00:01:02.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:29.000Steve, walk us through the looming rail strike in America.
00:01:34.000Yeah, 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.
00:01:42.000And I mean at a time like this, because the economy is already in tatters.
00:01:46.000It 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.
00:01:58.000Now 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.
00:02:09.000About one-third of all goods in America are shipped by rail.
00:02:13.000So it's hard to overstate the scope of this.
00:02:15.000One 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.
00:02:22.000Well, he does love public sector unions, which of course are completely beholden by the Democratic Party.
00:02:29.000But 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.
00:02:37.000And 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.
00:02:46.000You 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.
00:02:54.000So in 1902, there was a coal strike that was threatening America.
00:02:56.000Kind of similar timing into winter, just as it was getting cold.
00:03:00.000The results could have been catastrophic for the United States.
00:03:02.000He 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.
00:03:15.000We need to see that kind of leadership now.
00:03:17.000We're not seeing it, of course, from Joe Biden.
00:03:19.000I'm not sure he's even cognitively able to lead that kind of intense negotiation.
00:03:24.000But the fact of the matter is, this is a significant possible massive disruption to the U.S. economy.
00:03:32.000And 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.
00:03:45.000Yeah, 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?
00:03:54.000What is actually being debated or discussed or what is in contention?
00:03:59.000Right now, most of the details revolve around paid sick leave.
00:04:03.000And 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.
00:04:18.000But, you know, regardless, again, the point here is that clearly a solution could be reached.
00:04:23.000What 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.
00:04:35.000And 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.
00:04:58.000And basically, every American is really a stakeholder here.
00:05:02.000So this is, let me put on top of this, you know, another aspect that is crucial.
00:05:09.000Joe Biden has already decimated the transportation industry in general through his attacks on American energy.
00:05:15.000So 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.
00:05:34.000He killed that golden goose almost immediately.
00:05:37.000The 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.
00:05:46.000And we see it in not just in the rails, but for example, in the trucking industry.
00:05:51.000The trucking industry has been decimated lately.
00:05:54.000It is extremely difficult for trucking companies to turn a profit, difficult for them to find workers.
00:05:58.000The 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.
00:06:08.000And 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.
00:06:18.000I mean, that is as evidenced by the economic metrics that are out there, all of which decline massively.
00:06:25.000For example, I mentioned the Christmas shopping season.
00:06:27.000Consumer 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.
00:06:37.000It certainly goes all the way back to the 1950s.
00:06:40.000We literally just hit the lowest point ever.
00:06:42.000So 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.
00:06:52.000You throw on top of this now the potential for massive supply chain disruptions because of this potential looming rail strike.
00:07:00.000And 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.
00:07:07.000I mean, the economy is in a really tough spot.
00:07:10.000I believe that they played some games with the Fed over the summer and early fall to cushion the blow ahead of the midterms.
00:07:18.000I 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.
00:07:28.000Because, Steve, this midterm election should have been much more focused on the economy than it was, right?
00:07:34.000I mean, it shouldn't be a four-seat majority.
00:07:37.000It should be a 40-seat majority, given the economic catastrophe we're living through.
00:07:42.000And 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.
00:07:53.000People on Main Street, regular folks know that we are in a recession.
00:07:56.000You know, whatever academic debates the corporate media and the White House want to engage in, the American people know where we are.
00:08:02.000They know where things are in their own lives.
00:08:04.000They 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.
00:08:12.000That is the worst streak in all of American history.
00:08:15.000You are working harder to get poorer every single month.
00:08:18.000And the American people clearly know that.
00:08:21.000To 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.
00:08:34.000Now, the Fed, I will at least say this to its credit.
00:08:37.000It seems to have found religion, but very conveniently, largely after the midterm election.
00:08:42.000So, 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.
00:08:57.000Now, he's very late, but better late than never.
00:09:00.000And I think the Fed finally has come to grips with the crisis that they helped to create.
00:09:06.000And never forget this, too, by the way.
00:09:08.000Throughout 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.
00:09:32.000It was systemic and deeply embedded, yet they continued that ridiculous lie that canard for a long time.
00:09:37.000And I think, you know, to your point, largely because the Fed is incredibly politicized.
00:09:41.000And 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.
00:11:48.000So, Steve, one of the things that has been bothering me, and I'd love your feedback on this.
00:11:54.000How is it that Republicans messed up the economic messaging so terribly this election cycle?
00:12:01.000So 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.
00:12:29.000You 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.
00:12:40.000And yet, many of those same voters did not decide to vote for the GOP.
00:12:46.000I think the principal reason is the Republican Party, the establishment Republican Party, has not earned their trust on these kinds of matters.
00:12:54.000And so there is reluctance that is very understandable.
00:13:00.000It's not just some prejudice against Republicans.
00:13:03.000It'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.
00:13:21.000Now, 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.
00:13:31.000But the reality is at the officeholder level, that work is still very much ongoing.
00:13:36.000And so I think voters simply, let me be specific, let me give you an example.
00:13:39.000When 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.
00:13:47.000The 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.
00:13:59.00041% of small businesses can't pay the most basic bill their business has, which is the rent for their operation.
00:14:05.000At 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.
00:14:19.000And 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.
00:14:36.000I 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.
00:15:01.000But 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.
00:15:11.000Do you feel, Steve, in the time we have remaining that we just thought it would happen automatically?
00:15:18.000I think unfortunately, and look, and maybe I'm guilty of this as well.
00:15:22.000There 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.
00:15:30.000And, you know, you mentioned the mechanics of voting.
00:15:32.000Clearly, we did not work smartly and hard enough on the mechanics of voting.
00:15:36.000That's going to change for 2024, particularly in the states where those mechanics are largely rigged against us, places like Pennsylvania and Arizona.
00:15:44.000So we could fix that and we must fix that, of course.
00:15:46.000But yeah, listen, I think absolutely there was overconfidence and we need to absolutely guard against that.
00:16:58.000Right now, Bank of America has just lowered its 2022 forecast for the SP 500 by a whopping 900 points to 3,600.
00:17:08.000Saying we're headed for a recession this year, it said the new year target is the lowest on the street.
00:17:13.000This is not good news for those of you stuck in equities or anything tied to stock markets.
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00:17:56.000Email us freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
00:18:02.000Joining 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.
00:18:34.000So 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.
00:18:55.000These five men were charged with the extremely rare count of seditious conspiracy.
00:19:00.000No 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.
00:19:13.000So, of course, this went before a D.C. jury.
00:19:16.000Two of the men, Stuart Rhodes, who is the founder of the Oath Keepers, and another men, Kelly Meggs, were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
00:20:21.000I think they went out to fancy restaurants afterwards because it's really not about Stuart Rhodes.
00:20:26.000It'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.
00:20:44.000So this is the long-awaited insurrection conviction that they have been waiting for.
00:20:49.000Not only that, Charlie, this is in their belief, this brings them one step closer in justifying an indictment against Donald Trump.
00:20:58.000You 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.
00:21:11.000What they're going to try to do with this conviction is tie the oath keepers.
00:21:17.000Next 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.
00:21:27.000How 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.
00:21:37.000So that, Charlie, will try to be the connection between the sedition conviction and Donald Trump.
00:21:43.000So there's a lot of ways that the media and the Democrats can spin this.
00:21:48.000Now, second, you know, just to make sure everyone has the full picture, what was the evidence then?
00:21:55.000Because I'm guessing, and I really haven't dug that deep into it.
00:21:59.000I'm guessing they had some rather charged text messages and or communications.
00:22:06.000That 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?
00:22:20.000And he was sort of bringing these people together.
00:22:23.000He 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.
00:22:39.000So yes, the case was mostly on communications, text messages, especially Facebook posts and videos.
00:22:47.000But 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.
00:23:02.000For a half hour of being inside the Capitol, basically committing no crime.
00:23:08.000Now you have two men convicted with a crime that equals treason.
00:23:14.000And 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.
00:23:25.000So what sort of precedent does this then set?
00:23:30.000I 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.
00:23:39.000And so if there's something that could be convinced me otherwise, then send it to me.
00:23:42.000But 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.
00:24:05.000That is the precedent that has been set here, Charlie, and it's very alarming.
00:24:11.000Aside from that, the prosecutors argued that the conspiracy can happen instantaneously, and it can be an implicit conspiracy.
00:24:20.000Like you're telepathically sending messages to others that day on the steps of the Capitol.
00:24:26.000They weren't even arguing that this was a conspiracy months in the making.
00:24:30.000And 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.
00:24:46.000He was supposed to testify he suffered some health event, I think a heart attack before he traveled to D.C. to testify.
00:25:48.000Because it's very murky in the media and hard to track.
00:25:52.000If you were wargaming this in Trump's inner circle, what would you say is the greatest posing legal threat against him?
00:26:02.000Not 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?
00:26:14.000Or do you think there's a chance they're just going to go for all of it?
00:26:18.000I 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.
00:26:32.000So this obstruction charge, we've already seen numerous convictions and plea deals.
00:26:37.000This is a felony that dates back to the post-Enron era.
00:26:40.000It was originally passed and signed by George W. Bush to prevent tampering with evidence that we saw in the Enron investigation.
00:26:49.000What'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.
00:27:07.000I 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.
00:27:16.000They usually get a slap on the wrist and they go home.
00:27:20.000So they are setting another precedent here that's very dangerous.
00:27:25.000But I do think these are the two charges that Donald Trump will face.
00:27:30.000And 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.
00:27:47.000Yeah, and I mean, look, I'm not a lawyer.
00:27:49.000I just don't, I don't even play one on TV, but I don't think that's a strong case.
00:27:53.000But 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.
00:28:04.000I'm sorry, I get my language precise, to convict Trump.
00:28:06.000I mean, the district voted 96% against him.
00:28:11.000Now, Trump's lawyers who are savvy, that's a good argument to a judge to get a change of venue.
00:28:16.000I 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.
00:28:28.000So 30 seconds, and I'd love to have you for another segment, Julie.
00:28:30.000Do 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?
00:29:31.000And that is what's been so interesting about some recent reporting about this final report, which is now, I believe, on its fifth delay.
00:29:40.000This report was supposed to be issued in the middle of September.
00:29:44.000It was moved to October, two dates in November.
00:29:47.000Now I think we're on our second date in December.
00:29:49.000And 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.
00:30:02.000Apparently, there were people who thought this was a legitimate investigation.
00:30:07.000There'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.
00:30:24.000Some staffers have actually quit the committee in protest of focusing only on Donald Trump in this report.
00:30:30.000So 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.
00:30:38.000But look, we could tell by the televised performances, the witnesses that this committee has dragged out in front of the public.
00:30:46.000This had nothing to do with really investigating what led up to the events of January 6th and what happened that day.
00:30:54.000Most 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.
00:31:10.000But 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.
00:31:20.000And that's what the purpose of this report appears like it's going to be.
00:31:25.000Yeah, and it seems like an all-out blitz and legal strategy.
00:31:29.000And 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?
00:31:47.000I don't think usually a special counsel is like, okay, now we're going to start the process to look into.
00:31:53.000I think this is kind of more of a face and a name and a lead person to bring this to trial.
00:32:06.000What more evidence could they collect about January 6th?
00:32:09.000Who else could they possibly interview?
00:32:11.000Unless 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.
00:32:22.000You know, it's one thing to defy a subpoena from this hack committee that isn't even living up to its originating legislation.
00:32:30.000It'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.
00:32:40.000But 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.
00:32:48.000What's going to happen with those transcripts?
00:32:50.000We've been told the committee would make those public.
00:32:56.000My expectation is all of these transcripts are going to be buried at Jack Smith's office.
00:33:01.000The defense attorneys cannot see them for possible exculpatory evidence for their clients.
00:33:07.000The public will not be able to see it.
00:33:09.000Donald Trump and his lawyers won't be able to see it.
00:33:12.000We already see that happening with the classified documents.
00:33:14.000No one has seen this, including Trump and his attorneys.
00:33:17.000It'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.
00:33:26.000So 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.
00:33:34.000And 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.
00:33:49.000If 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.