The Charlie Kirk Show - August 23, 2026


From the Archive: Charlie’s 2023 Live Free Tour Speech at Texas Tech


Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

178.14

Word count

4,299

Sentence count

311


Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.
00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.
00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.
00:00:26.000 You've got to stop sending your kids to college.
00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.
00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.
00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.
00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.
00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.
00:00:45.000 Here I am.
00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.
00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:49.000 Here we go.
00:00:56.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
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00:01:13.000 That is Noble Gold Investments.com.
00:01:20.000 Thank you, everybody.
00:01:21.000 Please take a seat.
00:01:21.000 Thank you.
00:01:23.000 It's great to be back in Lubbock, Texas.
00:01:26.000 I got to tell you, I was here earlier last fall.
00:01:30.000 I guess I'll tell you why I was here.
00:01:32.000 It's going to upset some of you.
00:01:33.000 So, my father and my uncle, my aunt, all went to the University of Oregon.
00:01:38.000 So we're big Ducks fans.
00:01:39.000 See, now you guys are going to get upset.
00:01:41.000 See, and I, okay, first of all, I have nothing against, you know, I've always, I was a big Texas Tech fan.
00:01:48.000 Rest in peace, Mike Leach when he was here, and I was always pulling, and I can't stand the Longhorns.
00:01:54.000 They're awful.
00:01:54.000 So we can agree on that, right?
00:01:56.000 Okay.
00:01:56.000 So we're, we're all, and so we make a habit out of trying to go to a game or two, and Lubbock isn't too far from Phoenix where I live, and I come here.
00:02:06.000 We have an amazing time, and everyone was super gracious.
00:02:09.000 Except for all the F-bombs being thrown at us, Duck fans.
00:02:12.000 And it was the goof.
00:02:13.000 I was literally getting upset.
00:02:14.000 I got to tell you what you guys do.
00:02:16.000 This throwing the food thing on the.
00:02:20.000 What is this all about?
00:02:21.000 You know, there are tortillas flying, whatever.
00:02:23.000 And then I learned they tried to get rid of it, and you guys kept the tradition alive.
00:02:29.000 And I kind of had respect for it.
00:02:30.000 I kind of said, you know what?
00:02:32.000 You guys keep doing it.
00:02:33.000 No matter how much they try to tell you, you guys keep fighting the man, and you keep on throwing.
00:02:38.000 And I kid you not, I saw somebody up in the cheap sheets.
00:02:41.000 There was a tortilla that flew like 150 yards and went right on the 30-yard line.
00:02:46.000 And you guys put holes in them to try to perfect the aerodynamicism.
00:02:51.000 Do you guys at the frat houses, you try out or you kind of figure out the best way?
00:02:59.000 I've never seen tortillas fly so far.
00:03:02.000 So I needless to say, you guys totally choked.
00:03:06.000 I've got to be honest.
00:03:07.000 It was not a good night at the end of it.
00:03:10.000 But anyway.
00:03:11.000 Good memories for me, not so good for you, but, and then we, we, okay, very passionate folks here.
00:03:20.000 And then we had a great Sunday at Trinity Church.
00:03:22.000 So it's great to be back in Lubbock, Texas, everybody.
00:03:29.000 And do me a favor, anytime you ever, ever play those longhorns, you gotta beat them.
00:03:34.000 That's just, it's gotta be right in there.
00:03:36.000 So I don't wanna talk for too long before we get to questions, because I think that's the most important and the most fun, and that's why you're here.
00:03:43.000 I've done a lot of studying recently about the history of Texas, and it's fascinating.
00:03:49.000 And this is kind of one of the last bastions of how Texas used to be and what the future of Texas should really look like, which Texas was largely unsettled.
00:04:01.000 In fact, so much so that the Mexicans were like, if you guys can settle in Texas, like, you can have it.
00:04:07.000 Like, if you're able to kind of figure something out in Texas, like, go ahead.
00:04:11.000 It's not easy land.
00:04:13.000 It's tough land.
00:04:13.000 You have the Comanche Indians that were not exactly easy, you know, to live with and, you know, very, very violent.
00:04:20.000 And so my people, the Scots-Irish, were crazy enough to, you know, navigate the Appalachian Trail and go west and come to this place now known as Texas.
00:04:29.000 And in the early stages of Texas, Texas was the closest thing to a Jeffersonian republic.
00:04:35.000 There was really like no police, no standing army, and it was the law and the belief in the code of the West that kept Texas together.
00:04:46.000 And it's very interesting.
00:04:48.000 It's the most eerily similar example I can find to how the Hebrews lived in the Old Testament, where they had no police and no standing army.
00:04:57.000 And it wasn't perfect.
00:04:58.000 People still, you know, did bad things, but Texas turned into this powerhouse where so many different cultures and different civilizations said, you know, we don't really want to settle there.
00:05:10.000 For whatever reason, Texas all of a sudden started to grow and grow and became its own country first, the Republic of Texas.
00:05:17.000 And anytime you spend time around Texans, there's something different.
00:05:21.000 There's you're Americans, but you're also Texans.
00:05:23.000 I'll never forget the first time I did a speaking event in Texas, they do this hail Texas flag thing.
00:05:29.000 And then also, I was like, what?
00:05:30.000 This is really, I have nothing against it.
00:05:32.000 Because I love people that are proud of where they're from and thankful for where they're from.
00:05:37.000 And in the clearest possible way, Texas needs to start acting like Texas again.
00:05:42.000 And Texas needs to get that attitude back where you need to go tell the federal government to go pound sand, you're going to secure the border yourself.
00:05:49.000 And I want to talk to you about an issue so many Americans face, and that's health insurance.
00:06:01.000 There's an organization I really, really appreciate called Christian Healthcare Ministries.
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00:06:51.000 See why so many believers are taking a leap of faith.
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00:07:03.000 That's chministries.orgslash Charlie and use promo code Charlie.
00:07:13.000 And Texas Witch.
00:07:15.000 20 years ago was nowhere in comparable population.
00:07:18.000 I was 10 million more people than the state of New York.
00:07:21.000 This place is one of the best places America still has to offer.
00:07:25.000 And I'll give you another example Texas never should have locked down for the virus lockdowns that happen during COVID.
00:07:33.000 And the spirit of Texas is one of self sovereignty, one of liberty, one that tends to buck the trend.
00:07:40.000 And I firmly believe this that America cannot get back to greatness, which I think a lot of you guys are here tonight.
00:07:46.000 Because you want to see America made great again.
00:07:49.000 I think that's why a lot of you are here.
00:07:53.000 That would be a great slogan if someone ran for president on that.
00:07:57.000 That would be really great.
00:07:59.000 And it cannot happen if Texas just becomes a flatter version of Tennessee.
00:08:04.000 Texas needs to go back into its roots of the can do attitude to look towards that pioneer spirit.
00:08:13.000 And there is a toughness in the Texans that I've known that is very, very unique.
00:08:19.000 There is an attitude, too.
00:08:20.000 You guys got attitude like, holy, holy crow, you guys got attitude.
00:08:24.000 But I love it.
00:08:26.000 And I love it in a way where.
00:08:28.000 A lot of people are now looking for leadership, obviously, and what an opportunity.
00:08:34.000 And we look around the country right now, people are moving to the state, and what drives me nuts, I'm sure you know this, if you spend any time in Travis County in Austin or in Harris County in Houston, a lot of people are moving to the state, and they continue to act and vote in the pattern that they previously had when they destroyed the state that they fled from.
00:08:53.000 And, I mean, they destroyed California, and then they come to Texas and they say, oh, I don't like the fact that.
00:08:59.000 You know, in Texas, you can own firearms the way you can't.
00:09:03.000 Like, why'd you move here exactly?
00:09:04.000 Why'd you try to come here and try?
00:09:07.000 Another thing that drives me crazy is they're like, we need to expand abortion access in Texas.
00:09:11.000 And I'm like, well, where are you from?
00:09:14.000 And they're like, well, I'm from Massachusetts.
00:09:16.000 Like, okay, then go back to Massachusetts.
00:09:17.000 They have abortion all over the place.
00:09:17.000 Like, don't tell Texas how to run itself, actually.
00:09:22.000 Stop trying to colonize Texas.
00:09:27.000 And I think there's a really important thing.
00:09:30.000 Again, it's not a racial thing either, and this is what's so amazing.
00:09:33.000 Is that some of the most proud Texans are originally from Mexican descent and they're on the border and they're part of the Texas story.
00:09:41.000 And I think we can all agree though, and I want to just emphasize this and then we'll do questions, is that what's happening on the southern border is one of the most outrageous crimes against this country that we have seen in any of our lifetimes.
00:09:52.000 And it is to have a, to have anywhere between 10,000 to 15,000 people coming across the border.
00:10:04.000 is an invasion.
00:10:04.000 I don't care what your politics are.
00:10:06.000 You could be here, you could be on the super far left, it doesn't matter.
00:10:09.000 It's unsustainable.
00:10:10.000 And this is not a racial thing, but the bad guys actually look at it as a racial thing.
00:10:16.000 Now, in a very perverse way, they might end up being wrong, but it's still wrong what they're doing because they think, and it's not my belief system of this, but just look at what the Castro brothers have said repeatedly.
00:10:28.000 They said that as Texas becomes more Hispanic and less white, they thought that Texas would become more left-wing.
00:10:35.000 Well, it's not that simple, actually, because it turns out the Hispanic community is not a monolith and that there's a lot of Hispanic conservatives out there that don't believe that men can give birth and they want a secure border and they want police and they want a rule of law.
00:10:51.000 So it's not that simple.
00:10:54.000 But what it does do outside of the politics is it does destabilize a country.
00:11:01.000 And that's the bigger point, is that you cannot have an unregulated flow of millions of people.
00:11:07.000 We're not doing background checks.
00:11:09.000 We're not doing DNA testing.
00:11:11.000 We have no idea where they're from.
00:11:13.000 And act or even believe that somehow a stable country can continue.
00:11:18.000 And for those of you that either came to this country legally or your parents did, what is happening on the southern border is an insult to all of you that waited in line.
00:11:28.000 It is an insult for all of you that had to go through the proper protocol and process.
00:11:32.000 That basically what it is is, why did you follow the law?
00:11:37.000 And what they're saying basically is you don't have to follow the law anymore.
00:11:43.000 I am, I am, I've been patient and I actually have seen more and more fight out of your governor recently.
00:11:51.000 I wish it would have happened earlier.
00:11:53.000 And I want to see that next step taken.
00:11:56.000 And I think his administration is getting closer and closer to that, which is it is now time for Texas to start to deport the foreigners that have come here to this state and return them to their country of origin.
00:12:08.000 It is time to now do that.
00:12:12.000 I had the honor of a lifetime to call Charlie a friend.
00:12:16.000 And what I remember most wasn't just what people saw on stage, it was what was behind the scenes.
00:12:23.000 That was an unwavering commitment to his faith, his love for his family.
00:12:27.000 And his genuine desire to encourage others to live with courage and conviction.
00:12:32.000 Charlie believed that following Christ wasn't something you compartmentalize.
00:12:36.000 He didn't put it in a box, he lived it out loud.
00:12:38.000 It shaped how he lived, how he served, how he treated people every single day.
00:12:43.000 Charlie Kirk, American Martyr, captures that heart.
00:12:46.000 This documentary isn't just simply about remembering Charlie, it's an invitation for each of us to ask what kind of legacy we're building and whether we're willing to stand firm in our own faith when it's tested.
00:12:58.000 I hope.
00:12:58.000 That you'll watch it with your family and have those conversations together.
00:13:02.000 Go to angel.comslash Kirk.
00:13:04.000 That's angel.comslash Kirk.
00:13:06.000 Become an Angel Guild member.
00:13:08.000 Watch Charlie Kirk, American Martyr, and help bring more stories of faith, courage, and conviction to audiences around the world.
00:13:19.000 Largely because the federal government has left us no choice.
00:13:24.000 And it is a very simple moral question.
00:13:27.000 If the federal government is tasked with the safety and the well being and the administration of the rule of law, And they have year over year told you they are not going to do that.
00:13:37.000 Texas, which was once its own country, which can therefore declare an invasion clause easier than any other state in the nation, does not just have a right, but a duty to take this into its own hands and to fix this problem.
00:13:53.000 And I think Greg Abbott, to his credit, has been feeling the pressure and has been doing some stuff.
00:13:59.000 I mean, you've got the barriers, you've got the razor wire, you've got balloons on the, you know, whatever those big things are in the.
00:14:05.000 big objects in the Rio Grande Valley.
00:14:06.000 That's fine.
00:14:07.000 You got the National Guard.
00:14:09.000 It's hard for me to paint this picture.
00:14:10.000 If you haven't seen the video, I encourage you to look at it, where Texas National Guard really steamrolled by hundreds of people last week as if, like, no, no, no, this is our country.
00:14:19.000 We're just going to come right in.
00:14:21.000 And, you know, some people say, well, the Texas National Guard should have resisted.
00:14:24.000 But the Texas National Guard, in an ideal, should have resisted.
00:14:27.000 But think about it.
00:14:27.000 They would have gotten probably arrested by the federal government for, you know, violent confrontation of migrants.
00:14:33.000 And that's another important point, which is, There are some people that are coming that can fit the quote unquote migrant mold.
00:14:39.000 But a vast majority of these people are military age, fighting age males that are 20, 21, and 22 years old from 120 different countries.
00:14:51.000 We know that thousands of people have been intercepted on the southern border from the terror watch list, and we have no idea where they're going on the interior of the United States.
00:14:59.000 And I hate to say, but this feels awfully intentional.
00:15:04.000 It feels as if they want this to happen.
00:15:06.000 Now, why?
00:15:08.000 We can have a robust discussion about it, but I don't get from the current ruling regime that they love the country like you do, that they love the country the way that those of you that serve this nation do.
00:15:18.000 In fact, I feel as if they want to turn it into something different, that they want to try to overwhelm the system.
00:15:25.000 Before some of you yell up and say, you're a conspiracy theorist, well, you guys should study an academic paper that is called the Cloward-Pivin Strategy.
00:15:33.000 It was written in the 1970s by two academics, Cloward and Pivin.
00:15:37.000 They were communists, self-described Marxists and communists.
00:15:40.000 And they said, hey, the way that we, communists, are going to take over America is three steps, three very basic things.
00:15:48.000 We need to try to make sure America borrows so much money that the currency is worthless and the national debt becomes unsustainable.
00:15:56.000 We need to try to build an administrative state or a deep state bureaucracy that swallows the private sector and have D.C. be the most important part of the country and uncontrolled mass migration into America to destabilize the fabric.
00:16:10.000 Now, we wouldn't know any one of those three things, of course.
00:16:13.000 We are borrowing a trillion dollars every 100 days in this country.
00:16:17.000 For those of you that want to own a home, For those of you that want to have a future, it is literally getting stolen from you by these unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Again, this is not a political statement.
00:16:28.000 In 2020, when there was a different president, the average income to be able to afford a home in this country was $59,000 a year, according to Zillow.com.
00:16:39.000 It is now $106,000 a year to be able to comfortably own a home in this country.
00:16:44.000 Now, it might be less here in Lubbock, Texas.
00:16:46.000 I don't know.
00:16:46.000 I mean, but I bet property has gone up everywhere.
00:16:48.000 I bet it's gone up here too.
00:16:49.000 And, but it's probably a little bit easier here, but your incomes are probably not as high as they are in Dallas.
00:16:56.000 So it all kind of evens out.
00:16:58.000 And by the way, that's what they want.
00:17:00.000 They don't want you to own homes.
00:17:02.000 They want you to be permanent renters for the rest of your life because you're easier to control.
00:17:08.000 When I was landing here in Lubbock, I saw so many small towns, and it reminded me how mass urbanization has destroyed this country.
00:17:18.000 And there's something very dark about big cities.
00:17:21.000 Not just the fact that the worst ideas come out of cities, not just the fact that the worst politics come out of big cities and the most crime, but I want you to think for a second.
00:17:30.000 It's very easy to be anonymous in a big city.
00:17:33.000 You don't have to know your neighbor, you can kind of just blend in.
00:17:38.000 For those of you that have grown up in a small town, it is impossible to be anonymous in a small town.
00:17:45.000 That there's an accountability.
00:17:46.000 Your neighbors check in on you.
00:17:48.000 Everyone kind of has a reputation in a small town.
00:17:51.000 That's the drunk, that's the thief, that's the priest.
00:17:54.000 Stay away from that guy.
00:17:56.000 That's the guy you want to try to do business with.
00:17:58.000 Everybody has, for better or worse, but everybody has a reputation because that closeness creates community.
00:18:05.000 In New York City, you can kind of just be an anonymous widget in an 8 million person beast.
00:18:13.000 I don't think that's a good thing, actually.
00:18:17.000 Hi, folks.
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00:19:16.000 I think it's a better country when you're held accountable by your neighbors.
00:19:20.000 I think it's a better country when you know your neighbors' names.
00:19:23.000 I think it's a better country where you own property and you go to church and your kids are raised walking around a farm, not staring at a screen all day long.
00:19:33.000 I think it's a better country when you don't have to wonder that you're going to have to go riskily into debt to be able to own a home.
00:19:49.000 And these might strike you as overwhelmingly political statements, but they really aren't.
00:19:55.000 Because it's the restoration of a normal way of life.
00:20:00.000 And you guys still have it a little bit here in West Texas.
00:20:03.000 And if there's one thing I can communicate to you, is you need to fight to protect that thing.
00:20:08.000 Because how many pockets around this country have they allowed us to lose that American way of life?
00:20:15.000 Where they come in with big developers and mass urbanization, and cities that used to be very, very, let's just say, livable, just become kind of unthinkably progressive.
00:20:29.000 And they are targeting West Texas.
00:20:32.000 They are targeting Amarillo.
00:20:34.000 They are targeting Lubbock.
00:20:36.000 Because they look at themselves as imperialists, that there will not be a square inch where they don't control.
00:20:43.000 There's a book that was recently published, and I can't help but just think of so many of you.
00:20:48.000 The book's title is called White Rural Rage The Threat to Democracy.
00:20:55.000 And so if you get in a car and go 30 miles west or 30 miles east from here, you will find the people that this book is talking about.
00:21:00.000 These are two professors that wrote this book, and they were beautifully welcomed on MSNBC.
00:21:05.000 And for those of you that own farms and you work with your hands and you go to church, you happen to be white, they think you're the threat to democracy.
00:21:13.000 I think, first of all, how sick you must be to blame the people that have done the right thing for the last 100 years and originally were homesteading and raised a family and paid their taxes, many of whom served in the military.
00:21:28.000 And they blame the white rural rage voters because they don't think the way that the Harvard academics want them to think.
00:21:38.000 And in fact, dare I say that it is the white rural rage that very well might save this country one day.
00:21:45.000 It very well might end up course correcting us.
00:21:50.000 And it's not a racial thing, but they're making it a racial thing.
00:21:54.000 Because it's those that own property and they have different values than that of the regime.
00:22:00.000 So we need Texas to be Texas again for that attitude and that spirit to be reignited.
00:22:06.000 And I'm just so touched.
00:22:07.000 I mean, look at this turnout here.
00:22:09.000 on campus.
00:22:10.000 There's something happening.
00:22:11.000 I don't know what it's going to look like or how it's going to manifest politically.
00:22:14.000 I've been doing this now for 11 years.
00:22:16.000 I have visited more college campuses than any other speaker in the last decade.
00:22:21.000 I've never seen crowds like we are drawing right now.
00:22:24.000 And I believe it's because so many of you in Gen Z, you are up, you have reached your limit of the nauseating woke nonsense that has permeated the culture.
00:22:37.000 That you actually don't want to worry about getting fired from your job for using the wrong pronoun.
00:22:42.000 That you want an America that is strong, that is decent, that is stable, that is orderly.
00:22:49.000 You want to be able to get married and have kids.
00:22:52.000 And this is one of the reasons why, and again, this is what the data shows why young men are the most conservative that they have been in the last 50 years.
00:23:02.000 And young ladies, we got some work to do, but it shows a lot of promise because I truly believe that.
00:23:14.000 There are more decent Americans than indecent Americans, and that we're going to course correct this.
00:23:19.000 And the entire spirit of Turning Point USA is we do want to see this country return to greatness.
00:23:24.000 And we believe we return to greatness by recommitting ourselves to foundational principles and by not being afraid to confront the parasitic ideologies that have been destroying this country.
00:23:34.000 And what are those ideologies?
00:23:36.000 You can call them wokeism.
00:23:37.000 You can call them Marxism.
00:23:38.000 But they are decaying the society all around us.
00:23:41.000 And it's resulting in an untouchable oligarchy that is not listening to the people, that is more and more afraid that the silent majority might be silent no longer.
00:23:52.000 And as we can see here by this incredible turnout, And what's happening, I think our numbers are increasing to such a level that keeps them very nervous.
00:24:04.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.