00:00:55.920the way that we teach our values is basically through stories show me a civilization or culture
00:01:02.020stories i will show you their values so for example the stories that are in our culture
00:01:07.600are about generosity and benevolence and heroism and the individual and family and team building
00:01:14.240whether we whether we understand it or not the stories that we teach our kids are actually
00:01:18.660reflection the values that we hold and those values are the values found in the torah and
00:01:22.880in the Bible, the Judeo-Christian ethic. Do not lie. Tell the truth. If you do these things,
00:01:27.240you will fall from a position of power. The only way you could possibly get back to that position
00:01:31.800of influence of power is by doing an act of heroism that is greater than yourself.
00:01:35.880When I first joined Charlie, we were on a flight from Maine to New York. He looked at me and asked,
00:01:40.740how many states have you been to? Shocked by my low number, Charlie said, I'm going to have to
00:01:45.860change that. And he did. In my time with Charlie, I visited 48 states. This fall, we're supposed to
00:01:52.740hit the final two. On Charlie's desk, there was a framed box of texts that contained three simple
00:01:59.580questions. What can I do to help someone today? What can I do to add value to the world today?
00:02:05.820And how can I honor God today? Or in other words, what can I do for those around me?
00:02:11.560What can I do for civilization? And what can I do for our creator? Three simple questions,
00:02:16.720and yet by asking these questions of himself every day and doing his utmost every day to
00:02:21.820achieve the answers, Charlie Kirk changed the world. Everything Charlie did was part of his
00:02:27.340higher purpose. Each moment was a chance to learn, a chance to build, a chance to bond, or a chance
00:02:33.380to rest in the next flurry of activities. A great athlete does his absolute best every game and
00:02:38.740leaves it all out in the field. Then he leaves the rest to God. And that's how Charlie lived his life.
00:02:44.780He left every part of himself out there in the arena, and that's where he died. Facing forward,
00:02:50.340still honoring God, still pursuing the mission.
00:02:59.620Monday, 7 September in the year of our Lord, 2026, it's Labor Day Monday. And we always do,
00:03:04.780as you know, if you've been part of the War Room Posse for a number of years, we always do something
00:03:07.940special on Labor Day in commemoration of work and labor because we love to work. This year,
00:03:15.200It's a Charlie Kirk special, Charlie Kirk, the work ethic, because behind all the things you saw, Charlie, and this is, I want to thank the team for doing these great kind of opens for us, was a guy that was nonstop.
00:03:29.260He just had a energy and a drive, a thirst for knowledge.
00:03:33.400And remember, I kept saying the crucible of these college campuses, when Charlie with the humility and the dignity and the respect he had for people attacking him nonstop in these debates.
00:03:43.640um it took so much preparation and so much work to make it look effortless ben burquam joins us
00:03:52.480ben one of the reasons i want to have you on you you you were you've been doing the uh the rallies
00:03:57.800you saw charlie you were at the amfest you're at the student action summits you're all over you
00:04:02.880you've known this guy you've got a whole chapter in your new book about him but just talk to me
00:04:07.880about and i wanted i didn't want to focus on faith or his courage or other things we could
00:04:12.380It was this work ethic that I saw all the time that allowed him to do so much.
00:04:17.380And remember, everything Charlie started was not a hit.
00:04:20.780OK, Turning Point was not a hit when it first started.
00:04:23.360The show, the podcast was not a hit when he first started.
00:07:13.880I wish we had more weeks and months and years.
00:07:15.640But what Charlie did in 31 years to plant seeds for the next generation will, in my opinion, never be equaled.
00:07:23.820What he did to set up this nation for the next generation of warriors to come up to take the mantle and to fight the enemy will never be equaled.
00:07:33.640And so I, although we mourn, we mourn as we come up on, on the remembrance of the assassination.
00:07:40.200I also look at a guy who did more than I believe anyone else will do in my generation for that
00:07:45.480upcoming generation. And I pray, I pray a blessing over those people, over those seeds he's planted
00:07:50.240over the young people that were inspired and were motivated and were driven by Charlie's work ethic.
00:07:56.260I pray that they have vision and that they have hope and that they realize that his legacy lives
00:08:00.940on within them. That's my prayer for America, that we don't get distracted by the nonsense
00:08:06.460by people out there that are attacking his legacy or that are undermining it with
00:08:10.100wasted time, that we stay focused on building up that next generation that Charlie was so focused
00:08:15.400on. I want to go back to particularly the cauldron or the crucible of this, you going on
00:08:24.300cast cameras as an activist Breitbart had done it others and then Charlie um I don't think people
00:08:30.400realize how dangerous this is and not just dangerous how much it's it's a energy suck
00:08:35.900when you're in there it's so intense you're under scrutiny there's cameras everywhere
00:08:40.340and it's a hostile environment there's not a more hostile environment for the for putting forth uh
00:08:48.160not just the mega agenda but kind of the basic American principles that this republic are based
00:08:53.260upon a liberty and freedom than a modern Marxist college campus, because all the professors are
00:08:58.460Marxists. And most of these kids have come up and been formed in kind of these radical
00:09:02.280traditions. So talk to me about that, particularly Charlie. And I was, people know, when Charlie got
00:09:09.160to the White House and the RAV show and everything was going on that President Trump won, I was not
00:09:13.800a fan of him going on that spring tour. I was certainly not a fan of continuing on, just like,
00:09:18.820hey, you've done that, pass it on to somebody else. Charlie wouldn't hear it. He thought that
00:09:22.740that was a principal connection of, of what his task and purpose was.
00:09:27.100But tell me, cause you were a brawler when you first kind of start this
00:09:30.640activist, how, how, what was that environment and how tough is it?
00:09:34.520And how well prepared do you have to be?
00:09:36.660Cause they're looking for any chink in the armor.
00:09:39.480They're looking for any mistake. They're looking for any loss of temper, right?
00:09:43.440They're looking for, you know, to be authoritarian.
00:09:46.800go back to the beginning when you first saw Charlie and you were,
00:09:49.380you were an activist on these college campuses.
00:09:52.740Yeah, well, as an analogy, I've traveled all over the world. I've been in gunfights in Panama. I've been on the beaches of Calais, France, surrounded by illegals from North Africa that could have beaten me to death any moment they wanted to.
00:10:07.700I had more fear every time I walked onto a college campus because of the demons that have been invited in to the college campuses across America.
00:10:17.100There is a level of violence that is encouraged, that is fostered.
00:10:21.900There's a cancer on our college campuses that you can't really understand unless you've actually been there and gone through it.
00:10:28.940My armor, and we talk about this, every one of these battles you go into is building that armor that we put on that full armor of God as we walk into these places.
00:10:38.760But your shield gets stronger as you go into these battles.
00:10:42.080And when you walk onto a college campus and you're surrounded by these vitriolic demons, these serpents that I've been spit on.
00:10:50.720I've been hit with sticks and bats and bottles.
00:10:53.620I've got scars all over my head and my ears.
00:10:55.860I've been, I mean, disgusting things, spit in my mouth.
00:10:58.440And just like the most vile, disgusting people in our country and on our planet today are
00:11:13.900They lose when we are able to have constructive dialogue, respectful dialogue.
00:11:18.580They lose because our ideas work and theirs don't.
00:11:21.360And so what they've done is they've taught a generation of young people that the way
00:11:25.520to defeat your enemy, i.e. me, you, Charlie, is to get them mad and to get them to fight you
00:11:32.540physically and then beat them up and chase them away and make sure that no one else has the nerve
00:11:36.960to come back and do that. What Charlie understood, what I understand, what you understand is that we
00:11:42.200defeat them by staying calm in those moments. We defeat them by showing God's love even when
00:11:47.280they're hating us. When they attack us violently, we stand our ground. We defeat their ideas and
00:11:52.820ultimately that's how you defeat this cancer in our society that's why charlie was so focused on
00:11:57.540this that cancer that what we see the outgrowth of that in politics when we see a mandami or you
00:12:03.120see uh el sayed or any of these guys that are coming up into politics that was all a cancer
00:12:08.640that was spread through some through jihadism uh through their through their mosques but also on
00:12:14.080college campuses if you don't rip that that root out you're you're fighting the symptoms later on
00:12:20.980You have to fight the disease. And that's where it is now. Unfortunately, it's even in elementary schools and high schools across America. But in particular, it's still universities because they have more control over, you know, an adult than they do a child.
00:12:33.720But that that that is why Charlie never gave up on colleges, because he understood that the only way we win in this nation is if we take that ground back, if we tear down the principalities and powers of darkness that have taken it over and we bring light back into it.
00:12:51.660And so, you know, he had to do it. I mean, it's one of those things I talk about in the book.
00:12:56.660I pray about where I go and what I do.
00:12:59.420And there's a place, if you're courageous, because, you know, Charlie walked in, he had
00:13:03.560fear every time he went into these places as well, but he, he had, he knew that he had
00:16:13.660Okay, welcome back, and thank you for joining us for our Labor Day special.
00:16:17.400As you know, every year, as I've said, we try to commemorate or think through our work and people that work in the working class in this country.
00:16:26.540We honor the MAGA movement and the nation by doing that.
00:16:29.660We thought this year, particularly in the run up of the one year anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, it would be important to focus what I think was one of Charlie's major attributes, which is his work ethic.
00:16:42.980And here's the amazing thing about it.
00:16:44.680It was a thing that was probably unseen because it was behind the scenes and what he did every day.
00:16:49.520I'm really honored to be joined by three of the individuals closer to him, Andrew Covett, Tyler Boyer, and, of course, Blake Neff.
00:16:59.460You know, people know about Charlie's spiritual nature, his political work, obviously the courage.
00:17:05.180One of the things that separated him, and I said this at the top of the show, that three people I've known pretty well, Andrew Breitbart, Charlie Kirk, and Donald Trump.
00:17:12.880One of the things that united them behind the scenes was this unrelenting work ethic.
00:17:19.920And so much of Charlie that seemed effortless when he just saw it on stage or he saw it at a rally or he started particularly in the cauldron, a crucible of these college debates, this kind of effortless demeanor, the charm, the humility, the graciousness, really being a classic American gentleman.
00:17:39.560And behind that was just a relentless work ethic every day.
00:17:44.160So, Andrew, I'll toss it to you, but Tyler, Blake, jump in.
00:17:47.420We'd just like to hear, the audience would love to hear stories, anecdotes for the three guys that know him best.
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00:29:20.640War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann.
00:29:24.060We're going to go back and we're going to revisit 2020 and also 2022, the dark night of the soul of Charlie Kirk and the turning point on all of his team when they tried to destroy him.
00:29:53.320One of the things that's always blew me away about Charlie, if I mention anything on the show or whatever, he'd text me later, give me a book, send me some articles.
00:30:10.760Charlie loved to point out that getting a degree didn't mean you learned anything, and on the flip side, that you could learn an unlimited amount without getting any degree.
00:30:20.020We were joking in the office earlier that Charlie's hobby, he'd get out after a long day of grinding at Turning Point and on the show and he'd go home and his way of winding down was to listen to Dennis Prager talk about the Bible or to do a Hillsdale College online course or to read whatever book he was getting into.
00:30:41.140He was always acquiring more information, acquiring more knowledge.
00:30:45.080He had a huge range of people he looked to as mentors, and that included academics.
00:31:33.480he would sometimes when we would travel a funny thing he would do if he wasn't preparing for any
00:31:38.580specific question or event sometimes he just liked to ask me to to go off on a subject i remember he
00:31:44.400once asked me blake why did the roman empire fall and i just started talking and what was really
00:31:49.500great when he really wanted to just squeeze everything out he that he could like a like a
00:31:54.000dish rag you know you'd say something for a few minutes and you'd go okay what else and then you
00:31:59.080just had to keep going until he stopped asking you what else hold on blake he would also dispatch
00:32:04.700blake to read really really big books yes that he didn't have time for i remember one on for
00:32:09.200example uh this was this was happening last year he wanted to get better on the israel palestine
00:32:13.620issue he knew that was just endless questions were coming out he said blake get here you go
00:32:18.560read the long book give me the shorter 100 150 page book find the best one wreck and he i found
00:32:23.940a few and i recommended to him and then i go off and i read the 800 page book and he had to give a
00:32:28.460book report to charlie and so that but but that's how charlie did he would divide and conquer he
00:32:33.480would talk to different people subject matter experts because he knew people expected him to
00:32:37.700know all of this stuff and uh and by the way i will say this search for knowledge really kicked
00:32:44.360off in a new way during covid because he couldn't go to college campuses and he was stuck at home
00:32:48.460and you know we couldn't have our events so he was just voraciously reading and consuming and
00:32:52.900consuming and that's when he went from like one podcast a day by the way in 2019 to then within
00:32:58.960a course of about 10 days he told me he goes we got to do three a week and then like two days
00:33:03.920later he goes we got to do five a week and then like two days later he's like we're doing 10
00:33:07.080episodes a week and and that was charlie that was the freaking crazy part it's like we were stuck
00:33:12.000between all this all this content that we're creating at turning point like the charlie kirk
00:33:16.360show alone is like hours and hours and hours and hours of content i mean it's like like what we're
00:33:21.860doing every single day and he's running turning point usa we're running turning point action
00:33:25.860we're going to events we're doing events on campus and then in addition to that he's reading all the
00:33:30.940time and the man is responding to literally hundreds of people on his phone all day long
00:33:36.100like on phone calls audience emails texting audience emails like he crammed probably a week's
00:33:43.860worth of work into oftentimes a day or 14 hours and there just isn't anyone i've ever seen that
00:33:50.860But hang on. But hang on. Let's let's talk. Let's talk about his process. Let's talk about that process, because one thing I tell about Charlie, he was growing every day.
00:34:00.160The cauldrons made him tougher and more focused, but also the search for knowledge.
00:34:04.460It was kind of this convergence. How did he how did he not just juggle it?
00:34:09.160How did he compartmentalize it and then have it back converge in his work in the moment when he had to go on a debate stage or when he went into the crucible of these college campuses?
00:34:19.260Or he was at the White House doing, you know, helping with the hiring or on the campaign, Tyler, where all of a sudden you guys shift from kind of the theoretical debates to actually the practicality of the nuts and bolts of turning out massive number of voters.
00:34:32.680How did he compartment it? And then how did he bring it all back together to really just he stuck the landing every time? Walk us through the process.
00:34:41.980before andrew answers this question because the process andrew can speak to but the the lead up
00:34:48.300to the process is that he hated wasting time charlie kirk was it was visceral was like if
00:34:54.660there was one thing that would tick off charlie kirk it would it would be wasting time like and
00:35:00.960not from a sense of like my time is more important and more valuable than yours that's not how he
00:35:04.820approached it at all it was just like we only have so many hours in a day and so many minutes
00:35:08.980in a day and i have all these things i'm doing and if we waste time then we're losing that was
00:35:13.820but that was hardwired into him yes i remember he got visibly ticked off i saw this you would
00:35:20.060waste i remember when we were in it was a trip to korea just before uh and we were driving from
00:35:26.420the event he was at to a dinner he was going to have with some some supporter of ours in korea
00:35:32.180and we get stuck in seoul traffic which you can probably imagine what the traffic is like in seoul
00:35:37.520south korea and he like you could just see him he was like really uncomfortable and at one point
00:35:43.000he's finally like i just need to get out of this car and like go on foot and i don't know that that
00:35:46.480saved any time the times i've seen charlie like not like be able like to lose it is like being
00:35:52.980trapped in a car yeah he hated being trapped i think because it was a wasted time in his mind
00:35:56.720right because he was so wasted time he could do nothing about and charlie was always anytime there
00:36:00.740was an obstacle he thought how do i solve this problem how can i do it so being wasting time
00:36:05.760and being powerless to change it, utter actual torture for him.
00:36:10.680When I first started working with Charlie,
00:36:12.980I got lambasted by him more than a couple of times
00:36:16.680because I was not being efficient enough with my words.
00:36:18.800I would talk in circles or I would be tangential
00:36:21.220and he would just bark at me like, what's the point?
00:37:17.720He's not Jewish, but he followed kind of – he needed a discipline, a framework to use.
00:37:22.060So when the sun would go down on Friday, he was with family time until Saturday night when the – and sometimes it was stretched on Saturday.
00:37:31.060but that's how he did it he had to structure his life that fine finally to to accomplish everything
00:37:36.500that he did and that's why you know he lived 31 years but he lived you know might as he couldn't
00:37:41.660say he lived 75 or 80 in those 31 years 10 lifetimes do you think do you think that that's
00:37:47.720a premonition that you do you think now you have some perspective to look back on it that the reason
00:37:53.880he ran so hard and there was such urgency of every second of every day with charlie something in his
00:37:59.940soul knew, I've only got so much time in this veil of tears? I mean, I do 100%. I didn't think
00:38:08.620about it in life. But when I looked back at it, it all made sense. You know, and there was a lot
00:38:13.700of those revelations. And I said this at the memorial, I said, it was almost like, I realized
00:38:18.140that, you know, that this is almost like the scales fell off my eyes, I could finally see what
00:38:22.340was really happening around me for eight years. And that was that, you know, that we called them
00:38:26.040prove me wrongs, but they were tent revivals and that the people flocked by the thousands to come
00:38:30.580here. And, you know, I realized that so much of what he was doing was God's providential hand
00:38:36.640because Charlie surrendered so completely to being used by God. He didn't care what he wanted. He
00:38:41.540wanted to know what God wanted of him. That's what he was really about. And yeah, it helped that he
00:38:46.640was wired to just, he had this way of speaking. I think a couple of God-given talents and then
00:38:51.480everything else he worked for, the God-given talents was he hated wasting time. He told me,
00:38:55.380I tried having fun once. I hated it. And, and, you know, that was just Charlie Kirk in a nutshell.
00:39:00.560But then, and then, and then, but then he, he had this way of speaking just extemporaneous speaking
00:39:07.160that, you know, I, I remember Bill Montgomery who helped him right at the beginning said that,
00:39:11.500you know, they would do these tea party rallies and everybody would be falling asleep. They'd
00:39:16.320be kind of like slouching in the chair. And then Charlie would get up to the stage, 18 year old
00:39:19.980kid, 19 year old. And all of a sudden it was like, everybody's ears perked up and they sat
00:39:24.880straight up in their chair because charlie could speak through to make you pay attention to him now
00:39:28.640that drove the liberals crazy but the people that had an open heart it pierced the noise and they
00:39:34.340could actually focus on what somebody was saying but i believe you knew i believe there was some
00:39:40.000sort of deeper knowing i don't know if blake agrees but whatever it was you think you think
00:39:46.780go ahead i would say whatever it is it's uh it was a blessing upon him because as you said he
00:39:56.060was able to it's it's crazy for me to think that charlie was several years younger than me because
00:40:02.460as so much of his life was packed into that and he had so many accomplishments so many things he
00:40:08.340did so many things he was present at and you just it's like he could play he had his hand upon
00:40:14.560American history, and we were blessed to have it there.
00:40:19.580What was the discipline he had to have, particularly the crucible or the cauldron of the modern
00:40:26.320college campus? I think it was Berkwan that said earlier in the show,
00:40:30.960there's no more, and Ben's been all over the world and been in dangerous situations in Central
00:40:35.920America, following the immigration invasion, all that, the illegal alien invasion. He said,
00:40:41.720there's no more dangerous place on earth than a college campus right what what discipline did it
00:40:47.900take for Charlie to be such a gentleman and to be so humble and just to take the kind of abuse from
00:40:54.600a lot of the people but also just the kind of the punks asking the questions all the time and he
00:40:59.840would always just come back and just this kind of what I would call just being a an American classic
00:41:04.100american gentleman well i'll tell you and it was a it was uh quite the experience going through
00:41:12.960from the beginning because remember when we first entered the the campus 2015 and before that like
00:41:19.960you couldn't even get conservative speakers on campus you couldn't do anything people forget
00:41:23.840over the last 10 11 years just how bad it was how bad it was before turning point came in and
00:41:29.520basically blew the doors open on the place and forced essentially uh all administrations to have
00:41:36.760to bend the knee and remember there was a the big executive order passed by by trump in the
00:41:42.280first administration that was a lot of our students because the kid got punched on campus at
00:41:46.640i believe it was berkeley i remember that and and and so there was a we we intended to go to
00:41:53.960the most difficult places charlie intended to go to the most difficult places including like cal
00:41:59.000Berkeley and other places to, to prove something, which is that, like, if you can't handle, like,
00:42:05.260it's so easy to go into the easy places, the community colleges, the conservative campuses,
00:42:11.120and, you know, look like you're doing something right. The tough thing to do is to, to actually
00:42:16.840go put a table next to the Bernie Sanders table and give kids a clear difference, right? Here's
00:42:25.280what we're doing. Here's what they're doing. And that's what built Turning Point, the hard work.
00:42:30.800I'll tell you, Steve, you know, a lot of people say they want to be in this space. So they want
00:42:34.280to do what Charlie did. And you talk about the cauldron, you know, I was just reading the story
00:42:39.260of the garden of Gethsemane and Jesus is there. And he's so stressed about the burden that he's
00:42:43.800about to, you know, the cup that he's about to drink from that his skin, the blood appears on
00:42:48.280his skin, the stress, the weight that was upon him. And I will tell you, Charlie's not Jesus,
00:42:52.900jesus jesus i'm not saying that but what i will tell you is and i know we both saw this
00:42:57.380the struggles that he overcame the stress and the burden that he bore for the sake of the movement
00:43:03.700in the country the moments that i saw charlie at his lowest and how that formed him in such a deep
00:43:09.340profound way i'll never forget it yeah because hang on one second we're gonna take a short
00:43:15.280commercial break i want to come that let's come back to the dark night of the soul you know just
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00:44:41.640kit today that's prepare with bannon.com do it and do it today war room here's your host stephen k
00:44:51.240bannon i want to thank birch gold for being our sponsor of this uh labor day special charlie kirk
00:44:59.460the work ethic also patriot mobile that were with the turning point team and charlie kirk from the
00:45:04.860very beginning glenn story and uh jenny story make sure uh you support both birch gold and
00:45:10.500and Patriot Mova, and Patriot will be with us out at the convention this week.
00:45:15.280I just want to mention here, 22, people forget that, the Cary Lake,
00:45:19.400every night you guys will be on in the vote count, just extraordinary work.
00:45:22.680And you guys were staying on air, you know, eight, 10 hours a day.
00:47:09.960And by the way, the lessons you learned there and the work that you guys took in the next two years delivered the greatest comeback in American politics,
00:47:19.040the substrate of that was the turning point, turn out the vote effort, particularly for low propensity, lower information voters.
00:47:26.060Real quickly, guys, we've got a heart out here.
00:47:53.580He was watching. He would message me watching Monday Night Football. What set Charlie apart was how efficient he was at using his time. He was not a guy who, as all three of us are guilty of, pulls out his phone, looks at it, distracted. Oh, it takes a minute to regain his focus. He was always lasered in on what needed to be done in the moment.