Sen. Eric Schmidt (R-NJ) joins us to discuss the latest on Trump's cabinet picks, the LA fires, and TikTok. We also talk about the proposed ban on TikTok in the United States.
00:00:42.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:02:38.000People are tired of the $200 billion for Ukraine.
00:02:42.000When the Chinese control the Panama Canal and we have the opportunity to get the natural resources and the strategic advantage in Greenland.
00:02:52.000I don't think this issue is going away.
00:02:53.000I'm glad you got a chance to go up there.
00:02:55.000No, and look, people can make fun of it, but there is significant geopolitical reasons for Greenland to be part of the United States, natural resource reasons, and the way to look at it is either China, Russia, or the United States will end up controlling Greenland.
00:04:19.000As much as they try to ratchet up some sort of outrage, as they always do, Pete's the right guy for the job.
00:04:26.000And I think you look at the consistent theme of all the picks that President Trump has picked, with the view that he ran, you know, as much as it was R&D, it was disruptor versus establishment.
00:04:37.000And all of these picks are coming in as reformers.
00:04:42.000And so what, you know, what I've talked to Pete about, and I think what he's committed to doing is, first and foremost, getting rid of DEI. Immediately.
00:04:50.000We've been able to make some gains in recent years, but this is divisive.
00:05:18.000I think he's going to command respect.
00:05:19.000And don't underestimate the ability for us to recruit when they see somebody like Pete Hexeth leading the Pentagon as opposed to somebody like Lloyd Austin, who famously was wearing the mask in the Philippines during COVID. Disaster.
00:05:35.000No, it was more than the mask, Senator.
00:07:26.000she's serious she's a reformer she's going to come into doj an agency of course as everyone watching knows has been weaponized against political opponents been weaponized against catholics been weaponized against parents who showed up to school board meetings during covid i mean it's totally lost its way she's going to restore credibility and get it back to its core mission of taking on violent crime and we've got a lot of that uh to take on in cities across the country senator the The Senate schedule is going to be rather ambitious.
00:07:55.000Can you kind of bring us into the room?
00:07:58.000President Trump took D.C. by storm the last couple of days.
00:08:48.000Important thing of leadership is understanding the moment that you're in, right?
00:08:52.000We have a very unique opportunity with him winning the mandate, having control of the House and the Senate to actually deliver for the American people.
00:09:55.000As we gear up for another important election year, remember that we vote every day with our dollar.
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00:10:54.000Senator, tell us your thoughts and walk the audience through one versus two bills.
00:11:01.000If you think about this, because we have both chambers, we have the ability to move forward to what's called reconciliation, meaning if it's dealing with these budget issues and budget savings, in the Senate, we don't need 60 votes.
00:11:17.000We just need 51 votes, and we've got 53 votes.
00:11:20.000So reconciliation provides us a great opportunity to not have to rely on Democrats for any votes on the big-ticket items that we want to get done.
00:11:29.000And so the question then is, the House is sort of, hey, we want to do one bill, and I'm sympathetic in the sense that these are well-meaning folks who have a very, very slim majority.
00:11:40.000We have a slightly bigger majority in the Senate.
00:12:06.000And then you've got the issues that, you know, the tax cuts from 2017 are set to expire at the end of 2025. Right?
00:12:13.000So we've got all year to make sure that gets done.
00:12:15.000What I don't want to see, and my concern is with one bill, is that we get to March and we haven't done any of these big ticket items.
00:12:22.000We're going to be in a spending fight and a debt ceiling fight with the Democrats then.
00:12:26.000And if we haven't had any points on the board, it's just going to feel like, you know, I want to deliver early.
00:12:32.000And we're going to have leverage to get those tax cuts extended and make them permanent because they expire.
00:12:38.000So we have our own leverage on that to get that done.
00:12:41.000So my feeling is let's not empower Chuck Schumer to have any more leverage than we need to.
00:12:46.000Let's get this stuff done before March when we have that CR and debt ceiling fight and then continue to work on a second reconciliation package in the summer.
00:12:55.000Because worst case scenario, I just don't want to be in July and August not having got a lot of the stuff done that President Trump ran on.
00:13:30.000The House, at least right now, or what Speaker Johnson has articulated, although I'm not sure that's a uniform position in the House.
00:13:37.000But look, I'm sympathetic that it's not an easy task with a one to three vote majority over there on this stuff.
00:13:44.000But the argument for them is, hey, we won't get a second bite of the apple.
00:13:48.000We got to make sure we have everything in one so it'll provide maximum leverage to make sure everybody's getting what they want in one big bill.
00:13:55.000I will say, though, that I think the Senate, Senate Republicans are unified in our belief.
00:14:01.000And I'm not sure there's a dissenting opinion that we ought to break this up and let's get some early wins.
00:14:06.000And so, look, ultimately this is President Trump's call.
00:14:10.000And I think we are all committed to getting this done and, you know, securing those wins.
00:14:19.000This is just a, you know, a strategic...
00:14:22.000It's an ongoing discussion if it's one bill or two.
00:14:27.000And like I said, President Trump's the quarterback.
00:14:29.000He's ultimately going to make the call.
00:14:30.000But I think objectively, the best strategy here is to get one, you know, a border package done early and then let's deal with the other stuff later in the year.
00:14:41.000I heard from somebody who was in some of these meetings yesterday on President Trump's team.
00:14:45.000They said it was a markably different type of tone being around the Senate conference than it was in 2019 or 2020.
00:14:51.000It was seems that there was an agreement amongst the senators that this was Trump's party and that MAGA was here to say, did you get that sense with your meetings with president Trump these last couple of days?
00:15:02.000Now, look, I came in, in the 2022 cycle.
00:15:04.000I think one of the things that's also true is you have a younger group of members that have come in since 2018, really.
00:15:11.000That, you know, when Trump has been on the stage, I think it's transformed our conference in many ways to sort of America first.
00:15:19.000But Trump is, you know, it's not disputed at all that he's the leader of our party.
00:15:22.000And by the way, the reason we have 53 votes in the Senate and why we have a House majority and why we are the party of American workers now.
00:15:30.000We are a broad-based party with great opportunities ahead.
00:15:35.000That you guys did really well at Turning Point was that means with that broader base, we have more lower propensity voters, so we've got to make sure people show up and vote.
00:15:46.000And I do think in that room, everybody understood the role that President Trump played for us to be in this very unique historical position where we have the House and the Senate and the White House.
00:16:25.000Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here with New Year's Resolutions.
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00:17:38.000Fire Chief Muncy welcomes the program.
00:17:40.000Mr. Muncy, do you have fires right now in San Bernardino or are you mostly controlled?
00:17:45.000Hey, I'm sorry you don't have any partners right now, but I'll see if I can fill that gap.
00:17:49.000We've been doing pretty well in San Bernardino County.
00:17:51.000Our firefighters are keeping the fire small.
00:17:54.000We've had about half the wind speeds, I think, that we've seen in L.A., and we were blessed a couple days ago to start getting a little snow on our upper elevations.
00:18:01.000All that's been real helpful with keeping our fire small.
00:18:04.000We have sent quite a few resources over to L.A. County and L.A. City.
00:18:08.000Our hearts are just with our brother and sisters over there.
00:18:15.000This kind of devastation in 29 years, I'd love to say it's unheard of, but it just seems like it's becoming more and more commonplace.
00:18:24.000Over the last 20 years, the fires have just increased in magnitude and frequency.
00:18:30.000I think it's double what it was when I first started.
00:18:33.000It's a shame, and it's not lack of effort by these firefighters.
00:18:38.000They are, the acts of bravery that we've witnessed, that we've heard the stories from, talking to the fire chiefs in this area, they are fully committed and engaged and definitely have saved, well, it doesn't seem like it, they've saved, say, billions of dollars of property and saved countless human lives.
00:18:55.000And I think that's going to be the true testament as we walk away from this.
00:18:58.000What can we do different as we move into the future?
00:19:00.000What could we have done differently in the heat of the moment?
00:19:03.000But at the same time, recognizing the efforts of...
00:19:06.000Of the men and women that truly put their lives on the line.
00:19:11.000One story, for instance, I was talking to our strike team leaders that's over in the Palisades.
00:19:17.000And at the time I talked to him, he said he hadn't slept in 36 hours.
00:19:21.000And his crews were still actively fighting fire.
00:19:24.000That's what our firefighters are facing year-round.
00:19:27.000It's not just the fire season anymore.
00:20:26.000These pumps could be supplying tanks that are on hills that are gravity-fed, but often it's used to pump the pressure.
00:20:32.000So when you see these kind of trees that are on fire in these houses, you can imagine utilities are also affected.
00:20:39.000You lose power to your pumps, and now you have less pressure.
00:20:43.000Finally, look at this house that's burning down.
00:20:46.000What you're going to find when these houses are done burning is that the water is just running out of this house until you go turn the water meter off.
00:20:52.000So you have so much water that's being wasted as well.
00:20:56.000With this kind of devastation on this kind of scale, it's absolutely predictable that your water system is just not going to be able to maintain the fire flow that's required.
00:21:07.000Fire flow is just never designed for this.
00:21:10.000And I would go further and say it's not really feasible to examine.
00:21:14.000You know, how do you increase the pressure?
00:21:16.000How do you increase the diameter of the pipes?
00:21:17.000We're talking billions of dollars in infrastructure that would be required for this.
00:21:22.000Now, the state of California did a good thing.
00:21:24.000They sent a lot of water tenders into the fire, but let's talk a little about that.
00:21:29.000A water tender is a truck that's going to carry 2,500 gallons or larger is what the state requested.
00:21:36.000They're going to have to go find a water hydrant that has water and then drive back and supply these fire trucks.
00:21:42.000And then they're going to turn around again, and they're going to go find water.
00:21:45.000At times, they might find a static water source like a pool or a lake, generally freshwater, and they'll draw water from that.
00:24:28.000All of these fires have the chance of getting out of control.
00:24:32.000But we also have citizens doing things like this.
00:24:34.000Unfortunately, a couple of fires have been on more than once have been citizens that have been outside welding on days that have fire dangers.
00:24:42.000And that just a little spark gets into a brush.
00:24:44.000Next thing you know, you have a large fire.
00:24:47.000If I were to give you a percentile, I would say that over half of our wildfires that we respond to are human caused by negligence.
00:24:56.000Maybe about 25% could be attributed to some sort of homelessness activity.
00:25:03.000But generally, we're keeping those fires pretty small.
00:25:06.000They don't tend to just go make a warming fire in an area that they know that's going to spread to vegetation because they want to really be left alone.
00:25:16.000So, Dan, just in closing here, what what can people do to help this tragedy here?
00:26:16.000Your house is constructed in a safe manner to prevent a wildfire, that you're following those guidelines that you'll find on the websites about removing fuels away from your house, that you're examining the trees, the shrubs, the grasses, removing them, creating fire breaks around your property will keep those fires from spreading and destroying your house.
00:26:35.000My heart goes out to the LA City and LA County firefighters that are working so hard and citizens that have lost their houses.
00:26:41.000Charlie, thank you for highlighting these issues and having me as a guest.
00:26:52.000Freedom at charliekirk.com is Isabel Brown.
00:26:54.000Isabel Brown is very popular on TikTok.
00:26:57.000TikTok, by the way, is scheduled to be banned in the United States.
00:27:02.000On the 19th of January, coming up in nine days from now, it's gonna be in the hands of President Trump.
00:27:07.000The law gives President Trump the ability to either keep the ban or to allow TikTok to operate or to allow it under what could be some sort of a settlement.
00:27:16.000But in the meantime, the Supreme Court may or may strike down the law, allow TikTok to continue to operate.
00:27:23.000Over 170 million Americans use TikTok, and we reach billions of people on TikTok.
00:27:31.000Isabel, talk about the profound impact that TikTok has had making Gen Z more conservative.
00:27:37.000Well, the truth is, Charlie, we wouldn't be preparing for a Trump inauguration in just over a week if it weren't for TikTok.
00:27:44.000It has been astounding to see the impact that that campaign had on one social media platform.
00:27:50.000In fact, according to TikTok employees, Trump is outperforming his performance on every other social media platform on TikTok by a factor of five.
00:27:59.000So he's five times more impactful on TikTok than anywhere else.
00:28:03.000But of that nearly 200 million Americans that you just mentioned, That use the platform every single day.
00:28:09.000About 70% of those individuals are Generation Z, are this next great generation that we're starting to see become overwhelmingly conservative, largely because of accounts like yours, Donald Trump's, and so many others engaging with young people in an authentic, honest conversation that feels a lot more tangible and accessible on TikTok than it does on meta or YouTube, per se.
00:28:31.000What would a ban of TikTok mean for conservative creators and the progress you've been making to make Gen Z red?
00:28:38.000What's been really fascinating this last week is that there's been a much larger conversation opening up related to free speech on social media, not just from the First Amendment perspective, but from content policy and moderation perspectives, too.
00:28:51.000In fact, Mark Zuckerberg just said they're backtracking on Meta to get rid of fact checkers and censorship of conservative ideas, largely because of TikTok.
00:29:00.000Now, I know we've all had our frustrations with certain censorship issues and accounts getting shut down over the last several years, but I've been screaming from the rooftops for For about a year and a half that only one platform has been regularly reaching out to myself and other conservative creators to insist that we have a home on their platform, and that is TikTok.
00:29:18.000Frankly, the only reason that these conservative values are becoming trendy and cool again is because young people are confronting them where they are in a language they understand.
00:29:31.000Making America Great Again starts with making America healthy again.
00:31:59.000Do you think President Trump should save TikTok?
00:32:03.000Absolutely do, Charlie, namely because this is a matter of First Amendment freedom of expression rights for all American citizens.
00:32:10.000I'd be really curious to hear everything that was said in the oral arguments today, but I do know this free speech angle was of the utmost importance for TikTok's legal team, and I'm sure will be based in existing Supreme Court precedent from a case back in the 1960s called Lamont v.
00:32:27.000Way back then, American citizens wanted to receive propaganda that the United States government So when our federal government,
00:32:50.000namely Congress from a bipartisan perspective, is making the argument that this is against the issues of national security currently occupied by the White House and by those on Capitol Hill, they're really ignoring.
00:33:01.000This right to receive that Americans have baked into our Constitution to not just say something that might be unpopular, but to hear a difference of opinion as well.
00:33:11.000The ramifications for banning TikTok, how many small businesses use TikTok?
00:33:20.000What are the economic potential ramifications here?
00:33:23.000Again, I think that something needs to be probably cleaned up on the data side.
00:33:26.000Make sure that American data is not shared with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:34:03.000There are quite literally millions of American small businesses that have been built up thanks to TikTok alone in this post-COVID era that would essentially cease to exist almost instantaneously.
00:34:15.000Some economists are projecting this could yield a massive unemployment rise for Donald Trump taking office a week from Monday and would be catastrophic to the American economy.
00:34:26.000But as for this idea of American data, you know, I still have a very hard time believing that the true intention behind this law was to protect Americans' data.
00:34:35.000First and foremost, if this law is upheld by the Supreme Court, they are still allowed to hold onto nearly 200 million Americans' data after TikTok ceases to operate in the United States.
00:34:47.000So that data is just already out there.
00:34:49.000And we have countless documented examples of Meta selling your data to China, Russia, and the U.S. government.
00:34:56.000Mark Zuckerberg admitted today on Joe Rogan that the Biden administration forced them to censor certain content and to provide American data to the federal government.
00:35:07.000Airbnb has been known to sell your data to the Chinese Communist Party.
00:35:11.000So I don't really think that's what's happening here.
00:35:14.000When you see this rare bipartisan overwhelming support happening on Capitol Hill from people who can't even agree on what the definition of a woman is, the hair on the back of my neck begins to stand up asking what's really the impetus for this.
00:35:27.000And I think so much of it has to do with the free conversations happening on the platform.
00:35:39.000Oh, it would be an endless win, Charlie, and I'm highly encouraging the president to do so, not just to protect this red wave conservative movement we're seeing happen with young people, but to continue encouraging conservative values to thrive across Western civilization.
00:35:54.000This isn't just protecting free speech and the exchange of ideas for American citizens, but young people everywhere, and I'm incredibly excited to see where the movement goes.