The Charlie Kirk Show - The Christian Devotional for Politics Junkies

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's on the Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:01.000 My friend Cliff Sims for the entire hour, author of a new book, The Darkness Has Not Overcome.

00:00:07.000 We talk about his book, Faith in Politics, How Should Christians Vote?

00:00:10.000 What is Donald Trump like in private and in person, and more.

00:00:14.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:00:27.000 Here we go.

00:00:28.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:30.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

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00:00:35.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:39.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:40.000 He's an incredible guy.

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00:01:26.000 They are counting on your surrender.

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00:02:47.000 Joining us now is a good friend and great American patriot, author of the new book, The Darkness Has Not Overcome: Lessons on Faith and Politics from Inside the Halls of Power by Cliff Sims.

00:02:59.000 Cliff, welcome to the program.

00:03:00.000 Charlie, thanks for having me, man.

00:03:02.000 Lots to discuss this hour.

00:03:04.000 Cliff, tell us all about your book.

00:03:06.000 Man, so I set out after I left the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after working in the White House, and I realized there were a lot of lessons that I had learned.

00:03:15.000 Some of them I was trying to come to terms with myself, but also things that I realized that could apply to a lot of people's lives.

00:03:23.000 And I kind of combined that with this sense in my own life where I've really struggled over the years to frankly do a daily devotional, to be in the Bible every day, like I know that I'm supposed to be.

00:03:37.000 And so I basically wrote the political junkies dream devotional book.

00:03:42.000 So like if you want to know what it's like inside the government's doomsday bunker or what it's like inside, you know, what's inside the president's nuclear football, what's going on on Air Force One or inside the halls of the CIA, I tell all of those stories, take you behind the curtain there.

00:03:57.000 But also then each of those stories jumps into a faith lesson, something straight out of the Bible, some wisdom that could apply to anybody's life, no matter what you're going through, whether you're trying to deal with anxiety or depression or with the attraction of power or trying to make sense of this moment in American politics and culture, whatever it may be, I've packed all of that into the darkness is overcome.

00:04:21.000 And I'm excited to see it hit the stores this week.

00:04:24.000 Yeah, it is the darkness has not overcome.

00:04:26.000 So tell our audience about the work you did with Trump and some of the lessons alongside of it.

00:04:30.000 You had 500 extraordinary days there.

00:04:33.000 I did.

00:04:34.000 500 days in the White House helping run messaging and communications there.

00:04:38.000 And then later came back in the administration as deputy director of national intelligence.

00:04:42.000 And so, I mean, there's a million lessons that I can learn that I could, you know, communicate to people.

00:04:48.000 So picking one is tough, but I tell you, one that is particularly relevant right now is a story that I tell from when Trump moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

00:04:59.000 And this was a moment, a decision that presidents going back to Reagan had promised to do it and just always back down.

00:05:07.000 And Trump said, no, I'm going to actually follow through and do this.

00:05:11.000 And Joe Biden at the time said that this was going to set the world on fire, that the Middle East was going to descend into chaos and basically the arguments that people have been making for decades about why you shouldn't do this.

00:05:22.000 And Trump just stuck to his word and he did it.

00:05:25.000 And the day after he made that decision, we were standing in the outer oval looking at the TV there kind of in between meetings.

00:05:32.000 And it was, you know, there were protests that looked a lot like what we're seeing on college campuses now.

00:05:37.000 You know, they were chanting Trump, Trump, you will see Palestine will be free, you know, things like that.

00:05:43.000 And they're hanging him in effigy and burning American flags.

00:05:46.000 And I had a sense of, I don't know how to describe it other than if you were to see somebody trip on the sidewalk and you didn't want them to see that you had seen that.

00:05:57.000 You don't want the like secondhand embarrassment that goes along with that.

00:06:00.000 And not that the president had done anything wrong, but I just felt this strange sense standing next to someone who is, you know, witnessing themselves endure the most visceral criticism you possibly could imagine.

00:06:12.000 And I didn't know how to feel about that.

00:06:14.000 And Trump looked at me after watching it for a minute and he said, all right, what's next?

00:06:20.000 As in, what's next on our schedule today?

00:06:22.000 Like it did not affect him at all.

00:06:25.000 And I gained an appreciation, one, for the courage that Trump had to do the right thing, even in the face of intense criticism, but also in a lesson that we can apply to all of our lives, which is our willingness to endure or our criticism to achieve truly great things is going to be directly proportionate to our willingness to endure criticism or our intentions being misunderstood.

00:06:48.000 Like Trump had made peace with being misunderstood and being criticized in a way that has allowed him to achieve like truly remarkable things.

00:06:56.000 So that's a lesson that I've tried to make a core operating principle of my life and one of dozens and dozens of lessons that I talk about in the book.

00:07:05.000 The book is The Darkness Has Not Overcome.

00:07:09.000 So Cliff, spending a lot of time with President Trump, what do you wish people knew most about him?

00:07:15.000 And share some stories about it.

00:07:17.000 And what are some of the misrepresentations that he has to navigate in public opinion that you know are not true?

00:07:24.000 Well, there's a lot, but one of them is you know this as well as anybody.

00:07:30.000 You cannot be in a room with Donald Trump, spend any amount of time with him and walk out not liking him.

00:07:38.000 No matter what your preconceived notions were before you came into that room.

00:07:42.000 And a story that I tell about in the book that kind of illustrates just how nasty a place Washington, D.C. is, you know, the Congressional Black caucus, a group of Democrat lawmakers were coming in to meet with the president in the cabinet room.

00:07:57.000 And they were really, really upset with him because during the campaign, he had said, basically, black voters have been historically supportive of the Democrat Party.

00:08:07.000 And if you just look at what you have gotten for that support, it's really hard to make an argument that they've been good for your community.

00:08:15.000 What do you have to lose?

00:08:16.000 Give me a shot.

00:08:18.000 They were so mad about that walking into the room.

00:08:20.000 But in the course of an hour, I watched them get won over by him as a personality, as a person, as a human, to the point that Cedric Richmond, who at the time was the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and was later a senior aide to Joe Biden, looked across the table at Donald Trump and said, Mr. President, I don't agree with everything that you do or you say, but I truly believe that you have the chance to be a truly great president.

00:08:50.000 Said there's no cameras there.

00:08:51.000 It's behind closed doors.

00:08:52.000 I mean, this meeting is going better than I could have possibly imagined it would.

00:08:56.000 We walk out of there and they want to do a press conference in front of the White House.

00:09:01.000 And so we let them do a press conference, answer questions from reporters about the meeting.

00:09:06.000 And finally, someone asked the question that everyone had been waiting for.

00:09:10.000 You guys have said time and again that you think Donald Trump is a racist.

00:09:14.000 You have now spent time in a room with him in a very small group behind closed doors.

00:09:18.000 Do you still believe that he is?

00:09:21.000 Now, having seen what happened behind closed doors and the way that they acted toward him, I thought, man, this is going to be a real opportunity for there to be some reconciliation here and an opportunity to build some bridges if they just tell the truth about their firsthand experience with the president.

00:09:37.000 And unfortunately, they wouldn't do it.

00:09:39.000 They still alluded to him, you know, the possibility of him being a racist even after that.

00:09:46.000 It just showed just how eaten up by politics a lot of these people are.

00:09:52.000 But also, you know, it's one of the things that President Trump has to deal with.

00:09:55.000 People don't get to see how he is behind closed doors that even his adversaries walk into the room and they walk out liking him on a personal level, whether they're willing to actually say that publicly or not.

00:10:06.000 Yeah, some people say that he doesn't pay attention to detail, that he's what was your experience with that, Cliff, being there in those first, that first segment of the presidency.

00:10:18.000 Is he someone that really understands the details, someone that understands what's happening around him?

00:10:23.000 Yeah, there's no doubt about that.

00:10:25.000 I mean, he's involved in like in every detail in some ways.

00:10:27.000 I mean, when a new president, this may be a random example, but I'll just give it to you.

00:10:32.000 Every new president comes into the White House gets to remodel the place.

00:10:35.000 And they usually do it in conjunction with the first lady, redesign the Oval Office and that kind of thing.

00:10:40.000 The president was intricately involved as a builder himself in the remodel of the West Wing and picking out, I want the rug from the Reagan administration.

00:10:50.000 I want the couches from the Bush administration.

00:10:51.000 I want these gold curtains behind me.

00:10:53.000 He calls York wall coverings.

00:10:55.000 I tell this story in the book.

00:10:57.000 And he says, I want this particular type of wallpaper in there.

00:11:02.000 They thought it was a prank when he first called.

00:11:05.000 They hung up.

00:11:06.000 Finally, get him back on the phone and said, no, this is the wallpaper that we want here for the Oval Office.

00:11:11.000 And they freak out because they had stopped making that wallpaper three years before.

00:11:15.000 So they drop everything, hand-mix the inks, make 96 panels of double-sided wallpaper and deliver it all to the Oval Office by dinner time that night.

00:11:26.000 And so the president's definitely involved in the details, definitely attuned to what's going on around him.

00:11:31.000 And I think the real opportunity he has in the next administration is he now understands the personalities and the people in Washington, D.C.

00:11:41.000 And I think he's going to have a real chance to put some people in place and in these jobs around him who are going to execute on his vision.

00:11:49.000 And that's what we really need.

00:11:50.000 The president's vision.

00:11:52.000 You know, it's not your vision.

00:11:53.000 It's not my vision.

00:11:54.000 If you're an aide, you have to subordinate your wishes to the duly elected president of the United States.

00:12:00.000 And I think the president's going to have an opportunity to put some people in place in the next administration who are going to execute on his vision for the country.

00:12:08.000 And that's going to be the big difference, I think, in the next administration from the first one.

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00:13:18.000 Cliff served as a special assistant to President Trump.

00:13:21.000 And so let me just dive deeper into this.

00:13:24.000 You have some kind of political details in this book, Cliff, about what it's like to be in the cabin on Air Force One, doomsday bunker.

00:13:32.000 Just talk about some of those details here for the political junkies in the audience.

00:13:36.000 No, this is the stuff that I love that I was able to share in the book.

00:13:36.000 Oh, yeah.

00:13:41.000 And I did have to get it cleared through pre-publication review to make sure there was no classified information in there.

00:13:46.000 But I was able to share some pretty cool things.

00:13:49.000 And one was: you know, we worked at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, we would occasionally do continuity of government exercises.

00:13:58.000 And basically, if you watch any of the doomsday movies that Hollywood puts out, you know, what happens if there's a nuclear war?

00:14:05.000 What happens if there's some giant storm that knocks out power on the whole eastern seaboard?

00:14:10.000 Whatever it may be, the government has a plan for all of those things.

00:14:14.000 And some of that is ensuring that there are places outside of Washington, D.C., where the government could continue to function in those events.

00:14:23.000 And so I was able to visit one of those top secret locations and do some exercises related to those things.

00:14:30.000 And so you get to, you know, basically the side of this mountain and a giant metal blast door opens up and you go through in little golf carts and you're ushered into a giant underground city, which includes even like a made-to-order grill down there.

00:14:47.000 And you see the living quarters and the, you know, I saw where my computer would be in that location.

00:14:53.000 And then there's like the control room where you see all of these screens monitoring things all across the country.

00:15:01.000 And so you get a sense of what it would be like to actually have to live and function in one of these top secret underground bunkers if there was a, you know, God forbid, some kind of disaster to that degree.

00:15:13.000 So fascinating experience.

00:15:14.000 I share a lot of the details and help people kind of feel what it would be like to be in there in this book.

00:15:20.000 There's other things like, you know, I've always wondered what's in the president's nuclear football.

00:15:25.000 And is there like a giant red button that, you know, you just open the thing up and press the button to launch the nukes?

00:15:30.000 Like, what's actually in there?

00:15:32.000 And it still remains highly classified exactly what's in there.

00:15:35.000 But what I am able to share in the book is things like, well, there's not a giant red button in there.

00:15:40.000 And, you know, it's first and foremost, it's all about verifying the president's identity.

00:15:44.000 So the president carries with him a little card.

00:15:47.000 We call it the biscuit.

00:15:48.000 Everywhere he goes on it, it has what we call gold codes on it that kind of verify his identity with the National Military Command Center.

00:15:57.000 And then there are a menu of options.

00:15:59.000 I've heard it kind of compared to like a Waffle House menu of nuclear strike options that the president would have before him to be able to make a decision on what he's going to do.

00:16:07.000 But Charlie, one of the scariest things that I learned kind of through this process was one researcher estimated there would only be a six-minute window between the president learning about a nuclear attack coming on the United States and having to make a decision on what the response to that would be.

00:16:26.000 And so it just gave you a really sobering sense of, man, how small the margin of error is and how blessed we have been to not have endured nuclear war, frankly, you know, since we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

00:16:41.000 There's tons of details like that in the book that I share of what it's really like inside those rooms and what's really inside some of these even very top secret and sensitive compartments.

00:16:51.000 Yeah, I'm sure Joe Biden is equipped to respond in six minutes or less.

00:16:55.000 Cliff, I want to just introduce this theme for you here, and then we'll dive deeper into it as we continue throughout the hour, which is assailing the deep state.

00:17:06.000 Your first book talked a little bit about this.

00:17:08.000 I want you to talk about it from a Christian perspective as well.

00:17:11.000 Just describe to our audience, how powerful is the administrative state in our government.

00:17:16.000 Well, it's very powerful.

00:17:18.000 And frankly, you've got a lot of people there who, you know, we hear about all these threats to democracy that exist out there, but one of them is that there are a lot of unelected government bureaucrats who refuse to subordinate their wishes to that of the duly elected president of the United States.

00:17:34.000 And that is a true threat to democracy.

00:17:37.000 No one elected these people at all.

00:17:38.000 The other thing I noticed was the power of the DEI offices in a lot of these agencies.

00:17:45.000 They are very oppressive, very powerful bullies, frankly, that have bullied a lot of believers into having to accept the mandates that the DEI mandates and pronoun mandates and all of these different things.

00:17:59.000 I think one of the first things that needs to happen when President Trump comes in and puts new leadership in there is to abolish these DEI offices, which are not serving a legitimate national security purpose and reorient the priorities of the administrative state there toward executing on the president's wishes in American national security and not DEI.

00:18:21.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:19:25.000 So Cliff, I want to get your thoughts here on how should Christians and people of faith engage in the political arena.

00:19:32.000 Well, there's a couple of things I think are important, very foundational on this point.

00:19:36.000 And the first thing is, and this like hit me like a ton of bricks in my own life.

00:19:42.000 We need to put politics in its appropriate place in the hierarchy of priorities in our lives.

00:19:48.000 One of the things that I say to kind of sum it up, and this is actually the last paragraph of the darkness is not overcome, is that the most important events in human history were Jesus' death and resurrection.

00:20:00.000 Now, Tiberius was the emperor of Rome when that happened.

00:20:05.000 Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea when that happened.

00:20:08.000 But they were not the main characters in the story.

00:20:11.000 Jesus was, and he still is.

00:20:13.000 So why on earth would we make politicians the main characters in our story today?

00:20:19.000 This is something I have to wrestle with.

00:20:21.000 I've devoted my entire adult life basically to advancing conservative causes and electing conservative politicians and people that I believed in.

00:20:30.000 I think that's important.

00:20:31.000 We should be fighting tooth and nail to preserve the government we have in the country, in this country, or get a government that most closely aligns with God's vision for righteousness and justice here on earth.

00:20:45.000 But we should not be consumed by politics in a way that I frankly struggle with myself.

00:20:52.000 I also think there are a few kind of foundational principles about how we should think about voting.

00:20:56.000 Number one is God is sovereign over everything.

00:20:59.000 I mean, it's very clear in the Bible.

00:21:01.000 We are living under his sovereign will, everything that happens.

00:21:04.000 He raises up kings, he tears them down.

00:21:07.000 Everything that happens, he is sovereign.

00:21:09.000 But he has under his divine authority given humans dominion over the earth to rule on his behalf.

00:21:19.000 And so we're ultimately going to be held accountable for the decisions that we make in governing.

00:21:25.000 Even David in the Bible, a man who God called a man after my own heart, suffered the consequences of his sin and lost a son because of his sin.

00:21:35.000 So there is accountability for the decisions that we make.

00:21:37.000 And now you may be saying, well, I'm not a king.

00:21:40.000 I'm not even in the government.

00:21:41.000 How does this apply to me?

00:21:43.000 But actually here in the United States, it applies to you even more directly because here under our system, ultimate power lies with the people.

00:21:52.000 So you are both the governed and the governor.

00:21:55.000 And so thinking about those principles as you go into the ballot box, I think that that is, it's a really important thing to realize the weight of responsibility that we have.

00:22:05.000 I would never tell somebody how they should vote.

00:22:07.000 I'm supporting President Trump in this election.

00:22:10.000 I think that our country is in the toilet right now as a result of the policies of the Biden administration.

00:22:14.000 And I'm going to be fighting like crazy the next few months to get President Trump reelected.

00:22:18.000 But as important as that is, that is not the driving force in my life.

00:22:24.000 It's my relationship with Christ.

00:22:26.000 And that's a perspective I think that we could all use at a time that is so politically divisive right now.

00:22:32.000 So I agree with all that.

00:22:33.000 I think that's one extreme.

00:22:35.000 You say, you know, you don't want people to make politics their master.

00:22:39.000 What do you have to say for pastors that say you shouldn't vote at all or that it's not important to engage in government?

00:22:45.000 Well, I think everything that I just said about the principles that the Bible lays out for God's vision for justice and righteousness is on this earth and the fact that he is intricately involved in the affairs of man and has put government in place so that it would be an authority.

00:23:03.000 Governments are ordained on earth by God to be a reflection of his authority and hold people accountable for bad actions here on earth.

00:23:12.000 So to suddenly dismiss government as unimportant and not something we should be engaged in, I think flies in the face of frankly what scripture says.

00:23:23.000 And so it is my hope that pastors around the country would not necessarily stand in the pulpit and tell somebody how to vote, but they should also not be scared to speak into some of the political issues that we are facing today that may be divisive.

00:23:40.000 They may be difficult to talk about, but scripture speaks into every single thing that we're dealing with as humans on this earth.

00:23:48.000 And so to ignore the incredible power that scripture and the word of God could bring into these moments in American culture and American politics that are so difficult is a massive missed opportunity.

00:24:02.000 So you're right.

00:24:03.000 There's two ends of this spectrum that we need to avoid, but to not be engaged in these political discussions, I think is an abdication of the moral responsibility that a lot of pastors and faith leaders have to speak truth, God's truth, not everybody's got their truth now.

00:24:19.000 My truth and your truth.

00:24:21.000 No, no, no.

00:24:21.000 Let's talk about God's truth.

00:24:23.000 What does the truth have to say about the issues that we're facing today?

00:24:27.000 And to not speak into that is an abdication of that moral authority.

00:24:30.000 Yeah, it's an interesting thing.

00:24:32.000 Right now, there's a big play.

00:24:33.000 I have this book here called The False White Gospel, where they're trying to attack Christian nationalism, reclaiming true faith and refounding democracy.

00:24:45.000 The left is making a big play for the Christian vote.

00:24:49.000 I know you said you're not going to tell people how to vote, but how should they think about who to vote for from a biblical worldview standpoint?

00:24:56.000 Well, who is what leader is going to implement the policies that are most in keeping with God's vision for justice and righteousness in this world?

00:25:06.000 And the way that the left paints justice, so-called social justice, is not the vision that we see in the Bible, which is much more in keeping, frankly, with the American founding documents that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:25:31.000 And so electing government leaders who will defend life, who will promote human liberty and flourishing, and who will allow the pursuit of happiness.

00:25:40.000 And now, what we know from the Bible is the true pursuit of happiness is not chasing wealth and finance and fame and fortune and power and whatever it may be, but being able to pursue true happiness, which starts with a relationship with the living God.

00:25:55.000 And so I think if we look right now at the two parties, it's very clear which of those two is closer.

00:26:02.000 No one's going to be perfect, but it's closer to what you see in scripture of God's vision for true justice and righteousness being governed on his behalf here on this earth.

00:26:13.000 Yeah, and there's a fair amount of Christians.

00:26:16.000 I mean, Donald Trump won 72% of the Christian vote in 2016.

00:26:22.000 That number went down to 68% in 2020.

00:26:26.000 The question is how to get it upwards to 72% and how to grow that sort of margin.

00:26:32.000 In your book, and I want to talk about Cliff, you talk about how faith has intersected with your time in government.

00:26:41.000 Walk our audience through that.

00:26:42.000 Well, one of the things that I didn't fully appreciate coming from, you know, an upbringing of no means, I was as far from the halls of power as you could possibly think.

00:26:53.000 I did not know the allure of power and how it would have an effect on my life.

00:26:59.000 And I realized in retrospect that it's something that we all have to deal with.

00:27:04.000 And there are power dynamics, not just in government, but they're in our workplaces.

00:27:08.000 They're in our homes.

00:27:09.000 They're in our churches.

00:27:11.000 I have a power dynamic with my wife when I'm trying to decide where we're going to, we're trying to decide where we're going to go to dinner tonight.

00:27:17.000 Power dynamics are a part of our lives inextricably.

00:27:21.000 And so putting that in the context that God's, any power that we have on earth, great or small, is not our own, but is entrusted to us by God.

00:27:34.000 And that is something that I didn't do a great job of thinking about, but I tried to think about regularly in my government job that whatever power or influence that I may have has been entrusted to me by God.

00:27:45.000 And when you think about that, I mean, you have this incredibly powerful megaphone here in your program.

00:27:50.000 That's an incredible amount of power and influence that has been entrusted to you by God.

00:27:54.000 And we're good enough friends that I know that's something that means something to you, that you wrestle with that and want to use that power and influence for good purposes.

00:28:04.000 And so I think for all of us in ways big and small, wrestling with that daily and thinking about how we're using our power and influence, I think is something that would benefit everybody.

00:28:14.000 The Darkness Has Not Overcome is the name of the book.

00:28:18.000 You also have some stories here about Stephen Colbert, Tucker Carlson.

00:28:22.000 Tell us about what these people are up like up close and personal.

00:28:26.000 Well, you know Tucker as well as I do.

00:28:27.000 Tucker is probably one of the nicest guys that you'll ever meet.

00:28:30.000 He's obsessed with fly fishing.

00:28:31.000 He'd rather just hang out at his house with his wife and his dogs than be some famous political pundit or whatever.

00:28:38.000 So great guy.

00:28:40.000 But then there's something that really surprised me.

00:28:42.000 Stephen Colbert, when I went on the late show, I was kind of geared up to have my teeth kicked in when I got there.

00:28:47.000 And I hadn't really talked to him before we went on air.

00:28:50.000 And he came backstage right before we were about to go out.

00:28:53.000 He gets up from the desk and runs backstage.

00:28:56.000 And he said to me, I just want you to know if my audience booze you or heckles you, I'll stop the show and say that's not how we're going to treat our guests and we'll get them out of here.

00:29:04.000 So even though I disagree with Stephen Colbert on basically everything politically, I gained a lot of respect for that, at least on a human level for him.

00:29:14.000 But, you know, unfortunately, most people in the media, they're about as craven as you would anticipate that they would be.

00:29:22.000 So the good guys are pretty few and far between.

00:29:26.000 The world is in flames and biotinomics is a complete and total disaster, but it can't and won't ruin my day.

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00:30:08.000 Want to play this tape here as we continue with Cliff Sims?

00:30:13.000 Let's go to Cut 28.

00:30:15.000 He just compared Biden and his administration to the Nazis.

00:30:19.000 Who is this going to work with?

00:30:21.000 His base or is this something he's hoping will have some kind of effect on the rest of the electorate?

00:30:27.000 I mean, I don't think it's going to have an effect on the rest of the electorate.

00:30:30.000 It looks maintains that energy and excitement among the base.

00:30:34.000 Essie just laid out a litany of things about why this race is so close.

00:30:38.000 This ultimately, Sarah, in my view, is going to come down to turnout.

00:30:42.000 And I think a part of the problem for the Biden, a real-life campaign, is can you get all of those disparate groups to turn out and heighten numbers as you did in 2020?

00:30:50.000 Cliff, your reaction to that clip and the state of the 2024 race.

00:30:56.000 Well, I think he's right.

00:30:57.000 Turnout is going to be the whole ballgame.

00:30:59.000 And one of the really encouraging things that I would say right now is it seems like that our side has gotten really, really serious about the turnout game and about playing by rules that, frankly, we may not love, but that exist right now in terms of early voting, mail-in voting, and those kinds of things.

00:31:17.000 Organizations like your own and others that have really committed to coming in and making sure that we're going to get the level of turnout that we need to win this thing.

00:31:26.000 And I think Trump's in a great position right now because for a few reasons.

00:31:31.000 Number one, you look around the world right now, there's not a single region that is more peaceful, more prosperous than it was when Biden became president.

00:31:39.000 Number two, our economy is still weak.

00:31:43.000 Any growth that we're seeing right now is not happening in wages.

00:31:46.000 We're not seeing working people across this country have a better life.

00:31:49.000 Interest rates are still through the roof.

00:31:52.000 It's making it harder for the people to get their first home and to rise up the economic ladder by any economic measure.

00:31:58.000 President Trump had us going in a much better direction.

00:32:01.000 And were it not for COVID, would have had maybe the best economic story in history to be able to tell in such a short window of time for what he was able to do there.

00:32:11.000 And ultimately, I think a lot of the Democrats' messaging right now rings hollow.

00:32:15.000 All we're hearing from them is democracy is on the line.

00:32:19.000 Democracy is at stake.

00:32:21.000 And Trump's a threat to democracy.

00:32:23.000 And yet they are the ones who are engaged in political prosecution after political prosecution, a true threat to democracy.

00:32:32.000 And so I think even their central messages are ringing hollow and they can't run on their record.

00:32:38.000 And they got weekend at Bernie's going on in the West Wing right now.

00:32:41.000 And meanwhile, even in a courtroom, even with President Trump unjustly having to spend his days in a courtroom fighting these unjust charges against him, he brings that same energy.

00:32:53.000 He's bringing that same passion.

00:32:55.000 From a messaging standpoint, he's been really, really disciplined.

00:32:59.000 And I really like what we're seeing now going into the last six months of election here that gives us a real hope that we're going to be able to wrest control back of this government and get this country back on track.

00:33:11.000 So I'm very optimistic about Trump's chances, right?

00:33:14.000 That'll be my last question.

00:33:15.000 How does Trump break the deep state if and when he's re-elected?

00:33:18.000 It's going to come down to who he puts in those positions.

00:33:20.000 I think there are people that need to be in CIA director, DNI, FBI directors, go down the list, putting the right people in those jobs who know what they're doing, who know how to wield the levers of power and know how to use the president's duly elected powers and authorities to break that and make sure that there's an expectation and a demand that people will abide by the lawful orders of the president of the United States.

00:33:45.000 It's not unreasonable, but it's going to come down to putting those people in those positions to get the job done.

00:33:51.000 Plug the book one last time, Cliff, for our audience that has just come in, just tuning in radio stations across the country.

00:33:56.000 The darkness is not overcome.

00:33:58.000 Lessons on faith in politics from inside the halls of power.

00:34:01.000 It's out now and would appreciate the support from everybody around the country.

00:34:04.000 So thank you for having me on.

00:34:06.000 Very good.

00:34:06.000 Cliff, God bless you, man.

00:34:07.000 Thanks so much.

00:34:08.000 Thanks, brother.

00:34:10.000 I like looking at the betting markets when it comes to presidential betting.

00:34:14.000 They're very predictive, awfully predictive.

00:34:18.000 In fact, if you go back to the 2020 betting odds, it's very, very interesting.

00:34:24.000 The 2020 betting odds were even more accurate than the polls.

00:34:30.000 The betting, because people actually have to put their money where their mouth is.

00:34:34.000 Going right into election day, the betting markets had Joe Biden 63% chance of winning, and it had Donald Trump at 35%.

00:34:44.000 Now, mind you, it's still, it was 41,000 votes amongst three states.

00:34:51.000 Now, the betting markets have Donald Trump with a point lead in the bet, and they've reversed.

00:34:55.000 Every betting market has Donald Trump as the favorite, except predict it.

00:34:59.000 And that one's even tightened and is less is worse for Joe Biden.

00:35:02.000 Betting markets, you have to put your money where your mouth is.

00:35:04.000 Money supersedes ideology in these betting polls.

00:35:07.000 It's literal money.

00:35:08.000 Again, they're not absolutely predictive, but generally quite interesting.

00:35:12.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:35:13.000 Email us as alwaysfreedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:16.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

00:35:20.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 07, 2024

The Christian Devotional for Politics Junkies

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