The Charlie Kirk Show - How to Complete the Transformation of the GOP with Jeff Webb and Will Chamberlain

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, today on the Charlie Kirk show, a conversation with two of my friends, Will Chamberlain and Jeff Webb.

00:00:05.000 Check out humanevents.com.

00:00:08.000 And also, Jeff Webb is the author of American Restoration.

00:00:11.000 We got to get Will a book.

00:00:12.000 Will's got to write a book and he'll get there.

00:00:14.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:17.000 And please consider supporting us and this program at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:23.000 Get behind us at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:27.000 We go over what did you learn in the last year, what's positive, what's negative, and everything in between.

00:00:31.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:32.000 Here we go.

00:00:34.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:35.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:37.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:41.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:44.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:45.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:46.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:48.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:53.000 Turning point USA.

00:00:54.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:03.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:07.000 Hey, everybody.

00:01:08.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:09.000 I'm sitting in an undisclosed location.

00:01:12.000 Some would call it a bunker.

00:01:13.000 Others would call it a conference room with two of my very good friends, Jeff Webb and Will Chamberlain, both of which are now partners, you could say, at humanevents, humanevents.com.

00:01:25.000 I contribute there weekly.

00:01:26.000 Some of you email us.

00:01:27.000 You say, Charlie, where can I find your writings?

00:01:30.000 Well, every week, humanevents.com.

00:01:33.000 And there's some very big things coming up for this website.

00:01:37.000 Jeff, I want to start with you.

00:01:38.000 Jeff founded Varsity.

00:01:40.000 Jeff has spoken at a lot of our Turning Point USA events and is a great thinker and has done a lot of exciting things right now in his life and is also doing some exciting things right now.

00:01:49.000 Jeff, what excites you the most of what you're seeing right now in the pro-American conservative movement?

00:01:57.000 Well, Charlie, I think, first of all, the resilience is amazing.

00:02:01.000 I think everybody or many people predicted there was going to be this kind of depressing, almost hangover from the election, and it'd be difficult for people to come back and get excited about the country and the movement.

00:02:13.000 And, you know, we're seeing exactly the opposite.

00:02:16.000 I think that it was a very sobering loss.

00:02:19.000 There's no doubt about it.

00:02:20.000 And there was a lot of disappointment.

00:02:22.000 But it's been interesting to see how people have not lost the momentum.

00:02:27.000 You know, they believe in the movement.

00:02:29.000 They believe in the things, the America First Agenda, and many of the things that President Trump really brought to light.

00:02:35.000 And they're not discouraged.

00:02:37.000 Yeah, they took a breath, paused a little bit, but I think everybody's looking ahead and, frankly, excited.

00:02:42.000 No doubt that we have a big fight on our hands.

00:02:45.000 When you lose, when you don't have any of the three branches, it's a big challenge.

00:02:51.000 And we've already seen it with the, you know, with the recent COVID relief, so-called COVID relief bill, which is a disaster.

00:02:59.000 But be that as may, we've seen what can happen and why elections matter.

00:03:04.000 But I think that there's a real commitment to fighting the fight and really to taking the agenda forward.

00:03:12.000 People really doing whatever they can in their own lives, in their communities, in their states to keep the movement going.

00:03:19.000 And that's exciting.

00:03:21.000 Yeah, Jeff, I sense that there's a lot more of an action mindset in the conservative movement right now than I did after Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in 2012.

00:03:32.000 Will, you have been with Human Events since you bought it.

00:03:36.000 That's right.

00:03:37.000 And tell us what you are most excited about right now in the pro-American conservative movement.

00:03:43.000 All right.

00:03:44.000 What I'm excited about is the fact that the Republican Party has been reoriented to, I think, a much stronger and more popular platform.

00:03:52.000 And that's largely due to President Trump.

00:03:55.000 You know, when I started being more politically aware, it was frustrating to watch the Republican Party be the party of foreign wars, be the party of neoliberalism generally, and to not be concerned with populist issues and to be kind of ideologically inflexible.

00:04:11.000 And now I think we have a party that is much more aligned with American workers, and it's also much more aligned with just generally looking out for their constituents more so than appeasing an ideology.

00:04:25.000 I think about where we are in terms of how the right thinks about tech censorship.

00:04:29.000 Two years ago, the right was in a position where you even said something about telling a private company that they needed to stop discriminating against conservatives.

00:04:37.000 They're like, whoa, it's a private company.

00:04:39.000 They can do what they want.

00:04:40.000 That's completely changed in two years. 0.96

00:04:43.000 Non-intervention is now the default foreign policy position, and the Liz Cheneys are marginalized.

00:04:49.000 And then on, you know, on economic policy in general, it's much more pro-worker, pro-family, and not inflexible about defending corporations.

00:04:58.000 So I think that puts us in a position to win a lot of votes in coming elections.

00:05:02.000 Even with all the headwinds of COVID, we only lost, we just barely lost.

00:05:07.000 We have a close majority, we have a slight, the Democrats have a slight majority in the House.

00:05:12.000 There's a 50-50 tie in the Senate, and we lost by a few tens of thousands of votes in the presidential election.

00:05:17.000 We are well positioned coming out of the pandemic and with all the craziness that the left is doing to afford a really popular platform and to take back power in the coming years.

00:05:27.000 So I think both of your answers I agree with completely, and that's why we get along so well.

00:05:32.000 And you're right, Will, the Republican Party, and I just kind of go to CPAC and also our Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.

00:05:40.000 You look at the speakers, especially at our Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.

00:05:44.000 And I guess I could speak up on behalf of CPAC too.

00:05:47.000 No one told me what to say.

00:05:48.000 No one told me what to say at CPAC.

00:05:50.000 No one told anyone what to say.

00:05:52.000 And yet, amazingly, with no central choreograph or choreographing or orchestration, everyone was saying the same doctrine.

00:06:01.000 And so, Jeff, and then I want Will to get your response.

00:06:04.000 Jeff, you and I first sat down two years ago, and my back was really hurting there.

00:06:08.000 My back's a little bit better.

00:06:10.000 I joke around because it's one of the recurring themes on this podcast.

00:06:13.000 Pro-American, Charlie's back is hurt.

00:06:17.000 Is in 2019, when we first sat down in January, we said, What are we going to have to do to make populist ideas popular in the Republican Party?

00:06:26.000 Are we winning that fight?

00:06:27.000 Have we won?

00:06:28.000 Is it in the right direction?

00:06:30.000 And I made a comment to you that Tucker Carlson's running the Republican Party, and you kind of chuckled.

00:06:34.000 Do you agree with that kind of whole observation?

00:06:37.000 Well, I think there's no doubt that the populist movement within the party is winning, and it's irreversible.

00:06:43.000 I mean, as Will was alluding to, it has gained momentum.

00:06:48.000 You can see it at every step along the way.

00:06:50.000 Do we still have some vestiges of the old approach where we were, again, for foreign wars and just lower taxes and really didn't talk about the American worker and about our companies and our factories and our future and our schools, the things that really affect everyday Americans every day?

00:07:08.000 Those have come to the forefront.

00:07:10.000 And you were talking about CPAC.

00:07:12.000 It's amazing that people have realized in the short period of time after the election, rather than there being this reflection on, well, President Trump didn't win, so we're going to go a different direction.

00:07:22.000 Now we're going, which a few of the old, the old line Republicans did, that's not going to happen.

00:07:29.000 And it's amazing that they even felt that way.

00:07:33.000 So I think that, you know, I'm just, as we talked about earlier, I'm optimistic about it.

00:07:39.000 And I think that, again, you go back two years even, and we're a couple of years into the Trump presidency and the force of his own personality.

00:07:49.000 I mean, people were looking at it like this is a many people, this is going to be just during the term of Donald Trump, or that's four years or eight years.

00:07:57.000 That's all this is.

00:07:58.000 It's Trumpism.

00:07:59.000 It's beyond that.

00:08:00.000 And we're seeing that now.

00:08:02.000 We're seeing new leaders.

00:08:03.000 We're seeing people pick up the torch and move forward at all levels.

00:08:07.000 So it's exciting.

00:08:08.000 We have a lot of work to do.

00:08:10.000 So I want to now get into the challenges and what we're up against.

00:08:14.000 But Will, I want you to build that out a little bit more.

00:08:17.000 Because why does it feel that the people and the popular leaders in the conservative movement are articulating the MAGA doctrine?

00:08:26.000 I did write a book titled That.

00:08:28.000 And Jeff, what's the name of your book again?

00:08:30.000 Is it Middle Class Warrior or Middle Class Revival?

00:08:33.000 American Restoration.

00:08:34.000 I'm sorry I couldn't remember.

00:08:35.000 American Restoration, How to Unshackle the Great Middle Class by Jeff Webb.

00:08:39.000 Will, why does it feel as if there's this massive disconnect between the people who are in charge of the Republican Party and the people that are in the Republican Party?

00:08:46.000 It feels like leadership.

00:08:49.000 Kevin McCarthy's probably the least offender of this.

00:08:52.000 McConnell's the worst offender.

00:08:54.000 Why is there this kind of almost two different political worlds that we see operating from where if you want to get an applause line at CPAC, you have to embrace populist ideas?

00:09:07.000 If you went to CPAC and said, and now we are going to deregulate American corporations, people would look around, they'd say, what the hell is this?

00:09:19.000 Is this the Chamber of Commerce Convention or is this CPAC?

00:09:21.000 Will talk about that.

00:09:23.000 So, yeah, you could hear a pin drop at CPAC if you did that.

00:09:25.000 Just a giant, like, what's going on?

00:09:28.000 And that would have gotten applause 10 years ago.

00:09:30.000 I think the problem here is that institutions are slow to change, just generally.

00:09:36.000 These politicians have their donors.

00:09:39.000 They have their people that they've worked with for a long time.

00:09:43.000 They're more fixed in their beliefs.

00:09:45.000 I mean, Kevin McCarthy, I think, you know, he's trying to keep around Liz Cheney.

00:09:48.000 Why?

00:09:49.000 Even though Liz Cheney voted to appeach the president, well, he built relationships with Liz Cheney and her friends over the course of 20 or 30 years and feels an obligation to maintain that.

00:09:58.000 So those institutions are going to be the slowest part of the movement to reform.

00:10:02.000 But ultimately, they're politicians.

00:10:04.000 They're democratically accountable.

00:10:06.000 And I think you see that, you know, it didn't happen immediately in 2016, but over the course of the Trump presidency and now you see everybody sort of moving in the right direction.

00:10:16.000 And especially when you have politicians that maybe privately disagreed at the time with, you know, interventionist foreign policy, but felt that they couldn't come out and contradict the Bill Crystals of the world.

00:10:26.000 Well, that's over.

00:10:27.000 You know, Bill Crystal is the least popular person if you actually poll Republican voters, maybe next to Mitt Romney.

00:10:32.000 Those people are horribly unpopular now.

00:10:34.000 So, you know, that frees up the space for politicians who might have been a little bit more afraid to come out and actually advocate the populist platform that they probably think was right in the first place.

00:10:47.000 Look, you've heard me talk about my pillow.

00:10:49.000 And if you want to support Mike Lindell, do it through my pillow.

00:10:52.000 And a lot of people are saying it's literally changing their life.

00:10:55.000 They won't go flat, and you can wash and dry them as many times.

00:10:58.000 But all that aside, Mike Lindell, a lot of you are asking me, how do I support Mike Lindell?

00:11:04.000 I love what he's doing.

00:11:05.000 I think he has great character.

00:11:06.000 Well, go to mypillow.com.

00:11:09.000 That's mypillow.com and use the promo code Kirk when you check out.

00:11:13.000 You can get up to 60% off.

00:11:15.000 So you go to mypillow.com, promo code Kirk.

00:11:18.000 I know a lot of you are wondering, Mike Lindell needs help.

00:11:22.000 How do I help?

00:11:23.000 Go buy a pillow.

00:11:24.000 You'll sleep well and help Mike.

00:11:26.000 All my pillow products come with a 10-year warranty and 60-day money-back guarantee.

00:11:29.000 So go to mypillow.com, promo code Kirk.

00:11:32.000 Mypillow.com, promo code Kirk.

00:11:37.000 So now I want to get into the challenges.

00:11:39.000 And I think both of you, we agreed on the positives.

00:11:42.000 I want to start that way because if I started with the negatives, people would say, that's enough.

00:11:45.000 I got enough negatives in my life.

00:11:46.000 But we have the positives, and I think that the people are with us.

00:11:49.000 We narrowly lost, even with the shenanigans and the nonsense and the tomfoolery around the actual election and the stated interference from the Democrat Party, the Time magazine piece, Molly Ball.

00:12:01.000 And so now we're at a place right now where Republicans, conservatives, whatever you call them, people that love their country, if we don't give up, if we remain resilient, your word, I believe we can be successful.

00:12:14.000 But we must analyze what the biggest challenges are.

00:12:17.000 And we must not just analyze, but pinpoint and come up with courses of action.

00:12:21.000 Jeff, what do you think are the greatest potential obstacles to us winning again and restoring the American promise, which is something you and I talked about privately, which I just love that phrase, the American promise.

00:12:36.000 What is our biggest obstacles for us doing that, legislatively, socially, culturally, or politically?

00:12:41.000 Well, I think that you have to look the short term and the long term.

00:12:45.000 I think short term, there's this imminent threat, if you will, from this election legislation that the House is trying to move forward on, which would forever change how we conduct elections in this country.

00:12:58.000 And to be frank, put the Republicans at a disadvantage, possibly for generations to come.

00:13:05.000 So that legislation has to be defeated.

00:13:08.000 And everybody needs to be contacting their senators and really putting pressure on them to vote the right way.

00:13:19.000 It's scary that between where we are now and really going, you know, going backwards quickly and deeply, you have to rely on two or three moderate, so-called moderate Democrat senators.

00:13:36.000 But that's where we are.

00:13:37.000 And people have to understand that this is very serious.

00:13:40.000 So I think that you look at that in the short term.

00:13:43.000 I think longer term, well, it's short term as well.

00:13:48.000 But the power of big tech and the threat to our individual liberties and our freedoms and conservative thought is frightening.

00:13:59.000 And then I think you get into what's happening in our educational institutions.

00:14:04.000 I mean, here we are with so many children.

00:14:07.000 I heard a horror story today about a young woman, a student who has several, has different kinds of emotional problems, trying to get through college, but not even in class.

00:14:17.000 There's nobody there to help.

00:14:19.000 And then her father said this is going to affect her the rest of her life.

00:14:24.000 And so to the extent that we can have that kind of situation taking place with our children and it being acceptable is very disturbing.

00:14:33.000 But this is just an example of what's happened in our educational system.

00:14:38.000 So I think over the long haul, it has to be addressed.

00:14:41.000 It's not going to be easy.

00:14:43.000 It took a couple of generations to get where we are right now.

00:14:46.000 I don't have to tell you, Charlie, this is your area, but we have to get started.

00:14:49.000 And again, I feel the momentum.

00:14:51.000 I think sometimes you have to get to the darkness before you see the dawn, right?

00:14:55.000 And I think that the pandemic and the effects of the pandemic and how it's affected the everyday lives of our citizens has given people a determination that things are going to be different and they're going to be better.

00:15:09.000 I think there's a lot of wisdom there.

00:15:11.000 And the short term, which ends up being a long-term threat, is HR1, House Resolution 1.

00:15:17.000 And I'm not one to be alarm bells on pieces of legislation.

00:15:17.000 It really is.

00:15:22.000 I think the stimulus is wasteful.

00:15:23.000 I think it was a mistake.

00:15:25.000 I don't think it was necessary.

00:15:26.000 I think it put us in debt, which I want to talk to you about.

00:15:29.000 It rose up the deficit.

00:15:30.000 Do I think it was an existential threat to the future of our country?

00:15:32.000 No, I don't.

00:15:33.000 And I think that that actually was probably a strategic win for Republicans in the sense that we've actually saved a lot of potential political capital because we really haven't organized on a legislative fight yet in this new presidency.

00:15:49.000 We really haven't done it.

00:15:50.000 We've let them sign a bunch of, we've complained about Keystone XL, complained about the border, but I'm talking about an Obamacare style fight where we really vocalize our opposition.

00:16:01.000 And HR1 is that one.

00:16:03.000 HR1 is an existential threat where you would register every single person, not citizen, in every state, the Bureau of Prisons database, the DMV, publicly available databases.

00:16:13.000 Everyone would get a ballot.

00:16:15.000 You can't challenge it in court.

00:16:16.000 I mean, you read the specifics of HR1.

00:16:18.000 It's extraordinary.

00:16:20.000 So Will, what do you believe are the biggest threats to the movement?

00:16:24.000 We had a really fun private discussion recently, and I actually, I almost wish it was recorded because it was such a robust conversation where we said we need to change a trajectory of the nation, right?

00:16:35.000 And it's like almost like turning around a freighter in the ocean.

00:16:38.000 It takes a little bit of a while, but a two-degree turn can be a 200-mile difference a couple weeks later.

00:16:43.000 What do you think are the biggest threats and obstacles to our movement?

00:16:48.000 Right.

00:16:48.000 So, you know, the biggest threats are always going to be for us right now, the structural ones, and then perhaps ignorance of the big structural problems among Republican congressmen and congresswomen.

00:16:59.000 So HR1, right?

00:17:01.000 That's a structural change to the way our government works that would exclude Republicans from power, that would facilitate voter fraud and make it much, much easier than it currently is.

00:17:10.000 Everything should be going the opposite direction.

00:17:13.000 You know, election integrity should be like Caesar's wife beyond question.

00:17:18.000 You know, that's just the integrity beyond question, rather.

00:17:22.000 And that's really important.

00:17:24.000 I mean, that's the way it works in most other countries in the world.

00:17:27.000 France banned mail in voting for this reason.

00:17:29.000 I mean, because the obvious and transparent integrity of election means that people don't fight over the end result.

00:17:36.000 But also, it's just if you can't win an election, then it doesn't really matter like how, because the other side is cheating, it doesn't really matter how great your policies are.

00:17:43.000 So you have to fight on HR1.

00:17:46.000 We need to be moving in the direction of more integrity, not less.

00:17:48.000 Another structural issue, as I see it, is the free speech issue and the ability to speak freely on social media.

00:17:54.000 Because if you don't have the ability to speak freely, then on substance, one side of the debate is going to be underrepresented and the other side is going to be overrepresented, which means you have this inexorable poll leftward.

00:18:04.000 You also have people just in fear to express themselves generally because the sword of Damocles is hanging over everybody's account.

00:18:12.000 And I think that it's very, very important to not lose on this free speech issue and to fight back very hard against what the Democrats are trying to do, which is use the threat of antitrust enforcement to coerce them into being more aggressive in terms of censoring free speech.

00:18:29.000 And then I think the third thing that's a sort of smaller potential pitfall, but it's still there, is that Republican legislators won't grasp that these are the two big issues.

00:18:36.000 I mean, I saw something today about the House GOP pushing an estate tax repeal.

00:18:43.000 I mean, I don't, I understand there are compelling arguments for an estate tax repeal, but that's a first world problem and a type of thing that is just like has to be 30th or 40th on the list of GOP concerns.

00:18:55.000 It's not populist.

00:18:56.000 It won't impact the majority of our base.

00:19:00.000 Even if you can make some sort of fairness argument about double taxation, like it's just not the first thing that should be on the agenda.

00:19:06.000 And so, you know, if Republicans are doing that instead of focusing on, we're going to talk about making sure they don't, you know, stop making sure the elections are fair and that there's as much election integrity as you can.

00:19:17.000 Stop what the Democrats are doing at the federal level.

00:19:18.000 Do a lot at the state level.

00:19:20.000 And then the same thing with social media censorship.

00:19:22.000 And instead, we're going to be pulling out policy proposals from 2003.

00:19:25.000 I mean, we could be in real trouble.

00:19:28.000 I did not know that's what the House GOP introduced.

00:19:31.000 I'm going to do a podcast on that.

00:19:34.000 Remind me to do that tomorrow.

00:19:36.000 That's a great way to win over the iron worker in Western Pennsylvania who has negative $30,000 in credit card debt.

00:19:44.000 His kid just borrowed another $100,000 to go to Penn State to go learn about North African lesbian poetry.

00:19:51.000 What matters to him is to make sure that the billionaire can transfer his or her wealth to the next generation.

00:19:58.000 Like is the goal here that George Soros should have more money to donate to progressive causes and that his son should as well?

00:20:04.000 I mean, you know, is the billionaire class really on the side of the Republican Party right now?

00:20:09.000 That's not at all clear to me in general.

00:20:12.000 And so, you know, perhaps like if they, you know, if these people want an estate tax repeal, they can start, you know, not censoring us on social media.

00:20:20.000 How about that? 0.88

00:20:22.000 Instead, the Republicans say, oh, wait, all the corporations are taken over by woesters. 0.98

00:20:27.000 Coca-Cola is telling people that all white people are racist.

00:20:31.000 The vast majority of upper middle class people are donating to BLM Incorporated, or they get massive donations from upper middle class people. 0.93

00:20:39.000 And Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Louis Vuitton guy, they all hate you and your value system, House Republicans.

00:20:47.000 But the most important thing is an estate tax repeal.

00:20:50.000 That is going to be the compelling reason to give us back the House in 2022.

00:20:54.000 It sounds like a Chamber of Commerce created policy item.

00:20:58.000 Jeff, you have an opinion on the Chamber of Commerce.

00:21:00.000 Talk about that and just wherever it takes you.

00:21:04.000 Yeah, so having had the good fortune to build the business from scratch to be something, thank you, something very considerable.

00:21:14.000 You know, as I look at the landscape, if I was a young man really starting to, are really focusing on trying to start a company right now, it would be a hell of a challenge.

00:21:24.000 I mean, it's much more difficult.

00:21:26.000 Can you do it?

00:21:26.000 Of course you can do it.

00:21:27.000 But, you know, it's harder.

00:21:29.000 There are a lot of things in the way.

00:21:31.000 And then you, you know, I always thought as I was building this company, the Chamber of Commerce, because I related to the local Chamber of Commerce, frankly, in Memphis, Tennessee.

00:21:41.000 Good people, you know, really behind me.

00:21:43.000 But then as I began to look at the National Chamber of Commerce and what they stand for and who they help, they are not for the American worker.

00:21:53.000 They are not for small business.

00:21:55.000 They are for the big corporations.

00:21:57.000 They're for the wealthy class.

00:21:59.000 They're not really about helping kind of everyday Americans.

00:22:03.000 So I feel very strongly about that.

00:22:05.000 So people should not be, they shouldn't be misled and they certainly shouldn't contribute to the National Chamber of Commerce.

00:22:15.000 I think that small business has been particularly hurt during the pandemic, disproportionately hurt.

00:22:22.000 And we can put on our real cynical hats and say that perhaps the extended lockdowns are intentional because they are hurting the small businesses and the people that work for them.

00:22:35.000 And it's something that should be unacceptable to all Americans.

00:22:39.000 I mean, you look at the big companies who are able to stay open.

00:22:42.000 Look at how some of these major corporations have flourished during the pandemic.

00:22:47.000 It also makes you wonder, I can't help, but I'm just going to say this will make me some enemies, I think.

00:22:51.000 But, you know, you look at the targets in the Walmarts of the world, right?

00:22:54.000 Well, they got to stay open because they had groceries and they had pharmaceuticals, right?

00:22:59.000 Well, guess what?

00:23:00.000 They didn't close the furniture section, right?

00:23:03.000 So, and they didn't close the hardware section.

00:23:06.000 So what about the local hardware store?

00:23:08.000 Okay.

00:23:09.000 Why couldn't they, if Walmart is open?

00:23:11.000 If you really, if you think this is really a problem, we have certain things, we have to have groceries, drugs, pharmaceuticals, and so on, fine.

00:23:18.000 You know, put up a barrier between those parts of the store and the rest of the store, if you want to be fair.

00:23:24.000 If we'd have done that, we might be surprised about how fast things would have been opened.

00:23:29.000 Jeff, that's a really good point.

00:23:31.000 In fact, that would have been adequate protection for the small businessman and say, you know what, you can come here to get peppers and carrots, lettuce, and soup, but you just can't come here and go buy something that very well might also be accessible for pick one of those cities up there, Macomb, Quincy, all of them have Walmarts.

00:23:53.000 And they also have small businesses that almost don't exist anymore.

00:23:58.000 If you're a college basketball fan, the NCAA tournament, March Madness is your favorite time of year.

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00:24:08.000 March Madness is known for drama, and I love every minute of it.

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00:25:00.000 I think one of the biggest fears, if I were to contribute to the conversation, is the Republican Party needs to make a very conscious decision, a pivot, outside of just the public speeches they give at CPAC or at Turning Point Student Action Summit, but actually show it in policy that we're not the corporatist party.

00:25:15.000 We are the party of the people.

00:25:17.000 That is where we are.

00:25:18.000 And it will be a blend of traditional conservatism, Teddy Roosevelt, kind of pro-American policy, always trying to say that we don't want to go in the socialist direction.

00:25:28.000 None of us believe that, obviously.

00:25:30.000 But that also means we're not going to say that whatever Walmart or Target or Google wants is necessarily good for the country.

00:25:37.000 You touched on something, though, Will, that now I remember I really want to focus on, which is challenging big tech and what the states can do and what the states are doing.

00:25:46.000 You tweeted out one tweet that actually was sent to me of yours was that you praised Governor Abbott for what he was doing on the tech companies.

00:25:52.000 This is also something, Jeff, you and I have talked about.

00:25:54.000 Will, walk us through what you think the states can do and should the states get into an active posture on this fight against big tech and the corporate oligarchy running our country.

00:26:03.000 So yeah, I'll take those questions in turn because they're both good ones.

00:26:05.000 I mean, on substance, you know, it's hard to know exactly what, I mean, the Republicans can do right now because they're not really fully in power.

00:26:14.000 But there's something very symbolic and simple they can do.

00:26:16.000 They can stop taking money from Google and Facebook and all the big tech companies.

00:26:20.000 Like, there's no reason.

00:26:21.000 They wouldn't take money from George Soros. 0.81

00:26:23.000 They wouldn't take money from Chinese-affiliated companies.

00:26:26.000 So don't take money from companies that are censoring and harming your consumers, that treat the president of your own party as anathema and a horrible person.

00:26:36.000 That means, okay, you've decided to be adversarial to our political movement.

00:26:39.000 We're not taking your money and we're going to treat you that way.

00:26:42.000 And that's very simple.

00:26:43.000 So any GOP legislators who are still taking money from Google, they need to stop.

00:26:48.000 If they can give back the money, they should give it back.

00:26:51.000 And then make a point that the next time they take money from Google, they better hear about how Google has decided, has put in place a complete policy to prevent conservative censorship going forward.

00:27:01.000 Else, we're not interested.

00:27:03.000 Now, and then that sort of translates into what I'm seeing on the state level against big tech.

00:27:08.000 I'm very, very optimistic because it's not just what DeSantis did in Florida.

00:27:12.000 I was very optimistic about what Abbott did in Texas and what the Texas legislature is proposing.

00:27:17.000 They're proposing to say that political viewpoint censorship by the social media companies is going to be a tort.

00:27:24.000 That if you are an individual user who is wrongly censored, you can walk into court in Texas, say to the judge what happened.

00:27:32.000 The judge will grant you an injunction.

00:27:33.000 They will grant you your attorney's fees and they will impose an order on Google or Facebook or Twitter, whoever censored you to say restore the content.

00:27:43.000 And if they don't, they'll pay a fine.

00:27:45.000 That is what I've been proposing for a long time because I'm not a big believer in big government, right?

00:27:50.000 I may be a little more willing to use government to do things, but I don't like big government agencies.

00:27:55.000 But there's an example of how to protect speech that doesn't require new government agency.

00:28:00.000 You know, you already have the right to speak freely in a public park or a public university.

00:28:04.000 And whenever some public university tries to shut down a speaker, no matter how offensive, they lose.

00:28:08.000 It goes to court.

00:28:09.000 A judge grants an injunction, and that's the end of it.

00:28:12.000 We just need to take that body of law and say, okay, Facebook and Twitter, this now applies to you too.

00:28:17.000 You're like a public park.

00:28:18.000 You don't need a new agency.

00:28:20.000 You just need to create a new right of action.

00:28:22.000 That's what that's called, a new private right of action for American citizens when they're wrongly censored, that they can go to court and get this injunction.

00:28:28.000 That's what Abbott would do.

00:28:29.000 Totally, totally agree with what Will's saying.

00:28:32.000 And, you know, I wrote an article for Human Events on kind of the federalist approach and how we're left, you know, because we don't have any of the three branches of government that we are left to the states to fight the fight.

00:28:45.000 The good news is, the good news is that in 23 states, we have the governorship in both houses of the legislature.

00:28:52.000 This can be done, but it's going to take leadership in these states.

00:28:56.000 They can't just sit and deal with minor issues.

00:28:59.000 They have to understand that the national issues affect their state and their citizens as well.

00:29:05.000 And they are our last line of defense right now.

00:29:09.000 And so I think, as Will was saying, what Governor DeSantis is doing, what Governor Abbott is doing, let's get all of the states, especially where we have the trifecta, and let's get this organized.

00:29:20.000 Let's get together and let's fight the fight because that's where we can win.

00:29:24.000 So in closing, I'm going to ask you guys a surprise question.

00:29:26.000 I'll go to Will first.

00:29:28.000 What have you learned in the last year?

00:29:31.000 Lockdowns, 15 days of slow spread, shut everything down, mask, vaccine, BLM, George Floyd, Biden, ballots everywhere.

00:29:41.000 Lots happened.

00:29:42.000 A lot has happened.

00:29:44.000 What did you learn?

00:29:45.000 I'll start.

00:29:46.000 And then you guys can go any direction.

00:29:48.000 It could be political, it could be social, it could be anything.

00:29:51.000 What I learned in the last year is a deeper point, which is that unfortunately, people want to be taken care of more than they want to be free.

00:30:02.000 And I never, I always grappled with that, but I thought that there would be more backlash, more pushback against the lockdowns, the erosion of small businesses, the closure of schools.

00:30:14.000 And it's hard for me to admit this, but it also goes to show that freedom is a value and it's not the natural state of condition.

00:30:19.000 That if you don't tell people the need to be free and you don't teach them that, then they'll just kind of be in their natural sedentary, sloth, lazy state.

00:30:27.000 That's what I learned in the last year.

00:30:28.000 Will, how about you?

00:30:31.000 Yeah, I mean, interestingly, that's an area where I felt like I was actually a little bit prescient.

00:30:36.000 I was much more of a hawk on coronavirus.

00:30:39.000 And it was partially due to my views on the severity of the disease, but also partially because I looked at the polls and I was like, people really want us to lock down.

00:30:49.000 And I know in our space, that doesn't feel right at all that the people in our circles, but the polling was pretty clear that that was a solid 60-40, 70-30 issue, that people were much more in favor of restrictions than not.

00:31:01.000 And I was very, very deeply worried about the most important, being on the wrong side of the most important issue that was a 70-30 issue.

00:31:08.000 And so I don't think that helped the president.

00:31:11.000 I guess what I learned, though, is it just that I guess maybe I knew this before, but not as obviously. 0.88

00:31:17.000 How hypocritical the left was going to be on violence and rioting.

00:31:23.000 I never expected that the left would turn on a dime from peaceful protests to calling what happened in the Capitol on January 6th an insurrection and calling for the full force of the security state to be brought down on the protesters, completely in ignorance of the fact that over the summer, violence was just all you know throughout American cities. 0.74

00:31:44.000 And I mean, the way they'd go to try and distinguish, you know, well, it was at night when they attacked the Portland courthouse as opposed to during the daytime in Washington, D.C.

00:31:56.000 It just demonstrated that there's no underlying principle there other than we should have power and you guys shouldn't.

00:32:04.000 And it reminded me, I guess, yet again of, okay, well, if that's the way you view things, then we also need to be somewhat ruthless on our own end and then focus on making sure we don't lose these structural issues.

00:32:14.000 So, Will, I think there's a lot of wisdom there.

00:32:17.000 And Jeff, how about you?

00:32:19.000 What did you learn in the last year?

00:32:22.000 Well, I think one of the things that I'd learned that one of the things that really surprised me is how many people in a very, very important election that really has a lot to do with the direction of our company, our country, will vote based on personality.

00:32:39.000 That if you really, if you, if you say that the country is pretty much equally divided between the right and the left, and you take the 10% of the people, say from 50% to 40% that voted for the Democrat, and you separate them and you say, here are the policies of this particular party, this candidate, and you line those out.

00:33:04.000 What you find out is most of them are more aligned with the right, but did not take the time.

00:33:11.000 Either A, did not take the time to really understand the issues, or they didn't care as much about the issue.

00:33:17.000 They didn't think that they would be affected, or they let their dislike of President Trump and his personality dominate their decision.

00:33:28.000 And I think it's a big mistake.

00:33:29.000 I think we need to really, and look, the media did a great job of making it about Trump's personality.

00:33:37.000 And they did it for four years, frankly.

00:33:40.000 And I think it's just, I think it's a shame.

00:33:42.000 I think people need to be looking at what are the policies, where's that country going?

00:33:46.000 And frankly, I've already heard from some of my friends on the left, barely on the left, who have been very disappointed in what's happened on the border and have surprised at what's happened in the first few weeks of the Biden presidency.

00:33:58.000 So we'll see.

00:33:59.000 But frankly, I was surprised.

00:34:03.000 I think you're right on that.

00:34:05.000 And people that are surprised about Joe Biden and what's happening there, it's just we try to predict it.

00:34:10.000 It's just stunning.

00:34:11.000 Humanevents.com.

00:34:12.000 That's the one thing all three of us have in common, and we all love our country.

00:34:15.000 Will Chamberlain, Jeff Webb, and you guys can check out pieces from all three of us, basically on a weekly basis, and some very exciting things happening soon.

00:34:23.000 People say all the time, where can I find good news?

00:34:26.000 Humanevents.com is a good place to start.

00:34:28.000 Thank you, guys.

00:34:31.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:33.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:35.000 If you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:34:39.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:40.000 God bless.

00:34:44.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - March 16, 2021

How to Complete the Transformation of the GOP with Jeff Webb and Will Chamberlain

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