00:00:12.000So if you'd like to support the Charlie Kirk show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:00:16.000That is charliekirk.com/slash support and get involved with Turning Point USA Today and start a high school or college chapter at tpusa.com.
00:00:25.000The great Greg Gutfeld and I have a couple laughs live in front of thousands of students at our Turning Point USA Student Action Summit.
00:00:46.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:55.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:24.000You rarely see this kind of focus and commitment.
00:01:26.000They recently shared with me that they are doubling down and want to literally double their total number of happy customers in the next year.
00:01:33.000So here's the deal: if you're struggling with back pain, neck pain, shoulder, hip, or knee pain, even general muscle aches and pain, then I'm suggesting you order their three-week quick start, still discounted, only $19.95.
00:02:08.000Yeah, I think it started April 2021, right?
00:02:11.000Yeah, so it's a year and three months.
00:02:12.000And it was a little bit of a risk that Fox took, but you are just slaughtering your competition.
00:02:20.000And it's been weird because, you know, we waited for the right time to do it, and it just made sense.
00:02:27.000Like, I pretty much knew this was going to happen, but I couldn't say it.
00:02:31.000And so did Suzanne Scott, who's the CEO.
00:02:35.000We were talking about it, and we're going like, it just makes sense because when you see a hole and you just know you can fill it, it's like, it's like it was right there in front of us.
00:02:43.000So, you know, and the best, I got to tell you.
00:02:47.000So I had Adam Carolla on a couple of days ago, and then I did his podcast.
00:02:52.000And we were talking about how you know when something is successful in Hollywood, they don't talk about it because it is so damaging to their psyche.
00:03:04.000So he goes like, he goes, they pretend that my show doesn't exist because if it, because they just, it's like they can't look in the mirror and see their own failure because that's what my show is.
00:03:15.000My show reminds them of their failure.
00:03:18.000It's a 60-minute reminder of how irrelevant they've become.
00:03:21.000And so, Greg, but I think it actually, we can go a little deeper here.
00:03:24.000What is instructive about the success of your program that could be applied in just fighting against a lot of this boring and banal and overly radical commentary happening on television?
00:03:36.000Well, I think it helps to be funny and don't take yourself too seriously.
00:03:44.000I think that maybe, you know, 70% of the content in my show is ridicule and sarcasm directed at me.
00:03:54.000And the best fun that we have on that show is when Tyrus and Kat turn on me or the get they're great or guests so it doesn't look like you don't want to end I think we're past that that that cable stereotype of the angry right-winger.
00:04:11.000You know, you need to tell those people to go home.
00:04:39.000And that's how they portrayed in all movies, Republicans and conservatives, the evil dean and the animal house was wild.
00:04:46.000So about 20 years ago, I wrote an article called the Dean Wormer effect, which my desire was to flip it so that the conservative becomes the animal house and the left becomes Dean Wormer.
00:08:38.000Meanwhile, it's hard for places like my show to get talent because they know they're going to get blacklisted.
00:08:48.000This happens, like I, now comedians are finally coming on to do my show, but they like, let's say a comedian is going to do a show.
00:08:57.000His, you know, his other comedian friends or agents, he may not end up, he may not be able to do Fallon now or Kimmel because he went and did Gutfell.
00:09:06.000Now that's changed mainly with the podcast environment.
00:09:08.000You can go and do Rogan, you can do anything, but you'll see that there's fewer of those comedians on those shows.
00:09:14.000In fact, I know, like, take somebody like Jamie Lissow, who's on my show, amazing guy, selling out places.
00:12:10.000So that's a delusion that is being fed by cowards who they don't know.
00:12:19.000I think they are scared of the snake eating them, right?
00:12:23.000The snake of wokeism will turn on itself.
00:12:26.000And people in HR actually might be protected by sending out empathetic emails telling you what this special day is.
00:12:34.000And we're going to be doing this for these people and this for those people.
00:12:38.000And we're going to slice everybody up, you know, like a pie of identity.
00:12:43.000And they think that's going to save them.
00:12:45.000And one of the things that I think some conservatives got wrong, and I certainly underestimated this, was that there were going to be limits that somehow they would say, okay, we've gone too far.
00:12:55.000So for example, the Oregon government, the Oregon Health Department recently, the health department, they were going to have an urgent meeting about monkeypox and about BA.5.
00:13:07.000Did you see, you probably saw this story.
00:13:09.000And they sent out an email saying, we're very sorry.
00:13:12.000We need to delay this meeting because urgency is a white supremacist value.
00:13:22.000And it is the most insulting thing to blacks to say, you know, and it indulges the racist stereotype that certain groups of people are lazy.
00:13:33.000It's like they don't take time seriously.
00:14:53.000But you know what's interesting going back to the left, what's happening to the left, as the Babylon Bee gets funnier and funnier, what's less funny?
00:17:20.000But to kind of continue on this theme, and then I want to get a little bit practical because nothing is as difficult as what we're actually saying, which is, hey, you, go be funny against the left.
00:17:31.000Because they, well, how do I be funny?
00:17:33.000And so in some ways, it actually happens upon itself.
00:17:36.000Mockery and ridicule becomes very easy when they present it.
00:17:40.000But when we look at kind of this mission, which is to defeat wokeism, which I agree, that is Greenwald, that is Rubin, and that is all these really smart people that are now talking about it.
00:17:49.000How do we actually go about doing that?
00:17:51.000Well, I think that, I mean, obviously, you got to do your homework.
00:17:55.000I mean, there are people that are just naturally funny.
00:18:22.000I mean, I remember when I was 25, like I had a, I could barely write advertising copy because I just didn't, I didn't like have the confidence.
00:18:32.000But once you just start writing and you start sharing it, even if it's, you can, there's so many places to share stuff now that you have, you can, you can get good in the middle of the night.
00:20:38.000Now, I'm not talking about a diary where you go, I woke up and I thought about, you know, whatever.
00:20:42.000It is like, you know, seeing an idea or a story, writing down your thoughts, and just all of a sudden you're going to have a book.
00:20:49.000But you have, if you see something as a mountain or a 300 or 250-page book, you're going to get nowhere.
00:20:56.000You start out and you take those little steps.
00:20:58.000You move the arm, you stand up, you put on your clothes.
00:21:02.000It's kind of like the Jordan Peterson thing, you know, make you make your bed, right?
00:21:06.000And so, Greg, you actually touched on something.
00:21:09.000A lot of people here are ambassadors, social media influencers, but I think writing is becoming a lost art.
00:21:15.000Talk about how writing for you was so important.
00:21:18.000Obviously, it's how you got your start, but it seems like a lot of people want to be in front of the camera.
00:21:22.000But writing has a, it's a, it works a totally different part of the brain.
00:21:26.000And in fact, it helps all the other communication skills.
00:21:29.000People, okay, I could go on forever on this one.
00:21:31.000So, but at the end, the reason why I have so many notes is because it exercises the parts of the brain that you're using your manual dexterity, you're actually doing something physical while you're doing something mental.
00:21:48.000When you put those things together, it actually makes the thought stronger and you're better at projecting it.
00:21:56.000The best people on television are great writers.
00:24:15.000In fact, I make, it's one of the things that we talked, like, I make jokes on Fox about, you know, how much gold you have in your safe, William Devane.
00:24:24.000Make fun of hello, what's my little pillow?
00:25:20.000So, but this is, we hire a lot of people, and the skill that is hardest for us to find are people that have done the work to refine their writing.
00:25:28.000And now, there are people that are naturally good writers.
00:27:03.000So when it comes to, then some jokes are added, and then it's like 10 minutes, and I get in, and then I just sit there, and I must go, I must do 100 edits, like I mean, 100 reads, just like this.
00:27:34.000That's how weird I get because I think really, you wanted to get it as small and as tight as possible because then you're going to get more eyeballs.
00:28:22.000Like, there's a one of my mentors, Mark Bricklin, he was the editor-in-chief of Prevention Magazine and created Men's Health Magazine where I was editor in the late 90s.
00:28:38.000And he had a thing called the hotspot, which meant that in every paragraph in your article, when you're reading it, there has to be something that goes, the reader goes, whoa, I didn't know that.
00:28:52.000Could be a weird statistic, just an unusual fact, something funny.
00:28:59.000But if you read it, so the point being, it's an editing technique.
00:29:04.000If you're reading a paragraph and there's no hotspot in it, it's not so much that you have to add one.
00:29:40.000So, so, Greg, were you always a good writer?
00:29:43.000I think that I was very, I was very creative.
00:29:46.000And yes, I guess I was, but I wasn't, I was a writer, but I wasn't a good writer until I gained confidence.
00:29:57.000So, writing is creativity plus confidence.
00:29:59.000The reason I ask, and I just want to hammer this home: if you're looking for what you want to do in life, if you are able to be an above-average writer, it is a universal skill.
00:30:07.000Even if you work in an HR department, you have to be able to list off people's pronouns and have the hotspot in the paragraph and your disclaimer in the email.
00:30:16.000The point is, no matter what you do in life, writing will help you.
00:30:19.000Also, and let's say you are a great writer.
00:30:22.000Let's say somebody in here is an amazing writer.
00:37:14.000So super quick, audience of students, 5,000 students across the country, just advice to young people, you know, not just career advice, life advice.
00:37:30.000You asked me a question last year, which I thought I answered fairly well, but I always now include it wherever I go.
00:37:38.000Somebody asked, how do I deal with being outnumbered on campus?
00:37:43.000Like when I have ideas and I'm in a classroom situation and they're like either mocking me or they're not taking me seriously or they say this, you don't really believe that, do you?