Rich Barris, founder of the People's Pundit, joins me to debate whether or not there is a split within the Republican Party on the issue of MAGA vs. America First and why it's time to stop sending our kids to college.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, welcome back, hour two of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:11.000We have Rich Barris, the people's pundit, founder of Big Data Poll, joining us now.
00:01:19.000I tweeted something yesterday from Harry Enton from CNN, and I saw you get into the comments, and I was like, I got to get my boy Rich on.
00:01:30.000When I tweeted it, I was like, I thought about you in the back of my head.
00:01:34.000I was like, I know Rich is going to totally disagree, but I kind of disagree with you a little bit.
00:01:37.000That could make for a fun conversation.
00:01:39.000So Harry Enton is saying that there is no rift in MAGA, that President Trump was at 84% of approval rate within the GOP or his base, previous Trump voters.
00:02:47.000And Trump has won the argument even with them.
00:02:50.000And then you have a smaller group of Republicans that they're not MA.
00:02:54.000And by the way, I mean, we have some public figures that pretend like they are, but in truth, in the populace, they've been voting Democrat for a while.
00:03:02.000They may vote for a moderate Republican or traditional rhino or something, but they don't vote for MAGA.
00:03:08.000But they're overwhelmed and they're more than offset by a group of independents and even a small sliver of orphan Democrats that only vote for MAGA.
00:03:18.000And they'll only come out for America.
00:03:20.000And I don't even know if MAGA is the right way to say it anymore, Andrew, because we've had this like debate over MAGA versus America first.
00:03:26.000So the messaging is getting muddled there.
00:03:28.000But for all the time that we have been tracking it, it's, you know, in theory, you know, this is Donald Trump's vision of America first.
00:03:56.000Now, I remember Harry Enton in the run-up to the 2024 election showing poll after poll of Trump winning, of Trump being ahead in the polls, of Trump winning on this issue, that issue.
00:04:26.000He goes back and forth on a 24-hour basis.
00:04:28.000The video that you, the video that you reposted, not 24 hours before, he had just posted another video about how awful the strike polled in the public.
00:04:38.000And then he went back immediately after and did another video within a day, which is the one that you posted.
00:05:38.000So would you, would you say, Rich, though, that Trump's, I guess his political backing from his supporters is pretty like resilient.
00:05:49.000It's pretty stable, but it's been challenged in this first year and even with the Venezuela strike in new ways, I think, you know, because again, foreign policy seems to be the hot button topic, right?
00:06:04.000It's like, we don't want to focus on it.
00:06:07.000And then when we do, everybody's scared of the neocon intervention, you know, foreign abstractions rabbit holes that we've trails, what we've, we've followed in years past.
00:06:35.000Even 57% approved of the military action against Syria that Donald Trump took in his first administration in response to what we now probably, you know, almost assuredly know were false flag attacks, right?
00:06:46.000So historically, compared to other, including Iran last year, by the way, which was very even, you know, very evenly divided among the Americans.
00:06:56.000So where is this at according to your numbers, Rich?
00:08:17.000And this is what, and just so people understand.
00:08:19.000My own personal views are very different from what I think the, you know, how I think the public sees this or what they're telling us right now.
00:08:27.000My own personal views, if you can get a, if you can get a guy like that out of there, Andrew, with a limited strike like this, you know, in a limited operation, Intel-led operation, get him out of there and then bring the regime to heel, take the gold and the oil, go ahead, because we're $40 trillion in debt and you need to back the petrodollar.
00:08:59.000Look, they stole our oil a few years ago.
00:09:02.000You know, Joe, Joe, you know, the Democrats were too, you know, George Bush actually was the wiener here, but they were too weak to do anything about it.
00:11:56.000And I just feel, among other things, I feel like there'd probably be whistleblowers from these organizations with a lot of independent editorial decisions, too.
00:12:26.000So these guys, the Enton average, for instance, or the Enton aggregate that he pushed the entire cycle, excluded most of the polls that got the election correct, including ours.
00:12:36.000So, you know, when he, you got to watch that little writing, when he puts up on the screen underneath the Enton aggregate or whatever poll he's talking about, you better look damn close at what he's citing and where he's getting it from because all of the people who not fairly but accurately have predicted the outcome of elections in the Trump era are excluded from most of Enton's stuff.
00:12:57.000You will never see him cite, you know, one of the guys who are part of our association.
00:13:10.000The evidence of what they have been looking, even if you are pretending that this was just a, you know, a difference of opinion on who should be cited and who should not be, or what kind of data collection modes make the poll more accurate, make that pollster more accurate, and it's a methodological, you know, discussion or debate.
00:13:30.000Even if we were going to pretend for a second that that was true, which it's not anymore, I pretended for the first five years of my career.
00:14:08.000I believe it absolutely that they think Harry Enton's not as bad as you think he is, but I do think he probably, you know, he plays both sides.
00:14:17.000That much I can see until it's very true.
00:14:19.000All right, Rich, the, you know, I, Blake and I have taken a pretty, I would say, middle of the road approach on the Venezuela thing.
00:14:29.000There is something, and I, and I, I've, I watched Mike Cernovich, who's a friend of the show, uh, kind of give his take why he supported it.
00:15:35.000You know, obviously, the proof is in the pudding how this plays out.
00:15:39.000But is there a chance, based on where you see the base at, where you see Trump voters at, that we can turn this into a win politically from a polling standpoint?
00:15:50.000I think there's a way to really give the American people a vision because right now, Republicans, one of the main reasons they're losing, and we can get into some of the gripes that certain factions within the coalition have.
00:16:02.000But one of the, I would say the main reason that they have, they lost in 25 and we go into 26 with them being the underdog here is that they don't have a vision.
00:16:13.000They haven't given the American public an idea of what's the agenda for this year.
00:16:20.000And I think this is actually a really good opportunity.
00:16:22.000And I think the interview with Cernovich on Tucker was just great because I think Mike, whether you agree with him right now or not, guys, I think what Mike started to do was lay out what kind of a vision you could give to the American public and give, which could, look, Americans are dying for something to believe in again, guys.
00:16:42.000And I'm not saying that we should start toppling governments one by one in the Western hemisphere, but Reagan understood something about the unique identity of Americans and what it meant to be an American.
00:16:58.000And for so many years, one of the reasons for Trump's success is that, forget about the Malays, they've been in the gutter thinking, you know, hopelessness with hopelessness and despair, right?
00:17:09.000And some people look at, you know, especially younger people, they look at the situation you just brought up during the break.
00:17:26.000I tell you, that is the single most demoralizing aspect of modern American life is that you look across the street and you don't recognize your neighbors.
00:17:33.000You go to the DMV, you don't recognize your neighbors.
00:17:35.000You go on an airplane, you don't recognize your neighbors.
00:17:38.000And there is something insidious about this.
00:17:40.000Blake, I would love to build this out from a data standpoint at some point.
00:17:44.000There is something about when your country gets invaded by foreigners where American families stop or whatever the country is, stop having babies and stop believing in.
00:18:15.000I think there is a, you know, we talk about illegal and you still get these boomer cons that say, you know, oh, I support legal immigration and I'm just anti-legal.
00:18:55.000Because if you look at the American opportunity as a chance to enrich yourself and your family and the future generations that come after you, then you will be a contributing member of this society.
00:19:06.000If you look at America as an extraction machine operation like the Somalis do pre-modern, then you're going to treat us as oppressors and you're going to try and take back the wealth that you think was wrongly stolen by the white man.
00:19:19.000Yeah, if you look at just the chart or the graphic that Donald Trump put out on Truth the other day about these populations and how much they take, right?
00:19:57.000While domestic U.S.-born citizens don't, because if, well, of course, we all have criminal populations, criminal elements, but that largely, that's not what we're talking about here, right?
00:20:08.000We're talking about people who are trying to be good citizens and then just constantly beaten down by the system that they're fleecing.
00:22:25.000Lots of questions about what's going on with Greenland.
00:22:29.000There's been rumors that the U.S. is open to military force to take Greenland.
00:22:34.000I don't know how else you want to put that.
00:22:37.000But we, Blake, why don't you set up the next clip for us here?
00:22:42.000We'll have this ready to go so we can ask him about it once he sits down.
00:22:45.000But there's this big, obviously there's been a lot of stuff about Greenland after the Venezuela thing because there's chatter, which the administration has encouraged that, okay, we're flexing our muscle in this hemisphere.
00:22:56.000Could that mean we'll make a bid for Greenland?
00:22:58.000And there's debate whether it would be just seizing it or now there's also backroom.
00:23:05.000Anyway, this got a lot of attention because Denmark's prime minister reacted to this and basically said, if the U.S. goes after Greenland, and effectively this is going to be the end of the NATO alliance.
00:24:24.000I think this is part of what Stephen Miller said when he was on CNN.
00:24:28.000He said, Denmark can't stop us from taking it, which is true.
00:24:32.000But some people have actually just embraced people have embraced this attitude of that's all that matters is whether they can stop us or not.
00:24:42.000And I guess I would caution people from going really far down that rabbit hole.
00:24:46.000First of all, it's not ever been America's way, even when we were the global unquestioned superpower, not in decline anyway.
00:24:53.000It's not been our way to just bully weaker nations to beat them up.
00:24:58.000That's not really a great long-term play for America.
00:25:02.000Like what's greatly been to America's benefit historically is a lot of nations far weaker than us have been willing to work with us, have been willing to just accede to our leadership.
00:25:13.000And that led us in a dumb way where we just started to put other countries' interests first over ours, where we just did dumb things, where we're funneling endless foreign aid to crappy countries that don't like us and are taking advantage of us.
00:25:26.000But I don't think you swing back the other way and you just, for example, dissolve NATO because you feel like making your image on a map bigger.
00:25:34.000No, I mean, listen, I think you have to ask the question, how would we acquire Greenland?
00:25:49.000I think one thing that's been an issue is we've been, it's almost been too attractive to just, again, chest thump and say, like, oh, we could easily do it, which we could.
00:25:57.000But I think the way you make it a long-term play is you point out it is a win-win.
00:26:00.000You can say Denmark, you just talk about how Denmark is a great ally.
00:27:30.000Secretary Hegseth should be sitting down in just a second.
00:27:34.000Blake, what are some of the questions that people want to ask Secretary Hegseth?
00:27:38.000Someone really wanted to know what are your thoughts on the Russians sending a submarine to assist the Russian-flagged oil tanker.
00:27:46.000It wasn't much because the, I think, you know, what I believe that the Russian submarine, by the way, I've looked into this, was basically doing surveillance ahead of where the territory is all.
00:27:54.000Because they actually, this tanker evaded a blockade, probably with the help of additional resources provided by the Russians.
00:28:34.000Probably faster than we could build the missiles that would blow them up.
00:28:36.000And they can build missiles faster than us.
00:28:38.000So we're going to be asking about these seized vessels.
00:28:41.000We're going to be asking about, you know, what is the military obligation in Venezuela to, if we're going to be running Venezuela, is there a military obligation and what is the extent of that obligation?
00:28:55.000We're going to be asking about, you know, do we have proof that Iran, China, Russia are still on the ground in Venezuela?
00:29:08.000You know, we're going to be talking about Greenland.
00:29:10.000And if we can get to it, we're going to find out how many push-ups and pull-ups Secretary Hegseth can do, which is what everybody wants to know, obviously, Blake.
00:29:18.000And I just want to remind everybody one thing here.
00:29:21.000Secretary, so we did a flash poll, well, a straw poll at Amfest.
00:29:27.000So for our 31,000 attendees of Amfest, we asked them who was the most popular secretary.
00:29:35.000Secretary Hegseth was the most popular cabinet secretary in Trump's administration, according to our attendees at AmericaFest, which should tell you something.
00:29:46.00083% strong approval and only 0.6% strong disapproval.
00:29:54.000That's a pretty favorable crowd, however, you want to slice it.
00:29:58.000So again, it looks like we're getting some activity here.
00:30:01.000We will have Secretary Hegseth on in just a second from an undisclosed location.
00:30:07.000What other questions do you want us to ask the Secretary?
00:30:56.000Well, we were going to do this after, but we might be going right up against the end of the show here.
00:31:00.000President Trump has announced he's going to be pursuing new measures, not clear yet, but to make it easier for a single-family home.
00:31:08.000He says, for a long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American dream.
00:31:12.000It was a reward for working hard and doing the right thing.
00:31:14.000But because of the record high inflation of Joe Biden and the Democrats, the American dream is increasingly out of reach for many people, especially younger Americans.
00:31:23.000For that reason, I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it.
00:31:36.000People live in homes, not corporations.
00:31:39.000I will discuss this topic and more at my speech in Davos in two weeks.
00:31:45.000That is tremendous, and it's exactly what Charlie was saying.
00:31:47.000I was going to say, this is a Charlie Kirk special.
00:31:49.000So, we talk about the Gen Z economic moonshot, and it is very clear that President Trump is hearing the pushback.
00:31:57.000But this is the economic moonshot that Charlie wanted.
00:32:00.000This is what he said: we are in a race against the clock.
00:32:03.000We have to prove that our ideas work, and we have to clear away from a policy standpoint to make sure that Gen Z and let's be honest, generations after, are not getting blocked out by institutional investors, foreign buyers, and the like.
00:32:19.000Think about it: every single dollar you spend is either supporting your values or working against them.
00:32:25.000In today's economy, where you spend your money, it really matters, and that's how we take back our country.
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00:33:41.000Secretary Pete Hegseth, Department of War, welcome, welcome to the show.
00:34:53.000And as Marco has laid out, we're working with the Venezuelan government to ensure that there's a new way by which they can process that oil, partnering with the United States.
00:35:05.000And we're going to continue to enforce it.
00:35:09.000So far, Secretary, we haven't had any U.S. boots on the ground in Venezuela, but President Trump has said we're going to run the country in some capacity.
00:35:18.000Is there any possibility that that will take place?
00:35:21.000And if so, how many, what could that situation look like?
00:35:25.000Well, I think in these cases, what the president is so good about is we're not closing doors here.
00:35:32.000We're not revealing to anybody what we will or will not do.
00:35:35.000Strategic ambiguity is a really important thing.
00:35:38.000Leveraged properly, it creates opportunities that did not exist before.
00:35:42.000Just like that raid on Maduro that no one in the world anticipated, the most sophisticated raid maybe that's ever happened in military history, changed the entire dynamic.
00:35:50.000We didn't talk about whether something like that was possible.
00:35:53.000So, what happens next depends a lot on the decisions that are made inside Caracas and by leadership.
00:36:01.000The strikes on narco-terrorists and boats, full effect.
00:36:04.000The pressure continues to ensure that they work with the United States to ensure that that oil, and Marco made it clear, the president put out a statement yesterday: 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to be brought to the United States to be processed, to be used properly by the Venezuelans to ensure that that transition happens the way that it should.
00:36:24.000You could see scenarios where, hey, maybe we reopen the embassy and you've got Marines there to guard the embassy.
00:36:30.000You could look at scenarios where there's cooperation, but I wouldn't foreclose anything.
00:36:35.000And I think it's important not to foreclose anything to make sure that the outcome is one that benefits the interests of the United States in our own hemisphere.
00:36:44.000This is, you know, Russia, Iran, Cuba, others had their tentacles all over Venezuela to exploit it and also to leverage their opportunity to be closer to us and pull those energy assets out.
00:36:57.000We're flipping the script, putting America first, controlling our hemisphere.
00:37:01.000And that action taken on Nicholas Maduro was the star of it, but it's certainly not the end.
00:37:06.000Secretary, you watched the raid happen live as it was happening.
00:37:11.000And you mentioned that this was the most sophisticated raid of its kind, probably in who knows, living memory.
00:37:20.000The apprehension of Maduro and his wife.
00:37:22.000Like, what's the memory that stands out from that moment?
00:37:26.000The memory that stands out the most for me was watching the drone feed at the end when you could see the, I won't reveal the exact number, but the helicopters leaving Venezuelan territory over the water, and they looked like little ants, little dots, on their way out of the country.
00:37:43.000They have Maduro and his wife, indicted individuals, and all the Americans are out safely.
00:37:58.000In fact, the commanders have said they've never been more supported.
00:38:01.000They've never felt like they've had better intelligence.
00:38:03.000They've never had clearer and better authorities.
00:38:06.000They've never been given everything that they need.
00:38:07.000That's one of the things we're very proud of here at the War Department.
00:38:10.000We're going to support our fighters, back them up 100%, give them whatever they need, give them the authorities and rules of engagement to be successful.
00:38:36.000But it wasn't until we saw those birds floating out that any of us could really exhale.
00:38:43.000The courage it took for the president to authorize it, the sheer courage and competency of our men and women in the military, those assaulters, that extraction force, incredible, the best in the world.
00:38:54.000They went downtown without being heard, without being seen, with no notice, extracted that indicted individual and brought him back to the United States.
00:39:02.000Only the United States of America could do this mission, second to none, no doubt.
00:39:06.000And you even saw that on CNN, Mr. Secretary, where you had analysts saying that even China and Russia were looking at this going like, wow, this is incredible.
00:39:15.000So to your point, they've never felt that your men and women in the military have never felt more support, more backup.
00:39:21.000I mean, I know this is hard to quantify, but you came in with a mandate to make the military more lethal.
00:39:27.000The lethality, you said it again and again, fitness, excellence, meritocracy.
00:39:34.000How much more excellent, how much more lethal are we now than when you took over?
00:39:38.000And I also am curious about where recruitment stands right now for the U.S. military.
00:39:42.000Well, we've always had great Americans, right?
00:39:45.000Our job has been to unleash them, to allow them to do their job without tinkering in the way they operate, without more burdensome rules of engagement, without more political caveats, while actually giving them the authorities we need.
00:39:58.000And a lot of that emanated out of the speech I gave at Quantico to generals and senior enlisted saying, I'm putting commanders back in charge.
00:40:05.000It's not my job to tell that extraction force exactly how to do it.
00:40:09.000It's my job to get them what they need, ensure their standards are clear, they're able to execute at the highest possible level, and unleash them to do what they do best.
00:40:19.000I mean, that's the reflections I've gotten back from not just special operators, but conventional units just saying it's a new environment.
00:40:25.000It's a new vibe, a new aura inside the military where we feel empowered to be the warriors that we're supposed to be.
00:40:32.000We've always been that way, but other things have held us back.
00:40:35.000There have been political correctness or prerogatives or DEI or new priorities were emphasized and we didn't feel like we were fully supported, not anymore.
00:40:44.000And you mentioned the recruiting numbers.
00:40:46.000That's why last year was the most historic recruiting numbers we've seen in decades.
00:40:50.000This year is even beyond that so far, guys.
00:40:52.000The recruiting numbers are surpassing so far in FY26 what they were last year because the spirit continues.
00:41:05.000We're training better than ever before in what we do.
00:41:08.000And we've got historic financing to make sure we've got the weapons to do it.
00:41:12.000But also we're focusing on barracks and quality of life for the men and women who serve, raising pay.
00:41:17.000That's the way it should be, putting the troops first, and that's been our focus.
00:41:21.000Speaking of the troops under you, yesterday you announced you're going to seek a reduction in Mark Kelly, Senator Mark Kelly's rank as a result of his statements about possibly defiant orders.
00:41:33.000One of our viewers, Elizabeth, has asked us, she's wondering, she says, why not bring charges against him?
00:41:39.000She wonders how you reached that decision.
00:41:41.000Well, we went through the regular process and we have evaluated those statements, not just that one video, which was incredibly reckless.
00:41:50.000By the way, he was the senior member of that video.
00:41:53.000He's the only one we have jurisdiction over because he's retired, he's receiving a pension, money from the government, which means he's still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
00:42:02.000And watching the, I don't know, hissy fit that he's been throwing ever since shows us just how over the target we are.
00:42:13.000He understands he's still subject to UCMJ.
00:42:15.000He understood the doubt and uncertainty he was putting into the process by vaguely alluding to illegal orders but never pointing to what that would mean underneath the Trump.
00:44:04.000I wouldn't be in this position right here without Charlie Kirk, probably without the Charlie Kirk show, without his platform, without his courage.
00:44:10.000Throughout the confirmation battle, he was always right there saying, hold the line, don't give in.
00:44:27.000Listen, he was the thermometer and the thermostat of our movement, and you understand what that means.
00:44:33.000He understood what was going on around the country, and he understood how to ensure we were calibrated correctly to make sure make America great again or America first was moving in the right direction.
00:44:43.000But he did it because he had a, listen, he was a true believer on every front in politically and what he believed in in his own Christian faith and how he lived that out.
00:44:52.000And he wasn't about praise for Charlie Kirk.
00:44:54.000He was about the country and Christ and the cause and doing everything he could to advance it.
00:44:59.000He never cared whether it was his name in the headlines.
00:45:05.000He backed the other members of the cabinet up and created the opportunity for us to do exactly what we should do, which is what we said we would do, which President Trump appointed us to do, which is, you know, peace through strength, America first, bring the warrior ethos back to the military.
00:45:19.000All the things Charlie cared about, you guys care about, we're doing.