The Charlie Kirk Show - Sen. Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles | Fake Hispanic Irishmen, the State of Texas, and 2020’s Rapidly Shifting Electoral Landscape

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00:00:08.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:09.000 Special treat for you today on the Charlie Kirk Show, an exclusive sit-down interview with Michael Knowles and Senator Ted Cruz.

00:00:16.000 They have a podcast called The Verdict.

00:00:17.000 You're going to really enjoy this conversation.

00:00:19.000 We talk about big tech.

00:00:20.000 We talk about Robert Francis O'Rourke.

00:00:22.000 We talk about the 2020 election and so much more.

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00:01:00.000 Ted Cruz, Michael Knowles, here on the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:03.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:04.000 Here we go.

00:01:05.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:07.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:09.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:13.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:16.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:17.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:18.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:01:20.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:26.000 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.

00:01:35.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:38.000 Hey, everybody.

00:01:39.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:41.000 I am joined by two special guests.

00:01:44.000 We're very socially distanced.

00:01:45.000 They are the co-hosts of The Verdict.

00:01:48.000 You can download the Verdict podcast.

00:01:50.000 And of course, it's none other than Senator Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles.

00:01:54.000 You both have joined the podcast before, but welcome together.

00:01:57.000 Welcome, guys.

00:01:58.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:01:58.000 Good to be with you.

00:01:59.000 Great to be with you, Charlie.

00:02:01.000 So it's very strange times that we're living in, to say the least.

00:02:01.000 Awesome.

00:02:05.000 Senator, you do all of the representation for myself in Washington, D.C. You go to Washington and represent us, so I don't have to.

00:02:14.000 Can you give us a status report of how the nation's capital, which I think is incredibly corrupt and backwards and not serving the interests of the American people, how are things going there?

00:02:24.000 You're one of the few fighters.

00:02:25.000 You're one of the few people that actually stands for liberty and stands for our country.

00:02:28.000 Give us a status update from Washington.

00:02:31.000 Well, thank you, Charlie.

00:02:33.000 Look, it's nuts.

00:02:34.000 2020, when we started this year, who had on their bingo card global pandemic, Great Depression, and race riots?

00:02:43.000 I mean, this has been, it's been a tough year, I think, for the country.

00:02:49.000 I keep joking that I look out the window and wonder if we're going to see frogs and locusts any minute now.

00:02:56.000 And it's also a divided year.

00:02:58.000 I mean, we're angry that there's, you know, when you see people who are attacking the very foundations of our country, who are, you know, rioting in our cities, who are burning police cars and assaulting citizens and looting and destroying small businesses and murdering police officers.

00:03:19.000 And when you see them attacking, you know, you look at the issue of statues.

00:03:23.000 It started out with Confederate statues.

00:03:26.000 And then very quickly it moved to attacking George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, because, you know, Lincoln and Grant were such big Confederates.

00:03:39.000 And then it went nuts.

00:03:42.000 It truly became the theater of the absurd when you had vandals deface a statue of Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist.

00:03:52.000 And all of this is, when they're doing that, it's not that they're opposed to slavery.

00:03:57.000 It's not that they're opposed to racism.

00:03:59.000 They hate America.

00:04:00.000 And they're trying to tear down the very foundations of our country.

00:04:04.000 And I think there are an awful lot of us across the country who are desperate for leaders to stand up and unapologetically, proudly defend this nation, defend our Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights.

00:04:17.000 And does that mean every aspect of American history is perfect?

00:04:20.000 Of course not.

00:04:20.000 But it has been a journey towards justice and a journey towards better realizing the principles and values of equality and justice and rule of law that America was founded upon.

00:04:33.000 And Senator, you're one of the few fighters that actually has done that in the last couple weeks.

00:04:37.000 I have been very critical of mostly Republicans, just to be honest, of how silent and how cowardly they have been.

00:04:43.000 And you have been unafraid to speak your mind.

00:04:46.000 I was really sad for you.

00:04:48.000 It looks like you're not going to be able to vacation in China this summer.

00:04:53.000 So you will not be able to go.

00:04:55.000 The Chinese Communist Party, I think, sanctioned you, whatever that means, sanctioning a U.S. senator.

00:05:00.000 So I suppose that your podcast will not be listened in the Wuhan region anytime soon.

00:05:06.000 So I think that it's fair to say that WeChat will not allow the verdict with Ted Cruz on it.

00:05:12.000 So Senator, any thoughts on that?

00:05:14.000 I guess that you are now a sanctioned entity of the Chinese Communist Party?

00:05:17.000 Yeah.

00:05:18.000 Yeah, look, it's a badge of honor.

00:05:21.000 A day and a half ago, I woke up.

00:05:24.000 My cell phone is my alarm clock.

00:05:26.000 And the first thing I saw was a whole series of texts that over the night while I slept, that the Chinese communist government had sanctioned me and banned me from travel to China. 0.63

00:05:39.000 And listen, I despise communists. 0.99

00:05:43.000 The Chinese communist government, they are murderers, they are torturers. 1.00

00:05:47.000 They have one million Uyghurs in concentration camps right now. 1.00

00:05:51.000 They have grotesque policies, one-child policy, forced sterilization, forced abortions. 1.00

00:05:58.000 They engage in suppression.

00:06:00.000 They engage in censorship.

00:06:02.000 They engage in massive theft of American intellectual property. 0.66

00:06:05.000 And their cover-up of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, China was a direct cause of this global pandemic. 0.78

00:06:12.000 The Chinese government is directly responsible for over a half million deaths worldwide. 0.75

00:06:18.000 And, you know, it's interesting. 0.92

00:06:20.000 In recent weeks, in the wake of the pandemic, it's suddenly become fashionable in Washington for people to notice that the Chinese government is bad. 0.96

00:06:28.000 Now, I'm glad of it because there have been a lot of my colleagues, especially Democrats, but also some Republicans, who for years have been singing the praises of China and apologizing for China. 0.97

00:06:41.000 And I got to say, I've been in the Senate now eight years, and I have been leading the fight for eight years.

00:06:48.000 There's a reason China sanctioned me, which is that I've been leading the fight to stand up. 0.61

00:06:52.000 I think the single biggest geopolitical threat facing the United States of America over the next century is China.

00:07:00.000 And we need to stand up.

00:07:01.000 We need to defend ourselves. 1.00

00:07:02.000 We need to decouple our economy from the Chinese economy. 1.00

00:07:06.000 We need to address the supply chain and our vulnerability. 0.98

00:07:12.000 And so I am proud to continue to lead the fight against the threat that is communist.

00:07:17.000 There's a real downside here, though, I have to say, Senator, which is that we have the Verdict Podcast.

00:07:22.000 We have it on YouTube.

00:07:23.000 We have it on Apple Podcasts.

00:07:24.000 We have it on Google Play.

00:07:25.000 We were just about to expand into TikTok.

00:07:29.000 I had been working on my dance moves for weeks, and now, unfortunately, I suppose we're not going to be able to do it.

00:07:34.000 I'm sorry, I'm unwilling to exchange clothes with you or do any sort of synchronized, whatever.

00:07:39.000 Did you see the A-Rod one?

00:07:42.000 I don't think so.

00:07:42.000 Oh, it was, okay, look, when you're the father of a 12-year-old, nine-year-old, you see some things that are really, let's just say it's not high art.

00:07:53.000 Okay, fair enough.

00:07:54.000 I was really looking forward to both of you lip-syncing to some song that has come out in the last couple of years.

00:08:01.000 You pick any of them, but I'm sorry I'm going to have to miss that.

00:08:04.000 So, Michael, let's take a step back.

00:08:05.000 How did this dynamic duo come together?

00:08:08.000 This podcast was number one in all of podcasting.

00:08:11.000 Obviously, the senator is busy trying to protect our freedoms and liberties in D.C. You're in L.A. Walk us through the story of this podcast, how it came together, and also just some of the success you guys have had.

00:08:24.000 So, we launched the podcast during impeachment.

00:08:27.000 The senator was obviously in the impeachment trial at the Capitol all day, and then around 10 or 11 p.m., he would come on over to the studio.

00:08:34.000 We'd record until 2 in the morning.

00:08:36.000 Then, I would get to go to sleep.

00:08:37.000 He would get a couple hours, but then he'd have to go back to the Capitol the next day.

00:08:40.000 That was the beginning of the podcast.

00:08:42.000 That's how it launched.

00:08:43.000 It hit number one.

00:08:44.000 As I've joked before, did not expect the senator to beat Joe Rogan.

00:08:49.000 Not that I had low expectations for the man, but it was really great news to see that.

00:08:55.000 Showed people were interested in their government.

00:08:56.000 They just wanted a little more substance.

00:08:58.000 But we had been talking about doing a show for probably a year. 1.00

00:09:03.000 And the idea here being that a lot of people think that Americans are stupid. 1.00

00:09:10.000 They're not interested in their government. 1.00

00:09:11.000 They don't want to know about their history or their politics.

00:09:14.000 And that is just not the case.

00:09:16.000 What we thought is that actually the American people are very interested in their government.

00:09:21.000 They just don't want to be talked down to.

00:09:23.000 They don't want to get five-minute little sound bites.

00:09:26.000 They want to go a little bit deeper.

00:09:27.000 They want some substance.

00:09:29.000 And so we decided the impeachment was a great time to launch this show.

00:09:33.000 And I think if you show just a little bit of respect for the American people and for the audience, they will show how worthy they are of that respect.

00:09:42.000 And they'll show how low an opinion I think the mainstream media gatekeepers have had of them for many years.

00:09:49.000 Yeah, I mean, the activist media, which I call them, because it's truly, there's no difference between the people in the streets that are shouting and burning and looting and someone at Huffington Post that happens to have a verified Twitter account that got hired.

00:10:00.000 The only difference is the person that has the verified Twitter account probably made marginally better decisions towards the senior year in college.

00:10:07.000 That's probably the only difference.

00:10:08.000 And they got hired for BuzzFeed, and instead of throwing a brick through a window, they throw a fake article at a senator.

00:10:13.000 Like that's their vehicle for social change.

00:10:16.000 So I completely agree that the kind of the over-the-top model of podcasting and being able to actually communicate directly with your target audience is the way that media is going.

00:10:25.000 And that's exactly why the tech companies are trying to shut us all down.

00:10:27.000 And so, Senator, I want to ask you about this because I'm a conservative free market capitalist.

00:10:32.000 You and I have talked about this at length.

00:10:34.000 I recently was rereading the Federalist Papers, and the Founding Fathers warned us about centralized power, and they warned us about tyranny, and the greatest threat that they could think that would infringe on freedoms and liberties would be government.

00:10:47.000 Now, there's an argument to be made that some of these private companies actually have more power than the federal government, that Google could be more powerful than certain agencies of government.

00:10:56.000 Is there an argument to be made that the instruments of government should be used to maybe regulate or at least ensure fairness on some of these platforms?

00:11:05.000 I know it's an uncomfortable conversation for some conservatives.

00:11:07.000 I'd love to get your take on it.

00:11:10.000 Yeah, I think it is an enormous challenge, an enormous problem, and it's one that I've been, so I've chaired multiple hearings in the Senate on the issue of big tech censorship.

00:11:21.000 I think big tech censorship is the single greatest threat to free speech in America, and I think it's the single greatest threat to democracy in America.

00:11:30.000 And it's a complicated issue, so let's break it down into a couple of pieces.

00:11:33.000 And by the way, this is something we've done on the Verdict podcast multiple times, is drilled down into the details of this because this, let's start with the problem, and then let's address the solution, because the solution you rightly raised raises some challenging questions, particularly for those of us that believe in the free market.

00:11:50.000 But let's start with the problem.

00:11:52.000 There have always been biased journalists from the beginning, from the very first journalist who was carving words into a stone tablet.

00:12:00.000 There were biased journalists.

00:12:03.000 What's different about big tech is the amalgamation of power that they have is on a scale and scope that has never been seen throughout human history.

00:12:13.000 Google is more powerful than any company has been in the history of humanity.

00:12:19.000 And it is ubiquitous, it is everywhere, but it is also invisible.

00:12:25.000 So it's one thing, look, if you read the New York Times, you can tell they're a shrill leftist propaganda rag.

00:12:31.000 You can see it on the face.

00:12:33.000 The problem with social media and big tech censorship is they do it invisibly.

00:12:38.000 So if they decide we don't like what Charlie Kirk is saying, and you post on social media, it can just disappear in the ether.

00:12:46.000 And you have no idea when you post something on Twitter, when you post something on Facebook, you have no idea how many of the people who've said, I want to follow Charlie Kirk, I want to see what he has to say, you have no idea what percentage of those people actually see what you have to say.

00:13:00.000 They can just invisibly shadow ban you.

00:13:03.000 Even more insidious, they can curate your feed so that the only things you see are what they want you to see.

00:13:11.000 And you're completely unaware of this.

00:13:14.000 It is hidden.

00:13:15.000 And we've got now over 70% of Americans get their news from social media, from the little computer we all carry in our pocket called our phone.

00:13:24.000 That problem is massive.

00:13:26.000 And big tech in recent years has gotten more and more brazen.

00:13:31.000 They're more and more open about what they're doing.

00:13:33.000 They're actively censoring conservatives. 0.69

00:13:36.000 They're silencing views they disagree with and they're promoting views they agree with, things like the Black Lives Matter rioters and vandals. 0.84

00:13:45.000 They're promoting like crazy, and that's dangerous. 0.70

00:13:48.000 So then, what do you do about it?

00:13:51.000 Let's start with what we don't want.

00:13:53.000 Nobody wants a government speech police.

00:13:56.000 No one wants the federal government saying, okay, this speech is okay, this speech is not.

00:14:00.000 That would be a disaster.

00:14:03.000 But that doesn't mean there are no remedies.

00:14:05.000 And so I've laid out three potential remedies that Congress can consider and the federal government can consider to respond to the blatant censorship.

00:14:14.000 Number one is what's called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which is Congress a couple of decades ago gave big tech a special immunity from liability, an immunity from liability nobody else enjoys.

00:14:28.000 And it's a special benefit.

00:14:29.000 It's a special privilege given to big tech.

00:14:31.000 And the reason for it is Congress believed that social media, the internet, would be neutral public fora.

00:14:38.000 In other words, that it wasn't fair to sue Facebook for a comment that was made on Facebook if it's a third-party user.

00:14:45.000 It's not Facebook speaking.

00:14:46.000 It's just whoever happens to be posting speaking.

00:14:49.000 That was Congress's reasoning.

00:14:50.000 It's a neutral public forum, so they should be immune from liability.

00:14:54.000 Well, what's happened?

00:14:55.000 They've changed their mind.

00:14:56.000 They're not neutral anymore.

00:14:57.000 They're now biased.

00:14:58.000 They're censoring.

00:14:59.000 And if they're not going to be neutral public forum, there's no reason on earth they should get a special immunity from liability from Congress.

00:15:07.000 That's lever number one.

00:15:08.000 Lever number two is the antitrust laws.

00:15:11.000 It has long been against the law for monopolies to abuse their monopoly position.

00:15:16.000 By any measure, big tech is bigger, richer, more powerful, has more power and control than ATT was when it was broken up under the monopoly laws.

00:15:25.000 It's bigger and more powerful than U.S. Steel was, as they say in The Godfather, we're bigger than U.S. Steel.

00:15:33.000 Well, they're way bigger than U.S. Steel, and the antitrust laws are a serious tool to treat this abuse of power.

00:15:42.000 And then the third avenue sounds in breach of contract or consumer fraud and deception.

00:15:50.000 Stated pretty simply.

00:15:53.000 When you sign up for a social media account, the implicit promise, the contract between the consumer and the social media, the big tech company, implicitly is: if you choose to follow someone, you'll see what they have to say.

00:16:08.000 And if they choose to follow you, they'll see what you have to say.

00:16:13.000 We now know that promise is a lie, that they are deceiving consumers, that if they disagree with your views, it doesn't matter that people say, I want to hear Charlie Kirk.

00:16:22.000 It doesn't matter that people say, I want to hear the Verdict podcast.

00:16:25.000 If big tech disagrees, they silence you.

00:16:28.000 So there are real tools we could use to protect free speech.

00:16:32.000 And given the power of big tech, I think it's really important that we use them.

00:16:35.000 Michael, any thoughts on that?

00:16:37.000 Yes, I think, you know, the senator just laid out three distinct legal avenues at our disposal.

00:16:44.000 And one thing we've talked about a lot on Verdict is which one of these should we pursue?

00:16:48.000 The answer is yes.

00:16:49.000 The answer is all of them.

00:16:51.000 I know very often, Charlie, how many times have you talked to conservatives where they get hung up on all the minutiae of these details?

00:16:58.000 And well, I like this one, but I don't like this one.

00:17:00.000 And we've got to hold ourselves to rules that our opponents aren't playing by.

00:17:03.000 We've got to tie one hand behind our backs and jump up and down on a pogo stick.

00:17:06.000 And the answer is we have a real goal here.

00:17:09.000 We know that big tech is abusing its power.

00:17:12.000 We know that they are violating the law, as we can see plainly in front of us.

00:17:16.000 And that needs to be taken care of using all of the available means before us.

00:17:22.000 Yeah, and what I find so troubling is the amount of conservative think tanks that are funded directly by big tech.

00:17:29.000 And I'm not going to say any names.

00:17:31.000 You guys know who they are.

00:17:32.000 And these big conservative think tanks for years, Senator, you and I grew up reading some of their policy papers.

00:17:41.000 And now you read what they have to say on big tech and it comes out they're getting seven-figure annual contributions.

00:17:47.000 Something tells me that Google is not writing a check to that think tank because they love F.A. Hayek.

00:17:52.000 It's not happening.

00:17:53.000 They're not writing a check to that think tank because they're so moved by Milton Friedman's pencil speech.

00:18:00.000 They're writing that check because they're getting a piece of policy paper that can be distributed in center-right circles to almost create a paralysis amongst the conservative movement so they can create almost a super governmental structure in Silicon Valley.

00:18:14.000 And I have waited patiently for a competitor to rise up against these companies.

00:18:19.000 And I know there's parlor and all this.

00:18:21.000 It's just not, it's not even close to the same power or the same funding or the same amount of sophistication that Google and Facebook have.

00:18:30.000 I mean, Google is in the fiber business, they're in the medical business, they're in it's beyond just social media.

00:18:36.000 It's search engine optimization, all of it.

00:18:38.000 And you mentioned the antitrust laws.

00:18:40.000 The issue is that the antitrust laws were written for a completely different type of company, where you're actually front-facing selling a product where you could price gouge.

00:18:49.000 And so what they'll do in the Sherman Antitrust Act is a lot of these tech companies will try to hide behind the idea that, well, we don't really charge anything.

00:18:56.000 Well, if you can't figure out what they're charging, they're selling you, okay?

00:18:59.000 They're selling you to a potential vendor and they're selling all of your data around it.

00:19:04.000 And so here's my question, Senator, when it comes to this.

00:19:06.000 I'm cynical because I see a lot of your Republican colleagues that are bought and paid for by the tech companies.

00:19:12.000 They just are.

00:19:13.000 They get huge money from lobbyists that represent Google and Facebook and these other companies.

00:19:18.000 We're talking $40, $50 million a year.

00:19:20.000 And by the way, Google will spend about $38 million a year on government affairs.

00:19:24.000 They laugh at how little money they have to spend on how much they get back in return.

00:19:30.000 Yeah, they're like, oh my goodness, it's a rounding error for them.

00:19:32.000 Do you think that we can get congressional action, real congressional action on this?

00:19:36.000 Or is this going to be another issue like on immigration, where you have the weak Republicans and the entire corrupt Democrat Party that just try to sell our country out?

00:19:46.000 All right.

00:19:47.000 There are lots of elements of your question.

00:19:49.000 Let's go in reverse order. 0.96

00:19:50.000 Sadly, the last piece, probably, that the Democrats are going to be prostitutes for big tech, and many of the Republicans are weak winds, weak at blowing in the wind. 0.95

00:20:04.000 Let's loop back to where you started.

00:20:06.000 You're exactly right.

00:20:08.000 Much of conservative ink, of the sort of professional conservative think tanks and free market think tanks.

00:20:15.000 This issue is actually very closely connected to where we started the conversation with China.

00:20:20.000 Just like China, big tech gets people addicted to suckling at the teat of cash. 0.79

00:20:29.000 And it is buying subservience.

00:20:33.000 It is buying it cheap.

00:20:34.000 Yes.

00:20:35.000 And, you know, by the way, anytime someone says it's not about the money, it's about the money.

00:20:40.000 And listen, when it comes to conservatives or libertarians, and I love libertarians, but you get some of the folks that are getting paid a whole lot to argue, and it's an easy argument.

00:20:52.000 Well, hey, they're private companies, they're businesses.

00:20:55.000 Let me point out any principled conservative, anyone who understands free markets, you're not an unabashed prostitute for big business.

00:21:06.000 You believe in small businesses and entrepreneurs, and big business loves big government.

00:21:11.000 Big business gets in bed with big government.

00:21:13.000 Monopolies have always exist in totalitarian and socialist economies.

00:21:20.000 And so the notion that, well, because Google is a private company, there are no rules that apply to it, that is not conservative.

00:21:27.000 It's not libertarian.

00:21:29.000 It is destructive.

00:21:32.000 And so how do we fix it?

00:21:34.000 There are a couple of elements.

00:21:35.000 One is just sunshine.

00:21:36.000 And part of the reason I've chaired multiple hearings.

00:21:40.000 So the left makes arguments.

00:21:41.000 One of the arguments they make is, and one of the arguments big tech makes is there's no evidence of censorship.

00:21:47.000 And this is like the old example of the kid who kills his parents and then pleads the mercy of the court because he's an orphan.

00:21:54.000 It's true.

00:21:55.000 There are not objective data that demonstrate censorship.

00:21:58.000 Why?

00:21:59.000 Because big tech has all the data.

00:22:01.000 It won't answer any questions.

00:22:02.000 It has no transparency, no accountability.

00:22:04.000 So if I've asked repeatedly, I've asked repeatedly in writing and orally, simple questions, like I'll give an example of questions that I've asked every big tech company.

00:22:13.000 In 2018, the last election cycle, how many posts from Republican candidates from office did you ban or shadow ban and throttle their coverage?

00:22:22.000 How many posts from Democratic candidates from office did you ban or shadow ban and throttle their coverage?

00:22:27.000 Now, there is an objective answer.

00:22:29.000 Facebook knows the number.

00:22:30.000 It is a specific number, 622, whatever it is.

00:22:34.000 I don't know.

00:22:35.000 You don't know because you know what they say when you ask them, go jump in a lake.

00:22:38.000 I won't answer your question.

00:22:39.000 They just, they won't answer.

00:22:40.000 And so you can point to lots of examples, anecdotes.

00:22:44.000 Now, it's never satisfying to argue by anecdote, but the reason all you have is anecdotes is because they won't release.

00:22:50.000 They're a black box.

00:22:51.000 So the way I've tried to solve it, I'm not confident about Congress passing legislation on this.

00:22:57.000 But here's what could be done.

00:22:59.000 So in the last three and a half years, I have spoken to damn near every person in the Trump administration who would listen to me on this.

00:23:07.000 So I've spoken to the president multiple times.

00:23:10.000 I've spoken to the vice president.

00:23:11.000 I've spoken to the attorney general, both this attorney general and the prior attorney general.

00:23:15.000 I've spoken to the deputy attorney general about going after big tech.

00:23:18.000 I've spoken to the head of the antitrust division about going after big tech.

00:23:22.000 I've spoken to the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission about it.

00:23:24.000 I've spoken to the commissioners of the FTC about it.

00:23:26.000 I've spoken to the general counsel of the FTC about it.

00:23:29.000 I've spoken to the chairman of the FCC about it.

00:23:32.000 Now, we saw the Trump administration come out with an executive order on this just a few months ago.

00:23:37.000 That was great.

00:23:37.000 It was a very positive step in the right direction.

00:23:40.000 I've been pushing three years for it to happen.

00:23:43.000 One of the challenges, and you referenced this when you said the Sherman antitrust law was not written to solve this problem.

00:23:52.000 One of the challenges, say, within DOJ, the Department of Justice, is you have lots of different silos that think about this problem within their narrow world.

00:24:02.000 And what I've urged folks is: look, you need to think cross-dimensionally and across disciplines.

00:24:10.000 That's why I've laid out multiple theories of law because this is a new challenge, this monopoly on information and news and communication.

00:24:19.000 It's never happened before.

00:24:22.000 And so we had actually on the verdict podcast, one of our guests in one of the most recent shows we had was Bill Barr, the Attorney General.

00:24:30.000 And, you know, it's interesting.

00:24:32.000 You watch Barr at a media interview.

00:24:35.000 They're typically fairly brief.

00:24:37.000 The media interview is usually some hostile lefty.

00:24:41.000 And Barr's a very good lawyer.

00:24:42.000 He's pretty buttoned down.

00:24:43.000 He gives disciplined answers.

00:24:45.000 What was fun about this podcast is Barr and I have been friends for 25 years.

00:24:51.000 And so we spent a half hour.

00:24:53.000 I'm not trying to play gotcha with him.

00:24:55.000 I'm just talking and hanging out with him.

00:24:57.000 We spent a lot of time talking about big tech censorship.

00:24:59.000 And this was an issue that in the podcast we pressed quite a bit.

00:25:04.000 But it's interesting also the comments to the podcast, like a lot of people were like, wow, Barr is really funny.

00:25:11.000 And you don't see that, but he's got this wicked, sardonic, he's got a very dry sense of humor.

00:25:17.000 And I think my favorite moment of the podcast, Michael knows where I'm going, is I said, look, Barr has shown real courage to charge forward for rule of law with the media coming after him like the mob with pitchforks and torches at the end of Frankenstein.

00:25:32.000 They're coming after Barr like that.

00:25:35.000 And I used an analogy.

00:25:36.000 I said, Bill Barr, Bill, you are the honey badger.

00:25:40.000 And I got to admit, I didn't think, that was just sort of off the cuff.

00:25:43.000 I didn't think Bill would have any idea what the honey badger.

00:25:45.000 I think it would just go right over the head, right?

00:25:48.000 He knew exactly what it was.

00:25:50.000 And I was actually a little astonished.

00:25:51.000 And it's like, you know, honey badger don't care.

00:25:54.000 That's right.

00:25:54.000 And it's my favorite moment where he's, I mean, he was doubled over laughing.

00:25:58.000 It was a relief, actually, to know that the AG who is looking into these issues is at least familiar with YouTube.

00:26:03.000 Seems like he's familiar with a lot of these other technologies.

00:26:06.000 My favorite is at one of the hearings, I think the senator that you were hosting is one of your colleagues said, Mr. Zuckerberg, can you unlock my phone?

00:26:15.000 Because I'm kidding.

00:26:17.000 I don't think that was.

00:26:18.000 Or Mr. Zuckerberg, the Facebook that my grandkids on, what the hell is this thing?

00:26:26.000 Like, you know, you were trying, I'm half kidding, of course, when you, you know, Mark Zuckerberg testified, and, you know, you were the youngest person on the committee by half, right?

00:26:35.000 And you had people, no offense to your colleagues, they didn't know what the heck they were asking Mark Zuckerberg, right?

00:26:40.000 Half of them.

00:26:41.000 But I think actually...

00:26:42.000 Go ahead, Michael.

00:26:43.000 Well, there's a bit of a philosophical issue here, too, which is I think this problem that conservatives have when looking at tech is one of being a little out of date because we're arguing about this.

00:26:56.000 We say, well, we don't want to stop a private company from doing whatever they want to do.

00:27:00.000 There is nothing conservative about letting a handful of Silicon Valley oligarchs control the flow of information around the internet, control our public square, particularly when it's based on a fraud for the user agreements of these platforms, and it's based on receiving protection from liability in laws where they no longer deserve that protection from liability.

00:27:24.000 And so you mentioned the libertarians, Senator, and I'm familiar with a lot of their literature, and I can sympathize with it.

00:27:30.000 But it all comes down to they say, well, the private company is different because people can engage and interact voluntarily.

00:27:36.000 And first of all, I don't sympathize with that argument anymore because you literally have Google inside of classrooms all across the country that in order to go to school and get educated, you have to use Google or use Facebook products.

00:27:47.000 That's number one.

00:27:48.000 Number two, what really concerns people in the libertarian community is the threat of liberty.

00:27:55.000 And you look at Basiat's writing and the law, it's the idea that you have natural rights articulated by John Locke previously.

00:28:03.000 We all agree with that.

00:28:03.000 But what happens if a private company is infringing on natural rights and does so without you knowing, as you said, Senator, and there's no way to get them to stop doing it.

00:28:14.000 And in fact, they're actually more powerful than the very government that's supposed to represent us.

00:28:18.000 And this is a it's and so we have to ask ourselves the question: we are limited government people, but we're actually limited power and authoritarian and limited tyranny people.

00:28:28.000 And what happens when something else is actually more tyrannical than the government?

00:28:32.000 And that is a new philosophical direction that's only made possible because of artificial intelligence and technology and so on and so forth.

00:28:39.000 Well, and big tech is doing this deliberately, and they're getting worse.

00:28:46.000 One of the things we talked about at one of the hearings I chaired is a document that Google prepared.

00:28:52.000 And it's a PowerPoint that drafted by Google.

00:28:56.000 It is entitled The Good Censor.

00:28:59.000 It's about a 50-page PowerPoint.

00:29:01.000 And it describes how the old model of the internet, the one when we all started on the Internet, was what they described as the laissez-faire free speech model.

00:29:10.000 By the way, if you're a libertarian, you should like the laissez-faire free speech model.

00:29:14.000 The second model they described, in their words, was the European-style censorship model.

00:29:22.000 And they identified that big tech has made a decision to shift from laissez-faire free speech to European-style censorship.

00:29:29.000 And they identified four companies: Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

00:29:34.000 They actually had their symbols on that side of European-style censorship.

00:29:38.000 And it's a conscious decision.

00:29:41.000 And in one of the hearings I chaired, we heard testimony from Dr. Robert Epstein that was very, very interesting and deeply concerning.

00:29:51.000 So Epstein, he's an academic.

00:29:53.000 He's a psychologist.

00:29:54.000 He used to be the editor of Psychology Today.

00:29:57.000 So he's a respected academic.

00:30:00.000 And interestingly enough, he's not a conservative.

00:30:03.000 He is a liberal Democrat.

00:30:05.000 He voted for Hillary Clinton, and he actively supported Hillary Clinton.

00:30:08.000 He advocated for her.

00:30:10.000 So Dr. Epstein has done, to my knowledge, the only empirical work on Google's search outcomes and biased algorithms.

00:30:19.000 There are a couple of ways that Google engages in rampant manipulation.

00:30:23.000 One is the autocomplete.

00:30:25.000 If you start typing in a few words, you start typing in Donald Trump and it fills in all sorts of bad things.

00:30:33.000 You start typing in Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, and it fills in all sorts of good things.

00:30:39.000 And what Dr. Epstein found is that it has a massive impact on people's decision-making and how they vote in elections.

00:30:47.000 Another example is you search what are the first one, two, three, four, five, what's the first page of results?

00:30:56.000 And what would happen in 2016?

00:30:58.000 And he studied the 2016 election: you typed in Hillary Clinton and you got positive stories.

00:31:02.000 You typed in Donald Trump and you got negative stories.

00:31:04.000 People tend to click on the first story, by the way.

00:31:06.000 The first story is much more powerful than the second, and it goes down dramatically as you go down the order of search results.

00:31:13.000 His empirical research, Dr. Epstein, concluded that in 2016, Google's manipulated search outcome shifted 2.6 million votes to the Democrats in 2016.

00:31:27.000 And even though he voted for Hillary Clinton, he was horrified at these big tech gazillionaires having that power.

00:31:35.000 He also testified that big tech has gotten more egregious and that in 2020 they could shift 15 million votes to the Democrats.

00:31:44.000 If you care about a free election, letting a handful of billionaires in Silicon Valley behave like Colossus, silence every voice that believes in liberty and advance every voice that wants to tear down America, that is incredibly dangerous for anything like free elections.

00:32:04.000 And Google just announced they are going to fund $100 million to BLM Inc.

00:32:10.000 That's what I call it.

00:32:11.000 I don't even say the phrase because I want to make sure when I say something critical, it's separate than a phrase that is in itself true.

00:32:17.000 BLM Inc. and racial justice.

00:32:18.000 So you have Google.

00:32:19.000 They have so much profit that they are putting a nine-figure investment into divisive, left-wing, postmodern type content on their platform.

00:32:31.000 They want Section 230 immunity.

00:32:33.000 Hold on a second.

00:32:34.000 If you're going to do that, then not so fast.

00:32:37.000 And so I want to also talk about the election here coming in a couple months.

00:32:41.000 As you said, Senator, we had a year that none of us could have predicted.

00:32:46.000 We knew that the left was going to try things that they've never tried before.

00:32:49.000 And you mentioned it, Michael.

00:32:51.000 We had impeachment, which would have been the number one headline news.

00:32:54.000 You know, a president gets impeached and acquitted in the Senate. 0.94

00:32:56.000 We almost go to war with Iran.

00:32:58.000 Remember that whole news cycle in January?

00:33:00.000 Charlie, until you reminded me of that, I actually had forgotten that for, what was it, a week we were told we were on the verge of World War III?

00:33:08.000 That's right.

00:33:08.000 Now nobody even remembers.

00:33:09.000 Are you telling me the president killed the world's biggest terrorist and General Soleimani, who was directly responsible for murdering over 603 U.S. servicemen and women?

00:33:19.000 That can't possibly be true.

00:33:20.000 I would have read something about it if that had happened.

00:33:22.000 You would have seen it on network news, I think.

00:33:24.000 Yes, that's just not possible, I suppose.

00:33:26.000 Right.

00:33:26.000 The very same general that was passed up for killing, for lack of a better term, by Barack Obama and Joe Biden's administration on multiple occasions.

00:33:35.000 Yes, that would be the one.

00:33:36.000 And so we go through the virus, we go through the lockdowns, and Michael, you and I talked about this at length.

00:33:41.000 I was a huge critic of the lockdowns.

00:33:44.000 Still am.

00:33:44.000 Me too.

00:33:45.000 And Senator, full disclosure, I'm disappointed with the governor in Texas with what he's been doing recently.

00:33:49.000 We can go into that.

00:33:51.000 And, you know, we are now in a moment where we're not really sure even if we're going to have a convention, if we're sure what the political ecosystem looks like.

00:34:00.000 Michael, you do this every single day.

00:34:02.000 You listen to a lot of different people hosting for radio, and you have a good kind of understanding of the conservative base.

00:34:08.000 Where are we going wrong?

00:34:09.000 Because it feels like in some ways, we as conservatives and the Republican Party, and I distinguish the two because those are two completely different things, we don't really have an ethos right now.

00:34:18.000 And in 16, we had an ethos.

00:34:20.000 In 12, we didn't.

00:34:21.000 In 2008, we didn't.

00:34:23.000 What is the message that is going to get conservatives elected and the Republican Party to victory and hopefully Donald Trump re-elected?

00:34:30.000 Very often what's happening right now is people are pretending that a political argument is really a scientific argument.

00:34:36.000 And you've seen the exploitation of so-called science, capital S, with a trademark over the E, in the name of decisions that are patently political.

00:34:45.000 And I think this new round of lockdowns, coincidentally, from people who very much would like the president not to be re-elected is good evidence of that.

00:34:53.000 That's one issue here that the right, conservatives, tend to mistake the political arguments for science and science for politics.

00:35:01.000 So I think we're playing a game on the left's terms.

00:35:05.000 We're playing sincerely.

00:35:06.000 We're trying to come to a middle ground.

00:35:08.000 We're trying to be conciliatory.

00:35:09.000 We're trying to behave responsibly, whether it's saying wear a mask in certain places or practice certain kinds of social distancing, whatever.

00:35:16.000 We want to do that responsibly, but we're not able to have that conversation because on the backdrop here, if you may have forgotten this, is this presidential election?

00:35:26.000 The left is playing this entirely politically.

00:35:28.000 There were over 1,000 public health experts who signed a letter that said that if you protest the lockdowns, that will exacerbate the virus.

00:35:37.000 And if you protest for a leftist cause, that will actually slow the spread of the virus. 0.75

00:35:41.000 That is the wokest roke virus. 0.77

00:35:44.000 United Senator is jinx by me. 0.81

00:35:46.000 But it is the wokest virus ever, where if you happen to protest the right cause, the virus comes up and says, I'm not going to infect you.

00:35:54.000 In fact, that's right.

00:35:56.000 I stand in solidarity.

00:35:57.000 You keep going, comrade.

00:35:58.000 And it will go to the lockdown rally, and they'll go infect all of them.

00:36:01.000 Or church.

00:36:02.000 That's what I think.

00:36:03.000 And you know, that's right.

00:36:04.000 You're allowed to go to a church to attack it, but you're not allowed to go in church.

00:36:07.000 But there is a reason. 0.90

00:36:08.000 It's the Wuhan virus, which means it's a communists. 0.99

00:36:11.000 That is true. 1.00

00:36:12.000 It's a fellow traveler.

00:36:14.000 You know, this problem, though, is, I think what conservatives, we think that we can have a nuanced, complex, nice, rational debate here.

00:36:23.000 In the age of people tearing down statues, setting cities on fire, looting buildings in the name of social justice, that is not the time that you're going to get the most nuanced, rational academic discussion.

00:36:33.000 This is a campaign, and I think that unless we wake up to the fact that it's a campaign, November 3rd is going to come around, and it's going to be too late before we realize it.

00:36:42.000 So, Senator, you won in 2018 against a fake Hispanic Irishman from El Paso, Robert Francis O'Rourke, who has a very bizarre fascination of taking other people's weapons away and keeping borders open.

00:36:55.000 I don't want to have to psychoanalyze Robert Francis O'Rourke here on the Verdict and Charlie Kirk show partnership here, but I do want to get your opinion on Texas and electoral trends.

00:37:04.000 You won in Texas.

00:37:05.000 I think you would agree that your race was closer than would have been projected probably from the outside.

00:37:10.000 And I was so thrilled to see you win.

00:37:12.000 And so can you just talk about what you're seeing on the ground?

00:37:15.000 What it's going to take for the president to win.

00:37:17.000 A recent poll came out that showed, I don't know if I believe this, Joe Biden up in Texas or tied in Texas or down one, something like that.

00:37:23.000 I'd love to hear what your opinion is of trends nationally politically.

00:37:28.000 Yeah.

00:37:29.000 Look, I think Texas is in play.

00:37:31.000 And if you look at nationally what's going on, so part of the media narrative, like on so many other things, is completely wrong.

00:37:40.000 So the media narrative as to why Texas is in play is because of the growing Hispanic population and because of racial and ethnic divides.

00:37:50.000 That's not true.

00:37:51.000 If you look at every election I've had in Texas, I've won over 40% of the Hispanic vote.

00:37:56.000 And I've done so campaigning for securing the border, building the wall, stopping amnesty, supporting rule of law.

00:38:04.000 That's not the challenge in Texas.

00:38:06.000 The challenge in Texas, if you look across the country, there are two broad demographic and political waves going on.

00:38:14.000 On the one hand, on the positive side, blue-collar workers are moving right.

00:38:21.000 Steel workers, truck drivers, cops, firefighters.

00:38:25.000 That is moving Midwestern states more Republican.

00:38:30.000 That's moving states like Ohio, like Pennsylvania, like Wisconsin, like Michigan, all Republican.

00:38:36.000 Every one of those, Donald Trump won in 2016.

00:38:40.000 Minnesota, Trump came within a point of winning.

00:38:43.000 That is blue-collar workers who the Democratic Party have abandoned moving towards the Republican Party.

00:38:50.000 The countervailing political movement is suburban voters, and particular suburban women, are moving left.

00:38:59.000 And they don't like Donald J. Trump.

00:39:02.000 I mean, there is a real problem in the suburbs.

00:39:06.000 That means that heavily suburban states like Georgia, like Texas, like Arizona, where you are right now, Arizona is a giant suburb.

00:39:16.000 It's all Maritopa County, the whole state.

00:39:20.000 And those voters have moved significantly left.

00:39:25.000 You look at, all right, so Texas, let's talk about the 2018 election against Beto O'Rourke.

00:39:30.000 Beto raised over $80 million.

00:39:33.000 He outspent my campaign three to one.

00:39:36.000 To give you a sense of what that means on the ground, and you are a wonderful organizer, so you can appreciate this.

00:39:42.000 My campaign had 18 paid campaign staffers, 18, 18.

00:39:48.000 The O'Rourke campaign had 805.

00:39:52.000 I mean, that's the difference.

00:39:57.000 It was the most expensive U.S. Senate race in hard money in the history of the United States.

00:40:04.000 That's how much they wanted to take me out.

00:40:06.000 Wow.

00:40:07.000 And they more than doubled Democratic turnout.

00:40:10.000 This is where you've got to pause and understand this is real and it's dangerous.

00:40:14.000 They took Democratic turnout from $1.8 million all the way up to $4 million.

00:40:20.000 That is crazy, and that's hard to do.

00:40:23.000 Now, the reason we won, we turned out 4.2 million Republicans, and 0.2 was the whole margin.

00:40:30.000 So in 2020, listen, I believe Donald Trump's going to win Texas, but every leftist in the state is going to show up because they hate him.

00:40:40.000 They will crawl over broken glass.

00:40:43.000 And if we diminish that threat, if we underestimate that threat, that's how we lose the country, which means we've got to get everyone else to show up.

00:40:50.000 Yeah.

00:40:52.000 And so Michael, to piggyback off of that, and Senator, we're so thrilled you won, I have to say.

00:40:57.000 And I just, we're huge fans of yours, and we appreciate what you do for our country.

00:41:02.000 And as I say that, I have equal amount of repulsion for your opponent.

00:41:07.000 There's some people that are in the political system that I think are just so repugnant, and that would be Robert Francis O'Rourke.

00:41:13.000 So it was a very passionate race to see to make sure that you came across the finish line.

00:41:18.000 By the way, a quick aside, when Beto launched his presidential campaign, he launched it in El Paso, and the AP reported that he gave part of his announcement speech in his native tongue.

00:41:34.000 Gaelic.

00:41:34.000 Which that's exactly what I tweeted.

00:41:37.000 I said, wow, I've never seen a political speech in Gaelic.

00:41:41.000 And it really is, it's the absurdity of the modern left.

00:41:45.000 Oh, well, I mean, but it's also, there's a deeper philosophical question there, which is he's pandering. 0.76

00:41:51.000 I think it's insulting to Hispanic voters.

00:41:53.000 And I talk to a lot of Hispanic people that think it's incredibly insulting.

00:41:56.000 It's like, well, my nanny or something called me Beto when I grew up.

00:42:00.000 Well, if she called you the Texas chainsaw massacre, did you say that on your campaign side? 0.98

00:42:04.000 I mean, that's ridiculous. 0.81

00:42:05.000 So, Michael, where are Republicans going wrong right now? 0.92

00:42:10.000 So the Republicans are going wrong.

00:42:12.000 We have like three, four hours.

00:42:13.000 I know, yeah, Charlie, there's no way we're going to be able to admit all of this.

00:42:19.000 Where aren't they going wrong?

00:42:20.000 You know, in the Republicans' defense, I've been very critical of Republicans in recent weeks, but in their defense, they've got everything working against them.

00:42:28.000 I have often pointed out when the left complains about institutional oppression, the left controls every major institution, the mainstream media, Hollywood, big tech, higher education, lower education, administrative government.

00:42:39.000 They control all of them.

00:42:40.000 So if there is institutional oppression, it would seem to me it would be the left's fault, not the right's fault.

00:42:46.000 They've got all of this working against them at the same time, and they're going to turn it up.

00:42:50.000 They're going to gin it up every single day until November 3rd, because so much of this is about the election.

00:42:57.000 So I understand that.

00:42:58.000 I think what Republicans are trying to do, we've talked a lot on the Verdicts podcast about the timidity of many elected Republicans on how afraid many elected Republicans are of losing their positions and losing nice blurbs in the mainstream media.

00:43:13.000 So what they want to do is stand in the middle of the road.

00:43:17.000 They want to try to play both sides and go wishy-washy.

00:43:21.000 And the fact of the matter is, especially at a time like this, if you stand in the middle of the road, you are going to get hit by a truck.

00:43:29.000 The stakes are only going to increase day by day.

00:43:32.000 We are now at the point where we're not just talking fighting over tax rates or something.

00:43:35.000 We're fighting over George Washington being pulled down off of his pedestal in the American mind.

00:43:42.000 We are fighting over our very country.

00:43:45.000 Which side of that battle are you going to stand on?

00:43:48.000 Pick a side and fight.

00:43:50.000 Well, and it's not a policy debate.

00:43:51.000 And this is something that I talk to certain members of Congress.

00:43:54.000 And Senator, you get this.

00:43:55.000 This is a culture war.

00:43:56.000 In a culture war, there are winners and losers.

00:43:59.000 It's not a bill where you can place an amendment or you can kill it in the committee or you can say, oh, we're going to vote on it next year.

00:44:05.000 It's either you have a country or you don't have a country.

00:44:08.000 And I wrote a piece and I spoke to the president about this and I was so thrilled about his Mount Rushmore speech.

00:44:13.000 I think it was the best speech of his entire presidency where basically he said, we need to get our kids.

00:44:18.000 I agree with that.

00:44:20.000 Yeah, we need to get our kids to love America again.

00:44:20.000 Yes.

00:44:23.000 And the more you talk about suburban voters, I believe a lot of suburban women voters in particular are repulsed by the growing anarchy and indoctrination that's happening in our schools and the disorder and the disunity and the breakdown of the rule of law.

00:44:37.000 I think that is a really winning, a phenomenally winning issue if we articulate it correctly.

00:44:41.000 Where we are not going to win, though, is where certain senators, one from Indiana, all of a sudden says nice things about BLM Inc. and all of a sudden wants to get on the right side of police immunity or whatever issue that was.

00:44:55.000 I think that, Michael, you've said this before, either it was at Politicon and it was a call all the way back to Phyllis Schlafly.

00:45:01.000 People want a choice, not an echo right now.

00:45:03.000 I really believe that.

00:45:04.000 And the more that we are able to say, here are the dividing lines, we do believe that America is the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.

00:45:12.000 We do believe that the Constitution is the greatest political document ever written.

00:45:15.000 We have a history to be proud of, that America has made mistakes, but we're not a mistake.

00:45:19.000 Prove us wrong.

00:45:21.000 And Charlie, you bring up this Phyllis Schlafly point.

00:45:24.000 We could also go to Ronald Reagan's point, which is Ronald Reagan was asked about his strategy on the Cold War.

00:45:28.000 He said, my strategy is simple.

00:45:30.000 We win, you lose.

00:45:30.000 We win.

00:45:32.000 And when we're talking about this battle for the soul of America, for American history, for all the things we cherish, my strategy is simple.

00:45:39.000 We win and you lose.

00:45:41.000 And in order to win, that means you have to play offense and set the terms of engagement.

00:45:46.000 I think the president is at his best when he's an offensive political player, when he actually sets the tone.

00:45:51.000 And I think the winning issue here is what is America?

00:45:56.000 And unfortunately, that now has to be a ballot referendum issue for probably the first time in our nation's history when you think about it.

00:46:03.000 In 2016, it was sort of that way.

00:46:05.000 But you now have up or down the way you vote.

00:46:08.000 It's going to be, I either think America's a beautiful, benevolent, generous country that's worthy of our preservation, or this is all a mistake.

00:46:16.000 It's a corrosive rot.

00:46:17.000 We should just fundamentally destroy it.

00:46:19.000 And I'm really ashamed to be in this country.

00:46:21.000 And I hate to put it in those very simple terms, but that's really where it is.

00:46:25.000 Senator, I'll get your thoughts on that.

00:46:28.000 Yeah, look, I think you are absolutely right what the stakes are in this election.

00:46:32.000 And in terms of what Republicans need to do, number one, we need to stand up and fight.

00:46:38.000 Stand up and fight unapologetically for America, for our founding principles, for the greatness of this nation.

00:46:46.000 Hands down, the best characteristic of President Trump is that he's got a backbone, and he's willing to make decisions that most Republicans are too scared of their own shadow to make.

00:46:56.000 And the last four years I've worked very, very closely with the President.

00:47:01.000 And the policies that have been enacted have been enormously beneficial.

00:47:07.000 Now, at the same time, we've got to engage in winning people's hearts and minds, in winning the argument.

00:47:16.000 Margaret Thatcher said, first you win the argument, then you win the vote.

00:47:20.000 And you know, Charlie, I will say, you and I have known each other a long time.

00:47:24.000 The work you've done with Turning Point USA, I remember sitting down at tables when Turning Point USA was just kind of an idea. 0.81

00:47:32.000 And frankly, it was an idea that the Republican Graybeards laughed at you and said, Oh, come on, young people, they're the white whale.

00:47:40.000 They're never going to do anything. 0.67

00:47:42.000 They're distracted.

00:47:43.000 They don't care.

00:47:44.000 And you had a vision and you had a vision of organizing and engaging.

00:47:48.000 And over the years, I mean, I've spoken at probably over a dozen turning point events with young people who love liberty. 0.94

00:47:58.000 Things like, all right, y'all's t-shirts, socialism sucks.

00:48:02.000 Like it is if you were to pick two words right at the heart of a message, it's great.

00:48:07.000 But what we've got to engage is why podcasts, why your podcasts matter, it's why what we're doing on verdict I think and believe matters.

00:48:15.000 We've got to arm people with the information.

00:48:18.000 The great debate between socialism and free enterprise, too many people don't know the difference between the two, don't understand.

00:48:26.000 And if you look at, all right, let's talk for a minute about some of the suburban voters.

00:48:31.000 You're right that the angry riots, that the burning and the violence, that's scary.

00:48:38.000 And the Democrats have gotten so extreme and so radical that it should be driving voters in drobes to vote Republican.

00:48:48.000 Now, the countervailing side and the danger is: look, most people, and especially suburban female voters, they don't want to vote for someone they think is a scary, violent racist.

00:48:59.000 And that's sort of the Democrats. 0.97

00:49:02.000 They go to it over and over and over again: bigot racist, bigot racist. 0.90

00:49:06.000 And the tone, if they scare people enough, that's their strategy to win.

00:49:12.000 And it's something where we need to engage, and most Republicans are terrified of race.

00:49:16.000 They're terrified of addressing racial issues.

00:49:19.000 As you know, and I've seen some of my favorite videos of you are confronting these ignorant, angry mobs and confronting them, number one, with a smile.

00:49:31.000 You're not yelling and screaming at them, but you're confronting them with facts. 0.98

00:49:35.000 And the facts are: number one, the Democratic Party's history on race is utterly abominable, disgraceful, embarrassing, and they should bow their heads in shame. 0.60

00:49:45.000 It was Democrats who founded the KKK.

00:49:47.000 It was Democrats who wrote Jim Crow. 0.69

00:49:50.000 It was Democrats who put in place separate but equal and segregated schools.

00:49:54.000 It was Democrats who filibustered the Civil Rights Acts.

00:49:58.000 And my party, your party, the Republican Party, we were founded to end slavery.

00:50:04.000 Abraham Lincoln was our first president.

00:50:06.000 And Democrats like to say, well, okay, but that was ancient history.

00:50:10.000 What about now?

00:50:12.000 All right, what about now? 0.98

00:50:13.000 The sitting governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, a Democrat, had on his damn medical school yearbook page a picture of a guy dressed as a Klansman. 0.98

00:50:23.000 And his first defense, by the way, the first day, which the New York Times and all the media has conveniently forgotten about, was a guy as a Klansman, a guy in blackface. 0.97

00:50:32.000 He said, Yeah, I could have been one of those two.

00:50:34.000 He didn't specify which one.

00:50:36.000 So they're one of two scenarios.

00:50:37.000 Either Ralph Northam said either that was a picture of Democrat Ralph Northam dressed as a Klansman.

00:50:45.000 That's one possibility. 0.93

00:50:47.000 Or the second possibility is it isn't actually him, but he said, you know, for my yearbook page, captures me, medical school, and what I stand for more than anything else is some jackass in a white sheet dressed as a Klansman.

00:51:03.000 And if you can't say categorically, unequivocally, I've never in my life dressed as a Klansman, that is the Democratic governor of Virginia.

00:51:11.000 And so when it comes to race, we should be, look, I'm proud to defend equal right for every American, but too many Republicans don't know our facts, don't know our history, and are scared.

00:51:25.000 Ooh, don't call me a bigot.

00:51:27.000 Look, don't be a bigot and defend equal rights and equal justice.

00:51:33.000 And by the way, Black Lives Matter.

00:51:35.000 The radical Marxists who run that organization. 0.98

00:51:38.000 What they are advocating for, a Marxist overthrow of the United States government and abolishing the police departments of our country would result in more murders, more rapes, more assaults, and it would kill black lives. 0.98

00:51:51.000 Those leftists are arguing for more dead African Americans, more dead Hispanics, more dead Americans. 0.97

00:51:58.000 And if we're afraid of engaging and saying, look, America, we is the most extraordinary country in the history of the world. 0.57

00:52:09.000 We've got to engage on that terrain of ideas.

00:52:12.000 You're right.

00:52:12.000 The Mount Rush War speech was fabulous.

00:52:14.000 But we've got to get it out to people because, frankly, you and I both read the New York Times and the Washington Post that described it as dark and divisive.

00:52:23.000 And we've got to get around the media and straight to the people.

00:52:26.000 Senator, what you just articulated, if we had 54 senators that said exactly what you just said, this wouldn't even be an issue.

00:52:33.000 If we had 10 senators that said what you just said, this wouldn't be an issue.

00:52:37.000 They say, well, how do I fight?

00:52:39.000 That's how you fight.

00:52:40.000 You get righteously indignant towards the radical left that wants to destroy our country.

00:52:44.000 Michael, we have a hard stop, I know.

00:52:46.000 Any closing thoughts?

00:52:47.000 Going into November, what is your prediction?

00:52:50.000 What are you seeing and hearing?

00:52:50.000 I know we've got about 90 seconds out.

00:52:53.000 We've got 90 seconds.

00:52:54.000 I can sum it up in, I think, one sentence.

00:52:57.000 It's up to us.

00:52:59.000 It's up to us.

00:53:00.000 What the media, what the, and I described the media and the Democratic Party and the left, they're all the same thing.

00:53:06.000 What they tried to do in 2016 is what they're trying to do now.

00:53:09.000 They're trying to tell you that it's inevitable.

00:53:11.000 It's inevitable that the Democrats win.

00:53:13.000 They're going to win the White House.

00:53:14.000 They're going to win the Senate.

00:53:15.000 They're going to win everything. 1.00

00:53:16.000 Oh, you silly Republicans. 1.00

00:53:18.000 Don't even show up to vote. 1.00

00:53:19.000 Don't even leave your homes.

00:53:20.000 And it's a lie.

00:53:21.000 They lie like that all the time.

00:53:23.000 They want to tell you you have no power.

00:53:25.000 You have no say in your government.

00:53:27.000 You have no ability to access this sort of information.

00:53:30.000 Yes, you can, but it's up to you.

00:53:32.000 Are you willing to take that opportunity?

00:53:34.000 Are you willing to exercise your power and your responsibility as a U.S. citizen?

00:53:40.000 Or are you going to roll over?

00:53:41.000 I sure hope it's the former, but we're free to choose.

00:53:44.000 And Michael, let me ask you a question.

00:53:46.000 If listeners, if viewers want to engage and hear more about the Verdict podcast, hear more about the principles that underlie our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, hear more about the inside, about the battles in the Senate and the cloakroom and what's going on to save this country.

00:54:01.000 How do they do that if you want to actually do that?

00:54:03.000 Well, this is the big part, and I'm so glad you asked that question, Senator.

00:54:07.000 You can go to VerdictPodcast.com.

00:54:09.000 You can go subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, YouTube, everywhere, Spotify.

00:54:14.000 Until we get shut down, we're going to be in as many places as possible because the left allows their adherents, their followers, to be armed with facts, with arguments, with some clarity of vision.

00:54:25.000 We are trying to offer that on the Verdict Podcast.

00:54:27.000 Charlie, I know you do an excellent job, not just on this show, but through TPUS.

00:54:31.000 And also leave a five-star review for us.

00:54:33.000 And I would say, actually, I'd go further.

00:54:35.000 You should leave a five-star review.

00:54:36.000 If you want to leave four stars, just go do something else.

00:54:39.000 You need to mow your lawn.

00:54:41.000 But if you want to leave five, we need you to do it.

00:54:43.000 And, you know, on YouTube, if you sign up and subscribe on YouTube, I guess you can click on the bell and get notified.

00:54:48.000 You will find out when a new episode drops.

00:54:50.000 And we've got some pretty great episodes dropping that we've just shot over the last few days.

00:54:54.000 Absolutely.

00:54:55.000 And we've got to fight for our America.

00:54:58.000 Everybody, check out the Verdict Podcast.

00:54:59.000 Type it in, subscribe.

00:55:01.000 I never do this, but I hope that we can get them higher in the charts on Apple Podcasts.

00:55:05.000 So we'll have a good one-two, a good jockeying position, right?

00:55:09.000 You guys are the best.

00:55:10.000 Thank you, and you're both fighters for freedom and liberty and for America.

00:55:13.000 God bless you guys.

00:55:14.000 Thank you.

00:55:15.000 Well, thank you, Charlie.

00:55:16.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:55:20.000 What a great conversation that was with Senator Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles.

00:55:24.000 If you guys want to get involved with Turning Point USA, the nation's largest conservative student organization, fighting for freedom, liberty, American exceptionalism, and protecting our country from the radical left, go to tpusa.com.

00:55:36.000 That is tpusa.com.

00:55:39.000 Get engaged, get involved, start a chapter, chip in some money if you can.

00:55:42.000 It's tpusa.com, tpusa.com.

00:55:45.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:55:48.000 Please consider supporting our program.

00:55:50.000 Maybe $20 a month, $50 a month.

00:55:52.000 Some people are giving $100 a month at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:55:56.000 CharlieKirk.com/slash support.

00:55:58.000 That helps pay for our research team.

00:55:59.000 It helps pay for costs associated to deliver you 12 podcasts a week, sometimes even more, at charliekirk.com/slash support and keeps us protected from leftist boycotts.

00:56:11.000 God bless you guys.

00:56:12.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:56:13.000 If you want a signed copy of the MAGA doctrine, type in Charlie Kirk show to your podcast provider.

00:56:17.000 Hit subscribe.

00:56:19.000 Give us a five-star review.

00:56:20.000 Screenshot it.

00:56:21.000 And then email us freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:56:23.000 Thank you for listening.

00:56:24.000 Till next time, God

The Charlie Kirk Show - July 16, 2020

Sen. Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles | Fake Hispanic Irishmen, the State of Texas, and 2020’s Rapidly Shifting Electoral Landscape

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