The Charlie Kirk Show - Fighting the “Elites” for America’s Future

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, my remarks at Cal State Fullerton.

00:00:03.000 As always, you can email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:01:15.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:16.000 Here we go.

00:01:18.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:19.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:01:21.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:25.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:28.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:29.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:30.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:01:32.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:38.000 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.

00:01:47.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:50.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.

00:01:59.000 Hey, everybody.

00:02:00.000 Great to be here.

00:02:02.000 Thank you.

00:02:03.000 We are on tour right now.

00:02:05.000 This is our last stop.

00:02:06.000 Three stops we started in Boulder, and then we went to Berkeley, and now we're here.

00:02:11.000 So I think this will be what?

00:02:12.000 Do you think it'll be the most conservative stop of the three?

00:02:14.000 We'll see.

00:02:15.000 I don't know.

00:02:17.000 It'll be tough to say.

00:02:18.000 There's been some chatter of protests and stuff, so we'll see what happens.

00:02:21.000 But it's great to be here.

00:02:22.000 I love California.

00:02:24.000 Well, let me say this this way.

00:02:25.000 I love parts of California.

00:02:27.000 Well, no, I don't know.

00:02:28.000 Let me say it differently.

00:02:29.000 I love the people of Caleb.

00:02:31.000 I love some of the people of California, but I have a whole theory on California, and it really is a test of how important is weather in your life.

00:02:40.000 That really is the question, right?

00:02:42.000 I mean, you wake up.

00:02:43.000 I woke up very early this morning, and a morning in Southern California say, all right, 18% income tax, homelessness, vagrancy, crime.

00:02:52.000 All right, if this is the trade-off, then so be it.

00:02:54.000 It really is the great test of weather.

00:02:57.000 Because I guarantee you, if California was like Fargo, North Dakota in the winter, there would be nobody left.

00:03:04.000 But I love it here, and we have so many great friends that have supported us for so many years.

00:03:08.000 And thank you for that at Turning Point USA.

00:03:11.000 And Orange County is a really important place.

00:03:13.000 This is a place where it used to be really conservative, and then it kind of has veered to the left a little bit.

00:03:18.000 But I think there's a conservative revival happening in Orange County right now.

00:03:22.000 I really do.

00:03:23.000 And moms and dads are starting to show up at school board meetings.

00:03:27.000 Students are starting to rise up and start Turning Point USA chapters.

00:03:31.000 Pastors are starting to take stands, like the great Jack Hibbs, who's not too far from here.

00:03:35.000 I know a lot of you go to Jack's church.

00:03:36.000 He does a great job.

00:03:38.000 And so I'm honored to be here.

00:03:40.000 And some people say, oh, Charlie, why do you go to California?

00:03:42.000 Why don't you give up on it?

00:03:43.000 I say, look, we're a big country.

00:03:45.000 This is the largest state.

00:03:46.000 It's the wealthiest state.

00:03:47.000 And we're going to give up on this amazing place where there's actually more conservatives in California than any other state in the country.

00:03:55.000 And I feel an obligation to our fellow countrymen here in California.

00:03:58.000 I live in Arizona.

00:03:59.000 I wouldn't live here currently, but I just want to say, though, that there's so many amazing people in California that refuse to give up.

00:04:07.000 And I really, it really touches me.

00:04:09.000 It does, because, you know, I have an opportunity to travel the country, and it's easy to get cynical, but there's this remnant of California conservatives that just keep on fighting, that just keep on organizing, that refuse to give up, and know that they might not see victory immediately, but one small victory at a time and organizing.

00:04:28.000 Putting things together, that that really is something that inspires people all across the country.

00:04:33.000 It really does, and if we're serious about saving America, we're gonna have to hopefully get California's house in order.

00:04:39.000 If not, that then start at a local level, start at a county level, and we're starting to see that happen in some very substantial ways.

00:04:44.000 So I want to talk about a couple things in particular, um, and then we can go into some q a, which is, you know, obviously the most fun part of all this.

00:04:52.000 So um, I don't have a twitter account uh currently um, so I got banned from twitter.

00:04:57.000 You might know this.

00:04:58.000 So this has been one of the most interesting, like unexpected news cycles in my whole 10 years of doing this.

00:05:04.000 So I got banned from twitter for uh, participating in dead naming.

00:05:07.000 Do you guys know what dead naming is?

00:05:09.000 Um okay, I didn't know before I tweeted.

00:05:11.000 So here's one of the things, um, and it's i'm.

00:05:14.000 I'm technically suspended from twitter, not banned, so just to get the words correctly.

00:05:18.000 Uh, we'll get into that what that means.

00:05:20.000 So here's how you know you're living in kind of a tyrannical moment when you can't keep track of all the rules that you're supposed to follow.

00:05:26.000 I mean, if you're like me, I can't keep track of all of them right, they're.

00:05:29.000 They're going to kick you out of a social club or social media because you're like, wait, but what?

00:05:33.000 What even is that?

00:05:34.000 So I tweeted out, I think a month ago, about the current health czar, a person by the name calls themselves the name Rachel Levine whatever okay uh, and I said this person used to have a name, Richard Levine, for 54 years of their life and then transitioned.

00:05:49.000 Okay, whatever.

00:05:50.000 And I said that in the tweet.

00:05:52.000 And then you can't even use the name that used to exist.

00:05:54.000 Right, can't do that.

00:05:55.000 Um, it's called dead naming.

00:05:57.000 So you lose your account for that.

00:05:58.000 And then, in kind of like a Soviet show trial way uh, Twitter comes out and they say okay, in order to get your Twitter account back, you have to admit that you violated our hate speech policies and press the delete button.

00:06:08.000 So we very well could have done that.

00:06:10.000 But happened to the Babylon Bee, like two days before that.

00:06:13.000 And then it happened to us and I thought to myself, you know, I traveled to these events all across the country and I tell young people involved at Turning Point, Usa, you know it's worth fighting for conservative values, but it might cost you something.

00:06:25.000 And what a hypocrite I would be to tell you that and be like, oh yeah, by the way, i'm just going to delete the tweet and kind of get my twitter account back.

00:06:31.000 So we're we're, we're in this.

00:06:33.000 Uh, you would be banned from twitter for saying that.

00:06:36.000 So um, and I didn't even say that.

00:06:39.000 So I um, so this standoff started.

00:06:44.000 Babylon BEE gets suspended, we get suspended.

00:06:46.000 And you know, we talked to Seth Dylan from Babylon BE and we're kind of like this is insane.

00:06:51.000 And maybe five years ago we would have kind of deleted the tweet, press the red button and move on.

00:06:54.000 But we kind of know that when you do that, you conform to these ridiculous rules.

00:06:58.000 And there's, more important things in life than having access to a twitter account.

00:07:01.000 There just is, uh, fighting for the truth is way more important than having access to a twitter account.

00:07:05.000 Um, not lying is way more important than having access to a social media account.

00:07:09.000 So then Tucker Carlson comes out And he tweets out the tweet of the Babylon BR tweet, which then triggers Twitter to ban Tucker Carlson as well.

00:07:19.000 But it gets better, right?

00:07:20.000 So we're kind of like, all right, whatever.

00:07:22.000 Twitter is kind of a lost cause.

00:07:24.000 Like, you know, we're not going to delete the tweet.

00:07:26.000 We'll see what happens.

00:07:26.000 But there's really kind of momentum starting to be built.

00:07:30.000 And it caught the eye, this kind of this thing.

00:07:32.000 And I'm not taking credit for it, but we were definitely part of it.

00:07:35.000 No, we were.

00:07:36.000 Because the favorite news source for the world's richest man is the Babylon Bee.

00:07:41.000 And he loves the Babylon B, he's gone on their podcast on the entire thing.

00:07:45.000 And this is what I just love about this entire story.

00:07:47.000 Now, before we get any further, I have a nuanced view of Elon Musk.

00:07:50.000 I think some of what he does is awesome.

00:07:52.000 I'm not a fan of other things.

00:07:53.000 I love his entrepreneurial spirit.

00:07:55.000 I don't like messing with the human brain.

00:07:57.000 I don't like the stuff that he does in China.

00:07:59.000 I think you can have a mixed bag opinion of people.

00:08:00.000 I think that's fair.

00:08:02.000 But I just love what's going on right now with Twitter.

00:08:04.000 It's just awesome.

00:08:05.000 And so I love, I love every moment of it.

00:08:08.000 I think it's, and every person who loves the country and loves the Constitution free speech should just be eating popcorn, just seeing the next tweet that Elon's going to come out.

00:08:15.000 So they ban Babylon B, they ban us, they ban Tucker, and then it catches the attention of Elon Musk.

00:08:21.000 So Elon has nearly $300 billion.

00:08:23.000 He's probably even wealthier than that.

00:08:24.000 We don't even know the true valuation of SpaceX.

00:08:27.000 And he basically had a decision to make, which is, what am I going to do with all this money, right?

00:08:31.000 And that is a question that a lot of elites wrestle with.

00:08:34.000 So, you know, Bezos is like, I'm going to go to Mars, whatever.

00:08:38.000 Bill Gates is, I'm going to send vaccines all around the world, right?

00:08:42.000 And Musk was like, you know what?

00:08:43.000 Like, what?

00:08:44.000 I could have mansions everywhere and I could send shuttles to Mars.

00:08:47.000 But if we do not have the fundamental value of freedom of discourse, it doesn't matter how many zeros I have behind my net worth.

00:08:54.000 And that's a really just unprecedented thing for someone in the ruling class to say.

00:09:00.000 It is.

00:09:00.000 They're supposed to obey to the censorship regime, right?

00:09:04.000 Like, you're like, we shut up voices we don't like.

00:09:07.000 If you disagree with what we say, don't get in our way.

00:09:10.000 Well, it just so happens Elon is at the top level of the ability to be able to balance power.

00:09:16.000 So what ends up happening then is Elon makes this offer.

00:09:20.000 You guys know that two weeks ago.

00:09:21.000 He buys just like 10% of TikTok, Twitter.

00:09:25.000 Not yet.

00:09:25.000 Buys 10% of Twitter.

00:09:28.000 And so then he gets into all that.

00:09:31.000 They say he's going to come on the board of directors, denies it.

00:09:34.000 And we're like, oh, is he going to back down?

00:09:36.000 But if he was on the board of directors, he wouldn't be able to buy the entire company.

00:09:39.000 And at every corner, people think he's not going to do it.

00:09:42.000 He's not going to do it.

00:09:43.000 He's not going to do it.

00:09:44.000 Remember, this is the guy that's trying to go to colonize Mars and has electrical vehicles everywhere.

00:09:49.000 He's kind of in the whole business of defying people, which I kind of love personally, to be honest.

00:09:54.000 And this morning, he puts in a cash offer to buy all of Twitter for $42 billion, which is just insane, right?

00:10:03.000 And it was 44, 42.

00:10:05.000 43.

00:10:06.000 I'm sorry.

00:10:07.000 Okay.

00:10:07.000 See, you know what's so crazy about that?

00:10:09.000 I might get banned from YouTube for disinformation because I said 42 instead of 43.

00:10:14.000 This is the world I live in.

00:10:16.000 So Twitter's freaking out, right?

00:10:18.000 So he's going to buy the whole thing.

00:10:20.000 Now, just to kind of show how serious Elon is, is he's kind of, I don't know if you've seen Elon's Twitter account today.

00:10:27.000 He's responding to like random people's tweets with these like super cryptic messages.

00:10:32.000 World's richest man, just kind of like, I don't know, he has extra time on his hands.

00:10:36.000 And he says something so interesting, which is that if Twitter denies his offer, they're going to have to withstand possible accusations, legal remedies that show that they're not, let's say, obeying the fiduciary interest of their shareholder because of such a high offer, which they could be, they got huge lawsuits coming.

00:10:57.000 And so they're meeting right now, and Pragod Agarwal is the CEO of Twitter now.

00:11:02.000 We don't really know where, we don't know where Jack Dorsey is.

00:11:07.000 I don't think he's really in the equation right now.

00:11:09.000 And so Elon wants to buy the entire thing.

00:11:11.000 And so if you have seen even 1% of the reaction from the left today, it's been one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen.

00:11:18.000 No, even if you're a leftist in this room, it's unbelievable.

00:11:22.000 Just like Hitler and just like Stalin, Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter and suppress speech.

00:11:28.000 This is what they're saying.

00:11:30.000 And like, it's not just like randos, you know, that are just walking on the side of the street.

00:11:33.000 These like journalists, right?

00:11:34.000 Like important people.

00:11:36.000 And what I love is people say, like, I'm going to get off Twitter if Elon buys the entire thing.

00:11:41.000 Like, yeah, just like you were going to move to Canada when Trump went, right?

00:11:43.000 Like, okay, sure.

00:11:44.000 And here's what's going to happen.

00:11:45.000 It's like, okay, all like the weird people that wear masks when they shower, like, they'll get off Twitter and all of us will go back to Twitter and it'll be an awesome place, right?

00:11:53.000 Because we really don't use Twitter much anymore.

00:11:55.000 And so, you know, we're at this moment where Elon, and this is what I really want to kind of, you know, focus in on, which is Elon is an example of what I think we've lost in the last 20 or 30 years, which is someone with legitimate power outside of the government coming in and fighting for regular people.

00:12:17.000 And that is something that is worthy of reflection for a couple moments, right?

00:12:21.000 Because we're used to the opposite.

00:12:23.000 We're used to Zuckerberg putting $400 million into our elections to have mail-in ballots go everywhere, right?

00:12:29.000 We're used to kind of this idea of, you know, CNN and all these massive mega corporations coming in and crushing the weak.

00:12:37.000 And kind of out of nowhere, the very person who is a creation of the American left, and I'll prove it to you in a second, is now the person who is offsetting it.

00:12:45.000 And so a majority of Elon's wealth is because of the green energy nonsense that they've been pushing.

00:12:51.000 It's what's so hilarious, right?

00:12:53.000 Elon is only powerful because they want to get rid of fossil fuels.

00:12:56.000 So they want to get rid of all fossil fuels and drilling.

00:12:58.000 Well, someone has to be a beneficiary.

00:12:59.000 Okay, the electric car guy gets all the money.

00:13:01.000 The problem is they did not realize they couldn't control him.

00:13:04.000 So like one of the tweets here is from this person.

00:13:07.000 I don't even know their name.

00:13:08.000 Elon Musk is why we need to abolish billionaires.

00:13:11.000 Okay.

00:13:13.000 Asking them to chip in their fair share isn't enough.

00:13:15.000 Regulating them isn't enough.

00:13:17.000 This is a bleach checkmark person on Twitter.

00:13:19.000 When people are allowed to acquire this much concentrated influence, they'll inevitably man spread economic power into every other form of power.

00:13:26.000 Okay.

00:13:27.000 So I don't know what this person's name is, whatever.

00:13:30.000 So the interesting part of that, though, is they're okay with billionaires doing their bidding, but they don't like it when billionaires come in and defend Western values.

00:13:41.000 So a couple of thoughts on this.

00:13:43.000 The reaction to Elon coming in and trying to consolidate Twitter is, and their insane reaction shows how central censorship is to their plans.

00:13:54.000 They need to be able to shut you up.

00:13:56.000 And if all of a sudden that gets put into jeopardy, then a lot of their political control all of a sudden becomes less certain.

00:14:04.000 And you see the reaction one after the other, after the other, where these people on television are saying like, this is the worst thing for democracy.

00:14:12.000 Like Robert Reich, you know, at UC Berkeley says that this is like a threat to our entire civilization.

00:14:18.000 But it's so amazing because Elon said this in his tech talk today.

00:14:22.000 He says, I'm not doing this for financial reasons.

00:14:24.000 He says, I'm doing this because I don't want to live in a civilization that does not value freedom of speech.

00:14:31.000 And so you think about it, what is he really fighting for?

00:14:34.000 He's now fighting for the true promise of the founding fathers in an internet and technological era.

00:14:40.000 Like he's now saying, okay, Twitter is a private company or it can make its own decisions, but it really is the place where a lot of the ideas and news breaks today.

00:14:48.000 It's where the important people go to kind of report things and comment on them.

00:14:52.000 But if you're not even able to have free and open discourse on that, then you're always constantly living in a different type of censorship regime.

00:15:00.000 And this is something that I think we as conservatives have started to realize the last couple of years is that the threat to our speech is not just coming from the government.

00:15:08.000 It's actually primarily coming from private companies.

00:15:11.000 And so for years, they're like, oh, Twitter can do whatever they want.

00:15:14.000 They can censor conservatives.

00:15:16.000 But the moment then someone uses market principles that they were defending, like buying the company and then defending free speech, they all of a sudden want to block it.

00:15:24.000 So this Max Boot guy, you might know him, he says, I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter.

00:15:32.000 He seems to believe that on social media, anything goes.

00:15:35.000 For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.

00:15:40.000 This guy's a columnist for, I don't know, the Washington Post columnist owned by Jeff Bezos.

00:15:45.000 And so there's article after article after article.

00:15:47.000 And you think to yourself, like, what drives them to want to keep that kind of internet kind of regime going?

00:15:56.000 And it really shows that they're so afraid of what would happen in the coming elections if really good ideas would be able to spread freely without them having the thumb on the scale.

00:16:09.000 That's what they're, let me put it differently.

00:16:11.000 They're afraid of what happened in 2016 happening every two years.

00:16:16.000 Because in 2016, we had the closest thing to a free internet in my life.

00:16:19.000 2016, the tech companies were taken by surprise by Trump and all these people.

00:16:24.000 You guys remember 2016 internet?

00:16:25.000 It was awesome, right?

00:16:27.000 No one was getting booted.

00:16:28.000 Things went viral.

00:16:29.000 And guess what?

00:16:30.000 Like, that was how we checked CNN.

00:16:32.000 That's how we got the word out.

00:16:33.000 And these social media companies have kind of been in this non-stop apology to where we're so sorry.

00:16:38.000 We're to blame for this.

00:16:39.000 We're so sorry we're to blame for this.

00:16:40.000 But guess what?

00:16:42.000 Every single study shows that center-right content, conservative content, is the most popular on the internet when it's actually given a fair sharing to be heard.

00:16:52.000 There's a lot of reasons for it.

00:16:53.000 It makes sense.

00:16:55.000 So when you have a video that's like, actually, men can't become pregnant, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

00:17:01.000 Like that goes really viral.

00:17:03.000 Instead of all this insane nonsense that you keep hearing.

00:17:06.000 And so this is a glitch in the matrix.

00:17:08.000 That's what Elon Musk best represents.

00:17:10.000 Now, what's going to happen next?

00:17:12.000 And the question will be really how strong is Elon's resolve?

00:17:17.000 And I think it's rather significant.

00:17:19.000 Announced today, this is how this works.

00:17:22.000 The Security Exchange Commission has come out and they're opening an investigation at Tesla for apparent market violations.

00:17:30.000 Oh, you better believe they're going to bite back.

00:17:32.000 You're not just able to, quote, stop censorship.

00:17:34.000 We're going to put you in your place, Elon.

00:17:37.000 Now, the company they can really go after is SpaceX because of all the government contracts and stuff.

00:17:43.000 And mark my words, in the coming weeks and months, if this continues at the pace it's continuing right now, you're going to have people on the left say, We have to cancel government contracts with SpaceX.

00:17:53.000 We have to stop giving money to these sorts of people that want free speech.

00:17:56.000 Like, yeah, yeah, they're the worst, those free speech people.

00:17:58.000 And so we're living through this amazing moment where finally, those of us that feel as if we've been outnumbered and outgunned, we're finally starting to see the equivalent of what the American revolutionaries got from the French government in the Revolutionary War, which is just a little bit of a fighting chance.

00:18:16.000 A bigger power coming in and helping people, freedom-loving people, be pushed back against an overwhelming and it's sometimes very intimidating type of government or collection of power.

00:18:28.000 And so, yeah, this is the tweet here: as Elon Musk offers to buy the rest of Twitter, legal sources say today the SEC and the Department of Justice have announced what he described as a joint investigation into a myriad of Musk regulatory issues, primarily involving Tesla.

00:18:43.000 Coincidence, right?

00:18:44.000 Of course.

00:18:45.000 Like, you go on to buy Twitter, like, you're going to have to go deal with all of this.

00:18:49.000 And I don't think that's going to phase him.

00:18:51.000 Like, he'll just go to Mars.

00:18:51.000 Like, okay, whatever.

00:18:52.000 I'll just like, I'll leave.

00:18:53.000 Like, I don't know if the laws of extradition apply to interplanetary.

00:19:00.000 That would be interesting, actually, to see, to kind of push the boundaries.

00:19:04.000 But I'll complete the point here and I'll make a couple others and we'll get the question and answer, which is the anxiety and the frenetic reaction that we've seen, I think goes to show that if we can even liberate speech a little bit in the coming weeks, months, and years, that that's one of the fundamental ways that we make America a more stable and healthy country.

00:19:28.000 You want to know why you think like America's going in the wrong direction?

00:19:31.000 It's because of how much censorship there actually has been in the last couple of years.

00:19:36.000 How many people, I mean, I could do a show of hands.

00:19:38.000 How many people you know that you have friends and relatives that have never heard of news stories that would be so obvious to you?

00:19:44.000 I mean, I just was at UC Berkeley yesterday, and there were like trans activists that had no idea and had not heard that the person who thought that they were a woman won the NCAA championship ensuing.

00:19:57.000 Never heard of it.

00:19:59.000 And like no one, like I would say half probably had heard of it, half had not.

00:20:03.000 And a lot of you saw the story repeatedly covered and all that.

00:20:06.000 And you got to think, boy, if we had a free and open internet and not kind of algorithms that would immediately suppress sorts of content, how many other people would then be able to be persuaded?

00:20:15.000 Because here's why.

00:20:16.000 We know every one of their stories.

00:20:19.000 There's not one of their stories that we can't recite by name, right?

00:20:22.000 Like, okay, like support Ukraine, like Maskinvax, Ninth Booster, like everything is racist.

00:20:28.000 Let all the immigrants in, like, whatever.

00:20:30.000 Like, we can, it's like an incantation, right, at this point.

00:20:33.000 But how many of them could actually recite what we believe are some of the more cultural and economic problems facing the country?

00:20:38.000 Okay, so I'm going to kind of go through two more things here.

00:20:41.000 So I went super viral yesterday.

00:20:43.000 I don't have, you guys know, I don't have Twitter.

00:20:45.000 Someone, it's so great when you don't have Twitter and someone texts you that you're trending on Twitter.

00:20:49.000 It's awesome.

00:20:50.000 It's like, so I did something worthy of still trending on that Godforsaken website at Wasteland.

00:20:56.000 It's so funny when they're tweeting at me on Twitter.

00:20:59.000 I'm like, you realize I don't have like, okay, sure.

00:21:02.000 So I said something at CU Boulder that's really true, which is that we want more, we should make it a goal to try to have more young people own property and make it easier for young people to be able to own property, that we need to have less renters and more people that own property.

00:21:16.000 And at times there's an unexpected cost, and this is a thought experiment, and it's proven through data.

00:21:21.000 There's an unexpected cost to having development that prioritizes renting, especially development that goes over 5, 10, 15, 20 stories.

00:21:32.000 In fact, when you have concentrated population density, those areas tend to be a lot more liberal than areas that would be more suburban or rural.

00:21:41.000 Now, I said this, and I said it in a way that really bothered people, where I said that tall buildings can be a prerequisite towards a city all of a sudden taking a turn away from being a conservative city to a liberal city.

00:21:52.000 And they just like lost their mind.

00:21:54.000 Like, how dare you blame tall buildings?

00:21:56.000 I was like, okay, well, obviously I'm not blaming the height of the building, right?

00:21:59.000 I'm making an argument that population density and having people living on top of one another creates a couple of factors, like the tragedy of the commons.

00:22:09.000 When everyone owns something, nobody owns it.

00:22:12.000 And so you're not actually responsible for the dog park.

00:22:15.000 You're like 1 100th responsible for it.

00:22:17.000 And then all of a sudden you might be using more public transportation than driving yourself.

00:22:21.000 So you're not as like connected what gas prices might be or a car insurance payment.

00:22:25.000 Now, I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with those things, but they definitely foster an environment that make you look at things more collectively and less individually or kind of less in a way of what are all these different factors.

00:22:37.000 And you guys know this, when you rent, there's a way to find out, but a lot of people pay rent without actually looking at their bill.

00:22:42.000 You're usually immune, not immune, but you're not totally dialed into what the property taxes are and to kind of what all the other factors are.

00:22:49.000 You just kind of pay your rent and you move on.

00:22:51.000 But when you own a home, you know what your property tax bill is and you know whether or not property values are going up or not.

00:22:56.000 And so I said this, they lost their mind.

00:22:59.000 I totally stand by it.

00:22:59.000 I don't know why this is like such a triggering thing, but like we should try to encourage young people in particular to try to own homes and to try to actually be able to be in communities that are not as population dense as urban cities that I believe actually create liberal thinking habits and behavioral habits.

00:23:18.000 In fact, I mean, we have a lot of land in this country.

00:23:21.000 I think that we should encourage young people to quote unquote go west again.

00:23:24.000 Like to go on the frontier and to grow your own food and to actually be self-reliant and independent and not just be like, Uber 8 eats is down and I don't know how I'm going to feed myself.

00:23:34.000 And so I'm going to make another argument with this though, which is, you know, a little bit less, a little even more provocative.

00:23:40.000 Media Matters is going to love this, which is when you live in vertical housing units, you're a lot easier to control.

00:23:49.000 And you look at what's happening right now in Shanghai.

00:23:52.000 Shanghai is completely locked down from top to bottom because all you have to do is bar the door and you can control the movement of every single person in the building.

00:24:01.000 So that's just a technical thing, right?

00:24:04.000 If you could control a building, you can control every single person in that building.

00:24:07.000 It's a lot harder to control.

00:24:09.000 So if you have, let's say you have 250 apartments, and if you're able to control that building, you can control all the people in there.

00:24:15.000 That's a lot harder to actually control 250 suburban homes in a community that would be all spread out, right?

00:24:21.000 So you see that in Shanghai.

00:24:22.000 They can lock down 25 million people for the technical reasons are easier in that way.

00:24:28.000 Now, it's not obvious that you could still lock people down and control them if they're in single family homes, but it comes a lot harder.

00:24:34.000 It takes more manpower.

00:24:35.000 And it also, I think, in a lot of different ways, I think it has a psychological component to it as well.

00:24:42.000 So I stand by those comments.

00:24:44.000 I don't know why it's so controversial.

00:24:46.000 So I live in Phoenix.

00:24:47.000 Phoenix used to have height restrictions on their buildings.

00:24:50.000 Maricopa County, anyone from Phoenix, Arizona live there?

00:24:52.000 Maricopa County used to be the most conservative major county in America.

00:24:57.000 It's now flipping a little bit, unfortunately.

00:24:58.000 But because they had height restrictions, Maricopa County would always spread through East, West, North, and South development.

00:25:05.000 And it had the largest explosion per capita of single-family home development in the country because developers were capped at how high they could make the buildings.

00:25:14.000 And because of that, that actually made the valley, as we call it in Phoenix, more conservative.

00:25:19.000 Because young people were like, okay, I'm going to go buy a house instead of go buy a penthouse or whatever.

00:25:23.000 And your behavioral habits change.

00:25:25.000 And the data shows it.

00:25:27.000 Political scientists show that there's a decisive break between left-wing ideology and right-wing ideology when the population density changes between 800 person per square mile.

00:25:37.000 Okay, the second thing that I said, oh my goodness, I say these things and like all of a sudden these reporters start writing them and I don't think they actually, this is what I say.

00:25:44.000 So I'm going to clarify it.

00:25:45.000 So this, I read this headline and they say Charlie Kirk blames trans people for inflation.

00:25:50.000 I'm like, what are you?

00:25:52.000 What?

00:25:52.000 Like I never said that.

00:25:54.000 Let me tell you what I did say, okay?

00:25:56.000 Which is nothing even like remotely close.

00:25:59.000 I'm so dishonest to these people.

00:26:00.000 Here's what I said.

00:26:02.000 I said that if you are willing to believe in a certain worldview where things are not true, right?

00:26:09.000 Such as men can become pregnant or that biological reality can be changed, then you also might be likely to believe in economic things that are also not true, such as you can create money out of thin air and it will start to create wealth.

00:26:24.000 That's what I said.

00:26:25.000 And it's true, by the way, which is that if you do not have a, let's say, a coherent worldview based in reality, then you might be more likely to believe that, yeah, $7 trillion created out of thin air is somehow going to give us some sort of ticket to prosperity.

00:26:39.000 And that's why I think some of these more fundamental issues of kind of what is real, what is true, and what is good are super important.

00:26:45.000 It comes down to this idea of deconstructionism, though.

00:26:49.000 If you're able to deconstruct what we consider to be the laws of reality, then you are able to, I think, get closer to a place where people question everything.

00:26:59.000 And all of a sudden, they're like, yeah, well, maybe money's just a construct and we could create $8 trillion.

00:27:04.000 And who's to say?

00:27:05.000 Maybe inflation is just how you feel about things.

00:27:07.000 We think that's insane as conservatives, right?

00:27:10.000 We believe that creating money out of thin air is going to have dollar bills chasing value, not value chasing dollar bills.

00:27:17.000 And best articulated, we can go into this in QA if you want.

00:27:20.000 It's called modern monetary theory.

00:27:22.000 It's this plague on economic thought that has just totally spread over both political parties that believes you can inflate your way out of all the problems.

00:27:31.000 I believe that inflation is a tax on working people.

00:27:34.000 It's a tax on young people.

00:27:35.000 And inflation is a killer.

00:27:37.000 Inflation is a killer of a country, a nation, and a society.

00:27:41.000 Inflation is bad for everybody unless you're in the top 1% of 1% and you're able to allocate resources separately and you're able to differently.

00:27:50.000 You're able to move money around quickly and you're able to outpace your rate of return on top of that of inflation.

00:27:55.000 And it's especially dangerous inflation is for young people because by the time you guys graduate college, you guys can get into the workforce.

00:28:04.000 You're going to be a set of circumstances where everything costs three times as much.

00:28:08.000 Wages are not keeping up with inflation, not even close.

00:28:11.000 And I mean, I know some of you drove from all across Southern California here.

00:28:15.000 It costs like $180 to drive there and back.

00:28:19.000 And then, you know, your boss might give you a 2% or 3% raise.

00:28:23.000 And at some point, you're going to have to cut back on your spending or you're just going to go into debt.

00:28:30.000 Now, the other group of people that benefit from inflation are people that have incurred a lot of debt.

00:28:35.000 Those are people that actually benefit from inflation.

00:28:37.000 This is why corporations increased their borrowing during the virus by $600 billion.

00:28:44.000 They increased their borrowing.

00:28:45.000 Now, why would they do that?

00:28:47.000 Because they knew that they would never be able to get money this cheap again with interest rates that low, that even the growth rate will outpace the interest rate and will almost pay for itself long term.

00:28:56.000 And so basically overly leveraging their position, if you will, is what benefits their position.

00:29:03.000 So what a lot of you are now encountering, like, wait a second.

00:29:08.000 So you're trying to tell me that people that owned homes, they actually were, you know, or had mortgages, they're the big beneficiaries the last two years.

00:29:15.000 Your property value probably went up.

00:29:16.000 I don't know if that's the case in every community.

00:29:18.000 Probably did, especially in Orange County.

00:29:20.000 And then your debt burden, or let's say a $500,000 mortgage or a $600,000 mortgage, it actually has decreased the more dollar bills that we print because it's relative to how many dollars there are.

00:29:31.000 Because half a million dollars is not what it used to be, especially if it's 20% inflation year over year over year.

00:29:36.000 That is a, that disenfranchises students in particular.

00:29:40.000 Because now you're saying, wait a second, I need $75,000 just to make the down payment for a home that my parents used to be able to put $12,000 for a down pay to my home.

00:29:49.000 And so inflation is a silent killer of working people and young people.

00:29:53.000 So we believe in those pesky shackles of reality.

00:29:56.000 We believe we must be anchored to a natural law and things that do not change.

00:30:01.000 And this is, we don't have to overthink it.

00:30:03.000 We don't have to overcomplicate it.

00:30:04.000 Things such as money cannot be printed out of nowhere and create wealth.

00:30:09.000 We believe that we believe in something as simple as men are different than women.

00:30:15.000 We believe in certain things like human life is worthy of protection and preservation.

00:30:20.000 We believe a nation needs borders in order to be able to survive or else it ceases to be a country and it turns into a colony and kind of a mixture of all sorts of different factors that play into it.

00:30:30.000 These are principles that do not change despite what year or time or circumstance you are in.

00:30:36.000 And what really you're seeing right now is you're seeing a collection of people that are kind of wearing the jersey of team reality and people that are kind of on the woke side.

00:30:45.000 And here's the great opportunity and why I'm optimistic.

00:30:48.000 And then we'll get to questions.

00:30:49.000 When you start to have someone like Bill Maher and Joe Rogan, all of a sudden, like, I'm agreeing with them more than I'm disagreeing with them, there's something massive that is going to come in the next couple of years that is going to obliterate these woke people, the wokeys, I call them.

00:31:05.000 It's like, if you have Bill Maher, that's basically like, yeah, I think men and women are different and looting is wrong and defunding the police is a bad idea.

00:31:12.000 He is a little bit of a salty language.

00:31:16.000 And so, but has Bill Maher changed or has what it means to be a leftist in America radically changed in the last couple years?

00:31:23.000 And that's really the dividing line.

00:31:25.000 Do you believe that we have to operate within the framework of things that we can agree upon and then find ways to solve them?

00:31:31.000 Or do you want to just completely deconstruct everything that we've known to be true in humanity for as long as we've existed and think that you got it all figured out because you're a 20-year-old that took a sociology class at a local university?

00:31:44.000 Like, I figured it out because my professor said something that I've never heard before.

00:31:49.000 Like, actually, this is the problem.

00:31:51.000 It's a humility versus pride problem.

00:31:53.000 We as conservatives need to have the humility that there were a lot smarter people that wrote books, gave speeches, and governed societies before we were ever here.

00:32:02.000 And we have a lot to learn from those people.

00:32:05.000 And people that make promises of restructuring society and revolutionizing things, they're not just probably wrong, they're probably going to do a lot more damage than good.

00:32:14.000 And those people need to be stopped in their tracks.

00:32:17.000 And partners like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan and Bill Maher, I consider them to be incredibly exciting and helpful allies in this now new moment where it's like, okay, are we going to go in the direction where at least we recognize reality?

00:32:30.000 Or are we going to go say that we need to defund the police?

00:32:32.000 You know, that it's just gender is a social construct and all that.

00:32:35.000 That is the dividing line.

00:32:36.000 And my bet is that team reality is going to win.

00:32:39.000 Okay, let's do some questions, everybody.

00:32:41.000 And thanks for sitting through that.

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00:33:37.000 Take back control of your privacy by visiting squadpod.com/slash Charlie.

00:33:42.000 That is squadpod.com/slash Charlie.

00:33:48.000 All right, let me say something about QA before we get started.

00:33:51.000 So, this is a majority conservative audience, I would imagine, right?

00:33:56.000 So, if someone who is on the left or someone who disagrees comes up to ask a question, I ask you not to heckle or interrupt.

00:34:04.000 Show respect and show them the respect that they usually do not show us when we show up to events and public places.

00:34:11.000 So, please just be tolerant and to the extent of let them get their ideas out, and then we can respond appropriately, okay?

00:34:18.000 It takes courage to come up at a conservative event and let your voice be heard.

00:34:22.000 So, just show them that, and then we can respond from there.

00:34:25.000 Okay, the first question.

00:34:27.000 I was wondering if you could give some encouraging words to students who are being alienated by teachers, their communities, and their friends because of their Christian or conservative values.

00:34:39.000 That's a really important question.

00:34:41.000 So, students there, raise your hand if you think you've been graded differently or treated differently because of your beliefs.

00:34:45.000 Yeah, basically, every hand goes up.

00:34:48.000 That's right.

00:34:49.000 Marco says worth it.

00:34:50.000 Yeah, look, I want to say this.

00:34:51.000 So there's a disagreement on the right, and I have a lot of respect for Ben Shapiro, but he has a different answer than I do on this.

00:35:00.000 And I'll kind of say this.

00:35:01.000 So, Ben, and this is not precisely your question, but I'll incorporate it.

00:35:06.000 So, the question: here's the question: Do you lie on your term paper or how you present yourself to your professors to get a good grade?

00:35:13.000 That's a question a lot of people ask, right?

00:35:15.000 It's like it's easier to kind of hide and to not confront things.

00:35:18.000 So, Ben says yes.

00:35:20.000 Lie, misrepresent your beliefs, get the good grade, and get through college or high school.

00:35:25.000 I see it differently.

00:35:27.000 I do not believe getting a good grade is nearly as important as creating strong people filled with integrity, willing to fight for truth at all.

00:35:35.000 And so, now why am I bringing this up?

00:35:39.000 Because if you wanted to kind of, those of you that are conservative wanted to have an easier life, then just pretend to not be a conservative and just keep your head down and just pretend to be something that you're not and delete your social media.

00:35:50.000 I think there's a lot more important things in life than that.

00:35:53.000 So, the word of encouragement is this: first, something that is true that you don't want to hear, and then something that is true that you probably will want to hear.

00:36:01.000 It's never going to stop.

00:36:02.000 You will be harassed, called names, demonized, victimized.

00:36:06.000 You will be smeared and slandered.

00:36:08.000 You will lose a lot of your friends, and you'll doubt whether it's all worth it.

00:36:12.000 Sound fun, right?

00:36:14.000 Well, here's the second thing, though.

00:36:15.000 You will be a stronger, tougher, more resilient person that will look around at your peers one day while they're worried about whether or not they're being called the right pronouns.

00:36:25.000 And you will be, you will have your direction, you'll have resolve, you'll have an intestinal fortitude, you'll have gusto that will run circles around an increasingly fragile society, and you will have what is so lacking in America today: grittiness and toughness.

00:36:42.000 And that is something that I want to instill in every single young person.

00:36:44.000 So, yeah, it's going to be tough.

00:36:45.000 We here at Turning Point USA are here to help you get through that through our networking events, through our Young Women's Leadership Summit, through our chapter events, through events like this tonight, so you know you're not alone.

00:36:55.000 But we want to try to continue to rise up the citizen of young people and students to be able to take a stand.

00:37:00.000 But it's going to be tough, but it's worth it.

00:37:03.000 Thanks for being here tonight.

00:37:03.000 God bless you.

00:37:11.000 Hi, I wanted to ask: how would you advise that those of us who plan to stay in California effectively convince others to do the same, instilling the same passion to fight for conservative California instead of fleeing to other conservative states?

00:37:24.000 Yeah, it's a great question, right?

00:37:26.000 So, start local.

00:37:28.000 I think that for those of you that live in Orange County, take back Orange County.

00:37:31.000 Orange County is a great project.

00:37:33.000 Focus on it.

00:37:34.000 It's doable.

00:37:36.000 If you're not personally volunteering for local candidates, get involved.

00:37:40.000 Orange County is a great first step.

00:37:42.000 It really is, on a variety of ways, whether it be congressional involvement, whether it be city council, school board, super important.

00:37:50.000 Look, you're not going to be able to change the whole state in just one election cycle.

00:37:55.000 It's not going to happen.

00:37:56.000 I know a lot of people were upset with the results of the recall.

00:37:59.000 I certainly was.

00:38:00.000 But I really was in support of the recall then and now.

00:38:04.000 I thought it was a great thing to show the people in charge in Sacramento that they're at least still going to have to get up and pretend that they represent their voters, spend a bunch of money.

00:38:13.000 And I think it also invigorated a lot of you to get involved in the process that you otherwise would not have been involved in.

00:38:19.000 I thought it was a really beautiful thing.

00:38:21.000 So, and also, I just got to say that from a political standpoint, which is not something that I'll just talk about personally, not on behalf of Turning Point USA in this sense, which is if the races you get involved from a congressional standpoint in Orange County, they can and will determine the future of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.

00:38:40.000 So, all the while it might feel as if the state is lost, but there's five congressional districts in Orange County, or did they go down to four now with the new maps?

00:38:48.000 There's three now.

00:38:49.000 There used to be five, if I'm not mistaken, right?

00:38:51.000 Yeah, there's four.

00:38:52.000 So, those four, I don't know how they probably obliterated the maps, right?

00:38:56.000 But the direction of those four seats will be highly consequential to whether or not it'll be Speaker Pelosi or Republican Speaker of the House, right?

00:39:04.000 That's a very, very important dividing line.

00:39:07.000 Um, and so finally, I'll say with this, though, is that one of the keys to saving California is continually getting the churches to rise up and to speak truth.

00:39:17.000 And we have some pastors here in the audience that have done such an amazing job.

00:39:23.000 James Cadiz was here, Rob McCoy, Jack Hibbs, so many phenomenal people.

00:39:28.000 And then, look, if you believe California is your home and is your future, then don't allow someone to just automatically take your future and your home from you.

00:39:38.000 Fight for every inch.

00:39:39.000 And I believe that it's going to be a long-term project, but there's a lot more hope for California than I think people realize.

00:39:46.000 Thank you.

00:39:47.000 I appreciate it.

00:39:47.000 God bless you.

00:39:52.000 Hi, Darlie.

00:39:53.000 I'm the president of the Turning Point Chapter at Your Belinda High School.

00:39:53.000 My name is Jared.

00:40:01.000 So, last week on April 5th, in a 32 vote, my school board passed a resolution to ban critical race theory in my district.

00:40:11.000 So, my question is: what's the next steps to ensuring that we have a good education even after that ban?

00:40:18.000 That's great.

00:40:19.000 So, it's a two-part dance.

00:40:21.000 So, that's great.

00:40:22.000 Now, you need to say, okay, let's get pro-American curriculum in our schools.

00:40:26.000 So, what does that look like, right?

00:40:28.000 Hillsdale College has done a lot of work in this.

00:40:30.000 We're starting to do a lot at Turning Point USA.

00:40:32.000 But we have to teach people what is the American story?

00:40:35.000 What is the proper way to view American history?

00:40:37.000 What is America?

00:40:38.000 Was it a mistake?

00:40:40.000 Was it something that just kind of fell out of the sky?

00:40:42.000 There's just a couple things I'll share here that I think could really excite high school students that they're definitely not taught in school.

00:40:48.000 America was summoned into existence at a time and a place that is very unusual.

00:40:53.000 In fact, it's almost never happened before in human history.

00:40:55.000 Most civilizations or countries stumble into existence.

00:40:59.000 They're not summoned into existence.

00:41:01.000 I want you to think about that.

00:41:02.000 There was a decision to create America.

00:41:05.000 China just kind of existed and was kind of the Yangtze River Valley civilization.

00:41:08.000 It just kind of built into itself, Indus River Valley, into India, and so on and so forth.

00:41:12.000 But America was a group of people that made a decision, founding fathers, we have a set of principles.

00:41:18.000 We don't like what's happening.

00:41:19.000 We're going to declare independence of things that are always true.

00:41:22.000 And I'm afraid that most young people are not just being taught that even worse.

00:41:26.000 They're being taught the opposite.

00:41:27.000 They're being taught that the founding fathers were racist, bigoted slave owners, and they don't know their history.

00:41:31.000 They don't know that the first anti-slavery convention in America was hosted in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin in 1775.

00:41:37.000 They don't know that nine out of 13 states before the Constitution was ratified in 1787 had already independently abolished slavery.

00:41:45.000 A lot of young people are never taught that Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery in 1777, inspired by the Declaration of Independence.

00:41:52.000 So the next step is get your local school district to not just teach this, but inspire young people to be excited about the country they live in.

00:42:00.000 A lot of young people, I think, are unnecessarily depressed and negative about their life because they've been told the one thing that you have a yearning to associate with your country is awful.

00:42:11.000 Deep down, I think most people actually want to support their home.

00:42:15.000 And you kind of see that when you start to see like a Dodger's hat here and like a Ram's hat here.

00:42:20.000 Like that's a different way of kind of showing association that you care about where you're from.

00:42:25.000 Yet the one thing they're trying to get rid of is the jersey of America.

00:42:28.000 Like, and that's something I think that excites people.

00:42:31.000 It creates happier lives.

00:42:33.000 It creates stronger communities.

00:42:34.000 And all of a sudden, you're like, you know what?

00:42:36.000 I, here in California, have a direct connection to a time where people decided to say that self-government was a moral issue and that separation of powers and consent to the governed was worthy of protection and preservation, and they were willing to do something about it.

00:42:50.000 I think that actually creates a much happier country to live in than one where you think everything is racist, bigoted, awful, colonialistic, homophobic, and backwards.

00:42:58.000 At some point, that only way you could solve that question is to revolutionize the country.

00:43:03.000 And that's what they're trying to get young people to do.

00:43:05.000 It's like if all that buildup was nothing but evil, then you might as well just burn it all down to the ground.

00:43:10.000 So we as conservatives, and to answer your question in your Belinda, the home of Richard Nixon, if I'm not mistaken, right? Is to do this, which is to say to your local school district, we want to create a curriculum that creates grateful and informed citizens and an informed sense of patriotism.

00:43:28.000 That is not political.

00:43:30.000 That is essential to the survival of the country.

00:43:32.000 Thanks for being here tonight.

00:43:33.000 God bless you.

00:43:39.000 Hey, Charlie, my name is Jonathan.

00:43:41.000 I go to Casa Fullerton.

00:43:42.000 And I guess I have a simple question.

00:43:45.000 Like in a family full of like conservatives, we're kind of the minority in the grand family.

00:43:51.000 I just want to know how I can converse with the rest of my family, being like liberal, and especially my friends as well, without obviously causing discourse and too much hurt, I guess.

00:44:02.000 Yeah, well, never be the source of hurt.

00:44:04.000 That's my first piece of advice.

00:44:06.000 So don't be the one to call names or, you know, try to disassociate from people.

00:44:11.000 But I think every conservative here in this audience would agree that you lost friends, but they left you.

00:44:16.000 You didn't leave them.

00:44:18.000 And that's, I never support the severing of friendships over politics, but I'm also realistic.

00:44:22.000 It happens all the time where people stop being friends with you because of politics.

00:44:26.000 I bet every single person in this room could resonate with that.

00:44:30.000 So look, this is a situation where you're going to have to balance: are you going to tell the truth when there might be a consequence to it, right?

00:44:38.000 And it's also how you say it.

00:44:40.000 It's also how you communicate it.

00:44:42.000 Having that balance of 100% grace with 100% truth, trying to be magnanimous in how you communicate, I think is really, really important.

00:44:49.000 But also, you know, understanding that in family dynamics, you have to prioritize whether or not you want the family to kind of stay together, whether or not you want to make a political point.

00:45:03.000 And I don't say this advice lightly.

00:45:05.000 There's some politics that should, there's some families that should never discuss politics.

00:45:09.000 And there's an argument for that.

00:45:10.000 It's like they're so rigid in their beliefs, it's just going to cause a civil war.

00:45:15.000 Now, some people say, you know what?

00:45:17.000 I'm going to, you know, say what I want to say.

00:45:19.000 And I know, personally, dozens of examples of parents that don't talk to children anymore.

00:45:24.000 I think that's really unhealthy.

00:45:25.000 I think it's not good at all.

00:45:27.000 But it's a balance.

00:45:28.000 I think that everyone should know where you stand.

00:45:31.000 And then the final piece of advice is go to work on the family members where there's a little bit of openness.

00:45:36.000 If you believe that you're right, if we believe we're right, then start to send articles, ask questions, start to understand their, you know, their points of where they think that they view the world in a certain way.

00:45:46.000 Like, well, I just want to help people.

00:45:48.000 Like, okay, then start to find things where all of a sudden left-wing policies are not helping people, right?

00:45:53.000 Like, how exactly does it help people when the border's wide open and women are being sex trafficked across there every single day?

00:45:58.000 How does that help people exactly?

00:45:59.000 And start to ask those questions.

00:46:01.000 But and then with your friends, I mean, I kind of answered that already.

00:46:04.000 Just, you know, you're probably going to lose friends and they'll probably continue.

00:46:08.000 And also know the difference between good faith arguments and bad faith arguments.

00:46:12.000 Do not waste your time in bad faith arguments.

00:46:14.000 Just don't.

00:46:14.000 If people are just putting their hands in their ears saying, I don't want to hear anymore, just disengage.

00:46:18.000 But if people are really curious and they're dialoguing with you, that's worth your time.

00:46:22.000 But don't waste your time.

00:46:23.000 And you could use your own prudence and your wisdom to navigate that.

00:46:26.000 Thanks for being here tonight.

00:46:27.000 Appreciate it.

00:46:33.000 Hey, Charlie, I loved your comment about how you said we should encourage younger people to invest and like buy property and buy land.

00:46:41.000 Recently, Florida's governor Bron DeSantis, he passed SB, I think, 1044.

00:46:48.000 I forgot the exact name.

00:46:49.000 He wants to encourage, or he wants to teach financial literacy.

00:46:52.000 Is that something it's kind of surprising because I've seen a poll that said a lot of parents disagreed with schools teaching financial literacy.

00:47:00.000 And do you think that's something that as a nation can be pushed forward and financial literacy can be taught across all schools?

00:47:07.000 Yeah, I mean, it depends what the devil's in the details are.

00:47:10.000 What do they mean by financial literacy, right?

00:47:12.000 If the federal government is teaching us about financial literacy, certainly exactly.

00:47:17.000 Trust them on that.

00:47:18.000 Couldn't balance a budget to save their lives, right?

00:47:20.000 So, but no, I think financial literacy is super important.

00:47:23.000 But here's the thing is that, so if you go, if you take a financial literacy textbook from 2003 or whatever, right?

00:47:30.000 They'll say saving is good.

00:47:31.000 Save as much money as you can, right?

00:47:32.000 That's probably something you were taught in financial literacy.

00:47:35.000 That's actually really bad advice right now.

00:47:37.000 Like you shouldn't be saving money right now.

00:47:39.000 You're going to lose it.

00:47:41.000 You're like, what do you mean?

00:47:42.000 Inflation.

00:47:42.000 Like, you're getting poorer every day that money's in a bank account.

00:47:46.000 So, yeah, people need to know that.

00:47:48.000 That's really important.

00:47:49.000 Now, I hope and I wish for a set of economic circumstances that reward good behavior and don't reward bad behavior.

00:47:56.000 Saving is a good behavior.

00:47:58.000 We should have a society that does reward saving.

00:48:00.000 But right now we don't, right?

00:48:02.000 Now people get actively poor when they have cash sitting in their bank account.

00:48:05.000 And so to kind of piggyback on this, I do support financial literacy.

00:48:10.000 I think it's super important.

00:48:12.000 The lack thereof is unbelievable to me.

00:48:14.000 I think that a lot of the financial models kind of prey on young people and their illiteracy when it comes to credit cards and debt and all of that.

00:48:21.000 And the first thing is, this is why I can't believe this is not a law.

00:48:26.000 I want to start with financial literacy.

00:48:27.000 Like, okay, you want to go borrow $80,000 to go to some school to study some kind of super fringe degree?

00:48:32.000 Like, can we put some more checks and balances in for that?

00:48:35.000 Like, before you actually know what you're signing up for?

00:48:38.000 There was an amazing poll that showed like 45 to 50% of young people are borrowing money, student loan debt, without their parents understanding how much money it actually is or their payment plan post-graduation.

00:48:49.000 That's insane.

00:48:51.000 The way it used to work is you had to go dress up in a suit and tie and go to your local community bank, and you'd have to persuade a banker to give you a loan to be able to go to college.

00:48:59.000 And you know what they would say?

00:49:00.000 Show me your grades.

00:49:01.000 What are you going to study?

00:49:02.000 And how are you going to pay our bank back?

00:49:04.000 And now you can go borrow $80,000 in your pajamas from your basement.

00:49:09.000 And your parents might not even know that.

00:49:12.000 And so, yeah, I'm a big supporter and an advocate of getting more people financially literate.

00:49:17.000 And finally, to be able to have young people own property is what we would call a conservatizing event.

00:49:25.000 Of people that own homes, they don't go burn Wendy's.

00:49:30.000 They don't.

00:49:31.000 When you have a mortgage, you don't go march in the streets against like systemic inequality, like you have responsibility.

00:49:36.000 We need to try to create a set of circumstances more young people have responsibility in their lives.

00:49:42.000 The first of which is, do you own property?

00:49:44.000 Like, do you own something that eventually could get more valuable and you have a reason to keep going to work?

00:49:49.000 When you're renting, that's not always the case.

00:49:52.000 And so, and then you might say, well, Charlie, I own a car.

00:49:54.000 Well, that's a depreciating asset.

00:49:56.000 Well, actually, not anymore.

00:49:57.000 Amazingly, used cars are not a depreciating asset.

00:49:59.000 Everything's upside down, right?

00:50:00.000 Remember the financial literacy stuff?

00:50:02.000 It's like the more you drive it, it's actually getting more value.

00:50:04.000 It's so strange.

00:50:06.000 It's not sustainable.

00:50:08.000 I'm just giving you a warning.

00:50:09.000 This stuff is not when you have cars that have 60,000 miles on them going more than what a used car did two years ago.

00:50:15.000 That's like a fire alarm.

00:50:16.000 Something ain't right.

00:50:17.000 I'm telling you.

00:50:18.000 Not sustainable.

00:50:19.000 Thank you for your question.

00:50:20.000 Appreciate it.

00:50:25.000 Hi, Charlie.

00:50:26.000 My name's Kiara, and I'm the president of the Turning Point USA chapter at San Diego State University.

00:50:32.000 Thank you.

00:50:35.000 As we enter into yet another very important election cycle, and with campaign ads popping up left and right, I find myself feeling torn on the Citizens United versus FEC ruling.

00:50:48.000 My question is: what is the conservative approach to the Supreme Court's ruling that corporations' spending on campaign election communications can be unlimited, that corporations are people, and that their spending doesn't need to be regulated?

00:51:04.000 Yes, so let me let me walk you through the great question, by the way.

00:51:06.000 And you do a wonderful job.

00:51:07.000 You gave one of the best school board speeches I've seen, by the way.

00:51:10.000 You did a phenomenal job.

00:51:11.000 You really did.

00:51:12.000 So it's a great question.

00:51:15.000 So let's go through the lawsuit.

00:51:17.000 The lawsuit was an organization called Citizens United, run by David Bossey, and it was about a movie, actually.

00:51:22.000 The question was whether or not a movie that attacks a political candidate is political speech that needs to be regulated by the Federal Election Commission.

00:51:31.000 So it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court.

00:51:31.000 Okay?

00:51:34.000 And there was a couple of questions I want you to think about before I get to the opinion.

00:51:39.000 And a lot of the, even left-wingers will agree that there might be some problems here.

00:51:42.000 Where there was a question in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:51:46.000 Someone asked, they said, wait a second, would you consider, for example, a book written unfavorably about Hillary Clinton to be political speech that should be regulated?

00:51:58.000 And they said yes.

00:52:00.000 So I think that's incredibly dangerous.

00:52:02.000 I think that if all of a sudden my podcast, my radio program, my articles, and my books will start regulated as if it's a campaign ad on television, I think there's something very wrong with that.

00:52:14.000 In fact, that's what would have been the standard.

00:52:16.000 We would have expanded a speech bureaucracy that would go after anyone, any person, any time, and say that's the equivalent of running an ad on television.

00:52:24.000 That's the equivalent of running a 30-second ad.

00:52:27.000 That is an attack on journalism, on commentary, and speech.

00:52:30.000 But you do bring up a good point, which I will say, I do not think it's healthy, nor do I think it's sustainable to have major corporations that, whether it be the pharmaceutical corporations or labor unions or kind of public sector unions or tech oligarchs like Reed Hastings or Reid Hoffman or any one of the big tech billionaires,

00:52:54.000 Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, be able to parachute in and completely basically carpet bomb a race and make it where it matters less of what the candidate's message is and it's just who's going to get the more outside money.

00:53:06.000 Now, this is an important point.

00:53:08.000 The left, they're always trying to repeal Citizens United.

00:53:12.000 So basically, the decision of Cities United was: you can spend as much money as you want, no matter what, there'll be no restriction on it.

00:53:18.000 Now, because of that, believe it or not, the left has always been trying to get rid of that.

00:53:18.000 Okay?

00:53:23.000 In 2020, left-wing groups spent $1.5 billion.

00:53:28.000 Conservative groups spent $900 million.

00:53:31.000 So it's actually the left that has been using this more in recent years, understanding they can pump a lot of what's called dark money into the system and trying to change persuasion and outcomes and all this.

00:53:42.000 Let me just talk about from like a health of society standpoint.

00:53:45.000 I don't like it.

00:53:47.000 I do not like the idea that someone can just parachute in with $500 million, like $400 million, like Mark Zuckerberg, and change the way elections themselves are actually done.

00:53:57.000 So what is the conservative approach?

00:53:59.000 I think the conservative approach should be the following: that you make sure that political speech by individuals, commentators, podcasts, authors, and movies are protected no matter what.

00:54:08.000 That is not political speech.

00:54:09.000 However, I would support a law that is common sense and transparent that would say that if you're going to donate, you must be disclosed within 24 hours, that there's no more anonymous donations.

00:54:20.000 We must know where it's coming from.

00:54:22.000 No more like giving through shell stuff or dark money.

00:54:24.000 We want to be able to see it.

00:54:26.000 And I do think that a reasonable cap on money and racist is something that I think would actually de-radicalize our politics.

00:54:32.000 When all of a sudden we're starting to say that the Pennsylvania Senate race is going to be an $185 million Senate race and Wisconsin's going to be a $110 million Senate race, what then ends up happening?

00:54:43.000 Unfortunately, massive corporations that don't always have our country's best interests at heart, like Disney, will come in and start to run ads.

00:54:50.000 And then candidates will then be beholden to those corporations to not represent their voters, but instead the people that drop the biggest ad spend towards the end of the campaign.

00:54:58.000 And I don't think that's a good thing.

00:54:59.000 In fact, I think we can have common cause on the left.

00:55:02.000 So I'm worried that if we just blanket say, yeah, you know, repeal that decision, political speech from people like me would then soon be regulated.

00:55:09.000 But I do think that a common sense middle ground could be found where all of a sudden we try to make it seem, where we say there has to be some form of transparency and regulation with the amount of money pouring into some of these races.

00:55:20.000 And I don't know about you.

00:55:21.000 I'm so sick and tired of seeing these political ads already.

00:55:23.000 It is exhausting.

00:55:25.000 I don't think it's good to constantly see negative political ads about how awful things are on this person.

00:55:30.000 And I don't think it's healthy or good.

00:55:31.000 Thank you for your question.

00:55:32.000 You're doing a great job.

00:55:33.000 Thank you.

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00:57:27.000 So Charlie, you've been a very strong supporter of President Trump, but when lockdowns descended on our country two years ago, President Trump did not take a strong stand for freedom.

00:57:37.000 He consistently refused to fire Dr. Fauci.

00:57:40.000 On March 20th, 2020, he gave a press conference where he said that Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo locking down their states.

00:57:47.000 He said they're taking bold, strong steps, and I applaud them.

00:57:50.000 On April 22nd, he criticized Brian Kemp for reopening Georgia.

00:57:54.000 And he also attacked Thomas Massey for criticizing the $2 trillion CARES Act, which has contributed at least as much to this inflationary crisis as anything Biden's done.

00:58:02.000 So when Trump did not stand up for our liberties, why should we stand for him as opposed to, say, Ron DeSantis in 2024?

00:58:09.000 Okay.

00:58:10.000 Fair question.

00:58:11.000 So let me just first take my opinion.

00:58:14.000 Let's just so you know where I stand.

00:58:15.000 So I wrote a book that was published in February 2020 called The MAGA Doctrine, defending Trump and his policies and all that.

00:58:22.000 You're right.

00:58:23.000 And then, with all of that, I came out in March and April saying that this Fauci guy's got to go.

00:58:29.000 I was against lockdowns, federal spending.

00:58:30.000 So, I've been consistent all the way through, even publicly disagreeing with the Trump administration.

00:58:36.000 I think Trump's instincts were right.

00:58:37.000 I will push back a little bit.

00:58:38.000 I think his instincts were right.

00:58:40.000 And I think he was suffocated and unfortunately overwhelmed by a deep state medical bureaucracy that scared the living daylights out of him.

00:58:49.000 And I believe that he probably has some form of regret that he would have handled things a little bit differently.

00:58:55.000 Now, I'm not defending it because I think the lockdowns were the worst mistake in American history.

00:58:59.000 I think they did more damage than we'll ever know.

00:59:01.000 And I think also the pushing of the vaccine on the American population is something that will be studied for years to come.

00:59:07.000 That I think in a lot of different ways, we still do not know the entire story behind that, especially from a mandatory perspective.

00:59:14.000 And in Trump's defense, he never supported mandatory vaccines.

00:59:17.000 Now, with the Fauci thing, firing Fauci, I think, would have been a mistake.

00:59:24.000 But that doesn't mean that I don't think he should have been handled.

00:59:26.000 You should have put Fauci on a 30-person committee and sent him off to the hinterlands and have him be on some form of bureaucracy where they just meet all year and issue a report.

00:59:35.000 Firing Fauci would have made him into a cable news pundit, and he immediately would have been able to go on TV all the time and would have been the, I told you so, they fired me.

00:59:43.000 I think it would have created a bigger liability.

00:59:45.000 But I agree.

00:59:46.000 He should have been sent off, you know, to like, you know, the CDC office in Fairbanks, Alaska, to, you know, investigate pathogens and polar bears.

00:59:55.000 So your question is, why should...

00:59:56.000 So, and finally, you asked a question, a hypothetical question in 2024.

01:00:02.000 So I'm going to talk personally on this, not on behalf of Turning Point USA, on the political side of this.

01:00:08.000 It's pretty clear Trump is going to run in 2024.

01:00:11.000 And people have mixed opinions on that.

01:00:13.000 Ron DeSantis may or may not run.

01:00:15.000 I am Ron DeSantis' biggest cheerleader.

01:00:17.000 I think he's phenomenal.

01:00:18.000 I think he's America's greatest governor.

01:00:20.000 I think he's terrific.

01:00:23.000 So I've said this before, and everyone will have their own opinions on this.

01:00:28.000 That issue aside, which I would give, you know, I believe Trump did more good than bad, and you've seen how bad Biden did on that particular issue.

01:00:37.000 We definitely have to look at the totality of the presidency as a whole.

01:00:41.000 And he had our country.

01:00:42.000 We were experiencing a blue-collar boom.

01:00:44.000 We were energy independent.

01:00:45.000 The southern border was under control.

01:00:46.000 Putin wasn't invading countries.

01:00:48.000 I could go on and on and on.

01:00:50.000 The question is, did he earn a chance to be able to run for a second term?

01:00:54.000 I believe, given the shenanigans in 2020, the mail-in ballots going in every single direction, and all of this, I believe, at the very least, he needs to be given an uninterrupted case to tell the Republican base why he wants a second term and what he would do differently.

01:01:10.000 And I've already said he has my support if he runs again in 2024.

01:01:13.000 There's no mystery behind that.

01:01:14.000 With that being said, Ron DeSantis, I believe, very well could be a once-in-a-generation political statesman.

01:01:19.000 I believe Ron DeSantis could be in the mold of Churchill, Lincoln, and Washington.

01:01:23.000 But I said, I think, but here's what I know.

01:01:25.000 I know Donald Trump was a phenomenal president.

01:01:27.000 I know that he fulfilled his promises, and I know he would do it again.

01:01:30.000 Thank you for being here.

01:01:31.000 I appreciate it.

01:01:38.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:01:39.000 So my name is Max Mickelson.

01:01:40.000 I'm the chapter president of Orange County School of the Arts, Turning Point Chapter.

01:01:45.000 And that's like a radical right-wing university, right?

01:01:52.000 So earlier this year, as you may have heard from my friend Alex LaRusso, ALX, I started a chapter there.

01:02:00.000 We were egged, harassed, vandalized, had basically threatened attacks from administration, all kinds of things.

01:02:08.000 So I kind of have a two-part question.

01:02:11.000 First question is, do you think Elon Musk will free Alex?

01:02:16.000 So yeah, ALX is banned from Twitter.

01:02:18.000 I think so.

01:02:18.000 If Elon sorts this out, I support that.

01:02:21.000 And hopefully, he'll free me too.

01:02:23.000 Thank you.

01:02:24.000 And my more serious question is: what's your message to, I'm always trying to recruit people to the chapter, and a lot of the response I get is: oh, I don't want to be harassed.

01:02:33.000 I don't want to lose friends.

01:02:33.000 I don't want to be egged, basically.

01:02:37.000 And so, what would be your message to people who believe in conservative ideas, want to get involved, but I guess don't want to suffer the backlash that comes with it?

01:02:46.000 Yeah, that's, I mean, it kind of goes to the first question, right?

01:02:49.000 Which is, you're going to get it.

01:02:50.000 It's worth it.

01:02:50.000 Hold the line and strengthen your resolve.

01:02:54.000 I would love to go speak at one of these art schools.

01:02:57.000 And I'll tell you why.

01:02:59.000 The left has destroyed art in our country in a way that I don't think we can actually appreciate.

01:03:05.000 And this is kind of like one of my kind of, you would say, kind of like unexpected kind of focuses.

01:03:13.000 I think that our society has become so aesthetically ugly the more the left has taken things over, from architecture to what we consider to be art to music to dramas to this garbage they call television at night.

01:03:29.000 And so I believe art should try to strive towards the divine, the beautiful, the good, and the true.

01:03:36.000 There's two rules in architecture that used to exist in Western society.

01:03:40.000 You should try to have buildings that point upwards to God, and the circle is the perfect shape because it has no beginning or end, just like God.

01:03:48.000 Very two simple rules.

01:03:49.000 We get away.

01:03:50.000 You just look at Western architecture now.

01:03:52.000 It's just an amalgamation of like the very same deconstruction, the deconstruction ideology that we're seeing right now.

01:03:59.000 And so there's one of my favorite people to follow.

01:04:01.000 He passed away recently, is Roger Scruton.

01:04:03.000 He was amazing.

01:04:03.000 He talked a lot about objective beauty.

01:04:05.000 And it also talks about more fundamental things, which is do we believe there are such things as objective standards?

01:04:10.000 You didn't ask anything about this.

01:04:12.000 I'm just, you know, kind of riffing on it.

01:04:14.000 But I'm sure you love it.

01:04:16.000 But that's what's so interesting is that actually where these discussions are the most robust is in the art school, right?

01:04:22.000 So the question is: do you believe like a signed urinal is art and beautiful?

01:04:26.000 This was a question in the 1920s.

01:04:28.000 I can't remember.

01:04:29.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

01:04:30.000 Duchamp, that's right.

01:04:31.000 Marshall Duchamp, where he signed a urinal.

01:04:33.000 I don't think that's art.

01:04:34.000 I think that's a place to relieve yourself.

01:04:39.000 But that was considered to be art.

01:04:40.000 And I think that's actually directly connected to a lot of the philosophical deconstruction that we're living through right now, right?

01:04:46.000 If all of a sudden, you know, art is nothing more than what your own opinion of what is beautiful, well, then why can't you also have all these kind of other societal cancers all of a sudden start to infect every single portion of American society?

01:04:58.000 So, okay, so what do you say to friends that don't want to get involved?

01:05:02.000 Look, you can only push them so far, but it's all about leadership.

01:05:05.000 It really is.

01:05:06.000 And so if you're the leader, you know, you're going to have to say, hey, I'll take the hits for you.

01:05:10.000 Just help me out.

01:05:11.000 Try to be part of it.

01:05:12.000 And so there's two types of people.

01:05:13.000 You could be a George Washington or you could be a John Hancock.

01:05:16.000 George Washington went right into battle, stared the bullets in the eye, and went straight into there.

01:05:20.000 John Hancock, of course, we know he signed the Declaration.

01:05:23.000 No mystery he was involved, but he never wore a uniform of the Continental Army and was the number one financier of the effort.

01:05:29.000 There's people that are the fighters and the people that help the fighters.

01:05:32.000 And both are equally important.

01:05:34.000 So if people are afraid to get involved, be like, hey, can you be a covert graphic designer for our Turning Point USA chapter?

01:05:40.000 Something would tell me you guys would probably come up with some of the coolest memes in the world at your school.

01:05:46.000 So there's a lot of different ways to get people involved, but you as a leader are the most important thing.

01:05:51.000 We have a crisis of leadership right now in our country.

01:05:53.000 George S. Patton had a great quote, which is lead, follower, get out of the way.

01:05:58.000 And leadership is hard, but a lot of people think they want to be leaders, but in reality, they just want the perks of leadership, right?

01:06:04.000 They want the corner office, the Instagram followers, the chauffeur car, but they don't really want to work till 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning to go reach a deadline, make payroll, borrow money, fire, hire people.

01:06:15.000 They don't want to have to do that.

01:06:17.000 Leadership is hard, but it's necessary because it requires you to take responsibility.

01:06:22.000 A leader is someone who does not point any fingers except themselves when things go wrong.

01:06:27.000 And that's what you're doing as a turning point USA chapter leader.

01:06:29.000 So, God bless you, man.

01:06:30.000 Thank you so much.

01:06:31.000 I appreciate it.

01:06:39.000 Hello, Charlie Kirk.

01:06:40.000 My name is Michael, a student here at CSU Fortin and a member of the TPUSA Club at Foreton.

01:06:46.000 Thank you very much for coming.

01:06:47.000 I greatly enjoyed the speech.

01:06:49.000 Anyway, so my question: With foreign leaders being in power for decades to even a lifetime, and with the presidency in the United States being changed out every four to eight years, how do you effectively deter and combat a foreign entity when they could essentially just wait it out for a president who is much more lenient on foreign policy?

01:07:11.000 Because four to eight years compared to a lifetime is a drop in the bucket.

01:07:14.000 Sure, that's a good question.

01:07:15.000 So there's benefits and there's disadvantages to having term limits.

01:07:19.000 I think the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

01:07:22.000 Let me kind of give you a very obvious one.

01:07:25.000 If you have a really bad leader, you should have a way to get rid of that leader, right?

01:07:28.000 That's a pretty obvious one, right?

01:07:30.000 We believe in checks and balances.

01:07:32.000 That's a fundamental moral good, we believe.

01:07:34.000 It's part of what it means to actually have self-government in the West, to be able to check and balance against bad leaders.

01:07:40.000 But you bring up a point, right?

01:07:41.000 Which is, you know, how do you fight back against Iran or Russia or China that can just wait it out?

01:07:48.000 The answer to your question is exactly why the deep state was built and how they justified it, and it was used against us.

01:07:57.000 So to answer your question, in the 1960s, we all complained about the deep state, but we never actually asked the question, why was the deep state created?

01:08:03.000 Yeah, it was sort of control things and all this, but they weren't actually, they weren't doing it in secret in the 60s.

01:08:07.000 They said, listen, we're up against foreign adversaries that are there forever.

01:08:10.000 We need to create a permanent bureaucracy in Langley, Virginia that runs the Central Intelligence Agency, formerly OSS, and they'll always be there.

01:08:17.000 Therefore, they'll be the ones that will actually be able to be sustained.

01:08:21.000 Yeah, except what happens when they become corrupt to the core and spy on a sitting president of the United States, you know, start to leak information illegally, and they actually go against the will of the people, right?

01:08:29.000 So I would only push back to your question in one regard.

01:08:32.000 We kind of do have a permanent bureaucracy in our country, right?

01:08:36.000 We just have kind of different people that come in to try to manage it.

01:08:39.000 Does that make sense?

01:08:40.000 Where it's like, we have, yeah, we have a new president, but the FBI doesn't change.

01:08:44.000 Like, DOJ doesn't change.

01:08:45.000 The IRS doesn't change.

01:08:47.000 And look, I will say this: that, you know, there's a temptation to be like, oh, yeah, a dictator could just fix these problems.

01:08:55.000 They can wave a one.

01:08:56.000 I know that's not what you're saying at times, but I think that we need to do everything we possibly can to resist that.

01:09:02.000 That separation of powers and believing that a single person should not have the dominance over the many, that the many need to rule the few, the few should not rule the many, is something that will actually allow the civilization to survive a lot longer than the Potempkin village of the Chinese Communist Party.

01:09:19.000 So CCP or Saudi Arabia or Iran or Russia might be able to wait it out, but they're actually sitting on a much more, I would say, destructive set of circumstances because I do not believe dictatorships are sustainable long term.

01:09:36.000 I don't.

01:09:36.000 I think they can be passed down, but eventually there'll be fault lines, divisions, civil war, and hopefully a citizen-led movement to displace them.

01:09:44.000 So thank you.

01:09:44.000 I appreciate it.

01:09:52.000 Hi, how are you?

01:09:53.000 I'm a huge fan.

01:09:54.000 My name is Gabby, and I am here to ask you a question.

01:10:00.000 How many believe that California needs help in saving California?

01:10:05.000 Well, I believe that we need help in getting Newsom out.

01:10:09.000 And so my question to you is: I obviously support this candidate right here.

01:10:14.000 So I was wondering, and I wanted to ask you, what are your thoughts on Anthony Tromino?

01:10:20.000 And if you were still living in California, what are your thoughts on him?

01:10:26.000 And I met Anthony.

01:10:28.000 So I'll answer this personally, not on behalf of Turning Point.

01:10:30.000 I have to separate the two because we want to keep the event educational in nature.

01:10:34.000 So I'll just give you my own personal belief.

01:10:37.000 So yeah, I think High Leave Anthony.

01:10:39.000 I had a chance to pray with him up in Rockland.

01:10:41.000 Don't know enough about the other candidates to endorse yet, but pretty impressive guy, I got to say.

01:10:45.000 Awesome family, very articulate, very charismatic.

01:10:48.000 But yeah, haven't made my mind up yet.

01:10:52.000 But in the recall, I was a big elder guy.

01:10:54.000 I'm a big fan of Larry Elder.

01:10:55.000 I know he's not running again, but I made my allegiance there.

01:10:59.000 But I will say that to Anthony's credit, he is some of the most passionate and dedicated grassroots volunteers I've seen in a candidacy in quite some time.

01:11:08.000 They were up at Berkeley tabling yesterday.

01:11:10.000 Like, it's pretty amazing.

01:11:11.000 UC Berkeley campus.

01:11:13.000 Like, there's some resolve to that.

01:11:14.000 So, and I got to say, the one thing I am convicted by personally, spending time with Anthony, he really has a heart for this state and to turn it around.

01:11:22.000 So, you're supporting a good man.

01:11:24.000 Thank you.

01:11:24.000 I appreciate that.

01:11:30.000 Good evening, Charlie.

01:11:32.000 My name is Johnny, and I'm an MBA student at Cal State Fortune.

01:11:35.000 And like many other students and conservatives here, I believe this movement that we're starting is created at the grassroots level, which in turn starts in the classroom.

01:11:44.000 So, my question to you is this: What do you feel is the biggest problem in the collegiate education system?

01:11:49.000 And how do we fix this moving forward if we wish for our movement to continue to gain ground?

01:11:55.000 Yeah, man.

01:11:55.000 I mean, the biggest problem with the collegiate education system is the collegiate education system.

01:12:00.000 I mean, it's top to bottom, rotten to the core.

01:12:03.000 College is right for some people.

01:12:05.000 It's not right for most people.

01:12:06.000 It just isn't.

01:12:07.000 It's a racket and a cartel for a lot of people.

01:12:10.000 I have a book coming out called The College Scam, where I put forward a 10-count indictment against the current state of college that I think will blow you away.

01:12:18.000 So, for example, you know, I'm not going to put you on the spot, but I just want you to think for a second: you know, what do you think the national graduation rate from college is?

01:12:26.000 It's 59%.

01:12:27.000 Raise your hand if you know someone that dropped out of college.

01:12:29.000 Every hand goes up.

01:12:31.000 41% of people that go to college don't graduate.

01:12:33.000 That's demoralizing.

01:12:34.000 They leave with debt.

01:12:35.000 They leave with less direction.

01:12:37.000 They never should have gone to college in the first place.

01:12:39.000 Now, that's only one part of it, not to mention the student loan burdens, right?

01:12:43.000 Where people are borrowing money they don't have to study things that don't matter, to find jobs that don't exist, to go into a job market where everything's hyper-inflated, where that piece of paper means less and less and less.

01:12:52.000 A vast majority of people going to college are not trying to get their MBA, which is a great reason to go to college as long as it's not completely woke.

01:12:59.000 But they're getting sociology degrees.

01:13:01.000 They're getting degrees that don't exactly have a highly, let's say, a very competitive kind of standpoint to what that degree would be, especially where people are looking to hire right now.

01:13:13.000 We need more people in the muscular class in America.

01:13:17.000 We need more plumbers, electricians, and welders, and police officers, and firefighters, and entrepreneurs.

01:13:24.000 And we need to not demean them or diminish them.

01:13:27.000 We need to elevate muscular labor in our country.

01:13:30.000 If you ask me, we have way more than enough people that studied North African lesbian poetry in the last couple of years and that have this huge debt burden, and they don't really know where their place is.

01:13:45.000 So, look, top to bottom, college is doing a lot of damage to our country.

01:13:49.000 I wish that wasn't the case.

01:13:50.000 I don't think it has to be the case.

01:13:52.000 College can be awesome.

01:13:53.000 Hillsdale College is a great example of that.

01:13:55.000 If every college like Hillsdale College, I'd have a completely different opinion.

01:13:58.000 I've spent time at Hillsdale College.

01:14:00.000 I've got to know Dr. Larry Arm.

01:14:02.000 You know what they try to do from day one?

01:14:04.000 They tell you that you don't know everything, and there's something here at this college that's special, and you're going to go on a journey to discover it.

01:14:10.000 They also say this.

01:14:11.000 They say, we're going to complete the whole human being, the mind, body, and soul.

01:14:15.000 We're going to read things that are ancient and beautiful and good, and you're going to really wrestle with the most important ideas and topics.

01:14:21.000 That doesn't happen a lot at universities anymore.

01:14:23.000 Instead, it's, hey, you have your own opinion of truth.

01:14:26.000 Who's to say what is good and beautiful?

01:14:29.000 And kind of just go have fun along the way.

01:14:32.000 So, look, not to mention, I just want to say this about college in general, is that for parents out there, just be very, you know, pray about this and be filled with wisdom.

01:14:42.000 If you're pushing your child to go to college because of you, that's a bad reason.

01:14:46.000 Most kids going to college believe they don't want to be there.

01:14:50.000 Now, you might say, oh, they don't know what's good for them.

01:14:52.000 Okay, there might be an argument to that.

01:14:53.000 But it's also them that's borrowing the money.

01:14:56.000 Maybe it's not.

01:14:56.000 Maybe you're paying for it.

01:14:57.000 That's a different dynamic.

01:14:58.000 But at Berkeley yesterday, this one kid is $85,000 in student loan debt.

01:15:02.000 I said, you want to be here?

01:15:03.000 He said, oh, my parents are making me be here.

01:15:04.000 I said, that's quite an operation there, right?

01:15:06.000 Like, go borrow $85,000 in your name because your parents are making you do it.

01:15:11.000 Like, that's not good.

01:15:13.000 It's not sustainable.

01:15:14.000 So we need less people going to college.

01:15:16.000 We need more people to start businesses.

01:15:18.000 We need more entrepreneurs.

01:15:19.000 We need more people to do things.

01:15:21.000 And we need more people to be filled with integrity and courage and character.

01:15:24.000 And less people to be filled with postmodern secular atheistic ideas where they start questioning the most.

01:15:31.000 I had a woman yesterday at UC Berkeley came up to me at the table.

01:15:34.000 She said, Charlie, we don't know what human beings are.

01:15:37.000 We're just a collection of cells.

01:15:38.000 And I said, only at a university campus could you be filled with something that is so unwise to spend so much time on something so fundamentally deranged as that question.

01:15:48.000 And she really was wrestling with it.

01:15:49.000 She said, there is no fundamental difference between a human, we call a human and a goldfish.

01:15:54.000 And I said, listen, I don't have a college degree.

01:15:56.000 I didn't go to college.

01:15:57.000 Goldfish, they don't write symphonies.

01:15:59.000 And she's like, you're right.

01:16:04.000 Thanks for your question.

01:16:05.000 I appreciate it.

01:16:11.000 So I have a question that might be a little bit different.

01:16:13.000 I wanted to ask why you're a Christian.

01:16:16.000 I am a Christian.

01:16:17.000 It's true.

01:16:19.000 Sunday is Easter.

01:16:21.000 And so, look, we're all made in the image of God.

01:16:25.000 The universe that we live in right now was created by someone who loves us.

01:16:30.000 And the Bible tells us this.

01:16:31.000 The Bible is one author, 66 books have telling the story.

01:16:34.000 And look, we're made in that image of God.

01:16:37.000 And the gospel can be summarized in four words, three words, two words, and one word.

01:16:41.000 Four words, Jesus took my place.

01:16:44.000 Three words, him for me.

01:16:46.000 Two words, substitutionary atonement, and one word, grace.

01:16:49.000 We didn't earn it.

01:16:50.000 We don't start to do a lot of good things to be able to have eternal life.

01:16:55.000 I'm a Christian because I had a collision course with Jesus Christ in fifth grade, changed my life, gave my life to the Lord.

01:17:01.000 And every single year, it started to mean more to me.

01:17:03.000 As I got older, I realized, like, wow, I'm broken.

01:17:06.000 I am, you know, there's something not right with me.

01:17:08.000 It's like, yeah, that's original sin.

01:17:10.000 But Jesus is there to give us something we did not earn, to give us something we do not deserve to be able to get back into true and real communion with the God who loves us.

01:17:19.000 And it's true.

01:17:21.000 You look at the archaeological evidence, the evidence for the resurrection, the evidence through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the book of Acts.

01:17:27.000 You look at how there's never been an archaeological discovery that disproves the Bible.

01:17:32.000 All that things can be done with reason, but there's one final reason why I'm a Christian.

01:17:35.000 It's less because of this and more because of this, which when you start to open up your heart and your soul and all of a sudden have the humility that you're just kind of a speck in this massive cosmic creation, all of a sudden, I think many people in this audience might be a little skeptical.

01:17:49.000 All of a sudden, that Lord who does love you is going to all of a sudden come into your life in a way that you might not expect.

01:17:54.000 And so celebrate that Easter.

01:17:56.000 And if you haven't given your life to the Lord, He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, for you today.

01:18:02.000 Thank you.

01:18:06.000 Okay.

01:18:07.000 This will be the final question.

01:18:08.000 Is that right, Mackenzie?

01:18:09.000 Okay.

01:18:10.000 Yes.

01:18:11.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:18:12.000 I'm running for a local school board here in Orange County.

01:18:16.000 Thank you.

01:18:20.000 When I get elected, what is the most impressionable?

01:18:27.000 What is the most pressing issue that I could focus on to make the biggest impact in our public schools?

01:18:34.000 Well, first of all, God bless you for running, and thank you for your courage and your conviction.

01:18:38.000 It's just awesome.

01:18:39.000 So first, you'll be demonized, slandered, smeared.

01:18:44.000 I just kind of went through all that, especially if you go on a school board.

01:18:46.000 But no, we're going to have your back in more ways than one to be able to do the right thing and to stand with conviction.

01:18:52.000 So look, there's a lot of different things that I think that are incredibly important if you're on a school board.

01:18:56.000 Number one, you've got to ask questions about textbooks, curriculum, appropriation of funding, to make sure that there's policies in place that schools will never be locked down again, and making sure kids are not wearing masks.

01:19:06.000 I was driving in Beverly Hills today, and I saw groups of children walking on the side of the street coming out of Notre Dame Academy and right near Beverly Hills, all wearing masks outside.

01:19:16.000 And that's nothing short of child abuse.

01:19:18.000 It's child abuse to put a mask on a child.

01:19:20.000 It's bad for their development, it's bad for their spiritual development, bad for their linguistic development.

01:19:24.000 But the most important thing that you can get done as a school board is be a relentless hawk for transparency and accountability.

01:19:33.000 You need to be the public sector teacher union's worst nightmare.

01:19:36.000 You need to be asking questions they don't want asked.

01:19:38.000 You need to follow the money.

01:19:39.000 You need to find out whether or not they're teaching gender transition surgery nonsense to five, six, or seven-year-olds.

01:19:45.000 And then you need to channel righteous indignation and not put up with their excuses, their delay tactics, their nonsensical one-liners like, oh, it's all about equity.

01:19:55.000 No, it's not.

01:19:55.000 It's not about equity.

01:19:56.000 It's not about teaching children.

01:19:58.000 You are grooming children to be something that they shouldn't be, and I'm not going to put up with it.

01:20:03.000 So the most important thing is you need to have courage, which look you do have, but then you need to have a mission.

01:20:08.000 Your mission is not to be liked.

01:20:09.000 Your mission is not going to be like voted the most popular person in the school board.

01:20:13.000 Your mission is to protect the innocence of children and lead them through truth and to create informed patriots.

01:20:19.000 God bless you.

01:20:24.000 Okay, so in closing, I love California.

01:20:28.000 I have a couple asks out of you.

01:20:30.000 Do not give up on this state.

01:20:31.000 And you might be cynical and all this.

01:20:33.000 Focus on Orange County.

01:20:34.000 It's a beautiful place.

01:20:35.000 People are waking up.

01:20:37.000 They really are desiring a change.

01:20:40.000 Get involved in local races.

01:20:42.000 Get involved in city council races.

01:20:43.000 Know who's running for state senate.

01:20:44.000 Know who's running for state house.

01:20:46.000 Help on the congressional side.

01:20:47.000 All up and down the ballot.

01:20:48.000 Get involved in voter registration.

01:20:50.000 I mean, people right now, I'm telling you, they're opening their eyes in record numbers, especially in the Latino community.

01:20:56.000 There's huge opportunities that otherwise would not be happening.

01:21:01.000 And then finally, just keep in your prayers and keep in what you're doing, what Turning Point USA is doing on the front lines on high school and college campuses across the country.

01:21:11.000 I believe it's some of the most important work to make sure that we pass down American values to future generations.

01:21:16.000 We're working really hard, traveling the country last year.

01:21:19.000 I traveled 330 days last year.

01:21:22.000 We're doing three podcasts a day, three hours of radio a day.

01:21:25.000 If you're not yet subscribed to our podcast, please consider subscribing and thank you for considering.

01:21:30.000 You guys can take out your phone really easily and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.

01:21:34.000 All of this content will be rebroadcasted there.

01:21:37.000 But in closing, I believe the momentum we are seeing of regular, normal, everyday people running for office that are starting to ask questions, it is the rise of the citizen against the regime.

01:21:48.000 And isn't that the most American thing to do?

01:21:51.000 Which is regular, everyday normal people rejecting the cynicism, rejecting the negativity, and saying instead, this is still my country, that the many are going to rule the few, and that I'm not going to put up with these edicts, these orders, these mandates, and these double standards.

01:22:08.000 Instead, we're going to renew this idea of citizen government by and for the people.

01:22:13.000 And we've been given this gift by the American Founding Fathers, and it's up to us to conserve and preserve it.

01:22:18.000 And each one of you plays such an important and critical role in helping make that happen every single day.

01:22:24.000 God bless you guys.

01:22:24.000 God bless California.

01:22:25.000 God bless Orange County.

01:22:27.000 Talk to you soon.

01:22:31.000 Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

01:22:32.000 Email me directly, freedom at charliekirk.com or support the Charlie Kirk Show at charliekirk.com slash support.

01:22:38.000 Thank you so much for listening.

01:22:39.000 God bless.

01:22:42.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 11, 2022

Fighting the “Elites” for America’s Future—LIVE from Cal State Fullerton

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