The Charlie Kirk Show - May 26, 2025


No Debt Goes Forever Unpaid ft. Dr. Bill Federer


Episode Stats


Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

159.57202

Word count

6,960

Sentence count

549

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

28

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Bill Federer, a brilliant historian, talks about the history of tariffs in America and how they relate to current events. Bill Federer is the founder of Turning Point USA, a powerful youth organization dedicated to fighting for freedom in America.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I'm back in the Bitcoin.com studio and today I have an amazing interview for you with my good friend Bill Federer.
00:00:04.000 He is a brilliant historian and this interview is perfect for Memorial Day.
00:00:08.000 Enjoy and email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:11.000 Buckle up everybody, here we go.
00:00:13.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:15.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:17.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:20.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:23.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:25.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:26.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:00:27.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:34.000 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.
00:00:43.000 That's why we are here.
00:00:45.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:00:55.000 Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:02.000 That is noblegoldinvestments.com.
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00:01:06.000 Go to noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:11.000 Okay, everybody.
00:01:12.000 Today on The Charlie Kirk Show, we have an amazing guest and friend of mine to talk about history, how it connects with current events, and that is Bill Federer from AmericanMinute.com.
00:01:22.000 Bill, great to see you.
00:01:24.000 You're impeccably dressed as always.
00:01:26.000 Thanks for taking the time.
00:01:27.000 Charlie, great to be with you.
00:01:28.000 So, Bill, I want to ask a couple questions, the first of which, what is the history of tariffs in America?
00:01:34.000 The media makes it seem as if we've never done this before.
00:01:36.000 Have we financed our government tariffs before?
00:01:39.000 How did some of our founding fathers think about tariffs?
00:01:41.000 And how does that connect to some of the news of President Trump using tariffs as a negotiating tool?
00:01:47.000 Right.
00:01:47.000 For the first century and a half of our country, that's how the federal government raised its money.
00:01:52.000 So a little background.
00:01:54.000 Industrial Revolution in England.
00:01:57.000 Coal was what they burned, and they had coal mines that would fill up with water.
00:02:01.000 So in 1769, Isaac Watt invented a steam pump to get water out of coal mines, and that quickly turned into a steam engine that ran factories.
00:02:20.000 And so women would have to sit at a spinning wheel and take this yarn and turn it into thread and then make cloths. 1.00
00:02:26.000 Well, factories could make bolts of cloth really quick, really inexpensive.
00:02:31.000 And so this is called the Industrial Revolution.
00:02:34.000 But the British did not allow manufacturing in the colonies because they wanted to market.
00:02:40.000 And so when America becomes independent of Britain, the second bill that George Washington signed as president was the Tariff Act of 1789 to put a 5% tariff on all imports into America to make those 5%.
00:03:10.000 Matter of fact, there was no income tax in America until the Civil War.
00:03:16.000 I'll get to that.
00:03:17.000 And the U.S. Constitution specifically mentions that tariff taxes was the way the federal government was going to get its income.
00:03:25.000 Article 1, Section 8, authorizes the federal government to collect duties and imposts, which are different terms for tariffs, to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and the general welfare of the United States.
00:03:39.000 So basically, all federal money came from tariffs.
00:03:42.000 And so Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, created the Coast Guard to do what?
00:03:50.000 To catch ships that were trying to smuggle stuff into America without paying the tariffs.
00:03:55.000 And so he's in charge of federal revenue.
00:03:57.000 He's the Secretary of Treasury.
00:03:59.000 The fastest ships of the day were called cutters.
00:04:02.000 And so these were called revenue cutters.
00:04:05.000 It was the beginning of the Coast Guard.
00:04:06.000 the Coast Guard was started to collect tariffs.
00:04:09.000 And so when the...
00:04:15.000 Thomas Jefferson, the third president, stated April 6, 1816, it may be the duty of all to submit to this sacrifice to pay for a time and impost on importation of certain articles in order to encourage their manufacture at home.
00:04:34.000 So it's like, look, everybody, we're going to have to pay a little bit extra if we want these foreign goods.
00:04:39.000 Why?
00:04:39.000 Because we want to create a margin so that people can take the risk and start factories in America.
00:04:45.000 And this was amazing.
00:04:49.000 Instead of women sitting at spinning yards, they could buy bolts of cloth. 1.00
00:04:54.000 Instead of going to a well and dragging buckets of water into the house, they could have indoor plumbing.
00:05:01.000 And then we, so basically the Industrial Revolution freed women up from these menial tasks. 1.00
00:05:09.000 And then they produced farm equipment.
00:05:12.000 And so instead of a farmer having to hire manual labor, one machine could harvest a field.
00:05:17.000 Instead of ladies using wash tubs, they could use a washer machine. 1.00
00:05:21.000 And so this saw the fastest rise in the standard of living in human history.
00:05:29.000 And between 1792 and 1812, tariffs went up to 12.5%.
00:05:33.000 After the War of 1812, tariffs went up to 25%.
00:05:38.000 In 1820, they were at 40%.
00:05:41.000 and near the Civil War, they were at 60%.
00:05:45.000 Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, said December 5th, 1853, Happily, I have no occasion to suggest any radical changes in the financial policy of the government.
00:05:58.000 Ours is almost, if not absolutely, the solitary power of Christendom, having a surplus of revenue drawn immediately from imposts on commerce.
00:06:20.000 Ben Siegelman wrote in 1962 in the commentary magazine article, Tariffs Kennedy Administration in American Politics.
00:06:29.000 He said, in the early years of the republic, all but about $20,000 of the $4.5 million of treasury income stemmed from tariff levies.
00:06:40.000 Up to the Civil War, in fact, over 90% of the federal government's It's unbelievable.
00:06:51.000 The majority of the tariffs were collected at southern ports.
00:06:54.000 So the South, like Charleston, South Carolina, threatened many times to stop collecting the tariffs because they were in a position as an agricultural area of having to buy more expensive stuff from Europe or more expensive stuff relatively from the northern factories.
00:07:14.000 So the tariffs helped the northern factories, but really didn't help the South.
00:07:18.000 So when the Civil War started, The South held back their tariff income.
00:07:23.000 And the federal government was like, uh-oh.
00:07:26.000 So Lincoln pushed through an emergency income tax, and it raised $750 million to finance the Union during the Civil War.
00:07:37.000 And after the war, it was repealed.
00:07:40.000 No income tax.
00:07:42.000 Because the South is now part of the Union, and we can go back to normal, collecting tariffs at the Southern ports.
00:07:42.000 Why?
00:07:49.000 And so this was the way it was.
00:07:51.000 Up until the late 1800s, it was 95% tariffs.
00:07:57.000 This is what's called the Gilded Age.
00:08:01.000 And you had all kinds of factories and bridges made out of steel and high rise.
00:08:08.000 And if you've ever been to the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, it was built around this time.
00:08:16.000 It's a gilded masterpiece.
00:08:19.000 I mean, it is the most, you feel like you're in some foreign palace.
00:08:23.000 There was so much opulence and wealth in America at this time.
00:08:27.000 And then even into the early 1900s, I wrote a book on George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee scientist from down south, and the United Peanut Growers Association in 1921.
00:08:43.000 Asked Carver to go to the House Ways and Means Committee and to lobby for a tariff on peanuts imported from China because they could bring them in from China cheaper than the southern farmers could grow them.
00:08:57.000 And he was successful.
00:08:59.000 They passed the 1922 Fordney-McCumber tariff bill.
00:09:03.000 And then there's the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill of 1930.
00:09:06.000 But they say that the tariffs, though, by the way, let me just interrupt.
00:09:10.000 It's an antiquated model of economics, that even though we had it previously, that tariffs should never be used.
00:09:17.000 So kind of blend this bill using some of your economic expertise with the historical.
00:09:24.000 Is there a place for tariffs, looking at it through a historical and economic lens, in the current American geopolitical portfolio?
00:09:33.000 Yeah, definitely.
00:09:34.000 You know, the move away from tariffs sort of snuck in the back door.
00:09:39.000 You had Marxists from Germany immigrating to America, and they wanted redistribution of wealth.
00:09:47.000 And so they pushed through the first income tax in a peacetime in 1892, but the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in Pollock v.
00:09:58.000 Farmers Loan and Trust in the 1894 Supreme Court case.
00:10:03.000 The Supreme Court said any legislation that discriminates based on race, religion, or economic status is class legislation.
00:10:09.000 It's sort of economic DEI.
00:10:12.000 We're going to tax people more because of their status. 0.87
00:10:15.000 And the Supreme Court said, no, it's unconstitutional.
00:10:18.000 So what did Woodrow Wilson do?
00:10:21.000 Amend the Constitution.
00:10:22.000 With the 16th Amendment in 1913, he actually tacked a 1% Income tax on the top 1% richest people in the country onto the 1913 tariff bill.
00:10:35.000 It's just going to tax the Rockefellers, Carnegies, J. Paul Geddes, Astors, Flaglers, Harrimans.
00:10:42.000 It's not going to tax you and me.
00:10:44.000 And then you had World War I, and everybody said, okay, we had it. 0.87
00:10:50.000 Income tax during the emergency of the Civil War.
00:10:53.000 Now it's emergency of World War I. After the war, they reduced it, but did not eliminate it.
00:10:58.000 But it was still a tax on the wealthy.
00:11:01.000 You even had John F. Kennedy in his 1960 speech.
00:11:09.000 He said, introduced during the war.
00:11:13.000 When the income tax was extended to millions of new taxpayers, previously it had been a selective tax imposed on the wealthy.
00:11:22.000 And then, of course, FDR had his greatest tax increase in world history.
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00:12:27.000 So Franklin Roosevelt expanded the income tax to tax everybody.
00:12:33.000 And most people made $5,000 a year.
00:12:35.000 They didn't save up money to pay it.
00:12:37.000 And so FDR instituted paycheck withholding.
00:12:41.000 An emergency effort.
00:12:43.000 It was Uncle Sam needs you, buy war bonds and fight the axes, pay your taxes.
00:12:47.000 The person that came up with it was Beardsley Rummel, chairman of Macy's Department Store.
00:12:54.000 You know the Thanksgiving Day parade?
00:12:55.000 Oh yeah, very well.
00:12:56.000 And so it was called the pay-as-you-go tax.
00:13:04.000 You squeeze the sponge, the water goes out.
00:13:08.000 You raise the taxes on businesses in America.
00:13:10.000 Guess what?
00:13:11.000 They're going to go to other countries where the taxes are lower.
00:13:15.000 So after World War II, we were helping to rebuild Germany and Japan with brand new equipment, and they have cheap labor, no lawsuits.
00:13:27.000 No environmental red tape.
00:13:29.000 None of that.
00:13:30.000 And they could produce stuff really cheap and then ship it into America.
00:13:35.000 And with the profits, they would lobby politicians to lower the tariffs so they could bring their stuff in cheaper.
00:13:42.000 This is called free trade.
00:13:45.000 Now, the problem was that other countries would subsidize their businesses to help them produce their goods cheaper so they could sell them cheaper and put out of business the American competition.
00:13:59.000 And then once they had a monopoly, then they could flex their muscles when it came to negotiating foreign policy.
00:14:08.000 We'll hold back what you need because we're the only ones giving it to you.
00:14:13.000 And so we see that what Trump, in a sense, is wanting to do is to go back to the original model that did make America the wealthiest and most prosperous nation on the planet.
00:14:30.000 And you're making other countries pay a premium to have access to our customers.
00:14:37.000 And so, yeah, let's just kind of go a level deeper here.
00:14:41.000 So, You're a free market guy.
00:14:45.000 Can you reconcile how to best explain those two things that we want open to markets?
00:14:49.000 But also talk about China as well.
00:14:51.000 You're a historian that understands the Chinese Communist Party.
00:14:54.000 How do they view trade themselves as the middle empire?
00:14:58.000 Give us a little bit of their psychology and how they're currently viewing, let's say, markets with America.
00:15:03.000 It's not about enriching us.
00:15:05.000 It's about something different.
00:15:06.000 What is that?
00:15:07.000 Yeah, well, China is the oldest civilization in world history.
00:15:11.000 It goes back 5,000 years.
00:15:13.000 They had dynasties.
00:15:14.000 They've always had a top-down, controlled economy.
00:15:18.000 And then you had the British, and they colonized.
00:15:24.000 And what happened was the British were growing opium in India and shipping it into China.
00:15:29.000 And the emperor didn't want it.
00:15:31.000 And fought back, and then the British brought their navy in.
00:15:36.000 Well, the Chinese didn't have a navy, and so they lost.
00:15:39.000 And so it's called the Opium Wars.
00:15:41.000 And this is when the British set up HSBC Bank, Hong Kong Singapore Bank, which was used, basically, to take the profits from selling the opium into China.
00:15:53.000 Talk about a government involved in the drug trafficking.
00:15:58.000 But this is called the Century of Humiliation for China. 0.99
00:16:01.000 And they never forgot it.
00:16:02.000 And they're sort of paying us back with saying, OK, we'll weaken the West with fentanyl and all kinds of other things.
00:16:09.000 But when you had Admiral Dewey opened up trade with China, but we had the most powerful navy in the world.
00:16:20.000 You had during World War II.
00:16:24.000 America was defending China against Japan.
00:16:27.000 We had the Fighting Tigers.
00:16:30.000 But then you had Chiang Kai-shek. 0.94
00:16:34.000 He converted and became a Christian, maybe because he thought that would get Americans to want to support him.
00:16:41.000 And he's fighting the Japanese and fighting Mao Zedong and the communists.
00:16:47.000 And Harry S. Truman said, we're going to pull out.
00:16:51.000 MacArthur wanted to go in and defeat the Communists, and he may have been able to do that because they were not all that organized.
00:16:58.000 But Truman fired MacArthur, and Truman helped form the United Nations.
00:17:04.000 And Truman said, well, let's let the United Nations take care of this.
00:17:08.000 And it's like, it didn't work out that way.
00:17:10.000 So Chiang Kai-shek is chased out to Taiwan for Mosa, Free China, whatever the name was.
00:17:17.000 And the Communists took over China.
00:17:19.000 And they began to do a cultural revolution, not just a revolution, but a cultural one, which means they were destroying thousands of years of Chinese culture.
00:17:27.000 They destroyed the oldest gates, you know, in Beijing and the oldest Buddhist temple and tens of thousands of ancient Chinese works because they wanted to do the New People's Republic of China. 0.96
00:17:40.000 And they play the long game.
00:17:42.000 I heard somebody explain the difference between chess and poker.
00:17:47.000 But Americans are known for poker taking risks and gambling, and the Chinese are very strategic.
00:17:52.000 Yeah, so talk more about that.
00:17:54.000 The long-term planning of the Chinese Communist Party, how far out do they look?
00:17:59.000 And are they viewing this kind of trade war as an economic one or even something greater than that?
00:18:10.000 Well, the most popular game in China is called Go, G-O.
00:18:19.000 But your goal is to get control of different parts of the playing board with the fewest amount of pieces necessary.
00:18:28.000 And so it's very long-term strategy.
00:18:31.000 And so they apply this generationally.
00:18:34.000 They do have what I could best describe as a manifest destiny.
00:18:40.000 When America was first starting, we sort of knew we were going to go from sea to shining sea.
00:18:45.000 But China has this sort of corporate concept that they are the best and that they are going to grow and eventually take over.
00:18:54.000 And to a large part, they've been successful primarily through bribing politicians in other countries.
00:19:03.000 The China Silk Road Initiative, Turkistan.
00:19:06.000 They've always viewed themselves as the center of the world, as their natural place, which they feel they must regain.
00:19:13.000 Yeah, it's a psyche.
00:19:15.000 That's there.
00:19:16.000 So I think they've been rattling the sword that they wanted to take back Taiwan. 0.51
00:19:21.000 And of course, they did get Hong Kong back, which was a tremendous abandonment of the freedom-loving people there.
00:19:29.000 But Trump, I feel, is brilliant because when he threw them on their heels with this tariff war, so to speak.
00:19:39.000 40 Chinese banks have gone belly up just within the last two months.
00:19:44.000 They've had to pull back.
00:19:46.000 Their global aspirations have taken a hit, partly because they've bought a whole lot of Treasury bills.
00:19:55.000 And if they attack America, they're going to lose their customer.
00:19:59.000 Right?
00:20:00.000 Because because we're the ones that.
00:20:02.000 America is the market for the world. 0.93
00:20:05.000 And so if if they do anything to to So they're in sort of a box, and Trump is probably the only person on the planet that has the guts to push back against their agenda.
00:20:20.000 If you look at the Hutchison-Wempol company, which is a Chinese-owned company, they've been strategically taking control of major maritime ports, Panama Canal, the Dardanelles, different areas around the world that are choke points.
00:20:36.000 For naval travel around the world.
00:20:38.000 It's like, why are they doing that?
00:20:40.000 The Bahamas, they built a deep water port down there.
00:20:43.000 And then in Africa, they go to countries and say, well, Now, sorry to interrupt.
00:20:48.000 What would you say is their weakness?
00:20:50.000 If you were to advise President Trump, because you know this very well, what is the weak point of China that is a card that we could play?
00:20:59.000 Well, their population.
00:21:03.000 It's unsustainable.
00:21:05.000 The fewer women go back to the one-child policy they used to have, and they would all want men. 1.00
00:21:11.000 And they overstretched themselves so that they are vulnerable, I think, financially.
00:21:22.000 They have a good front.
00:21:25.000 Militarily, they do have some advanced things and supposedly hypersonic missiles and so forth, but very few.
00:21:33.000 The American military outnumbers the Chinese almost 10 to 1. So they're not ready to engage. 0.99
00:21:42.000 In anything.
00:21:43.000 They are trying to do what's called BRICS.
00:21:46.000 Brazil, Russia, China, India, you know, Singapore, whatever.
00:21:51.000 I always get the S mixed up.
00:21:54.000 But they've added, these are countries that want to trade with something other than the U.S. dollar.
00:21:59.000 And they've gotten a little headway, but I don't think it's anywhere near competitive.
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00:23:14.000 That brings up another interesting scenario.
00:23:19.000 FDR, on his way back from the Alta Conference, stops off.
00:23:22.000 His USS Quincy boat in the Suez Canal, and he meets with the King of Saudi Arabia, Aziz Ibn Saud, and they do an oil for security agreement that America will provide security for Saudi Arabia in exchange for Saudi Arabia selling its oil in U.S. dollars.
00:23:42.000 The number one commodity sold worldwide is oil.
00:23:45.000 And when everybody in the world is having to buy oil in U.S. dollars, and since Saudi Arabia is the biggest seller of it, one of the biggest, then everybody wants U.S. dollars.
00:23:56.000 And so we're able to be the reserve currency for the world.
00:24:01.000 Biden let that slip, and that's dangerous, because if it ever happens that we're not the reserve currency, there'll be lots of dollars that have been created that nobody needs.
00:24:16.000 I think Trump is very effectively trying to push back against that.
00:24:22.000 And then you had the Bretton Woods Agreement around 1948, Harry S. Truman, that made the international agreement that the U.S. dollar would be the reserve currency for the world, backed with gold.
00:24:35.000 It was secure.
00:24:36.000 Everybody said, hey, you can put your money in dollars and you know it's the most safest until Richard Nixon got us off the gold standard.
00:24:43.000 But even then, it was still responsibly managed.
00:24:48.000 But then under Biden and Obama and the spending, spending the trillions and trillions of dollars, we're the most in-debt nation in the history of the world.
00:24:56.000 Can a nation survive the amount of debt that we've accumulated?
00:25:04.000 Not without a miracle.
00:25:05.000 So I've written several books.
00:25:09.000 One of them is called Chains to Chains.
00:25:11.000 I go through all the world's history and I track empires.
00:25:14.000 Debt is always the precursor to an empire collapsing.
00:25:17.000 The Roman Empire, it expanded, expanded.
00:25:21.000 But then when Hadrian built its wall, it was this far and no further.
00:25:24.000 And they had to live within their means and they couldn't.
00:25:26.000 And they got in debt and then they ended up collapsing.
00:25:29.000 The Spanish Empire.
00:25:31.000 It was getting gold from America, but they were spending it as fast as they got it.
00:25:35.000 And when they lost their Spanish armada in 1588, trying to attack England, then they lost another armada a few years later, and then another one, Spain, went bankrupt, and they couldn't maintain their global empire.
00:25:48.000 And that's when, you know, England and France and others began to settle colonies in America.
00:25:53.000 France, under Louis XIV, became the biggest empire in the world.
00:25:57.000 But then France helped us with our Revolutionary War.
00:26:01.000 But what did they get in return?
00:26:01.000 Thank you.
00:26:03.000 Nothing but debt.
00:26:05.000 You fight a war, you should get something in return.
00:26:08.000 They didn't get any trade agreement.
00:26:10.000 They just got nothing but debt and then a couple years of crops failed and France went bankrupt and they had a French Revolution and it collapsed.
00:26:18.000 You look at the Ottoman Empire.
00:26:21.000 And it expanded and it would tax the non-Muslims. 0.95
00:26:25.000 And after centuries, the non-Muslims turned into very small minorities and the tax base was gone and then the Ottoman Empire fell.
00:26:33.000 And then how did we get rid of the Soviet Union? 0.96
00:26:35.000 The arms race.
00:26:37.000 Reagan was spending on military.
00:26:39.000 Russia tried to keep up and they couldn't and they took all their money out of their GDP and put it in the military and they collapsed.
00:26:46.000 And so we have been doing to ourselves voluntarily Well, we did to the Soviets to collapse them. 0.95
00:26:53.000 We got them to spend, spend, spend, and they went in debt and collapsed, and here we are.
00:26:58.000 So debt is fat to the body politic.
00:27:02.000 What's fat?
00:27:03.000 Well, you eat something you shouldn't, and then it turns into a fat cell, and you've got to carry it around.
00:27:09.000 It's not a brain cell.
00:27:11.000 It's not a muscle cell.
00:27:12.000 It doesn't add anything to you, but you've got to keep it alive.
00:27:16.000 What's debt?
00:27:17.000 Well, you spend what you shouldn't have.
00:27:18.000 And you have interest.
00:27:19.000 And you've got to keep paying that interest.
00:27:21.000 It doesn't add anything to it.
00:27:23.000 So America is like a 400-pound patient on the emergency room table.
00:27:29.000 And the Democrat comes in and says, I think you can handle another 100 pounds of debt.
00:27:34.000 We can keep this spending going.
00:27:36.000 And Trump's like, we need to put in some stints.
00:27:39.000 We need to do some radical surgery here.
00:27:43.000 We need to cut back on this.
00:27:45.000 And so America is at a very vulnerable spot.
00:27:48.000 Trump is trying to fix it.
00:27:50.000 You know, I did a book on the history of socialism, and a socialist tactic is you get a country to go into debt.
00:27:59.000 And then when they're destabilized, they also add in pitting groups against each other, victims and oppressors.
00:28:09.000 But then they destabilize the country, and then everybody cries out for the government to help.
00:28:13.000 And the government says, we'll help.
00:28:14.000 We're just going to take control of your lives.
00:28:16.000 But you look at the countries that fell behind the Iron Curtain.
00:28:21.000 They were all destabilized, and debt was a chief factor in that.
00:28:27.000 So Trump's trying to turn things around.
00:28:29.000 I think if he, you know, Kennedy talks about that.
00:28:34.000 He says if we could cut taxes, it will spur economic growth.
00:28:39.000 And then we'll be able to get our economy growing again.
00:28:45.000 And so Trump's taking this attitude of let's free up individuals so they can keep their money and then the economy can grow.
00:28:57.000 I did a book called The Interesting History of Income Tax, and John F. Kennedy talks about FDR's high taxes and how they've been chasing money out of the country and doing this outsourcing.
00:29:10.000 So February 6, 1961, Kennedy said, I've asked the Secretary of Treasury to report on whether present tax laws may be stimulating in undue amounts the flow of American capital to industrial countries abroad.
00:29:25.000 Right?
00:29:25.000 You squeeze a sponge, the water goes out.
00:29:27.000 Kennedy said April 20th, 1961.
00:29:30.000 In those countries where income taxes are lower than in the United States, the ability to defer the payment of U.S. tax by retaining income in subsidiary companies provides a tax advantage for companies operating through overseas subsidiaries that is not available to companies operating solely in the United States.
00:29:48.000 And so he says we need to give tax cuts to businesses.
00:29:52.000 The caveat is that And he says a tax cut.
00:29:59.000 This is September 3rd, 1963, JFK.
00:30:02.000 A tax cut means higher family income, higher business profits, a balanced federal budget.
00:30:07.000 Every taxpayer in his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new convenience, education, investment.
00:30:15.000 Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding his business.
00:30:22.000 And as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenue.
00:30:27.000 So if you cut taxes, people will have more money and they'll spend it.
00:30:31.000 And then the factories will have to hire more workers to meet the increased demand, right?
00:30:37.000 And so the idea is that you can stimulate the economy through cutting taxes.
00:30:44.000 And again, at the same time, replacing that with tariff income.
00:30:50.000 Taking a step back with all of this, the direction that President Trump is heading with tariffs and national security, how do you place him in the list of American presidents on the macro of what he's trying to achieve and the realignment, trying to really consolidate our hemisphere?
00:31:08.000 How would you judge it?
00:31:09.000 How would you grade it?
00:31:10.000 How would you compare it?
00:31:12.000 I would say he's one of the best presidents ever.
00:31:15.000 I agree.
00:31:16.000 I really believe that, you know, you see a concentration of power that takes place, and he is trying to cut the size of government.
00:31:26.000 It's like, who does that?
00:31:27.000 I've never seen, in studying all the presidents, you know, FDR concentrated power with his New Deal programs during the Depression, and then World War II, and he hired, and then he gets out, Eisenhower, Republican, gets in, Eisenhower hires Clarence Mannion.
00:31:45.000 The dean of the Notre Dame Law School.
00:31:47.000 His job is to go through all of the concentrating of power that FDR put in place and basically do doge.
00:31:56.000 What can we do to trim back all this stuff?
00:32:01.000 And he comes up with a great list, but all the rhinos had gotten to Eisenhower and said, look, look, wait a second, we're in charge. 0.59
00:32:11.000 It's okay to have big government, because the Republicans are in charge of it.
00:32:15.000 And so they basically let Clarence Mannion go, and he pioneered the conservative movement that Eddie Rickenbacker became a part of, and then Phyllis Schlafly, and then all the rest of us sort of followed along.
00:32:28.000 But that was Eisenhower.
00:32:31.000 he gave a cryptic address at the end of his term and he warns of the military industrial establishment but that was his words for the deep state it's like there's some people here and they got their own agenda and they're wanting to So really quick, I'm sorry to interrupt, Bill.
00:32:50.000 We're short on time.
00:32:51.000 Has any president in the last 100 years actually made that a stated goal and been successful to curtail the Leviathan?
00:32:59.000 A few.
00:33:01.000 Believe it or not, Andrew Jackson was the only president who paid off the national debt.
00:33:07.000 And that brings up a whole other thing.
00:33:09.000 You had the John Maynard Keynes.
00:33:13.000 He's a friend of FDRs, and it was a debt-stimulated economy.
00:33:17.000 So here we are, depression, and he comes up with this idea, hey, it's okay for the government to go in debt, to spend money in the private sector to create jobs.
00:33:25.000 Those jobs will pay taxes, and the taxes will pay off the debt.
00:33:29.000 Sounds good on a chalkboard, but it never gets implemented because every generation of Congress, right, says, hey, let's go in more debt so I can funnel money to my district to get votes, and then we'll let the next Congress decide how to pay it off.
00:33:45.000 And so that's how there's even a guy named Buchanan, James Buchanan, and he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1980.
00:33:56.000 Because he discovered what I just told you.
00:34:00.000 He's an economist.
00:34:01.000 It's like, why are these guys getting us in debt, these congressmen?
00:34:04.000 And he noticed that whenever they're up for re-election, they vote to increase the debt.
00:34:09.000 And so he says politicians will do anything to get re-elected.
00:34:13.000 And so and they hate trimming back the spending because they got to go back to their district and say, hey, no more pork projects.
00:34:21.000 But so what Trump is doing, actually cutting back the fat, trimming it, getting rid of deep state.
00:34:31.000 He's coming up against not just Democrats, but rhino Republicans and people that have been entrenched in this government spending. 0.98
00:34:40.000 But I think he's.
00:34:43.000 Going to be successful.
00:34:44.000 And I'm praying that he's successful.
00:34:46.000 And I think that's why we have to support him.
00:34:49.000 It may take, like Thomas Jefferson said, it may be the duty of all of us to have a little sacrifice to pay a little more for these goods so that we can encourage the manufacturing at home, get some of these factories back on American soil.
00:35:04.000 And it's a doable thing.
00:35:06.000 And I think the good Lord has given us this opportunity, and we need to support the president in it.
00:35:12.000 It may take a few months, maybe a year, for it to work through the entire system.
00:35:18.000 When Milley took over in Argentina, and he was in debt to the globalists, right, Argentina was, and he cancels all that debt, and for a while it was a little bit of an upheaval, but now Argentina's on solid footing.
00:35:30.000 And countries are like investing in Argentina because they say, hey, wait a second, he's got his act together.
00:35:36.000 They're on financial solid ground.
00:35:38.000 Final thought here, Bill, and then we've got to run, is how would you, in a quick 5-10 minute way, let's just keep it to 5 if you can, say that how Christians should think about government.
00:35:48.000 Where in the Bible does it say that we should have separation of powers, consent to the governed?
00:35:52.000 Why is it that Western government is grown out of biblical principles?
00:35:57.000 Make the case.
00:35:59.000 Yeah, so the default setting for human government is gangs.
00:36:04.000 And a gang leader with enough weapons we call a king.
00:36:08.000 And the first recorded instance of this was Nimrod, Tower of Babel. 0.82
00:36:11.000 And Josephus, the Jewish commentator, said, Nimrod wanted to build a tower so high that if God destroyed the world again with a flood, he could survive on top.
00:36:19.000 And he made everybody in town bake bricks and bring them or he would kill them.
00:36:24.000 And since the population of the world was centered there in Mesopotamia, and he wanted to control it, in a sense, Nimrod was the first globalist.
00:36:33.000 And God comes down, confuses the languages, the people scatter into language groups that turn into nations.
00:36:39.000 Lo and behold, nations was God's invention to postpone a one-world government.
00:36:44.000 But every generation has some king, pharaohs, caesar, kaiser, sultans are that wants to conquer other nations.
00:36:49.000 And if left unchecked, they'd have been happy to conquer them all.
00:36:52.000 And they keep getting bigger and bigger with the latest military advancements.
00:36:56.000 The kings can kill more people.
00:36:57.000 So instead of cane-killing Abel with a rock, they can kill with a bronze weapon, an iron weapon, a phalanx spear the Greeks had, a scimitar sword that the Muslims had. 0.99
00:37:04.000 And with the latest technological advancements, the kings can track more people.
00:37:09.000 Augustus Caesar wanted a worldwide tracking system, 2BC, called the census.
00:37:14.000 If he could add access to 5G and cell phones and facial recognition software, I bet he'd been tempted to use that.
00:37:19.000 So these kingdoms keep getting bigger until the king of England had the biggest the sun never set on the British Empire.
00:37:24.000 He was a globalist.
00:37:25.000 He was a one-world government guy.
00:37:26.000 India, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, British, Guyana, Canada, Barbados, Bermuda, Jamaica, and America.
00:37:31.000 So America's founders broke away and flipped it and made the people the king. 0.77
00:37:34.000 And so the word citizen, It means co-king. 0.98
00:37:38.000 So kings have subjects who are subjected to their will.
00:37:41.000 Republics have citizens.
00:37:42.000 And the citizen is a co-king. 1.00
00:37:44.000 And where did the founders get this idea?
00:37:47.000 It's a polarity change.
00:37:48.000 America is an experiment of a polarity change in the flow of powers.
00:37:51.000 It's had a top-down rule by gang leader kings.
00:37:53.000 It's bottom-up rule by we, the people.
00:37:57.000 We got the idea from the New England pastors.
00:38:01.000 That in Connecticut, in New Hampshire, in Massachusetts, in Rhode Island, where did they get their ideas?
00:38:07.000 From the Bible.
00:38:08.000 What part of the Bible?
00:38:09.000 That first 400 years out of Egypt before they got a king.
00:38:13.000 So king is the norm.
00:38:14.000 The Pharaoh was one of the most powerful.
00:38:16.000 And around 1400 B.C., millions of Israelites come out of Egypt, and for four centuries, no king.
00:38:22.000 And it worked because every citizen was taught the law and personally accountable to God to follow it.
00:38:28.000 And it worked for four centuries?
00:38:30.000 Until the priests went woke and stopped teaching that there was sin.
00:38:35.000 And Eli, the high priest, his own sons, are sleeping with women in the tent of meeting, and another Levite with a silver-graven image, and another Levite with a concubine, where the law says the Levite's to marry a virgin of his own tribe, and the poor concubine's raped to death by a bunch of sodomites.
00:38:48.000 Something about that behavior that appears at the last stages of a people around themselves.
00:38:51.000 And it turns into chaos.
00:38:53.000 They all go to Samuel, the prophet, and they say, this self-government system's not working anymore.
00:38:57.000 We want to be like the other countries. 0.99
00:38:58.000 We want a king.
00:39:00.000 And Samuel cries, and the Lord tells Samuel, they did not reject you, they rejected me.
00:39:05.000 Now, why is this story important?
00:39:07.000 Kings of Europe looked to the Bible for their authority, but they looked to the King Saul and on part of the Bible, divine rod of kings, I'm the royal gang leader, and the pilgrims and Puritans that founded New England looked to the pre-King Saul part of the Bible.
00:39:20.000 Millions of people, everybody taught the law, personally accountable to God to follow it.
00:39:24.000 So King Saul's the divider between England and America.
00:39:27.000 And so the idea of people being involved in government goes back to the pre-King Saul part of the Bible.
00:39:36.000 And so in New England, you literally had churches founding cities.
00:39:40.000 So the first Baptist church in America founded Providence, Rhode Island.
00:39:46.000 The first Congregationalist church in America founded Hartford, Connecticut.
00:39:51.000 Everybody's involved in church.
00:39:53.000 Everybody's involved in city government because it's the church founding the city.
00:39:57.000 There's like no non-church members there to be lazy and let them run stuff, right?
00:40:02.000 And they had one building in town called the Meeting House.
00:40:05.000 That's where the pastor would teach the Bible, and that's where they'd do their city business.
00:40:09.000 The word synagogue means meeting house.
00:40:11.000 That's where the rabbi would teach the law, and that's where they'd do their city business.
00:40:14.000 And so this was a covenant form of government where you get rights from God, you're fair to your neighbor because you're accountable to God.
00:40:22.000 You get blessings from God and you voluntarily share them with your neighbor as charity because you're doing it as unto God.
00:40:30.000 It's not socialism where the government takes away your stuff without your permission and gives it to somebody you'll never meet and they don't care where the money came from.
00:40:36.000 No, this is your money and you're moved upon by the Holy Spirit to be generous.
00:40:41.000 And this system worked for a century until it got a little dry.
00:40:46.000 And the pilgrims and Puritans taught it academically at Yale and Harvard.
00:40:50.000 And so they got nicknamed Old Lights.
00:40:53.000 And so David Brainerd was expelled from Yale because he said his professor was as spiritual as a chair.
00:40:59.000 And so in the 1700s, you have the New Lights.
00:41:01.000 And these are people that said, look, it's more than a plan.
00:41:03.000 Even if it's a good plan, you have to have an experience with Jesus.
00:41:06.000 When you do, your life will change.
00:41:07.000 You won't do worldly things anymore, like bars and brothels and government.
00:41:11.000 It's like, wait, what was that last thing?
00:41:13.000 Yeah, government, it's worldly.
00:41:14.000 If you're really a Christian, you're not going to be involved in worldly things like government. 0.99
00:41:17.000 It's like, huh, that's sort of different than an entire century where Christians are involved in government because it's Christians founding the city. 0.92
00:41:24.000 They're like, yeah, we're not going to do that anymore.
00:41:26.000 Or if you're really spiritual, you're going to withdraw.
00:41:28.000 Well, that brings up an interesting scenario, because if all the spiritual people withdraw from government, who's left to be involved but the less spiritual?
00:41:37.000 It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:41:39.000 Don't get involved in government because it's worldly.
00:41:41.000 Well, why is it worldly?
00:41:42.000 We're not involved.
00:41:43.000 All the Christians have left and there's a vacuum, right? 1.00
00:41:46.000 And so, you know, I thought people say, well, I'm spiritual.
00:41:50.000 I'm not going to get involved in politics.
00:41:52.000 By the way, politics comes from the word polis, which means city.
00:41:55.000 And politics is simply the business of the city.
00:41:58.000 And the policy is what the citizens all agree upon.
00:42:03.000 And polite is how they're supposed to treat each other.
00:42:06.000 And police is what happens when they don't treat each other polite, right?
00:42:10.000 But everybody's involved in the city.
00:42:12.000 And so in New England, you had churches founding cities, but when this revival happened, they're like, no, if you're really spiritual, don't be involved.
00:42:20.000 So if people, Christians are not involved, they're letting non-godly people teach kids there's no God and there's no sin, right? 0.95
00:42:33.000 Try this kind of sex.
00:42:34.000 Try that kind of sex.
00:42:34.000 If sex outside of marriage is not a sin, arguably there are no sins.
00:42:37.000 And if there's no sins, you don't need a Savior.
00:42:39.000 They're undermining the entire gospel.
00:42:40.000 You have to admit it's a pretty clever trick the devil's pulled.
00:42:43.000 To get Christians who believe the gospel of Christ, let their children be taught the gospel of Antichrist. 0.99
00:42:49.000 Oh, we're really spiritual.
00:42:50.000 We don't want to get involved in politics.
00:42:51.000 We're going to let our kids be taught there's no God, there's no sin, there's no need for a Savior.
00:42:54.000 It's like, oh, you're really spiritual, aren't you?
00:42:57.000 Bill, we'll leave it there.
00:42:58.000 We'll have you back soon.
00:42:58.000 We're out of time.
00:43:00.000 Please plug all your work so our audience can follow you.
00:43:03.000 Thanks.
00:43:04.000 AmericanMinute.com is my website.
00:43:06.000 AmericanMinute.com.
00:43:08.000 I have a book called Silence Equals Consent, The Sin of Omission.
00:43:11.000 We talk taxes.
00:43:12.000 I did a book called The Interesting History of Income Tax and also Turning Point Academy.
00:43:17.000 I do videos and you can sign up at Turning Point Academy.
00:43:21.000 Look for resources.
00:43:22.000 And it's an honor to be a part of you with that as well, Charlie.
00:43:26.000 Very good.
00:43:27.000 Bill?
00:43:28.000 God bless you.
00:43:29.000 Thank you for being a great friend.
00:43:30.000 Hope to see you soon.
00:43:31.000 Thanks so much.
00:43:32.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:43:33.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:43:36.000 Thank you so much for listening.