The Charlie Kirk Show - Rolling Stone's Mega-Lame Hitpiece with James O'Keefe and Rich Baris

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, down the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 James O'Keefe joins the program for his breaking news on John Fetterman.

00:00:05.000 And then we have Rich Barris to talk about the latest DeSantis polling.

00:00:09.000 As always, you can email us, freedom at charliekirk.com, get involved with turning pointusa at tpusa.com.

00:00:16.000 That is tpusa.com.

00:00:18.000 Please attend our young women's leadership summit at tpusa.com slash ywls.

00:00:25.000 That is tpusa.com slash ywls.

00:00:30.000 Our young women's leadership summit, June 9, 10, and 11, largest event in the country for female conservatives.

00:00:35.000 We have an amazing lineup of speakers, so check it out and get your tickets today at tpusa.com slash ywls.

00:00:44.000 Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:47.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:48.000 Here we go.

00:00:49.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:50.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:52.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:56.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:59.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:00.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:01.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:01:08.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:01:10.000 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.

00:01:18.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:21.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.

00:01:30.000 So we got sweatshirt Shrek, who is the U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, and the great James O'Keefe, who he's had a very, let's just say, interesting year.

00:01:42.000 I have so much respect for this man.

00:01:44.000 Andrew, I think you would agree because he has in like 60 days stood up an unbelievable media operation where he had every excuse to kind of just go on the sidelines.

00:01:55.000 And now this guy's breaking stories like you wouldn't believe.

00:01:58.000 I'm telling you, people do not understand how hard it is to stand up an organization overnight.

00:02:02.000 So Veritas 11 years.

00:02:06.000 It's unbelievable what he's done in such a short amount of time.

00:02:09.000 So you have the Veritas circus, right?

00:02:11.000 And then, boom, he has OMG now, O'Keeffe Media Group.

00:02:14.000 And the guy is dropping, you know, metaphorical bombs against the deep state, against all this stuff.

00:02:19.000 And it's just like nothing.

00:02:20.000 He's just like, yeah, we're just getting started.

00:02:22.000 It happened almost instantaneously.

00:02:24.000 I have so much respect for this man.

00:02:26.000 He put points on the board.

00:02:27.000 He had every reason to complain and to kvetch.

00:02:31.000 And he's back in the arena.

00:02:33.000 And that's where he belongs.

00:02:34.000 James O'Keeffe, welcome back to the program.

00:02:36.000 Hey, Charlie, good to be with you.

00:02:37.000 I got my Carhartt sweater on right here.

00:02:40.000 And in homage to Senator Fetterman, which we just launched a story on.

00:02:47.000 Are you wearing shorts?

00:02:48.000 And if you are, I do not want to see that.

00:02:50.000 So that's the real question.

00:02:52.000 And if you, you're probably better dressed than Mr. Fetterman.

00:02:56.000 So what did you discover here?

00:02:58.000 Let's play.

00:02:59.000 Let's play Cut 79.

00:03:00.000 Sorry for the delay, James.

00:03:01.000 We're traveling, so it's tough to dialogue.

00:03:03.000 Let's play Cut 79.

00:03:05.000 He'd be okay with like overturning the Second Amendment, probably.

00:03:08.000 I think on my family prefer nobody else that we can get interviews to.

00:03:12.000 It's like the ones you pick, like, we'll just say it's that, you know.

00:03:19.000 It's so interesting, but I want to know who they are because I'll listen to those people.

00:03:25.000 There's like puppets, though, of my big reporters who are like, they aren't like, you know, we'll paint the narrative the way we want.

00:03:32.000 So that's why you picked the journalist that you pick.

00:03:34.000 They'll say whatever you want this to.

00:03:36.000 Yeah.

00:03:38.000 All right.

00:03:39.000 So James, tell us about the honey trap that you laid here and how you were able to get this.

00:03:43.000 What is this?

00:03:44.000 It's a little confusing.

00:03:45.000 Take as much time as you need.

00:03:46.000 Walk us through this video.

00:03:47.000 Well, what you heard, there's the voice of a female intrepid journalist. 0.95

00:03:52.000 For those of you joining, I've got my Carhartt sweater on.

00:03:55.000 Actually, I confronted this guy in the street two days ago in DC.

00:04:01.000 She got up to go to the restroom. 1.00

00:04:03.000 I sat down.

00:04:04.000 Charlie, these are citizen journalists that are coming to O'KeefeMediaGroup.com and signing up to do what I do.

00:04:11.000 And we're training them.

00:04:12.000 We're equipping them with cameras and they're meeting with these people.

00:04:15.000 This happens to be in Washington, D.C.

00:04:17.000 This guy that you saw on camera is a special assistant to John Fetterman.

00:04:23.000 He basically holds his iPad, holds his fanny pack, gives him his medication, et cetera, et cetera, very close to him, as close as someone could possibly be.

00:04:31.000 And he's saying all the things that Fetterman really believes.

00:04:34.000 He wants to ban the Second Amendment.

00:04:36.000 I asked him if he wants to ban the First Amendment.

00:04:38.000 I would assume so, because in this tape, he says that they treat journalists as puppets.

00:04:43.000 And he named certain journalists, Charlie.

00:04:45.000 He names like Pod Save America and other sort of lefty journalists that they basically use as their ombudsman.

00:04:53.000 So none of this is shocking or surprising, obviously, to anybody, but you never actually see people say these things on video.

00:05:00.000 You never see them say them on the air.

00:05:02.000 So I've been doing this for, as you know, 15 years.

00:05:06.000 We're in the confirm suspicions business.

00:05:08.000 That's what we do now at O'Keeffe Media Group.

00:05:11.000 And what we really want to do is to create copycats, Charlie.

00:05:14.000 We want people to go out there and meet with politicians, their staff, administrative state people, you know, anyone that's lying, cheating, or stealing.

00:05:24.000 We want them to copy what this young woman did and we'll pay them $1,000. 0.84

00:05:30.000 And it's sort of taking off.

00:05:31.000 And, you know, we've got about 1,000 people that have signed up on our website to go do this sort of thing.

00:05:37.000 Andrew, 1,000 people.

00:05:39.000 James, you have teasing a second video.

00:05:44.000 And it looks like you actually confront this special assistant.

00:05:48.000 You've teased it on Twitter.

00:05:50.000 So let's just go ahead and play it.

00:05:51.000 And maybe you can tell us a little bit more about what went down.

00:05:54.000 Cut 81.

00:05:55.000 Hey, Luke.

00:05:56.000 Is this you take it?

00:05:58.000 My name is James O'Keefe, and the person you're expecting actually works for me.

00:06:04.000 It's so interesting.

00:06:05.000 You're on video saying that John Fetterman wants to ban the Second Amendment.

00:06:10.000 He probably, he'd be okay with overturning the Second Amendment.

00:06:13.000 Does he want to ban any other amendments?

00:06:15.000 The ones he picked, like, we'll just say exactly what he's talking to, you know?

00:06:19.000 How are the journalists or puppets?

00:06:21.000 Luke?

00:06:22.000 Luke, why don't you just talk to us?

00:06:24.000 He weaved this way and that.

00:06:26.000 He bobbed and weaved through the street back and forth.

00:06:28.000 He went, where are you going?

00:06:30.000 Shouldn't journalists be skeptical of those in power?

00:06:32.000 I have no comment.

00:06:33.000 You have lots of comments.

00:06:37.000 God bless you, James O'Keefe.

00:06:38.000 This is bobbing and weaving.

00:06:42.000 He was zigging and zagging across the street, banging into me.

00:06:46.000 There's one moment.

00:06:47.000 This is like a seven-minute long thing.

00:06:49.000 So Twitter, just an hour ago, Charlie approved Twitter subscriptions for me.

00:06:55.000 So what we're going to do is launch, I launched a minute-long thing there, and there'll be a 30-second reel, but we'll put, well, we have to figure out a way to pay our bills.

00:07:04.000 So we're going to charge $7 a month for people on Twitter.

00:07:07.000 This just happened an hour ago.

00:07:09.000 Twitter approved it on Stripe.

00:07:11.000 So we're going to release the full version of that.

00:07:13.000 But yeah, there you see him. 0.98

00:07:17.000 I sit down at the table and he goes, oh, crap. 0.96

00:07:21.000 And then he immediately gets on the phone with, I guess, the cheapest staff. 0.98

00:07:24.000 Like basically, they got me.

00:07:26.000 Scared to death.

00:07:28.000 He goes into the hallway of this restaurant and he's banging into me. 0.96

00:07:33.000 This is the damnedest thing I've ever seen. 0.99

00:07:34.000 The guy is like banging into me repeatedly, losing his mind. 0.99

00:07:39.000 Don't you love to see it?

00:07:40.000 We need to see accountability.

00:07:42.000 And we never see any of that anywhere.

00:07:45.000 So my vision is to have more people do what I do.

00:07:49.000 Not just me do it, but lots of other people do it.

00:07:51.000 So we go out into the street and it's sort of like a John Madden NFL game.

00:07:57.000 He's going this way, that way, cross the street, almost gets hit by a car.

00:08:01.000 And that's when I'm talking to him.

00:08:03.000 And these things are pretty entertaining.

00:08:04.000 It's like the catch a predator sort of thing, except not with child predators, but with lying Washington, D.C. Congress critters.

00:08:13.000 Can you just remind people about O'Keeffe Media Group, how they can get involved, how they can support you, because you want to democratize in the best possible way a decentralized conservative journalism, almost guerrilla operation.

00:08:28.000 Correct.

00:08:30.000 I think people don't trust institutions anymore.

00:08:33.000 Rightfully so.

00:08:34.000 Look at what happened with Tucker Carlson at Fox News.

00:08:37.000 Look at the majority owners of these companies.

00:08:41.000 Look at the majority owners of Pfizer and the stakeholders and the stockholders and the pernicious influence of advertising on media and the lack of investigative journalism.

00:08:55.000 So you need to decentralize journalism.

00:08:58.000 You need a movement.

00:08:59.000 You need a movement of integrity and accountability.

00:09:01.000 We've talked about this for many years.

00:09:03.000 But the way to do it with an O'Keefe Media Group, what we're trying to do is we're trying to put out bombshell reports every week.

00:09:09.000 We hope we'll have one every single week.

00:09:11.000 And we want to pay you to go out there and record what's happening.

00:09:16.000 And we're going to democratize it, like you said.

00:09:18.000 And if you go on our website, O'KeefeMediaGroup.com, you can sign up to be a journalist and we will deploy you and we will equip you so that you can do this sort of thing.

00:09:28.000 We're going to be producing a series of masterclasses that'll be coming out next month.

00:09:32.000 And this girl in this video, look at what she did.

00:09:36.000 Look at how brave she is.

00:09:37.000 A lot of people are already doing this.

00:09:40.000 And next time, you know, you want people say, I want to do this.

00:09:43.000 This is interesting.

00:09:44.000 Go to our website, fill out the form, and we will pay you to be a citizen journalist.

00:09:48.000 It's a tough mission, Charlie.

00:09:50.000 No one's ever actually done this before.

00:09:53.000 I hope it works.

00:09:54.000 I think it will.

00:09:55.000 We have to decentralize information gathering.

00:09:57.000 Otherwise, it'll be corrupted and co-opted.

00:10:00.000 Look what happened to me in the last four months.

00:10:03.000 The line drawn in the sand there.

00:10:05.000 But I've been untethered and now I'm free to pursue my true calling.

00:10:10.000 So I hope you all subscribe to O'KeeffeMediaGroup.com.

00:10:14.000 It's 20 bucks or Twitter subscription, 7 bucks to help pay the bills to keep us going forward.

00:10:20.000 And we did get a response, John Fetterman, by the way, yesterday.

00:10:25.000 He actually cursed us off in an email.

00:10:27.000 He said, thanks, F off.

00:10:30.000 That's what his chief of staff said.

00:10:33.000 So sophisticated.

00:10:35.000 As long as we now know the Eagles are better than the Eagles.

00:10:39.000 James, you're an American hero.

00:10:41.000 Check out O'Keefe Media Group.

00:10:42.000 Thanks so much.

00:10:43.000 We appreciate it.

00:10:44.000 And you're welcome back anytime.

00:10:47.000 Look, are you concerned about the American K-12 education system?

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00:11:53.000 So check it out right now at Charlie4Hillsdale.com.

00:11:59.000 Okay, we're here at a TPUSA Faith Pastors Summit.

00:12:02.000 We have so much going on at Turning Point USA, high school chapters, college chapters, Turning Point Academy.

00:12:09.000 We are doing an amazing amount of content on digital social media, training the next generation of leaders.

00:12:15.000 We have our Young Women's Leadership Summit.

00:12:17.000 We have so much happening.

00:12:19.000 And this pastor summit is getting some headlines.

00:12:21.000 Rolling Stone writes an article.

00:12:25.000 They say, Charlie Kirk, no, Charlie Kirk's turning point pivots to Christian nationalism.

00:12:31.000 Now, mind you, that's not a term I use to describe myself at all.

00:12:34.000 In fact, I don't even really know what it means.

00:12:36.000 I like the word Christian. 0.97

00:12:38.000 Obviously, I'm a Christian.

00:12:39.000 I am a nationalist, but put together it's a spooky kind of term.

00:12:42.000 And it goes through, and it's the strangest article.

00:12:45.000 And it just kind of goes back and forth and back and forth about how their, you know, Turning Point USA has grown throughout the years.

00:12:53.000 I will, I do like this part.

00:12:54.000 Turning Point USA, the right-wing powerhouse.

00:12:56.000 I'll take that.

00:12:57.000 Thank you.

00:12:58.000 In fact, we should have it framed, right, Andrew?

00:13:00.000 Turning Point USA is a right-wing powerhouse.

00:13:03.000 Rolling Stone.

00:13:04.000 That's exactly right.

00:13:05.000 That's it.

00:13:06.000 We should add.

00:13:06.000 We're going to do that.

00:13:07.000 That's it.

00:13:08.000 You might see it behind Charlie's head in the branding.

00:13:11.000 And I have a big head, so it's going to have to be pretty big.

00:13:14.000 Big brain.

00:13:15.000 That's right.

00:13:16.000 Here's what's hilarious about it, though, is the guy texted or something, you know, the reporter.

00:13:21.000 And he's like, can we Twitter DM me?

00:13:22.000 Can we do something?

00:13:23.000 I'm going to be writing this about how Turning Point is a Christian nationalist organization, and I have to get this done in 13 hours.

00:13:31.000 Semi-your comment.

00:13:32.000 It was like, so you've already got the...

00:13:34.000 I mean, if you look at this piece, it's like a 4,000-word piece.

00:13:36.000 I mean, he didn't write it overnight.

00:13:38.000 The guy obviously had the whole piece ready to go and ready to attack.

00:13:43.000 And we knew it was going to be a hit piece. 0.77

00:13:44.000 So screw them.

00:13:45.000 So there's a couple ways they try to attack successful organizations. 0.97

00:13:50.000 They'll try to make you seem radical.

00:13:51.000 They'll try to attack you if you're corrupt.

00:13:53.000 They can't do any of that here.

00:13:54.000 Obviously, they stumble over their own shoelaces.

00:13:58.000 Or they try to make you seem as if you're not living up to your own ideals.

00:14:02.000 Solinsky.

00:14:02.000 Right?

00:14:03.000 Always make the enemy live up to their own rules.

00:14:05.000 That's right.

00:14:05.000 Own book of rules.

00:14:06.000 And so what they're trying to do is they're trying to otherize us.

00:14:09.000 This is find a target, personalize it, polarize it.

00:14:11.000 And so they're trying to make us seem polarized.

00:14:14.000 And so what they try to do is, it's kind of funny.

00:14:16.000 You read the article.

00:14:17.000 They can't call us corrupt, right?

00:14:19.000 In fact, it even goes out of its way to say TPUSA Faith makes every church they work with sign a 501c3 disclosure to make sure not to violate.

00:14:27.000 I mean, we're squeaky clean at it.

00:14:29.000 We take it very seriously, okay?

00:14:31.000 And so they can't call us immoral.

00:14:33.000 So they just say that we're too extreme in our biblical values.

00:14:36.000 In fact, you got to read this one quote here about Rob McCoy.

00:14:39.000 This one's so funny.

00:14:40.000 This is written.

00:14:41.000 This is written.

00:14:41.000 This is my favorite piece of the book.

00:14:42.000 This is written by a secular journalist who is something else, right?

00:14:47.000 Let me find.

00:14:48.000 Yeah, you got to read it.

00:14:49.000 It's fabulous.

00:14:50.000 It says, so it says sponsoring the pastor summit here in Nashville starting May 24th.

00:14:55.000 It promises to empower attendees to stand boldly for righteousness in a world that desperately needs Jesus.

00:15:01.000 Guilty as charged.

00:15:02.000 The speaker lineup includes Eric Metaxas, of course, and Pastor Rob McCoy, Kurt's spiritual mentor and co-chair of TPUSA Faith.

00:15:09.000 Now, he is my pastor.

00:15:11.000 Yeah, you're a pastor, but like spiritual.

00:15:13.000 What is this?

00:15:14.000 Like Obi-Wan Kenobi?

00:15:15.000 And, you know, we were doing Star Wars references yesterday.

00:15:18.000 But this is how, this is, this is the theology of this guy.

00:15:21.000 I can guarantee you.

00:15:22.000 It comes out of like, you know, Star Wars.

00:15:24.000 He says, the doctrine of McCoy's church insists that Jesus will return to earth, literally in the Bible, to establish a kingdom of which there will be no end.

00:15:33.000 Literally in the Bible.

00:15:34.000 This is mainline theology.

00:15:36.000 And it demands that all believers fulfill his command to preach the gospel to the entire world.

00:15:42.000 Also in the Bible.

00:15:43.000 So just literally the Apostles' Creed.

00:15:47.000 This is like Christianity 101. 0.97

00:15:49.000 This is the ABCs of Christianity. 0.94

00:15:51.000 Like the bare minimum that you need to believe in order to consider yourself a Christian.

00:15:55.000 And Rolling Stone thinks this is like a really killer line of attack against Pastor McCoy.

00:16:02.000 Yeah, and they also say, well, there's this sea change.

00:16:04.000 And there actually isn't.

00:16:05.000 They say, oh, it's from college organizing to economic around economic issues to church organizing.

00:16:09.000 It's actually all harmonic.

00:16:10.000 It's all towards the same thing.

00:16:12.000 It's about liberty.

00:16:13.000 Liberty is God's idea, not man's idea.

00:16:15.000 And we are now growing as an organization to other communities to try to push back against wokeism and power leaders.

00:16:22.000 And Rolling Stone finds this to be objectionable.

00:16:24.000 In fact, they say we're a threat to democracy.

00:16:25.000 That is not a joke.

00:16:27.000 And so, you know, it kind of is they play patty cake here for a while, and then they just buried lead all of a sudden emerges, right?

00:16:34.000 It's like, oh, they do this, and they're a threat to democracy.

00:16:37.000 Where is this?

00:16:37.000 I'm trying to find it in the article.

00:16:39.000 I got to find it here out of nowhere.

00:16:41.000 Listen, were the founders Christian?

00:16:42.000 Were they into America? 0.62

00:16:44.000 They were a Christian 55 out of 56.

00:16:47.000 I mean, if there was any more clear-cut case that these people hate America, it's the fact that they can't even get behind the fact that our founders, the people who founded America, were Christians and they were nationalists.

00:16:58.000 So, again, the founding fathers would have been labeled by Rolling Stone as Christian nationalists.

00:17:03.000 But the focus on fundamentalism, again, what does fundamentalism mean actually mean?

00:17:07.000 Represents a clear and present danger to democracy.

00:17:12.000 Training a younger generation to raise up champions of lower taxes and fewer regulations is one thing.

00:17:16.000 It's quite another to seek to organize end times zealots with the aim of achieving a religious takeover of the secular United States.

00:17:24.000 Okay, first of all, we want people to live free, free from degeneracy, free from trans tyranny, and a beautiful life of flourishing. 0.98

00:17:37.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:18:34.000 Check it out.

00:18:37.000 I'm getting a lot of emails about the Rolling Stone article.

00:18:39.000 We have our TPSA faith thing here.

00:18:41.000 Again, they act as if there's some sort of subterranean clandestine agenda.

00:18:46.000 We want a restoration of the promise of the American founding.

00:18:49.000 We want a constitutional reset.

00:18:51.000 There's not some sort of secret agenda.

00:18:53.000 If you properly understood, the Declaration and the Constitution are quote-unquote radical documents in the eyes of secular left-wing Marxist postmodern reporters because they actually are at odds with the idea of checks and balances, consent to the governed, a republic, not a democracy.

00:19:08.000 The idea that you could separate from tyranny, virtue being necessary for a free people.

00:19:13.000 This is stuff that we talk about.

00:19:15.000 Again, our founding documents are so amazing, Andrew.

00:19:17.000 So I just wanted to say we should put Rich on the spot and ask him about it.

00:19:21.000 I actually had texted him.

00:19:22.000 We had a chat.

00:19:23.000 Oh, did he read the article?

00:19:25.000 I told him about it.

00:19:25.000 What's so funny about the sound of the world?

00:19:27.000 I'm going to put it about this moment.

00:19:28.000 Okay, we'll have Rich Barris in a second.

00:19:30.000 So get him ready, everybody.

00:19:31.000 So we get articles written about us all the time.

00:19:34.000 I've had more people text us about Jordan Peterson tweeted about it.

00:19:37.000 James Lindsay, you know, James Lindsay, you know that.

00:19:39.000 And by the way, people know that this is hackery by the media.

00:19:42.000 They know what we believe here.

00:19:43.000 They know our agenda.

00:19:44.000 Our agenda is very clear.

00:19:46.000 We want the Constitution and the promise of the Declaration.

00:19:49.000 We want 1776, 1787, 1791, which is the Declaration of Independence and also the Virginia Bill of Rights.

00:19:56.000 We want 1787, which was the ratification of the Constitution and then the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

00:20:01.000 So those three years, 76, 87, 91, we want the promises of those years to be restored here in America.

00:20:07.000 Well, and by the way, and we should bring, go ahead and bring Richards.

00:20:10.000 Yeah, let's bring Rich Barris here, people's pundits.

00:20:12.000 I just want to say, and I said this to Rich, I said, listen, the vast majority of conservatives, vast majority of Christian conservatives, yeah, they might have theological differences on homosexuality, gay marriage, whatever.

00:20:24.000 There is a big difference between all of that.

00:20:27.000 And you come after our kids and you come after the culture at large.

00:20:31.000 You start shoving it down everybody's face all the time.

00:20:33.000 Yeah, you're going to get pushback on that stuff, but they want to turn it into this Christian nationalism with a handmaid's tail or whatever.

00:20:38.000 Well, hold on a second.

00:20:39.000 What is the promise of the Declaration?

00:20:41.000 When the course of human events becomes necessary, we want people to dissolve political bans.

00:20:44.000 I want to dissolve political bans with the trans lobby.

00:20:46.000 We are risking.

00:20:48.000 That's the promise of the Declaration.

00:20:49.000 That's not actually radical.

00:20:50.000 What's radical is them trying to shove it down everybody's face.

00:20:53.000 They're King George, but they're tranny King George. 1.00

00:20:55.000 This is 100%.

00:20:58.000 They're colonizing our country.

00:21:00.000 Rich, Rich Barris, your thoughts.

00:21:03.000 I'm sorry.

00:21:04.000 I didn't know I was on.

00:21:05.000 That was too funny.

00:21:07.000 I couldn't keep it back.

00:21:11.000 I did hear about it, and then I have it up actually on my browser.

00:21:16.000 Now I didn't get through it all yet, but it's like the first six paragraphs, Charlie, immediately jump out at me.

00:21:21.000 It says, you know, you are founded on promoting free markets, and now we're turning to this, you know, this brand of Christianity, pushing Christianity. 0.57

00:21:28.000 It's ignorance, though, because free markets and capitalism, as our founders believed in it, is not the pursuit of greed or wealth for wealth's sake.

00:21:37.000 They believe in things like the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

00:21:41.000 Max Weber, it's a pretty important book.

00:21:43.000 I mean, it just seems like these people don't really know what they're talking about.

00:21:47.000 They don't know the worldviews that inform the founders who designed this government and our country.

00:21:53.000 So there's nothing at odds with promoting free markets and promoting Christian values.

00:22:00.000 You know, there's nothing at odds with the people who are not.

00:22:02.000 No, in fact, they rhyme.

00:22:03.000 They're harmonic.

00:22:05.000 Yes.

00:22:06.000 We love free markets because we love people and it points towards flourishing and goodness and wealth creation and personal responsibility and private property is a necessary prerequisite against tyranny.

00:22:16.000 Can we just say it out loud?

00:22:17.000 Guys, the people that were behind the most successful civilizations in the history of the world happened to be Christians. 0.76

00:22:25.000 They happened to be characters that came out of the Enlightenment, that came out of the Christian Enlightenment, that believed devoutly in their God and their Savior.

00:22:33.000 And guess what?

00:22:34.000 It worked real well.

00:22:36.000 Okay, yeah, were there flaws?

00:22:37.000 Of course.

00:22:38.000 Are we correcting some of those flaws over time?

00:22:40.000 I hope so.

00:22:41.000 Now we're regressing.

00:22:42.000 If you love the Lord, if you love virtue, if you love people, you should hate poverty.

00:22:48.000 And if you hate poverty, you have to have respect for markets because markets are the most proven way to obliterate poverty.

00:22:54.000 Now, are there problematic markets?

00:22:56.000 Of course there are.

00:22:56.000 There's externalities, there's monopolies and all this.

00:22:59.000 But the trend of a market-based economy is a savage ability to get rid of absolute poverty.

00:23:05.000 That is a fact.

00:23:06.000 If you love the poor, like the left pretends, you have to have respect for markets.

00:23:10.000 Period.

00:23:11.000 Okay, let's shift gears here.

00:23:13.000 Rich Barris, Ron DeSantis, you have some really interesting polling here.

00:23:16.000 First, I want to get your reaction.

00:23:18.000 Rich, you're super smart.

00:23:19.000 What is your initial response to Governor Ron DeSantis announcing in an interview on Twitter with Elon Musk?

00:23:25.000 What do you think about that?

00:23:29.000 You know, I think that there were some people on the right who were always skeptical of Elon Musk taking over Twitter and whether or not he was a very big promoter of free speech or whatever his motives were.

00:23:41.000 Was Twitter getting much better?

00:23:43.000 There isn't a universal love there for Elon Musk.

00:23:45.000 So I know what they're trying to do.

00:23:48.000 It's very clear that whoever is in charge of his social media campaign, Elon Musk has kind of lent the power of Twitter to them.

00:23:55.000 So I'm actually not surprised at all.

00:23:57.000 For anybody who's been on the receiving end of the attacks from DeSantis people who don't like what you have to say, you shouldn't be surprised.

00:24:04.000 You're not surprised.

00:24:05.000 So, Rich, what is your polling showing then?

00:24:09.000 What is the polling showing?

00:24:10.000 What does the race look like now that Ron DeSantis is officially entered?

00:24:14.000 This has been an argument for months now.

00:24:16.000 He hasn't announced.

00:24:18.000 Wait till he announced.

00:24:19.000 Charlie, nobody that we poll tells us they don't think Ron DeSantis is running.

00:24:25.000 Everybody knew he was running.

00:24:27.000 This idea, and maybe it's just the modern world that we're in.

00:24:31.000 It is not the way it was 15 years ago, you know, 10 years ago, where people jump in a race, there's this big production news event, and then they get all this favorable coverage and they get a bump.

00:24:45.000 The truth is, I'm kind of in the camp with Harry Enton and even Nate Cohen at the New York Times.

00:24:49.000 I think his bump already happened.

00:24:52.000 If he gets one, it'll be a very small one when you're behind 45 points.

00:24:56.000 You need more than an announcement bump.

00:24:59.000 And I think that that was a lot.

00:25:01.000 I think it was to put a lot on that, a lot of emphasis on that, because if he doesn't get it, and I'll tell you right now, in our poll, people track daily like us, there's no bump.

00:25:13.000 There's nothing.

00:25:14.000 So maybe give 48 hours, 72 hours.

00:25:17.000 I don't know what's fair, you know, a fair time period to expect.

00:25:21.000 But we just got out of some districts, very educated, very wealthy.

00:25:25.000 We're looking at them on purpose because we want to know where Trump could be weak.

00:25:30.000 And nobody was like, I think I'll decide when Ron DeSantis announces.

00:25:35.000 Trump is still above 50 in all of these.

00:25:38.000 There are three of them that we did, and he was above 50 in all three.

00:25:42.000 So he's not as dominant nationally, but we wouldn't expect him to be.

00:25:45.000 It was more educated, more wealthy.

00:25:47.000 But we did expect Ron DeSantis to perform better in some of these areas.

00:25:51.000 And in truth, only marginally better than some.

00:25:54.000 So, and Andrew, I sent the poll to earlier this morning.

00:25:57.000 You too, you as well.

00:25:59.000 I mean, that's the fourth area, guys.

00:26:01.000 Trump supposedly lost Tarran County by a few thousand votes in 2020.

00:26:06.000 So if there was going to be an area where we were going to see weakness, it would be there.

00:26:11.000 Andrew.

00:26:11.000 Yeah, Rich, what you're saying, I just want to make sure the audience is king in on it because you and I had a chance to brief on it before the show.

00:26:18.000 You're basically saying in what should amount to the most favorable DeSantis sort of district, right, based on education, based on wealth, based on just everything that you'd polled before, that especially earlier in the year, folks were trending towards DeSantis in this group.

00:26:34.000 You're saying you're not seeing that now in an area that should be bright for DeSantis.

00:26:40.000 Is that essentially what you're saying?

00:26:42.000 That's exactly right.

00:26:44.000 Even when we had DeSantis at about 31% nationally and Trump in the low 40s, 43%, had we polled this district at that time, I bet we would have saw either a tie race or maybe even DeSantis leading by a few points.

00:26:58.000 This is an area where 20 or roughly one in five Republicans have an advanced grad an advanced degree, and yet another 25, 30% have a four-year degree.

00:27:11.000 Very small working class, not a big 30 to 50,000 group.

00:27:16.000 People make a lot of money here.

00:27:18.000 And Trump is at 52 and DeSantis is at 21. 0.95

00:27:21.000 So to expect an announcement bump to change the fundamentals of what is going on here in this race is naive and a little bit ridiculous. 0.84

00:27:31.000 It's just not a little bit. 0.96

00:27:32.000 It's wholly ridiculous to me. 0.90

00:27:34.000 There's a fundamental problem that anyone not named Trump has in this race. 0.91

00:27:38.000 And they're not doing anything to address it.

00:27:41.000 In fact, they're doubling down.

00:27:43.000 So, even in his own state, you know, where we thought he did so well in South Florida, well, he's getting killed in those districts in South Florida.

00:27:51.000 Trump is crushing him.

00:27:52.000 He's leading with Hispanics, 30-points, Hispanic Republicans who are going to vote in the primary.

00:27:58.000 Why is that?

00:27:59.000 Nobody is stopping to say why. 0.99

00:28:02.000 They're just continuing with these ridiculous arguments. 0.97

00:28:04.000 If I get him one-on-one, I can beat him. 0.95

00:28:07.000 Or he's unelectable in a general election.

00:28:10.000 You're never going to convince the Republican primary voter that Donald Trump is unelectable.

00:28:15.000 Not a majority of them.

00:28:16.000 You may convince 15 to 25 percent, but not a majority.

00:28:20.000 And they already saw this man win a general election, and most of them believe that something happened in 20 that prevented him from winning that one.

00:28:29.000 So it's just an argument to a very small subset of the Republican primary vote.

00:28:35.000 And it's honestly a little bit shocking to me, you know, that there aren't more people who have put a lot more thought in how to really beat Donald Trump because this is the same old, same old gentleman.

00:28:45.000 I'm not seeing anything different here.

00:28:47.000 Ron DeSantis' camp is acting like what I saw in 2016 and 15.

00:28:52.000 It's not different.

00:28:54.000 So until it is, he's going to be mired in this, you know, 18 to 22% rate internationally.

00:29:03.000 Northface, if I know, I never want to see another Northface. 1.00

00:29:07.000 This is one of the most, do we have this advertisement?

00:29:09.000 We'll get it.

00:29:10.000 It's so despicable.

00:29:11.000 I mean, I know you might say, Charlie, the list of companies, I can't keep track of all of them.

00:29:15.000 That's why I tell you guys, go to publicsq.com, download the app.

00:29:18.000 It can be your compass can help you navigate all this.

00:29:21.000 Okay, Rich Barris, I know we're talking about something different here and something separate.

00:29:24.000 Rich, I want to get your reaction, though.

00:29:27.000 From what I've been talking to donors and chatter, Tim Scott, it seems, actually is getting some of the billionaire class interest more so than Ron DeSantis this week.

00:29:36.000 Rich, are you seeing that as well?

00:29:38.000 And what are we supposed to make of that?

00:29:40.000 I am, actually.

00:29:42.000 There have been a couple candidates waiting in the wind in case Ron DeSantis didn't work out.

00:29:47.000 And somebody like Tim Scott, he's getting a lot of help from the CEO of Oracle, former chief of Oracle.

00:29:53.000 He may still be.

00:29:55.000 Also, you know, his position on the committee has given him a lot of big network to a lot of Wall Street guys and a lot of Wall Street donors.

00:30:03.000 So they like him.

00:30:04.000 They think he's articulate.

00:30:05.000 And he is articulate.

00:30:07.000 With the exception of his mic going out, which wasn't good, with the exception of that happening during his announcement speech, he was very good.

00:30:15.000 And that's what I would have expected from Tim Scott.

00:30:17.000 Super nice guy.

00:30:18.000 The problem is, guys, and getting back to some of the polling that we were just talking about in the prior segment, even in these areas, we asked people, really, what kind of brand of Republicanism are you identifying with this year?

00:30:32.000 What are you looking for?

00:30:34.000 Charlie, last time we spoke, we were talking about Vivik's increased support in national polls.

00:30:39.000 And you said that the movement has changed so much over 10 years.

00:30:42.000 I mean, it's just so different now.

00:30:45.000 There's a ceiling for somebody like Tim Scott, not with the donors, but with the voters.

00:30:49.000 And the bottom line is, even in these areas, they don't choose traditional Republicanism like they choose America first Republicanism.

00:30:58.000 And we'll patently ask them right out, what do you identify as?

00:31:03.000 And it's two to one.

00:31:05.000 So the lane is just so small.

00:31:08.000 And Tim Scott is going to have to try to share that lane with Ron DeSantis, with Nikki Haley.

00:31:13.000 Ron DeSantis now is like firmly putting himself in that lane with some of these comments he's making, the culture of losing, right?

00:31:20.000 So I do think, though, that Tim Scott probably has the potential just from, I have the same calls with donors that you do.

00:31:28.000 They like him and they're going to fund him.

00:31:30.000 So Nikki Haley isn't as articulate.

00:31:33.000 And I think there has always been in conversations with them, there has always been something.

00:31:38.000 He's a very likable guy.

00:31:39.000 If you meet him in person, folks, he really is.

00:31:41.000 He's a very likable guy, and they just feel like he's got more charisma than some of these other non-Trump candidates.

00:31:50.000 Hey, Rich, so I want to make sure I understand the logic here, right?

00:31:54.000 It's, you know, is the calculus that Trump is going to lock down that, I guess, more conservative, as Joe Biden calls it, the MAGA, the MAGA Republican base, that quadrant of the party or that half of the party, is the calculus that if you kind of signal more of an establishment tone, if you signal, you know, maybe they call it polish or, you know, Trumpism without the drama, whatever that, whatever that lane is, is the calculus that there's 51%,

00:32:23.000 is there enough to win a Republican primary if you're going kind of in that lane, if you will?

00:32:29.000 I have heard directly from people around Haley, Scott, and DeSantis that a majority of Republicans don't want America first and want to move on from America first.

00:32:45.000 They believe that.

00:32:46.000 And to me, I don't know how you could.

00:32:49.000 I mean, we're looking at the polling here now, and it's even if you don't ask people what they identify as, gentlemen, Trump is over 50%.

00:32:58.000 The last time I checked, the definition of a majority was 50 plus one, right?

00:33:02.000 So it doesn't make any sense.

00:33:04.000 Some of the things that these non-Trump candidates are running on, these ideas, the logic, is just flawed.

00:33:11.000 And I think they've grappled, you know, grabbed onto it.

00:33:13.000 They really thought the environment after the midterms was going to hold.

00:33:18.000 But what they didn't realize is that even at his lowest point, 43%, it was incredibly difficult to prevent him from getting another seven with all of those undecideds and all of those other candidates.

00:33:31.000 When you ask people who their second choice was, it was still Donald Trump.

00:33:35.000 It wasn't like these, all of these people were anti-Trump and nobody, you know, anyone but Trump, they weren't.

00:33:43.000 That was wrong.

00:33:44.000 That logic was wrong.

00:33:46.000 And I don't know if they're relying on some bad pollsters.

00:33:49.000 I mean, we've seen some real doocies that shouldn't even be public. 0.99

00:33:52.000 They're just ridiculous. 0.93

00:33:53.000 I don't know what informed them of this, but clearly it's not talking to the average vote. 0.97

00:33:59.000 Rich Barris from People's Pundit.

00:34:02.000 Big data poll does a great job, Rich.

00:34:03.000 We'll have you back on soon.

00:34:04.000 Thanks so much.

00:34:07.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:09.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:12.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

00:34:17.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 25, 2023

Rolling Stone's Mega-Lame Hitpiece with James O'Keefe and Rich Baris

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