The Charlie Kirk Show - May 31, 2023


A Debt Ceiling Civil War? with Steve Bannon and Sen. Mike Lee


Episode Stats


Length

35 minutes

Words per minute

183.40623

Word count

6,569

Sentence count

479

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Steve Bannon joins the show to talk about the debt ceiling and why it's the most important vote of the Congress this week. Plus, we hear from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-New York) on why they don't want to vote on the Democratic debt ceiling bill.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's on the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:01.000 Steve Bannon starts the show off.
00:00:03.000 What's going on with the debt ceiling?
00:00:04.000 What are the action items?
00:00:05.000 Then we have Senator Mike Lee to explain the Senate perspective on the bill.
00:00:09.000 Email us your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with TurningPointUSA at tpusa.com.
00:00:15.000 Start a high school or college chapter today at tpusa.com.
00:00:21.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:23.000 Support the Charlie Kirk show, charliekirk.com slash support and get involved and come to our Young Women's Leadership Summit next week in Dallas, tpusa.com slash YWLS.
00:00:36.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:37.000 Here we go.
00:00:38.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:40.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:42.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:45.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:48.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:49.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:50.000 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.
00:00:59.000 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.
00:01:08.000 That's why we are here.
00:01:10.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.
00:01:20.000 Incredibly consequential day, stacked with expert guests.
00:01:23.000 Joining us now is Steve Bannon.
00:01:25.000 Steve, great show today.
00:01:26.000 Let's get right into it.
00:01:27.000 What are you hearing?
00:01:28.000 Where do we stand?
00:01:29.000 What is the latest?
00:01:30.000 What is the call to action for our audience?
00:01:31.000 Steve, the floor is yours.
00:01:34.000 By the way, Charlie Kirk, what a lineup you got today.
00:01:37.000 You've got some of the most important.
00:01:38.000 Plus, you've got the Senate.
00:01:39.000 You segue over to a couple of the big hitters in the Senate where this thing's going to go.
00:01:43.000 So, look, this is a fight.
00:01:44.000 This is the most important vote that'll be in this Congress, a defining moment, not just for American conservatism, but for America itself.
00:01:53.000 To boil it down to its bare essence, they want to take away all the power from the grassroots movement here, the MAGA movement, and just the American people.
00:02:04.000 Right now, the people are the head of the credits community.
00:02:06.000 That's why they hate it.
00:02:07.000 The American people are making decisions about the debt ceiling.
00:02:10.000 They are uncapping it and giving it two years, two years with no limits.
00:02:15.000 We could have four or five, $6 trillion in deficits, added directly to the debt ceiling and be in an economic firestorm.
00:02:22.000 And that's what the Republican, this locks in all the programs of Biden.
00:02:28.000 The 1.5 to 2.1 trillion that you're hearing on Fox all the time from CBO is a tissue of lies.
00:02:33.000 It's all false.
00:02:35.000 And I can point you to Nancy Mace's Twitter feed.
00:02:37.000 I mean, people who are not considered ultra-maga extremists, people are not in the House Freedom Caucus.
00:02:42.000 Many of the rising stars that have had McCarthy's blessing heretofore, the Wesley Hunts, the Byron Donalds, the Nancy Maces, they're all coming out and they're eviscerating this because they understand it's not sellable.
00:02:55.000 This is an unlimited, this locks in all of Biden's radical plans.
00:02:59.000 It is uncapped.
00:03:01.000 Two years.
00:03:02.000 And most importantly, it takes the power.
00:03:04.000 The numbers are so powerful.
00:03:06.000 CNN's showing you as more people understand how the system works, as more people understand how they run these deficits, have the Federal Reserve funded by printing money, and the rest of the world's revolting against that.
00:03:18.000 That is how you overthrow the ruling class in this country.
00:03:22.000 And they are doing a, this is their redoubt.
00:03:25.000 And so they don't want it to be one year.
00:03:27.000 The first bill had one year.
00:03:28.000 So next May, we would have a national conversation during a presidential election.
00:03:33.000 The first time in history, we'd have a national conversation about the finances of the country, about this orgy of spending, about our balance sheet, about interest rates, about the Federal Reserve.
00:03:43.000 It would all be there.
00:03:44.000 We would actually have a discussion of why we have gone from a republic now to an empire and have a deep, meaningful discussion with the left, with the centrists, and with the right, what this country needs from the people talking about it, not the media puppets, not the uniparty, not the ruling class, not the lords of Wall Street, not the tech oligarchs in Silicon Valley.
00:04:08.000 The American people having a frank, detailed, and quite frankly intense conversation at the beginning of a presidential election, the entire presidential campaign would be no, they do not want that.
00:04:19.000 So they kick it what they've always do.
00:04:20.000 They kick it past the election into 2025.
00:04:23.000 More than anything, this shows that they have complete and total contempt for you, for your intelligence. 1.00
00:04:30.000 They think you're a group of morons. 1.00
00:04:32.000 They think you're just going to listen to watch Fox News and have their drivel out there about this historic, we're bending the curve. 1.00
00:04:38.000 This is the first time it's been less than a year before.
00:04:40.000 Those are all lies, demonstrable lies.
00:04:43.000 And don't take it from me.
00:04:44.000 There are now dozens of reports up there from Heritage, from Club for Growth, from Freedom Works, from Nancy Mace, from Byron Donalds, people who would not be normally allies of the war room.
00:04:56.000 Take it from them, read it from them.
00:04:58.000 And what everybody should do, because this is what they fear, you should get on the phone, and particularly if you're in a Red District, you should tell your congressman and said, look, let me just cut to the chase. 0.62
00:05:09.000 Very simple.
00:05:11.000 If you vote yes for this, I will put my shoulder to the wheel because the first issue I have to deal with is you.
00:05:18.000 I will make sure that you're primaried.
00:05:20.000 I will make sure you lose.
00:05:22.000 And I will make sure that you're signing your political death warrant today when you vote yes on this.
00:05:26.000 I hate to be so brutally frank about that, but this is power politics, and this is where we are.
00:05:31.000 So, Steve, one of the points of confusion we're receiving is Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan.
00:05:37.000 Can you help me understand and add some clarity?
00:05:40.000 Why is Thomas Massey superfiscal hawk and Marjorie Taylor Greene, people we really respect, voicing support for this bill?
00:05:47.000 Steve, what are we missing?
00:05:49.000 I don't think you're missing anything.
00:05:50.000 I think, look, people have made their own decisions.
00:05:52.000 Congressman Massey, like he said last night, as an engineer, he wanted to, you know, as a politician, he wanted to vote against it, but the engineer in him took over, and that's what he voted.
00:06:03.000 I think people are very disappointed in that.
00:06:06.000 You know, Congressman Massey's a little idiosyncratic, and I think people have to deal with that.
00:06:11.000 But more importantly than Massey, we got retraded on the deal.
00:06:14.000 The deal at the beginning that they signed off on to have McCarthy as leader, it had to have unanimity, unanimity coming out of the rules committee.
00:06:24.000 You had to, you had Coleman, or you had Ralph Norman, and you had Chip Roy, who renosed that was supposed to be able to carry it.
00:06:35.000 There was always, it had to be unanimity among the Republicans.
00:06:37.000 This was a bait and switch by, because they just suspended the deal they had made because they must do this.
00:06:43.000 This is the uniparty.
00:06:45.000 This is the cartel.
00:06:47.000 They need that money, federal money spent at the $7 trillion level for the budgets like mother's milk.
00:06:53.000 They don't exist without it.
00:06:55.000 And they understand that the American people are standing in front of them.
00:06:58.000 So they just, they retraded the deal.
00:07:00.000 Massey was terrible, but more terrible, worse than that is what they retraded the deal.
00:07:05.000 Now you're going to have debate on that this afternoon in a general vote.
00:07:08.000 This is a power move.
00:07:11.000 We are fighting a spiritual war, but the spiritual war often manifests itself in concrete actions.
00:07:17.000 And that's where we are.
00:07:18.000 This is a defining moment in American, modern American political history because we scraped through and got a, we won 10 or 12 seats pickup.
00:07:27.000 We have a five-seat majority.
00:07:29.000 And from day one of this Congress, this audience, your audience, the populist nationalist MAGA, have exerted tremendous influence, and they hate that every second of the day.
00:07:40.000 And so now they have come out with this tissue of lies.
00:07:43.000 Yes.
00:07:43.000 You have had certain people that are supposedly MAGA in the House Freedom Caucus that are out there trying to hawk the spin.
00:07:49.000 Everybody's going to have to weigh and measure that.
00:07:51.000 So there'll be plenty of time for accountability after that.
00:07:53.000 But I will say this, and particularly for the House Freedom Caucus people and people in red districts, the citizens should weigh and measure it and make your own decision.
00:08:03.000 I'm not here to tell you what to do.
00:08:05.000 You should make your own decisions.
00:08:07.000 But I believe, particularly in red districts, that where the primary is the general, that if they vote yes, they've decided.
00:08:15.000 They've told you what they think of you. 1.00
00:08:16.000 They think you're a moron. 1.00
00:08:17.000 They think you will believe this tissue of lies. 1.00
00:08:20.000 There's not one penny.
00:08:21.000 If they believed of the 1.5 trillion to 2.1 trillion, what CBO and all these things are spending, if they believed that there was a penny, not a dollar, not $10, if they believed it was a penny of real savings, of real cuts, they would put a number in the cap.
00:08:38.000 They would be very comfortable with that.
00:08:39.000 They picked some number.
00:08:41.000 It has no cap for a reason.
00:08:44.000 They understand this is going to be a death spiral and the debt is going to be raised.
00:08:48.000 And you say, well, why would they do that, Steve?
00:08:49.000 Why would they do it against a country?
00:08:50.000 Because the lobbyist apparatus, what we call the swamp or the cartel, it feeds off of this spending of the federal government.
00:08:59.000 Why do you think of the nine richest counties in this nation?
00:09:03.000 That's right.
00:09:04.000 Seven of them, seven of them are in Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, and Maryland.
00:09:09.000 That's right.
00:09:09.000 Seven of the nine wealthy.
00:09:11.000 What does this make of Silicon Valley and New York?
00:09:14.000 We got the global financial capital up in New York.
00:09:17.000 We got the manufacturing up in Detroit.
00:09:19.000 We got the Silicon Valley.
00:09:20.000 We got the greatest source of value in this nation's history and mankind's history out in Silicon Valley.
00:09:26.000 You got new things in Austin, Texas, and in Phoenix all over Denver.
00:09:29.000 You got them sprouting up all Miami.
00:09:31.000 Why the seven of the nine in Washington, D.C.?
00:09:34.000 Because they get now a $7 trillion private equity fund every year.
00:09:39.000 And by this vote today, you're giving them a free runway.
00:09:43.000 That's right.
00:09:43.000 If they believed in anything, they would put a cap on it.
00:09:47.000 If they believed in anything, they would say, yes, let's just do it for a year.
00:09:51.000 And next year, let's have another debate of how it went, of how it went.
00:09:54.000 By the way, we didn't love the first deal, but we said, hey, it's a $1.5 trillion.
00:09:58.000 We don't want to increase it at all, but we'll do it to $1.5 trillion, right?
00:10:02.000 Because they say that should be the year.
00:10:03.000 And next year, whatever comes first.
00:10:05.000 It would be the railhead of a presidential election.
00:10:08.000 They saw the CNN numbers.
00:10:10.000 60% of the American people said no increase unless massive cuts.
00:10:14.000 45% of Democrats said that.
00:10:16.000 As people find out more about this, you can't continue to do this.
00:10:19.000 You've got to have cuts, real cuts, not ephemeral, phony, fake cuts.
00:10:24.000 So this is where we are.
00:10:25.000 That's why it's a hard no.
00:10:27.000 The Warhawks, the neocons that were unwilling to come to the table and budge at all to the sacred cow of the defense budget, which looks more and more as the invade other countries budget.
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00:11:17.000 Reports show us that Lindsey Graham was fired up throughout all these negotiations demanding increases to the military budget. 1.00
00:11:24.000 It's conceivable that we could have got an even better, you know, better deal, domestic spending, all that stuff, if we were willing to actually play ball on the defense budget.
00:11:34.000 Steve, we're not negotiating in good faith.
00:11:36.000 If we're not willing to actually talk about why do we have military bases in Peru, in Somalia, in every part of the world.
00:11:42.000 Steve, can you mention this?
00:11:43.000 Because the UNIPA has certain sacrosanct third rail sacred cows you're not allowed to touch, including the Department of Offense, less actually the Department of Defense.
00:11:53.000 Your thoughts, Steve Bannon.
00:11:55.000 Well, you know, as a veteran, and I take this very seriously, the defense budget is out of control.
00:12:01.000 We have to rethink the entire way that we conduct not just foreign policy, but national security.
00:12:08.000 We have to get off of this everything focused on kinetic war.
00:12:11.000 We have to start to think of the unrestricted warfare that the Chinese Communist Party is at war with us. 0.72
00:12:15.000 That's information warfare, cyber warfare, and particularly economic warfare.
00:12:19.000 We can bring down the existential threat, the greatest existential threat we have besides, as President Trump would say, the administrative and deep state here in our own nation, the Leviathan, the Chinese Communist Party. 0.96
00:12:30.000 I can do that.
00:12:30.000 And I've had experts on the show in six months cutting off from capital and technology in the United States, our market, our capital markets, and a technology.
00:12:38.000 The CC, Lao Beijing overthrows them.
00:12:41.000 We can't continue on.
00:12:42.000 I think the defense budget in this bill is going to be $900 billion.
00:12:46.000 And essentially, that's a lie.
00:12:49.000 That's a lie.
00:12:49.000 Because when you look at the real, all of it from the different departments, over a trillion dollars today, we cannot have a trillion-dollar defense budget.
00:12:58.000 We can't do it.
00:12:58.000 We've got to go in and start to think this through.
00:13:00.000 And this is, in a sense, that we know we have to win the war against Taiwan in Taiwan to defend Taiwan and the chip factories against the CCP, whether we like it or not.
00:13:12.000 But this has to be a totally rethinking.
00:13:13.000 This has got to be America first. 0.97
00:13:15.000 And the defense budget, I say this as a hawk, but not a neocon, that we must rethink the defense budget.
00:13:22.000 And that should be the first thing on the table to actually have meaningful, smart cuts on where we don't do.
00:13:29.000 And the profits of the war profiteers at the defense industry is absolutely incredible and unsatisfactory.
00:13:37.000 And Steve, but bigger than every one of those geopolitical threats that Lindsey Graham wants us to believe in, oh, Putin's going to invade Newark, New Jersey tomorrow, is our debt.
00:13:48.000 The debt is a national security crisis.
00:13:50.000 The national debt is the true threat to our sovereignty.
00:13:54.000 I mean, we have existential threats to our sovereignty, 10,000 people coming across the border, but the spending discipline, if you want to actually defend the nation, then get some fiscal sanity and spending discipline.
00:14:06.000 Steve Bennett.
00:14:07.000 Unrestricted warfare is the manual printed in the late 90s by the two brilliant Chinese communist colonels in the PLA that walked through the entire war against the West.
00:14:17.000 And central to that is economic warfare.
00:14:20.000 The national debt, the interest payments upon it, and plus the low productivity, what this is going to do is not simply the debt and the crowding out effect of having to finance these borrowings.
00:14:31.000 It's the fact of, has your nation gotten any better?
00:14:34.000 Have you seen the use of proceeds that go into new railroads, that going to new airports, that go into new infrastructure?
00:14:38.000 No.
00:14:39.000 It's all to play essentially operating income.
00:14:42.000 They talk about investments.
00:14:44.000 It's not.
00:14:45.000 It's just the way that the system works to spread this money out to everybody and to have phony economic growth, not real productivity economic growth based upon free market capitalism.
00:14:56.000 This is the debt and the system that leads you to the debt is one of the most, if not the most significant national security.
00:15:04.000 Look at this.
00:15:04.000 All of our allies, including all the third world, is running away from us, including the Saudis.
00:15:10.000 The Saudis just, yeah, they said they want to be part of the BRICS, which is that kind of developing nations, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, now Saudi Arabia and others, because they said, hey, we control the national resources and we do everything in dollars and you're devaluing this as we go.
00:15:25.000 We see what you're doing.
00:15:26.000 We see these budget deficits.
00:15:28.000 Maybe the American people can't stop it, but we're going to stop it for our people.
00:15:32.000 We're going to get off the dollar.
00:15:33.000 We're going to get gold back.
00:15:35.000 We're going to get gold back and we're going to have our resources.
00:15:37.000 This is the most significant national security threat to our nation.
00:15:43.000 Steve, it's time for the Republican Party to be the party of spending discipline.
00:15:47.000 And the base is demanding it.
00:15:48.000 The grassroots is demanding it.
00:15:50.000 And in some ways, look, both parties created this mess.
00:15:53.000 But this audience right now, you know, the war room posse, the people that watch us here on Real America's Voice, they're balancing their budgets.
00:16:00.000 They keep their credit card debt under control.
00:16:03.000 They're not spending with reckless abandon.
00:16:05.000 And there is an asymmetry.
00:16:08.000 There is a disharmony.
00:16:09.000 There is a disconnect between the working man and woman, their virtue, their principle, their integrity, and the lack thereof of the people in D.C. Ruling class has taken out a second mortgage on you.
00:16:21.000 You owe $250,000, all of you, and your families.
00:16:24.000 They've taken out a second mortgage under your name, and you're paying for it in taxes and lost productivity and growth in the American economy.
00:16:31.000 Think about that.
00:16:32.000 Steve Bannon, thank you so much.
00:16:34.000 And you got a show this afternoon, 5 p.m. Easter.
00:16:36.000 I know you're going to be hitting it hard.
00:16:37.000 Thanks so much, Steve.
00:16:41.000 All right, I got an important thing to share with you.
00:16:43.000 You were probably tired about all these left-wing progressive companies.
00:16:48.000 And you're probably exhausted with trying to keep up with all their virtue signaling and their woke nonsense.
00:16:53.000 It's a question, right?
00:16:54.000 Why has corporate America decided to say we hate you to their customers?
00:16:59.000 I mean, I see Adidas.
00:17:01.000 Adidas might as well have a big sign that says, we hate you.
00:17:06.000 Look, progressive left-wing companies are taking over the market, and it's time for us to fight back.
00:17:12.000 I want to tell you about a company I really care about, run by a friend of mine who's a great American, and they're growing, and they need your help, and it's very important, okay?
00:17:21.000 Look, we don't have to fund these companies, the left-wing companies.
00:17:24.000 We finally have an alternative, public square.
00:17:28.000 We have a solution.
00:17:29.000 I hear from people all the time, Charlie, how do we fight back?
00:17:32.000 Charlie, where are the options?
00:17:33.000 It's publicsq.com.
00:17:33.000 It's very simple.
00:17:36.000 Join the movement of millions of patriotic Americans who love truth, our country, and our Constitution at publicsq.com.
00:17:44.000 I use this app all the time when I'm traveling and also my local neighborhood.
00:17:47.000 It's an app and a website where you can get connected to tens of thousands of businesses from all different industries that share your values like life, family, and freedom.
00:17:57.000 Michael, who runs Public Square, does a fabulous job, and it's free to join as a consumer or a business owner.
00:18:03.000 And you can get started today at publicsq.com.
00:18:06.000 Download the app now.
00:18:07.000 That's publicsq.com.
00:18:09.000 How are we going to fight woke capital? 0.93
00:18:11.000 How are we going to fight these progressive companies?
00:18:13.000 How are public square?
00:18:15.000 They do a fabulous job.
00:18:16.000 I think the world of them, they're in the arena fighting back.
00:18:20.000 If you are a business owner, download the app.
00:18:23.000 If you are interested in supporting companies that aren't woke, download the app.
00:18:28.000 If you are traveling, you want to find a coffee shop that is not woke, download the app or go to publicsq.com.
00:18:34.000 I'm 100% behind them.
00:18:36.000 You're going to hear me talk about them a lot.
00:18:37.000 It's time for us to join forces and build the parallel economy.
00:18:42.000 Public Square, I have vetted them.
00:18:44.000 I've got to know them really well.
00:18:45.000 I've looked at the company deeply.
00:18:47.000 Deeply, fabulous people, ethical Christian, strong conservatives.
00:18:51.000 Publicsq.com.
00:18:53.000 Go there right now.
00:18:55.000 Download the app.
00:18:55.000 It is free.
00:18:56.000 It's a free app.
00:18:57.000 Free to join, especially if you're a business owner.
00:18:59.000 Go to publicsq.com.
00:19:04.000 Joining us now is one of my favorite senators, and I can tell you he's a man of integrity, and he's really been special, and I'm honored to call him a friend.
00:19:12.000 Senator Mike Lee.
00:19:13.000 Senator, welcome back to the program.
00:19:15.000 Thanks so much, Charlie.
00:19:16.000 So, Senator, all the focus has been on the House.
00:19:16.000 Good to be with you.
00:19:19.000 Everyone's talking about McCarthy v. Biden, McCarthy v. But we have to remember there's an upper chamber, and it really hasn't received that much attention or involvement, which I find to be interesting because you still need a 60-vote threshold, from what I understand, to raise the debt ceiling.
00:19:35.000 Maybe that's changed because of Senate rules.
00:19:37.000 So, Senator, how do you stand on this debt ceiling bill?
00:19:39.000 And more broadly, how do your colleagues stand?
00:19:42.000 Charlie, this was a big missed opportunity.
00:19:45.000 Now, I'm not going to refer to it yet in the past tense.
00:19:48.000 It hasn't passed.
00:19:49.000 There's still time, still time for Americans to demand something better and for Republicans to stand for what they promised they would stand for if given the chance to lead.
00:20:00.000 But this was a series of missed opportunities followed up by a series of badly communicated errors.
00:20:08.000 In other words, they failed to negotiate even a small fraction of what we promised to deliver.
00:20:13.000 And having so failed, they've then repackaged this in a form that they're presenting to the American people as doing things that it doesn't do.
00:20:22.000 It claims to save a whole lot of money.
00:20:23.000 It doesn't.
00:20:24.000 We're talking $6 to $12 billion TOPS is what it actually saves.
00:20:29.000 It claims to bring about a regulatory overhaul.
00:20:32.000 What we needed was the Reigns Act to restore the constitutional framework put in place by Article 1.
00:20:38.000 Instead, what we got was a regulatory pay-as-you-go measure.
00:20:42.000 A couple of problems with that.
00:20:43.000 Number one, it didn't solve the underlying problem, the unconstitutionality of executive branch agencies passing laws without the assent of the American people's elected representatives.
00:20:53.000 But it also contains a provision that renders it all moot.
00:20:58.000 It contains a provision, Section 265 of the bill says that the Biden OMB director has complete discretion to decide not to comply.
00:21:08.000 So time after time, when I see something promised in the bill to the American people, when I read the actual text, some annoying habit that I have, it doesn't do what it claims to do.
00:21:19.000 And I find that really disconcerting.
00:21:21.000 So, Senator, I want to just read some of the talking points that Jim Jordan and Thomas Massey and others, people that you and I really respect, are saying.
00:21:29.000 They're saying that this puts the IRS agent funding in suspension.
00:21:34.000 They're saying this is a $2 trillion cut.
00:21:36.000 Senator, some of this is kind of Washington, D.C. spending news speak.
00:21:41.000 And again, I'm not a legislative expert with this stuff.
00:21:43.000 There's some things that I would consider myself to be an expert on, such as debating left-wingers on critical race theory, Marxism.
00:21:50.000 Some of this stuff is unclear.
00:21:51.000 Is it a cut, Senator, or is it a slowdown in the rate of growth?
00:21:55.000 Just educate our audience in how the rules of spending gravity are in perpetual suspense when it comes to D.C. budgeting.
00:22:02.000 It's probably best described as an aspirational goal to increase the rate of spending less rapidly than it might otherwise expand.
00:22:13.000 And that really isn't enough.
00:22:14.000 You know, one of the things that I look for in a deal like this is what does it do in year one?
00:22:18.000 What does it do right off the bat?
00:22:21.000 Because that makes a big difference.
00:22:22.000 Very often, promises of cuts in the out years, in future years over the 10-year budgetary window, don't materialize.
00:22:30.000 This is the oldest trick in the book.
00:22:32.000 So one of the first things that I look to is what does it do in year one?
00:22:35.000 Well, in year one, it takes FY 2023 discretionary spending, the highest it's ever been in the history of our republic.
00:22:43.000 And it sets that as the baseline for the next fiscal year.
00:22:47.000 That by itself isn't a savings.
00:22:50.000 As far as the future caps that they have in mind, those are largely unenforceable, especially after we get outside of the first two years.
00:22:59.000 Those are things that Congress could choose to ignore without any consequence and without any difficulty at all.
00:23:05.000 So as far as I can tell, the only thing that this saves involves some of the clawbacks of these unspent COVID funds.
00:23:11.000 We're talking somewhere in the range of $6 to $12 billion.
00:23:15.000 By contrast, the limit, save, grow bill that was passed by the House about a month ago, which wasn't perfect, but I applauded it and was ready to vote for it eagerly, that would have saved us in year one alone something along the order of a trillion dollars,
00:23:31.000 well over a trillion dollars if you take into account the cost savings from the Green New Deal-styled tax credits that were put in place in the Inflation Reduction Act and in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
00:23:47.000 All we had to do was pass that.
00:23:48.000 We would have achieved somewhere along the order of $1 trillion in year one.
00:23:52.000 Instead, we're left with something that maybe saves $6 to $12 billion.
00:23:56.000 That's not enough, not even nearly enough.
00:23:59.000 So, Senator, I mentioned this in the opening, and I'm curious.
00:24:03.000 It is 60 votes, is that right, to pass the procedural?
00:24:06.000 It's still 60 votes.
00:24:08.000 It takes 60 votes.
00:24:08.000 And so what that means is you've got to have not only every single Democrat, and think about how sad this is, by the way.
00:24:15.000 We had every or nearly every Republican in the Senate ready to vote for limit, save, grow.
00:24:21.000 And if we had focused on that and said that was the deal, that was on the table, something like that at least, we could have forced the Democrats to produce the additional 11, 12, 13 votes to get over the threshold.
00:24:34.000 And instead, we start from a premise, which is always where we seem to get when we have a badly negotiated deal, where we start with the premise that all 51 Democrats in the Senate are, of course, going to be for this, because why wouldn't they be?
00:24:47.000 It's a great deal for them.
00:24:48.000 It suspends the debt ceiling altogether, and it's going to end up costing us about $4 trillion in new debt.
00:24:55.000 So 51 Democrats right off the bat.
00:24:57.000 That means all they have to do is get nine Republicans to join with the 51 Democrats.
00:25:03.000 If they can get at least nine, this thing gets done.
00:25:06.000 But remember, Republicans could stop this.
00:25:08.000 And this is why I wrote a letter a few weeks ago.
00:25:11.000 It was signed by 43 Republicans in the Senate saying that we would oppose cloture.
00:25:17.000 That is, we would stop them on the 60-vote threshold vote if they tried to raise the debt ceiling with anything that didn't bring about substantive spending and budgetary reforms.
00:25:30.000 Now, I believe this doesn't satisfy that, and it's one of the reasons why I plan to oppose this.
00:25:36.000 I'm going to propose amendments, trying to improve it, try to make it better.
00:25:40.000 Assuming that we're not able to make it better, I will oppose it, and I hope that my Republican colleagues will as well.
00:25:46.000 So, I mean, just speculation, do you anticipate it passing the Senate just based on kind of a, let's just say, walkthrough of the chatter in the hallway?
00:25:57.000 Yeah, my gut sense at this point, based on chatter in the hallway, is that it's likely going to pass.
00:26:01.000 But there's a lot that has to happen between now and when those votes occur in the Senate.
00:26:07.000 It's going to have to withstand some amendment votes.
00:26:10.000 And if not, we're going to draw out the time to a degree that my colleagues aren't going to like.
00:26:16.000 But once we get through those amendment votes, the picture might look a little bit different, especially as people continue to hear from their constituents who are understandably concerned about this deal.
00:26:26.000 Look, it takes 41 senators, just 41 senators.
00:26:30.000 This is why I wrote that letter.
00:26:31.000 41 senators can block basically any piece of legislation, including this one, if they choose to oppose it.
00:26:39.000 Republicans can stop this.
00:26:40.000 We are not victims to the House.
00:26:42.000 We are not victims to the Democrats here.
00:26:45.000 We can choose to stop this.
00:26:47.000 If this passes, it will be because enough Republicans helped the Democrats to get this passed.
00:26:52.000 Strangely enough, though, the opposition to the bill from the Senate, Senator, is not along the framework that you're articulating.
00:26:58.000 Senator Lindsey Graham is saying that he wants to oppose it, but he might vote for it because it doesn't spend enough on foreign aid and military adventures abroad.
00:27:10.000 Senator, I have so much respect for you because you're a realist here and you also believe that waste, fraud, and abuse does not stop immediately just because you're going to go buy a missile or have a $5,000 hammer.
00:27:21.000 You know, you're a realist at all parts of the budget.
00:27:24.000 Senator, can you just offer some context with, I know, full respect for your colleagues of how there's a philosophical difference amongst most Republicans that say they do not want to touch the defense budget at all.
00:27:36.000 And I'm afraid that does a disservice to our message of fiscal discipline when we're not willing to touch the sacred cow of the Department of Defense.
00:27:45.000 Yeah, first of all, let me say, Charlie, that anyone in the Republican conference or in the Democratic Conference for that matter who has concerns about the bill, I respect that and I want to encourage people taking a skeptical view toward the bill.
00:28:00.000 So I'm glad to have anyone joining me, even if it's for a different reason than I would propose.
00:28:03.000 Secondly, I believe that defense is one of the most important things the United States government can do.
00:28:11.000 It's one of the few things that only we can do and that we must do.
00:28:15.000 But at the end of the day, our ability to do the few things that only the United States government can do and that we have to do is impaired when we take on too many other responsibilities that don't have anything to do with what the United States government is supposed to do.
00:28:31.000 So if we really want to get a handle on this, we need to control spending.
00:28:34.000 We need to control it everywhere.
00:28:36.000 And if we don't do that, our ability to fund every one of our true priorities, including and especially national defense, which happens to be one of our largest obligations, appropriately so, is diminished.
00:28:49.000 In just a few years, we could find ourselves spending more on interest on our national debt than we spend on national defense.
00:28:58.000 That's going to really impair our ability to do everything that needs to be done.
00:29:03.000 So that's why I would ask all within the sound of my voice, including and especially those concerned about defense spending.
00:29:08.000 If you want to have money to spend on defense, for the love of this great country, step forward and express your concerns with this bill.
00:29:17.000 This bill, look, if it did all the things that its lead proponents are claiming that it does, I might well vote for it, but it doesn't.
00:29:27.000 You've got to read the fine print.
00:29:28.000 And when you read it, you see it's a whole lot of smoke and a whole lot of mirrors, not a lot of cuts at all.
00:29:34.000 Senator, you are honest across the board, and our audience appreciates it.
00:29:38.000 If we are going to be this party of fiscal discipline, then we must be willing to also talk about why do we have military bases in every hemisphere in every country, which, by the way, the failure to cut spending, the failure to balance our budget, is a much bigger national security risk than some third world jungle tribe that might be emerging in Peru.
00:30:01.000 It's a bigger national security risk that we don't have a strong dollar and that we can't balance our budget.
00:30:06.000 That right there is an existential risk to our Republic.
00:30:09.000 Senator, God bless you.
00:30:10.000 Thank you for your integrity and courage.
00:30:11.000 Thank you, Charlie.
00:30:15.000 We'll get back to the debt ceiling stuff.
00:30:17.000 We got guests, Galore.
00:30:18.000 We got Citizen Kaine, Senator Scott, the best guests.
00:30:21.000 But it's time to talk about Chick-fil-A.
00:30:24.000 The last couple of years, I've been peppering in some criticism of Chick-fil-A.
00:30:29.000 But there is a new appetite out there.
00:30:30.000 This is one of the reasons why the public square app, which all of you should download, is top 10 on the Apple App Store.
00:30:35.000 It's because all of a sudden there's this hunger, there's this desire, there's this appetite to go hold corporate America accountable.
00:30:42.000 And I am standing in applause.
00:30:43.000 Yes, I think it really is the trans thing.
00:30:46.000 The trans thing has gone so far, it's primal, it's going after kids. 1.00
00:30:51.000 It is far more animating than the race stuff.
00:30:55.000 Now, the race stuff, I believe, is equally as pernicious, equally as dangerous to the Republic, to our core values, to the promise of the West, than almost anything else out there. 1.00
00:31:08.000 But the race stuff, people get a little uncomfortable with.
00:31:10.000 So let's go back in time.
00:31:11.000 10 years ago, 11 years ago, actually, in the summer of 2012, I remember it vividly, Chick-fil-A was attacked by the left for not coming out in favor of gay marriage.
00:31:20.000 Mike Huckabee and others, the great Mike Huckabee, did a pro-Chick-fil-A day of support.
00:31:24.000 I remember going to the Chick-fil-A in Schaumburg, Illinois, and standing in line amongst fellow patriots.
00:31:30.000 And we bought our food and all as a show of solidarity to try to say, you know what, Chick-fil-A is one of us.
00:31:36.000 They refused to go along with the alphabet mafia pride stuff, and that was 10 years ago.
00:31:43.000 And Chick-fil-A was criticized when they opened a store in downtown Manhattan as being a hate group.
00:31:49.000 And so that was always there.
00:31:50.000 There was always this, we don't like you attitude of the mainstream press towards Chick-fil-A.
00:31:57.000 And unfortunately, it got to Chick-fil-A leadership.
00:32:00.000 It was starting to damage them.
00:32:02.000 Look, Chick-fil-A is a Christian company.
00:32:04.000 I'm not here to question the faith of Dan Cathy.
00:32:07.000 I'm not here to question the faith of the people that run Chick-fil-A.
00:32:10.000 By all accounts, I'm told that they are dutiful Christians and they believe in the Bible and praise God for that.
00:32:17.000 But I think they were traumatized to the attacks when they say they stood for traditional marriage, one man, one woman marriage.
00:32:23.000 And they were looking for an opening and an opportunity to try to regain some likability amongst the secular Marxists.
00:32:35.000 Now, you could call it naivete, I will not.
00:32:37.000 You could call it weakness, which I will, but you also could show it the embracing of a serpent ideology, which is DEI.
00:32:45.000 Now, during Floyd Apalooza, during the summer of 2020, Dan Cathy, the CEO, and I remember this clip, and now it's finally getting attention again, came out with this just repulsive line of reasoning that we as white people must feel shame and humiliation.
00:33:05.000 And he goes on to shine the shoes of a black man next to him, playing into all the false premises of race politics and sectarianism and tribalism and race essentialism. 0.63
00:33:18.000 Play Cut 33, CEO of Chick-fil-A.
00:33:21.000 And at that revival on the front seat was an older African-American, young older African-American American man that was sitting there.
00:33:30.000 And this young man got up that was there in that service, and he'd been so gripped with conviction about the racism that was in that local community, a small town in Texas, that he took a shoebrush and he walked over to this elderly gentleman and he knelt on his knees and he began to shine his shoes.
00:33:52.000 It was an attitude of conviction.
00:33:55.000 And so any expressions of a contrite heart, of a sense of humility, a sense of shame, a sense of embarrassment, begin with an apologetic heart.
00:34:08.000 There's another clip where he actually goes and shines the shoes of a black man.
00:34:12.000 I do not have time to get into DEI, but right now, Chick-fil-A has on their website a diversity, equity, inclusion director.
00:34:22.000 There is no compromising with this, okay?
00:34:24.000 Diversity, equity, inclusion is a Marxist, anti-white, anti-Western project.
00:34:31.000 It started from the college campuses.
00:34:33.000 It's against Christianity. 0.98
00:34:34.000 It's against the promise of the West.
00:34:36.000 There is no reconciling it.
00:34:40.000 It is against scripture itself.
00:34:43.000 There is no longer Jew or Greek.
00:34:45.000 There is no longer slave or free.
00:34:46.000 There is no longer male or female.
00:34:47.000 For all are one in Christ Jesus.
00:34:49.000 Galatians 3.28 is very clear.
00:34:53.000 But here's what is most disappointing about the Chick-fil-A thing, and why I'm speaking out against it, and I encourage you to as well, is that when I first got into this, when I started Turning Point USA, Chick-fil-A was on our team.
00:35:06.000 Chick-fil-A was strong, and they were in our corner. 0.97
00:35:09.000 So I hold them to a higher standard than Northface.
00:35:13.000 I hold them to a standard that you should be in the trenches, not pandering to race politics or DEI or CRT, but rejecting that repulsive ideology.
00:35:25.000 And it's disappointing beyond words to see a company that was once on our team act like the people we're fighting.
00:35:35.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:35:36.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:35:40.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
00:35:45.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.