The Charlie Kirk Show - Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's in the Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:01.000 What's going on in Texas?

00:00:02.000 Why does Texas elect their Speaker of the House with Democrats?

00:00:05.000 If you are from Texas or know a friend from Texas, text this episode to your friends right now.

00:00:11.000 Listen carefully.

00:00:12.000 This is how we could lose Texas for a generation or how we've already lost it.

00:00:16.000 It's chilling stuff.

00:00:17.000 And then we walk through a foreign policy discussion regarding Pete Hegseth.

00:00:20.000 And are we inevitably going to go to war with China?

00:00:23.000 A very informative and deep conversation with our guest, Will Tebow.

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00:00:44.000 Here we go.

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00:01:45.000 One of the more conservative states in the country, and they have tried to pour, all the Democrats have tried to pour money and money and money and money and money into Texas.

00:01:52.000 Remember, it turned Texas blue.

00:01:53.000 The Texas blue project.

00:01:55.000 And it failed miserably.

00:01:57.000 Pouring hundreds of millions of dollars, almost billions of dollars.

00:02:02.000 And Texas delivered a triumphant victory for President Donald Trump.

00:02:06.000 A 16, 14 point victory is unthinkable margins.

00:02:11.000 But what good is...

00:02:14.000 A 14-point victory for President Trump in Texas when you have Republicans that are going to work with Democrats to elect a Speaker of the House.

00:02:22.000 Joining us now is Abraham George, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas.

00:02:26.000 Abraham, welcome to the program.

00:02:28.000 Abraham, please educate our audience on what is happening in the great state of Texas.

00:02:32.000 Thank you for having me here.

00:02:33.000 Tomorrow is the Speaker's race here in the state of Texas, Texas House.

00:02:38.000 And what we usually have...

00:02:41.000 For the last decade or so, a small group of Republicans going to Democrats, which is the minority party here.

00:02:48.000 This time it is 62 members from the Democrat side, 88 from our side.

00:02:54.000 Some Republicans will partner with the Democrats to choose a moderate or a rhino Republican, for lack of a better term, to put as a speaker.

00:03:04.000 Then they will go and kill all the conservative bills in Texas House.

00:03:10.000 The Texas Senate is very conservative.

00:03:13.000 Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and the group will pass good legislation.

00:03:18.000 One of the legislation that got killed last time is the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government is buying land in Texas, especially around our military bases.

00:03:28.000 And there was a bill to stop that.

00:03:31.000 And some of the Republicans, along with all of the Democrats, said it's a racist bill and we're going to kill it.

00:03:38.000 And they killed it.

00:03:39.000 Now we have a national security issue in Texas.

00:03:42.000 The last year, we talked about border protection while Biden was in office.

00:03:48.000 And Texas did what we can do, but it could have been a lot better if we had a conservative speaker.

00:03:54.000 This is the same group who went and impeached the Texas Attorney General.

00:03:58.000 So this year, the party said, if you're not going to support a real Republican speaker...

00:04:05.000 Who will support reforms in Texas House by putting only Republicans in committee chairmanship?

00:04:11.000 That's another thing they do.

00:04:12.000 They put Democrats in committee chairmanship and give a lot more power to Democrats than they deserve in Texas.

00:04:20.000 So if we do that, we're going to not only Come after you.

00:04:24.000 We're going to center you.

00:04:27.000 We're going to educate your constituents, and we're going to come after you, basically.

00:04:33.000 So this has been going on for the last couple of months.

00:04:36.000 Governor Abbott is on board with the caucus nominee, which is David Cook.

00:04:40.000 Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is on board with it.

00:04:43.000 All of our statewide electorate officials are on board with it.

00:04:46.000 Most of our county parties are on board with it.

00:04:48.000 But a small group of Republicans.

00:04:50.000 Joining the Democrats, most likely going to elect a speaker.

00:04:54.000 At least they're going to try to do that tomorrow, which is what we're fighting at this point.

00:04:58.000 Yeah, so to walk through this, there is David Cooks, the conservative choice, Dustin Burroughs, yourself, Cody Harris.

00:05:07.000 So there's a lot of these different dynamics here.

00:05:10.000 Can you just reinforce, though, that there's a group of Republicans that are willing to vote with a Democrat?

00:05:18.000 Are Democrats willing to vote with a Republican or vice versa?

00:05:21.000 It's so hard for me to comprehend this.

00:05:24.000 So, you know, in Minnesota, you heard this a couple of days ago, they have one seat majority, and they decided we're going to elect a speaker by the Republican caucus, which is the normal thing to do, which is what everybody does.

00:05:39.000 In Texas, a group of Republicans will join the Democrats and elect...

00:05:44.000 A speaker who is backed majority by the Democrats.

00:05:49.000 That's unbelievable to me.

00:05:51.000 Yes, it's the craziest thing.

00:05:54.000 And it started happening in 2008 when Barack Obama got elected.

00:05:59.000 Our margins went down from 76 to 74. And, you know, we had two-seat majority.

00:06:07.000 So all these Republicans were kind of like very Democrat.

00:06:11.000 In their heart, they said, well, this is an opportunity for us to go work with the Democrats and get a speaker who we can control.

00:06:18.000 And that's what they've been doing ever since.

00:06:20.000 Our margin now is 88. We actually had added two more seats to the Texas House this time around.

00:06:27.000 We were 86. We have 88 members.

00:06:29.000 And all we need is 76. But we can't get 76 Republicans to support the Republican nominee.

00:06:37.000 They're supporting a Democrat nominee, or they're joining the Democrat Party to give power away to the Democrats.

00:06:44.000 This is the craziest thing in Texas.

00:06:46.000 I don't know if you heard this.

00:06:48.000 Don Jr. got involved in this and said, what are you all doing in Texas?

00:06:52.000 This is not the right way to do things.

00:06:55.000 President Trump won by 12 points.

00:06:57.000 We flipped 12 out of the 14 South Texas counties.

00:07:03.000 One of the counties...

00:07:05.000 I've never elected a Republican for the last 130 years.

00:07:09.000 We got Donald Trump elected at 14 points.

00:07:12.000 We have a clear mandate.

00:07:14.000 I mean, I listen to your show, and you understand this more than anybody.

00:07:17.000 There is a clear mandate for the Republican Party and for the elected officials.

00:07:21.000 And what we have in Texas is, unfortunately, a lot of these Republicans who used the party's name to get elected is real Democrats.

00:07:30.000 And they're going to go put Democrats in charge. 0.95

00:07:32.000 And parties are working against them.

00:07:35.000 So we spent a lot of money over the last two, two and a half months, educating our constituents, saying this is what's happening in Texas.

00:07:45.000 And one of the legislators, Cordy Harris, took that as a legislative bribery for the party to send mailers to his district, which will potentially affect his re-election, and filed the Texas ethics violation against me personally, saying the party chairman is bribing and threatening legislators, which is a crime punishable by minimum of two years in prison.

00:08:10.000 So this is how crazy they are and how far they're willing to go.

00:08:19.000 This is extraordinary stuff, Abraham.

00:08:22.000 And so, we see this kind of uniparty composition here.

00:08:26.000 Is it time for widespread parties?

00:08:29.000 And by the way, is there anything in the Constitution that prohibits a simple majority vote?

00:08:33.000 So just so you guys understand, it would be like if we did a Speaker of the House in this current House and we had to go get Nancy Pelosi and to go get Hakeem Jeffries to go support our Speaker candidate, correct?

00:08:49.000 Instead, no, it's OK.

00:08:50.000 It's Mike Johnson supported by only Republicans.

00:08:52.000 Is that right, Abraham?

00:08:53.000 And who came up with this stupid system?

00:08:55.000 That is absolutely right.

00:08:57.000 So if 10 or 15 Republicans go to Jeffries and say, hey, if you put one of us as a speaker, but we will give you all the committee chairmanships you need, and we will pass all of your bills, and we will do everything you guys want.

00:09:13.000 That's...

00:09:13.000 That's crazy.

00:09:14.000 You don't see that in the U.S. House.

00:09:16.000 And thank God we don't see that.

00:09:19.000 I mean, I like that bipartisanship once in a while, but I don't want this.

00:09:24.000 But that's what's happening in Texas.

00:09:27.000 It's been going on for about 12 years, actually 14 years now.

00:09:31.000 But ever since that...

00:09:33.000 Tradition started.

00:09:34.000 That's their excuse.

00:09:35.000 Well, that's being a tradition in Texas.

00:09:37.000 It's not.

00:09:38.000 It started at the same time when Barack Obama got elected because we did not have enough Republicans who had the balls to stand up and say, hey, we're going to still support a Republican nominee and we're going to have a conservative as a speaker and we're going to pass some conservative bills.

00:09:52.000 But they're basically giving power away to Hakeem Jeffries, and that's exactly what they're doing in Texas House.

00:09:59.000 Very interested in what's happening in Texas.

00:10:01.000 What is the action item?

00:10:03.000 Well, if you go to TexasUOP.org, you can see all the representatives who are Republicans who are supporting the Democrat nominee.

00:10:11.000 And their phone numbers are there.

00:10:13.000 The grassroots needs to get behind the Republican nominee and actually talk to their representatives and say, if you do this, we are going to primer you and we're going to get you out.

00:10:25.000 That needs to come from the grassroots, from their district.

00:10:28.000 That's the only thing that we can do at this point.

00:10:31.000 We've done everything else.

00:10:33.000 The people, the constituents, need to wake up and say, well, this is not what we elected.

00:10:41.000 While we may have won this election, the fight to restore our great nation is only beginning.

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00:11:39.000 .

00:11:42.000 Abraham, I know you're the state party chair, so you have to be careful the way you answer.

00:11:46.000 However, what's going on with Mr. Cornyn potentially being primaried by Paxton?

00:11:53.000 Or just kind of the grassroots, just look at it from an analytical standpoint.

00:11:57.000 Well, there is a lot of people who are excited to hear that Paxton is considering that, especially during your AmFast.

00:12:07.000 I think that's when he literally...

00:12:09.000 Paxson literally went out and said, hey, I am praying about it.

00:12:13.000 I did have a conversation with him a couple days ago, a few days ago, when we were traveling across the state about the Speaker's race.

00:12:21.000 And I asked him, what are your thoughts?

00:12:22.000 And he said, well, Abraham, I'm praying about it.

00:12:24.000 We're looking at numbers.

00:12:26.000 So I don't know if he's going to do it.

00:12:29.000 There is people who are very upset with John Conan on certain issues, and there is a lot of people who just like him.

00:12:36.000 So we don't know.

00:12:38.000 To be honest with you, we don't know what's going to happen.

00:12:41.000 I know there's a lot of interest in Texas to primary the senator, but is it going to happen and is it going to be successful?

00:12:50.000 It's a whole different conversation.

00:12:54.000 And because Texas is a huge state and it takes a lot of money to run for Senate here.

00:13:00.000 Ted Cruz just spent, I think, about $300 million.

00:13:04.000 So it's not a small task.

00:13:08.000 So we don't know.

00:13:10.000 Moving forward, what can we do to make the Republican Party more representative of its voters?

00:13:17.000 Well, one thing is we need conservatives running in 2026.

00:13:22.000 And that goes from all across the state for real Republicans who actually gets America First agenda, who actually will stand for state of Texas to run in the Republican ballot.

00:13:37.000 Not everyone's going to be successful, but we just replaced about 25, 26 members who were against the school choice, who were out there impeaching Ken Paxton, one of our favorite attorney generals in the entire nation.

00:13:52.000 So the party is doing the right thing.

00:13:56.000 We are moving forward.

00:13:57.000 But we need you and your audience to talk to them and wake them up a little bit and get them to the polls and actually get them to engage with the candidate who is actually going to be a MAGA candidate.

00:14:12.000 And that's what we've been doing.

00:14:14.000 And it's very controversial when the party does it because you're going against one Republican who is sometimes in office.

00:14:23.000 We actually went against Tony Gonzalez as a congressman.

00:14:27.000 We went against Dave Phelan as the House Rep and as former Speaker.

00:14:32.000 So there was a lot of unhappy people when the party does it, but when the grassroots do it.

00:14:39.000 That's a whole different angle.

00:14:41.000 And party can be somewhat neutral unless there's really horrible Republicans who does some really horrible things against the party platform and its principles.

00:14:51.000 And one thing that changed in the last convention, which is we have one of the largest conventions, about 10,000 people come together every two years to put our platform and our priorities.

00:15:02.000 We'd love to have you as a speaker on the next one in 26. Yeah, sounds great.

00:15:09.000 They came together and they said the party's name belongs to the people, not to the electorate officials.

00:15:17.000 So they basically said, if you're not going to play by the rules that's set by these grassroots members, they're going to hold you off from the ballot.

00:15:28.000 They're going to say you cannot run as a Republican.

00:15:30.000 You can run as a Democrat or Independent, but the Republican Party's name belongs to the...

00:15:36.000 To the grassroots members, not to the elected officials.

00:15:39.000 So there is a lot of that going on, conversations, which is one of the reasons why Cody Harris thinks he can actually file a felony charge against me if I were to remove him from the ballot.

00:15:51.000 But it's not up to the chairman.

00:15:53.000 It's up to the members of the party who makes that decision, and it comes with a lot of censoring, things like that.

00:16:00.000 And he has to violate multiple rules and all those things.

00:16:03.000 But at the same time, That gives the party a lot of power over elected officials, and they hate that.

00:16:11.000 But I think the people are waking up, and your audience can help a lot by making that phone call, talking to the elected officials, and also showing up to the Capitol.

00:16:24.000 Starting tomorrow, the session starts for 140 days.

00:16:28.000 We only meet 140 days every other year.

00:16:31.000 So they need to show up and say, This is a bill that I like.

00:16:35.000 I want you to actually work on this and support this, get behind this asset.

00:16:39.000 Thank you, Abraham.

00:16:40.000 Thank you.

00:16:41.000 Great work.

00:16:42.000 Talk to you soon.

00:16:42.000 Would love to come to your convention.

00:16:43.000 Keep Texas red and responsive to its voters.

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00:17:47.000 Joining us now is Will Tebow, Army veteran and director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute.

00:17:53.000 Will, welcome to the program.

00:17:55.000 Thank you for taking the time.

00:17:56.000 Will, what is your take on Pete Hegseth's nomination and the importance for the Department of Defense?

00:18:01.000 Yeah, thanks, Charlie.

00:18:03.000 There are two critical things about Pete Hegg, Seth.

00:18:05.000 The first is he understands that the military is, frankly, broken, and that business as usual is not going to be enough to preserve the integrity of our armed forces in a way that allows them to defend our nation.

00:18:18.000 DEI has corrupted defense policy, and there's a sclerotic being to everything that the military does that affects personnel to technology policy.

00:18:28.000 But the second thing about him is his incentive structure is completely separate from the military-industrial complex, from the senior ranks of military brass.

00:18:38.000 And that means he's going to be accountable to President Trump and the American people who sent President Trump back to D.C. in order to fix the military.

00:18:48.000 That's why it's so important that he gets confirmed.

00:18:50.000 Well, is it fair to say that the United States military is in a place of crisis right now?

00:18:56.000 Is it fair to say that the military is in free I think by any measure, Charlie.

00:19:02.000 I was part of the two wars that we spent 20 years fighting, and neither one yielded a legitimate military victory.

00:19:13.000 You can't tell what the blood, sweat, and tears we spent in the Middle East has produced for the American people, for American interests. 0.93

00:19:24.000 The results are questionable at best.

00:19:27.000 But what we see now is a military with dwindling end strength because people don't want to join and because the military doesn't want to hire the kinds of men who have served in uniform throughout our history.

00:19:39.000 And the only way that we're kind of hiding the story here is because the military has changed recruitment goals.

00:19:46.000 The military has changed the imperative to seem as if they are.

00:19:51.000 Doing okay or keeping the ship afloat.

00:19:53.000 But it's not.

00:19:55.000 Like you said, it's a disaster.

00:19:56.000 It is in free fall.

00:19:58.000 And the only question is, are we going to wait until it's too late to fix it?

00:20:02.000 We shouldn't wait until the crisis is so undeniable for everyone to see.

00:20:07.000 We've got to get ahead of it.

00:20:09.000 That's hopefully what Secretary Hegseth is going to do. 1.00

00:20:12.000 And that's what President Trump needs to do.

00:20:14.000 And the fact that he's nominating Pete Hegseth means he knows it.

00:20:17.000 So let's now take a step back.

00:20:20.000 Your association with the Claremont Institute, I imagine you are not a John Bolton neoconservative because I love the Claremont Institute and everyone there is very rational.

00:20:28.000 But of course you believe in American strength and American dominance militarily.

00:20:32.000 What does the Pete Hegseth nomination and the selection of people like Michael Anton in the State Department and the selection of Mr. Caldwell that is helping out in DOD, can you explain the philosophical divergence away from traditional neoliberal, neoconservative dogma and where the Trump Department of Defense is going to differ for the better for the American people?

00:20:53.000 Yeah, Charlie, I think we'll be in large agreement here, but it reflects the understanding that America is a nation in that...

00:21:01.000 what benefits America is not an ideology attached to a real life game of risk with soldiers displacing other soldiers around the world.

00:21:11.000 The American nation is what must benefit from defense policy, from foreign policy, from Department of the Interior policy.

00:21:22.000 And that means it's about affecting the kitchen table, right?

00:21:26.000 It is about the ability of a mom and dad to raise their family with the confidence that their children will be growing up in the land of prosperity and freedom and values.

00:21:39.000 and that they could perhaps send their sons to join the military.

00:21:44.000 Without fear that their lives would be wasted in far-flung adventures overseas with a nebulous tie to what matters to the American people and to their lives at home.

00:21:56.000 It's not an ideology.

00:21:58.000 It's not a game.

00:21:59.000 We want to do the things that benefit Americans as a people and a nation.

00:22:04.000 And I think that's what these appointments that you mentioned reflect.

00:22:06.000 It's why I'm excited about the Trump presidency.

00:22:09.000 And I know you're probably in the same boat.

00:22:13.000 Without a doubt.

00:22:15.000 So let me just get this straight.

00:22:17.000 The traditional neoconservatives are very upset.

00:22:20.000 Let's go theater by theater.

00:22:22.000 The one that is harder to articulate is the rise of China.

00:22:27.000 I am a China, I don't want to say hawk, but I'm certainly, I think they're a great enemy of ours. 1.00

00:22:32.000 But am I correct in viewing that some people that have been largely silent on China for the last 20 years, suddenly now...

00:22:40.000 Want us to get closer and closer with a Connecticut hot war?

00:22:43.000 Help me understand how we should think about the rising threat of the Chinese Communist Party.

00:22:49.000 Well, I think you touched on it there, Charlie.

00:22:51.000 You know, there's a lot of reasons to be, I don't think necessarily afraid even, but really wary of China and their growing prominence in the Pacific and in the world and even what they do at home. 0.95

00:23:07.000 The question is if you think war is inevitable or not.

00:23:10.000 And I think any reasonable American, and certainly those who are going to be in charge of our military, our intelligence community, and our foreign policy establishment, should seek to make war not inevitable, to avoid it while preserving American interests.

00:23:30.000 You know, if we move into the space of the Pacific kind of with a fait accompli that certain actions by the Chinese would produce a military response by America, that'll frankly limit our creativity and our ability to respond to China because we'll think that it's only about killing and destroying Chinese tanks. 0.92

00:23:53.000 We should understand that war doesn't have to happen, that there's a way that America can still leverage her economic muscle and her military deterrence in order to make any future Chinese military incursions unacceptable to them and to make it clear to them that the cost will be too high. 0.69

00:24:17.000 Let's unpack this.

00:24:18.000 So there's something called the Thucydides trap, which you know, which is a belief that when you have a rising power that threatens the displaced and existing dominant power, that it will almost necessarily lead to conflict or war.

00:24:35.000 And I'm starting to listen to some of these people in D.C. and I'm friends with them.

00:24:40.000 And there's not even a discussion.

00:24:41.000 I'm at lunch and dinner with them.

00:24:43.000 They say, oh, we're going to war with China.

00:24:45.000 It's going to happen.

00:24:47.000 It's a certainty.

00:24:49.000 And I just kind of reject the premise.

00:24:51.000 I hope that's not the case.

00:24:52.000 But can you explain that?

00:24:54.000 Because it's now being built into the kind of non-negotiable aspect of even challenging the premise that in the next 10 years, we're going to be in a hot war with China.

00:25:05.000 Yeah, we shouldn't forget that one of the more recent purveyors of the notion of the Thucydides trap is none other than Mark Milley.

00:25:12.000 And we should make sure that that's a lesson for many of our friends, Charlie, who want to pick up the mantle of this supposedly inevitable war.

00:25:22.000 I think it helps to kind of read the neoconservative...

00:25:28.000 The Center for Strategic International Studies produced a really, frankly, excellent war game about what a war over Taiwan would look like.

00:25:37.000 Their conservative estimate of a war in Taiwan where the U.S. is militarily involved is the loss of over 5,000 U.S. Marines, soldiers, and sailors in the span of less than 96 hours.

00:25:51.000 Half of our losses in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in just a few days, a long weekend.

00:25:58.000 The CSIS, frankly, they pass off those war game results like it's some mere academic exercise.

00:26:04.000 But that's what we're talking about when we discuss the possibility of war and of defeating the Chinese Communist Party often.

00:26:14.000 We should, again, tie our aims in the Pacific to those results that benefit the American This doesn't mean we let China eat our lunch economically or militarily.

00:26:26.000 It means we punish them in many ways, and it means we preserve our economic interests.

00:26:31.000 But it's not a license to act with reckless abandon.

00:26:35.000 Well, and so here's the other component of this.

00:26:37.000 So there's one analysis where you say, OK, war is inevitable with China, and I reject the Thucydides trap.

00:26:45.000 However, the Mark Milley perspective...

00:26:48.000 It's like, okay, war is inevitable, but what if we decide not to fight?

00:26:52.000 What if we just acknowledge that they're the dominant power and that we just kind of have this fusionism?

00:26:59.000 We don't want that either, right?

00:27:00.000 So that is an unnecessarily dovish approach to the Thucydides trap premise.

00:27:07.000 So you could have two really bad applications to this, I think, false premise that we're kind of involved in this inevitable conflict.

00:27:15.000 Can you unpack that, too, about a minute and a half remaining?

00:27:18.000 Well, that's precisely right.

00:27:19.000 You know, it's a problem of creativity.

00:27:23.000 A big problem with the foreign policy establishment is not necessarily that they're neoconsertive or dovish.

00:27:28.000 It's the fact that you think there are only two choices, to be a neocon or a dove.

00:27:32.000 Let's think about ways that we can enable allies to have a credible military deterrent themselves.

00:27:38.000 Let's think about how we can punish China economically and lay those punishments in place now so they know military incursions would be too costly for them to bear because they are susceptible and they are wary of those risks. 0.89

00:27:55.000 That's why the people who lead in the Trump administration need to be ready to never take the first answer, the first policy proposal at face value.

00:28:04.000 I totally agree.

00:28:04.000 There's so much there.

00:28:06.000 Well, and this is a—I love how you say a failure of creativity.

00:28:09.000 I totally agree with that.

00:28:10.000 I try to make my time with bureaucrats limited, and it's really bad for you because I think they're contagious.

00:28:17.000 I think they shed just really bad energy.

00:28:23.000 And when I'm around some of these bureaucrats lately, not to share any private information, there's no depth of thought of analyzing a— That could result in the worst possible thing.

00:28:37.000 I mean, the Russian-Ukraine one is the greatest example.

00:28:40.000 We'll talk about this after the break.

00:28:42.000 Is that they build all of their second and third movements, their sequential movements, while Putin's going to march through Europe just the way Hitler did. 0.70

00:28:50.000 So if you start with that base premise, then you can get to a really, really bad outcome like we have to fire American-made missiles into the interior of Russia. 0.77

00:29:00.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here with New Year's Resolutions.

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00:30:02.000 So let's talk about the failure of imagination.

00:30:04.000 Why is it that...

00:30:09.000 The bureaucrats that have infested our institutions have such a failure of imagination. 1.00

00:30:15.000 It's a big question, but, you know, I think we still live in the Cold War, right?

00:30:22.000 The enemy versus friend is absolute, and there are enemies, and there are friends.

00:30:26.000 You fight the enemies whenever you can, and you protect your friends no matter what's going on.

00:30:31.000 And again, foreign policy, America is not in a game of risk.

00:30:36.000 We should understand that.

00:30:37.000 Russia and Ukraine is another example.

00:30:39.000 You know, the choice is we fight them or we let them march all across Europe.

00:30:44.000 And so we send a lot of money to Ukraine.

00:30:47.000 We send a lot of weapons to Ukraine.

00:30:48.000 But why isn't the government and our military studying how warfare is changing in Ukraine?

00:30:54.000 Because, frankly, I think it's changing in ways we don't appreciate.

00:30:59.000 And understanding that is going to be what keeps us out of war in the future.

00:31:04.000 And so we can be, you know, articulate and reasonable about this in a way that burnishes our military power without falling into this false choice that is really, again, a lack of creativity and a sign of how sclerotic our bureaucracy has become.

00:31:20.000 If you had your druthers and you could list five things that Pete Hegg said slash President Trump could do in the first week, if not the first day, what would they be?

00:31:29.000 The first thing is to end race quotas at the Pentagon.

00:31:33.000 Why does every institution from West Point to an Army rifle squad have to be a racially proportional representation?

00:31:43.000 The military should be something different.

00:31:45.000 The second thing, let's enable our allies in the Pacific to have the military resources they need to build their own defense capability, from drones to submarines to cruise missiles.

00:32:01.000 Let's give it to them and let's get it in place fast so China knows that the costs of war are high.

00:32:07.000 When it comes to Russia and Ukraine, we need to move to peace.

00:32:11.000 We need to show the Ukrainians that the gravy train is not infinite. 0.82

00:32:16.000 But we also need to show the Russians that we're still in charge. 0.99

00:32:20.000 And I think there's a way that we can do that through diplomacy and economic power.

00:32:24.000 But let's couple that with an effort to get Russia out of China's pocketbook. 0.76

00:32:29.000 Let's remove a huge partner of the Chinese in Europe and Asia, and let's tie the Ukrainian negotiation to those ends. 0.97

00:32:39.000 The fourth thing is, frankly, we need to fire a lot of generals.

00:32:44.000 It's not just a problem of political appointees.

00:32:47.000 Uniformed senior officers have been a part of obviously military defeat, but also the encroachment of leftism in the military.

00:32:57.000 There's a great catalog that Claremont's produced of over 600 generals in their effort to make DEI military policy.

00:33:05.000 That has to end.

00:33:06.000 And finally, though, we need to think really creatively, again, about reforming key institutions in America and in the military specifically.

00:33:14.000 Why does West Point produce cadets who receive a degree in diversity and inclusion studies?

00:33:20.000 Why does the joint staff...

00:33:22.000 A body that should only provide advice and consent to the president, why do they have influence over military operational decision-making?

00:33:30.000 Let's make the joint staff a lot smaller so the next Mark Milley can't have influence over Chinese nuclear policy, and let's move them right next to the White House, close to the flagpole, as we would say, in the Army, so they're under close supervision and they can just provide that advice to the president that they're statutory obligated to do so.

00:33:49.000 Those are, I think, five things that will get us a long way.

00:33:52.000 Very good.

00:33:53.000 Will Tebow, thank you so much.

00:33:54.000 Really appreciate it.

00:33:55.000 Come back soon.

00:33:56.000 You're terrific.

00:33:57.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:33:58.000 Email us freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to our podcast.

00:34:02.000 And don't forget Panama and Greenland.

00:34:04.000 Don't forget those two very important hedges against the ascendant Chinese Communist Party.

00:34:09.000 We can beat the Chinese Communist Party in non-military ways.

00:34:12.000 There is something called low-intensity conflict, cyber warfare, tariffs, economic prowess.

00:34:18.000 China is entering a near-depression right now.

00:34:21.000 The Chinese, they've only been in capital markets for the last 20, 25 years. 1.00

00:34:24.000 They are not nearly as strong as you think.

00:34:27.000 We can break the back of the Chinese Communist Party, but D.C. wants to do it with missiles.

00:34:31.000 I think we can do it with markets.

00:34:33.000 We can do it with our economic supremacy.

00:34:36.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:37.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:39.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 14, 2025

Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?

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