The Charlie Kirk Show - My LIVE Reaction to the Trump/Putin Summit

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

America and the world are one step closer to peace after President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Charlie offers his immediate live reaction to the events of the day and what they reveal about both our president and his critics. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!    Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio. Here are my instant thoughts, everybody, on the Trump-Pooten meeting straight from Anchorage. Email us, as always, freedom at charliecirk.com. Buckle up, everybody 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. Okay, everyone, it is late on a Friday night, and it is a historic day. President Donald Trump woke up at 5 a.m. Boarded Air Force One and flew across the continent all the way to Alaska.

Why did he do this? He went to Alaska to go meet with Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin actually flew longer. Why did Vladimir Putin fly all the way from Moscow to Anchorage? That is one of the buried components of this that I want to explore, which is Putin did not have to do this. He's on the verge of an ugly victory that he flew all the way across his continent to meet with Donald Trump. Donald Trump, by the way, he was going to fly six hours there, do the meeting and fly six hours back. The guy's a total machine. So just a little bit of a setup here. This was done on an Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska, right outside Anchorage, Alaska. They decided not to do it at a resort or a hotel where sometimes these

meetings happen, but instead on a U.S. Air Force base. And I think we now know why President Trump decided in that. It wasn't necessarily because of security. I mean, they could have figured out security, but President Donald Trump, he wanted his opening salvo to be a show of force. You see, Vladimir Putin is a lot of things, but he is a brute force actor. What do you understands most fundamentally, more than anything else, is force and the administration of force. And Vladimir Putin coming down the tarmac there, shaking hands with President Donald Trump. Oh, boy. As you can see here, President Donald Trump on the tarmac, he timed something perfectly. And now we know why he selected and chose the Air Force Base. He selected the Air Force Base

because he wanted to remind Vladimir Putin that we had the finest Air Force. Air Force on the planet. Play Cut 245. By the way, if you're on podcasting, you don't see the optics of this. Helplomber flanked by F-35s, flying right over Vladimir Putin's head. And Donald Trump kind of claps as soon as they'd come because he knew it was perfect. And Putin knew what was happening in real time. He was just completely intimidated. And do you notice the other optics here? Donald Trump decided to line up the military aircraft around the original shot.

This was not a mistake. This was by design. You see, the optics were all Donald Trump's own particular choreographing. He wanted Vladimir Putin to enter in a way, flanked by the full strength of the U.S. military. This is something the media is completely missing. Usually in these summits, they'll have the first meeting, not on the tarmac. Do you know President Trump broke traditional protocol here? Traditional protocol, when it comes to diplomatic meetings like this, they have a whole binder, by the way, in the White House called diplomatic protocol. It's literally 1,500 pages long. I've seen it before. It's exhausting. You look at it this and the hairs on the flag to be. And so they went up to the president, I'm sure, speculation, of course. And they said, hey, you know, you got to do this. He said, I'm going to meet them on the tarmac. Forget that. And that was a power move with the stealth bombers right overhead that set the framing of the entire conversation. What does that show more than anything else? That shows that President Donald Trump, the intent of this entire meeting was framed around U.S. military might.

The framing towards diplomacy was the might of the United States military. And that is critically important because a lot, and we'll get to some of this tape, a lot of the media says, Donald Trump surrendering to Putin. No, the first thing he was doing was showing how strong we were with an impressive, perfectly time, perfectly choreographed flyover, and that is not easy to do. They had to hit it within like the 10 second mark, and they hit it perfectly. So then they disappeared. They vanished. Who was in the room? It was Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov and one other guy who I don't know and an interpreter. On our side, it was Steve Whitkoff, Marco Rubio, and President Trump and an interpreter. We knew within the first hour that this was good. We knew.

within the first five minutes was good because President Trump said, if it wasn't good, I was just going to call it off. I was just going to say this was a complete waste of time. But I want to dwell on something before we play as part of the post-press conference remarks, because we learned more as we went on. Why did Vladimir Putin do this? Vladimir Putin did this because he does not want to see breadlines in Moscow. Vladimir Putin did this because Donald Trump is engaging what is called, and it's an actual clinical term. It's not a pejorative or an insult to President Donald Trump. It's called the madman theory of diplomacy. It's a school of thought, which is you do not know which way he's going.

Is he going right? He's going left or north or south. He's going up or is he going down. He is keeping people guessing. And Vladimir Putin has no idea what Trump is going to do next. He's going to bomb. He's going to arm. He's going to retreat.

He's going to go. So Putin flies all the way across Russia in what could only be described as kind of a beta move by Vladimir Putin. He flies to the United States of America, to a U.S. Air Force base. He has B-2 bombers fly overhead, flanked by F3, to go meet with a foreign president in a war that is not currently an enemy combatant of technically, even though we're supplying weaponry. Why? Because Vladimir Putin knows that Trump holds the Trump card. He holds the Trump card, which could be deathly U.S. sanctions on the Russian Federation that could potentially break the back of it. Now, why does this also matter? Donald Trump holds another Trump

card that no one is talking about. And Biden did not play this card, the price of oil. you see Biden wanted high high oil why would Biden want high oil he wanted to divest America away from fossil fuels towards an environmental future so we had 60 70 80 dollar gas all throughout joe biden's entire presidency and so what a trump Trump wants low oil Trump wants 30 or 40 dollar gas he wants you to pay less at the pump so Putin what Putin fears most is that Donald Trump could release the strategic petroleum reserve in america and bring oil down to 30 bucks a barrel oil goes down to 30 dollars is a barrel and all of a sudden you're not allowed to buy oil if you're India. Forget javelin missiles. That is Russia sitting on an island. And Donald Trump knows that Donald Trump means business because low oil is a core campaign promise of the MAGA agenda. So low oil, low oil not paying a lot at the pump is directly tied into why Vladimir Putin flew all the way across the entire Asian continent to go to Alaska in a beta move. In fact, this is the committed to unleashed prosperity. The cost of Biden's war on oil and gas, nearly $100 billion a year in lost

output. So Vladimir Putin, he fears more deaths on the battlefield, sort of, seems to really not care about human life very much. But he definitely is afraid of Donald Trump bringing down the price of oil. If you guys have privacy to the loan debt, this is the best way out. They are phenomenal supporters of our Student Action Summit, America Fest, our campus tours. Many clients are not able to make the minimum monthly payment on their private student loans when they first contact Y-ReFi. If you go to Y-refi.com, you can read testimonies from other people who have been where you are and how they've successfully escaped. Do you have a co-borrower? Why-Refi can get them released from the loan, and you can give mom or dad a break.

Go to whyrefi.com, you can even skip a payment every six months up to 12 times without penalty. You don't have to ignore that mountain of student loan statements on your kitchen table anymore. Call 8-8 Y-ReFi 34 or go to Y-refi.com. That is y-R-E-F-Y-Y-F-Y.com may not be available in all 50 states. So go to y-refi.com. If you have distressed or defaulted private student loans, they can get you out of debt. So if you know anybody in your life that might have student loan problems, private student loan problems, check it out right now at y-refi.com. That is y-R-E-F-Y.com.

Okay. So now all of a sudden they disappeared and they come out and we said, what are we going to learn? what is going to happen here. This is a longer piece of tape here. This is Vladimir Putin confirming that Ukraine war was Biden's war. Now, this, of course, is technically true. We've got to be careful with this piece of tape. Vladimir Putin is probably just saying this to try to win points with Donald Trump. Why? Because Trump holds the cards. So mind you, Putin is intimidated. He gets flown over by B2 bombers. Trump is like at any time. And who else was in the delegation? Not in the meeting, but who else was in the delegation? Scott Besson and Howard Lutnik. Department of Treasury and Commerce. Why would the head of the Department of Treasury and Commerce fly all the way to Alaska? Because that was Trump not so subtly telling, hey, I'll hit you from the sky. I'll hit you in the tariffs. I'll hit you in the marketplaces. I will weaken you and bring you to the knees. I hold the cards. Let's hear. This is Vladimir Putin saying dangling both a carrot and a stick simultaneously. Let's play cut 246, please.

I'd like to remind you that in 20, 22, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague that the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it would come to hostilities. And I said it quite directly back then, that is a big mistake. Today, when President Trump is saying that if he was the present back then, there will be no more, and I'm quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that. I think that overall, me and President Trump have built a very good business-like and trustworthy contact. And have every reason to believe that moving down this path, we can come, and soon as back,

to the end of the conflict in Ukraine. Thank you. President Donald Trump has really ramped up the sticks, not just the carrots going in. Picking a fight with India, that is major, was a lesser covered thing. We didn't even talk about on the show very much. President Trump said, India,

if you keep on buying Russian oil, we're done. That was such a smart, prerequisite going into the meeting. Now, mind you, a lot of these meetings is a lot of guesswork. But before we go even deeper, and the media is calling it a failure and all this. Guys, sometimes this takes multiple meetings. Sometimes you've got to get in the room. multiple times. And the fact that this did not blow up, it is a success, just the fact that Putin

flew across Asia to come to Alaska. He did not have to do that. This meeting was not in Belarus. Typically, this would be like, oh, you got to fly to Minsk or, oh, you got to fly to Hungary or some Eastern European country, or fly to Abu Dhabi. We'll meet in the middle. No, you met on the turf of the United States of America. He entered American airspace for the first time in multiple years. I want you to listen to all of Donald Trump's comments here. as they were given in the press conference. This is unedded. It's about three and a half minutes long.

This is President Donald Trump's entire remarks, Plight Cut 248. Well, thank you very much, Mr. President. That was very profound. And I will say that I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on. Most of them, I would say. A couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there,

but we've made some headway. So there's no deal until. there's a deal. I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate. And I'll of course call up President Zelensky and tell them about today's

meeting. It's ultimately up to them. I'm going to have to agree with what Marco and Steve and some of the great people from the Trump administration who've come here, Scott and John Radcliffe, thank you very much.

But we have some of our really great leaders. They've been doing a phenomenal job. We also have some tremendous Russian business representatives here. And I think, you know, everybody wants to deal with us. We've become the hottest country anywhere in the world at a very short period of time. And we look forward to that. We look forward to dealing. We're going to try and get this over with. We really made some great progress today. I've always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir. We had many tough meetings, good meetings.

We were interfered with by the Russia, Russia, Russia, hoax. It made it a little bit tougher to deal with, but he understood it. I think he's probably seen things like that during the course of his career. He's seen it all, but we had to put up with the Russia, Russia, Russia, a hoax. He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax, but what was done was very criminal. But it made it harder for us to deal as a country in terms of the business and all of the things that would like to have dealt with. But we'll have a good chance when this is over.

So just to put it very quickly, I'm going to start making a few phone calls and tell them what happened. But we had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to. There are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant. But we have a very good chance of getting there. We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there. I would like to thank President Putin and his entire team whose faces who I know in many cases.

Otherwise, other than that, whose faces I get to see all the time in the newspapers. You're almost as famous as the boss. but especially this one right over here. But we had some good meetings over the years, right? Good productive meetings over the years. And we hope to have that in the future. But let's do the most productive one right now. We're going to stop really five, six, seven thousand,

thousands of people a week from being killed. And President Putin wants to see that as much as I do. So again, Mr. President, I'd like to thank you very much. And we'll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon. thank you very much Vladimir next time in Moscow oh that's an interesting one

I'll get a little heat on that one but I can see it possibly happening thank you very much Vladimir and thank you all thank you thank you so much now there's a couple takeaways there number one do you notice they didn't take any questions

that's important because they wanted to maintain the narrative this is high stakes diplomacy and honestly they're not there yet but they're making progress so why take questions that could potentially jeopardize the very important framing of this but number i want to also dive deep into something so people said oh there's donald trump talking about the russia hoax again no understand our entire foreign policy was polluted and corrupted by the fake russia russia russia hoax this war likely would not have happened if it was

not for the fake russia russia russia russia and also the fact that president donald trump was spied on, lied about, and then was impeached all around the Russia, Russia, rush hoax. It all kind of comes full circle, comes full circle where he's now standing with Vladimir Putin. Now, understand the second component of this, which is that I'll see you in Moscow. What was President Trump's instinct there? Oh, I'll get a lot of heat with that, but that might sound like a good idea. And honestly, it is a good idea. You should go to Moscow. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I believe Ronald Reagan actually visited Russia. I could be mistaken. In my memory, I'm thinking of a picture of, it might have been Nixon. Anyway,

the point is that why would we be afraid of an American president going to Moscow? Now, Putin came to us, and by the way, could be a little bit of a carrot. Hey, you end this war, Vladimir? Yeah, Reagan did go to Moscow. I was right. We can put that picture up there. Yeah, Reagan went to Moscow. During the height of the Cold War, by the way. So think about it. Fine, Vlad, I'll go to Moscow once the war ends, and I'll lift some of these sanctions, and you won't have as many breadlines worrying about in your rural districts. Because that would be a big power move for Putin, but don't just throw it. Yeah, that's it right there.

That's, I think it's Gorbachev and Reagan right in front of the Kremlin. You know, one of the biggest lies being sold to American people right now is that you're in control of your money, especially when it comes to crypto. But the truth, most of these so-called crypto platforms are just banks in disguise, fully capable of freezing your assets the moment some bureaucrat makes a phone call. That is not what Bitcoin was built for. That's why I use Bitcoin.com. I just did a major transaction on it. They offer a self-custodial wallet, which means you hold the keys. You control your assets.

No one can touch your crypto, not the IRS or not a rogue bank, not some three-letter agency that thinks it knows better than you do. This is how it was intended by the original creators of Bitcoin, peer-to-peer money, free from centralized control, free from surveillance, and free from arbitrary seizure. So if you're serious about financial sovereignty, go to Bitcoin.com, set up your wallet, take back control, because if you don't hold the key, keys you don't own your money bitcoin.com freedom starts here the the deeper component of all this though is that it's both parties did not have to be doing this they did not have to be doing this

but the media did not like this of course not let's play a piece of tape here this is from jake tapper not have a very good day where's jake and kately collins play cut two 52 And I'm wondering if you think Donald Trump leaves this high-stakes summit where nothing was achieved, angry and likely to bring in more sanctions. You know, Jake, the president didn't seem angry when he came out here. They were going into this summit. AIDS were setting expectations low in recent days because they were fearful that they were not actually going to reach a ceasefire while on the ground. here in Anchorage. And so obviously, though, the president himself made clear what he wanted. And it was that ceasefire. He did not get that ceasefire.

Okay. Dylan Mulvaney is completely misleading in the audience here. So listen, this and Jake Tapper says, oh my goodness, nothing was achieved. That sounds like something of someone who's never run a business. By the way, how does Caitlin Collins know any of that? There was no information released. Were you in the room? Did you bug the room? That is a complete misleading of the narrative. You know why? They're mad that this meeting happened in the first place. So anything that they say should be completely and totally discredited. Here's John Bolton, who, of course, is never missing an opportunity to try to heat up tensions towards another thermonuclear conflict. Playcutt 253.

Putin achieved most of what he wanted. Trump achieved very little. And I will say one other thing. I thought Trump looked very tired up there. I mean very tired, not disappointed, tired. And we'll have to reflect on what that means. Okay, first of all, Trump did not look tired. Second of all, he just flew six hours across the American continent to go meet with Vladimir Putin, and then he has to go fly six hours back. So how about let's just sit one out of Donald Trump,

looked really tired. Donald Trump always said this meeting would lead to a more important meeting. This was a sequencing meaning. And, I mean, Caitlin Collins, she should go be an umpire for Major League Baseball, because she just called a strike when it was a ball. listen the other component of this I want to play a little bit of the Sean Hannity interview

is that President Donald Trump is calling the shots President Donald Trump is framing this in a way that would be good for America and Sean Hannity made this point and I want to play this here we do not have to be involved in this this is a war where 7,000 people are unnecessarily dying

every single week every single week 7,000 people are dying let's play cut 257 in your press conference you talked about a lot of things that you agreed on and maybe one big issue you don't agree on are you prepared to go public with that no i'd rather not i guess somebody's going to go public with it they'll figure it out but no i don't want to do that i want to see if we can get it done you know it's still it's not a done deal at all and Ukraine has to agree. I mean, you know, President Zelensky has to agree. But it's a terrible war where he's losing a lot, and both of them are.

And hopefully it can get completed. That'll be a great achievement for them. Forget about me for them. And you'll save 7,000 lives a week. That's a lot. Did you ever hear Joe Biden talk about just the human cost of this? 364,000 people approximately dying a year in this. So they all attack Donald Trump's moral character.

I never heard Kamala Harris or Joe Biden say there's an unnecessary amount of killing fields happening in Ukraine and Russia because they're all just cannon fodder to them. To the Industrial War Project, it's all just cannon fodder for whatever aim or ambition that the Great American Empire wants to push. This is President Donald Trump saying that number one is to save lives. And you can call Donald Trump a lot of different names and attack. Oh, he's not moral.

I'm sorry, this is the most moral thing that someone can do. Blessed are the peacemakers. That is bigger than you. To go out of your way, to go stake your reputation, too. There's a lot of risk involved. This thing could have been a disaster, and it wasn't. It was a success. This thing could have been catastrophic.

That kind of a risk, to put it all on the line for what? What is the upside? Just to save lives. And I hope Donald Trump gets remembered in the history books for a lot of things. But he has a good heart. He looks at these pictures of the killing field. He says, what can I do? to fix it. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, they accelerated the war. They had an opportunity to end the war in

Istanbul and they decided not to do it. You had Tony Blinken, you had Boris Johnson, go in there, led by the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. State Department, and they blew up a ceasefire that would have happened 10 days into the war. And now probably 600,000 people are dead and millions of people are displaced. So what does Donald Trump have to benefit from this? Only thing that Donald Trump has a reward is that he can say, you know what, there's a young man that can now start a family right now in Russia because of what I did. And that matters because that person is made in the image of God. You know what? There's a young man in Ukraine that can start a family and they shouldn't just be killing themselves over a mile here or a mile there. Play cut 258.

And you're willing to expend political capital. All of the conflicts that I mentioned, including this one, this does not impact the United States as much as it does. Our allies in Europe. It's true. The Middle East, when we get involved in the Middle East, but you're doing it anyway. Now, why? Is it to save lives? You want to save a world? Number one, to save lives in all cases, because wars are wars. And number two is everything else. Wars are very bad. And if you can avoid them, and I seem to have an ability to end them. I seem to have an ability to end them. And he's exactly right. Let me say this in summary. The takeaways? Honestly, we're still trying to find out the specifics. However, the big takeaway is that President Donald Trump cares about the humanity of the people of Russia and Ukraine. He cares about American strength. He's not an isolationist, and you saw as that broad display. President Trump does not have me doing this. He could happily just keep on sending missiles and let people killing themselves, but he does not view the world that way. And honestly, we as Americans should not view other human beings that way. Trump said going in, if he came out with Putin by his side and talking to the press,

That would be progress and a win. We're going to keep our eyes very close on this, everybody. There's a lot more takeaways and a lot more that we're going to talk about it. Vladimir Putin flew across Asia because Donald Trump commanded force, force towards peace, force and power towards an inevitable conclusion. Thanks so much for listening. Everybody, email us as always Freedom at Charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust. to charliekirk.com.