Mark Halperin and Andrew Colvitt are joined by Charlie Kirk to discuss the impact of the shutdown on the Democratic Party, and why they think it's time for Chuck Schumer to go. Plus, a look at why the Democratic response to the shutdown is actually a good one.
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.
00:01:09.000All right, our two underway here at the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:12.000I'm Andrew Colvitt, executive producer with Blake Neff, and we are joined by Mark Halperin, editor-in-chief of Two-Way and also host of Next Up on the Megan Kelly Network and one of the best political analysts that I know.
00:01:28.000And every time I bring up Mark's name around, everybody goes, he's real good at politics.
00:02:00.000I mean, it's like last week, all I heard was about a Republican Civil War, conservative civil war, and then in one fell swoop, you got enough Democrats to break ranks, and now we've got a Democrat Civil War.
00:02:14.000Please make sense of what's happening.
00:02:16.000Well, a Republican Civil War after the election nine or 10 months, oh no, a week ago.
00:02:22.000It's rare to have two tentpole events like that roaring in opposite, diametrically opposite points of view.
00:02:30.000I think right now, and I talked about this on Next Up today, almost everything that happens can be seen through the prism of the renegades, the populace versus the establishment.
00:02:44.000You're seeing that in the Republican Party.
00:02:45.000You're seeing that in the Democratic Party.
00:02:48.000And I think the populist wing of the Democratic Party is super energized by Donald Trump.
00:02:54.000And the populist wing of the Democratic Party also has a political death wish because they wanted to continue to try to get Donald Trump to give up on the shutdown.
00:03:04.000And it was clear to eight Senate Democrats that he wouldn't.
00:03:08.000So the whole politics of both those stories revolve around Trump.
00:03:13.000On the negative side, he energizes the Democrats.
00:03:16.000On the negative side for the Republicans, he energizes the Democrats.
00:03:20.000On the negative side for the Democrats, he causes Trump derangement syndrome.
00:03:24.000And Democrats on the left who are complaining now, some privately are glad the shutdown's over, but the ones on the left who wanted to continue the fight just, they can't think straight when it comes to political combat with Donald Trump.
00:03:37.000Yeah, and I'm fascinated about this dynamic that we see playing out right now.
00:03:41.000You've almost got kind of a Rokana versus Hakeem Jeffries dynamic happening with Roquanna saying, Schumer's got to go.
00:03:50.000You heard this from Sonny Hostin on The View and others that are saying it's time to go.
00:03:54.000It was a congressman out of Massachusetts, right?
00:03:57.000The one that was about to get primaried for not wanting his daughter to play trans athletes.
00:04:33.000It's almost like he's looking for avenues to advance positive lines and to solidify his bona fides as a progressive in this caucus that is increasingly getting controlled by the radical left.
00:04:52.000Cleaning up the corruption that exists in Washington, D.C., in the Congress, at the Supreme Court, and of course, with the Trump administration, the most corrupt administration in American history.
00:05:01.000So we can actually deliver a country of the people, by the people, and for the people.
00:05:11.000Yeah, what I'm saying is that the outrageous behavior by individual justices like Clarence Thomas and Justice Alito and the failure to have an ethical code of conduct is corrupt.
00:05:24.000So what I translate this as, Mark, and you tell me if I'm wrong here, is that this is him saying, okay, yeah, I said that I endorse Schumer.
00:05:32.000Schumer still got my vote of confidence.
00:05:55.000And you know that based on his history, but you also know it because he's one of the few Democrats who's backing Schumer.
00:06:02.000He's an establishment figure, but he knows the energy in the party is with the populace.
00:06:06.000So he says things like, you know, he talks about, just like Rokana talks about Jeffrey Epstein, talks about corruption in Washington, talks about special interests, because that's the language of the populace.
00:06:19.000And right now, he and Schumer are discombobulated because privately, they're for the establishment.
00:06:40.000But for Schumer, at least, it's not particularly convincing.
00:06:43.000And that's why he's taking so much heat right now because nobody's buying it.
00:06:47.000So about that ascendant populist thing, I'd say the biggest populist story on the left is, of course, Zoe Ron Mamdani, runs for mayor of New York, wins.
00:06:57.000So do you think we might do you see that basically this factional struggle is going to just be everyone stares at New York, sees what happens with Mamdani's government, and if it fails quickly, will that sap its energy?
00:07:11.000Or do you think if he's able to do things that that will draw, it'll drive the party further to the left?
00:07:16.000Maybe even if it's not that successful, it still might drive the party to the left.
00:07:20.000You're asking the right question, and I've got no idea.
00:07:23.000Because it will depend on how he performs, but also what his style is, how accommodation, how much he accommodates, picking a police commissioner, what kinds of things he talks about, how much he, you know, does he arrest Netanyahu.
00:07:38.000So I think it's hard to know exactly how this will play out, but there's no doubt that he, well, I shouldn't say no doubt, he appears to want to have regular combat with the president, which will keep him in the news.
00:07:50.000I think how he governs will keep him in the news.
00:07:52.000And then his relationship to the governor's race where Kathy Hochul was endorsed, endorsed Mom Donnie, but hasn't been reverse endorsed.
00:08:00.000So he will be a part of the storyline.
00:08:03.000How big and what the variables are, I just don't know.
00:08:06.000And I live here and I follow it closely, but I think there's so many different ways he can go.
00:08:11.000I will say that his election night speech freaked me out as much as anything because it suggested a level of anger and determination to make this an us versus them governance that I think could be quite troubling for a lot of people in this city.
00:08:26.000Yeah, and Mark, what are you going to be looking for when he assumes office, when he gets the keys to the city, as it were?
00:08:33.000I mean, I'll just tell you my first thing.
00:08:35.000You mentioned the police commissioner.
00:08:36.000You know, he tried to moderate his tone when it came to the NYPD.
00:08:42.000I think this guy has deep-seated distrust within the NYPD.
00:08:47.000I mean, if you're a police officer and you're forced to go, you know, arrest somebody in a street melee, you know, good luck if something goes wrong, this guy having your back.
00:09:35.000I'm worried about some, you know, a cop killing somebody accidentally.
00:09:40.000And then he shows up at the scene and does he defend the cop or does he attack the cop?
00:09:45.000This city has seen a huge ratcheting down of the kind of racial tensions we saw several decades ago when there was non-stop, these non-stop combustible events.
00:09:54.000I worry about a return to those depending on how he handles it.
00:09:57.000And again, his election night speech made it harder for me to tell people to have hope or calm down or let's wait and see.
00:10:04.000I'm certainly amongst those concerned about how Hyandar handled those kind of high pressure situations.
00:10:10.000Yeah, I think Blake's right to sort of look to these first few tests that are coming out of the Mom Donnie era in New York to see what direction the whole city goes.
00:10:24.000Because, I mean, he is a bellwether for the future of the populist free stuff left-wing populism that's bubbling up all across the country.
00:10:36.000This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of YReFi.
00:10:40.000It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.
00:10:46.000His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.
00:10:52.000Now, here Charlie, in his own words, tell you about YReFi.
00:10:56.000I'm going to tell you guys about whyrefi.com.
00:12:20.000When somebody makes a statement about he's devoting time to the world, well, the world is the United States because if the world's in trouble or if the world is ripping us off, it's easy to say, oh, don't worry about the world, but the world is turning out to be our biggest customer.
00:12:36.000The world was on fire, and we could have been in that fire very easily if you didn't have a president that knew what he was doing.
00:12:43.000So obviously, Blake, Mark, the word there, or the phrase there, the world is the United States, I think, you know, keyed off the America First psyche in a, and to be diplomatic, though, and actually, I think what he was trying to say was that if you don't, if the world's out of control, we're going to have, we're going to have a real hard time finding peace and prosperity here at home.
00:13:04.000You have to put out the fires when they come up.
00:13:07.000I think people are making too much of it, but there is this note that we're focusing too much on foreign policy, not enough on domestic policy.
00:13:15.000Is that what you're seeing in the polling, the trends, the conversation that you're hearing in your circles, Mark?
00:13:22.000The populists of both parties, whether it's MAGA or Bernie Sanders supporters, they're like, come home, America.
00:13:27.000You know, it sounds like Mitt Romney's saying corporations are people too.
00:13:33.000And look, being commander-in-chief, you've got responsibilities.
00:13:37.000And the president's view of how to make America successful, as you said, is to be more engaged economically with the world in a way that's advantageous to the United States and not turn the back on countries who we can help themselves and have more allies.
00:13:54.000So I think the proof will be for so many, the answers to some of these questions for both the establishment of the party and MAGA is what will the economy be like at the end of the next year.
00:14:08.000We have a clip here that I think is a very important thing.
00:14:10.000I think some people have the, you know, it can, sometimes the framing is they're not focused on the domestic sphere enough, but it also is possible maybe the domestic sphere is just not super popular right now.
00:14:55.000So, Mark, you are inside the Oval Office.
00:14:59.000You have the president's ear for 30 minutes, and you're giving him messaging advice.
00:15:04.000Given this dynamic on the domestic front, what is your advice to President Trump on how to message this?
00:15:10.000Well, I'm not in the business of giving messaging advice to any politicians, but just looking at the polling and talking to a lot of voters, it really doesn't matter how you message it.
00:15:19.000Is the economy going to be better next year or not?
00:15:21.000The economy is, there's a lot of strong signs, not just the stock market.
00:15:25.000There are other strong signs, but people are still really uneasy about the economy.
00:15:30.000And it's pretty simple, not just for a president who put affordability and the economy front and center, but for any president.
00:15:37.000Will people before the midterms, will people at the end of his presidency say, yeah, that guy had a theory of the case about how to make our lives better, particularly on the economy?
00:15:46.000I don't think it matters how he messages it.
00:15:48.000I mean, obviously, there's ways to do it that are worse than others, but that's not, people aren't looking for messaging.
00:15:54.000They're looking for their lives to get better and more affordable.
00:15:56.000So, Mark, you're basically saying 2026 comes down to maybe some of these redistricting battles, but it's the economy stupid.
00:16:04.000And the second follow-up question is the Hispanic vote.
00:16:11.000One of the things I'm looking at is we're engineering these maps in Texas based on Hispanic vote modeled off of 2024.
00:16:18.000I'm concerned, especially with the economy, that that's going to have a big outsized impact with the Hispanic community.
00:16:25.000The data in polling and on Election Day last week makes it clear that President Trump did not create a realignment moving the Hispanic vote, or particularly young Hispanic men, from the Democratic comms to the Republican column.
00:16:41.000What happened was because of Biden-Harris and somewhat because of the president's appeal, they shifted away from the Democrats and they parked temporarily on Trump.
00:16:50.000Will they realign towards Republicans like in that Texas district or around the country?
00:16:56.000We don't know because it may have simply been the combination of Trump on the ballot and Biden-Harris policies that moved them.
00:17:03.000And here's an irony: the more the president remakes our culture and makes it less politically correct, the harder it is for Republicans to win Hispanic votes because they no longer have that to play off of and sell against.
00:17:22.000A new Hillsdale College miniseries on colonial America offers a fresh way to think about Thanksgiving.
00:17:28.000Beyond the food and the political debates, it reminds us what we should be truly thankful for: our freedom, our prosperity, and our faith.
00:17:36.000In a brand new six-part documentary series, Hillsdale College professors will teach you the religious, the political, cultural, and economic ideas that shaped a uniquely American culture during the colonial period.
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00:18:16.000C-H-A-R-L-I-E-F-O-R for Hillsdale.com.
00:18:23.000I am very excited about our next guest here on the Charlie Kirk Show, and that is Selena Zito.
00:18:29.000She is a reporter for the Washington Examiner, and she was getting Trump truthed all over yesterday about some of her reporting on the youth vote.
00:18:38.000And so I thought it was only appropriate that we brought in Mikey McCoy, who's, you know, like the youth whisperer these days.
00:19:12.000And you went in depth on the assassination attempt on Trump.
00:19:16.000And that was originally why I wanted to have you on, just because, you know, obviously the tragedy with Charlie, it hits very close to home.
00:19:40.000So what's really interesting to me is throughout the book, Butler, because people think it's only about what happened in Butler, but it actually takes a look at the heartland and what was happening last year, but also what is continuing to happen.
00:19:55.000And that is this youth movement towards faith and towards conservative populism.
00:20:02.000And how I kept seeing it over and over again in Pennsylvania.
00:20:08.000I wrote about it and I said, guys, something's going on here, right?
00:20:12.000And a lot of these young people I talked to, and it's in the book, said, well, they were first inspired by listening to Charlie and having their sort of conceived thoughts changed because of the way that he introduced faith into their lives.
00:20:30.000And ultimately, it led to also becoming conservative voters and understanding the importance of voting.
00:20:38.000Now, however, since what happened to Charlie happened, what I have seen, you know, in particular in Western Pennsylvania, that's where I live.
00:20:49.000I know I'm a Washington Post, Washington Examiner reporter, but I live in the middle of the country.
00:20:55.000And, you know, I see these young people showing up.
00:21:00.000You can see the pictures there that showing up for these revivals.
00:21:07.000And there's a real sort of awakening going on with young people that is getting largely missed by my profession, but it's very real.
00:21:56.000What was it about Charlie's message that you could tell was just connecting?
00:22:02.000You know, that moment where the eyes light up and there's just that aha moment with young people.
00:22:07.000Yeah, there's this great clip of Charlie debating a leftist and he's talking about how Wall Street is purchasing a bunch of the homes.
00:22:14.000And Charlie agrees with him that that should not happen.
00:22:17.000And the leftist kind of goes, oh, oh, I agree with you.
00:22:20.000And so Charlie was kind of the only one who was able to capture the energy of this youth populism that you referred to here.
00:22:28.000But this is also a warning sign for us that now with Charlie being gone, Turning Point, Erica, under her leadership, has done a great job with these events last night at Berkeley, you know, Auburn, Ole Miss, and just helping capture that energy, but also the future of the political movement and the economic reality of under 30s.
00:22:47.000And so you see dark political radicalization setting in for a lot of these youth.
00:22:51.000I mean, three of the biggest assassins in the past 12 months have been Gen Z.
00:22:58.000And so you saw the YouGov poll that says political violence is acceptable from 18 to 36 year olds.
00:23:07.000And so you kind of see this radicalization of the youth, but then you also see it with their economic reality.
00:26:52.000The emails to this show, freedomatcharliekirk.com, they were more positive than I was anticipating.
00:26:57.000A lot of people saw it as like a pragmatic step that was something that they could use if they needed and then, you know, refinance down to a more traditional 30-year or something like that.
00:27:13.000But when you look at guys like in Mikey's position, a Gen Zer looking to get ahead, these kind of ideas we need to start talking about.
00:27:22.000I think we need an economic moonshot for Gen Z.
00:27:26.000And frankly, we need a better phrase than economic moonshot because Gen Z doesn't is probably not even sure what I'm talking about when I say an economic moonshot.
00:27:36.000Like the economics of it all, I think, is incredibly important here.
00:27:40.000What are people saying in your age bracket?
00:27:43.000Yeah, you're right in that New York City isn't a place necessarily that Republicans can win, but it is a canary in the coal mine with what's happening as this youth populism movement is happening.
00:27:56.000And this is a huge warning sign, not just in the midterms, but also for the 2028 presidential election.
00:28:03.000Young people are going to start turning to radical candidates if there aren't solutions.
00:28:07.000And I'm talking total economic reality has to change for these people.
00:28:12.000And they're going to start turning to AOC as a presidential candidate.
00:28:16.000I mean, I think it's more likely that AOC is going to be a candidate for young people than Gavin Newsom when it comes to the left.
00:28:23.000And I think a lot of young people on the right, too, would turn to a candidate like that.
00:28:42.000There's no jobs for the degrees that they had.
00:28:44.000The student loans are at an all-time high.
00:28:46.000Credit card debt is at an all-time high with crushing APYs.
00:28:49.000It's just, it's totally killing young people.
00:28:52.000And we're going to turn to radical solutions, even if it is Mom Donnie smiling and giving us a promise that won't happen.
00:28:59.000And eventually this could destroy our country.
00:29:02.000So the right needs to start asking themselves questions.
00:29:05.000You know, 50-year mortgages, maybe that's not the best idea for young people in this country.
00:29:11.000And they need to start reaching out to young people.
00:29:13.000I thought it was amazing that JD Vance, he comes to mind in particular in Old Miss.
00:29:18.000He was talking about this stuff, but then he also wants to do more of these with young people.
00:29:22.000I feel like he's the only person right now, him and Erica Kirk, that are actually going out and engaging young people in the U.S. You know, it's funny is if you had a 50-year mortgage, the medium home buying age is 40.
00:29:34.000So you would be 90 by the time you paid off that mortgage.
00:31:53.000But, you know, we are in the middle of a really turbulent economic time, not very distant, different than the industrial revolution.
00:32:05.000Only this is more like a technological revolution, right?
00:32:09.000With AI and how it's disrupting our economy.
00:32:13.000And so we have to look back at what happened then.
00:32:16.000There was great fluctuations between Democrats and Republicans, wild swings, hundreds of seats every two years between in Congress, as well as presidents.
00:32:28.000We switch presidents every four years.
00:32:33.000Well, a lot of these men and women that ran back there talked over the people that were feeling that shift from an ag economy to an industrial economy, and they didn't address their needs.
00:32:47.000What the Republicans, what Trump needs to do, what Vance needs to do, and I think they're both very good at it, is go where the voter is, go where the people are and show that empathy about what their concerns are.
00:33:06.000I always expected him to win New York.
00:33:09.000I also never expected the Republicans to win Virginia and New Jersey.
00:33:15.000So, and they were, you know, slightly flawed candidates as well.
00:33:21.000So I think going to where the voter is, going where the economic distress is, tell that person, tell young people, I see you, I feel you, I hear you.
00:33:30.000I mean, when I was 25, when I was under 30, terrible economic times in Pittsburgh.
00:34:07.000Because you were there on the ground when you saw the surge of momentum behind the Trump campaign in 2024.
00:34:14.000Yeah, I mean, young people, the best, and I want to praise President Trump here because he's done an excellent job with this already with the 2 million plus deportations and southern border being secured at 99.99%.
00:34:28.000But that is the best way that you can help young people economically with housing, just all around economically.
00:34:35.000And that's the fastest and easiest way.
00:34:38.000But also, I just want to kind of point out that during the election trail, the top three TikTok accounts were President Trump, Team Trump, and Charlie Kirk.
00:34:48.000And they really knew how to message young people.
00:34:52.000I feel like we need to continue that messaging to young people and try to aim to be the top one, two, and three accounts on TikTok for reaching young people and giving them their desired content.
00:35:04.000That's what we're going to do with your TikTok.
00:35:22.000We just need to continue it and continue the messaging for it.
00:35:26.000Young people need to know that this is happening.
00:35:28.000But this momentum is continuing under Erica Kirk's leadership at Turning Point USA with all these campus stops, and it's really encouraging to see.
00:35:35.000Selena, we've got like 15 seconds for you.
00:35:37.000Tell us about the book, where to get it.