The Charlie Kirk Show - Wait a Minute, NPR is LIBERAL?!?!?

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00:00:01.000 What happened to Mike Johnson?

00:00:03.000 We explore with one of our favorite guests, Mr. Kane at citizenfreepress.com.

00:00:07.000 Citizen Kane, Christopher Ruffo joins us to talk about the collapse of NPR and more.

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00:00:39.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:40.000 Here we go.

00:00:41.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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00:01:39.000 Joining us today is one of our favorite guests, Citizen Kane from citizenfreepress.com.

00:01:47.000 Mr. Kane, welcome back to the program.

00:01:49.000 Glad to be here, Charlie.

00:01:50.000 Let's do it.

00:01:52.000 You are on fire on the stack right now.

00:01:55.000 We have to get right into the Mike Johnson news breaking news.

00:01:57.000 Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massey support a motion to vacate.

00:02:02.000 Now three people.

00:02:03.000 Now, Kane, I believe you're with me here.

00:02:06.000 I was rooting for Mike Johnson.

00:02:08.000 I wanted him to be a conservative, strong speaker.

00:02:11.000 We understood that the obstacles he had in front of him.

00:02:14.000 We understood that the barriers.

00:02:17.000 However, complete capitulation on FISA, Ukraine, lying to us about the border, misleading us on so many different types of legislative fights, zero wins when it comes to spending.

00:02:30.000 Citizen Kane, what does CFP Nation have to say about this?

00:02:32.000 Oh, they're angry.

00:02:34.000 They're angry.

00:02:34.000 I've been trying to keep, you know, keep the sheep corralled for a few weeks.

00:02:40.000 It's tough, you know.

00:02:42.000 This Mike Johnson thing, I'm with you.

00:02:43.000 Strategically, it doesn't make any sense.

00:02:45.000 President Trump has already told us that he doesn't want the chaos over the next four months of another fight for speaker.

00:02:54.000 And that's a difficult decision for him.

00:02:56.000 He said that last Friday.

00:02:57.000 It was only seven days ago at the Mar-a-Lago event that he had with Mike Johnson, two hours after Johnson had just passed warrantless FISA 702 spying, which Trump wasn't happy with.

00:03:11.000 So, you know, this is not just difficult for you and me.

00:03:14.000 This has been difficult for everyone, I'm sure, including the president.

00:03:18.000 I hadn't seen the news on Paul Gozar adding his name.

00:03:25.000 It's, but, you know, your original question was about CFP Nation.

00:03:28.000 They're angry.

00:03:28.000 They've been ready to get rid of, you know, they tend not to think about ramifications.

00:03:34.000 They're not journalists.

00:03:35.000 They're just regular voters.

00:03:37.000 And they've been ready to get rid of Mike Johnson for a while.

00:03:40.000 And probably the thing that angers them most is the Ukraine thing. 0.99

00:03:44.000 People, you know, I have to explain to people because I feel as though it's probably going to pass, right?

00:03:50.000 And so all the time in the open thread, people are talking about $61 billion for Ukraine and $61 billion for, you know, repeating that.

00:03:58.000 And I have to remind people, yeah, it's a remarkable amount of money.

00:04:02.000 And I have to remind people that part of that is paying Ukraine government salaries, government pensions.

00:04:08.000 I know, you know, Johnson and others try to say, hey, this is all, or the majority is going to U.S. weapons manufacturers that will be making the bombs and other things that Zelensky needs.

00:04:21.000 But I feel like that's disingenuous because $5 billion alone going, you know, every year to Ukraine government salaries and pensions.

00:04:29.000 It's an affront.

00:04:30.000 It's an insult.

00:04:32.000 I liked Matt Gates' amendment.

00:04:34.000 It probably won't go anywhere, but his amendment yesterday to require the payback of the Ukraine loan used to be build or finish the wall.

00:04:44.000 But, you know, it's difficult here.

00:04:46.000 How do we stop this guy?

00:04:48.000 Let me throw it back to you.

00:04:49.000 What do you think we can do to try to keep Ukraine?

00:04:52.000 Go ahead.

00:04:52.000 Yeah.

00:04:54.000 Here's the thing is that the machine of DC is demanding Ukraine money.

00:04:59.000 And here, I did a lot of thinking about this last night.

00:05:01.000 And I spoke to Stephen Miller, who I really like last night.

00:05:03.000 We had a 30-minute conversation.

00:05:04.000 He's so smart.

00:05:05.000 He's so analytical.

00:05:06.000 The operating thesis that we had is that Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden want Ukraine money more than anything else, right, Kane?

00:05:14.000 That the thing they want the most is Ukraine money.

00:05:20.000 What we didn't realize is that Mike Johnson also wants Ukraine money more than anything else.

00:05:27.000 So our negotiator is in harmony with Schumer and Biden.

00:05:32.000 And that's what, if you do a little bit of research, Mike Johnson is a neocon.

00:05:36.000 He is a cheerleader for the Ukrainian war effort, for the war machine.

00:05:41.000 So what Mike Johnson should have done, and this is leverage 101.

00:05:45.000 It doesn't matter if you have a one-seat majority or a hundred seat majority on this topic, is that they're telling you, Joe Biden, the regime, they're telling you that they need Ukraine money.

00:05:54.000 Now, my theory, Kane, as to why they want the Ukraine money so badly is that last night, breaking news, I think you had it in the stack.

00:06:03.000 I'm not sure, that top intel chief says that without the Ukraine money, that Kiev will fall by August.

00:06:10.000 They're worried that that will be a political disaster for Joe Biden.

00:06:14.000 So there's politics involved in this, that they want to try to get as much cluster bombs, as many missiles, as much heavy artillery as possible to at the very least slow down Putin so that there is not a August or September surprise of the Russian Federation taking over Kiev because they could do everything they possibly can to blame that on Trump, but that will be solely on Joe Biden.

00:06:34.000 And it will show that they were unable to broker a peace deal that was 600 miles to the east and they wouldn't have gotten near Kiev.

00:06:42.000 So my personal opinion is that they want that money to go to Ukraine, not because they think Ukraine is going to win the war, but that it will prolong the slaughter so that Joe Biden can have a better chance of reelection.

00:06:53.000 But I just want to throw it back to you here, Kane.

00:06:55.000 We thought that we had a negotiator who wanted southern border security more than Ukrainian border security.

00:07:02.000 And what now we have all realized is Mike Johnson is just as much of a warmonger, a neoconservative, a globalist when it comes to foreign policy as Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden.

00:07:13.000 Your thoughts, Kane?

00:07:14.000 Well, it's a sad thing to say.

00:07:16.000 I think you're right.

00:07:18.000 Look, I feel like I saw it months ago when Zelensky made his last visit to Congress and he had the one-on-one meetings with Mike Johnson.

00:07:26.000 I felt like then, because I was watching Johnson's comments very closely in the day or two after, and I felt like then that he had fallen prey, that he falls prey to this argument of, you know, that everything relies on you, that this is the West standing up to evil and it's God's time.

00:07:43.000 And I think it's a false argument.

00:07:45.000 In terms of it falling apart before the election, that's a great thought.

00:07:49.000 I had a little, you know, that occurred to me about a month ago when I heard a Democrat.

00:07:56.000 Was after JD Vance said, look, this is good money after bad.

00:07:59.000 This is, you know, the point, JD Vance was saying, look, if Ukraine were winning, if Zelensky were showing progress, if Russia could possibly be moved back, then he might have a different attitude.

00:08:11.000 But this is throwing good money after bad.

00:08:14.000 And then there was a Democrat comment and a political argument where they said, well, let's just give them one more year, one more year.

00:08:20.000 And there was another side comment about politics.

00:08:23.000 So that's when it first popped into my head that you're exactly right.

00:08:26.000 They don't want this to fall apart.

00:08:29.000 If it is going to fall apart, they would rather blame Trump.

00:08:31.000 Yes.

00:08:32.000 And they don't care about another 60 billion of treasuries having to be sold.

00:08:40.000 So it's a horrible state of affairs.

00:08:43.000 I'm not sure what we can do because, I mean, look, did you see where they slipped in?

00:08:48.000 They're slipping in the TikTok bill into the House.

00:08:52.000 Yep.

00:08:53.000 So they're trying all different kinds of angles here to get votes.

00:08:57.000 And it'll probably end up being Democrats who pass this day.

00:09:02.000 Well, no, we already know that.

00:09:03.000 So let me just read this to you: breaking news update.

00:09:06.000 This morning, breaking.

00:09:07.000 Foreign aid package was rescued by Democrats on the House floor as they supplied enough votes to start debate on the supplemental, setting legislation on track for passage in the speaker on a slippery path.

00:09:16.000 So the Democrats have now bailed it out, Kane.

00:09:19.000 The Democrats have now come in and they bailed out the rule with zero border security.

00:09:24.000 I'm sorry, no, there is border security.

00:09:25.000 The Ukrainian Border Patrol gets $300 million.

00:09:28.000 Our Border Patrol gets nothing.

00:09:31.000 Yeah, I have that story in Politico from the stack, actually, how it got moved by the rules committee.

00:09:37.000 So now, you know, these next 48 hours, it's going to be all kinds of votes.

00:09:40.000 We're going to have Senate voting on FISA with Rand Paul attempt and others, Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, trying to at least require warrants and also to strike that provision that was thrown in at the end from the House that would greatly broaden NSA spying capabilities.

00:09:59.000 So that's one thing.

00:10:00.000 We're going to have that vote in the Senate.

00:10:02.000 And then the House is going to be voting on four separate aid bills that will then be merged back into one.

00:10:07.000 Republicans, probably half the party, will support it, and most of the Democrats will.

00:10:12.000 So that's where we are.

00:10:13.000 Mike Johnson is going to rail Ukraine aid through on the back of Hakeem Jeffries and Democrat support.

00:10:23.000 You might have heard Mike Lindell and MyPillow no longer have the support of their box stores or shopping channels the way they used to.

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00:11:20.000 To align yourself with somebody who's obviously a one-term mayor, if he even makes it that far, you better be worrying about your job.

00:11:29.000 You better be worrying about your longevity because we're going to vote and we're going to get you out because you ain't doing right by us.

00:11:36.000 That's what time it is.

00:11:37.000 That's what time it is.

00:11:38.000 Welcome back, everybody.

00:11:39.000 Charlie Kirk here.

00:11:40.000 We have Citizen Kane from citizenfreepress.com.

00:11:45.000 Mr. Kane, I want to just comment on this: how anti-fragile, bulletproof Trump's poll numbers are.

00:11:54.000 Again, we don't know about the accuracy of the polls, but the trend is the key.

00:11:57.000 When you have multiple different polls, Quinnipiak, Rasmussen, Fox News, all across the board that have the same trend line that show that Trump in trial does not take a hit.

00:12:09.000 In fact, he's doing better in certain states.

00:12:12.000 Kane, we've never seen anything like this.

00:12:14.000 No, and we didn't expect it.

00:12:16.000 And I just pulled up a bunch of the polls.

00:12:18.000 So the first thing people, I don't know if you talked about it in the first segment of your show, but Robert Kennedy is officially on the ballot in Michigan.

00:12:25.000 Oh, yeah, no, we did a whole hour.

00:12:27.000 No, Kane, sorry to interrupt you, Kane.

00:12:29.000 We also made an announcement.

00:12:30.000 I'm going to send it to you.

00:12:30.000 Maybe you want to put it in the stack.

00:12:31.000 We're now doing our ballot chasing in Michigan.

00:12:34.000 That's how big of a deal it is.

00:12:35.000 We are now officially going to ballot chase in the state of Michigan, hiring up.

00:12:39.000 We're bullish on the state of Michigan.

00:12:41.000 Please continue.

00:12:42.000 Yeah, that's great news.

00:12:43.000 I hadn't seen that, that TP action was doing that.

00:12:46.000 So with Kennedy in the race officially in Michigan, we can, you know, Kennedy's campaign has said, has promised that they're going to be in all 50 states on all 50 ballots.

00:12:55.000 So I'm going to take them at their word for that.

00:12:57.000 But with them in Michigan, so there's two polls out there, actually.

00:13:01.000 New York Post is quoting a poll that shows Trump leading.

00:13:04.000 It's not the Fox News poll, shows Trump leading by three points over Biden in Michigan.

00:13:10.000 And then the Fox News poll, which I assume is the one that you're referring to, Trump is leading.

00:13:15.000 He increased his lead by a percentage point in March over February.

00:13:19.000 And it includes, and he's winning in a five-person race in Michigan as well as just a two-person race.

00:13:26.000 So, you know, it is the Nelson-Mandela effect.

00:13:31.000 You know, something interesting, Charlie, we forget polls from a year ago, but it was talking about the poll evolution of Trump versus DeSantis.

00:13:40.000 And I didn't realize this, but the Trump-DeSantis polls were very, very close before the first indictment of President Trump.

00:13:49.000 And they said that apparently a week before that first indictment in Miami, where the Veg flew down, was the only one who spoke publicly in Miami.

00:13:58.000 With that first indictment, Trump's lead went from about five points over DeSantis to 20 points over DeSantis within a week, right?

00:14:07.000 And so that was the first demonstration, the first manifestation of the Nelson Mandela effect, where you persecute the guy and people are going to notice and they're going to get behind him.

00:14:17.000 So, you know, now, as you know, because you read this stuff as closely as I do, so they've, right, the media promised as soon as he was indicted that his poll numbers would go down, right?

00:14:27.000 And then when the second indictment happened and the third and the fourth.

00:14:30.000 And so now they push that off and said when he's convicted, when he's first convicted, that's when he's finally going to take a dive in the polls.

00:14:39.000 So that's what they're praying on with this Alvin Bragg case, that they'll get a conviction from a biased New York jury and they'll be able to test out.

00:14:48.000 But hey, I put up an ABC poll earlier this week that showed two-thirds, it was actually a little bit more than two-thirds, 68% of people think Trump did nothing criminal in New York City regarding Stormy Daniels.

00:15:03.000 That it's essentially a campaign FEC violation misdemeanor that they bootstrapped to a felony, as Jonathan Turley says.

00:15:12.000 So I'm not so sure the Democrats and the media complex are going to be thrilled if they do get a conviction of Trump pending appeal.

00:15:21.000 Of course, there will be appeals.

00:15:22.000 But if they do get that conviction, I'm not sure there's going to be any change in the polls, at least to the detriment of Trump.

00:15:30.000 So it's the whole ride, right?

00:15:32.000 The whole, you and I have been talking about this on your show for over 12 months, trying to anticipate what the reaction would be.

00:15:39.000 And we really didn't quite see it coming.

00:15:42.000 And but now that it's here, it's strong.

00:15:45.000 You know, it's remained for how many months now?

00:15:49.000 Six months that his polling has been strong through indictments.

00:15:51.000 So I'm not too worried.

00:15:53.000 Do you think a conviction could jeopardize that?

00:15:56.000 It could.

00:15:57.000 It possibly could, but I don't think so.

00:15:59.000 And you know why, Charlie?

00:16:00.000 It's because these same polls said an indictment would jeopardize it, right?

00:16:04.000 And it was almost the exact same numbers that it was an indictment is going to do this.

00:16:07.000 All they'll have to do is indict, and it didn't happen.

00:16:10.000 So that's why I don't really believe these conviction polls.

00:16:13.000 I you've seen my headlines in the stack saying we're finally going to get a test of this conviction poll.

00:16:18.000 So I really don't think so.

00:16:20.000 There's a slight chance, but it looks like he'll have plenty of time to recover.

00:16:25.000 And it's going to be turnout.

00:16:26.000 You and I know it.

00:16:27.000 It's turnout, baby.

00:16:28.000 This is a margin of error election in seven states and 19 counties.

00:16:32.000 And with what TP Action is doing, we can get this done.

00:16:36.000 Amen.

00:16:37.000 Citizen Kane from citizenfreepress.com.

00:16:40.000 We'll have you back on soon.

00:16:41.000 Man, he rates really well.

00:16:42.000 The audience loves him.

00:16:43.000 Kane, thanks so much.

00:16:46.000 Herzog Foundation is part of an education revolution.

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00:17:38.000 Joining us now is Christopher Ruffo.

00:17:40.000 His book is America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.

00:17:45.000 Christopher, welcome back to the program.

00:17:47.000 You broke really a lot of this NPR story, a lot of these clips on social media.

00:17:52.000 For our audience that hasn't been tracking this NPR story, let's start at the relative beginning recently.

00:17:57.000 Walk us through it.

00:17:58.000 Yeah, so there was a longtime 25-year veteran of NPR named Yuri Berliner who posted this devastating critique in Barry Weiss's substack, the free press, saying what we've already known as conservatives for many years, that NPR is biased, it's left-wing, it's a monolithic ideological construction rather than a reflection of a broad variety of views representing the American people.

00:18:23.000 And so, in the wake of this reporting, I did a little bit of digging and I found that NPR CEO, a woman named Catherine Marr, you know, explicitly in her public statements has said has said she's against the idea of truth, she's against free expression, she's against the open and free internet, and that she has worked with governments to censor content online.

00:18:46.000 And so, as I was surfacing all of these views, they made contact with the public, they really exploded into the discourse, and I think provide a window, not just into NPR, but into the soul of America's managerial class.

00:19:02.000 That is perfectly said.

00:19:03.000 I want to talk about that because I'm going to play the piece of tape here that you helped surface and popularize: is that the people in the managerial class post-managerial revolution believe this way?

00:19:14.000 This is cut 148.

00:19:16.000 Catherine Mayer says that she abandoned a free and open internet when she was running Wikipedia, which is a whole nother problem, by the way.

00:19:24.000 The capturing of Wikipedia is a whole different issue.

00:19:27.000 Let's play cut 148.

00:19:28.000 I have come to the opinion and the perspective that free and open was a way of looking at the world that was inherently limited relative to what we were trying to achieve.

00:19:38.000 Free and open has the best of intentionality, but in the end, what free and open often ended up doing, and particularly in the case of Wikipedia, was really recapitulating many of the same power structures and dynamics that exist offline prior to the advent of the internet.

00:19:53.000 The ways in which we ascribe notability often really come from sort of this white male westernized construct around who matters in societies and who is elevated in whose voices.

00:20:05.000 And so, some of these ideas of sort of this radical openness really did not end up with the intention, really did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.

00:20:17.000 Westernized what Christopher makes sense of this for us.

00:20:21.000 So, let's just break it down into its simplest terms.

00:20:24.000 I can translate left-wing academic language for the normal person who may not have caught what she's saying.

00:20:30.000 She's saying that when Wikipedia was free and open, those were the principles on which the website was established.

00:20:37.000 She saw that white men were the most successful in publishing articles and establishing the facts and the pursuit of truth. 0.70

00:20:45.000 And as, of course, for left-wingers, if white men succeed in a system, that system has to be destroyed.

00:20:51.000 And so, she says explicitly that she abandoned the idea that Wikipedia should be a free and open system.

00:20:58.000 And I actually went and interviewed the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, yesterday.

00:21:04.000 And he said his jaw was on the floor.

00:21:05.000 He said this is a total corruption of Wikipedia, led by Catherine Marr.

00:21:10.000 And now she's CEO of NPR, the kind of perfect place, the apotheosis of left-wing conventional thought.

00:21:17.000 And Larry Sanger, the former co-founder of Wikipedia, said, if NPR wants to have a shred of credibility, it should fire Catherine Maher immediately.

00:21:26.000 So, Christopher, I want to play now Cut 93, but before I do, just remind our audience: they are taxpayer-funded.

00:21:34.000 This is a project of the federal government.

00:21:36.000 How much of our money does NPR receive?

00:21:40.000 So, there is this myth that NPR somehow only receives 1% of its funding from the federal government.

00:21:46.000 That actually is technically true, but what happens is that the federal government, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, sends hundreds of millions of dollars to local NPR stations, and then those local NPR stations send just shy of approximately $100 million a year back to NPR.

00:22:04.000 And so, if you actually count the money as a pass-through, in the same way that when you're trying to launder money, you pass it through various organizations, federal taxpayer dollars cover roughly a third of NPR's budget all in.

00:22:18.000 And so, if we're going to defund NPR, it would cripple NPR's central organization and cripple all of NPR's affiliates, which are just the government's way of pushing left-wing propaganda into not only Berkeley and Brooklyn and Minneapolis, but even in all those red states and red cities around the country.

00:22:39.000 I want to just contradict themselves because they say it's only 1% of their budget and they say, Okay, well, then let's cut it.

00:22:46.000 No, no, no, you're going to destroy NPR.

00:22:48.000 I said, Wait, but it's only 1% of the budget, I thought.

00:22:50.000 So, it's obviously more than 1% of the budget that is getting to them through taxpayer funding because anytime we want to cut it from the federal budget, they say that you're going to destroy all public radio.

00:22:59.000 And it's not public radio.

00:23:00.000 We have to understand they have huge reach on podcasting as well.

00:23:03.000 In fact, they're dominant on podcasting and they've diversified successfully into that.

00:23:08.000 So, it's not just terrestrial radio, which we love.

00:23:11.000 We're on terrestrial radar right now, but it is podcasting as well.

00:23:14.000 Let's play CUT 93, where the new taxpayer-funded CEO of National Public Radio, Catherine Maher, says her number one challenge is the First Amendment to the United States.

00:23:27.000 Play Cut 93.

00:23:28.000 The number one challenge here that we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly robust protection of rights.

00:23:39.000 And that is a protection of rights, both for platforms, which I actually think is very important that platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites.

00:23:47.000 But it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.

00:24:00.000 Chris.

00:24:01.000 It's incredible.

00:24:02.000 What she's saying, again, I'll translate, is that the First Amendment is valuable to the extent that it gives media and social media corporations the ability to censor dissent, to censor content that people like Catherine Maher do not like.

00:24:16.000 But then she says that it's an impediment.

00:24:18.000 It's a challenge.

00:24:19.000 It's a problem for her because it protects the individual's right to free speech.

00:24:24.000 And so she wants to sanitize the information ecosystem of all dissenting opinion, whether it's on COVID, whether it's on the election integrity, whether it's on other kind of counter narratives that have emerged on the right.

00:24:39.000 And she says, you know, the First Amendment, when I wake up every day hoping to sanitize the internet of bad opinion, is really my number one challenge.

00:24:48.000 It is shocking that the CEO of a taxpayer-funded, supposedly national, supposedly public, and admittedly radio, is an actual avowed self-described enemy of the First Amendment.

00:25:03.000 If this doesn't get congressional Republicans committing right now to defunding NPR, defunding CPB, defunding the propaganda network that was established by Congress many years ago, I'm not really sure what purpose Republicans in Congress serve.

00:25:19.000 If Trump wins, if Republicans have a majority of the House and the Senate, we need everyone to commit a total defunding of NPR.

00:25:27.000 Let them sell tote bags, let them do whatever they do, but they have to survive without taxpayer dollars.

00:25:32.000 Well, Christopher, you've been amazing at successfully lobbying legislators and governors.

00:25:37.000 So I'm going to let you take the lead on that.

00:25:39.000 I think you could be really, I'll help you any way I can.

00:25:42.000 We'll give you the platform, defund NPR.

00:25:45.000 But so I want to tell you, I was recently at a fundraiser for Turning Point USA in Palm Springs, very wealthy people.

00:25:52.000 And during the dinner conversation, one of our donors is like, yeah, I've been so shocked to learn that NPR is liberal these last couple of days.

00:25:59.000 I said, what?

00:26:00.000 They said, oh, yeah, we give $50,000 a year to NPR and we love them and we never knew they were liberal.

00:26:05.000 We thought they were fair and balanced.

00:26:06.000 And this new open letter.

00:26:08.000 Christopher, it's important to remember that most Americans don't think of them as liberal because they do such a good job of calmly talking into the mic with the beautiful little piano music and the perfectly curated audio.

00:26:23.000 It's very subtle, the vocal fry.

00:26:26.000 This is opening people's eyes.

00:26:27.000 I was shocked.

00:26:28.000 I, like you, they're a repulsive left-wing super PAC.

00:26:32.000 They've been for quite some time.

00:26:34.000 But millions of Americans are finally waking up to that, I suppose.

00:26:38.000 I think that is right, unfortunately, but I think it's also changing.

00:26:42.000 Look, I've talked with many conservative donors who also used to give money to Harvard, used to give money to NPR, used to give money to other Ivy League alma mater.

00:26:52.000 And that is changing and it's changing rapidly.

00:26:55.000 Look, when we ran the campaign against Harvard, one small note that people didn't realize is that Harvard had to float a $1.5 billion bond.

00:27:05.000 Well, why is that?

00:27:06.000 Well, Harvard couldn't draw on its $50 billion endowment, which is tied up in long-term investments.

00:27:12.000 And because we actually successfully rallied donors to stop giving money to Harvard, they had an immediate cash crunch, an immediate liquidity problem.

00:27:20.000 So they had to float a bond.

00:27:22.000 And so this signals to me that donors are waking up.

00:27:25.000 They're getting smarter.

00:27:26.000 We have to teach them what Harvard is doing.

00:27:28.000 We have to teach them what NPR is doing, and then we have to tell them to stop giving money to these institutions that hate them and that would like nothing more than to destroy the country that they would like to see in the future.

00:27:40.000 So, can you just also brag on the great work that you've been able to accomplish in Florida, the closing of the DEI offices, specifically University of Florida?

00:27:48.000 That's right.

00:27:49.000 We have successfully abolished the DEI departments in all public universities in Florida, Texas, just today in Iowa, six states, six states in total.

00:28:00.000 And really, the most beautiful kind of culmination of these moments is when university system presidents release the PR statements that they have fired the bureaucrats that were compromising the intellectual integrity of these institutions.

00:28:15.000 They fired everyone at the University of Florida's DEI department.

00:28:19.000 They fired everyone at the University of Texas's DEI department.

00:28:22.000 This is the opening gambit in what I hope is a pink slip revolution. 1.00

00:28:27.000 We need to fire the left-wing bureaucrats that are ruining our institutions, whether it's the universities, the corporations, or the federal government. 0.99

00:28:34.000 And we need to send them back to the private sector. 0.81

00:28:37.000 And, you know, out of the graciousness of our hearts, we should teach them to code.

00:28:41.000 And if that doesn't work, we should teach them how to mine cobalt and other rare earth metals.

00:28:49.000 Cultural revolution.

00:28:50.000 I want to make sure I get this right.

00:28:52.000 America's Cultural Revolution, Christopher Ruffo is special.

00:28:54.000 I am all for that.

00:28:55.000 I think that getting DEI folks to mine cobalt, it's the only, hey, you have to, it's the circle of electric vehicles.

00:29:03.000 It's the only way it works.

00:29:04.000 You got to make sure that the batteries come from somewhere.

00:29:09.000 Three-star general Michael J. Flynn, head of the Pentagon Intelligence Agency, knew all the government's dirty secrets.

00:29:16.000 He was one of the most respected generals in the military.

00:29:19.000 Flynn knew what the Intel world had been up to.

00:29:21.000 He understood its funding.

00:29:23.000 He ordered the first audit of the use of contractors.

00:29:27.000 This set off alarm bells.

00:29:29.000 The explosive new documentary, Flynn, deliver the truth, whatever the cost, and covers the facts behind this scandal.

00:29:36.000 Flynn told the truth.

00:29:38.000 He was the most dangerous person for Donald Trump to hire.

00:29:41.000 I find out the worst enemy that I'm going to face in my life is right here in America.

00:29:46.000 They took my assessment and they wanted me to change it.

00:29:49.000 And I was like, I'm not changing it.

00:29:50.000 They had to get rid of Flynn.

00:29:52.000 With in-depth interviews, archival footage, and never before seen personal record to the man behind the headlines.

00:29:59.000 I just felt like I was drowning.

00:30:01.000 Flynn, deliver the truth, whatever the cost.

00:30:03.000 Available now.

00:30:04.000 Watch it today.

00:30:05.000 Go to saveemnow.com.

00:30:07.000 Save emnow.com.

00:30:12.000 Christopher, you recently had a written debate with Curtis Yarvin, who's come on this program, and he's a friend.

00:30:19.000 Don't agree with him, obviously, and everything, but really smart guy, where you were going back and forth.

00:30:23.000 And can you just frame this debate for the audience that hasn't read it or is not going to have the time to read it?

00:30:28.000 So I thought it's a very interesting tension point.

00:30:30.000 He believes that we should go more in a direction of traditional monarchy.

00:30:34.000 You're a defender of the American founding, the American classical project, and the promise of this great country.

00:30:39.000 Explain to our audience.

00:30:41.000 So, yeah, this debate was between me representing the opinion that we should return to the founding principles of this country.

00:30:47.000 We should continue to be a constitutional republic and that we should recapture our institutions and change our laws to more closely reflect that original vision.

00:30:57.000 Curtis's point of view is that we should accelerate the decomposition of this country.

00:31:03.000 And from the chaos, he believes that a CEO, tech monarch, will emerge with absolute power to reign over the American people in the same way that George III reigned over us 250 years ago.

00:31:18.000 And so I think that Curtis is kind of interesting as a literary figure, as a provocative wielder of metaphors and concepts.

00:31:26.000 But his idea that we're going to have a benevolent monarch with absolute power is absolutely preposterous.

00:31:32.000 And so I tried to really explain why this is such a dead end ideology.

00:31:38.000 And in fact, it's nothing more than just a literary fantasy that he has concocted on his blog that has really no practical implications for American life as it is really lived.

00:31:49.000 And you said something important.

00:31:51.000 You said you are a radical in the sense you want to go back to the root, that you do not want necessarily marginal change.

00:31:56.000 You want fundamental restoration of this republic.

00:31:59.000 You just do not want obliteration.

00:32:02.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:32:03.000 And so, you know, we can have radical changes.

00:32:06.000 We actually need radical counter-revolutionary changes in this country.

00:32:12.000 And I think that I'm on the record.

00:32:14.000 My accomplishments speak for themselves of moving politics towards that vision.

00:32:20.000 But Curtis has a fantasy that through some catastrophic blowup of the United States, something better will emerge with absolute power.

00:32:29.000 I think that's absolutely preposterous.

00:32:31.000 If history teaches us anything, it's that when you centralize power in the hands of one person, it is almost invariably worse than when you have something along the lines of a republic.

00:32:43.000 You know, I think it's doubtful that if Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, was the dictator of the United States, that it would be better than what we have today.

00:32:52.000 I'll take Trump.

00:32:53.000 I'll take DeSantis.

00:32:54.000 I'll take a whole host of other people who I think would do a better job.

00:32:58.000 Well, and I just want to ask, you know, do you see where the Curtis-Yarvin group gets their energy from?

00:33:07.000 They are dissatisfied with the current slow-motion collapse of the country.

00:33:11.000 And I think we have to acknowledge their position as far as, or at least the attitude of how they see things.

00:33:17.000 But revolution is very risky.

00:33:19.000 Things can get worse.

00:33:20.000 Look at Russia. 0.82

00:33:21.000 The Russian Revolution started a decoupling from, yes, the agrarian model was bad and the czars were not great, but they got something far worse. 0.66

00:33:30.000 Revolution can usher in a dystopia.

00:33:33.000 Yeah, that's right.

00:33:35.000 But I think even more than that, psychologically, the kind of Yarvin model functions as an intellectual opium den.

00:33:44.000 You go into this dark fantasy about how the country is collapsing.

00:33:48.000 The regime is ruling over American life in a kind of pitiless, endless, nihilistic political rule.

00:33:57.000 And then if you follow his fantasy, his literary fantasy, that somehow you can shield yourself against these forces.

00:34:05.000 I'm telling you, no.

00:34:07.000 Actually, the responsible and the prudent thing to do is to get up and fight to improve it.

00:34:11.000 And even if you are a kind of Yarvonite in your diagnosis, simply retreating from the world of real life and real politics is not going to make you a stronger person, a stronger man. 0.52

00:34:22.000 It leads you on the path to kind of nihilism and substitutes fantasy for real politics.

00:34:29.000 This, while I like Curtis, I've spent some time with him in person.

00:34:33.000 He's always admirable.

00:34:35.000 I'm skeptical that he'd be able to wield absolute power.

00:34:39.000 I saw him in New York actually a few weeks before our written debate.

00:34:43.000 He shuffled up to me with his head looking down at the floor, was very apologetic.

00:34:49.000 He apologized for attacking me in print.

00:34:51.000 And I would say, for someone who thinks he has the pretension to absolute power, but has difficulty making eye contact, it's very hard to take that seriously.

00:35:02.000 I will let you guys settle that score.

00:35:05.000 But that's why the internet exists.

00:35:08.000 Christopher, thank you so much.

00:35:10.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:35:11.000 People should read that debate.

00:35:12.000 I found it to be profound.

00:35:13.000 And by the way, we're going to have Curtis on the show next week, and he can respond in his words.

00:35:18.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:35:19.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:35:22.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

00:35:28.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 19, 2024

Wait a Minute, NPR is LIBERAL?!?!?

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