The Charlie Kirk Show - The Coming Biden Depression with Steve Cortes and Citizen Kane

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody, Steve Cortez joins us to talk about the looming commercial real estate collapse.

00:00:06.000 And then Citizen Kane, one of my favorite guests from citizenfreepress.com, joins us to talk about Trump indictment and more.

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00:00:25.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:25.000 Here we go.

00:00:27.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:28.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:30.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:34.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:37.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:38.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:39.000 His spirit is love of this country.

00:00:41.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:48.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:00:56.000 That's why we are here.

00:00:59.000 Brought to you by my friends, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage, 888, 888, 1172, or AndrewNTodd.com.

00:01:10.000 Very important segment coming up here.

00:01:11.000 Steve Cortez joins us.

00:01:14.000 Steve, welcome to the program.

00:01:15.000 I also want to mention your Substack, Patria.

00:01:18.000 Is that right?

00:01:18.000 Is that how you say it?

00:01:19.000 That is correct.

00:01:20.000 Okay.

00:01:20.000 Everyone, check it out.

00:01:21.000 Patria on Substack.

00:01:23.000 And we're here to talk about your recent article, The Syllabus of Economic Errors.

00:01:28.000 Tell us about it.

00:01:30.000 Yes.

00:01:30.000 And by the way, so I titled this The Syllabus of Economic Errors because I'm playing off of the syllabus of errors, which folks out there might know, especially if they're Catholic, was a papal encyclical that was issued by Pius IX back in 1864, where he sort of rails against modernity and all of the heresies and mistakes of the modern age.

00:01:48.000 He was incredibly prescient.

00:01:50.000 He really saw the future and saw a lot of the failures that were unfortunately enduring even to this day.

00:01:56.000 So unfortunately, in the economic realm, when I was thinking about the risks that are intensifying in the economy right now, I really believe that it is due to a comedy of errors, a circus of errors, or, you know, if you will, a syllabus of errors, policy mistakes, policy failures in the last several years that have led us to a place right now where we are in a terrible economic predicament, where I think the risks are rising dramatically.

00:02:22.000 And by the way, when I say I think, it's not just that I think so, Charlie, it's that the American people think so.

00:02:26.000 There was a really pessimistic, terrible survey that just came out, a survey that goes back 30 years asking, are your children going to live better?

00:02:33.000 Are they going to be better off than you?

00:02:35.000 Are they going to live a better economic life than you have lived?

00:02:37.000 And for decades and decades, Americans always had a very optimistic view on that very basic fundamental question.

00:02:43.000 Well, unfortunately, it has flipped to a totally negative view.

00:02:46.000 78% of Americans do not believe that their children are going to live a better life than they are now living.

00:02:52.000 Only 21% believe in the affirmative, and that is by far the worst ratio in all of American history.

00:02:57.000 So the reason I wrote this article is to lay out how did we get here?

00:03:01.000 Because unless we understand the mistakes and the failures that led to this point, we're not going to be able to change the forward trajectory and to make the kinds of reforms and revisions economically that are necessary for us to get back to a place where we can restore prosperity to American families.

00:03:17.000 So walk us through some of these charts here and kind of give us the narrative as they all connect.

00:03:25.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:03:26.000 So, you know, first, in terms of the syllabus of errors, you know, looking back at the errors, the first error and the biggest one by far was the lockdowns in 2020, the lockdowns, which were unscientific, illogical, harsh, and in many cases, illegal, where we effectively made people like Fauci and Gavin Newsome and Lori Lightfoot, we turned them into effectively dictators and monarchs over our lives.

00:03:46.000 Now, there was a lot of damage done in many different spheres of life, right?

00:03:50.000 Social, mental, physical, all of the damage done to our lives, but also economic damage.

00:03:55.000 And part of this unintended consequence of the lockdowns is that people learned to work remotely.

00:04:00.000 They simply learned how to work well from home, employers and employees, both out of necessity, had to figure that out.

00:04:08.000 Well, when you convince people that they can do that, they no longer believe necessarily that they have to go to an office.

00:04:14.000 In addition to that, and I detailed this in the article, you also had the violence of that summer of 2020, the BLM riots, which produced carnage all over America and turned so many city centers into places of incredible danger. 0.90

00:04:28.000 And many of them remain so to this day.

00:04:30.000 I was just back in Chicago, Charlie, our former hometown, and the loop, the downtown neighborhood on a workday is a ghost town.

00:04:37.000 And the only people you do see around are pretty sketchy characters who seem like they're up to no good.

00:04:42.000 Same kind of situation in downtown San Francisco.

00:04:44.000 So you combine this remote work because of lockdowns, very dangerous city centers.

00:04:48.000 And what you then get, if we can please pull up chart number two, what you get is office vacancy rates, which are absolutely soaring.

00:04:57.000 And there it is.

00:04:58.000 That's office vacancy rates going all the way back to 2006.

00:05:02.000 What you can see right now is that this current spike in downtown office vacancies is even worse than the 0809 recession.

00:05:10.000 So as bad as the real estate situation was in 08 and 09, it is now worse.

00:05:15.000 And what this means, Charlie, is that commercial real estate back in 0809, the risks were mainly embedded in the residential real estate market.

00:05:24.000 Regular homeowners who were over their skis, over leveraged on home loans.

00:05:28.000 That is not the case now.

00:05:29.000 As a matter of fact, home loans are pretty difficult to get.

00:05:31.000 Anyone who's gotten a mortgage knows that.

00:05:33.000 The bank practically wants to do a full physical exam of you in addition to the financial exam before they're willing to give you a loan.

00:05:40.000 But on the commercial side, that's where the risks lie.

00:05:42.000 And some folks in the audience might say, well, Cortez, I'm not involved in commercial real estate.

00:05:47.000 And I would stipulate, well, you are, even if you don't know it, because the banks and particularly regional banks, which have been, of course, in tons of trouble lately, are incredibly exposed to commercial real estate.

00:05:58.000 And as Biden's inflation makes commercial real estate more and more vulnerable because of rising interest rates, this becomes an issue for everybody in our society.

00:06:08.000 And if we can pull up chart number three to prove my point, bank credit, the availability of bank loans has crashed.

00:06:15.000 This is an article from over the weekend in Bloomberg.

00:06:18.000 Bank lending slumps by the most on record in the final weeks of March.

00:06:22.000 So the last two weeks of March, bank lending, Charlie, dropped $105 billion, billion with a B dollar the last two weeks of March.

00:06:30.000 That is the largest drop in history.

00:06:33.000 And we have data on bank lending that goes back 50 years.

00:06:36.000 So think of all the economic calamities America's been through in 50 years, the oil embargoes of the 70s, the 1987 crash, 9-11, dot-com bubble, the 0809 housing recession.

00:06:48.000 Nothing has compared to what we are seeing right now in terms of the pullback in bank lending.

00:06:53.000 There is a credit crunch right now that is accelerating in our country.

00:06:57.000 And that means for Main Street, for regular people, particularly for small business, access to capital, access to bank loans.

00:07:03.000 It is drying up and it's drying up fast.

00:07:06.000 So this has really significant real world consequences, sadly, for all Americans.

00:07:12.000 And also, sadly, I believe it's going to get worse before it gets better.

00:07:16.000 So that's interesting.

00:07:17.000 So you think that one of the places the collapse might occur is more on the commercial than the residential side.

00:07:23.000 I mean, I tend to agree.

00:07:24.000 I mean, I think there might be some price adjustment on the residential side, but the Sunbelt, I think it might go down 10, 15%, maybe.

00:07:32.000 However, people are locked into really low interest rates.

00:07:35.000 So given divorce, bankruptcy, they're going to do everything they can to try to stay in those homes.

00:07:43.000 And also, a fair amount of these single-family homes are owned by funds and firms that are then re-renting them back, like BlackRock.

00:07:50.000 But the commercial side, talk about how much leverage is involved in typically building commercial buildings.

00:07:57.000 These are not done.

00:07:59.000 These are usually done maybe with 30 to 35% equity.

00:08:01.000 These are usually 60 to 70% debt financed.

00:08:05.000 A lot of them have gone up in the last decade under an expectation that people are always going to need office space.

00:08:11.000 The COVID rush obviously challenged that.

00:08:15.000 I mean, we're talking about entire, now that we're not even talking about retail shopping.

00:08:20.000 That's going to go down.

00:08:21.000 This is office space.

00:08:21.000 This is separate.

00:08:24.000 These places are going to turn into ghost towns.

00:08:26.000 Yeah, and I think in some places they already have.

00:08:30.000 By the way, that vacancy rate that I showed, that's nationwide.

00:08:32.000 It's much worse than that in some of the worst affected cities that I mentioned, places like Chicago and San Francisco.

00:08:38.000 But I mean, even San Francisco alone, Charlie, is such a risk, not just to that area, but to the entire country, because you may not be aware of this, but your 401k, in all likelihood, is investing in these office towers in places like San Francisco.

00:08:53.000 So people don't believe that they need to go to the office.

00:08:56.000 Center cities have become increasingly dangerous and effectively no-go zones for regular law-abiding citizens.

00:09:03.000 On top of that, now we throw Biden's inflation.

00:09:06.000 Biden came into office.

00:09:07.000 He inherited an economy that was recovering with gusto and without inflation.

00:09:12.000 And what did he do?

00:09:13.000 Along with collaborationist Republicans, especially in the U.S. Senate, he engaged in an absolute orgy of borrowing and spending that caused inflation to be unleashed intensely upon the American economy, driving interest rates higher.

00:09:27.000 In my article, I also give a chart of what 10-year yield, which is the benchmark interest rate for the entire world, really, but certainly for our country, what it has done since he took office.

00:09:35.000 It has more than tripled since he took office.

00:09:38.000 That kind of spike in interest rates was not planned upon, was not foreseen, even by sophisticated institutional investors.

00:09:46.000 So to your point, they're incredibly levered right now on the commercial side.

00:09:50.000 Again, retail's not levered.

00:09:52.000 On the retail side, the residential side, we really did learn our lessons pretty well in 08 and 09.

00:09:56.000 As a matter of fact, in some cases, almost too well.

00:09:59.000 Like it might almost be too hard to get a mortgage.

00:10:02.000 I think that's right, because I think the residential market actually is far healthier than people realize.

00:10:08.000 I think you've hit it perfectly.

00:10:10.000 The fault line here is in commercial.

00:10:13.000 And because of the capital that is necessary to build, for example, a new Trans-America building or at least recapitalize it, you get the big funds that come in, right?

00:10:24.000 These are not, it's not mom and pop retail.

00:10:26.000 Well, they are via the funds, but we're talking about five, six, seven, $800 million buildings, right?

00:10:33.000 What happens when all of a sudden your occupancy rate is 11%?

00:10:38.000 That's a scary proposition.

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00:11:57.000 So, Steve, just kind of build this out a little bit more.

00:12:01.000 Sure.

00:12:03.000 I'm not saying there's going to be a bank collapse, but there will definitely be fissures in not just in the economy, but the health of kind of lending as we know it.

00:12:15.000 And it could be an unintended consequence of remote work.

00:12:20.000 And so just build that out even more.

00:12:22.000 Sure.

00:12:22.000 So listen, I think the combination of remote work plus cities becoming increasingly dangerous and inhospitable to citizens, to commuters, that combination led to unforeseen consequences for the commercial real estate market, made the commercial real estate market challenged already.

00:12:41.000 Biden then comes in and throws inflation on top of this already challenging environment, making interest rates spike.

00:12:49.000 And remember to the point you made previously, these office towers largely are incredibly leveraged plays.

00:12:55.000 They are leveraged plays by institutional investors.

00:12:58.000 So there's not a lot of leverage, unlike 0809, there's not a lot of leverage in the residential, regular U.S. housing market.

00:13:05.000 As a matter of fact, the leverage situation there is very tame by historical comparison, meaning people have high credit quality.

00:13:12.000 But on the institutional side, there's tremendous leverage.

00:13:16.000 You now have inflation rocketing higher, sending interest rates higher with a work from home phenomenon.

00:13:23.000 And so these office towers are in incredibly dangerous and unprecedented territory.

00:13:29.000 And it has very dire effects for the entire economy, even if you don't think you're involved in commercial real estate.

00:13:35.000 The reality is banks may not collapse, Charlie, but what we already have.

00:13:39.000 Insurance companies could.

00:13:40.000 Insurance companies could.

00:13:42.000 Yeah.

00:13:42.000 And what we already have happening, it's not a matter of, we don't have to guess about it, is happening right now is an absolute credit crunch, meaning banks are simply not loaning money.

00:13:52.000 They are pulling back massively because they are intensely aware of the rising risks because they see what happened to Silicon Valley Bank, a signature bank.

00:14:01.000 They realize, particularly the regional banks, which are incredibly exposed to real estate, more so than the giant banks.

00:14:06.000 The regional banks realize we're in a tough situation right now.

00:14:10.000 It's time to batten down the hatches.

00:14:11.000 We're simply not going to loan money, or at least it's going to be very, very difficult to get us to loan money.

00:14:16.000 And again, not my opinion.

00:14:17.000 The last two weeks of March, which is the most recent data we have, total bank lending fell by $105 billion in two weeks.

00:14:25.000 That is the worst decline in the history of the United States.

00:14:29.000 And we have data on that that goes back 50 years.

00:14:33.000 So worse than the 2020 lockdowns, worse than 0809, the dot-com bubble, 9-11.

00:14:38.000 None of those events compared in terms of bank lending to what is happening right now.

00:14:42.000 And even if it doesn't get worse, I fear it's going to get worse, but even if it doesn't get worse, just what has already happened, Charlie, is going to have such terrible effects for the country because that credit, particularly from smaller and regional banks, that credit is the lifeblood.

00:14:56.000 That is really the juice, the lubricant for the economy, particularly when it comes to small business, right?

00:15:01.000 The kinds of small firms who can't go to JP Morgan and get a loan, but previously could go to their local banks.

00:15:08.000 That's not happening now.

00:15:09.000 And why?

00:15:10.000 Because of Biden's policy failures, other failures as well, but principally Biden's policy failures.

00:15:17.000 For years, the idea of investing in commercial real estate, not retail, but commercial for office occupancy was a blue chip investment.

00:15:27.000 And it was AAA.

00:15:29.000 I mean, insurance company, whatever insurance companies put money into, it's boring and it's an annuity.

00:15:36.000 So it's like self-storage and office buildings.

00:15:39.000 In fact, residential was considered to be too risky for years.

00:15:44.000 They might bundle AAA loans and that's about it and buy and purchase those.

00:15:49.000 But this is big because what you're talking about is an inversion where so many people once considered commercial real estate to be just completely bulletproof.

00:15:59.000 10 years ago, be like, what do you mean?

00:16:01.000 People are going to stop going to work.

00:16:03.000 Come on.

00:16:04.000 And yeah, actually, they will.

00:16:06.000 And so one minute remaining, Steve.

00:16:08.000 We don't know how this is going to end, but when something goes from a blue chip to a poison pill, bad things happen.

00:16:17.000 Exactly.

00:16:17.000 And by the way, to bring this to capital markets, away from real estate for a moment, we saw this same phenomenon last year in 2022.

00:16:24.000 Not only did stocks get killed, but bonds got killed.

00:16:27.000 Bonds are supposed to be your insurance.

00:16:28.000 They're supposed to be the safe part of your portfolio, kind of like you're talking about commercial real estate.

00:16:32.000 So when the insurance side, when the supposedly boring side gets crushed right alongside the volatile, you know, sexier side, then you know you're in a terrible new environment.

00:16:41.000 This is what Biden's inflation has done.

00:16:43.000 It has made things that were considered to be safe, you know, and by the way, for valid reasons historically, suddenly unsafe.

00:16:50.000 That's the new reality of this economy as the risks explode with Joe Biden.

00:16:55.000 It's going to be interesting to see.

00:16:57.000 Steve, thank you so much.

00:16:58.000 Appreciate it.

00:16:59.000 Charlie, appreciate it.

00:16:59.000 Thank you.

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00:18:15.000 Joining us now is Citizen Kane, who's also seen a similar rise, kind of like gold.

00:18:20.000 It's the citizen free press traffic charts and the gold charts are going up at the same time.

00:18:25.000 Mr. Kane, welcome to the program.

00:18:28.000 What's up, Charlie?

00:18:29.000 I'm here, brother.

00:18:30.000 So tell us, I'm told that you guys are 55% of the traffic of the Drudge Report now.

00:18:30.000 Great.

00:18:36.000 Tell us more.

00:18:37.000 Yeah, how about that?

00:18:38.000 I wanted to make a gold comment too, but I'll get to that second.

00:18:42.000 Yeah, so Matt Drudge, as addicts of the Drudge Report will know, if you scroll all the way down on the Drudge Report below the three columns on the far right, he updates every single morning his actual server traffic, right?

00:18:56.000 Not an estimate from similar web, not, you know, it's his actual traffic.

00:19:01.000 He puts the numbers in.

00:19:03.000 So what the chart you're looking at right there is our server traffic for the last seven days.

00:19:08.000 I did that last night.

00:19:09.000 So we did, we're at about 83 million.

00:19:11.000 We, the last 31 days, which is what Drudge uses, he uses 31 days.

00:19:16.000 We're at about 55%, which is, look, I'm not patting myself on the back.

00:19:21.000 It's this is CFP Nation.

00:19:24.000 I mean, a website, you know, as I've said jokingly, and here's a shameless plug: have your readers go right now if you've never been and go to citizenfreepress.com.

00:19:33.000 Everyone should.

00:19:34.000 Yeah, you'll think a seventh grader designed it.

00:19:37.000 You know, it's, and I, I say that with pride.

00:19:41.000 Here's a little side note.

00:19:43.000 It's funny, Charlie.

00:19:44.000 For the first three years, I didn't even have Citizen Free Press a banner at the top.

00:19:48.000 So when people would arrive, brand new people, they had no idea where they were.

00:19:52.000 It was literally just a stack of headlines not even telling you where you were.

00:19:57.000 So, so yeah, so we're at we're 360 million.

00:20:01.000 Judges like it's 650 million.

00:20:04.000 So the people, you know, the power of the people had have driven CFP's success.

00:20:10.000 And everyone should check it out, citizenfreepress.com.

00:20:13.000 I visit it multiple times a day.

00:20:15.000 They do an extraordinary job, and I'm really proud.

00:20:17.000 You should be proud, and you should pat yourself on the back multiple times because it's extraordinary what you've done.

00:20:22.000 Kane, you know, you come on our program often, and I really enjoy it, but you and I are always talking about the what-ifs.

00:20:28.000 What if they indict Donald Trump? 0.95

00:20:29.000 Well, it's now done, and New York seemed to be the first one, and it's absolutely ridiculous. 0.94

00:20:34.000 It's an insult to the Constitution.

00:20:37.000 Georgia might be next.

00:20:38.000 DOJ, how has this changed the calculus?

00:20:40.000 It seems so far have only made him stronger.

00:20:44.000 Your thoughts.

00:20:46.000 Absolutely correct.

00:20:47.000 So far, first indictment, he's stronger, much stronger.

00:20:50.000 In fact, yes, Georgia's coming next.

00:20:54.000 I posted a link last week, or maybe it was this weekend.

00:20:57.000 Fanny Willis, I think it was the New York Times, and they got some access with her.

00:21:04.000 It sounds like she's planning a wide range of conspiracy indictment, talking, you know, there might be 10 people indicted.

00:21:12.000 It doesn't mean that it, whatever.

00:21:15.000 You and I have talked about the case.

00:21:17.000 The case has no chance.

00:21:19.000 Yeah, it's weak.

00:21:20.000 It has no chance in Florida, excuse me, in Georgia.

00:21:23.000 But that's going to be, you know, that's going to be a second round of big news.

00:21:27.000 Obviously, the media was super disappointed with how quickly last Tuesday wrapped up.

00:21:33.000 I mean, Trump was in.

00:21:35.000 He looked strong.

00:21:37.000 He was back on the, you know, the graphics of having him.

00:21:41.000 He was back on that flight out of LaGuardia, back to Mar-a-Lago within 20 minutes of leaving the courtroom.

00:21:48.000 And so the media, you know, that just died.

00:21:51.000 That story died for the media.

00:21:52.000 And now they're going to get another one.

00:21:54.000 So, yeah. 0.99

00:21:55.000 So Georgia's next. 0.71

00:21:56.000 And then Jack Smith, the special counsel, that's the one that's really going to be, you know, well, I'll pause for a minute.

00:22:06.000 What are your thoughts on Georgia?

00:22:08.000 I agree.

00:22:09.000 I've always thought Georgia is the more serious case in the in how do I put this?

00:22:16.000 Not because of what Trump did.

00:22:18.000 He said to go find the votes, which is fine.

00:22:20.000 You could say that, obviously, not go manufacture or go make them up or just try to, you know, create them.

00:22:27.000 But, you know, Fulton County is not a favorable venue, and they're going to try to overwhelm the system.

00:22:35.000 It doesn't matter.

00:22:36.000 They're going to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.

00:22:40.000 This is a complete outrage.

00:22:42.000 Alan Dershowitz says that the federal government document case is the strongest, which is a joke because, of course, George W. Bush and Obama broke the same one.

00:22:52.000 Jimmy Carter probably broke it as well, but it's not, you can't, it's politically unviable because Biden has the same issue.

00:23:02.000 But Kane, I have a, I've heard this from multiple people.

00:23:07.000 I want to get your thoughts.

00:23:08.000 Do you think the Democrats want Trump to be the nominee?

00:23:11.000 That's unrelated to this, but it is connected.

00:23:15.000 That's a simple question.

00:23:16.000 I want your thought.

00:23:17.000 Do you think the Democrats want Trump to be the nominee?

00:23:22.000 That's a great question.

00:23:23.000 It's a bit of schizophrenia, right?

00:23:25.000 They want him if they think they can beat him.

00:23:28.000 And, you know, they rely on their mainstream polls.

00:23:31.000 We don't have to believe them.

00:23:32.000 But a lot of those, a lot of those lefty polls were showing, I'm talking about a month ago, two months ago, they were showing Biden leading or at least Biden tight.

00:23:42.000 There were some mainstream polls that were showing Trump leading.

00:23:44.000 So I think at that point, yeah, they wanted him.

00:23:48.000 They wanted Trump as the nominee, as the nominee in a way.

00:23:54.000 Now, the last one we just put up, Rasmussen's numbers, they flipped big.

00:23:58.000 They had Trump up six, 47-41 over Biden.

00:24:04.000 It's a really interesting question.

00:24:06.000 The way you, because the point of your question is, you know, despite these indictments, do they secretly want him?

00:24:14.000 Because they believe that young people, especially because of the abortion issue and what happened last fall and how young people turned out, they believe that young people and Trump derangement among independents will give them enough votes in those five or six swing states.

00:24:32.000 I'm sure a lot of them believe that, right?

00:24:35.000 And so, yeah, there's probably a large cohort, a large segment of Democratic strategists who probably want him over Trump.

00:24:46.000 It's weird, right?

00:24:46.000 Our base, I've been posting the polls every day.

00:24:48.000 You've been talking about them.

00:24:50.000 The base has strongly moved towards Trump and away from DeSantis in the past six weeks, mostly because of this indictment talk.

00:25:00.000 But yet, Democrats believe that Democrats are more afraid of DeSantis.

00:25:05.000 I'm convinced of that.

00:25:06.000 They're afraid of the age disparity.

00:25:08.000 That's so interesting.

00:25:09.000 So build that out.

00:25:10.000 So the Democrats are more afraid of DeSantis.

00:25:13.000 Therefore, do you think this factors into their indictments?

00:25:15.000 Do you think they're filing these indictments because they want to force the hand of a Trump being the nominee?

00:25:20.000 And their calculus, which might be flawed, but I'm just trying to figure out what they want.

00:25:25.000 I know what you mean.

00:25:26.000 Yes, if there were, look, if there were an overriding controlling force that was somehow in charge of what Jack Smith and Fannie Willis and Alvin Bragg were doing, then you could say, yeah, but there isn't, right?

00:25:37.000 We both know that these are, all of them are ego-driven.

00:25:41.000 Alvin Bragg, this was a pure ego indictment for him to become famous.

00:25:45.000 He now becomes an incredibly well-known person.

00:25:48.000 Same thing for Fannie Willis. 0.95

00:25:49.000 It's going to be ego-driven on her part. 1.00

00:25:53.000 So it's, you know, and she will become famous on MSNBC.

00:25:57.000 But let's get back to it.

00:25:59.000 You know, why did they, why did, why do they fear DeSantis more?

00:26:03.000 And I can't look, I'm not declaring that they absolutely do.

00:26:06.000 And that doesn't mean that I think that DeSantis is the better candidate.

00:26:09.000 I've sort of said, I love DeSantis, right?

00:26:11.000 I've said all along that I think he's our 28 guy.

00:26:14.000 And, you know, Trump still drives a part of the base that I don't think DeSantis would drive to get out of.

00:26:21.000 I think that's right.

00:26:22.000 And it's people that just, they do not vote for Hersher Walker, for Mehmet Oz, for Blake Masters, even Kerry Lake.

00:26:29.000 These people are a single candidate voter, and there's a lot of them.

00:26:33.000 There's hundreds of thousands in the states that matter.

00:26:37.000 Yeah, yes, I agree with that.

00:26:40.000 And it's something special about Trump, but we've never, in my lifetime, there's never been a candidate that sort of drove that.

00:26:45.000 Actually, Reagan de Libbett, one of my grandmothers, only voted Democrat her entire life, and she voted for Reagan.

00:26:50.000 So Reagan was able to sort of flip the Democrats and flip independents in the same way Trump has.

00:26:55.000 But let's get back quickly to why do Democrats want DeSantis?

00:26:58.000 Well, they're worried about that age disparity, right?

00:27:00.000 Beautiful young DeSantis family, gorgeous wife who beat cancer, beautiful young children versus the doddering old Biden who takes 12-inch steps, right?

00:27:09.000 So that's why I think Democrats deep down probably are more afraid of DeSantis.

00:27:14.000 They think he would get more independent votes, but they're discounting what you just mentioned, which is this unique Trump factor, his ability to drive people to the polls that we've never seen before.

00:27:25.000 So I think Trump is our guy.

00:27:27.000 I'm hoping and praying that we swing by, we swing through in five or six states, right?

00:27:33.000 We know them.

00:27:33.000 Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

00:27:41.000 That is where the battles are going to be fought.

00:27:43.000 What are your thoughts?

00:27:44.000 Email me freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:27:46.000 Do you think the Democrats want Trump to be the nominee?

00:27:49.000 Is there some sort of three-dimensional chess that is going on where they say if we indict him, he gets more popular in the Republican primary, therefore he becomes the nominee and we think we can beat him easier?

00:28:01.000 I'm not sure, to be honest.

00:28:03.000 I see it both ways.

00:28:04.000 Email me freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:28:09.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:29:10.000 So I have a theory, Citizen Kane, Mr. Kane from Citizen Free Press.

00:29:14.000 I don't think the candidate actually matters nearly as much as people think it does.

00:29:18.000 I'm a Trump 2024 guy.

00:29:20.000 I think the machinery matters.

00:29:22.000 I think that they're willing to run Joe Biden, not because of his appeal, his charisma, or his ability to speak, of which he has none of those things, but because they're so confident.

00:29:31.000 In fact, newly discovered documents by our team, they're all public, but we decided to dig.

00:29:35.000 There's an organization called America's Votes.

00:29:38.000 Very interesting.

00:29:39.000 America Votes.

00:29:40.000 Kane, did you know that they raised $245 million for the midterms to go get low-propensity progressive Democrat voters out to the polls in battleground states in the midterms just to go get people to ballot chase a $245 million operation?

00:30:00.000 I think that they're willing to go spend a billion dollars to ballot chase, do early voting, play games of signature verifications, you know, tap dance around the law.

00:30:08.000 I think it's more about the plumbing and the infrastructure and the machinery than the actual candidate that we're choosing.

00:30:15.000 What are your thoughts on that?

00:30:17.000 Yep, it's ballot harvesting.

00:30:19.000 So many things you brought up there that are good to talk about.

00:30:22.000 Okay.

00:30:23.000 So we had a little mini, little mini controversy.

00:30:26.000 Mike Lindell was like, no, no, no, we cannot embrace ballot harvesting.

00:30:29.000 And I spoke with Trump and he'll never talk about it again.

00:30:32.000 Boom.

00:30:33.000 Next day, Trump, first interview on Fox News in six months with Hannity, goes right into ballot harvesting and saying in all the states where it's legal, we've got to do it.

00:30:42.000 We've got to dominate because Democrats have sort of what you described in that 245 million.

00:30:49.000 They've got this on the ground push. 0.74

00:30:52.000 We've got to win that battle and then we can make it illegal on a federal level if we control Congress.

00:30:57.000 But you mentioned America votes.

00:30:59.000 You know what, Charlie?

00:31:01.000 My mind is warped from all these leftist organizations that have 200 million, 300 million, 400 million.

00:31:08.000 I know, but I don't even know the acronyms anymore.

00:31:12.000 As you were mentioning, I was racking my brain thinking, wait, is that the article that I read from Tracy Beans?

00:31:18.000 They're Zuckerbucks and there are so many of these grassroots organizations.

00:31:23.000 Well, they're not really grassroots.

00:31:24.000 It's AstroTurf.

00:31:25.000 But yes, keep going.

00:31:26.000 Right, right.

00:31:27.000 Right.

00:31:27.000 But I mean, they're paying, you know, one of them, and I don't know if this is America's votes, but they're paying, they're exploiting a loophole to pay people, not for their votes, but to go and get other people registered on an app.

00:31:40.000 You know, it's and look, they're doing that much, much better than we are.

00:31:44.000 I assume.

00:31:45.000 I don't know.

00:31:46.000 I would hope that you know the Trump team and the RNC have some have some action going.

00:31:52.000 You would know better.

00:31:53.000 The RNC is not.

00:31:54.000 I mean, what we're what we are going to attempt to do at turning point is try to build a ballot chasing operation in the states that matter, legal ballot chasing.

00:32:03.000 I think we have to embrace early voting.

00:32:04.000 I think the world of Mike Lundell, I think of this completely, I look at this completely differently.

00:32:09.000 Getting everyone to vote on election day is unsustainable.

00:32:12.000 And I'll tell you, I had a change in philosophy on this, Kane.

00:32:14.000 I'm a Kerry Lake guy.

00:32:16.000 I live here in Arizona.

00:32:16.000 I don't want to live under Katie Hobbs.

00:32:18.000 Are you kidding me?

00:32:18.000 When I showed up to go vote in Scottsdale on Election Day, it was a two-hour waiting line.

00:32:23.000 None of the machines were working.

00:32:24.000 People were disenfranchised.

00:32:26.000 And right then and there, I said, this is a mistake.

00:32:29.000 We should have had our low-propensity voters go vote the weekend before.

00:32:33.000 And it's just rational.

00:32:34.000 Expand the window of opportunity.

00:32:36.000 And people say, well, Charlie, that's not the most secure way to vote.

00:32:39.000 I agree.

00:32:40.000 Do you know what is the most unsecure way to vote?

00:32:42.000 Not voting at all.

00:32:44.000 And we are disenfranchising our own side.

00:32:47.000 It's a sad real politic reality.

00:32:49.000 I don't want to celebrate it, but I want to win.

00:32:52.000 Kane, minute and a half.

00:32:54.000 Yeah, I have the same epiphany on Arizona.

00:32:57.000 I was posting those videos live.

00:32:59.000 I realized massive turnout in Maricopa, right?

00:33:03.000 We overwhelmed the system.

00:33:04.000 Plus, they screwed us with that 19/20-inch ballot that wasn't being accepted.

00:33:09.000 So they knew sort of how to throw a little wrench in it.

00:33:12.000 Yes, we absolutely have to, we have to vote early and often.

00:33:17.000 We need to turn this into a baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, little league America. 0.99

00:33:23.000 Let's start having these ballot harvesting.

00:33:27.000 Anyway, so once you say a minute and a half, man, I feel the crunch.

00:33:30.000 So I'm going to get going.

00:33:31.000 I'm going to get 30 seconds.

00:33:33.000 Keep going.

00:33:34.000 All right.

00:33:34.000 Well, so my final point.

00:33:35.000 Yeah, we have to embrace this stuff.

00:33:38.000 We have to realize that Trump is going to be our nominee.

00:33:41.000 We have to stop the infighting.

00:33:43.000 We have to stop the infighting.

00:33:44.000 We have to get behind him.

00:33:46.000 And we have to have the, we need 91 million.

00:33:49.000 81, you know, let's go from 65 million to 80 to 75.

00:33:54.000 And these people are there.

00:33:56.000 There are 91 million decent people.

00:33:58.000 This is not Sodom where you say, find me one.

00:34:00.000 No, no.

00:34:01.000 There are a lot of decent people in this country and we can do it.

00:34:04.000 I want to win.

00:34:04.000 Kane wants to win.

00:34:05.000 We have to ballot chase, period.

00:34:08.000 They have a $245 million machine, one of several America votes, where they're playing the game.

00:34:13.000 Let's get in the arena.

00:34:14.000 We do 5%.

00:34:15.000 We do 10%.

00:34:16.000 We can move the dial.

00:34:17.000 I want to win.

00:34:18.000 I want to defeat these totalitarian Marxists and we can do it.

00:34:21.000 We have to have a change of philosophy.

00:34:22.000 We keep on doing the same thing.

00:34:24.000 We're going to lose.

00:34:25.000 God bless you, Kane.

00:34:26.000 Check out citizenfreepress.com.

00:34:28.000 I want to win the game.

00:34:30.000 And I know you do too.

00:34:31.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:32.000 Email us your thoughts as always.

00:34:34.000 Freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:35.000 Thanks so much for listening and God bless.

00:34:41.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 11, 2023

The Coming Biden Depression with Steve Cortes and Citizen Kane

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