The Charlie Kirk Show - The High School Debate Disaster with James Fishback

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 This is Andrew Colvett, EP of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:04.000 I am joined by James Fishback with a really profound, deep conversation about high school speech and debate.

00:00:11.000 Now, wait, you may think this is a boring topic.

00:00:14.000 This has implications more far-reaching than you could ever possibly imagine.

00:00:18.000 Do you know that one-third of Congress participated in speech and debate?

00:00:23.000 Do you know that it's one of the most important things you get on your resume leading into college, which then leads you into your professional life?

00:00:31.000 This is a massive, massive story that went really viral.

00:00:34.000 You are going to be shocked at what some of these debate judges are doing to 12, 13, 14-year-old boys and girls that are just trying to argue a point.

00:00:44.000 This literally went from coast to coast, and hopefully, it's going to help solve a really, really tremendous problem that is affecting our young people.

00:00:53.000 We dive into it with James Fishback from incubated.org.

00:00:57.000 You're going to want to support this guy and what he's doing.

00:00:59.000 Really impressive.

00:01:00.000 Buckle up.

00:01:01.000 Here we go.

00:01:02.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:03.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:05.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:09.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:12.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:13.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:14.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:01:16.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:01:21.000 Turning point USA. 0.65

00:01:23.000 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.

00:01:31.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:34.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.

00:01:44.000 Welcome, everybody, back to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:46.000 This is Andrew Colvett, executive producer of the Charlie Kirk Show, filling in for the one and only Charlie Kirk, who is indisposed today.

00:01:54.000 A little bit of a last-minute shuffle.

00:01:56.000 But we had a great show already prepped and ready to go for the man.

00:02:00.000 So listen, it's just plug and play.

00:02:02.000 All right.

00:02:02.000 Charlie will be back tomorrow with some, I promise you, very fascinating stories about what he is doing this evening.

00:02:10.000 So without further ado, however, I am thrilled to welcome my next guest, James Fishback.

00:02:18.000 I was alerted to these stories that he's been working on just a couple of days ago, and they are fascinating.

00:02:26.000 James, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:29.000 I'm excited to kind of dive into this.

00:02:31.000 We have the whole hour together, and we really need that much time.

00:02:33.000 So welcome.

00:02:34.000 Thank you for coming.

00:02:35.000 Well, thank you for having me, Andrew.

00:02:37.000 Yeah.

00:02:38.000 So, James, you are the founder of Incubate Debate.

00:02:43.000 And that's, and by the way, I think we're going to get the URL on the lower for you here shortly.

00:02:49.000 Incubate.org.

00:02:52.000 Definitely a worthwhile cause to donate to.

00:02:55.000 But this is just a wild story.

00:02:57.000 And you've published now two parts of it.

00:03:01.000 And, you know, we'll get those graphics up on screen.

00:03:04.000 Part one, you know, actually, let's take one step back.

00:03:09.000 Tell us your story of how you got involved in this high school debate genre area.

00:03:16.000 I mean, it's fairly niche, but when you actually peel back the layers, you realize just how important and how foundational to the future of America this project is that you're working on.

00:03:26.000 Tell us about it.

00:03:28.000 Absolutely.

00:03:29.000 I did high school debate from 2009 to 2013 when I was in high school.

00:03:33.000 I grew up down in Broward County, Florida.

00:03:35.000 High school debate changed my life.

00:03:37.000 I had a really bad stutter growing up as a kid.

00:03:40.000 I was shy.

00:03:40.000 I was a talker, but I was shy.

00:03:43.000 And I had this passion for economics, for foreign affairs, what was happening around the country and across the world.

00:03:51.000 I didn't have an outlet for it.

00:03:52.000 High school debate ended up being the perfect outlet to be able to make good arguments, to engage with arguments from the other side, and to not necessarily convince people of things, but to get them to think about different perspectives.

00:04:07.000 We need more of that in the country right now, I think.

00:04:10.000 And so then, you know, this activity gave me so much.

00:04:12.000 I came back from college and I did two years as a volunteer debate coach at an underserved high school in Miami, Florida.

00:04:19.000 And it was in those two years, Andrew, that I saw that high school debate had become a shell of its former self.

00:04:25.000 This was 2017 to 2019.

00:04:29.000 The tribalism that we saw in other parts of the country, whether that was in the media and corporate America and universities, along with the censorship, seemed like it was 10X in high school debate.

00:04:40.000 It was just at such an extreme level that students were actually losing rounds, were being interrupted by grown adults for saying things like illegal immigrant, simply the word illegal immigrant in a debate about immigration.

00:04:55.000 One judge I bring up in my first part of my reporting for the free press told students before the round: if you are pro-Israel, pro-police, or pro-capitalism, you will lose.

00:05:05.000 Simple as that.

00:05:07.000 She identified as a Marxist-Leninist Maoist.

00:05:10.000 Those are her words, Marxist-Leninist, Maoist, and told the students before the round on her online profile, I will not vote for you.

00:05:18.000 So kids have a choice there, Andrew.

00:05:19.000 These are young kids, 13, 14 years old.

00:05:22.000 Do I stick with my convictions or do I conform?

00:05:26.000 Most kids I knew conformed because scholarships, accolades, college acceptance letters were on the line, depending on how well they did at these tournaments.

00:05:35.000 And when you conform, you self-censor.

00:05:37.000 When you self-censor, you create an echo chamber that is largely devoid of conservative ideas.

00:05:44.000 I'm an unapologetic conservative, but for me, this is profoundly a free speech issue.

00:05:50.000 I got to tell you, I would be writing about this if there were conservatives before the debate telling kids: if you make a pro-choice argument or if you make an open borders or an anti-police argument, you lose automatically.

00:06:02.000 That's antithetical to debate.

00:06:04.000 It's un-American. 0.82

00:06:05.000 That's why I think Democrats like Roe Conna in Congress or former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, Larry Summers, have recognized this is a bigger than one party.

00:06:16.000 This is bigger than one series of political beliefs.

00:06:20.000 This is about free speech and open debate.

00:06:23.000 Ideas, by the way, that set this country into motion 250 years ago.

00:06:27.000 You cannot engage in viewpoint censorship.

00:06:30.000 Free speech is ultimately about protecting the speech that you disagree with most.

00:06:34.000 That's what we have to do.

00:06:36.000 We've got to bring free speech back to high school debate.

00:06:40.000 That's really well said, James.

00:06:41.000 Listen, I think, you know, when we were talking on the phone, I gave you a call yesterday and I, you know, I confessed to you, I said, listen, I missed part one, but apparently it was so viral.

00:06:53.000 Somehow I missed it, but that's all right.

00:06:54.000 Somehow it was so viral that they, you know, they asked you at the free press to come back and write part two.

00:07:02.000 You know, I think I want to get into part two.

00:07:06.000 In some ways, I think it's even more shocking than part one.

00:07:08.000 But part one, I think it took the blinders off for a ton of people of how the views of our society are being shaped at such a young age and how censorship is happening now at such a young age.

00:07:23.000 I mean, and I told you on the phone, I said, listen, Charlie in many ways cut his teeth by having uncensored, very public debates with college liberals.

00:07:33.000 I mean, Turning Point USA, as you understand it, the show would not exist as you see it now had it not been for creating a platform for very public debates to happen.

00:07:44.000 And what we see, you know, you think that these things are happening all the time.

00:07:47.000 And what you've now exposed in this two-part series is that actually the debate that you understood when you were a kid, the high school debates that forged so many of our current leaders.

00:07:59.000 Blake is one of the producers on our show.

00:08:01.000 He's texted me about his own debate experience from high school.

00:08:05.000 And I mean, how many elected leaders that are now in Congress?

00:08:10.000 You know, it's the state level, at the federal level.

00:08:12.000 It's estimated to your Congress point, Andrew, to interrupt.

00:08:14.000 It's estimated that upwards of one-third of... sitting members of the United States Congress did high school debate.

00:08:20.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:08:20.000 I mean, this is so foundational to the future of the republic.

00:08:24.000 And here, here what we see is that the free expression, the clampdown of it that you saw on Twitter, that you've seen in social media, that you see from the progressive left.

00:08:33.000 I'm encouraged that RoConna, he seems to be one of the few semi-sane Democrats that we have in Congress, that he reached out to Larry Summers, I think you said as well, who, by the way, was proven completely right on inflation.

00:08:47.000 It was Obama's foreign economics advisor.

00:08:49.000 Yeah, I mean, he was warning about all this excess spending.

00:08:52.000 Anyways, I'm encouraged to hear that.

00:08:56.000 I think, you know, what was the, again, it went viral.

00:08:59.000 You got tons of responses.

00:09:00.000 They made you write part two.

00:09:02.000 What was the prevalent, most prevalent response you got from the audience?

00:09:06.000 Yeah, the most prevalent response actually was from the National Speech and Debate Association, which is the center of my reporting.

00:09:12.000 They are the nearly 100-year-old National Debate League who's counted nearly 2 million alumni from 1925 to today, includes, by the way, Justice Scorsich, Alito, Katanji Brown Jackson, Senator Warren.

00:09:25.000 I mean, so many, so many others on both sides.

00:09:29.000 Here's what they did.

00:09:30.000 Absolutely nothing.

00:09:32.000 They had a really easy opportunity, Andrew, to remove the judges in my reporting.

00:09:39.000 They didn't even remove them.

00:09:40.000 They didn't even denounce them.

00:09:41.000 Here's one judge.

00:09:42.000 They did not remove, denounce, nothing when they put out their statement, which is a two-page word salad.

00:09:47.000 Here's what one judge says to students.

00:09:49.000 This person's judged hundreds, 120 kids in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey in the past year.

00:09:55.000 Quote, I'm quoting here directly from their online judging profile within the NSDA, the National Speech and Debate Association.

00:10:03.000 Quote, if you are white, don't run arguments with impacts that primarily affect people of color.

00:10:11.000 These arguments should belong to the communities they affect.

00:10:14.000 Andrew, what this judge is saying is if you're a white girl from Indiana or from Florida, don't you dare talk about the senseless violence in Baltimore, Chicago, or D.C. That's not your place to do it.

00:10:27.000 How un-American does it get than that? 0.96

00:10:30.000 That's just insane.

00:10:31.000 I mean, absolutely, we run into that all the time.

00:10:33.000 I mean, this show is fearless about racial topics and we constantly get called, you know, all sorts of terrible names because we're not allowed to have opinions about that.

00:10:41.000 And by the way, we're not allowed to, we're not allowed to have opinions about abortion either because we're a bunch of cis white males that aren't able to carry a baby unless we call ourselves trans or something.

00:10:51.000 But we're not allowed to have opinions because these things obviously don't affect us.

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00:11:35.000 We have James Fish back of Incubate Debate with us.

00:11:38.000 Fascinating conversation we're having about the state of high school debate.

00:11:45.000 It's a troubling account.

00:11:47.000 It's written in two parts.

00:11:48.000 Part one, we're just sort of getting into still.

00:11:51.000 But part two, in some ways, is more, even more explosive, James.

00:11:56.000 Correct me if I'm wrong, but part two, but it's like we have now a sea of these debate judges that are, and the USD, what's the acronym here, by the way?

00:12:10.000 It's the NSDAN SDA, the national speech and debate.

00:12:13.000 They're creating, they actually have a database called Tabroom, where they declare that debaters who argue in favor of capitalism or Israel or in favor of the police will lose the rounds they are judged in.

00:12:28.000 This is a fairly remarkable thing.

00:12:30.000 I mean, can anybody, anything be more antithetical to the spirit of debate than literally cutting out the knees from underneath certain debaters with certain perspectives?

00:12:40.000 No, this doesn't even really relate to debate.

00:12:44.000 This is not debate anymore.

00:12:45.000 If certain people are said, hey, if you argue a certain position, you automatically lose.

00:12:51.000 That's not the debate that I knew.

00:12:53.000 I'm sure that's not the debate that Justice Gorsuch or Justice Katanji Brown Jackson knew or Senator Warren knew from high school.

00:13:00.000 This is a shell of its former self.

00:13:03.000 Listen, just this one example here.

00:13:05.000 Again, I'm quoting verbatim.

00:13:06.000 Let me just set this up by saying these paradigms are what students are supposed to read before the round.

00:13:12.000 They were originally conceived to allow students to learn more about their judge and their preferences, not their political or ideological preferences, but whether they liked kids to speak at 300 words a minute or at a more moderate pace, whether they preferred primary versus secondary source evidence, whether they wanted students to focus on the impacts or why their arguments mattered.

00:13:34.000 That was how these paradigms were supposed to be used.

00:13:37.000 And then in that period from when I left high school in 2013 to when I came back as a coach in 2017, the paradigms became riddled with political and ideological statements.

00:13:48.000 They more closely resembled a Twitter profile of a political activist than of an impartial adjudicator of a high school debate.

00:13:56.000 Here's what one student, one judge tells to students in their paradigm.

00:14:00.000 This is again, I'm quoting this verbatim, and this actually is still public right now on the Tabroom website.

00:14:06.000 He says, quote, if you are discussing immigrants in a round and describe them as illegal, I will immediately stop the round, give you the loss with low speaker points, give you a stern lecture, and then talk to your coach.

00:14:25.000 I will not have you making the debate space unsafe.

00:14:31.000 Wow.

00:14:33.000 I mean, think about the implications about that for you and the Charlie Kirk show audience.

00:14:38.000 You are now, we are now raising up a generation of young people that are not allowed to debate the merits of immigration based on a very important bifurcation that we've had on the books and our laws for generations: that you can legally immigrate and you can illegally immigrate.

00:14:57.000 And these are legal distinctions that are now disallowed by a growing cadre of judges within the NSDA.

00:15:06.000 I mean, this is shocking stuff.

00:15:08.000 There's another example I hear that my producers are pulling up.

00:15:12.000 In his final round of the two-day tournament, and this is actually from part two, I believe, of your reporting.

00:15:18.000 Matthew was shocked to hear the opposing team levy a personal attack against him as their central argument.

00:15:25.000 The opposing team argued: this debate is more than just about the debate, it's about protecting individuals in the community from people who proliferate hatred and make this community unsafe.

00:15:39.000 They then pulled up a screenshot of a tweet from earlier that month, which Matthew had responded to.

00:15:47.000 So to put it another way, the debate leaders are literally encouraging kids to collect docs dossiers on other kids to get ahead and debate.

00:15:56.000 Am I reading this wrong?

00:15:58.000 You're reading it spot, spot on.

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00:19:19.000 James, you just mentioned that one-third of Congress is suspected to have participated in high school debate.

00:19:27.000 This is a foundational, formative experience for many of the nation's future leaders.

00:19:32.000 And it's getting completely bastardized, which is really, and you wrote something here, which I think is really, really important.

00:19:40.000 It said, you said, once students have been exposed to enough of these partisan paradigms, they internalize that point of view and adjust their arguments going forward.

00:19:49.000 That's why you rarely see students presenting arguments in favor of capitalism, defending Israel, or challenging affirmative action, which, by the way, just polling shows affirmative action is universally unpopular, but I guess you can't do it in high school debate.

00:20:03.000 Most students choose not to fight this coercion.

00:20:06.000 They see it as a necessary evil that's required to win debates and secure the accolades, scholarships, and college acceptance letters that come with winning.

00:20:16.000 This is a crucial, crucial point you make here.

00:20:20.000 And by the way, Charlie's very good at this.

00:20:22.000 He says, you know, his take on it is, you know, accept the bad grade, tell the truth.

00:20:26.000 Other people, like Ben Shapiro, say sometimes you should feel free to lie to your college professors, et cetera, et cetera, just to get the grade and get out, right?

00:20:34.000 I think there's a valid debate here.

00:20:37.000 But I want you to just explain that motivation really quickly: the tough position that these debate paradigms are placing kids that don't follow the narrative.

00:20:51.000 It's placed them in a really tough position.

00:20:53.000 You know, I think it's one thing, and I think Charlie's absolutely right.

00:20:55.000 In college, you take the L, you take the failure if it means not getting rid of the world biological women, as we recently saw with a college student. 1.00

00:21:06.000 You take the failure.

00:21:07.000 But we have to remember, Andrew, these are 12 and 13-year-olds, young girls, who signed up because they had a passion for what was happening in the country and they wanted to be able to learn more about it.

00:21:18.000 I think it's really hard to tell that person to stand by your convictions.

00:21:22.000 The natural thing for them to do is when an adult tells you to do something, you don't do it.

00:21:27.000 You think it's the right thing.

00:21:29.000 We have a macro view, you and I and your listeners.

00:21:31.000 We can look at how this is the context is happening in where free speech and open debate are under attack in all institutions in America.

00:21:38.000 Look at this one young girl who went on Fox a couple of weeks ago, Dana Perino show.

00:21:42.000 Her name is Brianna Watley.

00:21:44.000 She was told by her judge before the debate.

00:21:47.000 The debate was on President Biden's foreign policy track record.

00:21:50.000 A lot to debate there, by the way.

00:21:52.000 She was told by her judge not to bring up President Trump before the round, totally unprompted.

00:21:58.000 She said, I don't want to hear anything about Donald Trump.

00:22:02.000 How can you have a debate about Biden if you can't bring up the 45th president, his predecessor?

00:22:07.000 We look at things like the Abraham Accords. 0.81

00:22:09.000 We look at what happened in North Korea, the increase in NATO member funding.

00:22:14.000 And she was told, don't bring up President Trump.

00:22:18.000 I mean, this is what's happening.

00:22:19.000 You know, my reporting is adjust the facts kind of.

00:22:22.000 I brought the receipts.

00:22:23.000 I brought the actual judge statements that are public on the NSDA's website.

00:22:27.000 But this is a student who's rising up and says, I can't bring up Trump.

00:22:31.000 I can't debate.

00:22:31.000 And if I can't debate, I'm not doing this anymore.

00:22:34.000 Well, they're trying to otherize conservative ideas.

00:22:36.000 They're trying to, honestly, they're trying to dehumanize conservatives.

00:22:40.000 This is one I'm going to read from your reporting again here.

00:22:44.000 This is a judge, Lindsay Schroedick, who's judged over 120 students at tournaments in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey.

00:22:52.000 She's been certified by the NSDA with cultural competency badge and some other stuff.

00:22:58.000 So until last month, her paradigm, again, her paradigm is her POV.

00:23:03.000 It's in this tab room database that you went into.

00:23:06.000 She says this.

00:23:06.000 She tells debaters: if you are white, don't run arguments with impacts that primarily affect people of color.

00:23:14.000 These arguments should belong to the communities they affect.

00:23:18.000 So, again, you are not allowed to have an opinion on black fatherlessness in the home.

00:23:23.000 You're not allowed to have an opinion about Harvard and their acceptance of Asians, their acceptance rates of Asians.

00:23:31.000 You're not allowed to have any opinions that might affect a community that you don't belong to.

00:23:36.000 And you bring up this really interesting thing here, James, where you hearken back to Barack Obama's famous speech at the DNC, where he says, I am my brother's keeper.

00:23:47.000 I am my sister's keeper.

00:23:49.000 That something that affects you and justice that affects you affects me.

00:23:52.000 This sense that we are all one American family that resonated so profoundly at the time.

00:23:57.000 I mean, I'm old enough to remember that moment.

00:24:00.000 And how far the progressive lens has moved on from this, like, we are all in it together to your viewpoints don't matter and we're stifling these young people and basically holding over them the threat that you're not going to get into the college that you want.

00:24:15.000 It's profound the change that's happened, is it not?

00:24:18.000 It totally, totally isn't.

00:24:20.000 This isn't a political issue at all.

00:24:22.000 This is a free speech and open debate issue.

00:24:25.000 My piece, despite me being a conservative, is not about defending conservative ideas on their merit.

00:24:31.000 It's about defending conservative ideas because they ought to have a role.

00:24:35.000 They ought to have space for them in a high school debate of all places.

00:24:39.000 That's, of course, the great irony.

00:24:41.000 You know, this is a bigger issue than I think just progressivism, Andrew.

00:24:45.000 We're seeing the new establishment say that you're just not allowed to debate certain things.

00:24:50.000 We actually see it in our party on things like the Ukraine issue, where you have some senators who will accuse you of carrying Putin's water if you ask for there to be an inspector general on the Ukraine fund allotments, or if you ask questions about whether the military funding that's going to Ukraine is actually exacerbating the conflict and taking more lives because it takes away the option for a diplomatic negotiated settlement.

00:25:16.000 So this is a progressive problem.

00:25:18.000 I'm happy to see some progressives stand up and say we've got to defend free speech.

00:25:22.000 But make no mistake, there are people in our party who are against the idea of free speech when it comes to particular issues that they want to guard and protect with their life.

00:25:33.000 Let's go ahead and play Cut 64.

00:25:35.000 This is a student, just to give the audience an example here, that was given a zero in class for her project because she used the term biological woman.

00:25:45.000 Play Cut64.

00:25:47.000 I got a zero on a project proposal in my class because I used the term biological women, which is apparently not allowed anymore.

00:25:54.000 She even said it was a good project proposal, but I got a zero because I use this term that's exclusionary and not allowed anymore.

00:26:03.000 And I 100% know that this is like the most biased grade ever because my project is about transgenders competing in biological women's sports.

00:26:12.000 How am I supposed to do my final project if I can't use the word biological women?

00:26:16.000 But that's what my project is about.

00:26:19.000 James, this isn't just, I think that that clip's important because it shows that this is an institutional rot.

00:26:28.000 It's an ideological rot that is pervasive within the educational community.

00:26:32.000 Take a second here and tell me, James, why you think that this viewpoint, this type of sensorial, you know, we're blocking actual ideas from being debated.

00:26:46.000 Why is this so prevalent in education?

00:26:49.000 I think it's prevalent because one side has ostracized and marginalized and stigmatized the other side to the point that they're calling the other side Hitler and fascist and all racist and homophobe and all of that nonsense.

00:27:04.000 That anything that that side argues, even basic facts like biological women, those need to be stamped out because those are dangerous ideas in their mind.

00:27:14.000 And what happened to this young girl on a college campus is exactly what's happening in high school debate, is exactly what's happening in the workplace or happening maybe in your kids' eighth grade or 10th grade history class.

00:27:25.000 Conservative ideas are just not welcome because they are deemed, they are labeled as racist, as xenophobic, as fascist.

00:27:37.000 And the sad truth, Andrew, is that if there were actually a debate where progressive and conservative ideas came together, had those teachers, had those debate coaches of the NSDA allowed debates to happen in a fair and balanced way, you wouldn't have progressives saying these things about conservatives because you would have an opportunity for them to engage with their arguments.

00:27:57.000 Again, the goal isn't for necessarily a conservative to change a progressive's mind.

00:28:02.000 The goal is to simply get a progressive to say, hey, you made me think.

00:28:06.000 Maybe my views about defunding the police in light of the Pew Research Center noting that 81% of Black Americans want police funding to stay the same or go up.

00:28:14.000 Maybe that's something I have to rethink.

00:28:16.000 And open debate and free speech allows that pursuit of the truth to happen.

00:28:22.000 I want to bring up another example here, and then I want to get into solutions because you do mention that there are good debate judges out there still.

00:28:32.000 So this has not impacted every debate judge.

00:28:38.000 But you said, in general, students voluntarily and mutually disclose their evidence to their opponents before the debate.

00:28:45.000 This makes sense, right?

00:28:45.000 Because you get to see where they're going to come from.

00:28:48.000 It gives you an opportunity to sharpen your perspective and your debate.

00:28:52.000 But you mentioned this one judge.

00:28:55.000 It's just, I find it shocking.

00:28:56.000 And this is kind of why I want to get into solutions because I can't understand why this person is allowed to be a judge.

00:29:02.000 Ex-Braithwaite, who's judged 169 debate rounds with 340 children, students, has her own disclosure policy within her paradigm, again, on Tabroom.

00:29:14.000 So you get to look at your judge and get to see what their paradigm is, which uses the racial epithet.

00:29:19.000 One, N-words don't have to disclose to you.

00:29:24.000 Two, disclose to N-words. 1.00

00:29:26.000 So this is blatant racial discrimination.

00:29:29.000 And she's basically saying if you are a black student, a black debater, you don't have to disclose your arguments to your competitor.

00:29:37.000 How is this allowed, James?

00:29:39.000 Why is this person still a judge and why are they not kicked up?

00:29:42.000 I have no clue.

00:29:43.000 And that is the most egregious example because that is textbook racial discrimination.

00:29:49.000 Look, the NSDA has a lot of judges.

00:29:52.000 There's no question about it.

00:29:53.000 But when we provided incontrovertible proof, this is a public statement on a website that's still available.

00:30:00.000 If you click the paradigm, it links you directly to the NSDA's judging profile or ex-Braithwaite.

00:30:05.000 It says that if you're Asian, if you're Hispanic, if you're white, whatever, you have to hand over your evidence to the other team.

00:30:13.000 And if you're Black, you don't. 1.00

00:30:14.000 By the way, no race, no student benefits from this rule. 0.99

00:30:17.000 A black student would think, hey, I won the round because the judge put the thumb on the scale. 0.91

00:30:24.000 The white student is going to resent it.

00:30:26.000 And you're actually going to create racial division.

00:30:28.000 Believe it or not, and this is not an exaggeration.

00:30:31.000 This type of policy, if you could even call it that, stokes racial tension, contributes to strife.

00:30:38.000 That's what it does.

00:30:40.000 And now the white kid or the Hispanic kid resents the black kid because the black kid won the debate because they got a privilege. 0.95

00:30:48.000 They got a kickback that they didn't even ask for. 0.54

00:30:50.000 So this perverted racial equity reparation idea that we're going to let black kids do this and white and Hispanic and Asian kids do that. 0.52

00:30:59.000 Why can't the National Speech and Debate Association remove and denounce this individual?

00:31:05.000 It's been one month, one month, Andrew, and to your viewers since I published part one, and the NSDA has done absolutely nothing.

00:31:13.000 They continue to allow people like S. Braithwaite to racially discriminate against students.

00:31:18.000 Yeah, I mean, this is Jim Crow in the debate.

00:31:21.000 I mean, this is like reverse Jim Crow. 0.61

00:31:23.000 Is the bigotry of low expectation?

00:31:25.000 It's condescension.

00:31:26.000 It's racial. 0.77

00:31:26.000 It's explicit discrimination. 0.77

00:31:29.000 It's a profound and disappointing, but not surprising that this person still has a job judging students.

00:31:38.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

00:31:40.000 Just when you thought the government would stop trying to take over healthcare, Senator Bernie Sanders, that socialist Marxist communist, is pushing something that is no good.

00:31:48.000 I need your attention right now.

00:31:49.000 I'm urgently asking you to support the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste to stop the Senate from passing the Sanders Bill S1339.

00:31:57.000 It would raise the price of prescription drugs by making it harder for pharmacy benefit managers to continue to save an average of $1,000 per year for 275 million Americans just like you.

00:32:06.000 Bernie Sanders, he does, he is a sneaky commie.

00:32:09.000 I'll tell you what.

00:32:09.000 He will not lower prescription drug prices despite what the bill says.

00:32:13.000 It will create a socialist healthcare system here in America.

00:32:16.000 I've read the bill.

00:32:17.000 It's dangerous.

00:32:17.000 You got to stop it.

00:32:18.000 You have to sign lowermydrugprices.com.

00:32:21.000 I'm telling you, I'm involved in this.

00:32:23.000 You got to get into the game.

00:32:24.000 Add your name to thousands who are standing up and saying you don't want more government interference in healthcare, but you must hurry.

00:32:30.000 The Sanders bill will come up for a vote in only a few weeks.

00:32:33.000 Go to lowermydrugprices.com.

00:32:35.000 All of us together must oppose the Marxist Bernie Sanders lowermydrugprices.com.

00:32:43.000 Hi, I'm Peter.

00:32:44.000 Hey, man, Jace with a why.

00:32:46.000 Yeah, I figured.

00:32:47.000 So to start out, like, tell me, what's your favorite kind of food?

00:32:51.000 Pizza.

00:32:53.000 Oh, man.

00:32:55.000 What?

00:32:57.000 You can't eat pizza.

00:32:59.000 Why not?

00:33:01.000 It's bad.

00:33:05.000 Why?

00:33:07.000 Because it's like pretty bad for you.

00:33:12.000 But what makes it bad?

00:33:13.000 Oh, yeah, no, it's like probably one of the worst things you can eat.

00:33:20.000 How come?

00:33:23.000 Because of like the ingredients in it?

00:33:26.000 Which ones?

00:33:28.000 I mean, yeah, like basically all of them.

00:33:32.000 Name one.

00:33:34.000 I mean, you said your words, pizza.

00:33:39.000 All right, I'm cutting this off right now. 1.00

00:33:40.000 It's clear you're an idiot and deserve no more of my time. 1.00

00:33:45.000 Welcome back to the Charlie Kirk show. 1.00

00:33:47.000 James, you said that clip before the show.

00:33:50.000 I thought it was great.

00:33:52.000 Tell me what you're getting at with that clip.

00:33:56.000 There's a lot of wisdom in Family Guy, but I sent that clip because it's something that I encountered when I traveled all over the state for the past two years, my home state of Florida, and met with thousands of students to get them ready for incubate debates, our free nonprofit debate league in the state.

00:34:13.000 And I kept running into the same thing on the Trump point.

00:34:17.000 And look, whatever you or your viewers or I, whatever we think about Trump, let's just put that aside for one second, good, bad, and other, whatever we think.

00:34:24.000 When I would ask a student, what do you think about Trump?

00:34:27.000 And they would say, he's Hitler. 1.00

00:34:29.000 He's a fascist. 1.00

00:34:30.000 He's a racist. 0.99

00:34:31.000 And then just like Peter did at that gym, when Jace was saying pizza is bad, as a follow-up, why is that? 0.95

00:34:39.000 Why do you believe that?

00:34:40.000 And there was just blank stare, or there was no real substance in response.

00:34:47.000 And that was a really good way to test whether somebody had something substantive to say about the point in question.

00:34:54.000 Debate is all about having an argument, building up the evidence, and then defending that argument to the opposition.

00:35:01.000 And if you can't do that in a basic conversation about pizza or about your feelings about President Trump, then we've got some work to do.

00:35:08.000 And the point of the exercise is I've actually had a couple of kids who did it pretty well, who maybe talked about some foreign policy points or talked about some of the COVID spending.

00:35:16.000 And those are all fair game.

00:35:18.000 But it's really about whether you can defend something that is politically unpopular, where it's not the cool thing to say if you're 15 years old and you live in Miami or live in Broward County to say that you support Donald Trump.

00:35:32.000 I got to say, I did it the other way for conservative kids in rural parts of the state who had some pretty strong feelings about Vice President Harris or about President Biden.

00:35:40.000 I asked them the same thing.

00:35:41.000 Why do you feel that way?

00:35:43.000 And they also struggle to come up with reasons.

00:35:45.000 Debate isn't about telling kids what to think, conservative or progressive.

00:35:49.000 It's about telling them how to think.

00:35:50.000 And if you're going to have a view about Vice President Harris or about President Trump, you have to be able to defend it.

00:35:55.000 And I think that clip really illustrates a lot of people struggling to articulate some of their highly convicted views about the former president of the United States.

00:36:03.000 Yeah, I think that's brilliant.

00:36:04.000 How come?

00:36:05.000 Why is pizza bad for you?

00:36:06.000 You know, because you said it.

00:36:08.000 It's pizza.

00:36:09.000 I was cracking up when I was watching it.

00:36:11.000 Listen, we've got two minutes till we wrap up, James.

00:36:14.000 I mean, I think we've thoroughly demoralized the audience with the state of young people and high school speech and debate.

00:36:22.000 Just real briefly here, what is the solution?

00:36:25.000 Do we reform it or do we get behind incubate debate and you guys are trying to kind of do your own thing and create another avenue?

00:36:30.000 What's the answer, real quick?

00:36:32.000 The answer is capitalism, free markets, competition.

00:36:36.000 It always has been.

00:36:36.000 It always will be.

00:36:37.000 If you see something wrong with an organization or institution, you build your own, you compete, you destroy them, and you create something special and magical for the young men and women of this country.

00:36:47.000 That's what I'm doing with Incubate Debate.

00:36:48.000 I encourage others who are motivated former debaters to stand up and do the same.

00:36:52.000 Let me talk about Incubate Debate.

00:36:54.000 It's the fastest growing debate league in America.

00:36:57.000 We've got over 3,000 kids in my home state of Florida who come together four times a year and debate the issues where no one is putting their thumb on the scale, where free speech, civility, and diversity of viewpoints reign true.

00:37:09.000 And I got to tell you, Andrew, I'd be honored to have your viewers' support in this fight to bring free speech back to high school debate.

00:37:15.000 They can, of course, learn more at incubated.org.

00:37:19.000 That's great.

00:37:20.000 So now, are you looking to branch out of Florida?

00:37:22.000 Are you looking for people to sort of like franchise this to other states?

00:37:26.000 30 seconds.

00:37:27.000 Yeah, we are.

00:37:28.000 We're looking at that sort of TEDx independent model.

00:37:31.000 I was on the phone yesterday with a school board member in South Carolina, one as well with Texas with Senator Cruz to talk about Texas expansion.

00:37:38.000 We are pushing ahead.

00:37:39.000 We are trying to capture this moment.

00:37:41.000 We have the momentum on our side, and we want to bring this model nationally.

00:37:44.000 We want it to be independent.

00:37:45.000 We want kids to be able to debate like they used to.

00:37:48.000 That's what's going to really push this idea forward.

00:37:52.000 Well, it's a noble cause, James.

00:37:55.000 Thank you for exposing this.

00:37:57.000 I'm so glad this went so viral.

00:37:59.000 I think it was really shocking for a lot of people.

00:38:01.000 James, best of luck to you.

00:38:03.000 Incubate debate.org.

00:38:05.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

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The Charlie Kirk Show - June 29, 2023

The High School Debate Disaster with James Fishback

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