The Charlie Kirk Show - The Coming Real Estate Cataclysm? with Paul Martino and Kurt Schlichter

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's And the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 Paul Martino tells us how we can retake our school boards.

00:00:05.000 He's doing that in Pennsylvania.

00:00:06.000 I talk about the looming economic collapse coming through a type of real estate that's not talked about very often.

00:00:12.000 And then Kurt Schlichter, unfiltered about Tucker, Fox News, the conservative movement, and more.

00:00:17.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:21.000 Get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com.

00:00:25.000 That is tpusa.com.

00:00:27.000 Start a turning point usa chapter at tpusa.com.

00:00:32.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:33.000 Here we go.

00:00:34.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:35.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:38.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:41.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:44.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:45.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:46.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:53.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:00:55.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:04.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:06.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.

00:01:15.000 Paul Martino joins us, who is the chair of Back to School Pennsylvania PAC.

00:01:20.000 It's a very powerful story.

00:01:21.000 It's a great story.

00:01:22.000 National Review rights: Pennsylvania teachers, activists concocted bogus LGBTQ bullying epidemic for political gain investigation fines.

00:01:31.000 Paul, welcome to the program.

00:01:32.000 Tell us about this story.

00:01:34.000 Charlie, I'm thrilled that you're able to cover this story because what happened in our district is just unbelievable.

00:01:40.000 Once the left lost the school board as a result of their bad COVID policies in 2021, they decided that they would do anything in their power to discredit the current board.

00:01:51.000 They concocted this strategy to make up a fake bullying epidemic.

00:01:56.000 And the report was issued by Dwayne Morris demonstrating that they actually had a teacher who refused to report incidences of bullying so that he could instead go to the ACLU and complain.

00:02:07.000 We then had one of the own school board members, one of the Democrats on the school board, then sick the Office of Civil Rights on our district.

00:02:14.000 It is disgraceful behavior, and everybody needs to understand that this is what's going on.

00:02:19.000 Yeah, so let's just take a step back.

00:02:21.000 Tell our audience about your activism.

00:02:22.000 Is it true?

00:02:23.000 You got over 160 school board members elected in Pennsylvania?

00:02:27.000 That's correct.

00:02:27.000 We backed over 300 candidates, primarily in the wake of COVID and the horrible policies that locked down our schools.

00:02:36.000 And so the district that we're referring to was one of the places where we got three new members elected to flip the board majority.

00:02:43.000 And boy, we really pissed them off when we flipped board majorities.

00:02:46.000 And they decided that they were going to teach us a lesson.

00:02:49.000 And it's disgraceful behavior.

00:02:52.000 So tell us more about the lesson that they were trying to create.

00:02:55.000 I mean, this is all bogus.

00:02:56.000 This is kind of part of a theme of like fake hate crimes, if you will, or fake bullying.

00:03:02.000 Walk into the synthetic, walk us through the synthetic nature here.

00:03:05.000 That's right.

00:03:06.000 And our school board member, Karen Smith, who actually called the Office of Civil Rights, we're thinking about renaming her Karen Smith-Smolette.

00:03:13.000 We think that that might be an appropriate way to kind of understand what happened here.

00:03:19.000 And so there are, of course, incidences of bullying in any district the size of Central Bucks.

00:03:24.000 The incident rate is actually low in our district, as the report demonstrated.

00:03:28.000 It's actually below the state average.

00:03:30.000 But if incidences are not being reported and you show up to the school board meetings talking about how this is a rampant problem, you can create a narrative that gets the ACLU to investigate the district unfairly.

00:03:42.000 That's why we had to spend all of the money at the school board level to go do this investigation.

00:03:47.000 By the way, Charlie, they blamed us for spending that money for the investigation.

00:03:50.000 So let me make sure I understand this so our audience does.

00:03:53.000 So the activists made up a set of situations.

00:03:58.000 They covered up bullying reports from a kid who said they were getting bullied because they were LGBT.

00:04:04.000 Is that right?

00:04:05.000 Or did they make up?

00:04:06.000 Exactly right.

00:04:07.000 Okay, so how did they cover it up?

00:04:11.000 Walk me through that.

00:04:12.000 So there's a teacher named Andrew Burgess who had multiple incidences of reporting of an LGBT kid who was unfairly harassed.

00:04:21.000 There's no question that this happened.

00:04:22.000 It is disgraceful that this happened to this poor kid.

00:04:25.000 But instead of going through the proper channels in the school to report this up through the chain, he sat on those reports.

00:04:32.000 He sat on those reports as evidenced by this investigation so that he could claim that there was a systematic problem of the district not investigating such claims.

00:04:42.000 The only systematic problem was he wasn't reporting them.

00:04:45.000 Right.

00:04:46.000 So by sitting on it, that then warranted the ACLU to come parachute into your school district.

00:04:53.000 That's right.

00:04:54.000 And it's because he did it.

00:04:55.000 It's because he hurt the kid.

00:04:57.000 This is the part that is the most gut-wrenching of all.

00:05:00.000 This poor kid suffered because Burgess's political agenda was more important than actually getting the kid the help he needed.

00:05:07.000 And it became a huge local story, if I'm not mistaken, right?

00:05:11.000 Just massive amounts of protests and all that.

00:05:15.000 And so now is there backlash against the people that did this?

00:05:19.000 Yes, we've had multiple stories written about this.

00:05:21.000 It's part of the reason I'm on this program.

00:05:23.000 We need to call out this behavior because people have contacted me, Charlie, all around the country telling me, you know, I think stuff like this is going on at my district as well, where people are intentionally hiding the ball so that they can create a national story.

00:05:35.000 Central Bucks is in the most purple part of one of the most purple states.

00:05:39.000 So what happens in our backyard, people pay attention to.

00:05:43.000 And I know, unfortunately, that this case is not the only case of this kind where someone sat on reports so that they could get national attention to their political cause.

00:05:51.000 So if they would have gone through the process, there wouldn't have been much there there, right?

00:05:56.000 It just would have been investigated and handled.

00:05:58.000 There would have been complaints.

00:05:59.000 That's right.

00:06:00.000 There would have been complaints.

00:06:01.000 Those complaints would have gone up the proper chain of command.

00:06:04.000 I'm sure some of them would have been resolved.

00:06:06.000 I'm sure some of them required further intercession from the school district, but the district would have known and been able to do something about it.

00:06:13.000 But since they weren't reported, you can then go complain that the district did nothing about it because you intentionally didn't report it.

00:06:21.000 That is the behavior that we're just so frustrated by.

00:06:24.000 So, and also death threats then were sent to conservative school board members.

00:06:29.000 Let's give you a taste of that play cut 59. 1.00

00:06:32.000 You can't even manage your weight, you fat idiot. 1.00

00:06:36.000 You think you should be in charge of children? 1.00

00:06:37.000 You're an ignorant, psychologically weak, and damaged waste of scum. 1.00

00:06:41.000 And it's just very unfortunate your mother didn't abort you in the first place. 1.00

00:06:46.000 Miss Piggy Fat. 0.99

00:06:49.000 Hopefully a semi-truck plows into you today for the betterment of humankind. 1.00

00:06:53.000 Your ignorance is on full display and you will be judged accordingly by history. 0.98

00:06:58.000 So this was a death threat sent to a conservative school board member. 0.99

00:07:02.000 Is that right?

00:07:03.000 That's right.

00:07:04.000 And it was sent in our hometown where the motto of the left in our hometown is hate has no home here.

00:07:10.000 So we always enjoy when we get death threats in the town that says hate has no home here.

00:07:14.000 And relentlessly from there, what is a big lesson you want other parents across the country to derive from this unfortunate saga?

00:07:23.000 When you hear stories about systematic problems, you ask the kids, you ask the teachers when, where, how.

00:07:31.000 If it's just an anecdote or it's in the ether or, oh, I heard a story, you need to think twice about that.

00:07:38.000 But if you can get told, this happened on Tuesday, this was the people in the room, et cetera.

00:07:43.000 So everyone in your audience needs to understand instances like this do actually happen where there is bullying.

00:07:48.000 Get the specifics.

00:07:50.000 Don't let them create a false narrative that this is a widespread problem without actual evidence that something happened as opposed to just a story that gets told.

00:07:59.000 You were able to be very successful winning a lot of these school board races.

00:08:02.000 Tell us how you were able to do that and how that model might be able to spread to other states.

00:08:06.000 So obviously, we ran specifically in 2021 about the school closures.

00:08:11.000 2023, we're going to be back at it again, primarily now on the learning loss from those school closures.

00:08:17.000 So we haven't decided exactly how aggressive we're going to be in the state of Pennsylvania this year in 2023, but we're going to be back at it defending the boards that we already elected, as well as putting new people on boards who are going to address the learning loss that we're still suffering from those policies in 2020 and 2021 from.

00:08:33.000 Do you have a website that you would like to plug or a way that people can support you?

00:08:37.000 I think the most important thing to do right now is to go to Central Bucks Forward.

00:08:41.000 Central Bucks Forward is the website of the candidates who are actually running to go address this problem in my home district.

00:08:49.000 We'll talk more about the more nationwide or statewide stuff, but please go to Central Bucks Forward, see the candidates.

00:08:56.000 We have great candidates running who won't do this kind of thing and call the OCR on a nonsense report.

00:09:03.000 Let's get the right people elected.

00:09:05.000 Paul, thank you so much.

00:09:06.000 Appreciate you coming on.

00:09:07.000 Thank you.

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00:10:55.000 Right here in the New York Times, I'm going to mention the, I'm going to finish the podcast argument in a second, but this is a really important piece here in the New York Times.

00:11:02.000 If you were to ask me five years ago, let's pretend you run an insurance company.

00:11:06.000 Insurance companies do a lot of investments because they have to turn an investment, they've got a return on their deposits, essentially, because so many people are sending them money.

00:11:15.000 And so if you were an insurance company, a pension fund, private equity fund, if you were to say, Charlie, what is a blue chip investment?

00:11:22.000 Where can I park my money where regardless how the economy goes, regardless, it's just going to be stable.

00:11:29.000 It's just going to be reliable.

00:11:34.000 Self-storage would be at the top of the list.

00:11:36.000 It's been a good investment.

00:11:38.000 Nursing homes would be at the top of the list.

00:11:41.000 That would be a good investment.

00:11:43.000 And then office space.

00:11:45.000 Those would be the top three.

00:11:47.000 It would be nursing homes, self-storage, and office space.

00:11:53.000 Front page of the New York Times, it's a buried lead here.

00:11:57.000 Office market in dire straits in Manhattan.

00:12:00.000 This is going to result in major economic disruption.

00:12:04.000 New York City's biggest corporate landlords had it great for years, benefiting from a booming economy in a city where companies clamored to set up offices from low interest rates.

00:12:14.000 That buoyed the economics of an industry built on debt.

00:12:18.000 It's true.

00:12:19.000 Those days are over three years from into the pandemic.

00:12:22.000 Floors of office buildings throughout Manhattan have been emptied by tenants who have shrunk their footprint and employees who work from home.

00:12:29.000 Now, there's another rate, another problem.

00:12:31.000 Rapidly rising interest rates have intensified concerns for the New York City office market, the largest in the country and a pillar of the country's economy.

00:12:42.000 It's a pillar of the city's economy.

00:12:43.000 It could be a grave risk.

00:12:44.000 Geez, the font is so hard.

00:12:45.000 It's hard to read some of this.

00:12:47.000 That one-two-punch could be worse than anything corporate landlords have experienced.

00:12:51.000 It goes on to say more than two-thirds of all commercial real estate loans are held by small and medium-sized banks.

00:12:57.000 Let me read that again.

00:12:58.000 More than two-thirds of all commercial real estate loans are held by small and medium-sized banks.

00:13:06.000 This very well could be a way to eliminate small and medium-sized banks.

00:13:10.000 This commercial real estate collapse is going to happen in the next six months.

00:13:14.000 It's already happening.

00:13:15.000 But if you have a 15% occupancy, you can't even pay the note.

00:13:20.000 You can't pay anyone.

00:13:22.000 You're done.

00:13:23.000 You can't pay your investors.

00:13:24.000 You can't, I mean, and these commercial real estate buildings are incredibly leveraged.

00:13:30.000 It's a total wipeout.

00:13:32.000 If you're at 15 or 20% occupancy, I'm not an alarmist.

00:13:36.000 I'm not a guy that says, oh, the economy is going to fall apart.

00:13:38.000 I'm telling you right now, the next economic disruption is not going to come through single-family homes.

00:13:44.000 That actually looks pretty healthy, believe it or not, in certain areas of the country, especially in Arizona.

00:13:49.000 Single-family homes, they're selling in 20 to 30 days.

00:13:51.000 Prices are down 10 or 15%.

00:13:52.000 They might go down another 10%, but it's not going to be a collapse.

00:13:56.000 15% occupancy, work from home COVID.

00:13:59.000 I'm telling you, you are going to see people that are billionaires in real estate get to nothing if this is the case.

00:14:06.000 And the New York Times has a great job here.

00:14:07.000 Matthew Hagg, it's a very good article.

00:14:10.000 It's not political.

00:14:10.000 It's just a regular article the way the New York Times used to be.

00:14:13.000 Very rare to see, where he says that it's primarily built on debt.

00:14:17.000 You better believe that's true.

00:14:20.000 That these guys will go raise $100 million in equity and then they'll go borrow $600 million and go say, okay, and by the way, the bank will happily do it because this is a blue chip loan.

00:14:32.000 So if you try to buy, for example, a home, a $5 million home, a $10 million home, the bank will require 30% down.

00:14:38.000 It's a jumbo loan.

00:14:39.000 If you try to require, if you try to get a single family home for an investment property, that's $1 to $5 million, they'll do 25% down.

00:14:45.000 If you're a single-family home between $750,000 and $1.5 million, 20% down.

00:14:51.000 But they consider those to be a higher threshold of risk, right?

00:14:55.000 Office space never was looked at that risk because the risk department, the underwriting department at these banks, they'd say, no, these are easy.

00:15:04.000 These are great.

00:15:04.000 This is free money for us, free money for them.

00:15:07.000 And so we're going to give you 10% down, 15% down.

00:15:13.000 So you bring $150 million, you get a billion-dollar office building.

00:15:16.000 Yeah, you got to carry the note.

00:15:17.000 But if you're at 50% occupancy, you're printing money.

00:15:21.000 And you know how many real estate investment trusts, REITs are in this country that are about to go under?

00:15:28.000 Article continues.

00:15:29.000 The consequences extend far beyond the balance sheets of cities' landlords who borrowed billions.

00:15:36.000 But this could go throughout the entire economy.

00:15:40.000 Unless something dramatically changes over the summer, unless we have millions of people that say, you know what?

00:15:47.000 I actually want to go work in an office space when we have tighter margins and higher inflation.

00:15:54.000 You're going to see economic disruption that is very significant.

00:16:00.000 I don't want to say it's going to be 2008 because that was scary because it involved people's own homes, but banks will collapse.

00:16:06.000 You will see dozens of banks collapse if this is the case.

00:16:09.000 I hope that's not true.

00:16:10.000 I hope there's something I'm missing here, but it is unsustainable what is happening right now in commercial real estate.

00:16:19.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:17:19.000 Joining us now is Kurt Schlichter.

00:17:21.000 So Tucker is no longer at Fox.

00:17:24.000 Your immediate reaction?

00:17:25.000 I was stunned.

00:17:27.000 I mean, holy cow, that was so out of the blue that, you know, this is the guy who's the biggest thing in conservatism since Rush Limbaugh.

00:17:36.000 And I think what it is going to mean is a real transition for the whole conservative media landscape.

00:17:46.000 Before we had, you know, we were still in the process of identifying by organizations.

00:17:53.000 You know, I'm a Fox viewer or I'm viewing this entity or that entity.

00:17:58.000 I think now with Tucker out there, we've got the ability to individually brand in a way that we never had before.

00:18:07.000 So it's going to be, you know, hey, I'm following Tucker wherever he goes.

00:18:11.000 If he's on my Roku, that's fine.

00:18:13.000 If he's on my podcast, he's fine.

00:18:15.000 If he creates his own entity, he's fine.

00:18:18.000 And I think we're going to see down the road, Charlie, particularly if somebody figures out how to do it correctly, technically, people really curating their watching across a variety of outlets for a variety of individuals.

00:18:31.000 So you pick and choose.

00:18:32.000 I'm going to watch Charlie Kirk from here to here in the morning, and then my device will automatically go over here to this other organization that has Tucker, and then this other organization that has somebody else.

00:18:44.000 The era of network TV and traditional cable, I think this is part of the sunset.

00:18:51.000 So, Kurt, I want to just kind of get your speculation.

00:18:55.000 What was Fox thinking here, right?

00:18:57.000 You're a lawyer.

00:18:59.000 I mean, what were they thinking?

00:19:04.000 What is the calculus?

00:19:06.000 Well, look, Charlie, we've seen a hundred different explanations.

00:19:09.000 Everything from Rupert Murdoch has become Logan Roy in succession to he doesn't like, you know, oh, I want to see the Logan kit, the McLachlan Murdoch rapping, but that's a whole different other thing.

00:19:27.000 We've seen that maybe Murdoch doesn't like Tucker's religious angle, or maybe it has to do with the Dominion settlement, or maybe it's this Abby Grossman case.

00:19:36.000 Everybody's speculating.

00:19:38.000 One thing we know for certain, Fox is a very hard-edged business.

00:19:44.000 And if it thinks it's to your advantage to let a star go, it will look what happened with Bill O'Reilly.

00:19:50.000 He brought us Tucker.

00:19:52.000 Bill O'Reilly was at the top of his game.

00:19:54.000 He became a liability.

00:19:55.000 Fox decided we're better off without him.

00:19:58.000 Audios built.

00:19:59.000 Well, people made the same decision for Tucker.

00:20:01.000 It was Bill and Megan Kelly simultaneously, right?

00:20:04.000 They were dominating prime.

00:20:06.000 It was Megan, Bill, Hanny.

00:20:09.000 One, two, three.

00:20:10.000 And then all of a sudden, you lose Bill and you lose Megan in a span of about nine months.

00:20:15.000 But Tucker came in and shocked the world.

00:20:17.000 I mean, they didn't, I don't even think Fox executives anticipated Tucker becoming the number one host in the history of Fox News on average over a seven-year period.

00:20:29.000 I don't think they expected it either.

00:20:30.000 But what Tucker did, first off, he managed to essentially negotiate almost complete freedom of action.

00:20:39.000 And he took it in a way that brought in kind of the populist segment that really liked and appreciated Trump.

00:20:49.000 Now, look, you will see out there, there are a lot of Trump voters who will tell you flat out, I am a Trump voter.

00:20:54.000 I am not a Republican.

00:20:55.000 There are a lot of people who are Tucker voters, right?

00:21:00.000 Who are not Fox viewers.

00:21:02.000 Yeah, that's exactly right, Kurt.

00:21:04.000 You know, I've asked, again, this is not scientific, just, you know, talking one off to 30 people.

00:21:10.000 And I say, are you going to still watch the network?

00:21:12.000 Nope, nope, nope.

00:21:13.000 Across the board, you know, canceling Fox Nation.

00:21:15.000 It could be just an echo chamber because I'm around a bunch of right-wingers.

00:21:18.000 Yeah.

00:21:19.000 No, I see it.

00:21:22.000 You know, look, I don't have a beef with Fox.

00:21:25.000 Fox has been very good to me.

00:21:26.000 I've done a lot of Fox hits in my day, and I like several of the folks there.

00:21:31.000 Hell, I graduated from high school in San Mateo, California, right down the street from Greg Gutfeld the same year he did.

00:21:38.000 Okay, I like Fox in concept, but I'm not going to watch it every day the way I did because Tucker's gone.

00:21:46.000 Tucker was always there, and I used him, and I think a lot of people used him, Charlie, like an internet service because I would DVR him, and then I would watch what parts I wanted to later at my convenience.

00:21:59.000 I did not say, oh my gosh, Pucker time.

00:22:02.000 It was always Tucker time because I was in control.

00:22:05.000 And I think that's going to make it really easy for him to go on an internet system.

00:22:11.000 Maybe he goes to Twitter with Elon Musk.

00:22:13.000 Who knows?

00:22:14.000 Maybe he creates his own thing back to Daily Caller.

00:22:17.000 I don't know.

00:22:18.000 Who knows?

00:22:18.000 Salem?

00:22:19.000 I don't.

00:22:20.000 But I do think he's going to continue to be successful.

00:22:24.000 And I think I'm not sure where the energy is going to go in Fox because you've got a guy like Hannity and Hannity's been there forever.

00:22:35.000 And a lot of people are like, okay, seen that, done that.

00:22:41.000 And he's got his fans and he does well.

00:22:44.000 But Tucker was a phenomenon.

00:22:46.000 And are they willing to have another phenomenon?

00:22:48.000 Because if you have a phenomenon, they can be dangerous.

00:22:54.000 Bill O'Reilly was edgy.

00:22:56.000 Tucker was edgy.

00:22:58.000 Megan Kelly, to some extent, was edgy.

00:23:00.000 Yes. 0.86

00:23:00.000 And you've got that tension. 0.86

00:23:03.000 Again, I write about at Town Hall tomorrow, a piece called You Strike Down Tucker Carlson.

00:23:08.000 He'll become more powerful than you ever imagined.

00:23:11.000 That's my shout out to you, Star Wars-loving virgins out there.

00:23:16.000 You know, there's a tension in Fox between wanting to serve a conservative audience that's underserved.

00:23:24.000 It goes for the 50% the other networks actively hate, but while wanting to remain mainstream in the sense that it's objective and not necessarily a cheerleader, at least in the news portions.

00:23:36.000 So, there's always attention at Fox.

00:23:38.000 And if you get so far off the reservation at Fox, they may decide they don't need you anymore.

00:23:44.000 I think that might have been what happened with Tucker, but that doesn't mean Tucker's doomed.

00:23:49.000 I think Tucker's going on to.

00:23:50.000 No, I think Tucker's going to be fine.

00:23:52.000 I have multiple, you know, I'm saddened because having a network with someone like Tucker in the central canon of cable distribution, which is 110 million homes, there's only four channels, right?

00:24:04.000 People are like, oh, just create a new one.

00:24:06.000 Not the way it works.

00:24:06.000 These are grandfathered-in deals of CNN, MSNBC, HLN that nobody watches, CNBC, and Fox.

00:24:14.000 That's it.

00:24:14.000 That's the core canon of DirecTV, Spectrum, and Comcast.

00:24:19.000 That's it, right?

00:24:20.000 And so there's obviously other options, but people look, you know what it's like saying?

00:24:24.000 It's like saying, I go to Old Country Buffet and I want sushi.

00:24:27.000 It's like, well, it's not there.

00:24:28.000 So I'm just going to eat what's there.

00:24:29.000 Okay.

00:24:30.000 You're going to eat what's in front of you and you're not going to necessarily.

00:24:33.000 Some people might go leave to go get sushi, but you're going to go eat the food in front of you.

00:24:37.000 That's the menu in front of you on the cable channels.

00:24:42.000 Yeah, I think, look, I think more people are going to leave for sushi.

00:24:45.000 Now, look, I am, I am old.

00:24:47.000 I was born the last week of the baby boom.

00:24:49.000 You're younger, but even younger than you.

00:24:51.000 You know, I look at my kids and I've never, other than a cartoon, I've never seen them watch a television program.

00:24:58.000 The idea that they would come down and watch a specific television car is completely alien to the way they and their kids conserve consume media.

00:25:07.000 Now, guys like me, I grew up, you know, I grew up on the three networks and the weird UHF channels.

00:25:13.000 Okay.

00:25:14.000 So I, you know, my viewing habits ingrained from ancient times are, you know, you watch the show and it's been modified now using the DDR and everything.

00:25:27.000 But those crazy kids today, the future audience for conservative media is not out there watching shows the way we used to think of shows.

00:25:37.000 So, and the Fox, you know, Fox audience skews older.

00:25:42.000 It just does.

00:25:43.000 But then again, there's a lot of the content out there aimed for younger folks.

00:25:49.000 Your stuff, the Joe Rogan, Daily Wire stuff, it's presented in a very friendly way to these young viewers who have completely different viewing habits.

00:26:01.000 And that's not a judgment.

00:26:03.000 It's just a found that you're better or worse because you consume media differently.

00:26:08.000 But it's the job of a company like Fox to protect its shareholders by understanding that.

00:26:13.000 I don't know how well they do.

00:26:15.000 It's going to be interesting to watch.

00:26:16.000 I think they'll be teaching about it at Harvard Business School if we don't match due to the funded endowment with the next Republican Congress.

00:26:24.000 I don't know if that's kind of what I'm hoping for.

00:26:25.000 Not going to have anytime soon.

00:26:27.000 Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see if the boycotts will stick.

00:26:27.000 I hope so.

00:26:32.000 I mean, the ratings came out.

00:26:33.000 Actually, I don't know if the ratings came out for yesterday.

00:26:35.000 Monday, they were down.

00:26:36.000 So Tucker usually averaged 3.1 to 3.5 million.

00:26:39.000 So Kill Mead's replacement, they were at 2.5.

00:26:42.000 So it went down about 800,000, you know, almost immediately.

00:26:46.000 Some of those just might have been curious viewers who are like, what's going on tonight?

00:26:49.000 So we'll see what it sustains.

00:26:51.000 My guess is they're going to get down to 2.2, 2.3 in that time slot.

00:26:57.000 Now, whether or not, you know, they put, now, mind you, Jesse is on paternity leave.

00:27:04.000 So there's really no, there's no handoff.

00:27:06.000 They might get as low as 1.8.

00:27:08.000 And I don't know if they care, though, Kurt.

00:27:10.000 I think at least what I am getting is they want their advertisements back.

00:27:16.000 They want the boycotts gone.

00:27:18.000 They don't want to be hated anymore.

00:27:19.000 They want to go back to the cocktail parties and they want to become RNC TV.

00:27:22.000 They're done with the fight.

00:27:24.000 They don't care if it trims their margins a little bit.

00:27:27.000 Rupert Murdoch is worth $17 billion.

00:27:29.000 He's like, honestly, I'd rather be worth $11 and be reaccepted in decent and civil society and be able to have, you know, I want to, he's like, I want Dylan Mulvaney ads back on Fox, right?

00:27:42.000 They yearn for that kind of flow of trans capital.

00:27:46.000 I think that's kind of what is the desire here.

00:27:50.000 It's more ideological and comfort-driven than even money.

00:27:55.000 So, Kurt, just to summarize here, the, you know, your lawyer, what was the legal thought, though, on the Dominion case?

00:28:04.000 Is there something I was missing?

00:28:05.000 It just seemed to be such a weak case.

00:28:08.000 Look, it was going to lose once they got up to the right level of the court.

00:28:12.000 I mean, probably the United States Supreme Court, it probably would have lost in front of this judge because he was a seemed to be a liberal judge and didn't rule the way I would have ruled on the motions.

00:28:24.000 I think the Court of Appeal wouldn't have gone their way.

00:28:26.000 I think the Delaware Supreme Court wouldn't have gone their way.

00:28:30.000 I think it probably, I think the United States Supreme Court probably would have taken it, not just because of the money, but because it's an important free speech case.

00:28:39.000 The fact that it is legally meritless is not the only factor to consider.

00:28:47.000 Clearly, Fox thought it was better not to go through the trial for whatever reason.

00:28:53.000 And that could have been, you know, they didn't want the testimony that might have come out, including by Rupert Murdoch, to come out.

00:28:59.000 They just wanted to put it behind them.

00:29:01.000 They still have some other cases, too.

00:29:03.000 Keep that in mind.

00:29:06.000 Keep also in mind that their insurance companies are probably paying a substantial, if not all, of this settlement, okay?

00:29:13.000 Because companies, you know, insure themselves against defamation verdicts, and big companies get big excess policies.

00:29:20.000 And there are probably some insurers right now, you know, going down to the underwriting department and slapping people around.

00:29:28.000 But I think, look, I think it was terrible.

00:29:32.000 It's not formal legal precedent because it's not an appellate court decision.

00:29:36.000 But as informal precedent, it shows that it is possible to use lawfare to attempt to silence and punish speech.

00:29:49.000 That's well said.

00:29:50.000 I want to play a piece of tape here. 1.00

00:29:51.000 Here is Abby Grossberg making some accusations against Tucker Carlson, Play Cut 63.

00:30:00.000 He was looking for ratings, bait, purely, and was also looking for power.

00:30:05.000 It was a combination of ratings and power and manipulating the audience and manipulating also the political system.

00:30:12.000 There was an aspect of, I can pick who the House Speaker is.

00:30:16.000 I can pick who the President of the United States is or who the Republican candidate's going to be.

00:30:22.000 And I thought that was really dangerous and didn't want that kind of power.

00:30:26.000 I didn't want to have Senate candidates calling me and being very upset.

00:30:33.000 Are you going to destroy our whole campaign tonight?

00:30:35.000 Because he could do that.

00:30:37.000 Just one little flavor of many.

00:30:39.000 I mean, Kurt, it seems like that legal challenge could be moving forward or not.

00:30:44.000 It remains a question.

00:30:46.000 So let me ask you a bigger question.

00:30:48.000 If Fox becomes RNC TV, how does that impact us heading into 2024?

00:30:54.000 Well, look, I don't know how if Fox loses credibility by picking a side in the Republican primary, all it's going to do is get the people on the side it kicks and everybody else will tune out. 0.99

00:31:10.000 That's where we remember, Republicans are the abused wives of American politics.

00:31:16.000 And we're done. 0.92

00:31:17.000 We're not going to take the abuse anymore.

00:31:18.000 We're going to walk out the door.

00:31:20.000 And it is a, you know, so it's very dangerous for Fox.

00:31:24.000 If they don't play it right down the middle within the Republican context, they're going to find, you know, if they're anti-Trump, they're going to see Trump supporters go away.

00:31:33.000 If they're too pro-Trump, they're going to see people who support someone else go away.

00:31:37.000 And they've got a tightrope to walk.

00:31:39.000 As far as Abby Grossman goes, and you know, I defend people in sexual harassment suits, and I bring sexual harassment suits.

00:31:47.000 I've done both in public and out of the public eye.

00:31:51.000 And what she was talking about was not about sexual harassment.

00:31:54.000 What she was talking about is, I don't know what the heck she's talking about.

00:31:58.000 She doesn't like that Tucker Carlson had a lot of power. 0.65

00:32:01.000 Okay, not a sexual harassment thing.

00:32:04.000 And if you're morally, if you have moral problems with a very popular and respected commentator having the ability to influence things, I have two bits of advice.

00:32:16.000 The first is grow up.

00:32:18.000 The second is quit and do something else.

00:32:22.000 I don't understand why conservatives bring into the fold people who are obviously not part of the team.

00:32:30.000 And I don't think she was.

00:32:31.000 I don't think she's a conservative.

00:32:33.000 I don't think she likes the movement.

00:32:35.000 Really quick, how can people support your books?

00:32:37.000 Plug whatever you want.

00:32:38.000 Go get my new book, Inferno.

00:32:40.000 It's part of the People's Republic series, How's Act for Subtlety, the Kelly Turnbull Action Series.

00:32:46.000 A lot of fun.

00:32:47.000 Go read my town hall columns.

00:32:48.000 I have a good one tomorrow on Tucker Carlson.

00:32:51.000 But you can read them every Monday, Thursday, and Wednesday.

00:32:55.000 And follow me on Twitter at Kurt Schlichter.

00:32:58.000 Very good.

00:32:59.000 Kurt, thank you so much.

00:33:00.000 Appreciate your time.

00:33:01.000 Thank you.

00:33:01.000 Thanks for having me.

00:33:05.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:33:06.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:33:09.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:33:11.000 God bless.

00:33:14.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 27, 2023

The Coming Real Estate Cataclysm? with Paul Martino and Kurt Schlichter

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