The Charlie Kirk Show - Why Everyone Is Fleeing California ft. Lee Zeldin

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'll 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 The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.

00:01:09.000 All right, without further ado, we have Senator Mark Wayne Mullen.

00:01:12.000 He's a great, great senator out of the state of Oklahoma.

00:01:15.000 And I just want to give you guys in the red state of Oklahoma a little kudos here, Senator.

00:01:20.000 You guys have the lowest gas prices in the country, apparently.

00:01:24.000 A buck 83 a gallon in some counties in the great state of Oklahoma.

00:01:29.000 That's like number 10.

00:01:30.000 $1.99 price.

00:01:31.000 That's like, yeah, what is this?

00:01:33.000 We said we wanted the 90s back, and at least in Oklahoma, we have it.

00:01:36.000 This is great.

00:01:37.000 Well, in the 90s, it was like 78 cents a gallon.

00:01:42.000 But no, it was really.

00:01:45.000 I was filling up my work trucks.

00:01:48.000 However, at least in 97, 98.

00:01:50.000 But still, yet, to be under $2 a gallon is pretty amazing.

00:01:53.000 This is the difference, right?

00:01:54.000 So Oklahoma has the lowest gas prices in the country because we embrace our fossil fuels and drill, baby, drill.

00:02:03.000 And California has the highest gas prices in the country.

00:02:07.000 And they're shutting down rigs and drilling activity on a daily and shutting down pipelines on the daily.

00:02:14.000 Go figure how those two would run hand in hand, right?

00:02:17.000 Yeah.

00:02:17.000 So you have multiple counties in Oklahoma at $1.83.

00:02:23.000 Average gas price in California right now is $4.21.

00:02:28.000 Honestly, that's lower than I'd have expected.

00:02:30.000 You could have told me it was over $5.86.

00:02:32.000 Diesel is $4.80.

00:02:34.000 $486.

00:02:35.000 I mean, I just think it's amazing.

00:02:36.000 And then you've got California.

00:02:38.000 This is not what we're planning on talking about here, Senator, but you've got California has lost.

00:02:41.000 There was a New York Post article that I was reading this morning.

00:02:44.000 California has lost a trillion dollars of wealth.

00:02:48.000 So Sergey Brin and all these other billionaires are fleeing the state.

00:02:52.000 Peter Thiel, multiple others, opening up satellite offices in Texas and Tennessee and Florida because they're going to tax or they're proposing to tax the wealth.

00:03:04.000 So and that could be unrealized gains as well on billionaires.

00:03:08.000 So if you are on paper a billionaire, they're going to tax 5% of your wealth.

00:03:12.000 Just take it to fund their medical.

00:03:16.000 They're going to show up the medical books where they're giving free health care to illegals in that state.

00:03:22.000 Or give it to the homeless because that's worked out so well.

00:03:25.000 Right.

00:03:26.000 Let's not forget.

00:03:27.000 Don't forget they ran off the wealthiest man in the country or in the world, Elon Musk.

00:03:33.000 That's now in California too.

00:03:35.000 And so you just, you can't make up crazy.

00:03:38.000 New York is going to be the same way.

00:03:40.000 I mean, it's just a matter of time before the New York Stock Exchange moves to Dallas, Texas.

00:03:46.000 And you start looking at cost of building, right?

00:03:50.000 The cost of building in California is somewhere between $400 and $450 per square foot.

00:03:56.000 It's half that.

00:03:58.000 And in Oklahoma, so you can build a house and actually make it affordable.

00:04:02.000 I mean, they talk about affordable housing in California, but they regulate themselves out of existence.

00:04:10.000 And yet in Oklahoma, that's just called daily life because we have good governance because we have a red state instead of a blue state.

00:04:16.000 Yeah, I think that's a really fascinating dynamic of modern American culture is this divergence between red states and blue states.

00:04:22.000 It's getting further and further away.

00:04:24.000 And we're seeing it in the migration patterns.

00:04:26.000 If you look at, we saw this with Minnesota.

00:04:28.000 People are leaving Minnesota for the first time in ages.

00:04:31.000 They're all moving to Texas, Florida, Oklahoma.

00:04:33.000 The South generally gets a lot of people.

00:04:35.000 And yeah, they just can't get out of California or New York fast enough.

00:04:39.000 I'm glad you mentioned Elon Musk.

00:04:40.000 Have you seen this?

00:04:41.000 All the other billionaires were bailing just before the new year because they have that initiated measure that might be on the ballot to do a retroactive wealth tax, a one-time billion in California.

00:04:53.000 That's what we're talking about.

00:04:54.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:04:54.000 I didn't realize it was retroactive.

00:04:56.000 Yeah, that's why they're all bailing.

00:04:58.000 It's like all the Google guys and probably a bunch we've not even heard about.

00:04:58.000 It's not just Musk.

00:05:03.000 I'm out of all bailing.

00:05:04.000 I now live in the middle.

00:05:04.000 I left.

00:05:05.000 Hey, I have a guy, a friend of mine, and I won't mention his name, but he's just a southern Louisiana back roads swamp boy that has done very, very well at business investments.

00:05:19.000 And he doesn't do tech companies.

00:05:22.000 He does like construction industry companies.

00:05:25.000 He's done very, very well for himself.

00:05:27.000 And he left California and he moved back to Louisiana and he moved out.

00:05:32.000 Actually, he left in, I think, April or May of last year because of what was happening.

00:05:39.000 And he loves, he's married a girl from California, but he's like, you know, you can't afford to live there anymore.

00:05:45.000 No, it's there.

00:05:46.000 And it's up and down.

00:05:47.000 Yeah, it's like registering your car in California is like a thousand bucks if you have an SUV.

00:05:52.000 I mean, it's up and down.

00:05:54.000 The price of school, there's no school choice.

00:05:56.000 You know, we moved to Phoenix, you know, after Charlie died, and it's like there's school tax, you know, choice, right?

00:06:03.000 So you get a voucher if you send your kid to a private Christian school.

00:06:06.000 It's amazing.

00:06:07.000 It's like right off the bat, you're saving yourself $7,500 to school.

00:06:11.000 So totally off subject here, but just California, how they're aggressively going after everybody.

00:06:17.000 My son back in 2020 had a brain injury, real bad to brain injury.

00:06:22.000 We had to go through rehab and we had the only rehab center that was specialized in his cognitive rehabilitation was in Bakersfield, California.

00:06:32.000 So I literally lived in an RV with my son on and off for 18 months.

00:06:36.000 And I was talking about it at a, you know, either on, either on a show like this or TV or something.

00:06:42.000 But anyways, California found out about it and they tried to charge me taxes.

00:06:46.000 And I had to prove to them that I wasn't there consistently the whole time that I was leaving most weekends and going back home and that we were there for medical reasons, had to get literally doctor notes to keep me from having to pay income tax in California.

00:07:01.000 Jeez, are you kidding me?

00:07:03.000 I'm not joking.

00:07:04.000 That's amazing.

00:07:05.000 That's a really amazing story.

00:07:08.000 So we're again, we did not plan on talking about any of this with the senator here because there's actual, we got a shutdown fighting in Iran.

00:07:15.000 But this is I thought of this.

00:07:17.000 This is Tamika Mallory.

00:07:18.000 I'm not afraid for business, by the way.

00:07:20.000 So I can be listening.

00:07:22.000 I'm telling you, red states are booming.

00:07:24.000 The cost of energy across the board in red states is like half, if not less than that of blue states.

00:07:30.000 But it's more than this.

00:07:31.000 Look at what Mamdani is doing in New York, Senator.

00:07:34.000 This is Tamika Mallory.

00:07:36.000 I thought of this as we were talking.

00:07:37.000 I had the team grab it.

00:07:39.000 This is the new crime advisor that Mamdani has appointed.

00:07:43.000 PlayCut 280.

00:07:45.000 I don't give a damn if they burn down Target because Target should be on the streets with us calling for the justice that our people deserve.

00:07:54.000 Don't talk to us about looting.

00:07:56.000 Y'all are the looters. 1.00

00:07:57.000 America has looted black people. 1.00

00:08:06.000 America looted the Native Americans when they first came here. 0.99

00:08:11.000 So looting is what you do.

00:08:12.000 We learned it from you.

00:08:14.000 We learned violence from you.

00:08:17.000 Wow.

00:08:18.000 That's Donnie's new crime advisor.

00:08:22.000 You know, I'm not sure.

00:08:23.000 You should nominate her for chief of police.

00:08:25.000 Make her chief of police.

00:08:25.000 Why not?

00:08:26.000 Yeah, chief of police.

00:08:27.000 You know, I'm Cherokee.

00:08:27.000 There you go.

00:08:30.000 I know I don't look it, but I actually am Cherokee. 0.96

00:08:32.000 And I sometimes get, people give me crap by it. 0.81

00:08:34.000 And I said, man, I can't, I can't, I can't, you know, control who my ancestors loved, but I am Cherokee. 0.71

00:08:41.000 That's why we ended up in Oklahoma.

00:08:44.000 And my, you know, I still carried, I'm actually a card-carrying Cherokee, not like because I have high cheekbones, Elizabeth Warren, Pocahontas.

00:08:54.000 And so, but when she said Native Americans, I tell you what, first of all, very seldom all of us call us Native Americans.

00:09:01.000 We're Indians.

00:09:03.000 But it's frustrating because there is no ethnic group that serves in the military at greater numbers than Native Americans.

00:09:12.000 And we're not out there rioting and causing that stuff like she said.

00:09:17.000 So don't pull us into that picture.

00:09:19.000 We respect the rule of law and we respect law enforcement.

00:09:22.000 We love America.

00:09:23.000 Regardless of what happened to us, we're not out there trying to have, you know, all trying to separate ourselves from someone else.

00:09:31.000 Now, we are proud and proud to be Indian and we're proud of our tribes, but we fly the flag beside, you know, beside maybe our Cherokee flag along the way.

00:09:45.000 But, you know, we're not out there carrying somebody else's flag or Somalian flags or Mexican flags.

00:09:50.000 No, you're totally right.

00:09:51.000 I mean, Navajo Nation in Arizona, they vote Republican.

00:09:55.000 Yeah.

00:09:56.000 So there you go.

00:09:57.000 They do.

00:09:57.000 Yeah, they do.

00:09:58.000 I had a whole conversation overnight.

00:09:59.000 We actually do ballot chasing in Navajo Nation.

00:10:02.000 We have a whole like Cherokee team or a Navajo team.

00:10:05.000 Yeah, I mean, we have 36 tribes in the state of Oklahoma, and I had 19 in the second district.

00:10:12.000 And we're a red state, completely red state.

00:10:15.000 All 77 counties in Oklahoma vote red.

00:10:20.000 And the only state that may have a higher concentration of Native Americans is New Mexico.

00:10:28.000 But I'm not sure by that.

00:10:30.000 That number is still.

00:10:32.000 Yeah, I think Oklahoma is the most, you know, screwed up Supreme Court, that Supreme Court ruling.

00:10:38.000 You know, that was, that was, that was a real bad one from, was that Gorsuch?

00:10:43.000 Yeah, Gorsuch had that weird thing.

00:10:45.000 Gorsuch, by the way, Gorsuch is the prime example of why Supreme Courts need term limits.

00:10:45.000 Yeah.

00:10:53.000 I mean, and I listen, I come from a wrestling world.

00:10:56.000 I come from a fighting world, and I come from politics. 0.70

00:10:58.000 I know arrogance, but he's the most arrogant man I've ever met in my life.

00:11:03.000 I mean that sincerely. 0.84

00:11:05.000 I literally stood up and walked out of his office, and that says a lot because I may be the second most arrogant, but he's the most arrogant.

00:11:15.000 Well, we want him on our side with today's story.

00:11:18.000 Yeah, we need him on the tariff ruling.

00:11:20.000 He has power over us.

00:11:21.000 We love Gorsuch.

00:11:22.000 I don't.

00:11:25.000 I absolutely do not.

00:11:26.000 And I don't want to replace him with some lib, but I do not.

00:11:29.000 I have zero respect.

00:11:31.000 That guy has flat out lied to me.

00:11:33.000 He told me something that he never fulfilled.

00:11:36.000 And he told me, shook my hand on.

00:11:38.000 I mean, we literally shook hands, and he didn't fulfill what he said he was going to do.

00:11:42.000 And now he won't even return my phone calls.

00:11:43.000 And so I have zero, zero, zero respect for him.

00:11:51.000 Hey, everybody.

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00:13:08.000 Do it now.

00:13:12.000 So we are getting live updates from SCOTUS.

00:13:14.000 Yes.

00:13:15.000 And the senator warned us about him.

00:13:17.000 And now Justice Gorsuch.

00:13:21.000 Sympathetic on the trans issue.

00:13:23.000 Did you hear that?

00:13:24.000 Making them a protected class.

00:13:26.000 So well, you warned us.

00:13:32.000 He did warn us.

00:13:33.000 He did warn us.

00:13:34.000 Well, it's actually really tough to make a senator speechless.

00:13:39.000 I'm speechless.

00:13:41.000 Yeah, I don't.

00:13:42.000 Listen, men are men, and boys are boys.

00:13:45.000 And the Supreme Court is going to overthink this, aren't they?

00:13:49.000 They're going to overthink this.

00:13:50.000 Whatever they rule, they cannot overturn reality.

00:13:53.000 A pastor of mine, a friend of mine, used to say, educated beyond their intelligence.

00:13:56.000 Go ahead, Senator.

00:13:58.000 I'm just telling you, Gorsuch, when you meet with him, he's the smartest man in the room.

00:14:02.000 And he may be.

00:14:03.000 I mean, obviously, he's brilliant, but there's some very brilliant people out there that doesn't want to show how brilliant they are, but they can actually express it through humility.

00:14:19.000 And that guy doesn't have the ability to do that.

00:14:23.000 And for you to look at this case with transgender athletes in any other way, especially as a father of three, you know, three daughters who wrestle, that means they're in a combative sport. 0.85

00:14:39.000 I'm sorry.

00:14:41.000 That is a lifestyle choice when you decide you're going to transition.

00:14:48.000 Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

00:14:50.000 We're obviously 100% in agreement with you there, Senator.

00:14:53.000 I do want to get, we have Iran coming up. 1.00

00:14:57.000 There was a bunch of back and forth last night.

00:14:58.000 The Wall Street Journal posted something saying JD Vance is going for diplomacy, but Trump wants to strike.

00:15:05.000 You are, people need to understand this about you in this.

00:15:08.000 I mean, this role.

00:15:09.000 I'm going to say it.

00:15:10.000 You don't have to say it, sir, but I hear it from everybody that you are playing this massive go-between role between the House and the Senate, and then even both legislative bodies in the White House.

00:15:20.000 Can you shed any light on this Iranian potential strike versus diplomacy?

00:15:25.000 By the way, the vice president's office wrote back and corrected the piece in the Wall Street Journal saying that Marco and JD are presenting a suite of options from military action to diplomacy.

00:15:35.000 So they did correct the record there, but it was a lie from the go.

00:15:39.000 What are you hearing, sir?

00:15:40.000 Well, first of all, there are several people that play a good role between the White House and the Senate.

00:15:46.000 I mean, the president has many friends, and I'm just lucky enough to be called one of them.

00:15:51.000 So first of all, what Secretary Hekseth has said multiple times, mess around and find out.

00:15:59.000 I'm cleaning that up because my wife would be mad at me if I said the other thing. 1.00

00:16:03.000 And so would our distributors of this program.

00:16:06.000 Yes, continue.

00:16:07.000 So see, I'm being very nice.

00:16:09.000 And the president has made it very clear that he will be willing to protect the people of Iran if the murderous regime there in Iran decide they're going to kill people en masse. 0.88

00:16:24.000 And what that mass number is, I don't know what the president's tolerance is.

00:16:27.000 But I will tell you, the president doesn't bluff.

00:16:30.000 And he's proven that he is not afraid of Iran.

00:16:33.000 He's not afraid of going in.

00:16:35.000 We've proven we have the capability to destroy their air defense system and to strike anytime and anywhere.

00:16:42.000 And he made it very clear that he could have taken out the leadership if he wanted to, but he decided not to.

00:16:49.000 And so I wouldn't be surprised if you see some military action in defense of the Iranian people.

00:16:57.000 And I like to say this, in 1977 when I was born, Iran was a friend of us.

00:17:03.000 In fact, they were probably more Western advanced in the United States than it was to accepting women and in workplaces and into government and actually into ethnic groups too.

00:17:19.000 This current regime has destroyed all that.

00:17:22.000 And we'd love to have a relationship back with the Iranian people.

00:17:25.000 I think we have a lot in common.

00:17:26.000 There was a lot of business relationships that was between Iran and the United States prior to 1979, the overthrow of Shah.

00:17:34.000 And so I believe the president is actively looking at his position and what is the best way to support the people wanting to take back their country in Iran.

00:17:49.000 Yeah, I mean, and listen, I just, you know, we obviously support the people of Iran.

00:17:55.000 We want independence.

00:17:56.000 We want them to thrive.

00:17:57.000 We want them to throw off these brutal dictators. 0.98

00:17:59.000 We want them to do it.

00:18:00.000 Canada on this show, and I can tell you our audience feels the same.

00:18:02.000 I mean, you know, military action in another foreign, faraway Middle Eastern land.

00:18:08.000 It's not like Venezuela, Western Hemisphere, Monroe, Donroad Doctrine.

00:18:11.000 I think there's a broad base of support for Venezuela.

00:18:15.000 I think less so for Iran.

00:18:17.000 So I hope that we, you know, by the way, I'm all for cutting off the oil flow, you know, the revenues of the CCP to Iran.

00:18:24.000 I think that's absolutely what we should do.

00:18:26.000 Moral support.

00:18:26.000 Maybe there's some stuff that, you know, off the books maneuvering behind the scenes that needs to happen with our special ops guys or whatever.

00:18:34.000 I'm open to, I just, you know, I want to be cautious because regime change is messy.

00:18:39.000 It's always messy.

00:18:39.000 And it's proven in the Middle East more so than ever.

00:18:42.000 But I will say there does seem to be a legitimate organic popular uprising.

00:18:47.000 There is this, the son of the former Shah that seems like we had a guest on yesterday, Senator, that has a lot of support from the protesters movement.

00:18:55.000 I have no idea if he has a majority of support within the country, but it does seem to indicate there are some elements that are aligning for a real massive change in Iran.

00:19:05.000 Well, a regime change, this is much different than the regime change you saw underneath Secretary Clinton, who had the Arab Spring, which left the Middle East in complete disarray, versus what's happening in Iran.

00:19:19.000 This is an organic group that has risen up.

00:19:21.000 And when anytime you have these organic groups or someone, be it the Shah's son or not, there's a difference of opinions if he's popular or not popular.

00:19:30.000 I'd say he's not actually that popular.

00:19:32.000 But anytime you see a movement like this, leadership intends to move to the front.

00:19:38.000 And this is the people, not the United States, trying to have regime change.

00:19:42.000 This is the people that's having the regime change.

00:19:44.000 We're there to support the people in the event that they start being slaughtered by their own regime.

00:19:51.000 Now, to pivot back to Vice President JD Vance, I will tell you, there is no daylight.

00:20:00.000 There's open discussions, but no daylight when a decision is made between the president and JD Vance.

00:20:06.000 They have a great relationship.

00:20:08.000 Marco and our Secretary Rubio and the Vice President have a great relationship, but they also have such a good relationship that they can have an open discussion.

00:20:18.000 But when the decision is made, when the play call is made, they are together.

00:20:22.000 And that's the whole present team.

00:20:24.000 What the president allows people to do is express his opinion.

00:20:27.000 I visit with the president most time when he's asking me a question.

00:20:30.000 What do you think about this?

00:20:32.000 And he's truly inquisitive.

00:20:33.000 But when he decides to make a decision after he hears everybody out, he decides and he moves.

00:20:39.000 And that's what's so good about this administration is that when they move, they move together.

00:20:45.000 And JD has been very open about his position sometime on the use of military force.

00:20:51.000 But he is probably one of the smartest guys you'll sit down and talk to when he's truly wanting to get to the facts.

00:20:57.000 He's not a guy that makes decisions off emotions.

00:21:00.000 JD makes decisions off of facts, and he can change his opinion because of that.

00:21:05.000 And that's why I have so much respect for the guy.

00:21:08.000 I totally agree.

00:21:08.000 I mean, they're going to try and drum up a lot of drama because 2028's looming.

00:21:12.000 That's all it is.

00:21:13.000 Okay.

00:21:14.000 Yeah, of course.

00:21:15.000 Senator, thank you for your time.

00:21:16.000 We'll talk about the funding shutdown soon.

00:21:19.000 Okay.

00:21:19.000 Talk to you later.

00:21:22.000 President Trump walked into a catch-22 when taking office.

00:21:26.000 Do nothing, and America would be staring at a ticking debt bomb, the kind of crisis that could cripple our future.

00:21:31.000 Instead, he's taken action with strong policies to slow the train and buy us some time.

00:21:35.000 But the effects of past administration spending are still working through the system and experts predict dramatic price increases and market uncertainty.

00:21:43.000 Trump is doing all he can, but no matter who's in office, protecting your retirement savings is ultimately up to you.

00:21:49.000 And that's why many Americans are turning to real assets like gold and silver.

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00:22:19.000 President Trump is fighting for America's future.

00:22:21.000 Now it's your turn to help protect yours.

00:22:25.000 Honored to have our next guest.

00:22:27.000 That is Lee Zeldon, who's running the EPA, doing an amazing job.

00:22:32.000 One of the picks from Trump that I only ever hear positive things about.

00:22:39.000 Lee Zeldon, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:22:41.000 It's good to have you.

00:22:42.000 It's great to be with you guys.

00:22:43.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:22:44.000 You are crushing it over there at the EPA.

00:22:47.000 And, you know, we used to think of the EPA as like this employment killer.

00:22:51.000 You know, it's just like this barrier to getting good things done, being productive as an entrepreneur in the country.

00:22:56.000 You are changing that.

00:22:58.000 And I'm thinking, everything's great.

00:22:59.000 Everything's great.

00:23:00.000 And then I, you know, trolling around Twitter yesterday and I see that the New York Times is claiming, Lee, that you have stopped considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only on the cost to businesses.

00:23:16.000 And I love that on Twitter, it's now getting slapped with a community note because it's complete hogwash, but it's gone viral.

00:23:23.000 Their tweet has 5.1 million views because they are lying to people, correct?

00:23:29.000 This is the news.

00:23:30.000 Yeah, they like to write a headline like this to freak people out, to twist what would actually be accurate because they're trying to advance the narrative.

00:23:41.000 And it's amazing how synced up they are with others in the left-wing media, congressional Democrats.

00:23:48.000 All of a sudden, at once, they're all advancing a narrative that is 100% untrue.

00:23:54.000 Of course, we are going to be considering to factor in the impact on lives when doing our job.

00:24:02.000 Our core mission of EPA is protecting human health and the environment.

00:24:07.000 But what we aren't going to do is just play along with whatever the left-wing strategy is of the day to try to advance Trump derangement syndrome at its highest level.

00:24:23.000 For us, we've rejected the notion that in order to protect the environment, you have to destroy the economy.

00:24:30.000 We inherited a mess on all sorts of different regulations that amounted to the trillions.

00:24:35.000 We just saw some footage there of President Trump at a Ford factory in so many different ways.

00:24:41.000 The Obama and Biden administrations with tailpipe emissions and electric vehicle mandates, working with blue states like California, have reduced consumer choice, have increased vehicle costs.

00:24:55.000 And we inherited this mess and decided with this Trump mandate, President Trump winning all the battleground states, winning the popular vote, we're going to fix all of it at once.

00:25:06.000 And whether it's sending to Congress the three Biden EPA waivers to California that gave them permission to do their electric vehicle mandate, which Congress then passed the resolutions to reject and President Trump signed.

00:25:20.000 It's the change to cafe standards that you saw Secretary Duffy announce with President Trump at the Oval Office a few weeks.

00:25:27.000 It's the proposed repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding and all of the greenhouse gas emissions and light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles that followed and that start-stop, that annoying, almost universally hated start-stop feature on these cars that were getting rid of the off-cycle credits all in one proposal, which if finalized would be the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America.

00:25:51.000 We are going to push back on the left with their false narratives, their untruth, the mess of regulation that we inherited, and our goals to fix everything and to do it truthfully, promoting gold standard science and fulfilling that Trump mandate that the American public voted for.

00:26:08.000 Yeah, well, that's exciting.

00:26:09.000 It just strikes me, the EPA, the right has always had to play in this unfair playing field where if you, the Biden administration or the Obama administration does something nut-so to pursue a political agenda, and then if you repeal it, you have this panic attack where it's, ah, they're rolling back the environmental.

00:26:27.000 Well, that's exactly, I mean, exactly.

00:26:28.000 That's God forbid we live in the 90s again.

00:26:30.000 Yeah, that's the headline.

00:26:31.000 That's the implication.

00:26:32.000 That's what they want to do.

00:26:33.000 This is provda.

00:26:34.000 This is fake, that they want to imply that you don't care about people's lives.

00:26:38.000 The Trump administration does not care about people's lives when the exact opposite is true.

00:26:43.000 And we're actually creating an opportunity for growth again in this country and getting rid of nonsense regulations.

00:26:48.000 Now, this is what's funny about having you on today.

00:26:51.000 We had Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, and he was talking about gas prices at $1.83 in some counties in Oklahoma.

00:26:58.000 You clap back at the Governor Gavin Newsom's press office.

00:27:02.000 I loved this one, by the way.

00:27:03.000 This is image 303.

00:27:05.000 So Governor Gavin Newsom's press office is bragging about the fact that in California, gas prices hit lowest levels in years.

00:27:13.000 Here's what drivers will pay. 0.91

00:27:15.000 So he's taking credit for what you and the president are doing.

00:27:18.000 Meanwhile, what is it around?

00:27:20.000 I think average price around $4,420.

00:27:23.000 I just Googled it this morning in California, and you got a $1.83 in Oklahoma. 0.85

00:27:30.000 Why are you calling, let's just say, garbage on this note from Governor Gavin Newsom?

00:27:37.000 Yeah, because California could have lower gas prices if the left-wing Democrats who are destroying, pummeling that state into the ground would be advancing great energy policies like you're seeing in states where energy costs so much less, where it costs less to heat your home, to fill up your gas tank, where people are able to make their dollars stretch further because there are people in government at the state level who are advancing smart energy policies.

00:28:06.000 But in California, Governor Newsom and the Democrats running the legislature have been beholden to the far left.

00:28:12.000 Many of them are part of the far left, pandering the far left, and pushing these energy and environmental policies that are driving so many Californians to leave their state permanently for good.

00:28:23.000 President Trump has been able to, through his policies, reduce gas prices to under $3 in 43 states across the country.

00:28:30.000 California is not one of them.

00:28:32.000 And that is because of these people at the state level, in the capital of California, pushing these bad energy and environment policies.

00:28:42.000 So yeah, I think that if those Democrats in California wanted to truly be part of the progress, maybe they would get the heck out of the way going forward rather than doing what they have been doing, creating a mess that's been increasing gas prices.

00:28:58.000 And it's the reason why that list isn't 44 instead of 43 is because of these people who are bragging now and trying to take credit for the progress that President Trump has been delivering since the moment he came back into office.

00:29:10.000 It's so like brazen.

00:29:12.000 That's what I can't get over.

00:29:14.000 So they have their average gas prices in California are $1.40 above the national average.

00:29:19.000 It's at $4.21.

00:29:20.000 It's $1.40 above the national average.

00:29:23.000 And you have Gavin Newsom taking a bow saying, look at what I've done in the state of California.

00:29:28.000 Everybody with a brain knows this is because President Trump's policies, what you guys are doing at the EPA, it's just, I mean, you almost have to tip your hat at the brazenness of the lie.

00:29:39.000 Like the fact that he's willing to do this on Twitter when he knows the administrator of the EPA is going to come out and knock him for it.

00:29:47.000 Another question we have, Lee, here is that we're kind of looking at utility prices as well.

00:29:54.000 Are we seeing those drop commensurate with the price of energy in other ways, like gas prices?

00:29:59.000 Well, there's such a huge difference in red states and blue states.

00:30:03.000 And we saw, for example, President Trump's been pushing this pipeline called Constitution Pipeline to deliver natural gas from Pennsylvania into New England.

00:30:11.000 The New Englanders need natural gas.

00:30:14.000 It would reduce our reliance on foreign sources of energy.

00:30:18.000 It would make energy prices more affordable.

00:30:21.000 And it's being blocked by the left wing.

00:30:26.000 And you look at, you compare policies in red states where it costs so much less to heat your home than when you look at these Democrat-run states.

00:30:36.000 It's not a coincidence.

00:30:38.000 You know, it's not like there's nothing else to it.

00:30:41.000 No, it actually tells a pretty big story when you compare the price differential between the two states.

00:30:47.000 Now, all across the entire country, the numbers were going up big time when President Biden was in office.

00:30:54.000 The policies of his administration, all sorts of new regulations and favoring intermittent sources over baseload power, President Trump understands the need to ramp up baseload power in his country.

00:31:09.000 He understands the need to unleash energy dominance.

00:31:12.000 He wants to see more pipelines being built.

00:31:14.000 Thankfully, they now are.

00:31:16.000 He wants to see more power plants being built.

00:31:19.000 President Trump has saved clean, beautiful coal.

00:31:23.000 President Trump has been getting new nuclear sites online.

00:31:28.000 I've been at groundbreakings all across this country.

00:31:30.000 Idaho Falls, Idaho, new nuclear facility.

00:31:34.000 I was there for the groundbreaking.

00:31:35.000 I was in West Memphis, Arkansas, where a $4 billion data center was being built.

00:31:41.000 And it was built with a partnership with Arkansas that provides a net benefit to ratepayers.

00:31:46.000 It's the red state policies.

00:31:48.000 Yeah, this is my question for you, Mr. Administrator.

00:31:52.000 So you've got all these new data centers going up, right?

00:31:56.000 We know that we need it to fuel the AI revolution.

00:31:59.000 We know that President Trump and the administration, you guys at the EPA have made this a core tenant.

00:32:04.000 We want to be the AI center, crypto center, but that takes a ton of energy.

00:32:09.000 Are we worried that these new demands from these data centers, obviously Arkansas is a good example of it not being a concern, but because they're building capacity.

00:32:17.000 But are we worried that these data centers are going to drive up prices for consumers at home?

00:32:24.000 It's all about how you do it, Andrew.

00:32:25.000 And when you reference that West Memphis, Arkansas example, you have a partnership with the state of Arkansas and Entergy, where the ratepayers end up receiving a net benefit, not a net cost, a net benefit because of that project.

00:32:42.000 By the way, over a billion dollars.

00:32:44.000 So you get the jobs for the construction.

00:32:46.000 You get the jobs long term because we're talking about a multi-billion dollar project in Arkansas.

00:32:52.000 And what do you have in Arkansas that really makes it all possible?

00:32:56.000 Nuclear energy.

00:32:57.000 We have retrofits that are going on across the country.

00:33:00.000 We have small and large new builds.

00:33:03.000 President Trump has saved plants that we're going to go under.

00:33:08.000 And at EPA, we have been pushing forth regulatory proposals that would allow more plants to be built to streamline the process to make sure that it takes less time.

00:33:20.000 It costs less money.

00:33:21.000 There's more certainty when making this investment.

00:33:24.000 See, when President Trump talks about trillions of dollars of new investment coming to this country, this isn't some hypothetical claim of something that might happen years from now.

00:33:35.000 The ground is being broken all across America already of these massive new investments that are taking place.

00:33:43.000 And we're just going to keep it going.

00:33:45.000 We'll end up with more finalized deregulatory actions at one agency at the EPA in one year than entire federal governments have done in the past across all federal agencies across entire presidencies.

00:33:59.000 We're finalizing deregulatory actions into the trillions of dollars.

00:34:06.000 And we're proud of it.

00:34:08.000 And we're going to continue to stay focused no matter what.

00:34:11.000 You know, the New York Times or the Washington Post or any of these other left-wing outlets, no matter how much you might be upsetting some of the furthest left-wing Democrats in Congress, they are not going to bully and intimidate the Trump EPA out of doing the right thing to follow through on this deregulatory pledge to the American public to grow the economy.

00:34:35.000 Great work.

00:34:36.000 I want to say it again.

00:34:37.000 Of all of the operators in Trump's cabinet, you at the EPA, I only hear what a great job you're doing.

00:34:44.000 So Lee Zeldon, administrator of the EPA, great work.

00:34:47.000 It's no longer an impediment to growth, but a boon.

00:34:51.000 And so we thank you for your work.

00:34:53.000 We'll see you again soon.

00:34:54.000 Thank you, Lee.

00:34:54.000 Thanks, guys.

00:34:57.000 This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of WhyReFi.

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00:36:06.000 All right, we have updates coming from SCOTUS.

00:36:09.000 There's a few clips here that our team is pulling right now.

00:36:14.000 You had one.

00:36:15.000 Could you read it to us or do we need to wait for the clip?

00:36:18.000 This was the Alito clip.

00:36:20.000 Oh, yeah.

00:36:21.000 Where the ACLU is forced to admit.

00:36:23.000 And we're talking, of course, about there's a case before the Supreme Court about trans sports, trans athletes.

00:36:30.000 By the way, this.

00:36:31.000 Yeah, see, all right, here we got it.

00:36:32.000 So this is supposedly, I don't have the audio clip, but this is someone watching it.

00:36:37.000 Alito to decide if there is discrimination on the basis of sex under Title IX.

00:36:41.000 We need to define what sex is, right? 0.65

00:36:43.000 And the ACLU says, yes.

00:36:45.000 So Alito says, what does it mean to be a man or a woman, a boy or a girl?

00:36:51.000 ACLU says, we do not have a definition for the court.

00:36:55.000 You know, it reminded me because you told me this in the break, and I was like, this is why Charlie was so good.

00:37:01.000 He just stuck on this question again and again and again because he knew it fried a liberal brain.

00:37:07.000 It actually short circuits a lot of their imagine if they just had to go, imagine if they tried to run past Alito with a, well, if you define as a woman, then you're a woman.

00:37:17.000 Yeah, well, I'm feeling very negative about the Supreme Court currently because I'm expecting them to come down against Trump's tariffs.

00:37:25.000 And then we have Senator Mark Wayne Mullen saying some not nice things about Neil Gorsuch, Justice Gorsuch.

00:37:32.000 And then you've got, you know, Amy Coney Barrett is basically saying similar, like calling them trans girls.

00:37:37.000 There's a boy and there's a girl.

00:37:39.000 And that's what the options are.

00:37:41.000 There's this trans girl stuff is it's not a good start. 1.00

00:37:45.000 It's not a good start that they're actually misrepresenting the sex of the children involved.

00:37:52.000 It's interesting that Kavanaugh does seem the most on our side because Kavanaugh was annoying in that, I can't remember the name of it, but the gay rights case that was during the Trump first admin.

00:38:03.000 Obergefell?

00:38:04.000 No, it wasn't that.

00:38:05.000 It was, well, so now that I think about it, I actually think he ruled our way, but he did write.

00:38:09.000 It was like an annoying thing where it was when they ruled that like gender identity was a protected class.

00:38:13.000 I think.

00:38:13.000 Oh, right.

00:38:14.000 And then in the ruling, he says, I ruled against this, but I want to applaud you guys because you've made a lot of progress over the last few years.

00:38:20.000 I'm just really happy.

00:38:21.000 I have a theory on Kavanaugh that he got red-pilled during the conference.

00:38:25.000 Well, people have speculated on that.

00:38:26.000 I don't think, truthfully, I don't think his record bears that out because he's been lib on stuff.

00:38:33.000 He's been more good than bad.

00:38:35.000 Overall, but I don't think people have reacted to him by going, wow, he's way more conservative than we anticipated.

00:38:42.000 And it must be because he's basically gone the problem.

00:38:44.000 The problem with the Supreme Court right now is that Trump's first term, we have some kind of, they're not swings and misses, but they're not dominant, right?

00:38:54.000 They're not an Alito.

00:38:55.000 They're not a, here we go, right behind your head right here.

00:38:58.000 Clarence Thomas, Charlie's favorite Supreme Court justice.

00:39:02.000 It's worth noting, yeah.

00:39:03.000 Like probably, you know, the best, the two best Supreme Court justices we have were picked by two bushes. 0.99

00:39:10.000 Well, and they're a little older now.

00:39:11.000 That's my both of them are old.

00:39:14.000 And the trouble is, what I've heard, I remember speaking with someone who knew the court well, and the problem was like Alito and Thomas, they both kind of react to the vibe around them.

00:39:25.000 They get depressed when it's a liberal presidency and if they feel outnumbered on the court.

00:39:32.000 But when they don't feel outnumbered, when they're getting good cases, they get excited and they enjoy being a justice and then they're less likely to retire.

00:39:40.000 And that's a bother because it has to be said.

00:39:43.000 Justice Thomas, especially, is old.

00:39:46.000 It would strategically be sound for him to retire now rather than, I mean, even if he were to wait another year, if we've lost the Senate through some fluke or if it's a one, you know, one vote margin, then they could conceivably stonewall.

00:40:01.000 He's 77 years old, born in 1948.

00:40:03.000 And he is an amazing justice.

00:40:06.000 He's an incredible justice.

00:40:07.000 And Alito is amazing.

00:40:08.000 What's Alito's age?

00:40:09.000 I don't think he's that much.

00:40:11.000 He's certainly not youthful.

00:40:12.000 I think he's got to be 77.

00:40:13.000 Well, we'll find out.

00:40:15.000 I'm looking it up right now.

00:40:17.000 75 years old.

00:40:18.000 He was born in 1950.

00:40:19.000 So they're both.

00:40:20.000 Let's play a clip here from Alito questioning this Kathleen Martinetti, the attorney arguing before the Supreme Court case, I think on behalf of trans sports rights or whatever.

00:40:32.000 309.

00:40:33.000 That has a boys, let's say, track team and a girls' track team.

00:40:40.000 A student who has the genes and the reproductive system of a male and had those at birth and has never taken puberty blockers, never taken female hormones, never had any gender altering or affirming surgery says, nevertheless, I am a woman.

00:41:08.000 That's who I am.

00:41:10.000 Can the school say no, you cannot participate on the girls' team?

00:41:16.000 Yes, they can.

00:41:17.000 But that person, is that person not a woman in your understanding?

00:41:21.000 If the person says, I sincerely believe I am woman, I am in fact a woman.

00:41:26.000 Is that person not a woman? 0.99

00:41:28.000 I would respect their self-identity in addressing the person.

00:41:32.000 Self-identity.

00:41:34.000 I would respect their pronouns.

00:41:36.000 Yeah.

00:41:37.000 I mean, it's the big picture thing is, is neither of them, they're not imminently at death's door.

00:41:43.000 No.

00:41:44.000 But, and we have had justices who made it 290.

00:41:47.000 I believe Stevens did.

00:41:48.000 And he only, he lived a long time after he retired, too.

00:41:50.000 Well, you got the Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

00:41:52.000 Exactly, though.

00:41:53.000 So you can have people, if you do not choose the time of your retirement, God will choose the time of your retirement.

00:41:59.000 And it may not be the time that men would prefer.

00:42:03.000 And so we have to think about that.

00:42:05.000 And we have to think about these Supreme Court appointments.

00:42:08.000 I wonder.

00:42:09.000 The three appointments we made, none of them were catastrophic.

00:42:12.000 They're not, we had Souter who was picked by a Republican and became a liberal member of the court, but they're also not home runs.

00:42:19.000 And we're also seeing how issues have evolved.

00:42:22.000 So for decades, the top concern of a lot of conservatives was, oh, we need to overturn Roebie Wade, for example.

00:42:27.000 We now have that.

00:42:28.000 We need to be thinking about what are the other issues that we're looking towards.

00:42:33.000 And so, for example, now it's a much bigger deal.

00:42:35.000 You have to have justices who are ready to overturn the DEI regime, the anti-you know, anti-white, anti-male discrimination stuff, really enforce that stuff.

00:42:44.000 And not everyone is great on that.

00:42:46.000 And you have to make sure you're getting justices who will be skilled at that and also skilled at the coalition building aspect of it.

00:42:52.000 And I talk to people who are clerks, lawyers, and they have a lot of interesting takes on this because there are judges who might be really good on the ideology stuff, but they alienate people.

00:43:04.000 And then there are judges who are good on the ideology stuff, but they're also very good at that backroom dealing stuff.

00:43:09.000 And it's very interesting to talk to them.

00:43:11.000 Yeah, you have a lot of connections within this area.

00:43:16.000 You're always talking to clerks and you back channel with a lot of these people.

00:43:19.000 So I take your word for this.

00:43:20.000 I think there, I will tell you, not too long ago, I was back east.

00:43:24.000 I was in DC and I was meeting with some people that this is all they focus on is picking and sifting through the potential nominees for a next Supreme Court justice.

00:43:34.000 And there's already names being floated, they're being vetted right now, I'm telling you.

00:43:38.000 So there's work being done, and there's a lot of disagreement about who's going to be the best, who's going to be the right pick.

00:43:44.000 But it's very possible that Trump will have another pick or potentially two.

00:43:48.000 We might have a majority Trump chosen Supreme Court, and it would be a huge miss if that's not an amazing Supreme Court. 0.57

00:43:54.000 There's a lot of people that don't want it to just go through the Federalist Society again.

00:43:58.000 So that's a whole can of worms for another day.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 14, 2026

Why Everyone Is Fleeing California ft. Lee Zeldin

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