The Charlie Kirk Show - What's the REAL Inflation Rate?

00:00:00.000 What is the Everyman's CPI?

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:02.000 When is AI going to change the economy?

00:00:05.000 We talk about that.

00:00:06.000 And then Josh Hawley, Senator Josh Hawley, joins us to unpack the Senate betrayal.

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00:00:39.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:40.000 Here we go.

00:00:41.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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00:01:39.000 Things just keep on getting more expensive, but no, there's no inflation.

00:01:42.000 That's what the government tells you.

00:01:43.000 And obviously the government would never lie to you.

00:01:45.000 Joining us now is Jason Trennert, CEO of Strategists.

00:01:52.000 I think I said that right.

00:01:53.000 Did I?

00:01:53.000 Jason, you could correct me.

00:01:55.000 Well, close enough.

00:01:56.000 Strategists.

00:01:57.000 Okay, great.

00:01:58.000 So, okay.

00:02:00.000 Jason, what is the everyman's CPI or the common man CPI?

00:02:06.000 Yeah, the Common Man CPI is something that we constructed based on the CPI that comes out of the government.

00:02:13.000 And the government has a headline number of inflation, and then it has what it's called a core number.

00:02:20.000 And core excludes food and energy, you know, which for most people is pretty core.

00:02:26.000 So what we did is we said, what are the things that people pay for that they have to pay for?

00:02:32.000 And that's things like food, energy, shelter, clothing, utilities, insurance.

00:02:40.000 And that's our common man CPI.

00:02:42.000 The common man is a reference to Aaron Copeland, the fanfare for the common man.

00:02:47.000 But the point is that that is growing much more quickly than wages and has been growing much more quickly than wages for the last four or five years.

00:02:57.000 So it's one thing maybe if you can get a flat panel television cheaper, but it's very different when your utility prices are going up or food or shelter or all the other things that you have to pay for are going on.

00:03:10.000 So then how much has the everyday man's CPI gone up in the last year?

00:03:16.000 Well, it's up about 4.2%, so which is higher than the 3.1% that was reported this morning for the headline number.

00:03:28.000 And it's also grown about 7% more than wages in the past four years.

00:03:32.000 So that's part of the reason why you'll hear people talk about real wages starting to improve, which is wages after inflation.

00:03:39.000 But the problem is that the level of prices generally doesn't go down.

00:03:44.000 So if you're behind, you're still behind, even if you're starting to catch up.

00:03:48.000 And that's one of the reasons why the administration is not getting the credit for the economy it believes it deserves, despite the fact that you're close to full employment and stock prices are near all-time highs.

00:04:01.000 The average person is still very far behind where they were before the pandemic.

00:04:07.000 Yeah, so the other question I have that I think is important: can you just reiterate, how does the government currently calculate CPI?

00:04:16.000 And how did we get such a bizarre calculation that the media always touts?

00:04:23.000 Yeah, it's Charlie.

00:04:24.000 I'm going to tell you, it's pretty complicated.

00:04:26.000 You know, the BLS, there's about 800 or 900 people that work there that work on this thing, which is, you know, probably gives you an idea of part of the problem with government debt.

00:04:36.000 You have that many people working on a price, but it's quite literally thousands of prices that go into this calculation.

00:04:44.000 And it looks at prices on a month-to-month basis.

00:04:47.000 And then I tend to look at it on a year-over-year basis.

00:04:50.000 And it gives various weightings to those factors that are in the CPI.

00:04:57.000 So I can't give you a quick example because it literally would be spreadsheets upon spreadsheets that would come up with it.

00:05:05.000 We isolated 67 major categories within the thousands that we think are quite big.

00:05:11.000 And that's how we came up with our common man CPI.

00:05:14.000 We made a decision as to what's discretionary and what is something you have to pay for.

00:05:20.000 What, I mean, the obvious answer is fiscal policy coupled with monetary policy, but what specifically is driving this inflation from a policy perspective?

00:05:30.000 If you had to explain that to somebody who is not as initiated in economic or finance parlance.

00:05:37.000 Yeah, there's two, yeah, there's two easy because I think inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

00:05:44.000 So we've increased the money supply by 40% since 2000.

00:05:50.000 So it would stand to reason that prices would be up 40% over some period of time.

00:05:55.000 And then we've also increased the size of our budget deficit dramatically over that period of time.

00:06:02.000 So we're up to $34 trillion in debt.

00:06:06.000 And so while the Fed is trying to tighten monetary policy to a certain extent, it's being offset by massive fiscal stimulus, by massive government spending.

00:06:17.000 Last year, the deficit was 7% of GDP, which is unheard of at a period of time in which the unemployment rate is this low.

00:06:28.000 And we've only done that three other times in the post-war period, but each time the unemployment rate was above seven.

00:06:35.000 And the deficit only goes higher when you do go into, when we eventually do go into recession, the deficit will go meaningfully higher because there are things called automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance or food stamps or welfare that automatically kick in.

00:06:50.000 They don't have to be voted upon by Congress.

00:06:53.000 They're automatic into the system.

00:06:56.000 So this is very reckless, in my opinion, to be running deficits of this magnitude when there's no obvious immediate need that we have to.

00:07:06.000 Yeah, I mean, are we at war against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany? 0.60

00:07:11.000 I mean, what is the this is this is such an important and smart point.

00:07:16.000 Typically deficits are saved for emergencies.

00:07:18.000 That was the whole argument for COVID.

00:07:20.000 It's just a short-term thing.

00:07:22.000 But we are now posting massive structural deficits and there will be a reckoning, everybody.

00:07:28.000 We are a debtor nation.

00:07:29.000 We owe more than we are worth.

00:07:31.000 We're going to encounter hyperinflation.

00:07:35.000 And there's no urgency.

00:07:38.000 Our leaders just authorize another couple hundred billion dollars to go to a foreign country.

00:07:44.000 Your response.

00:07:45.000 Yeah, no, this is Charlie.

00:07:47.000 I mean, and again, this can get a little complicated.

00:07:49.000 One of the things that has happened since the global financial crisis in 2008, 2009 is that the Fed has largely monetized most of the debt, which is just a fancy way for saying it's bought most of the debt from the federal government.

00:08:03.000 So, what would normally give you an indication to stop spending would be higher interest rates has largely been obscured by the fact that you have a captive buyer in the Fed.

00:08:18.000 And so, this has also been highly regressive, which is to say that your average guy has gotten zero on his savings from 2009 through 2021, while a wealthy person that has a private equity portfolio or something that's highly leveraged has done has done great.

00:08:40.000 So, this is a very, you know, I think it was started with good intentions, but it's gotten out of hand.

00:08:48.000 And right now, the fiscal and monetary policy are, they're actually right now, they're working at odds with one another, but this massive, what they call quantitative easing, has allowed policymakers to live in a fantasy world that their spending doesn't have many consequences.

00:09:05.000 And sooner or later, it will have consequences.

00:09:08.000 Yeah, privately, they think AI is going to solve this, that there are going to be such efficiency, such growth.

00:09:15.000 Can you talk about that?

00:09:16.000 In a lot of these private intelligentsia circles, they whisper just NVIDIA will solve it.

00:09:21.000 You know, AI is going to just basically make labor irrelevant and we'll have a brave and Ozempic, you know, and NVIDIA would be the two things that, you know, and certainly, you know, and the U.S. is extraordinarily special.

00:09:36.000 You have to say that because it does have the most innovative companies in the world, in my opinion, that's largely in spite of big government as opposed to because of, but that is, it's not an excuse to run massive structural deficits.

00:09:52.000 And I would also say when it comes to AI, no one really quite knows how consequential it will be.

00:09:59.000 I don't doubt that it will be consequential.

00:10:01.000 I do very much doubt that anyone knows when.

00:10:04.000 And it will be all good.

00:10:08.000 I mean, you have 30 million jobs displaced.

00:10:12.000 That's going to expand the social safety net. 0.98

00:10:14.000 So.

00:10:15.000 Right.

00:10:17.000 And again, this is so early.

00:10:18.000 You're in such the nation stages of this technology that you can't, you know, I think Churchill once said you don't want to confuse deliverance with victory.

00:10:29.000 He's talking about Dunkirk.

00:10:31.000 And so, you know, this is what we're attempting to do.

00:10:34.000 We're conflating the idea that we might get lucky with the idea that we're winning.

00:10:41.000 And again, we are the reserve currency.

00:10:44.000 There are good reasons for that.

00:10:46.000 But there's no divine right to have a reserve currency.

00:10:50.000 There have been many societies that have lost it, and they've lost it largely in the same way we appear to be trying to lose it, which is by foreign excursions and bread and circuses and all sorts of other things to try to keep our best as a civilization to commit suicide.

00:11:09.000 Hey, everyone, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:12:13.000 So, Jason, challenge me if I'm incorrect here, but if the laws of economics, which don't change, are not going to be uprooted in the next couple of months and years, it's either they can tax their way out of these massive deficits, they can cut spending, or they could decide to inflate their way out of it.

00:12:33.000 Certainly seems that they're signaling and sending smoke screen: hey, we're just going to inflate our way out of it.

00:12:39.000 There's no spending cuts on the horizon.

00:12:41.000 This is why I think we're going to be entering a new normal of five, seven double-digit inflation annualized.

00:12:48.000 Am I looking at that correctly?

00:12:50.000 I think you're right.

00:12:52.000 But as you mentioned in the last segment, I would say there's four ways.

00:12:54.000 One is you can just, you can try to grow your way out.

00:12:59.000 I do think that is possible, and that's through pro-growth policies like in the last administration.

00:13:06.000 But otherwise, you either have to take pain by raising taxes or cutting spending, or you have to just accept higher levels of inflation.

00:13:16.000 So, that's basically it.

00:13:18.000 And politically, it's always easier to accept higher rates of inflation.

00:13:23.000 For most politicians, that is the almost perfect answer because it's hard to pin on one person precisely.

00:13:32.000 It doesn't move necessarily quickly, particularly if you have debt in your own currency like the U.S. does.

00:13:40.000 And so, it becomes a very attractive alternative to people that don't want to make hard decisions.

00:13:46.000 And I think that would describe a good portion of our political elite, I would say.

00:13:54.000 Yeah.

00:13:54.000 And so, there is this hope that maybe there'll be this 20 to 30 percent growth because we have a bunch of robots and AI solving everything.

00:14:02.000 But, of course, no conversation about the cost or the displacement or I mean, how do you even integrate it?

00:14:08.000 I mean, how do you integrate AI into?

00:14:11.000 I mean, it's a nice little widget and tool, I guess.

00:14:14.000 And by the way, the people who are going to be immediately displaced are actually the college-educated mid-level management, first and foremost.

00:14:20.000 It's not the plumber or the electrician or the welder, hilariously, which is why they're like, oh, we have to get robots too, so that we could displace jobs everywhere.

00:14:28.000 So, this is going to be a lot messier than people think.

00:14:30.000 It's okay, you have this really powerful technology.

00:14:33.000 How does it apply?

00:14:34.000 I mean, yeah, it's like a fun parlor trick.

00:14:37.000 I mean, it could help you prepare for homework.

00:14:40.000 Your thoughts, right?

00:14:41.000 Yeah, it can help you write, you know, dirty limericks and all sorts of, you know, right now.

00:14:46.000 I'm not saying it won't have an impact, but I also think that like many other significant technological changes, it takes a long time to get into business processes that really change the way people do business.

00:15:02.000 And the internet, as an example, really took about 14 years before it was something that was truly integrated into business processes and had a meaningful change in the way people were able to earn profits.

00:15:16.000 The Lord only knows how long this will take, but it's not, I'm relatively certain it's not going to be in the next year or two years.

00:15:24.000 This is going to be an evolutionary process.

00:15:28.000 And as you point out, there will be unintended consequences.

00:15:32.000 Generally speaking, I'm a very free market person.

00:15:34.000 So I don't want to create artificial barriers around technology because I think there's always new technology and there's new innovations that come about.

00:15:44.000 But I think the other point that you made, I think was a very good one, if you don't mind my saying, is that everyone's been telling kids, I have young, I have a college-age son, and I have a daughter who's 15.

00:15:58.000 And everyone for the last 10 years has been telling me to learn how to code.

00:16:02.000 And I would say artificial intelligence, in my opinion, the most immediate casualty of artificial intelligence is coding.

00:16:11.000 You know, there's still going to be people that really know how to do it, but there's going to be a need for a lot fewer of them.

00:16:17.000 And as you pointed out, the trades, the things where you need a human being to come into your house in the middle of the night to stop a flood.

00:16:26.000 That's not going to be something that's easily displaced by technology.

00:16:32.000 That's exactly right.

00:16:33.000 And if you look at, it's also they're replacing journalists too.

00:16:37.000 It turns out it doesn't take that much brainpower to write an article for the New York Times.

00:16:42.000 There's all these, there's these unionization campaigns and walkouts because they're afraid AI is going to start to replace them.

00:16:49.000 Turns out it's not that creative.

00:16:52.000 But also understand with AI, and we'll disclose it here, is that AI can only do what has already ever been done.

00:16:58.000 There is not yet, unless the leaks from BARD are correct, new, something new that it can't do math.

00:17:06.000 It can't create ex nihilo yet.

00:17:10.000 It can only process that which has already been and organize it very, very quickly.

00:17:14.000 So we shall see.

00:17:15.000 Jason, thank you so much.

00:17:16.000 Thank you.

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00:18:21.000 Joining us now is Senator Josh Hawley, who unsurprisingly voted perfectly yesterday and throughout the weekend.

00:18:28.000 Senator, thank you for joining the program.

00:18:30.000 It's a disappointment to see this legislation advanced, Senator, but I guess the buried nugget of positivity is more of your colleagues voted no than yes.

00:18:41.000 Your reaction, Senator.

00:18:42.000 Yeah, thanks for having me.

00:18:43.000 It's always great to be with you, Charlie.

00:18:44.000 And yes, you know, I mean, here's the deal is that Republicans, Republican leadership couldn't even get a majority of the Senate Republicans to vote for this thing.

00:18:53.000 And thank goodness.

00:18:54.000 I mean, why would you vote for another $60 billion for the Ukraine war machine?

00:19:01.000 No oversight, no plan, no nothing.

00:19:03.000 I mean, it's just writing checks to Joe Biden and his cronies in Ukraine.

00:19:07.000 It's unbelievable.

00:19:08.000 And I was just, you know, the war machine always gets paid.

00:19:11.000 That's what I've learned in D.C. Meanwhile, if you're an American, you know, somebody actually lives in this country, I mean, good luck to you.

00:19:17.000 The border's wide open.

00:19:19.000 Our infrastructure's falling apart.

00:19:21.000 You can't afford to buy gas.

00:19:22.000 But hey, unlimited money for Ukraine. 0.84

00:19:24.000 It's a travesty.

00:19:25.000 And so the numbers were winnowing.

00:19:25.000 Yeah.

00:19:27.000 And I also say this with a little bit of a grain of cynicism.

00:19:31.000 Senator, can you explain vote swapping?

00:19:34.000 Because some of these people who voted no, I know they're your colleagues.

00:19:38.000 I think that if it was a 90-plus vote, they would have voted yes.

00:19:43.000 It seems as if some of the old bulls and the people who are just immune to any sort of primary challenges, they voted in favor.

00:19:50.000 Can you, I mean, was this an ideological shift?

00:19:53.000 Was there some vote swapping?

00:19:55.000 Or was it that some people were afraid because the base is so on fire with this topic?

00:20:00.000 Well, I do think that voters are making themselves very clear about this, which is they want investment in the United States of America.

00:20:08.000 They actually want to secure our border, not Ukraine's.

00:20:11.000 They actually want to get crime down in our cities, not Ukraine's.

00:20:15.000 So rather than spending another $60 billion on Ukraine, think what that could do in our communities in this country. 0.82

00:20:21.000 Our voters are saying that loud and clear.

00:20:22.000 And I just, I don't understand, Charlie, why it's a virtue for some politicians, many politicians in Washington, to give the middle finger to voters and say, oh, look at me.

00:20:31.000 I'm so brave.

00:20:32.000 I'm ignoring our voters. 1.00

00:20:33.000 Our voters are idiots. 1.00

00:20:34.000 I mean, you've got some senators out there openly calling voters idiots. 1.00

00:20:37.000 No, that's right. 1.00

00:20:38.000 I mean, that's an approach.

00:20:39.000 Yeah, that's an approach.

00:20:40.000 I mean, to me, what is courageous is actually to follow your oath of office and to do the right thing and to do what's right for this country.

00:20:49.000 And what's right for this country is to invest in this country to secure this country.

00:20:52.000 What's not right is to spend billions on a foreign war that we have no plan to win, that we have a commander-in-chief who's senile should even be in office.

00:21:00.000 Why are you supporting that guy and his failed policies?

00:21:02.000 I don't get it.

00:21:03.000 So, Senator, I'm going to read one of your colleagues' quotes.

00:21:06.000 Our base cannot possibly know what's at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what's at stake if Putin wins.

00:21:14.000 Number one, I want your reaction to just the snobbery and the contempt that Senator Tillis espouses here.

00:21:20.000 But you're a senator.

00:21:21.000 What do you know that we don't know, Senator?

00:21:24.000 You know, my view is, is that the American people are pretty smart folks. 0.99

00:21:28.000 They're not idiots. 0.99

00:21:29.000 They're not stupid. 1.00

00:21:31.000 They know what's going on in Ukraine. 0.97

00:21:33.000 They look over there and they say, huh, looks like we've spent $115 billion.

00:21:39.000 Looks like we've spent more than all the Europeans put together. 0.51

00:21:42.000 Looks like we've been doing this for two years and there's no sign of a victory.

00:21:46.000 Joe Biden couldn't find his way to the paper bag.

00:21:49.000 Why would we spend more money when our own border is overrun, our own roads are crumbling?

00:21:53.000 That's what voters are saying.

00:21:54.000 And you know what?

00:21:55.000 They're right. 0.69

00:21:55.000 They're not dumb. 0.69

00:21:57.000 They're right.

00:21:58.000 So I've yet to hear an answer substantively to any of that. 0.98

00:22:01.000 And I just think, listen, I'll let my colleagues speak for themselves, but I think calling voters idiots, man, I mean, that's something, but I wouldn't recommend it. 0.95

00:22:11.000 Yeah, it's breathtaking and remarkable. 0.97

00:22:14.000 I don't think Tom Tillis is going to come on the show anytime soon.

00:22:18.000 So, Senator, I am curious, just do they ever specify what does success look like or what would the end of a conflict be? 0.64

00:22:28.000 Senator McConnell comes out and he says that, you know, we must defeat the Russians.

00:22:33.000 Well, that's quite a statement.

00:22:36.000 Does that involve Crimea?

00:22:37.000 Does that involve all of Eastern Ukraine?

00:22:40.000 Senator Mitt Romney said that this is the most important vote that we take as senators.

00:22:47.000 Do they ever specify what does success look like?

00:22:50.000 Number one.

00:22:51.000 And number two, I'm struggling to understand how this is in our national security interest.

00:22:56.000 Yeah, I haven't heard answers to any of those questions.

00:22:59.000 And here's the irony.

00:23:01.000 We're being told by the Biden administration that there's not going to be a military victory in Ukraine.

00:23:07.000 That's what they've told us.

00:23:08.000 You want to talk about what senators gets briefed on?

00:23:10.000 That's what we've been briefed on repeatedly, is that there's not going to be a military victory.

00:23:14.000 There's going to have to be a negotiated peace.

00:23:16.000 That's what Biden's people are saying.

00:23:19.000 Okay.

00:23:20.000 Well, then what's that going to look like?

00:23:21.000 And what's their plan for it?

00:23:22.000 We have no idea.

00:23:23.000 But yet, in the absence of that, we're just going to write a check for another $60 billion.

00:23:28.000 And by the way, like a million people crossed the border yesterday?

00:23:32.000 I mean, that's really where our priorities are.

00:23:34.000 I don't get it.

00:23:35.000 And frankly, Charlie, I'm fed up with it.

00:23:37.000 I mean, I've heard this song and dance for years now.

00:23:39.000 I have not voted for this Ukraine spending.

00:23:41.000 What I've tried to do over and over is actually get an accounting of how our money is being spent.

00:23:45.000 I'd like to know where the money's going.

00:23:47.000 We have no earthly idea.

00:23:49.000 We do know that our own government thinks that the Ukrainian government is corrupt, that they've got major eclectomania problems, which, of course, is a surprise to nobody.

00:23:58.000 And yet we just keep writing them checks.

00:24:00.000 I just, I think it is, as I said yesterday, it is the middle finger to middle America.

00:24:05.000 So there is a story that is gaining steam here.

00:24:07.000 And last evening, David Sachs with Elon Musk were in a Twitter space with Senator Mike Lee, Senator Ron Johnson.

00:24:16.000 And this has been reported for quite a while, but it's really starting to gain momentum.

00:24:21.000 I'm going to play this piece of tape here because, Senator, I want your reaction because this has been around for like the last year.

00:24:27.000 We're finally getting somewhere.

00:24:29.000 Play cut 55.

00:24:30.000 Could we get a real investigation, some congressional oversight, a congressional investigation of what exactly happened in that sort of March, April period at the beginning of the war, where, again, they had a draft agreement in Istanbul, and then Boris Johnson came in and the Ukrainians walked away.

00:24:50.000 I mean, I would love for the Congress to be able to ask real questions of the administration in its oversight capacity, asking what was your involvement in sabotaging that deal.

00:25:02.000 So, Senator, what is your reaction?

00:25:04.000 It seems as if that we dispatched Tony Blinken and also Boris Johnson to obliterate a peace deal that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

00:25:13.000 Your reaction, Senator?

00:25:14.000 Well, I think that we do need to answer that question.

00:25:16.000 I mean, that is absolutely a perfect question.

00:25:19.000 And we should know the American people should know. 0.60

00:25:22.000 We should know how every tax dollar, every dime has been spent in Ukraine.

00:25:26.000 Charlie, we have no idea.

00:25:27.000 We have no idea where this money is going.

00:25:30.000 How about Nord Stream 2?

00:25:31.000 I mean, we've now had widespread news reports that our own intelligence agencies were involved, at least at a bare minimum, involved in training the teams that blew up Nord Stream 2.

00:25:43.000 I mean, that's news.

00:25:45.000 Is that accurate?

00:25:46.000 What was our level of involvement?

00:25:47.000 Did we know about it beforehand?

00:25:49.000 There have been news reports, and I'm talking like the New York Times suggesting we did know about it beforehand.

00:25:53.000 I mean, this is crazy, crazy stuff.

00:25:56.000 And to just willfully ignore it, you know, put your fingers in your ears, say, la write more checks to Ukraine.

00:26:03.000 That's essentially what the Senate just did last night.

00:26:06.000 And I tell you what's going to happen. 0.85

00:26:07.000 This is going to end up just like Afghanistan, just like Vietnam. 1.00

00:26:11.000 In about 10 years here, all of these same people are going to look back and say, oh, gosh, I just, we had no idea. 0.66

00:26:16.000 We could never have known the money would be stolen like this.

00:26:19.000 We could never have known that this would end so badly.

00:26:22.000 We could never have known.

00:26:23.000 Yes, they could have.

00:26:24.000 They don't want to know.

00:26:25.000 They just want to spend your money and they want to give you moral lectures about how superior they are.

00:26:30.000 That's the issue here.

00:26:31.000 That's what we're seeing.

00:26:32.000 So, Senator, what are we hearing about any backdoor negotiations with the House to potentially block Speaker Johnson's ability to block this bill?

00:26:40.000 What are you hearing in that regard?

00:26:42.000 Well, I think the speaker's got the cards here, and I hope he will stand firm.

00:26:45.000 I mean, he has said he's issued several statements.

00:26:49.000 If I'm reading them correctly, I take them to be that they're not going to move on this Ukraine package.

00:26:55.000 They're not going to take it up. 0.96

00:26:56.000 And that's exactly right.

00:26:58.000 They need to, if they want to do something, first of all, they shouldn't spend any more money in Ukraine.

00:27:02.000 I mean, they ought to send a clear message to our allies.

00:27:04.000 It's time for our allies to step up here and defend their own backyard.

00:27:08.000 We shouldn't spend any more money, number one.

00:27:10.000 Number two, they ought to move an Israel aid package separately.

00:27:13.000 But really, Speaker Johnson is in control here, and I hope that he will maintain control and stay true to what I think he has said.

00:27:21.000 Sometimes it's hard to say, hard to decipher, but what I think he has said, which is that he is not going to take up this bill as passed by the Senate.

00:27:28.000 I sure hope he doesn't because it's a bad bill.

00:27:30.000 It does nothing to secure our national interests, our borders, zero zilch.

00:27:36.000 And the House, you know, the House ought to keep their pledges.

00:27:39.000 So final kind of thought here, Senator.

00:27:42.000 Can you walk us through from your perspective what went wrong with the border deal negotiation and how foreign funding all of a sudden superseded the priority of the invasion on our southern border?

00:27:53.000 Sure.

00:27:54.000 The negotiation on the border was always about Ukraine.

00:27:57.000 I've said this from the first.

00:27:59.000 From last fall, when Mitch McConnell said, okay, we're going to do border and Ukraine together, it was always about just peeling off enough Republican votes to get Ukraine.

00:28:07.000 It was always about Ukraine.

00:28:09.000 So it was always going to be a bad deal for Republicans.

00:28:11.000 Always, 100%.

00:28:12.000 And that's why McConnell shut every Republican senator except for one or two out of the deal.

00:28:17.000 None of us had any visibility into what was being negotiated.

00:28:20.000 And that was by design.

00:28:22.000 The whole idea was to spring it on us and say, oh, okay, here we go.

00:28:26.000 Best we can get. 0.96

00:28:27.000 Now, shut up, take this and vote for Ukraine. 0.97

00:28:29.000 That was always the plan. 0.99

00:28:30.000 And that then blew up in their faces because the deal was so bad.

00:28:33.000 Because of course Democrats weren't going to give Republicans a good deal.

00:28:36.000 Why would they?

00:28:37.000 They knew that Republicans were desperate to vote for Ukraine.

00:28:40.000 Why would they compromise?

00:28:41.000 So it was a horrible deal.

00:28:43.000 Thank you for covering it in depth.

00:28:45.000 Horrible deal.

00:28:46.000 It fell apart.

00:28:47.000 But Charlie, it was designed to be a bad deal. 1.00

00:28:50.000 It was always about Ukraine.

00:28:52.000 And the proof of that is there was never any serious attempt to involve Republican senators in negotiation.

00:28:58.000 McConnell ran the negotiations.

00:29:00.000 It was done behind closed doors.

00:29:02.000 It was always about getting to this last night's vote, this morning's vote, to send more money to Ukraine.

00:29:08.000 Very good.

00:29:09.000 Senator, keep fighting.

00:29:10.000 We have your back.

00:29:11.000 You're one of the most important voices in the Senate.

00:29:13.000 Thank you so much.

00:29:14.000 Thanks for having me.

00:29:17.000 Who can you trust?

00:29:18.000 Government leaders repeatedly fail us.

00:29:20.000 Self-appointed experts have led us astray.

00:29:23.000 Distrust in sold-called authorities is spreading like a bad cold, and we can't quite shake it.

00:29:27.000 But you're not as powerless as they'd like you to believe.

00:29:30.000 When there's no one to depend on, it's time to rely on yourself.

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00:30:00.000 Save $60 per kit at mypatriotsupply.com.

00:30:03.000 That is mypatriotsupply.com.

00:30:06.000 You got to check it out right now, mypatriotsupply.com.

00:30:12.000 I want to conclude.

00:30:13.000 It's kind of ties in the Tucker Carlson story as well, which they're still losing their mind over Tucker Carlson.

00:30:20.000 Visiting and interviewing Putin.

00:30:23.000 Now, interestingly, that was not a softball interview.

00:30:27.000 Tucker did great.

00:30:29.000 I encourage all of you to watch it.

00:30:30.000 How many views is that interview at now?

00:30:32.000 Tens of millions?

00:30:33.000 Over 100 million?

00:30:33.000 I'm not sure.

00:30:34.000 I'd be curious how someone could find that interview objectionable.

00:30:39.000 Okay, yeah, Putin was allowed to talk uninterrupted.

00:30:42.000 And what I found to just be hilarious about the whole thing is, you know, they're there to talk about the Ukraine war and Putin says, yeah, I'll get to your question.

00:30:51.000 Let me give you the history of how Russia was formed, going back to 900.

00:30:56.000 Oh, okay.

00:30:56.000 So 199.8 million people, 200 million people have viewed the Putin-Tucker interview.

00:31:05.000 In other words, more people viewed the Tucker-Putin interview than the Super Bowl.

00:31:10.000 Our prediction was right.

00:31:12.000 Our prediction was right.

00:31:14.000 We predicted that the Tucker-Putin interview would get better ratings than the Super Bowl.

00:31:19.000 The media is really upset that we were even allowed to see this.

00:31:25.000 I watched it multiple times.

00:31:27.000 I wanted to make sure I listened very carefully to what Putin was saying.

00:31:31.000 Again, I'm not a Putin fan.

00:31:32.000 He doesn't want a free society.

00:31:34.000 I want a free society.

00:31:36.000 He also was just kind of meandering through Russian history at times, which found to be rather unpersuasive, not exactly that interesting to me.

00:31:46.000 Other parts I thought he was making some really good points.

00:31:49.000 I thought that Putin was making some points where he was basically saying, why is the West continually lied about who gets NATO membership and NATO expansion?

00:32:00.000 You guys said that NATO wasn't going to expand, and yet then you have Lady Graham coming and saying, we're going to play offense against Moscow.

00:32:06.000 We're going to play offense against Moscow.

00:32:09.000 The Russian hawks are losing because they are not on the side of truth.

00:32:15.000 Obsessively hating Vladimir Putin and Russia.

00:32:20.000 And you can hate them.

00:32:21.000 Let me say it differently.

00:32:22.000 Believing that that is the greatest threat to American national security, where obviously the Chinese Communist Party or the Mexican drug cartels are far more important, lethal towards the future of America.

00:32:37.000 And Putin has said he wouldn't invade Poland.

00:32:40.000 You can disagree at that.

00:32:41.000 You can distrust him, but why would he invade Poland?

00:32:44.000 He explained that Ukraine has historic ties to Russia.

00:32:47.000 And if he invaded Poland, then that would invoke Article 5 of NATO and we'd be involved.

00:32:52.000 Okay, but we're involved right now.

00:32:54.000 We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars and we're involved right now.

00:32:58.000 What I analyzed from the Tucker-Putin interview is Putin just kind of, and Tucker isolated on this and Putin brushed it away, is he did feel a little bitter.

00:33:10.000 And I thought that was really smart when Tucker said that.

00:33:12.000 Putin is someone who thought he could get along with the West, who was lied to by Bill Clinton, lied to by George W. Bush.

00:33:19.000 Putin seems very obsessed with old grievances, literally 300-year-old ones.

00:33:26.000 But does anybody who saw the Putin-Tucker interview walk away thinking that that's the biggest threat to the American homeland?

00:33:35.000 Anybody. 0.91

00:33:36.000 He's like a lying gangster, basically where we're at. 0.97

00:33:41.000 He's a guy that's like obsessed with controlling Ukraine as part of Russia. 0.89

00:33:47.000 He believes that the fall of the USSR was one of the greatest failures in Russian history.

00:33:55.000 Part of the interview was Putin saying, like, hey, the fall of the USSR could have and should have been the beginning of a new normal in foreign alignments, but the war machine of Langley, Virginia, and Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin and Boeing and Raytheon, they don't want peace.

00:34:11.000 The American government does not want peace.

00:34:15.000 The American government wants war and strife.

00:34:18.000 They get powerful and wealthy from war.

00:34:22.000 NATO was allegedly established to fight the USSR.

00:34:25.000 So when the USSR fell, why didn't we let Russia participate with NATO or just get rid of NATO altogether?

00:34:31.000 Donald Trump said some stuff recently about NATO that are making people go nuts.

00:34:35.000 So what is the purpose of NATO now?

00:34:37.000 Why did we keep the Cold War going, Cold War going, when the whole reason for it went away?

00:34:42.000 It's the same reason why government programs never disappear.

00:34:46.000 Because entrenched bureaucrats and the oligarchs of the national defense industry, they need you to hate Russia.

00:34:53.000 They need more money against Russia.

00:34:55.000 They need the relentless saber rattling so they can stay rich and powerful and while the homeland falls apart.

00:35:06.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:35:08.000 Email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:10.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

00:35:14.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 13, 2024

What's the REAL Inflation Rate?

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