The Charlie Kirk Show - Unpacking the Conservative Uprising in America with Steve Bannon

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, Steve Bannon from the War Room Pandemic Podcast, one of the biggest podcasts in the country, joins our show advertiser-free.

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00:01:17.000 Steve Bannon is here.

00:01:18.000 You're going to enjoy this.

00:01:19.000 Buckle up. 0.96

00:01:20.000 Here we go.

00:01:21.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:01:23.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:01:25.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:01:28.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:32.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:33.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:34.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:42.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:51.000 That's why we are here.

00:01:53.000 Hey, everybody.

00:01:54.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:57.000 By popular demand, we have Steve Bannon here today from the War Room Pandemic Podcast.

00:02:03.000 And Steve, welcome to the show.

00:02:05.000 This has been long overdue, and I listen to your show quite regularly.

00:02:10.000 Can you just kind of start with where the idea of doing this live stream on the war room pandemic started?

00:02:15.000 Because it's not one of the top broadcasts in the world.

00:02:19.000 It's funny you asked that.

00:02:21.000 And by the way, we watch you all the time.

00:02:23.000 I actually did an homage to you yesterday on your breaking of the priest that was in Buckeye.

00:02:28.000 So just we follow your social media because you got so much big stuff up.

00:02:32.000 It happened. 0.97

00:02:33.000 I would do, John Fredericks is a guy that has this kind of radio network for the deplorables.

00:02:38.000 And he's from my hometown of Richmond. 0.89

00:02:40.000 I did his show in the once a week, you know, for forever.

00:02:44.000 And back in 2019, I got on there and talked about the impeachment.

00:02:49.000 This is after Nancy Pelosi who's up to the UN.

00:02:51.000 And it just said, hey, you know, President Trump's going to get impeached.

00:02:54.000 Here's how they're going to do it.

00:02:55.000 He's not going to get removed from office.

00:02:57.000 They're going to try to chop blocking for his re-elect because everything, he's on fire right now.

00:03:01.000 Economy, all of it.

00:03:03.000 And the audience like went nuts.

00:03:05.000 It says fake news.

00:03:06.000 It's not happening.

00:03:07.000 And so over the weekend, he says, you know, so first time he had negative response, I said, John, you know this is happening.

00:03:11.000 He goes, no.

00:03:12.000 So I talked to him and on October, that was a Friday.

00:03:16.000 We talked over the weekend and he put me up on his radio network on Monday.

00:03:22.000 We did one dry run.

00:03:24.000 We had Mark Meadows in the next day.

00:03:26.000 And so August, October 22nd of 2019, we started.

00:03:30.000 And then two hours and an hour in the afternoon.

00:03:33.000 And then in January, because I'm pretty dialed into China, I knew that there was this pandemic happening.

00:03:40.000 So we bifurcated the show one hour to the impeachment, one hour to pandemic.

00:03:43.000 And then when the impeachment fell apart a couple of weeks later, this is in mid-January.

00:03:48.000 And the funny thing, Charlie, is when I started war in pandemic, I had all the mainstream media from DC and New York guys I knew said the impeachment show is pretty intense because you get all these experts in, but why are you doing this pandemic?

00:03:59.000 It's like it's a bird flu from central China. 0.97

00:04:02.000 You sound like a nutcase. 0.99

00:04:03.000 And I said, Yeah, I don't know. 0.99

00:04:04.000 Just stand by on this thing.

00:04:07.000 So we've had a good run.

00:04:08.000 And I think, you know, just like you, people are looking for sources of information.

00:04:14.000 They can come every day, build a community, and actually get information they can use in their personal lives and information that they can actually apply to their political or their, you know, their social lives.

00:04:25.000 One of the things we pride ourselves on is that we're an activist.

00:04:28.000 Our audience, the Warren Posse, is an activist community.

00:04:30.000 I mean, you can see today when somebody like you are on, they'll be taking the clips and pushing them out and acting as a force multiplier.

00:04:37.000 So it's really about human agency.

00:04:40.000 That's what we try to tell the audience and give them tools and information and access.

00:04:44.000 And that's why the Turning Point USA, those types of things are what they like.

00:04:48.000 They like action-oriented.

00:04:50.000 It's not really traditional talk radio, which I love.

00:04:52.000 Don't get me wrong, but Rush Limba and these guys have such a great model.

00:04:57.000 And that's just not, it's not what we do.

00:04:59.000 And that's why a guy like you come on, you're the kind of guest that really we try to book and try to get on because it's action, action, action.

00:05:06.000 Well, it's very unique.

00:05:07.000 And, you know, there was just a story, I think, in the Washington Post or somewhere that blamed you for the fact that people are taking precinct committee positions seriously.

00:05:16.000 We were mentioned like halfway through because we've been trying to do that through our political arm turning point action.

00:05:21.000 And it's kind of refreshing to finally see a community that wants to do something and want to take back the Republican Party and take back the country.

00:05:30.000 And I want to explore that with you, Steve, because you've been one of the leaders on kind of this idea of populist conservatism.

00:05:38.000 And I don't think you get the credit always for being able to articulate the philosophical foundations for that.

00:05:44.000 Can you just kind of riff on that for a second here of why, what do we believe?

00:05:48.000 What are we trying to do here?

00:05:50.000 Yeah, I think it's, and by the way, it gets back to the precinct committee man, which came out of a guy in Arizona actually has been doing it for years.

00:05:56.000 It was ProPublica, the kind of left-wing investigative guys who I thought did a very good job of trying to find out what we're doing.

00:06:03.000 Look, populism really came from the financial crisis collapse of 2008, where I noticed that all the working class people were the guys left holding the bag, right?

00:06:12.000 And particularly, Obama came in most progressive president. 0.92

00:06:14.000 They just blew up the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve.

00:06:17.000 You had the greatest concentration of wealth ever.

00:06:19.000 And kind of the hardworking folks like my dad at the time, you know, was like, I think 80, almost 90 years old.

00:06:25.000 He had held ATT stock.

00:06:26.000 All the stock dropped to be of no value.

00:06:28.000 These are guys that totally buy into the system.

00:06:31.000 And so populism, I started looking at it, you know, we've won as Republicans, we've won more elections than we've lost since 19 since Nixon won in 1968.

00:06:39.000 If you look at Senate and House and state legislatures and governorships, and I tell people, hey, we won all these elections, but we lost the country.

00:06:47.000 And you could look at that right after the 2020, you know, this fiasco in 2020 and after the Biden administration came in and today with the mandates, that you just can't go on an old model, an old model that really is a corporatist.

00:07:01.000 And I think you said it so well on our show today, a corporatist model that just plays to these kind of tax cuts and deregulations for these giant corporations.

00:07:09.000 And that's been, and that's what the controlled opposition that the Democrats want.

00:07:13.000 We need something that engages citizens and particularly people.

00:07:16.000 Remember, they pay the taxes.

00:07:17.000 They're the ones that send their sons and daughters into the military. 0.64

00:07:20.000 Many of them are veterans.

00:07:21.000 They're the Chinese have a name for it, Lao Bai Jing, which means old hundred names.

00:07:25.000 It's just this common man.

00:07:27.000 And I come from a family of the common man and woman, right?

00:07:31.000 Just kind of hardworking, basic people.

00:07:33.000 We need to shift decision making to them and their engagement in the country's governance.

00:07:39.000 And that's populism.

00:07:40.000 Now, the other part of that is kind of nationalism and conservatism.

00:07:43.000 And that is, hey, we understand we are in a global network.

00:07:47.000 We understand that, you know, we have interest all over the world and obviously companies all over the world, et cetera.

00:07:53.000 But you've got to put American citizenship first. 0.82

00:07:56.000 America has to come first. 0.86

00:07:57.000 And American citizens have to come first, whether it's the sovereignty of our country, the southern border, how we deploy our troops, all of it. 0.88

00:08:05.000 It's not that we can't be in multinational organizations or treaties or things like that, but America's interests have to come first, just like other nations. 0.87

00:08:13.000 It's kind of the Treaty of Westphalia, which was 300 years ago that made the nation state the centerpiece.

00:08:18.000 That's still the way for us to get the most ability of freedom.

00:08:21.000 So, populism is really pushing decision-making down to the people and having policies that really benefit the people.

00:08:28.000 A perfect example is economics.

00:08:30.000 You know, for years and years and years, we've had tax cuts for giant corporations, deregulation for giant corporations, which in and of itself is not bad if you look at the overall aspect of it.

00:08:41.000 What we've allowed these multinational corporations, and I always tell the Republicans, they're the most progressive institutions in the world now, these woke companies, all these guys you gave tax cuts to and deregulation have now turned on conservatives, turned on traditionalists with a vengeance to deplatform them, debank them, all of it.

00:08:58.000 And so that's not working.

00:08:59.000 We have to have a model that focuses on bringing job, high-value-added manufacturing jobs back here, that looks at economics.

00:09:07.000 That we've put too much of the returns to capital that now needs to be pushed back.

00:09:11.000 Some of that's going to be pushed back to labor.

00:09:13.000 We have to have tax policy like that, investment policy like that, et cetera.

00:09:17.000 Because listen, it's on the shoulders of the deployable rest.

00:09:20.000 All the tax revenues essentially come from them, or the great bulk of it, since we know the wealthy pay very little in taxes.

00:09:26.000 And the pension funds are really the private equity and the venture capital that drive the Zuckerbergs of the world and the Jack Dorsey's of the world.

00:09:35.000 In addition, it has been the driving engine of shipping all the jobs over to China.

00:09:39.000 So, to me, this country is about 65% popular.

00:09:43.000 I think the policies of President Trump, who kind of personified this, right, as a real estate billionaire from Queens, then go to Manhattan on the global stage.

00:09:52.000 He understands and connects, as you've seen a million times, Charlie, he can connect to the common man and he understands their fears and particularly what they want out of governance, right?

00:10:04.000 Which is not a lot.

00:10:05.000 What they basically want to do is protect the family, make sure they get a fair share, and they will pay their taxes, they'll work hard, they'll send their sons and daughters to defend the nation.

00:10:15.000 So, it's pretty straightforward.

00:10:16.000 And I think that it's now we can, and the key, I keep telling people, I say, hey, look, we're winning.

00:10:22.000 And if you look at like in the 2020 election, look at the Rio Grande Valley, look at these, as Steve Cortez says, we are winning working class Hispanics like never before, right?

00:10:32.000 We're winning African-American males like we've never won before.

00:10:35.000 And those are because of basic Trump policies of populism and nationalism.

00:10:38.000 And so I think with the work that you're doing with the youth, which is still to me our most tenuous because I don't think we get that message out, I see a coalition here that could govern for 100 years.

00:10:48.000 And so that's what the war room every day tries to emphasize: the populist nationalist aspect of the Trump movement.

00:10:55.000 And an idea of populism is also in some ways non-ideological.

00:10:59.000 It's supposed to be prudent in its approach to reject kind of like bumper sticker conservatism of saying, oh, yeah, you can never do tariffs.

00:11:07.000 Like, why can't we have some tariffs if it actually helps your workers, right? 0.84

00:11:11.000 And so, Steve, can you let's go a level deeper about this, about how Republicans are kind of stuck in this muscle memory of a party and a movement that, quite honestly, I grew up in in 2012 and 13 and 2014, you know, where I used to go to these gatherings, Steve, and there used to be like charts and graphs about, you know, GDP growth or, you know, and again, I'm not discounting that.

00:11:34.000 I guess it's fine, right?

00:11:35.000 It's an element to a successful society.

00:11:38.000 But now, Steve, when I speak at these gatherings like I just did in Marietta, California, they're talking about culture.

00:11:44.000 They're talking about children.

00:11:46.000 They're talking about things that I think are far more important than GDP graphs.

00:11:49.000 Can you talk about that, about either where we went wrong and how we're correcting that?

00:11:54.000 I think that because elections and what the consultants told people, because remember, the consultants are really marketing experts that are focused on television and they were trying to make 30-second spots. 0.98

00:12:05.000 And so they came up with, it's the economy stupid. 0.92

00:12:08.000 And it got to be that we're just focused on the economy and GDP growth and tax cuts and deregulation. 0.99

00:12:13.000 And what people forgot is we're a country with an economy, not an economy that has a country bolted onto it.

00:12:19.000 And I think that's been one of the big powers in populism.

00:12:22.000 And populism, you can see the personified manifestation of populism right now.

00:12:27.000 People say, well, it's still too esoteric.

00:12:29.000 Look at the school boards.

00:12:29.000 Here's the thing.

00:12:31.000 Look at moms and dads, particularly moms there, arguing about masks, arguing now about vaccines, but particularly look about CRT.

00:12:39.000 I know so many moms who, let's say this, weren't political science majors when they were in college that now sit there and can tell you about Herbert Marcuse and Cloward Piven.

00:12:51.000 Michelle Foucault and Jacques Derrida and all of them.

00:12:54.000 Yeah.

00:12:55.000 In the Frankfurt School.

00:12:56.000 And when Joanne Reid is on MSNBC saying, oh no, critical race theory is just some Derek Bell esoteric thing at Harvard Law School.

00:13:03.000 They're saying, no, no, no, Derek Bell taught this.

00:13:05.000 Obama, I mean, they know it.

00:13:08.000 That's populism.

00:13:09.000 Yes.

00:13:09.000 They are so engaged, right?

00:13:11.000 That, and you're seeing it now in the precinct committee strategy where people are showing up.

00:13:15.000 There's, you know, the Republican Party structured to be kind of a grassroots party.

00:13:19.000 Now, what they get away with is only half of the billets are filled.

00:13:23.000 So Dan Schultz, a guy in Arizona for years, West Point grad, has been pushing this.

00:13:28.000 And we just kind of gave it a platform.

00:13:30.000 And people go, holy, hang on.

00:13:31.000 I can actually go down to a precinct, sign up, and be actually part of the Republican Party and be a decision maker.

00:13:38.000 And it doesn't cost me any money, just time.

00:13:40.000 And that's, and by the way, so the left's freaking out.

00:13:42.000 They hate populism.

00:13:43.000 They hate the fact they're seeing in Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and Florida, and particularly Arizona.

00:13:49.000 They're seeing grassroots organizations that really are getting engaged.

00:13:53.000 Remember, if you look at our political history, the two big reactions, one to the Clinton presidency in 92, was the Newt Gingers revolt in 94, which is kind of one of the beginnings of it.

00:14:02.000 And then the Tea Party revolt, right when you were coming on the scene, Charlie, in 2010, which was the kind of revolt against the Obama-failed policies in his first year, right?

00:14:11.000 His first year and a half.

00:14:13.000 Those two gave us huge first, we took back the House in 94 for the first time.

00:14:17.000 And then in 2010, 63 seats, the biggest sweep since the depths of the Great Depression in 1932.

00:14:23.000 That's populism.

00:14:25.000 Now, we kind of lost the plot because we really didn't have the policies to go along with that. 0.98

00:14:29.000 People, you know, once again, once again, Mitch McConnell and the establishment are pretty good about steering it back to what the Cokes want. 0.97

00:14:37.000 And that's the power of the Trump movement. 0.96

00:14:40.000 Today, I mean, you came out, and the reason we had you on the show today, you came out as a firebrand yesterday.

00:14:46.000 Say, hey, look, I've got a company over 100 people.

00:14:48.000 I'm taking this to court.

00:14:49.000 And I'll go to the Supreme Court.

00:14:50.000 You're not coming in here.

00:14:51.000 OSHA's not coming in here.

00:14:52.000 Defiance.

00:14:53.000 You know, JD Vance said, hey, I want mass civil justice media.

00:14:57.000 You had firebrands coming out from the leadership in the Republican Party.

00:15:01.000 It's been kind of crickets, just like it has been on the Heartbeat Bill.

00:15:04.000 The populace, whether it's in Texas with the right to life movement, whether it's whether it's right now with people at the school board level taking back for CRT, whether people are fighting these vaccine mandates, the leadership is still not there.

00:15:18.000 Remember, they're not leadership.

00:15:19.000 They're really led.

00:15:20.000 And I think that that is, we're living in an age right now because of organizations like yourselves, shows like this, and social media.

00:15:28.000 Even though we've been deplatformed all over, the words getting out and people are sitting there going, I just don't want to sit there and listen to talk radio anymore.

00:15:35.000 I just want to sit there and watch talk.

00:15:37.000 Not that I don't love it.

00:15:38.000 I love talk radio.

00:15:39.000 I love guys getting me fired up.

00:15:40.000 I love Fox, but I want to do something.

00:15:43.000 I want to be engaged.

00:15:44.000 And particularly if it doesn't cost them a huge check to be a donor, but to actually put their time and effort and energy in it.

00:15:51.000 We're in an age of populism right now.

00:15:53.000 And that's what the main ruling class in our country, the greatest fear is not simply Trump, but what President Trump represents.

00:16:02.000 President Trump, not in the room, not in the deal.

00:16:06.000 President Trump gave us a seat at the table and a bold seat, right?

00:16:12.000 They hate Trump.

00:16:13.000 Obviously, they tried to destroy him many, many times.

00:16:15.000 They don't want him to return.

00:16:16.000 And I'm talking about the establishment of the Republican Party, not the left.

00:16:20.000 But what they really fear most is the populist movement and the nationalist movement underneath Trump.

00:16:26.000 And you can see that from that ProPublica article where they literally freak out about people going to be election officials, people, this democracy personified, people going to be committeemen, election officials, school boards, that grassroots populism that is so powerful to give people a voice, they're in full meltdown.

00:16:43.000 Well, and the part that you highlighted, Steve, that I think is super interesting is how intelligent our grassroots activists have become over the last 10 years.

00:16:52.000 And I've seen this year after year, and I see it in our listeners on our podcast.

00:16:57.000 And they're emailing me about not just Marcuse and Foucault and Derrida, but they want to know about Machiavelli and they want to know about Descartes and Hume and Aquinas.

00:17:08.000 And they want to know about the ancient Greeks.

00:17:10.000 And I ask them, I say, like, what are you, a professor?

00:17:13.000 Like, no, I'm a plumber and I'm homeschooling my kids.

00:17:15.000 And Steve, that is, that's an even more profound point of why the elites are truly getting scared because an informed and active grassroots base, then all of a sudden they'll be able to call BS the next time some sort of technocratic politician does what Kelly Loffler does, who's a nice person, right?

00:17:34.000 Nothing against her.

00:17:34.000 But it's like, oh, yeah, reject socialism.

00:17:36.000 You actually want more than that.

00:17:37.000 This is such a powerful point.

00:17:39.000 It's one of the reasons Fox and the talking points aren't see over and over again.

00:17:42.000 That one that one of the shows like yours and mine have to always keep ahead of it is that I go into these sites and see what's happening.

00:17:50.000 The people are so informed and have access to so much information and they're so interested.

00:17:54.000 Yes, you've got to make sure the show is not a generalist show.

00:17:56.000 I mean, I come on there with the two hours in the morning.

00:17:58.000 I go, wow, not only do we have to concentrate, but we actually have to have new information because they're so up to speed.

00:18:06.000 It's quite, it's amazing.

00:18:07.000 And a lot of this is they're found on people's getter feeds or Twitter feeds or what your show is putting out.

00:18:12.000 And then they take it to the next level and they spend hours.

00:18:15.000 You have you go to some of these sites.

00:18:17.000 I sit there and I look at, you know, obviously some of it is a little ill-formed, but a lot of it is dead spot on.

00:18:24.000 And people have done research and they crowdsource things that you have real experts.

00:18:29.000 And so it puts the pressure on the Charlie Kirks and the Steve Bannon to make sure these shows don't turn into just Fox.

00:18:35.000 Totally.

00:18:36.000 You've got to be ahead of it every day.

00:18:38.000 Our staff is working to keep up with the audience.

00:18:42.000 Remember, this is another thing with President Trump.

00:18:46.000 I keep telling guys there's all ripping on him.

00:18:48.000 I said, hey, in many respects, the populist nationalist movement is actually farther to the right than President Trump.

00:18:55.000 I mean, I agree completely with that.

00:18:57.000 On the vaccine mandates, et cetera.

00:18:59.000 I said, don't you picking on poor Trump all the time.

00:19:03.000 And I said, but you've got to see where that go to the next tier down, not of elected officials, but of powerful voices in this movement.

00:19:11.000 And they're farther to the right.

00:19:12.000 And I believe that the smart people on the left understand that.

00:19:16.000 They see exactly what's happening.

00:19:17.000 And Trump has prudence and wisdom, and he will follow the cue from the people, though.

00:19:21.000 That's the thing.

00:19:22.000 If you've noticed that in some of his interviews, all of a sudden he's going after Pfizer a little bit.

00:19:27.000 He's going, I mean, he gets it, right?

00:19:29.000 He listens.

00:19:30.000 And that's something, he's a non-ideological figure, which a lot of people, that's an unknown commodity.

00:19:35.000 And so, so, Steve, are you starting to see, though, at the highest levels of the Republican Party and in Senate leadership or House leadership, are they starting to get the clue?

00:19:44.000 Is this starting to change?

00:19:45.000 And if so, what needs to be done for that to change?

00:19:48.000 Here's what needs to be done.

00:19:49.000 Here's what needs to be done.

00:19:49.000 And I think it's my turning point in these operations.

00:19:52.000 We have to, it's not only about winning anymore.

00:19:57.000 Obviously, we have to win, okay?

00:20:00.000 But we have to win with the right people and the right policies.

00:20:03.000 I think now, and I believe 2022 is going to be because we got to get to the bomb of three November.

00:20:08.000 That's still essential to get there.

00:20:10.000 But we have to do it with the right people and we have to do it with the right policies.

00:20:13.000 These have to be populist, nationalist policies, and they have to be the right people.

00:20:18.000 And you're going to see a lot of bait and switch.

00:20:21.000 And you brought up a perfect one, Kelly Loeffler down in, you know, first off, I think there's two one when we get to the bottom of Georgia.

00:20:28.000 You're going to see that we had two Republican senators.

00:20:30.000 However, I totally agree.

00:20:31.000 But it should have been a 500,000 vote win, right?

00:20:36.000 Let's be honest.

00:20:36.000 There's $405 or $500 million spent by the Republicans in that 45 days.

00:20:42.000 I don't think a lot of that flowed through the Charlie Kirk show or came to the war room.

00:20:47.000 And they were, I'm sitting there and instead of focusing on November 3rd and what's important and getting all the Trump voters out and jacked up, they're talking about capitalism versus socialism.

00:20:56.000 It's kind of this esoteric of view that, you know, people are going to say, hey, tell me how capitalism's work for me when I'm one paycheck away from complete desolation.

00:21:06.000 And it's worked for the 1%.

00:21:08.000 But how's it working for me?

00:21:08.000 I got that.

00:21:10.000 So it's the messaging, they're going to try to message this.

00:21:13.000 And what they're going to try to do is draft off.

00:21:15.000 They want the muscle and the energy and the dynamism of the Trump movement, the populist movement, but they want to continue with their same policies.

00:21:23.000 And we're going to have, that's going to be a fight.

00:21:24.000 I think a lot of these primaries, particularly, we could win, I think, 50 to 60 seats in the House if we tee this up like 2010.

00:21:33.000 Particularly, remember, Biden is in a complete free fall.

00:21:36.000 He's in complete free fall in the suburbs.

00:21:38.000 The economist poll the other day said the economist now, not the Charlie Kirk show or turning point or war room.

00:21:45.000 The economist poll had 42% of independent voters believe he's illegitimate.

00:21:51.000 Okay, that should go off like a firebell in the night.

00:21:54.000 The other poll they had, I think it was the morning council poll had, oh, no, no, no labels, which is a moderate group, had only 39% of suburban voters, which is their strength, believe they should do this $6 trillion in spending.

00:22:07.000 They wanted to follow Manchin's.

00:22:08.000 Let's take a breather.

00:22:10.000 We don't know what's going on here.

00:22:11.000 He's imploding everywhere.

00:22:13.000 And his numbers are lower than Clinton's in 94.

00:22:16.000 And the reason was, the reason was he was never at the Obama levels.

00:22:20.000 He was more, I think, at 43 or 45% of the real vote.

00:22:24.000 And that's why you see the implosion down.

00:22:25.000 We could run the tables.

00:22:27.000 The whole issue is going to be who's in the primaries, right?

00:22:30.000 And who are these voices going to be and what are the policies going to be?

00:22:34.000 And I think that's going to get a little dicey.

00:22:37.000 And it's going to be a lot of, you know, the establishment is going to blow back hard.

00:22:40.000 There's an article in Politico today that Kevin McCarthy doesn't want to talk about three November.

00:22:45.000 Now, Kevin McCarthy is a very nice guy.

00:22:47.000 He's done a good job recruiting, but we're in a war, right?

00:22:50.000 And we got to get focused on this.

00:22:52.000 And particularly, I don't see how you can back those people that turned on President Trump and voted for impeachment.

00:22:58.000 That to me, it's just going to, you're going to lose 10 or 15% of your vote.

00:23:02.000 I totally agree.

00:23:03.000 It's just going to sit there and go, hey, look, you know, I'm coming out.

00:23:06.000 I'm coming after this guy, but I'm also coming after this guy who represents.

00:23:09.000 And the Republicans are still under some fantasy that that's just going to just come.

00:23:15.000 And that's just not going to happen.

00:23:16.000 That's going to be Georgia all over again.

00:23:18.000 And so maybe you can help explain this to me, Steve.

00:23:20.000 Why is it then with Biden's sinking popularity, he seems to be accelerating what his regime is doing?

00:23:27.000 Usually when you plummet in the polls, there's like a cooling off period.

00:23:31.000 You kind of like invite a basketball team to the White House or like you give some sort of medal to a veteran.

00:23:38.000 You do like non-controversial things, right?

00:23:41.000 Instead, it seems like he says, what's the most radical thing I can do?

00:23:44.000 Why is that?

00:23:45.000 I have some of my own theories, but I'd love your wisdom on that.

00:23:48.000 Here's what I think it is.

00:23:49.000 Do you think the mandates, and I think you brought it up today about it's going to take some time for them to even write the EOs and to get OSHA involved before it's going to take a while for OSHA to knock on Turning Point USA's door, right?

00:24:01.000 So here's what I think.

00:24:02.000 I think it's a little bit of a misdirection play to demonize the remember 47% of the country is not vaccinated yet, but to demonize that minority into majority.

00:24:13.000 The reason is the next four weeks is going to be the fulcrum of American politics.

00:24:17.000 So we have two events coming up, and Biden needs to spend money.

00:24:22.000 He needs to buy off the working class and the middle class with these massive $6 trillion, the 1.25 phony infrastructure bill, which 19 collaborators in the Republican Party agreed to, and then the 3.5 trillion just radical expansion of the social safety net.

00:24:39.000 And he needs to do that with two big structural problems.

00:24:42.000 On the 30th of September, if you don't have a budget, the fiscal year ends and the government shuts down.

00:24:48.000 Number one, we also know, more importantly, the debt ceiling.

00:24:53.000 We've topped out now to the debt ceiling, so they just can't print money.

00:24:57.000 The ways you finance this whole debacle, you either one, sell bonds to the Chinese or the Japanese or the Gulf Emirates, government bonds.

00:25:05.000 You two, you either through growth, you get more tax revenues or you raise taxes.

00:25:10.000 And there's not enough juice there in the lemon to do that because there's no growth.

00:25:14.000 Number three, you just print money because we're the prime reserve currency.

00:25:16.000 We can do that.

00:25:17.000 That's a fancy term for saying it's going back on turning point USA's members.

00:25:24.000 This is really the full faith in credit of the United States.

00:25:26.000 Somebody's got to pay that off.

00:25:28.000 The American people always pay it off.

00:25:29.000 That is just adding to this.

00:25:31.000 They right now we have complete leverage.

00:25:33.000 What they have to do, and in this city, there's no heated debates right now about this.

00:25:38.000 They're not over in the Capitol Hill saying, how are we spending $6 trillion and adding this over the spending we're going to do?

00:25:43.000 Remember, this annual spending is about $5.2 trillion right now.

00:25:47.000 This is all over and above that.

00:25:49.000 And so the question gets to be is that, and they need to do that. 0.50

00:25:53.000 If he does not get this money and pay off and buy off the working class and buy off the middle class with essentially an expanded set of goodies, right? 0.53

00:26:02.000 And also buys off all the corporate clients. 0.73

00:26:04.000 One of the reasons you don't hear a peep here, the lobbyists in the Republican Party are quite comfortable with what's happening because their clients are going to get huge paydays, contracts, more revenue.

00:26:15.000 And that's why you almost hear no peep about it.

00:26:17.000 So to stop, it all gets back to money, money and power.

00:26:21.000 Right now, we have the leverage points.

00:26:23.000 If you don't allow a continuing resolution and any of these funny games, you know, they did it with President Trump all the time, kick the can down the road a couple of months, stick all kinds of things in the CR.

00:26:33.000 And for the continuing resolution that would get them past the 30th the other day, Charlie, they had the Hill newspaper said, oh, gosh, look what they're including in there.

00:26:42.000 One is 65,000 Afghani refugees in the United States.

00:26:47.000 It's the first time they ever mentioned the amount and where they were coming and why they needed money to pay for it.

00:26:53.000 And that's where they put it in there.

00:26:54.000 So for the audience, the mandates are huge.

00:26:57.000 They're dropping the hammer now.

00:26:59.000 Part of that, I think, is to get people's eye off the ball, the spending, but we're now into it.

00:27:03.000 You see, it's the, and if they get this spending done, I will tell the turning point audience: America's economy is never coming back like we like the country that was bequeathed to me and I was able to grow up in.

00:27:15.000 It's going to be a radically different.

00:27:17.000 This is going to be not just big government.

00:27:19.000 This is going to be government into everything, right?

00:27:21.000 This is, and AOC and these guys knew this with the Green New Deal that gets you into the middle of everything.

00:27:26.000 We're going to have very quickly $35, $40 trillion, a face amount of debt. 0.81

00:27:31.000 When you're at zero interest rates, what the Fed can keep right now, it's fine.

00:27:35.000 But when that comes off, we're going to be like Japan. 0.93

00:27:37.000 You're going to have multiple lost decades. 0.96

00:27:39.000 You know, your team members there, the people in their 20s, you can assume the time that you reach middle age, right?

00:27:47.000 Almost retirement, this economy is never going to come back.

00:27:50.000 It's going to be like 2% growth, 1% growth, no opportunities, and particularly no opportunities on a mass scale.

00:27:56.000 So we must fight this now.

00:27:58.000 And the uniparty that lives off the federal budget, lives off the spending, lives off the corruption, the graft, all that is pushing this.

00:28:08.000 And that's why these grassroots voices are more important than ever.

00:28:11.000 Yeah.

00:28:11.000 And when I speak to senators, there's some good ones out there.

00:28:14.000 I want to say Rand Paul's been terrific on Fauci.

00:28:16.000 He's led on Fauci.

00:28:18.000 He really has been phenomenal.

00:28:19.000 But when I talk to most senators, I don't feel that kind of sense of urgency, Steve.

00:28:23.000 And obviously, I wish that we still had state legislatures that appointed senators.

00:28:28.000 I think that was one of the worst things.

00:28:30.000 And even as a populist, I say that, Steve, I think that it's actually more populous to have the state legislatures to control it.

00:28:36.000 It's the opposite of what people would think.

00:28:39.000 But I don't feel that sense of urgency from the ruling class because they've been able to insulate themselves from any of the damage that their decisions actually have when they make them.

00:28:51.000 Here's the thing, and this is why your show and turning point, what you guys are doing and other groups are doing, they want you to kind of drift by in ignorance and focus on the shiny new tool.

00:29:01.000 That's why all these things pop up and they're out, but there's an outrage du jour.

00:29:05.000 They want your eye.

00:29:06.000 This is war.

00:29:07.000 And in the fog of war, they want you not to focus on it.

00:29:10.000 It's money and power.

00:29:11.000 Yes.

00:29:12.000 Right now from the Biden administration, the power is boom.

00:29:15.000 They're hitting you right in the mouth with these vaccine mandates and they're going to roll hard.

00:29:19.000 Okay.

00:29:19.000 It may take them a while, but they're going to roll hard.

00:29:21.000 And the money, they expect to get something through with the uniparty in the next couple of weeks.

00:29:26.000 And that's what this is down to money and power.

00:29:28.000 And what they're always going to do, no, there's no sense of urgency.

00:29:30.000 The only sense of urgency they've got is to make sure their donors get paid off.

00:29:34.000 And the lobbyists are the guys that do the, that's the link between the donors, the global corporations, Wall Street, and the Senate.

00:29:42.000 So, no, I think you see very little.

00:29:44.000 You've got a handful of really great guys over there.

00:29:45.000 Don't get me wrong, men and women, but it's not enough.

00:29:48.000 We have to change that, start changing that this cycle.

00:29:51.000 And I think, particularly in the House, in the House, we have to really get fire-breathing populists in there that are prepared to really, you know, and as you know, Charlie, you can't back off.

00:30:01.000 You just got to attack, attack, attack.

00:30:03.000 You always got to be on offense.

00:30:04.000 If you're ever on defense, they're just going to roll you.

00:30:07.000 No war has ever been won by playing defense.

00:30:09.000 And the states have more power than people realize in this.

00:30:12.000 You know, I was just in North Dakota, Steve, and, you know, North Dakota does not have a governor that is fighting at all.

00:30:19.000 And they just, it's amazing.

00:30:20.000 It's probably the most conservative state in the country.

00:30:22.000 If you just look at kind of how they vote, yet they're kind of just kind of governed by a bunch of moderates.

00:30:28.000 And I want to try to get the states to empower them to not just challenge the federal government, but to create the country that they want to live in.

00:30:36.000 And the trend is actually getting away from the international organizations and even DC.

00:30:41.000 The trend is getting more local and local.

00:30:44.000 Can you talk about that, Steve?

00:30:45.000 How the momentum is actually towards self-rule?

00:30:48.000 I want to remember it's in the Catholic Church, the concept was from Thomas Brown, I think, subsidiarity, that man lives best when decision-making is made at the lowest level.

00:30:58.000 That's kind of what nationalism is based upon, because you can actually control it from the grassroots level.

00:31:03.000 And that's why I think at the states and at the school boards, right, at the precinct committees, this is the new populism.

00:31:10.000 And absolutely, the states can be laboratories.

00:31:13.000 And right now, think about it.

00:31:14.000 Everything that's come out of three November.

00:31:16.000 Every policy we've got that's kind of a fighting policy has come from the states, has come from, hey, the railhead of the Patriot movement right now is Arizona.

00:31:25.000 Arizona, those patriots that were in what I call the new Concord Bridge of the Convention Center for those months in hot conditions, counting every day, doing the detailed work.

00:31:36.000 Now we know that people are out canvassing.

00:31:38.000 And this is why the Justice Department freaked out, right?

00:31:41.000 They wanted to charge them with criminal violations for voter intimidation.

00:31:46.000 That all came from, you know, basically nameless populist patriots in Arizona.

00:31:52.000 You're seeing that in Georgia.

00:31:53.000 You're now seeing it in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

00:31:55.000 So, no, I think people are on fire and particularly the degree that they say, I got to take this school board back.

00:32:00.000 I don't want to have my kids polluted with CRT.

00:32:02.000 I want to take the school board back.

00:32:04.000 I want to make sure that we have informed consent on both masks, the social distancing, whether they're in school or not, and particularly on vaccines.

00:32:12.000 People, I think, are feeling more empowered.

00:32:14.000 And remember, victory begets victory.

00:32:16.000 The more you have this, and I think, Charlie, actually, at the state level, I think you're going to have such a flood of candidates coming in.

00:32:23.000 Because right now, we have a lot of candidates jumping into these house races. 0.99

00:32:26.000 I think the next wave is in state legislation, House of Delegates.

00:32:30.000 You're going to see a flood of populists come in there to say, Hey, look, let me get into these state legislatures.

00:32:36.000 I can make some real changes.

00:32:37.000 Because we know from the election of 2020, all power resides in the state legislatures to really beam who the certified electors.

00:32:45.000 That's going to become a massive story towards the end of this year.

00:32:48.000 And in early next year, the certification process of these, of these, of this election, as it becomes, you know, in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and particularly Arizona and Georgia, is it becomes evident that something was untoward and they go through a decertification process.

00:33:04.000 That's going to raise up the power that the founders wanted into these state legislatures. 0.99

00:33:09.000 And I agree with you.

00:33:10.000 A massive mistake we made in an anti-populist in hindsight was to take the power away from the state legislature to actually elect the senators.

00:33:18.000 So, in closing, Steve, I want to ask you about Trump running in 2024.

00:33:21.000 I could see it both ways.

00:33:22.000 I see some positives.

00:33:24.000 I see some problems with that.

00:33:25.000 What's your own personal opinion on that?

00:33:27.000 Because my fear is that a technocrat tries to inherit the populist movement and it doesn't take.

00:33:35.000 And all of a sudden, we kind of have the thing that we've been seeing in the Senate Republican world, which is they'll show up to the Trump rally and get the endorsement and then turn around and do the exact opposite.

00:33:45.000 What's your thought on this?

00:33:46.000 My thought, first of all, I'm a huge advocate of because Trump's going to be on the ballot.

00:33:52.000 You know, we can say anything we want.

00:33:54.000 It's going to be about the Trump movement and Trump.

00:33:57.000 So the Republican Party just wants him to go away.

00:33:59.000 They say, just go off and be quiet.

00:34:01.000 Don't say anything.

00:34:01.000 So, no, the left is going to put him on the ballot.

00:34:05.000 And I think when he's on the ballot, we draw out more votes.

00:34:08.000 We draw out all the deplorables.

00:34:10.000 People put their shoulder to the wheel and we're going to win massively.

00:34:12.000 I'm actually an advocate.

00:34:13.000 He should not run for office, but I think he should become Speaker of the House for 100 days to impeach Biden, step down, and then say, I'm starting my campaign in 2024.

00:34:24.000 We need, look, President Trump's kind of like an Andrew Breitbart type guy.

00:34:27.000 These guys come along once and very rarely in American history, right?

00:34:32.000 The chapters of Trump's political career and his impact on the nation are far from over.

00:34:38.000 That's the candidate we've got in 2024.

00:34:40.000 We know what happened in 2020.

00:34:42.000 We're now fired up to get to the bottom of it.

00:34:44.000 2022 is kind of the interim point.

00:34:46.000 That's where we really take the country back and we get fire breathers in there for investigations, for being tough, for shutting down this White House and anything they want to do because we have the purse strings, they have the ability to investigate, right?

00:34:58.000 And the ability to actually lay out a tax code that's fair, all appropriations, and most importantly, the investigations in this administration, particularly God bless Rand Paul and Tom Cotton, Tony Fauci, and others, right?

00:35:12.000 Then we prep for 2024.

00:35:14.000 I just think that President Trump is the man for the times.

00:35:18.000 I just pray every day that he's going to be, he'll be 78 years old, or he'll be, I think, 78 years old at the time.

00:35:24.000 We're very fortunate to have him.

00:35:25.000 And quite frankly, all the other people around there will not galvanize like we need to be galvanized.

00:35:30.000 Sorry, I'm a strong advocate.

00:35:32.000 Every time I talk, to me, it's a foregone conclusion.

00:35:35.000 I think it's going to happen.

00:35:36.000 There'll be plenty of time for people later.

00:35:38.000 All these other people are relatively young.

00:35:40.000 There's plenty of time, but we've got to win 2022.

00:35:42.000 We must win in 2024.

00:35:44.000 And that even lays aside what happens when we decertify these elections because right then we'll be in a constitutional crisis.

00:35:51.000 All bets will be off.

00:35:52.000 But that's why I say three November, get to the bottom of that.

00:35:55.000 Let's have the state legislatures do their business. 1.00

00:35:58.000 Let's go back to the certification process, which is what we wanted on November 6th, on January 6th.

00:36:03.000 Let's see where the chips fall.

00:36:05.000 But I would say all the populists and nationalists focus on Trump 2022 or 22 with the Trump movement, populists with real fire breathers.

00:36:14.000 Then let's take care of it.

00:36:15.000 Let's get our put our shoulder to the world 24.

00:36:16.000 And I think it's pretty, I think it's pretty straightforward.

00:36:18.000 And every time I say a turning point conference, you guys are on fire.

00:36:23.000 So I know we're going to have enough young people.

00:36:25.000 The numbers are increasing like we've never seen before, Steve.

00:36:28.000 And, you know, I tell people a lot that students and young people, they are, they're growing envious because they actually want to start to live in the country they've been told exists for their whole life.

00:36:39.000 You know, they've been told that, yeah, you could go buy a home and start a family.

00:36:42.000 And they say, really?

00:36:43.000 Like, can I get in on that a little bit?

00:36:46.000 Because I want to participate in that project that used to exist.

00:36:50.000 So, Steve, final question here.

00:36:52.000 Our audience is like you.

00:36:53.000 We have a doing audience.

00:36:54.000 We kind of talked about precinct committee and all this.

00:36:56.000 What are the action items for people to do?

00:36:59.000 You know, just get as specific as you can.

00:37:01.000 The action item, number one, get engaged.

00:37:04.000 When I mean engaged, whether it's turning point, whether it's precinct committee men, whether it's a school board, the first thing you can do is be a force multiplier.

00:37:11.000 What do I mean by that?

00:37:12.000 Immerse yourself with information.

00:37:14.000 Immerse yourself with multiple sources of information and then act as your own little node to push this stuff out.

00:37:20.000 Connect people.

00:37:21.000 Do that 24 hours a day.

00:37:23.000 Just get into it.

00:37:24.000 This is, look, the country's at war.

00:37:26.000 You need to get engaged and immerse yourself like people in the 1940s, right?

00:37:30.000 Look, it's a political civil war, right?

00:37:33.000 And we're going to win this at the ballot.

00:37:34.000 Remember, we're the majority of the country right now.

00:37:36.000 2020 is going to show us that when we get to the bottom of it, act like we do control the country.

00:37:41.000 And the way to do that is get engaged.

00:37:42.000 And you can do that at so many different levels of opportunity.

00:37:46.000 First, immerse yourself in information.

00:37:47.000 Two, push that information out and then find where your interests are.

00:37:51.000 If your interest is in elections, you can get involved in election groups.

00:37:55.000 You can get involved in election integrity or actually helping to make sure the elections are fair.

00:38:00.000 If you like media, get involved in that.

00:38:02.000 If you like grassroots organizing, get involved in that.

00:38:04.000 If you like national security, you can volunteer for the military.

00:38:08.000 Or if you're a veteran, come back.

00:38:09.000 And there's so many groups.

00:38:10.000 So every interest you have in your country and in really taking this country forward, there's a network out there and a community.

00:38:20.000 It may be very small, but you'll find it.

00:38:21.000 And the way you'll find it is to get focused.

00:38:23.000 I would say if you do this, you still got time for the golf clubs and the tennis, but make this a big part of your life.

00:38:30.000 Make it a part of your fabric of your life and take action.

00:38:33.000 Remember, every day you're going to feel better as I get victory after victory after personally and as a group.

00:38:39.000 So just jump in and get engaged.

00:38:41.000 And also, and the thing you mentioned earlier is everybody, dedicate time to learn every single day.

00:38:46.000 Things will make more sense the more time you spend on this.

00:38:49.000 It's War Room Pandemic podcast.

00:38:52.000 It is always on the top five to 10 of all Apple podcasts.

00:38:57.000 We're always jousting up there, Steve.

00:38:58.000 And that's good.

00:39:00.000 If you actually...

00:39:01.000 Hey, can I say one thing, Charlie?

00:39:02.000 Don't ever change.

00:39:03.000 Today, I can't tell you how much the audience love the way you're very direct.

00:39:09.000 There's no BA, you know, it's just boom.

00:39:12.000 And I tell you, just keep doing that.

00:39:14.000 And your podcast will be better.

00:39:17.000 You'll be higher than the Warroom, okay?

00:39:19.000 I don't know about that, but it does give me hope because out of the top 10 podcasts, War Room, Ours, and Bongino, three are a populist conservatives.

00:39:28.000 I'll take that.

00:39:30.000 Pretty good.

00:39:30.000 Pretty good populists.

00:39:31.000 Pretty good.

00:39:32.000 Those three can throw a punch. 0.99

00:39:34.000 I'll tell you what.

00:39:34.000 Steve, thanks so much for joining.

00:39:35.000 Really enjoyed it.

00:39:36.000 Thank you.

00:39:37.000 Thank you, audience.

00:39:37.000 Thank you.

00:39:37.000 See you soon.

00:39:38.000 Bye.

00:39:40.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:39:42.000 Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:39:45.000 And if you want to support our program, you can do so at charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:39:50.000 If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, it's tpusa.com.

00:39:54.000 God bless you guys.

00:39:55.000 Speak to you soon.

00:39:58.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk dot com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - September 10, 2021

Unpacking the Conservative Uprising in America with Steve Bannon

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