The Charlie Kirk Show - Warhawks and Wisdom—Where 'The New Right' Should Stand on Foreign War

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we dive into the latest Ukraine news.

00:00:05.000 We talk about this from a moderate, nuanced, and prudent perspective.

00:00:08.000 What is the history of United States intervention in conflicts like Ukraine?

00:00:12.000 Should we get involved?

00:00:13.000 We've made the argument that we should not.

00:00:15.000 But what is the other side?

00:00:17.000 And why is it that the intensity of this conversation is reaching such a level of nastiness and antagonism?

00:00:27.000 It's worth exploring.

00:00:28.000 Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:31.000 Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.

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00:01:01.000 Buckle up, everybody, here.

00:01:03.000 We go.

00:01:03.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:05.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

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00:01:14.000 I want to thank Charlie.

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00:01:48.000 I've been watching some of the news this last weekend, and we have intentionally on this program not done the play-by-play of what's happening on the ground in Ukraine.

00:01:58.000 It can be very murky, very confusing.

00:02:00.000 And also, if you want kind of the play-by-play for that, there's other networks that have people on the ground that are doing that.

00:02:07.000 By play-by-play, I mean individual troop movements, bombings, rumors, all those sorts of things.

00:02:12.000 Instead, we're going to take a bigger picture and ask the question, how does it impact America?

00:02:16.000 Geopolitics, what are the philosophical implications behind all of this?

00:02:20.000 Now, last week, I made an argument that there is a rational and reasonable case that we should be careful intervening in Ukraine. 0.59

00:02:27.000 It was not a moral argument.

00:02:28.000 I, like many of you, am getting increasingly frustrated and upset that Putin's illegal and immoral invasion of a sovereign country of Ukraine is something that good and decent people should stand opposed and against.

00:02:44.000 I don't like seeing bullies.

00:02:45.000 I don't like seeing tyrants going into lands far away to go try and crush weak people.

00:02:52.000 Strong people have a moral obligation not to crush the weak.

00:02:56.000 However, we're seeing the exact opposite occur.

00:02:59.000 Now, I will say that America is war-weary, that we are a nation that spent 20 years in Afghanistan.

00:03:05.000 We couldn't even successfully pull out from there.

00:03:07.000 I made an argument last week that I will continue to make that our ruling class, the military elite that you don't trust, Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, approving funding to go to Ukraine very quickly only makes the very people that you don't trust more powerful and the risk of a confrontation that could go wrong in the wrong direction.

00:03:28.000 I'm not hearing a lot of people make this argument.

00:03:30.000 I'll be very honest.

00:03:31.000 The argument is either do we get involved or do we not get involved from a moral standpoint.

00:03:36.000 However, the question needs to be deeper than that, which is can we successfully pull it off?

00:03:41.000 When have there been successful military interventions to be able to deter people like Vladimir Putin?

00:03:47.000 The only example I can think of, there's two examples I can think of that were successful military interventions, but one of them came at a great cost, and one of them was not against like someone like Vladimir Putin.

00:03:57.000 So people more in the neoconservative camp, they would say, hey, look at the Persian Gulf War.

00:04:02.000 What a great example of a war where we came in and defended a smaller country against a bigger country.

00:04:07.000 Of course, this is when President George H.W. Bush was in office, when Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, and he wanted Kuwait.

00:04:15.000 He crossed the border into Kuwait, and America made the decision to come in and deter Iraqi forces, successfully bringing them back to the Iraq border and stopping the invasion of Kuwait.

00:04:26.000 Now, Americans did lose their lives, and we should never forget the Americans that lost their lives in the Persian Gulf War.

00:04:32.000 However, the amount of people that lost their lives in the Persian Gulf War is much smaller, let's just say, than that of other examples I will use.

00:04:42.000 Another war of deterrence where people will point to, say, look at how wonderful this was, was the Korean War.

00:04:48.000 The Korean War was a war against the philosophy of domino theory.

00:04:52.000 Of course, with Harry Truman as president and the march of the communists to the Korean peninsula, America got involved to try to prevent the continual spread of communism throughout the Asian, not just the Asian area, but across the entire continent.

00:05:09.000 We pushed back the Koreans all the way, the communist Koreans, I should say, and Russian and Soviet forces, all the way to the Chinese border, only to be counterattacked and pushed all the way to what is now the DMZ and the creation of North and South Korea. 0.98

00:05:21.000 Now, that is called the Forgotten War.

00:05:23.000 It's the forgotten war because it kind of blurs between the Vietnam War and World War II.

00:05:28.000 Now, the Forgotten War shouldn't be forgotten.

00:05:30.000 There were tens of thousands of Americans that, I believe it was tens of thousands.

00:05:37.000 You can get the exact number, Connor, of casualties and fatalities.

00:05:40.000 Persian Gulf War, there were 219 U.S. casualties.

00:05:44.000 154 were killed in battle and 65 died from non-battle causes.

00:05:49.000 That's a big cost, 200-plus people.

00:05:51.000 And the Korean War, I believe, was in the tens of thousands.

00:05:54.000 We'll get that fact-checked.

00:05:55.000 Now, those two wars are commonly looked at by neoconservatives and interventionists to say, look at how American leadership can deter Soviet forces or deter Iraqi forces.

00:06:07.000 Now, of course, there's a big difference, and let's use the Iraq example.

00:06:12.000 Iraq and Saddam Hussein is far weaker than Vladimir Putin. 0.56

00:06:17.000 Iraq did not have nuclear weapons.

00:06:21.000 And there was not the ramifications of getting all of NATO involved.

00:06:24.000 In the Korean War, 36,516 people were killed.

00:06:30.000 Over 100,000 people were wounded in what was called the Forgotten War.

00:06:34.000 Now, for every example of successful U.S. deterrence, there are 100 examples of unsuccessful United States intervention.

00:06:42.000 Long, meandering wars where the definition of success is undefined, such as the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, or some of our interventions in Syria, or the displacement of dictators in Libya.

00:06:55.000 When America gets involved and we intervene, we have a track record of messing it up more than getting it right.

00:07:01.000 That is not an indictment of our amazing military service members at all.

00:07:05.000 They deserve credit.

00:07:06.000 In fact, they deserve so much credit.

00:07:08.000 They deserve so much praise.

00:07:09.000 They deserve so much honor that we should not haphazardly send them into combat zones without a clearly defined plan and agenda for success.

00:07:22.000 So as this Ukrainian situation has popped up, there is an ever-growing community of people on the right that are demanding United States involvement in Ukraine.

00:07:33.000 However, many of them do stop short.

00:07:35.000 And I found this very interesting because the framework, the window that we are operating from, the Overton window that this entire discussion comes from, is something that I think is worthy of pause and reflection.

00:07:46.000 And I've said this many times on this program.

00:07:48.000 We are not isolationists.

00:07:50.000 We are not interventionists.

00:07:51.000 We're Americans.

00:07:52.000 We believe at times American strength needs to be exhibited abroad.

00:07:55.000 But we think most times America needs to put our own house in order and foreign endless wars destroy a civilization. 0.76

00:08:01.000 We are not ideological on this program when it comes to foreign policy.

00:08:05.000 We want what's best for our people first and foremost.

00:08:08.000 What I find very interesting is I was listening on the radio yesterday of Trey Gowdy's program on Fox News.

00:08:14.000 And Trey Gowdy had some congressmen.

00:08:16.000 And I can try to, I'm trying to think of who it was.

00:08:20.000 We can get the guest lineup.

00:08:21.000 from last night.

00:08:22.000 And the congressman was going on and on about how we need to stand with the Ukrainian government and how the Ukrainian people are a freedom-loving people and the Ukrainian government is a freedom-focused government.

00:08:33.000 Now, that is a misrepresentation.

00:08:36.000 However, I understand the kind of impulse to want to frame the Ukrainian government as the good guys because Vladimir Putin is so bad.

00:08:43.000 I get the impulse.

00:08:44.000 But it was very interesting by listening to his commentary and even the commentary of Adam Kinzinger and even the commentary of Liz Cheney is the Overton window that we are operating on is they all say, of course, we're not going to send U.S. troops.

00:08:56.000 And I say, huh, that's interesting.

00:08:57.000 So you want to intervene, but you actually don't want to intervene.

00:09:01.000 Why is that?

00:09:02.000 Well, it's because it's unpopular.

00:09:03.000 That's why.

00:09:04.000 It's because even the most hawkish commentator or politician, even if even Lindsey Graham, who is calling for the assassination of Vladimir Putin, and of course, dictator displacement and regime change and messing it up is something the American foreign policy establishment specializes in.

00:09:22.000 Even the most willing person to intervene, which I'm open-minded to all sorts of ideas, we are not dogmatic on this program.

00:09:29.000 They say, but no U.S. troops.

00:09:31.000 And that is the argument that we made two months ago when we were trying to warn against war in Ukraine.

00:09:39.000 We're trying to warn against getting involved with Russia, which is if you're not willing to see it through, don't get involved.

00:09:47.000 If you think half-measures are the way to do war, that's how all of a sudden you get things like Qaddafi and the Syrian civil war.

00:09:56.000 Because even the most hawkish impulses of the American security establishment know that if you send a U.S. troop into Ukraine, they know what will unravel.

00:10:06.000 So the question is, what are we really dealing with here?

00:10:10.000 Is it half-measures?

00:10:11.000 Is it virtue signaling?

00:10:13.000 Because if you're not willing to go all the way through and see it through, then what exactly is the agenda here?

00:10:20.000 That's something worth exploring, isn't it?

00:10:25.000 Hey, everybody.

00:10:25.000 People say this, and Plato actually said it first.

00:10:28.000 Ignorance is the root and the stem of all evil.

00:10:30.000 People say ignorance is bliss.

00:10:32.000 Wrong.

00:10:32.000 It's not.

00:10:34.000 Are you reading the headlines?

00:10:35.000 Are you looking around and seeing the things I am?

00:10:38.000 Look, Americans are being hoodwinked by half-truths, deceit, and propaganda, and our country is almost unrecognizable.

00:10:44.000 Normal is long gone, and the future is a dangerous place.

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00:11:32.000 One of the reasons why I don't trust our government is that they're either captured by a corrupt deal they've made or influence or by ideology.

00:11:41.000 It's either they have to A favor to some unspecified group of people, or they believe in something so abstract that the country will be harmed by their decision-making.

00:11:57.000 For example, Joe Biden's continual focus on trying to get us off of fossil fuels has made the world a more dangerous place.

00:12:06.000 We traded energy independence and peace for inflation and war.

00:12:12.000 That was the big bargain.

00:12:14.000 You see, when you destabilize the world's superpower when it comes to energy dominance, don't be surprised when other bad actors try to fill the void.

00:12:23.000 Joe Biden in cut four continues, this is just a short snippet of the times he said energy transition.

00:12:29.000 He looks at himself as the bridge presidency to abolish our reliance on fossil fuels.

00:12:37.000 The problem is the bridge might also mean the sovereign, the invasion of a sovereign nation like Ukraine.

00:12:42.000 Play cut four.

00:12:44.000 Transition from the oil industry, yes.

00:12:46.000 The rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment and our focus on clean energy options.

00:12:54.000 It should motivate us to accelerate the transition of clean energy.

00:12:57.000 We're working through an energy transition.

00:12:59.000 And the reality is we have to take some time to get off of oil and gas.

00:13:04.000 So the people from rural to suburban to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.

00:13:12.000 So that woman that runs the energy department, you know, I think her name is Granholm, right?

00:13:16.000 Jennifer Granholm.

00:13:18.000 Not only is she captured by ideology, but she also has ties to green energy companies.

00:13:23.000 So the point is that almost every single person in charge of our government either believes something that is never going to happen, therefore they don't deal with prudence and they don't deal with real world wisdom, or they're captured by a foreign adversary.

00:13:38.000 Joe Biden and the Biden regime is controlled by both.

00:13:42.000 The Biden regime is held hostage by people that have made private deals for years with China and Burisma and also by the young revolutionaries that went to Brown, Princeton, Stanford, and Harvard to try and create America to turn America into some sort of utopian experiment.

00:14:04.000 Now, the Energy Secretary Granholm, did you know she still owns millions of dollars of stocks in electric companies pushed by Biden?

00:14:13.000 Now, I'm told that she has divested by now, but she was confirmed by the United States Senate with the baggage of owning millions in energy investments.

00:14:23.000 So that's awfully corrupt.

00:14:24.000 So you're running the energy department.

00:14:26.000 You are waging a war on fossil fuels.

00:14:29.000 You're doing everything you possibly can to try to break the back of America's energy independence while owning millions of dollars of energy stocks in green energy companies.

00:14:40.000 This is one of the reasons why Donald Trump was so good on the world stage, is he did not believe in some sort of impossible, unrealistic, ideological agenda.

00:14:52.000 And he also was not, let's say, paid off by other countries.

00:14:57.000 But they tried to make it seem that way, which was so fascinating, is that the president that was actually independent of foreign influence, they went as hard as they possibly could to try to make it seem as if he was a Russian agent.

00:15:08.000 And of course, they it was the opposite of actually being able to prove it.

00:15:12.000 He was exonerated through that entire process.

00:15:16.000 And so when you hear even the most aggressive people pushing for intervention in Ukraine, you have to ask yourself the question, do they believe in an ideology that will never come to fruition?

00:15:29.000 And I'll tell you what some of the neoconservatives believe and what that ideology is, or are they being bought off?

00:15:35.000 Or do they actually believe this?

00:15:37.000 And are they dealing on team reality?

00:15:40.000 So, what is the agenda of someone that would want to intervene in Ukraine?

00:15:44.000 For example, what is the agenda of Lindsey Graham?

00:15:48.000 Is he corrupt?

00:15:48.000 Is he bought off?

00:15:49.000 I mean, maybe he gets money from the defense contractors, but I don't think that's the driving force.

00:15:54.000 I don't.

00:15:55.000 I think Lindsey Graham and the people like Lindsey Graham are driven by a different worldview, a worldview that actually is thousands of years old.

00:16:06.000 Lindsey Graham believes in a very specific ideological pursuit.

00:16:12.000 Lindsey Graham is an imperialist. 1.00

00:16:15.000 Lindsey Graham believes that neoliberal values can be exported to every corner of every country through force, missiles, tomahawk strikes, drone reconnaissance.

00:16:26.000 We're going to make you love democracy.

00:16:28.000 If you don't, we're going to bomb your villages. 0.54

00:16:30.000 Now, I believe that deep down every human being has the right, the natural right to live freely.

00:16:36.000 But it's not realistic to say as if you are going to export a constitutional government into every single country.

00:16:41.000 We saw what happened in Iraq.

00:16:43.000 We saw what happened in Afghanistan.

00:16:44.000 They don't want to be free right now.

00:16:46.000 It's going to take a lot of work.

00:16:47.000 You don't go from the 13th century to enlightenment values just because you give them a bunch of money and bomb their bridges.

00:16:56.000 Being an entrepreneur and running a business is not for the faint of heart.

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00:18:57.000 We're going to continue to dive into this story here, which I find to be very interesting because there's a lot of criticism happening on the kind of commentary of the right of people accusing anyone that doesn't want to go full-fledged into Ukraine with weapons and assistance and further escalation as being sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, which of course is not right.

00:19:22.000 I mean, that's a silly kind of left-wing style of argumentation.

00:19:25.000 But then on the other side, when there is a public opportunity to just kind of have, hey, the floor is yours, okay?

00:19:32.000 You don't like the way we're talking about it.

00:19:34.000 You don't like the way Biden is handling it.

00:19:36.000 What would you do?

00:19:38.000 What is the specific course of action?

00:19:40.000 What does success look like?

00:19:42.000 And at that moment, there's a very revealing set of, let's say, a revealing sequence of statements.

00:19:53.000 One of those being, hey, look, we're not going to do troops on the ground, which of course I agree with. 0.98

00:19:59.000 But then that doesn't really mean you're willing to see this all the way through.

00:20:03.000 So then the other argument is, well, Charlie, weapons should be just enough.

00:20:05.000 Weapons should be enough for Ukraine to hold the line. 0.99

00:20:09.000 So let me ask a very rational question.

00:20:12.000 If Ukraine were to receive more sophisticated Western weaponry, does that mean that more people are going to die in Ukraine or less people are going to die in Ukraine?

00:20:21.000 Do you think it's realistic that Ukraine can beat the Russians at this point? 0.55

00:20:25.000 Maybe it is.

00:20:26.000 Maybe it isn't.

00:20:27.000 There's military experts, which we don't really trust the experts very much on this program, that are split on that opinion.

00:20:34.000 Now, what is not being reported is that there is a drumbeat of peace talks that are happening.

00:20:43.000 There's a drumbeat right now of the potential of a peace deal being brokered.

00:20:49.000 And what's interesting is that none of the media companies are even mentioning this.

00:20:54.000 You see, foreign war, especially one as brutal and as shocking as Putin's war in Ukraine, it's a ratings boost for the floundering news organizations that were not seeing the record numbers they wanted when they were just covering the January 6th Commission and Donald Trump's golf game.

00:21:17.000 Peace talks are not getting any of the mainstream headlines.

00:21:21.000 The Russian-Ukrainian talks are continuing.

00:21:25.000 And what's really interesting is how almost none of the major organizations are covering it.

00:21:34.000 And it seems as if they are getting closer and closer to a deal.

00:21:38.000 Now, maybe it's not true.

00:21:40.000 Maybe it's all propaganda, but we should want peace, shouldn't we?

00:21:43.000 Oh, wait, but supplying $15 billion to the people of Ukraine or the government of Ukraine, that probably doesn't make us closer to getting to peace.

00:21:52.000 Now, I don't pretend to understand Russian military tactics at all.

00:21:57.000 Russia strikes near Poland border.

00:22:00.000 Someone explain to me what they're thinking with that.

00:22:02.000 Because if that missile goes 10 more miles into Poland, you might get drafted.

00:22:14.000 So Moscow hits military base near Poland, not Poland, 10 miles from Poland.

00:22:20.000 So how far will Putin go?

00:22:22.000 We don't know.

00:22:25.000 What is his end game?

00:22:26.000 We don't know.

00:22:28.000 So there is a question, though.

00:22:30.000 Who benefits by downplaying and perhaps undermining peace efforts?

00:22:36.000 Who benefits by this war continuing?

00:22:39.000 Here are some possible answers to that.

00:22:41.000 The TV ratings, obviously.

00:22:43.000 Television ratings are up for every single major floundering news organization.

00:22:48.000 The Chinese Communist Party benefits from this continuing.

00:22:51.000 Keeps the eye off them as they continue their plunder and their deceit of all decent people in the Western world.

00:22:58.000 Who else benefits by this war continuing?

00:23:00.000 Oil prices increase and it benefits oil-producing nations.

00:23:03.000 You see, one of the reasons why Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates aren't returning Joe Biden's phone call is they want to get a couple more weeks of the action here.

00:23:11.000 They're like, wait a second, $120 oil?

00:23:13.000 Woo! 0.99

00:23:14.000 We couldn't have dreamed of that.

00:23:16.000 Let's just keep this like Ukrainian conflict going for a couple more weeks.

00:23:21.000 Who else benefits from this?

00:23:23.000 And now this is going to sound very cynical, but I don't care.

00:23:25.000 Joe Biden is benefiting from this.

00:23:27.000 He's received a five-point boost in the polls.

00:23:31.000 Joe Biden is seeing a political uptick despite double-digit inflation, gas prices, and domestic strife here, urban crime increasing, small businesses struggling, entrepreneurship rates are going down, people are struggling to make ends meet because everything is so expensive.

00:23:49.000 It's kind of a sluggish moment in America right now.

00:23:53.000 It's also a very frustrating moment.

00:23:55.000 And this is just kind of a sidebar, which again, you can't blame Joe Biden directly for this, but his policies absolutely play into it.

00:24:01.000 Good luck navigating successfully through an airport, an inner city, getting a reservation at most restaurants and boom cities. 0.95

00:24:08.000 There is almost a kind of an infrastructure problem, not just from roads and bridges, but it's as if certain areas have grown so quickly, so overwhelmingly, it's as if the kind of peaceful, easily transfer from one activity to the other, that kind of quality of life, has been very much disrupted.

00:24:25.000 I could tell you that is absolutely the case in South Florida.

00:24:29.000 You have to get a dinner reservation like a year and a half ahead of time.

00:24:33.000 So TV channels and news organizations benefit by undermining the peace talks.

00:24:38.000 The Chinese Communist Party benefits by not having peace be brokered.

00:24:43.000 Oil-producing countries benefit.

00:24:46.000 And Biden has a distraction, a scapegoat for his failed policies.

00:24:51.000 And also, the Great Reset benefits from this, the World Economic Forum.

00:24:56.000 The World Economic Forum is now able to have a proxy conflict in a nation to be able to further make the case that a borderless, private property-less society will bring about and broker peace.

00:25:14.000 It really is modern-day yellow journalism. 0.52

00:25:17.000 The newspapers benefit, they increase circulation.

00:25:21.000 There's more web traffic around this.

00:25:25.000 Now, yellow journalism, for those that don't know, is a style of newspaper reporting that emphasized sensationalism over facts.

00:25:32.000 It is now the standard of journalism in America.

00:25:36.000 During the height of yellow journalism, I think in the late 19th century, right?

00:25:42.000 Many of the factors, it was one of many of the factors that pushed the United States and Spain into war in Cuba and the Philippines, leading to the acquisition of many new territories by the United States.

00:25:55.000 Yellow journalism has five basic characteristics.

00:25:59.000 Do you think we're living through yellow journalism right now?

00:26:01.000 Number one, scare headlines in huge print and often in minor news.

00:26:06.000 Number two, the lavish use of pictures or imaginary drawings.

00:26:10.000 Number three, use of faked interviews and misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts.

00:26:18.000 Number four, emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips.

00:26:24.000 I know that one's not as applicable, but I'm sure there's a kind of a, I mean, I think, actually, let's think about it.

00:26:32.000 What would the equivalent be?

00:26:33.000 The equivalent would be like a CNN special on Sunday for a couple hours on just Ukraine.

00:26:37.000 That would be the equivalent because this was written in 1900.

00:26:41.000 And dramatic sympathy with the underdog against the system, of course, being the Ukrainian government.

00:26:48.000 So let's just use the example.

00:26:50.000 Here's the New York Times.

00:26:52.000 Is this yellow journalism or not?

00:26:56.000 For those of you on radio, these are pretty emotional imagery, isn't it?

00:27:00.000 So let's go to number one: scare headlines in huge print.

00:27:03.000 Moscow hits military base near Poland.

00:27:06.000 Whoa.

00:27:07.000 Lavish use of pictures.

00:27:09.000 There you go.

00:27:11.000 Use of fake interviews.

00:27:12.000 Now, I'm not going to go that far.

00:27:14.000 I will say, though, that whether it be Snake Island or the Ghost of Kiev, all of that was made up.

00:27:20.000 It was war propaganda. 0.76

00:27:22.000 Emphasis on full color Sunday supplements went to that one.

00:27:24.000 And dramatic sympathy with the underdog against the system.

00:27:28.000 Sure feels that way.

00:27:30.000 Some would call it emotional manipulation.

00:27:33.000 Okay, this is a minute.

00:27:35.000 This is the clip.

00:27:36.000 I know both these people, Trey Gowdy, and I know Congressman Brian Mast.

00:27:39.000 I get along very well with Brian Mast, and he's a good friend.

00:27:41.000 I know some of his relatives as well.

00:27:44.000 And so this is not an attack on Brian Mast in any way.

00:27:46.000 I just see things differently in Ukraine.

00:27:48.000 But I find this clip interesting.

00:27:50.000 This is the clip, right?

00:27:51.000 Where he just kind of puts this little sentence in, this little crumb, where he's very hawkish on Ukraine.

00:27:56.000 He's like, no, no, no, no troops.

00:27:58.000 Be careful wanting to get involved in something when you openly broadcast that you're not willing to see it all the way through to victory.

00:28:06.000 Half measures result in total failures.

00:28:11.000 PlayCut 16.

00:28:13.000 I mean, it is hard to watch those images and not want to do something more.

00:28:18.000 I mean, is it really as simple as whether the missile lands on this side of Polish boundary line or that side of the Polish boundary line?

00:28:28.000 I don't think it can be.

00:28:29.000 I don't think that's who we are as a nation that we say, well, we could see 10,000 or far more Ukrainians indiscriminately killed and we won't do a thing. 0.96

00:28:39.000 But if the hair on the head of one NATO member gets touched, we're all in, all NATO members.

00:28:46.000 That's not who we are.

00:28:48.000 And that's not good for the security of the globe.

00:28:51.000 We need to go out there and say, these are the borders.

00:28:54.000 These are the parameters.

00:28:56.000 These are the, you know, not look at this the way that Biden, they called it a gaffe in the beginning when they said Biden was looking at this in terms of whether it was a major or a minor incursion.

00:29:05.000 I think what we really know is they were planning, trying to predict that this would be a minor incursion and they could brush it off without having to do anything.

00:29:14.000 No, we need to control the things that we can control and be strong in the face of all of this.

00:29:20.000 None of it is acceptable.

00:29:21.000 None of it is proportional.

00:29:23.000 None of it is rational.

00:29:25.000 And if we try to rationalize any of it, then Putin has already succeeded.

00:29:32.000 So that is not the clip, but it's close.

00:29:36.000 It was actually really helpful.

00:29:37.000 But in the conversation, he does say, look, we hear no troops on the ground.

00:29:42.000 And so I think Trey Gowdy said something very interesting, though, isn't it?

00:29:45.000 He said, we look at these images and it's hard not to want to do something.

00:29:49.000 I agree.

00:29:50.000 I think Trey Gowdy is exactly right.

00:29:52.000 It is hard not to want to get involved in every single fight.

00:29:56.000 But a mature nation that also knows that it's in a cycle of decline is very careful what they get involved in. 0.97

00:30:03.000 A mature nation that knows that we're being led by corrupt, ideological, arrogant, dumb people is extremely careful what they get involved in. 0.98

00:30:15.000 That's called prudence. 1.00

00:30:17.000 Maybe the imagery that you are seeing repeatedly on television is trying to persuade you to want to do something.

00:30:30.000 George Orwell said, quote, all the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

00:30:41.000 George Orwell.

00:30:44.000 We can agree that Joe Biden led us into this.

00:30:46.000 That is something I think the right can agree on.

00:30:48.000 We can all agree on bad energy policies that have stumbled us into this conflict.

00:30:54.000 But there is disagreement on how to proceed.

00:30:57.000 I mean, I'm highly critical of this idea of rushing $14 billion into Ukraine.

00:31:02.000 And I just want to continue to make this argument, which is: okay, were you thrilled with our exit in Afghanistan?

00:31:09.000 Were you ecstatic with the people that were climbing onto airplanes as we took off from Kabul?

00:31:17.000 Did you like the 13 dead Marines because of an IED because of the lack of leadership from Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin?

00:31:23.000 How about the recapturing of the Bagram air base or the Taliban retaking Afghanistan in a couple days?

00:31:29.000 Or how about Joe Biden randomly drone striking a family that ended up just being just a suburban family getting some groceries and Joe Biden just drone striked them?

00:31:42.000 If you were worried about Afghanistan, you should be hesitant to want to supply a bullet in Ukraine. 0.95

00:31:51.000 And yes.

00:31:53.000 My argument hinges on the lack of credibility and competency of the people running our military.

00:31:59.000 And that's something I think that's very interesting, isn't it?

00:32:02.000 Because a lot of the conservatives that are calling, and they are conservatives, they're calling for further intervention in Ukraine, and they have some very good arguments.

00:32:09.000 I really do.

00:32:10.000 I think Vladimir Putin bombing maternity awards, if it's true, and it looks to be true, by the way, verified by other journalists, is a disgusting thing.

00:32:16.000 It's a war crime. 0.92

00:32:17.000 It should want you to be involved.

00:32:22.000 However, what you should want to do is not always the right thing to do.

00:32:27.000 It's also not the thing that we're capable of doing.

00:32:29.000 Those are two things, should you and capable of.

00:32:34.000 The military was unable to, after 20 years, pull off a successful exit from Ukraine.

00:32:41.000 I mean, successful exit from Afghanistan. 0.93

00:32:44.000 Excuse me.

00:32:45.000 But now all of a sudden, like in the last couple months, they got their act together.

00:32:50.000 And the stakes are much higher.

00:32:51.000 These are not child molesting goat herders from the 13th century in the hills of the Kandahar Valley.

00:32:57.000 These are Russians in winter in a country they actually want to take over. 1.00

00:33:06.000 And also the binary, look, the more you dive into it, there really is only one good group of people in this whole thing.

00:33:15.000 And it is the Ukrainian people.

00:33:16.000 They are victims of this entire thing.

00:33:18.000 They are.

00:33:18.000 They are legitimate victims.

00:33:22.000 Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and tied into the worst influences of the West. 1.00

00:33:27.000 Vladimir Putin, evil scumbag through and through, as we've said. 0.98

00:33:32.000 And I would love, here's just an open invite for any person that wants to get further involved in Ukraine, whether it be calling for the assassination of Vladimir Putin or a no-fly zone over Ukraine or any of the senators that voted for the bill. 0.98

00:33:46.000 You're welcome to come on our program and I will let you tell me what a success looked like.

00:33:52.000 I know what I think success should look like.

00:33:54.000 Peace.

00:33:55.000 The end of a kinetic conflict.

00:33:57.000 Now, some people will say, well, Charlie, you're not going to get peace unless you're the stronger man.

00:34:01.000 All they understand is power.

00:34:03.000 Glad you mentioned that.

00:34:04.000 Do we have anyone in our administration that you think is going to project strength right now?

00:34:08.000 If not, don't get involved.

00:34:12.000 And the counterargo said, well, Charlie, our military can handle it.

00:34:14.000 Can they?

00:34:15.000 We gave $85 billion to the Taliban. 0.62

00:34:17.000 Who exactly do you trust?

00:34:19.000 I want names.

00:34:21.000 For the Republicans, they're like, we got to get involved.

00:34:24.000 Tell me who you think is going to be pulling this off exactly.

00:34:28.000 And tell me what they've done recently to give you all this confidence that they can do it.

00:34:34.000 We messed up Libya. 1.00

00:34:35.000 We couldn't keep Syria straight. 1.00

00:34:37.000 Afghanistan was a complete and total debacle. 1.00

00:34:40.000 We are having more training exercise incidents than in any recent memory in our military.

00:34:47.000 We are having critical race theory and wokeism taught in our military right now.

00:34:50.000 Again, this is not an indictment of the amazing heroes on the front lines.

00:34:54.000 Not the point.

00:34:55.000 It's the point of, and this is a funny argument.

00:34:57.000 Someone said, Charlie's just supplying weapons to them.

00:35:00.000 We couldn't get our own weapons out of Afghanistan.

00:35:02.000 How are we supposed to supply weapons to them?

00:35:05.000 We can't get $85 billion of Black Hawk helicopters and night vision goggles and missiles out of Afghanistan, but we can somehow get them into an active war zone against a nuclear power with Russians in mud season of winter. 0.99

00:35:18.000 Exactly how's that going to work?

00:35:23.000 I'm open to be corrected in this, but if you think I'm cynical, you're right.

00:35:27.000 I'm the mayor of the cynical town when it comes to foreign intervention right now.

00:35:32.000 I have zero confidence in the ability or the capacity for the American ruling class, yes, in the Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin, all the way down to our senators and from our White House to be able to pull off complicated and complex things.

00:35:50.000 In fact, I think it's inevitable they'll make it worse.

00:35:55.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:35:56.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast and hit subscribe by hitting the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner.

00:36:04.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:36:05.000 God bless.

00:36:09.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - March 14, 2022

Warhawks and Wisdom—Where 'The New Right' Should Stand on Foreign War

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