The Charlie Kirk Show - Another Signal Chat...And Another Pope?

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.

00:00:04.000 Why are they going after Pete Hegseth so aggressively?

00:00:07.000 It's not because he's failing.

00:00:08.000 It's actually because he's succeeding.

00:00:11.000 We also have Michael Knowles to walk us through.

00:00:14.000 What does it mean to select a new pope?

00:00:15.000 For those of us that are not Catholic, it was a very informative discussion.

00:00:18.000 And finally, I close this episode out with something.

00:00:24.000 I think there is something to say about making our churches as beautiful as possible.

00:00:33.000 Agree or disagree?

00:00:34.000 Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:36.000 Would love your feedback.

00:00:37.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com.

00:00:39.000 That is tpusa.com.

00:00:41.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:41.000 Here we go.

00:00:42.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:44.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:46.000 I want you to know we are lucky.

00:00:48.000 To have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:49.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:53.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:54.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:55.000 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.

00:01:03.000 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.

00:01:12.000 That's why we are here.

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00:01:25.000 Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.

00:01:32.000 That is noblegoldinvestments.com.

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00:01:40.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:01:43.000 Of course, the breaking news that happened over the evening, over the night, I should say.

00:01:47.000 Late last night and early morning in Rome, the news was announced that Pope Francis has died.

00:01:55.000 This is monumental news.

00:01:56.000 I was reflecting.

00:01:57.000 I have only lived through three popes.

00:02:00.000 I have lived for 31 years, and I've only lived through three popes.

00:02:04.000 We have, of course, I was born, and John Paul II was pope, and then Pope Benedict.

00:02:09.000 And now Pope Francis.

00:02:10.000 He was Pope for 12 years.

00:02:12.000 He was the first Pope from the Americas.

00:02:15.000 He tended to be a little bit questionable at times on some of his, let's just say, social justice perspectives.

00:02:22.000 But I'm not Catholic.

00:02:23.000 We do have Michael Knowles that's going to join us in the program to discuss this and the significance of it.

00:02:28.000 The College of Cardinals will assemble after, of course, the funeral of Pope Francis.

00:02:36.000 Pope Francis certainly caused a lot of heartburn to Catholics in America.

00:02:40.000 And so we're going to talk about the geopolitical significance of this because, remember, John Paul II was incredibly effective at fighting communism.

00:02:51.000 I would love to see the next pope, whomever that is, maybe a pope from Africa or a pope from Asia or a pope from wherever, have the same sort of moral clarity that John Paul II had.

00:03:04.000 Against totalitarian Marxism.

00:03:05.000 We'll discuss that later in the hour.

00:03:07.000 But first, breaking yesterday on Easter Sunday was another attack on American patriot Pete Hegseth.

00:03:15.000 The New York Times launched a massive attack on the front page right here.

00:03:21.000 Defense head said to send war plan to second group.

00:03:25.000 Hegseth's family members and lawyer are linked to encrypted chat.

00:03:29.000 There's a lot going on here, some of which...

00:03:31.000 I can talk about publicly, some of which I cannot talk about publicly.

00:03:35.000 Let's talk about the essence of it.

00:03:37.000 They're criticizing Pete Hegseth for sending war plans, again, in a Signal group chat.

00:03:43.000 Now, he denies this.

00:03:44.000 It looks like it's total and complete BS.

00:03:46.000 We know that there were not war plans being sent.

00:03:49.000 They're trying to take out Pete Hegseth, and that really goes down to what's going on here.

00:03:54.000 They're not attacking Pete Hegseth because he's failing.

00:03:58.000 They're attacking Pete Hegseth because he's succeeding.

00:04:02.000 Here's what they won't talk about.

00:04:05.000 You see, it's not that Pete Hegseth is a disaster of a Secretary of Defense.

00:04:09.000 Quite the opposite.

00:04:10.000 He's already succeeding in the metrics that matter most from building a lethal fighting force.

00:04:16.000 And we must ask the question throughout.

00:04:19.000 Coy Bono, we ask this question a lot.

00:04:22.000 Who benefits from attacking Pete Hegseth?

00:04:25.000 You see...

00:04:26.000 It's not that the military is falling apart like it was under Joe Biden.

00:04:29.000 The numbers are remarkable.

00:04:31.000 First, recruiting is up after historic lows in 2022 and 2023.

00:04:37.000 The Army and the Marine Corps recruiting have rebounded.

00:04:40.000 In fiscal year 2024, quarter one, the Army reported a 10% increase in new enlistments year over year.

00:04:47.000 The Marine Corps hit 100% of its recruiting goals.

00:04:51.000 So when Joe Biden was president and Lloyd Austin was running things, military recruitment was down.

00:04:56.000 But interestingly, almost no one ever attacked them.

00:04:59.000 And just to be clear, Lloyd Austin did something...

00:05:02.000 Infinitely more inexcusable than Pete Hegseth when he was hospitalized without telling anybody, and the chain of command of our military was largely broken because of Lloyd Austin's decision to go get, I think it was like a prostate surgery or something,

00:05:18.000 without telling anybody.

00:05:19.000 Morale is up.

00:05:21.000 A recent RAND Corporation survey shows a 15-point jump in troop satisfaction compared to 2021, particularly among combat units.

00:05:32.000 It's interesting how morale goes up when you say that we're going to have the same physical fitness standards for men and women.

00:05:37.000 We're going to get rid of the woke stuff. 1.00

00:05:39.000 We're also not going to allow transgender people in the military.

00:05:42.000 And all of a sudden, boom, morale goes up.

00:05:45.000 Has the media mentioned any of this?

00:05:46.000 Or is it just the swirling attacks?

00:05:50.000 Here it says Pete Hegseth is under fire.

00:05:54.000 Well, he might be under fire by all the right people in D.C. Instead, they should be doing a puff piece, the New York Times should be.

00:06:01.000 How recruiting is up, morale is up, and yes, standards are up.

00:06:05.000 The Army Combat Fitness Test, as mentioned, the ACFT, once watered down, has been reformed to restore challenge and purpose.

00:06:12.000 And yes, even efficiency is up.

00:06:16.000 Did you know that the Department of Defense's Inspector General just last month did an audit, and they noted a 12% increase in procurement efficiency and project delivery timelines?

00:06:28.000 Our influence also is up.

00:06:30.000 Did you know in the Philippines and Taiwan, joint exercises are up 30% year over year?

00:06:36.000 And of course, most importantly, our lethality is up.

00:06:40.000 The U.S. military is again training for warfighting, not workshops.

00:06:44.000 In fiscal year 2024, combat readiness scores from CENTCOM and INDOPCOM showed a 20% increase in unit preparedness over fiscal year 2022.

00:06:54.000 These are real numbers.

00:06:56.000 Morale, lethality, preparedness, efficiency.

00:07:00.000 So by all objective measurements, Pete Hegsep, in his short window of time, has been a roaring success, probably the most effective Secretary of Defense since the new millennium.

00:07:12.000 When you have a military that was bogged down by bureaucracy, wokeism, and low morale, and all of a sudden you see that turned around, you have to wonder.

00:07:22.000 But what is down exactly?

00:07:25.000 What's down in the Secretary of Defense's office?

00:07:28.000 What is down in the Pentagon?

00:07:30.000 The influence of neocons and the failed perpetual war architects.

00:07:37.000 The bureaucracy of combat forces, that is down.

00:07:40.000 And the weaponization of the uniform to serve ideological causes over national security.

00:07:47.000 Do you know what is gone now?

00:07:50.000 Pete Hegseth has removed this from the U.S. military and that makes him a major enemy of the entrenched permanent bureaucracy in the Pentagon.

00:07:59.000 When he removes the gay poems from our battleships, it turns out that you can have a 30% increase in war games. 1.00

00:08:07.000 Turns out that you could be 12% more efficient.

00:08:10.000 Play cut 134.

00:08:11.000 The coolest thing I did on board was to be able to participate in a LGBTQ spoken word night.

00:08:18.000 And I was able to read a poem that I wrote to the whole ship.

00:08:21.000 And that was probably the culmination of the whole deployment.

00:08:26.000 This whole thing is done.

00:08:28.000 That whole operation is done.

00:08:31.000 You know, I'm going to go read a LGBT gay poem.

00:08:34.000 On top of a battleship.

00:08:35.000 And it turns out when you remove that, efficiency, lethality, morale, recruitment all goes up.

00:08:41.000 This is also gone.

00:08:42.000 Here's another one.

00:08:43.000 While in uniform, we see the PSA on how to use pronouns.

00:08:48.000 Our own military was a major college campus with Tomahawk missiles.

00:08:53.000 Our military was becoming Harvard with drones.

00:08:57.000 That's what it was under Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley.

00:09:00.000 Speaking of which, you know what else is down?

00:09:02.000 The BMI of the Secretary of Defense.

00:09:05.000 Way down.

00:09:06.000 Warrior culture is ascendant, which is exactly why the knives are out for Pete Hegseth.

00:09:11.000 About this rubbish story.

00:09:12.000 Oh, he's putting stuff in signal chats.

00:09:15.000 Look at the core essence of what's happening here.

00:09:17.000 Steve Bannon would say, look at the signal, not the noise.

00:09:20.000 He has removed this cancer rather quickly.

00:09:23.000 Look at this.

00:09:24.000 Playcut 132.

00:09:25.000 Hi, my name is Johnny and I use he, him pronouns.

00:09:28.000 Using the right pronouns is a really simple way to affirm someone's identity.

00:09:32.000 It is a signal of acceptance and respect.

00:09:35.000 If it's a signal of acceptance and respect, how do we go about creating a safe space for everybody?

00:09:41.000 That's a good question.

00:09:43.000 A really good way to do that is to use inclusive language.

00:09:46.000 Instead of saying something like,"Hey, guys," you can say,"Hey, everyone." Another way that we could show that we're allies and that we accept everybody is to maybe include our pronouns in our emails or, like we just did, introduce ourselves using our pronouns.

00:10:02.000 This was an official military broadcast under Joe Biden.

00:10:05.000 And not a single criticism from the media.

00:10:08.000 Not a single criticism from the regime.

00:10:10.000 No, instead we have the alpha man ascendant, the warrior ethos back into the Pentagon.

00:10:17.000 And that is what gets...

00:10:18.000 Their attention.

00:10:19.000 But there, of course, is another thing.

00:10:21.000 Despite the fact that we're more lethal and morale is up and recruiting is up and efficiency is up and that we have a real warrior leading things.

00:10:28.000 No, no, no, no.

00:10:29.000 There's another thing at play here.

00:10:30.000 We're going to go a level deeper.

00:10:32.000 Because Pete Hegseth stands in the way.

00:10:35.000 Of the drums of war.

00:10:36.000 Do you hear that?

00:10:38.000 Oh, the neocons, they want to strike Iran more than anything else.

00:10:43.000 They want a ground war with Iran. 0.71

00:10:45.000 And Pete Hegseth stands atop the Pentagon to say, not today, neocon.

00:10:50.000 We ran on America First, not on colonizing Iran.

00:10:56.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:11:58.000 Pete Hegseth is succeeding.

00:12:00.000 He's making us the finest fighting force on the planet.

00:12:03.000 Here's breaking news.

00:12:04.000 President Trump backing Pete Hegseth live from the Easter egg roll.

00:12:07.000 Great job, team, getting that clip. 0.73

00:12:08.000 Thank you for that in real time.

00:12:10.000 Playcut 144.

00:12:11.000 I mean, I hear they're doing that whole thing again.

00:12:14.000 Here we go again.

00:12:16.000 Just a waste of time.

00:12:17.000 He is doing a great job.

00:12:21.000 Because he's doing a great job.

00:12:24.000 Ask the Hooties how he's doing.

00:12:26.000 Ask the Hooties how much this function adds. 0.55

00:12:30.000 Pete's doing a great job.

00:12:32.000 Everybody's happy with him.

00:12:33.000 We have the highest recruitment numbers I think they've had in 28 years.

00:12:39.000 No, he's doing a great job.

00:12:40.000 It's just fake news.

00:12:42.000 They just bring up stories.

00:12:43.000 I guess it sounds like disgruntled employees.

00:12:45.000 You know, he was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people, and that's what he's doing.

00:12:50.000 So you don't always have friends when you do that.

00:12:53.000 One more piece here about the wokeism, and then I do want to focus on Iran.

00:12:57.000 Which, again, we on this program, we have a very clear moral standard.

00:13:00.000 Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon.

00:13:03.000 But you also, you've got to keep Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton away because they right there and their staff, they're beating the war drums.

00:13:11.000 There is an undercurrent to try to take out everyone around Pete Hegseth and eventually do an encirclement around the Pentagon so that they can have a clear shot at bombing Iran.

00:13:20.000 And then, look, once you bomb Iran, that's a declaration of war. 0.94

00:13:23.000 What do you get next?

00:13:24.000 We don't know.

00:13:25.000 You might get troops.

00:13:26.000 You might get movements.

00:13:27.000 You can't play games with this stuff.

00:13:28.000 A war with Iran would break the back of this administration.

00:13:32.000 One more on what I just want to remind you what our military was becoming.

00:13:36.000 Morale was down.

00:13:37.000 Recruitment was down.

00:13:38.000 We were a sad fighting force under Joe Biden.

00:13:41.000 And very quickly, President Trump entrusting Pete Hexeth has brought it back.

00:13:46.000 Play cut 136.

00:13:47.000 Not a day goes by that I'm not grateful to be serving at this period of time.

00:13:54.000 Being able to undergo a full gender transition beyond hormones, laser hair removal.

00:14:01.000 Botox, lip injections, hair lowering.

00:14:04.000 Like, literally, I cannot be more thankful to be alive now.

00:14:12.000 This is a member of the military talking about the lip injections and the gender transition and how thankful that military member is to be alive, whatever rubbish that is, hair removal. 0.54

00:14:23.000 That's what our military was, that Pete Hegseth inherited.

00:14:27.000 All funded by taxpayers.

00:14:29.000 The military is no longer a safe space for this radical woke ideology.

00:14:33.000 We're back to not hair removal, but terrorist removal. 0.52

00:14:38.000 Not gender transition, but enemy elimination.

00:14:42.000 Lethality at all costs.

00:14:44.000 But Pete Hegseth is a prudent man.

00:14:47.000 You see, of course, it is inevitably, not inevitably, but it is President Trump's final decision whether or not we go to war with Iran.

00:14:55.000 He doesn't want to do that.

00:14:56.000 But understand all of the machinery around President Trump can be very persuasive and can be incredibly powerful in how military decisions are made.

00:15:10.000 Let's play cut 112 here.

00:15:11.000 I think it's around Iran.

00:15:13.000 No, I'm sorry.

00:15:14.000 That's something else.

00:15:14.000 That's Pete Hegseth defending himself at the egg roll.

00:15:16.000 I do want to play that.

00:15:17.000 Let me just say this very, very quickly.

00:15:20.000 The people around the president matter.

00:15:22.000 Back in the first term, it was Mad Dog Mattis and Mike Pence.

00:15:26.000 That we're literally launching a collusive conspiracy to try and get President Trump to support keeping troops in Afghanistan.

00:15:34.000 Let's play Cut 112.

00:15:36.000 You know, what a big surprise that a bunch of, a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hopes won't get back their Pulitzers.

00:15:47.000 They got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies.

00:15:49.000 See, this is what the media does.

00:15:51.000 They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees.

00:15:55.000 And then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputation.

00:15:59.000 And Pete Hegseth is right there.

00:16:00.000 He is pushing back against the media attacks because people that he fired for leaking to the media are now attacking him.

00:16:12.000 Okay, great.

00:16:13.000 But that's not really what's going on here.

00:16:14.000 It's a level deeper.

00:16:15.000 He knows it.

00:16:17.000 It's about the warmongers that never wanted him.

00:16:20.000 Remember, Pete Hegseth was at a 50-50 vote.

00:16:22.000 Do you remember what we had to do on this program?

00:16:24.000 You remember the effort, the energy, the intensity, the vigor, the spunk, the spirit, the mobilization?

00:16:30.000 It was supposed to be the era of good feelings.

00:16:33.000 It was December.

00:16:34.000 We just won the election.

00:16:36.000 I was in Palm Beach.

00:16:37.000 You guys were nicely supporting our program.

00:16:40.000 And we felt as if the fights were over.

00:16:42.000 But no, we mobilized the cavalry.

00:16:45.000 We mobilized the infantry, metaphorically.

00:16:48.000 And we said Pete was a red line.

00:16:50.000 And we said, oh, Joni Ernst, I don't think you want to do this.

00:16:52.000 And boy, did she make a 180 very quickly. 0.54

00:16:54.000 She did not realize.

00:16:55.000 She touched the stove and realized it was scolding hot.

00:16:59.000 They did not want Pete Hegseth all along because they knew that he was not one of them.

00:17:03.000 That Pete Hegseth is actually a grassroots warrior, number one.

00:17:08.000 Number two, he's a fighter's fighter.

00:17:11.000 And he doesn't want to war with Iran.

00:17:13.000 That's why they try to take him out then and now.

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00:18:18.000 Joining us now is a great friend and very serious Catholic, a devout Catholic.

00:18:24.000 On this Easter Monday, this news broke.

00:18:27.000 It is Michael Knowles from The Michael Knowles Show.

00:18:29.000 When I want guidance and wisdom on all things Catholicism, I go to Michael Knowles.

00:18:35.000 Michael, great to see you.

00:18:37.000 Charlie, it's great to be with you.

00:18:38.000 I'm sorry that I can't be on camera.

00:18:41.000 The timing of this is really odd.

00:18:44.000 I was walking down this morning to the Easter egg hunt at the White House.

00:18:48.000 And I got my whole family with me at 6 o'clock in the morning, and I see that the Holy Father has died.

00:18:53.000 And I thought, you know, of all the mornings to take off work, this is probably one of the worst ones I could have taken off.

00:19:00.000 But alas, I'm glad that I could at least phone in because I think people are having a lot of trouble processing the news.

00:19:07.000 I mean, you and I have talked about the Pope for years at this point, and I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

00:19:13.000 There are plenty of conservatives and conservative Catholics.

00:19:16.000 Have had a lot of questions with Pope Francis and problems with some of the things he's done.

00:19:22.000 So there's no sugarcoating.

00:19:24.000 But I think when we consider his legacy, the most notable aspect of it to me is that left-right political analysis doesn't totally map onto ancient institutions.

00:19:39.000 That's kind of my biggest takeaway with Pope Francis.

00:19:43.000 Whenever we think we can pin him down, we say, all right, he's Argentinian. 0.68

00:19:48.000 He comes from this kind of left-wing economic background.

00:19:50.000 Then he'll come out and say something like, gay marriage is a machination of the father of lies to deceive and confuse the children of God.

00:19:57.000 Every time we think he's going soft on some social issue, he'll say abortion is an assassination.

00:20:04.000 Abortionists are hired assassins.

00:20:06.000 And so you can't really pin him down.

00:20:08.000 And I think part of the reason for that is just the...

00:20:11.000 The weight of the Catholic Church. 0.63

00:20:13.000 You know, it's just been around for so long, and so we can't—our modern notions of politics, you know, they take you as far as they take you, but it would be a disservice to the man, really, to try to just minimize him in that way.

00:20:29.000 So his passing was today.

00:20:32.000 We've only lived through three popes.

00:20:34.000 I don't know how—I'm guessing.

00:20:36.000 I don't know your age exactly, Michael, but yeah, three popes.

00:20:39.000 Yeah, I'm not 60. That's right.

00:20:42.000 And just think about that.

00:20:43.000 I mean, rather monumental how few popes there are.

00:20:46.000 And so let's get technical for a second, Michael.

00:20:50.000 I, as you know, am not Catholic.

00:20:52.000 I'm an evangelical.

00:20:53.000 A lot of respect for Catholics and a lot of people that I...

00:20:57.000 We care about our Catholic, and we know a lot of good local Catholics here, including local father.

00:21:01.000 What is the College of Cardinals?

00:21:02.000 What is about to happen?

00:21:04.000 So everyone meets in Rome, Sistine Chapel.

00:21:06.000 Who's involved in it?

00:21:08.000 It's kind of a good old boys' network, is what I'm told.

00:21:10.000 Did Pope Francis put a lot of his allies in there?

00:21:15.000 Just walk us through the technical details of what we can expect for the selection of a new pope, because it gets a little rusty here, because we've only seen it a couple times in our lifetime.

00:21:24.000 That's true.

00:21:25.000 And this, what we're doing right now, has been happening for about 2,000 years, which is immediately when the seat is vacant, they call it sede pacante, when a pope dies, immediately everyone starts talking about who's the next one going to be, how does it happen?

00:21:39.000 So the Cardinal Camerlengo comes out.

00:21:41.000 This is his position in the Vatican.

00:21:42.000 He's announced the pope's death.

00:21:44.000 And there will be a period of about 15 to no more than 20 days of mourning.

00:21:49.000 And then the College of Cardinals is going to assemble.

00:21:52.000 The cardinals are bishops who are picked by the pope as sort of advisors and have positions within the Vatican.

00:22:03.000 Cardinals under the age of 80 can vote for a pope in the College of Cardinals.

00:22:09.000 So they're not only within the College of Cardinals, but they're cardinal electors.

00:22:13.000 They're all going to meet.

00:22:14.000 There are about, I think, about 180 of them right now who are eligible to vote.

00:22:19.000 They're going to go into the Sistine Chapel, and then you're not going to hear anything else.

00:22:22.000 The way that you're going to know that they picked a pope is through smoke coming out of the Vatican.

00:22:27.000 So, you know, classically, you're looking for the white smoke or the black smoke.

00:22:32.000 And then when the white smoke comes up, then they're going to say, So who's it going to be?

00:22:37.000 Because, again, not to sugarcoat some of the questions that have come up under the Francis pontificate, a lot of people are saying, is the next pope going to be really liberal?

00:22:46.000 Is he going to be, is he going to, I don't know, try to undermine the Catholic tradition or something like that?

00:22:51.000 And again, it's really hard to predict these things, but just because Pope Francis has appointed now so many cardinals does not necessarily mean that the cardinals are politically liberal or,

00:23:06.000 I don't know, side with Pope Francis on this issue or that issue.

00:23:13.000 A lot of these popes are in the developing world.

00:23:16.000 A lot of them are socially very, very conservative.

00:23:20.000 And so the ones who are up for it right now, one who's been talked about is Cardinal Pizzaballa.

00:23:25.000 He's the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.

00:23:27.000 That would be quite interesting given what a touchpoint Jerusalem has been in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

00:23:34.000 Another one who's up for it would be Peter Erdo.

00:23:37.000 He's in Hungary, also considered moderate to conservative.

00:23:41.000 There are a few who seem to be a little bit more liberal.

00:23:45.000 That would be Cardinal Zupi, Matteo Zupi, or Peraline, Cardinal Peraline.

00:23:51.000 But again, we don't really know.

00:23:53.000 In some ways, it's kind of like the Supreme Court justices.

00:23:58.000 Republicans pick these Supreme Court justices, and then half of the time they go on and disappoint us.

00:24:02.000 They rule in ways that are totally different than we expected.

00:24:05.000 And that could happen as well with...

00:24:08.000 With popes.

00:24:09.000 I mean, just use the example of John Paul II, whom everyone loves.

00:24:14.000 Don't forget, John Paul II was a child of Vatican II, of this major ecumenical council, which resulted in all sorts of reforms.

00:24:23.000 Some of the reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council, some of us, I think, had some problems with them, especially those of us who love the traditional Latin mass, the traditional liturgy.

00:24:33.000 And yet...

00:24:34.000 Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict for that matter, considered perhaps even more conservative.

00:24:39.000 Both of these guys come out of the Vatican Council, and yet they become some of the most stalwart, conservative-seeming figures of our lifetime.

00:24:47.000 So I guess getting back to the top, that's what I mean when I say you can't totally map this stuff onto left-right politics.

00:24:52.000 And also, you might think you've got to slam dunk with whichever cardinal is going to be the next pope.

00:24:58.000 It doesn't have to be a cardinal.

00:24:59.000 It technically, I suppose, could be me, but no one's picked up the phone yet to call me.

00:25:04.000 So, you know, you think you might know what the next pontificate's going to look like.

00:25:09.000 Really, at this point, we have no idea.

00:25:11.000 What do you want to see in the next pope?

00:25:14.000 I mean, obviously it would help if he's Catholic.

00:25:16.000 But what would you like to see as far as the advocacy internationally?

00:25:22.000 You mentioned John Paul II.

00:25:23.000 As I was raised, my grandmother, incredibly devout Catholic, wonderful person.

00:25:29.000 We grew up talking about John Paul II, about his moral clarity.

00:25:33.000 About his uncompromising views on the protective life and honestly how he believed the West was the best.

00:25:41.000 He was an articulate and effective critic of the Soviet Union being the Polish Pope.

00:25:49.000 He was vehemently anti-communist.

00:25:52.000 He made no mystery or no mistake with that.

00:25:57.000 What would you like to see in the next Pope?

00:26:00.000 And let's talk less regionally or less biographically, but from a positional, let's just say, from the position of the Pope, what would you like to see?

00:26:11.000 Right. What's he going to do?

00:26:13.000 You know, not that anyone's called to ask me, however, but you have called to ask me, so I'm happy to answer, and maybe people in the Curia could listen.

00:26:20.000 I think what would be really helpful to the Church in the next Pope is to have a Pope who is not hostile to tradition.

00:26:29.000 To the traditional liturgy, you know, what we call the Mass of the Ages, the traditional Latin Mass.

00:26:34.000 A lot of people think the traditional Latin Mass is just the new Mass that we have, but in Latin.

00:26:38.000 That's not true.

00:26:39.000 They're really different Masses.

00:26:40.000 The new Mass has removed a lot of prayers.

00:26:42.000 The new Mass actually could be said in Latin, but it usually is not.

00:26:46.000 You know, the reason I mention this is not just because I'm a fuddy-duddy and I have bow ties or something.

00:26:50.000 It's because there is so much beauty in this Mass that endured substantially unchanged for about 1400 years.

00:26:58.000 There's so much beauty that it's attracting a lot of people back to the church.

00:27:01.000 That is true.

00:27:01.000 That is objectively true.

00:27:03.000 You saw this in France just on Easter Sunday.

00:27:06.000 You had a record number of baptisms.

00:27:09.000 In the UK now, you've got this massive resurgence in the Catholic Church.

00:27:13.000 In England, for goodness sakes, this is the birthplace.

00:27:15.000 This is the land of Henry VIII.

00:27:17.000 And yet now Catholics are outnumbering Anglicans.

00:27:20.000 I mean, it's this unthinkable, I don't know what you want to call it, springtime for the church.

00:27:24.000 A lot of the people who are converting are converting not because of innovations or electric guitars or something, but because of the old smells and bells.

00:27:36.000 Listen, I play electric guitar.

00:27:37.000 I'm not totally opposed to electric guitar.

00:27:39.000 I'm kidding.

00:27:40.000 You're onto something.

00:27:41.000 You're onto something.

00:27:42.000 You're not wrong.

00:27:43.000 I think you could say this, Charlie, even from the evangelical perspective.

00:27:49.000 Where people are returning, it's where they find orthodoxy.

00:27:53.000 It's not where they want more of the world.

00:27:56.000 They want something a little higher than the world, at least for Sunday morning.

00:28:02.000 That would be what I would hope for in a pope.

00:28:05.000 Especially young men, they see a world consumed by evil and falling apart, and they want one thing that hasn't changed in 2,000 years.

00:28:12.000 And they say, hey, this place has lasted.

00:28:15.000 And I know it's going to last another 2,000 years because it hasn't changed.

00:28:19.000 So that's what I want.

00:28:20.000 Michael, in closing here, what is the timeline?

00:28:22.000 When can we expect a new pope, would you say?

00:28:25.000 And I'm sure there'll be a lot of coverage and drama out of Rome in the coming days and weeks.

00:28:29.000 Well, officially, there's no campaigning.

00:28:31.000 There's no jockeying.

00:28:33.000 And of course, the reality might differ from the official way it's supposed to go.

00:28:38.000 Yeah, I don't know about that.

00:28:39.000 I could see us having...

00:28:41.000 I bet we could have a pope within three weeks or maybe just after three weeks.

00:28:46.000 I don't think it's going to take very long.

00:28:49.000 I think that people have been expecting this now ever since Pope Francis' most recent illness.

00:28:55.000 So I think things are going to move rather quickly.

00:28:58.000 I think the number of cardinals who are really popabile is pretty small.

00:29:03.000 I think you could basically count them on one hand.

00:29:05.000 So I don't think it's going to be long now.

00:29:08.000 I mean, just as young people...

00:29:10.000 are returning to the Church because they want stability, they want order, they want orthodoxy.

00:29:15.000 I think the Vatican wants some stability, too, and so I think it's going to happen fast.

00:29:19.000 Michael Knowles, excellent work as always.

00:29:21.000 Check out The Michael Knowles Show, and we will be praying for you guys.

00:29:25.000 Hope a good decision is made and someone that leads people back to our Lord.

00:29:28.000 Thank you so much, Michael.

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00:29:45.000 Is it a daughter?

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00:29:47.000 Is it you?

00:29:47.000 Do you have those bills coming from these private student loan debts?

00:29:50.000 You're like, this is too much.

00:29:51.000 Why Refi, they're phenomenal.

00:29:53.000 They're very ethical.

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00:30:15.000 Go to yrefy.com.

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00:30:19.000 Y-R-E-F-Y.com.

00:30:23.000 Kind of piggybacking on what we were talking about with Michael Knowles, as an evangelical Christian, I want to talk about this story here from the New York Post.

00:30:30.000 I think it's very interesting and instructive in a variety of ways.

00:30:35.000 Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse, driven by pandemic internet and lax alternatives.

00:30:41.000 First of all, I see this happening on the ground.

00:30:43.000 In fact, I'm in a group chat with some amazing Protestant evangelical pastors.

00:30:47.000 I said, guys, this is a trend that's happening.

00:30:49.000 Are you seeing it?

00:30:50.000 They all agreed that young men in particular are joining the Catholic Church, even more so than the evangelical-type churches in the local area.

00:30:58.000 Some pastors had some theories, including my friend Pastor James Cadiz, which I think he was spot on with saying that young people like the liturgy and that they're very disappointed in the wokeism and the liberalism of a lot of the evangelical churches.

00:31:10.000 But let me go a little step further and build this out.

00:31:13.000 There is so little tradition today that people seek it out.

00:31:17.000 Our society is increasingly ugly.

00:31:20.000 Go to a shopping mall.

00:31:22.000 Do any of those buildings elevate you?

00:31:24.000 Go to the local McDonald's.

00:31:27.000 We used to be a country that even the local convenience store was built with the intent that it wanted to lift up the people that would shop there.

00:31:36.000 The town hall or the town center, for example, get a picture of Prescott, Arizona's town center.

00:31:42.000 Just City Hall.

00:31:43.000 Just an example.

00:31:45.000 Just get an example of any one of these old western towns, what they used to build.

00:31:50.000 And again, Blake would know these examples better than I would.

00:31:53.000 There's hundreds of them.

00:31:54.000 Now when we build a city council, if you guys could get Arlington Heights City Hall, Illinois, and contrast that with the Prescott, Arizona City Hall.

00:32:02.000 Yes, get Prescott, Arizona.

00:32:03.000 This is the Yavapai Courthouse.

00:32:06.000 That's a beautiful building, built with Roman columns.

00:32:11.000 It's a courthouse, so it's supposed to resemble structure, order.

00:32:14.000 So it's built with a lot of rigidity, but it still lifts you up, with the highest thing being the flag.

00:32:20.000 Now contrast that with the Arlington Heights City Hall.

00:32:23.000 Which might as well just be the Department of Ag.

00:32:26.000 Actually, that's more beautiful than I remember it.

00:32:28.000 But not as inspiring.

00:32:31.000 At least they have a clock tower to their defense.

00:32:35.000 Good pull, though, guys.

00:32:36.000 That's a much more appealing picture than it actually is.

00:32:39.000 It's actually a huge parking garage.

00:32:42.000 It's hard not to feel like evangelicalism is very shallow in the comparison to an ancient liturgy.

00:32:48.000 And to be honest, The trend that we are seeing is a very positive one.

00:32:56.000 People are seeking tradition, and what I hear from young people in particular is they say, everything is changing.

00:33:03.000 I don't need a worship song with electric guitar and smoke.

00:33:08.000 I want to feel holy.

00:33:10.000 And to be perfectly honest, it's a learning lesson for a lot of pastors I talk to.

00:33:14.000 If you are not creating an environment where the people that come to your church can find holiness and meaning, And can be elevated.

00:33:24.000 You're not doing your job.

00:33:26.000 There was a time in the 90s where people were hungry for a personal encounter with God.

00:33:30.000 And evangelicalism, I think, offers that better than some Catholicism circles.

00:33:34.000 Maybe. That's to be debated.

00:33:36.000 But times change, and needs and appetites change.

00:33:39.000 And I could tell you, on Saturday evening, I wanted to honor our Lord the night before the resurrection.

00:33:47.000 So I knew the local Catholic church was doing an Easter vigil.

00:33:51.000 Mind you, this goes from 8 p.m. to midnight.

00:33:53.000 An Easter vigil is a very long-standing tradition in the Catholic Church where they read basically almost the entire Bible.

00:33:58.000 They read for most of the whole Bible.

00:34:00.000 I go there, and I couldn't find a seat at 10 p.m. at night on a Saturday night.

00:34:05.000 And over half the people there were people my age.

00:34:07.000 It was like a selfie line just trying to get in there.

00:34:09.000 Everyone knew they followed the show.

00:34:11.000 I said, is this a turning point rally, or is this an Easter vigil?

00:34:14.000 The night before our Lord.

00:34:16.000 Again, I'm not Catholic, but I went there because when I walk into that specific Catholic church, I point up.

00:34:22.000 It's not a Costco with a rock band and a TED Talk and good coffee.

00:34:28.000 To be honest, I've had enough of that.

00:34:30.000 I don't want to go to Sam's Club to go to church or a school gym.

00:34:33.000 I kind of enjoy the holiness, the beauty, the pageantry, the structure, the tradition, and the reverence.

00:34:39.000 So I totally get it.

00:34:40.000 God bless those churches for...

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 21, 2025

Another Signal Chat...And Another Pope?

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