The Charlie Kirk Show - High on Denial? America’s Weed Problem & a 2026 Wake-Up Call

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.

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00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.

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00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.

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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.

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00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:49.000 Here we go.

00:00:56.000 The 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.

00:01:09.000 All right, welcome back.

00:01:10.000 Hour two, the Charlie Kirk Show is underway.

00:01:12.000 Blake Neff holding it down in the Bitcoin.com studios, your one-stop shop to buy, sell, and trade Bitcoin.

00:01:19.000 Thanks for holding it down, Blake.

00:01:21.000 Keeping the studio warm while I'm here in Palm Beach.

00:01:23.000 I'll be back in the studio tomorrow.

00:01:25.000 We have Alex Berenson joining us.

00:01:28.000 Check out his sub stack and his book, by the way, called Tell Your Children the Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence.

00:01:37.000 Alex, welcome back to the show.

00:01:38.000 You are sort of our resident expert on marijuana.

00:01:41.000 You and Charlie saw very much eye to eye on this topic, and it is now back in the news.

00:01:46.000 And I hope your book is selling like hot cakes because it's so important.

00:01:50.000 Hope you're getting a fresh infusion of that because the New York Times has admitted that we've been right all along.

00:01:56.000 452 is the image.

00:01:58.000 It's time for America to admit it has a marijuana problem.

00:02:02.000 Big, big admission from the New York Times, your former employer, by the way.

00:02:07.000 Almost like maybe you still have friends back there that are listening to you, Alex.

00:02:11.000 Tell us what the New York Times admitted and why now.

00:02:14.000 Sure.

00:02:15.000 So, I mean, by the way, it's interesting you mentioned about the book because even before the Times put this out, it seemed to me that there was something in the ether happening with people becoming aware, increasingly aware of the problems with cannabis and THC.

00:02:28.000 I think principally because so many, you know, so many young people are using and using very high potency vapes, what's called dabbing, which is essentially smoking chunks of THC, which is the active chemical in cannabis.

00:02:43.000 And when you use that way in particular, you can really knock yourself out and become psychotic very quickly.

00:02:51.000 And so I do think that this is unfortunately just something that's happening to people that their friends are seeing, that their family members are seeing, that their parents are seeing.

00:03:01.000 And, you know, for whatever reason, the book was starting to sell a little bit more even before the Times thing.

00:03:07.000 And now all of a sudden, it actually has sort of taken off again in terms of sales, which is pretty amazing because it came out sell your children seven years ago.

00:03:15.000 And I promise you, I will tell you the Times, my view on the Times, which I think it's very important that they did this, but I want to tell you something even more important that happened in the last 48 hours, which is that a conservative commentator, a young woman named Brett Cooper, who you may know, posted.

00:03:34.000 We actually have this post.

00:03:36.000 Let's throw it up, guys.

00:03:37.000 494.

00:03:38.000 Yes.

00:03:39.000 Here, I'll read it out.

00:03:40.000 My mom and I have been told that my brother's psychosis, now full-blown, diagnosed schizophrenia, is most likely drug-induced from his years of smoking weed.

00:03:51.000 This drug isn't harmless, no matter what our culture and screaming people in comment sections tried to tell us.

00:03:57.000 Yes.

00:03:58.000 So, so it's so important, right?

00:04:00.000 Because in the end, you know, the Times can write what it writes and I can write about statistics and journal articles and stuff, but people react to individual stories.

00:04:09.000 They react to the stories of people.

00:04:11.000 And, you know, especially when it's personal, right?

00:04:14.000 When it's, this is my brother and look what happened to him.

00:04:16.000 And that's been viewed almost 5 million times on X right now.

00:04:20.000 And so unfortunately, that is what's happening out there is that people are seeing, you know, family members or friends or friends of friends who've had real problems.

00:04:30.000 And they say, well, you know, this person wasn't using cocaine or methamphetamine or, you know, or mushrooms.

00:04:36.000 They were using, they were using THC.

00:04:38.000 They were using these vapes and suddenly they wound up in the ER and or maybe they have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and their lives are really wrecked by this and their families are getting messed up by it too.

00:04:50.000 And I need to figure out, I need to learn about this drug.

00:04:54.000 So what the Times wrote was sort of the broader, you know, the bigger picture question, which is this is happening against the background of the legalization of cannabis.

00:05:05.000 Charlie knew, right?

00:05:06.000 Charlie knew.

00:05:08.000 And so legalization, you know, many states have legalized in the last 10 to 15 years.

00:05:16.000 There's been a very aggressive, very pushy, very effective, you know, for lack of a better word, propaganda campaign selling cannabis and THC as medicine.

00:05:27.000 It's not medicine.

00:05:28.000 If we're going to legalize it on any basis, it's got to be as a recreational intoxicant that's got downsides and that needs to be regulated carefully.

00:05:36.000 But that's not how the industry got people to legalize.

00:05:39.000 They got people to legalize by telling them, hey, this is medicine. 0.79

00:05:42.000 And if you have seizures, it's good for you.

00:05:44.000 And if you're, you know, if you have cancer, it's good for you.

00:05:46.000 And it's going to keep people away from opioids, all this stuff, most of which has essentially no basis in science.

00:05:53.000 There's a couple of things where there's some evidence that cannabis and THC might be valuable, but mostly it doesn't.

00:06:00.000 Yeah, I was just thinking.

00:06:02.000 I remember being online kind of in that 2002, 2008, you know, that early internet window.

00:06:07.000 And it felt like weed was coming up all the time online.

00:06:10.000 There was this huge consensus among young people, except for me, where they were saying, oh, marijuana is basically harmless.

00:06:17.000 It was like a whole spiel.

00:06:18.000 It was only ever banned because racist lawmakers in the 20s had like a moral panic about Mexicans bringing this drug over the border.

00:06:26.000 And yeah, as you said, it was medicine.

00:06:29.000 It would cure cancer.

00:06:30.000 It basically was like a super drug, if anything.

00:06:33.000 And yeah, and the New York Times, it says in this article here, you know, in our editorials, we described marijuana addiction as relatively minor problems.

00:06:42.000 Many went further and claimed marijuana was a harmless drug that might even bring net health benefits.

00:06:47.000 And we said that legalization might not lead to greater use.

00:06:51.000 And the number they have here is insane.

00:06:53.000 It went from about 1 million daily users in 1992 to more than 18 million daily users today.

00:07:01.000 So the thing about cannabis, it's actually more addictive than alcohol, considerably more.

00:07:05.000 If you look at the number of people who use compared to the total number of the number of people who use daily, let's say, compared to the total number of users.

00:07:13.000 Okay, there's about 100 million adults in the U.S. who use alcohol on a regular basis, about half the population, a little bit more than half, okay?

00:07:22.000 So maybe a little bit more than 100 million.

00:07:24.000 Of those people, fewer than 20 million drink every day, okay, based on the studies.

00:07:30.000 And most of those people aren't drinking all day, every day.

00:07:33.000 If they do, we call them alcoholics.

00:07:35.000 We know they have a problem.

00:07:37.000 They know they have a problem.

00:07:38.000 When it comes to cannabis, there are more people using every day than use alcohol every day, even though the total number of cannabis users are much smaller than the total number of alcohol users.

00:07:50.000 And those people, those cannabis users, when they're using every day, they are waking and baking for the most part.

00:07:56.000 They are not doing this.

00:07:57.000 I'm going to have like one hit.

00:07:58.000 I mean, there are some people who do, but I'm going to have one hit at night and I'm going to go to sleep.

00:08:02.000 No, this is, this is, this is a major part of my life.

00:08:06.000 I wake up to this.

00:08:07.000 I schedule my life around my, you know, my vape breaks.

00:08:11.000 I may, you know, maybe I don't have a girlfriend anymore because I decided I liked cannabis more than having a girlfriend.

00:08:17.000 You know, maybe I just hang out playing video games and getting high all the time.

00:08:21.000 That is not, you know, your viewers, your viewers know that's a typical pattern.

00:08:26.000 Yeah.

00:08:26.000 Well, and Alex, you're kind of zeroing in on the young male cohort when you're talking about video games, vaping.

00:08:32.000 And this actually tends from what I'm gathering online, this young male, super high dose of THC, developing brains, leading to schizophrenia.

00:08:45.000 This actually, to me, is one of the more terrifying aspects of increased pot usage and us normalizing it and us sort of deifying the drug as like the only drug in the universe that doesn't have any side effects.

00:08:59.000 Young men seem to be particularly vulnerable to schizophrenia.

00:09:03.000 Let's go ahead and play this cut.

00:09:04.000 We actually have a cut here from Brett Cooper talking about it 495.

00:09:08.000 My mom and I have been told that my brother's psychosis, now full-blown diagnosed schizophrenia, is most likely drug-induced from his years of smoking weed.

00:09:16.000 This drug isn't harmless, no matter what our culture and screaming people in comment sections tried to tell us.

00:09:21.000 The story is that my brother Reed, who is 12 years older than me, became a pothead, I would say, late in high school.

00:09:26.000 Prior to this, he never showed any signs of mental illness.

00:09:30.000 He never showed any signs of psychosis.

00:09:31.000 But for the last decade, my brother Reed has been in and out of psychiatric facilities.

00:09:36.000 He has been on and off the streets in states like California and Idaho and Tennessee.

00:09:40.000 He's been all over the country.

00:09:41.000 This is what my family has been dealing with for a decade.

00:09:44.000 My brother Reed is now a diagnosed schizophrenic and he is mute.

00:09:47.000 As it stands right now, currently, he is unable to participate in society unless he is medicated.

00:09:54.000 So listen, men have a higher rate of schizophrenia than women.

00:09:58.000 They're more prone to severe mental illness than women. 1.00

00:10:01.000 And as we all know, as Charlie talked about all the time, young men are having a hard time in society today.

00:10:06.000 And it's understandable that some of them turn to this drug, but it doesn't make their problems better.

00:10:11.000 It makes them worse.

00:10:13.000 And I just hope that they know they're being sold a bill of goods here by the drug legalizers, by the cannabis industry.

00:10:19.000 They really should try not to use this.

00:10:21.000 It's not a good drug for them.

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00:11:27.000 I guess, Alex, some perspective I'd like on this is just how the New York Times kind of acts like they were, you know, they made an error of judgment, but it strikes me, I just feel like so much of these outcomes were obvious that there has to be this element where a lot of people realize they could make a lot of money off of this, that they could, like, they were creating something they knew would be super addictive and there would be a huge market for this.

00:11:54.000 And now a ton of people are getting rich off of these 18 million people a day who are using marijuana every single day.

00:12:01.000 Like it's kind of like tobacco.

00:12:03.000 Tobacco companies knew exactly how addictive their product was and they knew how deadly it was.

00:12:07.000 And I can't imagine that anyone was under any illusions who was in the know with marijuana.

00:12:14.000 There's two issues there, okay?

00:12:16.000 And they're both very interesting.

00:12:18.000 People in the industry.

00:12:19.000 Yeah, they know, they know how addictive this stuff is.

00:12:22.000 And they've been working for 30 years to make cannabis more potent, to make the, you know, what's called flower cannabis, what's in the joints, stronger, but also to produce these vapes, which are essentially pure THC.

00:12:34.000 And they know exactly what they've been doing.

00:12:36.000 And those, a lot of those people want to get rich. 0.94

00:12:38.000 If you look at the times, you know, unfortunately, it's the same kind of sort of useful idiocy that these people played when they called for schools to be locked down during COVID, when they went crazy with the Russian collusion hoax. 0.86

00:12:52.000 You know, there is a groupthink on the left in elite journalism that blinds people to facts that should be obvious. 0.79

00:12:59.000 And you, the data on this, what I'm going to tell your children, it was 2019.

00:12:59.000 Okay.

00:13:04.000 And I was able to draw on 20 years of data showing the sort of the harmful links between cannabis and severe mental illness.

00:13:12.000 And that's even counting the links between cannabis and, let's say, sort of bad life outcomes because you just don't achieve very much because you're smoking every day and you're not working very hard and your life is just sort of passing you by.

00:13:25.000 I'm talking about the really severe mental illness outcomes and frankly, the downstream violence from that, which is an issue we don't even have to begin to talk about.

00:13:32.000 We have so much else to talk about. 0.79

00:13:34.000 But people at the Times, people at the Washington Post, people at the Atlantic, all these places that think they're so smart, they didn't look at the data and they just told themselves over and over again, well, this is just being used to put black men in prison. 0.97

00:13:48.000 I mean, it was nonsense, okay? 0.97

00:13:50.000 It was nonsense in 2019.

00:13:52.000 It was nonsense even in 2009.

00:13:54.000 It hadn't been true for a really long time.

00:13:56.000 Let me tell you one quick thing that I discovered when I was writing Tell Your Children, which was people, as I think Andrew said, you know, they always say, well, we got banned in 19 in the 1920s and 30s because there was perception that it was a Mexican drug, that it was a drug that was being brought up from Mexico.

00:14:15.000 There is some truth in that.

00:14:16.000 What people don't tell you, what they didn't ever know, all these supposedly smart people, is that Mexico actually banned cannabis first because Mexicans saw what it was doing to their culture and country and they didn't like it.

00:14:31.000 So whenever this drug has become widely used, whether it's in India, whether it's in Mexico, whether it's in African or in North African countries, eventually there's a backlash to what it does to people.

00:14:42.000 And the fact that we thought we could rewrite the rules on this, that a bunch of nice liberals who basically had smoked pot a few times in college thought they could totally rewrite history and human biology and legalize this and there'd be no consequences just tells you once again what a bubble the left is living in and now by the way you know some of these people what's happened is they've seen their kids get completely screwed Screwed up on high potency cannabis and THC or their friends, and now they realize the truth.

00:15:12.000 I think here, here, let's do like a little rapid fire question and answer here.

00:15:16.000 Is weed a gateway drug?

00:15:18.000 Yes.

00:15:19.000 Yes.

00:15:20.000 Evidence is clear.

00:15:21.000 Does it?

00:15:21.000 Yes.

00:15:22.000 What is the rate of schizophrenia?

00:15:24.000 Do we know, especially in young men that are high drug users?

00:15:28.000 So the base rate is about 1%.

00:15:31.000 So one reason this has been able to happen is that let's say heavy cannabis use triples the base rate.

00:15:38.000 Okay.

00:15:38.000 Even not every young man is using.

00:15:41.000 So even if let's say 30% of young men are using in a dangerous way, that would not result in such a huge number that it would be immediately obvious, even though this is a really severe illness.

00:15:52.000 It becomes obvious over time.

00:15:53.000 But what I, what I say, and I say this with confidence now, is that there are probably hundreds of thousands of young people, mostly men, but some women in the United States and Canada who become severely mentally ill as a result of cannabis use, who wouldn't have been.

00:16:08.000 Hundreds of thousands of lives ruined, hundreds of thousands of families, because what you heard with Brett is this destroys families, right?

00:16:15.000 It doesn't just destroy one person.

00:16:17.000 When you're the family member, the brother or sister, I mean, God forbid you're the child, but brother, sister, parent of somebody with really severe mental illness, your life is misery.

00:16:27.000 I have a couple, Alex.

00:16:29.000 So even if you don't get psychosis, if you're using weed nearly daily from age 16, how bad of an impact is that going to have on your cognitive baseline?

00:16:39.000 How many IQ points are you going to lose?

00:16:40.000 It's a really good question.

00:16:42.000 I don't think there's a simple number.

00:16:44.000 It's bad for memory.

00:16:46.000 It's bad for motivation.

00:16:47.000 It's bad for intelligence, but I wouldn't be comfortable saying, you know, 10 points, 20 points.

00:16:51.000 I mean, clearly, most people who use or many, many people who use heavily find their lives disrupted by this.

00:16:59.000 In the same way, if you're an alcoholic, your life is going to be disrupted.

00:17:03.000 I've got another question.

00:17:06.000 Where weed has been legalized, have the outcomes been, has there been, you touched on violence.

00:17:12.000 Have we seen rises in violence, crime, criminality?

00:17:15.000 30 seconds out.

00:17:16.000 So why didn't they tell your children there was evidence that in the states that had legalized early, there was a rise in sort of in violence, basically, essentially in severe violence.

00:17:26.000 Now, nationally, we've been on a downtrend in terms of violence.

00:17:30.000 Obviously, cannabis psychosis is only one component of violence, right?

00:17:34.000 There are many, many different components of what make people violent, whether, you know, how we treat people who are, you know, who do we incarcerate people for a long time?

00:17:43.000 Obviously, that gets them off the streets.

00:17:46.000 Are the cops getting better at solving gun crimes because they, you know, they have more surveillance?

00:17:50.000 There's many things.

00:17:52.000 But there was evidence in 2019 of that.

00:17:54.000 Alex Berenson, check him out.

00:17:56.000 Thank you, my friend.

00:17:57.000 We'll talk to you soon.

00:18:00.000 Hi, folks.

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00:18:59.000 I want to get to our next guest, and that is Tom Bevin.

00:19:02.000 To hang out with him last night at celebrating freedom of speech with real clear politics.

00:19:09.000 Tom, welcome back to the show, my friend.

00:19:11.000 It's good to have you.

00:19:12.000 It's good to be back, and it was good to be with you last night.

00:19:14.000 That was a lot of fun.

00:19:15.000 Yeah, and thank you for honoring Charlie and his work celebrating free speech.

00:19:22.000 And I thought you guys did a great job of honoring him and honoring his legacy.

00:19:25.000 So, and you had liberals on stage.

00:19:28.000 I mean, you guys really run the gamut.

00:19:30.000 We had some spirited debates about trans and about it was, it was, it was good. 1.00

00:19:35.000 It was really good.

00:19:36.000 Don Lemon and was he a journalist or an activist?

00:19:39.000 It was a really good collision of ideas.

00:19:42.000 All right, Tom, I'm going to, I'm going to read something verbatim from a very prominent left-wing journalist that I was texting with.

00:19:50.000 And this is, everybody would know the name if I said it, but I'm going to leave it anonymous just for the sake of the relationship.

00:19:57.000 It says, there's absolutely no proof of any significant illegal voting.

00:20:00.000 He's talking about the Save Act.

00:20:02.000 You ran a campaign based on fear, demagogue, and exaggeration of them.

00:20:07.000 It worked until now.

00:20:08.000 Now, not only do you have a majority of the country against the way you're enforcing laws, but affordability has been revealed to not be because of legal entrance.

00:20:16.000 And you guys have a real problem heading into the midterm.

00:20:19.000 So unless you do something about health care costs, you're screwed, basically.

00:20:24.000 And Trump RX ain't it. 0.95

00:20:27.000 Agree or disagree?

00:20:28.000 I agree with some parts of it, disagree with others.

00:20:32.000 I mean, first of all, the Save Act, the majority of the country is in favor of that.

00:20:37.000 You know, across the board, even I think a majority of Democrats are in favor of it, but certainly African-American voters, Hispanics, Republicans, Independents think it's kind of common sense that you should have voter ID laws.

00:20:49.000 So is affordability a big issue?

00:20:53.000 Yes, it is a big issue.

00:20:55.000 Is Trump, you know, he's got some work to do.

00:20:59.000 Republicans do have some work to do on this issue.

00:21:01.000 So Trump is at 42.1% in our overall road clear politics average.

00:21:06.000 On the economy, he's at 40%.

00:21:07.000 On inflation, he's at 36%.

00:21:09.000 So to the extent that those continue to be issues that are of primary concern to voters, and most polls suggest that they are, I think the administration and the Republican Party has some work to do.

00:21:21.000 Do I think Trump RX is an answer?

00:21:24.000 It could be.

00:21:26.000 I think the saving accounts could be.

00:21:28.000 My take on the economy, as far as Trump is concerned, is that he's got a story to tell.

00:21:36.000 There are plenty of good numbers when you talk about the Dow and all that.

00:21:39.000 The problem that he has is a perception problem because people think the economy sucks, even though there are aspects of the economy that are really good.

00:21:46.000 But when Trump goes out there and says this is the best economy in the world and voters don't think that, then he looks like he's gaslighting and there is this discrepancy between what their perception is and what Trump is telling them the reality is.

00:22:00.000 And so that's really an issue for him to go out and prove to the American people that he is focused on this issue.

00:22:07.000 It's more of an almost an empathy type question to say, instead of saying affordability is a hoax or instead of focusing on taking over Greenland, for example, which occupied like seven days of the media landscape and all the oxygen, right?

00:22:21.000 For him to be doing these events, if you remember back to his first term, he was doing events at the White House with like truckers and welders and, you know, he had CEOs.

00:22:30.000 He had everybody in there.

00:22:31.000 It was all about the economy.

00:22:33.000 And he's not doing that kind of thing yet.

00:22:36.000 He'll do an event.

00:22:37.000 He did one speech on the economy at the end of last year in Detroit.

00:22:41.000 And that kind of got overshadowed by the fact that he flipped some guy off and had this thing with this factory floor worker.

00:22:47.000 He did another event recently in Iowa, which was supposed to be focused all on the economy, and then went out like two hours afterwards and tweeted that he's got the fleet steaming toward Iran.

00:22:58.000 And that became the headline.

00:23:00.000 They've got to do a better job, in my opinion.

00:23:03.000 The administration has to do a better job of having events and focusing on the economy and then sort of letting the you know staying out of their own way so that the people, the perception out there changes on how the economy is doing.

00:23:16.000 Yeah, Tom, that's what I find myself thinking and asking on the affordability issue, on the economy issue.

00:23:22.000 I, I, there's sometimes people have this debate: are we in a vibe session where the idea is people have gotten used to the idea that they just say affordability is their go-to acceptable expression for things just don't always feel awesome.

00:23:36.000 And I guess the part that goes with that is: does Trump doing events meaningfully help on this question?

00:23:44.000 How do you actually imprint the idea, oh, actually, the economy is doing well, or at least this administration is improving things?

00:23:52.000 I guess I don't see the obvious link between him doing an event at the White House and better poll numbers necessarily.

00:24:00.000 It's more of a question is, you know, he's also trailing on this question when pollsters ask: does the president care about people like me?

00:24:08.000 Right?

00:24:08.000 Does he have, is he focused on my concerns?

00:24:12.000 And that, that's more than anything.

00:24:13.000 It's like, it's not about the policy in particular.

00:24:15.000 Like these Trump savings accounts, right?

00:24:19.000 Is that going to have any short-term impact on the midterms?

00:24:21.000 Is that really going to change people?

00:24:22.000 No.

00:24:23.000 But it was an event where I think, you know, the focus was on, hey, this is how we help the younger generation, the next generation, actually, you know, invest and save and get ahead of the game.

00:24:36.000 I mean, he's fighting the problem that he's fighting right now is, you know, he can say, well, inflation's down.

00:24:42.000 Okay, it's down, but we just went through five years where we had, you know, mid to high single digit inflation, which compounded.

00:24:52.000 And so people, you know, things are 30 or 40% more than they used to be.

00:24:56.000 And we're talking about healthcare and, you know, college tuition and groceries and all those things.

00:25:01.000 And while Trump can point in the sort of short term, well, you know, the price of eggs are down, people are still not feeling, that's why they feel the economy sucks is because they've been battered for four or five years with inflation that has eroded their buying power.

00:25:13.000 And so I think one of the things that he needs to focus on from a policy perspective that would help him is to tell people and impress upon people that wages are rising faster than inflation.

00:25:25.000 It is all about wages.

00:25:26.000 If inflation's at 2% or 4%, but wages are growing at 4% or 8%, people are going to feel like they are getting some buying power back.

00:25:35.000 They are doing better in this economy.

00:25:38.000 And his policies have helped wage growth.

00:25:41.000 And so I think that's another area.

00:25:43.000 But again, it comes down to people looking at their TV screens and, oh, Trump's talking about the price of this or the price of that.

00:25:49.000 Trump is focused on the economy.

00:25:50.000 He's focused on the things that I care about, that we care about and my family and that we're talking about on the kitchen table.

00:25:56.000 He's not off, you know, focused on stuff going on overseas or Venezuela or even building a new wing on the White House.

00:26:06.000 I mean, those kind of things are just, they're catnipped for the media and they help shift the issue away from where I think the public wants it to be and where Trump needs it to be.

00:26:17.000 Tom, so I'm struggling, especially on this economic question here.

00:26:21.000 So throw up 456.

00:26:23.000 This is a question asked: are you better off today than you were four years ago?

00:26:28.000 48% say yes, 44% say no.

00:26:32.000 But that yes number is about 20 points, 20, 25 points higher than it was in November, I believe, of 2024.

00:26:41.000 So it's going in the right direction.

00:26:42.000 There's another image here, 502.

00:26:44.000 This is from Marquette.

00:26:45.000 It says family financial situation, living comfortably is at 40%, just getting by 45%, but that's up nine points from November of 2025.

00:26:56.000 So you see, it's almost like you're getting two sets of data.

00:26:59.000 It's like if you ask the question one way, people are positive.

00:27:03.000 If you ask it another way, it's almost like the Biden-year hangover and maybe this cognitive dissonance with what Trump is saying, they just can't get, they can't connect with it.

00:27:13.000 But what's true here?

00:27:14.000 Because I'm seeing positives, I'm seeing negatives.

00:27:16.000 Yeah, and this is, you know, people can make the data say sort of whatever it wants.

00:27:22.000 You could find this stuff.

00:27:25.000 I think the economy is getting better.

00:27:27.000 I think people are feeling a little bit better about the way things are going.

00:27:31.000 But Trump has about, you know, the Republicans have until about June.

00:27:35.000 And basically, by that point, if anything that happens after that won't accrue to their benefit probably in the midterms.

00:27:42.000 The other thing about these polls too, Andrew, is, you know, you really do need to go in and look at the sort of partisan splits here because, you know, there's this question, if you go back and look, how's the economy doing?

00:27:56.000 Well, when Joe Biden was in office, you know, Democrats, 75% of Democrats said the economy was great and 5% of Republicans said it was great.

00:28:03.000 You know, Republicans thought the economy sucked.

00:28:05.000 And the minute Trump gets into office, that number flips, right? 0.98

00:28:08.000 It's just a partisan sort of lizard brain thing.

00:28:11.000 And so Democrats are, even if they feel the economy is getting better, they're certainly not giving Trump or the Republicans credit for it.

00:28:18.000 And Republicans probably feel the economy is pretty good and they like and support Trump.

00:28:21.000 But focus on independence.

00:28:23.000 Like they're the ones, and again, it's a 15 or 20% part of the electorate, but they're the ones who truly do move back and forth based on what they see in their daily lives.

00:28:35.000 And they're going to be an important part of the midterms in November as well.

00:28:38.000 Tom Bevin, co-founder and president of Real Clear Politics.

00:28:41.000 Again, so great to see you last night and to be a part of that great event.

00:28:45.000 Thanks for having me and for honoring Charlie.

00:28:47.000 So God bless you guys.

00:28:48.000 Absolutely.

00:28:48.000 Thank you.

00:28:49.000 By the way, I check your homepage every day.

00:28:52.000 Every day.

00:28:53.000 Because if I need to see what the left is thinking, you put it all there for me right there.

00:28:53.000 Love it.

00:29:00.000 And even if I hate it, you guys put it up.

00:29:01.000 So it's a really powerful resource.

00:29:03.000 Tom Bevin, thank you.

00:29:05.000 Thanks, Andrew.

00:29:08.000 Howdy, Blake here.

00:29:09.000 Legacy Box has been a proud sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show all the way since 2021.

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00:30:20.000 Blake, you called this the Millennial 9-11.

00:30:23.000 You said it in jest, but it was funny because, but it is a sad story.

00:30:27.000 And I wanted to get to it because James Vander Beek left us with some really, really good clips.

00:30:33.000 He was a father of six children, so he leaves behind a wife and six children.

00:30:36.000 I think his GoFundMe to support his family is over a million dollars.

00:30:40.000 I encourage people to please support that because six children, that's a lot of mouths to feed.

00:30:45.000 Beautiful, beautiful family.

00:30:47.000 He had some great, just some really, really amazing clips.

00:30:50.000 He lost his battle with cancer.

00:30:52.000 He was so young, just in his 40s, which just blows me away.

00:30:56.000 Let's go ahead and play Cup 430.

00:30:58.000 Before cancer, God was something I tried to fit into my life as much as possible.

00:31:04.000 After cancer, I feel like a connection to God, whatever that is, is kind of the whole point of this exercise on this planet.

00:31:13.000 So beautifully said.

00:31:14.000 485 this was his final message was faced with the question if i am just a a too skinny weak guy alone in an apartment with cancer what am i and i meditated and the answer came through i I am worthy of God's love.

00:31:41.000 Simply because I exist.

00:31:45.000 And if I'm worthy of God's love, shouldn't I also be worthy of my own?

00:31:51.000 And the same is true for you.

00:31:54.000 You know, I want to flag, by the way, because I think this would interest some of our people.

00:31:58.000 So this might surprise you.

00:32:00.000 He was an actor.

00:32:01.000 We associate them with being spectacularly wealthy, but a lot of them are not as much as you might think.

00:32:06.000 And so they actually, unfortunately, his battle with cancer did exhaust the family's funds, we're told.

00:32:13.000 So they do have a GoFundMe for that family, for his wife, his six children.

00:32:18.000 It has already raised $1.6 million, which is very generous.

00:32:22.000 But if you feel inclined to support them, you can find that on GoFundMe.

00:32:28.000 I just wanted to shout that out there.

00:32:31.000 Yeah, it's remarkable.

00:32:33.000 There aren't enough people like him in Hollywood or in show business generally, but it is good to be reminded that those people do exist.

00:32:40.000 Yeah, he was a he was a just seems like a genuine guy.

00:32:43.000 Yeah, it's at 1.593 million.

00:32:46.000 And it seems like just a really nice guy.

00:32:49.000 And yeah, if you're a millennial, what was it?

00:32:52.000 I'm going to get the Dawson's Creek and then what was the other one?

00:32:56.000 Friday Night Lights?

00:32:57.000 Was it something like that?

00:32:59.000 Varsity Blues.

00:33:00.000 Thank you.

00:33:00.000 There was those two dueling high school football pieces of content.

00:33:06.000 Blake's version of himself in Don't Trust the Bee in Apartment 23.

00:33:12.000 I have not watched any of these programs, but a lot of people greatly did enjoy them.

00:33:17.000 Yeah, there's his GoFundMe.

00:33:19.000 And you know what?

00:33:20.000 Please support him.

00:33:21.000 God bless him.

00:33:22.000 Six kids.

00:33:23.000 It's just tragic.

00:33:24.000 I feel terrible for all those kids without their father.

00:33:27.000 So Blake, you got some emails for us.

00:33:29.000 Yeah, well, we got a great deal.

00:33:31.000 We got a very big response, obviously, to the video from that disturbed man, the disturbed shooter in Canada.

00:33:38.000 More, I'd say five or six people send us the identical take that that man, they believe, was demon-possessed in some way.

00:33:46.000 He certainly gave off that vibe.

00:33:48.000 And it's very understandable, you know, whether he literally was or not, why that's a useful way to look at it.

00:33:54.000 That when you allow certain mind viruses, certain brainworms into yourself, and if you indulge them endlessly, that can really take over you as a person.

00:34:05.000 That's why addiction is so dangerous.

00:34:07.000 It's why Charlie would talk about this, why he would try to listen to music that elevates the spirit, holy music, why you avoid certain things, because we are so heavily influenced by what we choose to marinate in and what we choose to be around.

00:34:21.000 It's why the friends you have matter.

00:34:24.000 You become like what you are around all of the time.

00:34:27.000 And if you're around poisons all the time, those take you over and they destroy what was once a full person.

00:34:33.000 You just become a parody of yourself.

00:34:35.000 We have a lot of responses on marijuana.

00:34:38.000 We got another email, I believe she'd contacted us before from one.

00:34:42.000 I don't want to say the name, but she has a brother who he's basically been in and out of homelessness due to marijuana use that shattered his mental health.

00:34:54.000 And we have another one, Gary, who says, these are all legal because people are making money off of it.

00:35:01.000 And I think Alex definitely drove that home for us.

00:35:04.000 Yeah, we got one from Clarence saying, be honest, and I'm not trying to be stupid here, but marijuana kept me from drinking because I knew what drinking was about and it wasn't good for me.

00:35:14.000 I would say to you, Clarence, that just because it kept you up drinking, being, you know, smoking a lot of pots, probably not good for you either.

00:35:21.000 Right?

00:35:22.000 In the scriptures, it says that you will be mastered by nothing, no addiction.

00:35:26.000 And so everybody struggles with what they struggle with, but that's the goal.

00:35:30.000 That's the North Star.

00:35:32.000 So just something to keep in mind.

00:35:34.000 I would say the numbers reflect, if you look at it, when you are hooked on one thing, the pattern is that it makes it easier for you to be hooked on other things, which is one reason making marijuana so widely available was such a mistake.

00:35:47.000 Like for the people at the bottom of society, it was like throwing one more problem onto another.

00:35:53.000 So it's not that we have 20 million people who use weed and then 20 million people who drink too much and then another 20 million who gamble too much.

00:36:01.000 It's often the same people doing all these things.

00:36:04.000 They do too much weed and they drink and they gamble away their money and they're hooked on, they play too many video games and they also are abusing prescription drugs.

00:36:13.000 And that's one reason the health of a lot of the American underclass is just totally disintegrated.

00:36:19.000 They're dying of the business.

00:36:21.000 Which we pay for in taxes.

00:36:23.000 Yeah, and they're dying of 10 different addictions.

00:36:25.000 And it'd be bad enough.

00:36:26.000 It would be bad enough if we just had people with drinking problems, for example.

00:36:30.000 But if you have a drinking problem and you're abusing your pills and you're taking a bunch of weed, it's very bad for you.

00:36:37.000 And we have to conquer these one at a time.

00:36:40.000 But the easiest way to not fall into this trap is to just make sure you never set down that path in the first place.

00:36:45.000 And that's why Charlie was such a great example.

00:36:48.000 Well, you know what's interesting, though, just looking at our emails, there's a lot of you that are a little skeptical about our weed take still.

00:36:53.000 It's interesting.

00:36:54.000 Gary says, will cigarettes and alcohol kill you?

00:36:57.000 Yes.

00:36:57.000 Cannabis does not.

00:36:58.000 This guy is a useful idiot. 1.00

00:37:01.000 So that's interesting. 1.00

00:37:02.000 Donald says, hey, folks, love you.

00:37:04.000 The three things listed above are legal.

00:37:06.000 Marijuana, alcohol, tobacco.

00:37:08.000 Use at your own risk.

00:37:09.000 They are all bad for you and they are only legal because they make someone money.

00:37:14.000 Drinking is bad, SIGs are bad, marijuana is bad, all legal.

00:37:17.000 Blake, final few moments here to you.

00:37:20.000 What do you say about the libertarian argument of the conservative movement?

00:37:24.000 You know, I understand the appeal, but we have to recognize like no one is an island.

00:37:30.000 None of us is, you know, homo economicus, like, you know, this pure Randian superhero against the world. 1.00

00:37:37.000 It's like I said, we're all shaped by what's around us.

00:37:41.000 And also, we are defined not just, as Charlie would say, we're not just defined by our independence.

00:37:46.000 We're defined by our burdens, our obligations, our duties.

00:37:49.000 We should seek out duties.

00:37:50.000 That's why Charlie would advocate marriage, children.

00:37:53.000 You become a stronger person when you actually have responsibilities and duties to fulfill.

00:37:58.000 And all these addictions we push everywhere, they are encouraging people to abdicate their duties towards others, which are part of what make us fully human beings.

00:38:09.000 We'll see all of you guys tomorrow.

00:38:11.000 Join the AMA.

00:38:12.000 We love having all of you.

The Charlie Kirk Show - February 13, 2026

High on Denial? America’s Weed Problem & a 2026 Wake-Up Call

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