On this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, we have a special guest on the show, Don Jr., who was one of Charlie's closest friends and was a key part of his presidential campaign in 2016. Don talks about how he and Charlie met, how they first met, and how they became friends. He also shares some of his favorite memories of Charlie and the time they spent together.
00:00:56.000The 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.
00:01:09.000All right, everybody, we're going to get started here.
00:01:11.000Without further ado, we'd like to welcome to the stage the one and only Don Jr.
00:01:25.000So, Don, your popularity is waning here.
00:05:01.000You know, I have no idea, but you just, the way he carried himself, I was like, you know, this isn't a 20-year-old.
00:05:07.000You know, what he was able to accomplish, you know, in his 31 years is what would be a crowning achievement of someone's life that got to see it through old age.
00:06:58.000I mean, he took care of himself at an age where, you know, I mean, I used to, you know, if you have dinner with Charlie, you're like, you're eating grilled chicken and salad again.
00:07:30.000Blake was traveling with Charlie internationally the last couple trips he took.
00:07:36.000You know, what are some things about Charlie that you saw that you either want people to understand about him or that you just know the world didn't really get about him?
00:07:46.000Well, I mean, I think that's certainly one of them.
00:07:56.000I say all the stuff that maybe some are thinking but are unwilling to actually articulate.
00:08:01.000So, you know, you could put him in an uncomfortable position, but then he'd chime in.
00:08:04.000And it was so, you know, for me, I do it all the time.
00:08:06.000For him, when he chimed in on those kinds of things, it was like, whoa, where'd that come from?
00:08:12.000So, you know, it was just honestly, like I said, a generational talent.
00:08:17.000And so, you know, as part of this movement, you know, there's not one person that's going to replace Charlie Kirk.
00:08:22.000There's not one person that would be capable of doing that.
00:08:25.000But if we all sort of band together, if we all have that same passion, enthusiasm, energy, and try, maybe a few thousand of us can fill those little percentage points and try to get to that 100 and keep the movement rolling.
00:08:40.000Can you tell us a bit about the relationship he developed with your dad as the president and as a candidate, too?
00:08:47.000Yeah, you know, my father, he's a unique guy.
00:08:49.000He'll listen to everyone and he sort of weighs those things equally.
00:08:52.000I mean, I think how he was able to relate to regular blue-collar Americans, people like, how is it possible?
00:08:57.000He's a trash billionaire from New York.
00:08:59.000It's like, well, he grew up on construction sites.
00:09:04.000He was a better developer, not because he listened to the guy behind a computer screen on Excel in like a gilded office, but because he spent time on the job sites with real people.
00:09:14.000So, you know, they understood each other.
00:09:16.000I mean, there's not many people in the inner sanctum of my father's sort of political circle that he sort of gets even when perhaps he's being delivered news that he needs to hear but doesn't want to hear.
00:09:31.000You know, politics that there's plenty of sycophants out there.
00:09:34.000There's plenty of people who tell you, oh, you know, they show up for the wins and they hide from the losses or the losses are someone else's fault and the wins that they had nothing to do with.
00:09:42.000You know, Charlie was one of the true people that could call him in the middle of the day and break through and be like, hey, man, this is actually a problem.
00:09:50.000And I know no one's telling you this, but it is.
00:09:53.000And so for my father to let in, even back in the day, a 25-year-old into that circle and have sort of full confidence in what he was saying and really change his views, perhaps change the way he delivered a message, was truly unique to see.
00:10:11.000I don't think there was anyone else that he listened to that way.
00:10:16.000And maybe period, but certainly not age-adjusted.
00:10:22.000I always, when I knew Charlie was, perhaps I'd accomplished what I wanted, just to get him there was when we'd be in a random place and Charlie's calling and he's picking up on the first ring or 11 o'clock at night, 12 o'clock at night on something.
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00:12:38.000I was out here a couple days before the election with Charlie, one of the basically the last live political events I had done with him prior to the election.
00:12:48.000And even then, we almost had to cancel event because we got called in.
00:12:53.000Some lunatic was, I guess, threatening me.
00:13:00.000And I mean, we've had that so many times.
00:13:03.000I mean, Charlie understood there was a mark out there for either one of us.
00:13:08.000We said the things that needed to be said.
00:13:11.000We were willing to articulate things that may not have been popular, certainly not to the radical left, even though they really resonated with real Americans.
00:13:36.000I remember even in 16, I guess we were at Michigan State University, and it was the same thing.
00:13:43.000You've seen this a thousand times, right?
00:13:45.000You sell 5,000 tickets, the school gives you a room that can hold 1,000 because they don't want you to be able to get it out there.
00:13:50.000They don't want you to be able to speak.
00:13:52.000And then they have to make sure to let in all the radicals just to try to shut it down.
00:13:56.000I mean, it was an active attempt to thwart whatever it is that whatever movement was sort of building.
00:14:03.000And we got into a room, I think, probably 1,000, 1,500 people, and we're about to go on stage.
00:14:08.000And the Michigan State Police literally pulled us aside and said, hey, we can't stop you from going, but we also can't guarantee your safety.
00:14:26.000And we won over so much of the room that they just, it was one of the most energetic of the many college events that we had done together because there was that sort of lunacy from the left.
00:14:38.000And Charlie did such a good job of being able to talk to them.
00:14:58.000But we did such a good job of just swaying that tide that they basically drowned out all the hatred, all of this, and just frankly energized not just the people on our side, but the people in the middle who were saying, this is actually a really reasonable guy, and this actually makes a lot of sense.
00:15:16.000There's been a lot of speculation after Charlie's death, and you see this kind of some infighting.
00:15:24.000And I think people respect in a whole new way what Charlie was actually doing and kind of the glue.
00:15:31.000I take kind of a middle approach to it, that I think we saw some of these fissures coming on the horizon.
00:15:36.000Maybe it accelerated some of the disagreements.
00:15:58.000But I probably didn't fully appreciate just how fragile some of it actually is and how much he was able to hold that together or just put a stop to it.
00:16:10.000But the reality is Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro, Tucker, Megan, Candace, they're not the enemy.
00:16:19.000I think we have an enemy that's truly out to change the structure of our country.
00:17:10.000I think why we're able to get to things that make sense is by actually having that conversation and that dialogue.
00:17:17.000And I thought Charlie did that so well, not just within the movement, which I think we all probably recognize he was holding together or at least stopping perhaps some of the insanity from spreading, but by literally every day opening up one of the largest platforms in the world, whether it's his podcast, whether it was just being out there in public for social, to those who hated him most and giving them the opportunity to speak, giving them the mic.
00:17:46.000And when people heard both sides of that argument, they realized, oh, wait a second.
00:17:50.000I mean, it's why he was so effective on college campuses, which when he's like, hey, we've got a new college campus tour since 16, I was like, are you out of your mind?
00:18:02.000We'll get them when they're 30 and they start paying taxes.
00:18:06.000But he was able to do that and have those conversations.
00:18:09.000And again, once people heard both sides, then they could sort of pick a lane and run with it.
00:18:14.000And I think that was perhaps his biggest threat to the other side.
00:18:19.000Not that he was a radical, because Charlie was like the least radical guy I know.
00:18:23.000Not that he was a wild man because that too was not his thing.
00:18:27.000But his threat was that he was actually so effective at winning over and changing hearts and minds that he became much more of a target.
00:18:38.000Yeah, so one of the things that I think is really interesting about in the aftermath of Charlie's assassination is that we had Ali Bestucci here and her initial reaction was, I don't want to do this anymore.
00:19:42.000I guess perhaps I've been a little bit more grown accustomed to sort of the threats or the lawfare or the political persecution side of stuff, doing 50 hours of congressional testimony for treason.
00:19:53.000It's like, oh, it's a crime punishable but death.
00:19:55.000That's like my average Tuesday at this point.
00:20:19.000They want to turn us from the unsilent majority back to the silent majority.
00:20:26.000And you could see for the last few years, if those people with the persecutions, and I get it, when you lose your bank accounts and you lose your this and you're being investigated, it certainly, the natural tendency would be to run from some of that.
00:20:43.000But if you actually have these feelings and you want your children to grow up in a country that they recognize, you actually don't have a choice because as rough as it can be, I think the alternative is of just giving up and ceding this to the most radical factions of our country.
00:21:01.000I think the end result of that is far worse than any of this.
00:21:05.000And we've seen it can go very extreme.
00:21:08.000So I understand, I'm not being glib about that, but we don't have a choice, and we just have to keep going and do it.
00:21:18.000And actually, I've been grateful to your family for a long time, but in the aftermath of what happened with Charlie, that gratitude has reached new heights because I see it in three dimensions.
00:22:17.000If you don't have that platform, if you don't have that balance sheet to be able to fight back financially, if you don't have any of those things, I could see that being much more daunting to the average person.
00:22:27.000But again, I think they realize that if you don't fight now, there's no coming back.
00:22:32.000There's no coming back from a communist takeover.
00:22:35.000That's just degrees of bad at that point.
00:22:39.000And so I think you almost needed to see that because when I started this and I was a business guy from New York City and it was great and I used to get invited to the cool person parties and you're like, well, America, I realized pretty quickly that initially I was sort of fighting for the America I believed in and always thought existed.
00:23:02.000And this is just a little bit of something.
00:23:04.000And I realized fairly quickly, and I know Charlie and I had this conversation a lot.
00:23:08.000It's like, we weren't actually fighting to preserve an America that existed.
00:23:11.000We were fighting to create an America that should have existed, the idea of our founding fathers, the things that they wanted.
00:23:18.000That had been gone and bastardized for far too long.
00:23:21.000And so everyone has this notion of their country.
00:25:21.000As involved with my church and politics locally, words of encouragement for me as I'm not going to back down from evil as it rears its ugly head, especially in Illinois, people say that it's lost, but I want to fight the good fight and the battle there because it's my home as well.
00:27:03.000I think that local politics aspect has been something that's forgotten for so long, but frankly, it could be more important than even the bigger picture things that get all perhaps the glitz and the glam and the rallies.
00:27:18.000You have to be, as we were sort of talking about earlier, you have to essentially become unafraid.
00:27:23.000When you start talking, when you open up those doors to people, it's even, honestly, even when I was in New York, I mean, the amount of people that would come by, like, hey, great job, you know, sort of thumbs up under the coat.
00:27:32.000They don't want anyone else to see it.
00:27:34.000You start having these conversations with people, and they're like, oh, wait, I can actually do that.
00:27:38.000When they see you actually be able to fight through some of that stuff and come out on top, it changes the mindset.
00:27:47.000I mean, I talk about my father as being perhaps the most resilient man in the history of American politics.
00:27:52.000I mean, when he got into this thing, he had no chance of winning a primary.
00:28:10.000The walls were closing in three days ago when they released pictures, 95,000 pictures for Jeffrey Epstein.
00:28:15.000He's in like four of them, and they were all like public pictures at events with adults, but they black out the face to make it seem like it's there.
00:28:21.000And then, you know, now all of a sudden there's 4,000 pictures of Clinton behind the scenes with minors, and it's like, you know, but people will never even hear those things.
00:28:30.000You know, they'll never know about those things.
00:28:32.000It's what you guys are doing on this show, what perhaps I do on my podcast on Rumble.
00:28:36.000It's just like getting the information out that no one else is going to put out there.
00:28:39.000Once you start having these conversations and people realize that that stuff is going on, man, just opening that door for them to walk through a little bit.
00:28:47.000It's not easy to always be the leader, but when you do, so many people will follow.
00:28:51.000And when they start having that dialogue and they can do so respectfully, like Charlie did so well, you can really change the game.
00:28:58.000And so the biggest thing is just stay involved, get everyone involved.
00:29:19.000But I just want to say in answer to his question, so many other people, you don't have to get involved.
00:29:25.000We need people involved in the electoral process, but I asked someone on the left, a longtime Alaskan, who was the fish czar for Alaska for off-our waters internationally.
00:29:36.000And I said, if you were king for a day of Alaska, what would you do?
00:29:41.000Because he served under Governor Wally Hickel.
00:29:44.000And he said, if I were king for a day, I would stack boards and commissions.
00:29:49.000Every city, every state has boards and commissions for every subject under the sun.
00:29:55.000And you don't have to get elected for that.
00:29:57.000You just have to put your name in the hat.
00:30:01.000And if you stack boards and commissions, which is the ground level of entry to everything else, and it covers the subjects, you can be a voice that gains more voice.
00:30:12.000We did, I was on a board and a commission for federal overreach in Alaska, and it was amazing what we were able to accomplish.
00:30:19.000So I just encourage people, that's an entry-level way to get in.
00:30:25.000Thank you, Mr. Trump, for doing all you do.
00:30:29.000I heard something here at Turning Point USA that was very disturbing about Pastor's son in South Korea.
00:30:36.000He's been in prison for over 105 days for being a Christian and preaching the gospel.
00:30:43.000He rose up at mega church from a mud hut.
00:30:46.000And I think it would be awesome if you could maybe put some pressure or talk to your father about putting some pressure on South Korea to get him out of prison.
00:30:55.000I actually just heard about this, Bettina.
00:31:58.000Like you, I'm also from the People's Republic of New York as well.
00:32:03.000But putting that to the side, Charlie Kirk absolutely was and still is to this day my hero.
00:32:10.000And I was just wondering, what advice would you give to a person like me to help uphold the wonderful legacy that he left behind in terms of his pursuit of civil discourse and trying to bridge divides and reach out to people on the other side of the aisle?
00:32:27.000Just get out there and have the discourse.
00:32:32.000He wasn't used to doing that when we started in 1916.
00:33:46.000And so I grew up, all these leftist institutions taking over our schools.
00:33:52.000And I grew up as a young man where I was made to feel evil because of my identity, basically because I, you know, even though I hadn't done anything.
00:34:02.000And so my question for you is, you know, there are a lot of young men who are angry and frustrated and resentful because of the direction that the messaging has taken and the economy.
00:34:15.000And, you know, things are just very hard.
00:34:17.000And so do you have a message for these young men who are angry and struggling?
00:34:23.000I mean, I spoke about it a lot on social media this week.
00:34:26.000You saw sort of, you know, for the last 20 years, the implementation of DEI.
00:34:30.000I mean, if you were a young white male, especially, it's like, didn't matter if you were qualified to go to an Ivy League school, you weren't getting in.
00:34:38.000You know, there's literally a generation or two of men that are going to have a hard time ever achieving that full potential because they were essentially shut out of the workforce.
00:35:47.000When they control the media, when they controlled the narrative, when they controlled all of social and tech, it didn't matter that you're just bitter.
00:35:54.000And you should be, but that doesn't mean you should give up either.
00:35:58.000You just have to get back out there and do it in an unconventional way.
00:36:00.000And Charlie and the Trump family, you guys are great examples because a lot of people think Charlie was like created in a Petri dish by billionaire donors or something like this, the RNC.
00:36:11.000Nothing could be further from the truth.
00:36:28.000I'm trying to get you backstage, John.
00:36:30.000So we, you know, but Charlie basically had the door slammed in his face more times than it was opened for a long, long time.
00:36:38.000And he just was an entrepreneur about it.
00:36:41.000He was so disruptive and he worked so hard that eventually he just forced the door to break down in front of him.
00:36:48.000And you guys, you think about your father's presidential run, I mean, he had to, it was a hostile takeover.
00:36:55.000You had to force the way into the apparatus of the GOP.
00:37:00.000And so, whatever those barriers are, I mean, I just believe Charlie is the living embodiment of he was just so dogged and so determined that it wasn't gonna, he wasn't gonna be told no.
00:37:11.000And I think that's the perspective we have to have in this country.