The Charlie Kirk Show - What Happened to Socrates and Jesus: Charlie at the 2021 Chapter Leadership Summit

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

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

00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.

00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.

00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.

00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.

00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.

00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.

00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.

00:00:33.000 Go start a turning point USA high school chapter.

00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.

00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.

00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.

00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.

00:00:43.000 And I encourage you to do the same.

00:00:45.000 Here I am.

00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.

00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:49.000 Here we go.

00:00:56.000 Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.

00:01:06.000 Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at NobleGoldInvestments.com.

00:01:13.000 That is NobleGoldInvestments.com.

00:01:18.000 Wow, Andrew and Amy, I remember the first chapter leadership summit.

00:01:21.000 It was like the first row right here, and now we have to have ballrooms, and it's amazing.

00:01:26.000 How many of you are at SAS?

00:01:30.000 Young Women's Leadership Summit.

00:01:32.000 And then, of course, we have America Fest coming up in December here.

00:01:36.000 It's going to be a lot of fun.

00:01:38.000 And so.

00:01:40.000 Not in Palm Beach anymore.

00:01:42.000 After what they did last year, we pulled the plug.

00:01:44.000 I'll tell you what.

00:01:45.000 We're coming to here in Phoenix.

00:01:49.000 We're going to have a great time.

00:01:50.000 So, there's a couple things that I just wanted to touch on, and then I'm going to do questions because, I mean, this is not like a college visit.

00:01:57.000 I'm not going to really change a lot of minds here.

00:01:59.000 I think we're all basically on the same page.

00:02:01.000 Instead, I want to answer your questions, hear what you're going through, and how we can help you.

00:02:06.000 I was so touched yesterday being able to meet, I think, basically all of you and hear a lot about your.

00:02:13.000 Difficulties, what you're going through.

00:02:16.000 And I mean, I was really struck by those of you that say, Charlie, I have a semester left of college and I'm being forced to get this experimental vaccine.

00:02:24.000 What do I do?

00:02:24.000 I think we've already connected some of you to some legal help and there's already some kind of wheels in motion there.

00:02:30.000 But the biggest thing that I heard from all of you last night is what is basically the problem in our country, and you are actually solving this problem, is that you feel that there is a price of ridicule and mockery.

00:02:46.000 Because you decide to be a Turning Point USA chapter leader, right?

00:02:50.000 And you know what's amazing about all of you, and I tell a lot of our donors and our board members and the adults that kind of support us, they say, Well, Charlie, how are we going to save the country?

00:02:59.000 It's this simple.

00:03:00.000 We need millions of Americans to do what our Turning Point USA chapter leaders are doing every single day to be the same person in public that they are in private, to say that I'm going to publicly advance the ideas that America is the greatest country ever to exist in the history of the world.

00:03:15.000 I believe in a conservative direction for our country, and you should have.

00:03:17.000 Applaud for that, by the way.

00:03:18.000 Of course you can.

00:03:23.000 And we're not going to apologize for our deeply held beliefs.

00:03:26.000 And kind of from that point forward, I mean, there's like a couple things that we really kind of focus on here at Turning Point.

00:03:32.000 We believe the Constitution is the greatest political document ever written.

00:03:35.000 We'll talk about that today.

00:03:40.000 We believe that markets are the best way to organize society and private property should be given a preference.

00:03:46.000 And of course, the bigger overarching theme, which is kind of the thing that All of you engage with every single day is what is America and what is our role here?

00:03:54.000 Is it just like this act of randomness, an oppressive, colonialist, homophobic, misogynistic, backwards type country?

00:04:01.000 Or is it something that is the greatest experiment in self government in human history?

00:04:06.000 And so, what's so exceptional about all of you is that you've made a decision at a very young age to kind of put social status, to put popularity aside, and you say, actually, I want to save the country, and that's a lot more important.

00:04:20.000 You deserve to be, I want to encourage you for that.

00:04:22.000 You deserve to be commended for that.

00:04:24.000 And you will all be blessed, and you will be.

00:04:28.000 You will be able to benefit from that more than I think you realize.

00:04:32.000 First of all, as I mentioned earlier, people say, Charlie, I wish I could say at work what I say privately.

00:04:39.000 Now, for a lot of you, that's not really the case because you've kind of all come publicly.

00:04:42.000 You're out of the closet, right?

00:04:43.000 There's really not a lot of mystery left.

00:04:45.000 Now, maybe there is.

00:04:47.000 Maybe some of you, there's some, you know, I don't know, but.

00:04:50.000 But most of you, basically, you're known as the conservative kid at your school, right?

00:04:56.000 And you should be proud of that, by the way, right?

00:05:02.000 I'm sure all of you have then found two or three of the whispering types, right?

00:05:07.000 Man, I totally agree, but I can't even say anything.

00:05:10.000 Then there's the people in the middle that are like, yeah, I agree with part of this, but I'm not going to do anything.

00:05:14.000 I have to go to Harvard, and that's really important, right?

00:05:17.000 Yeah, okay, sure.

00:05:18.000 I want to go become a judge, and I have to lie my way to the top.

00:05:21.000 Like, yeah, okay, sure.

00:05:23.000 For you, you actually have decided, and this is what makes our Turning Point USA chapter leaders heroes, and why you guys are all heroes.

00:05:30.000 I'm not going to overly build your ego up, but you deserve a little bit of an encouragement.

00:05:36.000 You've decided that truth and fighting for things that are true are quite honestly more important than being popular.

00:05:42.000 More important than being the cool BLM activist that has the sign that's like, oh yeah, look how good of a person I am.

00:05:48.000 If I have to, I see these signs hanging outside of dormitory rooms.

00:05:52.000 I'm sure you guys see this all the time on your college campus, which is basically like, I'm a better person than you are.

00:05:57.000 That's basically what the sign is, right?

00:05:59.000 And the new way they're doing that, of course, is through all of these different social movements.

00:06:03.000 And so where you come in, Is you're part of a movement.

00:06:08.000 You look around this room, this is just the elite chapter leaders, by the way.

00:06:11.000 This is not all of our chapter leaders.

00:06:14.000 Obviously, our campus coordinators, you're all here and we're growing that.

00:06:18.000 But there's a lot of chapter leaders that aren't here today.

00:06:20.000 But what makes you different is that you're the top tier.

00:06:25.000 You're the ones that are doing the most, organizing the events, pushing the hardest.

00:06:28.000 You're the ones that our own staff have singled out and said, you know what?

00:06:32.000 These are the ones that are really going to drive Turning Point USA forward.

00:06:36.000 And so, I want to talk a little bit about kind of our nation and your future in our country.

00:06:43.000 Then we'll get to some questions and kind of what it looks like.

00:06:45.000 We all know this.

00:06:46.000 Our country's on really fragile footing right now.

00:06:49.000 And I want you to think differently about one way that we can frame this.

00:06:54.000 I don't want you to blame your parents for this awful circumstance that we're in, even though it's true, by the way.

00:07:00.000 It's totally true.

00:07:00.000 No, it's actually very true.

00:07:02.000 That they decided that none of this stuff mattered.

00:07:05.000 How many of you have parents that have told you to calm down the conservative stuff, right?

00:07:09.000 Of course.

00:07:10.000 Of course, obviously.

00:07:12.000 Some of you are like, no, my parents tell me to ramp it up.

00:07:15.000 Okay, yeah, and there's some of that too.

00:07:18.000 But I'd say about half the hands, right?

00:07:20.000 Do that again, about half the hands say, you know, calm it down, too much.

00:07:24.000 You want to get a job and have a future.

00:07:26.000 Like, okay.

00:07:28.000 No, we want to have a country, thank you very much, okay?

00:07:30.000 Like, that's actually really important.

00:07:36.000 And it's tempting to want to say, why didn't you fight in the school boards in the 1990s?

00:07:46.000 Why didn't you care about this stuff in the 2000s?

00:07:49.000 Why didn't you get into the curriculum fights?

00:07:50.000 Why didn't you stop the 1619 project the first time it was uttered?

00:07:55.000 Right?

00:07:55.000 It kind of gets this resentment, and sometimes I play into that, to be perfectly honest.

00:08:01.000 It's tempting, right?

00:08:02.000 Because you're like, come on, this is all a bunch of garbage.

00:08:04.000 But look, they meant well.

00:08:06.000 Our parents' generation wanted peace and prosperity for us.

00:08:09.000 I'm 27, I'm not that much older than you.

00:08:12.000 And I was in a lot of your situation six or seven years ago.

00:08:16.000 Our parents wanted to have an America where you didn't have to all of a sudden show vaccination status, they just didn't want to fight for it.

00:08:26.000 You see what I'm saying?

00:08:27.000 They wanted the America that I grew up in, and some of you actually never grew up in the America that I grew up in.

00:08:32.000 Some of you can relate to this.

00:08:34.000 You were on like the later edges.

00:08:35.000 It was awesome.

00:08:36.000 Here's how it worked: no one cared about skin color, and you had sports.

00:08:52.000 And we didn't have these little devil devices all the time.

00:08:56.000 No pings and dings and Snapchats and TikToks and none of that stuff.

00:09:00.000 You went outside and you played.

00:09:01.000 You know, the phones we had were like these combustible engines, right?

00:09:06.000 Massive things you had.

00:09:08.000 It was great.

00:09:09.000 And if anyone in my high school ever said anything negative about America, even in my liberal high school, people would look at them like, okay, yeah, whatever.

00:09:17.000 We actually love America around here.

00:09:19.000 That's the America I grew up in.

00:09:21.000 By the way, this is like nine years ago, guys.

00:09:24.000 I feel like I'm talking, like, you know, Richard Nixon didn't do anything wrong.

00:09:27.000 I'm like, okay, yeah.

00:09:30.000 I'm talking nine years ago.

00:09:33.000 And so here I am at 27, and I just want to tell you that as we kind of look down at this moment, that this happened so rapidly and so fast, but it really was multi decades of it building up, right?

00:09:47.000 Political correctness, critical race theory, not being able to speak your mind, the textbooks changing, the social media dominance.

00:09:54.000 And our parents, in a lot of different ways, They never would have shown up at a conference like this that you're at right now.

00:10:02.000 Let me look around.

00:10:03.000 There's 300 plus of you, and you're spending the best days of summer.

00:10:07.000 Some of you in high school, raise your hand if you're in high school, by the way.

00:10:10.000 It's awesome.

00:10:10.000 How cool is that?

00:10:12.000 And the best days of summer, literally organizing and taking notes and saying, How can I become a better tactician and activist, better educated to save the nation?

00:10:27.000 And by the way, none of this stuff is political, by the way.

00:10:29.000 Our political stuff is all turning point action.

00:10:32.000 We're just talking about cultural.

00:10:33.000 We're talking about ideas.

00:10:34.000 That's what we do at Turning Point USA.

00:10:35.000 It's actually more important, way more important than the political stuff, by the way.

00:10:38.000 It's way more important.

00:10:40.000 And I know a lot of parents, they look at this, they say, oh my goodness, where did this come from?

00:10:45.000 So here's where I'm going to kind of bring you down a little bit after I built you up, right?

00:10:50.000 Is that this room should be 10 times the size, considering how bad it is out there.

00:10:56.000 And if I met a lot of you last night, you said, Charlie, I'm the only one at my school.

00:11:00.000 Only one.

00:11:01.000 Me plus two.

00:11:01.000 I'm like, well, how big's your school?

00:11:03.000 35,000 people.

00:11:04.000 Like, okay, I bet there's others, but I get the point, right?

00:11:07.000 The point is that it's one or two out of 35,000 that are actually organizing, or one or two out of 20,000, whatever it is.

00:11:15.000 And so the moment necessitates action and it necessitates you doing something about it.

00:11:22.000 You being here and signing up to be a campus coordinator already shows us a lot that what you're willing to do.

00:11:28.000 And there is a campaign, and you see this happening, that is almost like you want to give up.

00:11:36.000 If you're like me, it's tempting where you kind of want to give in at times, right?

00:11:40.000 Like, all right, fine, whatever.

00:11:41.000 Like, I'm not going to fight the mask thing again.

00:11:43.000 I mean, whatever, fine.

00:11:44.000 They can control my speech.

00:11:46.000 Like, whatever.

00:11:46.000 They can put these substances into my body.

00:11:48.000 Like, whatever.

00:11:49.000 It's tempting because they make you feel as if you have to consider, they almost want you to feel like you're losing your mind.

00:11:58.000 I mean, you flip through social media and you're like, every single person is against you.

00:12:02.000 And you're like, my goodness, is this some sort of psyops operation against us?

00:12:11.000 But then you look around to actual human beings, you're like, huh, a lot more people agree with me than I thought.

00:12:16.000 And so, what does success look like for a Turning Point USA chapter leader?

00:12:20.000 Let me manage your expectations.

00:12:22.000 Now, maybe Notre Dame Prep would be an exception, maybe.

00:12:25.000 Maybe some of these other conservatives, like Liberty or Hillsdale, would definitely be an exception.

00:12:29.000 Let me manage your expectations, though, okay?

00:12:32.000 Like, let's pick University of Texas Austin, okay?

00:12:35.000 Let's pick a very liberal school.

00:12:36.000 She's not gonna win over the student body on large, not gonna happen.

00:12:40.000 Okay?

00:12:41.000 She's not all of a sudden like 51% of University of Texas Awesome people are gonna be like, MAGA.

00:12:48.000 Not gonna happen, right?

00:12:50.000 Yeah, I know.

00:12:50.000 They're going to the downhook as OU or either Texas Tech or AM or whatever, right?

00:12:55.000 Oh, yeah.

00:12:56.000 Texas Tech, very good.

00:12:57.000 Same thing at Texas Tech, maybe there might be some hope, but it's liberal.

00:13:02.000 The point is this is that, what, you say Hale State or something?

00:13:07.000 Hale State.

00:13:07.000 Okay, got it.

00:13:08.000 So the point is that you gotta manage your expectations, right?

00:13:14.000 And this is an important thing.

00:13:15.000 By the way, that's not actually what the success we're looking like for.

00:13:19.000 Here's the first form of success just truth being spoken.

00:13:21.000 That's it.

00:13:22.000 I don't care if it's one person, two people, 10 people, 30 people, 50 people, 100 people, 1,000 people.

00:13:27.000 That's it.

00:13:28.000 Just saying things that are true.

00:13:30.000 Saying them publicly, saying them boldly, and saying them courageously, and not caring what they're going to write about you in the student newspaper.

00:13:37.000 Not caring about what the anonymous BLM Twitter accounts coming after you're going to say.

00:13:40.000 You say, you know what?

00:13:41.000 I am going to keep on saying this.

00:13:43.000 I am going to say that God created man, God created woman.

00:13:45.000 I'm going to say that America's a wonderful country.

00:13:48.000 I'm going to say that borders matter.

00:13:49.000 And you can say whatever you want about me.

00:13:52.000 And do you guys want to remove a weapon?

00:13:56.000 From their ability to come after you.

00:14:00.000 Everyone complains about cancel culture.

00:14:02.000 I do too.

00:14:02.000 Here's the problem with cancel culture we allow our own side to get canceled.

00:14:05.000 We allow ourselves to get canceled.

00:14:08.000 We then police our own speech and be like, man, am I allowed to say that?

00:14:12.000 Am I allowed to do that?

00:14:13.000 You know, some of you have probably seen that I said some things this week, whatever.

00:14:16.000 The point is that, whatever, we don't have to get into that.

00:14:19.000 The point is this, thank you very much.

00:14:21.000 The point, the reason I doubled down is not even that I care that much about it.

00:14:24.000 The reason is that people were telling me, like, you must be canceled and shut up.

00:14:28.000 I said, you know what?

00:14:28.000 I am gonna post this, I'm gonna triple down.

00:14:30.000 Because the second that all of a sudden you allow other people to police your speech, you might as well just say, I'm no longer a living human being.

00:14:38.000 The minute that all of a sudden someone comes at you, like, you have to stop saying that stuff, and it might be something that you're so deeply passionate about, it might be an intricate issue on the Second Amendment, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, whatever it is.

00:14:51.000 And this happens all the time on university campuses, all the time in high schools, where that social pressure happens.

00:14:57.000 Okay, so here's the first rule when it comes to cancel culture that we have to no longer abide by make yourself Indifferent and laugh off the cost that they're gonna throw at you.

00:15:07.000 Now, this is hard, because for some of you, that means that you might actually get kicked out of school.

00:15:12.000 I'm not kidding.

00:15:14.000 Some of you.

00:15:15.000 Now, public school is a lot harder to do that, right?

00:15:17.000 A lot harder.

00:15:18.000 But for some of these private schools, you could see the language they're coming after.

00:15:22.000 They're like, certain conservatives don't have a place here at XYZ school.

00:15:26.000 It's a huge cost to pay, it's a big cost.

00:15:29.000 Now, before they get to that though, they're gonna try to make your life totally miserable.

00:15:34.000 Right now, this is like the greatest pitch ever to go tell you, right?

00:15:37.000 Like, okay, you might get kicked out of school, you're gonna lose all your friends, you're gonna get ridiculed and mocked.

00:15:42.000 By the way, have a nice semester, right?

00:15:44.000 Like, but I'm not gonna lie to you, we don't do that, right?

00:15:47.000 But at a young age, here's what you are gonna become you're gonna be tougher than every single one of your classmates.

00:15:53.000 You're gonna have grit, perseverance, you're gonna have guts, you're gonna be what makes Americans different than the French.

00:15:59.000 All of your other classmates are gonna live very well.

00:16:02.000 I go after the French all the time, by the way, mercilessly all the time.

00:16:06.000 Yes, that's right.

00:16:08.000 I think.

00:16:09.000 We got a good German around here somewhere.

00:16:11.000 Super organized guy.

00:16:12.000 He's always on time, I'm sure.

00:16:14.000 So, where is he?

00:16:15.000 I met him last night.

00:16:15.000 Really sweet guy.

00:16:17.000 And so, again, I always make fun of the French.

00:16:19.000 You know, they were the only people ever to invent both the tourniquet and the white flag of surrender.

00:16:24.000 You know, it's brilliant.

00:16:25.000 So, anyway, enough of the French.

00:16:27.000 So, what makes Americans different is, and you could see this with the lockdowns, by the way, is that we still have a little bit of this, you know what?

00:16:36.000 I'm not going to put up with this authoritarianism.

00:16:38.000 By the way, I'll be very honest with you, though.

00:16:41.000 I am so disappointed and saddened at how much we put up with this last year and a half.

00:16:45.000 And by the way, we're still like the best in the world with it.

00:16:48.000 I know that sounds crazy.

00:16:49.000 Like, just finally, the Italians are starting to march against the lockdowns in Italy.

00:16:54.000 Like, finally.

00:16:55.000 After like a year and a half.

00:16:58.000 And like, finally.

00:17:00.000 So, what does that mean for you on your campus?

00:17:03.000 So, there's really like three things I wanted to say to you.

00:17:05.000 And it's super simple stuff, really generic.

00:17:07.000 And you're like, oh, Charlie, it's so cliche.

00:17:09.000 It is cliche, but it needs to be said, and we're going to build it out, okay?

00:17:11.000 It's literally three things.

00:17:12.000 I wrote them down because I wanted to make sure I was precise in it.

00:17:15.000 Okay, it's this simple, which is all of you are already doing this, but you need to go create new and lasting things.

00:17:20.000 Stop complaining all the time.

00:17:22.000 Okay?

00:17:23.000 Go start Turning Point USA chapter.

00:17:24.000 Start a business.

00:17:25.000 Start new things.

00:17:26.000 At your age, you gotta start new stuff.

00:17:29.000 I started Turning Point USA at age 18.

00:17:31.000 I had no money, no connections, no idea what I was doing.

00:17:33.000 I didn't go to college.

00:17:34.000 I didn't even know how to sign a check, front or back, credit or debit.

00:17:37.000 They don't teach that stuff in high school, by the way.

00:17:39.000 You better believe it.

00:17:40.000 I just started it.

00:17:41.000 By the grace of God, tons of energy, and now you could see what it's become, right?

00:17:46.000 160 plus full time people on staff.

00:17:48.000 You guys saw our campus, and it's totally by the grace of God.

00:17:51.000 But Turning Point USA never would have started if I didn't just start doing something.

00:17:55.000 And I guarantee you, in this room right now, someone has a way better idea than Turning Point USA that you're wrestling with and you're like, I want to do it, but the social pressure, stop it.

00:18:02.000 Go build lasting and beautiful and new things.

00:18:05.000 The energy that you have, the directive you have at your age, you're never going to have again.

00:18:10.000 So here's why college, I think, has become such a disservice to our country.

00:18:13.000 And obviously, a lot of you are in college, but let me tell you how you could break out of this, right?

00:18:18.000 Is that every time you turn the corner in college, it's about buying new textbooks, going to bigger class sizes, doing homework that you're like, I don't understand how this applies to me, going further into debt.

00:18:30.000 When you're your age, you shouldn't be just like micromanaged by the man or the machine.

00:18:35.000 You should go create new stuff.

00:18:37.000 You're able to pull all nighters and still be able to make coherent sentences, right?

00:18:42.000 The energy you have when you're 19 shouldn't be used to go like learn about Nietzsche.

00:18:46.000 Like that crap can come later, okay?

00:18:49.000 You can go learn like existential nihilism when you're 25.

00:18:52.000 It's just as garbage when you're 25 as when you're 18, let me tell you, okay?

00:18:52.000 Trust me.

00:19:02.000 Instead, when you're 18 or 19, Go start something new.

00:19:05.000 It could be a business, a nonprofit, a campaign.

00:19:08.000 Go run for something.

00:19:09.000 Go take a risk.

00:19:10.000 Seriously.

00:19:12.000 And like you being here is part of that.

00:19:13.000 So I want to commend you and encourage it.

00:19:15.000 The only way the American project gets saved is big and bold and dramatic risks from our young people.

00:19:21.000 And by the way, the left, they get embraced when they do this, right?

00:19:24.000 Like, oh, look at Sandy Cortez.

00:19:26.000 She's such a hero because she ran for office when being a bartender.

00:19:29.000 Like, yeah, okay, whatever.

00:19:31.000 Sure.

00:19:31.000 You know what?

00:19:31.000 Good for her.

00:19:32.000 She at least did something like that.

00:19:33.000 We need more of that on our side.

00:19:35.000 Go rise up and whatever that is.

00:19:37.000 It could be writing a book, you know, becoming a professional musician.

00:19:40.000 Well, Charlie, what if I fail?

00:19:41.000 Well, you're probably going to fail.

00:19:43.000 Of course, you are.

00:19:44.000 That's part of the entire American project, too.

00:19:46.000 We are the most forgiving of failure of any nation ever to exist in the history of the world.

00:19:50.000 It's reflected in our culture and our bankruptcy laws.

00:19:52.000 I'll prove it to you.

00:19:53.000 This is why we're different than the Europeans.

00:19:55.000 People say, well, Charlie, how dare you argue supremacy?

00:19:58.000 I'm not saying supremacy, okay?

00:20:00.000 I have a preference for our culture.

00:20:01.000 If you want to sit around and sip wine all day, like, yeah, go to Italy, okay?

00:20:04.000 I want to win, okay?

00:20:05.000 That's what Americans do.

00:20:06.000 We win.

00:20:06.000 Okay, like we don't just that's what we do here.

00:20:08.000 Okay, so let me tell you that we're the most forgiving of failure ever.

00:20:15.000 Bankruptcy laws in America, if you fail, there's a way to get out of it through bankruptcy laws.

00:20:19.000 I don't think any of you guys are gonna have to get to a place where you declare bankruptcy, but also the people we consider to be the greatest heroes are the people that fell the furthest and then built themselves back up.

00:20:31.000 We love those stories in America, we love it.

00:20:34.000 The people that were like left for dead, the Lazarus stories, right?

00:20:38.000 Raising from nothing.

00:20:39.000 Tiger Woods, like total rock bottom, right?

00:20:43.000 And he's decided to like do a sequel, right?

00:20:45.000 With recently.

00:20:46.000 But, like, the point is, like, no, seriously, it's like, okay, rock bottom, built it up, and then, okay.

00:20:51.000 But, you guys, I don't know if you remember Tiger Woods, like, top of the game, best golf forever, right?

00:20:57.000 Like, everything you can, and then totally destroys his life.

00:21:01.000 Affairs, car accidents, injuries, lies, divorce, the whole thing, right?

00:21:07.000 And he's like, you know what?

00:21:08.000 I'm now gonna prove it to myself.

00:21:09.000 Comes back and wins a master's a couple years ago, right?

00:21:12.000 Same with Kobe Bryant.

00:21:14.000 God bless Kobe Bryant.

00:21:15.000 By the way, if you wanna talk about someone who should be a role model for the black community, It should have been Kobe Bryant.

00:21:19.000 I mean, that guy, so I love Kobe Bryant.

00:21:23.000 Kobe Bryant, same thing.

00:21:24.000 So, Kobe Bryant, may he rest in peace.

00:21:28.000 Kobe Bryant was at the top of his game, had an awful affair.

00:21:32.000 I don't know if you remember this, got accused of sexual assault, possibly rape.

00:21:36.000 His whole life was in shambles, recommitted himself to his Catholic faith, and all of a sudden became an ambassador of discipline, of restraint, and of order, and went back and won another three NBA finals.

00:21:46.000 We love stories like that.

00:21:48.000 So, don't give me, like, oh, I might fail.

00:21:49.000 Of course, you're going to fail.

00:21:51.000 I failed along the way.

00:21:52.000 The question is Will you have the ultimate failure?

00:21:54.000 The ultimate failure is giving up, quitting.

00:21:56.000 Now you can kind of see a little bit of a through line of my recent commentary, right?

00:21:59.000 I can't stand giving up.

00:22:00.000 Don't do that.

00:22:01.000 It's not who we are.

00:22:02.000 Putting up your hands like, man, I can't take it anymore.

00:22:05.000 You're all stronger than that.

00:22:06.000 You're a lot tougher than you think.

00:22:07.000 You're a lot tougher than you give yourselves credit for.

00:22:10.000 You could dig a lot deeper, everybody, and you could push through when all of a sudden you feel like the world is against you.

00:22:16.000 You all of a sudden could get through that next hurdle when you're like, man, I can't go any longer.

00:22:20.000 Yes, you can.

00:22:21.000 You're 18, 19, 20 years old.

00:22:22.000 The physical barriers are probably not as much as you think.

00:22:25.000 You could go 72 hours without sleeping, every single one of you at the age you're at.

00:22:29.000 Seriously.

00:22:30.000 I've done crazy stuff like that when I started Turning Point.

00:22:32.000 Red eye flights, driving on two hours' sleep, knocking on random doors, forgetting people's names on phone calls, falling asleep on conference calls, you name it, I've done it all.

00:22:41.000 And without that kind of crazy, like upside down grit, only in America type cowboy spirit, I don't know if Turning Point USA would exist.

00:22:48.000 I wouldn't trade it for the world, by the way.

00:22:50.000 I wouldn't trade it for the world.

00:22:51.000 Now we have a team and an infrastructure able to do all those sorts of things.

00:22:54.000 And by the way, you know how many little failures we had along the way at Turning Point?

00:22:58.000 False starts, things that shouldn't have happened?

00:23:00.000 But the real thing was like, are we going to just put up our hands and say we're not going to do this anymore?

00:23:04.000 That's how people want us to think about the country, though, right?

00:23:07.000 They want us to give up on the country.

00:23:09.000 We don't do that here.

00:23:10.000 That's not who we are.

00:23:12.000 My grandfather did not fight in World War II and just give up when the Philippines was all of a sudden taken over by the Japanese.

00:23:17.000 We didn't give up when the Nazis took over all of Europe.

00:23:20.000 No, we're going to do a bigger invasion against.

00:23:20.000 Like, you know what?

00:23:22.000 That's right.

00:23:22.000 You call them the Nazis, not the Nazis.

00:23:23.000 You haven't seen Glorious Bastards, great movie, by the way.

00:23:28.000 I want you to channel what all of us have in common, which is a shared American ethos and ethic.

00:23:34.000 When you look at that flag, every single person in this room, you have something in common.

00:23:38.000 By the way, they're trying to destroy this American family.

00:23:40.000 You know that?

00:23:42.000 That's why they want to destroy our history.

00:23:43.000 You know why?

00:23:44.000 History is the stories that we tell each other where all of a sudden we have shared values.

00:23:50.000 That's why they don't want you to hear about Guadalcanal.

00:23:53.000 They don't want you to hear about Iwo Jima.

00:23:55.000 They don't want you to hear about all of a sudden how we destroyed Soviet communism without firing a bullet.

00:24:00.000 They don't want you to hear about that.

00:24:01.000 They want you to hear about, like, you know how racist we were and we're even more racist.

00:24:04.000 Not like, yeah, okay, enough, okay?

00:24:07.000 Eventually, this kind of negativity just wears down a person.

00:24:10.000 Like, no, we are built on the shoulders of heroes in this country.

00:24:15.000 We're built on the shoulders of titans and risk takers, people that sacrificed for us.

00:24:21.000 And so, go create new and lasting things.

00:24:25.000 Enough kind of being paralyzed by, you know, the forces around you.

00:24:29.000 You can liberate outside of this simulation, every single one of you.

00:24:33.000 That's, and by the way, I have a copy of the US Constitution.

00:24:36.000 This Constitution gives you the charge to be able to do this.

00:24:41.000 And what the system wants you to believe is you can't do those things.

00:24:46.000 You can't go build new things.

00:24:47.000 You can't think big.

00:24:49.000 So you say, Charlie, well, what's an idea for me?

00:24:51.000 I don't have an idea, but you do.

00:24:53.000 Here's the best idea of how to start a business.

00:24:55.000 You want to hear it?

00:24:56.000 Start an endeavor.

00:24:57.000 It's this simple Go find something that everyone is complaining about and go solve their problem.

00:25:03.000 It's that simple.

00:25:03.000 You want to go be rich?

00:25:04.000 Go do that.

00:25:05.000 It's that simple.

00:25:06.000 Go find something everyone's complaining about and go solve their problem.

00:25:09.000 Just so happened, everyone was complaining the country was dying and young people weren't getting organized.

00:25:14.000 And I agreed with them.

00:25:14.000 I said, okay, let's go educate a bunch of young people.

00:25:17.000 So, what's education?

00:25:18.000 I don't know.

00:25:19.000 Let's just figure it out.

00:25:20.000 We got energy.

00:25:21.000 The one thing that you guys have that I had, and I pray I still have, is energy.

00:25:26.000 Use it.

00:25:27.000 You guys can do more work than anyone else.

00:25:29.000 Outwork everyone else around you.

00:25:31.000 And the other part is like, well, you don't have the wisdom to do that.

00:25:35.000 You guys can get wisdom.

00:25:36.000 Go read big books, long ones, that all of a sudden you're like, why am I reading this?

00:25:40.000 That's exactly where, as soon as after 500 pages, you're on the right course towards wisdom.

00:25:45.000 Trust me.

00:25:46.000 Go read stuff where all of a sudden your friends are like, huh, loser, like, ah, perfect.

00:25:50.000 Yes, right place.

00:25:52.000 No more tick.

00:25:53.000 If you guys take a month off of TikTok, every single one of you will be wiser, by the way.

00:25:56.000 Infinitely wiser.

00:26:01.000 The war in Iran is having a devastating effect on the people living there locally.

00:26:06.000 What most people don't realize is it's affecting everyone on the global scale as well, even if we aren't there physically.

00:26:12.000 Every time a missile is launched or a bomb goes off, tiny microplastic particles are being spread into our atmosphere, leaching into our soil and water.

00:26:20.000 And guess what?

00:26:21.000 They eventually end up in our body causing harm.

00:26:24.000 They cross the gut lining, leach into your blood, and disrupt everything.

00:26:28.000 They've been shown to alter gut bacteria, suppress your immune response, and increase your risk for heart attack, stroke, cognitive diseases, and cancer.

00:26:37.000 There's now a plastic spoon's worth of microplastics in the average human brain.

00:26:42.000 But your gut can help fight back.

00:26:44.000 Kimchi 1 from Brightcore Nutrition is a potent ally in this toxic world.

00:26:49.000 It's packed with over 900 probiotic strains unique to kimchi.

00:26:54.000 And proven to bind and excrete microplastics, helping you detox from the inside out.

00:26:59.000 Your body was never designed to handle plastic, but your gut was designed to protect you.

00:27:04.000 You must give it the right tools.

00:27:07.000 Today, you can get an exclusive offer by visiting brightcore.comslash charlie, or for an even better deal, call Brightcore for up to 50% off your order and free shipping.

00:27:19.000 Give them a call now at 888 317 9258.

00:27:23.000 So, if you call them, you get an even better deal.

00:27:26.000 So, again, that's 888 317 9258.

00:27:28.000 317 9258, or you can visit them and get 25% off at brightcore.com/slash Charlie.

00:27:34.000 Purchase only directly from Brightcore Nutrition to ensure product integrity.

00:27:39.000 They do not authorize resellers.

00:27:41.000 So, again, brightcore.com/slash Charlie for 25% off, or call them to get 50% off at 888 317 9258.

00:27:53.000 Number two: three things, right?

00:27:55.000 Number two: always.

00:27:55.000 These are not hard.

00:27:58.000 Tell the truth.

00:28:00.000 Always.

00:28:01.000 Always tell the truth.

00:28:02.000 So, Pete, I'm gonna give you my own personal opinion.

00:28:05.000 I'm gonna tell you where I disagree with Ben Shapiro on something.

00:28:07.000 Love Ben, smart guy.

00:28:10.000 Where some people say, hey, should I lie to get a good grade?

00:28:15.000 I'm sure all of you encounter this all the time, right?

00:28:17.000 So, for me, grades were never really important, okay?

00:28:20.000 No, it's true.

00:28:20.000 Like, I mean, I could always just kind of navigate it.

00:28:23.000 I'd step up for the test.

00:28:24.000 I'm sure a lot of you are this way.

00:28:25.000 Like, bare minimum, I'm gonna go focus on real stuff.

00:28:28.000 Like, you know what I mean?

00:28:29.000 And, like, the teacher will hound me, and the teacher always kind of was like, You could do better.

00:28:32.000 I'm like, yeah, if I actually cared, right?

00:28:34.000 Like, you know what I mean?

00:28:35.000 Like, and again, I'm not endorsing that.

00:28:37.000 I'm sure some of you are like shaking, like, no, grades are everything.

00:28:41.000 I'm gonna ask you to pray about that.

00:28:43.000 Your grade should not be your identity.

00:28:44.000 No, seriously.

00:28:45.000 Your grade should not be your identity, seriously.

00:28:48.000 And by the way, I'm not like endorsing, go like fail every class and don't show up.

00:28:54.000 Like, you know, don't be a schlep, okay?

00:28:57.000 At the same time, it's like, is that your whole existence?

00:29:00.000 It's like, I got an A plus, an APU, a sister, I got a five.

00:29:03.000 Okay, congratulations, terrific.

00:29:04.000 Who's James Madison?

00:29:06.000 Well, okay, so you study for a test, but you don't actually know any of it.

00:29:06.000 I don't know.

00:29:10.000 I came across someone's like, I got a five on AP US history.

00:29:13.000 I said, okay, who wrote the Federalist Papers?

00:29:18.000 It's like they kind of broke into a sonata.

00:29:20.000 I'm like, that's not the answer.

00:29:22.000 It's like I'm not trying to do like, you know, Constitution 101, that's like some basic stuff, right?

00:29:26.000 You got a five on AP US history.

00:29:28.000 You should know that it's Alexander Hamilton and James Madison coming together before the Constitution Convention, 1787.

00:29:33.000 And John Jay, who was the first Supreme Court Justice of the United States.

00:29:36.000 That is correct.

00:29:37.000 So it's like, who wrote it in newspapers in New York State?

00:29:41.000 Not that complicated, right?

00:29:43.000 And again, it's not a trivia test.

00:29:44.000 It's like, don't make that your identity.

00:29:46.000 But so, going back to where I disagree, is some people say, Charlie, I'm going to get graded down differently.

00:29:50.000 Of course you will.

00:29:51.000 Obviously.

00:29:53.000 What's the most important thing in your life?

00:29:56.000 What's the most important thing?

00:29:57.000 That's something you should always ask yourself.

00:29:58.000 And by the way, all of you might have different questions.

00:30:00.000 Let me tell you what the most important thing is to me.

00:30:02.000 I believe the minute that you start lying to yourself and lying to others, you start breaking that covenant and that promise with your creator.

00:30:09.000 Telling the truth is everything, it's everything.

00:30:12.000 So, in the Christian ethic, the Christian tradition, We believe that Jesus was not just someone who said true things, he was truth himself.

00:30:20.000 That a life that will be blessed and a life that will be in alignment with how God wants us to live will be the embodiment of truth.

00:30:28.000 Do you know truth has a really amazingly paradoxical thing?

00:30:33.000 It's liberating and it also comes at a cost.

00:30:35.000 Always.

00:30:36.000 You'll never be able to be a truth teller and be loved by everybody.

00:30:41.000 No one.

00:30:42.000 You'll never be a truth teller and be of the world.

00:30:45.000 Not going to happen.

00:30:46.000 And so, when it comes to the grade, maybe you'll be able to persuade the professor, but you'll all come across the situation.

00:30:52.000 I guarantee it.

00:30:53.000 Raise your hands if you think you're graded differently because of your conservative views.

00:30:56.000 Yeah, basically the whole room.

00:30:57.000 Okay, you'll all come across this.

00:30:58.000 And by the way, I'm not telling you what to do.

00:31:01.000 I want to be very clear.

00:31:02.000 There might be an argument where lying to get a grade might be the better argument for you.

00:31:07.000 I don't accept that moral framework.

00:31:09.000 I'm not going to try to impose morals on you, okay?

00:31:11.000 I'm just going to ask this for consideration, okay?

00:31:13.000 So, I don't want you to go back like, oh yeah, Charlie told me to go fail.

00:31:16.000 I did not say that.

00:31:18.000 By the way, treat my speech like a buffet line.

00:31:20.000 Take what you like and leave the stuff you don't, okay?

00:31:22.000 Seriously.

00:31:23.000 None of this stuff is impositional on you, okay?

00:31:26.000 But here's the thing if you're gonna all of a sudden go write some sort of systemic racism, Nicole Hannah Jones, Robin D'Angelo, Tahanisi Coates garbage to go get a good grade, when are you gonna stop lying?

00:31:37.000 You gonna stop lying at the job interview?

00:31:40.000 How about at the promotion?

00:31:41.000 How about when you're senior management and you're supervising an entire division at Citibank or Goldman Sachs or Wells Fargo?

00:31:48.000 How about all of a sudden, when things get really tough and you're running an HR department at Coca Cola and they're like, we're going to go give 100 million bucks to BLM, you're going to stop lying then?

00:31:57.000 If you have a plan, you're like, okay, I'm going to lie here, but not here, you're way more self disciplined than I am.

00:32:03.000 Like, way more.

00:32:04.000 Because I know lies are a tricky thing.

00:32:05.000 They start to manifest in your behavior, don't they?

00:32:08.000 You don't even realize you start lying at times.

00:32:10.000 They just kind of spread out, they become part of your language.

00:32:13.000 Truth takes effort.

00:32:15.000 It does.

00:32:16.000 Truth takes courage.

00:32:18.000 You got to do it over and over again.

00:32:20.000 And then all of a sudden, When it gets really hard, they say, okay, what do you think of Trump?

00:32:27.000 Then you gotta be willing to say, maybe I like him.

00:32:30.000 He's the worst person ever racist, misogynist, bigot, homophobe.

00:32:34.000 A plus, congratulations, welcome to Harvard.

00:32:39.000 Which one?

00:32:40.000 So, I believe that career advancement and getting a good grade is mostly all garbage.

00:32:45.000 I want a generation of truth tellers with courage, not a bunch of people with good grades that watch the country decline and decay in front of them every single day.

00:32:58.000 So, always tell the truth.

00:32:59.000 People say, Charlie, you gonna get a vaccine card?

00:33:02.000 I'm like, I'm not getting vaccinated.

00:33:03.000 By the way, there's this crazy thing on social media.

00:33:05.000 Charlie Kirk's been vaccinated.

00:33:06.000 I guarantee you, I haven't been vaccinated, okay?

00:33:07.000 At least with this current experimental vaccine.

00:33:09.000 Again, if you've got the vaccine, I'm not here to tell you one way or the other.

00:33:12.000 But it's like, Charlie, you're going to get a card.

00:33:14.000 I'm like, look, I just told you I'm not going to get it.

00:33:14.000 You're not going to be able to travel.

00:33:17.000 I'm not going to go, like, fake my way to it.

00:33:19.000 I will pay the price of this.

00:33:21.000 And guess what?

00:33:21.000 You're also going to have to deal with whatever wrath that I can concoct when you try to limit my freedom and liberty, right?

00:33:27.000 And whatever that is, you're not going to like it.

00:33:29.000 Like, whatever that is, it's not going to be good.

00:33:33.000 And you got to own it.

00:33:34.000 Don't apologize for it.

00:33:36.000 Like, oh, yeah, uh, You know, when you're all at a dinner table with your family, your friends, or your relatives, are you getting vaccinated?

00:33:42.000 Are you getting vaccinated?

00:33:43.000 Are you getting, like, who are you?

00:33:45.000 Like, that's like a weird thing.

00:33:46.000 Are you HIV tested?

00:33:47.000 Like, what kind of creep are you?

00:33:48.000 Like, can I see your full medical history?

00:33:51.000 Like, can I go see the results of your colonoscopy?

00:33:53.000 Like, weird, overweight Karen?

00:33:54.000 Like, what kind of weird thing is that?

00:33:57.000 I need to see your intense medical history.

00:33:59.000 Like, you have way too much power.

00:34:00.000 I don't know who you are.

00:34:01.000 No one elected you.

00:34:02.000 You're not in the Constitution.

00:34:04.000 Like, leave.

00:34:05.000 You know what I mean?

00:34:06.000 Like, that's the way that you should respond to that.

00:34:07.000 Like, way too much power.

00:34:09.000 Like, I need to go see your vaccination history.

00:34:11.000 What kind of crazy people are these?

00:34:14.000 Anyway, always tell the truth.

00:34:16.000 Look at them in the eye.

00:34:17.000 This is what I believe, why I believe it, and treat me as you will.

00:34:22.000 That sort of inner peace that you'll have will only come with the third thing.

00:34:26.000 We're about to get to the third thing.

00:34:28.000 So people say, Charlie, how are you able to just, you know, withstand the arrows?

00:34:32.000 And all this, of course, gets tough at times, obviously, right?

00:34:34.000 I'm not like gonna say that it's like superhuman, but it gets easier when you do the third thing.

00:34:40.000 And the third thing is this you gotta know your stuff.

00:34:43.000 The more you know, the more you read, the more you listen, the more you're open to correction, the more wisdom you pursue, all of a sudden you're not gonna care when very unimpressive low IQ people start screaming at you.

00:34:55.000 You're not.

00:34:57.000 When you start pursuing beautiful ideas, like real stuff, I'm not talking about the stuff that they're pushing, I'm talking about stuff that's all of a sudden, what is the good?

00:35:06.000 What does that mean?

00:35:07.000 Like classical education.

00:35:09.000 When all of a sudden you dive deep and you become a master of these ideas, all of a sudden you're just gonna kind of play badminton with all this, seriously.

00:35:16.000 Yeah, whatever, whatever.

00:35:17.000 You got to know your stuff.

00:35:18.000 So, what does that look like?

00:35:20.000 Dive deeper, get to root causes.

00:35:23.000 Now, maybe for you, religion is really important.

00:35:25.000 Go read Thomas Aquinas.

00:35:27.000 If anyone here is a Christian, go read Thomas Aquinas and get good at it.

00:35:31.000 That's tough stuff.

00:35:32.000 You go read the Summa, get back to me.

00:35:34.000 That's tough.

00:35:35.000 Maybe you're not a Christian.

00:35:36.000 You're like, you know, I'm really big into the Enlightenment.

00:35:38.000 Okay, go read Rene Descartes, go read Immanuel Kant, go at least go back to the Greeks.

00:35:44.000 You got to be able to tell me what Socrates played on Aristotle believed.

00:35:47.000 You got to be able to tell me what the allegory of the cave is, the allegory of the ship.

00:35:50.000 And if this stuff's like way over your head, that's okay, guys.

00:35:52.000 That's, by the way, that's why we're all here.

00:35:55.000 But all of a sudden, when you get deeper into this, with hopefully some humility, because you don't want to become cocky or arrogant, right?

00:36:02.000 You'll get to a place where all of a sudden you won't care about the opposition that comes against you.

00:36:08.000 All of a sudden, you'll be like, you know what?

00:36:09.000 I know what I believe and why I believe it.

00:36:11.000 Like, just get out of my way.

00:36:13.000 And what I find far too often is that the conservative movement at times is we get really charged up of what we want to do.

00:36:20.000 And we don't always go deep into why we want to do what we want to do.

00:36:24.000 Like, what is the natural law?

00:36:25.000 That's a huge question.

00:36:27.000 Like, do we have a whole three months to go through it?

00:36:29.000 Because that's how long it takes.

00:36:31.000 Now, some of you go to great schools.

00:36:33.000 Some of you don't go to great schools, to be perfectly honest with you.

00:36:37.000 Take your self education seriously.

00:36:39.000 Take at least 30 minutes a day and turn your phone on airplane mode and go read a meaningful book, listen to a podcast that explores these ideas.

00:36:47.000 Obviously, we would love it if you listened to ours.

00:36:49.000 We try to do this at least once or twice a week.

00:36:51.000 Thank you.

00:36:54.000 But go challenge yourself and write something down at the end of that day that you learned that day that wasn't there the day before.

00:37:03.000 So, here's three things that you guys got to do every single day.

00:37:06.000 Go find something objectively beautiful and spend time in that thing.

00:37:11.000 It might be a piece of painting, it might be a painting, it might be a conversation with a friend, it might be a song.

00:37:17.000 The reason why there's so many issues of mental health in America is obviously there's some chemical side of it, is that we become such an ugly society.

00:37:24.000 And I don't mean like ugly people, I mean ugly in the sense of language, in music, in the aesthetic, is that the lack of depth in our conversations is just terrible.

00:37:36.000 And TikTok and all that stuff plays into it.

00:37:38.000 It's like, well, Charlie, what does that mean?

00:37:40.000 Well, for some of you, you might be going to school in Colorado or something.

00:37:44.000 You're easy.

00:37:45.000 You've got natural beauty all around you.

00:37:47.000 Some of you've got to go to school at St. John's.

00:37:48.000 Where's our St. John's people?

00:37:50.000 Okay, in the middle of New York City, it'll be a little bit harder, right?

00:37:54.000 But beautiful pieces of music, poetry, whatever it is, there's a canon of things that were developed in the pursuit of things that matter that you should ponder over, that should take you to almost take your breath away and make you wonder.

00:38:08.000 You know how often.

00:38:09.000 How rarely I should say that young people actually get a chance to do this today.

00:38:13.000 You know why?

00:38:14.000 Because there's an evangelistic nihilism on the other side.

00:38:17.000 They tell you when you enter into college, there is no truth, there is no meaning, there is no beauty, there's nothing but a power dynamic.

00:38:24.000 Those people should be ignored completely and totally.

00:38:27.000 Because even if they were challenged against their own premise, they don't actually believe that stuff.

00:38:32.000 And I'll prove it to you.

00:38:33.000 Next time a professor says, yeah, there is no truth, there is no meaning, nothing matters, say, okay, so you wouldn't feel anything.

00:38:41.000 If all of a sudden your wife or your daughter got kidnapped, it doesn't matter.

00:38:44.000 It's all a bunch of cells, right?

00:38:45.000 It doesn't mean anything.

00:38:47.000 That professor would be like, oh no, that would bother me.

00:38:49.000 Okay, so there is something.

00:38:51.000 There's some form of custody or an agreement to something that matters more than anything else, an attachment to something you care about.

00:38:58.000 And so you have to ponder on those things and then seek wisdom.

00:39:02.000 Anyone know what wisdom is?

00:39:03.000 Maybe you listen to the podcast, maybe not.

00:39:05.000 Yes.

00:39:07.000 Yes, the things that never change.

00:39:09.000 There's practical knowledge and there's eternal knowledge, okay?

00:39:12.000 Practical knowledge is who's the governor of Arizona.

00:39:15.000 That's going to change, right?

00:39:18.000 Well, whatever.

00:39:19.000 You guys can, but the point is that good or bad, but eternal knowledge is this Is it a good or bad thing to have children?

00:39:29.000 Should you be loyally married to your spouse?

00:39:31.000 What happens when you tell the truth?

00:39:33.000 What is courage, prudence, friendship?

00:39:35.000 These are eternal questions.

00:39:37.000 That's what matters.

00:39:39.000 You see, in college, they fill you with a bunch of practical knowledge and they leave you totally shallow on the eternal knowledge.

00:39:45.000 Why?

00:39:46.000 Because they believe that human beings are a project in progress.

00:39:50.000 They don't think that people 234 years ago had anything meaningful to say because they didn't have Twitter.

00:39:56.000 They didn't have vaccines, losers.

00:39:59.000 When in reality, we don't believe human nature changes.

00:40:03.000 We believe human nature stays the same.

00:40:05.000 We believe that the ancients can actually not just be helpful, but instructive to every decision that we make today.

00:40:13.000 That the people that pondered over things without the distractions of the news cycle.

00:40:19.000 2,000 years ago, could actually tell us a lot more than some hack on MSNBC right now.

00:40:24.000 Or some college professor at some Ivy League school.

00:40:27.000 So, you gotta know your stuff, and guess what?

00:40:32.000 When that happens, your ranks will increase.

00:40:35.000 People will gravitate towards you.

00:40:37.000 All of a sudden, you'll be able to call right from wrong, add depth and context to conversation.

00:40:41.000 You'll become a better organizer on campus.

00:40:44.000 You'll become more understanding what happens when opposition comes against you.

00:40:48.000 You won't be taken off guard when all of a sudden a big social media post comes, you know.

00:40:52.000 Because all of a sudden, you'll see a pattern when you start to study beautiful things.

00:40:55.000 You know what that pattern is?

00:40:57.000 That truth tellers get wrongly accused.

00:41:01.000 That truth tellers have to pay a price for saying those things.

00:41:05.000 And that courage is the commitment to that truth, regardless of the cost that comes against them.

00:41:11.000 And you'll see that pattern time and time again.

00:41:14.000 You see what happened to Socrates.

00:41:16.000 You see what happened to Jesus.

00:41:18.000 You see what happens to any one of the people that dare speak out against the times, the customs, or the traditions around them.

00:41:23.000 And all of a sudden, you'll say, man, now all of a sudden I can understand this a lot better.

00:41:27.000 And then you'll be better equipped to be that courageous organizer.

00:41:31.000 So, what are we doing here?

00:41:32.000 What does success look like?

00:41:33.000 Success at Turning Point USA is not a political success.

00:41:36.000 It's not like Republicans win, Democrats lose, like whatever.

00:41:39.000 And the success is this: that all of a sudden we have to have spreading like a wildfire, a revolution of courage and truth in our country.

00:41:48.000 Where all of a sudden you're not the only one standing alone, and you won't be.

00:41:51.000 It will spread because there are thousands of other people on your campus that are waiting for someone to challenge this authoritarianism and this tyranny.

00:41:59.000 All it takes is sometimes that one step and being willing to kind of take that backlash and take what that is.

00:42:04.000 So, there are three things in summary, and then we'll do some questions.

00:42:07.000 Go create new and lasting things.

00:42:09.000 Take risks.

00:42:09.000 Think big.

00:42:10.000 You're young.

00:42:11.000 Take advantage of it.

00:42:13.000 Number two, always tell the truth.

00:42:14.000 Always.

00:42:16.000 Tell the truth to yourself.

00:42:17.000 Tell the truth to your Lord.

00:42:19.000 Tell the truth to your friends.

00:42:21.000 And tell the truth when things are difficult.

00:42:23.000 You will be blessed by that.

00:42:25.000 Always.

00:42:26.000 And number three, know your stuff.

00:42:27.000 Become masters of these sort of topics and issues.

00:42:31.000 Have an unsatiable appetite.

00:42:33.000 Toward knowledge and wisdom and truth.

00:42:37.000 You should be filling up volumes of booklets, of notebooks, and forget the college stuff, right?

00:42:41.000 Like, they're not going to teach a lot of this stuff, and maybe Hillsdale, you're the exception.

00:42:45.000 But, like, you dive deep, all of a sudden you're like, man, this makes so much more sense to me.

00:42:50.000 Now I understand better ways to organize and better ways to do things.

00:42:53.000 Those are the three things that we need to commit ourselves to.

00:42:55.000 And this is the, I'm going to close with how I finished.

00:42:58.000 Don't blame your parents, lead your parents, show them what a responsible generation does with these things.

00:43:07.000 Do not do the Alexandria Casio Cortez thing.

00:43:10.000 Don't be like, oh, they're a bunch of losers.

00:43:12.000 Don't do that.

00:43:13.000 Say, you know what, they meant well, but they weren't up to the task.

00:43:16.000 I'm going to show them what it is, and they're going to follow me.

00:43:18.000 Your parents will follow you if you have courage and truth and direction.

00:43:23.000 I know that sounds totally contrary, right?

00:43:25.000 But if you feel let down like your parents, like, oh, their generation let us down, don't blame them.

00:43:29.000 They're your elders.

00:43:30.000 We are commanded to honor them.

00:43:31.000 Honor them by then leading them towards truth and with courage.

00:43:36.000 All right, let's do some questions.

00:43:37.000 God bless you guys.

00:43:47.000 All right, I don't know how we want to do that.

00:43:49.000 Okay, sure.

00:43:51.000 Hey, Charlie, thank you for calling out St. John's.

00:43:53.000 We know how much they love our turning point chapter.

00:43:56.000 So, a thing that I'm a big advocate for is like it's great to start your turning point chapter or like call out the professor in class, but to also like run for your student government and get into the student newspaper and student radio station.

00:44:10.000 So, even like I'm predicting that in my radio station this year, I'm going to be claimed for hate speech or like misinformation or something.

00:44:19.000 So, what's advice for?

00:44:21.000 Any student here that wants to join their high school or college student newspaper or radio station and start a podcast similar to yours and not get canceled?

00:44:30.000 Yeah, I mean, look, it's a great question.

00:44:32.000 First of all, what you're going through at St. John's is ridiculous.

00:44:34.000 All of you guys should be supporting.

00:44:36.000 They won't approve the chapter, they're forcing vaccinations.

00:44:39.000 It's terrible.

00:44:40.000 It's just out of control.

00:44:41.000 We have your back.

00:44:41.000 Thank you for being here.

00:44:42.000 And I know Pastor David's been helping you out a lot, which we're really thankful for.

00:44:47.000 Here's the thing if they won't let you into the school radio station or the school newspaper, go start your own.

00:44:54.000 Right?

00:44:54.000 And I'm gonna just manage your expectations.

00:44:57.000 They're gonna use all these buzzwords.

00:44:59.000 Like, experts say Turning Point USA is a public health threat.

00:45:01.000 Like, okay, what?

00:45:02.000 Like, what experts are you talking about?

00:45:04.000 No, seriously, this is what they're gonna say.

00:45:05.000 Like, experts say that you're a source of extremism.

00:45:08.000 Like, okay, extremism is a very relative term, right?

00:45:13.000 Extreme compared to what, right?

00:45:15.000 Like, if it's extreme all of a sudden to say that, like, there's man and man and woman and woman, like, I'm not exactly sure what your definition of extreme is.

00:45:22.000 Here's the thing though all of you should first attempt and try.

00:45:26.000 To get into leadership positions on your campus, whether it be in student body president, I don't know if they heard from CVP, I'm sure you guys will, or CLP in the coming days.

00:45:34.000 And the same can be said, by the way, for trying to influence and trying to get into the radio and these others.

00:45:41.000 But I will just say, they're going to try to do everything they possibly can to kick you out of that.

00:45:45.000 It's a private school, so you don't have that many measures at your disposal.

00:45:48.000 Just go start your own thing then.

00:45:49.000 Okay.

00:45:50.000 Yes.

00:45:52.000 Hi, Charlie.

00:45:53.000 Firstly, I want to say I just by chance found out the other day you and I are from the same place.

00:45:57.000 I'm from Glenview.

00:45:58.000 You know where that is?

00:45:59.000 Oh, yeah.

00:45:59.000 Where'd you go to high school?

00:46:01.000 Glenbrook South.

00:46:01.000 GBS, okay.

00:46:03.000 We beat you guys in a lot of times.

00:46:04.000 The Titans.

00:46:05.000 Yeah, you guys are a.

00:46:06.000 Yeah.

00:46:08.000 I was going to say something.

00:46:09.000 I was going to say, like, a bunch of spoiled brats go to GBS, but what's your question?

00:46:14.000 You're right.

00:46:15.000 You're right.

00:46:16.000 I'm just going to be honest.

00:46:17.000 Like, we're the middle class school.

00:46:18.000 That's anyway, so yeah.

00:46:20.000 My question has to do with our parents, because I was going to ask this at SAS, but I'll change it a bit.

00:46:24.000 You mentioned at SAS that they're living in yesteryear's America.

00:46:28.000 You put that very aptly.

00:46:30.000 For these parents that say, calm down, you're a conspiracy theorist, oh, I'm more worried about next week's paycheck than next year's country, is it possible to, through facts and logic, we say it a lot, to convince them of the true danger that the left poses?

00:46:47.000 And if so, how?

00:46:49.000 That's such a good question.

00:46:50.000 I'm giving you a hard time about GBS, by the way.

00:46:52.000 Oh, no.

00:46:52.000 I mean, you're right.

00:46:53.000 Yeah, I mean, so, yeah.

00:46:55.000 No, it's good.

00:46:57.000 Anyone else from Chicago around here?

00:46:59.000 Yeah, you guys know the Glumberg area well, probably then.

00:47:01.000 Yeah.

00:47:01.000 So, look, so this is a hard thing.

00:47:05.000 And I'm going to go a little bit over time than the clock on the screen, by the way, if that's okay.

00:47:08.000 There's a lot of questions.

00:47:09.000 So I will say this that this is a really hard thing to convince them because our parents, not all of them, have been trained to say, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory.

00:47:21.000 So here's what you just got to do slow it down.

00:47:24.000 Use these two examples, okay?

00:47:25.000 This is it.

00:47:26.000 And this is helpful for all of you.

00:47:27.000 Just say, hold on.

00:47:30.000 10 years ago, if someone said that a former president was flying with a New York financier with underage girls on a private jet to a private island in the Caribbean, that was considered to be not just a conspiracy theory, but an unspeakable conspiracy theory.

00:47:46.000 In fact, when I first started Turning Point USA, this was talked about a lot in like the deep Reddit channels.

00:47:53.000 Like, Bill Clinton's flying on this, and you wouldn't be allowed to mention it anywhere.

00:47:57.000 Well, now we know all of it was true.

00:47:59.000 All of it.

00:48:00.000 That was considered to be a massive conspiracy theory, remember?

00:48:03.000 So that's a really helpful, disarming example for your parents.

00:48:07.000 The next time they try to tell you, like, that's a conspiracy, like, hold on, time out.

00:48:10.000 Let's go through things that were once called conspiracy theories that aren't.

00:48:14.000 The second one is such an obvious one, right?

00:48:17.000 Which is the front page of psychology today.

00:48:19.000 You guys can all look it up.

00:48:22.000 Back in December, they said, conspiracy theories, what's behind it?

00:48:26.000 And they said, experts say, The virus did not come from a lab.

00:48:32.000 Why do so many Americans believe it?

00:48:35.000 That was a conspiracy theory, remember?

00:48:37.000 And now it's considered to be like 100% true, according to Mike Pompeo, who's been briefed on intelligence and all that.

00:48:44.000 Those are just two examples.

00:48:45.000 And I think those are facts and logic.

00:48:47.000 What we're getting at, though, I hope you guys all know, I can't stand the phrase conspiracy theory.

00:48:52.000 It drives me crazy.

00:48:54.000 Now, are there wacky things?

00:48:55.000 Oh, you better believe there are wacky stuff, right?

00:48:58.000 I'm not saying everything that everyone ever says is true.

00:49:01.000 Conspiracy theory, because of the way our culture has been built, has been turned into this like paralysis thing.

00:49:06.000 Like, okay, I'll stop talking about that, right?

00:49:09.000 Can't ask questions about that.

00:49:10.000 It drives me insane.

00:49:11.000 Now, there's things that people say that just aren't true.

00:49:14.000 I was getting these emails right near, you know, December.

00:49:16.000 It's like, Mike Pence is currently in Guantanamo.

00:49:19.000 What are you talking about?

00:49:21.000 He's in Gitmo.

00:49:22.000 Have you seen these things?

00:49:23.000 I'm like, that's not even a conspiracy theory.

00:49:26.000 That's just fiction.

00:49:27.000 Like, it's just like Narnia type stuff.

00:49:30.000 Like, I don't know what.

00:49:31.000 And I get these wackadoodle emails.

00:49:33.000 So use some practical wisdom or some prudence, right?

00:49:36.000 And you all have that, right?

00:49:38.000 But here's the point I can name five things right now that we aren't allowed to talk about.

00:49:42.000 Like, that's a conspiracy theory.

00:49:44.000 That's a conspiracy theory.

00:49:45.000 What they're trying to do is they're trying to limit the frame of discussion so they can control us within that robust discussion.

00:49:54.000 So they want us to have a really heated argument about the corporate tax rate, and that's supposed to define our political system.

00:50:01.000 You know what I mean?

00:50:02.000 Like, oh, we disagree.

00:50:04.000 I'm 39, you're 38.2.

00:50:07.000 Vote for me.

00:50:08.000 Like, that's what they want.

00:50:09.000 When in reality, like, hold on a second.

00:50:10.000 Like, the borders are wide open.

00:50:12.000 They're bringing infected migrants into America, if you even call them migrants, right?

00:50:19.000 They're pushing an experimental vaccine on America.

00:50:21.000 Okay, I'm talking about any of this stuff.

00:50:22.000 You know what I mean?

00:50:23.000 And so I get that all the time.

00:50:26.000 And you have to just, here's the one thing that I will say about the conspiracy theory thing don't act like one, okay?

00:50:32.000 So, it's one thing to say things and then don't act like one.

00:50:35.000 Don't raise your voice.

00:50:36.000 Grasping your hair is really bad.

00:50:38.000 Don't do that.

00:50:39.000 Okay?

00:50:41.000 You know, like the hands wide open, the worst thing you could do, right?

00:50:44.000 You know what I mean?

00:50:44.000 Like, and then here's some phrases to avoid.

00:50:46.000 What do you mean you've never read it?

00:50:48.000 Or you've got to go to this unknown URL.

00:50:51.000 You've never done that either.

00:50:52.000 Okay?

00:50:52.000 So, you could pursue truth.

00:50:55.000 Just don't act like one.

00:50:56.000 Okay?

00:50:58.000 Don't raise your voice to a place where all of a sudden you're shrieking bad.

00:51:01.000 Okay?

00:51:02.000 Like that shrieking decibel.

00:51:03.000 Don't do that.

00:51:04.000 And so, be very calm than measured.

00:51:06.000 Be like, well, Didn't we used to call the Epstein story a conspiracy theory?

00:51:10.000 Don't you think we overly use that sort of description?

00:51:14.000 And then just let them answer.

00:51:15.000 Just total silence.

00:51:16.000 That's a lot more effective.

00:51:17.000 Is that helpful?

00:51:18.000 All right, thank you.

00:51:19.000 Next question.

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00:52:28.000 Hi, Charlie.

00:52:29.000 So, in regards to Hillsdale, I'm super blessed to be studying there this fall and I'm super excited for it.

00:52:35.000 But one of the things that I've been wondering is how do I stay involved in the front lines and a part of the culture war when I feel like it will be so easy to feel comfortable there and fall into that comfortability when I'm surrounded by people and professors that are also pursuing beauty and truth and are committed to that?

00:52:52.000 That is definitely the exception to the rule.

00:52:54.000 You're going to be very intellectually challenged there because there's a lot more intellectual diversity at Hillsdale than I think people realize.

00:53:01.000 First of all, you got to deal with libertarians.

00:53:02.000 That's a whole different thing, right?

00:53:04.000 I'm kidding.

00:53:05.000 I've got any libertarians here.

00:53:06.000 God bless you for being here.

00:53:08.000 Seriously, I mean that.

00:53:09.000 I used to be a libertarian, and we'll bring you along the ride.

00:53:11.000 So I'm kidding.

00:53:12.000 I'm kidding.

00:53:13.000 I'm giving you a hard time.

00:53:15.000 Thank you, man.

00:53:16.000 No, I am libertarian on a couple of things.

00:53:18.000 I think lockdowns were the worst decisions ever done in our country's history.

00:53:23.000 And I agree with libertarians on guns.

00:53:28.000 I think that the Second Amendment needs to be deregulated.

00:53:31.000 Not more regulated.

00:53:32.000 I think we need to have more liberty, right?

00:53:34.000 See, so we're good on that.

00:53:38.000 But I'll give now the libertarians a hard time, right?

00:53:41.000 We got to come out of the cloud sometimes when we talk about economic policy, right?

00:53:45.000 And talk about things that are.

00:53:47.000 You'll have a lot of fun with that at Hillsdale, right?

00:53:49.000 Because what happens at Hillsdale and other schools, and they talk about this, is when you get super smart people that read all the time, you start to really get convinced that a certain model of absolutism.

00:54:05.000 Is then able to be implemented, right?

00:54:07.000 So you're gonna be really challenged, don't worry.

00:54:09.000 But the other thing is, keep your eyes open for local political involvement and local things you can do in that regard.

00:54:15.000 The same goes for all of you that might be at other conservative schools.

00:54:18.000 There was another Michigan conservative school that someone mentioned yesterday.

00:54:21.000 Yeah, we met, right?

00:54:22.000 There was another one that was like, yes.

00:54:24.000 Northwood, yes.

00:54:25.000 Same sort of thing, okay?

00:54:27.000 But then also, don't be afraid to play devil's advocate to the smartest conservative that you know at that school.

00:54:34.000 You know what I mean?

00:54:35.000 And think of the best possible arguments you can.

00:54:38.000 Challenge and check your premise, right?

00:54:40.000 Remember, you guys should all write this down.

00:54:43.000 A wise man loves to be corrected.

00:54:45.000 Remember that.

00:54:47.000 All of you should want to be corrected every single day.

00:54:50.000 We don't like that, right?

00:54:51.000 Don't tell me what to do.

00:54:52.000 No, you should want to be corrected.

00:54:53.000 Think about it.

00:54:54.000 Who wouldn't want to correct truth with error, right?

00:54:57.000 Who wouldn't want to replace something that you believe is true that isn't true, right?

00:55:01.000 A wise man loves to be corrected.

00:55:02.000 So I think you'll be just fine at Hillsdale.

00:55:04.000 Okay.

00:55:06.000 Yes.

00:55:10.000 Hi, Charlie.

00:55:11.000 So, my question is I know you've addressed the fact that, like, a lot of us lose friends or whatever, but we want to change their minds and we want to be able to have those conversations that the culture is telling us don't talk about that, don't talk about that.

00:55:26.000 So, how do we break through that wall that they've put up and really have those conversations and really start to bring these kids back?

00:55:33.000 Because they're our friends and they're our family and we love them.

00:55:37.000 Yeah, so that's a great, great question.

00:55:39.000 Where do you go to school?

00:55:41.000 I am graduating from Helena High in two weeks.

00:55:43.000 Awesome, in Montana.

00:55:44.000 In Montana.

00:55:45.000 God bless you.

00:55:46.000 You're not jaded yet, so I'm so thankful.

00:55:48.000 I wish I was like you.

00:55:49.000 No, I'm kidding.

00:55:50.000 No, I'm giving you a hard time.

00:55:51.000 So, Helen is a super liberal area.

00:55:55.000 So, let me tell you guys something, and then let me tell you the kind of reality of it, and then I hope that I'm wrong with it.

00:56:02.000 Maybe you guys can correct me.

00:56:03.000 You should want to pursue dialogue, you shouldn't engage in ad hominem attacks.

00:56:08.000 You should want to try to get towards truth.

00:56:11.000 But the unfortunate reality, and I'll give you some tips on how to do that, is that sometimes they will be the ones.

00:56:18.000 To disengage that conversation, to be brutally personal, right?

00:56:23.000 To all of a sudden be corrosive and not even want to do anything with you.

00:56:27.000 So, here's just some good tips for conversation.

00:56:29.000 Don't ever tell people what you believe.

00:56:32.000 That's a waste of time.

00:56:34.000 No one wants to hear that.

00:56:35.000 Ask them why they believe what they believe.

00:56:38.000 Don't tell people what you believe.

00:56:39.000 No one wants to be lectured by you.

00:56:41.000 Say, like, hey, that's really interesting.

00:56:43.000 So, what do you believe?

00:56:45.000 So, has that ever worked?

00:56:47.000 Where'd you get that from?

00:56:48.000 Like, what country is that working well in right now?

00:56:51.000 Do you trust the government?

00:56:53.000 Well, you don't.

00:56:54.000 Then why would you want to give that government more power?

00:56:56.000 You see what I'm saying?

00:56:57.000 Be a lead questioner in a courtroom, don't be a lecturer, right?

00:57:01.000 All of a sudden, it puts them on a beautiful platform, makes them feel like they're the most important person in the world.

00:57:05.000 They could talk about themselves all day long, how smart they are, right?

00:57:08.000 Well, I'm a BLM activist because I read an Instagram post that said that systemic racism is the most harmful thing to U.S. society.

00:57:15.000 Oh, that's the totality of your intellectual tradition.

00:57:18.000 Interesting.

00:57:19.000 Is there other Instagram feeds that you follow?

00:57:22.000 Oh, just that one.

00:57:23.000 Okay.

00:57:23.000 So, and that's a, I got it.

00:57:24.000 Okay.

00:57:25.000 So, you see what I'm saying?

00:57:26.000 And so, but then the other thing is try to, again, I fail at this.

00:57:30.000 I try to get better at this, right?

00:57:32.000 We're all sinners.

00:57:33.000 We all fall short, but this is what you should do.

00:57:36.000 And I have plenty of videos where I try to engage in this, right?

00:57:39.000 Is you really have to allow your style to be attractive enough that people want to keep on talking to you, right?

00:57:48.000 So, you have to win stylistically, not just substantively.

00:57:52.000 Right?

00:57:52.000 You have to win on having.

00:57:54.000 Here's the.

00:57:54.000 So, Charlie's people say, Charlie, what does that look like?

00:57:57.000 Have the lower heart rate than the person you're talking to.

00:57:59.000 It's that simple.

00:58:00.000 So, if there was like kind of a heart rate meter, like you need to have the lower heart rate, and they need to be like, right?

00:58:09.000 That's what they need to be, right?

00:58:11.000 The lower heart rate will win the argument every time.

00:58:15.000 You'll think more clearly, your vocabulary will be more precise, you'll be able to draw on information that you knew previously.

00:58:23.000 You'll be more compassionate and empathetic.

00:58:25.000 So, I hope that's somewhat helpful.

00:58:26.000 But I also just want to make sure I'm not painting an idealistic picture.

00:58:31.000 There will be, unfortunately, losses with holding these conservative views.

00:58:35.000 But where are you going to college?

00:58:38.000 Liberty, you're going to be just fine.

00:58:39.000 So, good for you.

00:58:41.000 Jake was student body president of Liberty right there.

00:58:43.000 So, all right.

00:58:45.000 Yes.

00:58:45.000 Charlie, a lot of people are really concerned about election integrity and restoring faith in our elections.

00:58:54.000 What can the people in this room do?

00:58:57.000 To ensure that that will happen and that we can be confident that our family members can be confident to actually go vote and believe that their vote will count?

00:59:07.000 What a great question.

00:59:07.000 Thank you.

00:59:08.000 So, kind of speaking outside of Turning Point USA here, and just kind of more personally, if we don't fix our elections in our country, then we're not gonna have elections ever again in our country.

00:59:19.000 We have to fix the way we do elections in our country.

00:59:21.000 And so, this is another one of those things where, like, you're not allowed to ask questions.

00:59:28.000 Like, who cares if there were 72,000 more ballots, mail in ballots in Arizona received than were sent out?

00:59:34.000 Like, nothing to see here.

00:59:35.000 Who cares that in Georgia they just keep on running ballots through the machines, literally, as we see that.

00:59:41.000 So, what all of you can do is first of all keep caring about this issue and educating yourself on it, and then demanding out of your lawmakers that we start to see real movement on this.

00:59:53.000 So, anyone from Georgia here?

00:59:55.000 Man, I'll tell you right now, you guys need some major changes in what's happening in Georgia.

00:59:59.000 Demand it.

01:00:00.000 You know, yeah, well, you and I agree.

01:00:03.000 So, and that's part of it, right?

01:00:06.000 Is that, you know, saying, so you might, I don't know what you're asking, like, what do you mean by demanding it?

01:00:12.000 Like, the Georgia voter integrity law.

01:00:14.000 That everyone got so upset about didn't go far enough at all.

01:00:17.000 And, like, we need a full forensic audit of Fulton County and Cobb County in downtown Atlanta and in Georgia to find out what actually happened in the 2020 election.

01:00:28.000 And this disenfranchises all of you.

01:00:31.000 It does.

01:00:32.000 We got to end mail in balloting as we know it in our country.

01:00:34.000 It is an absolute disaster.

01:00:36.000 Mail in, like, voting month in America is a joke.

01:00:40.000 I mean, when I grew up, again, as I feel like I'm talking about 50 years ago, we didn't have these, we got your election results on that night.

01:00:48.000 Less than 5% of people voted by mail.

01:00:51.000 You were able to vote at least a couple weeks leading up to Election Day, and it wasn't that big of a deal.

01:00:55.000 And now they have to expand for like six weeks of voting.

01:00:59.000 Every human being that's ever lived gets a ballot.

01:01:01.000 It's a big problem.

01:01:02.000 And so, what does success look like?

01:01:05.000 We need to model our elections after Florida, which is very simple.

01:01:13.000 Which is, Governor Ron DeSantis has done a phenomenal job of this.

01:01:19.000 Where, and so you need to just demand this out of your leaders.

01:01:24.000 We want Florida style elections.

01:01:27.000 It's that simple.

01:01:28.000 We want to be able to have the results on election night.

01:01:31.000 You only get ballots if you request them, right?

01:01:34.000 And you have to have a signature verification of it.

01:01:36.000 Let me close with a quick story on this, and then we'll go a little bit over.

01:01:39.000 I know that I'm going to screw up the schedule today.

01:01:41.000 But so I went to go, I'm a registered voter in Florida, left Illinois and registered in Florida.

01:01:50.000 When I went to go vote early, next to me was a guy that was trying to game the system, in my opinion.

01:01:57.000 He was trying to get a vote early, and it said, according to the system, they told him, Hey, we already sent a ballot to your home, and that ballot's been returned.

01:02:08.000 He's like, No, no, that's not true.

01:02:09.000 Let me vote.

01:02:10.000 And it turned into this argument.

01:02:11.000 And they're like, Well, you can sign an affidavit here that says that's not true, but you could be held criminally liable if that's right.

01:02:18.000 And he's like, Forget it.

01:02:19.000 And he just left.

01:02:20.000 I was like, Huh.

01:02:22.000 Now, we don't know his true intentions.

01:02:23.000 Maybe it was a glitch in the system.

01:02:25.000 The fact he wasn't willing to sign that affidavit was really interesting.

01:02:29.000 And I think to myself, that one example probably prevented thousands and thousands of instances of voting fraud across the state of Florida.

01:02:38.000 And that's exactly what we need.

01:02:39.000 If you want a ballot by mail, you sign for it, it comes to your house, you sign for it, signature verified, you can fill it out, and you sign for it again when you send it out.

01:02:47.000 That's fine.

01:02:49.000 And then they have polling places that you come with voter ID to go vote early.

01:02:52.000 It's not hard.

01:02:54.000 Not every single state has their elections screwed up and broken.

01:02:57.000 This state has no idea what they're doing.

01:02:59.000 Out of control.

01:03:00.000 Florida has to be the model for safe and secure elections.

01:03:04.000 Simple, no fault mail in balloting.

01:03:09.000 Election results must be reported by nine o'clock on election night.

01:03:12.000 It's that nine o'clock on election night you need all of your election results in.

01:03:15.000 That's two hours after polls close.

01:03:17.000 That's plenty of time to get all your votes tabulated.

01:03:19.000 And finally, voter ID.

01:03:21.000 Voter ID when you go and vote at every single election place across the country.

01:03:29.000 We'll take a couple more.

01:03:31.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:03:32.000 So, as you probably know, they are trying to get an FDA approval for the vaccine.

01:03:32.000 I'm Tori.

01:03:37.000 So, given that happens, my college has already said that they're going to mandate it if that happens.

01:03:42.000 What college?

01:03:43.000 Ball State University in Indiana.

01:03:46.000 So, if that were to happen and colleges start to mandate it, what would be your advice to all the young people who don't want it?

01:03:52.000 So, is Ball State public?

01:03:54.000 Yeah.

01:03:55.000 So, public, you guys have a lot more options at your disposal.

01:03:59.000 That judge in Indiana really set us back.

01:04:02.000 I don't know if you guys saw that ruling or not, where he said that every student at IU can be forced in Bloomington, Indiana.

01:04:08.000 Can be forced to take the vaccine.

01:04:11.000 This is an experimental vaccine, and according to the FDA's own wording, and let me be very clear you guys are 18, 19, and 2021 years old.

01:04:20.000 I'm sure someone here is vaccinated, and I'm sure you guys made an informed decision to do that.

01:04:24.000 I'm not trying to make you feel bad, but in general, at the age that we're all at, everybody, you guys do not need to be inoculating yourself with an experimental vaccine against a virus that has almost immeasurable risk against you.

01:04:38.000 Seriously, it's like you can't even measure.

01:04:40.000 The risk that it has against our generation.

01:04:43.000 And, but I can tell you though, is that I have 6,000 emails of people that have had serious adverse events to this vaccine.

01:04:52.000 Have any of you guys have any friends that have had adverse events?

01:04:55.000 Yeah, that's a lot.

01:04:56.000 Look around.

01:04:57.000 That's not normal, okay?

01:04:59.000 Like, I'd say about what, probably 50 hands just went up?

01:05:02.000 That's a lot.

01:05:04.000 I'm talking about people that are paralyzed, menstrual cycle disruption, mood changes, can't leave the bed.

01:05:11.000 Some people's fathers drop dead after.

01:05:13.000 Really, really scary stuff, right?

01:05:15.000 And so, if you're over 70, yeah, I think it makes sense to probably get it if you're really afraid of the virus, right?

01:05:21.000 Like, that's a totally different calculus.

01:05:23.000 But you're 17, 18 years old, right?

01:05:27.000 The risk reward ratio is like, man, hold on.

01:05:29.000 By the way, how many of you have already had COVID?

01:05:31.000 Raise your hand.

01:05:32.000 Yeah, hello.

01:05:35.000 I mean, that's pretty stunning, right?

01:05:37.000 So, wait a second.

01:05:38.000 So, you have to go get the vaccine to go prevent from getting vaccine that you're already naturally prevented from getting.

01:05:44.000 Like, what kind of psycho stuff is this?

01:05:47.000 And so, This is where I get a little fired up at the parents' generation.

01:05:51.000 It's like, where are the parents fighting for their kids right now?

01:05:53.000 Again, I have to kind of hold myself back, right?

01:05:56.000 Where I'm like, all right, you're not going to do it.

01:05:57.000 We're going to lead.

01:05:58.000 Okay, public school.

01:05:59.000 We'll help you with legal assistance.

01:06:01.000 If your religious exemption is the best, if you're in a public, we've already connected a bunch of people to Kelly Shackelford at First Liberty.

01:06:08.000 Happy to keep on doing that.

01:06:10.000 If you're in private, you're up a river without a paddle.

01:06:14.000 I'm sorry to say.

01:06:15.000 The Department of Justice has come out and said that you could basically discriminate against anyone based on vaccination status.

01:06:22.000 To me, I find this stunning.

01:06:24.000 I would like to have a lawyer explain to me the case law where you now can mandate medicine on your employees.

01:06:31.000 Like, I just want you to understand how crazy this is, and no one's been able to debunk this.

01:06:34.000 I want you to imagine if all of a sudden I said at Turning Point USA, like, every single employee has to take birth control that works for me.

01:06:40.000 Like, you know what I mean?

01:06:42.000 Like, oh no, I'm gonna go now, I'm gonna now go program and going to tell every single employee what medicines they could take to come work for me.

01:06:49.000 Like, that's kind of creepy and weird, right?

01:06:52.000 And a massive overreach of privacy.

01:06:54.000 They say HIPAA doesn't apply, which I don't believe them.

01:06:57.000 Right?

01:06:58.000 And again, the courts are just ruling against us under this pandemic heading.

01:07:04.000 So we'll be able to help you out, though, through some legal stuff.

01:07:07.000 Okay, one or two more.

01:07:10.000 All right.

01:07:11.000 My name's Harrison.

01:07:12.000 I'm from Nashville.

01:07:14.000 I was just wondering what do you do to keep a super strong work ethic?

01:07:19.000 Me personally?

01:07:20.000 Yes.

01:07:21.000 Yeah, well, so the one thing I've never had trouble is sitting still.

01:07:25.000 And so, yeah, I guess this is kind of built into me.

01:07:29.000 It's kind of Midwestern work ethic.

01:07:30.000 Those of you from the Midwest know what I'm talking about.

01:07:33.000 And so, by the way, there are plenty of lazy people from the Midwest.

01:07:38.000 Let me tell you, it's not everyone is working really hard.

01:07:41.000 So, yeah, look, I think life is a gift, man.

01:07:45.000 And I think we got a short period of time to hopefully do things that glorify God and advance truth, hopefully make a difference.

01:07:55.000 And idle time and just kind of sitting around is not for me.

01:07:59.000 And so, look, here's a good test for you is just.

01:08:03.000 Outwork everyone around you.

01:08:04.000 Wake up earlier, go to bed later.

01:08:06.000 And for me, it's this kind of like I look at a lot of the kids that I went to school with, high school with, and I kind of look around.

01:08:14.000 They really prioritize pleasure in the years that we prioritized, you know, work and like, you know, kind of pushing really hard.

01:08:21.000 And so, you know, it's very tempting to want to, and I'm just going to be very honest with you guys, is that the sooner you guys get out of the kind of like late night drunk culture, the better your life will be.

01:08:34.000 The sooner you get out of that.

01:08:35.000 Right?

01:08:36.000 And so, and again, I'm not moralizing.

01:08:40.000 Everyone's been through that, like, whatever.

01:08:42.000 Like, you can make whatever decisions you want.

01:08:44.000 Maybe it's going to work out for you.

01:08:45.000 What I will say, though, is that nothing good usually happens after midnight, right?

01:08:49.000 And people that wake up early tend to dominate the world, okay?

01:08:52.000 These are just like general rules for life.

01:08:54.000 By the way, so people say, well, Charlie, when do you have to do things that you don't like?

01:08:58.000 I can't stand it.

01:09:00.000 I'm an unapologetic anti-morning person, not a fan, right?

01:09:03.000 But I wake up every single day, 6:30 in the morning, got to host a radio show.

01:09:08.000 Like, you gotta dig deep, and then I go to work and do turning point.

01:09:11.000 You do things every day you don't wanna do.

01:09:13.000 So, part of what developing a work ethic is, is you have to dismiss whether or not you want to do something, and you have to say, ought I do that something, right?

01:09:22.000 Far too often, it's like, oh, I don't wanna do that.

01:09:24.000 I don't wanna do that.

01:09:25.000 I don't wanna.

01:09:25.000 Like, whoever said, like, what you want to do is the most important thing of what you should do.

01:09:30.000 Whoever came up with this crazy idea, right?

01:09:32.000 It's what you ought to do.

01:09:34.000 And then finally, just hold yourself to a standard and don't be happy where you are.

01:09:38.000 You know, you should be thankful for where you are, obviously, full of gratitude, but also be tough enough on yourself like, man, I could be a much better version of myself.

01:09:48.000 You know, I could lose some weight, I can, you know, be better informed.

01:09:53.000 And so for me personally, I made that decision a long time ago.

01:09:56.000 And then I'll kind of close with this we'll take one or two more.

01:09:59.000 I keep saying that.

01:10:00.000 It's like, but I didn't have a choice.

01:10:03.000 This is a very important thing.

01:10:05.000 This is why I encourage people to take a gap year before college.

01:10:08.000 I didn't have a choice.

01:10:09.000 I didn't have a choice to take time off.

01:10:12.000 As soon as I decided not to go to college to make this thing work, I had to do crazy stuff.

01:10:18.000 I had to wake up early, travel the country, not see my friends for a year, and all of a sudden, like, I have to outwork everyone just to make this thing, like, neutral.

01:10:26.000 You know what I mean?

01:10:28.000 And sometimes at college, I feel like kids are able to get a little bit comfortable and at least do the bare minimum.

01:10:35.000 Not all colleges, I know there's a lot, you guys are always, you guys are all doing a lot, but I've seen it work both ways, right?

01:10:40.000 Where there's a heavy emphasis on just kind of meandering through college.

01:10:44.000 For me, that would have been a disaster.

01:10:47.000 Like a total disaster.

01:10:48.000 For me, starting turning point forced me to be like, all right, if I don't work harder than everyone else, then this thing's not gonna work, and I'm not gonna be okay with that.

01:10:56.000 So, I hope that's somewhat helpful.

01:10:57.000 All right, where do we got?

01:10:59.000 I promise two more.

01:11:00.000 All right, this is the second to last question.

01:11:03.000 Yes.

01:11:04.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:11:05.000 My name is David Metch.

01:11:06.000 I'm from, well, I just graduated at Arcata High School.

01:11:10.000 Humboldt, it's fun.

01:11:12.000 Anyways, before I ask my question, I just wanted to say congratulations on getting married.

01:11:17.000 Thank you so much.

01:11:18.000 Thank you.

01:11:25.000 That was just a great example to a lot of people in here, I'm sure, including me.

01:11:30.000 One thing I wanted to ask.

01:11:31.000 I've been getting into a lot of this recently, planning on going to college, and I kind of want to get into politics.

01:11:38.000 What do you think?

01:11:40.000 How should I start and other people in this room start on getting into a campaign in a local town or anywhere?

01:11:46.000 How old are you?

01:11:47.000 I'm 18.

01:11:48.000 Okay, and you're just out of high school?

01:11:50.000 Have you knocked on doors before?

01:11:53.000 Occasionally, yeah.

01:11:54.000 All right.

01:11:55.000 Before I even started to do anything, I knocked on 100,000 doors in suburban Chicago.

01:11:59.000 I learned a lot about politics.

01:12:01.000 Now, by the way, that's not the only way.

01:12:03.000 Let me just You know, kind of where do you live again?

01:12:05.000 I'm sorry, Humboldt, California, California.

01:12:07.000 Okay, um, when I was in when I was 15 years old in Glenbrook, Illinois, I made like the most calls of anyone for kind of a rhino congressman.

01:12:17.000 Um, who's been he's like a nice guy, but I was really involved in the grassroots.

01:12:22.000 Okay, so taking off the turning point hat and putting on turning point action just politically, I say this all the time stop trying to be politically famous.

01:12:31.000 Okay, enough of the kind of like I'm gonna go like do all these things, like go knock on doors, please.

01:12:36.000 Okay.

01:12:37.000 Like, go make phone calls.

01:12:38.000 Get in the trenches, okay?

01:12:40.000 Knock on doors till your knuckles bleed, okay?

01:12:44.000 Seriously.

01:12:45.000 You wanna go build character?

01:12:46.000 You wanna go learn a lot about the American political system?

01:12:49.000 Go get some door hangers.

01:12:51.000 Go to Fountain Hills when it's 106 degrees outside and go knock on some doors for voter integrity.

01:12:56.000 You guys want it like that?

01:12:57.000 You'll learn a lot about politics, a lot about yourself.

01:13:00.000 You gotta go find the home.

01:13:02.000 You gotta go up here, here.

01:13:03.000 Oh, boy.

01:13:04.000 You know, you knock on the door.

01:13:05.000 I hate you.

01:13:05.000 I don't wanna see you.

01:13:06.000 You're the worst person ever.

01:13:07.000 I'll take a flyer.

01:13:07.000 Boom.

01:13:07.000 Like, okay.

01:13:08.000 You gotta mark it down, you gotta be organized.

01:13:11.000 That's hard work.

01:13:12.000 And so I'm telling all of you, before I started Turning Point, there was four years of activism, because guess what?

01:13:18.000 That's all that there was.

01:13:20.000 There was no youth organization.

01:13:21.000 And so, you know what young people did in Republican politics in suburban Illinois?

01:13:25.000 You showed up at a phone bank and you got a clipboard.

01:13:27.000 You're like, here, you know, do this for six months, you might get a picture with the candidate.

01:13:32.000 And now, like, we have Turning Point where you get to meet, like, all the Fox News hosts, and, like, it's great, you guys are doing amazing work.

01:13:39.000 The point is, like, before Turning Point, The idea of like political success was like you might get invited to the victory party.

01:13:44.000 Like, you're like, wow, that's so cool.

01:13:49.000 It's like you go knock on doors and knock on doors, and you're like, this is awesome, you know?

01:13:54.000 You gotta get back in that, everybody, okay?

01:13:57.000 Don't act like all of a sudden you're gonna be the campaign manager overnight, all right?

01:14:01.000 Humble yourself down, knock on the doors, and that's, by the way, that's what wins elections.

01:14:06.000 Doors win elections.

01:14:07.000 I'm talking just from a turning point action standpoint on this.

01:14:10.000 Okay, the final question, and I don't wanna derail the.

01:14:14.000 Programming too much here for the wonderful field team.

01:14:18.000 Hi, Charlie.

01:14:19.000 I'm Robert Schaefer.

01:14:20.000 I saw you a while back in Cisco, Texas, with the Wilkes and your buddy from California.

01:14:25.000 I have a question about Texas.

01:14:27.000 So, you saw the 50 Democrats that had their tail between their legs and went to Washington, D.C., like little, you know.

01:14:34.000 And my uncle is a state rep out of the district of Tyler.

01:14:39.000 He authored the constitutional carry bill for Texas.

01:14:43.000 But, yeah, thank you.

01:14:49.000 But my question to you is, how do you think right now Texas is as a state?

01:14:53.000 Like, even though Abbott did all those mandates and the House and the Senate, how do you think Texas politically is doing right now and how we can combat those politicians doing the, I forget what it's called, what they did though?

01:15:09.000 They're trying to break cloture.

01:15:10.000 Yeah.

01:15:10.000 That's right.

01:15:11.000 I mean, yeah, they left with Miller Lite, came back with Corona, right?

01:15:15.000 So, I mean, they did.

01:15:17.000 So, yeah.

01:15:18.000 And they had the vaccine.

01:15:19.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:15:21.000 Texas is a battleground.

01:15:22.000 It's probably tilting in the R direction.

01:15:26.000 And it's again, this has happened because of migration.

01:15:28.000 And so, not just southern border migration, which is a big part of it, but also migration from California and other states.

01:15:35.000 So, what do we do about it?

01:15:36.000 We have to then pass laws in these state houses that the other side hates so much that they wouldn't dare move to the states that we love.

01:15:45.000 It's that simple.

01:15:46.000 Like, for example, I wouldn't move to New York, high taxes, abortion laws.

01:15:51.000 It's like, so they've kept me out.

01:15:53.000 So, let's keep them out.

01:15:54.000 Let's pass our version.

01:15:55.000 Like, okay, we're going to pass the most pro life bills.

01:16:00.000 Constitutional carry bills, we're gonna bring down the income tax.

01:16:04.000 Like, all of a sudden, they'd be like, I wouldn't dare live in a state like that.

01:16:07.000 Like, mission accomplished.

01:16:09.000 Like, and the other thing is, the other thing is, stop trying to attract these California businesses, right?

01:16:17.000 Stop trying to attract these out of state businesses that bring their values with them.

01:16:20.000 I am optimistic long term for Texas, though, because the outward, the new migration patterns actually benefit more Republicans moving in than Democrats.

01:16:28.000 Okay, in summary, everybody go create new and lasting things.

01:16:32.000 I want to go hear about risks that you're taking.

01:16:35.000 You guys can always email me directly.

01:16:37.000 I do read all the emails.

01:16:39.000 I don't respond to them all, but I do read them all at freedom at charliekirk.com.

01:16:45.000 Always tell the truth and know your stuff.

01:16:49.000 One way you guys could personally bless me, I'm sure you guys are already subscribed, so I'm already telling you swipe up and hit subscribe.

01:16:56.000 Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast if you're not already.

01:16:58.000 It would help me personally.

01:17:00.000 And it's a whole battle with subscribers, right?

01:17:03.000 We're going to win because that's what we do around here.

01:17:05.000 And so, but I want to just close with this, which is whether you guys asked for it or not, you are now in a place of responsibility for the future of the nation, not just your campus, but the nation.

01:17:20.000 So you need to commit yourself to a lifetime of activism and involvement, which means that somebody here is going to go create a super valuable company and you're going to give five to 10% of your earnings to conservative ideas for the rest of your life.

01:17:37.000 Somebody here is going to go run for office after you go knock on 100,000 doors and go be a game changer.

01:17:43.000 You got to commit to a lifetime of this because I never want to hear again complaining, cynicism, or negativity.

01:17:51.000 What makes the American project different, thanks to this beautiful document that we have here, is that you can actually change that.

01:18:00.000 And this is a very cliche thing to say, but I'm going to reemphasize it.

01:18:04.000 When you lean in and you decide to change it, All of a sudden, you can see some benefit or change because of it.

01:18:12.000 That's a uniquely American thing.

01:18:14.000 And so, all of you on your college campuses, there'll be times when it gets tough, when it gets tiresome, when it feels like the weight of the world is on you.

01:18:22.000 Turning Point USA is there to support you, to assist you.

01:18:26.000 Call your rep immediately when you're feeling those things.

01:18:29.000 Talk through it.

01:18:29.000 That's why we're here for you.

01:18:31.000 And then that's why we have the events.

01:18:33.000 That's why we do our regional stuff to be able to build you up.

01:18:36.000 But know the difference and the change that you have.

01:18:39.000 When I was 18 years old, none of this existed.

01:18:43.000 And now we finally have a fighting chance to be able to save this beautiful gift, our home, the United States of America.

01:18:49.000 God bless you guys.

01:18:50.000 Thank you so much.

01:18:57.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - May 10, 2026

What Happened to Socrates and Jesus: Charlie at the 2021 Chapter Leadership Summit

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