On this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, I sit down with my good friend and presidential candidate, Charlie Kirk, to discuss his campaign for the White House. We discuss his pro-life and anti-death penalty positions, as well as his views on abortion and the death penalty.
00:00:31.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:38.000We 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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00:01:18.000I wanted to talk to you a little bit about some contradictions that I heard in your arguments.
00:01:23.000So on the topic of foster care, you mentioned earlier that you were in favor of cutting social welfare programs and that would include foster care because those people are dependent on it.
00:01:35.000So I don't understand how you could be pro-life, I don't like the terminology of that, but you're pro-life, but then after the kids are born, you're advocating for less social protections for them.
00:01:47.000So I don't remember, did I say I wanted to cut social welfare programs?
00:01:52.000When you said that people have an over-dependence on social welfare.
00:01:55.000Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah, on social welfare, yeah, of course, yeah.
00:01:58.000But foster care is a unique thing because these are kids that are not yet of the agenic age to be able to produce or get work.
00:02:04.000So obviously there's a role for foster care system, but it's incredibly broken.
00:02:08.000Let's be honest, the foster care system is one of the most broken, cruel, and unusual portions of our government.
00:02:12.000So not necessarily a good one to be defending, but it should be completely blown up and reconstituted in a new form.
00:02:19.000And I also think that foster care gets left behind in the whole argument because you're advocating for traditional family values, and that doesn't really include adopting a kid.
00:02:29.000It includes having your own nuclear family.
00:03:19.000The second contradiction was about how you advocate for a limited government but think that the government should have the jurisdiction to kill someone.
00:03:28.000Okay, well, I believe in a small but strong government and for the record, I believe that someone who took a life should have their life taken.
00:03:43.000What do you think would be a just punishment for a murder of an eight-year-old?
00:03:49.000I would say lock them up and make them Pay for their mistakes in real time, but I understand that costs taxpayer money and everything, but I just am against the death penalty.
00:04:01.000Okay, so is there any circumstance where you think the death penalty is okay?
00:04:05.000Yes, I think that school shooters and mass murderers and crimes against humanity, like you said, but not eye for an eye nonsense.
00:04:55.000Because I think that there's definitely degrees of evilness and I just don't believe in an eye for an eye, like a direct proportion, killing because they killed someone.
00:05:03.000I know that sounds good, but isn't that what justice should be?
00:05:08.000Justice is the administration of what is due.
00:05:10.000You should get what you have done received in return.
00:05:39.000Okay, so Everything the government does is a statement of some morality, right?
00:05:44.000If you lock up somebody in prison, that is taking away their freedom or liberty.
00:05:49.000So you have to make at some point, you have to say, I am appealing to some objective standard as to why I think the government should do what it does.
00:05:57.000And we have an answer to that question, right?
00:06:00.000I just want to know by what standard you think the government should be able to do that it does or does not do.
00:06:05.000Because the government does take life.
00:06:07.000And the government should be able to take life very sparingly and rarely through a jury of your peers and you're proven, you know, proven guilty and all sorts of these different elements.
00:06:17.000And you believe that even with mass shooters.
00:06:19.000So there is a degree to of which you think that justice is due.
00:06:22.000So the question is that this is a very important point that you stumbled into.
00:06:25.000We as conservatives try to strive for blind justice.
00:06:30.000Those on the left will argue for social justice.
00:06:35.000Yes. Social justice is saying no, you should not be given what you are due, you should be given more or extra based on some sort of group criteria, some sort of background, some sort of suffering.
00:06:47.000We as conservatives believe in the ideal that you shall not favor the administrative justice just because of your skin color, background, wealth, so on and so forth.
00:08:25.000I just wanted to get your opinion on the funding of AIPAC and the alleged buying out of the U.S. Congress, especially with everything going on overseas and the highly criticized and debated, like, two-party state between Israel and the Palestinian people.
00:08:43.000How would you curb or resolve the issue?
00:08:45.000Not just AIPAC, we have our own domestic issues, but they're coming in and earning 28 billion dollars for their donation of 43 and a half to the US Congress.
00:08:55.000So our foreign, like our proxies and our donations to Ukraine and the state of Israel.
00:10:37.000But I don't believe in the genocide and displacement of 1.7 million Palestinian people, because if you advocate for life, you advocate for all life around the world.
00:10:44.000Okay, so let's make sure we get our terms right.
00:10:47.000I don't want to spend too much time on this, but what is a genocide?
00:11:32.000GoPro footage of hours uninterrupted of Hamas terrorists wearing GoPros slitting little babies' throats, going into rock concerts, and in distress.
00:12:09.000So as Israel has been violating those for nearly the course of a hundred years, how would you feel if you invite someone into your home and you let them stay as a guest when they were oppressed?
00:14:41.000I see them literally get torn and ripped to shreds by Israeli missiles and them killing kids and animals in the street and fun and laughing and they post their own war crimes.
00:14:49.000None of those missiles were being launched prior to October 7th.
00:14:54.000A soldier, me versus you, if you're walking in the street with your family and I shoot you and post it on TikTok and laugh.
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00:18:07.000The emotions of this topic are very high.
00:18:10.000Obviously, my allegiance is first and foremost to America.
00:18:12.000I'm interested in it just from a moral standpoint, though, which is, why is it, help me understand, there are well over 40 Muslim-majority countries in the world, over a billion Muslims.
00:18:23.000Israel is the size of New Jersey, and it has half the world's Jewry, about 7 million people.
00:18:29.000Why can't you just let Israel exist and leave it alone?
00:19:25.000If it was really like, hey, they wanted to resist, they should have went after IDF outposts and picked a fight with somebody their own size.
00:20:49.000Yeah, there is a record of the death, and so we know how many Jews that there were in the country and in Europe, and they have not yet been able to repopulate to those same equivalent numbers coming back.
00:20:59.000So, look, I think we don't agree on anything, and that's okay.
00:21:03.000I would love to see an end to the killing.
00:21:50.000And that since we posit that Israel has a right to exist, that we need to come up with some solution where all people can live peacefully in the region.
00:22:09.000I don't want to speak on behalf of Israel, but if a group of people go and murder 1,200 of your own people for no reason, I don't think I'm going to give them the keys to Jerusalem.
00:22:39.000I'm a senior at the ASL interpreting program here at USF, and I bring this up because you had made the claim back in January during the Los Angeles Fires.
00:22:49.000Yeah, during the Los Angeles fires that ASL interpreters on screen were distracting and unnecessary.
00:22:55.000I'd like to start off with what your perspective of ASL is because a lot of people have ranges and some people may be inaccurate on what that belief is.
00:23:01.000I just mean the sign language interpreters during the Disaster proclamations that didn't exist when I was a kid and for whatever reason I have to look at them and it distracts me when I'm trying to hear what the person has to say.
00:23:11.000Okay, so a lot of people who are unaware of what American Sign Language is thinks it's that it's word-for-word exact English.
00:23:27.000there was an estimate about 10 people who had died in the Los Angeles fire.
00:23:31.000And the claims and the rhetoric that you had used, that ASL interpreters were useless and unimportant, could have led those people to remain living in the environment that they were in.
00:23:40.000They had ASL interpreters, so it didn't save their life.
00:24:08.000Closed captions is exact word-for-word order.
00:24:11.000ASL and English are not the exact same language.
00:24:13.000People who have no exposure to what English is and grew up in a generationally deaf family only know American Sign Language.
00:24:20.000The same way that somebody who was from Mexico and they only spoke Spanish, or any country for that instance, would only know the language they spoke at home.
00:25:33.000ASL is a complete range of a language, but completely blocking out ASL interpreters and saying that our work is completely useless is very, like, unempowering to the field that we're going into.
00:25:43.000And we're very lucky here at USF to have the only face-to-face program that offers ASL interpreting.
00:25:49.000The only other college here in Florida is University of North Florida, which is all online.
00:25:55.000Okay, so let me just make sure I understand.
00:25:58.000Should, and I don't know the answer to this, but do you think that In how we do broadcasts or whatever, we should have, like, pandering subsets to every single portion of minority populations.
00:26:08.000Like, for example, like, should we just say, we're not going to do the broadcasts with audio anymore because of hearing-sensitive people that don't like...
00:26:15.000I mean, we can get to some extremes here.
00:26:18.000So are you more against having access to people who are unaware of English?
00:26:22.000I'm against changing what has worked to try and accommodate Very small portion of the population that have outsized ability to complain for no reason whatsoever.
00:26:32.000And that has wide-ranging civilizational implications.
00:26:50.000It's a broader question of Where are we ever going to draw the line as a country that maybe this pandering has gone too far?
00:26:56.000And so I'm more concerned because ASL, the first word is American.
00:27:00.000What is so awful about that that's providing access that you're so against?
00:27:03.000Having it on the screen is hardly a distraction.
00:27:05.000Again, you can kind of tell I'm being, I'm pushing the boundaries intentionally, because I think that if somebody doesn't say this is silly and stupid, nobody will.
00:27:12.000I mean, at some point you get to the place where you have to say, no, what is the purpose of this?
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00:28:44.000I feel like my question is kind of silly after a couple others who have been up here.
00:28:49.000But I just wanted to know because You know, I wrote a lot in college about how campuses are not designed for the nuclear family, and it kind of caused some waves at my university because I was on the newspaper there.
00:29:04.000And so now, later, post-college, you know, I've thought about doing podcasting and talking with people, but I found it very difficult sometimes to remain calm in a debate.
00:29:16.000So, how do you remain so calm when someone who is dissenting, or even the crowd, gets obviously heated?
00:29:29.000I will say, look, I naturally do not have a lot of self-control, but I believe it's a fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and of course, the last one, self-control.
00:29:43.000I believe that those of us that are Christians should invite the Holy Spirit into our life on a daily basis, and that is a fruit of the Spirit.
00:31:48.000The first issue is this, is that Hamas was democratically elected.
00:31:54.000There is support for Hamas within the people of Gaza.
00:31:57.000Now, I don't trust these polls where they say, and this is even from some of the pro-Israel voices, they say, oh, you know, Hamas is supported by a lot of people.
00:32:05.000I look at a singular piece of evidence, which is when the Hamas terrorists did what they did in October 7th, they were greeted with widespread parade and celebrations in the streets of Gaza.
00:32:18.000So, the biggest problem is, is Islam in its current form?
00:32:23.000Can Islam in its current form foster a free society?
00:32:26.000And that's a question, because in the implementation of Mohammedan Islamic Jihadism, will they respect the elements of a free society?
00:32:36.000And we don't have a lot of evidence to suggest yes.
00:32:40.000Okay, sure, but the reason why I think it's important to reinstate that, you know, the Palestinians should live in that land, and it's theirs, right?
00:32:47.000And they shouldn't be relocated to Jordan or any other Arab country.
00:32:51.000It's because, ethnically, that's where their family came from, right?
00:32:54.000That's where their lineage comes from.
00:32:56.000And so it would seem disingenuous to say that, well, if Trump came in and basically re-bombed the area and got rid of all of them, moved them all out, developed the land, and just put Jews back into place, that doesn't seem proper and right.
00:33:11.000I mean, I'm fine with Israel controlling the whole area, but why can't Palestinians themselves live in those areas?
00:33:17.000I mean, it doesn't seem like – They do and they probably end up will.
00:33:21.000This idea of them moving in and out is logistically so impossible I can't even wrap my head around it.
00:33:25.000What I will say, though, is that this is the more complicated – and I don't want to get into this – is like whose land is it?
00:33:35.000Those are much more complicated questions.
00:33:37.000For basically as long as there has been a Judean Samaria, it has been the nations of Israel for about 3,000 years, there have been Jews in those regions.
00:33:45.000What is a Palestinian is a much more complicated question because that is actually a new term.
00:34:11.000However, their claim is on an ethnic one, so they're inviting the criticism, if that makes sense.
00:34:16.000Sure. I mean, and I would only push back and say that the, you know, most of the Jews who are living there now, most of them came from Eastern Europe, from Tammuz, Herzl, and Jabhat al-Din.
00:34:24.000Of course, but they don't live in Gaza.
00:34:26.000Sure, sure, but they live in a part of Israel that wasn't originally theirs.
00:34:30.000And they bought some of the land from, you know, the Turkish and so on, but they didn't buy all that land.
00:34:35.000They definitely invaded and conquered it.
00:34:37.000Yeah, and again, I don't want to go too deep in this, but the parts that were questionably Israel's have been largely given back.
00:34:44.000The Sinai, in particular, was given back to Egypt.
00:34:47.000There were lots of land for peace deals, and that almost never works.
00:34:52.000Here's what bothers me, is I've dealt With a lot.
00:34:55.000And I've got to know, as you can tell, the previous young man that was up here, with a lot of people from this region that are wicked smart.
00:35:01.000I think they deserve better than living under a radical Islamic totalitarian government.
00:35:07.000And I want to try to see them get closer to a free society.
00:35:10.000And I don't think under current Islam that's possible.