The Charlie Kirk Show - Will China Take Taiwan Next?

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 Will China take Taiwan next?

00:00:02.000 Also, what's going on with religious freedom across the world?

00:00:05.000 Johnny Moore and Joshua Phillip join us for a very thought-provoking, important episode about geopolitics and international affairs.

00:00:11.000 You can email me your thoughts as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:00:44.000 Buckle up, everybody, here.

00:00:46.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:46.000 We go.

00:00:48.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:50.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:53.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:57.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:58.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:59.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

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00:01:28.000 Johnny Moore from Kairos PR, Public Relations, that right?

00:01:32.000 Just right?

00:01:33.000 Kairos means action in the Bible, right?

00:01:33.000 Yep.

00:01:35.000 It's a time moment of action of time.

00:01:38.000 It means the intersection of time and opportunity.

00:01:38.000 It's a Greek word.

00:01:40.000 It's all throughout Mark.

00:01:41.000 There's that word.

00:01:42.000 Through the whole line.

00:01:44.000 Kairos.

00:01:44.000 So, Johnny, thank you for joining us.

00:01:46.000 So you're kind of an expert on international religious freedom, and you also have been following what's happening in Vienna right now with the Iran deal, where the Russians are kind of like the intermediaries. 0.54

00:01:57.000 Is that right?

00:01:58.000 Yeah, I don't think Americans really realize what's going on in Vienna.

00:02:00.000 I mean, stop to think that while all of this is happening in Ukraine, the deputy foreign minister of Russia has been negotiating what they say is going back into the Iran deal.

00:02:12.000 It's actually a whole different deal altogether.

00:02:13.000 But it's not even a negotiation, Charlie.

00:02:15.000 The Americans haven't even met with the Iranians.

00:02:18.000 They meet with the Russians.

00:02:20.000 The Russians go talk to the Chinese and the Iranians.

00:02:22.000 They go back to the Americans. 1.00

00:02:23.000 They tell the Americans back and forth.

00:02:24.000 It's a gigantic charade.

00:02:26.000 It's a disaster.

00:02:28.000 People don't really realize how catastrophic this is.

00:02:30.000 So the first Iran deal was really bad.

00:02:33.000 They said it tried to the way that the Obama regime spinned it, spun it, whatever, was that they were saying that this prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but we know that wasn't true.

00:02:44.000 Trump canceled it.

00:02:46.000 What is this deal?

00:02:47.000 Yeah, and what the Biden administration said, because by the way, the deal wouldn't have even gotten a vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress.

00:02:55.000 It was so, so unpopular.

00:02:56.000 So in order to get this moving, President Biden said, well, look, we'll go into the old deal and we'll have a longer, stronger deal.

00:03:05.000 Congress, Democrat-controlled Congress didn't even believe the president.

00:03:09.000 So in the last year, they passed a bill that requires that the negotiating team submit what they're talking about to Congress.

00:03:18.000 Biden's ignoring all of it.

00:03:19.000 The White House is ignoring all of it.

00:03:21.000 Yeah, and what we understand about this deal is that it relieves, they've been relieving a lot of sanctions on Iran, but they basically relieve the rest of them.

00:03:30.000 They take sanctions off of all these terrorists, including the people responsible for the bombing of the Jewish community 30 years ago in Argentina.

00:03:39.000 They actually may even take the Revolutionary Guard off the terrorist list.

00:03:43.000 The IRG, right?

00:03:44.000 The IRGC, you know, that was led by Silamani.

00:03:48.000 And so what will happen, okay, if this deal passes, we're going to see more terrorism from Iran. 0.98

00:03:53.000 We're going to see Iran kidnap more Americans. 1.00

00:03:57.000 Going to see the Middle East at the first moment where we actually have peace in a generation inflamed again with Iranian terrorism. 0.96

00:04:04.000 It's unbelievable.

00:04:05.000 Yeah, that's very logical way to look at it.

00:04:07.000 Of course, we don't have logical, rational people running the country.

00:04:10.000 So let me ask you something.

00:04:11.000 You said it doesn't have to go through Senate approval because this was something that Senator Alexander tried to force the hand of, if I remember correctly, back during Obama, and it ended up not mattering at all.

00:04:22.000 Is that correct?

00:04:23.000 Or well, but the treaties are supposed to be ratified by the Senate.

00:04:27.000 That's in the Constitution.

00:04:28.000 Technically, it's not a treaty.

00:04:29.000 The Iranians want it to be a treaty because they're telling the Biden administration, we want a guarantee that the Americans can't break this deal anymore.

00:04:37.000 But right now, one of the biggest critics of the Iran deal in Congress is Bob Menendez from New Jersey.

00:04:44.000 Yeah, it's not just Ted Cruz.

00:04:46.000 Well, how about Schumer?

00:04:46.000 It's Bob.

00:04:47.000 Schumer came out against the Iran deal, but that was a horse trading vote way back, right?

00:04:51.000 Is that correct?

00:04:52.000 Yeah, yes.

00:04:52.000 I mean, no, he was vocally against the Iran deal.

00:04:55.000 And this is, you know, Menendez is quite loud.

00:04:57.000 Schumer's totally, totally quiet on it, which is really, which isn't matter.

00:05:01.000 They can do it.

00:05:02.000 Since it's not a treaty, what is it?

00:05:03.000 An agreement?

00:05:04.000 Is that what it's like?

00:05:05.000 I mean, this is why President Trump could cancel it when he did cancel it.

00:05:05.000 It's an agreement.

00:05:09.000 And, you know, this is a really, it's a really awful, awful situation.

00:05:15.000 Yes, but one of the things that the Iranians say, who I don't trust the Iranian regime at all, is they just want it for nuclear power. 0.97

00:05:21.000 Just kind of walk us through how preposterous that is.

00:05:24.000 Well, I mean, this deal, what the Iranians have been doing is they've been sort of like extending the negotiation so they could accelerate the enrichment of Iranians. 0.78

00:05:34.000 So they're really good negotiators.

00:05:36.000 The Iranians are brilliant negotiators.

00:05:40.000 They run a hard bargain.

00:05:41.000 They're working really, really hard to do this.

00:05:42.000 And they're running circles around the Biden administration.

00:05:44.000 I mean, you can negotiate a deal with Iran, but you have to do it with strength. 0.96

00:05:50.000 And just like in the Russia-Ukraine situation, you know, what the spark that could ignite a third world war is not a MIG plane from Poland and Ukraine. 0.67

00:06:00.000 It's American weakness.

00:06:02.000 The United States isn't a weak country.

00:06:05.000 We're the wealthiest, strongest country in the world, but we're projecting an enormous amount of weakness.

00:06:10.000 And the Iranians are running circles around us at the negotiating table, if you can even call it that, as Americans sit in a hotel down the road with the Russian deputy foreign minister shuffling back and forth between them.

00:06:21.000 So let me ask you, Johnny, as we look at the international state of affairs with Iran and Russia and Ukraine, it seems like all these things are very tied together, right?

00:06:21.000 Right.

00:06:30.000 It seems as if one could impact the other significantly.

00:06:34.000 And yet I'm not seeing a lot of media coverage of the Iran deal at all, this new Iranian deal.

00:06:38.000 Why is that?

00:06:39.000 Well, look, I mean, I think there are lots of reasons for it.

00:06:45.000 The primary reason why people aren't paying attention to it is there's so many fires around the world, you know, as it is.

00:06:52.000 But, you know, the reporting was from Vienna because the deputy foreign minister of Iran spoke to the Iranian press, bragging in English, I might say, about how the Iranians had out-negotiated everyone else at the table.

00:07:07.000 They'd fought for every comma, every period, and quote, got far more than even he imagined that they would get.

00:07:17.000 So in the middle of this Ukraine-Russia crisis, the administration has been trying to potentially get Iranian oil back on the market.

00:07:28.000 It was widely reported that they sent negotiators to Maduro in Venezuela.

00:07:34.000 It would be very hard to get Venezuelan oil back on the market.

00:07:36.000 The whole thing is so decimated to take a year to do it.

00:07:40.000 But in this upside-down world, we have people sitting in Washington, D.C. saying, look, we have to stop Russian oil, but why don't we replace it with Iranian oil and Venezuelan oil, which is, you know, if you're for clean energy, it's like far dirtier than American energy.

00:07:54.000 And we're going to replace like one of the world's worst human rights violators with two that are even worse, worse than that.

00:08:00.000 Like the whole thing is absolutely upside down.

00:08:03.000 So you're the author of the book, Upcoming Look, The Next Jihad, about Christians in Nigeria.

00:08:08.000 Tell us about that.

00:08:09.000 Yeah, I mean, in one level, I feel like someone put me in a time machine and took me back to 2014, watching all of these fires all around the world.

00:08:18.000 But the single most neglected issue in the world is we have this raging fire of a new potential caliphate in Western Africa committing human rights atrocities that are incomprehensible. 0.73

00:08:31.000 More Christians have died, for instance, at the hands of terrorists in Nigeria alone than at the height of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and not just Christians.

00:08:41.000 They're intent on killing every single Muslim that stands above. 1.00

00:08:45.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:08:46.000 It's one of the great mysteries to me.

00:08:47.000 Right before COVID, I traveled over there.

00:08:49.000 I interviewed Nigeria's depopulated country in Africa.

00:08:53.000 Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa.

00:08:55.000 It's one of the most populated countries in the world.

00:08:57.000 It's basically half Christian and half Muslim.

00:09:00.000 The sort of like foreign policy experts say this has nothing to do with religion.

00:09:06.000 It's a competition over resources and all of this stuff.

00:09:09.000 They're a resource-rich country.

00:09:11.000 But in actual effect, all of that is also true. 0.98

00:09:15.000 But these terrorists are going into village after village after village on a jihad, finding the Christians and killing them.

00:09:23.000 And it's, and one of the great things the Trump administration did is they actually put Nigeria on a list among the worst violators of religious freedom in the world.

00:09:33.000 There's something called the Countries of Particular Concern.

00:09:35.000 Unfortunately, you know, the Biden administration took them off the list.

00:09:40.000 Nigeria is an amazing country, an incredible partner of the United States of America, a national security partner.

00:09:45.000 But it seems like we're easy on everyone we should be hard on and hard on everyone that we should be easy on.

00:09:52.000 And I just don't get it.

00:09:54.000 But I'm just telling you, if something doesn't happen to Western Africa two years from now, what's happening on that side of that great continent is going to make what we saw with ISIS in Iraq and Syria look small in comparison. 0.73

00:10:04.000 It's the next jihad.

00:10:05.000 You don't hear about that a lot.

00:10:06.000 So it's very important.

00:10:07.000 So Johnny, thank you so much for joining us, my friends.

00:10:09.000 Thanks, Charlie, for shining a light on these persecuted people.

00:10:12.000 Yeah, of course.

00:10:12.000 Thank you.

00:10:15.000 Look, everybody, I know you love freedom and you want to defend it.

00:10:18.000 And I know you love the Constitution.

00:10:20.000 It's a beautiful document, and so do I.

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00:11:36.000 Late last evening, the House of Representatives passed one of the largest spending bills in our nation's history.

00:11:42.000 And most people aren't talking about it and most people don't care.

00:11:46.000 It's a massive spending bill that would fund the federal government through September and also will provide $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine.

00:11:55.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

00:11:57.000 The spending bill, known as an omnibus, would fund the government through the fiscal year 2022, which started in October.

00:12:04.000 Lawmakers have begun negotiating it over its session.

00:12:06.000 It's a 2,741-page bill, 2,741 pages, and that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in the middle of the night at 1 a.m.

00:12:20.000 It might have to go through some other procedural loopholes, but it looks like this is going to go to the Senate next.

00:12:26.000 The Hill.com writes: quote, the lawmakers feast on pork and omnibus.

00:12:30.000 After an 11-year drought, congressional earmarks are back with a vengeance.

00:12:35.000 So, here's some of the things that you can expect out of this new omnibus bill if it passes through the Senate.

00:12:41.000 Number one, who's the winner?

00:12:43.000 Well, not small business owners, not entrepreneurs, not churches.

00:12:48.000 No, no, no.

00:12:49.000 The IRS.

00:12:50.000 The IRS is going to see the largest increase in their budget, if this passes and gets signed into law, since 2001.

00:12:58.000 They are getting $675 million new dollars on top of what they already get.

00:13:04.000 The Internal Revenue Service is going to get a funding boost, an unprecedented 20, once-in-a-20-year funding boost to help improve its customer service.

00:13:12.000 Yeah, right.

00:13:13.000 But also increase enforcement, modernize internal revenue service technology, and improve its web application.

00:13:19.000 I'm reading from CNN.com.

00:13:21.000 They're being very understated here.

00:13:23.000 I'm going to re-emphasize this: increase enforcement.

00:13:26.000 The Internal Revenue Service is getting the largest increase in their budget in 20 years to help go after disagreeable political opponents to audit them to make sure that you guys stay obedient and stay in line.

00:13:38.000 Provide a special funding transfer authority for the Internal Revenue Service to direct higher authority to help the agency deal with a massive backlog of returns and correspondence.

00:13:48.000 So, according to the regime in Washington, D.C., our border is wide open.

00:13:53.000 They're doing nothing to address that.

00:13:55.000 We have an opioid epidemic of over 100,000 drug overdoses.

00:13:58.000 You know where their priorities are?

00:13:59.000 To make sure there are more internal revenue service agents to go audit you and extort more money from you while you have double-digit inflation and while gas prices are going up.

00:14:09.000 Here's an interesting part of the omnibus bill, which I would love to hear Nancy Pelosi or someone explain.

00:14:14.000 It provides $75 million in election security grants, huh, to bolster state efforts to improve the security and integrity of elections for federal office.

00:14:24.000 I thought our elections were perfect.

00:14:26.000 If our elections are perfect, why do they need $75 million to go secure them?

00:14:30.000 Where is that money going to go?

00:14:32.000 I thought that's the big lie.

00:14:33.000 Aren't they trying to indict people for even saying that the election might have problems with it?

00:14:38.000 The next category is schools and financial aid boost.

00:14:41.000 The bill would provide $17.5 billion of new funding, largest in more of a decade, towards public schools exclusively.

00:14:50.000 They're expanding the maximum Pell cramp by $400.

00:14:54.000 Pell grants are generally awarded to undergraduate students with exceptional financial needs.

00:14:58.000 Now, this will go primarily to the college cartel that has done nothing to lower costs, went through Zoom school, and this is going to be a further bailout from the federal government.

00:15:10.000 There's a part here of this new omnibus bill that we mentioned, $13.6 billion in Ukrainian aid.

00:15:17.000 But the question is: where's that money going to go?

00:15:18.000 Is it going to go to bio labs?

00:15:20.000 $13.6 billion is a lot of money.

00:15:22.000 Here's the question: why is our government not spending $13.6 billion to secure our border, but they're sending $13.6 billion to send to Ukraine to go fight for their border?

00:15:32.000 Where's the $13.6 billion in suicide prevention for our young people that have the highest suicide rate in history?

00:15:38.000 Where's the $13.6 billion to go help with drug rehabilitation for the 100,000 plus drug overdoses?

00:15:44.000 Seems like some of our lawmakers have their priorities backward.

00:15:48.000 $13.6 billion that will say it is going to provide humanitarian security and economic assistance for Ukraine.

00:15:56.000 Interesting.

00:15:58.000 Also, spending on defense and national security will make up more than half the bill.

00:16:03.000 The measure calls for an increase in funding for military personnel, operations, and research of ground vehicles, aircraft ships, munitions, and other equipment.

00:16:09.000 For those of you keeping track at home, we nearly have a $30 trillion debt right now, and this will only expand our debt and our deficit to about $2 trillion.

00:16:23.000 We will borrow this year, is what we will say.

00:16:25.000 Not a single spending cut is found in this entire bill.

00:16:29.000 Now, most of you don't even know that this is happening.

00:16:30.000 It's increased, by the way, across the board.

00:16:32.000 It's also a mandatory 6% increase just across the board, that every federal agency is just getting a 6% increase across the board, according to an increase in annual appropriations, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

00:16:47.000 Inflation's at 7.9%, so they say that they need to continue to increase government alongside inflation, which of course makes no sense.

00:16:57.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:16:58.000 If the truckers have taught us anything, it's that we are infinitely more powerful when we stick together.

00:17:03.000 The same goes for supporting businesses that we believe in this country and your right to live free.

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00:17:13.000 They offer broad nationwide coverage because they use the same towers as the major carriers, get the same great service without funding the major carriers who donate to these leftist crazy causes.

00:17:22.000 Patriot Mobile, I know their whole team, Glenn and their CEO, they're amazing.

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00:18:00.000 We're here with Joshua Phillips.

00:18:01.000 So Joshua, welcome to the program.

00:18:03.000 Hey, Charlie, real pleasure being here.

00:18:04.000 I got to ask you, and you'll sort this out once and for all.

00:18:07.000 Is it epic or epoch times?

00:18:08.000 So it's actually both.

00:18:10.000 We just like to confuse everybody.

00:18:11.000 It's both.

00:18:12.000 Yeah, yeah, it's both.

00:18:13.000 How can it be both?

00:18:14.000 So if you want to speak the Queen's English, British or Canadian, it's Epoch. 0.84

00:18:18.000 Okay.

00:18:19.000 And if you're an American, it's Epic.

00:18:21.000 So it's EPOCHTimes.com.

00:18:24.000 Is that right?

00:18:25.000 That's right.

00:18:26.000 I have more people send links to me from what you guys are doing than I think anything.

00:18:29.000 I mean, it's really a fast-growing site.

00:18:31.000 Oh, thank you.

00:18:32.000 Yeah, that's the goal.

00:18:33.000 You know, that's the goal.

00:18:34.000 You work very hard.

00:18:35.000 I'm trying to grow it faster.

00:18:36.000 So Epoch Epic, you guys name it, E-P-O-C-H-Times.com.

00:18:40.000 Really good investigative work.

00:18:42.000 I want to ask you a little bit about this report you're doing.

00:18:44.000 Then I want to get into China because you have some very unique commentary.

00:18:47.000 And the Epoch Times, I think, does more China coverage than almost any other news outlet.

00:18:47.000 Oh, yeah.

00:18:53.000 Because you have some really good dissonance sources.

00:18:54.000 We've been on it for a long time.

00:18:55.000 And it's one of your main kind of missions, right?

00:18:59.000 So you have a new report here.

00:19:00.000 It says, investigative report.

00:19:02.000 Whistleblowers reveal how the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, has actively discriminated against religion with vaccine mandates.

00:19:09.000 Tell us about it.

00:19:10.000 Well, you know, Charlie, that started off as an investigation more into the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

00:19:16.000 And people saying, yeah, whistleblower stepping forward.

00:19:18.000 I interviewed a couple of them saying that the military has been discriminating against them on how they're giving the exemptions because they're giving administrative exemptions.

00:19:26.000 They're giving medical exemptions.

00:19:28.000 But for some reason, for a long time, they were giving no religious exemptions.

00:19:32.000 They've broken that wall a little bit now, but there's some kind of nuances to it that suggests that there's still some funny play going on.

00:19:39.000 But we actually found it goes beyond COVID-19.

00:19:41.000 There's an anti-religious agenda, it appears, within the Pentagon.

00:19:45.000 And this includes policies like what they call pluralism, where if you're a chaplain, you can't name your God.

00:19:51.000 If you're a Christian, you can't say and go public and say, you know, in Jesus' name, amen, publicly without getting in trouble.

00:19:58.000 You can't suggest that your religion is like the right religion publicly, or you'll get in trouble.

00:20:04.000 If you do it, you might never get actually promoted.

00:20:07.000 And so they call that pluralism.

00:20:08.000 You have to blend all religions.

00:20:09.000 And by doing this, essentially, the Pentagon has been destroying religion.

00:20:13.000 And other things, too, like them labeling evangelical Christians domestic extremists, even putting them alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

00:20:23.000 So, I mean, this is not getting out.

00:20:25.000 Tell us about how you learned about this, some of your sources.

00:20:28.000 Well, so I had two individuals step forward.

00:20:30.000 One of them was a lieutenant colonel, Air Force Reserve.

00:20:32.000 The other one was a major Air Force Reserve.

00:20:35.000 And they had really incredible stories.

00:20:36.000 They were saying that basically they, you know, the COVID-19 vaccine mandates rolled out.

00:20:42.000 They were told they could apply for an exemption.

00:20:45.000 As soon as they said, okay, I'm going to apply for religious exemption, their superiors told them in word, not on paper.

00:20:52.000 I don't know if you can do that.

00:20:53.000 I don't think that's going to be okay.

00:20:55.000 And the first reaction is like, what do you mean it's not going to be okay?

00:20:58.000 You just told me I can apply.

00:21:00.000 You just told me I can apply.

00:21:01.000 Why is it not okay?

00:21:03.000 And they're like, oh, well, it's a mission readiness issue.

00:21:06.000 Mission readiness, right?

00:21:06.000 Fair enough.

00:21:08.000 But under the Pentagon's actual doctrine, you're not allowed to do that.

00:21:13.000 The Pentagon's definition of what would constitute a religious belief is a sincerely held belief.

00:21:20.000 They can't say that a religion is defined as this, that, and this, right?

00:21:25.000 You can't say that if you're a Christian, you believe in like certain things and nothing outside of that.

00:21:29.000 The foundation of America and religious freedom in America is Protestantism.

00:21:33.000 It's people reading the Bible and interpreting it themselves.

00:21:36.000 And that is also the foundation of how the military defines it.

00:21:39.000 You can make up your own religion in America, and that is your religion, and you can hold it, and that is the freedom of belief we have.

00:21:45.000 And the military, by doing this, is restricting that.

00:21:48.000 And so I suppose, where is the U.S. Senate on this?

00:21:51.000 Or is anyone else looking into this?

00:21:52.000 I mean, this seems to be a pretty simple oversight issue.

00:21:56.000 And in fact, I think after I published this, I did see some different senators calling them out even more, asking for a comment on it.

00:21:56.000 They've called them out.

00:22:03.000 But again, you know, what we found is some interesting stuff.

00:22:06.000 So again, it goes into pluralism.

00:22:07.000 It goes into the idea of how they're restricting this.

00:22:10.000 I actually talked to the Pentagon.

00:22:11.000 I called them up, got some comments, and here's what they told me.

00:22:14.000 And actually, their comments, I think, made it even worse, to be honest.

00:22:18.000 I called the Pentagon, and the Pentagon spokesperson told me that, well, it's a branch-by-branch decision in terms of how they define this and how they decide this.

00:22:28.000 But they said that what they're going by on whether or not they recognize the religious beliefs when it comes to vaccines of individual service members is this.

00:22:37.000 They said they look at what they said when they first enlisted.

00:22:41.000 If they first enlisted and they said, it's against my religion, it's against my sincerely held belief, which is how they describe it, how they define it.

00:22:48.000 It's against my sincerely held belief to get vaccinations.

00:22:52.000 They claim that if they said that when they first enlisted, then it's recognized.

00:22:56.000 But if they did not say it, they do not recognize it.

00:22:58.000 But what does that mean?

00:22:59.000 It means that after you join the military, if you become a Christian, conversion is a very important thing.

00:23:04.000 Exactly.

00:23:05.000 If you convert to a religion, if your beliefs change over the course of your entire 20, 30 years...

00:23:10.000 Your beliefs can't change.

00:23:11.000 They don't recognize it.

00:23:12.000 Wow.

00:23:13.000 And by doing that, they are regulating religious beliefs.

00:23:16.000 Do you think this is impacting military preparedness?

00:23:19.000 It is.

00:23:20.000 In fact, I just saw news that one of our major warships can't deploy because the commanding officer doesn't want to get the vaccine and not letting him deploy.

00:23:27.000 I had Navy SEALs step forward.

00:23:29.000 We talked to their lawyer representing them.

00:23:31.000 They were giving us some indirect statements through the lawyer.

00:23:33.000 They're saying they're being punished.

00:23:35.000 Not only them, but even their family members.

00:23:36.000 They have to go and get medical treatment for different things.

00:23:39.000 They were not allowed to travel to get medical treatment, and their family members were not allowed to travel to get medical treatment because of these policies.

00:23:46.000 So some people want us to go to war with Russia, and they don't even want our military to be as prepared as it possibly can.

00:23:53.000 They want to fire our officers and fire some of the most experienced people we have because of this.

00:23:57.000 Okay, I want to ask you about China.

00:23:57.000 It's unbelievable.

00:23:59.000 Do you think China is more or less likely to now invade Taiwan given what's happened in Russia and Ukraine?

00:24:05.000 I would say it's actually a bit deeper than just whether or not they're going to invade Taiwan.

00:24:08.000 On a couple points, depending on how the Russian military performs, that's going to be the determining factor.

00:24:14.000 How the Western world responds and how the Russian military performs.

00:24:17.000 The Chinese military is not that strong.

00:24:20.000 Let's be honest about it.

00:24:22.000 They're less powerful than the Russian military.

00:24:24.000 They buy their engines from Russia in terms of training and protocols.

00:24:28.000 We can get into some of the weaknesses in that, but they're less powerful than Russia.

00:24:33.000 They have a lot of people, though.

00:24:34.000 They have a lot of people, but throwing a lot of people at a whole lot of missiles doesn't get you very far.

00:24:39.000 You know what I mean?

00:24:40.000 But in terms of military capabilities, they're less powerful.

00:24:44.000 So depending on how Russia performs, that will be the determining factor in how China goes.

00:24:48.000 Although they might take lessons from it and try to change things around.

00:24:51.000 The bigger side is this.

00:24:53.000 The bigger side is the Chinese financial system.

00:24:57.000 Because, and honestly, I'm watching this show and I'm like, are they doing this intentionally?

00:25:02.000 Is this the real goal?

00:25:03.000 I mean, I don't know because I can't see Russia doing this intentionally and basically throwing themselves in the fire.

00:25:09.000 But what this has done, because the Western world has sanctioned Russia and they pushed Russia to the Chinese banking system.

00:25:15.000 And any country that wants to work with Russia now, because let's face it, Russia controls natural gas.

00:25:20.000 They control a lot of the energy industry.

00:25:22.000 They control fertilizer in the fertilizer industry, which we already had a shortage of going to Brazil, which is the breadbasket of China.

00:25:29.000 They control grain between them and Ukraine. 0.73

00:25:32.000 The world, many countries in the world, almost all the Arab countries, they cannot do without Russian grain.

00:25:37.000 Europe cannot do without Russian energy.

00:25:40.000 And most of Latin America can't do without Russian fertilizer.

00:25:43.000 And China cannot do without any of those.

00:25:45.000 That means that any country that now wants to purchase that has to go through the Chinese banking system.

00:25:49.000 That means the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency is at risk.

00:25:53.000 And that means that U.S. sanctions and our ability to sanction countries, unless we want to go to war with them every time we do something, that means that the tax Americanas at the United States.

00:26:01.000 I guess sort of, I mean, if China invades Taiwan, we're just going to say you can't do it.

00:26:04.000 It would crash their economy overnight.

00:26:06.000 If we sanctioned China like we sanctioned Russia, China would not exist.

00:26:10.000 If the world goes along with it.

00:26:12.000 That's going to be the big question.

00:26:14.000 Mostly America, right?

00:26:16.000 If we cut off the NBA and Hollywood and all of our manufacturing plants, if we did it, which wouldn't happen, of course.

00:26:16.000 So let's go to the bottom.

00:26:23.000 But isn't China a little uneasy about going to Taiwan?

00:26:26.000 Well, let's put it this way.

00:26:27.000 If the world stood behind the U.S. in supporting the sanctions, which they are currently not on Russia, let's make that clear.

00:26:34.000 The world is not?

00:26:34.000 A lot of them are not.

00:26:36.000 Brazil, for example, is already...

00:26:37.000 It's a small country.

00:26:38.000 I mean, Adidas is.

00:26:38.000 I mean, Germany is.

00:26:39.000 Germany is somewhat.

00:26:41.000 Some European.

00:26:42.000 Super...

00:26:44.000 Well, they are.

00:26:45.000 They are.

00:26:46.000 But the bigger picture is, again, that they have to buy their fertilizers.

00:26:49.000 They have to buy different things from them that they can't get around.

00:26:51.000 I guess.

00:26:52.000 And again, and again, when it comes to world production of food, that is an important part.

00:26:56.000 There are ways to get around sanctions.

00:26:58.000 It's not that hard.

00:26:59.000 You create shell companies and you have like a partial ownership at a shell company.

00:27:02.000 You have your billionaire and, you know, let's say Belize somewhere, start a company, a shell company.

00:27:07.000 You do a 30% investment.

00:27:09.000 You get around the sanctions.

00:27:10.000 Other countries do it.

00:27:10.000 You can do it.

00:27:11.000 North Korea does it. 0.83

00:27:12.000 Yeah, but it still restricts a lot of economic. 0.97

00:27:15.000 It restricts a lot.

00:27:16.000 But, and I'm not saying it's going to be one way or the other for sure, right?

00:27:20.000 But if the world does not strongly enough stand behind these sanctions, if they let some things slip through, which they're starting to, that means that China now has the opportunity to also do what they want to do.

00:27:32.000 If China can actually push up its banking system as a world reserve currency, which is going to be hard, but if you have enough countries being willing to trade in it, they can actually really do a whole lot.

00:27:43.000 And that means that the ability of the U.S. to even sanction China is really, I think, seriously a risk.

00:27:48.000 Yeah, I mean, but I suppose it just all, it's a matter, I guess, of our own willingness.

00:27:52.000 If we told China we're not trading with you, the CCP collapses in a month.

00:27:56.000 This is partly true.

00:27:57.000 So I was, if people were watching my show, I've been saying for a long time, like, so during the beginning of COVID, I was saying that basically the Chinese economy looks like it's about to collapse.

00:28:07.000 At every turn.

00:28:08.000 It did not collapse because Western finance bailed it out.

00:28:11.000 That's exactly right.

00:28:12.000 Western investors poured money in China.

00:28:14.000 They bailed it out.

00:28:14.000 And it's true, Charlie, that, you know, okay, fair enough.

00:28:17.000 If that were to stop.

00:28:18.000 Yeah, like, for example, like McDonald's saying they're not going to do Russia, right?

00:28:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:28:22.000 I could list all these companies that say they don't want to do Russia.

00:28:25.000 If we did that with China, it would crush the CCP.

00:28:27.000 I mean, it could crush them.

00:28:29.000 It could crush them if we took a strong enough stance.

00:28:31.000 No, I'm not saying it's going to happen.

00:28:33.000 But if they invade Taiwan, I mean, it would be very, the argument would be there, right?

00:28:33.000 I'm not.

00:28:38.000 Yeah, it would be.

00:28:39.000 I mean, honestly, what you're saying right now would be the ideal situation.

00:28:43.000 The world would, I wonder if they'd do it, to be honest, because you have too many people with too much money tied up in China.

00:28:49.000 Oh, I totally agree.

00:28:50.000 I mean, that is going to be the question, right?

00:28:52.000 I mean, if they invade Taiwan, will we have the sort of moral outrage that we've seen against Russia?

00:28:57.000 And that would be the big question.

00:29:00.000 I wonder if we would.

00:29:01.000 I mean, that's a real wild card, and it's something I think the CCP itself would have to really consider.

00:29:06.000 I think that's what they're contemplating, though.

00:29:07.000 I think they're watching the Russian situation right now, and they're watching the response to it.

00:29:11.000 And they're going to watch as well whether countries start to change these policies as it goes forward as well.

00:29:15.000 But I also, and I want to take KeyPeople one more segment, but an invasion of Taiwan, I think, is much more sophisticated and more, it's amphibious.

00:29:24.000 And they could blockade the entire country, unlike Ukraine. 0.96

00:29:27.000 That's right as well.

00:29:28.000 And also, I mean, there are some Chinese sympathizers in Taiwan, but they have their own language.

00:29:34.000 That's very interesting.

00:29:36.000 It's complicated because also we watch what they did to Hong Kong with very little international pushback.

00:29:41.000 Yes.

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00:31:00.000 I think the CCP and Xi Juping are a little bit weaker than they put on, is that right?

00:31:03.000 Absolutely.

00:31:04.000 They're absolutely weaker than they put on.

00:31:06.000 And I've been saying this for a long time.

00:31:07.000 The Chinese Communist Party, frankly, I think if Western finance hadn't bailed them out at the beginning of the CCP virus outbreak, they probably would have collapsed.

00:31:17.000 Really, it's Western finance and the CCP's ability to even lobby our government through Western businesses that is really keeping them afloat right now.

00:31:26.000 Internally within the CCP, you have major, major infighting.

00:31:30.000 And I'd say in Russia as well, actually, which is important.

00:31:33.000 There's major infighting, which could tear it apart from the inside.

00:31:37.000 You have huge, really, I think, public discontent in the Communist Party, which is why they have to have such incredibly intense forms of social control in place.

00:31:46.000 Because really, the people will overthrow it in a heartbeat if they can, I think.

00:31:49.000 A lot of them would.

00:31:50.000 Yeah, so we're seeing this in Russia.

00:31:52.000 The oligarchs are getting pretty upset at Putin.

00:31:54.000 That is absolutely right.

00:31:54.000 Is that right?

00:31:56.000 Let's be clear about the state of Russia.

00:31:58.000 Russia.

00:31:59.000 And people might hate me for saying this, they work like a mafia.

00:32:02.000 Why would they hate you to say that it's true?

00:32:04.000 I could hate Mel. 0.97

00:32:05.000 I could hate them. 0.98

00:32:05.000 It's a mob state. 0.98

00:32:06.000 I mean, Ukraine is kind of a mob state, too.

00:32:09.000 And so, you know, just being fair, you got mob states in a few different places right now.

00:32:12.000 But the way the mob works in Russia is basically the main powers are the oligarchs.

00:32:19.000 Putin is beholden to the oligarchs.

00:32:22.000 And what is the power?

00:32:23.000 How does that whole thing work?

00:32:24.000 Basically, the oligarchs have two interests.

00:32:27.000 One is their own personal finances.

00:32:29.000 You're the mafia, you make money, right?

00:32:31.000 Two, it's you want to look you want to live a happy life.

00:32:33.000 You want to be good.

00:32:34.000 You don't want to get people attacking you.

00:32:36.000 Those two things are falling apart.

00:32:38.000 Western countries are seizing the yachts of the oligarchs.

00:32:41.000 They're taking down the businesses of the oligarchs. 0.56

00:32:43.000 They're making them look like Nazis on the world stage.

00:32:46.000 They're humiliating them everywhere.

00:32:48.000 The interests of the oligarchs, the interest of the mafia is getting destroyed.

00:32:51.000 And so what's their course of action?

00:32:54.000 Are they going to go against Putin or are he taking them out?

00:32:56.000 Well, here's the other big thing.

00:32:57.000 If you're a mafia, what's the other big thing you have to do?

00:32:59.000 You have to maintain an image of strength. 0.81

00:33:02.000 Because as soon as you look weak, your adversaries are going to come in and they're going to kill you.

00:33:06.000 Now, Putin has made the fault of all three of these.

00:33:09.000 Putin has destroyed their financial interests.

00:33:11.000 He's ruined their reputations and he's made them look weak.

00:33:14.000 The Russian military is like the laughing stock of the military community right now.

00:33:18.000 People are laughing at them.

00:33:19.000 Look how many tanks they're abandoning. 0.98

00:33:21.000 Some people say that Russia's not sending their best equipment.

00:33:24.000 They could do this easily.

00:33:25.000 They're doing it methodically.

00:33:27.000 Is that right?

00:33:28.000 It was bad planning, it looks like.

00:33:30.000 It looks like it was really bad planning.

00:33:31.000 It looks like basically Putin didn't communicate it.

00:33:33.000 He went through the FSB, their intelligence bureau.

00:33:36.000 They made their plans thinking it was just like a hypothetical exercise.

00:33:39.000 You're not going to be an FSB employee for very long if you say Russia's going to lose if you try to invade because we're weaker than Ukraine.

00:33:46.000 You know what I mean?

00:33:46.000 You're going to get fired real quick and maybe who knows what else.

00:33:50.000 You can't say that they live in a fantasy land.

00:33:53.000 I mean, it's a sea of lies.

00:33:55.000 We're hearing that there's 5,000 to 7,000 dead Russian soldiers.

00:33:59.000 I mean, that's a lot, but in the Russian worldview, that's not a lot.

00:34:04.000 It's not a lot for Russia, right?

00:34:05.000 Because they're just used to just sending people to the slaughter.

00:34:08.000 This is how they fight, man.

00:34:09.000 It's ham-fisted, throw everything you got at the fire.

00:34:13.000 You get a gun, you do not, comrade.

00:34:15.000 You know, run toward the machine gun until you take it over.

00:34:17.000 So this is not unusual.

00:34:19.000 I mean, it's kind of built into their history, right?

00:34:21.000 It is.

00:34:21.000 It's slow, arduous.

00:34:23.000 They don't really do the shock and off thing.

00:34:24.000 It is.

00:34:25.000 And this is why, actually, well, if realistically, strategically, if they wanted to win this, they should have gone stronger.

00:34:31.000 They should have used air support.

00:34:32.000 They should have hit harder.

00:34:33.000 It's very hard for them to do that now because the whole like...

00:34:36.000 Why do you think now?

00:34:37.000 Do you think Putin actually thinks he's going to run this country?

00:34:39.000 I mean, he's going to run Ukraine?

00:34:40.000 No, they don't have the ability to.

00:34:41.000 They know they can't run a protracted war.

00:34:43.000 What does victory look like for him?

00:34:45.000 Victory for him is going to look like throwing everything he's got at it because he cannot back down.

00:34:50.000 If he backs down, his life is at risk.

00:34:52.000 If he doesn't win this, his life is at risk.

00:34:55.000 Do you think he's legitimately paranoid and nervous right now?

00:34:58.000 I'd say legitimately and observably because he's basically in isolation.

00:35:03.000 You can watch when he's giving these talks with the other Russian leaders.

00:35:06.000 He's sitting at one end of a 30-foot table and he has him at the other end.

00:35:11.000 It's very similar, though, to Hitler's last days, though. 0.80

00:35:14.000 I've heard a lot of people compare this.

00:35:16.000 And actually, speaking of that, he would be able to look back at the Ukrainian underground resistance and know that the Ukrainian underground, they gave hell to the Nazis.

00:35:24.000 Yeah, so I mean, look, you conquer a country, but then what?

00:35:27.000 That's what I'm not understanding.

00:35:28.000 What is victory?

00:35:29.000 What does he mean?

00:35:30.000 You control the capital, you still have 20 million people that hate you, right?

00:35:33.000 Well, that's where it's going to be going, basically.

00:35:36.000 I think he's observing what happened in Hong Kong.

00:35:38.000 People hated the CCP when they took over Hong Kong.

00:35:40.000 That blew over, unfortunately.

00:35:41.000 Yeah, and so the world has a short memory as long as there's some other interest tied into it.

00:35:47.000 I think his goal was to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table as rapidly as possible, roll in there, take a few provinces, roll in as fast as you can, take a few provinces, negotiate, and maybe keep a couple of those areas.

00:35:58.000 It's going to be a big mess.

00:35:59.000 It's not good for humanity.

00:36:00.000 Okay, Joshua Phillips from Epoch Times.

00:36:02.000 Thank you so much.

00:36:03.000 Good to have you back on the bank.

00:36:08.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:09.000 Email us your thoughts as always: freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:11.000 And subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.

00:36:13.000 Thanks so much.

00:36:14.000 Talk to you soon.

00:36:18.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - March 11, 2022

Will China Take Taiwan Next?

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