today: 864-644-1900.
00:15:43.000 I recommend their program.
00:15:44.000 Dr. Ashley Lucas has her PhD in chronic disease and sports nutrition.
00:15:48.000 Her program is based on years of research and is science-based.
00:15:51.000 Second, the PhD program starts nutrition, but it's so much more.
00:15:54.000 Go to myphdweightloss.com, myphdweightloss.com.
00:15:58.000 Golly 64644-1900.
00:16:01.000 I lost over 30 pounds.
00:16:02.000 Dr. Asha Lucas, great American.
00:16:03.000 Check it out.
00:16:04.000 Myphdweightloss.com.
00:16:08.000 Subscribe to the all-in podcast.
00:16:10.000 But David, if you were to just ask the elites, who do you hate more, Russia or China?
00:16:15.000 I mean, it's not even close, they'll say Russia.
00:16:17.000 Russia has a smaller population.
00:16:19.000 We should probably be at the very least neutral, if not soft allies with Russia. 0.66
00:16:24.000 We were previously in World War II.
00:16:27.000 Is there something about Russia, their closed borders, their preference towards nationalism over globalism that makes the U.S. elites hate them so much, or at least the, let's say, Western intelligentsia? 0.93
00:16:44.000 What is it about Russia that drives them so silly? 1.00
00:16:48.000 Well, I think fundamentally they blame Putin for Hillary Clinton's loss in the 2016 election. 0.92
00:16:54.000 And you remember it started with the Steele dossier, that whole phony piece of opposition research that was commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign from a British spy.
00:17:04.000 They invented out of whole cloth this narrative, this hoax that somehow Donald Trump was an agent of the Kremlin.
00:17:13.000 And then when he won and they needed an excuse for their incompetent campaign, they claimed that somehow Russia had interfered in our elections in order to bring about that result.
00:17:24.000 And ever since then, they have kept hanging new ornaments off of this Christmas tree of a hoax where you had the Alphabank hoax, you had the Hamilton 68 dashboard hoax, where literally thousands and thousands of mainstream media stories were created claiming that the Russians were interfering in our politics.
00:17:45.000 And it was all completely made up.
00:17:47.000 But the American people have now been conditioned to believe that Russia has been involved in interfering and meddling in our politics.
00:17:57.000 And I think that's created an intense Russophobia and has created a view that somehow Russia is a direct threat to our democracy.
00:18:06.000 I think the truth of it is that Russia has not been involved in American politics.
00:18:11.000 I don't think they care about our internal affairs and I don't think they've been meddling in them.
00:18:17.000 If you watched Tucker's interview with Putin, he seems genuinely, Putin does, seems genuinely befuddled by American politics.
00:18:25.000 It seems like he has a hard time figuring us out.
00:18:28.000 In any event, I just don't think that they, yeah, I just don't think that they care, that the Russians care about the internal workings of American politics. 0.94
00:18:38.000 There is no proof to any of this, but it has created this intense Russophobia.
00:18:43.000 And so I think somehow that our domestic politics have now spilled over into our foreign policy and making Russia enemy number one. 0.54
00:18:52.000 But I think that, as you say, if we were to look at this in realist terms, Russia would not be enemy number one.
00:18:58.000 They are not the peer competitor to the United States.
00:19:00.000 China is.
00:19:02.000 They cannot threaten U.S. interests in a way that China can. 0.77
00:19:06.000 I mean, again, they've got half our population.
00:19:08.000 They've got an economy that's a fraction of our size.
00:19:11.000 Meanwhile, China has several times our population and their economy is roughly the same size as the US.
00:19:18.000 Or equal or greater.
00:19:20.000 Greater.
00:19:20.000 Yeah.
00:19:21.000 In purchasing power parity terms, they are bigger, and they can certainly produce more weapons than the U.S. can.
00:19:28.000 So again, just Russia is just not the threat they've puffed it up to be.
00:19:32.000 Moreover, we simply have no territorial disputes with Russia.
00:19:37.000 We have no vital interests at odds with Russia.
00:19:40.000 It just didn't need to be this highly conflictual relationship.
00:19:44.000 But it was made into that by our relentless drive to expand NATO right up to Russia's border, which is what turned a country that wanted to be part of the West.
00:19:55.000 I mean, again, when Putin came to power in 2000, he was very interested in having good relations with the West.
00:20:02.000 And we systematically turned that country, not just Putin, but the entire Russian elite against us with NATO expansion, with color revolutions in their backyard, by canceling nuclear arms control treaties, by putting nukes directly on their doorstep. 0.57
00:20:18.000 We did a whole series of things to antagonize the Russians and turn what could have been an ally, like you said, maybe a soft ally into an enemy.
00:20:28.000 So this was very much a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:20:31.000 Yeah, and people forget Kamala Harris went to the Munich security conference right before Putin invaded Ukraine and just read a script given to her by the Intel agencies, essentially saying we now want to have Ukraine in NATO.
00:20:46.000 And that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
00:20:49.000 And Putin was like, yeah, okay, like you guys are not getting off this, you know, ever eastward expanding NATO agreement.
00:20:56.000 And David, I want to remind our audience, there was an agreement that NATO would not expand eastward, that NATO was going to stay in its current composition.
00:21:05.000 And we broke that pact.
00:21:07.000 And we were the ones in the West that lied repeatedly.
00:21:12.000 We put weapons on their borders, you say. 0.92
00:21:14.000 And then you have that lunatic Lindsey Graham. 1.00
00:21:16.000 Another clip we should get a couple of years ago with Amy Klobuchar talking to a bunch of Ukrainian soldiers. 0.88
00:21:23.000 This is the year of offense.
00:21:24.000 Oh, yeah, with John McCain.
00:21:25.000 We're going to play offense against the Kremlin.
00:21:27.000 This is the year that we take them out.
00:21:29.000 I want you to just imagine, again, this is said often, but it needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated.
00:21:34.000 Imagine a bunch of Russian senators went to Mexico City and armed the cartel. 0.82
00:21:39.000 Well, no, actually, we wouldn't do anything about it.
00:21:41.000 Never mind.
00:21:41.000 David, can you comment on that element that we have isolated here, how we made a series of statements that we contradicted and misled Russia?
00:21:53.000 That we're not blameless in this equation.
00:21:56.000 No, I mean, definitely not.
00:21:57.000 So in the 1990s, when the Soviet Union began to fall apart, Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of East and West Germany.
00:22:07.000 And the promise made to him was that we would not expand NATO eastward.
00:22:12.000 And of course, we violated that on many occasions.
00:22:15.000 We brought NATO right up to their border.
00:22:18.000 And, you know, we keep saying that, well, NATO is purely a defensive organization.
00:22:22.000 But from the Russian point of view, it's offensive and it's potentially hostile and it's a threat to their security. 0.59
00:22:29.000 NATO has engaged in offensive operations.
00:22:31.000 We bombed Serbia. 0.98
00:22:33.000 We killed, I should say, NATO engaged in an operation against Libya and effectively killed Qaddafi.
00:22:40.000 So from the Russian point of view, NATO is a hostile military organization.
00:22:45.000 And in violation of our promises to Gorbachev, we brought it right up to their border.
00:22:49.000 Again, this is just a mirror image of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
00:22:52.000 The United States was willing to risk nuclear war in 1962 to prevent the Soviet Union from putting nuclear tip missiles in Cuba because we saw that as a threat to our security. 0.83
00:23:05.000 The American government does not tolerate foreign troops, weapons, or bases in our hemisphere.
00:23:13.000 It's called the Monroe Doctrine.
00:23:15.000 What the Russians have sought to assert is something similar is that they do not want enemy bases directly on their border.
00:23:23.000 And the tragedy of this whole Ukraine war is that it could have been avoided entirely if Ukraine simply agreed to be neutral.
00:23:30.000 Ukraine did not have to give up its sovereignty.
00:23:32.000 Ukraine did not have to give up territory.
00:23:35.000 It did not have to be ruled by Russia.
00:23:38.000 It simply had to agree to be a neutral buffer state between the West and Russia.
00:23:43.000 And that simply was not good enough for the West, which continually tried to expand NATO into Ukraine.
00:23:51.000 Yeah, and I just, it didn't have to be this way.
00:23:54.000 In addition, we blew up a potential peace deal.
00:23:57.000 I think it was Istanbul, where Boris Johnson and Tony Blinken go and obliterate that entire peace deal because they wanted war.
00:24:06.000 I'm just, I asked this question of an elected leader who called me the other day asking for an endorsement.
00:24:11.000 And obviously he didn't get one.
00:24:12.000 But David, you know the answer.
00:24:13.000 How many Ukrainians have died in this war?
00:24:16.000 I think that the total number of Ukrainian couches is at least half a million that would be killed and seriously wounded.
00:24:23.000 It's hard to get the exact number because the Ukrainian government doesn't publish it.
00:24:27.000 And that tells you something.
00:24:28.000 But I've seen credible estimates that the Ukrainians have lost about somewhere between 20 and 30,000 troops per month.
00:24:37.000 And, you know, this has gone on for slightly over 24 months now.
00:24:41.000 So you add all that together and it's probably in the 500 to 600,000 range.
00:24:45.000 And that is casualties plus deaths.
00:24:49.000 Seriously wounded plus KIA. 0.86
00:24:52.000 It's hard to know exactly, you know, again, what the split is.
00:24:55.000 I mean, there are some people who think there have been over 500,000 KIA, but I just can't, I'm just not sure about that.
00:25:01.000 Again, I think that the number of casualties is about 20 to 30,000 per month is what Ukraine is suffering.
00:25:10.000 And for what?
00:25:11.000 What do they have to show for that?
00:25:12.000 What do they have to demonstrate it?
00:25:14.000 And I mean, the amount of...
00:25:17.000 What they have to demonstrate is territorial loss.
00:25:22.000 They're losing territory.
00:25:24.000 With each passing day, the Russians are taking back more territory. 0.89
00:25:28.000 You know, for the first couple of years of this conflict, we were told that the purpose of us arming Ukraine was to evict Russia from their territory.
00:25:36.000 Well, last summer, we had this counteroffensive that we had appropriated the first $113 billion towards, and it was a total failure.
00:25:46.000 The Ukrainians didn't even make it to the first Servicin line. 0.73
00:25:50.000 They were destroyed in this gray zone.
00:25:53.000 They were impaled on Russian defenses.
00:25:57.000 They were destroyed by Russian artillery.
00:25:59.000 And they lost all of those weapons, the tanks and the artillery that we had given to them in that futile counteroffensive.
00:26:09.000 And by the way, this was obvious within the first two weeks of the counteroffensive.
00:26:12.000 We saw all of those leopards and all of those challengers smoking in runes in minefields.
00:26:19.000 I mean, the Ukrainians did not have an answer even to the Russian minefields. 0.53
00:26:24.000 And yet, this summer counteroffensive went on for about four months.
00:26:27.000 It was a total debacle.
00:26:29.000 But this is something that the West encouraged Ukraine to undertake.
00:26:34.000 And since then, since the defeat of the Ukrainians in that counteroffensive, the Russians have now been on offense. 0.66
00:26:41.000 They've done it in kind of a slow grinding, classically Russian way, but they are now taking a territory. 0.94
00:26:47.000 So, David, I was watching MSNBC very early this morning, and David Ignatius, who basically is the press secretary for the Central Intelligence Agency for the Washington Post, he said something really chilling, that the Ukrainian effort is now to go after Crimea.
00:27:04.000 I don't know if you caught this or not, but this goes to show that the West, if they mean this, this could be a trillion or two or three trillion dollar effort to go nowhere.
00:27:14.000 Play Cut 11.
00:27:16.000 Their strategy is to get powerful new U.S. weapons, including these ATACOMs, long-range missiles, that can put Crimea, Russian-occupied Crimea, at risk.
00:27:28.000 Crimea is probably what's most important for them. 0.51
00:27:31.000 If the Ukrainians using these weapons through the remainder of this year could really put Crimea at risk, you might have a situation where going into next year, the Russians say it's time to negotiate some satisfactory end to this war to get what we want.
00:27:46.000 The great thing about this aid package, the miraculous thing that Speaker Johnson and the Congress have done is to give Ukraine another year of life in this fight, maybe to get to the point where they can bargain from some strike next year.
00:28:01.000 David.
00:28:01.000 Oh boy.
00:28:03.000 Well, you see there the obsession with Crimea.
00:28:06.000 I mean, this goes way back to 2014.
00:28:09.000 The Russians took Crimea in response to the Medan coup that we engineered. 0.90
00:28:16.000 We helped topple the democratically elected government of President of Ukraine.
00:28:22.000 And in response to that, the Russians took Crimea in a bloodless coup.
00:28:26.000 Now, why did they do that?
00:28:27.000 Because the Russians have a very important naval base at Sevastopol within Crimea.
00:28:32.000 It's the home of the Black Sea Fleet.
00:28:34.000 It's been there since 1784 when Catherine the Great established it.
00:28:38.000 And 80% of the population of Crimea are ethnic Russians who would rather be part of Russia than the ultra-nationalist Ukrainian government.
00:28:48.000 And this has been shown over and over again by polling.
00:28:51.000 And yet, the kind of ultra-nationalist, and that's a nice word for them, Ukrainians have had this obsessive desire to get Crimea back. 0.90
00:29:00.000 And you saw this in the summer counteroffensive.
00:29:02.000 The whole idea was to punch through those Russian lines and to sever the land bridge from Donbass to Crimea and somehow lay siege to Crimea and force the Russians to sue for peace.
00:29:16.000 So this is not a new idea.
00:29:18.000 This whole idea that somehow you're going to put Crimea at risk and that's going to force the Russians to their knees. 0.58
00:29:24.000 It's a total pipe dream.
00:29:26.000 It's a total fantasy.
00:29:27.000 It's not going to happen.
00:29:29.000 Now, what might happen, though, is as a result of the U.S. giving Ukraine attackums, is they might destroy that Kerch Bridge.
00:29:37.000 You know, they might destroy the bridge between Crimea and sort of the Russian mainland.
00:29:46.000 But still, that will not do anything to change the outcome of this war.
00:29:53.000 I mean, the Russians aren't even using the Kerch Bridge anymore to supply their military.
00:29:57.000 That's happening over land routes now.
00:29:59.000 They have this continuous land bridge from sort of the main Russian territory through the Donbass, through Zaporizhia.
00:30:10.000 They now control all of that territory, so they don't need the Kerch Bridge. 0.76
00:30:13.000 So in any event, this is simply not going to work as a military strategy, but it does reveal this central obsession with Crimea that the Ukrainian nationalists and their sponsors in the West have had now for a decade.
00:30:30.000 Herzog Foundation is part of an education revolution.
00:30:33.000 For those of you worried about the best educational path to your kids and grandkids, I'm pleased to announce our new partnership with the folks at the Herzog Foundation.
00:30:39.000 They are the trusted source for American K through 12 education with a remarkable suite of different options.
00:30:47.000 So check it out from their online publication, The Lion, through the new podcast, Making the Leap.
00:30:52.000 The Herzog Foundation offers a wide range of advice and information for Christian parents.
00:30:57.000 We work with them at Turning Point Academy.
00:30:58.000 To learn more about how your family, faith, and community can flourish through a quality Christian education, go to Herzogfoundation.com.
00:31:04.000 That is Herzogfoundation.com.
00:31:06.000 So check it out right now.
00:31:07.000 Herzogfoundation.com offers a wide range of advice and information for Christian parents to make the best decision for your kids.
00:31:13.000 So check it out right now, Herzogfoundation.com.
00:31:16.000 Portions of the Charlie Kirkshark brought to you in part by the Stanley M. Herzog Foundation.
00:31:22.000 So David, you have a tweet out here on Axe where you say that the Russian military is larger and more powerful than even at the beginning of the war.
00:31:32.000 Tell our audience about that.
00:31:34.000 Yeah, absolutely.
00:31:34.000 And I was quoting testimony from our general who is in charge of our European command.
00:31:40.000 So this is an official assessment of the U.S. military.
00:31:42.000 It's not just my opinion on the matter.
00:31:45.000 And remember when, I don't know, six months ago, they were saying that the Russians had lost 90% of their army.
00:31:51.000 Now they're saying it's 115%.
00:31:53.000 It's bigger than it was.
00:31:54.000 So they've discarded the old narrative that we are degrading their military.
00:31:59.000 And that was what was in it for us in terms of funding the Ukrainians. 0.65
00:32:03.000 Now they've pivoted on a dime and said that we have to support the Ukrainians because the Russian military is bigger.
00:32:09.000 So, you know, there's just no stability to the narratives they tell.
00:32:14.000 But yes, the Russian military is bigger.
00:32:16.000 This is the classic Russian way of war is they start off slow. 1.00
00:32:21.000 They start off making mistakes and then they build up inevitably.
00:32:25.000 And this is how the Russians win wars. 0.87
00:32:29.000 And they have been building up.
00:32:30.000 Young Russians have been volunteering for the military at a rate of 10,000 a week.
00:32:35.000 These are not conscripts.
00:32:37.000 These are not people who are forced at gunpoint into service.
00:32:41.000 Like we've seen so many videos of young Ukrainians being rounded up and thrown in the back of vans.
00:32:45.000 These are patriotic Russians who are volunteering for their armed services.
00:32:50.000 And they're being put through training.
00:32:52.000 They're not being sent immediately to the front lines.
00:32:54.000 They're being put through six months or whatever of training.
00:32:57.000 And the Russian military is getting bigger.
00:32:59.000 In a similar way, the Russians have this huge industrial base that they inherited from the Soviet Union that's capable of producing massive amounts of weapons.
00:33:08.000 And over the last couple of years, they've been ramping that up.
00:33:11.000 And they're now producing more of everything.
00:33:13.000 More artillery shells, more artillery tubes, more tanks, more drones, more of everything.
00:33:20.000 And so this is, again, the Russian way of war is that they may be slow at the outset, but they ramp up into this huge, you know, military juggernaut.
00:33:31.000 And that is what Ukraine is now facing.
00:33:33.000 And meanwhile, it's the West that has depleted its arsenals and is largely out of weapons.
00:33:38.000 We've run out of artillery shells.
00:33:40.000 We've run out of artillery tubes.
00:33:42.000 We've, you know, we don't produce as many drones or tanks or planes or air defense missiles as the Russians do. 0.99
00:33:50.000 And as a result, we can't help the Ukrainians win this war.
00:33:54.000 We can appropriate this money, but we can't give the Ukrainians weapons we don't have. 0.94
00:34:01.000 So I think the Ukrainians are in dire straits.
00:34:04.000 And David, if they would have accepted the peace deal that was at least floated early, less people would have died and there probably would have been more territorial protections for Ukraine than how this will end.
00:34:17.000 I guess I'm asking you to predict, you know, a kinetic war theater.
00:34:21.000 How is this going to end?
00:34:22.000 Well, just to underscore your point there, there was that peace deal available at Istanbul in the first month of the war, and it didn't require Ukraine to give up any territory.
00:34:30.000 They simply had to agree to be neutral, to not join NATO, and they had to agree to honor the Minsk Accords with respect to the Donbass to give the ethnic Russians there some protection because they were being attacked by these Ukrainian ultra-nationalists.
00:34:46.000 These were entirely reasonable compromises that we could have made, the Ukrainians could have made. 1.00
00:34:52.000 It was not, I don't believe it was in American interest to prevent that deal from happening.
00:34:56.000 And yet that's what the administration did because they wanted this proxy war.
00:35:00.000 They thought that they could weaken Putin and challenge Putin.
00:35:03.000 Again, in the famous words of Boris Johnson, we want to challenge Putin, not make a deal with him.
00:35:08.000 And so hence this war continued and it's continued in a disastrous way.
00:35:14.000 In terms of where I think it's going, the Ukrainians are going to lose. 0.99
00:35:17.000 It's simply inevitable.
00:35:18.000 Can't provide them with enough weapons to win this war.
00:35:22.000 And even if they had the weapons, they no longer have the manpower to use them.
00:35:26.000 Remember that famous Time magazine story where they talked about how Zelensky had become delusional.
00:35:33.000 The writer was quoting top Ukrainian officials saying that even if the West comes through with all the weapons, we no longer have the manpower to use them.
00:35:42.000 And they've been forced to, you can see this in the conscription.
00:35:45.000 You can see them rounding up Ukrainians off the streets at gunpoints to impress them into military service. 0.68
00:35:53.000 You can see this in all the Ukrainians who have fled the country. 1.00
00:35:56.000 Just a week ago, there was an article in the New York Times talking about how lots of Ukrainians had died swimming across a river trying to flee the country to get into Romania.
00:36:07.000 So they have run out of Ukrainians who are willing to fight. 0.91
00:36:12.000 I mean, all the Ukrainians who wanted to fight volunteered at the beginning of the war.
00:36:16.000 So it's just not clear where the manpower is going to come from.
00:36:19.000 And then finally, you got the fact that the Ukrainians, or sorry, the Russians now have air superiority. 0.88
00:36:24.000 I mean, on a weekly basis, they are conducting the equivalent of shock and awe.
00:36:28.000 I mean, they are dropping these huge bombs on the Ukrainians and destroying their military positions and destroying their infrastructure.
00:36:36.000 So this war is going very badly for the Ukrainians.
00:36:40.000 And this new $61 billion that's been appropriated, it may prolong the war slightly, but I don't think it's going to change the outcome at all.
00:36:48.000 Yeah, it's an ongoing tragedy.
00:36:51.000 Here is Anthony Blinken, Cut 44.
00:36:53.000 Ukraine will become a member of NATO.
00:36:55.000 It's a great way to keep this war going. 0.98
00:36:58.000 I'm sorry, Anthony Blinken.
00:37:00.000 Play Cut 44.
00:37:02.000 Ukraine, the determination of every country represented here at NATO remains rock solid.
00:37:11.000 We will do everything that we can.
00:37:14.000 Allies will do everything that they can to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs.
00:37:19.000 Ukraine will become a member of NATO.
00:37:22.000 Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.
00:37:28.000 Build a bridge.
00:37:30.000 David, you tweeted out about Zelensky just stealing money.
00:37:33.000 By the way, I talked to well-informed Europeans.
00:37:37.000 I have friends in Florence who claim that Zelensky has mansions all across Europe and a lot of oligarchs are buying up yachts and ports of entry.
00:37:47.000 Is there truth to that, David?
00:37:48.000 Are the Ukrainians fleecing the American taxpayer for their opulent lifestyle? 1.00
00:37:53.000 Well, I can't speak to the mansions, but I can give you two data points.
00:37:56.000 Seymour Hirsch, the famed reporter, reported based on his intelligence contacts that Bill Burns had to make, the CIA director had to make a trip to Kiev where he sat down with Zelensky and told him he's stealing too much and that his subordinates were unhappy because he wasn't sharing the spoils enough.
00:38:13.000 So that's data point number one.
00:38:16.000 And again, I'm just relying on Seymour Hirsch for that.
00:38:18.000 I don't have my own sources on that.
00:38:21.000 The other data point was in that Time magazine story that I mentioned, where a Ukrainian official told Simon Schuster, who's the reporter, who, by the way, had written a very positive piece about Zelensky a year earlier.
00:38:34.000 He had named Zelensky man of the year.
00:38:37.000 So this is not a reporter who was anti-Ukrainian in any way.
00:38:41.000 He was predisposed to being very pro-Ukrainian in any event.
00:38:44.000 What this Ukrainian official said is that people are stealing like there's no tomorrow.
00:38:48.000 And he said this after turning off the tape recorder.
00:38:50.000 So it was this moment of confiding.
00:38:53.000 I 100% believe that.
00:38:54.000 Look, Ukraine has been known for corruption.
00:38:58.000 It's the most cottage industry of Ukraine.
00:39:04.000 There's simply a ton of corruption there.
00:39:06.000 This idea that we can flood this country with weapons and cash and not see a huge chunk of it stolen, especially when we, especially when the Congress opposed Rand Paul's bill.
00:39:21.000 Remember when Ram Paul had that bill to get the special inspector general cigar, you know, that Sopko is the top guy who did all that great work on how our money that was sent to Afghanistan got stolen.
00:39:34.000 Rand Paul said, let's get cigar to go look at Ukraine because he's the best at this.
00:39:39.000 And of course, that was rejected.
00:39:41.000 So there's a lot of reasons to believe that there's tremendous corruption going on.
00:39:45.000 So David, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin last year.
00:39:53.000 Your reaction to that, any thoughts you have?
00:39:55.000 Right.
00:39:55.000 Well, they did that in conjunction with a speech that Kamala Harris gave where she declared that Putin was a war criminal and guilty of war crimes.
00:40:02.000 I mean, look, they were fitting him for the Saddam Hussein jacket.
00:40:06.000 They thought that they were going to implement a regime change operation in Moscow that basically they would crush the Russian economy and that either the people would rise up or the elites would turn against Putin and then they would put him on trial at The Hague and then execute him.
00:40:22.000 I mean, this is basically, this is what they thought they were going to achieve at the beginning of the war.
00:40:27.000 I mean, this is how delusional they are.
00:40:29.000 And of course, the problem, one of the many problems with declaring in advance that Putin is guilty of war crimes and that in effect you want to execute him is that he has every incentive to continue this war forever and he's never going to give up.
00:40:43.000 It's existential for the Russian regime.
00:40:46.000 So why would they ever compromise? 0.59
00:40:48.000 This is also what makes it so foolish for Blinken to declare that Ukraine will be joining NATO.
00:40:54.000 I mean, that is what Russia is trying to prevent with its war.
00:40:57.000 So if you insist that Ukraine will be joining NATO, then Russia will continue this war forever if they have to.
00:41:05.000 And all the while, the American people largely don't support this.
00:41:09.000 I want to finish our conversation here, David, about the changing information consumption ecosystem, which actually gives me hope because this has been a tough conversation because this whole topic just I find so infuriating, which is how people are getting their information.
00:41:25.000 Your podcast is doing very well.
00:41:27.000 I want you to talk about the all-in podcast.
00:41:29.000 Rumble is doing very well.
00:41:31.000 David, talk about how people are getting their information, how that is more decentralized than ever, and long-term that should eventually manifest in policy change.
00:41:43.000 Well, you do pretty much have to go to independent sources in order to get the truth about this war.
00:41:47.000 I mean, the mainstream media has created this total phony narrative around it.
00:41:52.000 And the only way to really get the truth is to go to independent media, shows like yours, shows like ours, to hear people like, you know, Professor John Mearsheimer or Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the people who are really explaining the origins of this war.
00:42:07.000 If you do that, you get the truth about it.
00:42:09.000 But if you don't, you're kind of in this narrative hoax or narrative mirage, I should say.
00:42:16.000 And by the way, that was the narrative fallacy of this war is epitomized by that Blinken clip you played where he says that Ukraine will be joining NATO.
00:42:27.000 Because on the one hand, what the administration and what the whole mainstream media say is that this war has absolutely nothing to do with NATO expansion.
00:42:36.000 That is their claim.
00:42:37.000 And then on the other hand, they claim that we won't stop until Ukraine joins NATO.
00:42:42.000 So which one is it?
00:42:44.000 You know, if this war has nothing to do with NATO expansion, why won't you simply take NATO expansion off the table?
00:42:51.000 That is what the Istanbul Agreement required.
00:42:53.000 That is what the Russians are demanding. 0.96
00:42:55.000 So again, it's this totally self-contradictory position they have.
00:43:01.000 And If we simply would have agreed to take NATO expansion off the table, we could have avoided this war altogether.
00:43:08.000 But of course, they won't take it off the table because, you know, NATO expansion is the tip of the empire, it's the tip of the spear.
00:43:15.000 And they are obsessed with this idea of expanding NATO to the entire world.
00:43:20.000 It is the gay, the GAE, the great American empire. 1.00
00:43:25.000 And how dare just the way the acronym comes out. 0.98
00:43:28.000 I don't choose the letters.
00:43:30.000 And they will not stop, regardless of what lies they have to tell, regardless of what they have to put forward.
00:43:37.000 David, thank you so much.
00:43:38.000 I understand the podcast is doing very well, right?
00:43:41.000 Yeah, the podcast comes out weekly.
00:43:44.000 It's mostly a business podcast where we talk about current events, markets, technology, but we also cover politics and international current events.
00:43:54.000 And we drop new episodes on Friday, and it's typically a top 15 podcast when we drop a new episode.
00:44:01.000 Yeah, I listen to it.
00:44:02.000 It's excellent.
00:44:02.000 David, thank you so much.
00:44:03.000 Thank you for being generous with your time.
00:44:05.000 And I believe this is going to wake up a lot of people and educate them and inform them.
00:44:09.000 But the people are with us.
00:44:10.000 That's the promising element here is that I just wish the leaders would listen to the people.
00:44:15.000 Thanks so much, David.
00:44:16.000 Thanks, Jerome.
00:44:17.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:44:18.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:44:21.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
00:44:25.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.