The Charlie Kirk Show - The Odyssey of JD Vance

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

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00:01:17.000 All right.

00:01:17.000 Welcome, everybody, to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:19.000 It is July 20th, 2026.

00:01:23.000 Blake's holding it down in Phoenix, Arizona at the YRefi Studios.

00:01:27.000 We've got lots of news to cover this morning, a lot of breaking news, unfortunately, out of New York City, where a suspect is in custody now after.

00:01:36.000 An incendiary device was set off outside a federal building, which just so happens to house the ICE facilities.

00:01:44.000 Let's go ahead and play a quick recap video here just to get everybody up to speed and explain why and how this is so important to our current moment, SOT 6.

00:01:53.000 Here in New York and lower Manhattan, new video of the scene at 26 Federal Plaza.

00:01:58.000 Now, this was apparently, according to the FBI, someone deployed an incendiary device, as you can see from that smoke, and it's no small matter here.

00:02:06.000 That building, so there's what appears to be, yeah, the individual taken away.

00:02:14.000 A person has been apprehended.

00:02:15.000 That was the information we had.

00:02:17.000 That building houses the FBI New York field office.

00:02:20.000 It also houses the New York immigration court, among other things.

00:02:23.000 The FBI is saying an individual has been taken away, and the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force will now investigate.

00:02:30.000 All right, so you've got the federal building that houses the FBI field office and immigration court.

00:02:36.000 This Obviously, Blake, and you see all that smoke billowing up in the air.

00:02:40.000 This obviously, the first thought we have is this is politically motivated by the usual suspects.

00:02:48.000 Exactly.

00:02:49.000 It's, I mean, we've seen these attacks.

00:02:51.000 We've seen shooting attacks on ICE facilities.

00:02:53.000 We've seen blockades of ICE facilities.

00:02:56.000 And what especially stood out about this, and this is pointed out by one of our producers, is this came basically about one day after Tom Holman said, hey, we're going to be doing immigration enforcement.

00:03:10.000 In New York City, that was all because Mayor Mamdani was gloating in an interview that we're a sanctuary city, we're not going to be cooperating with any immigration enforcement efforts in the city.

00:03:21.000 And so, the federal government needs to lay down the law, they need to show that federal law still exists in New York City.

00:03:27.000 So, Tom Holman doesn't announce any particular operations, just says we're going to be doing stuff in New York.

00:03:33.000 And lo and behold, 24 hours later, some lunatic goes and tries to start a fire, set off bombs, you know, cause mayhem, possibly kill people.

00:03:45.000 Already, my thought is immediately going to obviously they'll charge this guy with a federal crime, but how much of a lift is it going to be to imprison someone for a very clear cut terrorism related crime in New York City if his claim justification is I'm fighting the Trump administration, I'm fighting deportations?

00:04:06.000 That's immediately what my mind goes to.

00:04:09.000 Isn't that it's a terrible indictment of the political moment we live in, Blake, where we can't rely on juries to do basic.

00:04:17.000 Things right now in these deep blue districts.

00:04:20.000 It's really, really a terrifying moment.

00:04:22.000 Let's go ahead and you mentioned this Tom Homan clip.

00:04:25.000 So let's go ahead and play this.

00:04:26.000 This is, again, just a day or two ago where Tom Homan was asked about Mayor Mamdani.

00:04:31.000 He replies and says, You know, we're going to be continuing our operations in New York City.

00:04:36.000 Stop 15.

00:04:38.000 ICE is operating in New York City today.

00:04:41.000 We're operating across the state today, but there's going to be a surge and there needs to be a surge.

00:04:44.000 But I am not going to show our hand because, you know, There are groups, well funded groups, will try to impede, interfere.

00:04:52.000 We're not going to give them any upside on this.

00:04:55.000 Fair enough.

00:04:56.000 And I guess that strategy actually worked out.

00:04:58.000 That strategy worked out.

00:05:00.000 Because he says, I'm not going to tell you where we're going.

00:05:03.000 I'm not going to tell you our operation.

00:05:04.000 We're not going to tip our hand. 0.93

00:05:06.000 And so instead, left wing lunatic tipped his hand. 0.57

00:05:09.000 He didn't have any operation to target. 0.84

00:05:10.000 So he just tried to set fire to a big federal building.

00:05:13.000 And I think, all things considered, that's preferable because he's just attacking a.

00:05:20.000 Building in downtown Manhattan when he could be hindering an actual ICE operation, putting agents more directly in danger, stopping people who should not be in this country from getting arrested.

00:05:32.000 So I guess Tom Holman's strategy worked out there, but hopefully we can get this guy in prison.

00:05:37.000 Yeah, you know, exactly.

00:05:39.000 So the point is there's got to be accountability one way or another on whoever did this.

00:05:43.000 The suspect is in custody as we speak, which is great.

00:05:47.000 But this is probably, I would put dollars to donuts here.

00:05:51.000 Blake, that we're going to find out this was a DSA guy or some radical leftist, anarchist, Antifa, somebody that's inspired by radical left wing ideology, right?

00:06:01.000 And this is bringing up a massive, massive debate that's ongoing.

00:06:06.000 Currently, right now, there was a post from Jordan Peterson that went viral over the weekend talking about ultimately this ideology is rooted in resentment and bitterness.

00:06:16.000 You had this great speech by Rubio, actually, a 10 out of 10 speech, phenomenal, phenomenal speech from Rubio talking about.

00:06:24.000 How ultimately leftism and socialism, communism, this rise that we're seeing, this DSA rise across the country, is rooted in resentment, a wanting to tear down productive people in our society.

00:06:37.000 And what you're starting to see is what I call stage five of this process, where people double and triple down on bad ideas, bad theories.

00:06:47.000 They refuse to be cowed by logic or evidence.

00:06:51.000 You start seeing defections, okay?

00:06:53.000 Stage five is the defection phase when you look through a series like this where people posit.

00:06:59.000 Terrible ideas, and they get challenged on them, and then they double down on it.

00:07:02.000 And then, guess what?

00:07:03.000 Defections.

00:07:04.000 You've got John Fetterman, who is now threatening to leave the Democrat Party.

00:07:09.000 You've got Bill Maher, who is now on record with, I believe, Jonathan Carl.

00:07:13.000 And we have these clips saying he's willing to consider voting for JD Vance.

00:07:17.000 You might remember that Bill Maher just interviewed JD Vance, was, I think, charmed by him, thought he sounded like a reasonable guy.

00:07:24.000 And he's threatening to do this.

00:07:27.000 There's multiple pieces of evidence here that show they might be jumping the shark.

00:07:33.000 They might be going too far.

00:07:35.000 You even have Van Jones attacking the DSA, right?

00:07:39.000 So, this is a new wrinkle in everything.

00:07:43.000 I believe we've got this clip from Jan Jones, 23.

00:07:47.000 I am tired, tired, tired of a set of people on the very far left in the Democratic Party, my party, telling us that in order for us to be progressives, we now have to believe ideas and support ideas that are completely nuts.

00:08:02.000 I am a progressive Democrat.

00:08:04.000 But what does that have to do with supporting Hamas?

00:08:07.000 What does that have to do with putting up candidates who say we should have no police?

00:08:12.000 No prisons.

00:08:13.000 We can't deport anybody, even if they commit rape or murder.

00:08:17.000 We want people to join this party.

00:08:20.000 When people come to the party, you want to give them a wonderful punch bowl of wonderful ideas like this.

00:08:25.000 Who is putting the poop in the punch bowl? 0.94

00:08:28.000 The people who are promoting these nutty, crazy, backwards ideas are party poopers. 0.99

00:08:35.000 Literally, they're coming to the party and pooping in our punch bowl. 0.96

00:08:39.000 And they need to stop.

00:08:42.000 He's really into that imagery.

00:08:45.000 Yes.

00:08:46.000 There's some emojis you should be using if that was a text message.

00:08:49.000 Yeah.

00:08:50.000 Regardless of the imagery, you're starting to see a little bit of a formation.

00:08:56.000 I almost, and by the way, we're going to get into this later in the hour.

00:08:59.000 We've got Michael Knowles joining us at 12 30 Eastern.

00:09:02.000 And we're going to talk about some of the messaging around specifically JD Vance.

00:09:07.000 But you see already the counter argument forming where you've got people that JD Vance is going to uniquely appeal to, that he could expand the coalition in sort of a new direction.

00:09:18.000 I'm just, Floating it out there.

00:09:20.000 All right.

00:09:20.000 So, Blake, we're talking about how there is actually a potential to expand the tent a little bit when we see DSA.

00:09:29.000 Listen, nobody here on this show is going to celebrate the rise of DSA.

00:09:34.000 I think it's a symptom of a deeper problem and a deeper rot in the country.

00:09:40.000 Do not get me wrong.

00:09:41.000 But we are now forced to live in this new reality where they are on the rise.

00:09:45.000 And there is an opportunity, if that's going to be the case, to use that against them because.

00:09:51.000 You see their influence within the Democrat establishment and their, honestly, the party apparatus, the grassroots apparatus on the left.

00:09:58.000 It's expanding, okay?

00:10:00.000 And this is starting to raise alarm bells with people that are more centrist in nature, right?

00:10:04.000 Sot 10, this is Bill Maher telling Jonathan Carl that he's considering voting for JD Vance.

00:10:11.000 Yes, this is a real clip.

00:10:12.000 This is not AI.

00:10:13.000 Sot 10.

00:10:14.000 You told JD Vance you're open, your vote is up for grabs.

00:10:18.000 Yes, my vote is in play because it can't be Trump running.

00:10:23.000 So.

00:10:24.000 I'm not living in communist America.

00:10:26.000 I mean, I know the talking point is that it's not communism, it's socialism.

00:10:31.000 Okay, I've read the quotes from the DSA platform, from their own mouths.

00:10:38.000 Don't tell me I'm not seeing what I am seeing.

00:10:41.000 And DSA, again, they say things like, you know, takeover of key industries, government.

00:10:48.000 That's communism.

00:10:49.000 You know, there is a definition.

00:10:51.000 By the way, Trump's doing that, too.

00:10:53.000 I love that Jonathan Carl's trying to, like, divert the.

00:10:56.000 Whole conversation back to Trump bad.

00:10:59.000 But, Blake, what do you make of this?

00:11:00.000 And do you think it's a real phenomenon, a real trend that could emerge?

00:11:04.000 It's going to be some.

00:11:05.000 There's definitely going to be people who are bugged out by this.

00:11:09.000 What I worry is it could be a little too easy to overstate it.

00:11:13.000 I think people who are really, I think the sliver of people who are left of center, but strongly ideologically opposed to real socialism, the aggressive DSA stuff, is probably not that big and it's probably pretty centered.

00:11:28.000 In a few very blue states.

00:11:30.000 What I worry about with DSA is I worry that their brand of, let's just say it, economic illiteracy, aggressive leveling, aggressive burn it down.

00:11:40.000 I worry a lot of that could have a lot of popularity in middle America, in a lot of the states that swung towards Trump in both of his elections, in all three of his elections.

00:11:51.000 I worry that that could appeal to a lot of those people because there still is a lot of energy in favor of blow the system up, burn stuff down.

00:12:01.000 And a lot of that anger, it's still there.

00:12:03.000 It's still rising in a lot of places.

00:12:05.000 And so I think of the opportunity, but the opportunity is coupled with the need to be offering a path where people have a stake in the country.

00:12:16.000 Otherwise, they are going to be won over by these hucksters who are frankly happy to destroy their country.

00:12:22.000 And all I can think of is in the UK, the UK has been sharply going downhill, and their DSA equivalent, the Green Party, is rising.

00:12:31.000 That party could 100%.

00:12:33.000 Win the next British election and in favor of open borders, mass socialism, let's all be poor.

00:12:39.000 It's rising in Canada.

00:12:40.000 It's rising in a lot of countries.

00:12:43.000 So it's good that we might be able to win over the figures like Bill Maher, but I wouldn't use that as an opportunity to be smug or feel super confident.

00:12:53.000 This is a very scary thing that's coming to America.

00:12:56.000 No, no, no.

00:12:57.000 And just to be clear, I agree with that.

00:13:00.000 That's why we stated very clearly this is not a good thing that you're seeing DSA rise.

00:13:04.000 It is a Symptom of a deeper rot in our country.

00:13:08.000 And this is why it's always important to say to our political leaders, this is a direct appeal to conservatives, real conservatives in DC and elsewhere, that we are in a race against the clock. 0.77

00:13:18.000 We have to improve the economic conditions of Americans, of working class Americans right here at home.

00:13:25.000 We have to focus domestically, or else all of these other foreign abstractions, these foreign entanglements, will distract us from the core job that we must get accomplished in the next two years.

00:13:35.000 And that is.

00:13:36.000 Improving the lives of real Americans, working class Americans.

00:13:40.000 Fundamentally, at its core, President Trump was re elected because people had a memory of Trump 1.0 of having more money in their pockets than when they did under Joe Biden.

00:13:51.000 That was fundamentally what got the white working class on board.

00:13:54.000 That's what got the minority working class on board, Hispanics, blacks in greater numbers.

00:13:59.000 It's what got young people on board because they believed that it was going to be a restoration of the American dream, the American promise.

00:14:06.000 And so we have to stay focused on that.

00:14:08.000 But this.

00:14:10.000 I think peeling away at some of the edges of the Democrat coalition because they refuse to police their own ranks of some of these insane ideas like abolishing prisons, abolishing deportations, all of these things are nuts.

00:14:23.000 And if you think Bill Maher is overstating things, he's not. 0.71

00:14:27.000 They are very clear that they want to seize the means of production in Momdani's New York.

00:14:32.000 That's communism.

00:14:34.000 That is communism.

00:14:35.000 Yeah, they might get in through elected office.

00:14:37.000 That's apparently the big difference, right?

00:14:39.000 They don't believe in bloody revolution.

00:14:41.000 If you're a DSA, you believe in.

00:14:42.000 Getting it through elected processes.

00:14:45.000 But once you're in elected office, well, then, yeah, it might get bloody if you start stealing people's wealth.

00:14:51.000 As Mike Lee is saying beautifully online, you know, there's this whole rage against the billionaire class.

00:14:57.000 Yeah, billionaires have a lot of money, but that doesn't make it yours.

00:14:59.000 That doesn't mean you have a right to it.

00:15:01.000 You're not entitled to it.

00:15:02.000 You didn't earn it.

00:15:03.000 You didn't build it.

00:15:04.000 I would still love to see that.

00:15:05.000 Elon Musk is their person they most hate.

00:15:06.000 The problem is, unfortunately, we've changed America a lot, and America has a lot of people who do just feel entitled to a billionaire's wealth.

00:15:13.000 They do.

00:15:14.000 Not see a downside to seizing it.

00:15:16.000 So the point that needs to be emphasized politically is when these people talk about equity, they're not just talking about the equity in SpaceX.

00:15:24.000 They're talking about your home equity.

00:15:25.000 They're talking, they like their plan in New York right now is basically to seize and like basically take state control of every rented building in the city of New York.

00:15:34.000 That's their plan for rent control.

00:15:36.000 You've got to really emphasize those personal bits.

00:15:38.000 Like abolish the police means criminals will roam free in your town.

00:15:42.000 Socialism is going to mean they take your stuff.

00:15:45.000 That's, I think, the only way we're going to be able to hold off this tide.

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00:16:51.000 Without further ado, Michael, Michael Knowles, host of the Michael Knowles Show, welcome back to the show.

00:16:57.000 It's good to see you, my friend.

00:16:58.000 Good to see you, gentlemen.

00:16:59.000 Thanks for having me.

00:17:00.000 Well, so Michael, I wanted to have you on because this show and yours have become the focus for a certain variety of critics online.

00:17:10.000 And namely, it's because of the way we reacted to JD Vance's interview on Joe Rogan.

00:17:17.000 He obviously made some comments about what he perceived to be a communication strategy meant to undermine his MOU negotiations that the president had dispatched him on.

00:17:29.000 There was a Time Magazine article that suggested that maybe it was an organized effort.

00:17:34.000 To undermine those efforts, to undermine peace negotiations in the Middle East.

00:17:38.000 And you and us took some fire because, you know, I don't know what they're alleging, but, you know, a lot of people don't like the way we approached it.

00:17:48.000 Help us unpack this.

00:17:49.000 What is really going on here, Michael Knowles?

00:17:52.000 Well, I think from the outset, for people who've never worked on a political campaign, it's a little bit confusing, especially if you haven't worked in the political media.

00:17:59.000 However, if you haven't worked in those things, you know exactly what's going on, which is that people are always running these kinds of messaging campaigns.

00:18:07.000 Whether they're geared at supporting or harming a certain candidate or an idea or a policy.

00:18:12.000 That's what's going on.

00:18:13.000 And in fact, that was the vice president's great transgression he just cited this Time magazine article, which said there was a campaign against the MOU or advocating for one position in the Iran war or the other.

00:18:26.000 And for that, the way that I got kind of plugged into this was there was some account on X that tagged all three of us expressing dismay specifically about the Charlie Kirk show.

00:18:41.000 I looked into it.

00:18:43.000 I see all these things on social media all the time.

00:18:45.000 So I looked into it, and the account, if the account is a real person, ostensibly it would be an Iranian person living in Germany.

00:18:54.000 So not an American, not living in America, has nothing to do with America whatsoever.

00:18:59.000 And I responded, I said, I'm sorry you don't like the American vice president, but I don't really care.

00:19:05.000 Why are you weighing in on this?

00:19:07.000 And then all these sorts of, whether they're artificial accounts, whether they're Real people who are organized in some way, whether they're individuals just expressing their opinion, they all kind of jump in and you get info op over info op over info op.

00:19:21.000 And it's all very tedious, but that is just how politics works.

00:19:25.000 And the only part of it to me, I don't take offense on behalf of me or my show.

00:19:32.000 I think it goes with the territory and politics and political media.

00:19:36.000 One thing that has driven me a little bit crazy, though, as it pertains to the Charlie Kirk show, is that everybody since Charlie was killed wants to speak for Charlie.

00:19:45.000 Here's what Charlie would have said in this instance.

00:19:46.000 Here's what Charlie would have said.

00:19:48.000 Coincidentally, Charlie would have agreed with me on whatever my hobby horse of the day is.

00:19:51.000 People do this a lot when people die and.

00:19:54.000 They've done it a lot with Charlie.

00:19:56.000 And it just really gets under my skin when people do that generally, and especially when people who didn't know Charlie that well, were not particularly close with him, in some cases, like actively didn't like him and undermined the things that he was doing, when they have the temerity to say that they're speaking for Charlie now.

00:20:16.000 And I guess it really got under my skin when it comes to the vice president, because we all know that Charlie was very good friends with the vice president and was very supportive of him.

00:20:25.000 Again, no one wishes to speak for him now.

00:20:28.000 One cannot do that.

00:20:30.000 But the artificiality of it all, the contrivance of it all, is just so deeply frustrating, especially as we head into the midterm elections and then into heating up for the 2028 campaigns.

00:20:43.000 It just, at a personal level, I find it all very distasteful.

00:20:48.000 Well, thank you, Michael.

00:20:49.000 And I really appreciate that about everyone wants to speak for Charlie.

00:20:56.000 I hope Andrew and I have done a good job, for example, on the Iran war, where we usually will say, We don't know exactly what Charlie would say about how things have unfolded the past six months.

00:21:08.000 Here is how he responded to Midnight Hammer.

00:21:10.000 Here is what he said and did while he was alive.

00:21:13.000 And here is our best guess about what he might do.

00:21:17.000 And we try to honor that.

00:21:18.000 And we try to show people what he said.

00:21:21.000 And it's true.

00:21:22.000 It's not just that a lot of people speak for Charlie, a lot of people want.

00:21:26.000 To have Charlie's guidance.

00:21:27.000 We get emails about that.

00:21:28.000 People will ask us how Charlie approached different things.

00:21:32.000 And we try to do that.

00:21:33.000 But a lot of people, they do clearly want to hijack his tremendous legacy for their personal hobby horse.

00:21:41.000 And as he said with Vance, here's what we know what Charlie said about JD Vance he loved him, he endorsed him extremely early, so early that they got ahead of things and had to go clear it up with donors afterwards because we weren't fully prepared for it yet.

00:21:55.000 And he said, When people would say, Are you going to run for president or whatever?

00:21:58.000 He would say, I don't need to because I have JD Vance there and I feel he's completely aligned with my politics.

00:22:04.000 That's what he said about the vice president.

00:22:07.000 Bingo.

00:22:07.000 Yes.

00:22:07.000 You know, Michael, I know nothing of this experience that you're speaking of of people that used to attack Charlie and now act like they could speak for him.

00:22:17.000 I've never personally experienced that at all.

00:22:20.000 It's news.

00:22:20.000 You're hearing it for the first time.

00:22:23.000 Breaking right here on the Charlie Kirk Show, let me show you some of his tweets.

00:22:28.000 We just had a few of them up.

00:22:29.000 This is when it was announced.

00:22:30.000 Breaking.

00:22:31.000 JD Vance is President Trump's vice president pick.

00:22:33.000 A great choice by Trump.

00:22:35.000 Let's win this thing.

00:22:37.000 That was on July 15, 2024.

00:22:40.000 This is from January 24, 2025.

00:22:43.000 I want everyone to stop and appreciate how fortunate we all are to have Vice President JD Vance, the second highest ranking official in the country, proudly speaking at the March for Life.

00:22:52.000 He was so great for this.

00:22:53.000 It's time for an American family renaissance.

00:22:54.000 This is, again, something J.D. and Charlie shared.

00:22:58.000 This is from August 29th, 2024.

00:23:00.000 JD Vance's messaging discipline is extraordinary.

00:23:04.000 Since being picked as Trump's VP, his pace has been ferocious both on the trail and in the media without a single gaff or slip up.

00:23:10.000 Incredible feat in the modern era.

00:23:13.000 He goes on.

00:23:14.000 This is February 29th, 2024.

00:23:17.000 When we talk about vice presidential candidates, this is, I believe, before he got picked.

00:23:21.000 Here's a key reason why JD Vance should be seriously considered.

00:23:23.000 Democrats are increasingly concerned that AZ and GA are getting out of reach, so they're putting a ton of money into the blue wall.

00:23:30.000 They're spending big in Wisconsin, PA, and Michigan.

00:23:34.000 JD Vance speaks the language of the Rust Belt.

00:23:37.000 Here's one that feels very relevant to our current moment.

00:23:40.000 This is from October 1st, 2024.

00:23:44.000 Trump took a ton of heat for trusting his gut and selecting JD Vance as his VP.

00:23:48.000 A massive lobbying effort, Michael.

00:23:50.000 We wouldn't know anything about what a lobbying effort could look like.

00:23:53.000 Happened behind the scenes to block JD.

00:23:55.000 Trump persisted. 0.66

00:23:56.000 Once again, Trump is vindicated.

00:23:58.000 Trump was right yet again.

00:24:00.000 How about that?

00:24:02.000 You know, this is where when people will sometimes ask me, because I think you're so right, people do really miss Charlie's guidance.

00:24:11.000 He was a singular figure when it came to maintaining and curating a conservative coalition, but he was also a thought leader and he was also an operative and he was doing all of those things.

00:24:21.000 And so they'll ask me, what do you think Charlie would have thought about this, that, or the other thing?

00:24:25.000 And I have opinions.

00:24:26.000 And I'm pretty sure I'm right, by the way, on any number of these questions.

00:24:30.000 And I usually say, look, it's really not.

00:24:32.000 You know Michael.

00:24:33.000 Yeah, yes, I did know him very well.

00:24:36.000 But I say, look, it's really not my position to state that.

00:24:39.000 Here are some things he said, whatever.

00:24:40.000 You guys have an actual institutional responsibility to answer those questions in a way that I do not.

00:24:47.000 And I think you've done a very good job at it, as you just did now.

00:24:50.000 But from the standpoint of the Charlie Kirk show and TPUSA, you really do have an institutional responsibility to do that.

00:24:57.000 And, you know, it is going to be dialed up a lot because we are now in this kind of shadow war for the 2028 presidential nomination.

00:25:06.000 I think it's all kind of silly because assuming Trump remains the head of the Republican Party and remains, you know, the powerful figure in the party, he's just going to pick the nominee.

00:25:16.000 And the idea that there's some kind of shadow war between Vance and Rubio, I think that's also in the imaginations of a lot of people.

00:25:23.000 Let's not forget Rubio endorsed Vance as the nominee.

00:25:26.000 Trump himself has said he wants both of them to run together on a ticket.

00:25:29.000 So I think a lot of this is really contrived.

00:25:32.000 And it's wish casting from factions on the right.

00:25:34.000 But there are always going to be these factions.

00:25:36.000 I mean, now I think a lot of the anti Vance rhetoric that you're seeing is really just a copy and paste of the never Trump movement.

00:25:43.000 There are some differences with it, but it's a lot of the same people making a lot of the same arguments.

00:25:47.000 So, okay, you're going to have that lane.

00:25:48.000 Look, that's a legitimate part of the conservative movement and the Republican coalition.

00:25:53.000 So you got that lane.

00:25:54.000 Then there will be the libertarian lane.

00:25:56.000 There might be the more hawkish lane.

00:25:58.000 There are these views.

00:25:59.000 On the right, we have a lot of intellectual diversity, and that's. often one of the strengths of the American right compared to the left, which is uniformly progressive.

00:26:08.000 So they can hash it out.

00:26:10.000 I'm all for, you know, duking it out in primaries and what have you.

00:26:15.000 I guess just my, the only thing that gets my blood pressure up a little bit about it is when people would have the temerity, especially people who didn't know Charlie that well, didn't like him all that much, were kind of undermining him during his life, when they would have the temerity to invoke him and pretend that they are the standard bearers for him, especially as a way to shiv.

00:26:35.000 The political candidates that he liked the most.

00:26:38.000 I mean, to me, it's just a bridge too far, and I think it bears weighing in on what's actually going on.

00:26:44.000 Thank you, Michael.

00:26:46.000 And I think it's a little more than wish casting on the Vance Rubio thing.

00:26:50.000 Maybe wish casting for Rubio himself, but there does, I was through the first Trump term, there wasn't anything quite like this in terms of the avid power struggle over who would take over.

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00:28:02.000 How lucky are we to have JD Vance as vice president?

00:28:05.000 We went all in for JD Vance for U.S. Senate when it was unpopular, when people would call us names.

00:28:14.000 We went all in for JD Vance for the U.S. Senate on like day one.

00:28:19.000 We recognized his gifts early on.

00:28:22.000 I saw the talent and I said, this is the guy.

00:28:25.000 This is the one.

00:28:26.000 JD Vance has become such a warrior for our cause in the past six months.

00:28:30.000 JD Vance is acting and looking like the vice president that Donald Trump needs, the vice president that Donald Trump deserves, and maybe beyond that, even the 48th president.

00:28:41.000 We're a long way from that.

00:28:43.000 We shouldn't even think or talk too much openly about that.

00:28:46.000 But he's a rock star.

00:28:47.000 He's smart.

00:28:48.000 He's capable.

00:28:49.000 He's humble.

00:28:51.000 He's phenomenal.

00:28:52.000 That's Charlie on JD Vance, I believe in January of 2025.

00:28:56.000 So.

00:28:57.000 All right, Blake, you wanted to unpack something with Mr. Knowles here, so the floor is yours.

00:29:01.000 Oh, excellent, excellent.

00:29:02.000 I'll also say, Michael, I got a message from a Dominican friar I knew in college who says he's a big fan and loves this segment, so I thought I'd throw that out. 0.99

00:29:10.000 But I'm glad you didn't get a message from a Jesuit.

00:29:12.000 You know, the Dominicans, they're reliable, and Jesuit can be a little more hit or miss.

00:29:18.000 Well, exactly, exactly.

00:29:19.000 I'm sure you knowing the difference is why he loves you.

00:29:22.000 So let's, I want to unpack this Rubio thing.

00:29:26.000 As you said, it feels like wish casting.

00:29:28.000 Secretary of State Rubio has not.

00:29:31.000 Really indulged at all these efforts to turn him against the vice president, I believe.

00:29:36.000 I think that's admirable.

00:29:37.000 But it does seem very sustained.

00:29:40.000 And I've certainly heard rumors that this isn't just people on X, there's donors lining up saying, We're going to keep upping the amount of money we can offer you until it'll just be too irresistible for you to run.

00:29:53.000 Even on social media, it's clear there's a lot of sustained attacks on Vice President Vance, there's a lot of sustained efforts to promote Rubio.

00:30:01.000 And even we're going to have this panel discussion.

00:30:03.000 We had these panel discussions with some of the young kids when we were at the Chapter Leadership Summit.

00:30:08.000 And we haven't released that yet, but one of the things we were talking to them about is who do you prefer?

00:30:12.000 And they were very aware there was this Rubio versus Vance dynamic going on, and they had mixed feelings about it.

00:30:19.000 So I guess the question is what is motivating this?

00:30:23.000 Is it what it seems to a lot of people that this is primarily just about the Iran war and the fact that Vance has become, so to speak, the face of I don't want a full regime change in Iran.

00:30:36.000 Are there other factors going into this?

00:30:39.000 Help us understand what's driving this intense wish casting, if that's what it is.

00:30:42.000 Yeah, I think you're right that the Iran war is the inciting incident for a lot of this campaign against Vance or for Rubio or what have you, not coming from either of the men.

00:30:56.000 But it also really draws on caricatures.

00:31:00.000 So there's this caricature that JD Vance is an isolationist.

00:31:04.000 He's not.

00:31:05.000 There's this caricature that JD Vance supports socialist economics.

00:31:09.000 He does not.

00:31:10.000 There is a caricature that JD Vance is anti Israel.

00:31:13.000 He's not anti Israel.

00:31:15.000 That is a caricature that is invented in the imaginations of political operatives, I guess, or people with an axe to grind.

00:31:21.000 Likewise, there's this caricature that Marco Rubio is, I don't know, some kind of Bush era neocon.

00:31:28.000 He's not.

00:31:29.000 Or that Marco Rubio just wants to, I don't know, resurrect three YouTube videos of Milton Friedman's economics from the 80s.

00:31:36.000 He also does not want to do that.

00:31:38.000 Or this idea that Marco Rubio, I don't know, on the Israel Iran issue, that he wants to give everything to Israel that they can do no wrong.

00:31:46.000 I don't think that's true either.

00:31:47.000 I think that in reality, Vance and Rubio are much closer, even just in the way they think about politics, on economics, on migration, on foreign policy, than the wish casters would have it be.

00:31:59.000 And so the dynamic that I see playing out is eerily similar to what you saw in 2024.

00:32:05.000 And what you saw in 2024 was a real tragedy of the Ron DeSantis campaign, because the Ron DeSantis campaign, in many ways, was doomed from the beginning.

00:32:14.000 The reason being that the thing everyone loved about Ron DeSantis was. that he was a really great governor in the vein of Donald Trump.

00:32:24.000 If you recall, the initial pitch for a President DeSantis was he's just like Trump, but even better.

00:32:30.000 You know, he has that kind of populist appeal, that common good appeal, that common sense appeal, but he's even better.

00:32:36.000 He's more disciplined.

00:32:37.000 He's this, that, or the other thing.

00:32:39.000 So he was going to run as Trump 2.0, you know, bigger, badder than ever before.

00:32:44.000 But because Trump was running in the race, the lane that DeSantis occupied, Was necessarily the anti Trump lane.

00:32:52.000 And so a lot of the DeSantis supporters, a lot of people who were gung ho in that campaign, didn't want him.

00:32:58.000 They wanted him to be the anti Trump.

00:33:00.000 But the thing that made him so interesting was he was a really good version of Trump in Florida.

00:33:04.000 And so there was this constant conflict within the campaign.

00:33:08.000 And obviously it was not successful.

00:33:09.000 I think that's similar to what you're seeing here.

00:33:13.000 The vice president's enemies are imagining someone that he is not.

00:33:18.000 And the same thing goes for Rubio.

00:33:20.000 And so I think it's why not only is Rubio loyal and, you know, He doesn't want division in the administration.

00:33:26.000 But I think he's smart and he sees some of these dynamics too.

00:33:29.000 A lot of the attacks that you're seeing on Vance, that he's not a doctrinaire, laissez faire, late 80s style capitalist on economics, the same thing's true of Rubio.

00:33:40.000 The fact that JD Vance will talk about the common good.

00:33:44.000 Guess what?

00:33:44.000 So does Rubio.

00:33:46.000 The fact that JD Vance doesn't want to bomb every country in the world.

00:33:49.000 I don't think Rubio wants to bomb every country in the world.

00:33:51.000 And so I think the Secretary of State understands those underlying dynamics.

00:33:54.000 As well.

00:33:55.000 And at least as of now, he hasn't fallen for it in the way that, you know, unfortunately, I think you saw play out in the DeSantis campaign.

00:34:03.000 I want to throw up this graphic here.

00:34:05.000 This is something President Trump himself posted during the MOU when JD was getting this first onslaught of attacks.

00:34:14.000 This is Trump posted this himself on True Social, 161, I believe it is.

00:34:19.000 Trump bump, voters overwhelmingly support the Iran peace deal.

00:34:22.000 And this, Michael, I think this is ultimately what's happening.

00:34:25.000 The MOU was popular because people love peace.

00:34:28.000 President Trump.

00:34:29.000 Vice President Vance is supporting policies that are widely and broadly popular across the American electorate.

00:34:36.000 There is just huge entrenched, and I don't even know if they're that huge, but groups on social media that will attack you once you say something that is massively popular.

00:34:49.000 So I think we're seeing this whole same playbook play out again.

00:34:52.000 Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show, thank you so much, my friend.

00:34:55.000 It's great to see you as always.

00:34:57.000 Good to see you guys.

00:35:00.000 Good conversation is about respect.

00:35:03.000 It's how we create a space where people are able to share their ideas and be heard.

00:35:07.000 Charlie knew that.

00:35:08.000 Turning Point still knows that.

00:35:09.000 And TikTok has always strived to build the kind of place that thrives on respectful connection, where curiosity fuels connection and we can share what's on our minds and learn from each other.

00:35:19.000 When ideas meet respect, good things happen.

00:35:21.000 On TikTok, you can find a mechanic explaining the why behind a problem most of us wouldn't even know how to name, or a father sharing a lifetime of knowledge with his viewers, viewers who listen, discuss, and then they respond.

00:35:33.000 TikTok turns connection into community through small acts of understanding.

00:35:37.000 You can feel it in the comments, in the thank you from a stranger halfway across the world.

00:35:41.000 TikTok is a place where respect opens the door for discussion, and discussion helps us build something real.

00:35:50.000 And we have Sean Davis, who is the CEO and co founder of The Federalist here.

00:35:54.000 Sean, welcome back to the show.

00:35:56.000 It's good to see you, my friend.

00:35:58.000 Good to be back.

00:35:59.000 Thank you for having me.

00:36:00.000 So, of course, we're always grateful to have you.

00:36:06.000 I have to get into this, right?

00:36:07.000 Okay. 0.75

00:36:08.000 Because I saw you sparring with a certain.

00:36:13.000 From the Washington Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel.

00:36:19.000 She and the editorial board, in their great wisdom, decided to attack JD Vance, right?

00:36:24.000 So you clapped back.

00:36:26.000 They said, President Vance goes AWOL.

00:36:29.000 The leader of the Senate could bring Congress together.

00:36:32.000 He's hawking a book.

00:36:34.000 I mean, this is a pretty aggressive attack from the Wall Street Journal.

00:36:40.000 You replied back, I'm sorry, but pulling this obvious little stunt against JD Vance, who's Wife just gave birth when Mitch McConnell hasn't been seen in weeks is absolutely absurd.

00:36:49.000 What are we even doing here?

00:36:51.000 Sean, what are they doing here?

00:36:53.000 Yeah, so I love Kim Strassel.

00:36:55.000 I actually think she's a great journalist.

00:36:57.000 She's done some amazing work over the years exposing waste, fraud, and abuse in Congress.

00:37:02.000 So my complaint isn't with her, it's with this new little op we're seeing against JD.

00:37:07.000 We saw it in the wake of the Rogan interview where you had a bunch of neocons who just want war everywhere attacking him for things he never said.

00:37:15.000 Then you have this hit come out from the Wall Street Journal, which is very neocon.

00:37:19.000 Very pro illegal and ridiculous legal immigration.

00:37:25.000 And they don't like JD because JD is America first.

00:37:27.000 He's not a neocon and he thinks we should close the border.

00:37:30.000 So let's just all be honest about what's happening here.

00:37:33.000 And it's a full on interventionist, neocon, America exists to do things for other countries, ideological hit against JD.

00:37:42.000 And what I found so absurd about it is the particular frame that they used, calling him AWOL, calling him the leader of the Senate.

00:37:51.000 Last time I checked, John Thune was the actual majority leader.

00:37:54.000 Now, I understand that he's a potted plant.

00:37:57.000 He's not particularly good at his job.

00:37:59.000 He's not very good at counting votes.

00:38:00.000 He can't exactly figure out how to get them to work more than two to three days a week.

00:38:04.000 So I understand the frustration with a majority leader in name only in John Thune.

00:38:11.000 But JD Vance is the vice president.

00:38:13.000 And yes, he has the authority to break a tie.

00:38:15.000 And yes, he can go in and sit behind the chair and wield the gavel in the Senate.

00:38:19.000 He is not the Senate majority leader.

00:38:21.000 So this attempt to retcon him.

00:38:24.000 And then to place on him all the failures of the Senate, which is actually run by John Thune and Mitch McConnell, is completely dishonest.

00:38:31.000 It's completely absurd.

00:38:32.000 And if we're going to talk about senators being AWOL, we should probably have a conversation about Mitch McConnell, who nobody has seen or talked to publicly in, I think, close to a month.

00:38:43.000 And there actually are standing Senate rules that govern absences that require you, if you are a senator, which Mitch McConnell is and JD Vance is not, to inform the Senate of the reason for your absence and to seek leave, to seek permission of the Senate to remain absent.

00:38:59.000 Mitch McConnell hasn't done that.

00:39:00.000 He's just had various surrogates tell us, oh, he's in great health.

00:39:03.000 And oh, by the way, he wants to make sure we're still shoveling bazillions of dollars to Ukraine.

00:39:08.000 That's not what the job of a senator is.

00:39:10.000 We don't need senators in absentia.

00:39:13.000 We need actual senators.

00:39:14.000 So if you're worried about senators being AWOL, let's have a conversation about Mitch McConnell and whether he should resign since he clearly cannot execute the duties of his office.

00:39:23.000 You know what strikes me, and I hadn't thought about this yet, Sean, is you've got me thinking back to some of the conversations we're told Mitch McConnell had from the hospital room.

00:39:33.000 He was sharp as a tack, he's on it.

00:39:35.000 He was talking about a lot of foreign.

00:39:38.000 Issues and policies.

00:39:40.000 He's talking about Iran.

00:39:41.000 He was talking about Ukraine.

00:39:42.000 He was talking about all these things.

00:39:44.000 And it strikes me, and I don't mean to speak ill of the dead.

00:39:46.000 Lindsey Graham, you know, I wish no ill towards him.

00:39:51.000 I'm sad that he passed on.

00:39:53.000 But, you know, he had that one quote, interestingly enough, when he was starting to feel ill, saying, I've got this Ukraine stuff to get done.

00:40:01.000 I've got Israel.

00:40:03.000 I've got, you know, so many foreign abstractions from the people that are supposed to be leading the United States of America.

00:40:10.000 And it strikes me that JD Vance stands in extreme contrast to that, talking about the middle class, the American dream, affordability, the common good.

00:40:21.000 These things do seem to be widely popular, broadly popular with the American electorate, but they do stand in contrast to the messaging that we're seeing from this neocon wing of the party that seems more obsessed and perplexed by foreign abstractions.

00:40:36.000 Am I missing something?

00:40:38.000 No, I think you've nailed it.

00:40:40.000 The GOP establishment, which is run by big spenders who want to open the border and just use the military as the police everywhere, that establishment hates Donald Trump.

00:40:49.000 It has always hated Donald Trump. 0.99

00:40:50.000 It was John Thune who was calling for Donald Trump to drop out in 2016 after the stupid access Hollywood tape. 0.99

00:40:56.000 So let's not be mistaken about what the permanent Washington establishment, where, by the way, the Senate is its base of operations, they hate Donald Trump. 0.98

00:41:08.000 They want to get past Donald Trump.

00:41:09.000 They are desperate to just obstruct him as much as they can.

00:41:13.000 Get to 2028.

00:41:15.000 They would love for JD to become the nominee and lose.

00:41:19.000 Trust me when I say they want JD to be bloodied up in a primary and to lose so that they can come in and say, Look, we have eliminated all traces of Trump and Trumpism and Vantism from the party.

00:41:30.000 And you guys didn't listen to us and you lost in 2028.

00:41:33.000 So we're taking the party back over.

00:41:35.000 We're in charge now and you're going to do what we say.

00:41:37.000 That is what's happening right now.

00:41:39.000 And that's what all of these attacks on JD are about.

00:41:42.000 The permanent Washington swamp.

00:41:44.000 The people who want forever wars everywhere and spending all the time and open borders, they hate Trump and they want to get rid of him.

00:41:50.000 And they know that if Vance is the nominee and Vance wins in 2028, because he is widely popular, I think he's probably the only Republican who can win in the Rust Belt in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

00:42:02.000 They know that if Vance gets in in 2028, their chance of taking back the party is probably over forever.

00:42:09.000 And that's why you're seeing this amount of violence and ridiculous rhetoric against JD in the middle of 2026.

00:42:15.000 I'm going to call out the elephant in the room here, Sean.

00:42:19.000 Because I don't believe this for a second, but the dig on Vance is that he's somehow anti Israel.

00:42:25.000 I've never heard anything that he said that was anti Israel.

00:42:28.000 I've heard him say pro America things, I've heard him say pragmatic and realist foreign policy things.

00:42:37.000 But what do you make of that specific attack?

00:42:39.000 Yeah, I think it is again being used by the same group of people who want the U.S. to be militarily involved all over the earth.

00:42:47.000 And the reality is, when it comes to Israel, There is 10% of people on the left who think that Jews in Israel are the worst thing in history.

00:42:58.000 The strain of anti Semitism on the left is insane. 0.64

00:43:02.000 And it's been incubated in universities.

00:43:04.000 It's finding its way into the left wing factions like the DSA. 0.71

00:43:08.000 And then on the right side of the party, you probably have 10% of people who are like, I don't want to do anything with Israel, or I'm done with Israel. 0.63

00:43:14.000 I'm tired of them controlling our foreign policy.

00:43:17.000 Whatever. 0.67

00:43:18.000 You have the middle 80% of the country who's like, yeah, I don't really have a problem with them, but maybe America just focuses on America and where our interests align great and where they don't, we're just going to do what's best for America.

00:43:30.000 That's actually where JD is.

00:43:32.000 But you have this segment of the right, which is wildly overrepresented in conservative media.

00:43:38.000 And that's the neocon wing, the interventionists, the people who were all for the Iraq war and said we were going to be greeted as liberators, kind of the Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney wing.

00:43:51.000 That is not representative of the party, but they're very much in control of the levers of power and they're in control of powerful mediums in DC.

00:44:00.000 And that's why they're doing this.

00:44:02.000 They think that if If they can somehow call him an anti Semite or a Nazi, that's somehow going to divorce him from the rest of the party.

00:44:08.000 When what 80% of the country actually wants, left or right, is just a foreign policy that puts America first.

00:44:14.000 Yeah, and they're very loud on social media, too.

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00:45:32.000 I just was thinking as you, Sean, were talking about all of the attacks.

00:45:38.000 On Vance and what inspires them.

00:45:40.000 And it just occurred to me that Charlie faced a lot of very similar attacks.

00:45:45.000 And I was thinking about this.

00:45:46.000 We had Michael Knowles on earlier, and he was saying similar things that JD Vance is trying to chart a difficult path of foreign policy realism when we have people who are maximally interventionist and people who are sort of, I don't even want to say maximally isolationist, they've decided to become turbo anti Israel.

00:46:04.000 And it's a path that we have a moral obligation to lead our party through.

00:46:09.000 And when Charlie tried to chart that path himself, he got attacked from both sides.

00:46:13.000 He had people who would call him an Israeli puppet and people who would call him an anti Semite, and both were untrue.

00:46:19.000 And it strikes me that it feels like Vice President Vance has become the heir to these attacks, where he does get attacked from both sides.

00:46:28.000 And both of those attacks are, in my opinion, pretty clearly unfair.

00:46:33.000 Oh, I completely agree.

00:46:35.000 He's become kind of the newest proxy to go hit at, and each side wants to define him.

00:46:41.000 And obviously, in politics, you define yourself or the other side defines you.

00:46:45.000 There was an interesting moment in his interview with Rogan that I think highlighted this, where Rogan brings up Israeli spying.

00:46:52.000 And what JD said made the people on the very far outside fringes angry, but what he said was totally common sense.

00:47:00.000 He's like, we got Israel spies, all the countries spy.

00:47:03.000 Like, welcome to international geopolitics. 0.61

00:47:07.000 They all spy.

00:47:09.000 You know, they all have their own interests.

00:47:11.000 But what I'm interested in is representing America's interests.

00:47:14.000 So I'm not going to get all hot and bothered that Israel does this because everyone else does this.

00:47:18.000 And the Israel haters on the left are like, oh, oh, see, he's a total Israel shill.

00:47:24.000 And then the Israel shills on the right were like, oh, he should.

00:47:28.000 What is he doing saying we have our own interests? 0.52

00:47:29.000 How dare he?

00:47:31.000 He's to the point where no matter what he says, the freaks on either side are going to attack him.

00:47:37.000 But what he's saying actually makes sense to the 80% of people who don't have like this deep emotional vested interest in a foreign country.

00:47:46.000 He's like, look, no animosity here.

00:47:48.000 We'll help them when it helps us.

00:47:50.000 They're our ally.

00:47:51.000 It's good to have a democratic ally in the Middle East like them.

00:47:54.000 But America needs to do what's best for America.

00:47:57.000 And sometimes that's going to intersect with what's best for Israel, and sometimes it's not. 0.60

00:48:01.000 That is like the most benign, banal, vanilla thing you can say about politics.

00:48:06.000 And yet, for the people for whom Israel is the only thing they care about, both in the completely Israel hating and Israel pro obsessed mark, that drove them bonkers.

00:48:17.000 And it's just the weirdest thing to watch online.

00:48:20.000 Because I think you guys are probably like me, you can see an op forming, you know when it's not organic, you can tell when it's completely manufactured.

00:48:28.000 And what we've seen over the last week is completely manufactured.

00:48:32.000 And I'm just kind of tired of the pretense of it.

00:48:34.000 I'm tired of pretending that, you know, oh, it's totally normal and these are normal people just having thoughts.

00:48:39.000 No, it's not.

00:48:40.000 It's an op.

00:48:40.000 Can we all just admit it's an op and move on and argue like adults?

00:48:45.000 Well, I got to kick you know, that's frustrating about this, Sean.

00:48:48.000 What's frustrating, sorry, Blake, is that we have a real existential problem facing this country.

00:48:55.000 We've spent time talking about DSA on the show today. 0.98

00:48:58.000 This is the kind of crap they're actually saying out loud, Sean. 0.97

00:49:02.000 And this distraction, these ops, They take our eye off the ball because this is really the game that's being played here if we have the courage to confront the truth. 0.99

00:49:13.000 And I just, this clip is so shocking to me because of just how true we know it is.

00:49:19.000 Sot 7.

00:49:20.000 I think it's particularly important, not just for our community in Tigray, but communities of the global South, period, right?

00:49:28.000 There's a certain reckoning that we are going to have to have with the global world order as it exists today and the way that it fundamentally will have to shift going forward.

00:49:38.000 The responsibility that we have as Americans, the recognition that is going to be required of us, of the exploitative and extractive nature that we play on the global scale and the global stage, is only going to be challenged if we are getting represented by people who understand that on a fundamental level.

00:49:58.000 And that means getting more immigrants into office, that means getting more people who have heritage in the global south into office, because that's where those decisions are made specifically. 0.95

00:50:08.000 So, they just gave up the whole game there. 1.00

00:50:09.000 That's actually what's happening.

00:50:12.000 And yet, we're distracted because JD Vance has the gall to say something that's sort of pragmatic and realist about foreign policy. 0.80

00:50:20.000 They want to just get Global South people elected to our office.

00:50:24.000 They want more Mayor Mamdanis.

00:50:26.000 Sean Davis.

00:50:27.000 Yeah, it's fascinating that all the DSAers are doing this.

00:50:31.000 They might have a piece of paper that says they're a citizen.

00:50:33.000 They're not Americans. 1.00

00:50:34.000 They're all foreign born. 1.00

00:50:35.000 They're all a bunch of invaders and subversives. 1.00

00:50:38.000 And You know, look, if everyone who is coming across the border was like a dyed in the wool right wing Christian Republican, that border would get closed so fast by the left, it would make your head spin. 0.99

00:50:50.000 It's not that they have some sort of special love for the global immigrant, for the global South immigrant.

00:50:56.000 No, it's pure power politics. 0.87

00:50:58.000 And they understand that if they want to take over the U.S. government and turn it into their plaything, they have to import people who they can get to support them.

00:51:06.000 That's entirely what it's about.

00:51:08.000 I'm glad we're at the point where they're finally admitting it out loud.

00:51:11.000 We're like, yeah, yeah, we just need to keep importing people until we get the votes we need to take over.

00:51:15.000 And then we'll make the whole country communist because America is imperialist and colonial and we need to take back all the wealth.

00:51:21.000 That they created.

00:51:22.000 They're just admitting the game out in the wide open.

00:51:26.000 And I'm glad you talked about this because Obama called it the stray voltage theory, where if we can just get you distracted with shiny objects and shiny trinkets, then they can go behind the scenes and do what they want to do. 0.95

00:51:37.000 We are constantly being distracted on social media, in the news, with shiny objects to distract us from the goal of the left, which is to take over the country with third world left wing communist immigration. 0.97

00:51:51.000 It's perfectly said. 0.97

00:51:53.000 Perfectly said.

00:51:54.000 That is the whole game. 0.90

00:51:55.000 I'm reminded of that SPLC executive who had the share of the white population slowly dropping as if that was the ultimate goal of these people because it is. 0.73

00:52:05.000 Sean Davis, co founder and CEO of The Federalist. 0.85

00:52:07.000 Thank you, my friend.

00:52:08.000 Great stuff as always.

00:52:09.000 Thank you both.

00:52:13.000 Hi, folks.

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00:53:12.000 All right, welcome back, everybody.

00:53:13.000 Just a little bit of breaking news here the suspect in the lower Manhattan, the federal building incendiary device incident, has been identified as Andrew Arabaka.

00:53:26.000 So, apparently, he's a 43 year old, Andrew Arabaka, per NBC4, local NBC, there in New York City.

00:53:34.000 The sign had a pool wagon that he brought with him.

00:53:39.000 Sign read Ice Off Our Streets.

00:53:40.000 The man has a history of anti Ice rhetoric.

00:53:42.000 So we know now a fuller picture of what happened there.

00:53:46.000 And it looks like, yes, indeed, this was most likely politically motivated.

00:53:51.000 So we're going to keep monitoring that story, give you details as it comes.

00:53:55.000 So without further ado, I want to bring in our next guest who has apparently, reportedly, seen the new movie, just like Blake, Odyssey, Dr. Benedict Whalen.

00:54:04.000 He's the chairman and associate professor of English at Hillsdale College.

00:54:08.000 Blake has seen the movie.

00:54:09.000 I have not.

00:54:10.000 Dr. Whalen has seen the movie.

00:54:12.000 I have not.

00:54:12.000 So I'm going to be doing a lot of listening here.

00:54:15.000 But Dr. Whalen, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:54:18.000 Honored to have you.

00:54:20.000 You are also the instructor, the professor on the new Odyssey course that Hillsdale College is offering.

00:54:27.000 So you're the perfect person to have on here.

00:54:30.000 You saw the film.

00:54:32.000 What did you think?

00:54:33.000 Well, thank you very much for having me on here.

00:54:35.000 It's a real delight and an honor for me.

00:54:38.000 I did see the film.

00:54:38.000 I saw it yesterday.

00:54:39.000 I was excited to see it.

00:54:40.000 I've done a lot of work on the Odyssey.

00:54:43.000 And as you would expect, as the earlier publicity was reporting, the film is a real spectacle.

00:54:49.000 There are all of these gorgeous shots, all these different locales that the Odyssey takes you to.

00:54:54.000 Nolan was going in place.

00:54:55.000 So it has a big scene, great, beautiful shooting.

00:54:59.000 It tells a great story.

00:55:01.000 It's a very interesting sort of summer blockbuster, as you would expect.

00:55:06.000 Of course, as you would also expect, it's Hollywood and it diverges in some important ways from Homer's text, as you would expect, and you can nitpick or not.

00:55:17.000 But it's a fun film.

00:55:19.000 And if it does anything, my hope is that it inspires more people to actually go and.

00:55:23.000 Than have questions and read Homer's Odyssey itself.

00:55:28.000 So, Dr. Whelan, actually, that might be where I disagree with you the most when you say it's fun, because I think that's what stood out to me it almost is an aggressively downbeat film.

00:55:39.000 It sort of portrays Odysseus, the wily Greek hero, the man of twists and turns, as it's often translated.

00:55:46.000 He's got PTSD from the Trojan War, he's depressed all of the time.

00:55:51.000 One of the climactic scenes is him basically having a PTSD style breakdown about.

00:55:56.000 That he did the Trojan horse and sacked Troy.

00:55:59.000 So, I suppose what I ask is it does diverge from the text.

00:56:04.000 Do you still feel this is a movie that's probably the only big budget adaptation of the Odyssey we're going to get for a long time?

00:56:11.000 Do you think it faithfully represents Homer, this foundational work of Western literature, for modern audiences?

00:56:19.000 Does Christopher Nolan get it close enough to what the poem is spiritually about, as it were?

00:56:27.000 That's a good question.

00:56:29.000 I think that the character Odysseus himself, the central character, is Nolan's Odysseus, is just in some of the most essential ways different from Homer's Odysseus.

00:56:41.000 So if the poem's really about the character of this man, and that's actually the first word of the poem, is the man, muse, tell me about the man.

00:56:49.000 If it's about the man, then it's, yeah, Nolan's film is different.

00:56:54.000 I actually very much agree with you that this, you know, Matt Damon's.

00:56:59.000 Odysseus, he is much, much more tormented by his past.

00:57:05.000 So, yeah, we could talk about PTSD.

00:57:08.000 He's closer to a sort of conflicted, modern, reluctant hero in certain ways who's done things that torment him and he's got this guilt that he's carrying around rather than the sort of ancient Homeric hero who has done things in his past that he regrets and wrestles with, but is also perfectly happy to gloat over his enemies as he butchers them and takes great joy in.

00:57:32.000 In telling lies that confuse his enemies and manipulate others to accomplish his ends.

00:57:37.000 So, yeah, there is more sort of joy, cleverness, maybe even energy to Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus, than Nolan's.

00:57:47.000 I still think, in other respects, though, the film, I think, does give us some sort of vision of the Odyssey.

00:57:55.000 I mean, if you think of all of those earlier episodes that are so connected with Odysseus, even just in our cultural imagination, like the fall of Troy.

00:58:04.000 The Trojan horse, the Cyclops, Circe, Calypso, those elements are there in the film.

00:58:10.000 And so it's at least unmistakably the world of the Odyssey, even if it's not really giving us Homer's Odysseus or obviously cutting things from Homer's Odyssey as well.

00:58:22.000 So I was just thinking the Odyssey, incredibly old.

00:58:25.000 It's basically the oldest work of literature that we have in the Western canon.

00:58:31.000 I was just checking.

00:58:32.000 It basically was probably composed around the date of the book of Isaiah.

00:58:35.000 It's older than a lot of books.

00:58:37.000 In the Bible.

00:58:38.000 And so when I ask, did this film get the heart of Homer's text?

00:58:43.000 I think it's also worth asking why is it that this text has been, is probably the oldest text that you will read in an English class, in a work of literature, in high school?

00:58:54.000 Why has it endured so long?

00:58:56.000 What are those important elements of it that you need to communicate if you're going to be making a film about it?

00:59:02.000 Yeah, well, some of the most central elements of the poem have to do with Odysseus, his particular suffering, his trials, his endurance.

00:59:11.000 That's one of his epithets.

00:59:13.000 The things he goes through on his journey, his very long journey to get home, and then what he has to do when he gets home to clean a house, to restore his political order, to reestablish his marriage.

00:59:26.000 So he's a really interesting, complex hero.

00:59:30.000 But the story itself also shows you all sorts of interesting things.

00:59:34.000 Homer was a very rich thinker.

00:59:36.000 So, for instance, if you take the Iliad and the Odyssey together, which tells about the destruction of Troy in the Iliad, and then in the Odyssey, Odysseus' return to Ithaca.

00:59:46.000 And the restoration of his kingship and marriage.

00:59:49.000 What you see is one of the things Homer emphasizes is that a political order that commits itself to the violation or disrespect of marriage ends up being destroyed.

01:00:01.000 That's what happens with Troy, which committed itself to this war defending the Prince Paris's abduction of Helen.

01:00:08.000 The counterpoint to that is the story told in the Odyssey, where you see, in fact, the king, through great suffering and difficulty, returning home.

01:00:17.000 And restoring his political order through the restoration of his marriage.

01:00:22.000 Homer understood that the sort of family and the household and the larger political order are inextricably related, and health and virtue in one helps shape and establish health and virtue in the other.

01:00:36.000 That's something that, for instance, I'm not sure comes across as clearly in Nolan's movie.

01:00:41.000 I want to make sure that our audience is, for those in the audience that don't know, The story of Odysseus and don't know the story of the Odyssey.

01:00:52.000 That's kind of, you touched on it, but you know, what is it?

01:00:56.000 Like, from a 30,000 foot view, I mean, I understand why, to your point you just made, why it's stood the test of time, why it's remained one of the foundational works of literature in the Western canon.

01:01:09.000 But, you know, I kind of wanted just a primer to make sure that our audience was ready, but you sort of answered it.

01:01:15.000 But if there's anything else that you would like to fill in, I think it would be helpful to make sure we're all on the same page.

01:01:20.000 Yeah, well, one thing that's interesting that happens in the Odyssey is Odysseus has been held captive by this immortal nymph goddess Calypso on her island of Ogidja, and they live essentially alone there for those seven years.

01:01:35.000 And in Homer's text, Odysseus spends those seven years on the shore, weeping, yearning to go home, and Calypso eventually is ordered by the gods to release him, to allow him to return home, and this is in part through Athena's intervention on his behalf.

01:01:52.000 But one of the things that's interesting there is Calypso is this immortal, beautiful goddess.

01:01:56.000 He's sleeping with her, and she offers him immortality as well.

01:02:00.000 And he's leading a life of ease, of luxury, of just relaxation and peace on this island.

01:02:06.000 And wouldn't that sound tempting?

01:02:09.000 Why does Odysseus want to return home to Ithaca, where Penelope's going to be 20 years older than when he left her, where there's this whole messed up political order, all these suitors coming after her?

01:02:19.000 It's a difficult, rocky island.

01:02:21.000 He's going to have to fight.

01:02:22.000 You know, why would Odysseus choose that?

01:02:25.000 As opposed to a life of ease, luxury, sensuality, and immortality.

01:02:30.000 Essentially, in leaving Calypso, Odysseus is choosing death itself.

01:02:34.000 And part of the answer to that question why would Odysseus choose Penelope in Ithaca?

01:02:40.000 It is loyalty to Penelope and to his place, but on a deeper level, Homer makes clear that, in fact, it's through struggle and suffering that human wisdom is found.

01:02:51.000 And it's wisdom sort of in the struggle, in the hard work of forming a marriage, of forming a political order, that humans find wisdom and then actual satisfaction rather than simply animal satisfaction.

01:03:04.000 So, as a whole, the work has this really robust, larger vision of what it means to be a human being and what a satisfactory or noble life would look like.

01:03:14.000 I love that.

01:03:15.000 You know, to choose death, as you put it, because there is deeper meaning in mortality and deeper meaning in struggle and wisdom.

01:03:27.000 Those are profoundly important themes.

01:03:30.000 I mean, I think every human being has wrestled with the mortality that we all face.

01:03:35.000 We will all face death someday.

01:03:37.000 And to wrestle with what is worth living, what makes life worth living, what makes the struggle worth enduring.

01:03:44.000 Is something that all of us are faced with asking ourselves if we're honest, uh, every single day that we breathe, and so that's a profound insight.

01:03:54.000 Thank you for that.

01:03:55.000 All right, Blake, I was struck by your review on uh, X that you posted.

01:04:00.000 It was it was lengthy and in good detail, it wasn't that long, which is something I encourage you to do.

01:04:04.000 So I was glad you did it.

01:04:06.000 What's that?

01:04:06.000 Well, I yeah, I can dive into this.

01:04:08.000 That we mentioned it's a somewhat gloomy movie, uh, Dr. Whalen, and a big part of that is it almost struck me.

01:04:17.000 People were debating whether this was a woke movie because it has a transgender casting, because of the racial casting and all of that.

01:04:23.000 Yet the core of it felt, I don't want to say it was a right wing movie, but it had a somewhat conservative theme, which is he really harps on this idea of civilization collapsing, the end of ages, that civilization is this fragile thing that Odysseus more or less accidentally brings an end to.

01:04:40.000 It has a line people have made fun of where he says, Our age of bronze is collapsing.

01:04:45.000 And that's funny because this is set during a period that historians literally call the Bronze Age collapse, where Civilization does go away for a while.

01:04:53.000 We lose literacy.

01:04:54.000 We lose historical records for quite some time.

01:04:58.000 And do you think that that's a good way to present the Odyssey, to present it as a story of the end of an age that is actually somewhat bleak, that is downbeat?

01:05:12.000 Does the Odyssey carry that tone in Homer's original?

01:05:16.000 Great question.

01:05:17.000 First of all, I want to agree with your point that one of the things I really enjoyed about the movie was.

01:05:23.000 Its treatment both with Troy and then also on Ithaca with the notion that civilization is fragile and you have to work hard and delicate, and it's a delicate thing that requires reinforcement.

01:05:36.000 So, for instance, Penelope has a line, I can't quote it exactly, but no matter how great the structure is, it needs to have people believe in its meaning for this political order to continue.

01:05:47.000 And I think that's a great point.

01:05:49.000 So, I really like your point there.

01:05:53.000 The problem is the problem that I had with it, and I'm going to try to express this without.

01:05:57.000 Entirely spoiling the end of the movie is that, as I've just said, that in Homer's poem, the epic ends with Homer's great the Greek word is his nostos, the triumphant homecoming and return of the epic hero.

01:06:14.000 And Odysseus does this he kills the suitors, he passes his wife's tests to prove that he's really who he says he is, and he restores political order with the blessing of the gods on Ithaca at the end.

01:06:26.000 We have this moment, in other words, of Triumphant return and restoration.

01:06:31.000 And in contrast to that, without going into all of the details or spoiling it, the movie ends, I thought, sort of apocalyptically.

01:06:41.000 That was the tone that we're going into a dark age and we're sailing away from Ithaca and the order has not really been reestablished and we don't really have a hope for the future.

01:06:55.000 So it has a sort of bleakness there, even at the end, that is not really in keeping with Homer's tone.

01:07:00.000 And I know that you can nitpick all sorts of changes, but that is.

01:07:05.000 A fundamental shift in my view from the overall arc of the Odyssey.

01:07:10.000 And so I think the big takeaway from that is people have to go read the Odyssey.

01:07:16.000 You can answer this quickly.

01:07:17.000 What's the best version of the Odyssey for people to read, in your opinion?

01:07:21.000 Well, the one I've taught for years and years, the one we did our Hillsdale online course with, is Robert Fagel's translation of the Odyssey.

01:07:27.000 It's a classic.

01:07:28.000 It comes out in a nice edition.

01:07:30.000 It's really wonderful.

01:07:32.000 It begins with the great line Sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns.

01:07:36.000 That's his translation of this word, polytropon.

01:07:39.000 And it's a great translation, twists and turns, because Odysseus not only does lots of twists and turns on his journey physically, but he is intellectually and in his stories and in his lies and his cleverness, he's a man of twists and turns.

01:07:52.000 He's hard to pin down.

01:07:53.000 So that's a great expression of the man.

01:07:57.000 It's a great translation.

01:07:58.000 I recommend it.

01:07:59.000 And I also, people hear ancient literature, epic poem, and they think that it might be some sort of difficult thing to tackle.

01:08:08.000 You'll find if you go and pick up Fagel's translation, it's highly accessible.

01:08:12.000 You could just read it in the evening to your family and you would really enjoy it.

01:08:17.000 It's really a page turner.

01:08:19.000 So, this is a selfish question of mine.

01:08:22.000 We've got our big budget Odyssey.

01:08:24.000 We got an adaptation of Troy 20 years ago that was of mixed merits.

01:08:30.000 What would you like to see if we were going to get other great works of ancient medieval literature?

01:08:36.000 I don't know how wide your specialty goes.

01:08:39.000 What should we be getting from Hollywood that we're not getting?

01:08:42.000 Because we don't get enough of these adaptations of big epics, foundational works of literature.

01:08:47.000 I love the question, and I actually had a sort of random thought as I was watching how Nolan did change the end of the Odyssey with Odysseus sailing off towards the West.

01:09:00.000 Actually, the next work in Imperial Rome, Virgil's great epic, the Aeneid, picks up with the destruction of Troy because, as Virgil tells it, and as the Romans, the Roman Empire developed this myth itself, that it actually was founded by Aeneas, who was a Trojan and who lived through the destruction of Troy.

01:09:22.000 Went on a journey through the Mediterranean and eventually founded Rome, which founded this empire.

01:09:26.000 So, in Virgil's retelling, it's the destruction of Troy that gives birth to the seed that becomes the great Roman Empire.

01:09:34.000 That's a wonderful work that is sort of picking up the mantle of Homer and ancient epic literature.

01:09:39.000 And I would love to see a big budget production of Virgil's Aeneid.

01:09:43.000 Oh, I love that.

01:09:45.000 Dr. Whalen, I got to tell everybody so, if you want to check out your Odyssey course that you taught, it's 100% free.

01:09:52.000 For people to check out, just have to go to learnlikecharlie.com.

01:09:56.000 We have a special URL just for that where your course pops up right at the front so people don't even need to look for it.

01:10:02.000 Learnlikecharlie.com and the Odyssey course will be right up there on the front page.

01:10:09.000 I think you've done an amazing job here, Dr. Whalen.

01:10:12.000 You obviously understand this content inside and out and you have such a native appreciation, a native understanding of the classics.

01:10:21.000 So check it out, everybody.

01:10:22.000 Learnlikecharlie.com.

01:10:24.000 Understand the fundamental foundational works of Western civilization and why they've stood the test of time.

01:10:31.000 I enjoyed this as an outsider because it was basically you and Blake going back and forth, which I appreciate and love.

01:10:37.000 So thank you so much, Professor.

01:10:39.000 Thank you so much.

01:10:40.000 Thanks for having me.

01:10:45.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - July 20, 2026

The Odyssey of JD Vance

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