Charlie Kirk is the founder of Turning Point USA, one of the most powerful youth organizations in the country. Charlie talks about how he got started with his organization and how he built it into one of America s most influential youth organizations.
00:00:41.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:02:28.000He was the sweetest, most godly, incredible person ever.
00:02:31.000He actually took me seriously because here I was 18 years old, no money, no connections, no idea what I was doing, and no reason that he should be listening to me.
00:02:38.000And this guy, for the people that know, Foster Freeze started from nothing in rural, I think it was like Rice Lake, Wisconsin, became like the top mutual fund manager for like 30 years, the Brandewine Fund out of Delaware, like legendary stuff, right?
00:02:52.000So he's someone that gets pitched all the time.
00:03:37.000Well, he probably saw someone that was passionate enough and crazy enough.
00:03:41.000And honestly, he probably saw someone that was really like naive to a great extent that I still wanted to get into this like broken political space, but I didn't know any better.
00:03:52.000And in Foster's own words, he said he saw someone with focus and determination and a Midwestern work ethic.
00:04:04.000And look, I live in Arizona now and I love Arizona, but I have like a huge Midwestern bias.
00:04:07.000I think Midwestern work ethic is like the best on the planet and nothing against other people in the country, but there is something very special about how we're raised in the Midwest and kind of that idea that we're going to outwork everybody.
00:04:55.000If you think about it, like, okay, if you're actually, if you're second mortgaging your house, like some entrepreneurs are, I don't have like one of those stories, right?
00:05:00.000I'm sure you guys talked to some of these people.
00:05:02.000I was on the second mortgage in my house and I couldn't feed my kids.
00:05:35.000First of all, like, I mean, it is risk in the sense that we as human beings do desire comfort and we want to kind of be in a place where we can have certainty above uncertainty and going and asking a question or going and asking a top billionaire for money, you have the probability of failure.
00:05:53.000And we are very failure verse as a species.
00:05:57.000Like you think about 5,000 years ago, you have, you know, two kids and you're living in like Mesopotamia and you're like, well, I hope there's food over that hill.
00:06:08.000And if you're wrong, your whole family could die.
00:06:11.000So like that's embedded into our species, right?
00:06:14.000God designed us in a way where there was not a lot of food all the place.
00:06:18.000So now you kind of extrapolate that kind of genetic wiring where we used to be in the wilderness to Foster Freeze.
00:06:24.000And you think you're like, wow, Foster tells me no, my whole life's going to actually, no, you're going to be fine.
00:06:29.000Like you could go and still eat food and you're not going to die.
00:06:32.000And so I think we have to overcome our genetic hardwiring where so many people think that it's like a life or death situation.
00:06:45.000And you have to overcome that because it's actually not that much risk.
00:06:49.000Now, what is risk is like if there's a material or a reputational thing you're putting on the line.
00:06:55.000Like, for example, if like you're working for a company and they're like, you know, you're not allowed to express your conservative views and you're like, all of a sudden wearing a MAGA hat, that's a risk.
00:07:14.000Entrepreneurship rate, entrepreneurship rates are going down is we're sending all these kids to college and they're telling you to be risk averse.
00:07:19.000Like the whole incentive structure in college is to not pursue big broad ideas is actually to stay rather cloistered in place.
00:07:26.000Speaking of that, that's where I first found your content was you on the college campuses Debating.
00:07:32.000And what was the most surprising aspect of that?
00:07:34.000Yeah, so I've been doing that for 13 years.
00:07:36.000I haven't been doing that on camera for 13 years.
00:07:38.000And so, look, the Lord has been so amazing to us and has blessed us in amazing ways.
00:07:43.000And so I never would have imagined, like, honestly, ever since I met Foster Freeze, that we'd be somewhat of kind of like a household name.
00:07:50.000I don't want to overextend it, but I mean, there's some serious virality and some real punch behind what we're doing.
00:07:56.000So I started doing that without even filming it.
00:07:59.000And so that's what people are like, you have to, and that was before like mass social media is 13 years ago.
00:08:29.000We started perfecting the model really around 2021.
00:08:33.000And then 2023 is when all of a sudden it kind of became a somewhat a culture phenomenon.
00:08:36.000And then of course the last year seems like I can't get out of people's algorithm.
00:08:40.000So you mentioned that you like the battle of ideas, but one thing that I tend to notice is that whoever has stronger rhetoric, persuasion skills, you know, quick on their feet, quick on their toes, that's going to be the person to win the argument, the debate.
00:08:54.000Do you feel like these debates have turned into a battle of ideas or just who has stronger rhetoric?
00:08:59.000I actually have to think, I think about that a lot.
00:09:02.000So I try to do a couple things and I fail.
00:09:05.000But if you notice, I've, in the viral videos, I try to put my microphone down literally physically on the table when the person is asking their question because I want to try to give them uninterrupted time to be able to make their argument.
00:09:18.000Number two, there is an advantage that the person coming up to the mic has that they're allowed to ask any topic and I don't know what that topic is going to be and they could prepare profusely on it.
00:09:49.000I mean, so mine changed is in over a period of time, probably, yes.
00:09:54.000I would say that I definitely have grown respect for like the thoughtfulness of a lot of international students when it has come to the Russian-Ukraine war.
00:10:05.000Like definitely, like I'm very against U.S. involvement, but like talking to, and they're all public, you can watch them, like very thoughtful German students and like very thoughtful students from Eastern Europe.
00:10:16.000Like for them, it's a very existential crisis what's happening.
00:10:19.000And so like to hear that was something that was very, let's just say different than what you would hear just on like the usual American political landscape.
00:10:27.000But yeah, no, look, I'd say over, I would say that I learn a lot too.
00:10:57.000And then I try to listen back to the footage.
00:10:59.000And so this is one of the reasons why it's a little bit unfair when I go to these campuses because I've been doing it for literally a thousand hours and these kids are like a college, you know, freshman.
00:11:08.000So I try to have at least somewhat of a teacher role to them and try to be a little bit softer.
00:11:12.000Unless if they're coming after me and they're like insulting me and you've seen it, right?
00:11:16.000Like they're just being like totally blitzkrieg.
00:11:19.000It's nice because I feel like you do tend to do that where they might have a hard time articulating a certain philosophical argument, but then you take it for that strongest, you know, derivative or representation of that strongest philosophy.
00:11:54.000But I will say, like, I try to meet you at the frequency you're at.
00:11:58.000So if they're coming after me and they're like insulting my appearance or whatever, like I'm going to, I'm not going to let myself get run over.
00:12:04.000But if a liberal student comes and they're like, hey, I really seek to understand this or help me know, or I try to, I try not to like pummel them, if that makes sense, because at least I think that's effective, right?
00:12:18.000Now, if they come with like a uniquely grotesque idea, then I'm going to try to expose it to the audience and to the online community.
00:12:26.000But no, look, I learn a lot and I hope the audience does too.
00:12:30.000And I mean, the physical crowds are now 3, 4,000 people almost every time we do this.
00:12:34.000Now, in those cases, when have you found that college is really worth it for someone?
00:12:38.000So I'm a big proponent of Hillsdale College.
00:12:40.000So Hillsdale, I think, is America's greatest college because it's what college should be, which is it's the development of the soul and character.
00:12:48.000So character is one of the most important things that you can invest in when you're 18, 19, 20, 20 years old.
00:12:53.000And I guarantee you, if you go to most colleges, they're about preparing you for your career, but they're not about preparing your character.
00:12:59.000And character is really, really important, right?
00:13:01.000Character literally comes from the Greek word tattoo or to etch into you.
00:13:04.000Character will define every decision, right?
00:13:06.000From what you eat to what you drink, how you communicate to people to the decisions you make, way more important than whatever you have a skill.
00:13:35.000Well, first of all, they don't think that's their reason for existing.
00:13:38.000Most of them, it depends, like the super left-wing colleges, which is most of them, they're all like, we're here to create global citizens for an ever-changing world, like some sort of pablum.
00:13:47.000Or they're like, we want to have you very specific, you know, skill.
00:13:51.000Like we want you to be able to like turn a widget, which by the way, if AI replaces that job, what do you have?
00:13:56.000That's a cool thing about developing character.
00:13:58.000Like if AI replaces jobs, you still have the most important of all things, which is you know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, beauty and ugly, right?
00:14:06.000You know the difference between the most, the high things and the low things.
00:14:10.000Like that's what we should strive for in higher education.
00:14:13.000That's why I think Hillsdale does a great job.
00:14:15.000But yeah, most, I mean, if you want to become a doctor or a lawyer, of course you have to go to college, right?
00:14:19.000You still have to go through this ridiculous environment of left-wing social indoctrination.
00:14:24.000But I will say, though, that I've debated all around the world, though, I debated at Cambridge and Oxford, all across the country.
00:14:32.000The other problem is that they're not in the pursuit of wisdom.
00:14:34.000And this is one of the more important things.
00:14:36.000Like if you ask a regular college kid, what is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?
00:14:40.000They like they'll just trip over themselves.
00:14:42.000And it's not a semantic thing, but semantic means meaning, but it's not a semantic thing.
00:15:13.000I think that's what college should be all about, is the cultivation of wisdom.
00:15:16.000As a Christian, we believe wisdom starts with the fear of the Lord.
00:15:20.000But yeah, I mean, I don't mean to talk uninterrupted for 10 minutes straight, but yeah, I think that college has completely derailed its purpose.
00:15:26.000In terms of college as an application for the average person, I think it's really interesting.
00:15:31.000Ben Shapiro claims to be wealthy in America, you need to do three things: graduate high school, get a full-time job, and get married before you have children.
00:15:59.000I don't think being wealthy is that important.
00:16:01.000Like, do you want to be wealthy of the soul or just have like a bunch of money?
00:16:04.000Well, that's that would be a different question, but I guess I mean, like, the question is, fine, if you want to be rich, I can tell you how to get rich.
00:16:10.000I mean, you would get rich, like work relentlessly and solve a problem for people and like dedicate your entire life to it and like become an insane person.
00:16:20.000Do you think it's possible to still do all of those things, though, and then not become rich?
00:16:24.000Of course, but like if you, if your whole reason for living is to become rich, you will become rich.
00:16:28.000Most people that think like most people I meet that want to be rich, they actually don't want to be rich.
00:16:32.000They want to have the lifestyle of being rich.
00:17:21.000I just challenge the premise of like, what is the most important?
00:17:24.000Like, I think if getting material wealth is the most important thing, I think there actually is a playbook for that.
00:17:31.000That absent of like committing crimes, like being a really crappy person, being sociopathic, it depends also what you define as rich.
00:17:38.000Like, there is a way forward for if it's your number one reason for living to earn $500,000 a year.
00:17:45.000Like, that's very conceivable in America.
00:17:47.000But if you're like, hey, actually, the most important thing is to have kids, which I think actually think having children is more important than having material success.
00:18:57.000It tells the truth about our history, how our nation was formed on biblical principles, and the importance of protecting our Judeo-Christian foundations as we move forward.
00:19:06.000God has given us an assignment to bring our faith into our world today.
00:19:09.000And here's the catch: it starts with focusing on our own attitudes.
00:19:13.000When you take time to understand how God has consistently blessed America, pouring his grace and mercy on us over and over again, it will give you hope for the days ahead.
00:19:22.000We cannot afford to forget our past, good and bad, or we will forfeit the best opportunities of our future.
00:20:21.000So that's a really important conversation.
00:20:23.000But I could probably agree with a liberal that it's not good to have like an entrenched permanent oligarchy that's running the country and that people have to go into debt and go into credit to pay for their groceries.
00:20:34.000Like I actually don't want to live in that country.
00:20:35.000So I can agree that we should talk about it more.
00:20:38.000But is there anything like inherently wrong with a billionaire?
00:20:40.000No, like most billionaires actually have solved big problems for us.
00:20:45.000Like, you know, people love hating on Elon Musk.
00:21:28.000But I'm just saying, like, if you want a generation to like have to go to the payday lending people, and if you want to have them like filling out credit cards at 25% interest, don't teach financial literacy.
00:21:40.000I don't know who, I mean, it's convenient.
00:21:56.000It's one of the things I like about Trump's upcoming big, beautiful bill is that every new baby born in America will get a $1,000 loan from the federal government in, I don't know if you guys know about this, but in a investment account that they can't touch.
00:22:08.000They're 18 invested in the Dow Jones Industrial Average that they'll be able to monitor throughout the 18 years.
00:22:13.000I think it can be grown by philanthropists, family members, grandparents.
00:22:17.000So they'll actually be able to see their wealth increase.
00:23:21.000You want to feel good and you want to have a bunch of, you know, toxins go through your liver, but you actually don't want to live a life of happiness and contentment.
00:23:30.000And if you want to, if you, I'm not a moralist.
00:23:34.000But then don't all of a sudden complain to me that you're not materially wealthy.
00:23:37.000It just seems like it's such low lift to make a huge change in terms of wealth inequality if there was just one course taught in high school about financial literacy.
00:23:47.000And so like, let's just say hypothetically, I'm just a casual viewer of, I mean, I've been watching for a very long time.
00:23:53.000How difficult would it be for you to just, you know, reach out to Trump or reach out to someone and be like, what do we got to do to put some incentives into the school system to teach financial literacy?
00:24:31.000Like, there have been some ideas to do this.
00:24:34.000I know that there's big companies that have tried to do this because they're like, oh, yeah, we're giving money towards financial literacy.
00:24:42.000Whatever program you think that's going on in financial literacy, you guys are all a failure.
00:24:46.000You should all be shut down because it's just not working.
00:24:48.000Because I deal with the next generation.
00:24:50.000They know kaputs about financial literacy, like very little to nothing.
00:24:54.000And this is one of the things that I just want to caution everybody about, which is like, I'm very, very pro-crypto, but I know a lot of people that have lost money on crypto.
00:25:01.000I'm sure you guys, I'm very, very pro-crypto.
00:25:41.000They want to hear about like, what's the next NVIDIA?
00:25:44.000Okay, I don't know, but I can tell you that in 40 years, if you put 100 bucks a week into a moderately managed, you know, wealth account, you're going to be great.
00:26:11.000I mean, the reason why we're called the iced coffee hour is because he had a joke on his channel called the 20-cent iced coffee, and you could save $3 a day, which is $100 a month.
00:26:21.000And if you just invest that in $200,000, $120 a year.
00:26:23.000Yeah, a Roth IRA, you know, assuming 10% interest, you have some inflation.
00:26:27.000When you're, you know, 60 or whatever, you'll be a millionaire.
00:26:29.000And it all came from a guy who was spending $500 a month at Starbucks.
00:27:28.000And also depends on your circumstances.
00:27:30.000And so if you have kids and $40,000 a year, it's very hard to build wealth.
00:27:34.000And that's a real problem that we have to tackle.
00:27:36.000But if you're 18 years old earning $40,000 a year and you're you have four roommates, yeah, you can build wealth for sure, actually.
00:27:43.000Like if you have four roommates and you're living in downtown Phoenix and your rent's a thousand bucks a month because you're splitting it four ways, you absolutely can build wealth.
00:27:51.000I mean, so it's a very case-dependent answer.
00:27:53.000But if you have $40,000 a year with two kids, I don't know how you'd support two kids or $40,000.
00:27:58.000You have to go to government assistance, right?
00:28:00.000Which by the way, we as conservatives, we bash government assistance a lot.
00:28:02.000So I'm a huge Oregon Ducks fan, like massive Oregon Ducks fan.
00:28:10.000So Dan Lanning, the coach of, I don't know if you care about a college triple or not, but the coach of University of Oregon, like there was a moment in his life where he was like what they call like not an assistant coach.
00:28:42.000And so if you're earning 40,000 bucks a year, you know, it's a tough, that's a tough spot.
00:28:49.000So I always think about this study, this data, where the U.S. military during World War II and Vietnam War conducted aptitude and psychological evaluations showing that 10 to 20% of new recruits were only ever positively counterproductive in any sort of work.
00:29:07.000And then this is also backed by corporate research as well, showing that 10 to 20% of individuals will only ever be toxic and contribute to less efficiency in the work environment than them just being gone in the first place.
00:29:20.000As someone that runs a massive company, how do you find these people and then seed them out?
00:30:25.000I mean, it goes to like levels of defiance, right?
00:30:28.000If somebody is directly defying orders or if somebody has a really bad attitude, and again, events are a great way to flush this out.
00:30:35.000I always say when I have our all-staff meeting, I said some of you guys are going to move up in the company in the next four days and some of you guys might not be here in four days.
00:30:42.000And like there's a lot of silence in the room.
00:30:43.000But, you know, when you have 700 people in a room, it's just the odds, right?
00:30:47.000And so, you know, we have very strict policies at turning point USA of certain things that we expect and certain things that drive success.
00:30:53.000And it's a great way to kind of see what people are made of.
00:30:55.000Now, when you say disobeying orders, how can you tell if they're truly just being defiant for the sake of being defiant or if they're an entrepreneur at heart and doing what they feel is the best move for the company, even though it's not popular?
00:31:09.000If there is a, if there is a rule, which is like, during these three days, you are not to drink alcohol because you have to be on call and that we're hosting high schoolers, totally appropriate.
00:31:18.000And we find out that you're at a bar drinking alcohol.
00:31:25.000Whereas if they're trying to find a more creative solution, yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, like we kind of run our stuff like the military in a sense where like the four days, we appreciate your creativity.
00:31:37.000But for example, if I'm hosting President Trump and I need like bike racks up and all of a sudden, you know, you show up with cones, like I didn't need your creativity there.
00:31:49.000Like, so, you know, if I'm hosting the biggest speakers in the movement and I need an intro video done and all of a sudden I see Dolly Parton, like, no, no, no, I need, I need an intro video.
00:32:00.000So like, I appreciate the creativity, but you got to be creative within, you know, by the way, we also have, there's, there's, there's times to be maximally creative, right?
00:32:52.000But for those people that aren't able to be a deckhand of a tight ship, those people that 10 to 20% of people that will only ever be positively counterproductive, what do we do with them as a society?
00:33:04.000Or you can't just let them job hop for their entire life, right?
00:33:08.000If they're like, if they're never going to make it out of poverty, poverty is just not good for anybody.
00:33:55.000I mean, all the money went back into the company.
00:33:56.000And so my test of a founder is always like, what do you pay yourself the first couple of years?
00:34:00.000And unless you have kids at home or else you have like a family to support, like, you know, a mom that's sick, you should not be taking money out of the company.
00:34:07.000Like, it all should be going back in because it's just, it's so precious at that point in that period of time.
00:34:12.000And so I would say that probably over 75, 75, 80% of all the money I make is invested.
00:36:05.000The only thing I'll say is like when Elon's company went on Tesla, I want to buy Tesla just as kind of a symbolic philosophical thing because I thought he was being treated so terribly.
00:36:11.000But like macro stuff, I'll get involved in.
00:36:13.000So, for example, if there's like, hey, I want to invest in, you know, more artificial intelligence or, you know, I think that, you know, oil is undervalued, you know, we'll have a conversation.
00:36:24.000The guy that does it is a guy named Doug DeGroot.
00:36:32.000So I don't buy individual Bitcoin, but I hadn't, I bet.
00:36:35.000I'm an investor in a thing called Anagram, which is the fundamental technology below crypto.
00:36:41.000So it's kind of like buying the plumbing of the crypto industry, if you will.
00:36:45.000And so like Solana and all these companies, anytime they wanted an ICO, you have to basically have the fundamental technology beneath it.
00:36:52.000I don't even understand it that well other than you're kind of buying a philosophy, if you will.
00:36:57.000And then look, I'm in a very unique, blessed place where there is a lot of deal flow that comes my way, where a lot of people want to, you know, have me invest in stuff.
00:40:23.000I don't want to misspeak on the spec on the, but I think it was like, I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to say a number because it's going to get cut up and all that, but it was.
00:40:50.000I mean, that's not, but I, I, I, I'm a unique combination now that I'm, I can see it, which is, you know, I'm like a heat-seeking missile towards what I want to achieve.
00:41:01.000And that and that alone can be an incredible differentiator in this space.
00:41:05.000So what are some of the sacrifices or compromises that you make because of that heat-seeking missile nature that people may not recognize?
00:41:13.000My life's configured now in a way where the biggest sacrifice I have to make is not being home with my kids.
00:41:38.000And so that's a sacrifice that I just am not willing to make.
00:41:42.000So I'm just saying no to a lot more stuff.
00:41:44.000And so, but in the early days, it's so interesting.
00:41:47.000Like people think like, oh, you know, you had a bunch of donors that wanted to give you money.
00:41:51.000Like, yeah, that's, that's not the story, actually.
00:41:54.000The story was I was going to find a lot of donors and tried to have to scrap and hustle and get like elementary funding because we could barely make payroll for the first five to six years, right?
00:46:53.000In terms of your own material success, where is the money coming from in terms of like percentages?
00:46:59.000Because I know you have like a store, you have a for-profit merchandise company, you have your nonprofit, you have, you know, your YouTube channel, all of these things.
00:49:14.000When you get to a place where you have like billions of dollars, you're actually worrying about money all the time because then you have like lawsuits and it's like your identity.
00:50:19.000Now, in terms of disclosures like this and being so open about your finances, AOC recently disclosed that she has no individual stock holdings.
00:50:28.000Tim Waltz famously said he doesn't have any investments.
00:50:31.000Do you think this is just financial irresponsibility?
00:50:34.000Or do you think it's a good thing that they don't have a financial interest in maybe some of the measures that they're putting forward?
00:50:40.000So, I mean, I'll talk about the Tim Wallace and AOC thing.
00:51:08.000I mean, again, I just kind of the idea, which is you're of that age.
00:51:11.000You haven't played into compound interest.
00:51:14.000You haven't like really tried to, I mean, by the way, you could have, you could have blinded trusts and, you know, different ways of building wealth.
00:51:21.000I don't think you should go as far as Nancy Pelosi and basically like trade stocks after committee hearings.
00:51:26.000I think that's probably a little ambitious, right?
00:51:28.000But I actually prefer my politicians to be successful.
00:51:31.000I know that's a weird statement, but people that own nothing, like own nothing, it might be like really appealing on the surface.
00:51:41.000But then I wonder, do they know how wealth is created?
00:51:43.000It's indicative of something deeper that can be done.
00:52:48.000I made this in a video years ago when the whole Nancy Pelosi tracker came up.
00:52:53.000I thought it would be a great idea for just anyone in Congress to signal their trades publicly in real time 24 hours before they plan to make them.
00:54:22.000It needs to be severe criminal penalties, in my opinion.
00:54:25.000I'm very populist on this question because, look, most people in this audience, they would love to know what's going on in a skiff.
00:54:31.000They would love, which is a secure compartmentalized information facility where there's no phones and just a bunch of generals giving you class and information about, I don't know, a new Wuhan leak or a new war, or they would love to know whether or not an electric vehicle mandate is going to be attached to the reconciliation bill or not.
00:54:46.000And then they're able to make trades on that information.
00:55:51.000Hopefully, some of the tariff money could potentially be that.
00:55:54.000The reason why I think we should have a strategic Bitcoin reserve, I know you guys had Michael Saylor on your show, and I think he's onto something.
00:56:00.000There is something called like the mass adoption theory, which is over a period of time, like the English language U.S. dollar, things just catch on and they're just kind of volitional and there's no stopping it.
00:56:20.000So Quantum is the only asterisk on all this.
00:56:23.000But I think Saylor is onto something very profound, which is that because Bitcoin is a scarce, legitimately scarce resource, that it's probably going to go nowhere but up.
00:56:33.000So Saylor makes a very provocative argument that Bitcoin could go up 10X over the next 10 years or something like that, which therefore, if we start a Bitcoin strategic reserve, it could pay for the national debt and basically cover our losses on the deficit.
00:56:46.000But I think that we should, I think the United States government should be invested in crypto without a doubt.
00:56:50.000I tend to agree with Michael Saylor that it's more likely to go to a million than zero.
00:58:12.000He's just very frustrated with some of the Republicans on Capitol Hill that don't want to cut it.
00:58:16.000So here's the worst thing we could do, though.
00:58:18.000The worst thing we could do out of all the options is not grow.
00:58:23.000So the worst of all the options is not grow.
00:58:25.000So when you have a big debt, that's bad.
00:58:28.000Not growing with a big debt is catastrophic.
00:58:31.000Growing with a big debt is somewhat manageable.
00:58:35.000Growing with cutting your debt is awesome.
00:58:38.000That would be the best possible scenario.
00:58:40.000So the calculus is, okay, we have a big debt.
00:58:42.000Let's at least try to have the debt outpace two things.
00:58:46.000The rate of the increase of the debt to GDP ratio and the rate of inflation.
00:58:51.000If GDP can grow faster than inflation and grow faster than the rate of the debt to GDP ratio, then we're in a manageable place.
00:59:01.000So that's what the premise of a lot of these tax cuts of the bill is, right?
00:59:04.000No tax on tips, no tax and overtime, right?
00:59:07.000The depreciation, the extension of the Trump tax cuts, all of which I support because you need a pro-growth agenda because when you're a debtor nation and you have no growth, then you're going to be in a really bad spot.
00:59:23.000First of all, I think Elon's greatest contribution was a philosophical one.
00:59:27.000I think Elon made us all realize how much waste there is and how much we really need to kind of get into the details of how much the government is inefficient from a technological standpoint, from a efficiency standpoint.
00:59:41.000So I don't think it's over by any means.
00:59:42.000I think Doge is a cultural mindset that is going to be hopefully around the Republican Party for years to come.
00:59:48.000It just seemed like Congress didn't really have that big of an incentive to do anything about it.
00:59:53.000What was most surprising, Elon said that he just wanted people to code and write in a description of where the money went, because right now you could basically just leave it blank, send money, and not write what the purpose of the money is for.
01:00:30.000I mean, this is a, it is a wild monster that is hard to rein in.
01:00:34.000And I know that sounds like cope and an excuse, but you have an entrenched permanent bureaucracy of millions of people.
01:00:40.000And then you have judges that are preventing literally the Trump administration from doing some of this stuff.
01:00:44.000You have federal judges that are coming in and preventing, you know, President Donald Trump from being like, nope, I want to lay off these workers.
01:02:02.000No, it's actually even worse than that.
01:02:04.000There's an incentive to keep spending more.
01:02:07.000In fact, the incentive in Washington, D.C. is that you have one wing that wants to spend money on more war, which is the Republican Party warmongering caucus, which I'm at war with.
01:02:16.000And then you have a whole nother thing, which is the welfare caucus.
01:02:18.000So you have the warfare welfare caucuses.
01:02:20.000So the warfare guys want to go invade the world.
01:02:23.000The welfare caucus wants to go put the entire world on welfare.
01:03:44.000And what do you think is the most likely outcome?
01:03:46.000Because I would like to think positively, but at the same time, I think realistically it's just going to be pressure.
01:03:51.000As one of my friends and heroes, Tony Robbins would say, I don't tell you to go to your garden and say, there's no weeds, there's no weeds, there's no weeds.
01:03:58.000I tell you to spot the weeds and pull them out.
01:04:58.000The best case telling is we can end this Russian-Ukrainian war and hopefully try to create a little bit of separation in daylight between the ever-growing marriage of Russia and China, which is bad for America.
01:05:40.000Regardless of how bad Putin is for invading Ukraine and all that stuff, basically we de-incentivized people to trust the dollar as a safe haven.
01:05:48.000Basically, we said, oh, if you misbehave, we might take away your dollars, which then has led to an incentive structure away from the U.S. dollar, which is very destructive.
01:05:56.000It seems like we're always facing several cataclysmic level issues at the exact same time.
01:06:02.000And so I'm just curious, what would you say are the top three issues that if they could be immediately addressed and fixed, we would be leagues, leagues better off.
01:06:11.000I'm going to give you probably some unexpected answers.
01:07:46.000And so if all of a sudden you're kind of this like obate, obese, sad country, of course you're going to kind of just fall apart and you're going to collapse.
01:07:55.000The last one is the most provocative of the three is that we have a major issue of this country that we become a nation of foreigners and we're strangers in our own country.
01:08:06.000We have not assimilated the third world well into our country.
01:08:09.000We have 20 million illegals that I believe invaded the country under Joe Biden.
01:08:13.000And so you kind of come, I could go to 456 if you want me to, but we are increasingly not a nation or a country.
01:08:21.000We look more like a colony where no one talks to their neighbor and we have to lock our doors at night.
01:08:26.000We're like a high, our cities are all super high crime.
01:08:28.000So people say, Charlie, what does success look like?
01:09:27.000Because the right's not going to believe.
01:09:28.000I mean, we can't stand him for obvious reasons.
01:09:31.000And to the left, they're like, look at this weak guy who's trying to find common ground with Charlie Kirk, who they think I'm terrible.
01:09:36.000So, but to his credit, I mean, there were no gotchas.
01:09:39.000But I mean, look, I'll kind of go back to the point I say, like, it's a failure of governance if you cannot walk your greatest cities at night.
01:10:40.000Where all of a sudden he kind of agreed with me and then, you know, went super viral where he was saying that, of course, it's deeply unfair for men to compete in female sports.
01:10:48.000What kind of insane stuff is this, right?
01:10:50.000Yeah, I think I would say that was probably one of the biggest takeaways.
01:10:53.000Have you kept in touch with him since then?
01:10:58.000My biggest text was him was being like, hey, you said that it was no big, you know, you were unfair for trans athletes to win state championships.
01:11:05.000Why are you not doing anything about it?
01:11:06.000Because a man just won the girls' championship in the state of California.
01:12:07.000It got to a point where Vegas was so welcoming.
01:12:10.000I made a video announcing that I was moving to Las Vegas and someone from like the business administration within the city of Vegas found my email and sent me like, hey, we're really happy to have you.
01:12:19.000If there's anything we could do, like they were happy to get the business.
01:12:40.000If you really want to like be an elected office that bad, just leave the Democrat Party and just go run as like a moderate Republican and just have some sort of like conversion story.
01:12:48.000Like, oh, yeah, I'm some sort of progressive.
01:14:23.000It was boundary pushing, but it was safe.
01:14:27.000You would, again, Gavin Newsom, if you're listening to this, would you let your son walk the streets of San Francisco unaccompanied at 1 a.m.?
01:15:29.000Then he ran for lieutenant governor and then he ran for governor.
01:15:31.000And he was mayor of San Francisco like during the collapse of San Francisco while it started to go down when all this progressive woke stuff started to pop up.
01:15:40.000If you want to make sense of the change and the chaos happening around us, you're going to need God's help.
01:15:45.000That's why Alan Jackson Ministries, a friend of mine, created the Culture and Christianity podcast, the Culture and Christianity Conference, and their weeknight news show, Alan Jackson Now.
01:15:57.000Millions of people also listen to Pastor Alan Jackson's powerful sermons each week.
01:16:01.000I do on radio, television, satellite, and online.
01:16:04.000In today's world, there's desperate need for truth.
01:16:07.000And Alan Jackson Ministries feels a sense of urgency to deliver God's truth and a biblical perspective to anyone who will listen.
01:16:18.000Their mission is to help people become more fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ, which is the most important thing, giving your life to the Lord, including here on the Charlie Kirk show.
01:16:56.000Now, you get a lot of people just on the street, and you have a good pulse of what's really going on with younger people.
01:17:02.000What's something that you've noticed that mainstream media either gets wrong or is just out of touch on?
01:17:07.000I would say that something that mainstream media really misses with young men, especially, is they desire to be more religious than I think they give them credit for.
01:17:20.000You're seeing a little bit of these news reports, but there's definitely a curiosity for God and for going back to the church in a very serious and significant way.
01:17:45.000But modernity has like the core of modernity is what?
01:17:49.000You are in charge of your own life and you could do whatever you want to do, and you're the center of the universe.
01:17:54.000Sounds good, leads to highest depression ever, highest rates, highest anxiety, and hopelessness.
01:18:02.000In Victor Frankl's amazing book, Man's Search for Meaning, he said that outside of food and water, the greatest need for man is meaning.
01:18:09.000And so, we see modernity constantly changing around us at all times.
01:18:14.000Things are changing, people are changing their genders, there's constant change.
01:18:17.000And I think young people want to go to a church environment that isn't changing.
01:18:22.000They want to go to a place that is stable, that is consistent, that is beautiful, that is ancient, that is everlasting, and that is eternal.
01:18:30.000What would you say is the biggest non-issue that people make out to be a massive issue?
01:18:34.000You already spoke about the issue that you think is extremely important that people don't really talk about, which is the birth rates.
01:19:01.000I would put it as like issue number 22,800 on issues of like what's pressing facing America.
01:19:09.000How about the fact that our public schools can't educate our kids and we can't find a single kid that can read at grade level in Maryland or Chicago?
01:19:19.000How about the fact that in this country that we have an average family cannot afford to go buy groceries in major cities and have to go into debt?
01:19:49.000In fact, I would argue that not only is it not a problem, it's a massive psychological operation against us to not actually talk about the major economic, cultural, and political forces that should be addressed in this country.
01:20:01.000And what do you think makes someone conservative or liberal in the first place?
01:20:07.000Again, I'm actually, the older I get, I do give a little bit more, I give a little bit more weight to community than I did probably 10 years ago, just because I see how much my daughter and my son absorb around me and my wife.
01:20:23.000So, I get kind of how you're a product of your environment, but it's not, you're not solely a product of your environment.
01:20:35.000So, conservative, it's just a worldview difference.
01:20:37.000So, left-wingers generally look at things through a prism of what they look at a prism of oppressor-oppressed, whereas we look at prisms of things versus just and unjust,
01:20:54.000right and wrong, and good and evil, and moral and immoral, where they look at things as more as like who's in power and who is not in power, which group wants sympathy, deserves sympathy, and what other group deserves sympathy.
01:21:09.000But look, we know that people that tend to be liberal tend to have temperament that is far more on kind of the openness and acceptance of, you know, how people are and how they act.
01:21:22.000We're conservatives, we tend to be much more order and discipline and let's just say structure-driven.
01:21:34.000So, when we as conservatives see someone that commits a crime and we don't think they're necessarily a product of their environment, we say, you shouldn't have committed that crime.
01:21:44.000Whereas liberals are like, well, we must have sympathy for them because the schools are broken.
01:21:48.000And of course, there is some truth to that.
01:21:49.000You still decided to commit the crime.
01:21:51.000It's an insult to every other person that's not committing a crime that comes out of that environment to act as if that person should be given an exception.
01:21:58.000As someone who works very closely with young voters, do you think that we should change the rights for who can vote?
01:22:11.000I'll say this, like we won the youth vote this last cycle.
01:22:14.000And it's funny, like we in certain states, not across the country.
01:22:18.000And it's just an amazing thing that you can actually win the youth vote and you could do it with mass virality and mass popularity and reaching out in ways that people would never have imagined.
01:22:29.000And so, No, I probably wouldn't put any more restrictions on it.
01:22:33.000You mentioned earlier in this podcast that one of the biggest sacrifices that you have to make is running this massive business at the same time as trying to be the leader in a family.
01:23:16.000Those seem like kind of select groups of people, though.
01:23:19.000You know, like if you're asking women that are attending a women's summit, they might be in a very specific situation.
01:23:25.000Yeah, I mean, like, I would say generally, I hear more complaints about the dating pool than, you know, like, wow, there's so many options.
01:23:33.000I think it's more of an options issue is that you could go online and just, if you, if you, if you don't like someone, instead of working through it, it's just you go back and you start swiping again.
01:23:43.000So there's, so let me, what's the problem with women?
01:23:45.000And then I'll go to the problem with men.
01:23:46.000The problem with women is that many of them, A, have unrealistic expectations of the man that they want, a lot of them.
01:24:30.000But number two is women need to be very clear that we need to tell women more clearly that if you do not have children before the age of 30, there's only a 50% chance that you will have children.
01:24:45.000Isn't that, though, that women are becoming very intentional about whether or not they want to have kids and just it's it's more socially acceptable miserable because of it though I mean it's not just mine you go fact check me put the numbers up the most depressed people in America are women without children they're the most likely to be on antidepressants they're the most likely to be anxious again people that experience severe depression are people people that say they are very unhappy are people young single women in their early 30s without children who are the happiest women in America married women with children I
01:25:15.000I think there is a, and by the way, of course they have the agency to do that.
01:25:17.000I'm not trying to like make a law like you must get married and have kids.
01:25:20.000But I think that we've gone wrong here, that women should prioritize family and children way above career, that they should try to find their husband before they're 25, that they should try to get married way younger.
01:25:32.000But then that also goes back to just finances.
01:26:24.000But if young women do it, then young men will.
01:26:27.000So if that's what the women need to do in order to make themselves worthy of dating, what do you think is the main thing men need to do to make themselves worthy?
01:26:34.000The most attractive quality in a young man that young women can't ever articulate is self-control.
01:26:56.000Are you going to have a wandering eye?
01:26:57.000Are you going to get drunk every night?
01:26:58.000Are you going to kind of go into like a drug, you know, abyss?
01:27:02.000Women can't always put that into words, but that differentiates a boy from a man.
01:27:06.000A boy is someone that has no self-control.
01:27:07.000I would argue it's confidence and ambition.
01:27:10.000And if you had those qualities, I think everything else falls into place because you have to have self-control if you're going to be ambitious.
01:27:20.000Look, again, it's just if you look at it, though, you can be very confident, ambitious, but you could also then cheat on your wife like 10 years later, right?
01:27:29.000So you have to be able to control your flesh.
01:27:31.000We have we as men have very different problems than women, right?
01:29:46.000I think I was- was at a level where like that felt like the right choice to make but throughout my early 20s was it because you felt more serious with her or i was also in a point where i was ready to be able to like financially yes legit i get that early 20s like i still think saving five bucks here and there i would do it i would go to save you're you're manic with saving money.
01:31:42.000It's you trying to be like egalitarian.
01:31:44.000No, you as women should want to be provided for.
01:31:47.000In fact, you should have an expectation that you as a woman are so important and so critical and so necessary and beautiful that it shouldn't even be a question that if you're in a date.
01:31:59.000Now, if it's a business lunch or like friends-owned stuff, 50-50.
01:32:04.000Like it's all of a sudden you're like, hey, I want to buy insurance or like, you know, you're going to, you know, I want to go do business.
01:32:09.000I still think the man should pay, but that's that's.
01:32:11.000But see, to me, when I was dating, it would be a huge turnoff if the check comes and she just looks at it and then looks at me and looks at the children.
01:32:20.000I at least want to see like I'm reaching for something and I'm like, no worries.
01:32:23.000I want a woman that wants to be led by a man.
01:32:26.000I don't want a woman that's all of a sudden going to be competing financially in a marriage.
01:32:29.000I don't want a woman that's going to be like, oh, you know, questioning financial decisions or a woman that's going to be like, all of a sudden, Jeff.
01:32:36.000No, the man is the leader of the household.
01:32:38.000The man is the leader of all the financial decisions.
01:32:41.000The man is the, is the primary, should be the primary provider.
01:32:59.000But like this idea, if a woman on a date were to pull out a credit card to go pay for something, like I would be, I would be like, oh, so you're like one of those boss babes.
01:33:10.000No, that's, that's not what that's saying for us.
01:33:13.000That is, no, that is completely messed up.
01:33:52.000The woman should be like, you know what?
01:33:53.000She should say, she's like, thank you so much for doing that and not having to put this unnecessary pressure on me because you have just freed me.
01:34:25.000There's a lot of great people that do that.
01:34:26.000But generally, we have overcorrected, okay?
01:34:29.000We have a lot of women that deep down want to go be moms and they would love to have their man come in and just grab the check and be like, no, I got it.
01:34:40.000And by the way, you know what they see that as a signal?
01:35:08.000Whole alpha is like, you go straight up where you are like smooth move and the girl is so stunned and she'll be like, oh, don't we have to be like, no, I got it.
01:35:47.000And by the way, it's not just a religious take.
01:35:49.000I actually think that if you introduce sex into dating, then all of a sudden there's kind of like a dilution of what exactly will be the ultimate physical crescendo of marriage.
01:36:00.000You can actually make a rational, reasonable, non-religious argument for that.
01:36:04.000Anyway, that's like a whole other topic that we could discuss another time, but I will defend that.
01:36:08.000I actually think bring back purity, bring back segment of yourself for marriage.
01:36:12.000Okay, but other top other things is this.
01:36:13.000You should go on a road trip with the person you're dating.
01:37:53.000So, were you raised in a house where a lot of friends came over all the time, or were you raised in a house where almost no friends came over?
01:38:21.000Imagine if you were to marry a closed house person and all of a sudden you were like, hey, we're going to constantly have a stream of people and you don't talk about that before marriage.
01:38:29.000All of a sudden, you're like, it's total chaos for a closed house person because they're raised in a place where evenings are very quiet.
01:38:36.000Make sure, this is another important thing, make sure that you get along with each other, that you really like each other, not just love each other, that you like spending time with that person.
01:38:45.000One of my favorite words in the English language is like.
01:39:11.000They shouldn't always necessarily be deal breakers, but boy, you should know the in-laws because your wife will take the form of the mother more times than not.
01:39:20.000So you should at least get along with your in-law, kind of know the in-law.