The Charlie Kirk Show - A Spicy Hour with Greg Kelly

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on Charlie Kirk Show, a full hour with Greg Kelly.

00:00:03.000 We talked about the police, the FBI, and a spicy conversation on race at the end of the program.

00:00:09.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:12.000 Get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com.

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00:00:23.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:24.000 Here we go.

00:00:25.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:27.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:29.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:32.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:36.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:37.000 He's an incredible guy.

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00:00:45.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

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00:01:07.000 Very important book is out that I encourage you guys to check out called Justice for All, written by Greg Kelly.

00:01:15.000 You guys probably recognize him from Newsmax or his infinitely entertaining Twitter account.

00:01:21.000 And Greg Kelly joins us now.

00:01:23.000 Greg, welcome to the program.

00:01:25.000 Hey, Charlie, thank you very much for having me.

00:01:27.000 Thank you for everything you do.

00:01:29.000 Thank you for Turning Point USA.

00:01:30.000 Thank you for your own amazing Twitter content.

00:01:34.000 You are moving the needle in so many different ways, and it's so appreciated.

00:01:39.000 Well, thank you.

00:01:40.000 I want to go deep into how you run that Twitter account because it's just hilarious.

00:01:45.000 And it's also just so different at times than your tone on TV, which I find to be the funniest part of it.

00:01:53.000 It's great.

00:01:54.000 We could go back to that at any time.

00:01:56.000 So, Greg, introduce yourself to our audience, your story, how you got started in journalism, and then we'll get into your book.

00:02:02.000 Well, folks, my name is Greg Kelly.

00:02:04.000 I was born and raised in the suburbs of New York City.

00:02:08.000 My father was a police officer who my entire life was just a cop and then worked his way up.

00:02:16.000 And by the time I got to college, Fordham University, shortly thereafter, he became the police commissioner.

00:02:22.000 So Ray Kelly is somebody you might be familiar with.

00:02:24.000 I dedicate the book to him.

00:02:27.000 After college, I followed in his footsteps.

00:02:29.000 I went into the Marine Corps.

00:02:31.000 I went through officer candidate school during my college years and was commissioned as second lieutenant.

00:02:38.000 When I got out of college, I served for nine years active duty, five years.

00:02:44.000 I was obligated after flight school, and flight school took four years.

00:02:47.000 I was a pilot.

00:02:48.000 I flew the Harrier jet, had a great time, an amazing experience, got to fly over Iraq, got to land on aircraft carriers.

00:02:55.000 But I always knew that I would do that for a time and then do something else.

00:03:01.000 And actually, I thought about doing journalism when I was in college briefly.

00:03:06.000 And for me, I had a kind of a problem with the idea that at 21 or 22, right out of school, I would be asking public officials questions and holding them accountable.

00:03:20.000 I was not equipped to do that at 22.

00:03:23.000 And I think most 22-year-olds are not.

00:03:25.000 Charlie, you're not much older.

00:03:27.000 You are equipped.

00:03:28.000 You have this God-given brilliance, and you're in the right place at the right time, doing what you need to be doing.

00:03:34.000 But so many people in media, I think they go in prematurely.

00:03:37.000 They don't know anything.

00:03:39.000 And it gave me a foundation.

00:03:40.000 It gave me certain expertise.

00:03:44.000 And it made me, I think, a better person in the Marine Corps.

00:03:48.000 And I decided, what do I want to do?

00:03:50.000 Do I want to be an airline pilot?

00:03:52.000 Do I want to join the FBI?

00:03:53.000 I thought about that for about a day and a half.

00:03:56.000 And my brother said, you've always liked current events.

00:03:58.000 You thought about it in college.

00:03:59.000 What about reporting?

00:04:00.000 What about journalism?

00:04:01.000 And it just clicked.

00:04:02.000 And I thought, wow, that's something I could actually get excited about.

00:04:06.000 I sent resumes all over the country, got hired by a very small station in upstate New York.

00:04:11.000 I was a little bit older than most of my colleagues.

00:04:13.000 I was 31 at the time.

00:04:16.000 But they had everything I needed to kind of master the craft or at least get a start.

00:04:22.000 And from there, I went to New York One, then Fox News, saw a lot when I was at Fox, embedded during the Iraq War.

00:04:29.000 Came a lot happened to me ideologically over the years, Charlie.

00:04:34.000 I wasn't always who I am now.

00:04:37.000 I got here because life happened to me.

00:04:39.000 I had to learn lessons.

00:04:41.000 I had to see things.

00:04:42.000 I had to feel things.

00:04:43.000 I had to make some mistakes, quite frankly, to get to where I am now.

00:04:49.000 And I think, like most people, you know, after you finish the journey and the journey isn't over, of course, but I'm glad everything happened the way it did to bring me to this point.

00:04:59.000 And we'll see what happens next.

00:05:03.000 So you got into this to try to hold powerful people accountable, and you do a great job of that.

00:05:10.000 How has that changed over the last couple of years?

00:05:13.000 Has it gotten easier?

00:05:14.000 Has it gotten harder?

00:05:15.000 I mean, I know personally, there are certain topics you are not allowed to challenge, certain orthodoxies.

00:05:21.000 Nietzsche used to say that there are certain pieties that you are not allowed to make fun of, right?

00:05:26.000 And one off the top of my head that, you know, I stumbled into, I think, last week is the crime of noticing that athletes are dropping suddenly.

00:05:34.000 You can't do that, right?

00:05:35.000 You get into a lot of trouble for doing that.

00:05:37.000 How, in your own opinion, being in this work, how has that changed, evolved, or stayed the same over the last couple of years?

00:05:45.000 So let me gently, I don't want to say push back, but the idea that media, the idea that journalists can hold powerful people accountable, a lot of journalists go in with that mindset.

00:05:59.000 We're going to hold the powerful accountable.

00:06:01.000 And in a weird way, it reveals a bias in and of itself.

00:06:06.000 That whatever situation I walk into must be wrong.

00:06:10.000 The powerful must be at fault.

00:06:12.000 Somebody's at fault.

00:06:14.000 And I am going to fix it because I have self-appointed myself a journalist and I must know better.

00:06:23.000 I actually don't consider myself a journalist anymore.

00:06:25.000 Journalism means different things to different people.

00:06:29.000 And I had that experience.

00:06:33.000 If you really want to hold people accountable, I don't think you can through journalism because it's too easy for the powerful to manage journalism.

00:06:44.000 They don't need journalists anymore because of social media and so many other ways to get the message out.

00:06:49.000 So holding people accountable.

00:06:51.000 I mean, it's a nice thought.

00:06:53.000 It used to be the case.

00:06:56.000 We are, especially you, Charlie, able to hold people accountable in a way that was not being done 10 years ago, 20 years ago.

00:07:06.000 I mean, if you have a voice and you know what you're talking about, you can get an audience.

00:07:11.000 Yeah, so Greg, I suppose it's a little paradoxical, right?

00:07:15.000 Because we should be in an era of more decentralized checks and balances against the powerful.

00:07:21.000 But it seems as if on the macro, the opposite is happening.

00:07:25.000 We have social media, more people with phones that could easily be going up to Jamie Dimon and filming them, asking questions.

00:07:31.000 And it happens here and there, but it seems that the macro trend is not the case.

00:07:37.000 It seems as if the powerful are more entrenched than ever before.

00:07:40.000 I just find that to be interesting.

00:07:41.000 I don't have any strong opinion.

00:07:43.000 I'm just pontificating on something I find to be the opposite of what you would believe it to be.

00:07:48.000 No, it's interesting.

00:07:49.000 It's a great observation.

00:07:51.000 Sure, we're able to say things and we're able to take stands, but the practical impact isn't always there.

00:08:01.000 But you make the point, you know, it's funny.

00:08:03.000 I read the entire January 6th report, 1,000 pages long.

00:08:07.000 And I read, I've been reading some of the depositions in the Missouri versus Biden administration.

00:08:14.000 And there's fascinating stuff in there.

00:08:16.000 Absolutely fascinating.

00:08:17.000 And I read 200 pages.

00:08:20.000 I didn't have time for the other 200 pages.

00:08:23.000 Two weeks later, I got to the other 200 pages and I see in there that Elvis Chan, the FBI agent, is friends with Lisa Page and worked with Peter Strzok.

00:08:34.000 I felt negligent that I didn't find that out sooner, but nobody knew that.

00:08:40.000 Nobody was right there, hiding in plain sight.

00:08:43.000 Ultimately, it was picked up.

00:08:45.000 There is so much information out there.

00:08:47.000 And they can actually say this is to hold them accountable.

00:08:51.000 There's almost, we're overwhelmed with information.

00:08:55.000 And very few institutions are equipped.

00:08:57.000 They have the time, the bandwidth to sit there and read a thousand pages of the.

00:09:04.000 So you read the whole January 6th report.

00:09:07.000 I did not.

00:09:09.000 What was your big takeaway, if anything?

00:09:11.000 Was it a lot of, do you actually find it to be helpful to read?

00:09:15.000 Well, I think it's a corrupt document.

00:09:17.000 I think they should all be arrested, quite frankly. 0.98

00:09:20.000 This is waste, fraud, and abuse, government assets being used to generate something as ridiculous as this. 0.93

00:09:28.000 But the big moment for me, you heard a million times, Donald Trump was watching television on January 6th, watching television.

00:09:35.000 He just sat there as the Capitol was being ransacked.

00:09:40.000 Nobody ever said, well, let's take a look at what was on television on January 6th.

00:09:44.000 And they have the moment, 2.38 p.m.

00:09:47.000 And by the way, they never actually proved that Donald Trump was watching television, but let's say for a moment he was.

00:09:52.000 At 2.38 p.m., Brett Baer on Fox News says, this is looking dangerous.

00:09:59.000 Now, what was on television at that time was a bunch of people walking in the park.

00:10:04.000 Same on CNN.

00:10:05.000 You had hyperventilating actors saying that this was the worst thing that they had ever seen, but the images themselves were tame.

00:10:13.000 Even Stelter and the CNN had to admit that the crazy stuff did not emerge until days and weeks after January 6th.

00:10:23.000 They're counting on us conflating it all.

00:10:26.000 That's one big, horrible ball, January 6th.

00:10:29.000 And Donald Trump should have heard that report and called the Navy SEALs.

00:10:33.000 And the other thing is, real quick, nobody called Trump. 0.76

00:10:33.000 It's ludicrous. 0.76

00:10:36.000 They made such a big deal that Brian Kilmead, Laura Ingram, you know, they called Trump because they were watching the fake news and they saw the freak out.

00:10:44.000 But who didn't call Trump?

00:10:45.000 Pence didn't call Trump.

00:10:47.000 The Attorney General didn't call Trump.

00:10:49.000 The Secretary of Defense didn't call Trump.

00:10:51.000 The National Security Establishment, nobody called the president.

00:10:57.000 That, I believe, exonerates him.

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00:12:15.000 Greg, tell us more about this January 6th report.

00:12:18.000 You said they should be arrested.

00:12:18.000 We were cut off on time.

00:12:20.000 Tell us more.

00:12:22.000 Well, listen, it was obviously a waste of everybody's time.

00:12:25.000 I'm surprised they pulled it off.

00:12:27.000 I mean, prime time hearings, no cross-examination, the deceitful editing of it all.

00:12:36.000 You know, it's interesting.

00:12:37.000 I actually read Bernie Carrick's transcript, 200 pages.

00:12:41.000 Bernie is amazingly articulate and powerful.

00:12:44.000 By the way, he actually raises the issue of the potential of real election fraud.

00:12:50.000 And just because they did not have smoking gun evidence, that's actually not the bar that's set for an investigation or for a lawsuit to go forward.

00:13:00.000 Bernie was great.

00:13:02.000 And also, he brings up Ashley Babbitt.

00:13:04.000 You guys are not talking about Ashley Babbitt, he tells the panel.

00:13:07.000 No one's talking about Ashley Babbitt.

00:13:08.000 You're all lawyers.

00:13:09.000 There's nobody in this room who can say that that was a justified shooting.

00:13:12.000 And it's fascinating to me.

00:13:13.000 The investigator says, okay, we understand.

00:13:16.000 And Bernie owns them.

00:13:17.000 And he totally shames them.

00:13:19.000 And finally, the guy gets up the gumption.

00:13:21.000 I'll just point out that, you know, she was shot as members of Congress were trying to do their jobs and people were screaming, hang Mike Pence.

00:13:31.000 Well, that's not justification for shooting an unarmed woman, unarmed anybody.

00:13:36.000 It's not.

00:13:37.000 You can't say a half mile from here, somebody said, hang Mike Pence. 1.00

00:13:40.000 Therefore, we can shoot this person. 1.00

00:13:44.000 That, you know, she must have justice. 0.99

00:13:47.000 Some way, somehow, she will through the courts, through the systems we have.

00:13:53.000 But, you know, I do think this was almost a plot against Trump.

00:13:57.000 And, you know, my book is very pro-law enforcement.

00:14:00.000 It is, of course.

00:14:01.000 However, we should not be blindly loyal to law enforcement.

00:14:06.000 And the Capitol Hill cops, they allow themselves to be politicized and they failed on January 6th in spectacular fashion.

00:14:14.000 They let the door open for people.

00:14:15.000 We have it on tape.

00:14:17.000 They walked away at the key moment just before Ashley Babbitt was shot.

00:14:21.000 How do you defend that?

00:14:22.000 So many unanswered questions, but what's worse, so many unasked questions.

00:14:28.000 That's correct.

00:14:29.000 Yes.

00:14:30.000 So I'm still kind of coming to terms with the report and what I should do with it, what I can do with it.

00:14:39.000 But the idea that these holes, these problems are in plain sight and nobody has the time to tackle it, including me.

00:14:49.000 I only read it because I happen to be on the plane for an excessive amount of time and I don't travel very much.

00:14:56.000 But once you deal with that, then where do you go?

00:14:59.000 And who no one seems to have the bandwidth anymore, Charlie?

00:15:02.000 Everybody is in a rush.

00:15:03.000 And I'm talking about our lawmakers and I love them.

00:15:05.000 I love some of them.

00:15:06.000 And I wonder if they're not looking to make a splash on Twitter rather than the drudgery of oversight and work.

00:15:17.000 You know, not all of that is tailor-made for viral moments, the real hard work of government.

00:15:23.000 And that concerns me.

00:15:25.000 What do you make of the non-discussion of Epps and the pipe bomber?

00:15:29.000 So the pipe bomber first.

00:15:32.000 And this was one of those moments where I questioned, first of all, I questioned, did I hear this right?

00:15:41.000 Did I just hear what Lester Holt said?

00:15:45.000 Because you know, and I know that a pipe bomb was planted outside the Republican National Committee and outside the Democratic Committee.

00:15:54.000 That's an interesting thing.

00:15:55.000 It's both.

00:15:56.000 It's both.

00:15:58.000 And the mainstream media, Lester Holt, the top of the show spoke about one bomb at the Democrat National Committee.

00:16:10.000 That's more than fake news.

00:16:13.000 This is.

00:16:15.000 This is somebody in collusion with the Democrats, with one side.

00:16:20.000 This is anti-truth.

00:16:22.000 This is somebody at war with the truth.

00:16:25.000 As far as Ray Epps, look, I think he works with the government.

00:16:30.000 I encourage folks to actually check out my Twitter or you can find this online, at Greg Kelly USA, Ray, W-R-A-Y.

00:16:39.000 And you may remember the congressman, I can't recall his name for the moment, from Louisiana, a Republican, who asked a point-blank question of Chris Ray, were there FBI agents or FBI informants inside the Capitol before it was penetrated, dressed as Trump supporters, dressed as MAGA.

00:17:00.000 And he would not answer the question.

00:17:02.000 Now, it never even occurred to me that there was anybody inside the Capitol.

00:17:06.000 I knew there were informants outside of the Capitol.

00:17:08.000 I actually know there are FBI agents in that who should have been calling, could have done a million things to stop what was happening.

00:17:15.000 They didn't want to, in my opinion.

00:17:17.000 But the idea that there were people inside.

00:17:19.000 So Epps is quite a case.

00:17:23.000 And you saw what he said.

00:17:24.000 He orchestrated it.

00:17:26.000 I think he's working for the government.

00:17:27.000 I do.

00:17:28.000 I agree.

00:17:31.000 And it's amazing that he is not the most famous man in America.

00:17:35.000 He should be.

00:17:36.000 And I guess I should be doing more on that, actually.

00:17:38.000 I think Ray Epps is on government payroll and or adjacent as an informant.

00:17:46.000 Charlie Kirk here.

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00:18:46.000 Greg, tell us about your book.

00:18:49.000 So the book is Justice for All, How the Left is Wrong About Law Enforcement, and a couple of things came together.

00:18:56.000 I'm going to make a little confession here.

00:18:58.000 All right.

00:18:59.000 And I was a totally different person.

00:19:02.000 But in 2008, I voted for Barack Obama.

00:19:06.000 I did think, and I was sold a bill of goods, that he was somehow going to be a president who could ameliorate racial tensions in America.

00:19:16.000 I bought that.

00:19:18.000 I remember the Father's Day speech in June of 2008.

00:19:21.000 And he said rather boldly to a group of black churchgoers that we have a problem in the African-American community, and that's too many fathers are AWOL.

00:19:31.000 Too many fathers are MIA.

00:19:32.000 He did say that.

00:19:33.000 And this can lead.

00:19:34.000 Pardon me?

00:19:35.000 No, he said that.

00:19:36.000 You're right.

00:19:36.000 He owned it for a while until it became inconvenient.

00:19:41.000 Well, Jesse Jackson almost immediately threatened to castrate him, caught on a hot mic on Fox News.

00:19:48.000 And he only went there one time during his presidency.

00:19:51.000 He decided to be a racially divisive president.

00:19:54.000 He always was conflicted about his own race.

00:19:57.000 It's actually in the 17 books about himself.

00:20:00.000 Am I white?

00:20:01.000 Am I black? 0.99

00:20:02.000 The blacks don't trust me. 1.00

00:20:03.000 They think I'm white. 0.98

00:20:04.000 The whites think I'm exotic.

00:20:06.000 He was having all of these thoughts. 0.98

00:20:08.000 And he chose, okay, I'm going to go all in, black victim. 1.00

00:20:13.000 Not only am I a black, but I'm a black and I'm a, I, I, I, but for the grace of God, survive being black as a young person.

00:20:20.000 An incredibly toxic message, but he needed it, especially in 2012.

00:20:25.000 He actually took a pretty big hit with the African-American community.

00:20:29.000 They thought things would improve.

00:20:31.000 They didn't under Barack Obama.

00:20:33.000 And he had to emotionalize them, galvanize them to come back to him.

00:20:37.000 And that's really how Black Lives Matter started.

00:20:39.000 So a big part of this book, quite frankly, is to have a conversation about race that's honest and meaningful and real and helpful.

00:20:52.000 Because the conversation about race happening right now is hideously dishonest and damaging.

00:20:58.000 Now, often, as a person who's Caucasian, you would say, well, it's not for me to say, or, you know, I need a pat, I have to have somebody black who agrees with me. 0.75

00:21:10.000 I can't, enough of that stuff.

00:21:12.000 I just, if it's not going to be waged, I'm going to do it.

00:21:17.000 I'm going to do it by myself.

00:21:18.000 I'm proud that I did it.

00:21:19.000 Things have to be said and re-emphasized.

00:21:22.000 You know, we kind of know this stuff, a lot of it, but we're afraid to say it.

00:21:27.000 And I'm glad I memorialized it in a book.

00:21:31.000 And also, it's a pushback.

00:21:33.000 I mean, overnight, law enforcement in America was demonized, canceled.

00:21:39.000 And it has made their job so much harder.

00:21:42.000 You know, my father, I mentioned the police commissioner of New York City, when he left office after 14 years as commissioner, it's a record, 12 under Bloomberg, two under Dinkins.

00:21:52.000 His approval rating was at 75% in New York City, which is half non-white. 0.97

00:21:58.000 His approval rating with Hispanics and blacks hovered in the high 50s, low 60s.

00:22:04.000 What happened was the Democrats came in.

00:22:07.000 They pretended that law enforcement was broken.

00:22:09.000 Then they pretended to fix what wasn't broken.

00:22:12.000 And now they've actually managed to break it.

00:22:15.000 And I think that all needed to be addressed and corrected.

00:22:18.000 Do you make a distinction in the book between local police and some of the, like you said, the Capitol Hill police that don't really do their job?

00:22:30.000 Well, the Capitol Police are definitely an outlier.

00:22:35.000 Absolutely.

00:22:36.000 And they've allowed themselves to be politicized.

00:22:39.000 So yes, I do make a big distinction between the Capitol Hill cops, people like Harry Dunn, because what's happening right now, this is a dry run for actual fascism.

00:22:51.000 For Harry Dunn to be an armed Capitol police officer, still on active duty, he works there berating and lecturing members of Congress and the public.

00:23:02.000 He's unelected and he has a weapon and he has a uniform.

00:23:07.000 This is what fascism looks like.

00:23:09.000 And he was very, it was an interesting casting.

00:23:13.000 You'll notice all the Capitol Hill cops.

00:23:15.000 You know, one was a good old boy. 0.93

00:23:18.000 One's black.

00:23:19.000 One's a pretty woman.

00:23:21.000 One's a Hispanic Iraq war veteran trying to make it difficult.

00:23:26.000 Like they're somehow beyond criticizing.

00:23:29.000 Anybody can be criticized.

00:23:30.000 I don't care where you come from, who you are, what you did.

00:23:34.000 It's what you said right now or what you did yesterday.

00:23:37.000 And we need accountability.

00:23:39.000 And I think too many people, quite frankly, it worked.

00:23:42.000 They were afraid to take on.

00:23:43.000 And possibly because of my military experience, but I say this in the book: we should not be intimidated by uniforms.

00:23:49.000 I wore a uniform.

00:23:50.000 Perhaps it's easier for me, but we have to remember law enforcement, they are public servants.

00:23:56.000 They deserve our respect, admiration, and support, but they are servants.

00:24:01.000 We do not work for them.

00:24:04.000 And if I can, real quick, is one of the reasons why I have a big soft spot for Matt Gates.

00:24:08.000 You know, say what you will about what happened last week.

00:24:13.000 Matt Gates never served in the military, but he's not intimidated by generals.

00:24:18.000 And what he has, how he has tried to hold this military accountable, especially General Milley, it's a beautiful thing.

00:24:26.000 And that's the way the system is supposed to work.

00:24:28.000 Civilians are in charge. 1.00

00:24:30.000 Citizens are in charge. 0.78

00:24:32.000 And it seems as if we're losing that kind of citizen-led government.

00:24:37.000 And it seems to be the exact opposite.

00:24:40.000 And so in the book, you, you know, and I'm, I want you to walk us through it.

00:24:44.000 You warn about what will happen if we do defund the police.

00:24:48.000 And so to walk us through, I mean, the Capitol Police is an outlier, but the FBI, they don't seem to be much better either.

00:24:53.000 The FBI seems to be more of the same, of kind of just politicized.

00:24:58.000 Is there a distinction maybe between the boots and the suits potentially between some of the top levels of the FBI?

00:25:04.000 I mean, you mentioned Elvis Chan, who has his pronouns in his bio, right?

00:25:10.000 And I totally, I love my local police.

00:25:12.000 I just was walking through my neighborhood the other day and a local police officer came up to me and I thanked him for all that he's doing.

00:25:17.000 And it's such a tough job.

00:25:18.000 If I saw Elvis Chan, my first words would not be gratitude.

00:25:24.000 I understand and I agree with you.

00:25:27.000 This is not a book about the FBI.

00:25:30.000 The FBI was not out trying to stop riots.

00:25:34.000 They were monitoring riots and possibly even facilitating riots.

00:25:38.000 I use some FBI statistics because their statistics are at this point somewhat reliable in terms of numbers across the country.

00:25:49.000 But I am focused on local law enforcement, state and local law enforcement.

00:25:54.000 Those are the ones, you know, those are the ones that people interact with.

00:25:57.000 You can go your whole life and never meet an FBI agent, right?

00:26:00.000 But most of us know a cop.

00:26:02.000 We know somebody who's a cop.

00:26:03.000 We had to call the cops once.

00:26:05.000 You know, maybe the cops called us.

00:26:07.000 We all kind of have some experience with law enforcement on a, on a, not on a daily basis, but so, no, the FBI, by the way, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

00:26:18.000 I mean, what is, what's not to like?

00:26:21.000 The FBI is in big trouble and needs to be, I guess, removed legally, of course.

00:26:31.000 They have to start over.

00:26:34.000 They have canceled themselves and they are not deserving our trust.

00:26:38.000 And I'll say this: the rank and file, you know, the knee-jerk thing is to say, well, you know, we have the managers, then we have the rank and file.

00:26:47.000 You're a manager.

00:26:48.000 The moment you started achieving any kind of seniority, you're in management.

00:26:54.000 FBI has huge problems.

00:26:56.000 I'm actually, it's one thing.

00:26:57.000 I wonder what would have happened, Charlie, if my father became the FBI director.

00:27:01.000 Twice in his life, he was offered that job.

00:27:04.000 Well, one formal offer, one, not so much.

00:27:09.000 Bill Clinton asked him to be the FBI director in 1993.

00:27:13.000 He turned it down.

00:27:14.000 At that point, he was a new police commissioner.

00:27:16.000 In his opinion, it was the best job in law enforcement.

00:27:19.000 Fast forward, Donald Trump called him the day he fired Jim Comey and asked him if he'd be interested.

00:27:27.000 And he was.

00:27:28.000 Now, come to learn that uh, our sense is that Chris Christie, who is uh still a favored person in Trump world, interceded and uh got his friend that job.

00:27:42.000 But a lot of things would be very different in America right now if uh Ray Kelly had been the FBI director, or if he still were the FBI director.

00:27:51.000 Yeah, and it's.

00:27:52.000 It's a tragedy that what's happened to the FBI, because we actually need a functioning, you know, domestic police force that can deal with some of these issues, especially across state lines.

00:28:01.000 But it's really too bad what it's become.

00:28:04.000 So, Greg, anything else about the book you want our audience to be aware of before we get into some other topics here?

00:28:10.000 Well, the book needed to be written.

00:28:13.000 I think that this is going to, it's a book for the woke, perhaps.

00:28:18.000 They need to wake the hell up.

00:28:20.000 After corporate America went bananas with Black Lives Matter, I thought that had to be countered because it hasn't been yet. 1.00

00:28:30.000 This narrative, this fake narrative that America is a fundamentally evil place, is fundamentally racist, is fundamentally committed to the eradication of black people and white supremacy. 0.99

00:28:44.000 I mean, it is all nonsense. 0.98

00:28:46.000 I wanted to organize my thoughts, present them in a methodical way to reveal that this is not true.

00:28:53.000 By the way, I debunked the 1619 project, which is not hard to do, and to have people pause, take a step back, and realize just how dangerous this is, what we have done. 0.64

00:29:06.000 Because police, understandably, it's called the Ferguson effect, and it's real.

00:29:11.000 If police officers believe that not only it was already a tough job, they already risked their lives.

00:29:19.000 Now they're risking their livelihood, their freedom.

00:29:22.000 You know, it was interesting.

00:29:23.000 When I was in the military, I saw this a million times.

00:29:26.000 A lot of folks in the military will gladly risk their lives for their country, but they won't risk their careers.

00:29:34.000 It's kind of interesting when you think about it.

00:29:36.000 And that goes for a lot of cops as well.

00:29:38.000 I understand that.

00:29:40.000 So this culture is in big trouble.

00:29:44.000 We have to kind of re-embrace the basics that the good guys are the good guys.

00:29:50.000 And I kind of say how we got here.

00:29:53.000 And there's a roadmap to how we get out.

00:29:55.000 Or actually, it's not, quite frankly, it won't get us all the way out.

00:30:00.000 But I have some, I think, practical steps that could help.

00:30:03.000 Number one, don't be intimidated by uniforms.

00:30:06.000 Number two, be comfortable talking about race.

00:30:09.000 You know, if you never talk about race and you only let the left dominate that conversation, because they have already created all the rules and they're all the tripwires that they know about, it's so easy to say the wrong thing if you don't talk about race very often.

00:30:24.000 We have to be comfortable talking about race.

00:30:26.000 And also, this will sound kind of corny and this will sound actually like it's what are you talking about?

00:30:32.000 But hear me out.

00:30:34.000 It's important to write letters.

00:30:36.000 We all know about organizing.

00:30:37.000 We all know about raising money.

00:30:39.000 But if you write a letter and you send it to a public official, if you write your congressman and ask to meet with him, there is a damn good chance you're going to be granted that meeting.

00:30:49.000 Too many of us are tweeting or sending an email or registering comments that float away.

00:30:55.000 But some magic actually starts to happen when you put a pen to paper.

00:31:01.000 Greg, you say we should talk about race.

00:31:03.000 How should we talk about race then?

00:31:05.000 Interesting.

00:31:07.000 How should we talk about race?

00:31:08.000 Well, I think we have to acknowledge, look, the number one driver of crime is, as we talked about for a moment, or the number one indicator that your life will not be as successful as it could be is being born into a one-parent household.

00:31:24.000 Fatherless home.

00:31:26.000 That's a problem.

00:31:28.000 We're actually supposed to think that the real problems in America were caused by stuff that happened 300 years ago and not enough people of color in TV commercials.

00:31:40.000 This is the ludicrous stuff that has dominated our conversation without talking about, well, why are certain groups lagging in school as opposed to other groups?

00:31:54.000 What is really happening here?

00:31:56.000 And it's complex.

00:31:58.000 People will get their feelings hurt.

00:32:00.000 There are people much more knowledgeable than I.

00:32:03.000 But I think that to pretend to live in Black Lives Matter, la-la-land, and corporations just going for it. 0.96

00:32:13.000 I guess we have to be brave.

00:32:16.000 We conservatives, people, red, white, brown, Asian, black, it doesn't matter.

00:32:22.000 Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:32:26.000 There's nothing diverse.

00:32:27.000 There's nothing equitable and there's nothing inclusive about a DEI office.

00:32:31.000 Yet overnight, we have to live with them.

00:32:33.000 So we have to be conversant.

00:32:35.000 There isn't necessarily a right answer.

00:32:37.000 And this is a conversation, but I want to have a substantive conversation, not the useless one that has dominated 2020.

00:32:46.000 You just alluded to a thought crime that I would love to explore with you, which is: look, the commercial portfolio that currently exists on an average NFL Sunday is it's so nauseatingly clear that they're going out of their way to try to make every single commercial disproportionately represented with black actors, every brand, every commercial.

00:33:15.000 And blacks are 14% of the American population.

00:33:19.000 Whites, I think, are 48 to 50%.

00:33:21.000 And there's Hispanics and Asians.

00:33:23.000 Okay, I really don't care that much about race.

00:33:25.000 I don't want to talk about it.

00:33:27.000 Oh, whites are 60 plus percent. 0.93

00:33:28.000 There you go.

00:33:29.000 But Greg, it's as if you're not even allowed to mention the fact that 80 to 90 percent of all new commercials have black actors in them.

00:33:39.000 And I don't have no moral problem with that.

00:33:41.000 Obviously, I do have a problem with it being forced in a way as if this is somehow virtuous or somehow we're making progress because we hire a bunch of blacks to tell us to go use indeed.com. 1.00

00:33:56.000 It's totally cosmetic. 0.57

00:33:58.000 And I do find that kind of outrageous and kind of amusing at the same time.

00:34:04.000 And this is where conservatives, whatever your color, but I'm going to talk to folks who are white.

00:34:08.000 Yes, I'm going to talk to there is suddenly this, uh-oh, we can't have too many white people in one room. 0.79

00:34:14.000 This looks racist.

00:34:16.000 You know, one of the one of the nicest moments in my career, we beat Fox News on Newsmax and we gathered around, we took a picture, and I knew what was going to happen.

00:34:28.000 I knew it.

00:34:29.000 Just so happens, we have seven hardworking people on the staff, mostly women, all happen to be Caucasian.

00:34:39.000 We didn't set out that way, of course.

00:34:41.000 It just was that way.

00:34:42.000 And I knew it.

00:34:43.000 I knew it.

00:34:44.000 Racist much? 0.98

00:34:47.000 It's that is the silliness that pervades.

00:34:52.000 Why aren't there more people who are qualified for some of these jobs there?

00:34:58.000 I said it.

00:35:00.000 Corporations would love, love, as we all know, to have more diversity.

00:35:05.000 It's a struggle because of the applicant pool, because of problems in education.

00:35:11.000 And too bad we don't have a Barack Obama type who, for one brief shining moment, was prepared to talk about it.

00:35:20.000 Look, he won't.

00:35:21.000 I will.

00:35:22.000 I know you will.

00:35:23.000 And I think conservatives have to be comfortable because it's a very easy topic to avoid.

00:35:28.000 And a lot of us do feel like somehow, a lot of us feel like you need cover.

00:35:34.000 You have, you can't just two white people talking about race.

00:35:37.000 Well, that's part of the problem.

00:35:38.000 It's not actually.

00:35:39.000 We're human beings. 0.72

00:35:41.000 Somehow it's going to everything's going to be solved through Uber Eats having nothing but black and trans actors. 1.00

00:35:46.000 That's going to eliminate racism or the new Taco Bell commercial where a white person's not in sight.

00:35:50.000 I don't know if that's true or not.

00:35:51.000 I'm sure someone will fact check me.

00:35:52.000 Anyway, Greg, thank you so much.

00:35:54.000 And by the way, it really bothers me just on this topic because there's nothing wrong with blacks in commercials.

00:35:59.000 Obviously, that's how they're going to misrepresent this conversation.

00:36:01.000 But it's weird and creepy how calculated it is and how strategic it seems.

00:36:07.000 We're having progress because white people can't be in commercials anymore. 0.99

00:36:11.000 All right.

00:36:12.000 Have fun with that one, Media Matters, and buy Greg Kelly's book, Justice for All.

00:36:15.000 Thanks, Greg.

00:36:15.000 Appreciate it.

00:36:16.000 Thank you, Charlie, very much.

00:36:18.000 Thank you.

00:36:21.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:23.000 Email me your thoughts as always.

00:36:24.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:26.000 Thank you so much for listening and God bless.

00:36:31.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 11, 2023

A Spicy Hour with Greg Kelly

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