On this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, Andrew Colvett is joined by Charlie's Chief of Staff, Mikey McCoy, and Producer Blake Neff to discuss what it's like to be a member of the Turnout Action Club, a political action committee dedicated to electing a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020.
00:00:48.000I'm Andrew Colvett, executive producer of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:52.000And I'm joined today by Charlie's chief of staff, Mikey McCoy, the great Mikey McCoy, and of course, Blake Neff, one of the producers here.
00:01:02.000Wait, we have a great Mikey McCoy, too?
00:02:24.000So he got back and then three days later.
00:02:27.000So it's hard to watch, but also he was so happy and he was having so much fun that it's really good to watch.
00:02:34.000And it's, I think, cathartic healing, all of those things.
00:02:37.000And then we're, of course, going to have the great, and she does deserve that title, the great Erica Kirk is going to join us because she loves this audience.
00:02:48.000She knew how much this audience meant to Charlie.
00:02:51.000And she had told me she wanted, she's basically not doing anything, no media, no anything, but she's going to be right here and she wants to speak directly to you, the audience.
00:03:00.000And I said, yeah, you know, whatever you want.
00:03:02.000Like, as little as long, like, it's totally up to you.
00:03:07.000And let us know how we can serve you and help you.
00:03:09.000And she was like, well, I just want to talk to the audience.
00:03:30.000I just wanted to ask what the plan is for future elections and the general election with turning point action.
00:03:36.000And I want to know how I can best get involved.
00:03:39.000I live in Washington State, so that's kind of a part area.
00:03:44.000So Washington State is not a state that we're going to be focusing on.
00:03:49.000However, when it gets closer to the election, what we do is we do these big volunteer drives where we'll book full hotels and room blocks, and we will give you an app and a list, and you can use the app to go knock on doors, make texts and phone calls, and try and chase ballots.
00:04:09.000So that's all through turning point action.
00:04:11.000We're going to be probably focusing on what we call building a new red wall because of the way the census is working.
00:04:18.000More people are moving from blue northern states like New York or West Coast states like California, and they're moving to the red states, the Sunbelt.
00:04:27.000So that would be Arizona, that would be Florida, Texas.
00:04:31.000And because of that, there is an opportunity, if we properly counted the census, right, Blake, maybe you can touch on that, that we're going to have a lot more of an ability to get rid of what they used to call the blue wall, right?
00:04:45.000So you heard about the blue wall was Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
00:05:32.000That will be another state that we really want to make solidly red.
00:05:35.000We think that we like the underlying momentum that we have in that state.
00:05:40.000And then maybe a state like New Hampshire.
00:05:43.000If you put those, where New Hampshire has more registered Republicans than Democrats, if you put those three states together, and if we get Nebraska to be a winner-take-all, which is still something that we're working on, you're going to create a map that's very, very, very, very hard for Democrats to win in the future.
00:07:05.000So what you should do is you should get your local GOP to get behind the Turning Point Action app.
00:07:11.000That will absolutely supercharge what you guys can do.
00:07:14.000And we have training sessions that we can do with local GOPs if you guys want to get the app and use it and chase ballots because that's ultimately what needs to be done.
00:07:24.000The Republican Party is now the low-propensity party, meaning it used to be that we would poll behind, you know, in the sort of generic ballots.
00:07:33.000You know, they poll which party do you prefer, but then we would make up the ground and then some on election day because our people would predictably come out.
00:07:40.000Everything's changed in the era of Donald Trump.
00:07:42.000Now we poll ahead, but then we don't show up.
00:07:45.000And so our job as the grassroots is to make sure people show up, and that's what the Turning Point Action app does.
00:07:50.000It identifies low-propensity voters, helps you focus your efforts on those people and get them out to the polls.
00:08:55.000So Blake, you're first on a lot of topics.
00:08:58.000No, it's definitely Charlie definitely was, among other things, he had a huge, very broad knowledge base.
00:09:05.000He loved to pick up tons of knowledge in different areas.
00:09:07.000He had a ton of knowledge in different areas.
00:09:10.000We would talk about, we've talked about how impressive he was in terms of being an organizer, in terms of being a political activist, in terms of being involved inside the White House and still really caring to pick up that broad base of historical knowledge, philosophical knowledge, Christian knowledge.
00:09:26.000None of us can match that, to be frank.
00:09:28.000He was always very proud, and Mikey can attest to this, that he would love to have Mikey quiz us on Bible topics because that was something where he could beat me on a lot of those topics.
00:09:38.000And he would ask me about history stuff.
00:09:39.000So in general, going forward, all of us are going to be trying hard to step into his shoes.
00:09:43.000But I do think you'll see a segmentation where maybe I'll answer really detailed political questions.
00:09:49.000Maybe Erica herself could talk a lot about faith stuff.
00:09:52.000So, Yeah, as I said, Charlie's breadth of what he was involved in is it was really what made him so exceptional, how many different things he had knowledge of from his own practical experience.
00:10:05.000He could talk, you know, this is how this election is probably going to go because I've worked directly in a bunch of elections.
00:10:11.000This is what's probably going on inside the Trump admin.
00:10:51.000The other thing Charlie, I have some pastor friends.
00:10:55.000The other thing Charlie is really good at is it was the Charlie effect.
00:10:58.000And Dr. Larry Arn talked about this, how he met this young kid who told him he was really passionate about politics and wanted to enter into that world.
00:11:54.000Have you ever heard someone say this is unconstitutional?
00:11:58.000Do you assume that that's just hyperbole?
00:12:01.000Have you taken the time to study and understand the Constitution so that you know for yourself what is and isn't constitutional?
00:12:09.000That's why we here at the Charlie Kirk Show are so excited that Hillsdale College is offering a brand new free online course called the Federalist.
00:12:17.000And as you guys know, Charlie was obsessed with taking all of the Hillsdale College online courses.
00:12:24.000The Federalist papers were written primarily by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
00:12:28.000Together, they explain how the United States Constitution established a government strong enough to secure the rights of citizens and safe enough to wield that power.
00:12:37.000And today, it's our responsibility to pay attention, to be vigilant, you might say, in order to preserve and protect Republican self-government.
00:12:47.000Hillsdale's online course on the Federalist includes 10 lectures, each about 30 minutes long.
00:12:52.000You can take the course at your own pace.
00:13:18.000We talked about this, and I don't privately, I don't think it ever made its way onto the show yet.
00:13:22.000But one of the things that was most remarkable about Charlie, and I, you know, having helped start this program with Charlie, remember it in this context, but it was, he did it in everything he touched in life.
00:13:37.000You kind of touched on it a little bit.
00:13:38.000But, you know, if he was going to start a podcast, it wasn't, you know, he wasn't going to be deterred, you know, in the early days if we fell behind in the rankings or something like that.
00:13:48.000He would push, push, push, push, push.
00:14:21.000I think a lot of entrepreneurs or what would be entrepreneurs, they have a great idea and then they can't follow through on it.
00:14:26.000Charlie had incredible follow-through, which is why all of this exists.
00:14:31.000And I only say that because I think one of the most important things for all of us around this table, anybody that is associated with turning point, anybody that's going to go out to campuses, our contributors, our students, is that we have to commit ourselves to following through and learning and growing and being the best versions of ourselves that we can be so that we can answer the tough questions just like he did.
00:14:54.000Obviously, nobody's going to answer them the way and as good as he did, but we have to be better.
00:14:59.000And that's, you know, that's incumbent on all of us.
00:15:01.000And we all have our own little areas of specialization and curiosity.
00:15:06.000So hopefully, you know, and branching out from there, people that go on campuses or speak at our events, we're going to bring in people that have specializations as well.
00:15:44.000I just wanted to let you guys know that we are praying for your team, praying for Erica.
00:15:49.000And my question is: during this tragedy, what has been one surprising thing that God has done for the team, giving peace and comfort during this time since Charlie's passing?
00:15:59.000And what is like one fear right now you may have so that we, the audience, can pray for God to meet that need for the team?
00:16:16.000In terms of what God's done, which is just looking back and being in awe of it, the actual day that it happened, and Blake can attest to this too, since he was there, being in Utah.
00:16:29.000I have no idea how I got through that day.
00:16:33.000And everything at the hospital, from the decisions that had to be made to the peace that was given to me by the Lord.
00:16:40.000I mean, it was evident that God was there.
00:16:45.000I don't know how I was able to operate.
00:16:48.000I felt looking back, I felt like my mind had just shut off and my body was just moving and doing everything that it had to do.
00:16:54.000And then the days following that as well, coming back to Arizona, Air Force 2, you know, all those details.
00:17:02.000Looking back on that, it was evident that the Lord's hand was involved entirely.
00:17:07.000I don't know if you feel the same, Blake, but I definitely saw it with you.
00:17:28.000What I've taken, what I've taken personal comfort from was, and we'll get into this when we talk about the trip to Asia.
00:17:35.000It was, I was only really just appreciating how big Charlie had become, how much he meant to so many people around the world.
00:17:41.000And then seeing that the universal reaction around the world of the scale of the reaction around the world, how many people he touched, how many people he's touching because of this.
00:17:55.000I've been telling people I want to get multiple of those freedom shirts because it's great to wear them around.
00:18:00.000And the people who react to it, who have been telling me, I never watched Charlie before, but now I can't get enough of him.
00:18:06.000It's like, it's incredible the life he lived.
00:18:22.000He's like, I started going to church again now because of this.
00:18:25.000And millions of people are having interactions like this all around.
00:18:29.000I'm getting messages where people say, my church, which never talks about public figures, the sermon was about Charlie and then his martyrdom.
00:18:37.000And I've drawn a lot of meaning from that.
00:18:40.000You know, what we've all said, that Charlie always wanted to have a revival.
00:18:46.000And we're seeing those signs of that across America and around the world.
00:18:50.000Yeah, and we've gotten messages from people saying their marriage is better.
00:18:53.000At the memorial, I had somebody grab me.
00:18:55.000This is a pretty high-profile person, and they shook me.
00:18:58.000They said, I am a changed person after last week.
00:19:02.000I need you to understand that I'm a better father.
00:19:21.000The prayer is, you know, if we is that the harvest would be so unmistakable and unbelievable that we really would see revival and that we would be faithful stewards of what Charlie put, you know, implanted in all of our hearts.
00:19:42.000And I just want to read this because we got a minute.
00:19:45.000Daisy just sent us an image that was a message that she was sent, and no names are in it, so I think we're okay.
00:19:52.000We have two couple friends that have been impacted by this.
00:19:55.000One couple was on the brink of divorce.
00:19:57.000The husband apologized to his wife and said he needed to start treating her better and leading his family better.
00:20:03.000This is the first time in their 15 years together.
00:20:06.000They started praying in the morning and the night together as a couple.
00:20:10.000Another couple we went to church with stopped attending a year ago.
00:21:20.000And I asked myself that probably a dozen times a day, various decisions or things that come up.
00:21:27.000And so pray for us that we would stay humble and stay low and stay close to Jesus.
00:21:33.000And I would say, you know, I've said this before, but there were so many instances where Charlie would have this amazing success, like this amazing thing would happen.
00:21:43.000And he would quickly type back to me personally.
00:21:46.000He'd go, just stay humble, stay close to Jesus.
00:21:49.000And I'll always remember that because that is the mantra.
00:21:54.000And, you know, just pray that we, at Turning Point, that we would be faithful stewards of all of this explosive growth, of this chapter growth, of these opportunities to continue the mission of Charlie.
00:23:01.000I mean, I think, hopefully, you guys will forgive me for that.
00:23:03.000But yeah, it would make me misty seeing him get misty, you know, because I know how much he left on the field.
00:23:10.000As you said, in the moment, you know, if anybody deserves to get a little emotional, it's Charlie because of how hard he worked for that moment.
00:23:16.000But I just always think how I'm forever just going to be the guy boringly droning in that clip.
00:23:44.000I know a lot of people have been buying Bibles and reading that, but I was also curious what his other favorite books were and his mentors.
00:23:55.000I would say there's a lot of answers to that.
00:23:59.000So, you know, Bill Montgomery was the one that sort of saw Charlie speaking at a tea party rally when he was 18.
00:24:06.000And the way that it was told to me by Bill was everybody was like sleeping, and Charlie gets to stage and everybody kind of their ears perked up and they were like, wow, who is this kid?
00:24:15.000So Bill was the first one to sort of take, and Bill was a really sweet guy, took an interest in Charlie, knew that he could sort of was the first, he gets the great credit of being one of the first to see the potential in Charlie.
00:24:30.000But, you know, Charlie had a lot of mentors, including Dennis Prager and Frank Turek.
00:24:37.000Frank Turek on, especially when it came to apologetics, Frank Turek was his go-to resource, and he would hit him up on a lot of this stuff.
00:24:44.000And then I would say, you know, the Horowitz, David Horowitz was one of his early mentors, especially when it came to just networking and fundraising.
00:24:54.000But he studied people that are living and people that are dead.
00:25:06.000And he would do these things, Blake, you know about this, where he would fly somebody out and they would be there for like four to five days on end.
00:25:13.000And they would just kind of loiter around the office.
00:25:15.000But then what really happened where a lot of people at the office didn't see this is afterwards they would go to Charlie's house and we would do these whiteboard sessions, these epic whiteboard sessions.
00:25:26.000Yeah, you'd do a spinal tap, suck all the S and S on it.
00:25:29.000And Charlie would just sit there with his notebook.
00:25:31.000He always had these spiral bound notebooks and he would just write and write and write and write.
00:25:37.000And if he had an answer that he was struggling with, this is something I get on campus.
00:25:42.000And so that was anybody from, you know, Frank Turk to Dr. James Orr.
00:25:48.000Well, I was going to say, I was just about to say, James Dr. Orr, who was on this week, was another one of Charlie's mentors.
00:25:54.000And he was a newer person that came into his life, but he was so excited to absorb everything he could on the classics from Dr. James Orr.
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00:27:29.000I'm trying to make sure that – he would always say that in those Hillsdale ads, but I believe he also was a big fan of that book and would cite it.
00:27:58.000He was really into – I'm trying to think all the books, man.
00:28:02.000We just need to sit down and put it all together.
00:28:04.000Now, because I know he got asked that in prior AMAs, and I think he even did like best – I always remember Man's Search for Meaning because that was his favorite book of 23, and he did kind of all of his reading in 2023, and he talked about that a lot.
00:28:16.000Well, he started reading way, way, way, way more during COVID.
00:28:19.000So COVID was a time where he took the shutdown and just started voraciously absorbing content.
00:28:27.000And I actually – he used to kind of hate this question, by the way.
00:31:19.000So type in Ask Charlie Anything 183, The Road to 270, what books to read, and it'll, it'll come up.
00:31:25.000And one last thing, just on the mentor issue, I think I just want to emphasize that kind of shows he was a very talented man, but one of his like very strong core traits, even as Charlie was becoming a bigger person, a more prominent person, he had that humility.
00:31:41.000He had no embarrassment, no shame about seeking a ton of mentors.
00:31:45.000Like, think about how, let's just say, how famous he was.
00:31:50.000And he's still like, I want to take a weekend to learn from this person who is a lot less famous than I am, who is a lot less noteworthy than I am.
00:31:57.000But I think I have a ton to learn from them.
00:33:09.000So I'm just curious with all with the enormity of inquiries you guys have had, which praise God for that.
00:33:17.000With a child in high school and one in college, I cannot be happier to hear about all of that.
00:33:23.000I'm just wondering what the vetting process is, how long you anticipate it will take to ensure that we're getting good leadership on these campuses, people with good, noble, pure intentions that are going to carry Charlie's Kirk, Charlie's torch onto this, onto the campuses with all these inquiries.
00:33:43.000I imagine it's going to take a little bit of time to vet everybody and get everybody equipped.
00:33:49.000Yeah, I mean, just to put it in perspective, we were getting somewhere around, let's say, 30 to 50 inquiries a week before this.
00:33:57.000So to get, you know, over 120,000 is a Herculean task for the team.
00:34:02.000I will tell you that we're exploring different ways to sort of do them in batches and groups, right?
00:34:10.000And we have field team all around the country that usually will take an inquiry.
00:34:54.000I will say that, you know, you mentioned how do we know they're going to be doing this in good faith.
00:35:01.000Well, one of the great things about having so many inquiries is a lot of those are duplicates from the same school.
00:35:06.000I mean, we have way more inquiries than there are schools in the United States.
00:35:11.000The way the college works is that once you hit about a thousand, you're kind of maxing out the possibility there.
00:35:18.000So a lot of those inquiries on the college level, we're going to be able to plug them in to these chapters that are already functioning and in existence.
00:35:27.000And they're probably going to be the next group that leads those chapters into the future.
00:35:32.000And on the high school level, you know, there's about 23,000, 24,000 high schools in the country.
00:35:38.000And we have every faith that one of Charlie's last desires, wishes, visions that he cast was that we're going to have a Club America chapter, which is our turning point high school brand.
00:35:50.000We're going to have those in every single high school in America.
00:35:53.000So even there, we've got duplicates, right?
00:36:08.000So if, say, example, you know, A is that we have two or three applicants that want to start a turning point chapter at a certain high school.
00:36:16.000Well, applicant A and applicant B might tell us applicant C is not in good faith or not the right person to do this and vice versa.
00:36:23.000So we're going to have the ability to cross-check even at the local school level.
00:36:27.000And the only other thing I would add is that we, the leaders of the chapter, so you elect the president of the chapter, the vice president chapter, et cetera, are selected appropriately.
00:36:40.000And we also host an event every single year called our chapter leadership summit.
00:38:30.000And those kind of messages keep me like my spirits really high because I know that we have so many people behind us and that they're doing it for Charlie and they're doing it for the mission.
00:38:42.000And I believe that this is part of the harvest that we're going to experience in the aftermath here.
00:38:48.000And I believe God has a plan and God has his hand on us.
00:38:53.000And by the way, one of the talk about getting involved, I mean, please, at the Arizona level, Charlie so badly wanted to make Andy Biggs the next governor of this state.
00:39:05.000And we're going to keep pushing that forward.
00:39:17.000So please consider getting involved at Turning Point Action to become a ballot chaser, volunteer, download the app and get involved here in the state of Arizona.
00:39:35.000He said, in my last interview with Charlie, I promised North Dakota would have the highest percentage of high school and college participants per capita in the nation.
00:41:24.000Yeah, because she doesn't look that pregnant.
00:41:26.000So she's six months pregnant and she looks like the same.
00:41:29.000It's very, you know, anyways, first baby thing.
00:41:32.000So hopefully that answers it, but she's doing great and she's been an absolute rock star in this time.
00:41:36.000She's helped keep the team together and handle all the coordination with the teams of people that have come, whether that was Tucker or Megan or Glenn.
00:41:44.000She was helping coordinate all of that.
00:41:46.000She's keeping the trains running on time.
00:43:13.000Yeah, so the biggest thing for me that I've been wondering, especially in light, you know, ever really since Trump was first elected, how do we go about having decent conversations with one another as human beings?
00:43:25.000You know, there's a lot of, I feel, tension.
00:43:29.000And I love talking about politics with my friends.
00:43:31.000A lot of them are poli-sci or economics, whatever it may be.
00:43:34.000And we get on those topics, but it always seems like we start building the tension.
00:43:38.000And I'm not really sure how we bring that down when we're in those conversations.
00:43:41.000How we get back to a human level and really focus on what matters most.
00:43:46.000And that's we do love each other at the end of the day.
00:43:58.000And he said it was his secret weapon to kind of, if someone was coming in hot, down a little bit.
00:44:05.000So his first is he would say, well, what evidence do you have for that claim?
00:44:09.000And that was his first question that he would like to ask to somebody.
00:44:13.000So asking questions, but then the hardest part is staying true to yourself because the other side doesn't necessarily come with good intentions in debate.
00:44:24.000And so they're ready to yell at you or worse.
00:44:29.000And so doing the Charlie effect is keeping calm, being kind, asking questions, and being the bigger person even when they're not is really kind of the secret weapon there.
00:44:46.000Ultimately, you can only control yourself.
00:44:48.000The rule I always like to remember for debates is remember, especially if it's in public, you're not just debating the person you're directly opposite.
00:44:56.000You're sort of debating every single person who is watching, every person who's a witness to it.
00:45:02.000And as a result, we should always be careful, like, not to disgrace ourselves, not to behave in ways that we'll regret later, because, you know, we are a representative of everyone who shares our views.
00:45:16.000And I think that will always encourage better behavior.
00:45:19.000I would say that Charlie was really good at not dehumanizing the other side.
00:45:24.000He always treated them as a human being.
00:45:27.000And even when they don't treat you like a human being, that you could still sort of acknowledge, hey, you're not treating me with respect, but fine, I'm going to still answer your question.
00:45:36.000And Charlie was really good at sussing out good faith, bad faith arguments.
00:46:21.000I'm just going to read to you what I wrote so that I don't mess it up.
00:46:25.000I just wanted to thank y'all for working so hard to preserve Charlie's legacy.
00:46:31.000I understand how important Charlie's relationship is within, or was within the Trump administration.
00:46:37.000And do we foresee continuing those relationships to further advance the MAGA Maha agenda?
00:46:45.000Yeah, I would say, and Mikey, you'd be good to chime in here as well.
00:46:49.000So I would say one of the fascinating things in the immediate aftermath was just how many people that Charlie was communicating with reached out to our team, to me personally, you know, just to say, hey, I'm here.
00:47:14.000And those relationships have been blossoming and growing.
00:47:18.000And so those friends of Charlie's in the admin want to maintain their friendships and maintain their connection to the organization to Erica.
00:47:27.000I know Erica's had a ton of people that are very, very important people to this country reach out directly and just say how they could help.
00:47:37.000And I know that she's ongoing having those conversations.
00:48:24.000And that was actually a joke that we had because I remember Charlie evolved on a lot of topics.
00:48:31.000One of the things that we're trying to figure out, we're going to do this kind of like, we're going to try and catalog all of Charlie's clips and debates and all these things.
00:48:39.000And we are, you know, one of the things I told Erica, I was like, he evolved on so many issues over time that if we're doing a large language model, you need to sort of weight the later opinions more because, you know, he just, he evolved on all of this stuff.
00:48:55.000And he got ultra-based, yeah, thanks to Erica.
00:48:57.000And I think some of us are on this table.
00:48:59.000But, no, he was, he, he, we have those relationships.
00:50:29.000And by the way, just to reiterate, Erica Kirk will be joining us, I believe, at 1:30 Eastern.
00:50:35.000I think that's about when she's coming on.
00:50:38.000But again, it's whatever Erica wants to say or do with zero agenda other than she told me she wants to tell the audience how much you meant to Charlie and speak directly to people who loved him most.
00:50:50.000And that was the people that are part of the Charlie Kirk show family all across the country and world.
00:50:56.000You know, I know there's people that I've been getting notes from overseas that are watching our streams.
00:52:47.000If we're going to have the truth on our side and we're going to be representatives of the truth, then we're not going to lie.
00:52:54.000Because if we're going out in public and giving people the truth, and oftentimes that's the gospel, why would the people receiving that message want to receive it from us if in the background we're lying all the time?
00:53:08.000Yeah, I mean, if you guys want to take a stab at the first question, my point, what do you think Charlie would want young Christians to remember most about living in their faith?