ActBlue, the Democratic Party's fundraising powerhouse, is in trouble. Mark Halperin and Brooke Rollins join the show as we talk about the Democrat Party in disarray, why the prices of eggs are so high, and what is going on with ActBlue.
00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Mark Halperin and Brooke Rollins joins the show as we talk about the Democrat Party in disarray, why are the prices of eggs so high, and what is going on...
00:00:42.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. 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.
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00:01:50.000I said the number on air because I remembered it because I had the dinner the day before.
00:01:53.000The amount of money these universities receive in Overhead with grants is hundreds of millions.
00:02:00.000I think it's like $130 million a year that University of Pennsylvania receives.
00:02:05.000For years, the Democrats have had a suspicious fundraising advantage.
00:02:10.000The Democrats have enjoyed a nonstop flow of money from an organization called ActBlue.
00:02:17.000Now, ActBlue operates as a fundraising powerhouse that is a pseudo-payment processor.
00:02:24.000So if you are a Democrat donor, And you want to give money to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or to Gavin Newsom or to whomever, you have an ActBlue account.
00:02:32.000It remembers your payment information.
00:02:54.000Now, Republicans have an equivalent win-red, but it just pales in comparison.
00:02:58.000However, there's something very weird happening at ActBlue.
00:03:02.000James O'Keefe has done a lot of reporting to ActBlue and found that some of the addresses didn't always correlate with donors.
00:03:07.000There's a congressional investigation into ActBlue, and more and more people are calling into a criminal investigation.
00:03:13.000Now, we have said many times here on this program that the cash advantage that Democrats have enjoyed via ActBlue is highly suspicious.
00:03:20.000Some people hypothesize, is this money coming from overseas?
00:03:23.000Is this money coming from Iran or China?
00:03:25.000We don't know, but we do know that ActBlue does not require the CCV numbers, the number on the back of a credit card, which is supposed to diminish fraud.
00:03:36.000Without requiring a CCV number, it is a lot easier to be able to steal credit card information, put up fake credit cards, and pump a lot of money into the American political system.
00:03:45.000Well, right now, ActBlue is falling apart.
00:03:51.000ActBlue, the Democrat fundraising powerhouse, faces internal chaos, New York Times writes.
00:03:55.000At least seven senior officials have left the group, setting off deep concerns about its future as it confronts scrutiny from congressional Republicans.
00:04:03.000And it won't just be congressional Republicans.
00:04:06.000If members of Congress end up sending criminal referrals to Kash Patel, I bet the FBI is going to go after them as well.
00:04:12.000More than $16 billion has passed through ActBlue in 20 years.
00:04:19.000$16 billion has pumped through Democrat ActBlue in the last 20 years.
00:04:26.000We don't know where all this money is coming from.
00:04:28.000But now ActBlue is starting to close its doors, not officially, but they are collapsing from within.
00:04:34.000There are so many nuggets of this article, I could do an entire hour-long show on this.
00:04:38.000Quote, if ActBlue were to become severely diminished, Democrats running for offices at levels of all government could face setbacks significant in their efforts to raise cash.
00:04:49.000Candidates for offices ranging from school boards and city council to presidency rely on the platform for online fundraising.
00:04:55.000While Republicans have spent years trying to catch up, we have not caught up on this game.
00:05:00.000The highest-ranking legal official at ActBlue, as well as the assistant research director, the chief revenue officer and engineer who spent 16 years building and maintaining ActBlue's infrastructure, have all left.
00:05:12.000They said, quote, Zion Ahmed, who is the last remaining lawyer in the ActBlue General Counsel's office, wrote an internal Slack message on February 26th that his access to his email and other internal platforms has been cut off.
00:05:23.000The other messages he posted in Slack have been deleted, according to screenshots obtained by the New York Times.
00:05:28.000Mr. Ahmed is now on leave from Act Blue, according to a person briefed on the group's staffing.
00:05:33.000Quote, Please be advised that we have an anti-retaliation whistleblower policies for a reason, Mr. Ahmed wrote.
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00:07:44.000First of all, you would think if someone found themselves for the first time in their adult life in a room with someone more handsome than them, it might lead to humility.
00:07:53.000But instead, it's like your producer's creating like a little shrine to you about your appearance.
00:10:03.000You've had pro-life presidents who didn't do very much to try to overturn Roe or to try to change the law in a way that would protect more life.
00:10:14.000Look, this is a guy who was for same-sex marriage publicly before Nancy Pelosi was, before the Clintons were, before Barack Obama was, which you could say means he's more left-wing than them, or you could say he is willing sometimes to take positions that are a little bit risky.
00:10:29.000That position's popular now, but it wasn't back then.
00:10:32.000I think that every Democrat asks themselves two questions if they disagree with Governor Newsom, and many people criticize him.
00:10:39.000One is, do you want your party to be on the wrong side of an issue, 70-30, 80-20?
00:10:44.000And if you truly believe that you want to take the position that's the minority, go out and defend it.
00:10:51.000Don't try to, as most Democrats are doing today, try to obscure the issue and say, Well, it should be up to local officials.
00:10:59.000And I think whether you think he switched for cynical purposes or not, I think he explained himself pretty well.
00:11:05.000And I don't think it's obvious that he's taking...
00:11:08.000I would take him at his word that this is what he thinks.
00:11:13.000But as you said, if that's really what he thinks, there's some actions that have to come with it following through.
00:11:18.000But if he does want to run for president, and again, I'm not as sure as you that he does, if he does want to run for president...
00:11:23.000That kind of thing is going to put him in a category that very few Democrats today are willing to be in, which is stand up to the base of the party with principle and emotion.
00:11:33.000And some would say it might be the beginning of a sister soldier moment, which you might remember was Bill Clinton running for the presidency in 1992. I was actually before I was born.
00:11:43.000Yeah, it was before you were born that I was in the room for it.
00:11:46.000Well, educate the audience on this, though.
00:12:19.000Today, that seems maybe a little quaint.
00:12:22.000But back then, when Bill Clinton's Democratic Party was not as far left as it is today, but it was too far left to win presidential elections, standing up to the base of the party was seen as very difficult.
00:12:34.000And few were willing to risk doing it.
00:12:37.000Bill Clinton's whole campaign was about sister soldier moments.
00:12:40.000He came out for NAFTA, which back then was out of step with the Democratic Party.
00:12:54.000All of these things were seen as part of a very self-conscious and purposeful effort to say things that would put him at odds with the liberal wing of the party, to say to more moderate voters, including independents and Republicans, but also to Democrats who wanted to win.
00:13:09.000I will stand up to the base of the party.
00:13:11.000Now, when you say Gavin Newsom might have said what he said with you purely for cynical political purposes, I think Bill Clinton believed all those positions.
00:13:20.000So it had the added advantage of being what he believed.
00:13:22.000And it's easier to sell that to the public if it's a legit position.
00:13:26.000But I think Gavin Newsom is someone who has in the past not gotten enough credit for criticizing some of the more liberal policies of the party.
00:13:44.000If you want to make the political points stick and sustain, you've got to stick to your guns.
00:13:49.000You've got to look for opportunities to do it.
00:13:51.000But you also have to do, if you want to win the Democratic nomination, you also have to do what Bill Clinton did.
00:13:56.000Bill Clinton said, I would say, I'm a Democrat by birth, heritage, and inclination.
00:14:01.000And that's the only way to get the Democratic nomination, because it's still dominated by the liberal wing of the party.
00:14:07.000Drag them to the center on some issues, but convince them that you're one of them.
00:14:11.000And I think Gavin Newsom is one of the few Democrats with the skill to do that.
00:14:15.000So does it say something more broader about our politics, that the attitude is going to the center-right, that Democrats are going to have to concede on some of the more unpopular issues?
00:14:27.000Is it Gavin Newsom that is seeing the trend and he wants to be a little ahead of it?
00:14:32.000What does that say more broadly about where the direction, the momentum of how people view political matters goes right now?
00:14:41.000And again, the Democratic Party is farther left than it's been in my lifetime or yours.
00:14:45.000And so the power of the left and the distance someone who wants to push the party or pull the party back to the center is farther than it's ever been.
00:14:56.000I know plenty of Democrats, including people who are in the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, like Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who say, of course, we have to talk to the whole country and not be in our narrow and confined blue bubble.
00:15:10.000But again, it's hard to predict how this will go because standing up to the base is a problem.
00:15:16.000And you saw that on Tuesday, where Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer refused to stand up to the base of their party, and they had a massive calamity.
00:15:25.000If they weren't protected by the media, what they did would still be a dominant story.
00:15:32.000But I think it's up in the air now, whether there'll be Democrats like Newsom who helped to pull the party back towards the center, or they'll be too afraid like the congressional leaders seem to be right now.
00:15:42.000Just to make sure we're clear, you're talking about the outbursts at the State of the Union, correct?
00:15:49.000I assume you've been talking about it all week.
00:15:50.000Yeah, I mean, the outbursts of the State of the Union, but also the whole series of events around it where the party simply cannot talk about issues in a sustained way that are popular.
00:16:03.000They're discombobulated by Donald Trump and the whole Trump team, including you, extraordinarily skillful at keeping them discombobulated.
00:17:56.000Get your reaction to Hakeem Jeffries kind of being a little frozen when he was asked yesterday about the Gavin Newsom situation.
00:18:04.000Now, what's interesting to me is that Gavin's team seemed to not give a little memo or a heads up to Democrat leadership that this was coming.
00:18:27.000And with a 36-hour lead time, they very well could have been a good party man, like a good company man, picked up the phones, worked it, and they would have had a little workshop thing and all the tensions would have gone.
00:18:37.000Instead, he kind of played into the ambush.
00:18:42.000Play 224. I want to ask about California Governor Gavin Newsom's comments saying that Democrats were in the wrong for allowing transgender athletes to compete in female and girls sports.
00:18:56.000What is your response to that after Democrats had opposed the women and girls in sports?
00:19:25.000I mean, first of all, every time I see the guy on TV now, he looks exhausted.
00:19:29.000For those of you who are just listening to the audio, Hakeem Jeffries just needs a nap or a vacation.
00:19:35.000And that means, I believe, it's a manifestation of how much pressure he's under.
00:19:39.000I hear from Democrats in Congress regularly, and I spent a lot of time on the Hill this week around the president's speech, he is not able to grapple with the liberal wing of the party.
00:19:49.000And so what you have is a guy who knows his party's on the wrong side of a lot of issues, including the one that Governor Newsom made news on.
00:19:56.000He is unable to stand up to that wing of the party because when he tries, they threaten to revolt.
00:20:03.000It's where the energy is in the party.
00:20:05.000And they've not found a way to stand up to him.
00:20:09.000Governor Newsom could have given them a heads up.
00:20:11.000He's not particularly close to a lot of Democrats.
00:20:15.000A lot of Democrats don't like him, and he doesn't make time for that.
00:20:19.000And that happens sometimes with big state governors, particularly in California, because it's 3,000 miles from Washington.
00:20:25.000But I believe that if Gavin Newsom runs for president, he's not going to run as part of the Washington club, right?
00:20:34.000And so he didn't want to give him a heads up.
00:20:37.000He wants to operate here on his own plane.
00:20:40.000And I'll say again, that reaction, that Brooklyn brand of word salad from Hakeem Jeffries is a manifestation of the fact that the party is a mess right now, not just on the issue of trans athletes and women's sports and girls' sports, but on the general question of how do they grapple with Donald Trump?
00:21:01.000Who, contrary to what the press says, is largely talking about issues that are 70 or 80 percent popular, as opposed to 20 or 30 percent not popular.
00:21:09.000And they haven't grappled with that, because the rational thing would be to build some sister soldiers and say, you know what, we're with America.
00:21:19.000But they just want to, as he did there, change the subject, or in some cases, defend the unpopular position, which, you know, hats off to them for being principled.
00:21:26.000But a party can only last so long if they're on the wrong side of it.
00:21:32.000Yeah, or just say a completely unrelated statement.
00:21:34.000I mean, I don't think anyone is pushing sexual predators on girls.
00:21:37.000It's a completely unrelated statement.
00:21:40.000Mark, I'm going to go back to an op-ed written by James Carville, and I know this came up in my Gavin Newsom discussion, where he basically argued that Democrats should do a strategic retreat or rollover and play dead.
00:21:53.000He argued that the Democrats' best move right now is allow Trump's numbers to get soft, and this whole thing's going to fall apart, and then we will strike.
00:22:32.000President Trump continues to be an 800-pound gorilla moving 800 miles per hour.
00:22:36.000Number two, Democrats don't have any leaders who have the communication skills to stand up to him.
00:22:42.000And number three, they don't have anything like what your party has, which is issue positions that you can sell through a machinery that's cranking fast involving communications and interest groups and real human beings, as we saw at the State of the Union-like speech.
00:23:01.000So I think what James is basically saying is we need to do nothing now because anything we do will make it worse.
00:23:29.000So I've heard lots of smart Democrats say James is just saying that because he wants to have something to say.
00:23:34.000And the alternative is to say, yeah, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin should be going head to head with Donald Trump right now when the party is divided and without any popular issue positions that they know how to sell.
00:23:46.000So the state of the Republican Party seems as if we have plenty of momentum moving forward.
00:23:53.000Any of the fault lines seem to be smoothed over.
00:23:56.000And there is large unity behind the president and the administration.
00:24:00.000Just looking at Doge, some of the reports yesterday saying that there might be a tighter leash on some of the activities there.
00:24:08.000What is your analysis of the state of how this administration is operating six weeks in?
00:25:16.000Members of Congress, Republican members of Congress, members of the cabinet, they say, we don't work for Elon Musk, and we don't want to cut veterans.
00:25:24.000We don't want to cut hospitals in our district.
00:25:26.000We don't want to cut research in our district.
00:25:28.000And so figuring out Elon's role and figuring out how to cut without...
00:25:33.000Really pissing off not just voters, but a lot of Republicans and veterans.
00:25:40.000And then third is the president's unprecedented at this stage of an administration playing big casino overseas, big casino in the Middle East, big casino with Ukraine, Russia.
00:25:51.000And certainly I don't think you can argue that this is worse than what Biden was doing, which was basically nothing, just maintaining the status quo.
00:26:28.000From a communications point of view, a bandwidth point of view, a presidential focus point of view, maybe there's just too many big projects and some of them should go on the back burner for now.
00:26:38.000Mark, please plug two-way and also your newsletter, which I read every morning.
00:28:16.000I mean, really, what a joy on so many levels.
00:28:19.000I know we have gotten to talk quite a bit off of the camera and off of your show, but this is the first time I've been back on the show, and I'm just so grateful to do it.
00:29:30.000Pocketbook issue, and that as we, Charlie, you and I have long battled together to take the American dream to every corner of our country, these are really, real significant issues.
00:29:41.000I don't have my chart here with me, but if I did, and by the way, President Trump loves this chart, but it shows that for 40 years, the price of eggs was pretty static.
00:29:49.000It was right around $1.50, $2 a dozen.
00:29:52.000Then under Obama, it went up, not surprisingly because of over-regulation and higher taxes, etc.
00:29:58.000the cost of input went up, but not significantly, you know, maybe from $1.52 to $2.53.
00:30:03.000Then under Trump, without anything intentional, but just because less government, lower regulations, everyone did better, the prices went back down.
00:30:11.000But then under Biden, they skyrocketed 230% higher than what they were under Trump 1.
00:30:19.000And there's reasons for that, over-regulation, et cetera.
00:30:22.000But the avian bird flu, which is a virus that these chickens have gotten, is a huge reason.
00:30:28.000The Biden team basically depopulated about 150 million egg-laying hens last year, which is the protocol.
00:30:36.000We're looking at the protocol now to see how to tweak it so that hopefully we don't have to do that moving forward.
00:30:43.000We rolled out a five point plan about a week ago, includes deregulation, includes repopulation much more quickly, includes importing eggs from other countries for the short term.
00:30:52.000And then for the long term, figuring out how to solve for these viruses that are basically annihilating a significant, significant populations in our poultry industry.
00:31:02.000And so I don't oversimplify it, but a bunch of chickens were killed like 100 million, and therefore it restricts the supply and the demand stays the same.
00:31:25.000I mean, the bird flu has certainly been a massive driver in that, but it isn't just that.
00:31:29.000And, you know, as much as we would love to get the price of eggs down to $2 by tomorrow, although I think we're making some good strides, I've seen some recent numbers, this is going to take a little while.
00:31:39.000It's going to take a little while to figure out how to solve for the flu.
00:31:41.000It's going to take a little while to get the deregulation, such as Prop 12 in California and line speeds and other things back to normal before they were in Trump 1.
00:31:50.000And frankly, just bring the cost of goods down across the country.
00:31:59.000He has just been such a, I mean, we all know this, right?
00:32:02.000Such a warrior for everything that we care about.
00:32:05.000And my role now becomes, you know, the farmers, the ranchers, the ag community bringing prosperity back to rural America and getting the price of those eggs down.
00:32:17.000So speaking more broadly, educate our audience about the duties and the responsibilities, all about what the Department of Agriculture does.
00:32:24.000People just think of it as, you know, kind of corn or soybeans.
00:32:33.000And when I got the call on November 23rd from President Trump, it was a Saturday before Thanksgiving.
00:32:38.000My husband and my four kids and I were driving to Auburn, Alabama for the Texas A&M-Auburn football game and very unexpectedly had the conversation that...
00:32:48.000I mean, really kind of changed everything.
00:32:51.000Although I will eventually go back and join you, Charlie, out in the trenches doing the great work outside.
00:32:58.000I mean, yeah, that's where my heart is.
00:33:45.000They've got some fires that have popped up that are a little bit scary, looking at the damage of Hurricane Helene, but also understanding what we need to do and the resources that are necessary to ensure we don't have another fire like what happened in California, that all the different components are working well together.
00:34:36.000How do we realign the United States Department of Agriculture?
00:34:40.000How do we set a model for not just the federal government, but around the country on how you realign, how you reduce in force, how you become more effective and more efficient with much less money?
00:34:50.000And that's what we and our very small team right now, we're still trying to get people in the door, but that's what we're doing every day.
00:35:15.000How are you guys thinking about this at the Department of Agriculture?
00:35:18.000Well, there's no doubt, you know, I've been now to six or seven different states.
00:35:22.000I've only been in for about two and a half weeks, I guess three weeks, and been to, gosh, a bunch of states, talked to a bunch of farmers, almost 200, I think, from around the country.
00:37:30.000Secretary Rollins, it's nice to say that.
00:37:33.000Anything else on your front vision, things you're dealing with, you want our audience to be aware of?
00:37:39.000And what are your asks out of Congress with this big budget bill?
00:37:43.000What are some needs that you see, waste to cut, elimination, doge up the food stamps, where you're going to be going to Congress and say, Hey, here are my big asks.
00:37:52.000So, at the end of the day, I think what's really important, and I'm assuming most of the people watching you today, Charlie, and are fans of yours probably also watch the president on Tuesday night.
00:38:14.000My goodness, you know, the concept of how you get this massive beast of the federal government that has gotten too big under both Democrats and Republicans, right?
00:38:52.000We're like family, and we're all working together.
00:38:54.000We've all now known each other and worked together for years at this point.
00:38:58.000So it isn't like we're in our silos anymore.
00:39:00.000This is a team effort to save America.
00:39:03.000So as I'm going to the Hill, and part of my message has been, Charlie, when you're in a revolution and you are significantly reducing the size of government, nothing Will be perfect.
00:39:14.000There will be mistakes made, but this sort of shaking up the whole system and almost restarting it in a way.
00:39:23.000There's not going to be another opportunity, I believe, perhaps in our lifetimes to do exactly what we're doing now.
00:39:28.000So even as I'm talking to our friends on the Hill, but even this morning I talked to a Democrat senator, and I won't say who it was, but we had a very collegial conversation about what our goals are, what we're trying to do at USDA, the importance of returning, you know, and realigning the agency.
00:39:44.000And for the most part, even those on the other side of the aisle understand that President Trump won with a mandate.
00:39:52.000And winning the popular vote and winning all the swing states.
00:39:55.000And that's now what we're working to effectuate.
00:39:58.000So I have gotten nothing but mostly general positive feedback, even from those on the other side, who understand what it is we're trying to do.
00:40:06.000And for the most part, doing it with the best, well, for our sake, we are doing it with the best of intentions.
00:40:12.000But even those on the other side, I think, for the most part, recognize that while they are not in power, they may not make these decisions, but they realize this is what the American people have asked for.