The Charlie Kirk Show - December 23, 2022


The Kari Lake Trial, Day 2 with Julie Kelly and Steve Cortes


Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

181.63771

Word count

6,100

Sentence count

475

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Julie Kelly joins us to talk about the pathological obsession with indicting Donald Trump, and then Steve Cortez makes the conservative case for Kevin McCarthy. Charlie and Julie discuss the January 6th report from the Joint Select Committee on Intelligence.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody. 0.96
00:00:00.000 Today in the Charlie Kirk Show, Julie Kelly joins us to talk about the pathological obsession with indicting Donald Trump. 0.96
00:00:10.000 And then Steve Cortez makes the conservative case for Kevin McCarthy.
00:00:15.000 I love your questions.
00:00:16.000 Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
00:00:21.000 Open up your podcast app and type in Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:24.000 Get involved with Turning PointUSA today at tpusa.com.
00:00:31.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:35.000 Buckle up, everybody.
00:00:36.000 Here we go.
00:00:38.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:39.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
00:00:41.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:45.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:48.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:49.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:50.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:59.000 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.
00:01:07.000 That's why we are here.
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00:01:22.000 Joining us now is Julie Kelly to go through all things with regarding the January 6th report.
00:01:32.000 And she is from America Greatness.
00:01:34.000 Julie, welcome back to the program.
00:01:36.000 Hey, Charlie, thanks so much for having me on.
00:01:39.000 So, Julie, walk us through.
00:01:40.000 It looks as if the final J6 committee report has been released.
00:01:45.000 Maybe or maybe not.
00:01:46.000 I'm not exactly sure.
00:01:47.000 Is that not right?
00:01:48.000 Okay.
00:01:49.000 Walk us through it.
00:01:50.000 You're right.
00:01:51.000 It's supposed to be released.
00:01:52.000 It was supposed to be released yesterday.
00:01:55.000 I just checked their website.
00:01:56.000 It still is not posted.
00:01:58.000 All we have is this 154-page summary of cherry-picked testimony and narratives that they wanted to collect.
00:02:07.000 And they're gradually dropping certain transcripts, but the full report still has not been issued.
00:02:13.000 And this continues to be delayed, Charlie.
00:02:17.000 And now it looks like they're also going to try to bury some of the more important witness transcripts that people are looking for, i.e., Ray Epps.
00:02:26.000 Benny Thompson said that those would be released sometime after Christmas when they were supposed to be part of this report, which, as I said, still has not been released.
00:02:34.000 Yeah, so what can we expect in this report?
00:02:38.000 You can just expect more of the same.
00:02:41.000 The political narrative that this committee, the regime, the Department of Justice, and the media has continued to perpetuate that somehow Donald Trump was solely responsible for the events of January 6th, that he incited this insurrection, which, as you know, Charlie, is one of the four criminal referrals made by this committee to the Department of Justice.
00:03:02.000 Well, still not covering or answering the questions, Charlie, that most Americans want to know.
00:03:09.000 Why was the Capitol so intentionally unprotected that day?
00:03:14.000 What happened to the pipe bomber?
00:03:16.000 Why didn't they release thousands of hours of security surveillance video that captured what happened inside and outside the building that day?
00:03:23.000 We can just see for ourselves what happened.
00:03:26.000 Where are the reports from Capitol Police, from Nancy Pelosi's office, from Mitch McConnell's office?
00:03:31.000 Those are the three entities responsible for protecting the Capitol.
00:03:35.000 Furthermore, what about documents from DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and her Metropolitan Police Department?
00:03:44.000 Those issues haven't even been touched on.
00:03:46.000 And get this, Charlie.
00:03:47.000 I did a quick search of the executive summary that was released the other day.
00:03:51.000 Here's a name that isn't even mentioned, FBI Director Christopher Wray.
00:03:55.000 I don't even know if this committee interviewed him.
00:03:58.000 So the question that have a lot of people, you know, the question that a lot of people are asking is, okay, so these are criminal referrals.
00:04:07.000 So then the Department of Justice will take them up against Trump.
00:04:10.000 Does that go now to the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, or is that a separate division?
00:04:15.000 Walk us through that.
00:04:16.000 So Charlie, the Department of Justice is already investigating Donald Trump.
00:04:21.000 They have a grand jury.
00:04:22.000 They brought in several of his attorneys.
00:04:24.000 They brought in Mark Short, Mike Pence's chief of staff.
00:04:28.000 They're already investigating Donald Trump.
00:04:31.000 So I believe that these referrals will go to the imaginary special counsel, Jack Smith, who, by the way, isn't even in the country, Charlie.
00:04:40.000 He's still recovering from knee surgery in the Netherlands.
00:04:44.000 So that's odd.
00:04:45.000 But what they did here, Charlie, with the special counsel, they appointed a guy who's not even in the country to give the ruse, to give the head fake that now the DOJ has this independent office, special counsel office, looking into everything related to January 6th.
00:05:04.000 But Charlie, all they're doing, they're moving the same investigators, the same prosecutors who've been working on this case for nearly two years.
00:05:11.000 They're just moving them from Maine Justice from the DC U.S. Attorney's Office into the special counsel office.
00:05:18.000 There's no independence there.
00:05:20.000 Does anyone think that Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, a longtime Obama loyalist, a Russia gate collusion architect who's been trying to get Donald Trump in handcuffs for the better part of seven years is really going to step away from this?
00:05:34.000 It's a joke.
00:05:35.000 This is another deception by this Justice Department.
00:05:38.000 And so, you know, you're going to have, as I said, the same individuals, the same DOJ looking now at these criminal referrals, just as they've been looking at other criminal, alleged criminal aspects of January 6th.
00:05:52.000 You mentioned it earlier, but I think it's important to repeat.
00:05:54.000 We haven't covered it very much on the show.
00:05:56.000 What are specifically the criminal referrals as it pertains to President Trump?
00:06:01.000 So there are four criminal referrals.
00:06:03.000 One is insurrection, conspiracy to incite insurrection.
00:06:08.000 One is basically giving false statements, perjury.
00:06:12.000 And then the other two are felonies, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of an official proceeding.
00:06:20.000 Now, these last two charges, Charlie, I've written for months that I believe those are the two counts that a grand jury will indict Donald Trump on.
00:06:30.000 I was a little surprised by the insurrection count.
00:06:33.000 That probably isn't going anywhere.
00:06:35.000 But I think that the obstruction and the conspiracy charges are probably what they will eventually indict Donald Trump with.
00:06:42.000 So you mentioned the lying under oath or perjury.
00:06:47.000 How is that possible when he didn't testify?
00:06:50.000 I believe it has to do with conspiring to make false statements.
00:06:54.000 So they weren't really clear.
00:06:57.000 And maybe they will detail, they'll flush this out a little bit more in the report.
00:07:02.000 But you'll recall that Liz Cheney suggested numerous occasions that Donald Trump was trying to force other people to lie under oath or withhold some sort of evidence.
00:07:14.000 So I'm not really sure where that charge will go either.
00:07:17.000 What I really think, Charlie, this is a little bit of safe face for the committee, right?
00:07:21.000 They want to look like their 18-month investigation really produced legitimate criminal charges when they already know that DOJ has been working on this.
00:07:29.000 They've been working hand in hand, let's admit it.
00:07:31.000 But they've been working on this criminal investigation for months anyway.
00:07:35.000 What I think they added, the insurrection and maybe even the perjury charge, is so DOJ will come back, pretend that they carefully looked at all four criminal referrals, eventually indict on the two, conspiracy and obstruction, and probably drop one or two of the others, the insurrection and perjury.
00:07:51.000 So it looks like they were really carefully deliberating.
00:07:53.000 Yeah, that's really Machiavellian and I totally believable.
00:07:58.000 So the final question I guess I have, because this thing is such a show and it's such a disgrace.
00:08:05.000 Ray Epps, is his testimony been made public?
00:08:10.000 It hasn't, Charlie.
00:08:11.000 And, you know, I'll be anxious to see if his transcribed interview, as we were promised, will be included in this final report.
00:08:19.000 Will it be heavily redacted?
00:08:22.000 Or will they say, which I think they're going to do with some of the key interviews, they're going to hand this over to Jack Smith and the DOJ and say, well, this is evidence that they need.
00:08:32.000 So it's going to be kept over here.
00:08:34.000 We can't release it to the public because we can't interfere in an investigation.
00:08:38.000 But, you know, no.
00:08:39.000 So we haven't seen anything from Ray Epps.
00:08:42.000 And as Tucker noted, I believe last night, there was no criminal referral against Ray Epps.
00:08:48.000 He remains uncharged nearly two years later, despite the fact being seen on video numerous occasions directing people to go to the Capitol, to go inside of the Capitol.
00:08:58.000 He was on Capitol grounds, which were restricted, which many January 6th protesters face that charge, even though they didn't go inside like he did not.
00:09:08.000 So we're still waiting for the case of the curious, Mr. Apps.
00:09:13.000 I mean, look, I'm going to be blunt.
00:09:15.000 It's so obvious he's a Fed and that he has engagement with the federal authorities and they're trying to cover it up.
00:09:23.000 And I really hope the new Congress does something about this.
00:09:27.000 I really hope so.
00:09:29.000 That needs to be a top priority. 1.00
00:09:30.000 Julie Kelly from American Greatness.
00:09:32.000 Thank you so much.
00:09:34.000 Thanks, Charlie.
00:09:34.000 Merry Christmas.
00:09:35.000 You too.
00:09:39.000 It is Christmas week.
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00:10:37.000 This is the exception.
00:10:38.000 We got Trump tax returns.
00:10:40.000 We got Omnibus.
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00:11:39.000 Okay, let's get you an update out of the Kerry Lake lawsuit trial.
00:11:44.000 Maricopa County is currently on trial, you could say.
00:11:48.000 I believe this is the last day of the trial.
00:11:50.000 I could be wrong about that, but I believe it is.
00:11:53.000 It is a very quick, highly compressed, lots of action in a short period of time.
00:11:58.000 Richard Barris, friend of the show, testified today.
00:12:02.000 Let's go to Cut 72.
00:12:04.000 Richard Barris, Republicans were absolutely disproportionately impacted.
00:12:09.000 Play cut 72.
00:12:12.000 Republicans were absolutely disproportionately impacted by this.
00:12:16.000 And we're talking about a net advantage that absolutely puts the margin in doubt.
00:12:22.000 So we're looking if it was 25 to roughly 40,000 votes, Mr. Olson.
00:12:28.000 The margin that we saw in these areas puts this election within a few votes either way.
00:12:35.000 It really does.
00:12:36.000 Richard Barris, the only question for me is that it had the potential to change the result.
00:12:42.000 And in his professional opinion, it was substantial enough to change the leaderboard.
00:12:47.000 Rich Barris is testifying in this trial, saying that the disruptions, the lines, the delays were enough to impact the result.
00:12:57.000 This is some pretty heavy stuff, play cut 71.
00:13:00.000 The outcome.
00:13:01.000 The only question for me is whether it had the potential to change the result.
00:13:06.000 And in my opinion, in my professional opinion, I believe it did have the, it did have that.
00:13:11.000 It was substantial enough to change the leaderboard.
00:13:13.000 It was.
00:13:14.000 When you say change the leaderboard, do you mean that it would have been a good idea?
00:13:19.000 Ms. Lake would be ahead.
00:13:20.000 Yes. 0.95
00:13:21.000 That the leaderboard would have changed, that Kerry Lake would have won.
00:13:25.000 He did a great job testifying.
00:13:27.000 Rich Barris deserves a lot of credit.
00:13:28.000 This is on top of yesterday, Maricopa County Scott Jarrett saying, look, it wasn't a disruption on election day.
00:13:35.000 Three-hour waiting lines in Anthem, Arizona.
00:13:38.000 It's not a disruption.
00:13:40.000 Play cut 52.
00:13:42.000 So you don't believe that what happened on November 8th was not a disruption in the election process?
00:13:52.000 I do not couch it as that.
00:13:54.000 Are you aware that Supervisor Gates came out on Election Day and said 20% of all vote centers were affected by these issues, with ballots being rejected by the tabulators?
00:14:07.000 Again, we didn't have ballots rejected by tabulators.
00:14:10.000 They were not being read in by tabulators, but that's not a disruption when voters still had valid options to participate in dropping in those ballots in our secure door number three.
00:14:21.000 So he considers it not a disruption.
00:14:23.000 The question that Kerry Lake's lawyer should have asked, oh, it was just waiting for you.
00:14:28.000 Okay, Mr. Jarrett, what number of voting centers being inoperable would you say constitutes a disruption?
00:14:36.000 That's like the most simple follow-up question.
00:14:39.000 You were waiting for it.
00:14:40.000 Saying, Mr. Jarrett, if that's not a disruption, by what threshold do you define a disruption?
00:14:48.000 40%, 50%, 60%?
00:14:52.000 Because there are some estimates that show that 58% of all voting centers were inoperable and went down.
00:14:59.000 Cut 75, Rich Barris testifies that those who said they would cast their vote by mail or drop their ballot off completed a questionnaire at a rate of 93%, play cut 75.
00:15:11.000 The bottom line here is that those who said they would cast their vote by mail or drop their ballot off by mail completed their questionnaire at a 93% rate.
00:15:21.000 There are always going to be people who tell you that they're going to participate in your poll, but then don't, especially in exit polls.
00:15:27.000 The rate for election day voters was only 72%.
00:15:32.000 So that doesn't, I can tell you that has never happened to me before, ever.
00:15:36.000 And why is that significant?
00:15:38.000 It's significant because, you know, looking at, we can go through it a lot more in depth, but looking at all the totality of it, there's no explanation for why these voters simply did not come back.
00:15:48.000 They didn't cast their ballot.
00:15:49.000 There's always going to be a difference, but the difference here is almost 20 points.
00:15:53.000 It's roughly 20 percentage points.
00:15:56.000 42 percent of random ballots selected had issues.
00:16:02.000 42 percent of random ballots selected head issues.
00:16:08.000 Rich Barris says, I could tell you this has never happened to me in my professional opinion.
00:16:13.000 I've done many, many of these exit polls.
00:16:15.000 These people didn't complete this questionnaire because they didn't vote.
00:16:18.000 They didn't get to vote.
00:16:19.000 We have evidence of people not being able to vote right here.
00:16:22.000 I pray this judge will hear this and will seek some form of a remedy.
00:16:29.000 This was a botched and ambushed and sabotaged election.
00:16:35.000 That's a massive deal that I just played you in that clip.
00:16:38.000 It means people didn't vote.
00:16:39.000 They were disenfranchised.
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00:17:44.000 With us now is Steve Cortez.
00:17:47.000 You guys have got to check out Steve's substack.
00:17:50.000 Steve, what is your sub stack called?
00:17:52.000 You know, I should know that.
00:17:54.000 If you go to my social media, you'll get there.
00:17:55.000 I think it's just substack.c Cortez.
00:17:57.000 But regardless, if you go to my social media, I'm on Getter.
00:18:00.000 I'm at Steve.
00:18:01.000 Very simple.
00:18:02.000 It's linked there.
00:18:03.000 And it's also linked on my Twitter.
00:18:04.000 I'm at Cortez Steve Cortez with an S.
00:18:06.000 So, Steve, you have a new piece out, which is getting a lot of attention.
00:18:11.000 And I want to dive into it with you.
00:18:13.000 The conservative case for Kevin McCarthy.
00:18:16.000 You say very clearly that you had your doubts before, but three things have changed your mind.
00:18:22.000 Walk us through it, Steve.
00:18:24.000 And by the way, when you say that, you know, I had my doubts, that's to put it mildly.
00:18:24.000 You bet.
00:18:27.000 I have been a very fierce and persistent critic of Kevin McCarthy over the years.
00:18:32.000 Anybody who's followed my writing and my broadcasting knows that I have lambasted him repeatedly and relatively recently.
00:18:38.000 However, he reached out to me and asked me to come in and speak to him, which I thought was a magnanimous move of him.
00:18:45.000 And so I went and saw him and I had a very skeptical view of it, frankly, going into it.
00:18:50.000 But here's why he did, in fact, persuade me that I would support him for speaker.
00:18:54.000 And if I had the vote, I would vote for him for speaker.
00:18:57.000 Number one is that he earned it.
00:18:59.000 And what I mean by that is he won.
00:19:00.000 And this is crucial, okay?
00:19:02.000 No matter what you think of Kevin McCarthy, he put together a campaign apparatus that added Republican seats, 23 of them over the last two cycles, 14 and 9.
00:19:11.000 And he did it through tireless campaigning himself, through excellent candidate selection on the whole.
00:19:17.000 And then most of all, through very aggressive fundraising.
00:19:19.000 You know, Republicans, particularly at the Senate level, were massively out-fundraised.
00:19:23.000 That didn't happen at the House level.
00:19:25.000 As a matter of fact, Kevin McCarthy and his leadership pack massively out-fundraised Nancy Pelosi.
00:19:30.000 So we had the firepower necessary to win.
00:19:33.000 So that's really my first reason simply is that he won and to the winners go the prizes.
00:19:37.000 And he earned that podium, that gavel with his victory.
00:19:41.000 The second part, which is more important to me, and I suspect to most of your audience, is that he is moving to the right.
00:19:46.000 He's somebody who has ideologically not been with us in the past, or at least not consistently so.
00:19:50.000 But he's laying out a very America-first agenda.
00:19:54.000 For example, and this is what I spoke with him about in private, but he's been very public about this as well.
00:19:59.000 I said, will you prioritize the border?
00:20:01.000 Will you make securing the border the number one priority of the Republican House?
00:20:05.000 And will you use every single lever at your disposal, including defunding the government entirely of Biden's programs if necessary, risking Biden shutting the government down?
00:20:14.000 Will you do that to secure the border?
00:20:16.000 He has said that publicly.
00:20:17.000 He also looked me in the eye and said, Yes, that will be priority number one.
00:20:20.000 Other America First type items, he's going to take charlatans like Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell off of committees, Ilhan Olmar off of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
00:20:29.000 He's going to put Marjorie Taylor Greene back on committees, and he promises and lays out a very methodical and aggressive approach toward congressional committee investigations.
00:20:38.000 And then the third reason that I believe we should support him is I don't right now see a credible alternative, at least not politically or ideologically to the right of Kevin McCarthy.
00:20:49.000 And I think there is an urgency.
00:20:50.000 And to me, Charlie, the idea that they would convene on January 3rd, not pick a speaker and engage in days and weeks and perhaps even months of a Republican food fight in front of the nation when the nation just handed the Republican House this mandate of leadership to start to thwart and to start to fight back against the horrible Biden agenda.
00:21:10.000 I think that would be the worst possible use of the mandate that has been given by the people.
00:21:15.000 I think it would make Republicans in the America First movement look foolish in front of the American people. 0.74
00:21:19.000 So the urgency of the moment convinces me that we need to coalesce.
00:21:23.000 There's not a credible alternative to the right, and that we need to vote for Kevin McCarthy, somebody I've been super skeptical of for a very long time, who I now believe deserves our support with accountability, of course.
00:21:34.000 I mean, that's the other key part here.
00:21:35.000 If he does not do what he's promised, if this is just about expediency, and if he's just fooling people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and President Trump and Steve Cortez and I think Charlie Kirk, if he's fooling us, well, shame on us, number one, for being fooled, but number two, we will absolutely hold his feet to the fire for this agenda.
00:21:51.000 So, Steve, can you walk us through what we are headed towards on one three?
00:21:58.000 So, Matt Gates was at Amfest.
00:22:01.000 I think very highly of Matt Gates, but he says we might not have a speaker to the cherry blossoms bloom.
00:22:07.000 Right.
00:22:08.000 There are some hard no's, there's some maybes.
00:22:11.000 Let's pretend that Matt Gates gets his way and he blocks Kevin McCarthy, which I know a lot of people in this audience support.
00:22:19.000 What does that mean to have a house without a speaker?
00:22:22.000 It means essentially there is no house.
00:22:24.000 That's the unfortunate reality.
00:22:25.000 And this is, I think, the world of Matt Gates as well.
00:22:27.000 And as a matter of fact, when I was on Capitol Hill last week after I saw Kevin McCarthy, my very next stop was the office of Matt Gates.
00:22:33.000 And obviously, he and I don't agree on this, but it's very rare that I disagree with him.
00:22:36.000 And I think the world of him, he's done enormous good for his district and this country.
00:22:40.000 We just disagree.
00:22:41.000 This is a family squad.
00:22:42.000 He was treated so terribly by the media and the DOJ.
00:22:45.000 But sorry, continue.
00:22:46.000 Yeah, totally.
00:22:46.000 No, but listen, and I view this as a family squabble.
00:22:49.000 I mean, we are still family.
00:22:50.000 We still share the same agenda.
00:22:51.000 It's a matter of disagreeing on the tactics on how to get there.
00:22:54.000 And he makes very valid, reasonable points, okay?
00:22:57.000 We both just have a different opinion on this, and we'll see eventually who's right.
00:23:01.000 Here's my biggest problem, though, with the Gates agenda.
00:23:04.000 If we were to not have a speaker, and I think he thinks it's okay for us to go to the cherry blossoms till springtime in Washington, D.C. without a speaker, literally nothing happens.
00:23:13.000 When I say there's no house, I'm not exaggerating.
00:23:14.000 You cannot swear in the members.
00:23:16.000 There are no committee assignments.
00:23:18.000 There is no committee work.
00:23:19.000 It is as if there is no House of Representatives, which means the status quo would persist until a speaker is chosen.
00:23:26.000 Those are simply the House rules.
00:23:27.000 I wish the rules weren't that way, but that is simply the reality.
00:23:31.000 So a speaker needs to be chosen.
00:23:33.000 And again, I think needs to be chosen relatively quickly.
00:23:36.000 My hope, of course, would be first ballot.
00:23:38.000 That very well probably will not happen on the first ballot.
00:23:41.000 But I do think that The caucus is going to coalesce sooner than people think.
00:23:47.000 I would also caution this: for people who say, Listen, McCarthy is too squished for me.
00:23:51.000 He's been too moderate in the past.
00:23:52.000 He's too wishy-washy.
00:23:53.000 Again, I understand all of that.
00:23:54.000 Believe me, again, if you look at my public record, I have been brutal of this guy in the past.
00:23:59.000 Here's the other risk, though, of not going with Kevin McCarthy: we could get somebody well to the left of him.
00:24:05.000 You know, remember, there is a significant caucus of moderates within the Republican Party.
00:24:10.000 And we may not like that, but this is the political reality we face.
00:24:10.000 I mean, there just is.
00:24:13.000 It's not the team that we want to put in the game, it's the team that we have on the floor right now.
00:24:17.000 And there are dozens of Republicans who are very moderate, if not center-left in their orientation.
00:24:24.000 Now, they are willing to accept Kevin McCarthy and willing to accept his very conservative agenda that he's laying out for now.
00:24:31.000 But if Kevin McCarthy suddenly isn't a candidate who can win, the reality is we may end up with somebody well to the left of Kevin McCarthy.
00:24:39.000 And I think that would be a disaster.
00:24:41.000 And so this is a fear that is no longer an abstraction, which is we win the house and there is no house.
00:24:41.000 Yeah.
00:24:52.000 And so think about it.
00:24:53.000 Let's try to play some three-dimensional chess here.
00:24:56.000 Hmm.
00:24:57.000 They're about to pass an omnibus that will basically make the Congress irrelevant to September 30th.
00:25:04.000 Kevin McCarthy's a no on the omnibus.
00:25:06.000 Is that right?
00:25:07.000 Oh, hard no.
00:25:08.000 He's a hell no.
00:25:09.000 He says hell no. 0.95
00:25:10.000 So he says hell no.
00:25:10.000 Yes.
00:25:10.000 Okay.
00:25:12.000 Now, the critics are saying he's just doing that because they don't need the house.
00:25:17.000 The people that are supporting Kevin are saying it's because he believes it and it's a hell no.
00:25:22.000 It's actually completely irrelevant what his intentions are.
00:25:26.000 He's a no, so that's good. 1.00
00:25:28.000 Okay.
00:25:29.000 So if there is no need for a Congress because of the omnibus, this could be a way for the Unit Party to try to say, hey, so what if you don't have a speaker?
00:25:41.000 Then you don't have what?
00:25:43.000 Any oversight of Maorkis?
00:25:44.000 You have no oversight of Garland.
00:25:47.000 You have no oversight of the southern border.
00:25:49.000 You have no oversight of Ray.
00:25:51.000 So Steve, not having a speaker would be a tragedy, wouldn't it?
00:25:57.000 100%.
00:25:58.000 And again, the urgency of the situation.
00:26:00.000 If this were sort of normal times, Charlie, I might be more apt to say, okay, let's have this food fight essentially in front of the American people because we can spend the time, right?
00:26:10.000 There's nothing urgent that needs to be done in January.
00:26:12.000 It can be done, you know, in April or May.
00:26:14.000 That's not the position we're in, right?
00:26:16.000 Because of what Joe Biden has done to this country, because of the created crises, plural, right?
00:26:20.000 Particularly the economic crisis, the economic stagnation that we are in, stagflation that we're in because of Joe Biden, but then also the border situation, which again, and that's why to me, there's many important issues, but to me, that is issue number one.
00:26:34.000 If the border continues to spiral out of control, the manner in which it is unfolding today, we will cease to have an America.
00:26:42.000 We will cease to have anything like the republic that we were born in, that our parents grew up in.
00:26:47.000 That is simply the reality.
00:26:48.000 That's the urgency of the moment right now.
00:26:50.000 And given that urgency, again, we need the lever of power that we're going to have in Washington, D.C. is the House, because we earned it, quite frankly, because the American people voted by a significant margin, even in the popular vote, which is a rarity in America, voted by a significant margin to give that mandate of power to the Republican Party, to give that speaker's gavel to a Republican.
00:27:12.000 I think it would be an absolute shame.
00:27:15.000 It would be a tragedy if we don't grab that gavel and take it and use it effectively to begin to fight back against Biden.
00:27:22.000 I just think intra-party squabbling for weeks and potentially months would do enormous damage to the country and it would do enormous long-term damage to the Republican Party and to the America First Movement.
00:27:34.000 The piece that Steve Cortez has published is the conservative case for Kevin McCarthy.
00:27:39.000 I encourage you guys to read it.
00:27:41.000 I find many parts of it to be very persuasive.
00:27:43.000 And I want your thoughts.
00:27:44.000 Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.
00:27:47.000 What are your thoughts on the speaker's race?
00:27:49.000 The general sentiment is not very favorable to Kevin McCarthy.
00:27:53.000 However, a growing concern that our audience has is, but Charlie, I don't want to lose the House in the process.
00:28:01.000 Which is very possible.
00:28:03.000 So, Steve, can you walk us through the motion to vacate the chair?
00:28:08.000 What is all the drama surrounding this issue?
00:28:11.000 I don't quite understand it as well as I should, and I'm sure our audience is equally as curious.
00:28:16.000 Sure.
00:28:17.000 By the way, just quickly, because one of your audience members suggested Newt Gingrich for speaker, which I would love, by the way.
00:28:17.000 No, happy to get that.
00:28:22.000 I don't think it's a realistic possibility, but I happen to notice because it's linked in my Newsweek article, there's also an op-ed in Newsweek from Newt Gingrich arguing in favor of Kevin McCarthy.
00:28:34.000 So just for the record, and listen, by the way, I know there's a lot of people out there frustrated and angry at me right now, people who support me, people who are political allies of mine are disappointed, particularly because they know how critical I have been, you know, really kind of fiercely so about Kevin McCarthy in the past.
00:28:50.000 But I'm trying to explain, and I look, I could be wrong, okay, but I'm trying to explain that from a place of principle, I believe that this is where we reach our objectives is via electing Kevin McCarthy.
00:29:01.000 And we'll see what happens.
00:29:02.000 But to answer your question about vacate the chair, so it's a matter of in terms of if the speaker were to, if there were a movement to overturn the speaker.
00:29:08.000 So if Kevin McCarthy or anybody else were elected as speaker, it is difficult to get a vote to the floor or a vote even to even to committees, but much less to the floor without the agreement of the speaker.
00:29:19.000 It's one of the reasons the speaker of the house is so powerful, very unlike the Senate, where every senator has a lot of individual power, not that way at all in the House.
00:29:28.000 So the motion to vacate is about saying essentially that they are stipulated that the chair is vacated and that we need to vote on it, that there is no speaker.
00:29:37.000 So it's a way to topple the speaker.
00:29:39.000 And the disagreement right now is over what should be that threshold.
00:29:42.000 What some of the critics of McCarthy want, what Matt Gates is arguing for, is that it should just take one single member out of the 435 in the House to be able to say motion to vacate and that they can do that with no other support rather than a single person.
00:29:55.000 And what Kevin McCarthy, I think, reasonably says is, I'm okay with having that method in place, but let's have the threshold be higher than one.
00:30:02.000 And I said, well, how high do you need?
00:30:04.000 And look, parliamentary tactics are not my bailiwick, okay?
00:30:07.000 This is not my expertise.
00:30:08.000 I said, you know, five, 10.
00:30:10.000 He said, sure, in that range.
00:30:11.000 So just so that there is a group of people who have a significant problem with the speaker.
00:30:14.000 And what Kevin McCarthy said to me was, for example, I don't want Eric Swalbo because he's so angry that I kicked him off the intelligence committee to stand up every single day and waste our time by putting one of these motions forward.
00:30:25.000 To me, that seems reasonable.
00:30:27.000 He's not saying it can't exist at all.
00:30:29.000 He's saying it should be a single member.
00:30:30.000 There will be some flex in the joints.
00:30:32.000 So Nancy Pelosi got rid of it altogether.
00:30:34.000 If it's, hey, if 10 members come together and say we want to vacate the chair, I suppose the only counter argument is, I mean, 10 Democrats could easily come together, but so what?
00:30:46.000 At that point, it would make it harder because then you have to call the order.
00:30:53.000 So you think that there might be a negotiation around that?
00:30:56.000 Because I personally believe there does need to be some mechanism to vacate the chair.
00:31:01.000 I don't think that Pelosi's rules are a good idea at all.
00:31:05.000 Correct.
00:31:05.000 Oh, 100%.
00:31:06.000 I'm with you there.
00:31:07.000 Yes, absolutely.
00:31:08.000 But I think there's flexibility there.
00:31:10.000 And again, I'm not an expert at all in parliamentary tactics, but Kevin McCarthy seems to be reasonable.
00:31:14.000 He doesn't want it to be single member.
00:31:16.000 I also think that's pretty reasonable.
00:31:18.000 Okay.
00:31:18.000 So the other question here, though, is that some people are saying, Charlie, you know, disagrees with Steve.
00:31:25.000 Don't want to bombard you with that, Steve, but there's a fair amount of disagreement.
00:31:28.000 And people are saying that, you know, McCarthy and McConnell and McDaniel are all the same.
00:31:33.000 I'm going to stand up for you here.
00:31:35.000 I don't believe that.
00:31:36.000 I don't.
00:31:38.000 Plenty fine to have objections and disagreements, but McConnell and McDaniel have behaved in a completely different way.
00:31:47.000 Can you build that out a little bit?
00:31:49.000 Do you agree with that assessment?
00:31:50.000 And by the way, just for the record, that's been President Trump's opinion the whole time.
00:31:54.000 If you've noticed, President Trump has been extremely publicly critical of McConnell.
00:31:58.000 He's occasionally a bit critical of Kevin McCarthy, but not really.
00:32:01.000 And as a matter of fact, I have urged him over the last several years to speak the same way about McCarthy he does about McConnell.
00:32:08.000 He always made the case to me, which I am now agreeing with, that he is fundamentally different, meaning that, look, we may not view Kevin McCarthy as intrinsically sort of hardcore America first, and he's not.
00:32:21.000 However, he doesn't fight against our agenda, and he is very persuadable on many elements of our agenda.
00:32:27.000 Whereas Mitch McConnell is a committed establishmentarian.
00:32:31.000 He's a committed worst.
00:32:33.000 And yeah, he's a committed uniparty activist.
00:32:35.000 And here's another significant difference: McConnell lost.
00:32:38.000 He didn't win the Senate.
00:32:39.000 McDaniel lost overwhelmingly relative to expectations.
00:32:42.000 McCarthy won.
00:32:43.000 It matters to win. 0.91
00:32:44.000 Yeah, Rana's too busy attacking Turning Point.
00:32:46.000 I don't know if you saw that yesterday.
00:32:48.000 The one youth organization that's actually trying to do something and doing it successfully.
00:32:53.000 I will just say this in closing, though, is that there's two ways to view it, right?
00:32:57.000 So Matt Gates says, we have a narrow majority.
00:33:00.000 Now's the time to oust Kevin.
00:33:03.000 Okay.
00:33:03.000 A lot of people in our audience believe that.
00:33:05.000 In inverse, though, is you have a narrow majority.
00:33:07.000 So therefore, you could have the most conservative Congress in American history.
00:33:12.000 So we'll see what they end up choosing.
00:33:13.000 Steve, we're out of time.
00:33:14.000 Thank you.
00:33:15.000 I encourage you guys to check out his piece, The Conservative Case for Kevin McCarthy.
00:33:18.000 Thanks so much, Steve.
00:33:19.000 You bet.
00:33:20.000 Thank you.
00:33:21.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:33:22.000 Email me your thoughts as always: freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:33:26.000 Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.
00:33:31.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.