The Charlie Kirk Show - February 23, 2026


Ask Us Anything 254: Charlie and Aliens? Smart vs Educated? Liu vs. Gu?


Episode Stats


Length

36 minutes

Words per minute

175.48685

Word count

6,338

Sentence count

596

Harmful content

Misogyny

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, host Charlie answers a question from a fan about if he believes in aliens. He also discusses the Roswell Crash and whether or not he thinks it could be evidence of alien life.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.
00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.
00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.
00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.
00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter.
00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.
00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.
00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.
00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.
00:00:45.000 Here I am.
00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.
00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:49.000 Here we go.
00:00:56.000 The 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.
00:01:09.000 So, all right, members.charlikirk.com.
00:01:12.000 Let's get underway.
00:01:13.000 Our first question.
00:01:15.000 I think we have a written question.
00:01:16.000 Oh, we're doing a written one first.
00:01:17.000 We have a written question from Brandon who asked, did Charlie – oh, we have him?
00:01:22.000 Oh, never mind.
00:01:23.000 Okay.
00:01:24.000 Brandon, unmute yourself and what's your question?
00:01:27.000 Hey, guys.
00:01:29.000 So with aliens in the news, I figured I'd ask if Charlie believed in aliens and if you guys believe in aliens.
00:01:41.000 All right.
00:01:42.000 So the problem is I'm searching our old dashboard.
00:01:45.000 It's impossible because illegal aliens. 1.00
00:01:47.000 Aliens.
00:01:48.000 Only kids.
00:01:49.000 Exactly.
00:01:50.000 Maybe if I search UFOs.
00:01:52.000 We're working on getting a video where it said we'll be revealing.
00:01:54.000 So we'll filibuster a bit here.
00:01:56.000 Danny does tell us he was around Charlie a lot.
00:01:58.000 He believes Charlie thought they were possibly demonic elements.
00:02:03.000 Obviously, Charlie was a Christian.
00:02:04.000 He believes in supernatural forces.
00:02:06.000 So you could have angels, you could have demons, and they might be measurable in this world in some way.
00:02:14.000 Charlie definitely was open to UFOs.
00:02:16.000 I remember a clip that went viral.
00:02:17.000 Remember when he was flying on that plane?
00:02:19.000 Yes.
00:02:20.000 And they saw kind of the that foo fighter?
00:02:22.000 Yeah, this is the first time.
00:02:22.000 Is that the clip they're getting?
00:02:23.000 Excellent.
00:02:24.000 So Charlie was convinced that there was anomalies that you couldn't explain and that one of the options could be aliens.
00:02:24.000 Excellent.
00:02:24.000 I remember.
00:02:32.000 But he was also very much like, you know, this could be foreign actors.
00:02:36.000 It could be our own military.
00:02:38.000 I don't think he'd made up his mind yet.
00:02:39.000 Charlie and I spoke a lot about C.S. Lewis and what C.S. Lewis said about aliens and that it wouldn't change our Christian faith or wouldn't challenge our Christian faith at all.
00:02:49.000 And we were grateful to C.S. Lewis for putting that forward.
00:02:52.000 I personally happen to believe that there are probably aliens.
00:02:57.000 My guess is, it's going to be painful to say, but it's probably like Obama's, where there's so much universe out there, it feels like it would genuinely defy probability to say there is no life of any kind in any of the literally hundreds of billions of galaxies that are out there with trillions, quadrillions, quintillions of stars and planets around them.
00:03:20.000 But we haven't seen any of it out there.
00:03:23.000 And our knowledge of physics is such that we'll probably never be able to run into them.
00:03:29.000 So there is some really interesting – okay, so listen, I like Joe Rogan, and I've listened to a bunch of his episodes when it comes to where he has experts on about extraterrestrial life and Roswell.
00:03:40.000 And I do find a lot of it really compelling.
00:03:42.000 I think different people, what's happened is the whole research behind aliens has been fairly siphoned off.
00:03:51.000 It's been blocked from sharing their expertise, sharing their research.
00:03:55.000 And that's for a variety of reasons.
00:03:57.000 So I don't think we make a ton of progress on it.
00:03:59.000 But the Roswell site and the 1947 crash site, they are very compelling.
00:04:05.000 Blake's sitting here shaking his head tonight.
00:04:07.000 And I'll tell you why, because there's actual people exist today that have held in their hands these compound structures.
00:04:17.000 I'm not super articulate.
00:04:19.000 But they cannot figure out how you would machine something that was found in 1947.
00:04:24.000 So I find that very compelling.
00:04:26.000 You couldn't even machine it without breaking the machine.
00:04:29.000 You couldn't let alone stack 18 layers like they found on some of these substances that they found.
00:04:35.000 So I actually think there's some compelling evidence out there.
00:04:38.000 I'll react to that, but I want to make sure we get Charlie's point.
00:04:40.000 So first, Charlie had this tweet.
00:04:42.000 I was flying back from Wisconsin on a friend's plane and got called up to the cockpit.
00:04:46.000 The pilots were very confused at what they were seeing.
00:04:49.000 Something was above them and was not showing on radar.
00:04:52.000 I'm sure there is a logical explanation here, but watch this video and tell me what I am missing.
00:04:58.000 This video got 7 million views, and this is an excerpt from it.
00:05:02.000 Let's play 652.
00:05:07.000 Is this the most profound you've ever seen it?
00:05:09.000 It's just like over and over and over again.
00:05:13.000 And no logical explanation.
00:05:16.000 The only logical explanation would be a satellite, but I don't know the satellites because it's circling this thing in place.
00:05:22.000 You've almost seen three of them.
00:05:22.000 Are they coming in?
00:05:25.000 They're lower on the horizon now.
00:05:26.000 If they're in formation now.
00:05:34.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:05:35.000 And if I'm coming up on the zone.
00:05:38.000 Yeah, there's two of them right there.
00:05:42.000 and they're way ahead of us yeah would they be surveillance I mean, yeah, my conspiracy theory non-existent.
00:05:56.000 And there's nothing on your radar.
00:05:58.000 200 miles.
00:06:02.000 How many miles do you think that's away from us?
00:06:05.000 We've seen it that way.
00:06:09.000 So since Wisconsin, you've seen it?
00:06:12.000 Not here.
00:06:17.000 Wow.
00:06:18.000 Do you think the U.S. government knows about it?
00:06:22.000 I mean, I have no idea.
00:06:23.000 But what kind of thing wouldn't be caught on radar?
00:06:25.000 How high does your radar go?
00:06:28.000 Be 50, 60,000.
00:06:31.000 Wow.
00:06:34.000 All right.
00:06:34.000 Thanks, guys.
00:06:36.000 That was fun.
00:06:37.000 I remember the discussion with them now.
00:06:39.000 It did.
00:06:39.000 It did.
00:06:40.000 And I was, as always, I'm the skeptic.
00:06:42.000 I am the black pill.
00:06:43.000 I'm just like, Charlie, it's probably not aliens.
00:06:45.000 And so I wanted to answer that on the, you know, where people are saying, oh, they found materials.
00:06:49.000 The interesting phenomenon when you get, when you really dig into this is Harry Reid was a top Democrat, a top guy in the government for a long time.
00:06:57.000 He's from Nevada, and he was actually a bit of a UFO enthusiast, as was, I believe, Hillary's campaign manager, Podesta.
00:07:08.000 I believe he also, I'm going off memory here.
00:07:10.000 Definitely Reed, though.
00:07:12.000 And he was into this stuff.
00:07:13.000 And so he kind of threw bits into bills, like, oh, yeah, let's have the Pentagon investigate this.
00:07:19.000 And so the reason you're getting more military stuff that we're, oh, we're getting these guys who come out and they say, there's evidence of aliens.
00:07:26.000 We found these stuff we can't explain.
00:07:28.000 I actually consider it's a marker of the way America's gone downhill because we just kind of let loopy UFO believer guys into the government and they started spamming weird stuff.
00:07:39.000 You weren't getting this at peak America in the 1960s when we were putting a man on the moon.
00:07:43.000 We didn't have Wernher von Braun coming out and going, oh, I have seen aliens.
00:07:47.000 There was an interesting thing I saw on X where it was back in the 1950s and CIA was doing some surveillance operations and this was actually uncovered where the CIA said, well, let's just go plant some UFO stories to cover up for the surveillance activities that we were doing.
00:08:04.000 So we know that that happens as well.
00:08:07.000 Or on the other hand, yeah, and also the military today might be you use fake alien stuff to figure out who is stable enough to be trusted with information.
00:08:16.000 so you just you give them the fake alien thing and if they immediately start leaking or going nuts you this i'm sure this is what inspired it was obama's alien comment But then Trump said, well, Obama was talking about classified information.
00:08:30.000 That's a big no-no.
00:08:31.000 But maybe I'll just let him off the hook and release some stuff.
00:08:33.000 Then he comes out with this truth social.
00:08:35.000 It says, based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War and other relevant departments and agencies to begin the process of identifying, releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomenon, UAPs, and unidentified flying object, UFOs.
00:08:52.000 I'm not exactly sure what the difference is.
00:08:54.000 And any other information connected to these highly complex but extremely interesting and important matters.
00:09:00.000 God bless America.
00:09:01.000 I like this old tweet.
00:09:03.000 If these guys existed, we better not find out because we'll definitely start sending them money.
00:09:07.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:09:11.000 For a lot of Americans, the healthcare system is reactive.
00:09:14.000 You get sick first, and then you wait for an appointment.
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00:09:34.000 That's the idea that you should have the freedom to make informed choices about your own health and the ability to prepare ahead of time.
00:09:41.000 So you're not reactive anymore.
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00:10:31.000 Let's get to our next question.
00:10:32.000 Who we got up, Blake?
00:10:34.000 Let's see.
00:10:35.000 Do we have Anthony next?
00:10:37.000 All right, Anthony's back.
00:10:39.000 Anthony, welcome back to the show.
00:10:41.000 What's up, guys?
00:10:42.000 Thank you.
00:10:43.000 I think this makes it four weeks in a row.
00:10:46.000 It's going to take you, man.
00:10:47.000 Some people ask good questions.
00:10:49.000 So some people take great questions.
00:10:52.000 But this is a shout out, guys.
00:10:54.000 Anyone out there who's listening to this?
00:10:54.000 Come.
00:10:56.000 Members of Charlie Kirk.com.
00:10:58.000 You can ask us whatever you want.
00:10:59.000 Go for it, Anthony.
00:11:02.000 No, I won't ask you whatever you want, Blake, but I do have a question.
00:11:05.000 So regarding this terror stuff that's happened today, Andrew, I got it.
00:11:11.000 Why does it look like Congress refuses to work with Trump?
00:11:15.000 It seems like even the Republicans, and I don't mean all of them, but there's a good chunk of them that refuse to work with him.
00:11:22.000 Like, are we serious?
00:11:24.000 Don't they want the country to do well or do they just want their own pockets to do well?
00:11:29.000 So Blake actually has a really good point on this.
00:11:32.000 It relates to our conversations around the filibuster.
00:11:35.000 So essentially, we have a Congress that is a zombie Congress because you can never get anybody, 60 senators, to agree on anything.
00:11:41.000 So it doesn't matter if it passes the House with a simple majority.
00:11:43.000 It gets the Senate and dies.
00:11:45.000 So the point is, we are relying on bills that were passed decades ago that have never been updated, that are not current with our current situations, that haven't been updated because of AI or any of these kind of licensing issues that are currently we're struggling with.
00:12:00.000 So Congress is essentially null and void.
00:12:03.000 It's a zombie Congress in a lot of ways.
00:12:05.000 Not completely, but somewhat.
00:12:06.000 As you said, I think Congress has gotten so used to being a sort of zombie Congress.
00:12:10.000 Their filibuster has been there so long, they're used to not. really having to consider that their positions might become laws.
00:12:18.000 Well, it's interesting because the Constitution does give the right to tax to the Congress, but then Congress can pass laws which delegates certain authorities and powers to the executive branch, which it's done in the 1930s, 1960s, 1970s.
00:12:33.000 Congress loves to give powers to the president rather than exercise them themselves.
00:12:37.000 And it's one of the biggest problems with Congress.
00:12:39.000 They fear power.
00:12:40.000 They fear using the power given to them by the founders.
00:12:43.000 It's also just harder.
00:12:44.000 It's like herding cats in Congress.
00:12:46.000 I mean, we had, you saw some of our conversation if you watched Thought Crime last night, which, by the way, was an amazing episode.
00:12:52.000 We'll have it on the podcast on Saturday.
00:12:54.000 You know, you've got guys like Thomas Massey or Dom Bacon that are going to be nose for whatever reason, and they'll say it's on principle.
00:13:03.000 Maybe they've got a beef with the president, whatever.
00:13:04.000 We could debate that another time.
00:13:06.000 It's just harder, especially when you have slim majorities.
00:13:08.000 And then you've got this, you know, filibuster-proof 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
00:13:13.000 And so we're President Trump and any executive for that matter is reliant upon statutes that have been passed by previous Congress.
00:13:21.000 Congresses.
00:13:22.000 So, all right, next question we got.
00:13:25.000 This is John.
00:13:26.000 John, thanks for waiting around and being patient.
00:13:28.000 Unmute yourself.
00:13:29.000 What do you have to ask?
00:13:30.000 Good morning, Andrew and Blake.
00:13:32.000 Good morning, John.
00:13:33.000 Blessings.
00:13:34.000 Yeah, blessings from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
00:13:36.000 Blessings to you too, brother.
00:13:36.000 Thank you.
00:13:38.000 What's up?
00:13:39.000 Yes.
00:13:40.000 So this week is the fifth year passing of Rush Limbaugh, and I was reading a Rush Limbaugh letter this week, and I came across this article.
00:13:50.000 And basically, it gets into the topic of smart versus educated.
00:13:56.000 And I thought, especially in light of Charlie and college is a scam, you know, I'd like to get your take on what is smart.
00:14:05.000 And in your opinion, what is educated?
00:14:08.000 Blake, you want to start with this?
00:14:09.000 Man, there's so many ways you could go with that because you could almost say, like, do you view educated positively or negatively?
00:14:15.000 Because we have so much credentialism in the U.S. You can get a PhD in this country without being as literate as one should be.
00:14:25.000 They have online PhDs.
00:14:26.000 They've had these crises.
00:14:27.000 I think it was at UC San Diego where their remedial math course of high school level math was too difficult.
00:14:34.000 So they had to introduce middle school level math for college students.
00:14:37.000 And many of the students in those classes had 4.0s in their high school coursework.
00:14:43.000 There's a girl, I believe, in Rhode Island who is suing, or maybe, no, Connecticut.
00:14:48.000 It was in Connecticut.
00:14:49.000 She's suing her old high school because they graduated her with honors and she cannot read.
00:14:55.000 She made it through high school entirely using text to speak on her phone.
00:14:59.000 Her educators for failing her.
00:15:01.000 You can go that direction.
00:15:02.000 You can say education, its degree collection has become increasingly meaningless.
00:15:07.000 But there's also true education, as Charlie would say, bringing forth, I believe, is what is leading forth.
00:15:12.000 And true education is when you don't prioritize credentials.
00:15:17.000 You don't prioritize jumping through hoops.
00:15:19.000 You prioritize the cultivation of the mind.
00:15:23.000 And that doesn't come from shelling out money for a degree.
00:15:26.000 It doesn't come from grinding out a test.
00:15:30.000 It comes from actually identifying what it is useful for a mind to know and cultivating that ability.
00:15:38.000 That more than any time in the past century, I would say, is reliant on your self-direction far more than whatever you could learn in a school.
00:15:48.000 Yeah, and I would use different words, actually, as opposed to smart and educated.
00:15:52.000 I know what Rush was getting at, but I would say wise versus smart and educated, because there's a lot of people with a lot of raw horsepower intelligence that are dumber than Dornell because they don't know what the truth is.
00:16:03.000 And so you talk about education means you could imagine three things.
00:16:06.000 You might imagine smart, educated, and wise.
00:16:10.000 And there are three different ways to go.
00:16:12.000 Wisdom is a much different word.
00:16:16.000 It echoes something deeper and more profound.
00:16:19.000 If you have the truth, so in order to know and to lead forth, what we're talking about the base root words of what education, how we derive that word, to lead forth, you have to know where you're going.
00:16:29.000 Otherwise, it's the blind leading the blind.
00:16:31.000 So where are we going?
00:16:32.000 You have to know the truth, capital T truth.
00:16:33.000 You have to understand the good, the true, and the beautiful, the eternal things, the things that are worth knowing.
00:16:38.000 And then you can cultivate critical thinking skills that help you get to that truth, right?
00:16:43.000 And so this is why Charlie loved Hillsdale College, because it's a learning institution, a higher learning institution that is a classical education that leads forth to somewhere good, that leads forth to critical thinking, deeper knowledge, deeper, more profound wisdoms.
00:16:58.000 And so, you know, this is why you also love Socrates and Plato and Aristotle.
00:17:01.000 It's why we studied the classics.
00:17:03.000 So I would say wise.
00:17:05.000 Wisdom is in far too little supply.
00:17:08.000 A lot of smart people that are very, very dumb and that make poor decisions.
00:17:12.000 And there's a lot of very credentialed people that make poor decisions.
00:17:15.000 They become educated beyond their intelligence or beyond their wisdom.
00:17:19.000 So that's how I would break it down.
00:17:22.000 So I would say a couple things too.
00:17:24.000 First, as a believer, I think if we read in Proverbs, it really contrasts wisdom versus knowledge.
00:17:32.000 So reading Proverbs, I think, is very helpful to answer this question.
00:17:35.000 The second thing, just to read a little bit from this article, and just one sentence, really, in this sentence, Rush is talking about the educated class and basically says they are committed believers, but they are not thinkers, yet they consider themselves the smartest people in the room.
00:17:55.000 And I think we all know some of those.
00:17:59.000 That's beautiful.
00:18:00.000 That's beautiful from Rush because what he's talking about is the disconnect between the elites and the credentialed class and the wisdom of the people.
00:18:08.000 We the people.
00:18:09.000 And Rush, as this show, is always going to put our faith in the wisdom, the collective wisdom of the real Americans that make this country great.
00:18:17.000 And there's more virtue in a lot in a plumber than there is in a Harvard-educated PhD student, oftentimes.
00:18:26.000 Thank you.
00:18:26.000 Amen.
00:18:27.000 Thank you.
00:18:27.000 God bless you.
00:18:28.000 And welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:18:31.000 Please unmute yourself.
00:18:33.000 Hi, how are you doing, guys?
00:18:35.000 Doing great.
00:18:37.000 Good.
00:18:38.000 I had a couple of questions.
00:18:40.000 One of them was about whether you could give us any update on the redistricting efforts and where that leaves us in the midterms in terms of like which states are doing it and where is it likely to happen.
00:18:52.000 And then the other thing I wondered about was: I know you've had, I think it's Mike Lee on talking about the talking filibuster.
00:19:00.000 And I wondered if we had any info on how likely it is for Thun to do that because he doesn't seem inclined to do it.
00:19:09.000 And if he did do it, what would that really do to help us with the SAVE Act?
00:19:13.000 And then also, can you give us an idea if there are any moderate enough senators other than, I guess, what's his name from Pennsylvania?
00:19:24.000 Fetterman.
00:19:25.000 Fetterman is.
00:19:26.000 Right, right, yeah.
00:19:28.000 Who might actually be pushed by the public if they were interested in this 80-20 issue?
00:19:34.000 You know, could contacting any of them or Thune make a difference?
00:19:38.000 So that's what I was wondering about today.
00:19:39.000 Thanks.
00:19:40.000 So the update, your first question was an update on the redistricting fight.
00:19:44.000 Well, we've got a couple updates there.
00:19:45.000 We had, remind me of his name, the gentleman from Virginia's Senator Glenn Sturtevant.
00:19:50.000 Sturdivant.
00:19:51.000 Yeah, so he discussed their plan in Virginia to make it a 10-1 Democrat state that they've been trying to ram through.
00:19:58.000 That's gotten really interesting just in the past 24 hours because not the Supreme Court, but an intermediate court ruling basically said this referendum does seem to be illegal and they should not continue early voting efforts on it.
00:20:13.000 And so you're actually getting individual counties in Virginia.
00:20:16.000 They're kind of creating a state-level constitutional crisis because they're saying they're not going to be proceeding with early voting while other counties are.
00:20:23.000 It's really becoming a mess there.
00:20:26.000 I'm not sure which way that will go, but it's really illustrating maybe there is a shot that this could be blocked.
00:20:32.000 That would be very important for preserving a few seats in this next week.
00:20:35.000 Well, and a judge rules on Tuesday that new congressional map in Missouri that favors Republicans is legal.
00:20:40.000 So that's score one for Republicans.
00:20:43.000 South Carolina is moving forward with some plans to redistrict.
00:20:47.000 So I would give the slight edge to Republicans right now.
00:20:52.000 We had a gentleman named Larry Schweiker on the show earlier, and he's been keeping track of that.
00:20:58.000 It might be time to have him back on the show.
00:21:00.000 As a matter of fact, he's keeping close tabs on this story.
00:21:03.000 And I think that we would still have the slight edge here.
00:21:06.000 It'll depend on what happens in Virginia.
00:21:08.000 It'll depend on what happens in Colorado if they move forward with their maps.
00:21:12.000 Slight edge to Republicans, though, just on a pure who's got more out of this, right?
00:21:17.000 So we'll see.
00:21:19.000 It's kind of TBD.
00:21:20.000 And again, we look at our friends over in Indiana for failing to move forward with that.
00:21:25.000 We're still going for them.
00:21:26.000 Yeah, we're going to have accountability on that.
00:21:28.000 Because it was a ridiculous decision, but it is what it is.
00:21:32.000 And then you mentioned the talking filibuster with, I think you were mentioning Mike Lee, how we had Mike Lee on this week.
00:21:39.000 And she asked, is it good to contact them?
00:21:39.000 Will Thune act.
00:21:41.000 It's always good to contact your lawmakers.
00:21:43.000 Yeah.
00:21:44.000 We should get Thune's number.
00:21:45.000 The best way to do it?
00:21:46.000 Yeah, you call.
00:21:48.000 Sometimes it might not even make sense that they react to these things because rationally, a few dozen or a few hundred people calling in, that doesn't represent tens of millions, but they do react to those things.
00:21:59.000 Politics is about numbers, but also intensity.
00:22:02.000 People who are more intense and more passionate and more vocal get more of what they want.
00:22:09.000 Well, we do say that.
00:22:11.000 Always be respectful.
00:22:12.000 I will tell you, that is a key part.
00:22:14.000 And we've got Senator Thune's DC number here.
00:22:17.000 It's 202-224-2321.
00:22:22.000 202-224-2321.
00:22:26.000 So please contact the D.C. number.
00:22:28.000 And then we've got, I guess, we've got a graphic up here with other offices.
00:22:32.000 We've got an Aberdeen or Rapid City, Sioux Fall, Washington, D.C. office.
00:22:36.000 So it's the Washington, D.C. Call the D.C. office, especially if you're not.
00:22:39.000 Call you can feel it.
00:22:40.000 Call South Dakota office if you were South Dakotan.
00:22:42.000 I think that would be the fairest approach.
00:22:44.000 But the D.C. one, that's where the senator is most of the time.
00:22:47.000 That's where he's most likely to hear from his staffers.
00:22:50.000 Oh, man, we're getting blown up about this.
00:22:52.000 Yep, exactly.
00:22:53.000 I've worked on those phones myself.
00:22:54.000 He has signed on to the SAVE Act.
00:22:57.000 The question is, is he going to do the necessary work to get it over the finish line?
00:23:00.000 If we have Fetterman that is on board with it, that's not enough, obviously.
00:23:04.000 But what the talking filibuster would do is it kind of takes it back to what Mike Lee describes as the original intent of the debate, right?
00:23:12.000 We often refer to the Senate as, you know, the, what's the line they always use?
00:23:18.000 It's the highest debate body in the world or something like that.
00:23:24.000 And it really isn't because they don't debate anything because they can't get to 60 votes on anything.
00:23:29.000 So they just, it's all procedural and parliamentary tactics to block real debate.
00:23:32.000 Mike Lee is saying, listen, we can debate, and you can debate as long as you want.
00:23:38.000 Send your people up there until you exhaust your octogenarian senators and Septuagintarian senators and they can't debate anymore.
00:23:45.000 And then we'll have a vote.
00:23:46.000 And then 51 votes will take it or 50 plus one with Vice President Vance.
00:23:50.000 So that's the spirit of it.
00:23:52.000 I actually love it.
00:23:53.000 And it's just a question of whether or not Thune will do it.
00:23:56.000 There are some concerns with the talking filibuster.
00:23:58.000 I've spoken with senators about this.
00:24:01.000 There is concerns that the Democrats could game it anyways and essentially break a single bill into its different parts and the amendment process and essentially repeat a talking filibuster over and over and over again.
00:24:12.000 In theory, you could stay there indefinitely.
00:24:14.000 So there's concerns about the way it would be implemented.
00:24:17.000 I think that will go back to Senator Thune and if he's going to put guardrails on a talking filibuster and how it can be implemented.
00:24:23.000 But President Trump has been very clear.
00:24:25.000 We will have the Save Act one way or the other.
00:24:27.000 I'm not exactly sure what he means, if that's an executive order or if he's going to do it by some other means.
00:24:33.000 He is dead serious about getting the Save Act, whether passed through Congress or the policies implemented in some other way.
00:24:33.000 We'll see.
00:24:42.000 I think it's existential.
00:24:43.000 I think it's ridiculous that you do not need a government-issued idea and to prove your citizenship to vote in a federal election.
00:24:50.000 So I'm 1,000% behind it.
00:24:52.000 It's common sense.
00:24:53.000 I think that's why you see that 83% of Americans already support it.
00:24:57.000 I don't know what the problem is other than Democrats want to cheat, frankly.
00:25:01.000 So that's where we're at on the Save Act.
00:25:04.000 I don't know if we got to all your questions, but I believe we got to most of them.
00:25:10.000 The online world moves fast and it's moving even faster these days.
00:25:13.000 That's why TikTok approaches teen safety with families in mind from the start.
00:25:18.000 Because discovery and creativity are both wonderful things, but it's important to make sure that safety comes first as well.
00:25:24.000 On TikTok, teenagers have over 50 built-in protections right from when they join.
00:25:30.000 Accounts for teens all start private by default.
00:25:32.000 They're not open to the entire world.
00:25:34.000 And for those under 16, direct messages are turned off.
00:25:37.000 Only their friends can comment on their videos.
00:25:40.000 And that kind of approach matters because feeling confident and comfortable about these platforms your teenagers are on shouldn't mean digging through a bunch of menus and trying to set everything up yourself and worrying that you got it wrong.
00:25:52.000 TikTok is taking a proactive approach.
00:25:54.000 Their protections are built in from the moment those teenagers join so that safety and peace of mind for parents is there right from the start.
00:26:02.000 All of this is to say, when safety comes first, discovery and creativity can follow without fear.
00:26:08.000 Learn more by going to tick tock.com/slash guardiansguide.
00:26:13.000 That's tick tock.com/slash guardiansguide.
00:26:20.000 So we have a written-in question from let's do no, let's do this one.
00:26:27.000 Sorry, crap, I'm in the wrong window here.
00:26:28.000 Let's do the one from Sam here.
00:26:31.000 He says, have you guys seen, I've heard about the Alyssa Gu one, or Eileen Gu, but I mean about Alicia Liu.
00:26:39.000 I'm going to mix up these names.
00:26:40.000 Aileen Gu is the freestyle skier from America that competes for the CCP.
00:26:45.000 And then Alicia Liu is.
00:26:48.000 Just won the gold medal yesterday.
00:26:50.000 And it was wonderful because she was.
00:26:53.000 Listen, I've been told that Alicia Liu is a Wokey. 0.99
00:26:56.000 She's a far lefty, but she has not disrespected the country at all. 0.98
00:27:01.000 Her dad fled the CCP China.
00:27:03.000 He partook in the Tiananmen Square massacre protests.
00:27:07.000 It was student-led protests in 1989.
00:27:09.000 He flees to America.
00:27:10.000 They have been surveilled by the CCP.
00:27:13.000 The FBI has told him they've been under surveillance trying to intimidate his daughter, Alyssa Liu, from skating for the U.S. team.
00:27:20.000 She did it anyways, and she got gold.
00:27:22.000 The first time a woman's got gold in figure skating in 24 years.
00:27:26.000 Let's have the clip at the other end. 0.99
00:27:27.000 Fair enough.
00:27:27.000 Blake's right.
00:27:27.000 We can go over it.
00:27:28.000 We should play this clip.
00:27:29.000 651.
00:27:31.000 It's pretty, pretty compelling stuff.
00:27:32.000 651.
00:27:34.000 The Chinese government has never let me go.
00:27:39.000 They sent spies to the U.S.
00:27:43.000 The spy actually became friends with me.
00:27:49.000 I befriended him.
00:27:51.000 I helped him a lot.
00:27:53.000 You know, you settled in down in the San Francisco Bay Area.
00:27:58.000 And I treated him as my friend.
00:28:03.000 And many years later, he confessed that he was actually a spy for the Chinese government on me.
00:28:12.000 It really, Liu versus Gu, it really unpacks some interesting trends here because we've had, they're both from the Bay Area.
00:28:19.000 We've had Chinese Americans in America for a long time, but I think we've been used to them being either just, they've been here ages, or they are anti-communist refugees. 0.98
00:28:31.000 They came here after it fell to Mao, after the Cultural Revolution, after Tananaman, as he did. 0.88
00:28:36.000 He came here after the Tanan Square massacre.
00:28:39.000 And now we have a much greater number of Chinese in America who are just here to work jobs. 1.00
00:28:46.000 They're fully, they're Chinese patriots.
00:28:49.000 They're on board with the Chinese system, or at least not critics of it.
00:28:53.000 And they're really not shy about spreading, using these as means of getting influence.
00:28:58.000 We've seen dark stuff in Canada.
00:29:00.000 Can never dump on Canada enough.
00:29:02.000 We've had actual candidates for office who are just blatantly China loyalists.
00:29:07.000 There was a candidate for the Liberal Party in Canada who was saying at a rally in Chinese, speaking in Chinese to other Chinese residents, hey, it'd be great if someone basically went and took out my opponent who's an anti-CCP Chinese dissident.
00:29:22.000 And he was just, he was saying this in the Chinese language.
00:29:25.000 We've had a lot of cases of infiltration.
00:29:27.000 We have a lot of cases of espionage.
00:29:29.000 And one of the things China does is they tend to view all Chinese abroad as essentially they either are under their control or they should be.
00:29:40.000 They should be subject to Beijing's will.
00:29:42.000 So they'll send spies to spy on these people, to monitor these people, to harass these people, and in theory, even to kidnap, do crimes to these people.
00:29:51.000 And we're going to see more and more of this.
00:29:53.000 I think it's a tale of two.
00:29:56.000 Well, listen, you've got Eileen Gu, who went over back to the CCP.
00:30:02.000 She changed countries that she was competing for in 2019 in preparation for 2022 Olympics.
00:30:08.000 So now she's back.
00:30:09.000 She fell.
00:30:11.000 I think she won silver.
00:30:12.000 She didn't get gold.
00:30:12.000 And then you've got Alyssa Liu.
00:30:16.000 Alyssa Liu.
00:30:17.000 It's Eileen Gu versus Alyssa Liu.
00:30:19.000 And here she is celebrating being the first U.S. woman.
00:30:22.000 She raised and born and raised in America.
00:30:24.000 She's a completely American. 0.95
00:30:27.000 She is the first U.S. woman to win gold in figure skating in 24 years.
00:30:31.000 It's just an amazing story.
00:30:33.000 And listen, I don't care what her politics are. 0.73
00:30:35.000 She's done it the right way.
00:30:36.000 And this is my general theme for all Olympic athletes.
00:30:39.000 I don't care if you're a Democrat.
00:30:40.000 You can take care of your Republican, but do not disgrace our country.
00:30:45.000 And Alyssa Liu has not disgraced our country.
00:30:48.000 She's shut her mouth.
00:30:49.000 She's just said, I'm so happy to be here.
00:30:51.000 I don't care if I get a medal.
00:30:53.000 I just want people to see my art on the ice.
00:30:55.000 That's what she's done.
00:30:56.000 She stood at that podium.
00:30:57.000 She jumped for joy.
00:30:59.000 And it's just a beautiful thing.
00:31:01.000 And I want to say, as a note, so Eileen Gu has made what, $20 million?
00:31:07.000 She makes huge amounts of $20 million a year because she was willing to renaturalize herself to China, not say anything bad about the government, represent China, was rewarded handsomely.
00:31:18.000 They wanted Liu to do the same thing.
00:31:20.000 She was approached.
00:31:21.000 They wanted her to skate for them in 22 and in this Olympics.
00:31:25.000 And she refused to do so.
00:31:26.000 Her father said, was adamantly opposed.
00:31:29.000 She turned down, it sounds like tens of millions of dollars to proudly represent America. 1.00
00:31:37.000 And, you know, she's a lib, but I would hope that our country is prepared to reward her for that because she should be seen as a patriotic hero for that.
00:31:44.000 She is.
00:31:45.000 And, you know, this Eileen Gu, it's kind of a tale of elitism.
00:31:50.000 She's a Stanford grad.
00:31:51.000 Her parents were very successful Silicon Valley types, venture capitalists.
00:31:58.000 And then she took the money.
00:31:59.000 She went back and took $20 million a year. 0.73
00:32:01.000 And she is annoyingly arrogant. 0.81
00:32:03.000 Play 633.
00:32:06.000 Do you see these as two silvers gained or two goals lost?
00:32:12.000 I'm the most decorated female free skier in history.
00:32:16.000 I think that's an answer in and of itself.
00:32:20.000 How do I say this?
00:32:21.000 Winning a medal at the Olympics is a life-changing experience for every athlete.
00:32:27.000 Doing it five times is exponentially harder because every medal is equally hard for me, but everybody else's expectations rise, right?
00:32:35.000 And so the two medals lost situation, to be quite frank with you, I think is kind of a ridiculous perspective to take.
00:32:44.000 I'm showcasing my best skiing.
00:32:46.000 I'm doing things that quite literally have never been done before.
00:32:50.000 And so I think that is more than good enough.
00:32:53.000 But thank you.
00:32:56.000 If that wasn't annoying enough, here's her posing with Kamala Harris, 655. 1.00
00:33:01.000 This is a very, very fascinating image, 655.
00:33:05.000 There it is.
00:33:06.000 She's right there.
00:33:06.000 And just because she's so annoying, we're going to play her falling, 649.
00:33:14.000 Two 900s to start things off.
00:33:17.000 And just look at that air.
00:33:19.000 Oh.
00:33:21.000 And Eileen catches a ski on the deck.
00:33:24.000 Oh, man, that is high pressure.
00:33:27.000 I mean, gets up, gonna get that ski, but in a two-run qualifying format, she only has one run now to lock in her spot for finals. 1.00
00:33:37.000 What went wrong on that hit?
00:33:38.000 I mean, this is an easier trick than those first two 900s, a perfect grab.
00:33:44.000 Just kind of catches the lip a little bit.
00:33:47.000 And the lip is just the top edge of that half pipe.
00:33:50.000 And so close.
00:33:52.000 This is, oh, man.
00:33:56.000 Listen, I couldn't do any of that.
00:33:57.000 That clip gives me joy.
00:33:59.000 Yeah, I couldn't do any of that.
00:34:00.000 So I'll just say that at the outset here.
00:34:04.000 But sorry, not sorry.
00:34:05.000 Not sorry.
00:34:07.000 I do not have to cheer for Chinese nationals.
00:34:11.000 Too bad it didn't work out.
00:34:12.000 Oh, we do have one more.
00:34:14.000 650.
00:34:14.000 Okay, so this is JD Vance talking about Eileen Gu.
00:34:16.000 We have a lot.
00:34:17.000 Good job.
00:34:17.000 Good on the prep.
00:34:19.000 646.
00:34:21.000 Eileen Gu is skiing for China.
00:34:23.000 You were at the Olympics at the Open.
00:34:26.000 Ennis Cantor has said she's a traitor. 0.91
00:34:28.000 Some people have said that this is a treasonous to ski for China and to overlook Jimmy Lai and the Uyghurs and pretend like those things aren't problems is a huge problem.
00:34:38.000 What do you think her status should be?
00:34:39.000 Should it be changed?
00:34:41.000 Well, look, I'm not going to, I have no idea what she should, what her status should be.
00:34:45.000 I think that's ultimately up to the Olympics committee.
00:34:47.000 I won't pretend to wade into that.
00:34:49.000 I certainly think that somebody who grew up in the United States of America, who benefited from our education system, from the freedoms and liberties that make this country a great place, I would hope that they want to compete with the United States of America.
00:35:00.000 So I'm going to root for American athletes.
00:35:02.000 And I think part of that is people who identify themselves as Americans.
00:35:06.000 That's who I'm rooting for this Olympics.
00:35:09.000 And Eileen Gu responded to JD Vance, and she said, this is 636.
00:35:14.000 So many athletes compete for a different country.
00:35:17.000 People only have a problem with me doing it because they kind of lump China into this monolithic entity and they just hate China.
00:35:23.000 So it's not really about what they think it's about.
00:35:26.000 No, it's about exactly what we think it's about.
00:35:29.000 You took the money, you went to you're a traitor.
00:35:31.000 You are judged slightly differently for joining with an authoritarian, despotic enemy of America compared to just if, yeah, if you if your granddad is from Italy and you could only make that team instead of the American team, I don't like it.
00:35:46.000 I still genuinely do dislike it, and I don't think we should allow it nearly as much as we do.
00:35:50.000 But yeah, we're gonna treat it more harshly.
00:35:52.000 Yep.
00:35:52.000 Sorry.
00:35:53.000 Sorry, Eileen Goo.
00:35:54.000 You are awful.
00:35:55.000 We do not like you.
00:35:57.000 Boo to go.
00:35:58.000 Boo to go.
00:35:59.000 But Alyssa Lou.
00:36:00.000 Woo to Lou. 0.99
00:36:02.000 Woo to Lou. 0.99
00:36:02.000 Boo to go. 0.99
00:36:03.000 Woo to Lou. 0.99
00:36:04.000 Sweet Lou.
00:36:06.000 Who loves Sweet Lou.