00:01:04.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:16.000With the Turning Point USA movement, I've had the honor of traveling across America to visit college campuses and engage in rigorous debate with the next generation.
00:01:24.000When you talk to as many students as I do, there are several familiar themes.
00:01:29.000I see disillusionment with the media, a lack of hope in their job prospects.
00:01:33.000I hear them claim that they're victims and deserve better.
00:01:36.000Whether college students realize it or not, they're forming ideologies that will affect the way they think and treat others for a lifetime.
00:01:43.000I'd like to recommend a great book to any young person in this time of life.
00:01:47.000It's called Reflections on the Existence of God by best-selling author Richard Simmons III.
00:01:52.000This guy never shies away from the hard questions of life.
00:01:55.000Reflections on the Existence of God is a collection of short essays that tackles the biggest questions of all.
00:02:40.000I have been told by our good friend Mark Joseph.
00:02:42.000I'm going to say that many times throughout this podcast to make sure people check it out.
00:02:46.000It's a great film, a phenomenal documentary.
00:02:49.000And some of the themes of the film are about censorship and cancel culture.
00:02:54.000So Adam, I wanted to get your thoughts on the fact that the president of the United States no longer has access, not just to Twitter, but almost no social media at all whatsoever.
00:03:04.000Do you think that the kind of cultural kind of trends that you talk about in the movie have played into this?
00:03:13.000Well, I think we've been heading down this road slowly for a long period of time.
00:03:20.000Many Americans didn't really notice we were heading down this road.
00:03:25.000Obviously, Dennis Prager and I and others who produced the movie sort of saw this one coming several years ago.
00:03:34.000It feels to me like it's a road we started down probably over a decade ago with firing professors who spoke up about this or censoring another person that may have spoken about that.
00:03:53.000And now we're just going down the same road.
00:03:57.000We're just taking as a society what was just traveling 20 miles an hour down this road.
00:04:06.000In the last 10 minutes, we put our foot down on the accelerator and we're now moving at 100 miles an hour down this road.
00:04:15.000Yeah, and so the president having no access to any of these social media channels, I think is directly related to the types of people that are staffing these companies.
00:04:25.000What happens on these college campuses does not stay on these college campuses.
00:04:29.000They then go work for Facebook and Twitter and YouTube.
00:04:32.000And you could disagree with the president.
00:04:34.000You could think that he handled certain things, you know, correctly or incorrectly, but then all of them say he shouldn't have access to the tens of millions of people on social media.
00:04:45.000It feels as if they're almost trying to create America into a major, the whole country into a college campus.
00:04:50.000Well, you know, if you think about it, an example I use, forget about politics per se, or right or left.
00:04:59.000What if everyone on college campuses or the vast majority of people on college campuses were vegan?
00:05:07.000And then, you know, the professors were vegan and some of the most of the students were vegan or some of the students that weren't vegan converted to veganism while they were there at college.
00:05:19.000When they left the college and they went home for Thanksgiving or when they left the college and went to their new workplace, do you think they would just leave the vegan lifestyle?
00:05:30.000I mean, do you think it's something they would just keep to themselves?
00:05:33.000How long before those people went into the break room of the new place they were employed at and said, hey, I looked at the vending machine and there was beef jerky in there.
00:07:03.000I've made this decision to go this direction politically.
00:07:07.000And, you know, I support Black Lives Matter and I support global warming and I support climate change and I support systemic oppression and all this.
00:07:16.000And I'm sure as hell not going to keep it to myself.
00:07:19.000And you're not going to be able to eat your pot roast and smoke your cigarette.
00:07:49.000You decided not to play the victim, despite certain circumstances around you that maybe would have allowed you to play that card.
00:07:57.000And you've reached a fair amount of success.
00:07:59.000And now you look at kind of the current generation and you say, where exactly is this stemming from?
00:08:06.000And I think that in some ways, you and Dennis play different roles in the film where Dennis plays kind of more of the professor and the explainer, and you kind of actually play the hero type against the criticism of the movie, right?
00:08:21.000Where the criticism is, you need to be sheltered and play a victim your whole life.
00:10:28.000And then I found myself getting a job on a construction site some months later as a laborer, as a ditch digger.
00:10:38.000And I dug ditches and I, you know, bought a beat-up pickup truck and a couple of tools.
00:10:43.000And next thing you know, I'd work my way up into some sort of junior carpenter role.
00:10:49.000And at some point, years later, maybe trying to think of it, but about six years later, I hadn't been living at home for many years at that point.
00:11:01.000My dad, when I saw him, handed me this letter that, of course, was addressed to his house because that's where I was living.
00:11:08.000And it was from the LA Fire Department.
00:11:23.000And said, your test date is, you know, this Saturday at Hollywood High to take the written test.
00:11:29.000I was like, okay, I was a carpenter at that point.
00:11:32.000Probably gave up my dreams about being a fireman many years ago.
00:11:36.000But I'd been waiting for so long that I just thought, no, I'll just go down to Hollywood High on Saturday and take the test.
00:11:43.000And I was waiting in line and I was so dumbfounded by the fact that I'd put my application in and, you know, six years later they processed it that I kept asking everyone around me, like, when did you put in your application?
00:11:58.000And there was a young woman of color behind me, very diminutive.
00:12:03.000And I said to her, when did you put in your application?
00:12:22.000I grew up in a poor family and I was uneducated.
00:12:27.000And I didn't have any of the I didn't have any of the modalities in place to try to get me a scholarship or help me be a fireman or all that kind of stuff was around.
00:12:37.000But I certainly never thought of myself as a victim.
00:12:40.000I just thought, well, you're poor, you're uneducated.
00:12:43.000You're just going to have to outwork people.
00:12:48.000That's why I think that whether intentionally or unintentionally, you are actually the narrative form against the criticism, which is why it makes it such an effective film, because it's one thing to say stop being a victim, but then you actually need to have kind of stories and heroes that are able to portray the opposite.
00:13:06.000Where Dennis in the film is much more of kind of a philosophical critique where he talks about basically, I've been warning against this since I've been in the Soviet Union when I was nine years old, not nine, but you know, since he was 18.
00:13:18.000And it's just the narratives I think form together really well.
00:13:25.000Look, let's talk about censorship on social media sites and what you can do about it.
00:13:29.000The left wants to silence and remove any voices they don't agree with.
00:13:33.000Twitter and Facebook were supposed to be open platforms, but I don't need their content moderators acting like the op-ed section of the New York Times.
00:13:41.000So instead of letting social media sites revoke your right to free speech, how about revoking their right to your data?
00:13:47.000Now you could just deactivate all your social media accounts, but that would be giving the left exactly what they want in the first place.
00:13:55.000Ever wondered how free to access sites like Facebook make all their money?
00:14:00.000Well, by tracking your searches, video history, and everything you click on, and then selling on your valuable data.
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00:14:25.000It's finally time to say no to censorship and take back your online privacy at expressvpn.com slash Charlie.
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00:14:46.000And so now we're kind of living in a country where the college campus radicals and the culture that comes from it feel more emboldened and more empowered than ever.
00:14:58.000And the kind of story that you outline in the film, we are being told can't happen and is now a near impossibility.
00:15:06.000Can you talk about, I mean, you're also, I heard your son, I think, on Dennis Prager's program.
00:15:12.000I could be wrong, Adam, but I was very impressed.
00:15:16.000Can you talk about how what you're now seeing in the younger generation, or at least amongst his friends, and how it's different than when you grew up?
00:15:24.000I'd be fascinated kind of of your kind of intergenerational critique there.
00:15:29.000Well, when I was growing up, it was just something that wasn't discussed.
00:15:34.000I mean, we understood there was such a thing as racism in this country and that this country had sinned a few times for sure in its past.
00:15:45.000I watched Roots with my mom and we understood that this was this horrific chapter in the past.
00:15:55.000You know, it was the late 70s or the mid 80s and people were very much just into living their life, you know, black, white, Hispanic, whatever.
00:16:07.000I mean, everyone knew there was a difference, you know, between this group or that group, but it's not, it didn't become who you were.
00:16:15.000So if you were a woman or you're gay or you're lesbian or you're black or white or whatever, none of that was who you were.
00:16:24.000And we're in a country with so many examples of people being successful from every walk of life that it would have seemed insane to say that you couldn't be successful if you were of this group.
00:16:40.000Now there's a narrative and the narrative is just something that is kind of spoon-fed to kids, whether it's CNN, whether it's just popular culture, whether it's the NBA, whether it's Hollywood or whatever it's going on on their school campus.
00:16:56.000And it's fed to them in such a way where it just is.
00:18:16.000And a lot of young people are now, for lack of a better term, infected with this ideology and it impacts their decisions and where they decide to go to school, if they decide to go to school at all, and the decisions they make beyond that.
00:18:30.000And so I want to build this out further.
00:18:32.000What do you think are actually some of the solutions to this?
00:18:35.000Because the movie is very strong on the criticism.
00:18:39.000Where do you think are the, how do we actually fix this?
00:18:42.000The cancel culture, the rush to censor, to obliterate a political opponent at all costs.
00:18:49.000How do we actually get to a place of fixing this?
00:18:54.000I think the people that are being accused of being racist or misogynistic or homophobic or whatever are going to have to stop backpedaling and explaining themselves and kind of telling these people, I'm not going to apologize, and sort of go a little bit more on the offense versus the defense.
00:19:17.000I have found with these people, when they accuse somebody of something, the second that person takes a step backwards, they take two steps forward.
00:19:29.000If you don't take a step backward, then they don't take the step forward.
00:19:33.000They're really looking for opportunities.
00:19:37.000And once they find out that you don't apologize or that you're not going to genuflect in front of them, they almost you're of no use to them and they move on.
00:19:49.000For instance, I say things all the time that may sound horrible.
00:19:55.000No one ever asks me to apologize because they know I don't apologize.
00:20:08.000I think the side that's being told that they're bad or that they're racist or that they're oppressive or misogynist, they need to start standing up.
00:20:18.000And instead of trying to have a dialogue and explaining why they're not racist, and by the way, how can you ever explain why you're not racist if you really think about it?
00:21:22.000Like, at some point, the people who are claiming the powers that be that are saying we're going to help these people, at a certain point, they're going to have to wake up and realize nothing happened for them.
00:21:39.000They're going to have to humble themselves a little, realize that maybe they backed the wrong candidate and that it was always just lip service.
00:22:27.000Well, at some point, I got to get my kids out of high school.
00:22:31.000If they ever go back to high school, they're not in high school now because all the schools are closed.
00:22:36.000But at some point, one must leave California unless things change dramatically.
00:22:42.000And so California is really a tragic example of this where had everything going for it, had the largest population, the best weather, amazing entrepreneurs, lots of talented people gathered in a kind of a geographic area.
00:23:00.000You've lived in California your entire life.
00:23:03.000Can you kind of walk us through this and how it's connected with some of the other themes we've talked about?
00:23:07.000Because we've seen Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro leave.
00:23:10.000You've signaled that you're going to leave.
00:23:12.000I can imagine for every one Joe Rogan, there's another 100 people that are leaving that aren't making a big public thing about it or 1,000.
00:23:20.000Can you talk about how California has just become almost unrecognizable?
00:23:27.000Well, California has always sort of prided itself on being the tip of the spear for change and progress.
00:23:37.000You know, so we always said, we're going to set the trends.
00:23:41.000You know, we're going to, and we did it with fashion.
00:24:00.000And they've said, we are going to enact things that are going to be the most progressive.
00:24:08.000And the problem with the most progressive is it's the least friendly for taxes.
00:24:14.000It's the least friendly for business and many other endeavors and rarely yields results.
00:24:21.000So we're going to have the most progressive schools.
00:24:23.000We're going to have the most progressive taxes.
00:24:25.000We're going to have the most progressive legislation.
00:24:30.000And unfortunately, that always just means more rules, more regulation.
00:24:35.000You know, there's a funny little example because I made a documentary about Carol Shelby, the race car driver, automotive builder, Shelby Cobra, Shelby Mustang, that Shelby.
00:24:48.000He lived in Texas and he came from Texas to Venice Beach, California, so that he could build his supercars, so he could build his Shelby Cobras.
00:25:01.000Could you imagine someone coming from Texas to Venice Beach, California to construct automobiles today?
00:25:12.000If you were in Venice, you would then be moving to Texas so that you could build your business up in a place that wasn't over-regulated and taxed and everything else.
00:27:50.000It's going okay, especially with the lockdowns.
00:27:53.000It's almost people have pride in like the surviving of the new California.
00:27:57.000And it used to be a really enjoyable place.
00:27:59.000I mean, even just a decade ago, a lot of these complaints just kind of, it might have been on tax policy or some social thing, but now it's cross-politics.
00:28:08.000People are completely fleeing the state.
00:28:10.000And I agree with you that, you know, Gavin Newsom has, he is, he is in particular one of my least favorite types of politicians because not only is he making bad choices, he's arrogant about it.
00:28:23.000And he completely defies his own rules and doesn't even allow criticism at all whatsoever.
00:29:12.000They haven't been in school for coming up on a year.
00:29:15.000And there is no evidence whatsoever that schools should be closed down.
00:29:20.000But yet the teachers' unions, who you have in your back pocket, or I should say they have Newsom in their back pocket, don't want to go back to work.
00:29:59.000Yeah, and I mean, Gavin Newsom's response is that, quote, all the new billionaires created by the initial public offerings, noting that its richest people are doing pretty damn well.
00:30:10.000That's his response: that the ruling class in Menlo Park is doing better than ever.
00:30:47.000A lot of people are suddenly disappearing from social media.
00:30:51.000Are you making any plans to go to alternative platforms?
00:30:56.000Just generally, what do you think our position should be on a lot of this social media issue?
00:31:00.000I know Dave Rubin's talked about it a lot.
00:31:02.000Dennis Prager's talked about it a lot.
00:31:04.000Are you making any moves or kind of how are you playing that issue right now?
00:31:11.000I'm not actively making any moves at this point.
00:31:16.000I do understand that that day will come, sort of like physically making the move out of state versus virtually or digitally making the move to other platforms.
00:31:28.000I definitely applaud and encourage these other platforms that have arisen.
00:31:34.000And I think that the tech guys and Gavin Newsom and whomever, they're making big calculated errors.
00:31:45.000And I feel the same about CNN and many of these other legacy news outlets, which is you are showing your hand now.
00:31:53.000You're being so obvious about your politics now that you're going to lose, you know, clientele.
00:32:01.000When I, you know, you go back two years ago and two or three years ago, and I would have these discussions where people would say, you know, don't talk about politics on your podcast.
00:32:21.000Every time someone says something that's conservative, you lose sponsors.
00:32:25.000And if you went and you looked at the iTunes charts, you would see almost all progressive political shows and rarely ever a conservative voice.
00:32:40.000If you look now, you see many conservative voices, including your own, on that chart.
00:32:48.000Well, what happened was they pushed so hard to the left that it gave an opportunity for so many people on the right to be heard and to come into prominence.
00:33:04.000You know, like you take a voice like Dan Bongino.
00:33:08.000Dan Bongino, we might not know who Dan Bongino is today if people didn't go so crazy hard to the left that people were looking for some alternative.
00:33:20.000You know, this is, I think CNN is in danger of doing this.
00:34:30.000I was watching either Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon the other night, and I saw one of their YouTube clips, and they did a very harsh takedown, as you would expect, of President Trump and the tragic events that happened on the Capitol.
00:34:49.000But I didn't feel as if I was watching, it was Jimmy Fallon.
00:34:53.000I didn't feel as if I was watching a comedy show.
00:34:56.000I felt like I was watching a political show.
00:34:59.000And I think you're exactly right that some of these institutions and some of these platforms, for lack of a better term, have become so overly politicized that all of a sudden these new creators are given an opportunity to fill that void.
00:35:14.000I think that's really, really well put.
00:35:15.000And so the final question I have, Adam, is what is your advice to specific people that are on these college campuses that are dealing with all the nonsense that you talk about in the film?
00:35:53.000They got to pull them from the pack and then they're going to pounce.
00:35:57.000If you stay together, if you don't back down, if you don't apologize, you'd be amazed at how many people are like-minded but scared, don't want to say anything, and how many folks will step up.
00:36:12.000And you will also empower them to step up.
00:36:16.000You know, if 100 restaurants just reopened in Los Angeles on Monday, then there'd be 500 open by the next Monday.
00:36:27.000But it's the one or the two or the three that have to go first.
00:36:31.000Those are the people that are going to, they're going to get hit the hardest.
00:36:38.000So if you get out and you get thrown out of your fraternity and then you immediately start apologizing to get back in your fraternity, then nothing will ever change.
00:36:49.000But if you stick with your convictions and if you get kicked out of your fraternity, it's going to suck for a little while.
00:36:56.000But eventually, enough people will get kicked out of their fraternity that you'll start your own fraternity and it'll be a better fraternity.
00:37:03.000So you just have to weather the storm.
00:37:06.000And a great point you've made a couple times this podcast, Adam, is apologizing is their currency.
00:37:44.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:37:45.000Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:37:49.000As always, you can support us at charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:37:53.000And I encourage you to get involved with Turning Point USA, where we play offense with a sense of urgency to win America's Culture War, tpusa.com.
00:38:01.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.