The Charlie Kirk Show - 'Life Lessons' with a Patriot, Friend, and Mentor— Dr. Bob

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 A bonus episode for you this week and a conversation I had with someone I've known for about a decade.

00:00:06.000 And he's been a very generous financial supporter of Turning Point USA.

00:00:09.000 And he has a podcast.

00:00:10.000 He's one of America's most impressive entrepreneurs.

00:00:14.000 And it's Dr. Bob.

00:00:15.000 He has a new YouTube channel and also podcast called Life Lessons with Dr. Bob.

00:00:22.000 I think you'll really enjoy listening to his conversations.

00:00:26.000 He has a lot of wisdom to share about the state of our country, about a lot of different things.

00:00:32.000 It's Life Lessons with Dr. Bob.

00:00:34.000 Freedom Needs Its Fighters.

00:00:35.000 You guys can also check it out on Apple Podcast.

00:00:38.000 It's Dr. Bob Shillman.

00:00:40.000 You can look up his biography.

00:00:41.000 It's pretty impressive.

00:00:43.000 He's the founder and CEO of one of America's most successful companies.

00:00:47.000 And you guys can give him a subscription on the podcast app.

00:00:50.000 You just type in Life Lessons with Dr. Bob, and you'll be able to subscribe.

00:00:54.000 And my episode is the second one there as well.

00:00:56.000 So we're reposting it here, and I think you'll really enjoy it.

00:00:59.000 We talk about a lot of different things and we dive deep.

00:01:03.000 And I think it's really great.

00:01:05.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:01:08.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA Today.

00:01:10.000 Turning Point USA, we are fighting hard to win the American Culture War at tpusa.com, starting high school and college chapters all across the country.

00:01:18.000 No advertisers on this episode.

00:01:20.000 So just enjoy my conversation with Dr. Bob Shillman, Life Lessons with Dr. Bob, and get involved with Turning Point USA Today.

00:01:26.000 Come to our young women's leadership summit at tpusa.com/slash ywls and our student action summit tpusa.com slash SAS.

00:01:35.000 All right, here's Dr. Bob from Life Lessons with Dr. Bob.

00:01:38.000 Buckle up. 0.96

00:01:39.000 Here we go.

00:01:39.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:41.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:43.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:46.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:50.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:51.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:52.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:02:00.000 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.

00:02:09.000 That's why we are here.

00:02:12.000 Tonight, our guest is Charlie Kirk.

00:02:15.000 Charlie is the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA.

00:02:19.000 It's the largest and most influential conservative youth activist organization in the country, starting with nothing but enthusiasm, energy, and purpose in 2012.

00:02:33.000 And in just nine years, he has built Turning Point USA to be a powerhouse of conservatism with now more than 2,000 chapters on college and high school campuses around the country and 250,000, a quarter of a million members.

00:02:50.000 And guess what?

00:02:51.000 He's only 27 years old.

00:02:54.000 Now, how did a 17-year-old kid who finished high school but who never graduated from college reach this remarkable achievement?

00:03:04.000 Well, I read a little bit about it and I'll tell you the intro.

00:03:07.000 It all started with an essay that he wrote as a senior in high school that described the liberal bias in textbooks.

00:03:16.000 So how, Charlie, did that essay lead you to where you are today, to the behead, to the head of a large conservative activist organization?

00:03:27.000 Great to be here, Dr. Bob.

00:03:28.000 And I just want to say thank you for backing us throughout the years.

00:03:31.000 You're a great friend and mentor.

00:03:33.000 So I'm super thrilled we're able to do this conversation so that people can learn from you.

00:03:37.000 Yeah, I wrote that essay when I was a senior in high school, and I came across an AP, which means advanced placement textbook, economics textbook, that was called Paul Krugman's Economics for the AP.

00:03:52.000 And Paul Krugman is an economist for the New York Times, who's been wrong about basically everything for the last 30 years.

00:03:59.000 And I opened it up and it was one chapter after the other of why private property needs to be put into question, why collectivization of property is actually more efficient, more of kind of the Cass-Sunstein model of organizing society.

00:04:18.000 And there was one chapter in particular that was wrong.

00:04:21.000 It was wrong in its interpretation of history and wrong in what it was trying to teach the readers.

00:04:27.000 And it was teaching students that the 1980s was not a period of economic growth.

00:04:32.000 It was a period when the middle class suffered and that poor people got poorer.

00:04:37.000 And Dr. Bob, you know, you're entitled to your own opinion.

00:04:40.000 You're not entitled to your own facts.

00:04:42.000 You know, the 1980s, that thanks to Ronald Reagan and tax cuts and deregulation, that the economy soared.

00:04:48.000 And so I challenged this to my teacher and kind of wrote it up.

00:04:52.000 And this was when Andrew Breitbart was still alive, right before he died, like a month before he died.

00:04:57.000 Breitbart.com took that essay and was the first essay I ever wrote.

00:05:02.000 I was, I just sent to them as a tip and they said, why don't you try to write this?

00:05:05.000 And it ended up going totally viral.

00:05:07.000 It was published on hundreds of websites.

00:05:09.000 I ended up going on Fox News over it.

00:05:12.000 And all of a sudden, I kind of realized, hey, this is what it feels like to be an activist.

00:05:16.000 You know why?

00:05:17.000 Because the enemies that I made because of that. 0.98

00:05:19.000 My teacher, administrator, and principal, superintendent, head of instruction, they hated the fact that I would go and expose the fact that they are teaching this garbage in these classrooms.

00:05:30.000 And so from there, I kind of got the itch, you could say, to try to do something to save this country.

00:05:38.000 And that led that article in Breitbart, led to an interview on Fox News.

00:05:41.000 That's right.

00:05:42.000 For a high school senior.

00:05:43.000 That's right.

00:05:44.000 Pretty good.

00:05:44.000 So I was on Fox News in the morning at like 6 a.m.

00:05:48.000 Then I went back to class and it was all over the internet.

00:05:51.000 And this was pre-Twitter.

00:05:52.000 It was still kind of getting online.

00:05:54.000 And my teachers were saying, did I see you on television this morning?

00:05:58.000 And that was the beginning stages of kind of what became Turning Point USA.

00:06:04.000 And I got to thinking kind of the entrepreneur in me kicked in.

00:06:08.000 I said, there must be millions of other young people experiencing exactly what I saw in that textbook.

00:06:15.000 And that was just one isolated incident of Dr. Bob of teachers that would go out of their way towards framing Marxism in a positive way and kind of the beginning stages of what was wokeism all the way back in 2012.

00:06:29.000 And that led you to becoming an activist.

00:06:34.000 Now, I know you did try to get into the Air Force Academy.

00:06:37.000 You slide at West Point.

00:06:40.000 For some reason, they turned you down.

00:06:42.000 And that was probably a good thing.

00:06:45.000 I was a professor for many years.

00:06:48.000 Nevertheless, when my children were graduating high school, I suggested to them that they not go to college because college for most people is a waste of time.

00:06:59.000 It's a waste of four years and it's a waste of money.

00:07:03.000 Now, of course, college is necessary for certain specialties.

00:07:06.000 If you're going to be a doctor, a lawyer, many things, an architect, you have to learn.

00:07:11.000 But colleges are, in many cases, a fraud.

00:07:15.000 They stretch it out for four years.

00:07:17.000 What generally you could learn that trade or that profession in two years.

00:07:22.000 Totally.

00:07:23.000 I told my kids, I said, if you want, I'll give you the exact same amount of money that tuition and living expenses will cost.

00:07:30.000 I'll front that to you and go out and do something, start a business or build a career.

00:07:35.000 You're smart enough.

00:07:36.000 You can learn what's necessary by doing.

00:07:39.000 You don't need to go to college.

00:07:40.000 So I think it was, it was very lucky that they turned you down because you wouldn't be here today if you spent time four years.

00:07:52.000 Oh, I totally agree.

00:07:53.000 And it would have been four years plus five years military service.

00:07:56.000 Right.

00:07:57.000 So I would just be getting out right now.

00:07:59.000 And who knows, maybe I would be in some Afghanistan debacle after that whole humiliation.

00:08:04.000 It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

00:08:06.000 And that's my lesson to young people: my whole life was about going to West Point.

00:08:09.000 I was an Eagle Scout football basketball captain, good grades, you know, member of the community, got every letter of recommendation you could imagine, got my congressional nomination.

00:08:18.000 But when it came for appointment to the academy, I didn't get in.

00:08:21.000 And it was crushing at the time.

00:08:23.000 And I couldn't quite process it or understand it.

00:08:26.000 And I was kind of left with this decision: what do I do?

00:08:29.000 And simultaneously, that kind of essay was written right near that denial letter.

00:08:34.000 And I realized that there was a much more important path than I was supposed to be on.

00:08:38.000 Now, did your parents pressure you in any way?

00:08:40.000 Usually, of course, American parents want their kids to go to college.

00:08:44.000 That's in their training.

00:08:47.000 So tell us about your parents.

00:08:49.000 They definitely wanted me to go.

00:08:51.000 There was definitely pressure, but they were very understanding of the circumstances and understanding of like, hey, it's your life now.

00:08:58.000 You can make what decisions you want.

00:09:00.000 And they were definitely under the belief that, hey, college is probably a better choice for you.

00:09:05.000 But they deserve a great amount of credit, Dr. Bob.

00:09:08.000 There was no shaming.

00:09:09.000 There was no kind of ridiculing, which would happen in some families.

00:09:14.000 Sure.

00:09:15.000 I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, the Wheeling, Arlington Heights area.

00:09:19.000 And where I came from, the kids that were addicted to drugs were treated much better than the kids that didn't go to college in the sense that if you didn't go to college, there was kind of like a social stigma to you.

00:09:31.000 And there probably still is.

00:09:32.000 Totally.

00:09:33.000 And so my parents decided like, hey, they were going to do the difficult thing, which was they were going to tell their neighbors that, you know, Charlie's actually not going to college this year.

00:09:42.000 That's a tough thing.

00:09:42.000 Be proud of it.

00:09:43.000 Be proud of it.

00:09:44.000 He's going on his own.

00:09:45.000 That's right.

00:09:46.000 He's going on his own.

00:09:46.000 He's going to figure this out.

00:09:48.000 And, you know, from the beginning, Dr. Bob, there were so many people that were negative and naysayers, but there were a couple people.

00:09:55.000 There were a couple of neighbors that stepped up and supported us early on that were conservative, not in, you know, massive numbers, but definitely helped us get going.

00:10:03.000 But large in part, you pinpointed it perfectly.

00:10:06.000 One of the reasons why students go to college is because of parental social pressure.

00:10:10.000 Right.

00:10:11.000 I'm going to, turns out my kids, despite the fact that I advise them not to go to college, they felt the social pressure to go to college and they did.

00:10:20.000 And I frankly don't.

00:10:22.000 And they're not using their education now.

00:10:24.000 They're doing something else.

00:10:25.000 But here's another story.

00:10:26.000 When I started my company, Cognix, back in 1981, a number of people, I tried to recruit smart engineers and I found this fellow who turns out to be brilliant.

00:10:37.000 And I rarely, I was teaching at MIT, got my PhD at MIT.

00:10:41.000 So I know what brilliance is, and I rarely use that.

00:10:44.000 Brilliant.

00:10:45.000 Name is Bill Silver.

00:10:47.000 And he joined the company for the summer to help me program things.

00:10:50.000 We had about three or four employees.

00:10:52.000 And at the end of the summer, he told me, he said, Dr. Bob, I'm going to stay here.

00:10:57.000 I'm going to drop out of a doctoral program at MIT.

00:11:02.000 And I spoke to his professors before I hired him, and they said he was the smartest student they ever had.

00:11:08.000 So he was a doctoral candidate at MIT.

00:11:11.000 And he says, I'm going to stay with Cognix.

00:11:14.000 I went home that night.

00:11:15.000 And Friday night, I usually return to my parents and I had dinner with them.

00:11:19.000 And they said, what's happening with the company?

00:11:21.000 I said, oh, very good news.

00:11:23.000 Bill Silver decided to drop out of college and join the company.

00:11:28.000 They said, that's terrible.

00:11:31.000 Don't do that.

00:11:32.000 Let him finish college.

00:11:34.000 And I said to them, college, life has various paths to it.

00:11:41.000 If opportunity arises, and the reason many people go to college is to look for opportunity and to be available for opportunity.

00:11:48.000 If the opportunity comes before you finish college, grab the opportunity.

00:11:53.000 Oh, I couldn't agree more.

00:11:54.000 You just met Mikey, who's here.

00:11:56.000 He's 19 years old.

00:11:57.000 So I'll tell you about Mikey.

00:11:59.000 I met Mikey after speaking at a church up in Thousand Oaks, California.

00:12:02.000 His father actually is my pastor.

00:12:05.000 And so he was driving me, really impressive kid, had his act together.

00:12:08.000 And I said, hey, what do you want to do with your life?

00:12:10.000 He said, I'm going to go to college to study political science.

00:12:13.000 I said, why?

00:12:14.000 And he said, well, to go get a job in politics.

00:12:17.000 I said, come work for me.

00:12:19.000 And he was like, well, don't I have to go to college to do that?

00:12:21.000 I said, no, you don't.

00:12:22.000 And to his parents' credit, they said, yeah, go move to Phoenix.

00:12:25.000 Go get your own apartment.

00:12:26.000 So now he has no debt, earning a good wage, you know, meeting some of the coolest people in the world, learning everything.

00:12:32.000 Politicians.

00:12:32.000 And politicians doing what he thought wanted to do at 19.

00:12:35.000 All of his peers are wearing masks, being forced to get vaccines on college campuses, not sure what they want to do with their life.

00:12:41.000 And they're doing it from their basement.

00:12:42.000 That's why they're not even getting a real college education.

00:12:45.000 Opportunity is there, just like Bill Silver.

00:12:47.000 Take it.

00:12:48.000 Do it.

00:12:48.000 And he said to his parents, who also were pressuring him, telling him it's a mistake.

00:12:52.000 And he looked at them.

00:12:53.000 He had the brains at that age, as you did, to say to his parents, Cognix is here now.

00:13:00.000 MIT will still be there.

00:13:01.000 That is exactly right.

00:13:02.000 Right.

00:13:02.000 If it doesn't work out, I can go back to MIT, but Cognix won't be here.

00:13:07.000 This opportunity won't be here.

00:13:08.000 That's right.

00:13:09.000 So it takes very special people, a very special person, because we offered jobs to another fellow, and he'd be a millionaire today based on stock options we give.

00:13:18.000 And he said at the end of the summer, he said, well, it was great working here, but I'm going to go in the Peace Corps.

00:13:24.000 So the, you know, opportunity knocks, you got to answer the door.

00:13:27.000 Door.

00:13:28.000 That's right.

00:13:29.000 If you want to live a life of adventure.

00:13:31.000 And that's the thing is that not everybody does.

00:13:34.000 If you want to go along to get along, then do what everybody else is doing.

00:13:37.000 You're going to do the knock on the door.

00:13:38.000 That's right.

00:13:39.000 Oh, it could be scary.

00:13:40.000 Who knows?

00:13:40.000 Oh, it's very scary because it's uncertainty, right?

00:13:42.000 There's pressure.

00:13:44.000 There's unpredictability.

00:13:45.000 You know this from starting an amazing company from nothing.

00:13:48.000 You got to be willing to hire people, fire people, manage people, work weekends, not sleep for weeks.

00:13:53.000 And in your case, because you have taken the conservative side, you can make enemies.

00:13:58.000 And I'm going to talk a little bit about that.

00:14:01.000 Here's what the left says about you.

00:14:03.000 Wikipedia quotes the New York Times as a horror show.

00:14:06.000 Oh, Wikipedia is a horror show.

00:14:08.000 Okay.

00:14:09.000 But here it quotes the New York Times as saying this.

00:14:13.000 By mixing and matching and twisting facts, Mr. Kirk has come to exemplify a new breed of political agitator that has flourished since the 2016 election of President Trump by walking the line between mainstream conservative opinion and outright disinformation.

00:14:33.000 Now, when they use the term agitator, I think they meant it in the negative.

00:14:37.000 I see it as a positive.

00:14:39.000 Thank you.

00:14:39.000 Because what an agitator does is questions what is happening and if it's wrong, tries to make it right, agitating for change.

00:14:48.000 You are an agitator and I'm using that in the most positive sense.

00:14:52.000 And I consider the New York Times taking time to write that piece, which was on 1A of the New York Times when they published that above the fold as a compliment.

00:15:00.000 They don't go after just any sort of schlep on the side of the street.

00:15:04.000 No, they're going to go after people that are doing something hopefully very significant.

00:15:08.000 And you notice when you read that, they don't give any sort of evidence.

00:15:11.000 No, never.

00:15:12.000 And they use this kind of interesting language, twisting and mixing and matching.

00:15:15.000 What exactly do you mean by that?

00:15:17.000 Because they won't outright say I'm lying, right?

00:15:19.000 Instead, they use these other terms.

00:15:21.000 Yeah, that's correct.

00:15:22.000 Right.

00:15:22.000 Because they're trying to create the impression that they're twisting, mixing, maxing, disinformation.

00:15:27.000 It's very cryptic.

00:15:28.000 Disinformation.

00:15:28.000 Yeah.

00:15:29.000 So tell me straight up, New York Times, what do you think?

00:15:31.000 And they won't do it.

00:15:32.000 They won't do that.

00:15:33.000 Now, tell us where TPUSA is now and then describe the other three organizations that you've recently started.

00:15:42.000 Absolutely.

00:15:42.000 We are bigger than ever, just from an organizational standpoint.

00:15:46.000 Our budget is in excess of $45 million.

00:15:49.000 We have no debt.

00:15:50.000 We have over 60,000 grassroots donors, people that chip in $5, $10, $20.

00:15:55.000 We're going to hit 100,000 grassroots donors by the end of this year.

00:15:58.000 We've been blown away by that, Dr. Bob, of how many small dollar donors that have been.

00:16:02.000 That's so important.

00:16:02.000 And it keeps the organization alive in perpetuity.

00:16:05.000 As you said, 250,000 active members, well over 200 full-time people on staff and growing, which is extraordinary.

00:16:15.000 And so we're in great shape and we're doing very well.

00:16:18.000 We also have Turning Point Action, which has been around for a couple of years, 501c4, social welfare organization that's also allowed to do politics and also able to help in political campaigns.

00:16:31.000 And we've been doing a lot with that.

00:16:32.000 So we've been involved in the recall newsom type effort.

00:16:36.000 And I know this will probably be airing after all of that, but that's something that we were involved in.

00:16:41.000 We've also been very involved or we're very involved in a lot of the state legislative races across the country, which are very important in Arizona and Pennsylvania and Georgia, involved in school board races from our 501c4.

00:16:53.000 And then, of course, involved in congressional and senatorial races as well.

00:16:58.000 We also started Turning Point Academy, which is a project of Turning Point USA, which is to try to advance pro-American curriculum in high schools across the country.

00:17:09.000 And yeah, that's just some of our new projects that we have coming.

00:17:12.000 But we really have this beautiful combination of our 501c3, Turning Point USA, not political at all, educational and cultural in its mission, and then Turning Point Action, which of course allows us to do politics.

00:17:23.000 And what about Turning Point Faith?

00:17:24.000 And Turning Point Faith is a new program that we just launched, which is really exciting, which is try to build a coalition of liberty for liberty of people of all different faith backgrounds.

00:17:36.000 Because, you know, Dr. Bob, if we're serious about what is the last entity that hasn't been totally corrupted by the left, right?

00:17:44.000 They've taken over the corporations.

00:17:46.000 They've taken over the tech companies.

00:17:47.000 They've taken over everything.

00:17:48.000 The American churches, they're ready to rock.

00:17:51.000 And you know this, especially when it comes to both of our love of Israel.

00:17:55.000 It is the American evangelicals that support Israel, that defend Israel.

00:18:00.000 And so Turning Point Faith, we have 32 full-time people that have been hired in this division of this organization to try and find pastors and find churches and give them the support they need and the resources they need and the training they need to speak out on these critical issues.

00:18:13.000 That is fantastic because people still look to their pastors for guidance.

00:18:18.000 And that's such an important point.

00:18:19.000 So Pew Research did a study a couple of years ago.

00:18:22.000 They said, who are the most important counselors in America when consequential decisions are being made?

00:18:28.000 For example, voting, marriage, financial decisions.

00:18:32.000 Number one was religious official.

00:18:34.000 Number two was boss.

00:18:35.000 You know what number three was?

00:18:36.000 Spouse.

00:18:38.000 Not that the spouses are unimportant, but someone will trust a religious official and their boss, even above their spouse, when it comes to these very intimate decisions.

00:18:47.000 Great to hit those points.

00:18:49.000 Let's talk about diversity.

00:18:51.000 Of course, it's a very big deal these days.

00:18:54.000 We're going to be talking more about that critical race theory.

00:18:57.000 But even 10 years ago, when I was running the company, we had something every month called Ask the President, where people could come, have pizza.

00:19:06.000 Usually about 100 of my employees would show up, probably for the pizza more than for asking the question.

00:19:12.000 And we also took questions anonymously.

00:19:15.000 And one of the questions from one of my employees was, Dr. Bob, when are we going to have more diversity?

00:19:23.000 And, you know, I thought about it very quickly and came to the conclusion that we'll have more diversity when that's what my customers want.

00:19:32.000 That's a great question.

00:19:33.000 Right now, my customers haven't asked for diversity.

00:19:36.000 They're asking for the highest tech, highest capable, most efficient, reliable products at fair prices.

00:19:44.000 And that requires hard work and brains and competency.

00:19:50.000 And that's why the company has, for 40 years, been based on merit.

00:19:54.000 It's a meritocracy.

00:19:56.000 We hire irrespective of everything else.

00:19:59.000 We don't care as long as you can write code or balance the books.

00:20:04.000 As long as you love your profession and you're going to do it really well with high ethics, we'll hire you.

00:20:10.000 So I would think that diversity will happen by its very nature.

00:20:15.000 If we just close our eyes to the nature of the person other than their skill set, then what are we doing wrong?

00:20:23.000 But now that's not the case.

00:20:26.000 Now, organizations are being forced by some of the largest fund managers in the country who own all these companies.

00:20:33.000 You know, most public companies, the stock is held by large funds.

00:20:39.000 And those fund managers are writing letters and pressuring corporations on this issue of diversity and inclusion and equity.

00:20:49.000 And I'd like your feelings about that.

00:20:53.000 What do you feel is important or not important about diversity?

00:20:57.000 Yeah, I mean, I will, I'll probably be committing a thought crime here, but I don't think diversity is a strength.

00:21:05.000 I think that diversity of thought can be a strength.

00:21:08.000 But when you're trying to build a successful enterprise, unity is your strength.

00:21:12.000 Unity, not difference.

00:21:13.000 Uniformity.

00:21:14.000 You want everybody to sign up for the mission of the company.

00:21:17.000 Whether it be a company or a military operation or a sports team, this idea that discord or diversity is somehow going to be your defining characteristic or strength.

00:21:28.000 It could be an element of who you are.

00:21:30.000 I'm not saying anything, you know, that you should be outrageously hateful or any of that.

00:21:36.000 Of course not.

00:21:36.000 But it's become this kind of incantation, hasn't it, Dr. Buff?

00:21:41.000 Diversity is our strength.

00:21:41.000 Very strength.

00:21:42.000 Why is it our strength?

00:21:43.000 Right.

00:21:44.000 And if you read letters from the president in annual reports, public companies file annual reports, there's always a letter from the president or the chairman.

00:21:51.000 And you will find ever since, I think, five years ago, the first sentence is about diversity.

00:21:56.000 We have a diverse workforce.

00:21:58.000 We have this.

00:21:58.000 Well, you know, investors, I don't think the investors care about that.

00:22:03.000 Okay.

00:22:04.000 What they care about is, is the company doing well?

00:22:06.000 Am I going to get my dividends?

00:22:08.000 Is the stock going up?

00:22:09.000 Yes.

00:22:10.000 That's what the investors stand for.

00:22:12.000 And as public companies, we're owned by these people.

00:22:15.000 We're owned by their shareholders.

00:22:17.000 And we owe it to them.

00:22:19.000 Certainly we owe it to them to run a straightforward, ethical organization that doesn't discriminate unduly against any particular race or people or sex or whatever.

00:22:29.000 But the first thing we got to serve is our customers and they want quality.

00:22:33.000 Yeah.

00:22:33.000 And so if you have a room and you look around the room and you have 20 coders, you know, people that can code that are all Asian, you didn't pick them because they were Asian.

00:22:42.000 You picked them because they were good at coding.

00:22:43.000 Exactly.

00:22:44.000 Because you need the efficiency.

00:22:45.000 You want to cutthroat business.

00:22:47.000 And I just want to be very clear here because some people are going to try to cut up what I said is that if you look at how a business needs to be run, the obligation and the duty is not to some sort of esoteric bumper sticker, which is what the activists have done.

00:23:03.000 Instead, it's about fulfilling the mandate to your shareholders or to your employees or to your customers, the most important thing, right?

00:23:11.000 Which is what keeps the entire enterprise going.

00:23:14.000 What's happened, though, is you have these social revolutionaries that have taken over the HR departments of these major funds.

00:23:19.000 Let's take Goldman Sachs, for example, that have no idea how capital flows work.

00:23:24.000 They are 100 years removed from the founding of that company.

00:23:28.000 And they come in after they go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, or Berkeley thinking like, well, yeah, it's just so easy to make money.

00:23:34.000 The hard thing is diversity.

00:23:36.000 And we need all these mandates.

00:23:38.000 And they look at Goldman Sachs as this kind of sandbox to try to revolutionize the world.

00:23:44.000 And we're starting to see that do real damage to our country.

00:23:48.000 Now, you see the push for diversity everywhere except in sports.

00:23:52.000 It's more interesting.

00:23:53.000 You know, I don't understand why they aren't held to the same standard.

00:23:57.000 How many short people are on in the NBA?

00:24:01.000 Right?

00:24:02.000 We need diversity, not only of color, I suppose, but diversity of height.

00:24:06.000 Yes.

00:24:06.000 How many skinny people are in football teams?

00:24:09.000 Well, and this is why I believe the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement is against the American creed and against what makes America an exceptional nation.

00:24:19.000 Because deep down, we love celebrating winning and success in America.

00:24:24.000 We love the people that can go 100 jeopardy rounds, you know, straight.

00:24:29.000 We love the Olympic athletes that could break the untouchable Olympic record.

00:24:34.000 We love the celebration of impossibility.

00:24:38.000 And that only happens when you prioritize competency, meritocracy, consciousness, reason, not kind of silly melanin contents in people's skin.

00:24:51.000 And so, but sports is the great example here, Dr. Bob, because deep down, no one wants to see a bunch of five foot eight people play for the Los Angeles Lakers.

00:25:01.000 But that's what would happen.

00:25:01.000 It would be really boring, actually.

00:25:03.000 Well, we would have to adjust the height of the basket to the average height of the player.

00:25:08.000 And LeBron James should have to have his hands handcuffed when he plays.

00:25:11.000 That's right.

00:25:12.000 That's only fair.

00:25:13.000 That's right, because he's too good.

00:25:15.000 And then I have to hear him lecture us that it's a racist country.

00:25:15.000 Right.

00:25:19.000 It's a terrible country. 0.98

00:25:21.000 The NBA is at least 80 to 85% black, maybe more. 0.54

00:25:25.000 And there's no racial quota there, nor should there be because it should be a competition of competencies.

00:25:31.000 Like everything else.

00:25:32.000 Everything should be held to that standard.

00:25:34.000 That's right.

00:25:35.000 And that was an American ideal.

00:25:37.000 Well, winning and giving prizes to people who win is not only useful for the person who won, it's useful and helpful to the people who can see that if you work hard, if you play hard, if you exercise, maybe you can do it.

00:25:53.000 I totally agree.

00:25:54.000 And this is being destroyed in America.

00:25:57.000 No more applauding for the people who are successful because it makes the other people feel bad.

00:26:04.000 And this is so important.

00:26:05.000 And you just said prizes in economics, we call this word incentives.

00:26:10.000 Incentives is what drive human behavior, right?

00:26:12.000 And so if you think you're going to get a $200, $500 ticket, you're not going to drive in the HOV lane by yourself because that's an incentive not to do that.

00:26:20.000 Disincentive, right?

00:26:21.000 And so the same is this for honor roll.

00:26:24.000 Why study?

00:26:24.000 Right.

00:26:25.000 Why read the book?

00:26:27.000 And in Oregon, the state law has changed about the requirements for graduating high school.

00:26:35.000 That's right.

00:26:35.000 It no longer requires proficiency in mathematics.

00:26:39.000 And I'm not talking about calculus here.

00:26:41.000 We're talking about basic math.

00:26:43.000 Graduating with a high school diploma does not require competency in mathematics nor reading or writing.

00:26:52.000 So you will be able to grad, people in Oregon will be able to get a high school diploma while they're illiterate, illiterate.

00:27:01.000 So what does a high school diploma then mean?

00:27:05.000 What does it mean if there's no standards?

00:27:07.000 It means that you're able to be an activist.

00:27:11.000 You showed up.

00:27:12.000 You showed up.

00:27:12.000 That's right.

00:27:13.000 Just like participation charges.

00:27:15.000 Participation charges.

00:27:16.000 And that's what we really started with 10 years ago.

00:27:18.000 That's right.

00:27:19.000 And this moves on to critical race theory.

00:27:22.000 And I didn't know what it was, so I had to look it up.

00:27:24.000 CRT.

00:27:25.000 The theory says that racism is a part of everyday life in America because racism is in the DNA of every white American, a white American, whether they know it or not.

00:27:39.000 They are automatically racist.

00:27:39.000 Yes.

00:27:42.000 This is being taught in our schools that America is fundamentally flawed from 1619 or whatever date they want, it became racist.

00:27:53.000 Now, if that's the case, how did Barack Obama get to be president for eight years?

00:27:58.000 You know, I'm struck by this.

00:28:00.000 Or why did more blacks come through legal immigration since 1980 than ever came through the slave trade?

00:28:06.000 Why do so many blacks want to come to this country if it's so racist and awful and colonialistic? 0.91

00:28:12.000 You see, the presupposition they come from is it's actually brilliant in one sense. 0.94

00:28:17.000 You can never prove it wrong because they state something that can never be proven right or proven wrong.

00:28:23.000 It's everywhere.

00:28:25.000 Well, what is everywhere?

00:28:26.000 The air?

00:28:27.000 No, no, no.

00:28:28.000 Racism.

00:28:29.000 And so then you call them out for it.

00:28:31.000 I do this all the time.

00:28:32.000 Well, prove it to me. 0.99

00:28:33.000 Well, you can't see it because you're white. 1.00

00:28:35.000 Oh, so your entire operational thesis is that we're operating.

00:28:40.000 We have something in our systems in our DNA that's everywhere.

00:28:43.000 You can't tell me where it is, but if you would be able to tell me where it is, I can't find it because of my skin color.

00:28:48.000 They say yes.

00:28:50.000 This is how this is absurd and insane.

00:28:53.000 And what it is, and you know this, Dr. Bob, is that it's a deconstructionist philosophy.

00:28:57.000 It's how can we disassemble the parts of America the quickest?

00:29:01.000 And they found the way to do that through race.

00:29:04.000 And if they can't point it out, how could we possibly fix it if it were there?

00:29:09.000 That's right.

00:29:10.000 It's like, oh, you have a tumor, but I'm not going to tell you where it is.

00:29:12.000 Where it is.

00:29:13.000 Right.

00:29:13.000 It might be in your kidney.

00:29:14.000 And you're flawed and you're labeled.

00:29:16.000 So we have gone a long way from measuring people, as Martin Luther King said, by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.

00:29:27.000 We've gone a long way.

00:29:29.000 And I believe this started with President Obama.

00:29:33.000 And we are now, America is now at a tipping point.

00:29:36.000 I agree with you.

00:29:37.000 We, Americans, America has to decide if we're going to go back to the America that we loved of freedom, free expression, and rights for everyone, right?

00:29:51.000 No discrimination in law.

00:29:53.000 The outcome might turn out differently, but everyone should have the shot at whatever they want.

00:29:58.000 We're either going to tip back there or we're going to go where President Obama said we would go to fundamentally.

00:30:06.000 He said this before he was inaugurated.

00:30:09.000 He said a few, he said, in a matter of a week, whatever it was, we are going to fundamentally change the United States of America.

00:30:18.000 And I think that's what is happening now.

00:30:20.000 That's right.

00:30:21.000 Fundamental shift.

00:30:23.000 And this is the question, isn't it?

00:30:25.000 Is that, do Americans still want the country that we once enjoyed, or do we want to go into this fundamental transformational direction?

00:30:33.000 And it's an open question.

00:30:36.000 It's a question of are we willing to fight for it?

00:30:38.000 Are we willing to do something about it?

00:30:40.000 Are the parents that are seeing what's happening to their kids willing to intercede and actually, you know, intervene, I should say, and stop this line of nonsense that's been happening?

00:30:50.000 But, you know, Dr. Bob, I totally agree because I grew up in an America born in 93, right?

00:30:58.000 Where I saw both sides of this.

00:31:00.000 I grew up in an America in 04, 05, 06, where no one cared about skin color.

00:31:06.000 It was about meritocracy, how hard you worked.

00:31:08.000 It was waking up early, staying up late.

00:31:11.000 And then I saw it change in front of my very eyes.

00:31:13.000 And you did too, Dr. Bob, obviously.

00:31:14.000 I mean, you've seen the country change.

00:31:16.000 But from my generational perspective, as 27, I feel like I've lived in two different countries in one lifetime.

00:31:22.000 Absolutely.

00:31:23.000 And it broke right quickly.

00:31:25.000 Quickly.

00:31:25.000 It broke exactly when I turned 15 years old in 2008 when Barack Obama got elected.

00:31:31.000 We have never had worse race relations in my time.

00:31:35.000 You know, maybe in Jim Crow of the Civil War, they were worse, but never, they were fine until Barack Obama pointed these things, pointed us in a totally different direction.

00:31:45.000 Totally agree with you.

00:31:48.000 I'd like to ask you, tell me about your family and your character, the traits that got you to be where you are today, got you to be at 27, heading a substantial organization with substantial cash flows in and out, hiring people.

00:32:08.000 How many employees did you say?

00:32:09.000 200 plus.

00:32:10.000 200 plus employees at 27 years old.

00:32:14.000 I didn't do that.

00:32:15.000 I started the.

00:32:16.000 No, you built something way bigger than that.

00:32:18.000 Yeah, but I started way later and it took 40 years, 40 years for the company to be what it is today with maybe 2,500 employees.

00:32:27.000 So tell us, and it's not secrets of success, but tell us about the family that you grew up in and how they motivated you.

00:32:35.000 And then the parts of your character that helped you to get you to where you are today.

00:32:41.000 Yeah, the first thing is my parents were very hardworking growing up.

00:32:45.000 When I mean hardworking, I mean my dad would take three days off a year, right?

00:32:50.000 Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day.

00:32:52.000 What kind of business was he at?

00:32:53.000 Architecture.

00:32:54.000 And, you know, building buildings and also developing very difficult business, obviously, once 2008 hit and, you know, that kind of whole market got uprooted.

00:33:03.000 But I grew up seeing my dad always be there for every single sporting event, every be there, be there for anything I needed.

00:33:10.000 But he'd come home for dinner, then he'd go back to work till one o'clock in the morning.

00:33:14.000 And then he'd wake up at 7 a.m.

00:33:16.000 You know what it's like to build a business.

00:33:18.000 And so that was the culture I was raised in.

00:33:21.000 And I was also, you know, obviously I'm very, you know, active and I have trouble sitting still.

00:33:28.000 And my parents, to their great credit, you know, anytime anyone would be like, oh, Charlie has trouble sitting still in class, they're like, you know what?

00:33:36.000 That'll be end up being a positive.

00:33:38.000 No, like medication counselors.

00:33:40.000 I want to tell you that same story.

00:33:43.000 Please.

00:33:44.000 It was the third grade in, or second grade, one of the two.

00:33:48.000 And we're learning how to print letters.

00:33:50.000 And Mrs. Kershaw, that was her name, went to the blackboard, said, class, here's how you make the letter A. You one line, lift the pen, another line, and a third line, three lines, and here's how you do it.

00:34:03.000 And then she says, okay, I want everybody to do that.

00:34:05.000 And she walked around the room.

00:34:07.000 And I remember this.

00:34:08.000 I can't remember what I had for breakfast, but I can remember what happened when I was in the third grade.

00:34:14.000 I said, oh, I can make it without lifting the pen.

00:34:17.000 And it's much faster.

00:34:19.000 And she came over to me and pushed me. 1.00

00:34:22.000 Teachers could do that at the time and it's fine. 0.53

00:34:24.000 You know, I didn't go home and complain.

00:34:26.000 Didn't call a lawyer.

00:34:29.000 She said, Mr. Shillman, you make it this way.

00:34:33.000 And I kept on doing.

00:34:34.000 So it's clear that I had the seeds of entrepreneurship.

00:34:40.000 That's right.

00:34:41.000 I want to do it my way.

00:34:42.000 I'm creative.

00:34:43.000 And it's a shame that our educational system doesn't recognize this.

00:34:48.000 That's right.

00:34:49.000 They want everybody to be the same and sit with your hands folded or whatever.

00:34:53.000 Same thing happened with my son, Barney.

00:34:56.000 We were getting letters and calls from the school.

00:34:58.000 Barney can't sit still.

00:35:00.000 And they advised us to put him on ADD medication, Ritland, or whatever.

00:35:05.000 And we took him to a variety of experts.

00:35:07.000 And one older, very experienced child psychologist said, well, in my day, we called that normal.

00:35:14.000 The way he acted.

00:35:15.000 I was right on the edge of that, Doctor.

00:35:17.000 I don't know how old your sons are, but I was, I was, my teachers were like, he can't sit still.

00:35:21.000 There's something wrong with him.

00:35:22.000 That's called drive.

00:35:24.000 That's exactly right.

00:35:26.000 And hopefully charter schools or private schools recognize these kinds of kids and treat them differently.

00:35:33.000 Them all over here, because they are going to be special.

00:35:37.000 They're the change makers.

00:35:38.000 They're the change makers.

00:35:39.000 I, I didn't care what the teacher's role was, his dr Bob's role yes, and the other thing.

00:35:44.000 So I I I, I.

00:35:45.000 So i'm not surprised that you had that same trait, and so you when when, when we first started turning point and my parents instilled this in me as well, which was that entrepreneurial approach too, which is, take risks, think big I was always taught that this country was a place to be able to do impossible things.

00:36:05.000 And I, you know, young people ask me all the time, Charlie, how'd you start this?

00:36:08.000 I started it.

00:36:09.000 You know, one of the things that, you know, I always laugh, and I don't mean to insult anyone watching this when people say, yeah, I went to college to study entrepreneurship.

00:36:19.000 That's funny.

00:36:20.000 I'm often asked, or I was years ago, asked to give lectures at very famous institutions to give lectures on entrepreneurship.

00:36:29.000 And I would go and I would tell them about my story.

00:36:32.000 But in the back of my mind, what I really wanted to say is, if you're sitting here, you're not an entrepreneur.

00:36:38.000 That's the whole point.

00:36:39.000 Right.

00:36:39.000 If you're sitting here, and so people say, well, Charlie, what are the steps?

00:36:43.000 I say, steps.

00:36:44.000 I said, you think I had a plan when I started?

00:36:47.000 I had a skill and a passion.

00:36:48.000 That was it.

00:36:49.000 And I kind of, you just kind of start.

00:36:50.000 They say, well, did you have a detailed business plan?

00:36:53.000 What are you talking about?

00:36:54.000 A detailed business plan.

00:36:56.000 I said, you know, I might have had like a pitch deck two years later to go raise some money from somebody.

00:37:01.000 Not initially.

00:37:02.000 No, I mean, initially, and even, you know, this as a creator, you're always changing things, right?

00:37:06.000 You're looking at it.

00:37:07.000 You have to be flexible.

00:37:08.000 It's one of the things.

00:37:09.000 You have to be ready to change.

00:37:11.000 You have to be agile.

00:37:12.000 People say, is there a five-year plan?

00:37:15.000 No.

00:37:16.000 And even today at Cognix, one-year business plan.

00:37:20.000 One year.

00:37:20.000 We try to be, and we're big enough.

00:37:22.000 We can plan for one year.

00:37:23.000 We have enough customers.

00:37:24.000 We can do that.

00:37:25.000 But five years, who knows what's going to happen in technology in two years?

00:37:29.000 And it's going to change how you do it.

00:37:30.000 Totally.

00:37:31.000 Totally.

00:37:31.000 Oh, who knew that COVID is going to come?

00:37:33.000 That's right.

00:37:34.000 So, you know, it's important to plan, but it's important to plan for the near term and be flexible, ready to change your actions and change your plan.

00:37:44.000 That's right.

00:37:44.000 And then also the other thing, you know, taught, you know, growing up through sports and other ways was perseverance as well, which is a very important thing, which, you know, that's a tough thing to instill in somebody other than if you have parents that are willing to tell you no and willing after you lose a sports game, be like, yeah, well, you should.

00:38:03.000 Try out or not.

00:38:03.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:38:04.000 And all of a sudden that instills in you this kind of hunger to want to be the best.

00:38:08.000 And because you know this starting something from nothing, you know, there's a lot of opposition that will come your way.

00:38:13.000 And I just don't mean opposition people that take you down.

00:38:15.000 That comes after success.

00:38:16.000 I mean that opposition in your own head, right?

00:38:19.000 Can I do this?

00:38:20.000 You know, is this really the right idea?

00:38:22.000 You know, should I be doing something else?

00:38:24.000 And so those are some of the values that I was raised with.

00:38:27.000 Perseverance is one of the things that I value most highly.

00:38:31.000 And it is very rare in our country.

00:38:34.000 Yes.

00:38:34.000 Because television movies show you a crime is solved in one hour or you can build a house and it shows you building.

00:38:41.000 And everything happens quickly.

00:38:44.000 And real things don't happen.

00:38:46.000 The only thing that happens quickly are mistakes and destruction can happen quickly.

00:38:50.000 I totally agree.

00:38:51.000 Building something, whether it's career or a house or building a business takes time.

00:38:59.000 It takes time and dedication and overcoming those barriers.

00:39:03.000 Now, you mentioned that your father was very hardworking.

00:39:07.000 Yes.

00:39:08.000 And I see a commonality in the people that I've met who were very successful in business or in the trade like you are in public speaking.

00:39:17.000 They came from families where the father, where they met, the father was home for dinner, but always hardworking.

00:39:26.000 It's true in my house.

00:39:27.000 We never had a new car.

00:39:29.000 We only had a bottle of soda once a week and it was a Sunday lunch, one bottle of soda.

00:39:36.000 And you know what?

00:39:37.000 I didn't feel like I was underprivileged.

00:39:39.000 I didn't feel poor because all my friends in that neighborhood were the same.

00:39:45.000 And I believe that's very important.

00:39:48.000 I think that, you know, this tendency to force communities to have low-income housing called affordable housing, of course, called affordable housing next to mansions, it makes no sense at all.

00:40:03.000 It's disaster.

00:40:04.000 It makes the people who are living in low-income housing, they can't afford the same clothes or the bicycles or whatever.

00:40:11.000 They're going to feel depressed and disagree.

00:40:13.000 They're resentful.

00:40:14.000 Resentful.

00:40:16.000 We're living here and yet we don't really live the same way.

00:40:20.000 That's right.

00:40:21.000 I think it's a total mistake.

00:40:23.000 And when the politicians use the term affordable housing, you know, I think every housing is affordable.

00:40:29.000 You just got to be able to afford it.

00:40:31.000 Right?

00:40:31.000 That's right.

00:40:32.000 Whether it's a $5 million home or $100,000 home, it's all affordable housing.

00:40:37.000 But forcing the mixture between those kinds of different strata of the economy, I think is harmful.

00:40:47.000 And it does create a group of people that can be mobilized for their grievances, which create activists and potential voters.

00:40:59.000 I'd like to talk a minute and hear your views on capitalism.

00:41:03.000 First, I'll give you mine, because I clearly am a capitalist and I've benefited from the capitalistic system, as have all my employees and as have all my customers and as have all my shareholders benefited from capitalism.

00:41:19.000 The left thinks that capitalists are greedy.

00:41:23.000 Well, capitalists, successful ones, certainly have more money than people who are poorer, right?

00:41:30.000 Than or people who are less successful.

00:41:33.000 And what happens when you go to work, whether you're mowing a lawn or whether you're selling computer systems, what's happening is you're delivering goods or services to the customer.

00:41:46.000 And what are you getting back?

00:41:48.000 You're getting back pieces of paper.

00:41:51.000 So you worked hard to deliver those goods or services.

00:41:55.000 You contributed to society by delivering goods or services.

00:42:00.000 And all you got back were these pieces of paper or a number in your bank account.

00:42:04.000 It was wired to you.

00:42:05.000 Yes.

00:42:06.000 Now, income tax is a tax that taxes people for producing goods and services.

00:42:14.000 In reality, you want people, the nation, society should want people, should incentivize people to create as many goods and services as possible.

00:42:25.000 Who cares if they get these pieces of paper or dollars?

00:42:28.000 Now, we all have to pay taxes and raise taxes, but the better tax is a tax on the money when it's spent, because then the person who produced those goods and services gets the dollars, then buys products for his own self, for his own consumption.

00:42:48.000 And that is sort of taking away from, it's not punishing society, but he's taking it for his, he or she is taking it for his own benefit.

00:42:54.000 And if you're going to tax, that's a better tax.

00:42:58.000 We don't want to place a disincentive on people for working.

00:43:02.000 And yet that's exactly what an income tax is.

00:43:02.000 Yes.

00:43:05.000 Yeah, I totally agree.

00:43:06.000 And markets are the best way to organize a society economically.

00:43:11.000 It has lifted more people out of poverty.

00:43:13.000 It has given people the opportunity entrepreneurially to start something from nothing.

00:43:18.000 And at the lie of the anti-capitalist critique, the whole thing, if you had to reduce it down to one thing, they think that if someone gets rich, therefore somebody got poor.

00:43:28.000 When in reality, that trade happened in most cases voluntarily and both people benefited tremendously.

00:43:35.000 Benefited.

00:43:36.000 And people's standard of living goes up.

00:43:38.000 And all of a sudden, you have abundance and you have choices.

00:43:41.000 And then products get better.

00:43:43.000 And if you don't like a product, you can compete against that.

00:43:46.000 And you could take a risk in the marketplace to be able to maybe create a better widget or go up against this company that might look really big, but they're actually kind of inefficient and they might be able to be disrupted.

00:44:00.000 And at the heart of all of this is entrepreneurship, which is really the small guy with a big vision that wants to take a risk to be able to benefit people so that he can get something out of it.

00:44:10.000 This goes back to our conversation of incentives.

00:44:13.000 If all of a sudden people don't have incentives to go take risks, well, then you're not going to see new products.

00:44:18.000 Well, right to that point, let's talk about computers, which I know something about.

00:44:23.000 The largest computer company in the world about 20 years ago, 30 years ago, was IBM.

00:44:29.000 And the second largest was digital equipment.

00:44:32.000 And an entrepreneur called Steve Jobs said, you know, we can make computers cheaper and we can give them many people will want computers.

00:44:42.000 And there's a famous RAND study that was done on how many computers, how many people would buy computers and how many needs would be computers.

00:44:50.000 And they said there's a need for 200 computers in the country.

00:44:54.000 There's no, no, no person, no individual is ever going to want a computer.

00:44:58.000 And in a matter of years, IBM is no longer the largest computer maker in the world.

00:45:05.000 Digital equipment went out of business.

00:45:08.000 And it's because of the free market that allowed a kid who didn't go to college, by the way, is another story.

00:45:16.000 He didn't go to college.

00:45:18.000 Wonderful idea, came out with the personal computer and wham, changed the world.

00:45:24.000 And free markets allows for that.

00:45:26.000 If the government was in charge of who's going to make computers and what you're going to do, we would have no innovation, none.

00:45:34.000 That's right.

00:45:35.000 And the prices would be extraordinarily high and the distribution of the good would be incredibly inefficient.

00:45:40.000 And at the core of all that, though, is private property.

00:45:43.000 That really is the core.

00:45:46.000 Am I able to keep what I earn?

00:45:48.000 And can I go to a judge and say that my idea for this computer is mine and not that other guy's?

00:45:56.000 That really is the core of Western civilization economically, is that you cannot have markets without private property.

00:46:02.000 And that's something that the American system protects.

00:46:05.000 And the tax system in most countries is getting to be confiscatory.

00:46:09.000 That's right.

00:46:09.000 And the argument is about fairness.

00:46:12.000 Well, the rich aren't paying their fair share.

00:46:15.000 Tell me how much of my money should you be allowed to take to be fair?

00:46:21.000 It's my money.

00:46:22.000 I earned it.

00:46:23.000 That's right.

00:46:23.000 Right?

00:46:24.000 What are you talking about?

00:46:25.000 Fair.

00:46:26.000 You shouldn't take any of my money.

00:46:27.000 That's what's fair.

00:46:28.000 That's right.

00:46:28.000 Well, and then what is the number unfair?

00:46:30.000 It is by definition a subjective term.

00:46:33.000 And besides, in America, as I understand it, more than 50% of Americans who are eligible to pay tax don't pay tax.

00:46:41.000 And then don't pay tax.

00:46:41.000 That's right.

00:46:42.000 Not to mention, some of the biggest companies get loopholes too.

00:46:45.000 I mean, you have Amazon that almost pays no taxes, and they're able to do that through a variety of different loopholes and all this.

00:46:52.000 And so there's an incredible crony component to a lot of this as well, when people that are producing real things probably pay upwards of 60 to 65% at times in state, local, federal sales tax.

00:47:06.000 And in California, not only do we have to pay an income tax, but after you've paid the income tax, you have after tax dollars, then you have to pay 15, 16% sales tax, which is property tax.

00:47:20.000 It's becoming overly, overly burdensome.

00:47:24.000 Yes.

00:47:24.000 And that's why many people are leaving California for states like Texas and Florida that have no income tax.

00:47:33.000 And Nevada.

00:47:34.000 But look, it's important.

00:47:35.000 Taxes are important.

00:47:37.000 I've never objected to paying taxes.

00:47:38.000 As a matter of fact, my father, again, poor, but wise, he said, Robert, don't spend your time trying to pay less tax.

00:47:47.000 Spend your time trying to make more money.

00:47:49.000 That's good wisdom.

00:47:50.000 And that is great wisdom because again, making money is a measure of how much you've contributed to society.

00:47:58.000 And let's talk about the wealth gap.

00:47:58.000 That's right.

00:48:01.000 All of a sudden, the wealth gap is a discussion for a very active discussion in America.

00:48:08.000 Now, some people, I think that Elon Musk is either he or Jeff Bezos, they vie for the richest person in the world.

00:48:16.000 And they have their, it's paper money, of course.

00:48:18.000 It's their stock in their company.

00:48:21.000 But the value is extreme.

00:48:22.000 It's very high.

00:48:23.000 It's in the billions, maybe $50 billion. 0.70

00:48:27.000 And people say, oh, that's ridiculous.

00:48:29.000 What can they do with it? 0.92

00:48:30.000 Well, that's up to them.

00:48:32.000 In my view, and people who talk about the wealth gap will say, look, you have these people who are multi, multi-billionaires and other people living on $50,000 or whatever it is.

00:48:44.000 I never worried about the gap.

00:48:46.000 I think it's wonderful that people make as much money as possible.

00:48:50.000 They've earned it.

00:48:51.000 Okay.

00:48:51.000 They're not selling cocaine to kids.

00:48:54.000 They've earned this money in legal ways.

00:48:57.000 Their stock went up because people bid the stock up.

00:49:00.000 But what is certainly of concern to society is the safety net.

00:49:05.000 Are there people, we call them poor, but poverty, and we define poverty differently every year, by the way.

00:49:13.000 It's a fluctuating definition.

00:49:16.000 Poverty in our country would be middle class in most other countries.

00:49:20.000 Okay.

00:49:20.000 In my view, poverty in this country means you have an iPhone 7 and you don't have a 50-inch flat screen which is only 40-inch.

00:49:29.000 So what's important is that there be no hunger, that there be adequate health care.

00:49:36.000 That's what's important.

00:49:37.000 So we should worry about where the baseline is.

00:49:40.000 That's more important than the difference between poor and rich.

00:49:44.000 Yeah.

00:49:44.000 And the distance or the gap is not the right focus.

00:49:48.000 It should be how quickly can people move up to social mobility.

00:49:52.000 So don't throw rocks at the top of the building.

00:49:54.000 Fix the elevator, right?

00:49:56.000 I mean, are you stuck in a government-run school by some teacher union thug that doesn't give you the access to be able to read or write?

00:50:03.000 And if you kind of look at it, the people that complain the most about wealth inequality are actually the ones implementing the policies that make it the hardest for people to move up and actually get into a middle class or upper middle class lifestyle.

00:50:14.000 And so instead they're distracting people about like, well, look at this sort of gap.

00:50:19.000 Like, okay, you know, whatever.

00:50:21.000 And then what in reality, it's like, wait a second, you are implementing a series of economic policies and also a series of educational policies in particular and crime.

00:50:32.000 We can't forget about crime.

00:50:33.000 So you have in Compton, for example, or inner city Chicago, you get shot on the way to school.

00:50:41.000 Your property values go down then when crime goes up.

00:50:44.000 And it's hard then for some of these families to break out of that.

00:50:47.000 But we must defund the police. 0.65

00:50:49.000 Well, that, I mean, the most absurd and ridiculous measure and effort anywhere.

00:50:54.000 But this is all smokescreen.

00:50:57.000 They're trying to focus on a couple people like Bezos, who I'm not a fan of because it's politics and Elon Musk, who is whatever, to try to focus all on that.

00:51:06.000 When in reality, it's, wait a second, are you able to go to school?

00:51:09.000 Can you go shopping without worrying?

00:51:11.000 Yes.

00:51:12.000 Can the kids in inner city Baltimore read?

00:51:15.000 Five schools in inner city Baltimore you looked at, almost all black, not one kid in fifth grade could read or write a grade level. 0.99

00:51:21.000 Not one kid.

00:51:22.000 And that's all because of the public sector teacher unions and what they've done to the educational system. 0.87

00:51:27.000 And nothing that the left is talking about is going to cure that.

00:51:30.000 That's right.

00:51:31.000 Whether you can give a high school diploma to somebody who is illiterate is not going to cure illiteracy.

00:51:37.000 That's right.

00:51:37.000 The way to cure literacy is to have standards and to enforce the teachers to teach properly or replace them.

00:51:45.000 And matter of fact, have competition.

00:51:48.000 Schools, I think that.

00:51:50.000 Parents should have vouchers and they can spend them wherever they want.

00:51:55.000 Their kids should go to school wherever those vouchers, including homeschooling.

00:52:00.000 The goal is to have an educated populace.

00:52:03.000 And the way to do that, I believe, is through the free market.

00:52:06.000 I agree.

00:52:07.000 And to have private school systems now where parents are paying, I don't know if you're not yet a parent, $40,000 for kindergarten.

00:52:18.000 $40,000.

00:52:21.000 And that's on top of the property taxes that they're paying for for the public school system.

00:52:28.000 And there's another note I want to mention on this, Dr. Bob, which doesn't get mentioned as much, which is if they really are complaining a lot about why Bezos and Elon Musk are getting wealthier, a lot of it has to do with our monetary policy as well, is that when we open up cheap money or if we spend $6 trillion in Washington, D.C., what does that do to the purchasing power of a $50,000 a year family, right?

00:52:50.000 What would that do to someone like your father?

00:52:52.000 And saved.

00:52:54.000 Absolutely right.

00:52:55.000 And so that's what I mean.

00:52:56.000 People don't understand.

00:52:57.000 Oh, great.

00:52:58.000 The government's going to print up money.

00:53:00.000 What that means is the money you have is going to be worth less.

00:53:04.000 And that means people complain prices are going up.

00:53:07.000 It's not prices going up.

00:53:09.000 Money is less valuable.

00:53:11.000 It takes more dollars to buy that same gallon of gasoline, right?

00:53:15.000 It takes more because the dollars are worth less.

00:53:18.000 And that is a tax on the middle class.

00:53:19.000 It really is.

00:53:20.000 Absolutely right.

00:53:21.000 No one wants to talk about it.

00:53:22.000 Everybody has to buy gasoline, for example.

00:53:25.000 And the tax on gasoline and the high price on gasoline, everyone has to pay rich or poor.

00:53:31.000 The rich can absorb that.

00:53:33.000 The middle class and the poor can't.

00:53:35.000 So we're seeing inflation happening.

00:53:38.000 I think it's going to be much worse in the next few years under the Democrats.

00:53:42.000 And it's mainly fueled by the giveaway of money, the printing of money.

00:53:47.000 That's right.

00:53:48.000 In hopes that that will fix things.

00:53:49.000 And it does the opposite.

00:53:50.000 It does the opposite.

00:53:52.000 And I like what President Trump said when he was running for president, when he was either in Chicago or Detroit, one of these horrible cities that have extremely high poverty, extremely high crime rate, which have been run for decades by the Democrats.

00:54:09.000 And he said to the people, what have you got to lose voting for me?

00:54:13.000 Right?

00:54:13.000 Yep.

00:54:13.000 It's not, you're already at the bottom.

00:54:16.000 There's the basement.

00:54:17.000 What have you got to lose?

00:54:19.000 And that's why he won.

00:54:20.000 And instead, they want to focus on the wealth gap when to make people angry.

00:54:25.000 That's right.

00:54:26.000 And it's the wealthy, it's their fault.

00:54:28.000 They took your money.

00:54:29.000 And there's 500 murders a year in Chicago.

00:54:32.000 Yeah.

00:54:33.000 Well, I want to thank you, Charlie.

00:54:35.000 First of all, I want to thank you for coming to my home and spending time with me.

00:54:40.000 But I want to thank you even much more for what you are doing, investing your energy, your life into building an organization that has the potential to change the direction of our country.

00:54:54.000 Thank you.

00:54:55.000 Well, thank you, Dr. Bob, for all that you've done to support us.

00:54:58.000 And your story is remarkable.

00:54:59.000 I learned a lot here.

00:55:03.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:55:04.000 Email us your thoughts.

00:55:05.000 It's always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:55:07.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:55:08.000 God bless.

00:55:11.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 03, 2022

'Life Lessons' with a Patriot, Friend, and Mentor— Dr. Bob

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