The Charlie Kirk Show - The Catholic Cardinals and the Trump Administration

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.

00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.

00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.

00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.

00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.

00:00:28.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.

00:00:31.000 Go start a turning point USA college chapter, go start a turning point USA high school chapter.

00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.

00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.

00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.

00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life, and I encourage you to do the same.

00:00:45.000 Here I am.

00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.

00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:49.000 Here we go.

00:00:56.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of the Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

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00:01:17.000 Welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:17.000 All right.

00:01:19.000 I'm at the mobile Y Refi studios here in Palm Beach, Florida, the beautiful Palm Beach.

00:01:24.000 Blake's holding it down in Phoenix.

00:01:26.000 How are we doing, Blake?

00:01:27.000 Oh, it's doing great.

00:01:28.000 We're in the main Y Refi studio.

00:01:30.000 It's way cooler than the mobile Y Refi studio.

00:01:33.000 So, Blake, I'm in it.

00:01:34.000 No, that's not true.

00:01:35.000 This is pretty cool, I will say.

00:01:37.000 But either way, Y Refi is great.

00:01:39.000 Check them out.

00:01:40.000 InvestYRefi.com.

00:01:42.000 Blake, you're going to be my beard today.

00:01:45.000 That's how I'm referring to it.

00:01:46.000 You are our.

00:01:48.000 You have a great beard, so it works.

00:01:50.000 So, we have lots of Catholic news.

00:01:52.000 We're a bit in a stasis point right now with the blockade.

00:01:55.000 We're in day two.

00:01:57.000 It does seem like most vessels are being blocked from that area around Iran.

00:02:03.000 There's about two dozen ports, maybe up to 30 Iranian ports that are being blocked right now, which does hold long term significance.

00:02:11.000 We will get into that as we know more, but vessels are being turned away.

00:02:15.000 So, as we're in this stasis in the Middle East, we want to turn our attention to some of this action that's happening.

00:02:22.000 With on multiple fronts now, not just between President Trump and the Pope, but with some of the cardinals.

00:02:29.000 And now he's also the Pope has visited Algeria, which comes with a whole bunch of added controversy. 0.51

00:02:34.000 And since you are the resident Catholic here, Blake, let's let you take it away. 0.66

00:02:40.000 Oh, you're really, really, it's just a bad day for me. 1.00

00:02:43.000 It's a bad day. 1.00

00:02:44.000 It's always annoying when Catholic leaders are making me frustrated, but it's inevitable. 0.96

00:02:49.000 It's a big tent, it's a big church.

00:02:51.000 But real quick, before I Tea off.

00:02:55.000 Today is election day in Virginia.

00:02:57.000 If you ignored all of our warnings that you needed to vote early there, go vote now.

00:03:02.000 You have five or six hours left to go to vote.

00:03:06.000 Normally, you only get to vote in one House race every cycle.

00:03:09.000 You're voting in five, effectively.

00:03:11.000 And it matters even more because in Maryland, their bid to redraw their map actually just failed.

00:03:17.000 Democrats couldn't work it out.

00:03:18.000 They started arguing too much, failed.

00:03:20.000 So we saved a House seat there.

00:03:23.000 We can save five seats today.

00:03:24.000 Get out and vote.

00:03:25.000 Anyway, back to the church.

00:03:27.000 So, we were talking a lot about the Pope, what he said about the conflict in Iran.

00:03:32.000 He was saying God doesn't listen to the prayers of those who wage war.

00:03:37.000 And then the president said some stuff critical of the Pope, he said he was soft on crime.

00:03:41.000 And we didn't get to another topic that I think is equally important, which is we have a set of cardinals.

00:03:48.000 Now, the cardinals are the senior clergy of the Catholic Church, they elect the Pope.

00:03:53.000 There are several, about almost 200 of them around the world, there are 17 of them in the United States.

00:03:59.000 But three of them went and did an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday where they were saying stuff just very overtly critical.

00:04:08.000 They weren't just complaining about the war, they were even complaining about immigration enforcement in this country.

00:04:14.000 And I'll be frank, that annoys me a good bit because it's one thing to say we should promote peace.

00:04:20.000 Christianity has always promoted peace.

00:04:21.000 It's one thing to weigh in on something so clear cut as, for example, abortion or assisted suicide, where the church has always held the same view on that for 2,000 years.

00:04:33.000 But there are, unfortunately, Christian leaders who have come along and they've adopted this view that did not exist 100 years ago, certainly did not exist 2,000 years ago, that it's actually immoral for nations to have borders.

00:04:46.000 So we want to play some clips from that.

00:04:48.000 So this is one of those cardinals, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, and he's complaining about ice doing their job.

00:04:56.000 Let's play clip number 10.

00:04:58.000 This past January, Cardinal Tobin called Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, a lawless organization.

00:05:06.000 Cardinal, those are strong words to call ICE a lawless organization.

00:05:10.000 Why did you do that?

00:05:12.000 I didn't say that they were people without law.

00:05:15.000 But when people act in this way, when they have to hide their identities to terrify people, when they can actually violate other guarantees of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, well, I think somebody's got to call that out.

00:05:31.000 And I'm not the only one.

00:05:33.000 Oh, man, I have so many notes.

00:05:34.000 So many thoughts.

00:05:37.000 First of all, the masks, Mr. Cardinal, are because they're getting doxxed and their lives are getting threatened.

00:05:44.000 Second of all, what about your criticisms for the protesters, the agitators, those who run kamikaze missions with their cars trying to run over ICE agents?

00:05:55.000 Any thoughts about that?

00:05:56.000 And by the way, Blake, again, you are my cover today.

00:06:01.000 But it strikes me because some of the same allegations, not to deviate too far from what you're talking about here, Are leveled at the Pope himself because, you know, here he is in Algeria, which is a predominantly Muslim country, and he hasn't visited Nigeria, where the, you know, 7,000 Christians have been massacred in recent years.

00:06:22.000 I mean, up to 50,000 since 2009.

00:06:26.000 So, it's the selective outrage that I find just the most troubling because then it just smacks of bias, of cognitive dissonance.

00:06:35.000 Well, yeah, we can be frank.

00:06:37.000 The Pope runs a global organization.

00:06:39.000 He oversees a global organization.

00:06:41.000 There is a limit to everything he can, certainly where he can travel, everything he can say.

00:06:46.000 But that emphasizes the point you're making, which is you create a narrative by what you choose to emphasize the most, what you choose to talk about. 0.63

00:06:55.000 Even with Algeria.

00:06:56.000 Now, there actually are persecuted Christians.

00:06:58.000 In Algeria, they are a small minority of a few thousand.

00:07:01.000 And the Pope did talk about that.

00:07:03.000 There have been martyrs in Algeria within the last 30 years.

00:07:06.000 But at the same time, yeah, if he's going to broadcast loudly that immigration enforcement is a problem, but not the fact that, for example, in Algeria, churches get shut down by the government pretty often.

00:07:19.000 They find excuses to hinder Christian worship.

00:07:23.000 In Algeria, Christian proselytization is illegal.

00:07:26.000 They have convicted people of this within the last decade.

00:07:30.000 And When you're not talking as much about that, not as loudly about that, but you're very loudly, for example, having church leaders say members of a country's government enforcing that country's longstanding immigration laws are a problem.

00:07:44.000 We have another clip from that that I want to make sure we play.

00:07:47.000 Let's play clip number 11.

00:07:50.000 One of the busiest stretches of the southern border for illegal crossings.

00:07:55.000 I feel it got to a point where it was getting out of control.

00:07:59.000 Under Biden?

00:08:00.000 Under Biden, yes.

00:08:02.000 You believe in strong borders.

00:08:04.000 Yes.

00:08:05.000 So what's wrong then with the current policy?

00:08:08.000 This is a roundup of people throughout the country, people who have been living good, strong lives, been here a long time, raised their children here, many of their children born here, and are citizens.

00:08:19.000 That's what our objection is.

00:08:22.000 I would like to know what Catholics feel about this indiscriminate mass deportation. 0.64

00:08:26.000 I think that it's very clear the American people are saying, we really didn't vote for this.

00:08:32.000 That really upsets me because that is bad moral leadership.

00:08:36.000 You're in a senior position, you should know better.

00:08:38.000 It is not indiscriminate.

00:08:40.000 What it is is it is an enforcement of our country's laws.

00:08:43.000 And you know, it's actively immoral enforcing laws only for some people and ignoring them for others.

00:08:49.000 And this weird waffling where he says, well, it was out of control under Biden, but I don't like how it looks now.

00:08:56.000 They're grabbing people who are inside the country.

00:09:00.000 You're not standing up for the laws of this country. 0.93

00:09:03.000 If you wanted to be a good leader, you might say, Hey, parishioners, you shouldn't break America's laws to come here.

00:09:08.000 You should try to come here legally, the way millions of other people in this country did.

00:09:12.000 You can still go to mass in your home countries.

00:09:15.000 Like, this is not an attack by the Trump administration on the church.

00:09:19.000 It's so frustrating to see this.

00:09:21.000 I know Charlie would always call out bad pastors among Protestant Christians. 1.00

00:09:27.000 I think it's our duty to call out bad cardinals among the Catholics. 1.00

00:09:30.000 I believe we do, in fact. 1.00

00:09:32.000 Have Kevin Pasobic, who is on assignment live from Dublin, Ireland.

00:09:37.000 Kevin, can you hear me?

00:09:38.000 Yes, I can, Andrew.

00:09:39.000 Can you hear me?

00:09:40.000 Can you see me?

00:09:41.000 Yeah, we got you, brother.

00:09:42.000 All right, tell us, give us, for a lot of people at home not paying attention to how this protest started.

00:09:47.000 I know it's about gas prices sparked by Iran, but there's a lot of layers to this.

00:09:52.000 Tell us what it's like there on the ground and how it came to be.

00:09:56.000 Well, Andrew, so what happened is that Ireland is a nation of about 6 million people.

00:10:03.000 And just imagine Kamala Harris had won the election.

00:10:06.000 And they imposed all these Green New Deal policies.

00:10:09.000 So the farmers are protesting here.

00:10:11.000 That's what we're seeing with these tractor protests all along the countryside this weekend.

00:10:17.000 So, what has happened is that there's taxes on top of taxes, being taxed 60% on the liter of petrol over here.

00:10:27.000 And, you know, we're seeing that they're protesting because that is unfair and they're already being taxed, first off, for. 0.53

00:10:39.000 All asylum seekers, you know, refugees, this and that from last year, so now on top of it, with the inflation from the Iran conflict, uh, these people are fed up.

00:10:51.000 These are blue collar people, this is uh, going across the political divide. 0.99

00:10:57.000 And it's been here behind me to get them out because.

00:11:02.000 This is not just immigrants. 0.96

00:11:06.000 They want the government outraged.

00:11:08.000 They're voting today on emotions of no confidence.

00:11:12.000 And if this passes this evening at 7 p.m. here, that would effectively mean that the T-shirt, the Prime Minister of Ireland, would have to resign along with his cabinet.

00:11:23.000 And there have to be snap reelections to get the Irish patriots here heard and effectively the fuel prices lowered to an affordable, efficient rate.

00:11:35.000 So, you know, these people have to make a living. 0.94

00:11:38.000 So, Kevin, if I'm understanding this right, so you've got a nation that has been inundated with foreigners, a lot of signs out there saying Ireland's full, Ireland for the Irish. 0.98

00:11:53.000 Then you've got the Iran war that kicks off, which obviously has fuel shortages, fuel prices spiking, especially in Europe. 0.68

00:12:02.000 This has added on top of the price increases that have come through Green New Deal type. 0.99

00:12:07.000 Taxes, and then there's already taxes that have been imposed because they need to pay for the social services for these new immigrants. 0.98

00:12:15.000 So, meanwhile, the blue collar Irish are getting squeezed at all ends. 1.00

00:12:19.000 They're sick of it.

00:12:19.000 This kind of reminds me of the Dutch tractor protests as well.

00:12:25.000 This populist energy from the working class of the Europeans.

00:12:29.000 So, what are you seeing out there?

00:12:31.000 Is it safe?

00:12:32.000 Are they staying peaceful?

00:12:34.000 Is it rowdy?

00:12:36.000 What do they hope to accomplish with this protest?

00:12:38.000 Sure.

00:12:39.000 So today, yes, and exactly.

00:12:40.000 We saw it in the Netherlands and in Germany and in Canada a few years ago, and even in America slightly.

00:12:46.000 So they've taken the playbook here and they're doing slow rolling protests to show that they control the food supply.

00:12:55.000 Basically, no food or no farmers, no food.

00:12:58.000 Okay.

00:12:59.000 So what it is here is that today it is peaceful.

00:13:04.000 And, you know, there are some chanting old songs and they want to be.

00:13:11.000 Basically, overthrowing the government by lawful means.

00:13:15.000 And, you know, there's no shame in that.

00:13:19.000 There's a lot of Irish pride going around.

00:13:21.000 But again, this crosses both political spectrums here.

00:13:25.000 It's not about the left or the right, liberal or conservative, because it affects everybody.

00:13:30.000 And yeah, so far it's peaceful.

00:13:32.000 I mean, by Irish standards, there's some.

00:13:37.000 Some of the most passionate people on earth here.

00:13:42.000 Kevin Posovic, we're going to call it right there, my friend.

00:13:45.000 Good job.

00:13:46.000 Stay safe.

00:13:47.000 And we'll check in for more updates as this story develops.

00:13:51.000 But there is a potential election that would be a vote of no confidence within the Irish Parliament.

00:13:56.000 Thank you, Kevin, which would obviously spark a huge change in that nation's government, sparked in part by the conflict in Iran, Blake.

00:14:07.000 Figure out whether the demonstrators, if the demonstrators want less migration, that means it's a riot and an outburst and they need to crack down and seize their bank accounts.

00:14:16.000 Whereas if they want a far left government to overthrow and they want to overthrow the government that way, that means they're marching for democracy.

00:14:25.000 Good trouble versus bad trouble.

00:14:27.000 Yeah, do you see it?

00:14:28.000 You're obviously being a little bit sarcastic there, but I do think that's important.

00:14:31.000 A note you're making is that the same tactics could be deployed from the right or the left, but the media will paint one as virtuous, the other as sinister.

00:14:40.000 And illegal.

00:14:41.000 Yeah, and frankly, go ahead.

00:14:43.000 Let's circle back to what we were saying in part one.

00:14:45.000 Like, you know, it's such a great point with those cardinals where supposedly one of them complains, oh, ICE is a lawless organization.

00:14:52.000 Well, first of all, that's not true.

00:14:53.000 But second, you know what else is lawless? 0.90

00:14:56.000 Millions of people coming into your country, living here illegally, working here illegally, stealing people's identities, all sorts of things. 0.99

00:15:05.000 It's, you know, remember a few months ago, there was that New York Times profile of the guy who stole this other person's identity, and they tried to frame it as a tragedy affecting two families. 1.00

00:15:15.000 The guy whose identity got stolen and who got blamed for a bunch of crimes he didn't commit and got harassed by the IRS, and the guy who stole his identity.

00:15:23.000 It talks about that guy going to church in the article.

00:15:26.000 I'd always wonder why doesn't that guy's priest ever say, hey, you should find a way to go back to the country you're legally allowed to be in?

00:15:26.000 And you know what?

00:15:34.000 Hey, are you stealing someone's identity?

00:15:36.000 You shouldn't be doing that.

00:15:38.000 It's so frustrating what these religious leaders do.

00:15:40.000 Well, and you know, to kind of make a further point, what you're saying, Blake, is that.

00:15:46.000 You know, today there was a big breaking news story.

00:15:48.000 We're actually going to have Mary Margaret Olihan tomorrow on it.

00:15:52.000 But this, the DOJ has released an 800 page report how the Biden administration and the Biden DOJ were targeting pro lifers, many of whom are Catholic, simply for their views that are longstanding church positions on life and unborn babies.

00:16:10.000 But you don't see a lot of noise being made about that.

00:16:13.000 So that makes me wonder again, the selective outrage is very, very frustrating.

00:16:18.000 And again, I'm not a Catholic.

00:16:19.000 Blake, you are a Catholic.

00:16:21.000 Putting President Trump's beef with Pope Leo aside, these are massive, massive, glaring inconsistencies, and I think they need to be called out.

00:16:32.000 I wasn't expecting this, I have to say.

00:16:34.000 But Death of Recess, it stopped me in my tracks.

00:16:38.000 This isn't about dodgeballs and jungle gyms.

00:16:41.000 It's about control.

00:16:42.000 The modern American classroom didn't just happen, it was intentionally designed, it was standardized and centralized.

00:16:48.000 And once you see who built it and who protects it, everything clicks.

00:16:52.000 Billions of dollars are flowing through education bureaucracies every year.

00:16:57.000 Test scores collapse, and somehow the answer is always more money and less parental authority.

00:17:02.000 The documentary breaks down.

00:17:03.000 How organizations like the NEA amassed enormous influence, how radical gender ideology entered classrooms, and why something as basic as recess, movement, freedom, childhood, you know, had to go.

00:17:16.000 That's not random.

00:17:17.000 That's systemic.

00:17:19.000 Institutions protect themselves, they do not protect your kids.

00:17:22.000 And that's why this documentary exists on Angel Studio streaming platform, Angel Guild.

00:17:27.000 Angel Guild is willing to distribute films that challenge powerful systems when legacy media won't touch them.

00:17:34.000 So, right now, go to angel.com.

00:17:36.000 Dot com slash Charlie and watch Death of Recess right now.

00:17:40.000 If you're a parent or plan to be, you need to see this.

00:17:42.000 That's angel.com slash Charlie and watch Death of Recess.

00:17:50.000 Without further ado, we have the great Peachy Keenan.

00:17:52.000 It's been a little while since she's been back on the show.

00:17:55.000 Welcome back, Peach Keenan.

00:17:57.000 Thank you so much.

00:17:57.000 Great to see you guys again.

00:17:59.000 You're one of the holdouts in California.

00:18:01.000 That's why we wanted to get you on.

00:18:03.000 There's been dramatic events afoot in that state.

00:18:06.000 We have a lot of fans in California.

00:18:08.000 They're always asking if we can save their state.

00:18:10.000 We're always pretty honest.

00:18:12.000 It's going to be tough, but it does create a lot of entertainment and content and lessons for all of us, at least.

00:18:18.000 Yeah, it's a content goldmine.

00:18:20.000 But yeah, please, please, Blank, save me.

00:18:23.000 Get me out of here.

00:18:24.000 So, yes, the big news, the big news, of course, yesterday.

00:18:28.000 Yesterday, we talked about Eric Swalwell's unfolding scandal that forced him to drop out of the governor's race, where he was the front runner.

00:18:34.000 Now, Eric Swalwell's done.

00:18:37.000 He went from two weeks ago, he was going to be the next governor of California, probably, and now he's out of the race, out of Congress, out of American life, possibly out of the public if they end up indicting him.

00:18:50.000 He sort of issued a strange statement where He apologized to everyone he hurt while also saying the allegations against him are false.

00:19:00.000 We can't really make much of that.

00:19:02.000 We also have very entertaining responses from his rivals for the governorship.

00:19:07.000 I think this one sent me by the team, Katie Porter, where she says, The allegations against Congressman Swalwell are horrifying.

00:19:14.000 I'm thinking of the courageous women who have come forward to share their stories.

00:19:17.000 We believe you and stand with you.

00:19:19.000 And then, thanks to Elon Musk's ex, we have the lovely reader's note. 0.82

00:19:23.000 Katie Porter is an alleged domestic abuser who poured scalding potatoes on her ex husband's head. 0.99

00:19:29.000 She has been seen on camera verbally berating staff for minor slights and has been described as abusive herself.

00:19:37.000 Yeah, we're so blessed by the copious wonders of the Democrats in California.

00:19:43.000 And unfortunately, now we're looking at, I mean, I'm happy to see Swalwell go down.

00:19:47.000 You know, he was such a thorn in everyone's side, but it was so strategic.

00:19:51.000 It would have been great if this had come out when it was just him versus Steve Hilton.

00:19:55.000 After the primary, and then C would have been, you know, kind of just swept into office.

00:19:59.000 So, of course, they had to drop it now.

00:20:01.000 And it was very strategic, they all had the same talking points.

00:20:04.000 And now, unfortunately, as happy as I am to see Swalwell go down and hopefully he'll go to jail, which is where all California Democrats actually belong.

00:20:12.000 Unfortunately, now we're looking at Tom Steyer coming around, which is like worse than Newsome.

00:20:19.000 Like, I don't know what it's like when you're drowning, you know, and someone hands you an anchor.

00:20:23.000 That's what it feels like.

00:20:25.000 As a California lifer, kind of, yeah, lay out what does this, we were discussing yesterday, what does this really tell you about the California Democrat Party where it's that mixture of ineptitude, you might say, because the state isn't well run, yet also, There's this real killer instinct in how they execute political hit jobs on their own people.

00:20:44.000 And of course, how they keep a stranglehold on their state, no matter how messed up it is.

00:20:49.000 Yeah, I mean, they're ruthless.

00:20:50.000 And Sacramento has been run for, I think, decades now by a kind of cabal of far left, almost like Marxists.

00:21:02.000 You see some of these with Scott Weiner, the San Francisco state senator who's looking like he'll easily replace Nancy Pelosi's seat.

00:21:12.000 And, you know, he's the one who made it legal to give some knowingly give someone HIV.

00:21:12.000 In the house.

00:21:19.000 That is no longer a felony in California.

00:21:21.000 That is a misdemeanor.

00:21:22.000 He also made it okay for grown men to sleep with 16 year olds.

00:21:28.000 That is no longer a felony.

00:21:29.000 That is just kind of not something you probably shouldn't do, but it's fine if you do.

00:21:34.000 And so here's California.

00:21:36.000 We're getting rid of Gavin Newsome, which is a blessing, but I am very nervous about the future.

00:21:41.000 We could be looking at a knockout punch of Tom Styre's governor and Nithya Raman as mayor of Los Angeles, who I know it's hard to believe, but she's actually worse than Karen Beth.

00:21:53.000 How is that possible?

00:21:54.000 What would we get? 0.88

00:21:55.000 Is she Mam Donnie, but on the West Coast?

00:21:57.000 Or what would be the changes? 0.75

00:21:59.000 Yeah, I'd say she's probably worse than Mam Donnie. 0.99

00:22:01.000 I think she's a lot smarter than him.

00:22:03.000 Very clever. 0.93

00:22:04.000 She's actually a, Multi millionaire, kind of Hollywood elite.

00:22:07.000 Her husband is a very well known, very successful television writer.

00:22:11.000 He was one of the executive producers of Modern Family and all these big TV shows.

00:22:15.000 But she pitches herself as this woman of the people.

00:22:18.000 She's an open communist. 0.99

00:22:20.000 And during COVID, she was a thorn in the side of every small business in LA. 1.00

00:22:24.000 She was draconian when it came to COVID regulations for businesses reopening.

00:22:32.000 And now she's presenting herself as this woman of the people, this populist.

00:22:35.000 We're going to fix everything.

00:22:36.000 We're going to finally get the homelessness off the street by building homes for them.

00:22:41.000 And street medicine teams are going to go in and, you know, what, give them all methadone and keep them in their tents.

00:22:48.000 So it's going to be a lot more of the same. 0.91

00:22:50.000 And the thing is that she's a lot smarter than Karen Bach.

00:22:52.000 So not a good combination for us.

00:22:55.000 What about Spencer Pratt?

00:22:58.000 Are we feeling like there's any possibility that he could surprise us?

00:23:03.000 I think there is.

00:23:04.000 I mean, I think there's always a chance, right?

00:23:06.000 There always has to be hope.

00:23:07.000 But when you look at LA, I think, you know, Karen Kamala Harris won Los Angeles City by like, you know, 70, 75%.

00:23:18.000 And so if it's down to two people, it's likely going to be a Democrat, unfortunately.

00:23:25.000 Now, the only saving grace is potentially enough people were burned by literally burned by the fire, burned by COVID, have seen the decay of the city.

00:23:33.000 They drive by the tents every day.

00:23:35.000 They're being attacked, you know, by, you know, vagrants.

00:23:39.000 Um, where they go to work and other in businesses being closed down, maybe some people will see the light.

00:23:46.000 But I've thought this every time you know, I keep thinking, like, oh, the Gavin Newsom recall finally, and it never quite works just because of the demographics in the city, they're not looking good.

00:23:56.000 That's unfortunate.

00:24:00.000 PG, I saw that you.

00:24:03.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:04.000 So you're saying that there's basically no hope.

00:24:07.000 I mean, I will say that.

00:24:08.000 There's always hope.

00:24:09.000 There's always hope.

00:24:10.000 We have to hope.

00:24:12.000 Yeah, I will say that my whole take on Gavin Newsom, and it's an unpopular one, is that as bad as he is, and he is very, very bad, that there's always worse, right?

00:24:21.000 Gavin Newsom is still sort of cut from an older mold.

00:24:25.000 He kind of still ascribes to certain norms.

00:24:28.000 I think Tom Steyer.

00:24:29.000 If he becomes your governor, paint a picture of what that could be, especially if he has a communist as mayor in Los Angeles.

00:24:37.000 What kind of policies are you really looking at as a possibility?

00:24:42.000 And I don't know tons about Tom Steyer because he's always thought of as some kind of like joke, you know, when he pops up in every presidential campaign.

00:24:50.000 But from what I've seen so far, just from his tweets and his posts, you know, Newsom was always mindful of running for president.

00:24:56.000 So he never kind of wanted to look too far left.

00:25:00.000 He's canceled some of the crazy things that have come out of Sacramento, actually, because I think he was trying to make himself plausible as a president.

00:25:09.000 Dyer has no such boundaries or guidelines.

00:25:12.000 He came out yesterday with a post that is the end of California, which is getting rid of Prop 13, which is what keeps people's property tax basically kind of quote unquote affordable.

00:25:24.000 And they've been trying to overturn Prop 13 for decades, which would jump everyone's property taxes by, you know, 10x your property tax, it would kill the state.

00:25:34.000 The tweet yesterday was about getting rid of the property tax just for corporations.

00:25:38.000 Um, and so, I mean, if you're a small business, goodbye.

00:25:41.000 If you're a huge, if you're Google in Santa Monica, maybe you can survive that.

00:25:45.000 So, I don't really know all the implications of that, but be just like a stock, you know, commie light.

00:25:50.000 Um, but again, California is not run by uh the governor, it's run by the kind of deep state of California out of Sacramento, and these people will never be budged.

00:25:58.000 Like, even you know, Schwarzenegger couldn't crack that nut. 0.99

00:26:02.000 Um, Styro will just be their puppet. 1.00

00:26:04.000 and we will just get you know more high speed train trains to nowhere Sounds depressing. 1.00

00:26:11.000 I feel like the story with California is it's always about the same as it was before, but a bit worse.

00:26:19.000 There's a certain consistency to it that, well, it's not admirable, but there's something.

00:26:26.000 And Peachy, I know we're going to get to the Catholic topic here as well, but how much of this, just as a sort of cautionary tale to the rest of the country, how much of this is because of population displacement, immigration policies?

00:26:40.000 And by the way, if you talk about Prop 13, the only thing holding that state together right now is these old core families in these old core neighborhoods that make the communities work, that are a lot of them only able to afford California because they are priced in and grandfathered into Prop 13.

00:26:55.000 What happens, the displacement of California that you've already experienced and what you could experience if Prop 13 is removed?

00:27:03.000 Yeah, I mean, every year I have to say goodbye to friends who move.

00:27:07.000 I think we're losing another family this year going to Tennessee.

00:27:11.000 In COVID, our small Catholic school lost.

00:27:14.000 You know, almost 20 families left for various other states, Idaho, Tennessee, and a lot went to Texas.

00:27:22.000 These are Catholics who fled.

00:27:25.000 Some people can't leave. 0.98

00:27:26.000 I can't leave yet.

00:27:27.000 My husband's job is sort of like changing here.

00:27:29.000 So we're stuck for the moment.

00:27:30.000 All our family is here for now.

00:27:33.000 And so, I mean, when I grew up here, I grew up in Pacific Palisades.

00:27:37.000 You know, my childhood home burned down in the fire.

00:27:40.000 And when I was a kid, this was a red state, bright red state.

00:27:43.000 I remember Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan lived up my street.

00:27:47.000 And when he went, I was a very little girl, but we were on the front lawn when he drove to the airport to take office in DC.

00:27:54.000 And my mother had us all waving flags, and all the neighbors came out to like wave goodbye to the Reagans, you know, in the early 80s.

00:28:00.000 And I mean, if you did that now, I mean, imagine that happening now in Pacific Palisades, people being pro Reagan.

00:28:07.000 Like it was just, and so, and it is 100% due to the demographic change. 0.50

00:28:12.000 I mean, this was like what an 80, 70% white state.

00:28:15.000 And now it's, I think, it's reversed. 0.57

00:28:17.000 Now it's, I think, 30% white.

00:28:19.000 And LA County is like, I mean, under 30 is probably like maybe 16 percent white.

00:28:25.000 So everything, you know, just it's just, you know, it is the regret replacement isn't a theory, it's over. 0.50

00:28:33.000 So that's just what it is.

00:28:34.000 That's sorry, that's just like what we're dealing with here.

00:28:37.000 And so you have all the consequences of that.

00:28:39.000 And so, yes, California will spread.

00:28:42.000 We're seeing it in California, the Californication of New York City and all these sort of big cities.

00:28:48.000 It's frightening.

00:28:50.000 Okay, Peachy, I know we're going to get to. 1.00

00:28:52.000 This Catholic story in just a second, but who knows?

00:28:55.000 We might have just got sidetracked here.

00:28:57.000 This is a new story of a woman accusing Eric Swalwell of rape.

00:29:01.000 It just dropped SOT 13.

00:29:03.000 I only had one glass of wine.

00:29:07.000 We were supposed to go to a political event, and he said he needed to get paperwork from his hotel room.

00:29:16.000 When I arrived at his hotel room, I was already incapacitated and I couldn't move my arms or my body. 0.98

00:29:29.000 He raped me and he choked me. 0.97

00:29:37.000 And while he was choking me, I lost consciousness. 0.99

00:29:41.000 Peachy, your reaction to that clip?

00:29:44.000 Wow, they're really going for him.

00:29:46.000 If that's true, that's obviously.

00:29:48.000 Horrible.

00:29:49.000 I'm sure she's not the only one. 0.99

00:29:50.000 He seems like he was a real dirtbag. 0.96

00:29:53.000 I mean, there's a ton. 0.99

00:29:54.000 There's like infinity dirtbags and perverts in the Democrat Party, but he feels like a special case. 0.93

00:30:00.000 Like he was really out of control. 0.84

00:30:04.000 What does that say about the Democrat Party?

00:30:06.000 That they are just like producing so many, and now Ruben Gallego might be going down, right?

00:30:10.000 Wasn't he maybe potentially one of the guys in that gross video?

00:30:16.000 How many races are there?

00:30:18.000 Unconfirmed about Ruben Gallego.

00:30:21.000 But there are a lot of people looking into that.

00:30:23.000 They are known to be close associates, close friends, but unconfirmed either way.

00:30:29.000 I just want to be clear about that.

00:30:30.000 But yes, they are close associates.

00:30:33.000 And by the way, yeah, go ahead.

00:30:36.000 I was saying, I'll be frank.

00:30:37.000 I think I'm skeptical of the vast majority of allegations like this.

00:30:42.000 I think it always should raise an eyebrow when someone's coming forward years later to make an allegation that's effectively impossible to prove or disprove after that amount of time.

00:30:53.000 And this is so clearly a politically related hit job as well.

00:30:56.000 It raises an eyebrow.

00:30:57.000 That's all I'll say.

00:30:58.000 I have no doubt he's a bad dude.

00:31:00.000 He almost certainly is cheating on his wife a bunch, but that's not in itself illegal.

00:31:06.000 But I will say he has done a lot to bring this upon himself because Eric Swalwell, it's always there's a certain good feeling that comes when people who egged on every left wing hysteria, every single moral panic of the past decade fall victim to it themselves.

00:31:24.000 And so to that extent, It is richly deserved.

00:31:29.000 Yeah, I will say there's been no more shameless plugger of the Me Too, believe all victims, victims deserve to be heard.

00:31:38.000 President Trump's a bad guy.

00:31:40.000 Let's get in with Schiff and lie about the president, paint him as some villain.

00:31:46.000 And so it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, certainly, but that is an explosive video.

00:31:50.000 Peachy, I didn't mean to cut you off.

00:31:52.000 No, not at all.

00:31:52.000 I mean, I just wonder how, you know, really the crime here is, and those are all terrible.

00:31:58.000 But the real crime is the cover up because obviously everyone, all of his colleagues knew, all of them knew that at the very least he was doing unspeakable things and being a very naughty boy.

00:32:10.000 Did they know he was actually committing potentially assaulting crimes and rape?

00:32:15.000 I don't know.

00:32:15.000 But the cover up is really the disturbing part that all these women and all these Democrat liberal women who wear white to the State of the Union and Me Too pins and called Trump a rapist and all this, they know who Swalwell is, but they don't want to say anything because he's a reliable vote and he's very popular with the media speaking out against Trump.

00:32:32.000 And so that is just like disgusting. 0.72

00:32:35.000 You know, if you're going to come out and, you know, bash Republicans for being, you know, whatever, you think they're like being bad for women, but you're protecting actual rapists who are like your buddies and you're just hanging out with them in the Democrat parties. 0.99

00:32:50.000 What does that say about feminism? 1.00

00:32:52.000 Yeah, well said. 1.00

00:32:53.000 Well said.

00:32:54.000 And Nancy Pelosi, for what it's worth, has denied any knowledge of these accusations against Eric Swalwell, which is noteworthy because even I had heard about them.

00:33:03.000 And so if you've I've heard about them.

00:33:05.000 How has Nancy Pelosi, one of the leading Democrats in California, not heard about it?

00:33:11.000 Right.

00:33:12.000 By the way, if you can't have it, take it, is his senior quote.

00:33:17.000 Think about that.

00:33:18.000 Eric Swallow's senior yearbook quote is if you can't have it, take it.

00:33:22.000 That's awesome.

00:33:23.000 Age like milk.

00:33:24.000 Age like milk.

00:33:24.000 That's awesome.

00:33:25.000 All right.

00:33:26.000 Peachy, we don't have any time here for your deep thoughts, which is really frustrating for me.

00:33:30.000 But the Catholic controversy with Pope Leo, the Cardinals, weigh in.

00:33:35.000 We've been talking about this hour.

00:33:37.000 Please, your perspective.

00:33:39.000 We have about a minute and a half.

00:33:40.000 Yeah, so.

00:33:41.000 Yeah.

00:33:41.000 Okay.

00:33:42.000 So, very quickly, you know, Pope Leo, you know, I'm a devout Catholic.

00:33:45.000 I respect the Pope.

00:33:47.000 People were excited about him. 0.90

00:33:48.000 He's obviously what everyone assumed he was sort of like a stock boomer lib, which all boomers in the church are. 0.79

00:33:57.000 All the boomer priests are the same as him. 0.63

00:33:59.000 He's anti war. 1.00

00:34:00.000 That's fine. 0.94

00:34:01.000 Okay.

00:34:02.000 He's allowed to be anti war.

00:34:03.000 That's totally within bounds.

00:34:05.000 But I want to talk about those three cardinals who are on 60 minutes really quick Stupich, Tobin, and what's his name, McCleary. 0.58

00:34:12.000 These guys were, you know, they're Obama IFes. 0.54

00:34:15.000 They're, They're far left.

00:34:17.000 They are basically, they were very close. 0.98

00:34:20.000 They were proteges of Uncle Ted McCarrick, who was a disgraced, you know, rapist, actual rapist in the DC area. 0.83

00:34:29.000 He was handpicked by, these two were handpicked by Francis to be elevated as these like liberal, look at them. 0.85

00:34:36.000 These, they represented Pope Francis's like ideals.

00:34:39.000 They wanted to tamp down conservative Catholics.

00:34:42.000 And so the rise in organic converts this year was in spite of these guys.

00:34:47.000 Not because of them and not even because of Leo.

00:34:49.000 I mean, I would argue that Donald Trump was more, should get more credit for drawing people into the church.

00:34:54.000 People want tradition and the church is still the only place you can really get that Latin and all the rest.

00:35:00.000 And there are certain parishes where people are being drawn, not to those guys' parishes.

00:35:04.000 Blake, I'll let you take it away here.

00:35:06.000 And I should say 30 seconds.

00:35:08.000 We should shout out.

00:35:09.000 You have a book that's already out and you have another that is coming up.

00:35:12.000 We should 20 seconds.

00:35:13.000 There you go.

00:35:15.000 Taught your line.

00:35:16.000 Okay, great.

00:35:17.000 Thank you.

00:35:17.000 Thank you, Blake.

00:35:18.000 Yeah, my first book, Domestic Extremists.

00:35:21.000 Is still available.

00:35:22.000 It's about basically why you all should be more, more trad.

00:35:26.000 And then my new book is called Super Villains.

00:35:28.000 It comes out September 1st.

00:35:30.000 You can pre order it today at Passage. Press or on Amazon.

00:35:34.000 Thank you very much.

00:35:35.000 Thank you, PG.

00:35:36.000 We'll have you on soon again.

00:35:40.000 I want to talk to you about an issue so many Americans face, and that's health insurance.

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00:36:55.000 Andrew had to step away.

00:36:56.000 So I'm Blake here, flying solo for the next hour.

00:36:59.000 But I think we'll have a good time.

00:37:00.000 I'm very excited about this next guest.

00:37:02.000 It's a topic I think will be very interesting.

00:37:06.000 So I want us to welcome Jacob Siegel.

00:37:09.000 He is an editor at Tablet Magazine, and he's also the author of a new book called The Information State Politics in the Age of Total Control.

00:37:21.000 Jacob, welcome to the program.

00:37:23.000 Thanks for having me.

00:37:24.000 Good to be here.

00:37:24.000 All right.

00:37:25.000 Let's dive right into it.

00:37:26.000 That's a very ominous cover.

00:37:28.000 Looks a lot like a cover of a Kafka novel at a glance.

00:37:30.000 I'm guessing that's deliberate.

00:37:34.000 What is the information state?

00:37:36.000 It's a new kind of political regime that rules not through the consent of the governed in the way that we expect a democracy to rule.

00:37:45.000 It doesn't rule through the formal procedures of law and constitutional procedure.

00:37:52.000 Instead, it rules through control of digital code.

00:37:56.000 So it essentially moves decision-making power from the recognizable centers that we know from the framer's intention from the history of America.

00:38:07.000 It takes sovereignty and decision-making power from there and it relocates it essentially into the digital infrastructure.

00:38:15.000 So debanking is an example of how the information state exercises power, mass information operations, mass censorship.

00:38:24.000 All of these are the sort of tools of the trade of what I'm saying is really not just an abuse of government power, but an entirely new kind of political regime that's coming into being, and we're watching it be born now.

00:38:39.000 Yeah, and I guess as laid out, I looked through a summary of the book, and it looks like we're kind of seeing what we were warned about 25 years ago with the launch of the war on terrorism, with the Patriot Act.

00:38:52.000 We started to get concerned about extremism online, terrorist activities online, tracking those things online.

00:39:00.000 And now we're seeing it turn around where they're built like the hunt for terrorists abroad has turned into this hunt for terrorists in the United States.

00:39:09.000 And that's turned into, as you say, debanking, but also, especially, the censorship apparatus, correct?

00:39:15.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:39:16.000 And there really is a straight line from this massive expansion of surveillance powers and not only governmental surveillance powers.

00:39:24.000 You know, the Patriot Act was part of it.

00:39:26.000 But what also happened after 9 11 is that the social media companies and the telecommunications companies. were essentially turned into kind of private surveillance units that were doing the work that the government couldn't do because it was unconstitutional.

00:39:42.000 So they were pulling all of this data in.

00:39:44.000 They were harvesting this data through programs like PRISM that we found out about through the Snowden leaks.

00:39:51.000 And so the entire commercial side of the internet was also essentially functioning as a kind of mass dragnet.

00:39:59.000 Now, what ended up happening after the war on terror started to wind down or as it entered its second decade, was that entire apparatus for surveillance, counterterrorism, was redirected from targets abroad to targets at home.

00:40:14.000 So that huge machinery of repression and surveillance started to get targeted against Americans inside of the United States, first through programs like what was called Countering Violent Extremism that were monitoring the internet for extremist behavior in the U.S., ostensibly tied to terrorism, and then finally through this new counter disinformation establishment.

00:40:38.000 All right.

00:40:39.000 And so, this counter disinformation establishment, can you describe what it is?

00:40:43.000 Because the sense from the book, it's not even just government.

00:40:46.000 It's almost this alliance that exists between government agencies like the FBI, but also this NGO blob complex.

00:40:56.000 And that's a very important part of this information state, correct?

00:40:59.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:41:00.000 Because right now, as I'm saying, there's this new thing coming into being, which is this kind of informational power that essentially takes over, governs through control of the digital platforms.

00:41:13.000 But, you know, we still have a constitution in the United States.

00:41:16.000 There's still laws that prohibit spying on American citizens.

00:41:20.000 And so the government is aware that it can't carry out all of these functions it might like to carry out.

00:41:25.000 And so it outsources this work through NGOs, through these sort of cutouts that it creates.

00:41:32.000 And it establishes these convoluted institutional networks.

00:41:37.000 And this really kicked into high gear in 2016 with the creation of something called the Global Engagement Center.

00:41:46.000 which Obama chartered just as he was leaving office.

00:41:49.000 And it was really the premier government run counter disinformation establishment.

00:41:55.000 But the way it worked in its own mission statement was not just to carry out actions on its own as a federal agency, it was to affect what it called the whole of society effort.

00:42:06.000 So the whole purpose was to align different powerful institutions, what they called stakeholder institutions across American society, You know, that could be media, it could be financial institutions, universities, et cetera.

00:42:21.000 Get all of them on the same page, get all of them bought into this new mandate to not only counter foreign disinformation, but this expanding laundry list of bad forms of information.

00:42:35.000 So foreign disinformation grew to domestic misinformation, which then eventually included malinformation, which became an actual term within another government agency called CISA.

00:42:50.000 under the Department of Homeland Security made part of its mission monitoring the internet for malinformation, which referred to true statements, factually correct statements that were perceived to cause harm.

00:43:04.000 Can you give us examples of that malinformation?

00:43:06.000 And was this actually censored, suppressed?

00:43:08.000 I suppose.

00:43:10.000 What are some good examples of that?

00:43:11.000 So, malinformation could include somebody questioning the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines.

00:43:18.000 It could include somebody questioning climate change, climate change skepticism, opposition to the war in Ukraine, opposition to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

00:43:30.000 All of these were on the list of issues that the government agency, CISA, and the related institutions that were working with it, like the Election Integrity Partnership and other sort of related NGOs, these were the kinds of narratives that they were monitoring, that they, in coordination with the social media companies, were looking at.

00:43:53.000 It's very hard to say exactly how many posts online were censored.

00:43:57.000 You know, I went to Washington, D.C. I interviewed more than a dozen people who worked directly on this kind of thing, and I didn't get a single You know, solid estimate from anybody.

00:44:10.000 It just in the millions is all anyone could tell me because there were deliberate firewalls created between the social media companies and the sort of NGO partners and the federal agencies.

00:44:23.000 So it was set up in such a way that they were trying to create a denial of liability for everybody involved.

00:44:31.000 Now, some of this came out through the Twitter files and other reporting, but just to give you an example of how it worked.

00:44:38.000 You know, if, for example, the Election Integrity Partnership informed the social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook, that they were concerned about a particular narrative online, they didn't necessarily need to then tell Facebook or Twitter every post that they wanted censored.

00:44:56.000 The social media platform could just dial it down on its own to suppress the visibility.

00:45:01.000 It's sort of a perfect censorship machine because you just say, oh, as the government, we're concerned about this, we dislike it.

00:45:08.000 And they do all of the censorship for you, but it's not ordered, so it's not violating the First Amendment.

00:45:14.000 The information state, I want to take an excerpt from this.

00:45:18.000 It's getting at one of the most extreme cases of this censorship apparatus that exists indirectly in American life.

00:45:26.000 And everyone's going to remember this story.

00:45:28.000 On the eve of the 2020 presidential race, the New York Times published a frontal attack on the principle of free speech.

00:45:35.000 On the cover of its Sunday magazine, there was an essay, The First Amendment in the Age of Disinformation.

00:45:41.000 The author Emily Bazalon, a graduate of Yale Law School, made the case basically that free speech threatens democracy as much as it also provides for its flourishing.

00:45:55.000 And just days after this article came out, we got.

00:46:00.000 The Hunter Biden laptop story.

00:46:02.000 And if you've forgotten how heavily that was suppressed, we've heard a lot that the Intel agents, I believe 50 of them, came out and said, this shows the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.

00:46:12.000 But it wasn't just that they smeared it as disinformation.

00:46:15.000 On Facebook, you were not allowed, not merely not to post the article, you could not message the article to people in a private message.

00:46:24.000 The New York Post had its Twitter account blocked because they were publishing a true story that their reporter. Had research.

00:46:32.000 This is really the information state as you're describing it in full flower.

00:46:36.000 It's government and NGOs and news publications creating this miasma that just justifies the suppression of true information.

00:46:44.000 Isn't that correct?

00:46:45.000 Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

00:46:47.000 And it's actually even worse than that in the sense that the FBI had obtained those laptops in, I believe, December of 2019.

00:46:57.000 So for months prior to the scandal over the laptops becoming public, they were in the FBI's possession.

00:47:05.000 Which means that the Bureau had already certified that they were authentic.

00:47:09.000 They knew that they weren't Russian plants of some sort.

00:47:12.000 And yet, the FBI went to the social media platforms prior to the leaked documents based on the laptops and prior to the New York Post reporting on the laptops and told the social media companies hey, we expect there to be another Russian hack and dump operation in the lead up to the election.

00:47:34.000 This time, we think it's going to target Hunter Biden.

00:47:37.000 So the FBI actually colluded in what was really an information operation to suppress legitimate reporting on the laptops, despite knowing that the laptops were authentic because they were in the FBI's possession.

00:47:52.000 Outrageous, outrageous.

00:47:53.000 But let's follow up to, I guess, the obvious question.

00:47:56.000 So they've built this apparatus and it managed to exist throughout, frankly, the first Trump administration, even though it was often actively hostile to it.

00:48:06.000 And this apparatus still exists in our government.

00:48:08.000 How do we go about breaking this information state?

00:48:12.000 How do we take it apart and bring back a normal functioning media environment, a normal functioning information environment?

00:48:19.000 How do we get as free as we were in the 1990s?

00:48:22.000 Well, I think one of the things we need to look at is data ownership.

00:48:26.000 And this is something I've been talking about for a while, but I think that it's an important idea to get out to the public.

00:48:34.000 Essentially, when we're on the internet, all of our data is being harvested from us.

00:48:41.000 It's free as it's leaving us, right?

00:48:43.000 We don't get anything for it as we're producing this data.

00:48:47.000 It's treated as if it's free, but then it's bundled in ways that monetize it so it becomes extremely valuable.

00:48:54.000 And because there's this sort of mass data harvesting at scale, It makes it possible to create these sort of manipulated mass media environments.

00:49:04.000 Now, if you had to actually pay people for their data that you're using, I think it would disincentivize a lot of the collection of data, which would disincentivize some of these mass surveillance efforts.

00:49:20.000 And that in turn, it would have a kind of cascade effect where it would also disincentivize censorship because the censorship relies on the mass surveillance.

00:49:28.000 So essentially, creating something like a property rights structure for people's data is a step in the right direction.

00:49:35.000 The other thing I would say, and I come at this less in the sense of immediate political solutions and more in terms of what I think is wrong with the environment in a bigger picture way, because the policy stuff is just not my specialty.

00:49:53.000 But I would say in a big picture sense, one of the things that the internet has done and that social media has done is that it's really eroded national borders and boundaries.

00:50:03.000 So, if you're somebody who believes in border enforcement, we have to carry that same sensibility over to online spaces.

00:50:12.000 We have to think about what it means to create an environment on social media, for instance, where Americans can enter into a political conversation with other Americans that's not going to be inundated by people who are not Americans stepping into that political conversation.

00:50:28.000 I think X has taken a good step in that direction by adding to the user data. of posters on that site where they're posting from but there's more that can be done in that direction All right.

00:50:42.000 What about?

00:50:42.000 So that's data ownership, private sector.

00:50:44.000 One minute.

00:50:45.000 Is there something we can do to really, for example, what could the Trump administration do to dismantle this if it was of a mind to do so in the three years it has?

00:50:54.000 I mean, it's taken some very serious steps, I would say.

00:50:58.000 Seriously, it rolled back both CISA and the GEC.

00:51:01.000 So the two primary federal agencies that were involved in this were immediately targeted by the Trump administration.

00:51:09.000 It doesn't mean they can't be reconstituted.

00:51:12.000 At some point in the future, or that the duties of those offices can't be moved elsewhere.

00:51:16.000 But the other thing is to start to introduce legislation that, a bit like the settlement we just saw come out of the Missouri versus the Biden case, that prohibits coordination between the federal government and social media companies about posts to censor.

00:51:38.000 So that settlement, which was just reached in this big case that went to the Supreme Court and then got kicked.

00:51:43.000 Down it only lasts for 10 years and it only prohibits some of that activity.

00:51:49.000 Thank you very much.

00:51:50.000 We're actually out of time on our segment.

00:51:52.000 Jacob Siegel, the information state, check it out.

00:51:54.000 Thank you very much for coming on.

00:51:56.000 Thanks for having me.

00:51:59.000 America is entering its 250th year, and the direction of this country is being decided right now in our culture and our economy.

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00:53:12.000 We haven't talked about it yet, but there was something very unfortunate that happened on Sunday to people who care about Christianity, people who care about conservatism, who care about nationalism around the world.

00:53:25.000 You might already know what I'm talking about.

00:53:27.000 There was an election in the small European country of Hungary.

00:53:32.000 And to talk about it, we're going to be joined by Jeremy Carl.

00:53:36.000 He's a fellow at the Claremont Institute.

00:53:38.000 He's the author of The Unprotected Class, and he was one of Charlie's favorite nominees to this administration, unfortunately.

00:53:46.000 The Senate was not playing ball.

00:53:48.000 Jeremy, are you there with us?

00:53:50.000 I am here with you.

00:53:50.000 It's a pleasure to be with you.

00:53:52.000 Thanks for joining us.

00:53:52.000 All right.

00:53:53.000 So, yeah, just to set the stage here Viktor Orban was the prime minister of Hungary for the past 16 years.

00:54:01.000 He definitely, when you'd reach around and you'd try to find a leader who you'd say, like, who's the guy you think is doing everything right or mostly everything right?

00:54:10.000 And I think you and I would both agree Viktor Orban is a guy we would look to.

00:54:14.000 While every other European country was bringing in immigrants by the millions, he was saying, Hungary is above all for Hungarians.

00:54:23.000 We're going to preserve our national character.

00:54:25.000 While every other country was racing towards secularism, he was promoting Christianity in his country.

00:54:30.000 And especially while everyone else is annihilating the family, they took a lot of steps to protect the family.

00:54:36.000 But 16 years is a long time to hold power, and they were defeated in Sunday's election.

00:54:44.000 Jeremy, can you explain to us how this came to pass?

00:54:47.000 Yeah, well, I've spent a couple different fellowships in Hungary for a few weeks each over the last few years, so I have had.

00:54:55.000 Some time to sort of spend there and understand a little bit about kind of what's going on.

00:54:59.000 I think you kind of hit on the key thing, which is 16 years is just a long time.

00:55:04.000 Helmut Kohl, who was the prime minister who unified Germany after communism, was in for 16 years and eventually he just got bounced.

00:55:12.000 Now, do I think that there were things that were problems?

00:55:15.000 Yes.

00:55:16.000 The economy was still sluggish.

00:55:19.000 I think ongoing corruption, while sometimes perhaps overstated, was still a real issue.

00:55:25.000 I think that there were people who were not happy about the Way that Russia Ukraine relations were being handled by Orbán, although there were equally many who were happy that he was keeping.

00:55:37.000 Hungry out of that.

00:55:38.000 But I just think that combined with a huge amount of pressure from the European Union, standing up media outlets, withholding funds, doing everything they could to help Orban's opponent.

00:55:49.000 And, you know, this time it just turned out to be too much to overcome.

00:55:54.000 Yeah, it really, I think one of the things I wanted to talk about this because there's important lessons from it, which is even if you really deliver, if you deliver on the border, if you deliver on family stuff, if you deliver on a lot of your red meat issues, it's politically unforgiving because you still also have to deliver on.

00:56:12.000 The core stuff, which is you have to make sure the economy is growing and you have to make sure that you're not seen as corrupt, shady.

00:56:21.000 If that reputation gets embedded, it can destroy even the best policies.

00:56:25.000 And I think that's a big takeaway to take from here.

00:56:27.000 But I also wanted to bring it up because I've seen a lot of defeatism about it because, let's be frank, a lot of bad stuff might be about to happen in Hungary.

00:56:36.000 If you want to prove that it's a bad sign, we have a tweet by Barack Obama on Sunday night.

00:56:44.000 Which got 65 million views, where he says, The victory of the opposition in Hungary yesterday is a victory for democracy, not just in Europe, but around the world.

00:56:56.000 It's a testament to the resilience and determination of the Hungarian people, a reminder to all of us to keep striving for fairness, equality, and the rule of law, which, as you and I know, is 100% bunk.

00:57:09.000 Hungary is a good example to look towards for all the attacks that they'll bring against you, which we've certainly seen play out here in America, that you can.

00:57:18.000 Hold every election, you can campaign fairly in every election, you can literally win four elections in a row and then finally lose one.

00:57:26.000 And they'll just say, You're not democracy, because for them, democracy doesn't mean holding elections, doesn't mean winning elections, doesn't mean listening to what the people want.

00:57:36.000 It means listening to what we've decided needs to happen in Brussels or at Davos or at the United Nations or wherever Barack Obama happens to be.

00:57:45.000 No, that's exactly right.

00:57:46.000 And I think it's notable, however, if you want to look for some bright spots, and I do think that there are a few amidst the gloom.

00:57:53.000 Here.

00:57:54.000 Madjar, who was the candidate who beat him, is a former member until actually very recently, a fairly senior member of Orban's party who essentially almost ran to his right on some issues.

00:58:07.000 Certainly, he did not give any ground on immigration or national identity or some of these things.

00:58:12.000 And he basically said, you know, I'm going to kind of do a lot of the same things that Orban was doing, but I'm going to sort of improve relationships with the EU and maybe, you know, alter a little bit vis a vis Ukraine and Russia.

00:58:26.000 and I'm going to cut down on corruption.

00:58:29.000 Now, I think there's reasons to be Pessimistic if you look at George Soros's son and Obama sending out celebratory tweets, that this is in fact what's going to happen.

00:58:39.000 But the fact that at least he was, you know, that's how he felt he needed to do to win is an indicative of the fact that Orban really has set the political tone in Hungary in a way.

00:58:54.000 And so that's a pretty big achievement.

00:58:56.000 Yeah.

00:58:56.000 Well, that's another warning.

00:58:58.000 As you say, his opponent, it's pretty funny.

00:59:00.000 His name was Peter Magyar, which is kind of like having a guy run for president named John American.

00:59:05.000 But this guy, as you said, he had to run as, oh, I'm also tough on immigration.

00:59:10.000 In fact, I believe he even claimed that a handful of migrants who had come into Hungary had eaten animals in one of the city's zoos. 0.95

00:59:18.000 That attack still has currency. 0.99

00:59:18.000 He did. 0.99

00:59:20.000 He said, he's actually a squish on immigration.

00:59:23.000 I'll be just as tough. 0.99

00:59:24.000 He used Ukraine.

00:59:26.000 I had a friend who was just in Budapest, and he said the ads he saw really made it look like the election was a referendum on Ukraine and on Russia.

00:59:34.000 But you have to be wary because we've already seen reporting, the European Union is.

00:59:39.000 Really celebrating this because Orban was by far the gutsiest leader in standing against them.

00:59:44.000 They were cutting off European Union funds, saying, You're an autocracy.

00:59:49.000 You're acting anti democratically.

00:59:51.000 And they've already been saying, We'll release these funds if you get on board with the euro, if you get on board with immigration, if you get on board with a lot of our foreign policy agenda.

01:00:03.000 And so a lesson here is you have to be ready for these guys who are going to promise you, I'm not going to change any of the big stuff you like with this guy.

01:00:12.000 But if they're more vulnerable to pressure from the outside, from globalists, from Sorrow's World, from the European Union, from the global American empire, as it were, you're going to lose your country eventually.

01:00:25.000 Yeah, I think that's the concern.

01:00:26.000 And actually, the other aspect of this that I think is very interesting that I'm actually writing about right now is the degree to which it showed how much, to be frank, a number of our key senators still hate Trump's foreign policy.

01:00:41.000 Now, JD Vance went all the way to Hungary to campaign.

01:00:45.000 For Orban in the waning days, which shows how much of an emphasis we put on this as an administration.

01:00:51.000 Trump and Orban have been very close, good friends.

01:00:55.000 You had in the wake of this election, immediately McConnell had a sort of celebratory op ed on Fox News, which kind of was indistinguishable from somebody, something that would have been tweeted by Hillary Clinton.

01:01:11.000 You had Roger Wicker, who's the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, from very deep.

01:01:15.000 I want to read that because it's think of what we read from Obama earlier.

01:01:19.000 There's a similar tweet from Hillary Clinton.

01:01:21.000 And now we have this Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from a Republican state.

01:01:26.000 The freedom loving people of Hungary have voted decisively in favor of democracy and the rule of law.

01:01:32.000 I congratulate them and Peter Magyar, the next prime minister of Hungary.

01:01:36.000 They have rejected the malign influence of Vladimir Putin, the world's most malicious dictator, and decided their own future.

01:01:43.000 So, contrast this by a Republican senator and what was stated by Obama.

01:01:49.000 They're practically indistinguishable.

01:01:51.000 This is a guy, he's saying this about a country that stopped mass immigration, a country that. 0.58

01:01:56.000 Gave, I believe they gave a lifetime tax exemption to any mother who has four children.

01:02:02.000 They would give loans to newly married couples and it would be fully forgiven if you had three kids.

01:02:07.000 This is a country that did it right and they did it while holding and winning elections.

01:02:11.000 This is a country that dismantled their NGO deep state.

01:02:15.000 They did it right.

01:02:15.000 And if we have Republican senators who can't see what an asset that was, what an ally that was, and all they see is Vladimir Putin everywhere, they shouldn't be leaders in our party, period.

01:02:27.000 Yeah, well, obviously, I agree with you.

01:02:28.000 And again, I think the shocking thing is not so much that he thinks this.

01:02:32.000 I mean, I know, frankly, a number of Republican senators who, based on my own experience through the Senate, either think this or, to a first approximation, at least will entertain it, but that he felt comfortable enough to just say it.

01:02:47.000 And again, he didn't even frame it in terms of, well, I'm glad that I'd like to see us be more pro Ukraine, and I think the opposition will let us do that, and that's great.

01:02:58.000 I mean, that would be still pretty bad in my view because he could just be silent.

01:03:02.000 But he literally repeats like the left's talking points on rule of law, on democracy, that are just false.

01:03:10.000 And so it's just, it's a shocking example.

01:03:13.000 And there's a couple other senators who also chimed in of just how much Trump continues to fight with his own party to set the direction of his foreign policy.

01:03:23.000 I want to close the loop on Hungary.

01:03:24.000 Viktor Orban, a leader a lot of us admire, people around the world admire.

01:03:29.000 He kind of set the template for what a populist.

01:03:32.000 Right, leader was capable of doing.

01:03:34.000 As a result, Vice President Vance was actually showing some support for him before the election.

01:03:39.000 Obviously, it didn't work out.

01:03:41.000 But as the Vice President explained, he knew it was unlikely to save him, but you had to try because he was an ally of ours who deserved it.

01:03:49.000 Let's play clip eight.

01:03:51.000 I think that Viktor Orban's a great guy who's done a very good job.

01:03:54.000 I think that his legacy in Hungary is transformational.

01:03:57.000 16 years fundamentally changing that country.

01:04:00.000 But one of the reasons why we decided to do that, Brett, is not because.

01:04:03.000 You know, we can't read polls.

01:04:04.000 We certainly knew there was a very good chance that Victor would lose that election.

01:04:08.000 We did it because he's one of the few European leaders we've seen who's been willing to stand up to the bureaucracy in Brussels that has been very, very bad for the United States.

01:04:18.000 We didn't go because we expected Victor to cruise to an election victory.

01:04:22.000 We went because it was the right thing to do to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time.

01:04:28.000 So this wasn't about Russia and fundamentally it wasn't about Europe.

01:04:31.000 It was about the United States and the fact that he's been a good partner.

01:04:35.000 To both me and the president personally, but also to the United States.

01:04:38.000 I'm sad that he lost.

01:04:40.000 I really admire that from the vice president.

01:04:42.000 I think that message of standing with those who stand with us, who stand for what we believe in, is a very positive one.

01:04:48.000 And I think it was gutsy of him to go because he had to know it was likely that he would lose and they'd do the whole, oh, Vance, kiss of death on this guy.

01:04:56.000 It's nonsense.

01:04:57.000 We stood up for someone who was worth standing up for.

01:05:00.000 Yeah, no, I mean, I agree.

01:05:02.000 And I thought it was admirable.

01:05:03.000 It was admirable of Trump to send him.

01:05:05.000 It was obviously admirable of Vance to go and wasn't able to change the outcome.

01:05:10.000 But I do think that it sent.

01:05:12.000 A good message to our allies that if you're with us, that we are going to stand with you.

01:05:16.000 And I think over the long term, obviously, that's a very good message to send.

01:05:21.000 And then obviously, you know, we'll see what happens with the new guy.

01:05:25.000 I think it'll be interesting to see whether he really tacks to the left or whether he attempts to sort of continue at least some of Orban's legacy and, but maybe play a little nicer with the European Union.

01:05:39.000 So we'll just have to see how that develops.

01:05:41.000 All right.

01:05:42.000 And one final thought on that.

01:05:43.000 He's out of office after 16 years and he lost bad.

01:05:46.000 But that does not make him a failure.

01:05:48.000 It doesn't make any leader a failure.

01:05:50.000 Politics is all about buying your country time.

01:05:53.000 And while London looks unrecognizable compared to just 20 years ago, Budapest is still a great city.

01:05:59.000 I've been there.

01:05:59.000 It's lovely to visit.

01:06:00.000 I encourage everyone to do so.

01:06:02.000 And that's a testament he can always be proud of.

01:06:04.000 I want to hit another topic in these last five minutes, Jeremy.

01:06:07.000 The White House published an economic report for 2026, and it's very much after your own heart.

01:06:13.000 You wrote the book, The Unprotected Class.

01:06:15.000 It's all about how. 0.53

01:06:17.000 White Americans, especially straight white male young Americans, that classic persecuted group, they're unprotected.

01:06:23.000 They're discriminated against by our businesses, by our governments, by academia. 0.51

01:06:27.000 And the justification for all of this, of course, is that with DEI, we would unleash massive amounts of growth.

01:06:34.000 And the White House says they looked at the numbers and not so much.

01:06:39.000 They released numbers on Monday that said industries that heavily pursued DEI programs were about 2.5% less productive.

01:06:48.000 Than those that did not.

01:06:50.000 So, DEI, in addition to being racist and discriminatory, is making us all poorer.

01:06:55.000 Yeah, I mean, I think it's totally plausible.

01:06:57.000 I always do approach these large macroeconomic studies as somebody who's done a little graduate training in economics with a little bit of.

01:07:05.000 Skepticism.

01:07:06.000 I think that you're kind of trying to deal with large multi causal things and it's hard to just pinpoint them.

01:07:13.000 But that having been said, what they're really saying and trying to quantify is just something that should be screamingly obvious to everybody.

01:07:19.000 Because if you do away with the propaganda words around DEI, all we're basically saying is when you hire people who are less qualified based on the color of their skin or some other characteristic of theirs other than their competence, you're going to wind up with a less efficient, less powerful business.

01:07:37.000 That is Almost a tautology.

01:07:39.000 I mean, it should be obvious to everybody.

01:07:41.000 And I salute them for at least trying to put a number on that that turns out to maybe not be so insignificant.

01:07:47.000 It really highlights kind of the outrageous.

01:07:50.000 It's good that we've mainstreamed DEI almost as a negative thing, but it's also ridiculous that we use terms like DEI when we could just say racial discrimination is actually bad and we're constantly accused of it.

01:08:03.000 Yet it is the left that has built their entire political ideology on discrimination, that we need to put a thumb on the scale for.

01:08:11.000 Hiring, whether it's based on race, based on sex, based on sexual orientation, based on any number of things.

01:08:19.000 And they just, they basically just lie about it.

01:08:22.000 And they tell us this is fairness when we should be able to stand up and say, very obviously, that's not true.

01:08:28.000 Yeah.

01:08:28.000 I mean, absolutely.

01:08:29.000 And again, I think part of their control of language is how they keep political power.

01:08:33.000 And it's one of the reasons why when I put anti white racism in the title of the subtitle of The Unprotected Class, even guys like Chris Rufo, who've done great work on this and endorsed the book, You know, sort of did a, you know, intake of breath, like, are we allowed to say that?

01:08:49.000 And, you know, my view, which I think you now see a lot more politicians saying that since the book came out, is that it's very important to just be really clear about what we're talking about and not let them, you know, hide behind terms like affirmative action or DEI.

01:09:05.000 What they're doing is racial discrimination or they're doing gender or sex discrimination.

01:09:10.000 And we should just be really clear that, like, what they're doing is un American and we should call it by its name.

01:09:16.000 Absolutely. 0.61

01:09:17.000 Absolutely. 0.99

01:09:18.000 It's just such a ridiculous thing. 0.99

01:09:20.000 They've been able to run this scam. 0.92

01:09:22.000 I'm sure you monitor this because you're such the expert on it.

01:09:26.000 Can you give us a sense how much progress, besides this report, has the administration been making on dismantling this apparatus, both within government and within the private sector?

01:09:37.000 I think they've done a great job, all things considered.

01:09:39.000 I'm a huge fan of Harmeet Dillon, who is our assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department.

01:09:46.000 She and her team, I think, have been doing outstanding work.

01:09:49.000 They had to backfill a huge amount of staff because when she came in and said, Hey, guess what?

01:09:54.000 Our definition of civil rights is actually that you're going to treat everybody equally.

01:09:58.000 A lot of the existing attorneys had no interest in that. 0.97

01:10:01.000 And so she lost about 70% of her attorneys. 0.60

01:10:03.000 She had to build that staff back up.

01:10:05.000 But from everything from getting rid of disparate impact to getting rid of DEI to everything from, I mean, they're kind of suing on, they've created a Second Amendment division.

01:10:18.000 They've pursued religious freedom issues that have been very favorable.

01:10:22.000 So I think we've done a lot.

01:10:23.000 On the other hand, this problem was not made in a year.

01:10:28.000 And I think sometimes people on our side get a little too impatient in just thinking we can snap our fingers and undo it in a year.

01:10:35.000 There is a whole host of executive orders, laws, et cetera, that have to be undone.

01:10:41.000 And then there's a bunch of lawsuits that need to be filed against people who continue to break the law.

01:10:47.000 So we've made a lot of good progress, but there's still a lot of work to do.

01:10:52.000 That's absolutely right, Jeremy.

01:10:54.000 Again, you can check out his work.

01:10:55.000 He's with the Claremont Institute and he's the author of The Unprotected Class.

01:11:00.000 Thank you for coming on, Jeremy.

01:11:01.000 I know we had to bring you on on short notice, so thank you again and you take care.

01:11:10.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 14, 2026

The Catholic Cardinals and the Trump Administration

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