In this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, host Andrew Colvett is joined by Producer Mikey McCoy and Editor-in-Chief Blake Neff to discuss the life and career of Charlie Kirk, the founder of the largest pro-American student organization in the country, Turning Point USA.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000Andrew Colvett here, executive producer of this show, joined by Mikey McCoy and Blake Neff in studio.
00:01:15.000We're going to be taking your questions this hour.
00:01:19.000So please join us at members.charliekirk.com, members.charliekirk.com.
00:01:24.000We have a written one here if we want to start with that.
00:02:09.000I've spent a lot of time researching and talking to people in the community.
00:02:13.000And this week, our local newspaper did a report on it, on our effort, and they, it was very negative and kind of mocked me for it.
00:02:21.000People really can't get past the headline.
00:02:25.000And it is, it's a little radical to some, but I'm proposing a new county for our area to give us a little bit more representation and naming it after President Trump.
00:02:34.000So my question kind of is, how do you guys, you know, how did Charlie, because there's a lot of negativity surrounding my effort, just push through and persevere, you know, when this negativity comes?
00:02:45.000Like, how do you, you know, I've got kids.
00:02:54.000Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to take this one.
00:02:56.000You know, because I will tell you that Charlie was no stranger to negative headlines and to being taken out of context, to smear pieces, hit pieces, all the things.
00:03:08.000And it got to the point where we literally would just, we would put him in the chat.
00:03:13.000I would drop the new article in the chat that was, you know, completely taking something he said out of context.
00:03:18.000And he would, he would literally go, LOL.
00:03:21.000And, you know, obviously Charlie had a big microphone.
00:03:38.000He would advance the actual mission that he was on, not the representation that somebody would give him or paint a picture of him that was a lie.
00:06:37.000I got, I, this is how I know God made us for each other because anytime I do get quote-unquote hate, it's the same stuff you get.
00:06:44.000Like that, I don't even want to say it's not even worth saying it or repeating the things that we're called or the names that we're called.
00:06:55.000I've lost friends, but I actually am kind of grateful that that's happened because God has pruned my life in a way where I am surrounded in a circle now by people who love us, support us, pray with us, encourage us.
00:09:19.000He's a businessman, real estate developer.
00:09:21.000He comes from a world where you resolve disputes, where you resolve impases through direct face-to-face contact, through direct conversation.
00:09:33.000But do you think that some of that contact, like on a spiritual level, that some of that contact can affect, can affect a person?
00:10:40.000This is Andrew Colvet, executive producer of the Charlie Kirk Show.
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00:11:07.000And now you can hear from Charlie in his own words.
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00:11:46.000Okay, so for the record, I want you guys to know that I still have on the security bracelet from the Charlie Kirk memorial that I went to at the LSU student union on Friday afternoon.
00:12:00.000Like, I just decided that God was going to, it'll fall off when it's supposed to.
00:12:05.000But, you know, and every time I go to the grocery store, wherever, and I want it to be a conversation piece because I just, I don't know, I just feel compelled. to let that be an opening to good conversation like Charlie wanted to do.
00:12:21.000And God, I got tears in my eyes right now.
00:12:25.000One thing that is breaking my heart is the stuff that's going on with Candace Owens and the things that she's saying.
00:12:33.000And it seems to be so valid, but like my heart is pulling.
00:12:58.000It just hurts because, God, I mean, I've been watching Charlie Kirk for over four years.
00:13:05.000Watching him got me through some very dark years with my daughter and who was sexually assaulted by an NOPD, a New Orleans police officer at the trial, just dealing with the FBI.
00:13:19.000I mean, we dealt with every three-letter agency and we came out on top.
00:13:23.000And I feel like pressing into what I was watching every day with Charlie helped me through that.
00:13:31.000And I just, I'm looking for some clarity.
00:13:47.000So many people love Charlie, whether they, the people who knew him best, but also just people who'd never met him at all because they had that.
00:13:55.000He could speak to so many people with his forthrightness, with his he was just one of the most honest people ever in a lot of ways.
00:14:09.000And my heart breaks for you because I know there's so many people like you out there.
00:14:16.000And what people, those things people are saying, I would encourage you not to, not to take the outlandish things to heart, not to let people divert you from what Charlie was really about, what his mission was really about.
00:14:38.000We understand that sometimes when we don't speak on every topic, it creates a bit of a vacuum.
00:14:42.000And there is, just so you know, there's a reason for some of the silence on certain things and the choosing not to engage in certain things.
00:14:52.000And you could tell that she is grieved just by Charlie not being with us and the anchor that Charlie was in her life, but also the fact that, you know, she wants to carry his mission forward and she wants everybody to be unified and on the same page.
00:15:07.000So, Mikey, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.
00:16:30.000He was so glad to hear it wasn't true.
00:16:32.000Yeah, like not everything is some grand scheme.
00:16:35.000And just because someone's not answering all of your questions when you want them to answer your questions does not mean it's not going to be a problem.
00:16:44.000I think, but there's a lot of people, a lot of people are deeply affected by this.
00:16:49.000And for some people, the temptation of something very emotionally upsetting is they want to like, frankly, sometimes there's a temptation to lash out.
00:17:01.000And I would remember that, I would encourage you to remember all of us love Charlie.
00:17:10.000It is fundamentally, I'll just say it, it is fundamentally outrageous and insane to say that any of us would have wanted Charlie dead or wanted anything bad to happen to him.
00:17:23.000And when we get emails where people just say, you killed Charlie or like, you're lying about everything, I would strongly encourage those people to reflect on what is motivating them to do these things.
00:17:37.000I want to also say there is a point where you, you know, it's, it's deeply frustrating that somebody like Mikey would have to even dignify some of like, you know, this story that you just, you'd have to even dignify that with a response.
00:21:03.000If we don't, we have really, really big.
00:21:05.000Of course, the House races are going to be very interesting this year around because we have all of these new maps that will possibly cause a lot of seats to flip.
00:21:15.000We're going to be seeing how that shakes out.
00:21:17.000Obviously, the Texas map at this point is in the courts, their future.
00:21:21.000We have a few states we're still fighting to get those new maps passed.
00:21:24.000Indiana, I believe Ohio is still in contention.
00:21:44.000So it's, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, we want to start a turning point chapter for adults in this state, this state.
00:21:51.000The way we do it is we don't do the turning point chapter thing, which is like kind of our campus base for high school and college campus.
00:21:56.000But if you're an adult and you want to get involved and plugged in, go to coalitions.com.
00:22:01.000You can plug in whether you're a farmer, you're a mom, Latinos, African American, all the things that you, the little kind of groups that you might have affinity groups for, you can plug in there.
00:22:12.000But they all gather all collectively and together.
00:22:15.000And there's a coalition for you to join.
00:22:17.000And then what we do is we dispatch those coalitions with technology, data, door knocking lists, all the things that you need to get involved in your local community and your local races.
00:22:27.000So coalitions.com would be the main thing.
00:22:30.000There's other ways to get involved at Turning Point Action.
00:22:32.000You could apply for actual staff jobs if we're hiring in your area in Arizona.
00:22:37.000We're going to have a lot of employment opportunities for full-time ballot chasing.
00:22:41.000But that will not be the only place that we do that in 2026.
00:22:44.000But as Blake said, Arizona is going to be a key, key focus for us.
00:22:48.000Just simply, it's not only important for the sake of the country and the state of Arizona, but it was so dear to Charlie that you better believe we're going to leave it all out on the field on that one.
00:22:57.000So check out TP Action for opportunities.
00:23:00.000Download the app, Turning Point Action app, and check out coalitions.com.
00:23:05.000So hopefully that answers all of your questions.
00:23:58.000Yeah, no, they're on the members site.
00:24:00.000So you can actually search those through the member site.
00:24:05.000Obviously, they get kind of buried, but just search Tom Homan, for example, or whatever, and you should be able to bring some of that stuff up.
00:24:48.000Hopefully we can get a faster timeline, but we are going to build that so everybody can get all of the things that Charlie said and search them with the help of AI.
00:24:58.000Thanksgiving holds so many memories, and I'm sure it's the same for you.
00:25:02.000Right now, there's a girl finding out she's pregnant.
00:25:05.000In the next couple of weeks, she's going to make a decision.
00:25:08.000And whatever decision she makes will become her memory of this Thanksgiving for the rest of her life.
00:25:13.000What will she be thankful for a year from now?
00:26:17.000And can I just digress on my question for one second?
00:26:21.000When people are listening to maybe other individuals who claim to be in the conservative space, they should remember that Charlie was a godly man who surrounded himself with godly men who thought of him as a son, that his friends thought of him as a brother, that he was a leader and a role model in his community.
00:26:39.000And he built an organization where like senators and congressmen were like dying to get on the show because they were proud to be associated with him.
00:26:52.000So if you are listening to someone who was not like that, you should turn off their podcast and turn back on Charlie Kirk Show.
00:27:10.000You're very welcome and very well earned.
00:27:13.000The reason that I was calling, and this isn't about financial support to Israel, because that can be debated one way or the other, and that's fine.
00:27:20.000But what has been bothering me lately are the absolute disgusting lies being told about Israel.
00:27:25.000And I just wanted to sort of give a small example.
00:27:28.000Population growth in the West Bank in 1967 was 700,000 people.
00:28:34.000Should we give them this or that weapon?
00:28:36.000Do we need to have unconditional support for any specific political action?
00:28:42.000Should the U.S. ambassador be meeting with a convicted traitor?
00:28:46.000No, but you can discuss all of those things, but it's also the case that a lot of people just, they have an obsession with it that clearly transcends anything that is reasonable.
00:29:00.000And they have this intense dislike verging on hate.
00:29:05.000And some of that will just become telling lies about it.
00:29:08.000And what I like to emphasize is there's something about it that it goes beyond its actual importance to America as an issue.
00:29:18.000For a lot of people, how you feel about Israel has become this symbol of how you feel about the wider world.
00:29:25.000And it's perhaps specifically because it is actually a place so far away from America.
00:29:30.000It allows people to get really amped up in their emotional and moral energy about it, while at the same time not having direct skin in the game on what the outcome is.
00:29:40.000And I think that really allows people to just say whatever.
00:29:43.000Like if you tell a lie about your neighbor, that neighbor might punch you in the face.
00:29:47.000But if you tell a lie about a country on the other side of the world, probably nothing is going to happen to you.
00:30:03.000I remember we talked about that a couple of years ago.
00:30:06.000Israel's entire court system is pretty wild.
00:30:09.000They're one of those countries where the judges can appoint their own successors.
00:30:12.000Can you imagine how terrible America would be if judges in this country just could appoint, like you'd have super liberal Supreme Court of the 70s, the court that did Roe v. Wade, and they would just be appointing their own successors.
00:30:25.000You can't have Reagan or Trump or, you know, appointing more conservative justices to change it.
00:30:56.000That's what drives a lot of weird conspiracy theories about it, that all Jews or all Israelis have the same opinion and operate in concert.
00:31:05.000All I can say is if you think all Jews have the same opinions, you've clearly never met any of them because they go to one Shabbat dinner.
00:31:13.000They argue with each other all the time.
00:31:17.000Well, and I always think, you know, the allegation, you know, Jewish people run the world or something like that.
00:31:21.000It's like, have you ever seen the UN and how many sanctions and have been leveled against Israel?
00:31:31.000And it's basically, you know, so if they can control the world, they would control the UN, but they don't.
00:31:36.000But to your point, you know, I mean, I was looking at the numbers with your question about the Palestinian birth rates.
00:31:43.000And, you know, they do have a very high birth rate.
00:31:45.000Their population has actually increased, albeit at a slower rate than it otherwise would have during the war.
00:31:52.000And that, again, is probably because of people emigrating out.
00:31:57.000It was over 100,000 people that got out through the Rafa crossing.
00:32:00.000They suggest that about 50,000 have died in the conflict.
00:32:23.000I hope that we talk about this issue much, much less because the peace holds and it becomes a long-term peace.
00:32:29.000And I think I speak for a lot of us when we say it would be wonderful not to have to talk about this area of the world nearly as much moving forward.
00:32:49.000I want to be brief so I can be considerate of others' times, but I do want to say I am so sorry for your loss of Charlie.
00:32:58.000I think that you guys have been doing the absolute best you can to move forward and carry his mission.
00:33:04.000And that's so clear to me and so many of us.
00:33:07.000And we feel very, I can speak for myself here, but feel very comforted when we come to join the show every day because it feels like we're interacting with parts and pieces of Charlie.
00:33:22.000So something that, and I actually, I was building up the courage to maybe join a live before Charlie was killed was to talk about the hiring processes right now.
00:33:37.000So obviously Charlie was a big advocate for, you know, college is a scam.
00:33:42.000And I myself, I have a very successful degree and not I'm sorry, career and not having a degree.
00:33:50.000And many people that I know have, you know, worked their way up in life and just become, you know, self-learners and have done the same.
00:33:58.000But when, you know, something happens and they need to go and look for a job, they're hit with automatic rejections because these, I guess it's the hiring systems have this nice little check mark of, you know, four-year degree or master's degree.
00:34:12.000And if you're not hitting that, then you're automatically getting thrown out.
00:34:16.000So these well and overqualified candidates are getting completely, they're not even passing a person's desk.
00:34:23.000It's just automatically getting filtered out.
00:34:25.000They're putting in over 200 applications and getting absolutely nowhere and not able to talk to a real person about it.
00:34:32.000So just, you know, in feeling empowered and not needing a degree to be successful, how do you guys recommend, you know, people that don't, but are having a hard time getting a job?
00:34:44.000How do we navigate the employment search?
00:34:47.000First of all, I just want to empathize greatly with how horrible it is.
00:34:51.000I think applying for a job was annoying and frustrating five years ago.
00:34:57.000It's gotten an order of magnitude worse with, frankly, artificial intelligence because now there are people who can spam essentially unlimited applications.
00:35:07.000They can use AI to write their cover letters, write their customers, like instantly customize your resume towards this page, and they can endlessly spam.
00:35:15.000And then you have similar AI robots evaluating the applications.
00:35:19.000It's made the entire process just that much more horrible.
00:35:24.000And I think it's going to lead to probably a resurgence of what would be very old-fashioned, which is the need to really leverage personal relationships, build personal relationships, and leverage those to find employment.
00:35:39.000I guess I can only, speaking to myself, I can't give a lot of specific job advice on how to get a job in a specific field.
00:35:46.000What I can say is that professionally, it's the friendships I've had, the close conversations I've had with those I know that have panned out the most in giving me opportunities.
00:35:57.000I remember you bragging one time that you've never had a job that you've applied for.
00:36:01.000Yeah, and that's that's I don't really want to say that with someone when people are struggling because I know that's a very tough thing to say.
00:36:08.000What I could say, like, so as an example, it's sort of weird to say, but getting involved in the elections, for example, and not just getting involved, talking to all of the people that you volunteer alongside about what they do, what their work is.
00:36:22.000None of that is going to specifically get you a job.
00:36:25.000But knowing lots of people, it will increase your ability to be lucky.
00:36:30.000You think of those people who have that story.
00:36:32.000Oh, I was just having that conversation and it turned out it totally changed my life.
00:36:36.000Or you've heard that story where you talk to someone in the line at the grocery store and oh, 40 years later, we're married and we have eight kids.
00:37:45.000And I would also say that for young people, what I often tell young people is find somebody that you really, really look up to, respect in the field that you're interested in pursuing, and call them.
00:41:09.000And so we are hesitant to put our attention outside of the domestic affairs.
00:41:14.000We were really realizing this in the last few months, you know, when Charlie went to the UK, Charlie went to Korea, went to Japan, that he had become actually this global hero of so many people.
00:41:25.000So many people around the world look up to America because we have this assertive conservative movement that is not that we have real freedom of speech.
00:41:46.000And so we would want to promote those things.
00:41:49.000So as we've talked about on this show, we had Sarah Rogers from the State Department on the other day.
00:41:52.000We're still in discussions on what this might look like, but there's a lot of hope we could use the Turning Point brand, Charlie's personal memory, to promote those values, especially free speech, you know, the Christian West and so on around the world.
00:42:08.000We're not sure what that might look like, but it might include some sort of global turning point.
00:42:12.000Canada would be an obvious place to plant that.
00:44:48.000This is an example of the macro, which is Charlie was a good, faith-based human being.
00:44:55.000And you share your story about how you discovered him after, after, and you feel like maybe it was just a little too late and you wanted to discover him when he was still alive.
00:45:05.000And you just are learning more about him.
00:45:07.000And the deeper you go, you have such a love for him.
00:45:11.000But that's how we feel as Christians, too.
00:45:14.000That there's just once you start that relationship with Christ.
00:45:16.000And this is something I just feel like Charlie would be saying right now is you go deeper and you get to know him more.
00:45:22.000And like that, Charlie was amazing because he lived for something greater than himself.
00:45:29.000He died for something greater than himself.
00:45:30.000And he died for something greater than himself.
00:45:33.000And I just think that's, that's you're, you're giving such a beautiful analogy right now of what we as Christians feel, that, that Charlie died for something bigger than himself and that we one day, hopefully, hopefully we too can die for something greater than ourselves.
00:46:06.000You know, and Kimberly, like something I said actually at the memorial that I think is important is just that, you know, we don't grieve the way the world grieves.
00:46:16.000You know, I obviously losing Charlie was probably the hardest thing that I've ever been through that this organization has ever gone through, obviously.
00:46:27.000But we don't grieve the way the world grieves.
00:46:29.000And I feel like God has given me all of these beautiful little just clues and moments of realization, you know, whether it was we weren't doing, we weren't doing a campus tour.