The Charlie Kirk Show - May 25, 2023


Where Ron Desantis’s Presidential Announcement Went South with Andrew Kolvet


Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

189.47519

Word count

6,619

Sentence count

567

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, host Andrew and producer Tan Tan discuss the disastrous Ron DeSantis presidential campaign launch, and why it's unfair to blame anyone but himself for it. Plus, why Elon Musk's app failed to live up to its hype.

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Charlie Kirk Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Tan Charlie Kirk Show.
00:00:01.000 DeSantis has a tough presidential launch.
00:00:04.000 We are honest about what he did well and how things could improve for him if he so chooses.
00:00:08.000 Email us freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with Turning PointUSA today at tpusa.com.
00:00:14.000 Start a high school or college chapter at tpusa.com.
00:00:19.000 That is tpusa.com.
00:00:22.000 Buckle up everybody.
00:00:23.000 Here we go.
00:00:24.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
00:00:26.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
00:00:28.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
00:00:32.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
00:00:35.000 I want to thank Charlie.
00:00:36.000 He's an incredible guy.
00:00:37.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:45.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:00:54.000 That's why we are here.
00:00:57.000 Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at AndrewandTodd.com.
00:01:06.000 We had our evening all scheduled, producer Andrew and I, despite the TPSA Faith Pastor Summit.
00:01:10.000 I was curious to see what was going to happen.
00:01:12.000 Now, you've probably heard about the absolute mess of the Ron DeSantis announcement yesterday, and it was a mess, right?
00:01:20.000 Now, to Ron DeSantis' credit, there was a legitimate amount of interest here.
00:01:24.000 Elon hyped it up, and so I think there is a fair argument to be made.
00:01:28.000 That's not spin and not BS, that enough people wanted to hear Ron DeSantis and wanted to hear what he had to say.
00:01:33.000 And I think that's a positive thing.
00:01:34.000 I wish they would have actually leaned into that spin earlier.
00:01:38.000 Andrew, it was 25 minutes of just kind of a mess, right?
00:01:42.000 It was Elon walking in and out of rooms.
00:01:43.000 Oh, my gosh.
00:01:44.000 And the headlines are brutal.
00:01:45.000 I will say.
00:01:46.000 Yes, the app was crashing.
00:01:47.000 And some of this is unfair towards DeSantis.
00:01:50.000 The fair criticism, which we will share here, is we tried to warn DeSantis yesterday on this program.
00:01:55.000 We didn't say it explicitly.
00:01:57.000 We did say, though, be careful if the headlines go to Elon.
00:02:00.000 Now, what we were saying, though, is when you do an announcement that's not traditional, you're entering in a third-party element into the announcement formula.
00:02:08.000 Listen, we fully support what Elon did when he came into Twitter.
00:02:12.000 He got rid of a bunch of the dead weight.
00:02:15.000 But here's the thing.
00:02:15.000 He fired a bunch of people, fired a bunch of folks that were probably not working that hard.
00:02:20.000 He's changing the culture.
00:02:20.000 It's going to take time.
00:02:21.000 So listen, we all understand what happened at Twitter, but this is my big question here.
00:02:28.000 I have seen Twitter spaces with Elon with like 3 million people on them.
00:02:33.000 And the thing did not crash.
00:02:34.000 So they were claiming that it crashed because there were like 600,000 people or whatever right at the beginning.
00:02:40.000 It doesn't make sense to me.
00:02:42.000 Something Fritzed that hadn't Fritzed previously with Elon.
00:02:45.000 So it could be a woke engineering team that didn't want to see this happen.
00:02:49.000 Could have been sabotaged.
00:02:50.000 Don't put that past them.
00:02:51.000 There's no evidence to support that except pure speculation.
00:02:54.000 We'll get into kind of the depressing element, which is we want Twitter to succeed.
00:02:58.000 Actually, I'm not delighting in this like some people are.
00:03:01.000 I will say, though, that it was, I was disappointed because you had this amazing opportunity to communicate to the center right with the center left of America.
00:03:09.000 600,000 people could have grown to millions, and it just looked like a total clown show.
00:03:12.000 It was bad for Elon.
00:03:13.000 It was bad for DeSantis.
00:03:14.000 Okay.
00:03:14.000 So it's unfair to blame that on DeSantis, except for the part of why did he choose to do something untraditional?
00:03:21.000 His headlines are now completely marred by a failure to launch, right?
00:03:25.000 Now, if I was DeSantis, I think they could have done a much better job of spinning this, right?
00:03:30.000 I think what DeSantis immediately got memed and Elon got memed.
00:03:34.000 And instead, he could have just said, I'm so popular, I melted the servers.
00:03:38.000 Something of that.
00:03:40.000 But they failed miserably.
00:03:41.000 But here's the actual part that I want to focus on.
00:03:44.000 Not the fact that it was a digital Hindenburg and it was failure to launch and all that stuff.
00:03:49.000 Here's what I actually think everyone's missing is how unbelievably boring and Off tone, Ron DeSantis's, once he got a chance to speak after 25 minutes, this is actually important.
00:04:01.000 So, Ron DeSantis, after all this lead up, right?
00:04:03.000 He's got hundreds of thousands of people watching.
00:04:06.000 He misread the room.
00:04:08.000 The Republican base does not want an op-ed writer right now.
00:04:10.000 The Republican base does not want a policy conversation.
00:04:13.000 They do not want to have details on amendments.
00:04:15.000 They do not want perfectly tailored soundbites.
00:04:18.000 And it was so clear that when Ron DeSantis was in the Twitter space, he was reading an op-ed.
00:04:23.000 He was literally reading a script.
00:04:24.000 He was reading a script.
00:04:25.000 Everything was, it was so rehearsed.
00:04:27.000 You know, the number one piece of feedback I received from you, the audience, and from people texting me, they said, what are you even doing?
00:04:35.000 At least put in an um or an awe or you know, Elon, or great to be here.
00:04:40.000 It was, it was the Joe Biden regime is keeping the border open.
00:04:45.000 Woke goes to die in Florida.
00:04:48.000 Right.
00:04:49.000 And we, and then he used words that so obviously you would not use when you're speaking extemporaneously, right?
00:04:55.000 He used the word fragility.
00:04:57.000 I mean, unless you're Robin D'Angelo talking about race, that's not a word that people use in everyday discourse.
00:05:04.000 But that's the exact, see, this is what we talked about: the risks and the rewards of being adventurous, trying something new.
00:05:10.000 I think what you saw there was he, there was just a lack of understanding of the medium.
00:05:15.000 Why Elon Musk is able to go on there and get 3 million is because you can tell he's literally just coming up with it.
00:05:20.000 And Elon hasn't looked very organic.
00:05:23.000 Elon hasn't slept in three days, and he just got off a call with Tesla.
00:05:26.000 And it's just, you know, Elon might say something.
00:05:29.000 There's an unpredictable element.
00:05:31.000 And then DeSantis decided to go boring.
00:05:33.000 And I say this is a huge admirer of DeSantis and a friend, but you got to be honest.
00:05:36.000 Okay, let's go to Cut 83.
00:05:39.000 Governor DeSantis could have just released an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal instead of reading this on a Twitter space.
00:05:44.000 Please play Cut 83.
00:05:46.000 I don't think it has to be this way.
00:05:47.000 American decline is not inevitable.
00:05:50.000 It is a choice.
00:05:51.000 And we should choose a new direction, a path that will lead to American revitalization.
00:05:57.000 We must restore sanity to our nation.
00:06:00.000 This means embracing fiscal and economic sanity.
00:06:03.000 Stop pricing hardworking Americans out of a good standard of living through inflationary borrowed print and spending policies.
00:06:10.000 And please embrace American energy and dependence.
00:06:13.000 This also means replacing the woke mind virus with reality, facts, and enduring principles.
00:06:20.000 Now, I will say, our show and maybe a couple others, I think we popularized some of these themes.
00:06:24.000 I think the woke mind virus, we've said more than almost any other program.
00:06:27.000 So whatever, it's out there in the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.
00:06:30.000 I'm glad to see it.
00:06:30.000 But that's so scripted, Andrew.
00:06:33.000 It felt like he's reading an op-ed.
00:06:35.000 Well, and you and I were actually in a room together with Mikey, another member of the team.
00:06:41.000 We were all sitting there waiting for it to come on.
00:06:43.000 And then it came back on.
00:06:44.000 And we thought it was a recording from something that dropped off.
00:06:47.000 I thought it was an auto call.
00:06:48.000 I thought it was a kind of like a evacuation call.
00:06:53.000 Or like RoboCall, evacuate the beach.
00:06:55.000 The hurricane is coming.
00:06:56.000 It was so monotone.
00:06:57.000 There was no inflection of voice.
00:06:59.000 And this is the point.
00:07:00.000 We made this point yesterday.
00:07:01.000 I want to re-emphasize it.
00:07:02.000 The conservative base doesn't want that right now.
00:07:04.000 They don't want just perfectly tailored op-eds.
00:07:07.000 They don't want boring.
00:07:08.000 They want a brawler. 0.99
00:07:09.000 They want a street fighter. 1.00
00:07:10.000 They do not want an op-ed writer for the Wall Street Journal.
00:07:13.000 And somebody that's willing to kind of, you know, go straight to the people, have those conversations, make it feel really organic, like take random challenging questions from the audience, right?
00:07:24.000 Because that's the beauty of Twitter spaces.
00:07:25.000 I mean, Twitter spaces is a very organic.
00:07:29.000 You get to see inside real conversations with top people that you maybe follow online, whatever.
00:07:34.000 And it just wasn't that.
00:07:36.000 It wasn't that.
00:07:36.000 And, you know, what else was sad was he had all these people at the beginning of the Twitter space.
00:07:41.000 And then with all the technical difficulties, a lot of them left and they didn't come back.
00:07:46.000 So it was a, you know, and again, the headlines are just brutal.
00:07:50.000 It's like, why DeSantis' disastrous launch matters from Politico Playbook?
00:07:56.000 There's Ron DeSantis, the good, the bad, the beautiful.
00:07:58.000 Twitter glitches, Mar DeSantis debut as presidential candidate, NPR.
00:08:05.000 The Guardian.
00:08:06.000 Now's the time to think about just how bad a DeSantis presidency would be.
00:08:09.000 CNN glitches, echoes, and melting the servers, crashed DeSantis' campaign launch at Twitter.
00:08:14.000 So you see what they're trying to do.
00:08:15.000 They're actually trying to go after Elon and DeSantis.
00:08:17.000 And according to the New York Times, there was no tech prep at Twitter for this.
00:08:22.000 There was zero tech run-through, according to the New York Times.
00:08:25.000 I mean, just fake, fake story.
00:08:28.000 So Ron DeSantis and his team made a decision to outsource their announcement zing and potential to a third-party company, and that ended up being a mistake.
00:08:38.000 And you only get one first impression.
00:08:40.000 And again, he'll probably get over this.
00:08:43.000 However, I got to tell you, the MAGA meme people, they are ruthless, man.
00:08:47.000 I mean, they are just.
00:08:49.000 NBC's David Ingram says, this is going to be a stain that Trump is going to leverage for at least a few weeks.
00:08:55.000 At least a few weeks.
00:08:56.000 I mean, you're going to be hearing Trump mention this.
00:08:58.000 Trump, until Amy Klobuchar was, he said he called her the snow woman because she announced in the blizzard.
00:09:04.000 That was the worst announcement.
00:09:05.000 That was the all-time worst presidential announcement.
00:09:07.000 Yeah, but she also was not a leading contender or candidate.
00:09:10.000 And you got to give her some credit for trying.
00:09:12.000 I actually thought it was admirable.
00:09:13.000 She's out there talking about global warming and it's negative 10 degrees and it's a line. 0.88
00:09:18.000 She kept it going.
00:09:19.000 She said global temperatures are on the increase and she's shivering global temperatures.
00:09:26.000 And I mean, it's at least there was some sort of spirit there, right?
00:09:28.000 I heard she's an icy person anyways. 1.00
00:09:30.000 No, she's not kind.
00:09:32.000 But we're going to talk more about the substance of what DeSantis did and did not talk about.
00:09:36.000 And then in a second perplexing move, he gets done with the Twitter space and runs to somebody that I know you as the Republican base do not want to hear from.
00:09:46.000 Trey Gowdy.
00:09:48.000 Yep.
00:09:48.000 What is that all about?
00:09:49.000 We should show that before and after Trey Gowdy.
00:09:52.000 All the cable news channel hosts you can select.
00:09:55.000 You select the guy that fumbled and bumbled the Benghazi investigation?
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00:10:31.000 Text Charlie to the number 74868.
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00:10:54.000 Fair or unfair, he's getting labeled as a campaign disaster.
00:10:58.000 Again, he's not in charge of Twitter, but he did make the decision to not do a traditional launch.
00:11:03.000 And I think every single person in America will remember the moment that President Donald Trump went down that golden escalator, play cut 90.
00:11:22.000 I am officially running for president of the United States.
00:11:30.000 And we are going to make our country great again.
00:11:41.000 You only get one opportunity for initial optics.
00:11:44.000 Okay, so then he had a decision of who, so that didn't go well, right?
00:11:48.000 And the other thing that just bothers me is then why do you go then to Trey Gowdy, who did not fulfill the mandate when he was in Congress, was underwhelming as an oversight chair when it came to Benghazi, and was a big swing of the mess.
00:12:00.000 Here's Ron DeSantis going on Trey Gowdy's program, talking about the military.
00:12:07.000 And actually, let's go to this one on name calling.
00:12:09.000 PlayCut 93, please.
00:12:11.000 Governor, there is a very, very slight chance that you will pick up a nickname at some point in the next couple of days or weeks.
00:12:19.000 How do you run robustly?
00:12:23.000 Even sometimes when it's going to be tough.
00:12:25.000 Well, look, I don't mind being called different things.
00:12:28.000 I've been called everything but a child of God as it is.
00:12:31.000 So that doesn't phase me.
00:12:32.000 And you can call me whatever you want.
00:12:34.000 Just make sure you call me a winner because that's what we've done in the state of Florida.
00:12:38.000 And that's exactly what we would do nationally, not only in the election, but actually bringing all these great policies to bear.
00:12:46.000 Andrew, the response from a lot of people has been confusion.
00:12:49.000 And is he going towards kind of this moderate lane?
00:12:52.000 I would have liked to see a little bit of a different tone where I'm leaning in as a governor that is going to go after the administrative state.
00:13:00.000 He's not reading the room in a way.
00:13:02.000 He's acting as if this is a policy debate where that is not where the conservative base is at all.
00:13:08.000 It's not about details or about this or about laws or legislation.
00:13:13.000 All that stuff is fine.
00:13:14.000 It's about an attitude.
00:13:15.000 It's about a vibe.
00:13:16.000 It's, are you going to betray me when you go to D.C.?
00:13:19.000 And he decides to go on a cable television program with Trey Gowdy, who largely is remembered for being an underwhelming House oversight chair.
00:13:29.000 Yeah, he failed the movement at one of the most critical times.
00:13:33.000 I mean, in some defense, we didn't, people had not realized what time the country was at, right?
00:13:40.000 At that moment.
00:13:41.000 And it was early on when they were really targeting President Trump in those early days, but he failed.
00:13:47.000 He believed in the institutions.
00:13:48.000 He defended the institutions.
00:13:50.000 I think he later apologized and said he missed the boat.
00:13:52.000 But whatever.
00:13:53.000 The base does not love Trey Gowdy.
00:13:55.000 I mean, that's just the bottom line.
00:13:56.000 I've got to conclude, though, Charlie, with all of these different signals that we were talking about yesterday, we're seeing today, they are looking at some numbers.
00:14:05.000 This is my theory.
00:14:06.000 They've all huddled together in a war room, and they realize that they can't compete with Trump on the base, right?
00:14:13.000 The people that love DeSantis, that were base Republicans, that were MAGA Republicans, American First Republicans, they loved him.
00:14:20.000 But I think they're looking at the numbers and they've concluded we can't beat Trump at his own game, so we have to pick a different lane.
00:14:28.000 And so what they're doing is they're trying to consolidate all of the Trump skeptics, the people that are like, hey, I like Trump's policies, but he was too much for me.
00:14:37.000 I was always embarrassed having to support him.
00:14:39.000 All this stuff.
00:14:40.000 His Twitter feed was too mean, everything like that.
00:14:42.000 They're trying to play a very strategic lane and send very strategic signals to a very strategic and specific group of Republican voters.
00:14:52.000 This feels, though, like a 2004, 2008 type campaign where I'm going to just say the kind of tailored sound bites.
00:15:02.000 I'm going to go and talk about positions that don't ruffle feathers too much.
00:15:07.000 Did Governor DeSantis say anything with a zing or a bang that was newsworthy?
00:15:13.000 I mean, you have an opportunity.
00:15:14.000 I mean, that's what underwhelmed me.
00:15:15.000 You know what Ron DeSantis could have said?
00:15:16.000 That would have made some news?
00:15:18.000 He would have said, when I'm president, my first act of president, I will pardon Donald Trump for any targeting from DOJ.
00:15:24.000 But see, here's the thing.
00:15:25.000 I don't think he wants, like, that's not the kind of energy he wants, right?
00:15:28.000 Because I think he wants to.
00:15:29.000 You want to win over the base.
00:15:31.000 Hey, man.
00:15:32.000 But I think what he's saying, I think they've concluded they can't compete on that ground.
00:15:32.000 I agree.
00:15:36.000 But what they can do is they can get the people that are hungry for a more boring approach, but they want the conservative policies.
00:15:42.000 They want somebody that's not going to cause the cultural tumult that Donald Trump, you know, they think that he caused, and really it was a weaponized media.
00:15:53.000 But I think that's what you can conclude.
00:15:56.000 They're looking at the numbers and saying, this is our lane.
00:15:58.000 If we get this chunk, this pie, and this group, maybe we can put together a coalition.
00:16:04.000 I'm not so certain Trump is looking at 50 or 60% of the party, and it's not moving.
00:16:09.000 It's even higher than that in certain states.
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00:17:14.000 Okay, I want to play another piece of the tape here.
00:17:16.000 Tim Poole had some sharp words here.
00:17:18.000 Play cut 86.
00:17:19.000 Listen, man, I like Ron DeSantis as a politician.
00:17:21.000 He has great policy.
00:17:22.000 He's doing a great job. 0.98
00:17:24.000 But holy crap, did they not give this guy one minute of media training? 0.94
00:17:28.000 Did they not have any kind of campaign coach be like, go watch Captain America one time and just watch any Hollywood movie where the protagonist gives a speech about saving the world. 0.98
00:17:41.000 Now, again, some of this is unfair, but he had a pretty long buildup for this.
00:17:47.000 There's obviously kind of this built-in demand.
00:17:49.000 So he's going to have to kind of navigate this failure to launch archetype that has now been put on him.
00:17:55.000 But my biggest complaint, and somebody says, well, Charlie, you know, I only vote on policy.
00:18:01.000 Yeah, most people vote for people.
00:18:02.000 They don't vote for policy ideas, especially in primaries in the Republican primary.
00:18:06.000 But I do want to just reemphasize this.
00:18:09.000 Did DeSantis make any news even on the policy?
00:18:12.000 Or was it just more abstractions?
00:18:13.000 No, I think the forum was the news.
00:18:16.000 But there wasn't...
00:18:18.000 I would have liked to see a little bit, you know, a zinger here or a zinger there or something substantive.
00:18:23.000 This is why it goes all to my theory that this is all poll tested and they are seeing a lane and they're like, here's the signals you send to those people so that you don't alienate those people, that you bring those in and you signal that you're safe, that you're not going to be like Trump and have, you know, whatever controversy.
00:18:37.000 But here's the problem.
00:18:39.000 I don't think that's who DeSantis is.
00:18:40.000 You and me both like DeSantis as a person, as a politician, as the governor.
00:18:44.000 He's been a fabulous governor.
00:18:45.000 Because he has taken massive risks and he goes off the cuff on the fly in these press conferences.
00:18:51.000 Really, that's his medium.
00:18:52.000 I mean, the press conference medium for DeSantis is very powerful, right?
00:18:57.000 Trump's is probably the rally, right?
00:18:59.000 Or the retail politics, like we say.
00:19:00.000 But I don't know that DeSantis isn't strong in either of those, but he is very strong when it comes to press conference, sparring with the media.
00:19:08.000 And by the way, he takes risks there.
00:19:10.000 He says hard things.
00:19:12.000 He gets into unscripted moments.
00:19:14.000 And I think that's what, I mean, for better or for worse, that is what the base is now.
00:19:20.000 So we're like ruined for the old style.
00:19:23.000 We're ruined for the canned moment.
00:19:26.000 But maybe they're reading the tea leaves.
00:19:27.000 Maybe they're looking at polls.
00:19:28.000 Maybe they're looking at this or that.
00:19:30.000 And they're saying, actually, there's a whole subsection Of the non-Trump vote or the winnable vote in the base that doesn't like that, that doesn't like the Trumpisms and doesn't like the sort of entertainment moving into politics, the pathos, right?
00:19:44.000 They want boring.
00:19:45.000 Maybe that's the read here.
00:19:46.000 But here's the problem: I don't think it suits Ron DeSantis.
00:19:50.000 I think it takes away his personality.
00:19:52.000 I think it takes away the energy.
00:19:55.000 And I think it just kind of leaves us all listless.
00:19:57.000 And, you know, we'll see if it works, though, right?
00:20:00.000 I mean, I think you have to say some of this stuff, but have a little bit of spice, a little bit of zing.
00:20:07.000 You're running against Donald Trump, okay?
00:20:10.000 Now, maybe Ron DeSantis thinks because of the indictments or whatever, Trump is going to be out of the way.
00:20:14.000 That is a long shot, moonshot-type, very unlikely scenario.
00:20:20.000 Let's play cut 84.
00:20:22.000 Everything here DeSantis says is correct, but listen, he's reading a piece of paper when he's saying this.
00:20:26.000 You have the eyes of the world on it.
00:20:29.000 Let yourself be, you're not going to beat Trump reading scripts.
00:20:32.000 You're a smart man, DeSantis.
00:20:35.000 Liberate yourself from the consultants.
00:20:38.000 PlayCut 84.
00:20:39.000 Florida is the nation's fastest-growing state.
00:20:42.000 We're number one in net immigration, number one in new business formations, recently ranked number one in education.
00:20:49.000 We have a 50-year low crime rate and one of the lowest tax and debt per capita in America.
00:20:55.000 But we also understand governing is not entertainment.
00:20:58.000 It's not about building a brand or virtue signaling.
00:21:01.000 It is about delivering results.
00:21:04.000 And our results in Florida have been second to none.
00:21:07.000 We can and we must deliver big results for America.
00:21:12.000 I pledge to be an energetic executive that will take on the important issues.
00:21:16.000 Look, so that was that was a slide at Trump.
00:21:19.000 He said, not about building a brand or entertainment.
00:21:21.000 But Governor DeSantis, I hate to break it to you.
00:21:24.000 Politics is entertainment right now in the Republican primary.
00:21:27.000 You're right.
00:21:27.000 In the general election, it's about ballot harvesting, ballot chasing, voter registration, or early in-person voting.
00:21:34.000 It might be a little boring during the general.
00:21:36.000 Yeah, and but in a primary right now, the Republican base post-Trump, this has kind of become American Idol, man.
00:21:45.000 This is not just about a policy debate because here's why.
00:21:48.000 And this is not incorrect.
00:21:51.000 The base is trying to sniff out if you're a fraud that's going to go be a Paul Ryan.
00:21:55.000 They're constantly going, they're constantly having their radar out there trying to say, ooh, are you going to deceive me? 0.96
00:22:01.000 Are you going to be one of those snakes?
00:22:03.000 Are you going to be one of those people that go and say one thing and do another?
00:22:06.000 And so they've heard all this before, Governor DeSantis.
00:22:10.000 They've heard all this stuff.
00:22:11.000 They say, that's fine.
00:22:12.000 But prove to me through your language, through your vibe, through your energy, through your spirit, through your conviction that you are a man that is going to go on day one and say to the FBI, you're done.
00:22:22.000 I don't get that from just listing off.
00:22:25.000 So here's, here's, can I share a theory?
00:22:27.000 I'm looking at these, I'm looking at some of the polling right now.
00:22:30.000 So this is from CNN.
00:22:32.000 The CNN poll dropped yesterday.
00:22:34.000 Trump is the first choice of 53% of Republican, Republican leading voters in the primary, roughly doubling DeSantis' 26%.
00:22:41.000 All right.
00:22:41.000 Okay.
00:22:42.000 So he's double 53 to 26.
00:22:44.000 But the survey also finds that wide swaths of Republican-aligned voters are willing to consider either of the two candidates as well as several other candidates.
00:22:53.000 So more than eight in 10 either support or say they're open to considering Trump, 84%, and DeSantis, 85%.
00:23:00.000 So what I think they're trying to do is they're trying to say, look at our policies, look at what we're doing in Florida.
00:23:06.000 I mean, he's still, to DeSantis' credit, he's still taking a ton of heat, right, for some of what's going on in Florida, some of his culture wars.
00:23:15.000 That's what makes me love him, though.
00:23:15.000 He's been amazed.
00:23:17.000 Do you know what would have been great if he would have gone on and say, and by the way, I just want to open up this call and say, hey, NAACP, you're not welcome in the state of Florida. 0.91
00:23:24.000 Like, boom, like, yes, that's what we want.
00:23:27.000 Get in the arena.
00:23:29.000 Throw a punch.
00:23:29.000 Say day one, we're going to, you know, what he could have said?
00:23:31.000 He said, you know what?
00:23:32.000 We're going to pardon the January 6th people that did not were non-violent offenders.
00:23:37.000 Yeah, but Trump already occupies that ground.
00:23:39.000 But at least play in that, right?
00:23:40.000 Yeah.
00:23:41.000 Play in that lane.
00:23:42.000 But yeah, what I think they're looking at is they're saying, listen, 85% of the base either supports him already or is willing to consider him.
00:23:50.000 So that's a pathway.
00:23:52.000 But what he's trying to do is no unforced heirs.
00:23:54.000 Obviously, the technical glitch, the failure to launch, the trolling, all that stuff is going to have its effect.
00:23:59.000 The question is, does it matter when the time comes to vote, right?
00:24:03.000 85% of people are either support him or are willing to consider him in the Republican base.
00:24:07.000 That's a massive number.
00:24:09.000 And then the next closest is Nikki Haley at 61%, Scott at 60%, and Pence comes in at 54%.
00:24:15.000 So, I mean, it's basically still the two-man race, right?
00:24:18.000 It's 1A, 1B right now.
00:24:21.000 But, you know, and then you have all these guys like Chris Christie with 1%.
00:24:24.000 Let's play Cut 83.
00:24:25.000 Ron DeSantis on his Twitter space reading his op-ed.
00:24:27.000 PlayCut 83.
00:24:28.000 I don't think it has to be this way.
00:24:30.000 American decline is not inevitable.
00:24:32.000 It is a choice.
00:24:34.000 And we should choose a new direction, a path that will lead to American revitalization.
00:24:39.000 We must restore sanity to our nation.
00:24:43.000 This means embracing fiscal and economic sanity.
00:24:46.000 Stop pricing hardworking Americans out of a good standard of living through inflationary borrowed print and spending policies.
00:24:52.000 And please embrace American energy and dependence.
00:24:55.000 This also means replacing the woke mind virus with reality, facts, and enduring principles.
00:25:04.000 I mean, I'm laughing because this is that it's not that's not a way somebody talks.
00:25:08.000 No, this is why Trump is the king of media for 40 years.
00:25:11.000 He knows how to get people's attention, keep people's attention, talk in a way that's engaging, use words that people would use over kitchen table conversations, brand.
00:25:21.000 And again, some of you are emailing us.
00:25:22.000 Well, Trump, this is you're being super unfair to DeSantis.
00:25:25.000 We're being honest, actually.
00:25:27.000 I mean, again, I've endorsed President Trump.
00:25:29.000 I want to see him win.
00:25:30.000 I'm actually giving DeSantis free advice if he wants to take it, which is you have to stop being boring.
00:25:35.000 You got to fire these consultants, put these pieces of paper away, and get in the arena.
00:25:40.000 Get in the arena.
00:25:41.000 And if you're unwilling to do that, then you're not going to be the nominee.
00:25:44.000 And maybe he just says, hey, I'm going to run this race a certain way.
00:25:47.000 And I want to be, you know, I don't think Trump's going to win the general and people are going to look to me for 2002.
00:25:51.000 Maybe this is more about 2028, where it's like, I'm going to be super boring.
00:25:54.000 Trump's going to do his thing.
00:25:55.000 He's going to rip me apart.
00:25:56.000 I'm going to be the guy.
00:25:57.000 The I told you so thing.
00:25:58.000 I hope that's not.
00:25:59.000 I think he thinks he's got a lane.
00:26:00.000 I really believe what we're seeing.
00:26:02.000 And why this is so confusing for us is you and I have both met Governor DeSantis.
00:26:07.000 We, we, uh, Turning Point Action did like, what, six or seven events with with Ron during this during 2022?
00:26:14.000 Fabulous success.
00:26:15.000 But but the thing is, the energy has shifted, is what I'm trying to say.
00:26:18.000 It has.
00:26:19.000 You know, I'll be this is a great point, Andrew.
00:26:21.000 I've seen DeSantis, who last summer when we did these events, he didn't have all these consultants pittering around him.
00:26:27.000 He came up with his wife.
00:26:28.000 Yeah, and he was just like, want me to talk about this and talk about that.
00:26:31.000 Something has changed in the last 60 days.
00:26:32.000 There's people around DeSantis that have changed his language, changed his approach.
00:26:37.000 He's way too robotic right now.
00:26:39.000 And I think it's going to harm him.
00:26:41.000 But also, I just want to make sure people are clear as to why Trump will then end up being successful because you earn trust not through reading a script.
00:26:52.000 You earn trust through making statements that are rooted in courage by living out that courage in how you communicate that and understanding the audience is an audience scorned.
00:27:05.000 It is an audience scorned.
00:27:06.000 Okay.
00:27:08.000 Not that we should listen to this person, but let's play Cut 88.
00:27:10.000 Jennifer Palmeri, play cut 88.
00:27:13.000 He could have just been an effective governor of Florida and be doing well with the Republican voters that want to move on from Trump, but instead he like Just like double, triple, quadruple down on a very mean-spirited, pretty nasty MAGA agenda that I don't think, you know, I mean, what are you doing?
00:27:36.000 I'm not sure.
00:27:36.000 I think I could argue Donald Trump is more electable than Ron DeSantis.
00:27:40.000 Yeah, I don't think that's, I don't know if that's fair or not.
00:27:43.000 I mean, but it also goes to show that they're going to portray you as nasty and cruel regardless of what you say.
00:27:50.000 And here's a question.
00:27:51.000 Did Ron DeSantis win over a primary voter in Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, or New Hampshire last evening?
00:27:59.000 Actually, I would love to know what the audience thinks.
00:28:01.000 Was there anybody out in the United States?
00:28:02.000 Are you persuaded in the last 24 hours?
00:28:04.000 Yeah.
00:28:05.000 Email us freedom at charliekirk.com from his Trey Gowdy interview.
00:28:09.000 And also, I'm going to clear up the Mark Levin thing.
00:28:11.000 It is being misrepresented that Mark Levin endorsed Donald Trump, endorsed Ron DeSantis.
00:28:15.000 He did not do that.
00:28:19.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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00:29:19.000 So let me ask you a question.
00:29:20.000 Tim Scott is announced for the presidency.
00:29:22.000 Ron DeSantis is announced for the presidency.
00:29:26.000 What happened this week?
00:29:27.000 What did we do this week to increase our chances to ballot chase, ballot harvest, and have an early state infrastructure in Wisconsin, Arizona, or Georgia?
00:29:38.000 Such a good point.
00:29:39.000 Ron DeSantis running for the presidency now guarantees this will be a $1 billion primary.
00:29:46.000 A $1 billion primary.
00:29:48.000 Tim Scott will raise at least $100 million.
00:29:50.000 I think he's going to raise more than that.
00:29:51.000 Tim Scott?
00:29:51.000 Yeah.
00:29:51.000 Well, through his super PAX, yeah.
00:29:53.000 Ron DeSantis, $250 to $300 million.
00:29:55.000 I think more than that, probably too.
00:29:58.000 So that money should be spent in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin to make sure we can win.
00:30:02.000 And then maybe New Hampshire and Nevada could get some too.
00:30:04.000 I think Pennsylvania, I don't have much.
00:30:06.000 Poso disagrees with us on Pennsylvania.
00:30:09.000 He's holding out hope, but I think he secretly knows it's the steepest hill to climb of all of those.
00:30:14.000 Yeah, and Tim Scott might just get $100 million from Larry Ellison alone.
00:30:17.000 Yeah.
00:30:18.000 $100 million.
00:30:18.000 Oracle founder.
00:30:20.000 And meanwhile, the Democrats are laughing.
00:30:22.000 They're not having a primary.
00:30:24.000 They're building infrastructure.
00:30:25.000 They're suing.
00:30:26.000 They have lawfare operations.
00:30:27.000 They're suing in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin.
00:30:29.000 They're relaxing senator verification thresholds.
00:30:32.000 And here we are.
00:30:33.000 We're about to have one of the most expensive personality disputes in the history of politics.
00:30:38.000 Okay, hold on, though.
00:30:39.000 I mean, listen, I think we're both Trump supporters, but we both like DeSantis.
00:30:44.000 I think there is millions of us, right?
00:30:47.000 And if that CNN poll is right, that 85 or 86% of primary voters on the conservative side are open to DeSantis.
00:30:55.000 I mean, listen, we have a producer on our team that is, you know, he basically is formulating it that there's a lot of people that just don't like Trump, right?
00:31:07.000 They are tired of it, and they think they want a different option.
00:31:10.000 If that supposition is correct, then, you know, let them find it out, let them have the deal.
00:31:15.000 I mean, I think you've made a compelling point that this money could be better spent elsewhere.
00:31:21.000 But, you know, it's going to happen now anyway.
00:31:24.000 The Democrats are the actual winners here.
00:31:25.000 The Democrats are so happy this year.
00:31:27.000 This guarantees a $1 billion.
00:31:29.000 This will be one of the most expensive primaries ever.
00:31:32.000 It will.
00:31:32.000 It will.
00:31:33.000 There's a fair amount of Republican, rich donors that hate Donald Trump more than sin.
00:31:40.000 I'm just being honest.
00:31:42.000 It is.
00:31:42.000 And they're going to be looking for any person to deploy.
00:31:46.000 And they're richer than ever post-COVID, the easy money era.
00:31:48.000 They have a lot of money to spend, and they're going to deploy significant resources.
00:31:53.000 I love it when you build this out.
00:31:54.000 Charlie, I remind the audience, $100 million, just so you guys are clear, when we talk about $1 billion being spent on a primary, $100 million in the general could win the entire.
00:32:05.000 We believe it actually, the operating hypothesis that we have is that whoever the Republican nominee is, if it's Trump especially, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa are solidly center-right, especially in a presidential year.
00:32:19.000 It will come down to, because of the reconfiguration of the Electoral College of the Sunbelt rising and blue states decreasing, the math has changed slightly.
00:32:26.000 So to come down to three states, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin.
00:32:29.000 That's the whole race.
00:32:30.000 My opinion is make Ron Johnson the vice presidential candidate.
00:32:32.000 They're very tribal in a good way in Wisconsin, and they'll vote for one of their own.
00:32:36.000 Therefore, it's just a two-state race, Georgia and Arizona.
00:32:39.000 And in those two states, $120 million can win if you have a ballot chasing type army.
00:32:43.000 Basically, you hire a thousand Scott Presslers.
00:32:46.000 A thousand Scott Presslers in Arizona, 1,000 in Georgia.
00:32:51.000 And then you do the math backwards.
00:32:53.000 If each one of those ballot chasers is responsible for bagging 750 votes over the course of 30 days.
00:32:59.000 Yes, you do the math.
00:33:00.000 Guess what?
00:33:01.000 All those deficits that we lost by in 2020, even in 2022, they're gone.
00:33:06.000 They evaporate.
00:33:07.000 So this is the way we should be thinking.
00:33:08.000 This is what the Democrats are thinking, by the way.
00:33:09.000 They just care about banking votes, early voting, banking votes, signature revocation, banking votes.
00:33:14.000 And we're worried on personality contest, right?
00:33:17.000 And I say this as a admirer of Ron DeSantis and an admirer of Tim Scott.
00:33:23.000 I want to win.
00:33:24.000 I don't want to have the Democrat Crime Syndicate be able to stay in power because we're about to have a bloody, expensive, $1 billion operation that, quite honestly, serves the best interest of Democrats.
00:33:38.000 The true winner of this will be the Democrats because I hate to break it to you.
00:33:42.000 Donald Trump might get outspent.
00:33:45.000 All this different stuff happens.
00:33:48.000 He's going to be the nominee.
00:33:49.000 Okay?
00:33:50.000 He will outwork you.
00:33:51.000 He has the conservative base.
00:33:52.000 He has the conservative influencers.
00:33:54.000 He understands the base really well.
00:33:56.000 And no matter how much money you're going to spend against him, it actually only helps him in a certain way.
00:34:01.000 He has a built-in memory of being a great president.
00:34:04.000 He's got all this stuff working for him.
00:34:06.000 And especially in, you just look at the elect, you just look at the primary delegate math.
00:34:10.000 So therefore, let's say that Donald Trump wins the nomination after a billion dollars spent on him.
00:34:15.000 The question will be, in April of next year, when that happens, we're going to look around.
00:34:19.000 We're going to say, oh, so how are we going to win Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin?
00:34:22.000 And I'll say, hey, we've been trying to tell you guys about this for 18 months.
00:34:27.000 I am super concerned.
00:34:28.000 This is what the RNC should be doing.
00:34:30.000 I'm super concerned that we are about to get so distracted.
00:34:34.000 This is a massive smokescreen operation, and it's only going to guarantee a Joe Biden second term.
00:34:42.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
00:34:43.000 Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:34:47.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
00:34:52.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.