On this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, host Charlie Kirk sits down with his good friend Blake to discuss the upcoming midterm elections and the importance of standing up for freedom on the campaign trail. Also, Charlie and Blake answer listener questions about Section 230, Roman history, and much more! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share to stay up to date on all things Charlie and the rest of the CWK family! Today's episode is brought to you by Noble Gold Investments, the official Gold Sponsor of the show, a company that specializes in gold and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investing. Go to noblegoldinvestments.org/thecharliekirkshow and become a platinum sponsor! It's where I buy all of my gold! That is Noble Gold, Investing in the future of the future, I buy gold and I'll tell you how to get 20% off the price of gold in the form of gold, platinum and precious metals! I'll send you all the gold I'm going to be giving you a brokerage account so you can get a 20% discount when you place an order with a broker! You'll get 10% off your first month of your first bill, plus I'll give you an extra $5, FREE shipping when you sign up for the next month, plus an additional $10,000 in gold, I'll get an additional 5% off my brokerage offer when you become a VIP membership when I get my first month, and you get an ad discount when I receive $25,000, you get a maximum of $50 or $50,000 when you shop at The Charlie's Guide, I get it in the program starts! Click here to apply for a $150,000 or more, you'll get 5% OFF your first year, I'm giving you an ad-free version of the Charlie's Korner, and they'll get 25% off, and get a 2-month promo code CHILLED! CHALKERKirk, I won't have access to the show starts in the next episode, and I get a discount on my ad-only offer, and a FREE shipping offer when I'm in your ad starts in two weeks! Thank you, Charlie will be able to rate your ad!
00:00:42.000His 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.
00:01:02.000Noble 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.
00:01:12.000Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:30.000You know, Blake, it's amazing how many people come up to me and they say, Charlie, I love the show, and Blake is so smart.
00:01:35.000You know, you're kind of like the whole thing.
00:01:36.000I will admit, I'm getting used to this, but when I was coming into the office today, we had two of our volunteers who they'd just parked and they were asking where to go, and then they recognized me, and they're like, Oh, Blake!
00:02:16.000First, there is a question I think Daisy wants us to answer.
00:02:19.000Charlie, what is your perspective on repeal or reform of Section 230?
00:02:23.000Blake, remind our audience, Section 230 is about the Communications Decency Act, if I remember correctly, which regulates speech, whether or not it's a utility or a publisher.
00:02:39.000It's kind of a liability shield for some web companies, and it basically says, you can't be liable for things like defamation, for example, if you're merely a publisher that has content from other people.
00:02:56.000So a newspaper is liable for defamation if they print an article that defames somebody, because you are Mm-hmm.
00:03:17.000Man, I used to know way more about this because it was a big talking point in 2017 and we talked about it on Tucker.
00:03:23.000It was platform versus publisher, right?
00:03:24.000It was platform versus publisher and I know that a facet of Section 230 was that basically since they were saying we're not publishers, we can do like lots of censorship stuff and I think that's what it was.
00:03:39.000So, again, we'll have to refresh ourselves, but from what I understand, Section 230 says that if you get platform status, you cannot be sued for defamation or libel like a publisher is.
00:04:20.000I grew up in Washington and then went over to New York for college and I, you know, just...
00:04:27.000A little bit of a liberal saw things very blue and my dad and I, you know, butted heads a lot because he voted for Trump in 2016 and I didn't really understand it.
00:04:35.000And then COVID hit and I was like, I'm not getting vaccinated.
00:05:29.000So I feel like it's just been really interesting watching Kamala's campaign over the past few weeks, compared to, you know, when everything started back in July, August.
00:05:38.000It seems like she's just grasping at straws at this point.
00:05:41.000And my question is, do you think that this is influencing undecided voters or maybe more independent voters to vote for Trump?
00:05:48.000And do you have any concerns with her recent, quote, strategy, claiming that Trump is, quote, Hitler?
00:06:18.000it's polling or early vote data that is telling them we're not getting the energy of our core voters out and you know whatever we were doing it's not working and they're they're kind of getting a little desperate and so they're thinking we need to up the enthusiasm of our voters And how do you up the enthusiasm of the left?
00:06:55.000He's a guy in Nevada who is really the guy on Nevada early vote.
00:06:59.000And he's been pointing out, and this is a liberal guy, by the way, he's been pointing out the one out of four voters, the two out of four voters, the Republicans are turning out noticeably more than the Democrats.
00:07:10.000And so I think the Democrats are thinking, who are our base voters who are not 100% voting?
00:07:16.000We need to start scaring them a bit more and just get our base turnout up.
00:07:20.000And I think they're just noticing this lack of enthusiasm, and that's affecting both their turnout and also probably their get-out-the-vote effort.
00:07:27.000Maybe they're seeing fewer of the volunteers that they need to close the deal.
00:07:32.000And also, it's just, I think they've seen Kamala, whatever she's doing hasn't been working great, and so it was sort of, you know, throw it deep, hope it works.
00:07:42.000And as we saw with the CNN thing, it didn't work.
00:07:44.000I really, I was mentioning this yesterday, Mark Halperin, he was commenting on that, and he's just saying, A lot of Democrats are really defeated after that town hall.
00:07:53.000It's the realization Kamala is not getting better.
00:07:56.000This is sort of what we see is what we get.
00:08:02.000During her convention, she kind of had her shtick going.
00:08:05.000she had a thing where she she can do a scripted bit if you tell her to memorize this bit yeah she can do it You can, you know, you can train a horse to jump over something.
00:08:16.000But she doesn't have any ability to think on her feet.
00:08:19.000And you just really compare that with Trump, where Trump, whatever, you know, whatever you think of him.
00:08:48.000Kamala's last-ditch strategy is all about women and high-prop voters.
00:08:51.000Abortion rally tonight in Texas, calling Trump Hitler, and closing speech on January 6th, trying to reignite the high-propensity college-educated voters, and those people vote on Election Day.
00:09:00.000Yeah, and their thought is this is maybe a low turnout election overall, lower turnout than 2020 for sure, maybe even lower than 2016.
00:09:08.000Just get your core 100% voters in and hope that's enough.
00:09:13.000And yeah, she's speaking right now in Texas.
00:09:16.000Natalie, I hope that answered your question.
00:09:18.000Thank you for being a member and God bless you.
00:09:31.000So, Kamala Harris is very proud of this massive infrastructure bill, and a lot of that bill was to add all these EV charging stations across the nation.
00:09:40.000And recently, we rented a car in Southern Illinois, and it was a hybrid, so I was excited.
00:09:46.000Boy, we'll just be able to charge this thing everywhere.
00:09:50.000So my question is, how much of that dedicated budget I know it was billions and billions for these chargers and how many EV charging stations are actually operational today?
00:10:05.000I googled it just as he was saying it and amazingly the Washington Post, the same place flipping out about not endorsing Kamala, had an article from March.
00:10:14.000Biden's seven and a half billion dollar investment.
00:10:18.000In EV charging has produced how many stations?
00:10:21.000Do you want to guess how many stations in two years?
00:10:38.000And notably, what they could have done is, for the amount that they spent on it, They could have just bought Starlink for everyone, just give it to Musk and have him do Starlink for the entire country.
00:10:49.000And yeah, that'd be handing out a ton of money to a private act or whatever.
00:10:52.000But instead, they spent tens of billions of dollars on it, or allocated, and I don't think anyone has service yet.
00:10:57.000It's just been a total nothing burger.
00:11:00.000And you could have just, yeah, bought Starlink for everyone.
00:11:02.000And that's a very common thing with government infrastructure these days, is you can blow...
00:11:07.000Billions and billions of dollars, and you'll get nothing.
00:11:11.000I think California is now on $25 billion or so for their high-speed rail network.
00:11:37.000There was a high-speed rail company from France that was consulting on working on the California high-speed rail, and they finally said, this is too dysfunctional.
00:11:46.000We're going to move to a more functional country.
00:12:20.000It's going to take you six more years to build a train in the Central Valley?
00:12:23.000Yeah, to places that don't need a train, that don't want to train, that no one will take.
00:12:28.000You have an uninterrupted highway on Highway 5.
00:12:30.000Since you mentioned Japan, Japan once had to do repairs in a station, and they had to do some sort of overhaul in the station, and they did all of it in one night.
00:12:39.000You can watch the video of them doing it.
00:15:35.000let's go with lavinium lavinium okay you won't know until the end of the quiz if you got it right in order to determine who would rule the city there were they were founding and who would name it romulus and remus blank appealed to their grandfather asked the gods fought a war against each other or dueled each other they they asked the gods so they were like let's just ask for like a sign and
00:16:00.000And I think it was something, I can't remember the exact details, but I think it was like Romulus said his site was better, and his name was better because more birds landed on his hill or something.
00:16:13.000And then they did fight each other, but I think they're going for, they asked the gods, and then they got in a fight and he killed Remus.
00:16:19.000Before the Roman Republic was founded, Rome had blank kings.
00:16:46.000Yeah, the second king of Rome was known for being probably like religious.
00:16:51.000Yeah, pious, unjust, frugal, or warlike.
00:16:55.000In the Roman legend, he's the guy who like invents the entire Roman religion.
00:16:59.000Like any festival they do, it's like, oh, Pneuma invented that.
00:17:02.000This is where, again, Livy is making all the legends into...
00:17:06.000And this is not stuff you know super well, right?
00:17:09.000I actually remember this one from listening to the History of Rome podcast a decade ago, and he just summarizes, like, who invented that festival?
00:19:47.000So, I didn't actually hear the question, Daniel.
00:19:49.000The question is, how do you endure or get through or handle criticism or controversy associated with your comment?
00:19:55.000My opinion on that is that it's God-given from Charlie.
00:19:58.000I think God gave him a calling, and I'm very serious about this, because most people will get criticized and they will soften their position.
00:20:07.000They will not say the hard truth out to not offend somebody.
00:20:15.000And by the way, that can be a good thing if you're trying to win somebody to your side or kind of find common ground.
00:20:22.000But what Charlie has done over the years is basically just develop the thickest skin, but I think it was a calling from God.
00:20:29.000And when you unapologetically put forth a conservative idea or a faith-based idea, truth about Jesus, whatever it may be, and they come at you with venom or they attack you and you hold your line...
00:20:44.000What that does is it inspires so many other people to do the same.
00:20:48.000And then when we do that, when you do that, Charlie, and you clip it and you put it on social media, that is the making of a movement with backbone.
00:20:56.000So you're essentially reforming from the inside out and a whole new generation that's being sort of raised on this approach to have actual backbone and to not back down.
00:21:08.000And I think we've had a Terrible situation within the conservative movement of a bunch of go-along-to-get-along guys that just want to go to the rubber chicken dinners and make friends with everybody and get invited to the parties.
00:22:38.000You don't get the heavy, really icky stuff that you get, like, I grew up in Houston and Kansas and, like, When I came out here, I was expecting it to rain hard all the time, and it's like, dinky stuff.
00:23:35.000Why do we have to be lib on everything?
00:23:37.000They change their attitudes, and suddenly you see a lot of people swinging that way.
00:23:40.000I think we see this with the Hispanic vote, where once you really got it through that, wait, you don't have to vote for Democrats just because you speak Spanish.
00:23:48.000And right now, the early vote in Miami-Dade County is Republican right now.
00:23:53.000So I think it's really important to have people who, especially now that things are opening up, that you can have the guts to speak publicly.
00:24:01.000You pave the way for a possible revision in the future.
00:25:54.000Instead, the government is choosing America last.
00:25:56.000And she, my mother, says, how does this make sense?
00:25:59.000And then the question is, how could the Trump presidency correct this?
00:26:02.000Blake, what are your thoughts on that?
00:26:04.000Well, so Trump in general has promised to have more robust trade restrictions.
00:26:10.000I don't know if he said specifically on things like minerals with Russia, but I think it would be something he would be interested in to say like, wait, no, we're not going to let Russia dump minerals on the market.
00:26:22.000And I think in the long run, you just need the US to genuinely treat it as a priority.
00:26:27.000Oh wait, we should have things that we do in the US because it's strategically important.
00:26:32.000We've realized that with chips, but I think we're also going to realize that with military manufacturing and also just production of basic materials.
00:26:41.000I think you and I have both heard, China owns all the rare earth metal extraction.
00:26:46.000It's not because all the rare earths are in China.
00:26:48.000It's because they dig them up, and we don't dig them up, and we just let our guys flail, and then suddenly, oh, China is the one who makes everything.
00:27:21.000Nathan, Nathan, thank you for being a member.
00:27:24.000So my question really pertains to personal finance.
00:27:27.000I'm a deacon of my church and I see a lot of people come in with benevolent fund requests.
00:27:33.000And, you know, it seems like a lot of people could use just, you know, financial advice and the financial situation of a lot of people could be improved by personal finance, you know, even in elementary school, starting in elementary school all the way through high school.
00:27:51.000Just want to see what your thoughts are on that.
00:27:53.000Yeah, you know, Andrew has some thoughts on this.
00:27:55.000Blake, I think, is going to be more sympathetic with me.
00:27:57.000I actually don't think it's a financial literacy problem.
00:28:56.000They don't understand where inflation comes from.
00:28:57.000They don't understand why it's a bad idea just to give people $20,000 for a home.
00:29:01.000They don't understand why price fixing and price controls are bad.
00:29:04.000They think it sounds good that the bad guys are going to get it stuck to them.
00:29:08.000But why do they think it's a good thing if entrepreneurs and business people get controlled by the government and they can't set their own prices?
00:29:16.000Well, they've been told values, so they play together, that the values of these people are bad, that they're the fat cats, that they're the bad guys.
00:29:23.000So they play together, and I think both are true.
00:29:26.000And I've been talking to Charlie about in the next year, and one of our big things that we need to push, whether it's at the federal level or at local level, Economic literacy classes are incredibly important because the Democrats are using them to take advantage of young people and essentially get them moving in the wrong political direction because they just fundamentally don't understand the way the world works.
00:30:11.000Definitely there's a very wasteful attitude, and you'll see bad justifications for this, where they just feel like there's no hope for the future, so they might as well just buy creature comfort things.
00:30:24.000No, you 100% can save money, and the amount of things you can take advantage of to save money is...
00:30:35.000And some of it does involve lifestyle compromises.
00:30:38.000I lived in a room of one of my dad's friends from law school for my first year in D.C. Okay, that's a beneficial contact to have that I could live at a cheaper rate, essentially subletting a room in a guy's house.
00:30:53.000But that is also what a lot of people won't be willing to do.
00:30:57.000And I think my main hobby for my first couple years in D.C. was I rented books for free from the Arlington Public Library.
00:31:03.000I learned a lot about Napoleon doing that.
00:31:06.000And, okay, that's like a dorky thing to do, but it is a very cost-effective thing to do.
00:31:10.000And saving money when you are under 25, especially, has such huge returns over time.
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00:34:35.000So our church, we take communion every week and someone from the church gets to stand up and can kind of offer some meditation thoughts about communion before we pray over the bread and the cup.
00:34:50.000And my thoughts have been really pretty inspired by a lot of the things I've heard you talking about.
00:34:56.000One of them, the Bible being a book of distinctions, good and evil, life, and righteous and unrighteous, that kind of thing.
00:35:03.000And then your conversations with Seth Gruber, where he's talked about abortion being the devil's sacrament and kind of the contrast between, you know, for us, Jesus says, this is my body given for you.
00:35:20.000And then Seth Gruber points out that on the left, it's my body, my choice.
00:35:27.000So I wanted to ask, kind of as I was thinking about this, one of the things you mentioned a week or two ago was the percentage of abortions that are had by people who say they are Christians.
00:35:36.000And I couldn't remember the exact number.
00:35:38.000I was hoping you could refresh my memory on that because you know that there are Christians that do it, but the number was kind of shocking to me.
00:35:46.000I was wondering if you could refresh my memory on that.
00:36:16.000So 24% of all abortion patients identify as Catholic, 17% identify as mainline Protestant, and 13% as evangelical Protestant.
00:36:26.000So if you scale that out, that is, if you add 24 plus 17, about half of all people that get abortions have some affiliation as a Christian.
00:37:25.000yeah um first time first time all our long time listener got members past week so thank you um welcome really very excited got my kids to sign up and register and vote and they voted and it's their first time to vote so love it what state you know well it is texas we're red that's important you know hey it's more important run up the score right um we've got some pastors in the area in the area that um Lately,
00:37:54.000recently on Sundays, while well-intentioned, I think, on the message, they basically paint both sides as not necessarily of the highest character, and Republicans and Democrats side both.
00:38:09.000So while one pastor has said that the Democrats, obviously, their platform is awful, the Republican side also, because of their history, the only reason this pastor said because Roe v.
00:38:22.000Wade in 1973 was the reason that they established a pro-life platform.
00:38:28.000And so therefore, he basically said, keep my name out of your mouth.
00:38:32.000And it really took me back because I've respected this guy for so long.
00:38:37.000- Yeah. - And I just don't know, how do you respond, how do you rationalize or, because what's gonna happen, he's dissuading thousands of people not to participate, but you're gonna sit out or vote for a third party if you kinda take that line. - Andrew, do you wanna preface this, please?
00:38:52.000Yeah, so, Charlie, I think you really articulated the central distinction here.
00:39:04.000But what you are electing, what are you choosing with your vote and your civic engagement Is a policy platform and the people that are going to populate your government and the policies they're going to pursue.
00:39:17.000Are they in line with Christian teaching and doctrine?
00:39:39.000He's out of, I believe, Franklin, Tennessee.
00:39:42.000So he doesn't get mixed up in politics very often, but he just did this from the pulpit, and it went viral, and I think we should play at 135.
00:39:48.000I saw a pastor this week, a very well-known pastor, that said, he tweeted or something, never Trump, this year Harris, always Jesus.
00:40:03.000I just want you to understand that that is one of the most foolish things I've ever seen.
00:40:49.000They're building their platform on everything that God hates.
00:40:54.000And that is a, I think, striking thing to say, but increasingly it's difficult to argue.
00:41:01.000And that's a terrifying reality that we have one political party full of broken people and another political party full of broken people, but one party is building its platform on everything God hates.
00:41:14.000Yeah, and so to answer your question directly, which I think is really important, you have to challenge these pastors and or stop going to these churches if they don't have moral clarity in the time for choosing.
00:41:26.000You just ask them, it's like, okay, is this stand worth it for them to say that Georgia's abortion law is illegal, that Texas's abortion law is illegal, that Alabama's abortion law is illegal, Tennessee's, North Dakota...
00:42:43.000I would have stayed longer, except I have a dog that was costing me a fortune that I had to get home to.
00:42:48.000So other than that, but because of that, some of us were wondering, and for some reason I thought this was like a Zoom, like when I was a teacher, you could see all the faces.
00:43:01.000So this might not even work, but we're kind of hoping that Election night, there might be something with you that the chasers could be part of.
00:43:11.000So we could kind of reconnect in a special way.
00:44:27.000Yeah, I was actually calling to ask, what would you recommend to somebody who wants to get involved in their community in a positive way?
00:44:35.000But, like, my husband always recommends that I go and become a politician, but with my past, I don't foresee that being a path forward for me.
00:44:47.000But what would you recommend for somebody who wants to do something but not a political path?
00:44:52.000Well, first of all, I'm told it's your birthday, so happy birthday.
00:45:06.000Yeah, if you don't want to get involved in politics, that's definitely not for everyone.
00:45:09.000I mean, I'm never going to run for office, probably.
00:45:13.000But there's infinite ways to get involved in like what matters is being a member of your community whether that's being a member of a church being a member of a group and then talk about these things with people there's so many things that people are just afraid to bring up ever and if you can bring it up and if you know you know what the issues are and the reasons that they're important And if you're friendly with people, you can very much bring up political topics without it being this fraught thing.
00:45:41.000You don't have to be a liberal who will, like, scream at someone if they're feeling the wrong way and then cut them out of your life.