The Charlie Kirk Show - Americans Come First: The Truth about H-1B Visas and "Skilled Worker" Immigration

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 H1B says, what good are they for anyway?

00:00:04.000 We talk about immigration, we talk about anti-white racism and more with Ryan James Gerdusky and also Jeremy Carl.

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00:00:23.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:25.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

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00:00:34.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:35.000 He's an incredible guy.

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00:01:21.000 Joining us now is Ryan James Gerduski.

00:01:24.000 He's behind National Pop Substack.

00:01:26.000 That's natpop.substack.com.

00:01:29.000 Also founder of the 1776 Project PAC and host of a new show called It's a Numbers Game on iHeart.

00:01:37.000 Ryan, welcome back to the program.

00:01:38.000 Thanks, Charlie, for having me.

00:01:39.000 So I wanted to have you on because you are an expert on this now very high profile and controversial issue.

00:01:47.000 And it shouldn't be that controversial, but I guess that's one way to frame it, which is H-1B visas.

00:01:52.000 So the position of this program is Americans come first and America is for Americans only. 0.73

00:01:57.000 And this is not that controversial of a position that if we're going to have immigration, legal immigration, it should benefit the homeland.

00:02:03.000 It should be done very, very intelligently.

00:02:05.000 However, we've had this mass migration wave, so it makes sense to allow things to cool down and to reanalyze the way we do immigration altogether.

00:02:13.000 With that being said, the people that are pushing for, let's say, more H-1Bs or something similar, I can sympathize with some of their premises. 1.00

00:02:22.000 So where are we at right now with this H-1B debate, and what do you think is most missing from the current dialogue surrounding it?

00:02:29.000 Well, first of all, I mean, immigration, to paraphrase what Bill and Hillary Clinton used to say about abortion in the 90s, immigration should be safe, legal, and rare. 0.98

00:02:38.000 In a natural market economy, there is no such thing as a long-term labor shortage, right?

00:02:45.000 That is not natural.

00:02:46.000 The labor shortage, the ongoing quote-unquote labor shortage, is increasingly worse because of our H-1B visa system and most of our visa systems, actually.

00:02:59.000 When the H-1B system was created in 1990, by the way, it's not like we had this in 1776 and we needed it to bring Albert Einstein or Albert Einstein came without an H-1B visa.

00:03:09.000 The studies done justifying an H-1B system was created about wages, not about talent.

00:03:17.000 It was about how do, one, our employers get involved in the Asian market, and two, how our employers work within a talent pool to work within a wage that works for them, to suppress wages.

00:03:29.000 The average H-1B visa worker in this country makes less than $120,000 a year.

00:03:35.000 These are not all, you know, the next Tesla or the next Elon Musk or the next anybody.

00:03:41.000 And there's been consistent cases of visa fraud in the last two years.

00:03:46.000 Under the Biden administration, there were two big cases.

00:03:49.000 One being most famously Facebook, which was going straight to foreign countries through the H-1B visa system.

00:03:55.000 And they were discriminating wholeheartedly against Americans.

00:03:59.000 I think Facebook had to pay $15 million or $14 million for wholeheartedly just disqualifying Americans and discriminating against them.

00:04:07.000 And then there was another company called Larson and Turbo Infotech.

00:04:11.000 They're a company that has spent like 4.6, 4.7 million in fines because they were firing Americans, qualified Americans, and replacing them with Indian H-1B workers. 0.99

00:04:21.000 The idea that this is like a DEI program for mediocre Americans who like Like Slater over Screech on Saved by the Bell is completely, just wholeheartedly not true.

00:04:36.000 Many times it's qualified Americans who've worked in these jobs for long periods of time who have been displaced by H-1B foreign workers.

00:04:44.000 Yeah, but there's also an exceptional talent visa that is being conflated with H-1B, which I think the exceptional talent visa actually has a place.

00:04:56.000 Like, if you're Yo-Yo Ma and you want to be able to perform for two years, it's called the O-1 visa, and you want to go perform for the New York Philharmonic, great.

00:05:05.000 I mean, I don't know if Yo-Yo Ma is American-born or if he's from Japan.

00:05:08.000 He's American-born, but yeah, I get what you're saying.

00:05:09.000 Yeah, so sure.

00:05:10.000 So, whatever.

00:05:12.000 Sorry.

00:05:13.000 Whoever, I think that's fine, and I think that an exceptional talent visa has a place in a free society, and we should embrace that.

00:05:21.000 Can you please add the distinction?

00:05:23.000 Because some people are defending H-1Bs as if they are O-1s.

00:05:28.000 Right.

00:05:28.000 Well, O-1 visa is for exceptional talent and it ranges, right?

00:05:32.000 It ranges from like supermodels and artists to people who are science and math wizards who have unique talents and they're the best.

00:05:43.000 their country and of the world.

00:05:45.000 If you wanted to bring only Albert Einstein's into this country, right, there are not a lot of geniuses walking around in everyday life in any society whatsoever.

00:05:56.000 You could probably reduce the entire visa system of geniuses just down to 2000 people a year, rather than the 85,000 H1Bs. 0.98

00:06:06.000 H1Bs, you know, they do work of accountants sometimes, They do work of low-skilled technology laborers. 1.00

00:06:14.000 And when people come on an H-1B visa, their residency to the United States is attached to their occupation.

00:06:21.000 So they cannot ever leave their job unless it means leaving the United States.

00:06:29.000 They are basically removed from the market of being able to compete for a better job or a better, you know, more qualified bonuses or increased salaries.

00:06:41.000 It's literally to suppress those people's wages.

00:06:44.000 And a lot of them sometimes are not tremendously skilled.

00:06:48.000 Between 55 to 40 percent of all Can you reiterate that?

00:07:03.000 Because if I were to, when I speak to, and I'm friends with people on both sides of this aisle, however my position is very clear on this, when I speak to a tech CEO or someone that uses H-1B, they are insistent, Ryan, that Americans are unwilling or unable to do these jobs. 0.52

00:07:19.000 Right.

00:07:20.000 Well, according to the census, 72% of Americans with STEM degrees do not have a job in the STEM field.

00:07:30.000 I'll repeat that.

00:07:30.000 72% according to census numbers.

00:07:33.000 Other numbers according to different social scientists and economists.

00:07:36.000 Range it between 30 and 60%.

00:07:38.000 But most people say it is a majority of Americans with STEM degrees do not have STEM jobs.

00:07:45.000 They can't get them.

00:07:46.000 Secondly, the idea, and you've seen this a lot on the internet, I'm sure, that American education is just so antiquated, so bad, that we need to bring in workers from other countries because we rank 15th or 16th in the world for math and science. 0.92

00:08:00.000 We rank 15th or 16th according to the PISA scores in elementary schools behind only a handful of countries, mostly in Western Europe and East Asia.

00:08:10.000 Most countries in the world do not even take the PISA tests because they score so badly.

00:08:17.000 India, for example, which has become a hot-button subject given how many applicants come from India.

00:08:22.000 India has not taken the test since 2009 because the last time they took the test They ranked second to last behind Sub-Saharan Africa. 0.96

00:08:30.000 So the idea that our students are just so incredibly stupid and we shouldn't invest in the youth of America because they're just being displaced by hardworking people who, you know, they don't love the prom king. 0.94

00:08:43.000 They love the math wizard in school. 1.00

00:08:45.000 That is...

00:08:46.000 Completely and totally incoherent and not correct whatsoever.

00:08:50.000 There is no data that ever backs that up.

00:08:53.000 I mean, yes, there are some people in East Asia, some people in Western Europe that are doing better in math and science than ours, but overall, not even a question.

00:09:01.000 It's not even close.

00:09:02.000 The American talent is far overwhelming than that of other countries.

00:09:07.000 We have a lot of suppressed talent in the United States because of ordinary white people being discriminated against at every level of American life.

00:09:14.000 Do you believe that plays in?

00:09:16.000 Yes, 100% true.

00:09:17.000 100%!

00:09:18.000 Listen, Charlie, one of my donors for my PAC, who is a very, very wealthy individual, said to me one day, and they're white, and they said, I am genuinely worried that my children cannot get a good enough job and they will be discriminated because of their race.

00:09:33.000 We have seen this time and time and time again.

00:09:35.000 Again, it is a silent conversation that a lot of people and middle class parents have with their kids.

00:09:42.000 And they worry about technological changes.

00:09:44.000 They worry about AI.

00:09:45.000 They worry about how would their kid get a job, but also about the disqualifications on just being a white person.

00:09:51.000 Despite the fact, this is an interesting, this is according to the census and the CDC.

00:09:56.000 Despite the fact that Native Americans, people of American Indian ancestry, have some of the lowest birth rates in history, in an entire country.

00:10:04.000 their population is increasing every single year.

00:10:07.000 Now we can't import more American Indians than Native Americans, so where are they coming from? 1.00

00:10:12.000 It's white people saying they're 1 16th Cherokee just so they can check off a different box so they are not discriminated against and they feel it and they're worried about it and hopefully more states take action using the Harvard lawsuit saying you can't discriminate people based on race for jobs.

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00:11:28.000 Well, what I was saying is that there's a lot of people, middle American people, who are genuinely worried that their children will be discriminated against in employment and in government contracts, if they're small business owners, or at college admissions because of their skin color.

00:11:42.000 And that is why you're seeing an enormous amount of people point that, oh, I'm 116th Cherokee, therefore I am not white, I'm Native American.

00:11:50.000 It's the Elizabeth Warren story.

00:11:52.000 That is what a lot of people are doing, because there is a genuine fear of it, and there is a lot of discrimination from corporations when it comes to hiring Americans.

00:12:01.000 I mean, that has been proven evident in all of these lawsuits over H-1B visa fraud.

00:12:07.000 So, the way that this conversation started was around an appointment in the White House, and it has kind of turned into now a multi-day debate.

00:12:19.000 What has this debate told you about the state of the current coalition and the conservative movement?

00:12:25.000 I think that, it's funny, I've just been writing about this.

00:12:28.000 I think that if, you know, listen, we have a new coalition within the Republican Party that Donald Trump built in 2024. It is very working class.

00:12:37.000 We have seen overseas people build new coalitions that give them governing majorities.

00:12:43.000 We just saw it in the UK when they had Brexit.

00:12:45.000 Boris Johnson built this fabulously large conservative party organization of working class people to achieve Brexit.

00:12:50.000 The people wanted lower levels of immigration.

00:12:53.000 The Tories did not.

00:12:55.000 And so the Tories were thrown out.

00:12:56.000 If tech bros who did not like the trans stuff or the woke stuff or the taxes or whatever they did not like that or crime in the cities, whatever they did not like that brought them to the Republican Party.

00:13:07.000 If they believe that that means they can remake the Republican Party or the MAGA Party or the Donald Trump coalition in their image, They are being extremely naive because the genuine consensus from Americans is there has been too much immigration and we need to have lower limits. 0.65

00:13:27.000 That means we discriminate against people from certain regions of the country or, you know, race or religion or whatever.

00:13:32.000 It just means we need lower levels.

00:13:34.000 We need to take a me time, a pause.

00:13:37.000 In some capacity, we bring over a million people per year, the most generous nation in the world as far as refugees go and asylum seekers.

00:13:44.000 We need some me time to work on our Americans who have been suffering because of the Biden administration.

00:13:51.000 And by the way, before that, under the Obama administration.

00:13:54.000 I mean, it's been 16 years out of the last, or sorry, 12 years out of the last 16 of Democrat control, and it hasn't always worked out.

00:14:02.000 So I think that really taking a pause, taking a me time from a constant overflow of people wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

00:14:09.000 And if anyone thinks they're going to change that because they have money or social media platform or a podcast or whatever the case is, they are very, very, very mistaken.

00:14:20.000 And telling Americans, sorry, you're too fat and like the wrong people and you're too lazy and you rooted for screech over Slater on Saved by the Bell from 35 years ago is really not a winning message to politicians and to people who aspire to run for president again.

00:14:36.000 So, yeah, in closing here, the this was an obvious fault line when you and I would we saw this six, six months ago.

00:14:45.000 I had a call yesterday from somebody who, very high up tech leader, and he said, Charlie, a year and a half ago you told me that the base of MAGA wants zero legal immigration.

00:14:56.000 He said, I had never heard that from anybody until you said that to me.

00:15:00.000 And now he's looking through Twitter and he's like, that seems to be the consensus view.

00:15:04.000 How is that possible?

00:15:05.000 They seem as if they're so bothered that this would even be an opinion that is espoused or articulated.

00:15:13.000 Because in most parts of the country, they still live in the 1950s.

00:15:16.000 They live in single-family homes in neighborhoods that are over-demographically one or two racial demographics in very good schools.

00:15:25.000 They don't live in the rest of America. 0.97

00:15:27.000 You know, in closing, in 2020, there was a Cato.

00:15:30.000 Cato was open borders, 100%.

00:15:31.000 They did a study, they did a poll, and it was like 44% of Americans wanted a 90% reduction in legal immigration.

00:15:38.000 It was like 75% wanted a 50% cut in legal immigration.

00:15:41.000 And among the Republican base, and that was before Biden.

00:15:44.000 That was all before the Biden invasion.

00:15:47.000 Right now, it's got to be close to 90% of Republicans and probably over 60% of independents say, we need a pause.

00:15:54.000 And if this moment did anything besides making them realize that, hey, they're not giving up just because, you know, we won the election or they like Elon Musk now or they like whoever, whatever the case may be, they really feel this.

00:16:07.000 And this has to be achieved in some way in order to make the base feel like they are voting for Trump and putting everything in line for Trump meant something.

00:16:17.000 Ryan, excellent work as always.

00:16:19.000 Thank you so much.

00:16:19.000 Really appreciate it.

00:16:20.000 Thank you.

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00:17:26.000 Mike Johnson has been endorsed by President Trump to be Speaker of the House.

00:17:32.000 Now, I would love your thoughts.

00:17:34.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

00:17:35.000 Do you think Mike Johnson should continue in his pursuit to try to become Speaker of the House?

00:17:40.000 I would love your thoughts.

00:17:43.000 Look, here's the bigger issue.

00:17:45.000 We could potentially, potentially have a delayed presidential certification if we do not have a Speaker of the House.

00:17:56.000 Maybe.

00:17:57.000 Now this would rock the boat.

00:17:59.000 Now the Constitution does not explicitly say that we need a Speaker to be able to do that.

00:18:04.000 But you're definitely putting it into risk.

00:18:07.000 There's a little bit of a risk.

00:18:08.000 Let's just put it that way.

00:18:09.000 Fair amount of a risk, actually, by introducing this entire element without having a Speaker of the House.

00:18:17.000 Jeremy Carl, welcome to the program.

00:18:19.000 Author of The Unprotected Class, How Anti-White Racism is Tearing America Apart.

00:18:25.000 Jeremy, welcome to the program.

00:18:26.000 Thanks so much.

00:18:27.000 It's great to be on, as always.

00:18:28.000 So, Jeremy, I want to first get your reaction.

00:18:31.000 President Trump has endorsed Mike Johnson to be Speaker of the House.

00:18:37.000 How should we think about this?

00:18:38.000 Yeah, I mean, I think it was...

00:18:40.000 I saw somebody else refer to this as the art of the deal.

00:18:43.000 I think it was Matt Gaetz, actually.

00:18:44.000 And I think he's right and certainly has the credibility to say that.

00:18:47.000 I just think it was a very practical decision on President Trump's part.

00:18:51.000 I think he doesn't need the disruption.

00:18:53.000 I think it's very different to have a big game of chicken when we don't control the White House and we don't control the Senate, as opposed to a time where we have the new president coming in, we've got all three branches of government, and we just don't need the distraction.

00:19:09.000 So do you think that if we get a new speaker, there could be any potential delay in the certification of the presidential election results?

00:19:17.000 Well, I think that's what some folks are worried about.

00:19:20.000 I'm not as worried about that.

00:19:21.000 I mean, I don't think that we're going to wind up with some weird thing where it's like, oh gosh, you know, some weird thing happened and all of a sudden we're going to have President Harris.

00:19:31.000 I mean, I understand why folks are going to be concerned about that, but it just seems sort of far-fetched.

00:19:36.000 But I think people are just trying to avoid chaos.

00:19:38.000 They're trying to avoid a bad look and they're just...

00:19:41.000 Going to go forward on that basis that they want everything to run smoothly and maybe Johnson is not the ideal guy but he's the guy we have and so we're going to go forward with him.

00:19:50.000 And I don't know a backup currently.

00:19:53.000 Maybe, Emer?

00:19:54.000 Elise Stefano could have, but she's obviously leaving the house.

00:19:58.000 Okay, I wanted to get your quick thoughts.

00:20:00.000 We covered this pretty intensely this hour.

00:20:03.000 How should we think about the H-1B visa debate, Jeremy?

00:20:07.000 I am told time and time again by tech CEOs and others that they need H-1B visas or else the American companies will fail.

00:20:15.000 What is the truth?

00:20:16.000 Yeah, well, I think, as usual, the truth is often somewhere in between.

00:20:21.000 I think that this has actually been a really healthy debate.

00:20:24.000 I'm not one of those folks who's been discouraged by it.

00:20:27.000 Charlie, I know you've been pretty vocal about the fact that we need to find a kind of way to work together with all the members of this coalition, but I'm glad we had the discussion.

00:20:39.000 I think what it has exposed is that a lot of these H-1B folks are actually not at all elite.

00:20:45.000 And at the very worst, I think we can come out of this with an H-1B system like my friend Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies has pushed that you would have an auction so that you really are only getting at least higher scale, higher folks up on the food chain to do this. 0.93

00:21:01.000 But I think, look, immigration is going to be an issue for the base.

00:21:04.000 It's certainly an issue for me.

00:21:05.000 And I'm glad that we put a shot across the bow.

00:21:08.000 And I think hopefully the tech right folks are going to pause a little bit and realize that we need to get some real wins on immigration if they're going to get anything that they really want on H-1B. So one of the big concerns is they say, well, there isn't enough talent here.

00:21:23.000 You wrote a whole book about anti-white racism.

00:21:25.000 One of the reasons why there might not appear to be the talent that they might want is that we've done quite a heck of a job of tamping down potential excellence in the majority of the country, which is white America. 0.95

00:21:39.000 Can you connect those two on how anti-white racism is actually connected with the H-1B debate?

00:21:47.000 No, absolutely.

00:21:48.000 And in fact, I have a whole chapter in my book that's essentially on Silicon Valley and what happened here.

00:21:53.000 And I've got a subsection to that chapter called the H-1B scam that kind of goes into this a lot.

00:21:59.000 So I think you've got all sorts of concerning things happen.

00:22:03.000 You have a lot of ethnic nepotism in hiring going on.

00:22:07.000 Once you get whites kind of getting shoved out of these processes, you get white White middle Americans often not even kind of being in the position set where they're considered.

00:22:20.000 Often that's a public school system failure.

00:22:22.000 So it's a whole bunch of things.

00:22:24.000 But you've also had, over the last few decades, you've had a net white flight from Silicon Valley that we haven't talked about.

00:22:30.000 It hasn't just been a question of, oh, we've brought in all these great immigrant engineers and everybody's living happily ever after.

00:22:36.000 It's we've changed the country in that area so dramatically that the people who used to live there have kind of gone elsewhere despite the huge economic opportunities.

00:22:47.000 And I don't think that in an unrestrained way, at least, that's something that we want to repeat in the country as a whole.

00:22:53.000 Yeah.

00:22:54.000 And so talk more about in your book how systemic this is and what can President Trump do now with his victory to legislatively or through executive order, executively fix the entrenched anti-white racism within public policy in this country?

00:23:12.000 Right.

00:23:12.000 Well, I think we could try.

00:23:13.000 It's going to be really hard because the Civil Rights Division of DOJ is not going to want to move, but we've got a nominee there, Harmeet Dhillon, who is going to be terrific.

00:23:22.000 And I think she'll do everything she can to make it move.

00:23:26.000 But a lot of these things are actually, as much as people like me do talk about how we need to reform a lot of our civil rights laws, a lot of our existing laws are being violated by these companies pretty blatantly.

00:23:38.000 They've got all sorts of preferences.

00:23:40.000 And Marc Andreessen, who's sort of been a tech ally of the right, has been talking about this recently.

00:23:46.000 They've got all these companies that are just doing racially preferential things that damage white people that are not allowed under current law.

00:23:54.000 And so I think if we go after these guys, that's going to help a lot.

00:23:58.000 If we look, I mean, there are situations where there was a whistleblower...

00:24:02.000 Google, I talk about in my book, who says that they were explicitly being told to, like, discard the resumes of white men in particular.

00:24:09.000 I mean, you get a couple of painful civil rights decisions against these guys, and you're going to get different outcomes.

00:24:18.000 So I think there's a lot that Trump can do just with the executive branch.

00:24:21.000 And if we can do things with laws, that's obviously great as well, but that's always a heavier lift than just using the powers that we are going to have walking in the door.

00:24:29.000 Talk also about the education system as well.

00:24:31.000 Foreign students taking American spots.

00:24:33.000 This is a major problem.

00:24:35.000 Please talk about that.

00:24:36.000 Yeah, I mean, certainly I spent 14 years at Stanford and we saw this where you, in engineering particularly, you had just all of these spots being taken by foreign grads.

00:24:48.000 There's a number of problems with that.

00:24:49.000 And of course, in a place like Stanford, look, I mean, these guys were really smart, certainly at the top of the level.

00:24:54.000 These were the sort of 0.1% that everybody talks about.

00:24:57.000 But I'll tell you, and this was not something that Stanford I think has talked about it publicly, but nobody put me under an NDA, so I'll talk about it.

00:25:05.000 I can tell you that among our engineering and science profs, there was real concern about espionage, particularly from China, among some of these graduate students.

00:25:15.000 And there were, in fact, departments and programs where there was sensitivity about even having graduate students from some countries.

00:25:22.000 So there is some awareness Even among these top universities about what is going on, but there's a reluctance to talk about it.

00:25:31.000 And we're also boxing out our own people. 0.53

00:25:33.000 And I think part of the really good discussion that's come out of our side is that we're not just having some sort of war of all against all where every native born American should have to work 80 hours a week to compete with some foreigner. 0.61

00:25:46.000 We should unapologetically significantly favor our own citizens.

00:25:51.000 That's not woke.

00:25:52.000 It's just common sense.

00:25:54.000 So, yeah, and it's not racist.

00:25:58.000 It's just the way that the country should operate.

00:26:00.000 So, speaking more broadly, from the immigration perspective, the consensus that the electorate gave President Trump through this mandate is that American workers come first, that the citizenry is in charge of the government.

00:26:21.000 Not that complicated.

00:26:23.000 Looking at this coalition, and it seems as if it's gone very heated, and that's fine.

00:26:28.000 No big deal.

00:26:29.000 It's okay that people get upset.

00:26:30.000 I'm close with everybody involved in this whole thing, and everyone knows where I stand on stuff.

00:26:35.000 I'm one of the few kind of people that's trying to mediate.

00:26:40.000 Can you talk about the need and the importance, better said, of keeping this coalition together despite disagreements on this one issue because our agreements on some of the more macro issues are dominant and very strong?

00:26:56.000 Yeah, no, I think it's critical, Charlie.

00:26:58.000 And again, I've really appreciated you taking that role.

00:27:01.000 And that's certainly the role that I've tried to play in a more minor key as well.

00:27:05.000 Look, I've lived in Silicon Valley.

00:27:07.000 I was an ex-tech guy.

00:27:08.000 I kind of understand how those guys think.

00:27:10.000 I've also been involved in In the kind of immigration patriot movement since even long before MAGA, so I certainly, that's sort of my home intellectually.

00:27:20.000 But we do need to keep these guys together.

00:27:22.000 We obviously need to keep our voters in mind because that's the people who put us in office and we do need to put Americans first, period.

00:27:31.000 At the same time, The folks in tech who have supported us, and in the cases like Elon Musk, just played an enormous role in helping get Trump elected.

00:27:42.000 They have real needs and interests, and we need to figure out how we can work together to meet some of those needs consistent with the national interest.

00:27:50.000 And once all the kind of shouting died down a little bit about H-1Bs, we begin to see some more productive I think if they're willing to help us on the illegal immigration question, on the mass deportation question,

00:28:05.000 on getting rid of diversity visas, I think they're going to find that if big tech folks help us there, we can have a much more pleasant discussion about what we can do about real top 0.1% tech folks who they feel like they may need For their business.

00:28:23.000 So I actually think the good news is we've had this conversation before we were even getting into office with our coalition.

00:28:29.000 And I actually am quite optimistic.

00:28:31.000 I see that there's a good way forward here.

00:28:34.000 And it's going to require some give and take.

00:28:36.000 And that's what you need in any coalition.

00:28:40.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:29:42.000 So Jeremy, this is a difficult issue, but it's very important.

00:29:45.000 Some people say, oh Charlie, you know, this is kind of a, you know, a leftover issue.

00:29:49.000 Not really.

00:29:50.000 Over 200 million people use TikTok.

00:29:52.000 A lot of kids use TikTok.

00:29:53.000 It is highly influential.

00:29:55.000 This is not a kind of a side issue.

00:29:57.000 This is a primary political policy issue that requires some deep thinking.

00:30:01.000 Previously, I was always about ban TikTok, ban TikTok.

00:30:04.000 I got away from that as I read the bill and realized it could be used to potentially ban Telegram and ban Rumble and obviously extrapolated towards the anti-speech regime.

00:30:13.000 However, core to one of the anti-TikTok arguments, something that I once held, was that TikTok is turning all the kids' libs, right?

00:30:22.000 That was kind of the whole thing.

00:30:24.000 And so, to Ryan's credit and to the whole team and Andrew, this last March, we sent out a tweet saying, hey, TikTok, you guys are scheduled to be banned.

00:30:32.000 If you treat us fairly, we're going to post on there and we'll see what happens.

00:30:36.000 Well, 1.8 billion views later, turns out that actually TikTok can turn people to be more conservative and more Trumpy.

00:30:45.000 How should we think about this issue?

00:30:47.000 Yeah, I think it's a little tricky.

00:30:48.000 I mean, actually, I live in Montana, and our Republican governor was the first with our legislature, our governor, who's a former technology entrepreneur and understands tech.

00:30:56.000 We were sort of the first to ban TikTok.

00:30:58.000 And it's been interesting to kind of watch that get walked back a little bit nationally.

00:31:03.000 And I understand why it's...

00:31:05.000 a sensitive issue.

00:31:06.000 I understand why Trump is weighed in against it, because I think there's a feeling that, A, we don't necessarily want to give the government always that type of power.

00:31:14.000 B, I think Trump, who's obviously very savvy about public opinion, can see that a lot of Gen Z voters are going to be very angry if we lose TikTok.

00:31:22.000 At the same time, I think that the Chinese Communist Party ownership and potential misuse of Americans' data is something that we need to be concerned about.

00:31:31.000 And I think realistically, we probably are going to need to engage with a little bit of brinksmanship, where we get as much separation as we can between the Chinese Communist Party and Americans' data.

00:31:42.000 And you continue to have TikTok in the But I think we should be able to have, I mean, if there are true national security violations, We should have the power to ban TikTok.

00:31:55.000 But I think whether we use that power is a separate question.

00:31:58.000 And on that, I think like President Trump, perhaps I'm a little more skeptical.

00:32:02.000 Yep, and I mean, President Trump, he actually fired, this is an incredible development, he filed an amicus brief this last weekend, or amicus or amicus, I can't remember, at the Supreme Court, basically arguing that the Supreme Court should stay its decision to allow him to sort this out in his incoming term.

00:32:24.000 In closing here, Jeremy, what specific executive orders or action do you want to see more broadly from the administration, creative ideas that you want to see entertained that have not been yet pushed forward or yet implemented in the transition team?

00:32:38.000 Well, I think maybe the number one thing I'd love to see is some updating of what was the Schedule F idea at the end of the last administration.

00:32:47.000 I'm not going to get too deep in the weeds, or there are folks who say, well, you actually need to do it slightly differently.

00:32:52.000 But the basic idea behind Schedule F is that we were going to make it so that...

00:32:58.000 The truly senior policymaking civil servants in the government became like political appointees, and I was a political appointee in the last Trump administration, at will employees.

00:33:10.000 And so that if they were basically defying the administration, which they're not allowed to do, they shouldn't be allowed to do that as part of their policy.

00:33:19.000 Yeah, I think.

00:33:36.000 There are also going to be a lot of bureaucrats who are going to try to stop you, even though their job is to help implement the policies of the administration.

00:33:44.000 So I think putting some teeth into something that would really give us the power to hire and fire the true policy-making folks at the top would do a tremendous amount to restore democratic accountability to the system, to go after the deep state, and I would love to see us move very aggressively in that lane.

00:34:04.000 Jeremy, you're welcome.

00:34:05.000 Anytime.

00:34:06.000 Happy New Year.

00:34:06.000 And you have an honor and a distinction that no one will ever have again.

00:34:10.000 You are the final guest of 2024. Jeremy, thank you so much.

00:34:14.000 Thanks so much, Charlie.

00:34:15.000 It's a pleasure to be on, as always.

00:34:17.000 Thank you.

00:34:17.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:19.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - December 31, 2024

Americans Come First: The Truth about H-1B Visas and "Skilled Worker" Immigration

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