Ben Leo helps summarize my trip to the UK, and the shockwaves that it made, then Josh Hammer joins us to talk about Harvard and President Trump's war on Harvard. Finally, a piece of audio from our conversation on Ben Leo's show in London.
00:00:55.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:01.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:02:30.000Islam does not believe in freedom of speech.
00:02:32.000Islam does not believe in freedom of religion, and Islam does not believe in separation of mosque and state.
00:02:37.000Those three things are antithetical to the West.
00:02:39.000In a Muslim-majority country, most Muslim-majority countries, you cannot criticize the Prophet Muhammad.
00:02:47.000In most Muslim-majority countries, you do not have the same robust freedom of religion protections.
00:02:52.000And finally, whereas we in the West are very careful to try to intermix religion and state, they are commanded to actually go into the state and try to change the state to be more Islamic around the core pillars of Islam.
00:03:05.000And the last thing I'll finally say is I cannot see a single Western country that has become more Islamic and has become a better place to live that is happier or freer.
00:03:14.000So, Ben, did anyone watch that interview?
00:03:17.000Yeah, thank you for doing it, because it was a ratings hit.
00:03:42.000And for a lot of Brits, at least, we don't know, I know, and lots of conservatives know and GB News viewers know, but most people, I'd argue, don't know about the limits on free speech here until it takes a friend from the US like yourself to come over and say, Hang on a minute, guys.
00:04:00.000And what you said about Lucy Connolly specifically, you mentioned that you're going to give Marco Rubio from the State Department a heads up about Lucy's case.
00:04:10.000We had a lot of people, a lot of sort of liberal lefties saying, well, hang on a minute, we don't want Americans coming over here and interfering in our politics, which is fine.
00:04:17.000And I understand that Obama did it back in the days of the Brexit vote.
00:04:22.000And we said, you know, we don't want Americans over here doing that kind of thing.
00:04:32.000Yeah, but I was going to say the difference between now and the Obama days and the Brexit days is I think we're in an existential threat to the future of the West.
00:04:46.000This isn't just a vote on Brexit and whether the UK is part of the EU or not.
00:04:50.000I think it transcends borders and it transcends countries.
00:04:55.000It's the West against a tyrannical globalist future.
00:04:59.000And when we have allies and friends in the United States, albeit from a foreign government, at least...
00:05:14.000And indeed, you mentioned 30 Brits a day, and you're absolutely right, 12,000 Brits a year being arrested for words they post on the internet, which is absolutely insane.
00:05:26.000As I said, there was a cohort of people, mostly militant leftists, who were saying, you know, what right does Donald Trump's associates and MAGA conservatives have to come over here and talk about free speech, saying that Trump was clamping down somehow on free speech in the US?
00:05:40.000But I've argued many times on the air since then that, look, it's more than just foreign interference.
00:05:47.000And if we don't do something about it and protect the very nature of free speech, and free speech for me, if you come down to it, If you're tiptoeing around on eggshells and concerned about what you're saying or how you'll deliver it because you're concerned about the consequences, that's not free speech.
00:06:56.000And, you know, he didn't reveal his cards any further than that.
00:06:59.000But it's well known now in the highest levels of the American government the attack on freedom of speech happening in the United Kingdom of what is happening of 30 people a day being arrested.
00:07:20.000I remember, I'm mid-30, so I just about remember the time when But there's especially young university students who have grown up in this era of tyranny and so-called free speech.
00:07:34.000They think free speech exists, but you only have to look to yourselves and America and the First Amendment.
00:07:40.000That is true free speech without consequences.
00:07:42.000And when it comes to Rubio, I mean, amazing.
00:07:47.000When the story came out over here, it was blowing up in the news that the facts of the State Department, it wasn't just a source said from the State Department, we're looking at this.
00:07:55.000It was an official statement from Rubio's State Department saying we're monitoring the situation.
00:08:00.000And I always say, though, Charlie, I think we're about, I reckon, five years behind the US politically, culturally.
00:08:08.000I think we're going through our Biden era at the moment.
00:08:10.000And it's always the darkest before the dawn.
00:08:13.000And I think you need to, I said before Labour got elected in July last year when the Conservatives or the fake Conservatives were still in power, I said, look, I think we need a Labour government to really drag this country into the gutter before a lot of, So I think we're going through our Biden era at the moment.
00:08:38.000We're probably about five years behind you, but I remain, although you have a grave assessment of your visit to the UK, Charlie, I do remain hopeful and faithful that we will soon be on your coat.
00:09:10.000I just wrote a piece for The Spectator that I encourage everyone to check out.
00:09:13.000While I saw that your government has now been taken over, now that you have Mohammedans that have basically infiltrated all parts of the United Kingdom and of London, I do see that kind of bubbling up of the everyday man.
00:09:30.000I would be going through restaurants in London, and people would be asking me for pictures saying, we love you, we need to have a big fight here.
00:11:15.000Keir Starmer today, the Prime Minister, reformed, by the way.
00:11:18.000Over the past six months or so, Labour and the government and Keir Starmer have been mocking reform, saying that they could only fit their MPs in the back of a taxi, for example, because they're so insignificant.
00:11:30.000Today, Keir Starmer gave a massive speech at some industrial centre in the north of England.
00:11:34.000He talked for a little bit about the reason why he was there, and then he launched into some obsessive rants about Nigel Farage, about reform, and so on and so on.
00:11:43.000So he's completely rattled, and he's also changing.
00:12:31.000But that's what reform are tapping into.
00:12:33.000If they can win that red wall, which they did at the local elections, I think maybe in three or four years we'll see Prime Minister Farage.
00:12:52.000You may already own a firearm, but before you face the financial and emotional weight of pulling the trigger, consider Berna.
00:12:58.000Berna's less lethal launchers fire tear gas and kinetic rounds designed to incapacitate attackers for up to 40 minutes, giving you time to escape and call for help without deadly consequences.
00:14:28.000Particularly the young lady in the U.S. flag jumper, the last guy at the end, the Prince Harry lookalike, who for some reason was bouncing up and down.
00:14:39.000I wanted to know how these students compare to the students that you frequent in the U.S., Charlie.
00:14:44.000Yeah, so they're definitely, let's say they have a higher intelligence quotient.
00:14:49.000They are definitely smarter book smart than your everyday state school in America.
00:15:25.000They have some high rhetorical ability, but they were still resorting to their pre-prepared AI-generated remarks reading from a phone or shaking like a leaf.
00:15:36.000Yeah, I've said for many years now, even before watching your sort of debates over the years with university, college students, I've always said, I think university now these days is a hindrance to a young person's development because there is no expectation There is no sharing of ideas.
00:15:56.000I've always said, unless things change, I don't want them going to university.
00:15:58.000And in actual fact, when I used to work at, I was a reporter at one of the, well, the biggest newspaper here in the UK for seven years.
00:16:04.000We regularly used to have people coming in for work experience or what you guys would call internships, right?
00:16:09.000So you get young journalists coming into the office to get some experience.
00:16:13.000They'd come straight from university with...
00:16:19.000They'd done three, four, five years, got in hundreds of pounds worth of debt.
00:16:23.000And they couldn't even look somebody in the eye or pick up the phone or knock on the door, which is essential as a journalist, and say hello or ask a question.
00:16:35.000They spend their time, unfortunately, heads buried into screens.
00:16:39.000And these days, I've always argued, and I think I'm absolutely correct in saying it, I'd rather hire somebody who had one or two years on the job.
00:16:46.000Who could speak to somebody and look them in the eye and behave as a human being, be empathetic and just be a normal person than somebody, some academic with, as I said, degrees and qualifications coming out there is.
00:16:57.000The students you spoke to at Cambridge, as I said, I was completely laughing at my chair.
00:17:01.000The one young lady you spoke to with the American flag on, she's here now on screen, you were making the point that Western women on the whole were unhappier than decades ago.
00:17:11.000The studies show that she, with respect to her, And unfortunately, my assessment is that a lot of these young people, and I don't blame them personally.
00:17:31.000I blame the system because we've had people now struggling to get homes.
00:17:34.000They can't have or won't have families until they buy houses or own a property.
00:17:40.000So I kind of understand why they don't want to settle down and do that.
00:17:45.000predominantly just given an absolute lie over the years of feminism and told they can have it all.
00:17:51.000This kind of person, this lady here, with respect to her, she's a prime example of somebody I would argue would be a lot happier getting out of that university environment, stop reading stuff online and studies and this and that, and just go and enjoy the beauty and the happiness of life and children.
00:18:09.000She would be much happier if she got married and had kids.
00:20:05.000I am quoted by saying, Charlie, every time he sees President Trump, reminds him to, quote, crush these universities with every power that he has.
00:21:02.000Okay, so the fundamental indictment against Harvard University, I mean, the way you framed it is actually quite perfect, because you want to make an example of the worst actor, the most prestigious institution when it comes to layman prestige across the country.
00:21:17.000The Ivy League in general, Charlie, has been out of line with American Western values for far longer than you or I have been alive.
00:21:24.000A point that I like to remind the listeners and viewers when this topic comes up.
00:21:29.000Let's think back to William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review.
00:21:32.000He found the National Review in the 1950s, literally before he even found the National Review.
00:21:36.000He wrote a book called God and Man at Yale.
00:21:39.000It was the first book that Buckley ever published.
00:21:41.000He wrote that shortly after he graduated from Yale.
00:21:44.0001951, barely after victory against the Nazis in World War II, when William Buckley is already writing about leftist, socialist, secularist, atheist decadence in the Ivy League ivory tower.
00:21:56.000So this has been a problem for a very, very long time.
00:21:59.000I mean, the rise of the 1960s Frankfurt School of Cultural Marxist Campus Radicals has been very well documented.
00:22:04.000Chris Rufo had a great book on this just about a year and a half, two years ago or so.
00:22:07.000And I think what we've seen since October 7th is this just take on an unavoidable When you see people tearing down American flags on Harvard University, which, by the way, they've done.
00:22:22.000They're putting up the PLO flag, the Palestine Liberation Organization flag there.
00:22:25.000People chanting not just terrible things about Jewish people, but also just about the United States.
00:22:31.000You know, the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Columbia literally calling to eradicate Western civilization.
00:22:36.000Harvard, Charlie, lest I need to remind the viewers here.
00:22:41.000Harvard was also sued badly, and they lost badly when it came to affirmative action.
00:23:04.000By the way, Charlie, one of my best friends in the world, a brilliant lawyer by the name of Adam Martara, he was actually the trial lawyer against Harvard in this case.
00:23:11.000So I know this case actually quite well.
00:23:13.000Harvard's admissions policies, when it came to the Students for Fair Admissions case, were blatantly, overtly discriminatory.
00:23:20.000They were clearly, clearly violating the 14th Amendment, violating the Civil Rights Act, Title VI, when they were discriminating against white people.
00:23:31.000And the key part for present purposes, Charlie, is that the Trump executive order, probably the single most important executive order that Trump has signed into law, and he signed a lot of good ones, but the single most important, the executive order that I said essentially achieved a Cold War victory without firing a single shot for our side,
00:23:48.000the forces of civilizational sanity, was where, among other things, back on January 20th, he interpreted this case, the Students for Fair Missions versus Harvard case, as also requiring an end to DEI and everything else that smacks of anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-American, anti-Western bigotry on campuses.
00:24:05.000Harvard has flagrantly stuck their middle fingers at this there.
00:24:08.000So it's far more than just anti-Semitism.
00:24:37.000Because I don't want to get to a place where Am I understanding that correctly?
00:24:48.000Yeah, so there's numerous things, right?
00:24:50.000So first of all, there's a Trump executive order from 2019.
00:24:54.000This is one of his executive orders that was produced by the Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights back then when Ken Marcus was leading it there.
00:25:01.000And back then, they interpreted Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for the very first time to apply to Jews.
00:25:08.000And one of the things that they did as part of this executive order that Trump signed six years ago now was he said that anti-Zionism constitutes anti-Semitism for purposes of Title VI.
00:25:18.000Now, Charlie, it's important to define terms.
00:25:19.000There's a lot of confusion as to what anti-Zionism is.
00:25:22.000Simply criticizing the policies of a democratically elected government is obviously and transparently not anti-Semitism.
00:25:59.000I don't pretend this is kind of a bright line ruled one way or the other there, but there have been judicial rules given by courts over the years, and the line ends up being somewhere in that gray area right there.
00:26:32.000They want to show how smart they are, and they're getting their ass kicked.
00:26:35.000Okay, so how do you think Harvard is going to react to all this?
00:26:40.000Do you think they're going to give in and surrender at some point?
00:26:43.000They're in a very, very difficult position.
00:26:45.000Well, I'll tell you who I don't think is going to surrender.
00:26:47.000I don't think that Donald Trump is going to surrender because this is a politically winning fight.
00:26:51.000I mean, let's hold the policy, the law aside for a second, Charlie, just focusing on the brute politics of this.
00:26:56.000What an amazing political operation, an amazing political move by Donald Trump and his whole administration.
00:27:03.000I mean, they're literally making an enemy of one of the least popular institutions in America.
00:27:08.000Higher education in general is not very popular.
00:27:10.000Harvard University is definitely not popular.
00:27:12.000They are making the Democratic Party, which once upon a time purported to be the bastion of the working class in this country, the old white working class there.
00:27:20.000You know, they are making these people bend over backwards to defend Harvard University, to tell people earning, you know, 30, 40, $50,000 a year.
00:27:30.000They're putting that Democrats in a position to tell these folks, these hardworking men and women, that your taxpayer dollars should go fund these ivory tower socialist Marxist Jew-hating America-hating lunatics on the Charles River in Boston.
00:27:42.000It's a brilliant, brilliant political move.
00:27:44.000So for that reason, among others, I simply don't see the Trump administration giving in here.
00:27:48.000I think that Harvard ultimately is going to be forced to blink first.
00:27:53.000I want to tell you guys about why refi.
00:27:55.000Private student loan debt in the United States totals about $300 billion.
00:27:58.000About $45 billion of that is labeled as distressed.
00:28:01.000Why refi refinances distressed or defaulted private student loans that others will not touch?
00:28:06.000They provide you with a custom loan payment based on your ability to pay.
00:28:55.000And what they should be doing is they should have We know that his strategy, negotiating strategy, is to ask for, you know, get the headlines with a crazy ask, and then he wants to make a deal.
00:29:08.000And they should have said, you're right, President Trump, we're hiring Alex Partners, a restructuring firm, and we're going to do a zero-based budget of what the administrative expense of Harvard should look like.
00:29:17.000We're going to restructure our organization.
00:29:20.000You're right, we've done a horrible job.
00:29:23.000Protecting students from hate and allowing pro-terrorist protesters to interfere with education and we're going to stop it now and we're going to enforce our code of conduct which Harvard has not done.
00:29:36.000So Josh, can we talk about the brilliance of the politics here?
00:29:41.000Most of America is not college educated.
00:29:44.000Most of America has not gone to any college.
00:29:47.000Even those that are college educated, they don't necessarily look at delight, at the smugness, the pomposity, and the elitism of Harvard.
00:29:55.000In many ways, this is a populist fight, one that the workers of this country say, you know what, why do they have $55 billion?
00:30:34.000Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, many others have spoken for years about trying to tax these endowments and try to redistribute them to trade schools, electrician schools, plumbing schools there.
00:30:47.000It is a beautiful Venn diagram overlap sweet spot here where it really kind of checks all the boxes.
00:30:52.000But I remember it was back during the campaign, back when Barack Obama was still on the campaign trail as a Kamala Harris surrogate.
00:30:58.000And this is when kind of the anti-Harvard rhetoric started picking up from the Trump-Van side of the ledger.
00:31:03.000And Barack Obama, who was a Harvard Law graduate, started defending Harvard University.
00:31:07.000I mean, could you imagine better politics for the Republican Party and the MAGA coalition than forcing Barack freaking Obama to defend Harvard University?
00:31:23.000Is there any fear that we are going to be neutering our best research institutions?
00:31:31.000That is what some dissenting voices that I trust are cautioning.
00:31:35.000Charlie, this country is 30-plus trillion dollars in debt, okay?
00:31:39.000And at some point, you have to start trying to make sure that this money is serving the common good.
00:31:44.000That is the only reason that higher ed ever gets favorable tax treatment, all this fiscal taxpayer largesse in the first place, is that we once upon a time thought that they produced sound citizens inculcated in the good virtues to conduce to the common good.
00:31:56.000If Harvard wants to stop discriminating against Americans, against white people, Asians, Mormons, Jews, all of the above, if they want to stop doing that, You know, then we can have that conversation.
00:32:05.000But unless and until that happens there, I see Donald Trump should raise them to the ground and salt the ashes.
00:32:38.000And I seek to try to find reconciliation.
00:32:41.000I think we actually have more in common on this issue than people realize.
00:32:44.000I mean, there's there's the fringes, but I think there's actually when it's properly presented more agreement than I think is always understood.