The Charlie Kirk Show - July 10, 2025


Shock And Awe 2.0 Is The Key To MAGA Unity


Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

175.82515

Word count

6,570

Sentence count

531


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the CharlieKirkShow, host Charlie Kirk is joined by Mark Halperin to discuss the Epstein scandal, the Trump administration's response to it, and what it means for the future of the country.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
00:00:04.000 We examine Epstein and also a plan for President Trump to chart his path forward, Shock and Auth 2.0, as Mark Halperin joins the show.
00:00:12.000 Get involved with Turning Point USA Today at tpusa.com.
00:00:15.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:17.000 Become a member today, members.charliekirk.com.
00:00:20.000 That is members.charliekirk.com.
00:00:22.000 And email me as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:25.000 That is freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:27.000 Okay, everybody, it is the event of the summer coming up in Tampa, Florida.
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00:01:18.000 SAS2025.com.
00:01:22.000 Email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.
00:01:24.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:01:25.000 Here we go.
00:01:26.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:01:28.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:01:30.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:01:33.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House.
00:01:36.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:01:37.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:01:38.000 His spirit, his love of this country.
00:01:40.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, turning point USA.
00:01:47.000 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.
00:01:56.000 That's why we are here.
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00:02:24.000 We're going to find out real quick whether or not we are a movement or this is just a moment.
00:02:30.000 President Donald Trump won a popular vote majority.
00:02:33.000 And when you are building and when you have won a multi-ethnic, multi-generational, multi-viewpoint coalition, it's inevitable that you have moments like what's happened the last couple of weeks.
00:02:45.000 You're not going to be able to keep everyone happy, including I know a lot of you in the base right now.
00:02:49.000 It's been a very instructive week.
00:02:53.000 You know, by the time I'm 35, I'm 31, I'm going to be able to say I've been through some stuff.
00:02:57.000 I'm going to be able to teach a masterclass.
00:03:00.000 I learned a lot this week.
00:03:02.000 I learned how you don't handle PR when it comes to a story that is as complex, as sensitive, as high profile as the Epstein thing.
00:03:13.000 It started on a Sunday night.
00:03:14.000 The whole thing was so perplexing to me because you sign the one big beautiful bill on Independence Day, and then on a holiday weekend, going into a news week, you decide to leak it to Axios that it's like, case closed, don't ask any questions, there is no list.
00:03:30.000 The whole thing was like, profoundly confusing is the term I used on Newsmax.
00:03:35.000 And again, trust me, I don't want to talk about Epstein every single day.
00:03:37.000 But it's been very interesting because this week, sometimes news stories go away.
00:03:43.000 Sometimes news stories kind of you have a one-day cycle.
00:03:47.000 This is a rare occurrence where the news story is actually getting bigger.
00:03:51.000 Sometimes they have legs.
00:03:53.000 And it's not just on social media.
00:03:55.000 Social media is a little bit deceiving, especially X. X is very goofy and wacky lately.
00:04:00.000 But it's not just the online right.
00:04:02.000 And it's as if something just happened last evening or yesterday afternoon.
00:04:07.000 I was starting to get texts from people that are not necessarily politicos.
00:04:12.000 Trump voting adjacent mid-propensity voters that might listen to a podcast once or twice a week.
00:04:21.000 That's about the criteria.
00:04:22.000 They are not like you in this audience in the Charlie Kirk faithful.
00:04:27.000 And they started to text me, Charlie, what is going on with this Epstein thing?
00:04:30.000 I'm confused.
00:04:31.000 It doesn't make sense.
00:04:32.000 What is going on?
00:04:33.000 And the story started to grow and it had legs.
00:04:36.000 The last 48 hours, this has been building to a crescendo.
00:04:41.000 And I would much rather be talking about which we should be focused on, which is mass deportations, which is focusing on dismantling the administrative state, curtailing the size and scope of government.
00:04:53.000 When you build a coalition like President Trump won in a popular vote majority, you're going to have different viewpoints.
00:05:00.000 But an undercurrent of the entire Trump movement was that we demand transparency from our government because we were lied to during COVID and we were lied to about the Hunter Biden laptop and we were lied to about 51 Intel agents and we were lied to about Ukraine.
00:05:17.000 We were lied to about so many different things that we want to try to rebuild trust in our government.
00:05:23.000 What's been very interesting and instructive to me is that this is not only a young online libertarian transparency push.
00:05:32.000 Instead, this seems like it's spanning multiple generations.
00:05:37.000 And you and this audience have an email me, freedom at charliekirk.com, very ticked off and very confused.
00:05:44.000 And this is going to be a testing moment for all of us.
00:05:49.000 What we do next is going to be critically important.
00:05:52.000 Radical transparency has always been the hallmark of the Trump administration.
00:05:57.000 And I believe it will continue to be.
00:06:00.000 People panicked over tariffs.
00:06:02.000 They are panicked over Iran.
00:06:04.000 And some are panicked over Epstein.
00:06:06.000 So right now, the people who love and defend the president want more information.
00:06:11.000 And very similar to kind of how they did the JFK files, people say, well, why don't you just put a link of all the files out there?
00:06:16.000 This is breaking news over the evening.
00:06:18.000 This is Department of Justice from the post-Millennial Cut 403.
00:06:22.000 Department of Justice reports to court that it's still reviewing Epstein records for possible release judicial watch reveals.
00:06:28.000 So we're all over the place.
00:06:29.000 We're back.
00:06:30.000 We're forth.
00:06:30.000 That is a positive step, though.
00:06:32.000 It shows that this has been a bigger grassroots push than I think people realize.
00:06:39.000 It shows that people are listening.
00:06:41.000 But let's take a broader step back, though.
00:06:45.000 50 years from now, the most important two fights of whether or not this administration and this presidency will be a success are whether or not we can recalibrate the administrative state and dismantle it down to the bone and to the core, and whether or not we can have 15 to 20 million deportations.
00:07:05.000 That is what will determine the future of the country.
00:07:08.000 And at that moment, this is where coalition politics matters.
00:07:12.000 Because for coalitional politics, you know, some people are upset because we're sending more arms to Ukraine.
00:07:17.000 I'm certainly not thrilled about that.
00:07:19.000 Some people are upset because of what happened between Israel, Iran.
00:07:24.000 Honestly, I think President Trump handled that beautifully, and I think that was a masterclass in a third way of foreign policy.
00:07:31.000 But all of this is happening at such a time where the fault lines, and every movement has fault lines, are being exposed in a rapid period of time.
00:07:41.000 It's as if this is compressed into a short 10-day window, and no movement can sustain that.
00:07:47.000 No movement can sustain within a 10-day window, we are going to flush out all the fault lines.
00:07:52.000 And the tragedy, honestly, is that a week ago, President Trump signed his Hallmark piece of legislation that deserves a lot of attention.
00:08:00.000 And a week later, no one's talking about the Big Beautiful Bill.
00:08:03.000 It should have been a week of celebration.
00:08:06.000 It should have been a PR week all about this.
00:08:08.000 And instead, that is not the case.
00:08:11.000 What happens next will determine whether or not this is just a moment or whether this is a long-lasting multi-generational movement.
00:08:20.000 And there are two major things that need to happen.
00:08:22.000 And here is my advice to the administration, both privately and publicly.
00:08:26.000 Take this weekend and go to Camp David.
00:08:28.000 That's my first piece of advice.
00:08:30.000 No reporters.
00:08:31.000 Put your phones out of the room and get yourselves back into the room.
00:08:34.000 Go to Camp David.
00:08:35.000 Get out of the White House.
00:08:37.000 Get the senior staff.
00:08:38.000 Get cabinet officials and go to Camp David.
00:08:41.000 Cancel all your plans.
00:08:42.000 If you're coming to SAS, still come to SAS, but then go to Camp David.
00:08:46.000 You need to have a little bit of a pause button here.
00:08:48.000 It's been a fast six months.
00:08:50.000 You got to have the president, the vice president, get Marco Rubio, you'll get everyone in the room.
00:08:54.000 That's number one.
00:08:55.000 Number two, plan out another wave of shock and awe.
00:09:00.000 Have a couple days to kind of have some fun, have some laughs.
00:09:03.000 Can you believe how much we've been through the last six months?
00:09:05.000 And then what we need is we need the shock and awe again.
00:09:09.000 Plan out another 100 executive orders.
00:09:13.000 Draft them.
00:09:14.000 Get them ready to go.
00:09:15.000 Go quiet for a day or two.
00:09:17.000 And then boom, come out and have President Donald Trump in the Oval Office and just start signing 100 executive orders.
00:09:24.000 Remember how that was?
00:09:25.000 Remember how good that felt?
00:09:27.000 That could still happen.
00:09:28.000 Remember the first couple of days when President Trump was signing stuff and people are all over the place?
00:09:33.000 That is the type of energy that we need.
00:09:35.000 Go to Camp David.
00:09:37.000 Reassess.
00:09:38.000 Take a breath.
00:09:39.000 You guys have been through a lot.
00:09:40.000 You guys have been to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
00:09:42.000 You guys have been to the UAE.
00:09:44.000 You've been all over the country.
00:09:45.000 Marco Rubio is in Malaysia.
00:09:47.000 We got the Russian-Ukrainian thing.
00:09:49.000 No one slept during Israel and Iran.
00:09:50.000 You got to pass the big, beautiful bill.
00:09:52.000 The border is completely secure.
00:09:53.000 You guys have been through a lot.
00:09:56.000 By the way, this is all on the heels of a very high-pressure transition after the highest stake presidential campaign ever seen after President Trump got shot.
00:10:04.000 These guys are on fumes of fumes.
00:10:06.000 Take a well-deserved long weekend at Camp David.
00:10:09.000 Take a deep breath.
00:10:10.000 Have the senior staff together.
00:10:12.000 And then plot out and plan out Shockanov 2.0 because we still have a lot of stuff that we can do.
00:10:18.000 There are hundreds of potentially drafted executive orders, and it's time to wind up and go right back into the arena.
00:10:24.000 Because I get it.
00:10:26.000 I get that this whole thing can grind you down and can wear you down.
00:10:29.000 But the executive orders must be focused on two things.
00:10:32.000 Deportations, dismantling the administrative state.
00:10:35.000 By the way, think of all the stuff that we can still do.
00:10:37.000 We got Department of Education stuff that we still have to fight.
00:10:40.000 We have Maha promises that we still have to fulfill.
00:10:42.000 We could restore the trust around the, basically across the board.
00:10:47.000 We have to break up the college cartel.
00:10:49.000 They're breaking up the publishing cartel.
00:10:50.000 No pharmaceutical advertisements on TV.
00:10:52.000 I mean, we have dozens of campaign promises.
00:10:55.000 The NGO cartel.
00:10:56.000 We got to go after the actual Mexican drug cartels, the Sonola drug cartel.
00:11:00.000 We have 88% of the Trump administration left in front of us.
00:11:04.000 And I get it.
00:11:04.000 It can wear you down.
00:11:05.000 And people say, oh, you know, it's breaking up the coalition.
00:11:07.000 The coalition only breaks if you allow it to break.
00:11:10.000 And my advice to President Trump and his team, take a breath, take a pause, go to Camp David and plot out Shock and Aub 2.0.
00:11:19.000 Look, the headlines are getting darker by the day, escalating global conflicts, shaky supply chains, and an unstable power grid.
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00:12:17.000 And part of that shock and awe is that I think that anything that is not proprietary, anything that does not involve the trafficking of kids, at least give us some of the elements of the Epstein stuff.
00:12:29.000 That's the least you could do.
00:12:29.000 Or give us who is the cell block partners where Epstein was.
00:12:34.000 Again, I'm not overly interested in Epstein.
00:12:36.000 I'm not.
00:12:36.000 Like, we have not done endless shows on it.
00:12:39.000 We haven't done a lot of podcasts on it.
00:12:41.000 We're focused on a lot.
00:12:43.000 We're focused on very macro and sometimes specific micro stuff.
00:12:46.000 Other programs have made it kind of their shtick.
00:12:51.000 So during Shock and Awe 2.0, which President Trump has to do, declassify all documents from 9-11 and before.
00:12:59.000 Go on a Transparency blitz.
00:13:02.000 Literally sit at the table at the resolute desk once it is planned out and just go on a transparency blitz.
00:13:08.000 We're declassifying this.
00:13:12.000 Boom, boom, boom.
00:13:14.000 MLK, RFK being shot, one after the other.
00:13:17.000 Let the American people see it.
00:13:19.000 We're declassifying the COVID stuff.
00:13:21.000 We're declassifying just Russia Gate, crossfire hurricane.
00:13:27.000 And then do a series of executive orders, go further to break the college cartel, authorize some sort of a military cooperation against the actual cartels, and then sit at the resolute desk and say, we are now marshaling back our focus to this hemisphere.
00:13:43.000 You want to get your base excited?
00:13:47.000 Panama Canal and Greenland.
00:13:49.000 Hemispheric dominance.
00:13:52.000 Very well received by your base.
00:13:54.000 To have dominance over the Panama Canal.
00:13:56.000 Kick the CCP out of core institutions in our country.
00:13:59.000 Reverse all of Obama's consent decrees.
00:14:02.000 We need President Trump back into the arena where he is at his best.
00:14:06.000 But I think it starts with a Camp David retreat.
00:14:09.000 I think it starts with just a little bit of a reassess and a reset.
00:14:12.000 And that's okay.
00:14:13.000 There's nothing wrong with it.
00:14:14.000 Some people say, oh, it's because, guys, people need rest.
00:14:20.000 No PR, no publicity, no cameras, no press pool, no X live streams, just camaraderie, reflection, reorientation.
00:14:31.000 Presidents passed, Ronald Reagan and many others would go to Camp David at very high stakes thing.
00:14:36.000 And I think this administration deserves it.
00:14:38.000 Look at all they've done.
00:14:39.000 Do you understand that when they fly in Air Force One, the entire staff doesn't fly when they go, they don't sleep when you go to Saudi Arabia.
00:14:48.000 You're literally sleeping on the floor.
00:14:49.000 I mean, this is a tough job.
00:14:50.000 And they got to come back and they got to be sharp in front of the press, in front of the world.
00:14:54.000 They deserve just a weekend to take a breath and be like, wow, we won the election.
00:14:59.000 We crushed the transition and here we are.
00:15:02.000 And you got to find out some way to address this Epstein in a new way.
00:15:05.000 You got to figure that out in some way.
00:15:06.000 But that's just one thing.
00:15:07.000 Again, I don't want to get too emphasized.
00:15:08.000 It's important, but we got to stay focused on civilizational implication issues.
00:15:14.000 How are we going to get more deportations?
00:15:16.000 By the way, plot out a potential indictment plan of all of these Sanctuary City mayors that are getting in the way.
00:15:23.000 Go indict Karen Bass, Brandon Johnson, boom, in one day.
00:15:27.000 You're getting in the way of ICE.
00:15:28.000 We are going to indict you.
00:15:30.000 Shock and awe.
00:15:31.000 What matters 50 years from now is whether or not we take back control of the administrative state and we have mass deportations.
00:15:39.000 What is the common denominator, though, between CrossFire Hurricane and Epstein and all this stuff?
00:15:45.000 Is that there is a super government below the surface that we need to exert dominion over, that we need to exert control over.
00:15:55.000 And that is the fight.
00:15:56.000 We have been focused on that since day one, that the real fight is not Republican or Democrat.
00:16:01.000 It is going to be bureaucrat versus citizen.
00:16:04.000 It is going to be deep state versus the Constitution.
00:16:07.000 It is going to be surf, which is what they want you to be, against oligarch, the technocratic state, the council of experts.
00:16:15.000 And then I want to see President Trump right back in that resolute desk, just firing off 100 shotguns.
00:16:20.000 Don't even tell anyone it's coming.
00:16:22.000 All of a sudden, say, I'm calling a press conference and you have, can we get that picture of Shotgun 1.0 where he just had folders stacked and he within an hour and a half and he was casually with his Sharpie signing.
00:16:36.000 Oh, there's an executive order on that.
00:16:38.000 People have been waiting a long time on that.
00:16:39.000 Do you remember how good that felt?
00:16:41.000 The momentum?
00:16:42.000 Here is a rule of MAGA.
00:16:45.000 And I've been around for 10 years, so I can say this now.
00:16:47.000 And I wrote the MAGA doctrine.
00:16:49.000 Trump is at his best when he is on offense.
00:16:52.000 He sets the terms.
00:16:54.000 There it is right there.
00:16:56.000 He's able to frame the debate.
00:16:58.000 We as a movement are at our weakest when we are on defense.
00:17:02.000 RussiaGate, January 6th, we are at our weakest when we are backpenned.
00:17:09.000 See those folders?
00:17:09.000 I want to see that again.
00:17:10.000 I want to see White House aides flood into the oval with the most based, crisp, imaginable executive orders on every possible topic, border, deportations, Sanctuary City mayors, college cartel, school choice, public sector teacher unions.
00:17:28.000 We need to keep President Donald Trump right back there on a transparency blitz and an executive order blitz.
00:17:34.000 Reorient, recalibrate, and reassert dominance over the executive branch.
00:17:44.000 America is at a crossroads.
00:17:46.000 Families and communities are shaken by instability, gripped by fear, and dealing with profound political instability.
00:17:53.000 In these uncertain times, too many people are turning to desperate measures and false promises for answers.
00:17:58.000 But here's the truth.
00:17:59.000 The mission of the church has never been more clear and necessary.
00:18:03.000 Look, it's time to step beyond the comfort of our buildings and boldly reclaim our streets with the redemptive power and transformative love of Jesus Christ.
00:18:12.000 Nothing else will set you free except the love of Jesus.
00:18:16.000 That's why Saturate USA matters.
00:18:18.000 This isn't just a program.
00:18:20.000 It's a nationwide movement of courageous churches and passionate believers uniting with one clear goal, bringing the gospel and Jesus Christ to every home in America.
00:18:30.000 At saturateusa.org, you and your church can step into this critical moment by adopting your local zip code and sharing Jesus Christ with your local community.
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00:18:51.000 Rally your volunteers.
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00:19:19.000 Love God, love people, proclaim Jesus, and make him known.
00:19:22.000 Saturateusa.org.
00:19:27.000 Joining us now is Mark Halperin, editor-in-chief of Two-Way and host of Next Up on the Megan Kelly Network.
00:19:34.000 Mark, great to see you.
00:19:35.000 Mark, I caught your interview with Megan Kelly, I think it was yesterday, where you were discussing the Epstein story.
00:19:41.000 This is an unusual one where it seems as if it is growing in its interest and with velocity over the last couple of days.
00:19:49.000 What is your analysis as a reporter of how the Trump administration has handled this?
00:19:55.000 And what would you say is the political implications of this?
00:19:58.000 Well, first of all, nice to be back.
00:20:00.000 And if you want to know why I'm not, as is our usual practice, wearing a ripped and wrinkled t-shirt, it's because I had your cousin, I mean, your friend Michael Knowles on my podcast today.
00:20:10.000 And as you know, he's an Ivy League dweeb.
00:20:12.000 I knew he'd wear a sports jacket.
00:20:13.000 So that's right.
00:20:14.000 He always dresses up.
00:20:15.000 That's why I'm overdressed.
00:20:17.000 Okay, so there's at least four reasons why you would think the president and the administration would be doing full-on disclosure.
00:20:25.000 First, it's the right thing to do for the victims.
00:20:28.000 Second, they promised that they would be transparent about this.
00:20:33.000 Three, the MAGA movement, as best we can tell, certainly men of its leaders like you are for it.
00:20:39.000 But certainly, I surveyed the, asked everyone on Tuway this morning on the morning meeting, go in the chat if you're a three-time Trump voter, say what you think they should do and a very pro-disclosure.
00:20:51.000 And four, you know, they've handled it badly in so many ways.
00:20:57.000 And just the politics of it suggests that the way to recover from such a poor handling of it would be to comply with the other three things.
00:21:06.000 So what's on the other side?
00:21:07.000 Why wouldn't they be disclosing?
00:21:10.000 And the answers are not great.
00:21:12.000 Either they're trying to protect people or there's an intelligence connection that they're trying to protect, as best I can tell.
00:21:21.000 I struggle, despite what I said about the two-way community, I struggle with knowing whether there's political damage here for the president in the midterms.
00:21:30.000 People say, you know, there won't be turnout in the midterms or his approval rating will go down.
00:21:34.000 MAGA is very resilient.
00:21:36.000 MAGA fights with the president sometimes and then moves on.
00:21:40.000 And I don't know that this is a qualitatively different case.
00:21:44.000 There's a lot of emotion around this.
00:21:45.000 There's a lot of resonance around it.
00:21:47.000 There are a lot of leaders, including some MAGA leaders who often disagree, who seem to agree on this.
00:21:52.000 There's not much support for the president's position, except for people who he hired.
00:21:57.000 So I don't really know where it's going or how much damage it will do.
00:22:00.000 But I do think that the two ledgers, the two sides of the ledger seem pretty clear.
00:22:05.000 And it's incumbent upon them to not put out a statement or say some things on the fly, but to have a long and detailed explanation of why they're choosing the course they're choosing, because the way they've done it so far is only arousing suspicion.
00:22:20.000 Based on your reporting, did the Trump administration think it would go away after a day or two with this kind of Sunday night leak strategy?
00:22:30.000 They did.
00:22:30.000 And of course, as you know, they're leveraging the credibility of the director of the FBI and his deputy, two people who previously were in the camp of saying there needs to be disclosure and concerned about a conspiracy.
00:22:43.000 So I think they were trying to leverage them.
00:22:47.000 Did they think it would go away?
00:22:49.000 Yes.
00:22:51.000 Part of the issue here is while MAGA media is quite interested, the dominant media, inexplicably to me, is not interested.
00:23:01.000 Even though you've got now House Democrats writing a letter to the president saying he should put all this stuff out, I don't know why the press isn't interested in the story.
00:23:08.000 It's a compelling story, just as a story.
00:23:11.000 The whole thing is, but including this latest episode.
00:23:16.000 But also the fact that Donald Trump is split from MAGA.
00:23:20.000 So there are a lot of stories about the MAGA split, but there are not a lot of stories on TV, especially where Donald Trump pays attention, even though he doesn't like the dominant media.
00:23:29.000 He pays close attention.
00:23:30.000 There are not a lot of stories there about the underlying question, which is where is justice for the victims?
00:23:36.000 And so part of why they didn't think they'd pay a political price and part of why I don't think they're as concerned as they might be is this is a big topic of discussion on Megan's show, on your show, on X, but it's not a dominant conversation in the country at large in a way that would put more pressure on them.
00:23:56.000 Yeah, I think that's partially right.
00:23:59.000 I think that it's growing, at least yesterday I started to get non-political-ish people start to reach out as it's starting to penetrate more circles.
00:24:07.000 So again, I don't want to spend our entire conversation on this, but I do find it to be interesting.
00:24:13.000 I would say the last point on this, and we'll go to another topic, is this is one of the few instances, and maybe you can correct me, where it seems as if the president is 180 from his base.
00:24:24.000 The only one I could think of is maybe the vaccine and the years after that, when he would go to rallies and sometimes get murmurs and even booze at times.
00:24:33.000 Can you think of other examples potentially and how do those usually rectify?
00:24:39.000 They just kind of go away as they're an addressing.
00:24:42.000 Right.
00:24:42.000 Well, I know you want to move on, and I've got so much to say about the thing he's just passing, but well, okay.
00:24:48.000 So first of all, he's certainly adverse with the base on amnesty, path to citizenship, path to legal status for people who came to the country illegally.
00:24:58.000 So that's another one right now where he's at least flirting with doing it differently than the base.
00:25:06.000 So my monologue on my show today is about how Donald Trump makes decisions.
00:25:12.000 And I think he's an extraordinarily underrated decision maker.
00:25:15.000 And he's extraordinarily different than the other presidents I've covered in many of the ways he makes decisions.
00:25:21.000 And one of those things is no decision's ever final.
00:25:25.000 He'll make a decision, and then he'll make a different decision.
00:25:28.000 And sometimes it's 180 degrees different in response to it.
00:25:32.000 I know that the people who feel passionately about this feel passionately about it.
00:25:37.000 And I understand why.
00:25:39.000 But I also know two other things.
00:25:40.000 Number one, it doesn't affect their lives directly.
00:25:44.000 You could say that it affects their trust in the president or their trust in his commitment to transparency or justice.
00:25:51.000 But in the end, it doesn't affect their pocketbook directly.
00:25:54.000 It doesn't affect their daily lives directly.
00:25:56.000 And so I think the chances of it, so the Risks of being at odds with some of MAGA are lower.
00:26:04.000 Number two, whatever reason caused them to choose the course they've chosen so far must still be there.
00:26:13.000 I was quite struck, I've said this several times already.
00:26:16.000 The way he tried to shut the reporter down, asking about the other day, I thought was a massive tell.
00:26:21.000 It wasn't his usual, you're the fake news, you're asking questions that don't matter.
00:26:25.000 Because as you point out, this does matter to a lot of people who care about him and who he cares about.
00:26:31.000 But if he simply sticks to whatever rationale he has for the course he's chosen and other news occurs, which has already happened, and it never catches on with the mainstream dominant media, and if he can please MAGA some other way, I think he could stick to this.
00:26:49.000 And again, I'd say, I'd like him and I'd like the attorney general and the FBI director, I'd like them to explain not just the facts of what they did better, but the reason for what they did better.
00:27:00.000 To say there's nothing to see here, we all know anyone who's followed this at all knows that's not true.
00:27:06.000 So I think that MAGA is very understanding when the president explains things, but he hasn't explained it.
00:27:14.000 And so, yeah, again, in the attempt to move on, we're going to stay on the topic.
00:27:21.000 Yeah, and I think that's right.
00:27:24.000 And at least talking about from the base perspective, the younger base in particular, there is this growing distrust of government.
00:27:32.000 And it's actually really bad that people don't trust their government.
00:27:36.000 I missed the country in the 1950s and 60s.
00:27:37.000 I wasn't alive, but this idea that you trust your institutions and they tell you the truth.
00:27:42.000 But this certainly doesn't help, does it, Mark?
00:27:45.000 I mean, for trying to rebuild trust and trying to rebuild integrity in our institutions.
00:27:51.000 I'm going to propose something to you that just occurred to me.
00:27:54.000 I'd like our shows together to do a joint focus group of young people who care about this issue.
00:28:02.000 You and I will moderate it together.
00:28:04.000 Let's recruit 12 young people.
00:28:05.000 Let's get them on a Zoom and let's let the White House hear their voices because the fact that young people care about this more than older people, which you and I are hearing anecdotally all over the place, I'd love to give voice to that because that is the big issue.
00:28:21.000 And again, I'm not minimizing the responsibility our society has to the victims at all.
00:28:26.000 But the longer term issue that runs parallel to that is trust in government.
00:28:31.000 And it's a thing that needs to be put in sharper relief.
00:28:35.000 Younger people really care about this more than older people in general.
00:28:39.000 And the reasons for that relate, at least in part, to their incredulity that a government, particularly a government if they're MAGA, who they voted for and trust, could so fundamentally betray what they thought was going to happen and should happen.
00:28:53.000 So it's a good idea.
00:28:56.000 Let me just elaborate more is that this is a generation that they view they have been wronged by every power institution as long as they have been alive.
00:29:03.000 Exactly.
00:29:04.000 Exactly.
00:29:05.000 And they saw Trump to be different in that way.
00:29:07.000 Please, Mark.
00:29:08.000 Well, the reason I want to do this so much is because it's crazy.
00:29:12.000 We live in a society with all this media and you've not heard that a single place, right?
00:29:18.000 Like one or two voices maybe on your show, my show, somebody you and I have talked to, but the country needs to see 12 young Trump voters saying, Mr. President, this is wrong.
00:29:29.000 And here's why.
00:29:31.000 Here's why we feel so passionately about this.
00:29:34.000 That voice needs to be put in sharp relief.
00:29:37.000 It needs to be heard.
00:29:38.000 And I'd like the president to hear it because I suspect he hasn't.
00:29:41.000 This is important.
00:29:42.000 And I'll tell you, it's a more structural issue because what I am concerned about, and I trust everyone, I trust Cash and I trust Bongino and I know them quite well.
00:29:54.000 Yeah, of course.
00:29:55.000 But I care about keeping the coalition together as a MAGA guy and as one of President Trump's greatest defenders on a daily basis, multi-platform, that I am concerned that the coalition that we have built, especially under 30, is going to be put in jeopardy.
00:30:12.000 And we'll learn a lot this weekend.
00:30:13.000 This weekend, we have our big event.
00:30:14.000 We have 7,000, 6,500 young people coming from across the country this weekend in Tampa, Florida.
00:30:21.000 And we're going to learn a lot when we're there.
00:30:24.000 And so if you want to come do the focus group down there, Mark, come on by.
00:30:28.000 Maybe I will.
00:30:29.000 Every time I read the list of who's coming, it appears that everyone you and I both know will be there except for me.
00:30:35.000 Well, then you'd have to come in.
00:30:36.000 We'll give you a room.
00:30:37.000 Come do the press.
00:30:39.000 It would be awesome to do that on stage.
00:30:41.000 Yeah, it would be again, I don't know how to run a focus group, so you'll have to teach me.
00:30:45.000 I'm not being sarcastic.
00:30:46.000 We'll do it together.
00:30:47.000 It seems as if it's an art to be able to run it as much as it is a science, right?
00:30:51.000 Because you don't want.
00:30:53.000 Yeah, it is.
00:30:54.000 It is.
00:30:54.000 It is.
00:30:55.000 And I've done hundreds of them.
00:30:57.000 So I wouldn't say I was great in the beginning, but I get how to do it now.
00:31:01.000 Check out 2-Way TV and also Mark's excellent show, which is host of Next Up on the Megan Kelly Network.
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00:32:09.000 So Mark, I'm looking at the New York Times, flipping through it as I do as for penance every morning.
00:32:16.000 But you said something briefly on the Megan Kelly program.
00:32:20.000 The media would, you would seem, would have kind of a straight shot here at a story with Trump, right?
00:32:29.000 Here's this Epstein Thing that has some velocity.
00:32:32.000 Here is Trump.
00:32:33.000 Why has the media ignored this for so long?
00:32:37.000 What is that all about?
00:32:38.000 I mean, I don't want to try to get into like the dark, you know, wacky stuff, but it's just true.
00:32:43.000 The media, the mainstream media, not internet media, seems like meticulously uninterested in this.
00:32:51.000 It's been a mystery to me for the entire time.
00:32:56.000 There are dark possible explanations that I don't want to give voice to necessarily.
00:33:04.000 Perhaps I will as I ramble here.
00:33:07.000 I don't know.
00:33:08.000 It's an incredible story.
00:33:10.000 And currently, there are stories about the quote unquote divisions with the MAGA base because of course they love that.
00:33:16.000 But why the press is not covering a story about the documented abuse of children and the politics of it, of how it's gone this long.
00:33:27.000 And, you know, you've got all sorts of Trump angles that are appropriate to discuss.
00:33:35.000 So I don't know.
00:33:36.000 I'd say the same thing about the Hunter, the Joe Biden acuity thing and the doctor taking the fifth.
00:33:43.000 If I were running a news organization like the New York Times or NBC News, with the exception of continuing to cover the tragedy in Texas, I would have led with those two stories.
00:33:52.000 Those are massive stories, and yet they're barely covered today.
00:33:56.000 And I normally can explain the press's behavior.
00:33:59.000 I can't explain those two.
00:34:00.000 I cannot.
00:34:02.000 So more broadly here, just from, I want to talk about on the Democrat side.
00:34:06.000 Is there any strategy on the Democrats to try to be interested in this?
00:34:09.000 Or are they too also?
00:34:11.000 So they're seeing your favorite.
00:34:13.000 Jamie Raskin, your favorite House Democrat, I believe.
00:34:16.000 I know you like Nadler too, but Jamie wrote, Jamie wrote a letter with five or six other House Democrats sounding like Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon saying, you know, everything should be released.
00:34:30.000 So they've entered the fray.
00:34:32.000 And again, I would think the press would write about that.
00:34:34.000 And there was a little bit of coverage of it.
00:34:35.000 But here you have a rare moment of bipartisan moral clarity saying this needs to be done for the sake of trust in government and the sake of transparency and sake of the victims and a shared populist line that elites should not be protecting elites.
00:34:56.000 And yet, you know.
00:34:57.000 That's such a good point.
00:34:58.000 Let me interject.
00:35:00.000 That's what I think this Epstein thing is a unique example where there's like five or six elements that kind of combine because it does have this.
00:35:08.000 Not only was he a creep and a pedophile, which has there has been a yearning in the right-wing base that there has been some pedophilic activity that has not been held accountable.
00:35:21.000 As you know, that has been a legitimate concern for over a decade.
00:35:25.000 And then number two, that he probably was an intelligence asset, either for the American government or for MI6 or for the Saudis or for Mossad or whatever, right?
00:35:37.000 We don't know.
00:35:38.000 Number three, of course, the way he died, which was not exactly transparent.
00:35:43.000 And then, of course, like what you, he's a billionaire or allegedly.
00:35:48.000 So there's this populist thing, which is like, oh, if you have money, you can buy your way out of no matter what evil actions that you are in.
00:35:56.000 And that the elites will protect each other.
00:35:59.000 Yeah, no, that's right.
00:36:01.000 To allow them to get away with things.
00:36:04.000 And, you know, no one has documented the full impact of the failure for a single Wall Street executive to be indicted after 2008.
00:36:12.000 No one has documented how that affected the psyche of the American people.
00:36:16.000 But this is of a piece with that.
00:36:18.000 And, you know, one of the things that I work as hard on as anything as a journalist is I've lived in Boston, Washington, and New York my whole life, okay?
00:36:27.000 But my obligation is to not reflect the point of view of those three elite places.
00:36:31.000 And yet, when I say the obligation to the victims and when I say the responsibility to not have elites protect elites, I feel it in my core.
00:36:44.000 Like, that is a human resonant thing for me, in part because I feel both things myself, but in part because I know tens of millions of people around the country feel it passionately.
00:36:55.000 And to have this administration, which promised otherwise to not do it, just is going to incite the worst speculation about what the motive is.
00:37:06.000 And elites protecting elites is not great.
00:37:08.000 Transparency is the answer here, and it's not too late to fix it.
00:37:11.000 Mark, thank you so much.
00:37:13.000 Really appreciate your time.
00:37:13.000 Thank you.
00:37:14.000 See you in Florida.
00:37:15.000 See you in Florida.
00:37:15.000 Can't wait.
00:37:16.000 Thanks so much for listening.
00:37:17.000 Everybody, email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:37:20.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.