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00:01:48.000I'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.
00:02:28.000I, 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.
00:02:45.000I don't like seeing tyrants going into lands far away to go try and crush weak people.
00:02:52.000Strong people have a moral obligation not to crush the weak.
00:02:56.000However, we're seeing the exact opposite occur.
00:02:59.000Now, I will say that America is war-weary, that we are a nation that spent 20 years in Afghanistan.
00:03:05.000We couldn't even successfully pull out from there.
00:03:07.000I 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.
00:03:28.000I'm not hearing a lot of people make this argument.
00:03:31.000The argument is either do we get involved or do we not get involved from a moral standpoint.
00:03:36.000However, the question needs to be deeper than that, which is can we successfully pull it off?
00:03:41.000When have there been successful military interventions to be able to deter people like Vladimir Putin?
00:03:47.000The 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.
00:03:57.000So people more in the neoconservative camp, they would say, hey, look at the Persian Gulf War.
00:04:02.000What a great example of a war where we came in and defended a smaller country against a bigger country.
00:04:07.000Of course, this is when President George H.W. Bush was in office, when Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, and he wanted Kuwait.
00:04:15.000He 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.
00:04:26.000Now, Americans did lose their lives, and we should never forget the Americans that lost their lives in the Persian Gulf War.
00:04:32.000However, 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.
00:04:42.000Another war of deterrence where people will point to, say, look at how wonderful this was, was the Korean War.
00:04:48.000The Korean War was a war against the philosophy of domino theory.
00:04:52.000Of 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.
00:05:09.000We 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.
00:05:21.000Now, that is called the Forgotten War.
00:05:23.000It's the forgotten war because it kind of blurs between the Vietnam War and World War II.
00:05:28.000Now, the Forgotten War shouldn't be forgotten.
00:05:30.000There were tens of thousands of Americans that, I believe it was tens of thousands.
00:05:37.000You can get the exact number, Connor, of casualties and fatalities.
00:05:40.000Persian Gulf War, there were 219 U.S. casualties.
00:05:44.000154 were killed in battle and 65 died from non-battle causes.
00:05:55.000Now, 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.
00:06:07.000Now, of course, there's a big difference, and let's use the Iraq example.
00:06:12.000Iraq and Saddam Hussein is far weaker than Vladimir Putin.
00:06:21.000And there was not the ramifications of getting all of NATO involved.
00:06:24.000In the Korean War, 36,516 people were killed.
00:06:30.000Over 100,000 people were wounded in what was called the Forgotten War.
00:06:34.000Now, for every example of successful U.S. deterrence, there are 100 examples of unsuccessful United States intervention.
00:06:42.000Long, 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.
00:06:55.000When America gets involved and we intervene, we have a track record of messing it up more than getting it right.
00:07:01.000That is not an indictment of our amazing military service members at all.
00:07:09.000They deserve so much honor that we should not haphazardly send them into combat zones without a clearly defined plan and agenda for success.
00:07:22.000So 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.
00:07:35.000And 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.
00:07:46.000And I've said this many times on this program.
00:08:22.000And 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.
00:08:44.000But 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.
00:09:04.000It'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.
00:09:22.000Even the most willing person to intervene, which I'm open-minded to all sorts of ideas, we are not dogmatic on this program.
00:09:31.000And that is the argument that we made two months ago when we were trying to warn against war in Ukraine.
00:09:39.000We're trying to warn against getting involved with Russia, which is if you're not willing to see it through, don't get involved.
00:09:47.000If 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.
00:09:56.000Because 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.
00:10:06.000So the question is, what are we really dealing with here?
00:11:32.000One 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.
00:11:41.000It'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.
00:11:57.000For example, Joe Biden's continual focus on trying to get us off of fossil fuels has made the world a more dangerous place.
00:12:06.000We traded energy independence and peace for inflation and war.
00:12:14.000You 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.
00:12:23.000Joe Biden in cut four continues, this is just a short snippet of the times he said energy transition.
00:12:29.000He looks at himself as the bridge presidency to abolish our reliance on fossil fuels.
00:12:37.000The problem is the bridge might also mean the sovereign, the invasion of a sovereign nation like Ukraine.
00:12:44.000Transition from the oil industry, yes.
00:12:46.000The 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.
00:12:54.000It should motivate us to accelerate the transition of clean energy.
00:12:57.000We're working through an energy transition.
00:12:59.000And the reality is we have to take some time to get off of oil and gas.
00:13:04.000So the people from rural to suburban to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.
00:13:12.000So that woman that runs the energy department, you know, I think her name is Granholm, right?
00:13:18.000Not only is she captured by ideology, but she also has ties to green energy companies.
00:13:23.000So 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.
00:13:38.000Joe Biden and the Biden regime is controlled by both.
00:13:42.000The 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.
00:14:04.000Now, the Energy Secretary Granholm, did you know she still owns millions of dollars of stocks in electric companies pushed by Biden?
00:14:13.000Now, 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.
00:14:29.000You'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.
00:14:40.000This 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.
00:14:52.000And he also was not, let's say, paid off by other countries.
00:14:57.000But 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.
00:15:08.000And of course, they it was the opposite of actually being able to prove it.
00:15:12.000He was exonerated through that entire process.
00:15:16.000And 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?
00:15:29.000And I'll tell you what some of the neoconservatives believe and what that ideology is, or are they being bought off?
00:15:55.000I think Lindsey Graham and the people like Lindsey Graham are driven by a different worldview, a worldview that actually is thousands of years old.
00:16:06.000Lindsey Graham believes in a very specific ideological pursuit.
00:16:15.000Lindsey Graham believes that neoliberal values can be exported to every corner of every country through force, missiles, tomahawk strikes, drone reconnaissance.
00:16:26.000We're going to make you love democracy.
00:16:28.000If you don't, we're going to bomb your villages.
00:16:30.000Now, I believe that deep down every human being has the right, the natural right to live freely.
00:16:36.000But it's not realistic to say as if you are going to export a constitutional government into every single country.
00:17:05.000330 days on the road I spent last year.
00:17:08.000But if you're not careful, the stress can start to take a toll on your body, raising your blood pressure, making it harder to sleep, draining you of vital energy, and making you more irritable.
00:17:16.000That's why I recommend you supplement with magnesium daily.
00:17:19.000About 75% of people are magnesium deficient.
00:17:22.000That number might be higher among business owners and C-level professionals.
00:17:26.000That's because stress depletes magnesium levels.
00:17:28.000This can trigger a various cycle of rising stress and severe magnesium deficiency.
00:17:33.000This deficiency can lead to higher levels of anxiety, irritability, trouble sleeping, and low energy.
00:17:38.000It can even contribute to foot and leg cramps while you sleep.
00:17:41.000Now, you might be wondering, does magnesium really affect all these things?
00:17:45.000In fact, magnesium is involved in more than 300 chemical processes inside your body.
00:17:50.000So a lot of different things can start to go wrong if you're deficient.
00:17:52.000The good news is you can experience a number of positive health benefits just by getting enough magnesium, including better sleep, more energy, healthy blood pressure, less irritability, a calmer mood, stronger bones, reduced muscle cramping, and even a few migraines.
00:18:04.000But to experience these health benefits, you have to get the right kinds of magnesium.
00:18:07.000Truth is, most magnesium supplements you find in health stores use the only two cheapest synthetic forms.
00:18:14.000There are actually seven unique forms of magnesium.
00:18:16.000You must get all of them if you want to experience its calming, stress-relieving effects.
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00:18:32.000Simply take two capsules before you go to bed, and you'll be amazed by the improvements in your mood and energy levels.
00:18:36.000And how much more rested you feel when you wake up?
00:18:38.000For an exclusive offer for my listeners, go to magbreakthrough.com slash Kirk and use Kirk10 during checkout to save 10% and get free shipping.
00:18:57.000We'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.
00:19:22.000I mean, that's a silly kind of left-wing style of argumentation.
00:19:25.000But then on the other side, when there is a public opportunity to just kind of have, hey, the floor is yours, okay?
00:19:32.000You don't like the way we're talking about it.
00:19:34.000You don't like the way Biden is handling it.
00:19:42.000And at that moment, there's a very revealing set of, let's say, a revealing sequence of statements.
00:19:53.000One of those being, hey, look, we're not going to do troops on the ground, which of course I agree with.
00:19:59.000But then that doesn't really mean you're willing to see this all the way through.
00:20:03.000So then the other argument is, well, Charlie, weapons should be just enough.
00:20:05.000Weapons should be enough for Ukraine to hold the line.
00:20:09.000So let me ask a very rational question.
00:20:12.000If 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?
00:20:21.000Do you think it's realistic that Ukraine can beat the Russians at this point?
00:20:27.000There's military experts, which we don't really trust the experts very much on this program, that are split on that opinion.
00:20:34.000Now, what is not being reported is that there is a drumbeat of peace talks that are happening.
00:20:43.000There's a drumbeat right now of the potential of a peace deal being brokered.
00:20:49.000And what's interesting is that none of the media companies are even mentioning this.
00:20:54.000You 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.
00:21:17.000Peace talks are not getting any of the mainstream headlines.
00:21:21.000The Russian-Ukrainian talks are continuing.
00:21:25.000And what's really interesting is how almost none of the major organizations are covering it.
00:21:34.000And it seems as if they are getting closer and closer to a deal.
00:21:40.000Maybe it's all propaganda, but we should want peace, shouldn't we?
00:21:43.000Oh, 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.
00:21:52.000Now, I don't pretend to understand Russian military tactics at all.
00:22:43.000Television ratings are up for every single major floundering news organization.
00:22:48.000The Chinese Communist Party benefits from this continuing.
00:22:51.000Keeps the eye off them as they continue their plunder and their deceit of all decent people in the Western world.
00:22:58.000Who else benefits by this war continuing?
00:23:00.000Oil prices increase and it benefits oil-producing nations.
00:23:03.000You 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.
00:23:11.000They're like, wait a second, $120 oil?
00:23:27.000He's received a five-point boost in the polls.
00:23:31.000Joe 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.
00:23:49.000It's kind of a sluggish moment in America right now.
00:23:55.000And 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.
00:24:01.000Good luck navigating successfully through an airport, an inner city, getting a reservation at most restaurants and boom cities.
00:24:08.000There 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.
00:24:25.000I could tell you that is absolutely the case in South Florida.
00:24:29.000You have to get a dinner reservation like a year and a half ahead of time.
00:24:33.000So TV channels and news organizations benefit by undermining the peace talks.
00:24:38.000The Chinese Communist Party benefits by not having peace be brokered.
00:24:46.000And Biden has a distraction, a scapegoat for his failed policies.
00:24:51.000And also, the Great Reset benefits from this, the World Economic Forum.
00:24:56.000The 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.
00:25:14.000It really is modern-day yellow journalism.
00:25:17.000The newspapers benefit, they increase circulation.
00:25:25.000Now, yellow journalism, for those that don't know, is a style of newspaper reporting that emphasized sensationalism over facts.
00:25:32.000It is now the standard of journalism in America.
00:25:36.000During the height of yellow journalism, I think in the late 19th century, right?
00:25:42.000Many 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.
00:25:55.000Yellow journalism has five basic characteristics.
00:25:59.000Do you think we're living through yellow journalism right now?
00:26:01.000Number one, scare headlines in huge print and often in minor news.
00:26:06.000Number two, the lavish use of pictures or imaginary drawings.
00:26:10.000Number three, use of faked interviews and misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts.
00:26:18.000Number four, emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips.
00:26:24.000I 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.
00:27:58.000Be 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.
00:28:06.000Half measures result in total failures.
00:28:29.000I 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.
00:28:39.000But if the hair on the head of one NATO member gets touched, we're all in, all NATO members.
00:28:56.000These 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.
00:29:05.000I 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.
00:29:14.000No, we need to control the things that we can control and be strong in the face of all of this.
00:29:52.000It is hard not to want to get involved in every single fight.
00:29:56.000But a mature nation that also knows that it's in a cycle of decline is very careful what they get involved in.
00:30:03.000A mature nation that knows that we're being led by corrupt, ideological, arrogant, dumb people is extremely careful what they get involved in.
00:30:17.000Maybe the imagery that you are seeing repeatedly on television is trying to persuade you to want to do something.
00:30:30.000George Orwell said, quote, all the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
00:30:44.000We can agree that Joe Biden led us into this.
00:30:46.000That is something I think the right can agree on.
00:30:48.000We can all agree on bad energy policies that have stumbled us into this conflict.
00:30:54.000But there is disagreement on how to proceed.
00:30:57.000I mean, I'm highly critical of this idea of rushing $14 billion into Ukraine.
00:31:02.000And I just want to continue to make this argument, which is: okay, were you thrilled with our exit in Afghanistan?
00:31:09.000Were you ecstatic with the people that were climbing onto airplanes as we took off from Kabul?
00:31:17.000Did you like the 13 dead Marines because of an IED because of the lack of leadership from Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin?
00:31:23.000How about the recapturing of the Bagram air base or the Taliban retaking Afghanistan in a couple days?
00:31:29.000Or 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?
00:31:42.000If you were worried about Afghanistan, you should be hesitant to want to supply a bullet in Ukraine.
00:31:53.000My argument hinges on the lack of credibility and competency of the people running our military.
00:31:59.000And that's something I think that's very interesting, isn't it?
00:32:02.000Because 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.
00:32:10.000I 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.
00:33:22.000Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and tied into the worst influences of the West.
00:33:27.000Vladimir Putin, evil scumbag through and through, as we've said.
00:33:32.000And 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.
00:33:46.000You're welcome to come on our program and I will let you tell me what a success looked like.
00:33:52.000I know what I think success should look like.
00:34:55.000It's the point of, and this is a funny argument.
00:34:57.000Someone said, Charlie's just supplying weapons to them.
00:35:00.000We couldn't get our own weapons out of Afghanistan.
00:35:02.000How are we supposed to supply weapons to them?
00:35:05.000We 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.
00:35:23.000I'm open to be corrected in this, but if you think I'm cynical, you're right.
00:35:27.000I'm the mayor of the cynical town when it comes to foreign intervention right now.
00:35:32.000I 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.
00:35:50.000In fact, I think it's inevitable they'll make it worse.
00:35:55.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:35:56.000Email 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.