Chris Bedford joins us to talk about why it's harder to remove Joe Biden than you might think. Also, the fight over pro-life at the Democratic National Convention. Jeff Webb joins the program as we talk about Joe Biden s quickly deteriorating mental state. Charlie Kirk is the Co-Founder of Turning Point USA, a powerful youth organization that fights for freedom and justice on college campuses across the country. He is also the President and Founder of the Center for American Progress, a pro-choice political action committee that campaigns for the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. He has been a long time friend of mine, and I think you'll agree that he's one of the most brilliant human beings I've ever met. He's also one of my favorite people to talk to, and he's a great friend to listen to, so it's no surprise that I brought him on The Charlie Kirk Show to talk all things Democratic presidential politics and what's going on in the Democratic primary race and why he thinks it's time for Joe Biden to step down from the ticket. If he doesn't decide to run for president in 2020, it's going to be a big problem for the Democrats. Chris Bedford is a senior politics editor at The Blaze and a regular contributor for The Blaze, and has been with me for years. . He's a super smart guy, so I thought he'd come on the show to give us his take on the Democratic presidential candidates and their chances of beating Hillary Clinton in 2020. and why it would be a good idea to get Joe Biden out of the race. And he's not only to run against Hillary Clinton. What do you think of Joe Biden's chances of being the Democratic nominee? If Joe Biden decides to leave the race, what would you think? What would you would you do if he decides to run in 2020? And what s your thoughts on what s going to happen if he does decide to quit the race? or if he s tired of running for president? and what s the best person to replace him? Join the conversation on the ticket? Subscribe to our new podcast, and what do you'd like to see Joe Biden do in 2020 and who s running against Hillary and what would he s running for him in 2020 and who would you ditching him in the primary? Thank you for listening to this episode of The Charlie Kirch Show? Charlie, Charlie,
00:00:52.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:58.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:11.000Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
00:01:20.000Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.
00:02:16.000He wasn't the activist's first choice.
00:02:18.000But they had to square the fact that, well, he's an old white guy, and they've been running against them for years.
00:02:23.000Then they had to add Amala Harris to that.
00:02:26.000And he ended up with a campaign that Wasn't anyone's first choice, but they decided they could run it against Donald Trump.
00:02:31.000Now they're, after four years of running from the reality of obvious cognitive decline by their candidate, they finally had to acknowledge after the debate that this was something that could not be hidden anymore.
00:02:42.000And there's a panic, and they're running for fantasy yet again, except this time it's going to be a whole lot more complicated.
00:02:48.000You hear people like Michelle Obama floated, or Hillary Clinton, or Gavin Newsom, or Whitmer out in Michigan.
00:02:55.000These candidates can't simply be swapped in, and there's a couple things that are holding them back.
00:03:03.000They have a lot of folks in that campaign that all their access to power, all their access to influence, all their access to money, It's based on defending Joe Biden.
00:03:12.000Two, the federal election finances, there are actually rules on this.
00:03:19.000The money that's been raised for Joe Biden can't simply be given out to other campaigns.
00:03:28.000So what Democrats are actually going to be faced with, and we're starting to start to see break today from James Clyburn and others, influential Democrats in the House, is that Kamala Harris is the only other choice, aside from Joe Biden, that at least wouldn't completely torpedo the Democrats' media strategy and campaign buying strategy.
00:03:47.000Yeah, so I want to play this tape again.
00:03:48.000We played it before, and it's worth repeating.
00:03:51.000It's James Clyburn, and you mentioned it.
00:03:53.000It's cut 64, where he says, well, you know, it's for Joe or for Kamala.
00:04:15.000How would you feel if there is a decision for him to step down, if he decides that, and he has to decide that, or if the party pressures him to do that?
00:04:25.000How would you feel if they worked around and tried to go around Kamala Harris because of her lack of high poll numbers and popularity and broadly based?
00:04:35.000Do you think it's hers to have if it is not his?
00:04:37.000I will support her if he were to step aside.
00:04:43.000But I want to support her going forward at some time in the future.
00:04:48.000I want this ticket to continue to be Biden-Harris, and then we'll see what happens after the next election.
00:04:56.000No, this party should not in any way do anything to work around Ms.
00:05:16.000Clyburn's important in this situation.
00:05:18.000He's the reason that Joe Biden was probably the Democratic nominee and is now the president in the first place.
00:05:24.000People who went down, including myself, right as COVID was starting to hit and shut things down, went down to South Carolina for the primary, were wondering if this was going to be the last stop on the road for Joe Biden.
00:05:42.000Now, of course, Joe Biden is governed as radical as anyone on that stage would have ended up promising to, but he's the reason that Joe Biden ended up getting that win and then going to Super Tuesday and hitting it out of the park for the Democrats after that.
00:05:55.000So his voice carries a lot of power in this.
00:05:59.000And it also shows that there's been a lot of kind of tinkling around the edges and people talking about, well, could we skip this black woman over?
00:06:06.000Could we skip this South Asian woman over with all the race politics that they put at the center of the Democratic Party?
00:06:13.000And they've been kind of hoping that maybe they could because Even though Joe Biden might be a gently alive corpse, Pamela Harris is probably one of the least popular people in the country next to Mitch McConnell.
00:06:24.000Her appearance at the Black Entertainment Television Awards this week was a disaster.
00:06:29.000She doesn't actually connect with Black voters in any way.
00:06:32.000When Gavin Newsom was in trouble and facing a recall in California, they didn't even ask her to come back and campaign for him in California.
00:06:42.000But James Clyburn coming out and saying he's going to support her, well, that is also a warning shot to Democrats who might want to put Gavin Newsom or some other white person at the top of this ticket, that they can't so easily slip over Kamala.
00:06:54.000Yeah, so Christopher, I want to reiterate that.
00:06:59.000If they switch it out, in fact, there are certain demographics where Democrats will do far worse with, for example, older voters and white working class voters, if Kamala Harris actually ends up being the nominee.
00:07:12.000I wonder how well she even really connects with the Black population that she's supposedly supposed to be a mascot for.
00:07:17.000If you see her campaign ad she cut at the BET Awards, she's sitting there and she's talking in this street parlance which she got completely mocked for because it's not at all how she talks in real life.
00:07:32.000But she's not talking about issues that affect Black grandmothers or black mothers or black children or people who are dealing with these different issues here in Washington, D.C., where I live, where there's a huge problem of absent fathers, there's a huge problem with drugs, there's huge problems with crime, there's problems with jobs.
00:07:48.000She was out there instead talking about basically white college professor garbage, whether it's transgenderism or the most recent access to the pill and things like that.
00:07:59.000Those aren't the issues that are actually impacting the Black community at the same level, but she's not a really great candidate to go out there and reach out to them.
00:08:07.000Now, CNN's got a poll out right now where they're claiming that she would actually be the best person, even better than Joe Biden, but I don't think the Democratic Party is quick to believe that.
00:08:17.000Yeah, and there are a lot of elements that go into this.
00:08:20.000So if they were to switch it out, if they were to say, Kamala, you're the one, she doesn't become president.
00:08:27.000So she's running for president as vice president.
00:08:30.000So Joe Biden would effectively finish out his term.
00:08:33.000They'd have to figure out a vice president.
00:08:36.000But all this comes back to Joe Biden has to relinquish his delegates, doesn't he?
00:08:47.000Republican delegates are largely, except for the superdelegates, committed based on how their states voted.
00:08:53.000Democrats, as I understand the convention, is a lot more freewheeling.
00:08:56.000At the end of the day, you still really would need Joe Biden's blessing on this whole thing or you risk just a massive civil war walking right into the election.
00:09:05.000And the Democrats here, their point is not to get rid of Joe Biden.
00:09:09.000I don't think they've ever really cared that much about Joe Biden or to put Kamala Harris in president.
00:09:14.000Point for them is to defeat Donald Trump.
00:09:17.000So a Democrat civil war at the top would be a disaster.
00:09:20.000And if they try to get him to step down, maybe even within the next week himself as the presidential nominee before this convention and put Kamala Harris up there, well, you're going to start to see Republicans start clamoring and saying, well, if Joe Biden is not mentally fit to run for president, then how is he mentally fit to be president?
00:09:39.000And they're going to try and push Kamala Harris to invoke the 25th amendment and actually take his place.
00:09:44.000No, I don't think she's ever actually going to do that.
00:09:47.000But this sort of floor fight would force Democrat after Democrat to come to the floor of the House and the Senate and talk about how the person who they don't think is capable of even running for president should still have the nuclear codes.
00:09:59.000And I also think that if that happens, we won't see that much of Joe Biden going forward.
00:10:04.000If he's not running for reelection in the end, his White House days of even a lot of public ceremonies will probably draw to a close.
00:10:11.000Christopher, fill us in on the coming convention.
00:10:19.000I was just looking at my calendar, trying to plan out the month, and I realized, holy smokes, I'm leaving just a week from Sunday.
00:10:25.000But a lot of folks are getting in there early, and those are the folks who are going to be hammering out what the party's platform is.
00:10:32.000The Republican Party hasn't had a platform change in eight years.
00:10:35.000Usually you kind of want to update it from time to time.
00:10:37.000For example, the 2016 platform has a whole lot in it about how they don't like Barack Obama.
00:10:43.000That's not really that important when you're running in 2020, but they use the excuse of COVID to say, and the lack of a convention to say, we're just not going to do party platform this time around.
00:10:53.000But in 2024, we're in for some changes, actually some really dangerous changes.
00:10:59.000There is a push coming from the Trump campaign in particular, To try and get the pro-life language in the platform out.
00:11:06.000Now the 2016 platform was about as bold as any Republican platform that has ever been on the pro-life issue.
00:11:13.000But in the years since, despite being a historic president for getting some of the, for example, for helping to repeal Roe v. Wade, The relationship between Trump and a lot of the pro-life groups is really sour.
00:11:26.000And he says that they weren't there to back him up, and he blames them for some of the election losses that he had.
00:11:31.000He's really walked kind of a careful line these past couple of months.
00:11:35.000I think one that's not really angered too many people, it's allowed his pro-life supporters to really stay on.
00:11:41.000But in the convention, the strong rumor going through the panic phone calls and text messages I've been getting, is that there's going to be a move to really simplify The platform and in the process, potentially take that out entirely.
00:11:54.000And maybe in a better case, just water it down.
00:11:59.000What do you think is a way to try to make sure we are still clearly in the, um, I'm a hundred percent pro-life that, that there's a pro-life declarative statement in the platform committee.
00:12:11.000What would success look like in that regard, in your opinion?
00:12:14.000I think you need to make some noise here.
00:12:16.000Now remember, Ronald Reagan made fun of the party platforms.
00:12:20.000It's something that not a lot of people read, and he's generally right.
00:12:23.000But the platform serves a couple of important notices.
00:12:26.000For example, perches, which aren't legally allowed to talk about politics, of course some of them do anyways, aren't actually allowed to endorse candidates.
00:12:35.000They are allowed within the IRS rules to talk about party platforms.
00:12:40.000The moral majority really made a lot of hay out of this, where even with their nonprofit status over the years, they would just send out snippets of the Democratic Party platform next to snippets of the Republican Party platform and let them speak for themselves as a way to really influence voters.
00:12:54.000I mean, right now, Donald Trump has a Republican Party that is completely unified behind him.
00:12:59.000The Never Trumpers have either come around or are gone.
00:13:02.000There's very, very few people who are intending to stay home, and that's shown in the polls.
00:13:06.000If you read the morning newsletters coming out of DC, there's panic amongst the Democrats over just trying to send their money, even just triage, to the House of Representatives and maybe give up on holding the Senate for the Democratic Party.
00:13:19.000So that makes no sense for the Republican Party to want to actually divide some of the activist base here.
00:13:25.000And while I do think there are a lot of folks who would end up coming around and voting for Donald Trump on this, he would tick off a huge amount of his activists.
00:13:33.000There are definitely people Who would stay home if he ended up doing this?
00:13:37.000And at the end of the day, it's also not going to bring Democrats over.
00:13:41.000Nothing's going to stop Kamala Harris or Joe Biden or whoever the nominee ends up being from running ads saying that Donald Trump wants to take away the pill and take away condoms, take away contraception, stop abortion.
00:13:56.000I think the best way to kind of make some, to change this is to make a lot of noise about it.
00:14:01.000Usually, Thanks to the efforts of the late Phyllis Schlafly, there's been press and media in these rules and platform hearings.
00:14:09.000This year, there's a rumor that it's going to be closed.
00:14:12.000Tony Perkins is trying to do everything he can to make it open again, but once those doors get closed, if there's no pressure from media, no pressure from activists, no visibility, well, that's where the kind of swampy things happen, like your movie in pro-life.
00:14:25.000So, I mean, do you think it's conceivable that pro-life is removed completely?
00:14:30.000I would find that hard to believe that that would end up happening.
00:14:34.000I think the most likely at this point is it's watered down.
00:14:37.000Maybe it's changed from an overtly pro-life platform to one that is critical of the Democrat stance on Late term abortion or something like that.
00:14:47.000That's kind of where a lot of folks, some of the new folks, newer folks with the MAGA movement, maybe outside of more social conservative traditionalists, do want to take it.
00:14:56.000And it's a danger very, very much politically for the pro-life movement.
00:15:00.000So if they were capable of stripping this and they were able to do it, then they, and right now they have the votes.
00:15:06.000La Civita has talked about how he's basically got control over two thirds to three quarters of the delegates who are going to be actually voting on this.
00:15:14.000They're going to do whatever the president really says.
00:15:16.000The RNC hasn't got their finger on this.
00:15:20.000If he were to strip it and he were to win, then a lot of other candidates that may have come up on his coattails are going to see that and probably try to follow it.
00:15:28.000It's going to be a pretty big danger to social conservatives, but there still are 20 to 30 delegates right now who are quietly talking about how they want to push back and maybe just get watered down language and just keep a foothold.
00:15:45.000We had last month saving babies with preborn by providing ultrasounds.
00:15:49.000And we're doing again this year what we did last year.
00:15:51.000We're going to stand for life because remaining silent in the face of the most radically pro-death administration is not an option.
00:15:56.000As Sir Edmund Burke said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, and we're not going to do nothing.
00:16:02.000Your gift to preborn will give a girl the truth about what's happening in her body so that she can make the right choice.
00:16:39.000Go to charliekirk.com and click on the Preborn Banner.
00:16:44.000Hunter Biden has joined meetings with President Biden and his top aides this week at the White House.
00:16:48.000For people familiar with the matter, tell my colleagues who are told the reaction from some senior White House staff is, quote, what the hell is happening?
00:16:57.000Just one quick note before I get to Jeff here.
00:17:00.000Have you noticed that there's been no reporting of the Biden White House for four years?
00:17:03.000And now we're learning who's in meetings and who's moving around the place.
00:17:58.000Yeah, and it was interesting to see, I mean, like, you know, Dana Bash was, she followed up a couple times, but generally they didn't interject too much.
00:18:06.000It wasn't like Chris Wallace, who just tried to dominate the entire debate.
00:18:10.000And so your reaction post-debate here, Jeff, on the political dynamics and President Trump's performance, and I want to play some of the tape actually from the debate.
00:18:19.000Yeah, well, I thought that, first of all, I think President Trump did a very good job.
00:18:25.000He was relaxed, very much in tune with the issues.
00:18:31.000He had a good knowledge base, communicated well.
00:19:59.000If you were paying attention, Jeff, you and I have talked about this for quite some time, and Human Events has done such a great job of covering this, is the mental decline.
00:20:06.000I mean, I've dealt with family members that have had Some form of mental slip or dementia or Alzheimer's or a mixture of both.
00:20:13.000It is a sad thing and it accelerates very quickly by the way.
00:20:17.000Months can be years with this disease and the sickness.
00:22:29.000It's accelerating at such a rate that it's it's impossible for anybody to ignore it.
00:22:34.000It's there and it's not going to get any better and apparently it's beyond being even improved by drugs because that didn't look like that was apparent the other day either.
00:22:49.000Alright, I need to tell you guys about StrongCell.
00:25:52.000Does anybody believe now that in those small meetings, cabinet meetings, private meetings, that you had a person who was completely different?
00:26:03.000You could also, by putting those clips together, you could hear the talking points.
00:26:07.000Sharp seemed to be the word that everybody was being encouraged to use.
00:26:13.000But yeah, I don't know how they walk that back.
00:26:15.000I mean, it's just, It's too fresh on everybody's mind that how people were covering for him is, you know, the members of his party, but also the media, the same thing.
00:26:27.000So it's, but it can't be hidden anymore.
00:26:48.000People don't want someone in this position that has this kind of impairment.
00:26:54.000And there's another component of this, which is very important.
00:26:58.000If they're going to pull Joe Biden for Kamala Harris, we must remind people Kamala Harris has been a terrible vice president overseeing the border, overseeing, and then of course Kamala Harris and Tony Blinken were involved in the Ukrainian stuff.
00:27:12.000Do not forget that Kamala Harris was dispatched.
00:27:15.000To the Munich Security Conference before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and she said Ukraine is a potential candidate to join NATO.
00:27:24.000Kamala Harris is just as much to blame for the bloodshed in Ukraine as Joe Biden.
00:27:45.000Well, I think, you know, I've discussed Ukraine a number of times, the sort of thing you've got to be very careful about, you know, commenting on.
00:27:53.000But I think that if you really look into it and believe that we have something, we have some fault, some liability in, I think, being too aggressive to the Russians.
00:28:09.000And if they needed an excuse for this to be a matter of defense, she certainly gave it to them.
00:28:15.000I mean, to have NATO not close to your border, but on your border, I think it gave Putin the perfect excuse to go in.
00:28:25.000But I do think that... I mean, Putin is to blame for the invasion.
00:29:41.000You folks home will have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning.
00:29:44.000What I would say is I'm going to shut down the virus, not the country.
00:29:48.000It's his ineptitude that caused the country to have to shut down in large part.
00:29:53.000Health care, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, Thank you, President Biden.
00:30:21.000Jeff, your reaction to that remarkable tape?
00:30:24.000Well, again, you said it, the acceleration.
00:30:28.000That last, that very last clip is, I think it's difficult to watch for anybody and how you, how you can't look at that, see someone who really, who has lost a lot, who's unable to sort things out and speak clearly and have clarity of thought and People are too focused on what that's going to mean for the election.
00:30:51.000People should really be focused on what happens, as they say, when that phone rings at 3 a.m.
00:30:57.000and there's some kind of geopolitical crisis and he has to make the decision.
00:31:02.000We should all be very, very concerned about that and I think the people around him Not at all.
00:31:08.000Jeff, in closing here, we're running out of time.