00:01:38.000His 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.
00:01:46.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:57.000I am taking your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:03:00.000You guys can also listen to us live and watch us live every single day from 12 Eastern to 2 Eastern on our Facebook and YouTube channel.
00:03:08.000And also, we have exclusive podcast commentary on top of that that you don't even hear on the radio show and you do not hear on the live stream.
00:03:16.000And I want to thank all of you that support us at charliekirk.com slash support.
00:04:02.000I don't really know what your pastor is getting at here.
00:04:05.000I can best guess that the pastor is inferring that some of the wishes and wants and desires the Democrat Party might align with a compassionate Christian worldview.
00:04:16.000However, when you look into what government helping people actually does, it hurts people.
00:04:22.000Government helping people has not actually made people wealthier or richer.
00:04:26.000The more people that have gone on government assistance over the last couple decades, the more likely they are to stay in poverty.
00:04:34.000So if you want to help people, you should want them to get off of government assistance.
00:04:38.000You should want them to not receive government welfare or a check from the taxpayer.
00:04:44.000And so the idea is intentions versus results.
00:04:48.000It is tempting to want to support a Democrat nominee or a Democrat platform that would say, we're going to give health care for everybody.
00:04:55.000But is that really going to help them?
00:04:57.000It might help them in the short term get some sort of delivery of health care.
00:05:00.000However, giving somebody a government benefit does not make them more likely to be self-sustainable, to be self-reliant, and quite honestly, has not helped communities that have had high increases of Medicaid, welfare, or government assistance or taxpayer assistance be able to break out of the spell of poverty.
00:05:17.000For example, since Lyndon Baines Johnson passed the Great Society Act in the mid-1960s, the more money we have spent to try and abolish poverty, poverty is one.
00:05:27.000The greatest poverty elimination program is a job, is not locking down your country, and is also having entrepreneurs employ people in communities across the country to be able to lift people out of the current socioeconomic circumstance they're in.
00:05:42.000That best aligns with the Christian worldview of a man shall not work, he shall not eat.
00:05:48.000And secondly, any person out there that tries to make a biblical or theological or Christian defense of abortion, I do not hold that view at all whatsoever.
00:05:57.000We have had 61 million abortions since Roe versus Wade, and I do not hold the view that you can possibly hold a theological belief and also be pro-abortion.
00:06:07.000So thank you, Isaac, for the question.
00:06:08.000Check out the podcast we did over the weekend where we touch on some of these topics as well.
00:06:18.000Charlie, they just released the topics for the debate next Thursday in Nashville: Fighting the Chinese coronavirus, American families, race in America, climate change, national security, and leadership.
00:06:29.000What are your thoughts on these topics?
00:07:06.000One out of four of young people in our country have contemplated suicide in the last 90 days.
00:07:10.000Alcoholism, depression, joblessness, 100,000 small businesses have gone under in the last six months.
00:07:16.000There is a real human cost to the draconian lockdowns.
00:07:20.000So it is a massive issue that is not being talked about.
00:07:23.000So if under these kind of topics that have been presented, though, to the president, the one in particular that I think the president needs to zero in on is national security.
00:07:33.000The president has had an incredible record of success negotiating foreign peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
00:07:40.000Looks like he's going to bring Saudi Arabia to the table to sign the peace deal.
00:07:46.000The embassy has been moved to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights, not to mention holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable.
00:07:54.000In more ways than one, he has been a phenomenally successful president abroad.
00:07:59.000So I think that the president needs to zero in on how he has kept our country safer.
00:08:03.000He has not declared endless misadventure wars overseas.
00:08:07.000And the president has been firm in his commitment to defending the American worker, defending forgotten America, and also ending the endless wars.
00:08:38.000Can we have a debate topic on the opioid crisis in our country that kills over 50,000 Americans every single year?
00:08:46.000Can we have a debate topic on suicide and depression?
00:08:49.000Can we have a debate topic on how churches are being closed, but cannabis dispensaries have remained wide open?
00:08:56.000Can we have a debate topic on the human cost of lockdowns?
00:09:01.000Can we have a debate topic on how young people are going to be the first generation to inherit a less free, less prosperous, and less, let's say, equal under-the-law country than the generations before it.
00:09:14.000But instead, they're hyper-focusing on climate change and race in America.
00:09:19.000President Donald Trump has to focus on every one of the major issues that is pertinent to him convincing persuadable voters.
00:09:26.000President Donald Trump, in his debate, has to say that the Harris administration will shut down your churches.
00:09:32.000The Harris administration will lock down the country again.
00:09:39.000Number one, Joe Biden will take great offense at this.
00:09:42.000Make him make the argument that he'll be in charge, not Kamala Harris.
00:09:46.000Number two, we all know Kamala Harris will actually be in charge.
00:09:49.000Kamala Harris is the most liberal senator in the United States Senate.
00:09:53.000Kamala Harris is disliked amongst persuadable and moderate voters.
00:09:57.000And Kamala Harris must become the primary focus of most of the messaging that is going to be brought to the forefront of this American political conversation.
00:10:08.000So when Kamala Harris takes over the White House, when Kamala Harris becomes president of the United States, which was what will happen if Joe Biden wins, how do you think she's going to be on the economy?
00:10:20.000How do you think she's going to be on China?
00:10:22.000She will be a transactional machine politician that will not hold our adversaries accountable and will kowtow to the corporatist interests of the Democrat Party.
00:10:31.000So Wayne from St. Petersburg, congratulations, you win a signed copy of the MAGA Doctrine.
00:10:36.000I have to tell you that I do not think this helps Donald Trump with the current selection of questions, but how he responds to it will be the real trick.
00:10:44.000How he responds to that sequence of questions will matter most to how he actually is able to win the debate.
00:10:53.000I think if the president performs like he did in the town hall, he will win the election.
00:10:58.000I believe this debate will be the most important debate in presidential history.
00:11:02.000I'm going to share something with you that no one else in the mainstream press has said that is a good sign for Donald Trump.
00:11:09.000Any persuadable voters that are still out there, I give very little to any chance that they're going to vote for Joe Biden.
00:11:17.000Typically, the late-breaking voters go against the incumbent.
00:11:22.000That is typically the laws of politics.
00:11:25.000I think it is the exact opposite in this election.
00:11:28.000I think that there are many people that have not yet made up their mind, and those people are waiting for a reason to vote for Donald Trump.
00:11:34.000If you're against Donald Trump, you're against Donald Trump.
00:11:37.000There's no way that another 18 days of Donald Trump is going to make you be like, you know what?
00:11:44.000After the impeachment, almost going to war with Iran, allegedly, the Mueller investigation, the tax returns, the $2 billion in negative ads, is something in the next 18 days really going to turn you against Donald Trump?
00:12:03.000So President Donald Trump has to embrace the late-breaking strategy that we are in the last moments of this presidential campaign.
00:12:11.000And President Trump has to give a clarion call and a ask to bring swing and persuadable voters into his category and motivate his base and get center-right voters to vote for him.
00:12:53.000They do physical, psychological, and social movements to make you a better person.
00:13:00.000Specific lessons you learned about psychology or habits, the ease of just 10 minutes a day, the tone of your program or anything you loved.
00:13:07.000It is so easy to log your food and it's also very flexible.
00:13:53.000Your pastor is wrong biblically and morally.
00:13:56.000Number one, I believe in comprehensive Christianity, not compartmentalized Christianity.
00:14:01.000I don't think there is anything where we should not get actively involved as Christians, whether it be music, arts, entertainment, and yes, government.
00:14:11.000But secondly, I also believe that this is an anti-biblical and anti-theological view.
00:14:17.000Tyndale, when he was translating the Bible, and he came under great condemnation and great accusations of heresy from the institutionalized Catholic hierarchy when he did this.
00:14:31.000There are so many amazing Catholics that listen to our podcast, but it's just a historical fact.
00:14:36.000And when Tyndale was translating the Bible away from Latin into English, he believed that biblical literacy was a major problem.
00:14:45.000And when Tyndale went back to the Koigne Greek, the words that were originally written in the New Testament, Jesus Christ clearly said to his followers, his disciples, he said, on this rock build my, and most people say church.
00:15:30.000Well, unfortunately, many English translators originally said, I will build my church.
00:15:34.000But however, it's a mistake to substitute an institutional vision of a church centered on just religion for what Jesus wanted us to do in the public square, which was to transform the whole agenda of life, not just creating a walled-off spiritual realm.
00:15:52.000And so, for example, an ecclesia was actually a gathering, that's right, a physical gathering of a Greek city-state.
00:15:59.000An ecclesia was a whole body of citizens in a free city-state.
00:16:04.000called out by the herald for discussion on decision of public business.
00:16:08.000So why would Jesus tell us to get involved in the public business, to not just be compartmentalized or walled off, but tell us to get directly into the public square?
00:16:17.000And I encourage all of you Christians out there to use this against your pastors because they're theologically wrong and they are misleading you if they tell you not to get involved in politics.
00:16:26.000We are commanded by Jesus Christ to get involved in politics.
00:16:29.000In fact, the two words that unified the Greek ecclesia, the secular ecclesia, was the Greek term isonomia and the Greek term ella uutheria.
00:16:40.000Those two words, isonomia, meant equality, ella eutheria, freedom.
00:16:45.000What two countries are founded on the ideas of equality and freedom?
00:16:51.000America was founded on the ideas that built ecclesia, that Jesus Christ told us that you should build on this rock that which the Greek city-state embodied.
00:17:01.000And so any pastor that tells you or is afraid of engaging in politics, in my theological interpretation, I'm not the only one that holds this view, I'm just articulating it, is not biblical.
00:17:19.000And if you look what Tyndale and Martin Luther did in the early stage of the Protestant church, it is very interesting how Tyndale was actually arrested, tried, condemned, and murdered for translating the Bible correctly.
00:17:36.000And for any Christian out there that says, it really doesn't matter if we get involved in politics or not, well, two words for you, Nero and Diocletian.
00:17:46.000Nero and Diocletian were Roman emperors that were absolute martyrs against Christians.
00:17:53.000Do you care about Christians being persecuted?
00:18:00.000Why is your pastor not speaking out against Christians being persecuted, against pastors being arrested?
00:18:05.000If your pastor has remained silent, remained closed, or was closed throughout the summer, they were in direct defiance to the theological mandate to, as the Bible says, do not fear.
00:18:18.000More times than not, God tells his followers in the Old Testament, be not afraid.
00:18:23.000And so too many pastors in America have cowered to the secular line of thinking that the church should not be involved in politics.
00:18:37.000And just another thought on Tyndale and Luther.
00:18:40.000I'm reading a whole book on Tyndale and Luther, and they completely transformed Europe and helped create Western civilization.
00:18:48.000And through the Gutenberg printing press, they brought the Bible to the language of the peasants.
00:18:53.000The language of the peasants was English.
00:18:55.000Latin was the language of the priests and of Rome.
00:19:00.000As soon as the Bible was translated to English, you saw the greatest democratization of thinking and the greatest democratization of people rising up and wanting to be involved in the civic process.
00:19:17.000And some other pastors will say, well, we're not allowed to defy authority.
00:19:21.000Well, then how do they square Daniel 6, 10?
00:19:24.000It says clearly, now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened towards Jerusalem.
00:19:31.000Now, as a pretext, if you go through Daniel 6 through 9, it says very clearly that King Darius basically put a hit out on anyone that followed the rabbinical or Jewish laws.
00:19:44.000Daniel leaned in and he opened up his window.
00:19:47.000And three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to God just that he has done before.
00:19:52.000Then these men went as a group, found Daniel praying, asking God for help, went to the king, got him arrested, eventually threw him in the lion's den.
00:20:00.000Daniel knew what was being asked of him was tyrannical, and he opened up the window and he said, I'm going to do it anyway.
00:20:08.000Where were the pastors that were like Daniel during this lockdown?
00:20:12.000These pastors were cowards that didn't open up their church.
00:20:16.000And the pastors like Ken Graves and James Cadiz and Rob McCoy and Jack Hibbs, the list goes on.
00:20:24.000But we need to have pastors that have the spirit of Daniel, not the fear of the secular left.
00:20:31.000And so many of these pastors I've interfaced with they'd much rather collect their tithes and their offerings through live stream than stand clearly for the reopening of the church.
00:20:39.000The church was originally told to us by Jesus Christ to be political.
00:21:00.000And if they have any sort of disagreement, I'd love to know what biblical translation they're using and what sort of contorted justification they have to try and justify a non-political and closed church during these very important times.
00:21:17.000Hey, Charlie, can you talk more about what's going on in college campuses?
00:21:20.000I am convinced that I should not send my kids to college.
00:21:30.000You win a signed copy of the New York Times Bestseller of the MAGA Doctrine.
00:21:34.000And this segues nicely to our thinker.org book of the week, T-H-I-N-K-R.org slash Charlie, book of the week.
00:21:43.000Thinker.org book of the week is the coddling of the American Mind, How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.
00:22:04.000But at thinker.org slash Charlie, T-H-I-N-K-R dot org slash Charlie, you are able to consume these amazing books.
00:22:15.000Our book is The Coddling of the American Mind.
00:22:17.000We'll go into it in just a second, but there's David and Goliath.
00:22:20.000There's Outliers, The Abolition of Man, The Splendid and the Vile, God in the Dock and Miracles, and so much more.
00:22:27.000So I encourage you guys to go to thinker.org slash Charlie.
00:22:30.000If you want to explore big ideas and go deep for learning, it's thinker.org slash Charlie.
00:22:35.000So The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianov says there are three great untruths that have begun to coalesce into a cult of safetyism in the United States.
00:22:46.000These untruths fly in the face of ancient wisdom and modern research and have proven harmful to the individuals and groups who have imbibed them.
00:22:55.000Greg Lukianov and Jonathan Haidt team up to illuminate these untruths and their deterious effects, as well as suggest some remedies.
00:23:03.000So number one, more than just resilient, children are anti-fragile.
00:23:06.000Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book on anti-fragility.
00:23:10.000Also, they talk about the belief that what doesn't kill them makes us weaker, has fostered the rise in paranoid safetyism.
00:23:17.000This is probably the most important book if you want to realize why our country handled this pandemic so poorly and why we retreated to safetyism and we did not embrace courage, bravery, or wisdom, but instead retreated to fear.
00:23:30.000Also, the book talks about making warnings about unreliable emotions are as old as humanity itself.
00:23:37.000So perhaps it's not a good idea to make them a basis for dialogue in universities.
00:23:42.000Universities have completely damaged our country.
00:23:45.000We deal with this quite often at Turning Point USA and professorwatchlist.org.
00:23:49.000You guys should check it out, professorwatchlist.org.
00:23:51.000And at Turning Point USA, you guys are able to get engaged, get involved, and we play offense with a sense of urgency to win America's culture war.
00:23:59.000But I can tell you that the left hates the idea that there are other ideas.
00:24:03.000It's not that they disagree with us, it's that they don't want our ideas to exist at all.
00:24:08.000They want to use whatever power at their disposal to squelch opposition opinion and to go after anyone that might disagree with them even slightly.
00:24:20.000And what happens at the university is they have emotion-based tribunals where they do not have logical thinking.
00:24:28.000If I were to say the most qualified people and applicants that we have that come work for us at Turning Point USA dropped out of college or they didn't go to college at all whatsoever, or they completely rejected everything that they learned in college.
00:24:41.000Anyone that comes to work for me and they say that college is a meaningful experience, they usually don't last very long.
00:24:46.000In fact, here on the Charlie Kirk show, our best workers are people that are like, yeah, college was a complete waste of time.
00:24:53.000And that kind of should tell you that maybe college isn't preparing our young people to be able to succeed in our country.
00:25:01.000It continues by saying the untruth that the world is comprised of good people and evil people is a natural but polarizing tendency.
00:25:08.000Also, the great untruths of fragility, emotional reasoning, and us versus them have flourished in the soil of helicopter parenting, social media, and the decline of a child's play.
00:25:19.000Raising kids with wisdom means responsibly encouraging independence in action and thought.
00:25:25.000And finally, universities can encourage wisdom by putting the pursuit of truth before social justice and by upholding free speech and inquiry as quintessential to the life of the university.
00:25:35.000That is the coddling of the American mind, how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation of failure.
00:25:40.000Our book of the week, at thinker.org/slash Charlie, T-H-I-N-K-R dot org/slash Charlie.
00:25:49.000You went assigned a copy of the MAGA Doctrine.
00:25:51.000I was recently in a group of leftists who claimed that you, quote, can't be racist towards a white person because they were not oppressed.
00:25:59.000I would like to know how you would have responded to that question and if you have any advice on how to maturely handle the situation without starting a fight.
00:26:53.000I'm talking about individuals being prejudiced against another group of individuals just based on the color of their skin.
00:26:59.000Where do you get your definition from?
00:27:01.000Where do you derive that definition from?
00:27:04.000And they'll quote some literature and all that and say, that's just not true.
00:27:06.000Look at the Webster definition right there.
00:27:09.000A belief that race is fundamental detriment of human traits and capacities and racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
00:27:18.000So, for example, when black people tell white people to take a knee because they did something wrong, that's racist.
00:27:27.000When you tell young people that are eight and nine years old that you have privilege based on the color of your skin, white privilege, that's racist.
00:27:37.000Categorizing people based on skin color and judging them based on that skin color is racist.
00:27:43.000Where the left believes, and this is rooted in critical race theory, that it is actually a struggle between groups.
00:27:50.000They believe that it is actually all black people are oppressed and all white people are not.
00:27:55.000And therefore, anything that is racist is the proliferation of that society.
00:28:00.000And that's kind of where you get to the second definition here of the Merrien-Webster dictionary definition: the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another.
00:28:11.000Well, that's not what's happened in America.
00:28:41.000If you believe it's a power struggle, then yes, white people cannot be racist, but only if you believe the power struggle is inherently racial.
00:28:50.000The only power struggle I believe is maybe a very small set of leftist elitists that are running our country.
00:28:58.000Maybe that's the only power struggle I could possibly believe in.
00:29:01.000But generally, and most specifically, this idea of a broad-based power struggle in our country is completely baseless, especially based on skin color.
00:29:11.000So thank you, Lauren, for your question.
00:29:13.000You win a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine.
00:29:14.000Just understand when someone from the left is talking about racism, they are not talking to you about the type of racism that you and I grew up believing, which is any person of any skin color hating another person of another skin color.
00:29:27.000That is the true definition of racism.
00:29:32.000On Mondays, I know you answer your listeners' questions, and I thought I'd send you some this week instead of just being a passive listener.
00:29:38.000You win a signed copy of the MAGA Doctrine because you emailed us freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
00:29:43.000In the past year alone, I have been asked in three of my graduate-level classes to give introductions stating my name, gender pronouns, and cultural identity.
00:29:50.000I'm not afraid to share who I am, she, her, hers, and a Christian, but I've seen classmates apologize for being white, and teachers have discussed that being a woman makes you a victim of trauma.
00:30:02.000I'm deeply saddened that these conversations is becoming common.
00:30:06.000I would like advice or talking points on how to address this concern in the college institution.
00:30:11.000Man, if parents are listening to this, what are you doing sending your kids to school learning from this garbage that you're a woman, that you have trauma because you're a woman, and that you have to say your gender pronouns?
00:30:23.000I just don't even, I just, it's so destructive.
00:30:26.000This is how the country is going to fall apart.
00:31:05.000If your grandfather stormed the beaches of Normandy and liberated the European continent, if you sit in your basement all day and act like Hunter Biden, you do not get a Congressional Medal of Honor.
00:31:18.000Therefore, if your skin color is white, you do not have to apologize unless you've actually been a racist.
00:31:26.000And it's also a lot more nuanced than that.
00:31:30.000What about the white people that died to free the slaves in the Civil War?
00:31:34.000What about my relatives, my ancestors, that fought in the American Civil War?
00:31:54.000There have been racist white people in our country's history.
00:31:57.000There have been racist black people, too.
00:31:59.000There have been racist Mexicans and racist Hispanics.
00:32:03.000Anyone who apologizes for their race needs a lot of help.
00:32:09.000And I don't know the best advice I can give you, Rachel, but anyone who's doing that is not going to be successful in this country because you will, you're immediately starting from a position that you have something to apologize for just based on your existence.
00:32:24.000I had somebody the other day email me.
00:32:25.000They'd say, are you going to apologize for being a fascist?
00:32:29.000And I said, first of all, I'm not a fascist, so I'm not going to apologize for that.
00:32:34.000Second of all, you asking me to apologize for being something I'm not is incredibly fascist.
00:32:40.000Third of all, the fascist dilemma in America is a supply and demand problem.
00:32:45.000The great Douglas Murray mentioned this once, and I want Douglas Murray in our podcast.
00:33:11.000Therefore, any person who pops their head out as a racist fascist gets the equivalent of the price getting raised.
00:33:18.000They become incredibly popular instantaneously because there's so few of them.
00:33:22.000And there's such an incredible thirst and a desire to try and satisfy this theory that there's a racist and that there are fascists on every single corner.
00:33:36.000And so there's a lot of things to unpack here, but anyone who believes that we're a racist country doesn't know our history.
00:33:46.000Anyone who apologizes for something they did not do or something they're not responsible for is indulging in postmodern critical race theory, perpetual atonement.
00:33:58.000What an awful existence that is to be a slave to something you didn't even do.
00:34:04.000This is a new concept, actually, because those of us that believe in the Christian tradition, we believe that you could be a slave to your sin.
00:34:16.000It's kind of new for me to think that you're going to be a slave to something you didn't do.
00:34:20.000Like you're going to be held hostage by how you look?
00:34:49.000Like, you must apologize and you must feel guilt because of how God made you.
00:34:58.000Well, they don't believe in God, so that would kind of explain why they feel that way.
00:35:03.000So thank you, Rachel, for your question.
00:35:05.000It just brings me such incredible just disgust is one word and just frustration towards what has happened to higher education in this country.
00:35:45.000You guys really help keep this engine going, and you allow us to do two episodes a day, two hours of radio a day, two hours of live streaming a day, as well as speaking all across the country.
00:35:58.000I think that the Democrat Civil War is going to happen internally at first.
00:36:02.000I'm very optimistic about Republicans' chances moving forward.
00:36:05.000The Democrats have entertained and platformed such malevolent and insidious, baseless, and dangerous ideas that once Donald Trump is gone, which is the only glue that is keeping the Democrat Party together, their entire party will disintegrate.
00:36:19.000Their party will turn into the Bolsheviks versus the Mensheviks.
00:36:21.000Their party will turn into the post-Tito Yugoslavia, where the Bosnians were fighting the Croatians, who were fighting the Serbians, who were fighting the Albanians, who are all together fighting to reclaim the unified Yugoslavia.
00:36:35.000What happens when a patriarch or a dictator falls?
00:36:42.000And by no means am I calling Trump a dictator, but I am saying that the pathological possession that the Democrat Party has towards Donald Trump is the only thing that keeps them unified.
00:36:53.000As soon as Donald Trump gets removed from the equation, either in victory or in defeat, there will be an immense power struggle.
00:37:00.000And AOC and Talib and Bernie Sanders, they are going to want more power than they have currently because they are going to feel like they were gypped and they will be angry if they lose and they will be motivated if they win.
00:37:14.000And Justice Democrats have just run this ridiculous ad.
00:37:16.000Let's play this ad, by the way, and bleep out the swearing.
00:37:19.000This is Justice Democrats' advertisement to try to get Donald Trump defeated.
00:38:01.000They do hate Donald Trump, but they believe in a much more fundamental, broad, magnanimous, and motivated revolution that is based in a complete and total fundamental transformation of our country.
00:38:15.000So I don't know what it will look like.
00:38:17.000I do think that if AOC and Bernie Sanders get motivated enough and they get betrayed enough by the Democrat Party, it could splinter.
00:38:24.000The splinter becomes more likely if Donald Trump wins.
00:38:27.000If Donald Trump wins, the splintering of different parties becomes almost inevitable, where they break into their own factions and their own subset groups.
00:38:36.000And this is one thing I've always encouraged Republicans to do.
00:38:39.000I've encouraged Republicans not to break into micro parties because the first party to do that will give the other party a hull pass towards political victory in the future.