Jeremy Carl is back on The Charlie Kirk Show to talk about his confirmation hearing, and why he stood up for himself in one of the most contentious hearings in recent memory. The show is sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, hour two, the Charlie Kirk Show is underway.
00:01:40.000And, you know, I've just was, as I said, as you said, it was an honor to be nominated and looking forward to hopefully being able to join.
00:01:48.000Yeah, well, so, and Blake, I mean, feel free to chime in here, but you had one of the more eventful nomination hearings that we've seen in recent memory.
00:01:58.000And boy, did they come after you with just, I mean, it was like hyperbole.
00:02:04.000I talked to you before that hearing and you said, like, I'm going to have to sit there and just get, you know, raked over it for a couple hours.
00:03:06.000And that was actually the most, the part I was most proud of about the hearing is there's, you know, it's a high-pressure environment when you go in there.
00:03:13.000And even if you're somebody like me who's certainly spoken in public fora on many occasions, when you have a bunch of very hostile senators controlling the microphone and saying, you know, have you no decency?
00:03:27.000You know, how dare you have that view?
00:03:30.000It's very easy to kind of recant or go back.
00:03:34.000I stood by my beliefs, which I certainly do believe very strongly.
00:03:40.000And so, you know, I kept my integrity.
00:03:42.000That was really the most important thing to me going into the hearing.
00:03:46.000And just the sort of avalanche of positive correspondence and comments that I got afterward really convinced me that obviously, not just morally, but practically, that was the right thing to do.
00:04:03.000You were one of the people he really wanted to get into the government.
00:04:07.000He was very excited about it, really fought for you.
00:04:09.000But you're facing, obviously, a ton of opposition from Democrats.
00:04:13.000But what's been frustrating to us to hear is there's been some skepticism from one of the Republicans on the committee, Senator Curtis from Utah.
00:04:21.000And his expressed reason was very odd to us.
00:04:25.000He believes you were not supportive enough of America's policy towards Israel.
00:04:31.000And he basically said you would be bad for that role because you're going to the United Nations.
00:04:35.000Now, that's shocking to us because we know Charlie was a huge supporter of Israel and us, you know, protecting them in the Middle East.
00:04:43.000So the floor is yours to respond to Senator Curtis's concerns.
00:04:48.000Yeah, and I want to be first sympathetic to Senator Curtis.
00:04:51.000I mean, I think if you were primarily viewing this from the media oppo dumps that were happening in the weeks up to the hearing and then certainly the comments the Democrats were making, you know, maybe you would be skeptical.
00:05:06.000But I certainly would point, as you note, to Charlie's support of me.
00:05:09.000And Charlie was really, of course, a great supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
00:05:14.000And I also, of course, worked as the right-hand man for a decade for the late Secretary of State, George Schultz, who was Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State and was also sort of second to none as a champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
00:05:28.000So I'd certainly point to things like that and the fact that those two gentlemen chose to be in my corner over a number of years, Secretary Schultz and Charlie, of course, both sadly no longer with us.
00:05:44.000And then obviously, just personally within the UN system itself, I mean, there's no question it's a hotbed of anti-Semitism.
00:05:50.000The focus on Israel they have there is absolutely absurd and ridiculous.
00:05:55.000It wastes time from actual productive things that could be accomplished.
00:06:00.000And there's no question that we are their biggest ally in that system where they often don't have other allies.
00:06:07.000And we, just like any other close ally we have, we have to be very supportive of them in that context.
00:06:13.000And I would certainly just say that not just because of Senator Curtis, but I would have said it if I could have gotten more than two words edgewise in the hearing itself.
00:06:22.000Well, by the way, I mean, much has been made.
00:06:25.000You grew up Jewish, apparently, but it's also, it doesn't mean that you don't have critiques of the status quo relationship or the way that money flows or any of that stuff.
00:06:36.000All of that stuff is on the table, but to say, you know, you are broadly supportive of that ally and of that relationship, their right to exist, their right to defend themselves.
00:06:45.000So I don't know what the, even what the to-do was about, to be perfectly honest.
00:06:49.000It's like, yeah, you can have critiques without basically saying, hey, we need to blow up this whole relationship or something.
00:06:56.000And I mean, there's, I mean, I had a huge amount of support very publicly on the eve of the hearing and afterwards from prominent members of the pro-Israel community.
00:07:05.000All of our UN ambassadors were supportive.
00:07:09.000The global envoy we have for addressing anti-Semitism issues was supportive.
00:07:16.000I have at times said some things that were critical of some sub-aspect of it, but none of that really impinges on what we're doing in the UN.
00:07:26.000There's no question that for the actual job that I would be put in, if I'm confirmed by the Senate, that I would be forswear for every element of the U.S.-Israel alliance.
00:07:42.000It's really obvious that, frankly, the behavior toward Israel in the UN system is egregious, and we should be fully supportive of them in that context.
00:07:51.000It's been so galling to me to see this happen because we have to have all these Democrats on stage posturing about this when they're the party that's allied with Mamdani.
00:08:00.000They're the party that has people routinely demanding boycotts who are routinely saying like their own there's one big villain in the Middle East.
00:08:10.000And they're endlessly using this as part of their wider front, as you're well aware, that they attack Israel basically because they see it as Western, because they see it as European, because they see it as they code it as white, as we say.
00:08:24.000And as we see, this administration is standing up for those things.
00:08:27.000That's why Secretary of State Marco Rubio, we were just touting his speech in Munich where he says, we are going to confidently stand for Western civilization.
00:08:36.000And we have to be doing that at the UN.
00:08:39.000And you're one of Charlie and President Trump's picked men to do that at the UN.
00:08:58.000I mean, obviously, the hearing just happened.
00:09:00.000I've got, I don't want to sort of name names because the process is going on, but I've got some senators who are very strongly in my corner and who I think would love to make a meeting happen so that I could sort of clarify a bit more of my background and interests and in these sorts of issues to Senator Curtis.
00:09:21.000I really do feel like if he gives me a little bit of time to speak with him, I think he'd be very reassured in this area.
00:09:27.000So I hope to get the chance to do just that.
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00:10:48.000He obviously was a version of the Salem witch trials at the Senate for Democrat counterparts there.
00:10:57.000So you didn't get to talk about the substance of the actual job and what makes you competent, which is, I think, the whole point.
00:11:04.000They wanted to distract from the fact that you are one of the most articulate, competent, I would say, defenders of American values, of President Trump's platform, his foreign policy.
00:11:16.000They didn't want you to talk about any of that.
00:11:18.000So, you know, the floor is now yours, Jeremy.
00:11:22.000Why do you want this job and what do you hope to accomplish?
00:11:27.000And I was actually at the beginning of this process, which was further back than any of you would probably believe, even if I told you, I was given a choice of a few different portfolios that I might have had and really, after thinking about it a little bit, chose this one as a place where I could really make an impact.
00:11:45.000Because look, the United Nations and certainly many other international organizations have been a longtime source of frustration to those of us who are America first, to those of us who believe in American sovereignty.
00:11:56.000I mean, there's no question that as President Trump has said, they have great potential, but they have not lived up to that potential.
00:12:03.000But I think there's a lot of things that we could be doing, need to be doing in these bodies.
00:12:08.000There's sort of a horseshoe effect, I think, a little bit here, where the people who are sort of most opposed to the UN and the United States and the people who are actually inside the UN kind of want the same thing, which is to have a bunch of shop talk and not really a lot of useful concrete action on the things that the UN should be doing, which really primarily should focus around keeping the peace and certainly not being a global government.
00:12:32.000What I want to do is have the UN do a limited set of things and actually do them effectively and advance U.S. interests in them.
00:12:39.000So that means we want to be countering China and Chinese influence everywhere we can.
00:12:43.000We want to be in the standards bodies and making sure we elect Americans in those standards bodies.
00:12:49.000There's 56 different, I believe, standards bodies within the UN system, ranging from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the International Telecommunications Union.
00:12:59.000People don't necessarily think about them in the U.S. that much, but they actually end up often having enormous influence on what we do.
00:13:08.000You start with the U.S.-Israel relationship, which I talked about there, and we need to be very good protectors of Israel and other allies.
00:13:15.000And there's really just, you know, it's a huge organization.
00:13:19.000There's so many different moving parts.
00:13:22.000But I think aggressively moving on issues of U.S. sovereignty, trying to stop the migration abuse that we've seen that has led to open borders throughout the world, which is often enabled by the UN system.
00:13:36.000Those would be kind of the priorities that I have if I'm confirmed for the job, which of course I didn't get to talk about during the hearing.
00:13:44.000You know, there was that powerful moment in Secretary Rubio's speech where he says the UN has the ability to do a lot of good.
00:14:04.000You know, it took those European partners coming together along with the U.S. to even get peace negotiations, a discussion to even begin between Ukraine and Russia.
00:14:15.000What did you make of Secretary Rubio's speech?
00:14:23.000I mean, well, first of all, I'm glad you mentioned it was an absolutely terrific speech.
00:14:26.000I'm not just saying that because he may be my boss at some point in the near future, but I thought it was outstanding.
00:14:33.000I thought it did a great job of having a really hopeful vision and also really stressing the importance of American sovereignty and American power at the same time.
00:14:42.000I thought the critique of the UN was right on, and it really gets to what I was just saying earlier, which is, well, okay, is the UN going to just sit there and be a place that talks shop and doesn't actually get anything done?
00:14:56.000If I were in the UN, that wouldn't really strike me as something that would be enhancing my power and credibility.
00:15:02.000And so what I want to do is to have, hopefully be able to effectuate under U.S. leadership some internal reforms so that we can act in places like Venezuela and we're not just sort of hamstrung by these infinitely kind of back and forth processes that are all just about virtue signaling.
00:15:22.000Yeah, it's really great to emphasize this because it's already bad enough.
00:15:26.000People might be asking, why are we having this hearing about you?
00:15:28.000It's because you were nominated way back last spring and then the Senate's taken a while on a lot of nominees and thankfully they resubmitted you again.
00:15:37.000The White House has really stood by you and that's one reason it's so important to get you in.
00:15:41.000Admirably stood by their people, even where they faced some bad faith opposition.
00:15:47.000And I want to make sure we get to this.
00:15:49.000So, especially if you are in Utah, we want you to call Senator Curtis's offices.
00:16:13.000Let's repeat that for the podcast people: 202-224-5251.
00:16:20.000Say you're calling your Utah voter if you're from there, and you say, I'm calling about Jeremy Carl's nomination to be Assistant Secretary of State for international organizations.
00:16:32.000Mention that he was one of Charlie's favorites.
00:16:36.000He really wanted him in that post, and you want the senator to honor Charlie.
00:16:40.000I want to underscore, be respectful, respectful.
00:16:43.000And I also want to underscore that Jeremy didn't know we were doing this.
00:17:29.000We know that he's a really strong guy and will be good in this.
00:17:32.000And I'm just, you know, incredibly appreciative of the support of President Trump and Secretary Rubio to really stand strong at a time when a lot of others would have folded.
00:17:41.000Yeah, well, and listen, the viewpoints that the Democrats were hitting you with, you know, whether that interchange you had with Corey Booker was hilarious to me.
00:17:50.000You believed that, you know, you held your ground?
00:17:53.000But it was just amazing to me that this was like shocking to them.
00:17:56.000These are down the middle, completely mainstream conservative beliefs that you hold.
00:18:03.000And the more that they're going to try and gaslight the public in thinking that mainstream conservative beliefs, by the way, proven, we've got a billion clips that prove all of these positions, you know, whatever.
00:18:15.000The fact that they're still trying to act surprised about them at this point, Jeremy, is really, that's why I said I felt like I was in 2021, 2019, something like that, 2014 even.
00:18:52.000We expect to see you at the State Department soon.
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00:20:06.000So, the team apparently has been getting all these requests from you guys about kind of some of our bestsellers on the charliekirkstore.com, CharlieKirkstore.com of our merch.
00:20:18.000And so, they've re-released all of these ones.
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00:20:25.000Jesus Saves, Live Free, another one of our all-time bestsellers.
00:20:29.000Here I am, which Charlie specifically requested to get that made, and then the Charlie Kirk Show T as well.
00:20:36.000So, go to charliekirkstore.com to check out all of those.
00:20:40.000The team always is like, you got to bring it up.
00:22:38.000I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
00:22:40.000Sean, I don't know if you saw the news, but if you have any thoughts on Robert Duvall, feel free.
00:22:45.000Yeah, so my favorite role of his, it wasn't on the big screen, it was in the TV mini-series of Lonesome Dove, which I think is the greatest American novel ever written.
00:23:16.000He tells you how to make a perfect mint and julep, taught to him by Fidel Castro.
00:23:21.000All the obviously the Godfather series, Open Range, little appreciated movie of his, Days of Thunder, which is where Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman met and ended up getting married.
00:23:34.000But Rubin's racing, son, because Tom Cruise is complaining that they keep bumping his car.
00:26:53.000The DGA and our candidates are winning everywhere.
00:26:56.000Many Americans feel like the pendulum swung too far during the Biden administration, and it swung way too far during the Trump administration.
00:27:04.000And what they want is an America where they can wake up every morning and not be worried about its future.
00:27:31.000They understand they cannot get elected saying the things that they believe.
00:27:36.000So now there's a long campaign to get them to say things that they don't believe but that sound good in the hopes that they can get elected and then not do any of those things.
00:27:44.000So you have Obama talking about dealing with the homeless problem.
00:27:48.000Democrats don't care about dealing with the homeless problem.
00:27:51.000But you have to say that because people are sick of it.
00:27:53.000They don't like being accosted by crazy drug addicts on the street.
00:27:56.000So yeah, we'll pretend to care about that.
00:27:58.000With Hillary, you have to pretend to care about the borders because that sounds sane.
00:28:03.000No, they don't care about the borders at all.
00:28:05.000And then you had Bashir, who's really, I don't even want to say he's a left-wing nut job.
00:28:11.000He's the son of a popular former Kentucky politician, and that's the only reason he's in office.
00:28:17.000But he let the mask slip there, especially with Spanberger, who's a total left-wing nut job, saying, look, we just have to pretend to believe these things and say things that sound nice.
00:28:26.000And then when we get in office, we don't have to do any of it.
00:28:59.000Yeah, so I mean, they're all but banning ICE.
00:29:03.000They're undoing everything Youngkin did to reform schools and on the trans issue.
00:29:08.000But I will have to say, in a certain real politics sense, I admire the Democrats for what they're doing because they don't get stuck in this trap that Republicans get in.
00:29:18.000When they get in office, if they only win by a single vote, they do 100% of their agenda.
00:29:24.000And it's why they're able to make such massive sweeping cultural and political gains in the country.
00:29:29.000You look at Obamacare, that thing was a political disaster.
00:29:33.000They wanted to remake the country and they had to do it by remaking health care.
00:29:37.000And so I think Republicans actually can learn a little something from this: if you get in and you use power for your ends to reward your friends and constituency, you will be rewarded long term.
00:29:50.000And so Democrats lie and they cheat and they steal, but it works for them.
00:29:54.000Yeah, I mean, this was just a few days after getting sworn in.
00:29:58.000New 4.3% sales tax on Uber Eats, Amazon, et cetera.
00:30:02.000New sales tax on admissions to a wide variety of businesses.
00:30:06.000Create two new higher tax brackets of 8% and 10% on people making over $600,000.
00:30:11.000A new 10% bracket for anyone making over a million, 3.8% investment tax on top of state income taxes.
00:30:16.000Raise the hotel tax, new personal property tax on landscaping equipment, ban gas-powered leaf blowers.
00:30:23.000Of course, because California has just paved the way on so much of this.
00:30:28.000Make it illegal to approach somebody at an abortion clinic.
00:30:30.000Extend the time absentee ballots can be received after election day to three days.
00:30:35.000Allow people to cast their votes electronically through the internet.
00:30:38.000I mean, on and on and on it goes, not to mention their redistricting fight where they're going to have a single Republican district.
00:30:45.000Now, it looks like that one has at least been stayed for a little while.
00:30:50.000They'll probably get it, what, in 2028, but it's not going to make it in time for the midterms.
00:30:53.000I mean, they just went full radical to your point.
00:30:56.000But here's what's crazy: now you see the leaders of the party signaling to the base saying, hey, go a little bit lighter, a little lighter touch, fly under the radar, don't be so radical.
00:32:40.000And this is apparently all keeping with this Transparency Act.
00:32:45.000And it gave them a 30-day statutory guideline to get this stuff out.
00:32:50.000And they have, and it feels like all hell's breaking loose.
00:32:53.000If you just look on X, it's like allegations are flying everywhere.
00:32:56.000People like Janice Joplin's in there, Elvis.
00:32:59.000Like, if you've been mentioned at all in a link of an article, in an email from Jeffrey Epstein or somebody else, you are mentioned in this.
00:33:39.000This is a guy who's been funding hoax after hoax on behalf of the Democrats.
00:33:43.000You had Reid Hoffman, who is BFF with Jeffrey Epstein.
00:33:46.000You had Kathy Rummler, who is Obama's ethics czar and his White House counsel, who is Epstein's fixer, who is involved in working with him to help mitigate scandals facing the Obama administration, even a secret service scandal.
00:34:02.000And you look at all this and you're like, man, this is a pretty common theme here.
00:34:06.000Like, Democrats were completely in bed with this guy.
00:34:09.000And it's been really interesting to watch the media cover this and do everything they can to not mention Reed Hoffman, who is in up to his neck in Epstein nonsense and now wants to pretend, oh, he was just a casual pen pal with the guy.
00:34:23.000Yeah, so this is from Kanakoa the Great.
00:34:26.000He said, Reed Hoffman stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's ranch, private island, in Manhattan apartment.
00:35:09.000They called each other very close friends, discussed the visits to Epstein's properties, private jet shopping, gift exchanges, and talked about how much they missed each other.
00:35:20.000That is five years of emails if they emailed once every day.
00:35:24.000I mean, so this is apparently the craziest email.
00:35:28.000Again, shout out to Kanakoa the Great on X. In January 2015, as allegations that Epstein trafficked Virginia Roberts to Prince Andrew went global, Hoffman offered to help Epstein with his negative press coverage.
00:35:49.000It also mentioned prominent individuals who had previously been linked to Epstein, including President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, former White House counsel Kathy Rumler, and billionaire business magnate Les Wexner.
00:36:35.000And there's not a whole lot of guidance on what's true, what's mere hearsay, what's out of context, just mentioning of names.
00:36:44.000And it does feel like a lot of the people, you didn't want to listen to him at the time, have been proven right that people are just getting smeared.
00:36:51.000And like out of nowhere, innocent people are getting hurt.
00:36:55.000And some of the victims are getting hurt too.
00:36:57.000Yeah, well, you had Ro Khanna, another Reed Hoffman Democrat ally, go to the floor, you know, along with Thomas Massey, and they outed, you know, six people who were on there as people who were doing stuff with Epstein.
00:37:10.000They were random people in a lineup that was tangentially related to Epstein.
00:37:45.000And I guess my frustration is after all this time, after all these years, I just assume all the documents they had, if they ever even had them, that tell us those things, that answer those questions, are gone.
00:37:57.000And I just find the whole thing maddening and frustrating because I feel like that's the one thing people want to know.
00:38:25.000This was all soft power and behind the scenes.
00:38:28.000If that's what it was, then the question is like, how far does it go?
00:38:30.000Because if it's a much more casual arrangement where he just deals in information sometimes, that's, I guess, then you ask, what's the big scandal there?
00:38:40.000Because the claim is, of course, that he was doing intel ops that might blackmail people and trap people, get really involved in the family.