Tucker Carlson vs. The Czar

Hey everybody, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. We have a really incredible story for you here with Derek Evans who's running for Congress out of West Virginia's 1st District. He was there on January 6th. He served prison time in federal prison and he has a piece of video that you're not going to want to miss.

We talk about it. Why haven't we seen this before? Who is this person?

It's from January 6th. It's kind of a bombshell and he's exposing it as he's running for Congress. As we talk about, we need better Republicans. This guy has a spine of steel.

I'll tell you what, you're not going to want to miss it. Then we welcome Kurt Schlichter to the show to unpack the Putin interview with Tucker Carlson. Why are we pushing Russia away? Why did we not welcome them after the Cold War? Did Tucker do a good job?

Did he do a bad job? Can we trust Putin? We break it all down here with Kurt Schlichter who is a cold era soldier.

He has literally been trained on how to defeat Russian battalions. So it's a fascinating conversation. You're not going to want to miss it. Blake Neff joins us as well to participate in that conversation. Buckle up. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks. I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold.

Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. I'm actually really excited about this guest that we have coming onto the show right now. His name is Derek Evans. He's running for West Virginia's first congressional district, if I'm not mistaken, and he was at the Capitol on J6, and he has a very interesting story to share with us today. Derek, welcome to The Charlie Kirk Show.

Hey, Andrew. Thank you so much for having me on, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I'm very fascinated about this.

I was diving into this yesterday with some friends of yours who were telling me about it, and I was like, this is actually really fascinating for a couple of reasons. You've created a video that I think I'm going to kick things off with here just because it does a really good job of sort of laying out all of the different pieces of this story. It's clip 143 if you get that ready. One of the things that we often talk about on the right is that if this was an insurrection and you're dealing with a bunch of 2A-loving, gun-toting Americans, you would have seen some guns. Actually, you have footage of a guy with a gun, but a real big question emerges from this footage of whether he was really, if he's really one of us, if that makes sense.

Let's go ahead and play cut 143. At the outset of the video, you can see that the crowd is peaceful. There are no fights and there's no damage to property. There are some protesters climbing scaffolding to wave flags and basically make their voices heard.

And you'll note that once they get up on the top of the scaffolding, they stay there. And that's important context for the rest of this video because this kind of goes on for about a minute and a half. And once again, you can watch all of this over at j6footage.org.

But for now, I'm going to fast forward here to the, at about the one minute and 24, 25 second mark, a Hispanic male on the younger side decides to scale the scaffolding, turns around, brandishes a firearm, aims the firearm into the sky, and fires off two rounds. Let's roll the tape. Let's roll the tape. Did you all see that? Let's rewind it and watch again. It's very interesting footage that I had not seen before. So I have so many questions, Derek, you were there on J6, you ended up serving time, you were prosecuted. Tell us about that, your own experience.

And then I want to get into this guy. Do we know who he is? How did you get this footage? Was he ever prosecuted? The floor is yours. Yeah, so I was previously elected to the West Virginia State House in 2020.

It's important context for my story. I was the first Republican to win my district in over 98 years. I won a landslide victory. So I went to the Capitol that day to exercise my natural God-given rights of free speech, not only for myself, but for the roughly 50,000 people who just elected me. I was on the east side of the building.

It was completely peaceful, nonviolent, non-destructive. People would watch my video. It's pinned at the top of my social media feeds. I walked through an open set of doors. I immediately go over to a police officer.

It's on video. I say, thank you for your service. God bless you.

He gives me a friendly fist bump inviting me into the building. I spent less than 10 minutes inside the public rotunda area, walked out the same set of doors I entered and ultimately the same weaponized deep state going after President Trump came to my house, ripped me away from my wife and my four young children, threw me in prison, held me hostage. I believe that they came after me so hard because I was the highest ranking government official, one of the only Republicans they could get their hands on.

Fascinating. So how long did you serve or how long did your sentence? Yeah, so I was one of the first people arrested. I was arrested January 8th, two days after January 6th because I live streamed the entire event. I had an 18-month legal battle, which pretty much bankrupted our family. Ended up doing three months in federal prison and I did eight days of that in solitary confinement because I refused the vaccine while they were holding me hostage. No kidding. All right, so I'm sorry that happened to you.

I'm sorry that our government is more fixated on charging people like you than people who are beating up people on the streets or cops in New York, what have you. But I mean, this is what's fascinating to me about this story. How did you get the footage and why have we not seen this before? Tell me the story there and then tell me what we know about this guy who brandishes the firearm, as you say, and then fires two shots in the air.

And later in the same video that you put together, you note that he immediately comes back down off the scaffolding. And so I think those are interesting clues as we're trying to put together who this person was. Yeah, well, you know, I travel all over the country sharing my January 6th story, just trying to get the truth out there for people. And after every single time that I speak, there's people who come up to me and share their own January 6th story and want to show me videos. And, you know, a lot of times it's things I've already seen, but I don't tell them that, you know, I try to. And most of the time it's people who are fearful.

They were just there and they were so scared of the government going to knock their door down just for being there that day. And so this kind of the same situation and someone showed me this video and I said, Oh my goodness, I don't think anybody's ever seen this before. And so I started asking around to people who I know are very well connected to this story and connected in the J-6 community do a lot of great work in terms of, you know, checking out footage and releasing footage. And none of them had seen it before either.

So we immediately got to work and tried to get this out there. We attempted to identify the guy. We, I think I know who it is at this point. I didn't know when I made the video, but I'm not 100% sure.

So I don't want to say somebody's name and it'd be wrong. But what we do know is that to your point, you would imagine that the government has some sort of footage of this guy. You would imagine that the government has some sort of footage of this guy.

I don't think it does. It's very fascinating to me that they have not went after this guy in any way. I mean, they're going after people who just had walking sticks that day and trying to claim that that was a weapon. So they've done everything they could to, I mean, we got January 6 political prisoners sitting in prison right now. Some of them just had a gun in their holster.

They didn't realize it was illegal to have it in DC. They made a big deal out of that. And then here you have a guy who actually pulls it out and fires it off questions.

Yeah. And so there's also, it seems like this guy has been given some talking points, right? I don't know how we know that. That's just, I'm just reading some of the background story here that it was given to me.

Something about, you know, I just do what Donald Trump tells me to do. Is this individual said that to authorities or do we have a clip, a tape of this? There is. There's some people on Twitter, once again, I haven't independently confirmed this, but I'll try to get his name in just a second, that they're claiming that it is. And if so, there was a video of him in a Vice video right after NBC's reported on and stuff in 2022. And they're claiming this is the same guy, but in the pictures they have, he has different clothes on. So I'm not 100% sure if it is that guy. But look, here's the thing. This guy is not a Trump supporter.

I don't care what he says. Trump supporters were not there to do anything like this. Trump supporters were there to peacefully and patriotically protest, which is why there was a million plus people there.

And by and large, that's what we all did. Obviously there were infiltrators there. There were government provocateurs. Congressman Clay Higgins has pointed out there were hundreds of paid government agitators in the crowd. We know that there were some Antifa people who went in the crowd. This guy is not a Trump supporter by any means.

Yeah, I mean, Clay Higgins has really done fantastic work on this. And he's actually exposed as well that some of the FBI agents or assets were inside group chats ahead of January 6. And they were stirring up trouble then and trying to instigate aggressive actions on the ground.

He's, I mean, it's over 200. We have Steven Sun from the Chief of Police, the Capitol Police, who has also said there was a lot of federal activity on the ground there. Whether this guy was an actual Fed or maybe, like you said, could have been Antifa, some other group, it has all the hallmarks of somebody that's stirring up trouble and trying to pin this on Trump.

It feels like an op, right? He's saying, we're just doing what Trump's telling us to do. Well, I'm sorry, but Trump did not say go climb the scaffolding, shoot two shots in the air and then quickly climb down and sort of pin it on the rest of the people that were there. And I think you would agree that if you broke the law, if you did violence on that day, you should be prosecuted, right? Absolutely. Go ahead. Yeah.

I just would agree with you. Absolutely. Anybody who did that, I mean, that's not why we were there that day. We were there to, once again, peacefully and patriotically. That's what President Trump said to do was to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. And that's what we did that day. Anyone who were doing these sorts of activities, I don't believe they were Trump supporters, but even if they were, that's not what we were there for.

And they need to be held accountable. Absolutely. Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here. Mike Lindell and MyPillow employees want to thank my listeners for all your continued support. To thank you, they're having an overstock clearance sale right now for the best prices ever when you use promo code Kirk and you get free shipping on your entire order. Get 50% off the MyPillow 2.0 and the brand new flannel sheets that just arrived and won't last long. Get six pack towel sets for only $29.98 and take advantage of the free shipping on larger items like mattresses and mattress toppers. The 100% made in USA on sale for as low as $99.99.

Everything is on sale from the brand new kitchen towels that have the same technology as the bath towels that actually absorb dog beds, blankets, couch pillows, and so much more. To get the best specials ever, go to MyPillow.com or call 800-875-0425. Use promo code Kirk and get free shipping on your entire order. So call 800-875-0425 or go to MyPillow.com promo code Kirk. That is MyPillow.com promo code Kirk.

I think so highly Mike Lindell. He's a great patriot. He's a terrific person.

Go to MyPillow.com promo code Kirk. I want to talk about your race. You are, I mean, this is a brave thing you're doing and the two pieces of this conversation are tied together in my mind and I'll tell you why. Because talking about J6, exposing what happened that day, and I think the government's flagrant abuse of so many decent and normal patriots who just love this country, love their families, love their God. And then you come out here and you're running for West Virginia's first.

Tell us about that race. I mean, is this story been, are people waking up and they see your bravery on that day as far as your bravery to expose what's happened after what happened to you? Is it a scarlet letter?

Are they inspired by it? Tell us what's going on. Well, I'll tell you Andrew, this is one of the reddest districts in the entire country.

So the joke's on the federal government and the deep state who try to come after me. We have not spent a single dollar in our campaign yet in terms of voter outreach. And the last poll that came out a few months back, we were at 45% against a six year RINO incumbent, which is the closest race in the country for someone challenging an incumbent in the primary.

So we're polling great. We're getting endorsements from like General Flynn, Mike Lindell, Veterans for Trump. We've got over 5,000 donors. We're raising money. I mean, we raised over $300,000. We fundraised our opponent last quarter.

So things are rocking and rolling over here, man. I think the deep state's starting to get a little nervous realizing that this is a very winnable race for us. Yeah, tell us about your competitor here. You said RINO. Trump endorsed?

What's the story there? Trump has not endorsed in this cycle so far. Obviously, we're hoping to get the Trump endorsement. I think that President Trump's looking for loyalty.

And I believe that I've definitely been loyal in that regard. But I'm going to support President Trump regardless of who he endorses because he's the only person who can save our country and fix everything. But my opponent refused to endorse President Trump when DeSantis first announced that he was running for president. She was asked on local radio. She refused to endorse President Trump and decided to stay out of it. She has voted to send billions and billions of our tax dollars to Ukraine. She voted to force our military members to receive the COVID vaccine if they wanted to continue their career in the military. I mean, this has just supported all the lockdowns and mandates.

This is, once again, one of the reddest districts in the country. We deserve a Freedom Caucus member from this district, someone who's going to stand on the national stage and beat the drum of freedom, not only for southern West Virginia, but for all conservatives across this country. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. How can people get behind your campaign, Derek?

I mean, this sounds like a kind of a no brainer. I appreciate that. Yeah, they can go to evans4wv.com. That's evans4wv.com.

You can go over there. You can click to donate. Like I said, we're not backed by Big Pharma. We're not backed by the military industrial complex. We're backed by blue collar, everyday hardworking Americans who are chipping in because this is, I tell everyone, this is not my campaign. This is a campaign of the American people. If you've ever, and I mean, if you've ever wanted to send a message to the deep state, you can do so by helping elect a former January 6th political prisoner into Congress. That would send the ultimate message to the deep state. And once again, I've already been elected here.

I mean, people know who I am. We're polling great. We're raising money. So head on over there to evans4wv.com. Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that we've got Langford negotiating a border betrayal bill from one of the reddest states in the country. And we've got people that are unwilling to endorse President Trump in one of the reddest districts of the country.

Charlie tweeted this out earlier. He said, we need better Republicans. And I couldn't agree more.

We need people with a spine, with a backbone, and that love this country, that are loyal to this country, not to special interests, not to big money, Big Pharma. So God bless you, Derek. And we wish you well. And we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks for your story. Thank you guys for having me.

Appreciate it. For years, I've been talking about how our nation's public schools have been captured by progressive ideologues, especially true of your Christian family. For those of you worried about the best educational path for your kids and grandkids, I want to tell you about how Turning Point Academy is working with the Herzog Foundation, how you at home can also benefit from it. They have an online publication called The Lion and also Making the Leap. The Herzog Foundation offers a wide range of advice and information for Christian parents to make the best education decisions for your kids. Go to HerzogFoundation.com. That is HerzogFoundation.com.

So check it out right now. HerzogFoundation.com. Portions of The Charlie Kirk Show are brought to you in part by the Stanley M Herzog Foundation.

That is HerzogFoundation.com. We're going to be talking about more into the Tucker Carlson interview. I said earlier, I watched it three times, which, you know, I didn't watch it on normal speed.

I have to say I watched it on like 1.5, 1.75. It was just such a deep, rich, interesting conversation. I couldn't help myself. And we're going to go through it with none other than Kurt Schlichter, senior columnist at Town Hall. Welcome to the show, Kurt Schlichter. Thanks for having me.

Well, thanks for being had. So, Kurt, initial reaction to this, you know, Blake said before in the show that polling his friend audience, that there's kind of a wide array of reactions to this. Some said he did really bad. Some said he did really well. A lot of fascination with the way Tucker, with Putin specifically, how he approached this global audience he knew he was going to have.

What was your takeaways? Well, look, from what I saw, I was distinctly unimpressed by Putin. Putin is a communist apparatchik. He's a scumbag dictator. He's a murderer.

He's a bad person. I, you know, and I've always had my suspicions of the Russians back from when I was in the Cold War learning to kill them. But I think the bigger issue than what Putin had to say, because Putin's a dictator. Putin's a liar. Putin is the KGB colonel and acts exactly like that.

The more important thing is not what he says, but the fact that he behovers. And the giant conspiracy to prevent us from hearing what Vladimir Putin had to say is one of the most atrocious things I've heard in recent days. And you know all the atrocious things that happened in recent days. Andrew, the presumption of these little mini fascists whose resemblance to Putin is much closer than they'll ever want to admit. The presumption that they can tell me who I am and can't hear, that I'm not allowed to hear from Vladimir Putin if I want to. Now, I don't like Vladimir Putin. I think he's a bad guy. He's an enemy of the United States. And I think a lot of what he says is nonsense when you step through it.

On the other hand, I'll do the same thing. I don't need a bunch of Democrat apparatchiks telling me what I can and can't hear. And the idea that Tucker Carlson is some sort of traitor for going and talking to one of our enemies and getting his point of view. You know, are they terrified that Putin's going to say something that's going to convince people? They probably, I don't know, maybe they are.

Or maybe they just like having a monopoly on information. Either way, I'm going to listen to whoever I want. I'm going to think whatever I want. And I'm going to say whatever I want. And if they don't like it, well, I'm going to try and keep it as they speak. Thank you for that. Yeah, we got the dump button on standby every time you come on, Kurt.

Katie, you haven't actually violated that rule, although some have. So I mean, Tucker brought up a lot of stuff with Putin. And what really struck me was that, yes, I think it's true to say that Putin seems wounded by the West. And if not wounded, bitter towards him. I think Tucker used the word bitter at one point. He said, I'm not bitter.

It's fine. You know, whatever. But I was struck by the fact that it felt like a sparring match, almost like British subtext. It's so subtle, but these little jabs come out. The way he phrases things is very specific. I mean, you could tell when he was trying to jab at Tucker, jab at the West, place all the blame on the West. And the way he framed the 2014 Maidan coup, which was a color revolution, I think that's safe to say. I mean, CIA's hands are all over that.

But the way he presented what he did in 2022, to finish the war, to protect our people that was started in 2014, we're trying to bring justice for the Eastern Ukrainians, at the very least, Crimea. I mean, it was just fascinating to watch this sparring match happen. It was also a one-sided sparring match, and Tucker was trying to press him. But I mean, I think my big takeaway was if you are wounded by the West, if you distrust the West, you're bitter at the West, and you look across the table and you see Vladimir Putin there, you realize that you cannot trust this man.

I think that's what I watched it three times, Kurt. And I was like, you cannot trust this man. He's too cagey.

No, look, he's arrested. Look at the Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the guys that kind of wanted to be closer to the West. They are the exception. Russia has always been terrified of the West. It's partly connected to it. But Russia has always been out there in Asia. It was fighting Mongols. It was, you know, fighting barbarians back in the day in ways that Western Europe wasn't. But it's never been part of Western Europe the way, say, you know, Germany or France are. So it suffered unimaginably from Napoleon, World War I, World War II, especially. So, you know, there is a Russian psychology.

I mean, I'm not sympathizing with it. But I think it is vital that we understand our opponents, not understanding your opponents and what they actually think. It always ends badly, ended up battling yesterday at the Supreme Court, because it didn't seem like the Colorado lawyers really understood the position of those opposing, throwing, you know, a president's opponents off the ballot. And he wasn't capable of answering basic questions from the justices. You have to understand what Putin thinks. And moreover, you have to credit him with actually thinking some of it.

He has a completely different perspective. Now, I spent a lot of time in Ukraine as a soldier. And I have some understanding of Russia from being a soldier during the Cold War and studying them up on them. And the Ukrainian situation is not the perfect black and white, good versus evil situation we've been told. Again, I am on the Ukrainian side. Vladimir Putin should not have invaded.

He should not be killing a bunch of people. It's bad. I get it.

Yes. But the Russians have a point of view. And it's very hard to engage someone or deal with someone unless you understand what they're thinking, what their intent is.

In a military operation, one of the things that we do is we have a group of people whose entire purpose is to figure out what the enemy is thinking and what it does and why, because it helps us win. But we don't do that when we have this propaganda, and it is propaganda, that, oh, you know, Putin's just bad. And that's why he does these things. Okay, Putin's bad.

I get it. But there are reasons he's doing these things. He might not like them. He might not be convinced by them.

But he should probably try and understand what they are even if you disagree. Well, and Blake, I want to bring you in on this part of the conversation, too. You know, I call Blake our resident historian.

He knows far too much about European history than a normal human being should. But Blake used to work with Tucker over at Fox, knows him well. I mean, the piece of this that I think even, Kurt, you probably would sympathize with, and Blake, I know that you do as well, is this idea of NATO expansionism and being sort of wounded by that.

Blake, do you have a take on that? And I mean, yeah, we don't trust Putin, but NATO expansionism is certainly a very important through line here the last couple decades. It's sort of, it's been a consistent thing ever since the invasion happened. It's that Russia has repeatedly said, both after the invasion in the context of why they did it, and in the years before it. They talked about NATO expansion being something they strongly opposed. It was a big red line to have Ukraine and NATO.

And it was always this sense in the West that, you know, State Department type people would just say that they were lying or exaggerating or not taking it seriously. And then they go and invade Ukraine. And I remember there was some journalist, I can't remember which, but she was, she was going on, I would just want to ask Putin, why Putin?

Why? She was having this Twitter breakdown. And it was like, what else did you want him to say? He said exactly why it was. It's that we had this giant anti-Russian alliance that existed for half a century during the Cold War. And then the Cold War ends and our response is to expand this anti-Russian alliance so it goes closer to Russia. And now Putin says that he asked Clinton, Bill Clinton, hey, if we, if we asked, if we were interested in joining NATO, would we be allowed to? And he says that Clinton himself personally seemed open to it. And then it was always, he would talk to his team, he would talk to his foreign policy handlers, and they would say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't, walk that back, walk that back. And that's, if it's a lie, it's a lie that very much, it's a very realistic lie.

It captures the way we have this foreign policy apparatus that even tries to control what the presidents do. And, you know, this is the group of people who are extremely traumatized by Trump, just winging it on NATO, coming in and saying, yeah, I might, I might pull out of NATO if they don't pay more. And they would come in and say, you're not allowed to say that, you have to reaffirm our commitment. And he'd say, nope, nope, they gotta, they gotta pay more.

And they did pay more. Yeah. Kurt, what's your, what's, yeah, what's your reaction, Kurt, to that part of the conversation? Well, look, anyone who knows anything about Russia understands that they are paranoid. They got invaded by Napoleon. They got, you know, brutalized in World War I, and they got invaded in World War II, killed 20, 30, 40 million Russians. Okay, they're, you know, I know that we're not, I know, you and I know that NATO is not going to invade Russia. Russia doesn't necessarily know that. Russia has, it's concerned, and you can, you know, you can dismiss them all you want. But if you're surrounding Russia with NATO countries, it's going to react.

And it might not react the way that a bunch of Yalies and Georgetown grabs, down at the body bottom, want to. They've got, look, our foreign policy elite is garbage. They have, they've been an unmitigated disaster for the last 30 years. Even though, even in light of Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan, I would still argue that the failure to bring Russia into the West after the end of the Cold War is our greatest foreign policy disaster of the last 30 years, maybe the last 50 years.

And it's not even close. Imagine if we had engaged Russia, worked with Russia. I don't think they'd ever be a close ally, a close friend. They're certainly never going to be exactly like us. But, gosh, I sure wish I had them on our side against China right now.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're right. I think a lot of people have pointed that out that, you know, we are driving Xi and Putin into a closer and closer relationship. BRICS is another part of this story.

And yeah, they threw down their guns. They wanted to be part of the West, and we pushed them aside. Blake, you've got a point on BRICS and the de-dollarization to make it from the Tucker. One of the most fascinating things in the interview is Putin gives this extremely lengthy explanation of why the big sanction attack on Russia was not bad for Russia. He says why it was bad for the United States. It's a very long answer, so I'll just summarize it. He points out the dollar is the cornerstone of US power.

It's used everywhere in the world. That's why we can get so much debt and why we can just print so many dollars without our inflation rate going to, you know, 100%, 500%. We can keep it, you know, 10% is really high for us even when we print like crazy.

He points this out. And then he continues where he says, it wasn't us who banned the use of the US dollar in Russia. We had no such intention. It was the decision of the United States. I think it is complete foolishness from the point of view of the interests of the United States. It damages the US economy, undermines the power of the United States across the world. Our transactions in Yuan accounted for about 3% before the war.

Today, 34% of our transactions are made in rubles and about 34% in Yuan. Why did the United States do this? My only guess is self-conceit. They thought it would lead to full collapse, but nothing collapsed. And it's just very funny to have, you know, a rival of the United States, the focus of all this energy, come out and basically give a, as far as I can tell, very fair critique of America's strategic decision-making. You guys have the dollar. It's so strong. It's the bedrock of why the US is such an economic superpower.

Why did you guys go and use it as this kind of one-time-use weapon? And the thing he doesn't bring up is this is what's driven the growth of the power of BRICS is countries like India or Brazil have looked and seen, wait, are we going to be the next Russia? We don't know what it could be. We don't, we might be friends with the US now, but will we be in 15 years? Do we need to start undermining the dollar now? And it's just funny that Putin has to come out and say this for us.

Kurt, your reaction? Well, look, a lot of people have been saying it, but Putin's right. He's rubbing our face in what's obviously true. You know, the use of the dollar as a weapon is really, you know, risky because of exactly this response where people say, wait a minute, wait a minute, I can't trust the Americans.

You know, who knows what they're going to choose next as they're lying in the stands. So propaganda is most powerful when there is an element of truth to it. Now, Putin wants to manipulate us. He wants to raise his stature in the West. He likes people cheerleading him. He likes people going, well, man, that guy makes a lot of sense. But he's not making sense. What he's doing is copying what Western critics of the West have been saying all along. So it's not like Putin's some special genius who figured these things out.

We all knew these things. He's just using them against them. And, you know, he's right. We ought to be more circumspect in how we exercise our power. And if the fact that this communist dictator, because I don't think you ever stop being a communist, if this communist dictator is pointing it out, well, maybe that's a lesson. We shouldn't be doing dumb things. Well, yeah, and I think that's right.

I mean, and, you know, he sort of says, well, look, you put all these sanctions on us and they don't work. We're now the number one economy in Europe. Well, I mean, yeah, Moscow might be really pretty. But if you go outside of Moscow a few miles, you'll see the dilapidation and the decay of the Russian countryside, really.

I mean, it's really, it's St. Petersburg and it's Moscow and everywhere else is essentially a wasteland. And so, I mean, nobody should be looking at this interview with rose colored glasses and thinking that Putin is some genius. He's blessed with a ton of natural resources under his feet. And he is savvy. He is savvy.

But yes, he is using our own critiques of ourselves against America. But, you know, all of this can change in about, you know, nine months. So let's see how the world turns.

Last thoughts, Kurt, you got 30 seconds. I would like to see America come to a rapprochement with Russia. I think too much of the Russia hate leaves. And again, I literally know how to destroy a Russian motor rifle division. I mean, I was a Cold War soldier. Okay, I have no illusions about Russia. I'm an American. And I think it's an American interest that Russia, if not be an ally, at least not be an outright enemy allied with Xi.

I think the next administration somehow comes to some arrangement with Russia. It's imperfect. It's dangerous.

But I'd rather have it and not shooting at it. Thank you, Kurt. Excellent as always.

Thanks so much for listening, everybody. If you like what we do here, if you appreciate the content that we put out, please consider going over to members dot Charlie Kirk calm that's members dot Charlie Kirk calm and join the inner circle the inner sanctum of this community that we are building. It means a lot to us. It is a subscription and it helps keep the lights on helps keep us strong helps keep us speaking the truth boldly without fear of cancellation or censorship. So again, that's members dot Charlie Kirk calm.

It's grown like gangbusters. So we're grateful. Please consider joining if you haven't. We have exclusive content, exclusive interviews, and video conference calls with Charlie himself. So go to members dot Charlie Kirk calm. Join us there. Talk to you soon. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust go to charliekirk.com