The Charlie Kirk Show - The Biggest News Story of the Last 40 Years

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00:00:26.000 Hey everybody, where did the Wuhan flu, the China virus, come from?

00:00:30.000 We dive into the facts of the origin of the Chinese coronavirus and ask the question, why does it matter?

00:00:37.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:40.000 Also, why are our leaders so confident in their corruption?

00:00:46.000 What is the least corrupt country in the world?

00:00:48.000 We dive into that and so much more.

00:00:50.000 If you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com slash support.

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00:01:33.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:01:34.000 Here we go.

00:01:35.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:36.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:39.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:42.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:45.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:46.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:47.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:56.000 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.

00:02:04.000 That's why we are here.

00:02:07.000 Last year at Turning Point USA, we did a video where we went into detail about the origins of the Chinese coronavirus.

00:02:19.000 It was very obvious to us, and Benny Johnson did a great job for us and our entire productions team, that the virus did not come from some sort of wet market. 0.99

00:02:28.000 It didn't come from Chinese eating bats, which is something that they do. 0.95

00:02:35.000 No, it was very obvious that it came from the Wuhan University of Technology or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 0.72

00:02:44.000 We know that Wuhan was the jumping off point for the virus.

00:02:47.000 We know that it was very contagious.

00:02:50.000 We know that it was almost designed for human beings.

00:02:54.000 And yet, our activist press seems completely uninterested in investigating the origins of the virus that uprooted all of civilization, that killed hundreds of thousands of people, that forced us to go into temporary economic recession, create $8 trillion out of thin air, massively erode the purchasing power of the dollar.

00:03:20.000 We're just supposed to not care about where the virus came from.

00:03:26.000 And I think the question of where it comes from is more than just a human interest story.

00:03:31.000 And by the way, if any journalist took this seriously, if any person in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal took this seriously, this would be considered groundbreaking journalism.

00:03:42.000 But because it does not accomplish any sort of political objective, the activist media has completely laid off of this story.

00:03:53.000 Any sort of reporter at the New York Times or the Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, if you are interested at all, and the Wall Street Journal has done some work into this, in becoming well-known and building a career, which is what journalists, I think, care about, but I don't think anymore, at least they used to.

00:04:09.000 Now it seems that they're more interested in reinforcing the narrative than actually trying to expose truth or try to break stories that currently aren't being covered.

00:04:22.000 This is the story for you to cover.

00:04:25.000 And I was really struck as I was reading about this over the weekend, and I was spending a couple hours diving into this, when Dr. Anthony Fauci said he's not convinced that the virus developed naturally.

00:04:34.000 Let's go to cut four.

00:04:36.000 You hear it for yourself. 0.88

00:04:38.000 Play cut four.

00:04:38.000 So I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?

00:04:42.000 No, I'm not convinced about that.

00:04:45.000 I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened. 0.87

00:04:54.000 Gaslighting.

00:04:55.000 Dr. Anthony Fauci has known where this has come from for quite some time.

00:04:59.000 That sounded like a setup question.

00:05:01.000 It sounded as if Dr. Fauci wanted that to get out there so he can move the frame of the debate ever so slightly that a couple months from now, Dr. Fauci will come out and say, of course, we've always known it as manufacturer.

00:05:13.000 What's wrong with you?

00:05:15.000 And that's the way that debate happens now is you almost have to go back to the newspapers that existed a year ago and say, no, hold on a second, this was not just a little bit debated.

00:05:26.000 This was those of us that said this came from a lab were called conspiracy theorists.

00:05:33.000 And so, did you know the United States actually heavily funded the Wuhan Institute of Technology?

00:05:40.000 The original grant money of our taxpayer dollars was provided to EcoHealth, $3.7 million, $76,000 of which was slated for the Wuhan Institute.

00:05:52.000 This funding was approved with the backing of the NIH and Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the agency that Dr. Anthony Fauci was leading.

00:06:01.000 The contract was conveniently canceled in April of last year.

00:06:05.000 Oh, why?

00:06:05.000 I wonder what was happening in April of last year.

00:06:10.000 Dr. Fauci has a lot to answer for.

00:06:13.000 Why was the United States funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

00:06:17.000 Why was the United States funding potential gain of research, which basically means you have to create a virus so bad to eventually be able to develop a vaccine around it?

00:06:31.000 Why was the United States involved in that?

00:06:35.000 Do you know that zero Democrats have signed on into the investigation of the origins of the Chinese coronavirus?

00:06:42.000 That just goes to show that whatever we're going to find, the more we look into this, it is not going to make the Democrats politically more comfortable.

00:06:51.000 It just goes to show that the more information we're going to find around this issue, the more likely our original Suspicions are going to be confirmed.

00:07:10.000 Now, there is no transparency or in any of this.

00:07:12.000 The media doesn't care.

00:07:13.000 Our government, it seems as if it's trying to cover this up.

00:07:18.000 And we know this did not come from a bat or a wet market.

00:07:24.000 The more we've looked into this, and those by we, I mean just House Republicans or people that are even slightly interested in the truth, A test of 80,000 animals in the greater Wuhan area found that none of them had any traces of COVID-19 or the Chinese coronavirus,

00:07:46.000 meaning that there were no animals in the general area that were carriers of the species jump that would have been necessary for the original narrative to be true.

00:07:57.000 In fact, this almost feels like it acted like it was designed simply and solely for human beings.

00:08:05.000 As if this was built in a laboratory, released intentionally or not, I don't know, remains to be seen.

00:08:16.000 But it seems as if this was manufactured.

00:08:22.000 MIT identified work by Shi Zeling, a top scientist in the Wuhan lab.

00:08:27.000 I'm reading from the New York Post, as an example of, quote, gain of research, gain of function research, a method of developing vaccines by first making a virus more potent and tailored to attack human cells.

00:08:38.000 She told Scientific American, quote, China in general has history of research leaks resulting in infections.

00:08:45.000 And the State Department issued warnings about these specific experiments and the lack of trained personnel as early as 2017, what we were funding.

00:08:53.000 And the Chinese media were discussing improper waste disposal at the Wuhan Institute and employees selling lab animals on the black market before the outbreak.

00:09:02.000 Did you know that cell phone use in the Wuhan Institute of Virology stopped for three weeks in October, suggesting that there was a work halt and perhaps for evacuation or decontamination in October of 2019?

00:09:18.000 Did you know that three Wuhan lab researchers were hospitalized in November of 2019?

00:09:25.000 Three researchers at the Chinese lab that has been scrutinized as the possible origin of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic went to the hospital due to an illness in 2019.

00:09:35.000 The money that NIH received, according to Senator Tom Cotton, went to an American organization which turned around and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to these Wuhan labs to investigate coronaviruses and yes to find ways to make them more contagious and more dangerous. 0.50

00:09:54.000 This is the biggest story of the last 40 years.

00:09:59.000 Never before has human life been so disrupted.

00:10:01.000 I'm talking about just the flow of your daily schedule, how your children are educated, how our economy moves, walking around with a cloth mask, suicide rates increasing, drug usage increasing, alcoholism increasing, the way that we interact, communicate, the introduction of new language of new speak, social distancing, stopped the spread.

00:10:26.000 This is the most important story, and yet our leaders are worried about whether or not you're wearing two masks when you shower.

00:10:39.000 How the people in charge are so uninterested in this shows that there's something deeper at play here.

00:10:48.000 The school year is ending and families are making plans to send their kids to summer camp.

00:10:52.000 But kids with a mom or dad in prison are often forgotten and overlooked.

00:10:56.000 That's where Prison Fellowship's angel tree camps come in.

00:11:00.000 Hi, this is Charlie Kirk, and I'm partnering again this year with Prison Fellowship to send 163 kids to camp this summer.

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00:11:12.000 A one-time donation of $200 provides a scholarship to send a kid to an angel tree summer camp where they can build a relationship with a caring camp counselor, hear the gospel, and experience the love of God in the great outdoors.

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00:11:36.000 Call 888-206-2802.

00:11:39.000 That's 888-206-2802.

00:11:43.000 Or go to charliekirk.com to make your donation today.

00:11:46.000 Help a kid go to summer camp, charliekirk.com.

00:11:51.000 Alexander Solshenitsyn, the man who took down the Soviet Union without a gun, not a weapon, not a missile, but with his pen.

00:11:59.000 The Gulag Archipelago is one of the most powerful pieces of literature ever written. 0.91

00:12:05.000 If every single child in America or young person in America was made aware of the Gulag Archipelago and read Soshelnitsin and read it correctly, instead of Nicole Hanna-Jones and Tahanisi Coates and Robin DiAngelo, the world would be a much better place.

00:12:20.000 I believe that a steady diet of C.S. Lewis and Thomas Soule and Alexander Sochelnitsyn and Russell Kirk would do our generation a lot of good instead of the smear merchants that are currently selling books to your children to teach them to hate themselves and hate the country.

00:12:38.000 Alexander Solzhenitsyn had a famous quote.

00:12:43.000 I think it pertains to the Wuhan laboratory leak perfectly.

00:12:48.000 We know they are lying.

00:12:51.000 They know they are lying.

00:12:53.000 They know that we know they are lying.

00:12:56.000 And we know, they know that we know they are lying.

00:13:00.000 And they still continue to lie.

00:13:04.000 Alexander Solshenitsyn.

00:13:06.000 I remember a story back in January of 2020, right as the Chinese coronavirus started to spread.

00:13:15.000 As soon as we started to hear reports of China acting in a very strange way, lockdowns, masks, and do you notice how the Western media didn't take it very seriously at first? 0.73

00:13:26.000 How China sent people all around the world, despite the fact that they knew this was a very contagious virus and they saw how it was changing their behavior.

00:13:36.000 Well, as soon as that was happening on January 28, 2020, Dr. Charles Lieber was indicted by the United States Department of Justice.

00:13:44.000 Why?

00:13:45.000 And who was he?

00:13:47.000 Well, do you know that he worked as a strategic scientist for the Wuhan University of Technology?

00:13:54.000 Now, this is a story that has not been covered at all.

00:13:59.000 And I might write an op-ed about this because I just remembered this and I dug it up.

00:14:03.000 Do you know that he received $15 million from our government and was also working at the Wuhan University of Technology?

00:14:12.000 In addition, he was also paid $50,000 a month by the Chinese government for being a biological specialist.

00:14:22.000 Now, I can believe in coincidences up to a point, but you're supposed to tell me that the man that was earning $50,000 a month from the Wuhan University Technology that got $15 million from our government from Harvard at the top level of biochemistry was indicted the moment that all of a sudden the virus started raging across the world.

00:14:46.000 Oh, we're just supposed to believe that's a coincidence.

00:14:49.000 You see, if you read his indictment, he was interviewed by federal investigators back in April 24th, 2018.

00:14:58.000 So we're supposed to believe that they just sat on the information of him lying to investigators?

00:15:03.000 Maybe.

00:15:04.000 Or maybe this was an attempt to silence a man who knows exactly what was happening in the Wuhan University of Technology.

00:15:13.000 You see, a friend of mine, I was having dinner up in Montana over the weekend.

00:15:18.000 He made a very good point. 0.66

00:15:19.000 He said, Charlie, the United States was just as involved in the Wuhan laboratory as the Chinese Communist Party was.

00:15:26.000 And that is an unfortunate truth.

00:15:28.000 We call this the China virus, and we should, because the Chinese Communist Party lied about it. 0.96

00:15:33.000 It probably was developed in a laboratory. 0.95

00:15:35.000 Whether it was leaked intentionally or not remains to be seen.

00:15:38.000 They sent their citizens all across the world.

00:15:40.000 But what is hard for us to admit is that our government was probably intimately aware of what was happening in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, gain of function research, the development of vaccines, and all roads lead back to this man who is now indicted, Dr. Charles Lieber and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

00:15:58.000 You want someone to do what you want them to do, indict them, all of a sudden, they will become very obedient.

00:16:04.000 You want to make sure someone doesn't leak information to the press?

00:16:08.000 Keep them in a framework that they might go to jail sometime very soon.

00:16:13.000 Dr. Charles Lieber received 1 million Chinese won and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at the Wuhan Institute of Technology.

00:16:24.000 Well, if I was Senate Republicans or House Republicans, as soon as you take back a chamber of power, I would subpoena Dr. Charles Lieber immediately in front of Congress and ask him some questions.

00:16:36.000 Well, since you were paid over $158,000 and $50,000 a month by the Chinese government, you had a working office in the Wuhan Institute of Technology, what were you working on?

00:16:46.000 Do you believe this leak was natural?

00:16:49.000 Those are questions that are critical to finding out where this virus came from because we know they're lying to us.

00:16:56.000 And we know they're lying to us either because they're bought and paid for by China or that they want this virus to continue and the lockdowns to continue to execute a totalitarian power grab over our people.

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00:18:14.000 Why are Democrats so afraid of talking about the origins of the Chinese coronavirus?

00:18:23.000 Well, partially because they know that once the truth comes out, every single one of the charlatans that they have partnered with have either defended or received money or helped steer money towards the source of the outbreak. 1.00

00:18:39.000 You see, all of this is centered around a defense of one man, and the Democrats have made a political bet that you are stupid. 0.92

00:18:47.000 The Democrats' political bet is that you don't care that China, working with the top levels of health officials in the United States, have any sort of concern about where this epidemiological Pearl Harbor originated from. 0.99

00:19:01.000 They just think that as long as you receive stimulus checks or assistance from the government, that you don't care what your leaders do.

00:19:13.000 And this transitions actually nicely to something that I've been wanting to talk about.

00:19:19.000 And it also happened this last weekend.

00:19:20.000 You probably saw it.

00:19:22.000 One of the worst governors in America, and she will get away with this.

00:19:26.000 Let me just be purely cynical.

00:19:30.000 She will get away with this.

00:19:32.000 Because people largely don't care.

00:19:35.000 I'm going to tell you why they don't care.

00:19:36.000 It's because pleasure supersedes virtue in our society.

00:19:41.000 We don't demand virtue out of our leaders.

00:19:43.000 We just want them to give us pleasure.

00:19:46.000 Give me food that tastes good, wine that will get me drunk, and enough cash so that I can get a dopamine rush.

00:19:56.000 Because we have a misunderstanding of what liberty is.

00:19:58.000 Liberty is not doing things that make you feel good.

00:20:02.000 Liberty should be the pursuit of virtue.

00:20:07.000 Governor Gretchen Whitmer was found this weekend, was photographed, for going to a local restaurant with a large group of people without a mask on.

00:20:22.000 She said, yesterday I went with friends to a local restaurant.

00:20:25.000 As more people arrived, the tables were pushed together.

00:20:28.000 Because we were all back vaccinated, we didn't stop to think about it.

00:20:30.000 In retrospect, I should have thought about it.

00:20:32.000 I am a human.

00:20:33.000 I apologize.

00:20:33.000 I made a mistake.

00:20:35.000 Of course, she also went down to Florida during the lockdowns to go vacation and enjoy the sun while her citizens remained masked up and locked up.

00:20:50.000 And so this kind of recurring trend, and we call these people hypocrites, but I think that's a really sloppy word.

00:20:56.000 That's an easy word, and it's partially true.

00:20:58.000 It's not untrue.

00:20:58.000 It's just we all know about Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey, who enforced some of the strictest lockdowns, but that didn't stop him from eating at a restaurant with his family.

00:21:10.000 Or how about Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania?

00:21:12.000 After he called business owners cowardly for wanting to end strict lockdowns, he went to a non-socially distanced BLM Incorporated rally in Harrisburg.

00:21:22.000 You all remember the people that were celebrating Joe Biden's win as a mosh pit in the street.

00:21:27.000 Or how about Nancy Pelosi, where she went to Chinatown and said that all of the people that said this came from virus were being xenophobic and fear-mongering.

00:21:37.000 And then, of course, she goes in and breaks her own lockdown measures, going maskless to go get her hair done.

00:21:42.000 Or Diane Feinstein, who urged the FAA to make all employees wear masks in airports, and yet she was found walking the streets without the halls of Congress without a mask.

00:21:53.000 Or how about Lori Lightfoot, who, of course, she wanted everyone to cancel their traditional Thanksgiving plans, but she was seen not wearing a mask in a megaphone and then vacationing in Maine because she needed some personal time.

00:22:07.000 How about J.B. Pritzker, who went to Lake Geneva, the governor of Illinois, in the midst of all the lockdowns?

00:22:13.000 And hello to all of our friends on AM560, the answer.

00:22:16.000 Or how about Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, constantly berated people wear masks, but he removed his own to celebrate with a non-socially distanced crowd of Biden supporters in New York City.

00:22:28.000 Or Chris Cuomo, despite his brother Andrew Cuomo, who's embattled, but he'll survive because the media is keeping no pressure on him, saying that if you don't wear a mask, it could literally kill somebody.

00:22:40.000 He walked the streets, no mask on, no social distance.

00:22:48.000 Governor Gavin Newsom, one of the most famous, found himself in French laundry after reportedly racking up a $15,000 alcohol tap.

00:23:00.000 That's some expensive wine for only 11 people.

00:23:04.000 Have you guys spent $15,000 on wine in one sitting?

00:23:12.000 And of course, he was there without a mask, no social distancing.

00:23:15.000 How about Dr. Anthony Fauci saying that everyone must wear a mask, and then he was found maskless at a baseball game, the Washington Nationals baseball game.

00:23:24.000 And Governor Andrew Cuomo, who wrote a book about the Chinese coronavirus, about his leadership in that moment.

00:23:34.000 And then, of course, he was found walking the streets of New York without a mask on.

00:23:39.000 So what does that all teach us as we look at Governor Whitmer, who's under fire right now?

00:23:43.000 She'll get through this, of course, because in reality, the people don't really care anymore what their leaders do.

00:23:51.000 They have such a low confidence in their leaders, they just want stuff from their leaders, not virtue.

00:24:03.000 Well, first of all, they believe that you are a subject, not a citizen.

00:24:07.000 Citizen means co-ruler.

00:24:12.000 The easy way to describe this is they believe that they are above you. 1.00

00:24:16.000 That's partially true.

00:24:18.000 But quite honestly, they're so uninterested in you.

00:24:21.000 They really don't care.

00:24:22.000 They don't think about you at all.

00:24:24.000 They think about their own existence and their own feudal society that they have built.

00:24:32.000 Number two is they actually don't think there'll ever be a political consequence.

00:24:37.000 Gretchen Whitmer does not think she can be beat at the ballot box. 0.97

00:24:41.000 All she has to do is call the other side racist.

00:24:44.000 Not to mention, do you remember her husband who went to the either the lake or the ocean and said, don't you know who I am?

00:24:51.000 It doesn't matter that voting is illegal.

00:24:54.000 My wife is the governor of Michigan. 0.51

00:24:58.000 It also goes to show that they don't even believe their own nonsense when it comes to the virus.

00:25:04.000 It also goes to show that they don't even believe that the virus is nearly as threatening as they say it is.

00:25:09.000 They look at it as a crisis that can present a wonderful opportunity to remake America in their own leftist image.

00:25:21.000 And finally, this is a fire alarm for our republic.

00:25:27.000 The Founding Fathers wrote about this extensively in the Federalist Papers.

00:25:33.000 They said that when leaders are able to live outside of the laws that they pass, you will be entering a period of despotism, of authoritarianism, or totalitarianism.

00:25:57.000 That our government is built primarily under the belief that when one of your leaders passes a law, they must equally be affected by that law.

00:26:08.000 That you cannot carve out an exemption of Obamacare as a member of Congress like they did.

00:26:15.000 You cannot carve out saying that a member of Congress is allowed to pay a different tax rate than you are.

00:26:26.000 It's not allowed, even though they find ways to do that.

00:26:29.000 This is why we were supposed to get rid of congressional insider trading. 0.92

00:26:38.000 Even though Nancy Pelosi and her husband is able they're able to own one million dollars in Tesla stock despite pushing green energy type initiatives.

00:26:50.000 So this is something that we should take very seriously.

00:26:52.000 As this separation continues between you and the leaders and there is no political, what are you supposed to do?

00:26:59.000 Vote them out, good luck.

00:27:01.000 They become one-party states. 1.00

00:27:04.000 You think you're going to vote out Gretchen Whitmer?

00:27:06.000 Maybe.

00:27:06.000 Maybe there will be a reaction to this.

00:27:11.000 And some of my friends that I've consulted about this, they say half the country are just ignorant sheep. 0.95

00:27:17.000 Which goes to a deeper philosophical question, which is do people want to be ruled comfortably or live freely, dangerously? 0.94

00:27:28.000 And I think we've grown to learn that most of the country wants to be ruled comfortably.

00:27:35.000 They're so cynical about their leaders when you ask them, they say, hey, do you think leaders are corrupt?

00:27:39.000 Of course they do.

00:27:39.000 But I still might vote for them because they'll give me what I want.

00:27:44.000 They'll give me a stimulus check.

00:27:45.000 I don't care if they're corrupt as long as I get mine.

00:27:48.000 Liberty starts to erode quickly as soon as people can vote their own benefits.

00:27:53.000 And these rulers know that they do not have to act ethically to get your vote.

00:27:58.000 They simply have to dole out certain benefits like frisbees to you.

00:28:06.000 You get a stimulus check.

00:28:07.000 You get loan forgiveness.

00:28:09.000 Instead of being very clear about putting forth a set of public policy measures that build things that are eternal and that matter, we say that our leaders think they're above the law, and that's true, but they're just kind of, they have no concern for the law.

00:28:29.000 For example, Energy Secretary Jennifer Grenholm for Joe Biden has sat on the board of Proterra.

00:28:36.000 She owns $5 million in stock options in that company.

00:28:40.000 So you have the person who's in charge of the energy department of the United States government, who has $5 million in stock options in an electric car vehicle startup.

00:28:53.000 Has anyone said that's even remotely corrupt?

00:28:57.000 Now, I think one of the issues with the conservative movement is our hyper-fixation on economic freedom.

00:29:06.000 Now, I love economic freedom.

00:29:08.000 I love private property rights.

00:29:10.000 I think private property and freedom are directly tied together.

00:29:13.000 But do you know what's even more important than economic freedom for the well-being of a nation?

00:29:20.000 Public corruption.

00:29:22.000 You're only truly free when your leaders are not completely and totally purchased, when your leaders are acting ethically.

00:29:31.000 The countries that are the most desirable to live in now in the world are the ones that are the least corrupt, the ones that pursue virtue and not momentary pleasure.

00:29:44.000 Look, for many of you that watch our live stream or our radio show, listen to our radio show, you know I talk about Relief Factor a lot.

00:29:51.000 And look, truth is, I know millions of people are in some kind of pain, maybe from exercise or just getting older, that can do it.

00:29:58.000 That's why I'm so impressed with Pete and Seth Talbot.

00:30:00.000 They are on a mission.

00:30:01.000 You've rarely seen this kind of focus and commitment.

00:30:04.000 Seriously, they recently shared with me that they are doubling down and want to literally double their number of total happy customers in the next year.

00:30:10.000 And I believe they'll do it.

00:30:11.000 So here's the deal.

00:30:12.000 If you're struggling with back, neck, shoulder, hip, or knee pain, or even general muscle aches and pain, then I'm suggesting you order their three-week quick start, still discounted only $19.95, about a dollar a day to see if we can get you out of pain.

00:30:23.000 So go to relieffactor.com.

00:30:24.000 That's relief factor.com.

00:30:26.000 The Talbots are amazing people.

00:30:27.000 Check it out.

00:30:28.000 ReliefFactor.com.

00:30:32.000 Our rulers seem more corrupt than ever.

00:30:35.000 That might be true.

00:30:37.000 But it's also because we, the people, do not demand ethical behavior from our leaders.

00:30:42.000 Let me tell you about a president by the name of Warren G. Harding.

00:30:48.000 Warren G. Harding, by all objective measurements, was a pretty good president by what he did.

00:30:58.000 But Warren G. Harding found himself involved in a certain scandal known as the Teapot Dome scandal.

00:31:07.000 The Teapot Dome scandal, somewhat complicated, set the entire country on fire because the American people in the 1920s could not possibly fathom the idea that their leaders would be involved in a deal of an oil reserve in Wyoming of something that would be set aside for possible potential personal use.

00:31:34.000 It actually ended up being the scar that ended Warren G. Harding's presidency.

00:31:42.000 Calvin Coolidge came after Warren G. Harding.

00:31:48.000 There was a time when the American people, we demanded ethical behavior from our leaders.

00:31:53.000 Not to say they always fulfilled that.

00:31:54.000 There were plenty of bad presidents.

00:31:55.000 Ulysses S. Grant was an awful president.

00:31:58.000 Andrew Johnson was not a good president, especially when you contrast that Abraham Lincoln.

00:32:04.000 But the point being is that they at least were a little bit shy to hold their corruption.

00:32:09.000 Now they show their corruption on cable television.

00:32:12.000 Now they have Dr. Anthony Fauci be the top spokesperson as he has direct ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Technology.

00:32:20.000 Now we have our energy secretary who runs the energy policy while owning $5 million in electric car stock.

00:32:30.000 So the thing that I look at is who are the least corrupt countries in the world?

00:32:35.000 Not the ones that are the most economically free.

00:32:37.000 Economic freedom is important.

00:32:39.000 Don't get me wrong.

00:32:40.000 We are conservatives.

00:32:41.000 We believe markets help human beings.

00:32:44.000 We believe markets and private property, entrepreneurship, and risk-taking is the best way for human beings to improve their life and the life of people around them.

00:32:52.000 But if you have a system that is so incredibly corrupt, any sort of economic freedom you have is a temporary mirage.

00:33:01.000 It's a temporary smokescreen.

00:33:04.000 It'll go away.

00:33:05.000 The least corrupt country in the world is New Zealand, followed by Denmark, then Finland and Switzerland.

00:33:11.000 I wonder what those countries have in common.

00:33:14.000 Really strict immigration and a commitment to what their nation actually is.

00:33:18.000 That's interesting.

00:33:20.000 I'm sure there's no correlation at all, of course.

00:33:22.000 This is according to transparency.org, followed by Singapore, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Estonia, Japan, Ireland, UAE, Uruguay.

00:33:38.000 That's right.

00:33:38.000 UAE is considered to be less corrupt than us.

00:33:41.000 They don't have elections in the UAE, and they're still less corrupt than us.

00:33:45.000 Uruguay, France, Bhutan, and then the United States of America.

00:33:50.000 And we've fallen six positions.

00:33:54.000 So if you want to fix the problems that exist in America, we have to go after public corruption because that is the thing that ties everything that I've talked to together.

00:34:03.000 That is the tie that binds all of this together.

00:34:06.000 Why is it that no one cares about the origins of the Chinese coronavirus?

00:34:10.000 Well, it's because of corruption.

00:34:12.000 Why is it that no one gets upset that Gretchen Whitmer or Tom Wolfe say one thing and do another?

00:34:23.000 We know that's corrupt.

00:34:26.000 Why is it that Hunter Biden is allowed to continue to do what he does?

00:34:29.000 It's because we have, as a nation post-1990s, been so overly fixated on the excesses of individualism and allowed the republic, the nation, our home, to crumble around us.

00:34:43.000 And every time there's been any form of societal decay, we say, that's not my problem.

00:34:50.000 Give me mine.

00:34:53.000 If conservatism is going to be relevant at all for the next couple decades, we must focus on how the ultimate destruction of a society comes when its leaders have no concern for its citizens, but for themselves, but even worse, when the citizens don't care what their leaders do.

00:35:12.000 And the public corruption index at transparency.org should be a fire alarm for Western society, and that must be where we focus our attention.

00:35:22.000 If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, go to tpusa.com.

00:35:26.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:29.000 And again, I encourage you to support us at charliekirk.com slash support.

00:35:33.000 God bless you guys.

00:35:34.000 Speak to you so.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 25, 2021

The Biggest News Story of the Last 40 Years

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