The Charlie Kirk Show - Bidenomics 101—How 87,000 IRS Agents and ESG will Destroy the American Middle Class

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, today's Charlie Kirk Show and Economics-focused episode.

00:00:03.000 ESG, the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS going through with guns.

00:00:07.000 What?

00:00:08.000 Vivek Ramaswamy and Dave Bonson joins us.

00:00:11.000 You can email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com.

00:00:17.000 Start a high school group, start a college group today at tpusa.com.

00:00:21.000 Turningpoint USA is on the front lines for freedom, tpusa.com.

00:00:26.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:27.000 Here we go.

00:00:28.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:30.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:32.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:35.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:38.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:39.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:40.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:42.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:49.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:00:58.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:00.000 Brought to you by Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage.

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00:01:13.000 So Inflation Reduction Act, the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents.

00:01:19.000 It didn't really get a lot of coverage.

00:01:21.000 Joe Biden signed it into law yesterday.

00:01:24.000 With us right now is someone who I really respect, and he's an expert of all things economics.

00:01:30.000 David Bonson is the founder and partner and chief investment officer of the Bonson Group and author of the book.

00:01:35.000 There's No Free Launch, 250 Economic Truths.

00:01:38.000 And he just launched a free online video series, Economics101 at Bonson.com.

00:01:43.000 Dave, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:45.000 Thanks for having me, Charlie.

00:01:47.000 So Dave, tell us about the Inflation Reduction Act.

00:01:50.000 Will it reduce inflation or is this another Orwellian curveball thrown by our politicians?

00:01:56.000 Yeah, it's a good thing the bill doesn't have anything about false advertising because this is really, as Bernie Sanders said, absurd to call it an Inflation Reduction Act.

00:02:09.000 I'm not one who thinks there's a whole lot it's going to be doing to make the inflation worse because it really almost does nothing at all except for ad IRS agents.

00:02:19.000 It's much more of an Orwellian bill than it is economic.

00:02:24.000 Even the climate issues, there is about 300, 400 billion of corporate welfare to green energy companies.

00:02:32.000 But Manchin, to get his vote, also agreed for more permit approvals for oil and gas companies.

00:02:39.000 So even the greenies in the Democratic Party proved to be a cheap date. 0.99

00:02:43.000 It's really a disaster of a bill, and the IRS agent issue is the primary thing that stayed in it.

00:02:50.000 That's so interesting to me.

00:02:51.000 So you're right.

00:02:52.000 And I didn't realize it till you just said it.

00:02:54.000 So the green energy kind of cabal, they get some funding, but it's also if they really hate fossil fuels, but Manchin got his thing.

00:03:04.000 The thing, though, that it seems as if is the big takeaway is 87,000 new IRS agents.

00:03:11.000 Talk about how extraordinary of an increase that is.

00:03:14.000 I mean, for people that don't run businesses, we got some emails, people that emailed us freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:03:20.000 Oh, Charlie, just pay your taxes.

00:03:22.000 Who cares?

00:03:23.000 Dave, educate our audience a little bit about the menace that is the IRS.

00:03:27.000 Yeah, you know, Charlie, I work with high net worth investors for a living.

00:03:31.000 My firm manages about $4 billion.

00:03:34.000 And the people who are most aggressive at reducing their taxes are left-leaning clients.

00:03:40.000 They support the taxes, and then they will move heaven and earth to avoid paying them.

00:03:46.000 The people that don't have the options to hire financial firms like mine and accountants and lawyers and so forth are middle-class people.

00:03:55.000 And so all of a sudden you have wage earners that maybe get certain money from Venmo and the IRS starts auditing how much cash they're receiving if they're Uber drivers and other things like that.

00:04:07.000 Well, the IRS people are not the cream of the crop intellectually.

00:04:11.000 Okay, this is just a fact.

00:04:14.000 You don't become IRS agent because you're a brilliant businessman or businesswoman.

00:04:20.000 But what they can make up for with talent deficit is more volume, more people.

00:04:25.000 And that's what this bill seeks to do.

00:04:27.000 It may end up only being 50,000 agents.

00:04:30.000 I love that pushback right now.

00:04:32.000 The Washington Post said, oh, it's not going to be 87,000.

00:04:36.000 But the Biden administration ran a report saying they could afford up to 87,000 more people.

00:04:41.000 So let's say it's only 50,000.

00:04:44.000 All that means is the rest of the money is going to be lost and thrown away in bureaucracy because it is fundamental.

00:04:50.000 Yeah, I mean, it's like saying, okay, it will only be a Yankee stadium full of IRS agents, which is new ones on top of what we already have.

00:04:58.000 And just so you know, because I know you're very charitably minded, you know that I care about these things.

00:05:02.000 I give a lot to my church, Christian schools, 501c3s, which of course Turning Point has.

00:05:09.000 They're going to audit charitable donations, Charlie.

00:05:11.000 That's going to be a huge.

00:05:12.000 Oh, it's going to be a huge part of it.

00:05:15.000 We have no delusions of grandeur of what the police state will try to do.

00:05:19.000 Something tells me that BLM and the alphabet mafia groups aren't going to get that much scrutiny.

00:05:24.000 So, Dave, I want to play a piece of tape here just to kind of add to what you're talking about here.

00:05:28.000 There's this video going around, which appears to be a video that shows new IRS agents training and knocking and entering a room, then arresting two men for conspiracy.

00:05:38.000 It's very creepy.

00:05:40.000 Playcut 66.

00:06:05.000 Well, if you're going to hit it on behind your back, say no.

00:06:11.000 Do you have any other weapons on your hands behind your back?

00:06:17.000 So, Dave, right there, I don't know if you could see that video or not.

00:06:20.000 That is a training video of what seems to be otherwise-looking civilians trained to become IRS agents, not learning how to go through tax returns or how to cite deductions or accounts in the Canary Islands.

00:06:34.000 How to bulldoze a door and say, IRS, you're under arrest for conspiracy.

00:06:34.000 No, no, no.

00:06:40.000 What's going on here?

00:06:41.000 Yeah, obviously, I wish I knew more context and so forth.

00:06:45.000 I can tell you that I don't imagine IRS agents are going to become much more qualified at ATF-style raids than they are right now at auditing offshore accounts.

00:06:55.000 But it's frightening.

00:06:58.000 And even apart from some of the darker places it could go, there is just a fundamental issue here.

00:07:05.000 They do not know that they need this.

00:07:08.000 If they knew they needed it, why wouldn't they just go collect the additional money?

00:07:13.000 They're quantifying the amount of taxes they say are not being paid.

00:07:17.000 But if they know how much is not being paid, why aren't they just collecting it now?

00:07:22.000 It's already resourced.

00:07:24.000 The fact of the matter is they have a tax code that's too darn complicated.

00:07:28.000 Take away the need for IRS agents by having a flatter tax code and a simpler tax code that disincentivizes people to get creative in their taxes.

00:07:37.000 So I'm going to get cynical here for a sec, Dave.

00:07:39.000 But if you have a super complex tax code, then can't you decide who you're going to enforce that complex tax code against?

00:07:46.000 Well, and also who you're going to need to enforce it against, because again, back to my prior point, subsidy, regulation is a subsidy.

00:07:54.000 Okay, I promise you, my multi-millionaire left-wing clients are going to be fine.

00:08:00.000 They're going to get through it.

00:08:01.000 They're going to set up other trusts and do other planning.

00:08:04.000 That's what the financial community is supposed to do is work on tax mitigation. 0.87

00:08:08.000 That's our job.

00:08:10.000 The people who won't be fine are the people who don't have the resources to do more complex tax planning.

00:08:16.000 And people whose politics they don't like.

00:08:18.000 Any other parts of the bill, Dave, that you think actually might result in, is there anything meaningful, anything good in this bill at all?

00:08:26.000 And then also tell us about your online courses.

00:08:28.000 Yeah, sure.

00:08:29.000 Real quickly, I do think it's good to get more permit approvals for oil and gas drilling on federal land.

00:08:35.000 I'm really upset that they had to bribe Joe Manchin to do it.

00:08:39.000 But that's one good part of the bill.

00:08:41.000 And I want to be fair about that.

00:08:42.000 I'm pretty objective in the way I talk politics.

00:08:45.000 That's the one good thing.

00:08:46.000 The other bad thing is the price fixing on pharmaceuticals.

00:08:50.000 I think that making Medicare negotiate after 2026 is going to stunt innovation in how we develop new life-saving treatments.

00:09:01.000 And I don't like that part of the bill either.

00:09:04.000 A lot of the principles that drive my political opinions are the things I delve into in this online course, Charlie.

00:09:11.000 Bonson.com has my Bonson Economics 101 course.

00:09:16.000 It's 30 lectures, all free, a full syllabus, dozens of links to readings and videos and things to just simply drive a better understanding of economics, a better understanding of first principles that should influence the way we think about public policy.

00:09:33.000 Can you spell it out for?

00:09:34.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:35.000 Bonson is B-A-H-N-S-E-N.

00:09:39.000 And so Bonson, B-A-H-N-S-E-N.com.

00:09:43.000 Unfortunately, my last name wasn't Smith, or we'd be getting even more traffic for the site.

00:09:48.000 That's all right.

00:09:49.000 Those of us with last names of Kirk, you know, I have to laugh.

00:09:52.000 When I do a dinner reservation, they say, how can you spell that?

00:09:54.000 I say, I'm going to another restaurant.

00:09:56.000 You have lost my business.

00:09:58.000 Thank you, Dave.

00:09:58.000 Appreciate it.

00:09:59.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:10:03.000 Charlie Kirk here.

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00:10:59.000 This is one of the most important topics in America, period.

00:11:03.000 It is one of the most important yet difficult to grasp at times topics.

00:11:08.000 So we're going to go through it in a step-by-step manner with a subject matter expert who's super smart and he loves the country and he's doing something very important.

00:11:18.000 It's Vivek Ramaswamy, and he joins us right now.

00:11:21.000 He is behind a new effort called Strive to Fight ESG.

00:11:27.000 What exactly is ESG?

00:11:29.000 Vivek, welcome back to the program.

00:11:31.000 Good to see you, Charlie.

00:11:32.000 How are you doing?

00:11:33.000 First, congratulations.

00:11:33.000 I'm doing great.

00:11:34.000 Great interview with Tucker last evening.

00:11:36.000 But let's start at the beginning because some of our audience, they're not really as well-versed in this as I think they would like to be.

00:11:42.000 They're very busy and it can be very confusing.

00:11:44.000 What is ESG and how does that impact normal everyday people?

00:11:49.000 Yeah, so the rise of ESG is basically a way for quasi-governmental actors in the private sector to use your money to advance progressive values in corporate America without you knowing it.

00:12:01.000 So, Charlie, I know that sounds confusing.

00:12:03.000 Here's how it works: is a group of large asset managers, let's name them, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.

00:12:09.000 What they do is they aggregate the money of everyday citizens, probably most of the viewers of this program, and then they use that to buy up shares in public companies in corporate America.

00:12:19.000 And then they tell those companies to adopt diversity, equity, inclusion quota systems for race or gender, carbon caps, climate change measures, scope three emissions caps that most of those everyday citizens don't actually agree with.

00:12:33.000 I think it's a form of financial fraud, actually, Charlie, using someone else's money to advance agendas that the owner of capital, the citizen, disagrees with.

00:12:42.000 That's a problem.

00:12:43.000 No one has yet stepped up to solve it.

00:12:45.000 And my view is: I'm not going to wait for politicians to solve this problem.

00:12:49.000 I think we can solve it through the market.

00:12:51.000 That's why I found it strive.

00:12:52.000 But this is hopefully the beginning of a great uprising of everyday citizens saying that it's not just our voice, it's our money too, that we can use to exercise our voice.

00:13:02.000 And I think that's the power of what we saw, even in the first week since our launch last week.

00:13:06.000 Yeah, I'm enthusiastically behind this.

00:13:08.000 And so, just so everyone understands, ESG creates a corporate social credit score.

00:13:14.000 That's what this is.

00:13:15.000 It's a corporate social credit score that has emphasis on environmental, social, and corporate governance.

00:13:22.000 Vivek, walk us through the three parts.

00:13:24.000 How do they judge that?

00:13:25.000 Who does the judging, for example?

00:13:27.000 What is the criteria?

00:13:29.000 Yeah, so the whole point, Charlie, is there is no fixed criteria.

00:13:32.000 And what does that vagueness do?

00:13:34.000 It gives the people in charge, like Larry Fink, the power to define how he feels like on a daily basis.

00:13:40.000 So here's the irony: actually, they claim to apply environmental standards to American energy companies.

00:13:46.000 So what these ESG-linked asset managers and financial institutions have done is they have used shareholder pressure to cause companies like Exxon and Chevron and great American energy companies to produce less oil, to frack for less natural gas.

00:14:01.000 That has contributed to a generational energy crisis in this country, where people are paying high prices at the pump, people don't have enough access to energy, and American energy companies are doing worse.

00:14:11.000 But you know what the funny part of the story is, Charlie, is that when American energy companies produce less, that allows companies like PetroChina on the other side of the world to fill the gap by producing more oil instead.

00:14:23.000 And then you look at who the top shareholder of Petro China is.

00:14:26.000 It's one of the top shareholders, at least, is none other than BlackRock.

00:14:30.000 And so in a certain sense, some of these ESG-based financial institutions aren't clearly defining ESG.

00:14:35.000 So they can apply these constraints to American companies, but they don't apply those constraints to Chinese companies that they invest in.

00:14:42.000 And the cherry on top, Charlie, is that that's even bad for the environment because American energy companies are actually much cleaner in their production of oil and gas than Russian companies and Chinese companies.

00:14:52.000 Yet the ESG movement, even in the name of environmentalism, that's the E in ESG, are actually making the environment worse, let alone making America less strong and our economy less vibrant as well.

00:15:03.000 So that's the E.

00:15:04.000 The S is all of the stuff you know well, the diversity, equity, inclusion stuff.

00:15:10.000 Yeah, very exactly.

00:15:11.000 Exactly.

00:15:12.000 I mean, I'll just give you one example to make it really tangible, right?

00:15:15.000 I'm going to tell you about Apple.

00:15:17.000 Okay, this is the world's largest company by market cap.

00:15:19.000 Many of us own iPhones, okay?

00:15:21.000 This is a progressive company by most measures.

00:15:23.000 They made large donations to BLM.

00:15:25.000 But this year, Apple had a shareholder proposal on its ballot that called for a racial equity audit at the company.

00:15:34.000 The management and board of the company said, this is a really bad idea.

00:15:37.000 We don't want to do it.

00:15:38.000 The board recommends against voting in favor of this racial equity audit at Apple.

00:15:45.000 BlackRock still votes in favor of it and it gets majority shareholder support because of these ESG-linked asset managers.

00:15:51.000 And it got majority support over the objection of Apple's own board.

00:15:56.000 And keep in mind, this is not some right-wing company we're talking about Apple here.

00:15:59.000 This is the world's largest company that's still recommended against adopting this.

00:16:02.000 So that's the S in the ESG.

00:16:04.000 And then G is just a catch-all for everything else that didn't fit number one and number two.

00:16:09.000 And so they are bullying companies into being like the pseudo-college campus equivalents of hyper-radicalism to give money to all their favorite causes, to all their kind of social causes.

00:16:22.000 So let's talk about what you're doing now to go about fix it.

00:16:25.000 Tell us about Strive and the response you've received since your launch.

00:16:30.000 It's been overwhelming, Charlie.

00:16:31.000 So I found a Strive earlier this year.

00:16:33.000 It's a new asset management firm designed to compete against BlackRock, where the message that Strive delivers to corporate America is to tell companies to get out of politics, to focus exclusively on delivering excellent products and services to people who need them and maximize shareholder value that way rather than focusing on these toxic political agendas.

00:16:53.000 And so we launched our first fund.

00:16:55.000 It was an energy index fund, a U.S. energy index fund that delivers a different voice than BlackRock and the other large asset managers to the U.S. energy industry.

00:17:04.000 The ticker is DRLL, DRIL.

00:17:08.000 It's listed on the New York Stock Exchange as of last week.

00:17:10.000 I had the chance of the privilege of ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange last week.

00:17:14.000 But the message to American energy companies that we deliver as a shareholder is to drill more, to frack more, to do whatever allows you to be most successful as a company over the long run without regard to somebody else's climate change agenda or DEI agenda or social agenda.

00:17:30.000 And I have to say, Charlie, we were overwhelmed by the support we've gotten in the first week alone.

00:17:36.000 Within the first week, we exceeded $100 million.

00:17:39.000 That made that the fastest non-seeded ETF launch of this year.

00:17:43.000 And the part that really inspired me was unlike the other ETF launches that launched with over $100 million in the first week, our volume was driven by tiny trade sizes by comparison, like under $5,000 on average per trade versus millions of dollars for the other ETFs that scored over $100 million in the first week.

00:18:01.000 So this is truly the beginning, I think, of a great uprising of everyday citizens, a positive uprising.

00:18:07.000 You hear about the term the great reset.

00:18:09.000 The great reset refers to the imposition of ESG by dissolving the boundaries between the public and private sector in places like Davos.

00:18:16.000 Well, I think the counterforce to the great reset is the great uprising of everyday citizens who say we had enough of this merger of state power and corporate power, enough of the fascism.

00:18:26.000 But the good news is you don't have to wait till November to vote.

00:18:29.000 You vote every day with your dollars.

00:18:31.000 And being able to use your dollars as a shareholder to deliver this new voice, I hope is going to be really empowering people for Charlie.

00:18:37.000 And hopefully the first week was really just the beginning of a broader movement we're building.

00:18:41.000 Yeah, so we have you for another segment, but the hurdle that has to be overcome has to be these state pension funds.

00:18:48.000 They are the biggest placers of investment, right?

00:18:51.000 The CalPERS, whatever they call it, California pension.

00:18:54.000 I mean, I think it's something like $600 billion.

00:18:57.000 It's something insane, 100, 200 billion, but look at the number.

00:18:57.000 I could be wrong.

00:19:00.000 But they're able to then call the shots a BlackRock, right?

00:19:03.000 So you have teacher unions that then come in to call the shots of BlackRock.

00:19:08.000 So deep down, BlackRock would say, oh, no, we're just taking orders from our pension funds.

00:19:11.000 So you have this kind of incestuous relationship.

00:19:14.000 Vivek, your thoughts.

00:19:15.000 Well, we can continue this conversation for hours, but the long story short is actually the problem, Charlie, is even in the red states.

00:19:21.000 Because it's one thing when California and New York went to BlackRock and States Jr. Vanguard and said, you have to adopt these values and we're using our money to tell you.

00:19:27.000 But the problem that I've seen firsthand is the complacency amongst the deep state within the red states that are really the administrative class that forget the intentions of their citizens.

00:19:37.000 And so you're 100% right.

00:19:39.000 That's really where the action is.

00:19:40.000 And that's where the next step of the.

00:19:41.000 So I have an idea.

00:19:42.000 So Connor's listening.

00:19:43.000 So when Carrie Lake becomes governor of Arizona, she has to say, we're going to put all of our state pension money into Strive. 0.91

00:19:50.000 We're going to say we're going to let an asset manager that isn't BlackRock or Vanguard manage the state pension money.

00:19:57.000 Well, I think this is, I hope there's other competitors to Strive because at the end of the day, this is about actually accomplishing the goal.

00:20:03.000 Nobody else stepped up, so that's undoing with Strive.

00:20:04.000 But we'll talk more about what I think is an uprising in the red states that can be positive.

00:20:11.000 Look, rents are going way too high.

00:20:12.000 The rent is too high.

00:20:14.000 If you're renting or a friend or family member, that is, right now is the time to make the move to homeownership.

00:20:19.000 My good buddies, Andrew Del Rey and Tadavakian at Sierra Pacific Mortgage have helped so many people to make that leap from renting and owning.

00:20:25.000 I know what you're saying.

00:20:26.000 Oh, Charlie, rates are too high.

00:20:27.000 Listen, you could always refinance.

00:20:29.000 The problem is, though, why are you giving all of your money to rent when you could be building equity with lots of programs that offer first-time buyers assistance with little to no down payment needed?

00:20:40.000 I encourage you to visit andrewandtodd.com right now.

00:20:43.000 They're beautiful people.

00:20:44.000 They're wonderful.

00:20:45.000 The thing I love about these guys is it's not about the transaction.

00:20:48.000 They're about helping you.

00:20:49.000 They just helped me through a whole problem right now.

00:20:51.000 They were amazing.

00:20:52.000 There's no one like it.

00:20:53.000 And by the way, I dealt with the banks before them.

00:20:55.000 I mean, never again.

00:20:57.000 The banks, the worst.

00:20:59.000 Andrew and Todd made the whole process seamless.

00:21:02.000 They're helping you create a plan to help you reach your goals, whether it's for today or a year from now.

00:21:07.000 With today's still historically low interest rates, it's easier than you think to become a homeowner.

00:21:11.000 I've relied on them and producer Andrew has as well.

00:21:14.000 I highly recommend you take action right now.

00:21:17.000 I use them and you should too.

00:21:18.000 I know them personally.

00:21:19.000 They're Christians.

00:21:19.000 They're patriots.

00:21:20.000 Unlike these big woke, godless banks.

00:21:23.000 Why would you do your loans with banks who hate you?

00:21:26.000 And if you know someone who's still paying rent, tell them about Andrew and Todd.

00:21:28.000 Again, you might say, Charlie, now's the worst time to buy.

00:21:31.000 That's not true.

00:21:32.000 Okay.

00:21:32.000 Property values are going to go up.

00:21:34.000 And if you're renting, you're getting poorer.

00:21:37.000 So stop paying rent.

00:21:38.000 Start putting your hard-earned money into a home.

00:21:40.000 Again, there's some packages you might be available that might be available for you or no down payment.

00:21:44.000 Go to andrewandodd.com.

00:21:46.000 That is andrewandodd.com.

00:21:47.000 Tell them Charlie Kirk sent you.

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00:21:55.000 Stop renting.

00:21:56.000 Start buying.

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00:21:58.000 AndrewandTodd.com.

00:22:02.000 Vivek Ramaswamy has a new ETF.

00:22:05.000 It's D-R-L-L. 1.00

00:22:06.000 Is that right, Vivek?

00:22:08.000 That's right.

00:22:08.000 Drill.

00:22:09.000 D-RLL. 0.84

00:22:10.000 And it's an ETF, so an exchange-traded fund.

00:22:13.000 So someone said, what company is it?

00:22:14.000 But it's an ETF.

00:22:15.000 So you could buy it.

00:22:16.000 Someone just emailed us, actually.

00:22:17.000 They just bought it.

00:22:18.000 They said, Charlie, I just bought $100 of Drill in my Schwab account.

00:22:23.000 Since an ETF, there's no fee and no minimum.

00:22:25.000 So there you go.

00:22:26.000 They're buying into it.

00:22:27.000 But how do we overcome the pension fund problems?

00:22:30.000 So I checked in the break.

00:22:32.000 The California pension fund has $440 billion under management.

00:22:37.000 That's an unbelievable amount of money.

00:22:40.000 They also call the shots at BlackRock.

00:22:42.000 They call the shots at Vanguard.

00:22:43.000 So if you count New York, California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, you have almost a trillion dollars of pension fund money that is thrown around with a lot of weight that the wokies have taken over. 1.00

00:22:56.000 What is the solution to the state pension funds that dictate so much of this radicalism?

00:23:00.000 So I'm going to give you a counterintuitive solution, Charlie.

00:23:03.000 It is not to focus on California and New York and Oregon.

00:23:06.000 It is actually to focus on the rest of the country, where if you add up the money in places, not just like Texas and Florida, but Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia.

00:23:15.000 I mean, you go across North, Dakota, South, Dakota, Wyoming, et cetera.

00:23:18.000 That actually adds up to a big sum of money as well.

00:23:21.000 Well, in excess, depending on any account of a trillion dollars as well.

00:23:24.000 But the problem is that red states for the last 10 years, as the ESG movement has invaded capital markets, have tried to stick their heads in the sand and pretend like the problem didn't exist. 0.87

00:23:34.000 They were dragged along for the ride.

00:23:36.000 So, when Cowpers and New York and other states demanded large asset managers, embrace these new climate change orthodoxies, embrace these racial justice orthodoxies, including quota systems, et cetera.

00:23:46.000 The other states just said, Hey, we're going to pretend like this doesn't exist.

00:23:49.000 But their capital and the citizens' capital that they manage was dragged along with it.

00:23:53.000 So, what's the solution?

00:23:55.000 I think it's going to actually be delivering political accountability to pension fund managers, including even in red and purple states, where the same thing that happened in school boards across the country last year, right?

00:24:06.000 The school board was supposed to be this managerial institution that was somehow untouched.

00:24:10.000 Everyday citizens and parents woke up and said, You know what, those aren't your kids, those are my kids.

00:24:14.000 I'm going to take ownership by bringing accountability to the school board.

00:24:18.000 We need to see that same movement happen in the pension fund system to pension fund boards, reminding them, especially even starting with red and purple states, to remind those state bureaucrats that it is not your money.

00:24:28.000 Yes, it is actually our money as citizens.

00:24:30.000 For example, North Dakota or South Dakota or Wyoming could say right now, our pension fund money will not go to BlackRock, Vanguard, or State Street, correct?

00:24:39.000 They can do that.

00:24:40.000 And more importantly, even affirmatively use their shareholding power to send a message to corporate America to say that, you know what, Apple or a subsidiary of Berkshire, after the way when you donate to BLM, that's not your money.

00:24:50.000 It is our money.

00:24:51.000 It is our citizens' money, and we won't stand by it.

00:24:53.000 Yes.

00:24:53.000 But we're going to have to actually pursue new alternatives that deliver a different voice to corporate America.

00:25:00.000 And that's where the red states haven't really woken up yet, but I think that they're going to.

00:25:03.000 They're going to have to be forced to because the everyday citizens are going to demand accountability just like they did at school boards last year.

00:25:10.000 Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

00:25:11.000 And I mean, so for people that are more kind of concerned about woke corporations, your vision is that through the asset fund managers, but also through creating alternatives, do you think deep down some of these CEOs have been waiting for this to try to?

00:25:28.000 I don't think a lot of these CEOs are on board for this.

00:25:30.000 Do you agree?

00:25:30.000 Well, some of them are.

00:25:31.000 So that's why we started with the U.S. energy sector, Charlie, because I spoke to, for example, one of the largest energy conferences in the country last week in Denver, a room full of oil and gas executives and CEOs.

00:25:41.000 What I love about the energy industry is that the employees of the energy industry are not the employees of Twitter.

00:25:45.000 And what I mean by that is Elon Musk can take over Twitter if he wants, but he's still got 60,000 employees who don't want to do the thing that he actually wants them to do.

00:25:52.000 In the U.S. energy industry, my impression, Charlie, is that they are waiting in the wings for this new shareholder mandate to say that, you know what, Strive gets off the ground, DRLL gets off the ground.

00:26:01.000 We already are off the ground.

00:26:02.000 Keep taking off and say that, you know what, there is a new sheriff in town.

00:26:06.000 There's a new shareholder mandate.

00:26:08.000 This is the post-ESD movement.

00:26:10.000 See you later, ESG in the rearview mirror.

00:26:12.000 We're going in that new direction because most people who work in the oil and gas industry don't believe that they're harming humanity.

00:26:17.000 They believe that they're delivering prosperity to human beings and Americans, and they're proud of it.

00:26:21.000 So I think it starts with the shareholders.

00:26:23.000 And then, Charlie, I think a lot of people mistake, take a company like Disney.

00:26:26.000 A lot of people mistake Disney for Disney CEO for bending the need to his employees.

00:26:30.000 Actually, the top shareholders of Disney are BlackRock, State Student, and Vanguard.

00:26:33.000 And so I think once you get this new shareholder movement going, that's actually going to get top down.

00:26:38.000 But then again, BlackRock only has money because red states give them money, right?

00:26:42.000 So BlackRock does, I mean, again, BlackRock probably has some sovereign wealth money from some Middle Eastern country too.

00:26:48.000 However, but if all of a sudden BlackRock had $100 billion less than Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama said, we're not doing that anymore, boy, you're really onto something.

00:26:57.000 I would love to lead the red state crusade.

00:26:59.000 Nothing I love more than calling out weak Republicans for not understanding what time it is.

00:27:03.000 But these red states, they could change woke corporate culture almost overnight because it's like, oh, wow, okay, Disney is beholden to BlackRock.

00:27:12.000 BlackRock is beholden to Missouri.

00:27:14.000 And that's where all of a sudden you connect the dots.

00:27:16.000 Okay, we're out of time.

00:27:17.000 Vivek, it is striveassetmanagement, strivefunds.com.

00:27:21.000 And also buy his ETF if you want.

00:27:24.000 We don't do investment advice here, so check it out.

00:27:26.000 D-R-L-L. 0.98

00:27:27.000 If you like it, get it.

00:27:28.000 If not, that's okay too.

00:27:29.000 Vivek, thanks so much.

00:27:30.000 Everybody, thanks so much for listening.

00:27:31.000 Everybody, email me your thoughts as always.

00:27:32.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:27:34.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:27:35.000 God bless.

00:27:38.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 18, 2022

Bidenomics 101—How 87,000 IRS Agents and ESG will Destroy the American Middle Class

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