Will Thibeau
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
Yeah, thanks, Charlie. There are two critical things about Pete Hegseth. 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. DEI has corrupted defense policy and there's a sclerotic
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
you know, being to everything that the military does that affects personnel to technology policy. 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. And that means he's going to be accountable to President Trump and the American people who sent President Trump back to D.C.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
in order to fix the military. That's why it's so important that he gets confirmed.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
I think by any measure, Charlie. I mean, you know, I was part of the two wars that we spent 20 years fighting, and neither one yielded a legitimate military victory. 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.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
The results are questionable at best, 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. And, you know, the only way that we're kind of hiding the story here is because the military has changed recruitment goals.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
The military has changed the imperative to seem as if they are doing OK or keeping the ship afloat. But it's it's not like you said, it's a disaster. It is in free fall. And the only question is, are we going to wait until it's too late to fix it? We shouldn't wait until the crisis is so undeniable for everyone to see. We've got to get ahead of it.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
That's hopefully what Secretary Hegseth is going to do. And that's what President Trump needs to do. And the fact that he's nominating Pete Hegseth means he knows it.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
Yeah, Charlie, I think we'll be in large agreement here, but it reflects the understanding that America is a nation in that what benefits America is not an ideology attached to a real life game of risk with soldiers displacing other soldiers around the world. The American nation is what must benefit from defense policy, from foreign policy, from Department of the Interior policy.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
And that means it's about affecting the kitchen table, right? 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, right?
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
And that they could perhaps send their sons to join the military 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. It's not an ideology. It's not a game. We want to do the things that benefit Americans as a people and a nation.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
And I think that's what these appointments that you mentioned reflect. It's why I'm excited about the Trump presidency. And I know you're probably in the same boat.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
Well, I think you touched on it there, Charlie. 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. But we... The question is if you think war is inevitable or not.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
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.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
And, 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, you know, killing and destroying Chinese tanks and boats and soldiers.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
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
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
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. 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. I think it helps to kind of read the neoconservative line of thinking and their research behind this, though.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
The Center for Strategic International Studies produced a really, frankly, excellent war game about what a war over Taiwan would look like. 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.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
Half of our losses in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in just a few days, a long weekend. The CSIS, frankly, they pass off those war game results like it's some mere academic exercise. But that's what we're talking about when we discuss the possibility of war and of defeating the Chinese Communist Party often.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
We should, again, tie our aims in the Pacific to those results that benefit the American people. This doesn't mean we let China eat our lunch economically or militarily. It means we punish them in many ways, and it means we preserve our economic interests. But it's not a license to act with reckless abandon.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
Well, that's precisely right. It's a problem of creativity. A big problem with the foreign policy establishment is not necessarily that they're neoconservative or dovish. It's the fact that you think there are only two choices, to be a neocon or a dove. Let's think about ways that we can enable allies to have a credible military deterrent themselves.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
Let's think about how we can punish China economically and lay those punishments in place now and So they know military incursions would be too costly for them to bear because they are susceptible and they are wary of those risks. 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.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
It's a big question. But, you know, I think we we still live in the Cold War. Right. The enemy versus friend is absolute. And there are enemies and there are friends. You fight the enemies whenever you can and you protect your friends no matter what's going on. And again, foreign policy. America is not in a game of risk. And. We should understand that. Russia and Ukraine is another example.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
The choice is we fight them or we let them march all across Europe. And so we send a lot of money to Ukraine. We send a lot of weapons to Ukraine. But why isn't the government and our military studying how warfare is changing in Ukraine? Because frankly, I think it's changing in ways we don't appreciate. And understanding that is going to be what keeps us out of war in the future.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
And so we can be 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.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
The first thing is to end race quotas at the Pentagon. Why does every institution from West Point to an army rifle squad have to be a racially proportional representation of America? The military should be something different. The second thing, let's enable...
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
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. Let's give it to them and let's get it in place fast so China knows that the costs of war are high. When it comes to Russia and Ukraine, we need to move to peace. We need to show the Ukrainians that the gravy train is not infinite.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
But we also need to show the Russians that we're still in charge. And I think there's a way that we can do that through diplomacy and economic power. But let's couple that with an effort to get Russia out of China's pocketbook. Let's remove a huge partner of the Chinese in Europe and Asia. And let's tie the Ukrainian negotiation to those ends.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
The fourth thing is, frankly, we need to fire a lot of generals. It's not just a problem of political appointees. Uniformed senior officers have been a part of, obviously, military defeat, but also the encroachment of leftism in the military. You know, there's a great catalog that Claremont's produced of, you know, of over 600 generals in their effort to make DEI military policy. That has to end.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
And finally, though, we need to think really creatively, again, about reforming key institutions in America and in the military specifically. Why does West Point produce the cadets who receive a degree in diversity and inclusion studies? Why does the joint staff A body that should only provide advice and consent to the president.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
Why do they have influence over military operational decision making? Let's make the joint staff a lot smaller. So people, you know, 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.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
So they're under close supervision and they can just provide that advice to the president that they're statutory obligated to do so. Those are I think five things that will get us a long way.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Why Do Texas Republicans Give the Democrats Power?
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The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
Well, there is administrative error, but they deported an El Salvadoran citizen back to El Salvador who crossed illegally in 2012, was detained in 2019, and then tried to claim asylum. He never had asylum. So his protected status, quote unquote, was not that he couldn't be removed from the country. He could. He was a removable alien.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
The only protection he had was being removed to El Salvador in particular. So there was this underlying flaw, but even so, the idea that there's some profound injustice here, that's just wrong.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
Well, it just means that they should have gone through a process to try and get his this withholding of removal revoked.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
You know, the reason this withholding of removal was granted is because he came up with this sob story in 2019 where he said, if you send me back to El Salvador, I am likely to be persecuted, maybe even murdered by the 18th Street gang, which is with MS-13, one of the or was rather one of the big gangs in El Salvador.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
But in the interim, Nayib Bukele has become the president of El Salvador and has effectively punished and has effectively done something to actually deal with these gangs. And as a result, El Salvador is a safe country now. And the underlying reason why he couldn't be deported there is gone.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
So the Trump administration could have simply gone to court, got his withholding of removal revoked, and had him sent back. So even though they didn't do that, and therefore there's this administrative error, they should have waited to remove him. The end result would have ultimately been the same. He'd have ended up back in El Salvador.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
Reason we have mass deportations is because we had a mass invasion facilitated by Joe Biden. They didn't vet every one of these migrants individually to ensure they could get into the country. On the contrary, they let them in en masse, and they did so intentionally. So you have to give the Trump administration a little grace in order to solve this problem.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
There probably are going to be moments where they are over-inclusive. And I think it's important for us as a conservative movement to not just, you know, go hit the fainting couch the moment there's a report in The Atlantic that something went wrong.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
I mean, here, you know, the Trump administration confessed error in court, like the ICE filings, clearly the filings in court clearly say, yeah, this guy did have a withholding of removal to El Salvador. He shouldn't have been removed. Our mistake. But it's important. They classified it as an administrative error rather than some profound injustice.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
And they're right, because if they had gone through the normal process, this guy was going to get removed back to El Salvador.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
Well, I mean, first off, the Trump administration deserves enormous credit for reducing illegal crossings by 95% year over year. I mean, we take it for granted. It's an enormous accomplishment. They did it in two months. Credit to them. So we'll start there.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
In terms of executing on this deportation, I mean, I think it's a good check to remember that they do need to cross every T and dot every I and that the media is going to come after them hard. And so they need to especially make sure that no American citizens get caught up in this. But failing that, I think they do need to keep going forward.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
I think there's a really profound impact here of, you know, deportations in a wide variety of places because what you'll start to see is self-deportation. You know, think about there was that student, I think, at Cornell who was one of the people who was spouting all this anti-Semitic stuff and involved in all these encampments.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
And he posted on Twitter that he was self-deporting because he was afraid he was going to be detained and removed. Perfect.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
You're absolutely right. And, you know, sometimes this is I would say this to there are probably people in your audience who are like, well, why isn't the administration doing this or feeling like, oh, you know, they could be doing more. They could be more conservative. I mean, trust me, as somebody who's been around Republican politics, I'm 39 now. I've never seen anything like this.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
And don't take it for granted, because the next time next Republican president or, you know, in 10 or 15 years, you might be complaining that they're not doing anything at all. It's a remarkable accomplishment. And it comes from the fact that they realize, you know, think about where they were sending migrants back on military planes.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
Think about the video hits they're doing where they have Kirstie Noem going down to El Salvador. These things are a deterrent. They are a demonstration that if you come here illegally and you don't leave on your own accord, we aren't going to be nice about it. And that's what people need.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
That leads people to think, well, you know, maybe I should just go home on my own and just get on a plane like a normal human being rather than be deported in handcuffs on a military plane.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
Yeah, that's exactly what we need. I mean, really, the neoconservatives were always so reluctant to apply that logic at home where it actually was most applicable. You know, we need to say, OK, we need to actually deter it. And so Mitt Romney, you know, had this soft talk about self-deportation. But Trump is actually demonstrating how you get it done.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
You make clear that the border is secure, that you're going to get deported and that if you get deported by ICE, it won't be fun.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
My understanding is that they've created a fictional series where it's a young white boy who at age 13 has somehow fallen into, in Seldom, a bizarre theory given that I don't think we'd ever call a 13-year-old involuntarily celibate. That's a bizarre claim to make about him. But also that he's responsible for killing a young black boy and that somehow this is now a model for what
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
british teach school should be teaching their children that they should be making uh young white males in particular feel guilt implicitly on you know the end that they you know are secretly monsters that could pinch to go out and murder uh their classmates of a different race or something uh it's a bizarre show um
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
And honestly, there's evidence that this is just a straight up inversion of some of the very serious crimes that have been committed in Britain. Notably, there's this kid, Axel Rudakubana, who murdered a slew of people in Southport. And there's other instances like this where you actually do have a serious spree of knife crime committed by sometimes young black males.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
So the idea that you would suddenly turn this around And make it about white males is just it's I mean, I don't have a better phrase for it than blood libel.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
Yeah, they've turned a fantasy into something they believe their young white males need to be lectured about. It's offensive, and I think it'll ultimately be counterproductive because I think that it will breed a lot of resentment towards the establishment from young white males and turn them to the right.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Truth About the "Maryland Dad" Deportation
I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
That's exactly it, Charlie. It is finally common sense again at the Pentagon for men and women to be evaluated based on the same rubric. What is it that, frankly, the defense establishment and both parties have told us for over 10 years now, men and women deserve the same opportunities in combat that they do in the rest of life.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
And so long as everyone passes the same standards, well, then they should have that opportunity to serve in these brutal roles. Well, we are finally taking a step towards that being a reality after about 15 years of meddling with this delusion. Now, when a man or a woman are evaluated based on their fitness, they're evaluated on the same scale.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Before this week, a woman had to do about 42 push-ups to get an A-plus on her fitness test, while a man had to do 84 push-ups. All the while, we were told that that man and that woman were able to do any combat job in the same capacity, even though they're being judged by the same It was this bait and switch that, frankly, both sides of the aisle would tell the American people.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
And Pete Hegseth has finally fixed that by saying when it comes to these gruesome, excellent driven jobs, that it requires the same standards. So we're not playing identity politics with the infantry.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Precisely, Charlie. And that's what the deadlift was put in the Army combat fitness test to measure. The ability of a soldier, again, we were told of any gender, to lift a heavy weight off the ground, like, say, the body of your fallen comrade, and then carry it out of harm's way. It is brazen as far as I'm concerned.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
to say that there was this equal standard for all, when just as you showed, it was a different standard. I'm pretty sure you were just kind of reading off some of the minimum standards, and that's not even in consideration for Army combat rules. You know, it's important to note, and you mentioned this, there was even a point where they changed the test.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
It was the leg tuck close to a pull up that proved even with a gender segregated score to be too, quote, discriminatory for women. So you had senators from both sides of the aisle. and female Army generals who demanded that the Biden administration and the Army under the Biden administration take out that event from the Army Combat Fitness Test.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
So when we say that, yes, it may be the same test that measures people, well, it's been a test that's been altered in order to meet the realities of gender disparity in physical performance.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Precisely. That's exactly what it is. And it's a curve for our most serious roles. You know, if you asked yourself, hey, who would I rather, you know, drag my son or daughter's body out of combat? If you had to choose out of a hat, it would be a man or a woman. Anyone would choose a man if they had to choose, right? It's the perfect case of where the exception proves the rule here.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
But it's about what the military is. The It is not a place where you necessarily deserve a fair shot at the job that you might think you deserve. It's a job where only the best is needed and where masculine virtue is absolutely necessary. And there's no greater way of laying that disparity clear than in the physical fitness test, but it is where we were told the most brazen lies.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
And it's why, although this policy change, of course, by the Defense establishment is kind of, you know, tossed aside and said it's just an issue of identity politics. That's not true. It is at the core of what it means to be in the military.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
And that's to maintain physical excellence and to be capable of going to what we called in the Army the limited advance with your unit, no matter the challenge ahead of you. That's what the Army Combat Fitness Test measured.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
and we're finally one step closer for it to being a genuine test of physical excellence and not just a pass-fail metric before you can include all other characteristics of identity politics.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Will. Right, and that's the point. One thing that I think is worth making explicit again is, Under the Obama administration, standards became mere pass-fail metrics for the bare minimum of what it took to serve in some of these units. Even when I joined the Army, what the fitness test was, it was a means of determining who is the best and who is the rest, from first to worst.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
And if you were first, you got whatever job you wanted, and you filled out the units by order of merit individually. Standards have not been that since the policy change that Secretary of Defense Hegseth describes. That's a fundamental difference when we're measuring our military on pass-fail minimum metrics as opposed to genuine excellence in the pursuit of being the best.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
I'll also say, he glazed over this too, military generals, uniformed generals, recommended against this policy change even back in 2015, about 10 years ago. I would be hard-pressed to think that there are many two-, three-, and four-star generals who would put their career on the line and recommend against such a policy change today.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
As I said at the start, there were many generals who lost their mind when it became clear that that women weren't performing as well under the first iteration of the Army Combat Fitness Test. And so with help from Democrat senators, the Army changed that test. So let's also use this as an occasion to ask serious questions about the military leaders who are implementing this policy.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
In many cases, these are the same leaders who carried forward the Obama policy and for different units. And now we're expecting them to all of a sudden faithfully execute Trump administration policy. We need to be really careful about how that gets implemented.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
perhaps a handful, but the point is, what does this do to the culture and the unit cohesion of these units? Frankly, Charlie, I can tell you firsthand That even if it's just one or two women in a large unit, that is kind of a reorganizing principle based on something other than lethality and readiness. The whole framework for how a unit trains and fights is different.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Because I was in the infantry when it became gender integrated. And there was working groups, there were new resourcing requirements, time in the woods where we would spend three weeks in the field and not really think about it too much. We're all of a sudden unique because of the different kinds of demands that men and women need when they're supposed to live in austere environments.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
And obviously a lot won't make it and the vast majority won't. And there might be some that do. But does that mean that it's worth it to change the fundamental character of a war fighting formation? Again, not a McKinsey consulting class, not a Harvard Law School class, but an infantry platoon, a platoon that is meant to fight in a war no matter the consequences and no matter the conditions.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
It's been a while since we've had sustained combat that looks like that. And I fear that we may naturally fall into this trap where we think 21st century values merged with 21st century warfighting. We will just assume that it works that way and that all will be the same, even if it's just a few elite, great, excellent women who can meet these standards.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Frankly, my wife was one of those women who could meet those standards, and she served alongside special operations units. That's how we met. But she would be the first to tell you that, again, the exception doesn't prove the rule. And her predilections or willingness to serve does not mean we need to change the fundamental character of previously all-male warfighting units.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
I think there's still some more questions to ask here.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
There were two conceits that our leadership class had when it came to globalization. The first is assuming that we can separate the making of things from the design of things. The idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain, while the poor countries made the simpler things. You would open an iPhone box, and it would say, designed in Cupertino, California.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Now, the implication, of course, is that it would be manufactured in Shenzhen or somewhere else. And yeah, some people might lose their jobs in manufacturing, but they could learn to design, or to use a very popular phrase, learn to code. But I think we got it wrong. It turns out that the geographies that do the manufacturing get awfully good at the designing of things.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Now, we assume that other nations would always trail us in the value chain. But it turns out that as they got better at the low end of the value chain, they also started catching up on the higher end. We were squeezed from both ends.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
The second is that cheap labor is fundamentally a crutch, and it's a crutch that inhibits innovation. I might even say that it's a drug that too many American firms got addicted to. And so I'd ask my friends, both on the tech optimist side and on the populist side, not to see the failure of the logic of globalization as a failure of innovation.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Rose Garden 'Liberation Day' Reaction
Indeed, I'd say that globalization's hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it's been bad for innovation. Both our working people, our populace, and our innovators gathered here today have the same enemy. And the solution, I believe, is American innovation.