Mark Halperin, editor-in-chief of Two Way Media and host of the new show NextUp on Megan Kelly's network, joins me in the studio to talk about the first 100 days of the Trump administration, and to honor Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA.
00:00:00.000Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
00:00:03.000What is happening with the first 100 days Mark Halpern unpacks, and then a very fun story about how the left, who tried to oppose Turning Point USA, is in complete implosion because of their woke worldview.
00:00:15.000Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com, and get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com, that is tpusa.com.
00:00:41.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:47.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:00.000Noble 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.
00:01:10.000Learn how you can protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:01:45.000Mark, you're beating me in the podcast charts, so I'm looking at it right there.
00:01:48.000It's a great surge, and so I hope you stay there because it's well-earned and deserved because you've had the best scoops of the last year.
00:01:55.000And I also got to tell you, I got more response being on Two Way than even being on some cable TV shows.
00:02:08.000I heard from a lot of your friends who watched our conversation, and thank you for coming on Two Way, who thought that I got you a little deer in the headlights, and they were like...
00:02:22.000Serious thing is the passage of your friend, mentor, David Horowitz, who I had the pleasure of meeting and honor of meeting a couple times.
00:02:30.000But I just want to tell you how sorry I am because I read what you wrote, very touched by it.
00:02:34.000And he touched so many people's lives.
00:02:36.000And it really, you and I don't consider ourselves historic figures because it's not the way we think about ourselves.
00:02:41.000But we've both had the pleasure of knowing and honor of knowing historic figures.
00:02:45.000I'm really grateful for history that you got to meet such an extraordinary person.
00:03:23.000I mean, really one of the smartest creative thinkers I ever met.
00:03:26.000And again, just really so happy for you that you got to spend time with someone who, historically, you're a great thinker and really inspirational to so many.
00:04:15.000And one of the privileges I have is I get to talk to really smart people who have both views that this is incredible and this is disastrous.
00:04:24.000I, you know, Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, who you know, did an interview with the New York Post around 100 days.
00:04:30.000And she said on the border, she gives the president an A or A plus.
00:04:34.000I can't remember which she said, but she suggested for a lot of other things incomplete.
00:04:38.000And I think that's really the only right grade to give him.
00:04:43.000Every president and every presidential advisor I've ever covered has sort of complained about it and said, you know, Roosevelt was governing during historic times and you could do a lot in that period.
00:04:53.000I think on the big projects, China, Ukraine, inflation, the economy overall, reconciliation, the big budget bill, and of course on tariffs, it's just too soon to say.
00:05:05.000But even his critics, I think, have read a lot of the coverage, including the New York Times, say most of what he's done, he promised to do as a candidate.
00:05:13.000Most of what he's trying to do are not some projects that he's invented, but that he ran on.
00:05:45.000And are there any places where you think, based on your reporting, where there might be a little recalibration, where they might have went a little too hot and they might dial it back a little
00:05:56.000I'm talking to people around the White House and in the White House.
00:06:02.000There's the tariffs and there's everything else.
00:06:05.000And everything else is a big bucket, right?
00:06:07.000It's got Ukraine and China and non-tariff China and everything else.
00:06:11.000But the tariffs is such a big deal because I talk to serious people every day, and I know you do too, who think this is the greatest own goal in the history of politics or sports, that he is destroying the world economy, not because of some virus in a wet market or a lab in China.
00:06:30.000But through an act of purposeful presidential conduct.
00:06:33.000So that's the place where you've already seen recalibration, right?
00:06:37.000Some of the tariffs that were put on have come off.
00:06:40.000Some of the stated goals have changed.
00:06:42.000But I think it's not an exaggeration to say in the next 100 days, the second 100 days, how he handles the world when he's unleashed through the tariffs is going to be determinative, not just about the tariff policy or his economic record,
00:07:01.000Some recalibration regarding Putin, but I think that's more tactical than strategic.
00:07:05.000I think most of what we're seeing in the other bucket is not shown a lot of change the course or regret on the margins on immigration, on the margins on some of the economic policies.
00:07:17.000But for the most part, I think you're going to see more of the same, except in that first bucket, where, again, he has bet everything on a theory of how to make this work.
00:07:26.000And I think the challenges, particularly as they relate to China, Are extraordinary.
00:07:30.000I read the other day, I don't know if it's true, but it's too good not to repeat.
00:07:33.000One in every three things that's made in the world now is made in China.
00:07:41.000So how he confronts China, not just economically, but militarily, strategically, diplomatically, this is as big a play as I've seen any president I've covered done.
00:07:51.000People talk about George Bush trying to change the social security system or Barack Obama passing health care.
00:07:59.000One case successful, one unsuccessful in terms of passing a bill.
00:08:03.000But this is reshaping the world economy with a few strokes of a few pens.
00:08:09.000So one thing that you mentioned, which is the Russia-Ukraine situation, which I'm incredibly interested in, and I hear things I can't say publicly.
00:08:58.000Some days he thinks, yeah, we'll get a deal.
00:09:00.000And other days he's very bearish on a deal.
00:09:03.000You know, my joke for a while has been, and it's a grim joke, that Zelensky will make a deal except under two circumstances.
00:09:08.000When the war is going well for him, because he doesn't want to make a deal when he's on the march, or when the war is going poorly for him, because he's on his back foot and he knows the terms wouldn't be good.
00:09:17.000And of course, those are the only two possibilities.
00:09:19.000So Zelensky is a barrier to peace as well.
00:09:26.000But he is a barrier to a deal because there's no forcing mechanism.
00:09:30.000He's always looking for something better.
00:09:32.000I think what the deal could be and what each side will have to give up has been clear to everyone I know in the region for a long time, right?
00:10:13.000And your question, you hear lots of people in the establishment in both parties say, well, if Putin wants away, we go back to arming Ukraine and try to help them win the war.
00:10:22.000I just don't think there's an appetite for that.
00:10:46.000There really right now is no strong incentive for Russia to make a deal.
00:10:52.000Other than President Trump and his team saying, look, do you guys want to enter the second world or do you want to be part of a little bit of an ever-growing, softening Western relationship where I don't know Russian politics that well.
00:14:26.000The left, they see the impact that we're having, and a group of, let's just say trolls, to put it nicely, a circus act that mostly exists on TikTok, but a little bit on Instagram, they get very jealous that we're having this success at Turning Point USA.
00:14:41.000So they decide to launch their own counter to literally follow me around the country and stalk me as a way to try to troll and disrupt the event.
00:14:49.000They call themselves the Un-F-America Tour.
00:14:52.000It is run by two young trolls by the name of Dean and Parker.
00:14:56.000If you don't know who they are, you are living a much greater life than I am because they're rather unenjoyable people.
00:15:04.000And so I debated them both on Jubilee.
00:15:45.000Well, because their organizer was racist using microaggressions.
00:15:51.000Mr. Older Millennial, fill in the gaps here and talk as if people in the audience have no idea of the baseline facts here, and let's walk through this.
00:15:59.000So you had it right, right off the bat, is that they basically just decided they were going to follow you around.
00:16:05.000And basically try to ape off your success.
00:16:08.000And the entire event was just poorly planned from the beginning because, one, they didn't reserve anything.
00:16:16.000And they brought 52 creators for a four-hour talk just wasting money like that.
00:16:22.000But they showed up, and obviously they got very upset that they didn't get to move to the front of the line.
00:16:28.000They were reminded very quickly of their...
00:16:31.000Lack of importance to most people in the world.
00:16:33.000And they went and set up on the far side of campus where, funnily enough, the sprinklers went off and they had to pay to get them shut off, which is beyond hilarious.
00:16:45.000And what happened is, before the event happened, there had been some accusations of microaggressions against the creators of color.
00:16:57.000And so whether it was the minority creators said that they were microaggressed because they weren't given extra security, which is what they felt they needed when they went to Texas, and they weren't given enough say, there was no minorities as headliners, and that's what they accused.
00:18:59.000Because I get asked the question all the time, well, Charlie, what is DEI in practice?
00:19:02.000Everybody, their organization is now collapsing because some organizer by the name of Z, a Bernie Sanders former staffer, microaggressed the black women.
00:19:58.000This principle, you cannot run anything.
00:20:00.000And my team is in the chat saying that we called it.
00:20:04.000And their influencer page has been taken down.
00:20:06.000Is this not a great example of a bunch of left-wing young influencers trying to win young people, talking about how great woke is, and then woke destroys their own operation?
00:20:16.000Well, that's the beauty of it, is that you have...
00:20:19.000I mean, I made a TikTok about it where I said that if you get together so many people that are focused on being victims, that that is the basis of their content, and you get them all together, they're going to have a victim Olympics.
00:20:31.000They're going to see who can be the biggest victim.
00:20:33.000And turns out, they're really good at it.
00:21:15.000Z came in alive full of a bunch of black women, and the first thing she did when she came on there was to say, I know you guys aren't educated on, like, clearly they're speaking about politics.
00:22:09.000This is Parker being silent, getting dressed down in front of thousands of people saying, these are microaggressions and we win the oppression Olympics.
00:22:18.000And the worst part is, it's wild because I'm used to seeing them take what we say out of context.
00:22:24.000I'm used to seeing them take what you say out of context.
00:22:27.000And it's fun to watch them do it to each other because what she just said, Z said.
00:22:47.000And this is honestly the first time I've ever seen the you people thing actually enforced in, like, real life of somebody hearing you people and being...
00:25:43.000What does a mechanic and auto shop owner in Georgia, a taco restaurant operator in Arizona, and a life-saving medical innovator in Tennessee have in common?
00:25:51.000They're all small business owners, and they're all thriving on TikTok.
00:25:55.000Across the U.S., over 7.5 million businesses, from family-owned shops to entrepreneurs, are using TikTok to compete and grow.
00:26:02.000We use TikTok all the time on The Charlie Kirk Show.
00:26:05.000In fact, 74% of businesses on TikTok say TikTok has allowed them to scale their operations, increasing sales, and expanding to new locations.
00:26:42.000Well, I honestly think, like, right now we're seeing the fact that TikTok does push liberals.
00:26:47.000It's coming back to bite them right now because we're watching their...
00:26:50.000What is equivalent to, you know, a divorce proceeding or a couple's counseling on TikTok between them.
00:26:56.000But, yeah, I mean, the benefit of the conservative community is that everybody knows that what we're talking about is what we actually want to talk about.
00:27:04.000When it comes to liberals, we have so much evidence of them being paid and being told what to say, but they know that when they talk to us, they know it's genuine because we couldn't get a dime out of the RNC if we tried.
00:27:15.000So, you know, they know they're getting the genuine thing from us.
00:27:21.000We're only allowed to grow so far before we get taken down.
00:27:24.000And that's why I'm super excited about the possibility of somebody new owning TikTok.
00:27:29.000Like Reid's proposal makes me very excited for the future.
00:27:32.000Yeah, we need to get that sorted out for sure.
00:27:35.000Why do you think young people are gravitating to the right so much and are becoming more and more conservative?
00:27:42.000Well, there's that old adage that says, you know, if you're not a liberal in your 20s, you don't have a heart.
00:27:46.000But if you're not a conservative in your 30s, you don't have a brain.
00:27:49.000The thing is that now, reality is coming to these people a lot sooner.
00:27:54.000So, reality is hitting people a lot younger, so they need to recognize the reality of the world.
00:28:09.000We recognize, oh, it's going to take work.
00:28:12.000And I think a lot of people are coming to that decision sooner than they have in the past.
00:28:17.000What do you see in your audience as to why young men especially are gravitating towards the conservative movement and how Democrats are going to try to adapt or going to try to catch up?
00:28:32.000I mean, young men are being told that they're evil, that being masculine is bad, that being assertive is bad, and that they're just bad people by dint of being a white young male.
00:28:44.000And when you get enough hatred from the other side, you're going to walk away from it.
00:28:47.000And there's really nothing that the left can do to recover it because they don't have...
00:29:05.000So, my first order of business is apologizing to the individuals that are watching this stream, that are a member of the BIPOC community, for not speaking out about this sooner.
00:29:16.000But I think one really big mistake I've made, one really bad thing I've done...
00:29:21.000Something I need to hold myself accountable for was not calling this out before we went boots on the ground in Texas.
00:29:29.000My internal justification was that, well, I have fans across the country that have already bought their plane tickets to go to Texas, and they're going to be there, and I want to make sure that I'm there for them.
00:29:44.000And in retrospect, I recognize that I did not handle the situation correctly, Final thoughts, one minute remaining.
00:29:56.000That is their alpha male apologizing for racism that doesn't even exist.
00:30:01.000That's what they're delivering to the American people.
00:30:03.000No, and that's the sad part, is that is the example of what a liberal man looks like these days.
00:30:09.000And the sad thing is that if that's what you're aspiring to be, you're not going to inspire anyone.