The Charlie Kirk Show - Why "Disparate Impact" Must Die

00:00:00.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:00.000 Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.

00:00:04.000 Donald Trump just signed one of the most significant executive orders in 50 years.

00:00:08.000 It's two words that aren't talked about a lot.

00:00:09.000 It's called disparate impact.

00:00:11.000 It's part of the three horsemen of the race obsession that has been strangling this country. 0.77

00:00:17.000 We dive deep into it.

00:00:18.000 I'm excited to share with you President Trump's amazing executive order around disparate impact.

00:00:23.000 You're going to learn something.

00:00:24.000 I encourage you to listen to it once or twice.

00:00:26.000 text it to your friends, some good news on this podcast.

00:00:29.000 So make sure you enjoy.

00:00:30.000 Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:32.000 And then we have more news, good news on top of it.

00:00:34.000 Kevin Hassett joins us, director of the Economic Council, about some very good news coming out of the Trump White House when it comes to economic news and financial markets.

00:00:44.000 Email us as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:47.000 Subscribe to our podcast.

00:00:48.000 That is the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page.

00:00:50.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:51.000 Here we go.

00:00:52.000 I want you to know we are lucky.

00:00:57.000 To have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:59.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:01:02.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:01:03.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:01:04.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:01:12.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:01:21.000 That's why we are here.

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00:01:49.000 The media onslaught against the Trump administration is intensifying.

00:01:53.000 And on campus, there are some people that are getting a little impatient.

00:01:57.000 They say, I want more wins from President Trump.

00:02:00.000 I want more wins.

00:02:01.000 I'm not that sympathetic to that, to be perfectly honest, because what President Trump did in even the first week is more than what some presidents have done in four years, and it's not even yet been 100 days.

00:02:13.000 The kind of impatient, let's just say, attitude doesn't resonate with me.

00:02:19.000 And it's also not rooted at all in if you're watching the daily news cycle.

00:02:24.000 We talked about how yesterday President Trump is trying to do the largest deportation effort in American history.

00:02:29.000 He's being enjoined.

00:02:30.000 We're working through how to solve that.

00:02:32.000 He's trying to solve the Russian-Ukrainian war.

00:02:34.000 But we are drill, baby drill.

00:02:36.000 The southern border is completely secured.

00:02:38.000 We're going to get a massive tax bill.

00:02:40.000 We have the executive order on no men and female sports. 0.98

00:02:43.000 We have the executive order on no chemical castration of children.

00:02:47.000 11% more voters.

00:02:49.000 Are saying the United States is on the right track since January.

00:02:52.000 It's big.

00:02:53.000 And just wait until the economy stabilizes.

00:02:55.000 We get our tax bill passed.

00:02:57.000 And there's something that happened yesterday in the Oval Office that received almost zero media coverage.

00:03:04.000 And to be honest, very few people in the conservative movement have been covering this.

00:03:09.000 Not enough people in conservative media have been taking the time to say time out and pause.

00:03:14.000 This is a massive victory.

00:03:17.000 It's an act of courage by President Trump who's now going at the very core.

00:03:22.000 He's going at the life source of DEI.

00:03:25.000 President Trump is going right at the baseline.

00:03:29.000 He's going at step one of how we started to see the slipping of excellence, the death of meritocracy, and the elevation of mediocrity.

00:03:40.000 President Trump is addressing root causes.

00:03:43.000 This, of course, is something called disparate impact.

00:03:46.000 President Trump signed an executive order called Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy.

00:03:52.000 If you do not know about disparate impact, you should take out your pen.

00:03:55.000 You should listen carefully.

00:03:57.000 If you're in the car right now, you're going to learn something.

00:03:59.000 You're going to learn that there was something that was embedded, encoded into the fibers, almost every single one of our laws and our hiring practices that you might not know about.

00:04:08.000 President Trump signed an executive order yesterday repealing two regulations that have existed since LBJ and Nick

00:04:13.000 That means Ronald Reagan didn't touch this.

00:04:16.000 George H.W. Bush didn't touch this.

00:04:18.000 George Bush didn't touch this.

00:04:19.000 And even in the first Trump administration, we didn't get to this.

00:04:22.000 But that's why exile was good to us. 0.75

00:04:24.000 That's why those four years of us not having power, we were able to study, go deeper, and say, what is the root cause here?

00:04:31.000 What was the first mistake?

00:04:32.000 What was the original sin?

00:04:34.000 And disparate impact is the original sin of the DEI monstrosity.

00:04:38.000 The government will eliminate the use of enforcement of so-called disparate impact liability.

00:04:43.000 But what is that disparate impact?

00:04:45.000 What's the big deal, Charlie?

00:04:46.000 Come on, show me the real wins.

00:04:48.000 No, no, no, no.

00:04:49.000 You should be thanking the Lord about the significance of the profundity here.

00:04:53.000 It's the sort of thing that few people have heard of, but has completely remade American life over the last 50 years.

00:04:59.000 Disparate impact is a legal doctrine that holds that any rule, any policy, So, for example, in 1971, there was a Supreme Court case,

00:05:15.000 Griggs v.

00:05:16.000 Duke Power Company.

00:05:17.000 Duke Power was sued because for people to get certain jobs at the company, they required them to either have a high school diploma or pass an aptitude test.

00:05:26.000 Black applicants were less likely to have a diploma.

00:05:29.000 And they didn't do as well on the aptitude test.

00:05:31.000 The Supreme Court ruled that Duke's job requirements were, quote, justified, were not justified by business necessity.

00:05:38.000 And so they were illegally discriminatory.

00:05:41.000 And thus the doctrine of disparate impact was born.

00:05:44.000 You could probably guess why this doctrine is so incredibly pernicious.

00:05:48.000 Literally every standard imaginable has created, has some sort of disparate impact against a group.

00:05:55.000 Nobody on this planet has ever designed a test.

00:05:58.000 Or a standard that men, women, blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Catholic, Jews, gays, straights do so equally well.

00:06:04.000 The very idea is an absurd fantasy.

00:06:06.000 You're going to have different outcomes.

00:06:09.000 But what disparate impact does is it says the test itself is wrong.

00:06:15.000 It is a loophole that you could drive a semi-truck through.

00:06:18.000 It's a little sliver.

00:06:20.000 You say, oh, disparate impact, oh, what's the big deal here?

00:06:22.000 No, no, no, no.

00:06:23.000 This has been exploited by DEI.

00:06:27.000 We have a world where the federal government can go after any company, any school, or any state, or any local government that they want to for discrimination using the Civil Rights Act.

00:06:38.000 By deciding that whatever their hiring standards are, they don't meet a business necessity.

00:06:43.000 So who decides the necessity?

00:06:45.000 Well, not business owners, not entrepreneurs, not the people that actually own the property.

00:06:50.000 No. Instead, federal bureaucrats and judges decide it. 0.94

00:06:54.000 Since the feds can go after anyone for anything, everyone now lives in fear.

00:06:59.000 People have tried to come after Turning Point USA unsuccessfully for disparate impact.

00:07:04.000 Oh, we don't like your criteria for this.

00:07:06.000 And they try to do some EEOC complaint.

00:07:09.000 Thankfully, we won all those complaints.

00:07:11.000 And this is where so much of DEI comes in.

00:07:15.000 So because you're so afraid of big government coming in, the leviathan of the anti-racist state, They try to impress companies, impress the government, show how committed we are to diversity.

00:07:29.000 Companies know that they can be attacked at any time on the grounds of disparate impact.

00:07:33.000 So they try to look good by having a massive DEI department.

00:07:38.000 Don't come after us.

00:07:39.000 Go after some of the other companies.

00:07:41.000 Sometimes this works.

00:07:43.000 Sometimes it doesn't.

00:07:44.000 This system has imposed a massive regulatory and efficiency burden on the American economy.

00:07:52.000 DEI, in my opinion, is the greatest silent regulation on American prosperity.

00:07:58.000 DEI, affirmative action, disparate impact.

00:08:01.000 That is the evil trinity.

00:08:04.000 That is the sinister triad, the three horsemen of the death of merit.

00:08:12.000 DEI, affirmative action, and disparate impact.

00:08:17.000 Most people don't even know what those words would mean.

00:08:19.000 Maybe affirmative action five or ten years ago.

00:08:21.000 But it's been enveloping businesses, entrepreneurs for quite some time.

00:08:27.000 Companies are terrified of a disparate impact complaint.

00:08:32.000 The system has imposed a massive regulatory and efficiency burden.

00:08:36.000 It's turned into a war against merit and against freedom.

00:08:40.000 We've basically made it illegal for companies to simply try to hire the most talented people for a given job.

00:08:46.000 And don't be surprised, our companies are not as innovative as they used to be.

00:08:51.000 This needed to change, and now the Trump administration is finally changing it.

00:08:55.000 To go deeper, we've actually seen a decline in standards and performance.

00:09:01.000 In 2022, the Los Angeles Unified School District removed requirements for algebra proficiency.

00:09:09.000 Why? Because they said black students don't do as well in algebra. 0.95

00:09:14.000 So? After they removed the algebra proficiency, black students got even worse at algebra, showing that lowering standards didn't actually improve outcomes. 0.98

00:09:27.000 Disparate impact penalizes neutral and effective criteria.

00:09:33.000 The use of standardized testing in New York City schools was curtailed due to racial disparities.

00:09:40.000 Yet these schools produced more national merit scholars per capita than other states.

00:09:47.000 This is how they're getting rid of the SAT.

00:09:50.000 They're getting rid of the ACT.

00:09:53.000 Here is the best way that I can summarize it.

00:09:56.000 Effectively, you end up disparate impact means punishing the test when students fail, not punishing the students when they fail the test.

00:10:09.000 Instead, they're trying to rework the test, not try to improve the excellence or the merit of the applicant or the future student or worker at your company.

00:10:23.000 Music

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00:11:22.000 I'm intentionally not watching the NBA playoffs.

00:11:25.000 The NBA is not what it used to be.

00:11:27.000 But let's think about this.

00:11:28.000 If disparate impact were applied to the NBA, the league would be even in further crisis.

00:11:35.000 Not because of poor performance, but because, you think about it, who would actually end up having to be represented?

00:11:44.000 Black men only make up 13% of the U.S. population, but they account for over 70% of NBA players.

00:11:52.000 Well, that's disparate impact.

00:11:54.000 Why is it that black Americans are able to do so well to go into the NBA? 1.00

00:11:57.000 It's because the NBA is an excellence-driven organization.

00:12:02.000 Should the NBA institute racial quotas on the court?

00:12:07.000 Should they have to bench players based on the color of their skin to achieve equity?

00:12:12.000 Should they replace merit with a lottery?

00:12:15.000 You can start to see how destructive disparate impact is just in that singular example.

00:12:22.000 Imagine a judge saying that height isn't a job necessity in the NBA.

00:12:27.000 Phenomenal example, Blake.

00:12:28.000 That's exactly right.

00:12:30.000 The lunacy of disparate impact that almost every single company lived in fear of being criticized and potentially indicted for was that, well, is that a job necessity?

00:12:43.000 Imagine a judge saying, well, height is not a job necessity because Muggsy Bogues wasn't tall.

00:12:52.000 Oh, really?

00:12:53.000 So is height a job necessity to the NBA?

00:12:56.000 I would say so.

00:12:57.000 I would say that being tall is a job necessity.

00:13:01.000 One reason the college cartel is so strong is that generally the government doesn't like the idea of simply giving job applicants an IQ test because those have disparate impact.

00:13:12.000 You know, I should wear a shirt in the next fall tour.

00:13:16.000 Blake is going to love this.

00:13:17.000 Bring back IQ tests.

00:13:19.000 What could be more fair than an IQ test?

00:13:22.000 It's not even about where you went to school.

00:13:24.000 Now, schooling can moderately improve your IQ test, your IQ output moderately.

00:13:31.000 They're fine with requiring an expensive college diploma, even though those also have disparate impact.

00:13:37.000 Why? Honestly, the only reason is that federal bureaucrats like colleges. 0.99

00:13:41.000 If we bring back IQ tests, it's much more fair.

00:13:45.000 It's much more equitable.

00:13:47.000 Someone that might not have gone to as good of a school.

00:13:49.000 For example, they might not have gone to Stevenson High School in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:13:53.000 They might have gone on the south side of Chicago.

00:13:55.000 But an IQ test would be able to pluck out that individual that might not have had the same schooling because they might have the raw intellectual firepower and potential.

00:14:04.000 Who could possibly be against IQ tests?

00:14:07.000 Oh, they're against IQ tests because they want to have a credentialing lobby, which actually creates more disparate impact, which is what's hilarious.

00:14:15.000 Requiring an expensive college degree is one of the few requirements companies are allowed to have, even though that definitionally is a disparate impact.

00:14:24.000 So President Trump signing this executive order is one of the great step forwards to get back to a merit-based system.

00:14:35.000 When merit dies, mediocrity inherits the throne.

00:14:40.000 Do you notice?

00:14:42.000 And again, this is a little bit more anecdotal, a little bit subjective, but I think you'd all agree.

00:14:47.000 Do you guys think the country works better, the same, or worse as it did 20 years ago?

00:14:55.000 I mean basic stuff.

00:14:57.000 The ability to go to a bank and get good service.

00:15:01.000 The ability to have a flight on time.

00:15:04.000 To not have your luggage lost.

00:15:06.000 The ability to get a good driver if you want to get in a taxi cab.

00:15:09.000 Do you think...

00:15:11.000 The basic necessities that keep a society going are getting better, worse, or they've stayed the same.

00:15:20.000 Power outages are more common today.

00:15:22.000 I think our quality of how we actually treat people in hospitals has declined rapidly.

00:15:28.000 I'm afraid we're slowly slipping into a culture of mediocrity, and that is what happens when you no longer have a culture of meritocracy.

00:15:36.000 And here is the sad but brutal truth.

00:15:40.000 When you have a culture of meritocracy, sometimes the room is not going to look like Angelina Jolie's Christmas card, as Bill Maher would say.

00:15:49.000 It's not going to look where everyone is different in pigmentation.

00:15:53.000 It might be, or it might not be.

00:15:56.000 You see, when you have merit, you don't know what the end result is going to be.

00:16:02.000 It could be a bunch of Asians.

00:16:03.000 It could be a bunch of Nicaraguans.

00:16:05.000 It could be a bunch of Scots.

00:16:07.000 And it's irrelevant because we actually don't care.

00:16:09.000 And that is the point.

00:16:11.000 We don't care about the melanin complexion of the end result.

00:16:17.000 We care.

00:16:18.000 Can that team?

00:16:19.000 Can that unit?

00:16:21.000 Are they able to do awesome stuff?

00:16:25.000 And forced diversity via disparate impact has been slowly suffocating excellence.

00:16:35.000 We are standing against President Trump going against desperate impact.

00:16:39.000 It's being ignored by all the legacy media.

00:16:41.000 Honestly, that's okay.

00:16:42.000 And all of you should be applauding and celebrating because it's a massive leap to get us back to our birthright of being an excellent country.

00:16:53.000 The battle between good and evil seems to be escalating.

00:16:56.000 It is easy to blame politicians, government, or poor leadership, but behind all of that is a spiritual battle.

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00:17:19.000 They actually exist.

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00:17:26.000 We don't need to be afraid, but we do need to be aware and prepared.

00:17:30.000 Angels, Demons, and You provides valuable insight, practical tools, and biblical truth to help you recognize the spiritual battle around us and become a difference maker in our generation.

00:17:42.000 Get your copy today at alanjackson.com slash angels.

00:17:47.000 Hear from people whose faith directly impacts our culture on Pastor Alan's Culture and Christianity podcast.

00:17:54.000 Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

00:17:58.000 Joining us now is Kevin Hassett, the Director of the National Economic Council.

00:18:03.000 So much to discuss here.

00:18:04.000 So, Kevin, let me begin by this.

00:18:07.000 I'm traveling the country, I'm on tour, and even some Trump faithful are just a little bit confused about the direction of the tariff strategy and all this.

00:18:15.000 They are very well-intentioned, but they want a little bit of clarity.

00:18:19.000 What would you say is the update and the message of the grand strategy to someone that loves President Trump, loves the agenda, but they are seeking clarity on what is happening with all of the announcements, tariffs, and etc.?

00:18:31.000 Kevin, the floor is yours, and thanks for making the time.

00:18:33.000 Yeah, it's great to be here, Charlie.

00:18:36.000 Big fan and also a big fan of the Hillsdale courses.

00:18:38.000 I got to tell you, it's really good advice for folks to take those courses.

00:18:42.000 It's way better than just sitting and watching some random TV show at night.

00:18:45.000 The bottom line is that the president has been talking for a long time about how unjust our trade deals have been and how bad for American ordinary folks, ordinary workers they are.

00:18:57.000 I'll give you an example that, you know, there are huge tariffs on Harley-Davidson's like everywhere because it's...

00:19:03.000 It's a famous American product.

00:19:05.000 And the European tariff on Harley-Davidson, they hate American output so much that they actually have a tariff on Harley-Davidson motorcycles, even if Harley-Davidson makes the motorcycle in Europe.

00:19:17.000 Can you imagine?

00:19:18.000 And so our trade deals are filled with things like this that are just unjust.

00:19:23.000 And what President Trump showed in the last administration, where I was honored to be chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, is that when you make better trade deals, then it helps blue-collar wages skyrocket.

00:19:34.000 And so after basically 16 years of the previous four presidential terms, real wages in the U.S. declined.

00:19:43.000 In the first three years of the Trump administration, real wages went up for the typical family by six.

00:19:47.000 $6,500.

00:19:48.000 And the reason was that we put America first.

00:19:51.000 We put America workers first.

00:19:53.000 And so what he's doing now is he's doubling down on that strategy, and he's doing it in Trump time.

00:19:58.000 Actually, I have an update, which is today we've just got two more actually written requests for a trade deal with our trading partners that are way better for American workers.

00:20:08.000 So we're up to 20 written requests and I think 36 negotiations.

00:20:13.000 And the U.S. Trade Representative Jameson...

00:20:16.000 Greer is meeting with 14 trade ministers between now and tomorrow.

00:20:21.000 And so what's happened is that President Trump, with his tariffs, has put everybody on notice that, look, you got to be nice to American workers, respectful of our trade.

00:20:33.000 And if you come to the table and do that, then we'll make a deal with you.

00:20:36.000 And the deals are moving forward at breakneck speed.

00:20:39.000 So I love all of that.

00:20:41.000 And so let's now...

00:20:43.000 Go deeper into what I think is going to be the great pairing.

00:20:47.000 So we have the tariff strategy and trying to redomicile American manufacturing.

00:20:51.000 And again, I hope everyone internalized what Kevin just said here, who's the director of the National Economic Council.

00:20:57.000 You cannot even avoid European tariffs if you make your Harley-Davidson motorcycle in Europe.

00:21:04.000 So our best products are not even able to be sold in many of these countries.

00:21:10.000 We actually have a free market spirit to us using tariffs.

00:21:13.000 I know this is rather contrarian and paradoxical in some ways, but how is it a free trade agreement or paradigm?

00:21:21.000 If you can't sell your stuff, then you're nothing more than one side of free trade.

00:21:26.000 You're just a purchaser.

00:21:28.000 You're not able to actually trade.

00:21:30.000 You're not able to barter.

00:21:31.000 And look, Europe, they play tough.

00:21:33.000 They are protectionist, not to mention China.

00:21:37.000 I love that.

00:21:38.000 And I think that also there's so much, there are assets here.

00:21:42.000 Let me ask you about liquefied natural gas.

00:21:45.000 I think that's one of the biggest components here, is that can we expect some announcements that using tariffs as a negotiating tactic and a leverage tool, we can start to decouple some of our allies from their addiction to Iranian and Russian oil?

00:22:03.000 Can you cue our audience in a little bit on how LNG plays a dramatic role in these negotiations?

00:22:10.000 Yeah, LNG is definitely part of the negotiations.

00:22:13.000 It's interesting because I know how studious you are that you picked up on that.

00:22:17.000 But one of the things that we're...

00:22:20.000 Putting on the table in these negotiations is that we could agree to something called an offtake agreement.

00:22:25.000 And so the idea would be that right now, if you're Japan, you're kind of like hostage to whoever's going to sell you LNG and oil.

00:22:33.000 And if we can successfully expand pipelines in Alaska, then we can fund those pipelines basically with commitments to sell the stuff to Japan because we have enough of it in the U.S. And that's really, really good for Japan.

00:22:47.000 and it makes them so happy to not have to be dependent on oil and natural gas from other sources or even to have some insurance against the volatility of the price of oil in free markets.

00:22:58.000 That's so valuable to them that they're coming to the table with the best trade deal you ever saw.

00:23:02.000 And I have one other thing to say about the trade deal, which is just that it shows the way...

00:23:09.000 I know you know it very well, is if you think about it, we just have a sort of an agreement in principle with India that was announced by J.D. Vance, the vice president.

00:23:16.000 Yes. And you would say, why India?

00:23:19.000 Well, it turns out that if you look at the history of non-tariff barriers and not letting them, not letting us sell stuff in there and all that, that probably the worst actor on earth was what was.

00:23:30.000 Historically, over the last 30 or 40 years, you could argue that the worst actor on trade was India.

00:23:38.000 And so why did President Trump say, okay, our first agreement on principle has to be with India?

00:23:43.000 Because he wants to show that he can make a deal even with the hardest people to make a deal with.

00:23:49.000 And if he can do that, then all the other deals should just fall into place.

00:23:53.000 So just as kind of like a geeky side point, motorcycles are a huge deal in India.

00:23:59.000 Massive deal.

00:24:00.000 In fact, I believe it is the preferred mode of transportation, much more so than traditional automobiles.

00:24:06.000 And there have been massive import tariffs to be able to import our motorcycles into India.

00:24:14.000 Just something to think about.

00:24:16.000 85%. 85%.

00:24:17.000 And so when you're trying, again, there's a lot of consumers there that could potentially want to buy motorcycles and we want to be able to compete there.

00:24:27.000 So now I want to segue to the second part of the component, and this is where people are missing this.

00:24:32.000 The market is up really generously right now.

00:24:33.000 I'm trying not to stare too much at the market day over day.

00:24:35.000 I tell people, invest for the next 10 years, not for the next 10 minutes.

00:24:39.000 And actually, you know what?

00:24:40.000 Can you comment on that?

00:24:41.000 Can you comment on how you guys have been navigating some of the, let's just say, doomsday propaganda from the media?

00:24:49.000 Because I actually think it's very admirable and incredibly courageous and has remarkable resolve.

00:24:57.000 The fact that you guys have been rather unfazed by the jitters and focused on something much more meaningful and substantive and long term.

00:25:06.000 Can you comment on that briefly, please, Kevin?

00:25:08.000 Oh, yeah, sure.

00:25:09.000 And the thing is, the way I like to think about it is that the mainstream media...

00:25:14.000 And then, you know, there are a lot of very partisan Wall Street houses, like, go read, like, what Goldman Sachs says about the economy every time Donald Trump is running for office or as president.

00:25:24.000 You know, they just downgraded the U.S. growth this year to 0.5%, which, you know, is just impossible to be that low.

00:25:32.000 But the point is that what happens in the mainstream media, and sometimes this moves markets for the short term, is that they seem to always expect the worst of Donald Trump.

00:25:42.000 But from anyone with experience knows that you should expect that he's got a plan and he's going to deliver the best for the American worker.

00:25:49.000 And that as that happens, that markets are going to celebrate because it's the golden age in America again.

00:25:55.000 But what happens is that when we're making changes,

00:25:58.000 The media is filled with stories that basically characterize him as, you know, not...

00:26:06.000 Having a plan.

00:26:08.000 Whatever the worst thing you could imagine about Donald Trump is what they cover every day.

00:26:11.000 But then the best thing you could think happens.

00:26:14.000 And it's over and over again.

00:26:15.000 So why did we get $6,500 increase in wages, real wages, for people right before COVID in the first three years of the Trump administration after 16 years of nothing under Obama and Bush?

00:26:27.000 Well, the answer is he delivered.

00:26:29.000 He delivered on his promises.

00:26:31.000 He had a plan that was great for the American worker.

00:26:33.000 And so people should sooner or later learn that you're not going to get the worst that you could imagine out of Donald Trump.

00:26:39.000 You're going to get the best.

00:26:40.000 The other component of the conversation is the Big Beautiful Bill.

00:26:43.000 That is going to make America the most attractive financial market for investment on the planet.

00:26:49.000 Give us an update on the Big Beautiful Bill negotiations.

00:26:53.000 Yeah, so the big, beautiful bill negotiations are led by Secretary Besant and myself as part of the big six.

00:27:02.000 The other four are the majority leader, the Speaker of the House, and the Chairman of the Finance Committee and Ways and Means Committee.

00:27:07.000 And we've been meeting regularly.

00:27:09.000 And through all the stuff, all the news that you read about day in and day out, we've got a massive amount of staff and leadership meeting all the time to make sure that the big, beautiful bill gets into the end zone.

00:27:21.000 By, say, June.

00:27:22.000 And I can tell you that the talks and the writing of the language is so advanced right now that pretty much the train is leaving the station next week in the house.

00:27:34.000 And so there's been historically fast progress on the largest tax bill ever that also has a heck of a lot of smart spending cuts as well.

00:27:46.000 And so if you think about it...

00:27:49.000 Trade is about 14% of the economy.

00:27:51.000 Not trade or domestic stuff is about 86% of the economy.

00:27:55.000 And we're about to give like an incredible vitamin shot to 86% of the economy.

00:28:00.000 And nobody's even really talking about it.

00:28:03.000 Well, yeah.

00:28:04.000 And so just to repeat that news, you're saying that it's going to start being introduced in the Ways and Means Committee next week.

00:28:10.000 Is that right?

00:28:10.000 Oh, well, I'd say that the language is already being finalized next week.

00:28:15.000 And so the House expects that it's going to have a bill passed, you know, maybe the next three or four weeks.

00:28:21.000 But the point is that you're going to see the bill.

00:28:23.000 You're going to actually be able to start to talk about it in the news.

00:28:25.000 You're going to start to see the bills next week, yeah.

00:28:27.000 Oh, and I don't give investment advice, but I don't think the market will go down with that news.

00:28:35.000 If you guys want to help out these campuses indirectly, refer someone to YReFi.

00:28:40.000 WhyReFi, they've been great supporters of the show.

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00:28:55.000 May not be available in all 50 states.

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00:29:16.000 May not be available in all 50 states, so take a look at it right now, YReFi.com.

00:29:22.000 So tell me more, Kevin, about what we can expect.

00:29:31.000 There are some rumors here about potentially...

00:29:34.000 Tax raises for the wealthy, a new bracket for 40% of the president.

00:29:38.000 He struck down this idea of the millionaire tax.

00:29:42.000 I know you have to keep your cards close to your chest, but conceptually, are we thinking about closing the carried interest loophole and then also spending cuts alongside of it?

00:29:51.000 What is the philosophical approach you guys are taking every day to these negotiations?

00:29:56.000 Right. Well, the president has said that he thinks that it might...

00:30:00.000 There might be an argument for a higher marginal tax rate on people who are extraordinarily wealthy, but he doesn't think that now is the right time for that.

00:30:10.000 And I think that it's also the case that if one did try to do that, it might be a pretty heavy lift on the hill.

00:30:16.000 But the main theme really is that we're reducing taxes on ordinary Americans, not...

00:30:29.000 And so on the corporate side, he's creating even bigger incentives for people to build factories in the U.S., to create blue-collar jobs in the U.S. And that's what he's doing on the corporate side.

00:30:41.000 And on the individual side, he's highlighted things like no taxes on tips, no taxes on Social Security, and so on.

00:30:48.000 And those are his main priorities.

00:30:51.000 I could say that on the individual side, The new tax cuts are going to be, I think, even more impactful than what we saw last time.

00:31:01.000 Again, and those tax cuts were amazing.

00:31:03.000 But if you think about it, right now, for example, if you're a person who just retired and you're getting your Social Security and you decide your Social Security benefit isn't as high as you would like and you want to go back to work, then when you go back to work and you earn a dollar,

00:31:19.000 they take away 50 cents of your Social Security benefit.

00:31:21.000 Think about it.

00:31:22.000 So the highest tax people on earth are the people who decide, hey, I need to get a little more money than my Social Security, so I need to go back to work.

00:31:28.000 And that Social Security taxes 50 cents on the dollar before, and then the other taxes on top of it.

00:31:33.000 And so President Trump recognizes there are a lot of people out there who would like to participate more in society, would like to work more, but are discouraged from doing so because of the very, very high tax rates.

00:31:42.000 And that's the real main priority of this bill for us.

00:31:47.000 I'm at the higher income level.

00:31:49.000 We're very blessed here on this program and podcast.

00:31:52.000 Thank you.

00:31:53.000 But if my taxes go up 2% or 3%, I won't be celebrating.

00:31:56.000 However, if there's a deal that is cut to do that and we get spending cuts, I'll say, okay, that's a prudent deal.

00:32:03.000 We have a small increase by 2% or 3% and we get massive spending cuts.

00:32:08.000 I don't want to pay more in taxes.

00:32:10.000 I'm already taxed enough already.

00:32:12.000 I get it.

00:32:13.000 If it helps all of a sudden us get closer to a balanced budget, I'd rather have a dollar for my grandkids than two extra percent of my income.

00:32:23.000 And I say that as someone who is on the higher income ladder.

00:32:28.000 And so I don't know how that's going to float over the hill.

00:32:30.000 But I think – can you comment on that, please, Kevin?

00:32:32.000 About a minute and a half remaining.

00:32:34.000 Yeah, I could just say that as an individual, as an individual, I 100% agree with you.

00:32:39.000 Although, I guess, government salaries being what they are, I'm not sure I'll be in the top tax bracket this year, now that I'm after White House.

00:32:45.000 But the bottom line is that there are a lot of people who think that balancing the budget is important, and it really, really is.

00:32:51.000 And one of the interesting things is that I know a lot of people are disappointed in the spending cuts.

00:32:56.000 That Congress is talking about.

00:32:58.000 They wish that they would be larger.

00:33:00.000 But one of the things that we have a plan for that hasn't, again, been discussed a lot is that the Doge savings are real.

00:33:08.000 The Doge savings are real.

00:33:10.000 And what we could do throughout the year is that when we aggregate the Doge savings into something called a rescission package, that we can send a bill up to Capitol Hill.

00:33:21.000 And they can pass it without it being exposed to filibuster.

00:33:24.000 So the same rules that allow you to pass something with a simple majority apply to the rescissions that we can send back because of all the great work that Elon's doing.

00:33:33.000 And so when you look at the big, beautiful bill and think, well, I really love the tax side.

00:33:38.000 I wish the spending cuts were bigger.

00:33:40.000 Just be aware that for the rest of the year, regularly, we're going to be rescinding.

00:33:49.000 Kevin, you've been one of the best guests we've had in a while.

00:33:54.000 You had incredible insight, and you communicate it in a way where the audience can really understand.

00:33:59.000 So thank you, and please come back soon.

00:34:01.000 I mean that sincerely.

00:34:01.000 Of course.

00:34:02.000 It's a pleasure to be here, Johnny.

00:34:04.000 Thank you.

00:34:05.000 You know what I like best about him?

00:34:07.000 He was realistic, optimistic, and cheerful.

00:34:10.000 I like those three things.

00:34:12.000 We need more of that.

00:34:13.000 It's very dealing in reality.

00:34:15.000 A great attitude is so much of life.

00:34:16.000 It really is.

00:34:17.000 When we're dealing with economics, a lot of it is attitude.

00:34:20.000 Oh, the world is falling, or oh, we can invest in everything.

00:34:23.000 A lot of it is mindset-driven.

00:34:27.000 Positive mental attitude has a lot to do whether or not you're going to succeed.

00:34:31.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:32.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:35.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 24, 2025

Why "Disparate Impact" Must Die

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