00:00:08.000And then we also dive deep into what is a blue slip.
00:00:12.000You're about to learn something that is a blue slip educational crash course as to why President Trump can't get some of his nominees through the U.S. Senate.
00:00:21.000Senator Michael Lee joins us to react and email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:42.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:50.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:03.000Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:01:12.000Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:02:40.000Even though we had an election almost a year ago, even though Donald Trump has been president for six months, he still does not have his people in there.
00:02:47.000Career bureaucrats in a city that went 90-10 for Democrats are running your government.
00:02:54.000And it's not because of Donald Trump or the White House.
00:02:56.000They're doing their job and they're doing it rapidly.
00:03:00.000Now, we've talked yesterday, and I mean this half-jokingly, the U.S. Senate, John Thune, turn off the air conditioning.
00:03:07.000By the way, in the coming days, it'll be a very muggy 85 degrees in D.C.
00:03:11.000And you better believe they'll start confirming people if you do that.
00:03:14.000But there's another problem at play here outside of the delay, which we examined thoroughly with Senator Rick Scott and with Senator Mark Wayne Mullah.
00:03:23.000And then we have Senator Lee coming up because we are keeping the pressure on this program.
00:03:30.000At this show right now, in this midsummer moment, the most important thing that we can draw your attention to, the most important thing that we as a collective Charlie Kirk show team can do is to demand the U.S. Senate Acts.
00:03:52.000If you don't know what a blue slip is, you're about to learn how the good old boys club of the U.S. Senate operates.
00:03:58.000The blue slip refers to a practice used by the Senate Judiciary Committee for judicial nominations, for circuit and court judgeships, but also for U.S. attorneys.
00:04:11.000A U.S. attorney is someone that works for the Department of Justice, confirmed by the U.S. Senate that oversees prosecutions and indictments and criminal cases.
00:04:22.000The U.S. attorney, they have geographic jurisdictions.
00:04:25.000So there's a U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
00:04:28.000There's a U.S. attorney for South Florida.
00:04:46.000Donald Trump can't proceed on so much of the sanctuary city cartel activity until he gets his U.S. attorneys confirmed.
00:04:55.000So U.S. attorneys must go through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:05:00.000And so President Donald Trump wrote this scathing truth social yesterday, but let me dive this a little bit deeper into this.
00:05:06.000Before the 1950s, blue slips were never used.
00:05:09.000But in 1956 onward, a senator by the name of James Eastland, the blue slip, became a tool to allow either home state senator to veto a nominee by simply not returning the slip.
00:05:22.000So basically, let's say Donald Trump wants to get a U.S. attorney for where I live in Phoenix, Arizona, or even more importantly, a U.S. attorney in Tucson.
00:05:32.000Tucson is filled with cartel activity, child sex trafficking, narco-drugs.
00:05:38.000Right now, and we're aiming to eventually fix it, Arizona has two Democrat senators, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego.
00:05:48.000So let's say Donald Trump wants to have a rock star, non-controversial U.S. attorney for Arizona who wants to go after the cartels.
00:05:57.000And he nominates, let's just say, Mark Lamb, for example, someone that's just a rock star.
00:06:04.000To kill that U.S. attorney that the president wants and that people voted for, all Mark Kelly or Ruben Gallego have to do is submit an anonymous blue slip and that nominee dies.
00:06:18.000Now, the timeline under Orrin Hatch, a nominee could receive a hearing even if one home state senator objected, but basically the tradition, this is simply tradition.
00:06:44.000Joe Biden openly broke with this at least two times.
00:06:47.000So Democrats have broken with this in the past, but we as Republicans, you see, we're the guardians of tradition while we can't get U.S. attorneys.
00:06:56.000Now, here is where it completes the point.
00:06:58.000You want to know why we have not indicted Brandon Johnson as the mayor of Chicago?
00:07:02.000Do you want to know why we can't go after Karen Bass?
00:07:05.000Do you want to know why we can't go after some of the ACT Blue oligarchs that have obviously been flirting up against the law?
00:07:13.000Do you want to know why we have not been able to go after the sanctuary cities in New York?
00:07:19.000It's because we don't have U.S. attorneys confirmed there.
00:07:21.000We have Biden holdovers running the U.S. attorneys' offices all across the country.
00:07:25.000Now, ultimately, of course, Pam Bondi is in charge of them, but there's, I think there's like 130 U.S. attorney jurisdictions.
00:07:34.000And so Pam Bondi can't possibly, and Todd Blanche possibly manage every single U.S. attorney outfit in Montana and Alaska and Hawaii and Missouri.
00:08:09.000You see, Chuck Grassley is empowering blue state Democrats.
00:08:12.000Chuck Grassley is giving power to Ruben Gallego and to Mark Kelly.
00:08:16.000Chuck Grassley is giving power to Gillibrand, to Schumer.
00:08:22.000So if we want to get a U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York, which we need, by the way, to go after sanctuary cities and child sex trafficking and drugs, we can't do it if Chuck Schumer or a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee submits a blue slip.
00:08:37.000And so then they go back to the home senators.
00:08:39.000And here's the one that matters for all of you in the audience and you probably care about.
00:08:45.000Alina Haba is trying to become the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, but Corey Booker refuses to move on her.
00:08:52.000Corey Booker has veto power over the president, even though we have a Senate majority because of this ridiculous tradition called the blue slip scam.
00:09:01.000President Donald Trump writes last night, I would never be, therefore, after this long explanation that basically I just gave, I would never be able to appoint great judges or U.S. attorneys.
00:09:10.000So it goes for judges and U.S. attorneys in California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia, and other places where there is coincidentally the highest level of crime and corruption.
00:09:30.000I am the president of the United States of America, not the president of the red states of America.
00:09:34.000But unfortunately, because of this blue slip tradition that never should have happened because the Senate takes themselves so seriously, they are able to overrule the will of the president.
00:10:04.000This is simply an old boys' club of some sort of, well, we must honor the senator from Arizona, Ruben Gallego, who, by the way, his policies are awfully akin to that of the cartels.
00:10:17.000So Ruben Gallego can block, again, I care about Arizona.
00:10:20.000He can block a U.S. attorney that wants to go against the cartels, even though Donald Trump won Arizona by six points.
00:10:26.000So Trump wins Arizona and he doesn't get the U.S. attorneys that people voted for because Ruben Gallego has veto power over the president because Chuck Grassley is defending this ridiculous tradition.
00:10:39.000Charlie Kirk here: crime is skyrocketing.
00:10:41.000You may already own a firearm, but before you face the financial and emotional weight of pulling the trigger, consider Burna.
00:10:47.000Burna's less lethal launchers fire tear gas and kinetic rounds designed to incapacitate attackers for up to 40 minutes, giving you time to escape and call for help without deadly consequences.
00:13:55.000Do not give veto power to New Jersey, California, Illinois, Arizona, and Atlanta Democrats to be able to usurp the sovereign of this country.
00:14:07.000Last night, I was surprised to see President Trump on Truth Social go after me and Senate Republicans over what we call the blue slip.
00:14:19.000The people in real America don't care about what the blue slip is, but in fact, it impacts in their states the district judges who serve their communities and the U.S. attorneys who ensure the law and order is enforced.
00:14:37.000I was offended by what the president said, and I'm disappointed that it would result in personal insults.
00:14:47.000Now, we're here to do business that's very important part of this committee's work to do our constitutional duties of reviewing people that require Senate confirmation.
00:18:25.000And why should we give veto power to Democrat senators over President Trump's ability to have U.S. attorneys as he chooses?
00:18:33.000As far as where it came from, it's a precedent that's many, many decades old, and it really is a protection that's there to make sure that local judges, U.S. attorneys, U.S. Marshals have the support of their home state senators.
00:18:48.000Now, one thing I should point out here is that it's not an immutable rule.
00:19:13.000More changes could be made as it's abused.
00:19:17.000Customarily, members of both political parties have in the past deferred in many respects to some of the sitting president's priorities, even if they're of the opposing party.
00:19:30.000People have recommended district judges and U.S. attorneys, for example, who might not be the same people they would recommend if the president were of their party, but who they find acceptable nonetheless.
00:19:45.000Over time, though, Democrats have started abusing the blue slip and, in many instances, unreasonably refusing to identify anyone who might be mutually agreeable to both them and the president.
00:19:57.000And so that's where we're running into a little fork in the road.
00:20:00.000So, for example, in California, these senators do not want anyone.
00:20:05.000And so, is it time for us or is there conversations to bypass this blue slip tradition?
00:20:10.000Because Senator, you and I both want to see cartels gone after.
00:20:14.000We can't have empty U.S. attorneys' offices for years that robs President Trump of an important instrument of his government, including in New York or Seattle or Portland.
00:20:25.000In some ways, you're basically confederating the entire country.
00:20:29.000This is a neo-Confederate way to create sanctuary zones where U.S. attorneys would not be able to fulfill what the president won a popular vote majority on, Senator.
00:20:39.000Yeah, and we certainly can't have that happening.
00:20:40.000Look, in previous Democratic administrations, including most recently in the Biden administration, we had the understanding that you could break the blue slip if you acted unreasonably, if you unreasonably refused to consent to anyone the president might find acceptable or refused to recommend somebody to return a blue slip.
00:21:03.000If you did that unreasonably, that the blue slip might well be circumvented.
00:21:09.000And so I suspect we may near that point if we're not there already.
00:21:13.000Yeah, so as far as my encouragement goes, Senator, I think you guys are there.
00:21:18.000And I have such great respect for Senator Grassley.
00:21:21.000I think he's wrong here to just be, let's say, immovable.
00:21:24.000So for whatever it's worth, I think you need to tell the colleagues, your colleagues, our audience is fired up because look, when you are now six, seven months into administration and you guys can't get U.S. attorneys confirmed, too deferential to the Democrats.
00:21:36.000And you and I both know, Senator, that if these were good faith objections by the Democrats and they're trying to come to some sort of happy medium, fine.
00:21:47.000There are cartels that are running rampant in a lot of these states, and we need U.S. attorneys to be able to broker the enforcement of the law.
00:21:57.000So, Senator, I now want to ask you more broadly about confirmations.
00:22:02.000The audience is also very fired up as to why there are so many confirmation backlog.
00:22:35.000Just day before yesterday, it was at 144.
00:22:39.000We just this morning, two of the committees I serve on, Energy and Natural Resources, which I chair, and Foreign Relations, on which I also serve, those two committees alone submitted an additional six names to the executive calendar just today.
00:22:54.000And we're not clearing the backlog nearly as quickly as we're adding to it.
00:23:00.000The Senate has no business taking a recess for the month of August, which is currently set to be the entirety of the month of August, without first clearing the backlog.
00:23:31.000And if somehow the Senate were to decide to recess, unwisely in my mind, without clearing the backlog at a minimum, for the love of all that is sacred and holy and constitutional, we should not be holding what are called pro forma Senate sessions while we are in recess.
00:23:48.000Because those pro forma sessions, what they do is prohibit the president of the United States from exercising what would otherwise be his power to fill appointments for a recess appointment under the Constitution.
00:24:07.000And so is there also a strategy to try to break the will of the Democrats to try and get them to basically surrender their obstruction, Senator?
00:24:39.000And the Senate works on the principle of exhaustion.
00:24:43.000Meaning at some point when we remain in session and these guys have to show up and speak, they have to show up and vote.
00:24:49.000They get tired of all the procedural objections because it becomes more difficult, particularly where you hold them in at a time when they don't want to be here.
00:25:44.000But, Senator, is the Republican Conference unified?
00:25:48.000I mean, look, I know you can't talk ill of your colleagues, but I know some colleagues, for example, that they get out of town Thursday at the first moment they can.
00:25:56.000Will we have a unified Republican conference?
00:25:58.000That's a very important question, or will Republicans also end up sipping cocktails in the south of France in August when they should be voting for nominees?
00:26:08.000Look, I want to believe, Charlie, and in most ways I do believe that most of my Republican colleagues want to get this job done.
00:26:14.000Now, I think there are a number of different opinions.
00:26:17.000We've got 53 Republican senators, got a lot of different opinions on exactly how best to go about that.
00:26:24.000But I will say this, based on our conversations yesterday afternoon, the conference is coming together much more than we were last week in acknowledging that there is a problem, that it has to be addressed, and we can't simply leave without fixing the problem.
00:26:41.000There are still a number of opinions about how exactly to go about that, but I think we're coming closer to being unified on this issue.
00:26:49.000I myself could accept several different variations of an outcome, but the one we absolutely must not do is recess and then prohibit the president from doing what presidents are allowed to do during a recess.
00:27:04.000The very best solution involves staying here, getting butts and chairs, and making those same senators who are delaying the process be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
00:27:14.000When we make it easy for them to delay and obstruct, just so that they can have more governance, more dominance by the overwhelmingly left-leaning deep state bureaucrats that otherwise will control these agencies, as long as we don't confirm these personnel.
00:27:31.000The more we facilitate that and make it comfortable for them to obstruct and delay, the more we'll get that.
00:27:36.000And by the way, Charlie, if we leave and we don't fix the backlog, even if we didn't add a single additional nominee between now and next year, we'd still be well into the second quarter of 2026, probably the end of April before we got these nominees confirmed.
00:27:55.000And that's before you consider the fact that there'll probably be at least 200 additional nominees on the calendar by then.
00:28:02.000August is where all the Democrats, they do all their planning, they want time off.
00:28:19.000The SAVE Act tells the American people what American people already expect and demand, which is that only U.S. citizens may vote in U.S. elections.
00:28:29.000Now, that is already the law, but unfortunately, the way the Supreme Court has interpreted the law, the states which run voter registration are not even allowed to ask on the National Voter Registration Act forms for proof of citizenship, even if they know or have reason to know that somebody is, in fact, either illegally in the country or in the country legally, but not a citizen.
00:28:52.000They're not even allowed to ask for it or deny somebody that if they certify that they are citizens, just taking it on their word.
00:28:58.000So the SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship at the time you register to vote.
00:29:03.000Look, you have to prove who you are when you get on an airplane, when you go to the drugstore, when you go to the doctor's office, when you get a hunting license.
00:29:13.000Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer comes out, calls it a return to Jim Crow.
00:29:17.000Chuck Schumer, how exactly is that a return to Jim Crow to require people to prove who they are when you have to do that every time you go to TSA?
00:29:26.000This is absolutely nonsense, and it's irresponsible for the party of Jim Crow to be comparing to Jim Crow that which any sane American recognizes must be the law.
00:29:39.000And please go back to your colleague, Senator Grassley and Senator Thune and say, look, good job passing Big Beautiful Bill, but we got to end this blue slip operation that gives Democrats an outsized and leveraged veto power over the presidency.
00:31:52.000People say, well, Charlie, you know, don't Democrats.
00:31:54.000No, they don't have the same intentions that we have.
00:31:58.000Democrats are abusing the tradition, is what makes this entire thing null and void.
00:32:04.000It invalidates the tradition at its core.
00:32:07.000You see, taking a step back here, the idea that President Donald Trump cannot have the people of his choosing because some Senate Democrat from a blue state doesn't like him, I think it's completely and totally outrageous.
00:32:25.000Because I do want to talk about South Park.
00:32:28.000So yesterday, I just started laughing when someone said this to me.
00:32:31.000Apparently, our very popular prove me wrongs and our extraordinarily viral campus debates are being prominently profiled on South Park.
00:34:08.000Benny Johnson says, Cartman is playing Charlie Kirk on the next episode of South Park, and it's a great honor pop culture can bestow upon you.
00:34:14.000Jack Pesobic says, South Park is doing Cartman as Charlie Kirk.
00:34:18.000Cartman is playing character inspired by Charlie Kirk in the next South Park episode, Daily Caller Rights, and Colin Rugg as well.
00:34:25.000And this shows that the cultural impact that we are making at Turning Point USA cannot even be ignored by the professional comedians at Comedy Central.
00:34:36.000And billions and billions of views later, I tell you guys, hey, we're going viral on Instagram and TikTok.
00:34:56.000This means that all the graphic designers, all the artists, all the scriptwriters, all the comedians, they're seeing Charlie Kirk turning point USA stuff.
00:35:06.000When they're flipping through Instagram, when they're flipping through TikTok, our stuff is going viral and it is making a difference.
00:35:13.000In fact, one of my favorite things is when I'm on vacation or I'm traveling, when a liberal parent has to take the picture of their conservative son who likes me.
00:35:39.000I mean, look, if you can't make fun of yourself or get made fun of, especially if you're a public figure, I mean, if you're making fun of just some guy on the side of the street, that's cruel.
00:35:46.000I mean, look, but I'm a public figure, billions of views.
00:35:52.000However, we did do some research, and we have been told that it's a very rare cultural accomplishment as a conservative to kind of be profiled on this program.
00:36:02.000This is Tim Poole and also Steve Cortez saying that this is evidence that we are winning the culture war.
00:36:18.000By the way, so a huge win for Charlie Kirk, Chicago boy, like we are.
00:36:22.000We love to see Chicago boys do well, but more importantly for the country.
00:36:25.000You know, I think the point is here, you're right.
00:36:27.000We are winning the culture war, right?
00:36:28.000When South Pork Park feels that they need to mock a show host and a campaign operative, albeit a super important one, like Charlie Kirk.
00:36:37.000And that is just more evidence and an example of the cultural penetration that we have enjoyed at Turning Point USA.
00:36:46.000We commonly say that cult that politics is downstream from culture.
00:36:51.000And what this shows is that through the phenomenon of us going on these campuses, by having those debates, by engaging in this, that South Park and the whole leadership team of South Park can't escape us.
00:37:03.000And the response has been amazing because the left is very mad that I am not mad about this.
00:38:54.000And by the way, they have distilled my essence rather well.
00:38:58.000And so I have to say that, again, we got to watch the episode, but if Cartman comes out throwing hats at people, woof, that'd be phenomenal.
00:39:07.000And so we see no hats so far, but just the entire image and the entire thing is obviously us.
00:39:15.000And so, again, just like we said with Media Matters yesterday, we love this.
00:39:19.000It's all just another example of the cultural penetration, the success.
00:39:26.000And we're going to take this in good step and in good spirit.
00:39:28.000And it's just a good lesson for life, everybody.
00:40:10.000Growing up watching several episodes of South Park, I haven't watched it in about a decade, you know, been busy building some stuff, but it's without a doubt a cultural phenomenon.
00:40:17.000I think they signed a $1.5 billion, $1.5 billion five-year deal with Paramount and CBS.
00:40:43.000And it goes to show that when we go to those campuses and producer Andrew fills in and we're doing hundreds of hours of debate a year on these campuses and explaining and teaching and being with students, that it's been so popular that now it is a really a household thing, moving the needle and helping to win this cultural battle.
00:41:02.000Getting, no joke, billions and billions of views.
00:41:07.000It is a remarkable thing to witness and to be a part of.
00:41:10.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:41:11.000Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:41:14.000Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
00:41:18.000For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.