Today at the Charlie Kirk Show, Rich Barris discusses the Tucker departure, and also 2024 polling, Alex Berenson talks about Fauci s return to public life, and Charlie Kirk's thoughts on Tucker Carlson leaving Fox News.
00:01:09.000His 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.
00:01:17.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:55.000If Tucker remains off the airwaves through Election Day 2024, which seems to be a possibility due to contracts, how does that impact conservative media and the 2024 election?
00:02:08.000I think it's indisputably a loss for the American right if Tucker stays off the air.
00:02:14.000He was the lone voice, Charlie, that would not just, you know, for a long time, Fox News was the only outlet for the American right, but they were never fully on page with the energy of their party.
00:02:31.000That's how Republicans ended up with Mitt Romney, right?
00:02:35.000Tucker was different because Tucker, his rise was in part because of the rise of MAGA, but also because he had long held more libertarian that evolved into these views that are so widely shared by a part of the public that doesn't identify with Republicans, but agrees with them on wide issues.
00:02:57.000Like, I don't want to go to war with Ukraine.
00:02:59.000I don't want to go to war with Russia over Ukraine.
00:03:02.000If, you know, I will help Ukraine, but if it means getting into a great power conflict, that's stupid.
00:03:43.000And so I'm trying to understand, you know, is there even possible for a replacement?
00:03:51.000Do you think part of Tucker's power was in the 100 million homes he was able to get into, or is it Tucker himself?
00:03:58.000Think he was able over seven years to build such a loyal audience that wherever he goes, he's going to take a lot of that audience with him.
00:04:06.000Yeah, I think, you know, Fox didn't, you know, Fox needed Tucker.
00:04:14.000It's that, look, Charlie, staring into the camera when someone's saying something stupid, that Tucker, look, people, he had an appeal, still does, obviously, that people loved, but he also had built a record where people could appreciate and trust him.
00:04:30.000Nobody else, look, the Pentagon is celebrating in Politico today.
00:04:35.000They ran to Politico and they're celebrating Tucker being off the air because of his critique of foreign policy and the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
00:04:46.000There are also quietly, apparently, Republican lawmakers who are for instigation, escalation.
00:06:14.000It's about a machine of ballot chasing, voter registration, billions of dollars of micro-targeted advertising.
00:06:19.000And I just did a whole show the last hour about why the administrative state governmentally, from a policy perspective, likes Joe Biden.
00:06:26.000Rich, I personally, I want to get away from polls.
00:06:28.000I know that you do a lot of polls, but I think you would agree it's much more about ballot chasing and early voting operations and those sort of schematics.
00:06:35.000Is that the way we should be thinking about 2024?
00:06:41.000And this is why the number one question to me, because no matter who the Republican nominee is, Joe Biden is going to be extremely difficult.
00:06:49.000I think it was very clear in 2022 that they did not give up.
00:06:52.000This is like, I know a lot of Republicans think that this COVID ballot harvesting operation they had in 2020 was going to be temporary and that somehow that's not going to be that bad this time.
00:07:02.000I think they're out of their minds and fooling themselves.
00:07:05.000Democrats are going to turn out and they're going to turn out to vote for Joe Biden.
00:07:09.000They're going to turn out because they have a machine to turn them out, because they're going to micro-target for ballots.
00:07:14.000Because the voting window is so wide now, that doesn't require the physical work of getting human being A to polling place.
00:07:24.000It just takes a piece of paper now into somebody's hands, which is illegal, but they do it anyway, or into a mailbox.
00:07:30.000So they've basically shortened the logistical hurdle for the American Democrat Party.
00:07:35.000And so, and then they have a 30-day window, and then they know in real time who is voting and who isn't.
00:07:39.000Turnout is no longer really a thing, I think, anymore, Rich.
00:07:42.000They're going to hit their benchmarks.
00:07:44.000And if not, they'll just pour more money into it.
00:08:18.000I was just going to say they just don't understand what they're up against yet.
00:08:22.000And I'm listening to some of these people talk about arguments, Charlie, like, oh, but this candidate will get these women in suburbs that don't like Trump.
00:08:30.000And it's like, they are just like eight years too late.
00:08:34.000You know, that's not what this is about anymore.
00:08:36.000For me, the only way a Republican is going to beat Joe Biden, any Republican, is by having an appeal to a group of people that normally would not turn out for Republicans.
00:08:48.000And then understanding that candidate has to understand that it's not just about persuasion anymore or galvanizing.
00:08:55.000There needs to be infrastructure in place.
00:08:58.000And I'm telling you right now, the argument about the suburban women, you're looking at nationally, maybe 6 million.
00:09:07.000And this has been a problem for Republicans without Trump and before, actually.
00:09:13.000This has been a downward trend in states like Arizona and Georgia for a while now.
00:09:17.000So you need to inject a different voter into the electorate and you need to make sure you have the infrastructure to make it easy for them.
00:09:24.000We actually went back and re-interviewed some people in Nevada.
00:11:57.000Check it out, strongsell.com forward slash Charlie.
00:12:02.000So, Rich, let's build this out a little bit more.
00:12:04.000Looking at this completely objectively, Rich, I want you to walk through the downside of a long, expensive Republican primary.
00:12:13.000Because we have Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, you know, potentially Ron DeSantis, who does look like he's going to run.
00:12:20.000So, it's safe to assume there's at least $200 million of F you money out there that donors are going to spend because they personally don't like Donald Trump on the right.
00:12:31.000I know some of these donors, you know some of these donors.
00:12:33.000I'm not going to say their names, okay?
00:12:35.000They donate to some good things and to some bad things, but they really hate Trump, right?
00:12:50.000I'm going to spend the money because I hate Trump.
00:12:53.000Walk us through analytically and objectively why that is a bad thing if we want to win the White House in 2024.
00:13:02.000So there are historical considerations, and then there's the new, which is what we have been talking about, which is that things have changed now.
00:13:10.000It's, you know, people used to say things like, well, having a competitive primary is a good thing and it'll make the candidate that emerges ultimately stronger.
00:13:20.000That never really has been true, especially when it comes to incumbents.
00:13:24.000And I actually think that in this situation, you would consider Donald Trump an incumbent almost, because the bottom line, Charlie, this is why the DNC is keeping everybody off the debate stage.
00:13:35.000This is why they're moving South Carolina before Iowa and New Hampshire.
00:13:39.000History, whether it's Herbert Walker or Bush, whether it's Jimmy Carter, when there's a known candidate, a known president, and they are run through the primary, they're run through the ringer, and they're battered by their opponents, making attack lines that are going to be used later.
00:13:52.000They are weakened by it and they lose.
00:14:20.000Number two, this operation that we're talking about is going to cost a fortune.
00:14:26.000The only and that, and it's, and it needs to start now.
00:14:29.000It can't be in, there's not enough time.
00:14:32.000It's half a billion dollars minimum in three states.
00:14:37.000Yeah, minimum, minimum, Charlie, because wouldn't it be great if we had time, if we started now to really go into other states to give us some cushion, to give us some a little bit more effort?
00:14:47.000When Democrats did this in 20, they started months before.
00:14:52.000That was the whole point of why the primary that Bernie was losing, I mean, that Bernie was winning turned out to be such a disaster for them because they really had started to put some of this stuff in place for Joe Biden before.
00:15:04.000And it took them, they have unions, the right does not.
00:15:07.000So there's a lot of organizational concerns that the right needs to address now.
00:15:12.000And they need to, you know, there's just not enough time after a primary is over to pivot to a general.
00:15:19.000So let's say we have this $200 million super PAC war chest of just any candidate but Trump, right?
00:15:25.00030 million here, 10 million here, because billionaires are richer than ever.
00:15:28.000The oligarchy has had a really good run, right, in the last five years.
00:15:32.000A lot of cheap money flows upwards, right?
00:15:37.000And so these billionaires are going to say, okay, I'm going to spend this money.
00:15:40.000So, Rich, even though Trump is going to win, what does that do for Trump's name idea in these states?
00:15:45.000What does that do for, you know, and by the way, that's money that can't then be spent, right?
00:15:52.000And by the way, it could be more than 200 million.
00:15:54.000This could end up being a $500 million primary because you're talking about some of these donors that have serious FU money that are just going to say, like, yeah, you know, I hate Trump, $250 million.
00:16:05.000I'm going to put $250 million into a super PAC because I hate Trump that much.
00:16:08.000That's Republican on Republican-friendly fire.
00:16:12.000Rich, we could be in a place where we could be having to like tie up the primary a year from now in delegate counting in March and April.
00:16:19.000We're like, well, this is a waste of time.
00:16:20.000Meanwhile, Democrats will be chasing ballots and registering voters and running negative ads on Republicans fearmongering for nine months straight.
00:16:28.000The only one who wins, the only people who win through a bitter primary on the Republican side is the Griff.
00:16:35.000You know, if I lump them all up into one category, it's called what you're calling it, the Griff.
00:16:40.000The consultants who feel like, and that's another part of this, Charlie, they want this fight, not the voters necessarily.
00:16:51.000They're not making the money that they would make without Donald Trump.
00:16:55.000So you have the consultants, you have, frankly, politicians who are looking out for themselves before the party and its ability to beat Joe Biden in 2024.
00:17:05.000And if they don't, it's because they put all of those selfish concerns first.
00:17:15.000And they had plenty of time to put together this infrastructure.
00:17:18.000They got to start putting that before they, you know, put their own concerns and access, you know, questions about access, you know, ahead of what it takes to win.
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00:19:49.000But if you read the New York Times, these people, there's this hard group of 20 or 30% of the United States that believes that without Fauci, we all would be dead.
00:20:00.000And without the vaccines, we all would be dead.
00:20:02.000I mean, he said so many crazy things in that interview, but the craziest thing he said was that he thought the vaccines had saved 5 million lives in the United States.
00:20:15.000And so it might be, it might be a book deal, or it could be that there's some sort of negative new.
00:20:20.000I mean, I don't want to get ahead of myself here, but sometimes when you see these profile pieces, at least this was the case with Andy McCabe, and this was the piece with Peter with Peter Strzok.
00:20:29.000They're trying to get ahead of something.
00:21:08.000You know, Caitlin, I don't want to say a mistake, but I think we really need to remember next time we're confronted with this, that when you have a situation where there's doubt in the minds of some people about whether something works or not, we better try to reach out and be a better explainer of why we feel these things are important.
00:21:28.000Because whenever, particularly in our country with our free spirit, which we all embrace, that people being told what to do very often has the opposite effect.
00:21:38.000That's what I was referring to in that interview.
00:21:40.000Yeah, you said I said, I mean, Alex, we all embrace the free spirit.
00:22:11.000Most people got their kids vaccinated.
00:22:14.000Yeah, there were places, and frankly, those places were mostly on the left where, you know, people had questions about, let's say, the MMR vaccine.
00:22:22.000But for the most part, people listened.
00:22:25.000The reason people didn't want to take these vaccines.
00:22:29.000And by the way, if you look at data on people over 65, there's very, actually very little difference between the United States and Europe in people over 65 on the mRNA vaccines, the COVID vaccines, even, I mean.
00:22:44.000The difference is that Americans heard from me and heard from you and heard from Tucker.
00:22:50.000And some younger people realized this is probably not in our interest.
00:22:53.000This doesn't, you know, this, this COVID is just not that dangerous for us.
00:22:57.000And frankly, I don't think I'm going to be protected from it even with the vaccine.
00:23:01.000I don't think I'm going to be protected from passing it to somebody else.
00:23:04.000These people, Coney Fauci in particular, but all of them, instead of early on saying, you know what, we're going to target this at the people who might actually benefit from it.
00:23:14.000And we're going to let everybody else make their own decision about it, decided it became a fight.
00:23:19.000It became, we're going to shove this down your throat.
00:23:22.000And one of the reasons they got to that place was because they had scared so many of those New York Times readers, those 40-year-olds living in Brooklyn who hadn't let their kids out of their apartments for a year.
00:23:48.000And even if the vaccine had been completely effective and had no side effects, it would have been wrong to force healthy adults to take that.
00:23:57.000It's not right to make people, to take away people's medical autonomy.
00:24:02.000That's a core American, a core Western value.
00:24:05.000The fact that the vaccines don't work and may be dangerous are the icing on this, you know, Wano case.
00:24:12.000And it's so frustrating, Alex, because there's this whole. component that is still ignored and was ignored, which is, is there any treatment that might be able to reduce the hostility of the virus against your body?
00:25:09.000People pushed him into doing the right thing.
00:25:11.000And, you know, 35 years later, he made exactly the same mistake.
00:25:16.000He wanted vaccines for a, for, in this case, for a respiratory virus that you basically can't really treat with vaccines or prevent with vaccines instead of good treatments.
00:25:27.000And, you know, the problem is the people who were telling him this, we, you know, we weren't sympathetic to the media in the same way that, you know, gay activists were sympathetic to the media or the media was sympathetic to them in 1989.
00:25:40.000And so we got demonized for really trying to get him to look the right way.
00:25:46.000So, and we have here, we're pulling the advertisement.
00:25:49.000I personally get really triggered when I see these Paxlovid ads, not because of the efficacy or not efficacy.
00:25:55.000I'm not an expert on that, but the fact that now we're allowed to talk about treatments, like, oh, really?
00:25:59.000After you've mandated the vaccine, I mean, again, I know for certain that, hey, if we would have had a national thing, say, hey, if you lose 10 pounds, you're going to have a better shot of surviving this virus.
00:26:09.000If you go for a walk outside, if you get some vitamin D exposure, get your vitamin D level above 50, right?
00:26:14.000Vitamin D is abundant, not just in the sky, but all throughout Walgreens and CBS.
00:26:19.000I mean, you could just, you could supplement it.
00:26:57.000We don't eat in the same, you know, they eat more healthily in Europe.
00:27:02.000Those are the things we should have been talking about.
00:27:04.000Instead, Tony Fauci and the public health establishment locked people, including kids, in their houses for a year, made them more depressed, made them fatter.
00:27:13.000Yeah, of course we had terrible outcomes from this.
00:27:15.000Yeah, I mean, again, if we would have, but it's politically incorrect, right?
00:27:18.000There's a couple of things, like, for example, I'll never forget when Fauci stopped short of, you know, not saying, okay, everyone needs to be locked down with a mask, but he didn't go after hookup culture, right?
00:27:27.000Remember, he was asked that about, because that's a sacred cow.
00:27:44.000Now, we're hitting on something though, right?
00:27:46.000Which is, it's a pandemic of hysteria unless there are some central pieties and some holy elements of your society that actually matter more than quote unquote the pandemic, which is social activism, you know, obesity, which I think is an interesting one because it was in front of us the whole time, right?
00:28:05.000Instead of public health awareness of, you know what, let's all as a country try to get our BMI down 10%.
00:28:32.000It helps you in the sense that you do lose weight.
00:28:34.000But let's not be surprised if in 10 years there's some next side effects out of Ozempic that, you know, that nobody's even predicted, because this is what happens when you rely on a medical cure for everything instead of helping people or encouraging them to be healthy.
00:28:48.000I can't believe that this is a conservative position.
00:28:51.000Well, it's not my position, but I agree with you.
00:28:53.000I have said for a while that the American right embraces obesity culture way too much.
00:28:58.000Alex, tell us about you going to Rumble.
00:29:00.000Telling people, telling people to be healthy.
00:29:04.000How did telling people not to be fat become something that is a politicized point of view?
00:29:08.000It's because we're, as you well know, we are purchased and owned and operated by corporations that make a lot of money, not just off of getting you fat, keeping you fat, and then selling you medication to subsidize you being fat and overweight.
00:29:21.000When you get healthy, when you're taking the right supplements, you're happier, you're less depressed, you're less likely to be on benzos, less likely to be on SSRIs.
00:29:27.000It's not a total thing, but if you get back your autonomy and get back into a healthy lifestyle and you eat kind of local and you're not getting processed foods and not GMOs, all of your hormone markers go in the right direction and you become less profitable for these ridiculous pharmaceutical companies.
00:29:44.000I just want to say, you know, I think the word you used was autonomy.
00:29:48.000You have more bodily autonomy and it gives you more political autonomy.
00:29:52.000You are more independent in every way.
00:29:55.000And there are people who don't, I guess, don't like that, or at least think that you should be more reliant on the government and less on yourself.
00:32:51.000I mean, I think we have a really good case.
00:32:53.000I think people, some people who've read the case who I think didn't know exactly how we were going to frame it have been surprised by the strength of it.
00:33:02.000But, you know, we'll take our chances.
00:33:37.000If you read very carefully what I said, if you look at the broad public health effect when you have masks that are so-called mandated or supposed to be worn, because so many people don't wear them, even though they're in an arena in which masks are supposed to be worn or they don't wear them properly from a public health standpoint on the cohort of people, the effect can be only marginal.
00:34:02.000And as we mentioned, it was 10, 13% or so.
00:34:05.000But for the individual who religiously wears a properly fitted mask, the effect is much, much, much better than that.
00:34:18.000Alex, and then we're supposed to act as if when we went through airports with, you know, these, I mean, these pieces of cloth that they were going to do something?
00:34:41.000That would cost about $2 billion a day every day to have Americans quote unquote properly wear N95 masks, which most people can't tolerate for long periods of time anyway.
00:34:52.000And, you know, there are several bucks and you'd have to swap them out.
00:34:54.000So from a realistic point of view, it's a joke.
00:35:32.000And, you know, he's done this thing now repeatedly in, you know, in a couple of dimensions, school closures, masks, lockdowns, where he said, well, it wasn't me.
00:35:40.000I didn't really tell anybody to do anything.