The Charlie Kirk Show - Rail Strikes and Biden's Economic Midterm Mirage with Steve Cortes and Julie Kelly

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, Julie Kelly joins us to unpack the latest of the January 6th investigation.

00:00:07.000 And will Trump be indicted?

00:00:09.000 She joins us to unpack that.

00:00:11.000 Get your tickets to AmericaFest today at amfest.com.

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00:00:17.000 And Steve Cortez gives us an economic update and we dive into what is this rail strike that is looming?

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00:00:40.000 Here we go.

00:00:41.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:43.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

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00:01:26.000 Steve Cortez joins us now.

00:01:27.000 Steve, welcome back to the program.

00:01:29.000 Steve, walk us through the looming rail strike in America.

00:01:34.000 Yeah, Charlie, listen, this is an incredibly significant issue and a massive economic risk that this country certainly does not need at a time like this.

00:01:42.000 And I mean at a time like this, because the economy is already in tatters.

00:01:46.000 It is already careening into a ditch, largely because of the inflation that was unleashed by Joe Biden, which is a created crisis from his misbegotten policies, his complete mismanagement of the U.S. economy.

00:01:58.000 Now add in right in front of the holidays, right in front of, at least for retail, the most significant economic few weeks of the year, a potential catastrophic rail strike.

00:02:09.000 About one-third of all goods in America are shipped by rail.

00:02:13.000 So it's hard to overstate the scope of this.

00:02:15.000 One of the things politically that I find fascinating about this is that Joe Biden claimed he was going to be the most pro-union president ever.

00:02:22.000 Well, he does love public sector unions, which of course are completely beholden by the Democratic Party.

00:02:29.000 But private sector unions, which are mostly a lot of the Democratic Party, but not nearly as slavishly as the public sector unions, turns out he's not as interested there.

00:02:37.000 And even moreover, whether or not he's pro- or anti-union is the fact that he's simply not taking a direct enough role in trying to fix this situation.

00:02:46.000 You know, back in 1902, Teddy Roosevelt, which was really, I think, one of the moments that made him the great statesman that we now regard him as very properly.

00:02:54.000 So in 1902, there was a coal strike that was threatening America.

00:02:56.000 Kind of similar timing into winter, just as it was getting cold.

00:03:00.000 The results could have been catastrophic for the United States.

00:03:02.000 He gathered all of the interested parties, the owners, the miners, others, the press, everybody into rooms and insisted on personally leading the negotiation until he could reach a settlement, which he indeed did.

00:03:15.000 We need to see that kind of leadership now.

00:03:17.000 We're not seeing it, of course, from Joe Biden.

00:03:19.000 I'm not sure he's even cognitively able to lead that kind of intense negotiation.

00:03:24.000 But the fact of the matter is, this is a significant possible massive disruption to the U.S. economy.

00:03:32.000 And again, at a time that the economy is in terrible shape anyway and cannot sustain this kind of an economic headshot given the already weakened state because of what Biden has wrought.

00:03:45.000 Yeah, so but can you just kind of go through if you were, let's just say if you were in arbitration with the two parties, what is the main sticking point right now?

00:03:54.000 What is actually being debated or discussed or what is in contention?

00:03:58.000 Right.

00:03:59.000 Right now, most of the details revolve around paid sick leave.

00:04:03.000 And look, in my view, and I don't know all of the details and we don't know what has been negotiated, of course, behind closed doors, but in my view, the demands of the miners or excuse me, of the railroad workers in this case are actually pretty just and are pretty reasonable.

00:04:18.000 But, you know, regardless, again, the point here is that clearly a solution could be reached.

00:04:23.000 What it takes is the will to reach it, and it takes the leadership and negotiation skills of somebody, particularly the president of the United States, to be willing to exert his influence, his authority.

00:04:35.000 And again, this is the problem of having somebody like Joe Biden in office, somebody who is incapable of executing the tasks of the hardest job in the world, somebody who post-election, I think, frankly, doesn't care very much post-midterm election, you know, is frankly indifferent to the plight of the American economy, the plight of the railroad workers, the plight for that matter of any stakeholders in this situation.

00:04:58.000 And basically, every American is really a stakeholder here.

00:05:02.000 So this is, let me put on top of this, you know, another aspect that is crucial.

00:05:09.000 Joe Biden has already decimated the transportation industry in general through his attacks on American energy.

00:05:15.000 So the fact that Joe Biden immediately upon taking office declared war on American energy production, on the domestic, affordable, dependable flow of energy from our own ground, from our own land that was so facilitated by Donald Trump, when we became not just energy independent, but in fact, energy dominant.

00:05:34.000 He killed that golden goose almost immediately.

00:05:37.000 The consequences for inflation have been incredibly severe, but particularly so for the transportation industry, which of course needs this fuel quite literally to move things.

00:05:46.000 And we see it in not just in the rails, but for example, in the trucking industry.

00:05:51.000 The trucking industry has been decimated lately.

00:05:54.000 It is extremely difficult for trucking companies to turn a profit, difficult for them to find workers.

00:05:58.000 The vaccine mandates were particularly onerous for this business and sent a lot of truckers out of that business on a permanent basis because of what Joe Biden wrought.

00:06:08.000 And so here again, when you combine an existing economic crisis and an economy that is teetering on the edge of a really disaster, and by the way, that's not just my opinion.

00:06:18.000 I mean, that is as evidenced by the economic metrics that are out there, all of which decline massively.

00:06:25.000 For example, I mentioned the Christmas shopping season.

00:06:27.000 Consumer confidence in recent months tanked to a post-World War II low per the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey, which is the gold standard of consumer sentiment.

00:06:37.000 It certainly goes all the way back to the 1950s.

00:06:40.000 We literally just hit the lowest point ever.

00:06:42.000 So consumers are already in a terrible place, in a terrible frame of mind because of their pocketbooks, because of what Joe Biden has done to their savings and their prosperity heading into Christmas.

00:06:52.000 You throw on top of this now the potential for massive supply chain disruptions because of this potential looming rail strike.

00:07:00.000 And it's really just a recipe for an even deeper disaster that the American people have already had to endure with Joe Biden when it comes to the economy.

00:07:07.000 I mean, the economy is in a really tough spot.

00:07:10.000 I believe that they played some games with the Fed over the summer and early fall to cushion the blow ahead of the midterms.

00:07:18.000 I think that everyone knows that we're in a recession, but I think there are some games also done, obviously, with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to get gas prices a little more manageable.

00:07:28.000 Because, Steve, this midterm election should have been much more focused on the economy than it was, right?

00:07:34.000 I mean, it shouldn't be a four-seat majority.

00:07:37.000 It should be a 40-seat majority, given the economic catastrophe we're living through.

00:07:42.000 Yes.

00:07:42.000 And by the way, to that point of whether or not we're in a recession, according to CNN polling, not exactly a right-wing organization, 75% of the American people say that we are in a recession right now.

00:07:51.000 So the American people know this.

00:07:53.000 People on Main Street, regular folks know that we are in a recession.

00:07:56.000 You know, whatever academic debates the corporate media and the White House want to engage in, the American people know where we are.

00:08:02.000 They know where things are in their own lives.

00:08:04.000 They know that real wages, meaning your income adjusted for the things you need to buy in your life, real wages have declined for 19 consecutive months.

00:08:12.000 That is the worst streak in all of American history.

00:08:15.000 You are working harder to get poorer every single month.

00:08:18.000 And the American people clearly know that.

00:08:21.000 To your point about the Fed, look, the Federal Reserve is every bit as complicit in creating this inflationary madness as is Joe Biden and the Congress, you know, particularly Schumer and Pelosi.

00:08:32.000 All of them share in the blame here.

00:08:34.000 Now, the Fed, I will at least say this to its credit.

00:08:37.000 It seems to have found religion, but very conveniently, largely after the midterm election.

00:08:42.000 So, for example, just this past weekend, the president of the St. Louis Fed, Bullard, made some very aggressive comments about how much the Fed needs to raise interest rates to try to rein in this inflationary madness that the Fed Fed chiefs themselves helped to create.

00:08:57.000 Now, he's very late, but better late than never.

00:09:00.000 And I think the Fed finally has come to grips with the crisis that they helped to create.

00:09:06.000 And never forget this, too, by the way.

00:09:08.000 Throughout all of 2021 and even into 2022, as this inflation was becoming ever more obvious to regular Americans, to anybody paying attention, there was a consistent lie from the power brokers in Washington, D.C., from the White House, from Janet Yellen at Treasury, from Jerome Powell at the Fed, that it was quote transitory.

00:09:26.000 That was the nonstop echoed lie.

00:09:29.000 Of course, they knew it wasn't transitory.

00:09:31.000 It never was. 0.90

00:09:32.000 It was systemic and deeply embedded, yet they continued that ridiculous lie that canard for a long time.

00:09:37.000 And I think, you know, to your point, largely because the Fed is incredibly politicized.

00:09:41.000 And the Fed, unfortunately, particularly Jerome Powell, is most interested in the institutional power of the Fed rather than trying to protect the prosperity of regular Americans.

00:09:50.000 That's right.

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00:11:25.000 With us is Steve Cortez.

00:11:27.000 He has an amazing sub stack.

00:11:28.000 How do people find that, Steve?

00:11:30.000 Yes, please.

00:11:32.000 Best way is to go to my social media.

00:11:33.000 I'm on Getter.

00:11:34.000 I'm just at Steam.

00:11:36.000 Very simple.

00:11:37.000 I'm also still on Twitter.

00:11:38.000 I'm at, I say still because I barely survived there.

00:11:40.000 Some of the timeouts that I was put in and suspensions.

00:11:43.000 I'm at Cortez, Steve, Cortez with an S, and link to my substrate through either of those.

00:11:48.000 Very good.

00:11:48.000 So, Steve, one of the things that has been bothering me, and I'd love your feedback on this.

00:11:54.000 How is it that Republicans messed up the economic messaging so terribly this election cycle?

00:12:01.000 So what was so fascinating about some of the exit polls is how upset people are about where America is, how dissatisfied they are about the economy, and yet how for the first time really in the last 20 years, voters had these feelings, had the ingredients for what would be a red tsunami, but they didn't do the one-to-one connection.

00:12:25.000 Right.

00:12:26.000 Why?

00:12:26.000 No, correct.

00:12:27.000 So you're exactly correct.

00:12:29.000 You know, voters overwhelmingly report correctly that we're in a recession, overwhelmingly give massive disapproval of Joe Biden on most issues, but particularly on the economy and inflation.

00:12:40.000 And yet, many of those same voters did not decide to vote for the GOP.

00:12:44.000 So we have to ask the question why.

00:12:46.000 I think the principal reason is the Republican Party, the establishment Republican Party, has not earned their trust on these kinds of matters.

00:12:54.000 And so there is reluctance that is very understandable.

00:12:58.000 Okay.

00:12:58.000 It is evidence-based reluctance.

00:13:00.000 It's not just some prejudice against Republicans.

00:13:03.000 It's knowing that in the past, the Republican Party, let's be honest, the Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush style Republican Party, has economically worked for the interests of C-suite executives and the globalist credential class rather than on behalf of working Americans.

00:13:21.000 Now, that is changing massively because of what Donald Trump has done and because at the voter level, the Republican Party has transformed into a party of working class Americans.

00:13:31.000 But the reality is at the officeholder level, that work is still very much ongoing.

00:13:36.000 And so I think voters simply, let me be specific, let me give you an example.

00:13:39.000 When voters look at the Republican Party and see that we have now sent in a time when Americans can't pay their rent, I put a chalk talk up on my social media.

00:13:47.000 The latest number out of a lineeable of 5,000 small businesses in America shows that 41% of them could not pay their rent in the month of November.

00:13:56.000 That is a staggering number.

00:13:58.000 It is a record high.

00:13:59.000 41% of small businesses can't pay the most basic bill their business has, which is the rent for their operation.

00:14:05.000 At that same time, Republicans, established Republicans have joined with the Democrats to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine to escalate a fight which has no discernible, no definable U.S. national interest.

00:14:19.000 And yet we are borrowing, we don't have the money, we are borrowing a mountain of money to send to Ukraine to an incredibly corrupt country to battle another corrupt country in an ancient ethnic war that has no ramifications if we were to just leave it alone for the national interest and certainly not for the economy of the United States.

00:14:36.000 I think a lot of voters quite reasonably look at that trade-off and say, I don't believe that the Republicans have my back when it comes to the kitchen table tangible issues of the economy and that they're most concerned about me and my prosperity.

00:14:50.000 And we've got to change that.

00:14:51.000 Now what a missed opportunity to control the house.

00:14:53.000 What a missed opportunity, right, Steve?

00:14:55.000 I mean, obviously there's ballot harvesting and all that stuff.

00:14:58.000 We know it.

00:14:59.000 We talk about it.

00:15:00.000 We're on 100%.

00:15:01.000 But it is inarguable, though, that there was some missed opportunity on the margins to win over an extra five to seven to eight percent of independent voters.

00:15:11.000 Do you feel, Steve, in the time we have remaining that we just thought it would happen automatically?

00:15:17.000 Sure.

00:15:18.000 No, I do.

00:15:18.000 I think unfortunately, and look, and maybe I'm guilty of this as well.

00:15:22.000 There was too much complacency because I think if you looked at the political landscape, if you look at how deeply unpopular Joe Biden is, I think there was an assumption that we would do well.

00:15:30.000 And, you know, you mentioned the mechanics of voting.

00:15:32.000 Clearly, we did not work smartly and hard enough on the mechanics of voting.

00:15:36.000 That's going to change for 2024, particularly in the states where those mechanics are largely rigged against us, places like Pennsylvania and Arizona.

00:15:44.000 So we could fix that and we must fix that, of course.

00:15:46.000 But yeah, listen, I think absolutely there was overconfidence and we need to absolutely guard against that.

00:15:51.000 But also, here's the good news.

00:15:52.000 We did win the House, not by the margins we wanted.

00:15:54.000 No, of course.

00:15:56.000 We have the lever of power now to start to convince those reluctant voters that we do have their back when it comes to these cases.

00:16:02.000 No, no, no, of course.

00:16:03.000 I mean, I know this sounds silly.

00:16:05.000 It could have been worse.

00:16:06.000 And I know that we were just a couple notches away.

00:16:10.000 I mean, we were, I mean, you look at David Schweikert's seat.

00:16:13.000 He won by like 1,400 votes.

00:16:14.000 You look at Siscomani's seat in Arizona.

00:16:16.000 He won by like 2,000 votes.

00:16:18.000 You look at Valadeo.

00:16:19.000 I mean, we're talking about if 15,000 to 20,000 votes in some of these house races, Lauren Boebert go differently.

00:16:25.000 Pelosi's still speaker.

00:16:27.000 We're talking about 15 to 20,000 votes, Steve.

00:16:29.000 Right.

00:16:30.000 And so praise God we landed the plane in that way.

00:16:33.000 But there has to be a comprehensive reevaluation.

00:16:38.000 Machinery number one, obviously, voter integrity, election integrity.

00:16:42.000 But there were places where we should have done a lot better with independent and swing voters.

00:16:48.000 And I think it's worthy of some examination.

00:16:51.000 Thank you, Steve.

00:16:51.000 I appreciate it.

00:16:52.000 Great job.

00:16:53.000 You bet.

00:16:53.000 Check them out on Getter at Steve.

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00:18:02.000 Joining us now is Julie Kelly from American Greatness to go over some of the latest news when it comes to the January 6th investigation that just seems to never end.

00:18:12.000 Julie, welcome back to the program.

00:18:14.000 Hey, Charlie, thanks for having me on.

00:18:16.000 So walk us through the news yesterday.

00:18:19.000 It took the headlines at every major news outlet as if this was something that was very important.

00:18:25.000 Someone was found guilty of seditious conspiracy.

00:18:30.000 Is that warranted?

00:18:32.000 Walk us through it.

00:18:34.000 So this is related to the prosecution of members of the Oath Keepers, an alleged militia group accused of trying to overthrow the government on January 6th.

00:18:46.000 So this is the first trial of many.

00:18:48.000 Five men stood trial.

00:18:52.000 About a six or seven week trial.

00:18:55.000 These five men were charged with the extremely rare count of seditious conspiracy.

00:19:00.000 No American has been convicted of this crime, but they were charged with seditious conspiracy after Merritt Garland was getting a lot of heat a year after January 6th for no insurrection or treason-like charges.

00:19:13.000 So, of course, this went before a D.C. jury.

00:19:16.000 Two of the men, Stuart Rhodes, who is the founder of the Oath Keepers, and another men, Kelly Meggs, were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

00:19:24.000 Three other men were acquitted.

00:19:26.000 All five men convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding.

00:19:30.000 But as you could see, Charlie, the headlines were over the top crazy.

00:19:34.000 This looked like the biggest win for the DOJ in 100 years or so.

00:19:40.000 You had prosecutors celebrating at fancy restaurants in Washington, D.C.

00:19:45.000 But this is an absurd case.

00:19:46.000 It's an absurd conviction.

00:19:49.000 How do you overthrow the government, Charlie, with no weapons?

00:19:52.000 Two of the men never even went inside of the building.

00:19:55.000 The other three who went inside actually reports that they tried to help police.

00:20:01.000 They carried no weapons.

00:20:02.000 They assaulted no one.

00:20:04.000 They vandalized nothing.

00:20:05.000 They walked in open doors on the east side, were there for about 25, 30 minutes, and left. 0.60

00:20:11.000 But this is the sort of ridiculous case that this DOJ is bringing in its vengeful retaliation against Trump and his supporters.

00:20:20.000 So two thoughts on this.

00:20:21.000 I think they went out to fancy restaurants afterwards because it's really not about Stuart Rhodes.

00:20:26.000 It's about the narrative because now there's a reference point where they can say that somebody has been charged for seditious conspiracy, not charged, has been convicted for seditious conspiracy.

00:20:40.000 Do you agree with that?

00:20:42.000 Absolutely, 100%.

00:20:44.000 So this is the long-awaited insurrection conviction that they have been waiting for.

00:20:49.000 Not only that, Charlie, this is in their belief, this brings them one step closer in justifying an indictment against Donald Trump.

00:20:58.000 You saw in the statement last night made by Benny Thompson, chairman of the January 6th committee, and of course his vice president, Liz Cheney, crowing about these convictions and the rule of law, and then instantly mentioning Donald Trump.

00:21:11.000 What they're going to try to do with this conviction is tie the oath keepers.

00:21:17.000 Next month starts the trial of the Proud Boys, the two alleged militias who this committee has been fixated on, and try to tie both of those groups to Donald Trump.

00:21:27.000 How they will do that with the Oath Keepers, they were providing security for Trump allies like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn in December and then on January 6th.

00:21:37.000 So that, Charlie, will try to be the connection between the sedition conviction and Donald Trump.

00:21:43.000 So there's a lot of ways that the media and the Democrats can spin this.

00:21:48.000 Now, second, you know, just to make sure everyone has the full picture, what was the evidence then?

00:21:55.000 Because I'm guessing, and I really haven't dug that deep into it.

00:21:59.000 I'm guessing they had some rather charged text messages and or communications.

00:22:04.000 Is that correct?

00:22:06.000 That is basically most of the case is a lot of text messages and communications, videos posted by Stuart Rhodes, who look, if you watch Stuart Rhodes and his videos, he's not someone that you want to hang out with, right?

00:22:20.000 And he was sort of bringing these people together.

00:22:23.000 He was going to events throughout 2020, trying to recruit people to provide security, not just at Stop the Steel rallies, but of course, all of these protests and demonstrations and riots going on throughout the country during 2020.

00:22:39.000 So yes, the case was mostly on communications, text messages, especially Facebook posts and videos.

00:22:47.000 But at the end of the day, as I said, these people walked in to a building a half an hour after Congress evacuated, open doors on the east side of the Capitol, no weapons, didn't attack anyone, didn't vandalize any property.

00:23:02.000 For a half hour of being inside the Capitol, basically committing no crime.

00:23:08.000 Now you have two men convicted with a crime that equals treason.

00:23:14.000 And all of these people face decades in prison, even for the obstruction of an official proceeding conviction, which is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

00:23:25.000 So what sort of precedent does this then set?

00:23:30.000 I mean, if you can now be charged for seditious conspiracy, I also just want to, for the record, I haven't seen all the evidence.

00:23:39.000 And so if there's something that could be convinced me otherwise, then send it to me.

00:23:42.000 But is the precedent now if you have very strongly worded private communications and messages, and then you show up to a protest but don't actually do anything violent, then you could be connected with a crime against the United States.

00:24:02.000 Is that right?

00:24:04.000 That's right.

00:24:05.000 That is the precedent that has been set here, Charlie, and it's very alarming.

00:24:11.000 Aside from that, the prosecutors argued that the conspiracy can happen instantaneously, and it can be an implicit conspiracy.

00:24:20.000 Like you're telepathically sending messages to others that day on the steps of the Capitol.

00:24:26.000 They weren't even arguing that this was a conspiracy months in the making.

00:24:30.000 And of course, unfortunately, what this trial did not expose is the numerous FBI informants we know were run into that group months before January 6th, including the man who was the vice president of the organization.

00:24:46.000 He was supposed to testify he suffered some health event, I think a heart attack before he traveled to D.C. to testify.

00:24:53.000 The jury never heard from him.

00:24:56.000 But look, this is a problem that is hopefully will be exposed under a Republican Congress, Charlie.

00:25:03.000 Everyone deserves to know exactly how many FBI informants were in these groups, who they communicated with, and one of two things.

00:25:10.000 Did they provoke the events of that day, or did they collect the intelligence about January 6th and never pass it on?

00:25:17.000 Those are some of the larger questions that loom, especially after this trial.

00:25:21.000 Or how about who planted the pipe bombs?

00:25:25.000 We don't know.

00:25:26.000 Almost two years.

00:25:27.000 Everyone forgot about that.

00:25:29.000 Yeah, that would be more than seditious conspiracy, right?

00:25:34.000 That would be Timothy McVay type stuff if the bombs actually worked.

00:25:38.000 Praise God they didn't.

00:25:40.000 So Julie, I want to connect something that you said here about how they're trying to draw a line to Trump.

00:25:46.000 Can you just kind of give an update?

00:25:48.000 Because it's very murky in the media and hard to track.

00:25:52.000 If you were wargaming this in Trump's inner circle, what would you say is the greatest posing legal threat against him?

00:26:02.000 Not legitimate, but where do you think if they're going to try to take the quote unquote their shot, where do you think it's going to come from?

00:26:08.000 Is it going to be January 6th?

00:26:10.000 Is it going to be the memorabilia?

00:26:12.000 Is it going to be Fulton County?

00:26:14.000 Or do you think there's a chance they're just going to go for all of it?

00:26:18.000 I think in terms of DOJ and what's happening in DC, what I believe and have said for months is that he will be indicted on conspiracy and or obstruction of an official proceeding.

00:26:32.000 So this obstruction charge, we've already seen numerous convictions and plea deals.

00:26:37.000 This is a felony that dates back to the post-Enron era.

00:26:40.000 It was originally passed and signed by George W. Bush to prevent tampering with evidence that we saw in the Enron investigation.

00:26:49.000 What's happened, Charlie, is this DOJ has bastardized this felony to basically now criminalize, make into a felon anyone who interrupts any sort of government proceeding, which a lot of people think is our birthright, that that's the time to protest.

00:27:07.000 I mean, we've seen, you know, we could go through the list of protests, especially in Washington, where official congressional business is disrupted by protesters.

00:27:16.000 They usually get a slap on the wrist and they go home.

00:27:18.000 That's not the case with January 6th.

00:27:20.000 So they are setting another precedent here that's very dangerous.

00:27:25.000 But I do think these are the two charges that Donald Trump will face.

00:27:30.000 And I believe that these convictions yesterday only bolster the government's way of convincing a grand jury that Donald Trump is guilty and should go to trial for conspiring with these groups and others to attack the Capitol on January 6th.

00:27:47.000 Yeah, and I mean, look, I'm not a lawyer.

00:27:49.000 I just don't, I don't even play one on TV, but I don't think that's a strong case.

00:27:53.000 But a DC jury, I mean, there will be a competition to try to be part of that jury, to be part of the person to indict, to convict Trump.

00:28:04.000 I'm sorry, I get my language precise, to convict Trump.

00:28:06.000 I mean, the district voted 96% against him.

00:28:11.000 Now, Trump's lawyers who are savvy, that's a good argument to a judge to get a change of venue.

00:28:16.000 I don't know if they'll get one, but it's not even, you're going to have people on the jury that almost guaranteed cast the ballot against the man if this ends up going that far.

00:28:28.000 So 30 seconds, and I'd love to have you for another segment, Julie.

00:28:30.000 Do you think that it is then, it is then very likely, almost certainly Donald Trump will be indicted by Mr. Jack Smith in the coming months, if not year?

00:28:41.000 I absolutely do.

00:28:43.000 And to your point, Charlie, it is a grand jury made up of these same people who will be considering indictments against Donald Trump.

00:28:50.000 And I've seen these D.C. grand jury sign off on the most absurd charges, including seditious conspiracy.

00:28:57.000 So they have no filter either.

00:28:59.000 And unfortunately, these judges have no handle.

00:29:02.000 They are a rubber stamp for the DOJ.

00:29:05.000 And to your point, have refused every change of venue motion made in every single case.

00:29:10.000 So there is a rumored January 6th report that is going to be issued soon.

00:29:15.000 It seems as if, according to some of the more accurate reporting, the people that I trust, this is really going to be focused on Trump.

00:29:22.000 It seems to be a Trump 2024 derailment strategy.

00:29:28.000 Is that right?

00:29:30.000 It is, Charlie.

00:29:31.000 And that is what's been so interesting about some recent reporting about this final report, which is now, I believe, on its fifth delay.

00:29:40.000 This report was supposed to be issued in the middle of September.

00:29:44.000 It was moved to October, two dates in November.

00:29:47.000 Now I think we're on our second date in December.

00:29:49.000 And it looks like the reason why is there's internal conflict because Liz Cheney, of course, wants this report to solely focus on Donald Trump, place blame at his feet, explain why he was responsible.

00:30:02.000 Apparently, there were people who thought this was a legitimate investigation.

00:30:07.000 There's an entire team assigned to looking at law enforcement's response, their foreknowledge, their lack of preparation, and the intelligence agencies apparently that failed to detect this insurrection to the extent that that's true.

00:30:22.000 So there's a lot of conflict now.

00:30:24.000 Some staffers have actually quit the committee in protest of focusing only on Donald Trump in this report.

00:30:30.000 So there's a little spin now, a little damage control coming out by people like Adam Schiff saying, oh, no, no, no, we're going to address all the issues.

00:30:38.000 But look, we could tell by the televised performances, the witnesses that this committee has dragged out in front of the public.

00:30:46.000 This had nothing to do with really investigating what led up to the events of January 6th and what happened that day.

00:30:54.000 Most Americans who still see this as an organic event, not an inside job, really want to know how the FBI and local law enforcement failed, how the Capitol police failed, why they weren't protected, why they let people in at certain vantage points.

00:31:07.000 We have that on film.

00:31:08.000 We know that that's true.

00:31:10.000 But all of that, it looks like for now is going to be scuttled while they attempt to blame Donald Trump and say that he is not eligible for office again under the 14th Amendment.

00:31:20.000 And that's what the purpose of this report appears like it's going to be.

00:31:25.000 Yeah, and it seems like an all-out blitz and legal strategy.

00:31:29.000 And President Trump is now an active candidate, which then seemed to trigger, in Garland's calculation, the appointment of Jack Smith, a special counsel, which timeline-wise, you got to think a lot of the work is already done, though, right?

00:31:47.000 I don't think usually a special counsel is like, okay, now we're going to start the process to look into.

00:31:53.000 I think this is kind of more of a face and a name and a lead person to bring this to trial.

00:32:03.000 I think that that's probably right.

00:32:06.000 What more evidence could they collect about January 6th?

00:32:09.000 Who else could they possibly interview?

00:32:11.000 Unless Jack Smith is going to do what Robert Mueller did, and that is drag one Trump associate after another before his investigation, including Republican lawmakers.

00:32:22.000 You know, it's one thing to defy a subpoena from this hack committee that isn't even living up to its originating legislation.

00:32:30.000 It's another to defy a subpoena from a special counsel prosecutor tasked and appointed by the Department of Justice, which I'm assuming Jack Smith will do.

00:32:40.000 But look, there's another big question here, and that is the thousand plus transcripts of interviews that this committee has conducted over the past year and a half.

00:32:48.000 What's going to happen with those transcripts?

00:32:50.000 We've been told the committee would make those public.

00:32:54.000 It doesn't look like that's the case.

00:32:56.000 My expectation is all of these transcripts are going to be buried at Jack Smith's office.

00:33:01.000 The defense attorneys cannot see them for possible exculpatory evidence for their clients.

00:33:07.000 The public will not be able to see it.

00:33:09.000 Donald Trump and his lawyers won't be able to see it.

00:33:12.000 We already see that happening with the classified documents.

00:33:14.000 No one has seen this, including Trump and his attorneys.

00:33:17.000 It's buried at DOJ, which is exactly what they try to do with all of this evidence while they spin in the media that this is what it's about.

00:33:26.000 So the next few weeks leading up to January 3rd are going to be very interesting with Smith's special counsel, also what this committee ends up doing.

00:33:34.000 And my expectation is that this report is going to land like a thud, and there's going to be a lot of conflicts with legally with the information they've collected and now are hiding in criminal trials away from defendants and their defense attorneys.

00:33:49.000 If they indict Trump, it's very important his lawyers say get out of D.C. I'm not sure they're going to get a venue change requested, but if there is ever a robust argument that a fair mind could say, you know, you probably are not going to get a fair hearing, it would be Donald Trump on trial in Washington, D.C.

00:34:07.000 And I mean, anywhere.

00:34:09.000 I mean, you could go to Cincinnati and you could pick a better venue, but it's they know what they're doing.

00:34:15.000 They venue shop.

00:34:16.000 And boy, Washington, D.C. would be fertile ground against Trump. 1.00

00:34:20.000 Okay, Julie, great job.

00:34:21.000 Check out AmericanGreatnessandGreatness.com.

00:34:23.000 Thank you so much, Julie.

00:34:24.000 Thank you.

00:34:25.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:26.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:29.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:34:30.000 God bless.

00:34:33.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - December 01, 2022

Rail Strikes and Biden's Economic Midterm Mirage with Steve Cortes and Julie Kelly

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