00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:50.000Joe Mauer was great, and they'll probably never be great again because they have those owners who kind of treat their baseball teams the way the Democratic Party treats America.
00:01:58.000This like husk to extract value from and then abandon.
00:02:02.000I've never seen him give me crazy eyes like that.
00:02:07.000That hit you at a deep childhood trauma level.
00:02:27.000We just don't want baseball to go the same way that soccer goes in all those other countries where there's two teams ever allowed to win the title.
00:02:34.000It's good for baseball to have a villain, Blake.
00:03:10.000Among the options, so these are including ground operations and a massive bombing campaign, according to a report Thursday from Axios.
00:03:17.000Among the options under consideration are seizing or blockading key Iranian positions, including Karg Island.
00:03:23.000We've heard a lot about Karg Island, the country's main oil export hub, as well as the strategic islands of Abu Musa and Larak near the Strait of Hormuz.
00:03:32.000Axios reported citing U.S. officials and sources familiar with internal deliberation.
00:03:38.000Other scenarios include targeting Iranian oil shipments or conducting large-scale strikes on nuclear facilities, it added.
00:03:45.000And President Trump has reportedly not made up his mind.
00:03:49.000But what we know is that all of the chess pieces are in place to do something like this.
00:03:55.000And Blake, we've seen this before where President Trump sort of mobilizes in a region and you're thinking, oh, it's bluster, saber-rattling.
00:04:05.000But lately, he's tended to just kind of press the go-to.
00:04:08.000And I mean, we were thinking about, I guess, it was initially just the air assets, but they did start moving these a few weeks ago.
00:04:18.000And as you say, it could be two things.
00:04:20.000It could be show I'm very serious so that they have the pressure to make a deal, but more so than a lot of people and more so than himself in the past, he appears ready to push through with it.
00:04:31.000I think we would love to have all of your emails about what you support on this because we're of two minds on this.
00:04:40.000We do want to win that conflict since it's begun.
00:04:43.000But I am thinking always of the discussions we'd have with Charlie and the way that, okay, if this isn't what wins it, it's now just another step towards we have a bunch of troops now on the ground in the area.
00:04:57.000And then if it doesn't end the war, the pressure will be, well, you could send more troops and escalate more, and then that will end it.
00:05:04.000Yeah, well, CNN's even reporting on this.
00:05:10.000By the way, you know, CNN was famously denying that there was any negotiations going on, and then they eventually had to backtrack and say, yes, there were negotiations on a deal going on.
00:05:27.000Well, Audi, whatever the president ultimately decides about a ground operation in Iran, all the pieces are now in the region to carry one out.
00:05:37.000And it's not just the thousand paratroopers.
00:05:39.000You have Marines deployed to the region, and then all the forces, the air transport, et cetera, that one would require to put troops on the ground.
00:05:49.000Whether that be, you've heard the discussion of Karg Island, which is so central to Iran's energy industry, or perhaps along the shores of the Strait of Hormuz to secure the Strait of Hormuz, we don't know.
00:06:01.000And ultimately, it's up to the president.
00:06:16.000I don't want to see ground troops in Iran.
00:06:20.000I would love for the people of Iran themselves to rise up.
00:06:23.000And it's, you know, there's another report that B.B. Netanyahu suggested that we now give the signal to the Iranian people to rise up in the streets.
00:06:33.000And President Trump rebuffed that and said they'll get mowed down.
00:06:36.000I mean, I think we saw, they clearly were leaning that way when it first began.
00:06:40.000Remember when the first strikes threw in, a lot of the rhetoric from the president was the Iranian people take back your country.
00:06:47.000He was clearly gesturing towards something like that happening.
00:06:50.000And in truth, I think they expected that to happen.
00:07:16.000And it's difficult because, I mean, what we could do is we could give the signal and then just explicitly launch airstrikes on behalf of those people.
00:07:24.000But it's difficult to coordinate with a fundamentally uncoordinated mass.
00:07:39.000It's an interesting idea because I met some Persian folks recently and they were basically telling me the people are ready to rise up when the signal is given.
00:07:57.000An interesting potential of having, you know, the 82nd Airborne, these Marines in position.
00:08:05.000I mean, in theory, again, I don't love this job falling to us, but maybe a potentiality here is that they give the signal to go and these guys basically become like a protector force.
00:08:21.000I'm just saying maybe that's one of the options on the table.
00:08:24.000We've repeatedly wanted uprisings to sort of efficiently and easily solve our problems in the Middle East.
00:08:30.000And there's often this idea that any government we're fighting has this 0% approval rating that will crumble as soon as you blow up a few guys.
00:08:38.000And unfortunately, I think it's clear there's at least a pretty large mass of Iranians who do support this regime.
00:08:44.000And there might be more now because they're at war.
00:08:50.000Well, and the factions within an old country, an ancient culture like Iran, are going to be deeper than in a country like Venezuela, right?
00:09:08.000And I have to tell you, this isn't just another historical drama.
00:09:11.000It's a wake-up call that you all need to pay attention to.
00:09:14.000We spend so much time talking about 1776 and constitutions and congresses and declarations, but this film reminds you of something even deeper.
00:09:23.000Before the revolution, there was revelation.
00:09:40.000What really struck me was the portrayal of Benjamin Franklin.
00:09:44.000He's this brilliant, rational mind, and yet he's drawn into genuine friendship with Whitfield, not because he suddenly becomes someone else, but because he begins to see freedom isn't structural.
00:11:45.000Well, so what it was is it went astonishingly viral.
00:11:49.000Was a Christian man named Trevor, Trevor Sheets, and he just does kind of a post, and I don't know that we want to read the whole thing, but it was basically the opening line of it, which is what I think got a lot of people's attention, was my wife was formerly promiscuous.
00:12:08.000She was then radically born again, committed to church, evangelized constantly, Puritan books in her bedroom, prayer journals, grief over past sexual sin, etc.
00:12:18.000We got to know each other over each other well, over a year, dated for four months, engaged for two and a half, and didn't sin sexually with one another.
00:12:26.000Our first kiss was on the altar of our wedding day.
00:12:28.000Goes on, talks about they've been married for several years now, they have children, and all of these things.
00:12:33.000And then there's a photo at the bottom of their wedding, which is very nice.
00:12:36.000This has gotten 35 million views on it.
00:12:42.000That's like Nick Shirley levels of view count.
00:12:45.000And it's been very divisive, as we know, because some people say this is a perfectly fine testament.
00:13:40.000So the guys who are having a really good time calling her a whore and much, much worse, are not recognizing that they're actually talking about the activities of someone when she was legally a child.
00:14:21.000And the other thing I want to correct is there was a ton of guys out there saying, like, oh, she's, they were basically equating her to Nala Ray, like saying, okay, so you were like a webcam girl and you were promiscuous.
00:14:34.000And, you know, they described it in much worse terms, but then you pivoted to become a Christian influencer.
00:14:39.000And I'm like, no, this woman became a Christian almost 10 years ago.
00:14:43.000So it's not like she's like, oh, yeah, yesterday I was on OnlyFans, but now I'm building up my platform by saying I'm reformed.
00:14:50.000This woman actually did the steps of repentance and got married and has been living, you know, quietly.
00:14:56.000Yeah, this is not somebody who like immediately was like, now embrace me as a Christian influencer.
00:15:01.000I mean, she's, she's shown repentance and she's shown fruit in keeping with repentance.
00:15:06.000So I'm like, this is not that kind of story.
00:15:08.000And I understand the resentment of young guys going, okay, so the second you say I'm a Christian now, even though five minutes ago I was on OnlyFans, I'm going to keep all the money.
00:15:18.000And in fact, I'm going to continue to make money now on my reform story.
00:17:13.000And something else she said in that interview, if you watched it, and I thought, this is so different from what we have gotten from the Me Too movement, which is that a lot of women who obviously participated in some level in consensual sexual sin, then later come back and go.
00:19:48.000But it kind of does, you hit on a vein here that I think has a lot of rich stuff to explore because we had a guy named Gabe Saint in the studio yesterday, and he was talking about the animosity and the resentment between the sexes, especially with Gen Z.
00:20:04.000And there is a distortion of, you know, what young women expect from their men and what young men are even capable of providing.
00:20:15.000He kept using this word simps, that they were kind of these beta male, these sort of weak men that don't know how to lead.
00:20:23.000And then the ones that do, they're not free to be strong and masculine.
00:20:27.000And the women want the men to accept all this responsibility, be the provider, take care of them, bring them flowers, take them on dates, pay for dinner, but they don't give them any authority in the relationship.
00:20:37.000So they're just expecting the men to sort of worship them and revolve around them.
00:20:42.000And it feels like there is this healthy imbalance.
00:20:45.000And you talked about you understood the suspicion that women get to be sort of promiscuous.
00:20:51.000And then when they just claim the name of Jesus, good men have to take them back or something.
00:20:57.000There is a lot there because actually what's underlying a lot of this is a really unhealthy, I think, relationship between the sexes.
00:21:09.000As America turns 250, we want to help Good Ranchers take a moment to remember the people who built it.
00:21:16.000And those, of course, are America's ranchers.
00:21:18.000For over 250 years, ranchers had worked tirelessly to feed America through droughts, wars, recessions, pandemics, changing politics.
00:23:16.000One, it was funny that I ended up sort of being on the receiving end of some of the hostility over the last couple of days when I came to this woman's defense because I have been very outspoken that I believe the longhouse is real and it's a real problem.
00:23:30.000And I'm actually working on a book on this that I'm like, I do believe that we are increasingly living in a gynocracy.
00:23:37.000You hear that term, which essentially means that it is a female-dominated culture.
00:24:06.000Just explaining for all of our boomer viewers.
00:24:10.000But so at the same time, I watched this very bitter, angry reaction from so many young men over the last 48 hours to this post.
00:24:21.000And one, I think they are projecting all kinds of things onto this couple and in particular this woman that I'm like, you don't know her background, you don't understand.
00:24:28.000And you're assuming that she is like sort of any cam girl who is just, you know, on a dime, said, now I'm a Christian.
00:24:34.000And so now buy my new merch that's, you know, Christian-branded merch.
00:25:41.000It is not meant to disparage anyone or to insult anyone.
00:25:44.000It's just to acknowledge what's happening here and that it would very understandably engender feelings of anger and resentment.
00:25:52.000But the thing to do is not, you know, projected all over this girl who has been saved and was saved 10 years ago.
00:26:00.000And the other thing, I think there is a false perception by young men because of this, that young women are more promiscuous than they used to be.
00:27:03.000And I thought that was admirable because actually our disposition is much more sympathetic to, you know, the prodigal son story, the bringing in, like, we believe that change is real.
00:27:15.000If you don't, then you're not a Christian.
00:27:24.000If that's not true, then what are we even doing here?
00:27:27.000And I understand that you don't want to lift those people up too soon.
00:27:30.000You know, be careful who you lay hands on.
00:27:32.000Get that, but that's that was not why we had Nala on because Nala was warning against this really coercive, addiction-riddled sort of lifestyle where you're an online prostitute.
00:27:50.000I don't know what her ultimate motives were if she was just sort of taking the influencer world and transposing it onto a Christian setting.
00:27:58.000I don't know, but I think it's important to warn people about this.
00:28:01.000But you, what's your, I'm just curious what, like, what your take is on the Nala Ray thing, because we, that was a huge blowup for us.
00:28:09.000Yeah, and you know, part of what I think we don't talk about with that is that there's this perception that all of these young women just go, I want to get on a webcam and make lots of money.
00:29:32.000Like they'll go on, they'll make a little bit of money and then they get off.
00:29:34.000I mean, not that it's really that much better if you make a lot of money, but it is just exceptionally evil about something that leaves an indelible mark on, like, well, I don't want to say indelible.
00:29:45.000Jesus can clear a lot, but it's huge damage on your soul, on your personality, on your ability to live a normal life ever after.
00:29:56.000And so I think there is this perception that these women are profiting and no one's holding them accountable and they're getting away with it.
00:30:02.000And, you know, a couple things to say about that.
00:30:04.000One, ultimately, in light of eternity, nobody's going to get away with anything.
00:30:08.000The person who can read our hearts perfectly is going to know whether or not you were truly repentant.
00:30:12.000So you want to encourage these young Christian men, hey, nobody's going to pull the wool over God's eyes.
00:30:17.000You know, there will be accountability eventually.
00:30:19.000But in the meantime, instead of attacking this individual woman, we need to talk about why we got to this place that young men and young women are not finding each other and finding relationships.
00:30:31.000So I wanted to ask, just so we are, as you said, we have the problem that young people are splitting apart.
00:30:39.000Another debate that was going on in the last few days, there was a woman who on, I believe a woman on X who basically said, it's not appropriate to ask people to date like in a church setting.
00:31:05.000And so up to now, I think the church has now realized they've handled it abominably.
00:31:10.000I mean, I can show you just a couple of years ago, you have essays at like the Gospel Coalition and places like that saying, we have to stop making marriage an idol.
00:32:08.000And, you know, that also, I would say, we also need to have an education of young women in how to be gracious in saying no, thank you.
00:32:16.000So that if a young man asks one woman out and she's not that interested at church, if he then, you know, a few weeks later or a couple months later asks out her friend, that first girl should not go and say, oh, he's so creepy.
00:32:37.000Well, I was just thinking, it's really, I thought a bit about how so much of the system has broken down over time as marriage rates have declined, as like courtship periods have extended.
00:32:46.000Because I remember another thing that went viral a few months ago was just talking about people dating back in like the 40s and 50s and like, oh, oh, these people are dating four or five people at a time.
00:32:55.000Well, yeah, because they actually are just going on dates with them.
00:32:58.000They're not having these extended relationships.
00:33:00.000That's why going steady became a thing.
00:33:08.000And then it was usually a brief thing.
00:33:10.000I think about one thing I wonder about is, is there damage that's done, for example, just it seems much more the norm, even in Christian communities, to just be in a unmarried, unengaged relationship for one year, two years, three years, then you get engaged for a year and a half, and then you actually pull the trigger.
00:33:27.000And it's just, no one was doing that back when we actually had thriving families and a 2% divorce rate.
00:33:33.000And, you know, I haven't looked deeply into this story, but one of the other interesting developments a couple of weeks ago was Pastor Josh Howerton like challenging these shacking up or, you know, let's say promiscuous couples who are having sex and not married.
00:34:58.000So Matt Walsh has come out and said, my biggest issue with this is that like we need to stop celebrating our formerly sinful ways because you're giving this permission structure to your kids to then go, oh, they survived.
00:35:13.000I had a pastor that said, I want less impressive testimonies.
00:35:16.000I want a bunch of like, I was born, I met Jesus, I served Jesus, I lived well and righteously, got married, had kids, had those kids, you know what I mean?
00:35:26.000But like in churches, evangelical churches are the worst of this.
00:35:28.000They're like, I was a drug dealer for the cartel, and then I was shooting up heroin, and then Jesus came to me, and it's like, okay, that's that's great, but like, we like, hopefully, we have boring testimonies, right?
00:36:30.000Or are you saying, like, I'm not going to, you know, delve into juicy details and specifics, but here are some poor choices I made in my youth generally.
00:36:42.000And be real and honest about the cost.
00:36:46.000So, you know, those are two different pieces.
00:36:47.000Because look, I mean, when we look at Paul and like Acts, he's pretty out there about here's, you know, I was chasing Christians to persecute them.
00:37:20.000Imagine being a young woman just finding out that you're pregnant, not knowing where to go or what to do, not even knowing exactly what is going on in your body.
00:37:28.000While the whole world tells her it's just a clump of cells, you and I, we both know the truth.
00:37:36.000And once she has an ultrasound that you provide and she sees the truth of the baby growing inside of her, you help her choose life.
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00:38:27.000Again, that's 833-850-2229 or click on the pre-born banner at charliekirk.com.
00:38:36.000Now we have Sean Davis and Molly Hemingway of the Federalist, a publication I check every day.
00:38:43.000And you guys have an event here in town, and so we get the glory of your presence, which not to be related to Jesus because you're not Jesus.
00:40:07.000And he lost his show, and yet now he gets to write something.
00:40:11.000He's like, hey, he's like Lord of the Rings.
00:40:13.000It just really speaks to the power that the left has over many institutions.
00:40:16.000It also speaks to just how absolutely awful late night has, or Hollywood has become that they're using a washed-up late night host who, like, there's got to be better options than Stephen Colbert, is what I'm saying.
00:40:32.000I'm sure he wrote, I'm sure he's written bits, but the idea that he's going to magically write a screenplay on one of the most celebrated works of fiction in all of history is, it's absurd.
00:40:43.000Now I have to get this Jimmy Kimmel clip because you guys have now inspired it with Stephen Colbert, where he's attacking Mark Wayne Mullen for being a plumber.
00:41:09.000Jimmy Kimmel, remind you, is the guy that almost lost his show, should have lost his show when he tried to blame Charlie's assassination on MAGA.
00:41:18.000And so I went after him, and it was like this Colvette versus Kimmel thing, like for like three days.
00:41:55.000Like, he's one of Kimmel's best friends.
00:41:57.000The reason anyone cares about him, because Carollo's clearly the funnier one of the two, who still to this day, like, I think does construction stuff for fun, and then you're mocking a tradesman.
00:42:24.000Yeah, and then cries when he, he, you know, people, he, he likes to play this victim.
00:42:29.000He was sharing made-up information for political gain.
00:42:34.000He was lying for political gain, which is why he suffered for what he was saying there.
00:42:40.000And think about what it, the message it sent.
00:42:42.000It's a, you can go shoot a conservative and the entire liberal media apparatus is going to rally to your defense and whitewash it and make it go away.
00:42:50.000That is a green light for other people to do it as well.
00:42:53.000And blame some of the primary victims.
00:42:55.000Which is just disgusting, reprehensible stuff.
00:42:58.000But I just, in general, the Democrat Party, of which Jimmy Kimmel is a major player, they are, what is it, like 40 points underwater with men right now?
00:43:08.000No normal man feels good about the Democrat Party.
00:43:12.000And then they're going out there and saying, if you are a plumber or a carpenter, you're reprehensible.
00:43:17.000You have no business having any say in the running of our country.
00:43:21.000And you wonder why they have these problems.
00:43:22.000Well, let's go ahead and play the clip then, just since we brought it up.
00:43:27.000Don't worry, Trump's got a whole new generation of thinkers lined up, including his newly confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security, Mark Wayne, Chuck Mike, Bruce Dave Mullen.
00:44:35.000I do want to say that this, speaking of him being a former Oklahoma senator, does remind me of a big pet peeve I have with the Republican Party, which is in a state like Maine, where a Republican has no shot of winning, you get someone like Susan Collins, who's actually remarkably great for the state of Maine.
00:44:54.000In a state like Oklahoma, which bleeds red, you get these really limp, disappointing senators who in no way are doing what they, you know, you can tolerate a Susan Collins if you have someone who's actually worthy, you know, in Oklahoma to push the agenda in ways that are, that they can do because they're so safe.
00:45:17.000And I do not feel great about the current senators out of Oklahoma.
00:45:23.000How is it that the reddest state in the country, I don't think a single county in Oklahoma has voted for a dam in multiple elections, why are they giving us squishy?
00:45:32.000Well, this is my problem with Texas, that even Cornyn's on the table to be endorsed is beyond me.
00:45:39.000I mean, Texas should absolutely have some of our best senators, right?
00:45:44.000And that's why we've, I mean, we've endorsed Paxon.
00:45:49.000He said I'd drop out if Cornyn, if they passed the Save Act or they make a deal to get it done, Save America Act.
00:45:55.000I thought that was a smart chess move.
00:45:57.000And Trump's kind of taking a step back.
00:45:59.000I think he kind of read the tea leaves, read the room a little bit, and we'll see how that plays out.
00:46:03.000There was a huge information operation right after that primary.
00:46:07.000Cornyn should have, with the amount of money he spent, with his name recognition, with being an incumbent, he should have cleaned up in that primary.
00:46:15.000He went to a runoff, and there was this info op in D.C. to say, oh, he won, you know, because he had more than all of the other contenders.
00:46:31.000I mean, you got to get these guys out.
00:46:34.000I mean, listen, if you can get Lindsey Graham out in South Carolina, if you can get Nate Morris in Kentucky, if you can get a Paxton in Texas, already that would be a huge upgrade in multiple places.
00:46:47.000The ones that frustrated me are like, okay, we got rid of Romney in Utah and we got replaced with Curtis.
00:46:53.000How do you perform more poorly than Romney?
00:46:57.000I really want folks to understand this.
00:47:01.000And I know Charlie appreciated it as well because we said it privately a bunch as we were building the show and thinking through our show flow.
00:47:09.000You know, you can't measure the impact of the work that you guys do just on how many page visits you get.
00:47:14.000And I hope people understand that because it would be shows like ours and when Charlie was here where you guys formed so much of the intellectual groundwork and foundational thought work that went into then doing it on the show and the podcast and then millions more would see it.
00:47:30.000And so I just, you know, you guys do really, really important work and we just totally respect you guys.
00:47:35.000And you've been doing it for so long and doing it the right way.
00:47:39.000And I hope people really understand that about you guys.
00:47:42.000And Sean and I were talking actually just this morning about the important difference between mere punditry and actual investigative reporting.
00:47:50.000Anyone can give their opinion about anything.
00:47:52.000If you actually want to change the situation on the ground, knowing the facts, being able to put them together in a sensible way, and also just having a different perspective than everybody else in corporate media.
00:48:04.000You know, they're always trying to push an establishment talking point.
00:48:08.000Even if you take this week in the discussions on the SAVE Act, everyone in D.C. is trying to say, oh, they're going to get this SAVE Act done through reconciliation.
00:48:16.000Through our reporting with actual facts, we're showing how that's actually not going to happen and how that's a cop-out.
00:48:22.000And, you know, it's one thing to just say it.
00:48:25.000It's another thing to show procedurally why that's.
00:48:28.000Yeah, I mean, it's amazing how much power the parliamentarian has.
00:48:31.000You know, it's like you can't, you, there's, they tried, right, during the BBB, like the, at some point that was floated and they were like, you can't get it through.
00:48:43.000Reconciliation is a weird thing because so much of the rules around it are statutory.
00:48:48.000You know, so most Senate procedure and parliamentary stuff is just based on internal rules and precedents.
00:48:55.000Budget stuff and reconciliation stuff are one of the rare areas where they've actually put these restrictions on what the Senate can do in it into law.
00:49:02.000If you go back and read the debate at the time, there are a lot of people who thought that was a really bad idea.
00:49:06.000Like, you can't be putting Senate procedure into law.
00:50:29.000Well, if you can take that little morsel and say, okay, what if we just take away everything else in the SAVE Act, but all we care about is voter ID?
00:50:36.000It shows that you have room to negotiate and be that deliberative body that it was for hundreds of years before people started just taking all the debate out and putting it into back rooms.
00:50:46.000I genuinely wish we could get rid of, actually kind of get rid of C-SPAN, because I think C-SPAN messed up Congress where every speech, if you've ever been inside the chambers, you know that the speeches they give are fake.
00:50:57.000They're delivered to nobody except a few bored bystanders who are yawning.
00:51:02.000They're all just so they can be on C-SPAN, be on the record for whatever clip they want to get.
00:51:10.000It's almost, it's very alien to read about the U.S. Congress 150 years ago, where guys can become major American figures because they are, you know, giants of actual argument on the floor of the House, on the floor of the Senate.
00:51:24.000They get things through on the basis of that.
00:51:27.000And that's been totally wiped out in favor of just endless procedural nonsense.
00:51:31.000On the filibuster specifically, though, I think I actually might disagree there on it being about minority rights.
00:51:39.000I think a good formulation from a friend of mine, Vince Collins, actually, I think you know him.
00:51:45.000He pointed out the filibuster, it protects not the minority, it protects the majority from votes it secretly does not want to take.
00:51:53.000Because that is how we have all these Republicans who say, I'm super MAGA, I'm super gung-ho on the border.
00:51:58.000Oh, but, you know, it can't pass this.
00:52:02.000And same thing when the Democrats have power.
00:52:04.000Oh, yeah, we know we'd love to do all that, you know, crazy socialism, abolish the police stuff, but, you know, 60 votes, guys, tough breaks.
00:52:12.000And I feel like that is how it has broken out.
00:52:14.000And we have this fake Senate, a fake Senate that never passes anything.
00:52:20.000I think that's less a function of the filibuster than the modern running of the Senate.
00:52:25.000I personally think Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell together destroy the U.S. Senate.
00:52:29.000Rather than allowing debate to flower and to be unpredictable, they would go in, they put a bill on the floor, they would do what's called fill the tree.
00:52:37.000So they make it impossible for anyone to offer amendments and they'd file closure.
00:52:41.000And then you would just vote on that, and that was the end of it.
00:52:43.000If you could convince me that if we've abolished the filibuster tomorrow, that we had 51 votes to do truly transformational things to restore the country, I think I would be all for it.
00:52:55.000The reality is that if we were to abolish the filibuster today, they would have 51 votes to reopen DHS, and that is it.
00:53:03.000That is the only thing the Republicans would get.
00:53:06.000You don't think we get Save America Act passed?
00:53:08.000You don't think we get end invasion-level migration?
00:53:33.000Primaries are where the battle is for Republican.
00:53:35.000To your point, though, rather than blackpilling over this, it is true that by and large, every two years you get a slightly better class of Republican senators.
00:53:44.000You compare who've come in more recently with people who came in during Schmidt, Subberville.
00:53:49.000Yeah, real leadership coming in there.
00:53:52.000Holly's been kind of interesting, actually.
00:53:54.000He's been more and more kind of an X factor.
00:55:17.000Sometimes we'll get a new one I haven't heard before, and I'll just have to ask what it is because I don't know all of my 90s alt rock that they throw at us with some bowling for soup songs I've ever heard of.
00:55:25.000So I went to this show in Scottsdale a couple weeks back and I actually saw the Gin Blossoms.
00:55:31.000And I was like, I was like, guys, I saw the Gym Blossoms.
00:55:34.000And I was too young when they were big, but you keep hearing their songs for years afterwards.
00:55:40.000And so they're, I mean, I know the words, you know?
00:55:42.000And everybody in the studio is like, who's the gym blossom?
00:56:17.000Okay, so speaking of big, big views like that, Sean showed me this really interesting YouTube on how everybody came to hate Nickelback and how unnatural that was.
00:57:34.000Because, you know, and Pozo loves Creed, and so there's been a lot of Creed talk.
00:57:37.000And I kind of lumped them together in the same thing.
00:57:40.000But Creed was, obviously, had the faith angle that was much more pronounced, if you will.
00:57:46.000I mean, music is an interesting question.
00:57:47.000I mean, we had the All-American Halftime show, which did like between 50 and 60 million viewers.
00:57:52.000We actually hired an independent media analyst to break down the numbers and give us like a Nielsen equivalent.
00:57:59.000And it was the, if you add up all the streams together, it was the number one live stream event in basically online history.
00:58:07.000But we all did that with like two months prep.
00:58:09.000Yeah, and I mean, honestly, we put in like most of the work in the last two weeks, but it was, you know, and if you, we can't claim that it was the number one because we didn't put everything into one account.
00:58:20.000So Turning Points YouTube account, though, was the second largest in world history and the number one in U.S. history.
01:00:35.000I think losing Charlie was a big blow to that.
01:00:37.000But I also think just some of this, the Epstein stuff and the Iran stuff, I feel like, you know, we've got CPAC going on, by the way, in Texas.
01:00:46.000So the conservative movement is coalescing, at least in some shape or form, in that sense.
01:01:02.000I think a big part of the energy coming out of 2024 was the outsider energy.
01:01:08.000When you're on the outside looking in, which Trump was, they tried to kill him, they tried to imprison him, they tried to bankrupt him, and then he's ascendant and comes back.
01:01:37.000But yeah, there's been a definite vibe switch.
01:01:40.000And speaking of difficulties, building coalitions, that's a very difficult thing to do and to maintain.
01:01:47.000You know, just being here in this studio reminds me that after Charlie was assassinated, people tried to say, oh, well, this is a big free speech martyr.
01:01:57.000Well, he was a free speech martyr, but he was so, so much more than that.
01:02:02.000It was not just about advocating for free speech, but the content of what he was talking about was much more important.
01:02:08.000But also just his role within the movement was as this statesman who was able to interact with all these different groups of people with sometimes competing interests and keep everybody from going crazy.
01:02:20.000And you don't really have a lot of figures who can serve that function.
01:02:26.000And also just politically speaking, Donald Trump has historically been really good at managing his coalition.
01:02:32.000And I think less good in recent months than he has been in the world.
01:03:49.000if they have an accent like that anyways i did love see the the moment where i felt like the energy was coming back was the pearl harbor comment in That was great.
01:04:00.000That's the Trump I want to see more of.
01:04:02.000Well, you know what's crazy is we had, you know, I talked with Rich Barris, who's polling a lot, and he's kind of like Black Pill Barris right now.
01:04:09.000And, you know, I asked him after the State of the Union, you know, do you think he's going to get a bump from that?
01:06:20.000And so that's what I wish more people were thinking about in D.C. Obviously, in D.C., the main push is make sure Donald Trump does not pull out of this war.
01:06:42.000What's going on with the Wall Street Journal?
01:06:44.000You guys probably know more about that than I do.
01:06:45.000But the neocon element, I've heard it described, I think it was Kurt Mills or something, said that this is like the Empire Strikes Back of the Neocons.
01:06:54.000And I mean, I'm curious about your take.
01:06:56.000So, okay, let's say you've got the 82nd Airborne getting in position.
01:07:53.000I think, I mean, even on domestic policy, he wants to issue executive orders.
01:07:57.000One reason I think he loves tariffs, he does innately like tariffs, but he also loves that he can impose them by executive fiat a lot of the time.
01:08:05.000And whenever he's trying to demand the SAVE Act, it's okay, suddenly it's mired in, oh, the Senate has a filibuster and they don't want to, and they're moving slow and it's a bummer.
01:08:14.000I think he likes with foreign policy that he does have this huge range of action.
01:08:19.000I think people who, frankly, have always been in the pro-war caucus, they won him over with, oh, this Fordo thing, big instant success.
01:08:27.000This Venezuela thing, big instant success.
01:08:30.000I think it's pretty clear they sold him a narrative that Iran would be similar.
01:08:35.000I think they pretty clearly expected that they would blow up the Ayatollah and they would instantly either surrender or collapse.
01:09:25.000Like six months later, they trade him and he goes back to Japan.
01:09:27.000And he meets the government and they're like, we wish you to like, you know, make an initiative to like negotiate a peace deal with the United States as quickly as possible.
01:09:34.000And he just looks at them and he's like, I don't think you guys quite understand what you have done.
01:09:39.000I don't think they're going to make peace with you guys.
01:09:43.000War has a way of having objectives outside of what your own are.
01:09:47.000It's easier to start a war than to end it because the enemy gets a vote.
01:09:50.000I will say, I saw, again, Wall Street Journal story saying that Trump is privately telling anybody who will listen that he does not want this to drag on, that he wants to be out very soon.
01:09:59.000And Byron York had the point that, well, that's also what he's saying publicly.
01:10:04.000And he has said publicly over and over and over again.
01:10:07.000He's thinking more four to six week timeline.
01:10:10.000And so that is why you're seeing the pressure now being to elongate this war and have it continue.
01:10:16.000The gas prices alone are politically catastrophic.
01:10:23.000But I do think that, and I'm saying this is totally outside of my own views, communicating more what you want to achieve might be helpful for political outcomes.
01:10:32.000Doing more of a, you know, bringing people along with your goals.
01:10:38.000I wasn't expecting this, I have to say.
01:10:40.000But death of recess, it stopped me in my tracks.
01:10:44.000This isn't about dodgeballs and jungle gyms.
01:11:04.000And somehow the answer is always more money and less parental authority.
01:11:07.000The documentary breaks down how organizations like the NEA amassed enormous influence, how radical gender ideology entered classrooms and why something as basic as recess, movement, freedom, childhood, you know, had to go.
01:13:01.000I want to help me understand what do you think the importance of this?
01:13:04.000How damaging was this to President Trump, to the war effort?
01:13:09.000Or is it, you know, kind of what you learned about Joe Ken has your thinking on it changed?
01:13:14.000Yeah, I think it'll end up being a blip in the whole scheme of things.
01:13:18.000Washington has a way of making you believe that whatever is happening right now is the most important thing ever.
01:13:23.000I mean, it wasn't unimportant, but I think, you know, a month or two from now, it'll be forgotten.
01:13:27.000Molly and I were talking on the way to the studio this morning about how there seems to have been a permanent change kind of in how the American mind processes events.
01:13:38.000I don't know whether it was COVID that did it or the Russia hoax or the JFK assassination where people just instinctively refuse to believe whatever it is they're told is the primary story.
01:13:51.000And a lot of times this can be directionally accurate.
01:14:09.000And everyone kind of knew, no, no, no, it came from a lab.
01:14:12.000So I think there's a healthy instinct that people have to question the narrative, but there can be a point where that goes way too far.
01:14:20.000And I think what we're seeing now with just how easy it is to go and research stuff on the internet, there's podcasts everywhere.
01:14:26.000It's really easy to kind of choose your own adventure when it comes to a narrative.
01:14:30.000And that can, like I said, it can be a good instinct, but it can really go too far to where you just refuse to accept anything you ever hear ever, in which case you're really just crafting your own reality.
01:14:45.000And I think overall, it's kind of an unhealthy thing to do when we can never agree on the nature of reality or facts or anything ever.
01:14:54.000There's got to be a way back from that.
01:14:57.000And more specifically on the individual in question, I do think that Sean refers to staffer syndrome where staffers think they're much more important than they are.
01:15:05.000If you believe you cannot support your principle and you feel that you should resign, I think you should resign.
01:15:13.000I think that's more honorable than staying in and undermining and sabotaging, leaking.
01:15:37.000The strongest supporters of this war should understand that debating the objectives, the means by which you're going to obtain those objectives, is healthy and important.
01:15:49.000You have to have the support of the people who are putting their lives on the line, who are paying for it, and who might be forced to pay for it.
01:15:55.000For, you know, in the case of previous wars we've done, sometimes that lasts for decades.
01:15:59.000And so there are, see, I didn't love like everything about the way this went down.
01:16:04.000And I think we should just encourage much better debate.
01:16:08.000So I find it interesting that, you know, we're plus six months from Charlie's assassination, and it still feels like this is the churn that we're in, even in the midst of a war.
01:16:22.000And sort of the question is, you know, can we bring this back together in time for the midterms?
01:16:29.000Can we bring the coalition back, a winning coalition, so that we don't get completely shellacked?
01:16:35.000And if so, what needs to happen between now and then?
01:17:23.000What do we have to do to get where we need to be?
01:17:25.000I think Trump needs to have a laser focus on the domestic economy.
01:17:29.000He needs to understand that you have people who went to college and followed the rules who can't get jobs.
01:17:34.000You have a whole generation that thinks they're never going to get married.
01:17:37.000They're never going to own a home because you look at how much you have to have just to have a down payment, let alone the mortgage interest rate.
01:17:42.000And increasingly, you have multiple generations of people who believe the American dream is a total fantasy and totally out of reach.
01:17:49.000If he is laser focused on that with solutions on how to deal with how can you afford a house, how do you get college affordable?
01:17:56.000Can we make groceries normal, gas affordable?
01:17:59.000I think that solves most of his problems.
01:18:02.000And I would say, you know, this is Donald Trump is currently the president, but will not be with us forever.
01:18:08.000And it is shocking and appalling to me how little other Republicans have thought about being leaders in this moment.
01:18:17.000And the political party that does address some of these really deep questions about, you know, what does it mean to be an American?
01:18:23.000What does it mean to have a flourishing life will benefit with voters?
01:18:26.000Now, I also think there's something incumbent upon the people themselves.
01:18:31.000One of the things I love about particularly Charlie's last few years was his emphasis less on politics and more on inculcating morals in the people, focusing on the importance of religion.
01:18:43.000And I think that even as Sean and I are doing day-to-day news, you guys are doing a daily radio show, like we have to be focused on the day-to-day, but we also need to be focused on much bigger long-term issues about the trust we put in princes and whether we are a moral people capable of having this constitutional government.
01:19:01.000And if I can just make a little pitch here, I have a book coming out next month on Justice Alito, who is, I think, our most important and least understood justice.
01:19:12.000And one of the things I try to point out in this book is how he balances pragmatism and principle.
01:19:18.000And too often on the right, we have seen people really just go at one extreme or the other.
01:19:26.000You can be, you know, you can ride your principle and not care at all about whether you're helping the people that those principles are supposedly supposed to help.
01:19:33.000Or you can be so pragmatic that you become a utilitarian and think the ends justify the means.
01:19:38.000And so we as a people need to understand how to balance those things and also hold up those people, less influencers, more people who show moral courage, like I would say, Justice Alito.
01:19:51.000And Blake, final, I think you should take us home here.
01:19:54.000That Mamdani versus MAGA, that divide the future.
01:19:58.000I mean, you have to recognize, like, people set, people still, I think they get lost in the idea that we won this like huge permanent victory in 2024.
01:20:08.000They're not really accounting to reality, which is this can swerve back very violently.
01:20:13.000There's very radical people who would love to abolish a lot of core American freedoms, would love to bring a revive 2020 style social revolution.
01:20:24.000They already have ruined entire states.
01:20:26.000They would love to ruin the entire country.
01:20:29.000And that is what we are facing if we cannot adapt to the stresses that young people are facing, because they will vote to blow stuff up.
01:20:37.000Some of them will vote to blow stuff up just because it gives them a rush to do it.
01:20:40.000So you have to win over the people who are at least inclined to keep things together.