The Charlie Kirk Show - The World Waits While Trump and Putin Meet

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

The biggest meeting of President Trump's second term is about to happen: His one-on-one summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Charlie lays out the stakes and Trump's chance to get his biggest win for world peace yet. Edward Kovalik talks about Trump's energy leverage on Russia, why oil remains central to American long-term prosperity, and more. 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. The stakes, Trump and Putin, sit down in Alaska, and we lay it all out. And then what are the biggest lies when it comes to global warming, environmentalism, and drilling? Go to oilfax.com as our guest, Edward Kovalik, goes through to all at oilfax.com. Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.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. Today's a very, very big day, and we're going to be covering it throughout the day. as breaking news happens, but first we want to foreshadow. And more importantly, you just want to describe what is happening before the big meeting in Alaska. President Donald Trump right now is on a plane. He's on Air Force One. He's on a plane.

Flying from Joint Force, Joint Andrews Air Force base all the way across the North American continent to Alaska. Before we go into the details of this, I just want to say this is President Trump at his best. He does not have to be doing this. He doesn't. He's trying to stop his seventh war. Let me say that again. He is trying to stop his seventh war. He's flying all the way across America and across Canada, confronting a foreign leader and taking a risk that this very well could fail because he wants peace.

The president is doing this because he does not want to see the bloodshed, the suffering of five to seven thousand people. dying per week and for what what is the goal what is the objective and if it's five to seven thousand people a week you're talking about three to four hundred thousand people a year generations of young ukrainians and russians because the russians matter too the russians are made in the image of god here too plus all the casualties and all the refugees and for what President Donald Trump is taking a mature approach here. Now, mind you, this summit comes on the heels of President Trump rushing more artillery and more military support for Ukraine. You see, Putin had a certain calculation.

Putin thought that if Trump was going to send all of these armaments to Ukraine, that the MAGA base would revolt against Donald Trump. There's been no such revolt, actually. we might not love the idea of further armaments but we trust the president and we have confidence the president that he's using that towards a peace settlement Vladimir Putin very well might have misread the room the buried lead of this is not the fact that President Trump is flying across the continent that should be appreciated but instead why is Putin flying Why is Putin kind of taken the beta role here flying to America, not on his turf or on neutral ground?

What is Putin doing? That's the part that has fascinated me throughout all this. And I want to explore that together because Putin doesn't have to be sending in tons of aircraft. Reports are showing he's bringing in like 500 people and they're flying in planes. I mean, a lot of ordinary Russians are pretty angry about this summit. So what is Putin doing here? This is the first presidential meeting between a U.S. president and Putin. In over four years, Biden had no interest in this.

So we know why Trump is doing it because he loves America. He doesn't want to see us in another boondoggle, doesn't want to see us in a quagmire. And his heart hurts for 7,000 dead people a week. And for all the liberals that attack Donald Trump, he is a better person than Joe Biden. because he actually cares about 7,000 Russians and Ukrainians dying. He's doing something to stop it. But what is Putin doing here? That's the fascinating part.

I don't have a clear answer, except I think Putin wants an end of this war more than he is broadcasting. Now, look, we need to set expectations cautiously. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in this war. Wars radicalize their participants, definitionally. It is a lot harder to end a three-year war than it. is to end a three-week one. That's why the original Istanbul overture to end the war early on, that was our best shot. Because when you get deep into a war, they say, well, they bomb this church, and they bomb this village, and they did a drone strike, and they did an attack, and

they did our bombers, blah, blah, blah, blah, therefore we must keep on escalating. Wars have a tendency to do that. Russia has three core demands for peace. Neutral Ukraine, this is the key. This is the Russia's, the big three. And no other program is going to tell you this. And we got this from Professor Mersheimer. He said this on the Tucker Carlson program, and it was really, really important. Professor Mersheimer said, here's the three things. A neutral Ukraine, not in NATO and no U.S. security guarantee, no offensive Ukrainian military capability, and recognition of Crimea plus the four oblasts annexed by Russia. Now, are those 100% required? The answer is we don't know, because the Washington foreign policy establishment has refused to ever negotiate. How do you

know what Russia wants when you can't negotiate. They refused before the war and they blew up negotiations, as I mentioned, Istanbul. And that was our great moment. Istanbul was, it was such a human rights crime. Boris Johnson and Tony Blinken and the U.S. security establishment did something unspeakably evil. There was a chance to end the Russian-Ukrainian war and the Russians were willing to do it in the first couple of weeks. I think it was 10 days in. And we said no. And now hundreds of thousands of more Ukrainians were used as cannon fodder for some abstract regime goal of the foreign security

apparatus. And Biden sabotaged it. Of all the things in Biden's legacy, this is one of the most unspeakably dark moves of his administration. Our entire generation of young Ukrainians died and Russia took more territory. So it was for nothing. But if we were actually willing to negotiate, maybe peace would actually be possible. If we're willing to say no, Ukraine and NATO, and we'll recognize Russia holding Crimea and the Donbass, maybe Russia will let Ukraine keep its military. Or maybe they'll evacuate some of the territory they've captured. We don't know it's possible because nobody has tried to negotiate until President Trump, until now with President Trump. I will say, of the three guarantees, the most reasonable to the least reasonable. Okay.

So no NATO and no security guarantee, no offense, Ukrainian military capability, and then the recognition of Crimea plus the land. Of the most reasonable, I think the land is the most reasonable. They won it. They invaded. They shouldn't have invaded, but they want it. Giving it back to Ukraine after Russia. That's not going to happen. So the European elite have to take the pill and stomach the fact that Vladimir Putin won back part of Ukraine, including Crimea.

Okay. I think that's, I don't. like it he should have invaded but of all the contentions that's one that i think there is some flex in the joints number two though is a little bit harder which is a neutral ukraine now there's two parts of that ukraine should not be part in nato but then the security guarantee there's like the minsk agreement so there's some you know component there the last one just looking at this as an honest onlooker as an american who doesn't have as much skin in the game saying that ukraine can't have offensive weaponry capability, that's basically just saying we want them to be a sitting duck.

Is Ukraine really going to invade Russia maybe or the new territories? I guess. Russia can't demand the disarmament of another country while they are a major power. I think that's a little bit silly. But maybe Russia can come to a deal, which is, okay, you get the land, no NATO, and then Ukraine can keep its military. Will they strike that deal? We don't know. President Donald Trump has said that he will know in the first couple of minutes whether or not Vladimir Putin is ready or not.

Ukraine would probably only fight to take back the regions occupied by Russia, so this could end up being like an endless multi-decade war. But I want to repeat something. What is Putin doing here? Because Putin is on pace right now to win an ugly victory, ugly, hard fought, lots of death. But why is Vladimir Putin getting on an airplane and flying to Alaska, not in Belarus, not in Switzerland, not in Abu Dhabi, not in Doha, but he's flying to America.

What's the last time Vladimir Putin was on American soil? Maybe a decade ago? What is Putin doing here? I have a theory that we're going to explore after the break, because I actually think Vladimir Putin deep down would much rather have a soft working relationship with the United States of America than Russia. Russia and China are not nearly the natural allies that you think they are. And maybe that might be the buried lead as to why

Vladimir Putin is getting on a plane and flying to Anchorage. If you're tired of watching this country drift away from the values that made it great, it's time to get involved. That's why I stand with AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens. Amac is the conservative alternative to AARP, and it's not just for seniors. If you love America, believe in the Constitution and support the principles of faith family and freedom, this is your movement.

AMAC members receive great perks, including discounts on travel, insurance, and health care, free access to exclusive resources, and the award-winning AMAC magazine delivered right to your door. And right now, you can join for as little as $1.20 a month, it's an amazing deal, with a five-year membership. Join millions of patriots who still believe in this country. Visit amac.us slash Kirk and become a member today. Russian President Vladimir Putin makes a rare public appearance at a monument honoring U.S. cooperation during World War II, just hours before his summit with President Trump. Now, Putin is getting a lot of domestic backlash for even having this meeting.

Because remember, wars radicalize people. Why are you meeting with the Americans? They're providing armaments. So what is Putin thinking here? Well, number one, Vladimir Putin wants Russia to be wealthy. And right now, America holds a lot of cards. This is Putin going up to a memorial. Pretty good optics, honestly. And we did work with the Russians to defeat the Nazis. And I'm glad we did. We cannot forget about our partnership working with the Soviet Union.

Now, what happened after that is the Soviet Union became a gulag infested death camp. However, at that time, that was the right move. It absolutely was the right move, unquestionably. So Vladimir Putin makes a rare appearance. on a monument honoring U.S. cooperation during the World War II. He's now on a plane flying like 14 hours from Moscow and he's going to land an acreage quite soon. We do better working with Russia than being at war with them.

And remember, it all ties together. We have all this new Russia gate stuff thanks to the Durham annex. A lot of the anti-Russia sentiment was fake. It was manufactured. It was synthetic. It was led you to believe that they manipulated our election, and that's why Donald Trump won. So you have to wonder, like, we have, does Russia hate us, or did our ruling class make us hate Russia and then Russia strike back? Should Russia have invaded Ukraine?

No. It's not a defensible position. However, was NATO expansion taunting and daunting to the Russian Federation? Yes. This is a new clip from Hildar. Let's play cut 5-11. He is not meeting with a friend. He is meeting with an adversary.

And an adversary who wants to see the destruction of the United States and the Western Alliance. But if he could bring about the end to this terrible war where Putin is the aggressor, invading a neighbor country, trying to change the borders, if he could end it without putting Ukraine in a position where it had to consider, its territory to the aggressor, had to, in a way, validate Putin's vision of greater Russia, but instead could really stand up to Putin to make it clear there must be a ceasefire. There will be no exchange of territory. If President Trump were the architect of that, I'd nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

There's a lot there. A lot of ifs. We recklessly stoked a war that never had to happen. We stoked a conflict by expanding NATO without purpose and refusing to negotiate anything related to it. We acted arrogantly, and Ukraine paid the price. Is this an opportunity for a Russian reset? Do I think we're going to get the Anchorage Accords? No.

Do I think that it's a really positive sign that Putin is flying all across his continent? To go to a state, by the way, that used to be his? talking about land swaps, Alaska used to be Russia's. We bought it in the mid-1800s for $7.4 million. I believe that was the number. Pretty good deal. Right move. Remember, Trump said this is a setup for a second meeting.

And if I were to conjecture a little bit, I think President Trump was like, I could totally get a deal with Putin. If it wasn't for Brussels, if it wasn't for the European ruling class, I think this deal could easily be cut. Yeah, $7.2 million in 1867, equivalent to $129 million.

So we bought Alaska for $129 million. It's amazing. Before they really understood petroleum. Now, does Zelensky want peace? Do the intel agencies want peace? What President Trump is doing is he is short-circuiting conventional norms of protocol. Oh, you can't do that. You can't meet with them.

A lot of people are going to be critical of this whole thing. But it's Putin coming to us. It's Putin coming to America. That's a power move. I think we hold a lot more cards here than sometimes we realize. The military industrial complex does not want peace. And I think Putin, by flying all the way to Alaska, is signaling, ever so carefully,

hey, man, we're better together than we are apart. Yeah, there's a lot of problems. You're not going to be best friends. This is not going to be like an American-UK relationship. but we are better than the CCP and make no mistake the russian china thing they're not as natural allies as you think they've had a lot of problems throughout the years that is a forced marriage we for that is an arranged marriage the russia chinese thing is an arranged marriage by the intel operations as president trump would famously said we'll say we'll see what happens

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podcast is informative and encouraging. You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working hard to get biblical truth back into our culture. You can find out more about Pastor Alan and the ministry at Alan Jackson.com. That is Alan Jackson.com. Again, that is Alan Jackson. excited for this conversation. Edward Kovalik, who is the chairman and CEO of the prayer operating group, and we've been talking about his stuff for a while. It's oilfax.com. Edward, great to see you so much to the discuss. Thank you for joining the program. You are an energy truth teller. First, let's just talk geopolitical, and then we'll go in a little bit more specific.

What are the stakes of America and Russia meeting today? Russia being one of the biggest producers of petroleum on the planet? Please, Edward, welcome the program and walk us of the geopolitical stakes, what's happening today? First of all, Charlie, it's great to be with you. I'm a huge fan and what you do is just so, so important. If anyone is not aware of this, oil, fossil fuels basically drive the entire global economy and, as a result, drive geopolitics. Russia is really a petro state, an extractive state, whose primary line of business is producing oil. and minerals and essentially an influential member of OPEC Plus.

So, you know, to President Trump's credit, he's been really eagle-eyed on keeping oil prices low to manage real costs for everyday Americans. And that's why I think you've seen the White House be a little bit light-footed, light-handed on really exerting maximum pressure on Russia. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with respect to these negotiations and if President Trump really uses that final, you know, Trump card, so to speak, against Russia geopolitically with respect to Ukraine because President Trump has really hesitated up until now to do that. Has global demand for fossil fuels or petroleum gone up or down in the last five years. So just to set the record straight, demand for energy and specifically fossil fuels has gone up

every year since the beginning of the implementation of fossil fuels. If you go back to the early 20th century and look at sort of the world pre-fossil fuels up till today, you'll see pretty much a straight line up into the right linearly with demand growth every year. The only stutters in that growth have been the 07.08 credit crisis, and then we saw demand bounce right back thereafter. And then we saw another pause in demand growth during COVID when we were all forced to stay in our homes for, you know, over a year. And then you saw demand growth come right back. And so, you know, that's really no mystery since even with all the talk about renewable energy, as it's called, replacing fossil fuels, fossil fuels still account for 60% of electricity generation,

in this country, a greater share in most other countries, and really are part of everything that we use in our daily lives. Everything that surrounds us in our daily lives is made from fossil fuels. Yeah. And so I asked for a reason because we were told 10 years ago that there's going to be a green energy push and that we're going to divest ourselves from fossil fuels. How is that working? We were told that we had peak oil and that we're going to have solar panels and windmills, and it was this very utopian vision. What's the truth? Well, the truth is that there is no energy transition. There's only energy addition. Nearly half the world is still energy poor and consume about the amount of energy that your refrigerator does on a per capita

basis for an entire family. So most of the world is trying to pull themselves out of you know, energy starvation. And, you know, in that same period of time, as we've seen demand for growth for oil rather grow linearly since the early 1900s, we've also seen people live a lot longer as a result of all the things that fossil fuels have enabled. We've also seen tremendous prosperity and record numbers of people coming out of poverty. I think global poverty is now down from about 42% in 1980 to less than 10% today. And so this whole idea that we can transition from fossil fuels to solar and wind for our primary source of energy is really just foolish and a lie because solar and wind are extremely

inefficient, extremely low energy dense, and completely uneconomic. And were it not for extreme government subsidies up to date, we probably see much less solar and wind actually developed around the world. And you can learn more about this at oilfax.com. I'm actually on the website right now. It's oilfax.com. And you have this amazing thing, 10 energy truths in the age of AI. So there's been several predictions made by the kind of climate core. Would you say this is a decivisational movement, the environmental? is that is that the undercurrent is that the reason they have such gusto absolutely you know if you just go through a logical progression of facts here cutting off energy supply to create energy scarcity is a path towards starvation not towards promoting human flourishing and that's really you know the only logical outcome particularly in a time where we're seeing

real stress in the West on electrical grids as a result of AI-driven data center growth that's projected a double between now in 2030. Really on a grid in this country that dates back, you know, on average to the 1970s, it's really arcane and needs a tremendous amount of investment. And so with this aging grid, limited distribution capability, AI data centers are going to hog all incremental power supplied to the grid, which is really going to leave Americans left out in the cold and could lead to a scenario where we see energy rationing in this country, which, again, leads to poverty because we know for a fact that energy, well, access to abundant

and affordable energy is the number one variable correlated to both human longevity and prosperity. Yeah. And so the decivisational component is incredibly important. Everyone could check it out at oilfax.com. So we are all marveling at artificial intelligence. We're marveling at what it can do. I mean, some of us are a little terrified

to be honest. But connect the dots. Why does energy and fossil fuels why is that a key ingredient with the AI revolution? You can't have one without the other. Well, for one, it's as simple as AI

data centers use a tremendous amount of power. Training one single AI model uses as much energy as electricity we need to supply 100 homes in a year. So it's just a staggering amount of electrical demand. So this whole lie, which is simply what it is, that climate change is induced by the use of fossil fuels. And as a result, we need to curb fossil fuel use and thereby create scarcity and energy in general goes against the whole narrative of empowering our society with AI because AI is going to require every ounce of, you know, electrons we can possibly spare to power these data centers. So the sad irony is that people have been led to believe this lie because I think,

people genuinely want to be virtuous they want to do right they want to do good by the environment they want to do good to each other i believe in the human spirit and that human spirit has been turned against itself ironically by buying into this lie because buying into it will lead to you know human poverty and uh really worse outcomes yeah and so let's talk about some of those lies And in particular, one of them, they will say that the constant production of fossil fuels is bad for the environment. You touched on that. What is the truth here? There was that ridiculous movie Frack Nation.

I think that's what it was called. And it was like, oh, my drinking water now has petroleum in it. What is the truth here? So, as you recall, they started by calling it global warming. They rebranded it to be climate change, but ironically, far more people have died in history because of extreme cold than extreme heat. Now that we have a scientifically honest administration in the White House, and Chris Wright is really doing a yeoman's job as energy secretary to expose real science behind climate, There is no proven correlation between fossil fuel use and climate change. There's actually no correlation between global CO2 and climate change when looking back at, you know, climate for 200 million years.

So I think that historically, you know, you've had groups that have used bad science, very small data sets, really bad sampling. to make a political point because it sure as heck is not a scientific point. Yeah. So can you just build that out really quick? Tell us more about the evidence we have for the last 200 million years. How do we know that, what you just said? Because that's a contention that's thrown at me all the time on college campuses. Well, we have great geological data that is exemplifying, you know, the nature of the atmosphere for that period of time. And, you know, In times of high CO2 concentration of the atmosphere, the planet's gone through sort of a tropicalization period. And we're kind of seeing that now, which leads to more abundant food supply, actually a greening of the planet.

And so all of this is evidenced in the geologic history. It's really pretty indisputable. It's hard to believe it was even possible. But the Democrat-run states are now more pro-abortion than ever and will only get worse. unless you join me standing for life. This is Charlie Kirk and we're saving babies right now with preborn. Ultrasounds save lives. That's why preborn gives free ultrasounds to girls and women.

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Continuing with us is Edward Kobelik from Oilfax.com. Edward, I want to take a step back here. and just say, so you're a veteran of the oil industry. You started your oil business, prairie operating company, which is traded on the NASDAQ during Joe Biden. How has running your oil business been different under President Trump versus Joe Biden? Well, you know, going back to when we started the company, everybody told us that we were crazy because we weren't going to need any more fossil fuels by 2030. So I was an absolute idiot for starting the company in Biden's America. to fast forward to today, and I think we've got a much more sober, true attitude coming out of the White House. We'd like to see some real policy changes as an industry to promote

American energy over OPEC oil, because we are the largest manufacturing industry in the United States in terms of value. We employ over 10 million Americans. A lot of blue-collar workers, mostly blue-collar workers earning 84% above private sector wages. So, you know, we're big fans of this administration telling the truth about oil, but we need some help as an industry to really promote production in this country. Yeah. So what does that look like? What would the ideal portfolio or sequencing of decisions look like? Great question. You know, I think that there's a lot that the administration can do with respect to federal lands and federal leasing where we are in Colorado, for instance, there's a significant amount of federal land.

Yeah, and offshore and in Alaska. So that, together with EPA policy on ozone and emissions, that could really use a lot of work. And I think they're, you know, working on it, but we are an impatient bunch and we'd love to see it all happen a little faster. Yeah. So this pro-energy agenda is incredibly important. How much does this differentiate state by statement? Colorado is a nightmare for a lot of different ways. The environmentalists have tried to get rid of exploration on the western slope. I don't know if they were successful, but they've tried for a long time.

And what can the federal government do in addition, not just executive orders, but to increase production? But do you guys in your business, do you want more production? Because wouldn't that also drive down the price? So how do you reconcile that, more exploration, more production with the price of oil because if it goes down too low, then there's no incentive for you guys to keep exploring. Well, it's a really interesting topic because, you know, as much as President Trump would like lower oil prices, the reality is, is that oil prices are really at a historic low when

really adjusted for inflation. So if you factor in sort of the shale boom that's allowed us to become producers of 13 million barrels a day or so of energy, That was driven at really higher prices to today. There's been about $20 of inflation built into oil prices. So oil near $60 is really oil near $40 going back 20 years. So, you know, that's a really important thing to understand. The other really important thing to understand is that, you know, most of the oil produced in this country is now shale.

And shale is, it's not what you sort of imagine on television, where we drill a well and you see a gusher of oil and you walk away for 30 years and you keep producing that oil at the same rate. Shale is really a resource of very high decline. So we produce about 60% of the reserves from a shale well in the first three years of production with a hyperbolic decline. So just the effort to maintain production flat

is a real huge challenge in the first. the United States and we're quickly running out of economic drilling locations to do that at these types of prices. So the idea that we can really create, you know, a lasting, tenable American energy independence for the next 50 years at $60 or less oil is really not correct. So we're really in a battle with OPEC and OPEC still holds a lot of cars. around total global production. But I and everyone in this industry have been trying to predict oil prices for as long as I can remember. And the one thing I know for a fact is we're always wrong. We've always been wrong in predicting. But economics, as you point out, have a way

to right production. Low oil prices, create high oil prices because people, you know, stop producing as much oil. Edward Kovalik, thank you so much, oil facts.com. We need to dominate. the world with energy. We should be drilling more. We should be exporting more and we should be exploring more. If we want to dominate the AI space and we have to refute all these lies.

That's why I want people to check out oilfax.com. The global warming, environmental, you know, pollutes your drinking water. It's all a bunch of BS. Oilfax.com. Edward, thank you so much. Thanks for having me on, Charlie. 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. Go to charliekirk.com.