The Charlie Kirk Show - Why We Can't Abandon America's Cities

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

00:00:04.000 Alex Marlow joins us about the federalization of DC.

00:00:07.000 Rick Scott about Mom Dani and how we flip blue cities to red and so much more.

00:00:11.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:13.000 Subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page.

00:00:15.000 That is the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page.

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00:00:21.000 That is tpusa.com.

00:00:23.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:24.000 Here we go.

00:00:25.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:27.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.

00:00:29.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:32.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:36.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:37.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:38.000 His spirit, his love of this country.

00:00:40.000 He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

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00:00:46.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:00:55.000 That's why we are here.

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00:01:23.000 I want to welcome a great man, Senator Rick Scott, to the program from the great state of Florida.

00:01:29.000 Senator, great to see you.

00:01:30.000 Senator, I want to get your response to Zoron Momdani.

00:01:34.000 I'm going to play Cut 270.

00:01:36.000 He is vowing to be Donald Trump's worst nightmare as President Trump weighs in working with rival in New York City mayor's race.

00:01:43.000 Let's play Cut 270 first.

00:01:46.000 My administration would be Donald Trump's worst nightmare.

00:01:50.000 And you don't need to take me at my word or take Andrew Cuomo at his.

00:01:55.000 You need to only look at the actions of the Trump administration since I won the Democratic primary.

00:02:01.000 How else can you describe a president who has proposed denaturalizing the Democratic nominee of New York City?

00:02:10.000 How else can you describe a president who has sought to entertain suggestions of deporting me, of arresting me, of taking control of the city over the will of New Yorkers?

00:02:21.000 Those are the actions of a president who is afraid of the fact that I will actually deliver in a manner where he is simply betrayed.

00:02:29.000 Joining us is Senator Rick Scott.

00:02:30.000 Senator, your response to Mr. Momdani's obsession with Donald Trump.

00:02:35.000 Well, what President Trump is doing is he's deciding he cares about this country.

00:02:39.000 So look at Mondami.

00:02:40.000 I mean, here's a kid that has funny money and he's running like he cares about people.

00:02:45.000 I heard the you know, did you hear the rumor that the first action he's going to take if he wins is to change the name of New York to New Havana?

00:02:52.000 Because that's exactly what's going to happen.

00:02:55.000 He says he wants to run grocery stores.

00:02:56.000 He should go look at the grocery stores in Havana.

00:02:59.000 They're empty of groceries.

00:03:02.000 They're empty of groceries.

00:03:03.000 He probably wants to bring in the healthcare system from Havana.

00:03:06.000 It means you don't get health care.

00:03:07.000 Oh, except if you're the elite, if you're part of the cash regime, it's just like all these places have socialism.

00:03:15.000 The elite get it.

00:03:17.000 They get everything.

00:03:18.000 And by the way, how do they keep their power?

00:03:20.000 They put people in prison.

00:03:21.000 Go ahead and ask Jose Danielle Ferrero and about 1,400 peaceful protesters.

00:03:27.000 Three years ago, they peacefully protest and they're all imprisoned, maybe for the rest of your life, as young as 14 years old.

00:03:35.000 So if Mondrami wins, it's New Havana.

00:03:40.000 No groceries, no healthcare.

00:03:42.000 You say the wrong thing, they're going to go after you.

00:03:45.000 And so the sinister nature of this is so many New Yorkers seem to want to support this.

00:03:52.000 And in some ways, Florida is to blame because the patriotic New Yorkers are moving to Florida.

00:03:57.000 Therefore, you're left with a remnant of communist, Marxist, Islamist, Mohammedan voters in the city of New York. 0.76

00:04:06.000 We must fight for our blue cities.

00:04:08.000 It's very tempting to say, oh, forget our blue cities.

00:04:11.000 This is kind of ties in with the federalization of Washington, D.C., which I want to get your comment on in a second.

00:04:16.000 But can you just reiterate why we should not surrender and retreat away from our biggest blue cities?

00:04:25.000 We have to.

00:04:26.000 We have to go into every neighborhood and talk to every citizen And every voter and explain why we are better for them.

00:04:33.000 We are better for you.

00:04:34.000 I grew up in public housing.

00:04:36.000 I know what it's like to live in public housing.

00:04:38.000 It's better under capitalism than it is under socialism.

00:04:42.000 Give me the chance.

00:04:43.000 The dream of this country, the idea of America is that you can start from anywhere and live the dream.

00:04:49.000 You don't share the wealth by people taking away wealth.

00:04:53.000 You share the wealth by giving people opportunity.

00:04:56.000 But we have to go in and talk to people.

00:04:58.000 I went to Harvard about two or three months ago and talked to the students.

00:05:01.000 They agree when you sit down with them and say, say, do you believe that you want people to get free everything and not have to work?

00:05:09.000 No, you're going to have to pay for it.

00:05:12.000 How's that good for this country?

00:05:13.000 So I think we can go win the, we've been able to do it in Florida.

00:05:17.000 Think what happened in Florida.

00:05:18.000 In 2010, when I won the governor's race, there are 569,000 more Ds than R's. 0.97

00:05:23.000 And now there's 1.3 million more R's and D's.

00:05:25.000 What happened is we elected people that ran and said, We're going to take care of you, your job, your kids' education, public safety.

00:05:34.000 So if we, if Republicans go talk about those things and actually do those things, we will win blue cities.

00:05:40.000 We've been able to do it around Florida.

00:05:42.000 We'll be able to do it all across the country.

00:05:44.000 And if nothing else, you are not a nation if you just surrender your biggest cities.

00:05:49.000 You're nothing more than just dominating the outskirts.

00:05:52.000 And by the way, no, we care about exactly.

00:05:56.000 But can you also talk about the success of Miami?

00:05:59.000 15 years ago, Miami was kind of written off as a permanently blue city.

00:06:05.000 It was wildly corrupt.

00:06:08.000 Look, Miami has a lot of problems, but it's in a far better place, a far safer direction, a far more prosperous direction, a far more livable direction.

00:06:17.000 Because you and Florida, Senator, you guys went all in and you guys reached out to the Venezuelan community, the Cuban community, but also you had a pro-freedom agenda.

00:06:27.000 20 years ago, Miami-Dade was the blue stronghold of the American Southeast, and now it is a Republican county.

00:06:36.000 What can we learn from the Miami takeover or switch, I should say, and apply it to other blue cities?

00:06:42.000 Go up.

00:06:43.000 In 2010, when I ran, okay, Republicans have basically given up on Miami.

00:06:49.000 And I didn't.

00:06:50.000 I spent week after week after week talking to everybody in Miami about what I wanted to accomplish, how I wanted to get them a job, improve their kids' education, make sure they were safe.

00:06:59.000 And we went from losing Miami bid to in the 2020-24 cycle, we were able to win by 10 points.

00:07:08.000 And we have our new sheriff as Republican, the supervisor election Republican.

00:07:13.000 I mean, all of our constitutional officers at the county level are all Republicans now because we went all in for what we believe in.

00:07:20.000 So this is all doable all across the country.

00:07:23.000 Have the right message, the right candidates, and show up and talk to people.

00:07:27.000 They agree with this all across this country.

00:07:30.000 People agree with us.

00:07:31.000 They don't want socialism.

00:07:33.000 They don't, they take Miami.

00:07:35.000 People left these places to get away from socialism.

00:07:37.000 They want opportunity.

00:07:38.000 Give me my shot.

00:07:40.000 Give me my chance to live the dream.

00:07:41.000 That's what they want.

00:07:43.000 And it's, again, the transformation of Miami-Dade County.

00:07:46.000 I remember as it was happening, James Carville was freaking out, as he should, because it changed the entire dynamics of the state of Florida.

00:07:55.000 And so we now look at New York, we look at D.C. I do want to get your comments on this, Senator.

00:07:59.000 President Donald Trump has now invoked the home rule designation.

00:08:04.000 He is federalizing Washington, D.C. And quote, we will bring the military if needed.

00:08:10.000 What is, I mean, you spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C. Is D.C. safe?

00:08:14.000 Number one.

00:08:15.000 And then, number two, do you support this move by President Trump?

00:08:19.000 Well, first off, D.C. is not safe.

00:08:22.000 People don't just walk the streets in D.C. and feel safe anywhere around D.C. I mean, I've got to be careful in what I do, but we've got people in my office that are very careful about where they go.

00:08:32.000 So this is great what Donald Trump is doing.

00:08:35.000 I'm on a bill with Mike Lee that we would, that Congress would take this back.

00:08:40.000 So the prison is doing what Congress should be doing.

00:08:43.000 We should be taking this back.

00:08:44.000 So I'm very thankful.

00:08:45.000 Guess what?

00:08:46.000 This is going to be a place where I can tell my grandkids, hey, you want to come here and enjoy this city now.

00:08:51.000 Before I would have to say, oh, you can come here, but you got to be very careful.

00:08:55.000 You can't be out after dark.

00:08:57.000 You can't go.

00:08:57.000 You got to be careful going to a restaurant or anything after Dark.

00:09:00.000 So, this he's going to change dramatically, D.C. It's going to be great.

00:09:04.000 It is a symbol of national decline and a mockery that our nation's capital is more dangerous than Bogota, Mexico City, Islamabad. 0.96

00:09:17.000 Washington, D.C. is more dangerous than Mexico City, Bogota, Islamabad, Lima.

00:09:22.000 I mean, it is a disaster.

00:09:26.000 And I think we should give Washington, D.C. to Maryland for a very important reason.

00:09:30.000 It takes off the 51st state conversation, except for the national monuments.

00:09:36.000 I want to dive more into this, but for no other reason than if you do not have control over your nation's capital, you are not a nation.

00:09:45.000 And you have almost every day, you have young, innocent people that are mugged, carjackings, crime.

00:09:53.000 It is an outrageous testament to the failure of our ruling class as they are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars abroad on foreign wars while our own nation's capital is unlivable.

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00:11:09.000 Senator, I do want to get your thoughts.

00:11:11.000 We had Senator Mark Wayne Mullen on last week.

00:11:13.000 I know that there are going to be some changes potentially to Senate rules because Chuck Schumer completely messed this up.

00:11:19.000 We still have over 150 of President Trump's nominees that are in paralysis, that are frozen.

00:11:26.000 Senator, what is going to be the plan come September to unfreeze and to move President Trump's necessary nominees?

00:11:34.000 Because here's the way that I view it and the audience views it: it is a disgrace and a subversion to the Democratic process when you win an election, but you can't staff your government for almost an entire year.

00:11:47.000 That is theft of an administration.

00:11:49.000 Republicans then do it to Democrats.

00:11:51.000 Democrats are doing it to us. 0.58

00:11:52.000 But what are we doing to fight fire with fire and play smash mouth politics?

00:11:57.000 Senator Rick Scott.

00:11:58.000 Well, number one, we've got to understand the Democrats.

00:12:01.000 This is all Democrats' fault.

00:12:03.000 They've decided to make sure Trump does not get his team in place.

00:12:07.000 This has never happened before.

00:12:10.000 It's only being done to Donald Trump.

00:12:12.000 And so we have two choices.

00:12:15.000 One, we can stay there every day and we should stay there as many days as it takes to get this done.

00:12:21.000 Number two is we've got to change the rules.

00:12:23.000 Some of these nominees probably don't need to have Senate confirmation.

00:12:26.000 That's number one.

00:12:27.000 Number two is we're going to have to shorten the time.

00:12:30.000 What they are doing is not really using it to vet these nominees.

00:12:35.000 They're using it just to slow things down.

00:12:37.000 So we've got to say, okay, so what we're going to do is we'll stove the vote, but we're going to do these votes every 10 minutes.

00:12:43.000 We're just going to roll through these every 10 minutes and we'll get them all done because it's just being used as obstruction not to actually do their job to vet the candidates.

00:12:53.000 That's what the Democrats are doing.

00:12:54.000 So I'm very hopeful we'll get this fixed.

00:12:57.000 Trump's got to get his team in place.

00:12:59.000 Yeah, we need to get our nominees.

00:13:01.000 Period.

00:13:01.000 End of story.

00:13:02.000 We need to get our people in place.

00:13:04.000 It is an outrage that we have not been able to do it.

00:13:07.000 Senator, one final question here as we proceed.

00:13:12.000 What are the other big fights, spending fights, rescission packages, things that we need to know of on the Senate calendar for the remainder of this calendar year?

00:13:20.000 Because unfortunately, as you know, the Senate is full of a bunch of gutless wonders that as soon as an election year kicks in, very little will happen.

00:13:27.000 So we have a little bit of time left on the clock.

00:13:29.000 What are the big things that we need to know about the U.S. Senate and fights looming into the fall?

00:13:34.000 Well, the big fights are going to be these.

00:13:35.000 Number one is that we're going to have a budget done by the end of September.

00:13:39.000 It sure doesn't look like it.

00:13:40.000 Well, we haven't passed our budget bills.

00:13:43.000 So that'll be the government will be shut down if we don't then do a continued resolution.

00:13:49.000 Historically, under Mitch McConnell, what the Republicans and Democrats together would do is they would say, oh, we'll talk about it for the next couple of months.

00:13:57.000 We'll do it right before Christmas.

00:13:59.000 And then they use the Christmas right before Christmas, they come up with a bill that four people had decided, all right?

00:14:06.000 Two Republicans, two Democrats, and be a blowout spending bill. 0.99

00:14:10.000 So the commitment is we're not going to do that this time, but that's historically what they're doing.

00:14:14.000 So one is the government going to get shut down September 30.

00:14:18.000 100% Democrats' fault if it happens because they will not allow us to pass appropriation bills.

00:14:24.000 That's the first thing that will happen.

00:14:25.000 Number two, if we do, when are we actually going to pass the budget?

00:14:29.000 So my goal is, is one, my first goal would be, let's get the budget done and let's balance the budget.

00:14:36.000 Okay, if that's not going to happen, then let's do, let's don't be doing this every two weeks.

00:14:40.000 Let's just give this a continued resolution for the next year because we know the Democrats are never going to work with us.

00:14:45.000 Let's don't have some big blowout spending bill at Christmas.

00:14:48.000 Senator, look, I'll just say on the spending component of this, we need to cut spending.

00:14:55.000 This is going to be the big fight.

00:14:56.000 And the grassroots has been very patient.

00:14:59.000 And I know the president agrees with this and the president's on board.

00:15:02.000 We had to do the one big, big, beautiful bill thing.

00:15:04.000 We had to do debt ceiling.

00:15:06.000 We have heard on this program, it's a running joke, five years of excuses as to why we can't have a throwdown spending fight.

00:15:14.000 We need to have an all-out spending fight because the budget fight can apply to every single dollar on the U.S. budget.

00:15:23.000 Where the big, beautiful bill, that was a reconciliation.

00:15:25.000 Is that correct, Senator?

00:15:26.000 The budget fight is where we can get down to every line item.

00:15:30.000 Senator.

00:15:31.000 Yeah.

00:15:31.000 The reconciliation bill was only mandatory spending.

00:15:34.000 The budget bill is the discretionary spending.

00:15:38.000 We've got to do both.

00:15:40.000 And it looks like we might have another opportunity on the reconciliation, but we could, we could take the things back under the budget process and say, we're going to look at these things every year, just like you do.

00:15:51.000 You don't say, oh, I'm for sure always going to spend that money.

00:15:53.000 You look at every line item.

00:15:55.000 So the budget process should give us the opportunity to look at every line in the budget.

00:16:00.000 That's what Ron Johnson and others and I are trying to do.

00:16:03.000 Let's go through every line and figure out the waste and get rid of it.

00:16:06.000 Balance the budget.

00:16:07.000 We have to balance the budget today.

00:16:10.000 And to President Trump's credit, we're bringing in new revenue through tariffs.

00:16:14.000 And we are, that's legit.

00:16:16.000 We have to cut spending.

00:16:17.000 We have to get everyone in a room.

00:16:19.000 We have to smoke it out here in the way that we have to just, we have to, we have to smoke out the truth in the room.

00:16:25.000 I am personally very, very annoyed that we keep on hearing excuses about this massive deficits.

00:16:32.000 Senator, you're on the right side of history here.

00:16:34.000 We need to harshly go after the budget this fall.

00:16:40.000 Gentlemen, let's get real for a second.

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00:17:57.000 Joining us now is editor-in-chief of Breitbart News to go over A variety of topics, but the breaking news today is the federalization of Washington, D.C. This really seemed to have been triggered by the young man working for Doge being mugged, but President Trump has been alluding to this for a couple months.

00:18:15.000 He's been talking about how D.C. has become a slum.

00:18:18.000 D.C. is a third world city. 0.93

00:18:20.000 Alex Marlow, your take on President Donald Trump federalizing our nation's capital.

00:18:25.000 I love it.

00:18:25.000 I lived there for a while, Charlie, and we have a mechanism to help.

00:18:29.000 save the city, which has been overrun by Democrats and thus crime, vandalism.

00:18:35.000 It is an embarrassment.

00:18:35.000 It's a national disgrace.

00:18:37.000 The city has a lot of potential.

00:18:38.000 It is where people convene, like it or not, just by nature of the fact that it's our nation's capital.

00:18:43.000 It is the city that is broadcast to the world as the most representative of the United States, like it or not.

00:18:48.000 A lot of days not, but that's just the reality.

00:18:50.000 And it's one of these places where if we do this right, we could have a safe, beautiful capital that the world admires.

00:18:56.000 And Donald Trump has a keen eye for this stuff.

00:18:59.000 He has a mechanism to change it.

00:19:00.000 So why wouldn't he?

00:19:02.000 This is the outside the box thinking that I love about Donald Trump, because why would he tolerate something that's second tier in America?

00:19:08.000 He's a cheerleader for this country.

00:19:10.000 And if you look at the way D.C. has gone in recent years, it's gotten more crime-mattled, more dirty, and somehow more expensive at the same time.

00:19:18.000 It's totally unpleasant to go there.

00:19:19.000 I used to live there and I used to love living there.

00:19:22.000 It's been the center of the world for so long, really since Barack Obama has kind of been the center of the world.

00:19:26.000 Let's go clean it up and let's get some points doing it.

00:19:29.000 Well, and look, exactly.

00:19:30.000 So they're already calling him a fascist, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

00:19:34.000 We don't care.

00:19:35.000 This is about a nation's capital.

00:19:38.000 By the way, if you go to Singapore, you go to Tokyo, you go to Seoul, South Korea, you go to any of the great Asian capitals, they wouldn't put up with what we have here at all, period, whatsoever. 1.00

00:19:48.000 And why have we put up with such crime, endangerment, slum activity all throughout? 0.92

00:19:55.000 And it's a combination of not just the homelessness and the drug use and the maniacs, because I was just in D.C. recently and it was just a bunch.

00:20:02.000 It was terrible.

00:20:03.000 But also, it is a very violent city.

00:20:06.000 Very violent.

00:20:07.000 Why have we put up with it for so long?

00:20:10.000 Okay, so it's a one-party town.

00:20:11.000 So the Democrats run the city.

00:20:13.000 So if they choose to start actually prosecuting crimes, they start trying to hold people to account and to not release all the criminals onto the streets, then what that's going to lead to is a short-term uptick in crime statistics, which is bad.

00:20:27.000 That's an admission of failure.

00:20:29.000 So they're never going to do that.

00:20:30.000 So politically, they have to allow for all of the crime to continue because to address it would necessitate admitting that it was bad to begin with.

00:20:38.000 They're never going to do that because the left is so political.

00:20:41.000 They would rather see crime than have a short-term, you know, hit in the polls over this issue.

00:20:46.000 The other thing is the left, they love chaos.

00:20:48.000 They're agents of chaos.

00:20:50.000 They don't want to see a law and order society.

00:20:52.000 They don't want to see our nation preserved and conserved in terms of the values you and I champion on a daily basis, Charlie.

00:20:58.000 So they're not going to be the ones to take the initiative.

00:21:01.000 The only chance you've got is conservative Republicans doing it from the perch of the presidency, to be honest with you.

00:21:07.000 And any prior Republican president that we've had in my lifetime would never have been able to fight through any of the name-calling and the outrage and the hand-wringing that we're about to witness.

00:21:18.000 But it doesn't matter.

00:21:18.000 Trump's got to soldier through and he's got to get this done.

00:21:21.000 Talk about the politics of it.

00:21:23.000 How will this be received politically where the media will call him a fascist, home rule, and all that?

00:21:30.000 And also, no one's talking about the tourism angle.

00:21:33.000 Hundreds of thousands of young kids visit Washington, D.C. every year on school trips, high school trips, middle school trips.

00:21:39.000 We want them to see something they're proud of, and it does something to the psyche.

00:21:43.000 I could say this as someone who's been to D.C. You, Alex, I mean, numerous hundreds of times.

00:21:47.000 When you get off of Reagan and you drive through Erdullah, where you fly in, and you just see slums and you see tents, and it just, it brings down your soul.

00:21:59.000 It really does.

00:21:59.000 So I lived in the, yeah, I lived in the foggy bottom area for about four years or so.

00:22:04.000 And my typical day would involve me rolling out of my apartment, running down to the Lincoln Memorial, running along the Potomac River, running through iconic Georgetown with the cobblestone streets on Prospect Avenue, which was, you know, from the scenes from the exorcist.

00:22:19.000 I always love used to doing that in the fall.

00:22:21.000 It was such a blast, Charlie.

00:22:23.000 By the time I left, it was Black Lives Matter time.

00:22:26.000 All the stores were boarded up.

00:22:27.000 Everyone was bummed out because of stupid coronavirus masks.

00:22:30.000 There are riots all the time.

00:22:31.000 There are people marching down the street, making all sorts of noise for no reason.

00:22:34.000 There's no reason it has to be that way.

00:22:36.000 It wasn't that long ago that DC was at least tolerable and we can make it beautiful again.

00:22:40.000 We can make DC great again.

00:22:42.000 I mean, it's a cliche for a reason.

00:22:44.000 We can absolutely do that.

00:22:46.000 Trump's got the power to do it.

00:22:47.000 And I'll tell you, if he succeeds, he'll get a lot of credit because even people on the left, I think, will admit to some degree that this could be done and the people in charge now will not address it.

00:22:56.000 We have long said here on this program, the future of MAGA and the future of this movement will go through the reclamation of our major cities.

00:23:03.000 That doesn't mean we have to make New York MAGA or LA MAGA, but you must be able to have dominion and control and authority over America's greatest cities.

00:23:12.000 If we want to just be an outskirt movement, look, if we want to just control the Midland Texas, the Oklahoma cities, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's incomplete.

00:23:22.000 It is incomplete because then basically you are the master of the hinterlands, which again is not an insult, beautiful parts of the country, but we need to go into the fire.

00:23:32.000 Is it time then, Alex, if we have a successful model in Washington, D.C., to replicate this in other cities?

00:23:39.000 It's a little bit harder, obviously, because you have home rule designation in D.C. But is it time for us to start to roll in the tanks to Chicago?

00:23:47.000 Is it time for us to sign the Insurrection Act in Los Angeles?

00:23:51.000 What are we putting up with and why?

00:23:54.000 Talk about how this might be the entry point to a broad reclamation project of the third worldification to liberate New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, LA. 0.90

00:24:05.000 So yeah, I'll talk philosophically and then I know some lawyers are going to have to back me up on the legal side because I don't know how much of this could actually get done.

00:24:12.000 But from my perspective, it doesn't make sense that we have the strongest, most advanced, most technologically savvy fighting forces in the world, and yet we allow for our cities to be war zones.

00:24:23.000 It doesn't make sense to me.

00:24:24.000 And I'm not saying that we want to have a massive military presence in our city because that'll defeat the purpose of what I'm talking about anyway, which is that I would like for our cities to be a place where culture is thriving, not where people are fearing for their lives when they walk down the block, get a sandwich.

00:24:39.000 But the point is, is that if we have resources that are able to clean up some of these problems, maybe it's the fentanyl issue because it's connected to the illegal immigration.

00:24:47.000 Maybe it's what they're doing with ICE in Los Angeles.

00:24:49.000 Maybe that's the place to start.

00:24:50.000 But I would look for opportunities around the edges first and then maybe broader from there to try to set the standard that in this country, we have great thriving cities.

00:24:59.000 I'll tell you, I live a suburban life where I walk to school with my children and I don't live near a major metropolitan center.

00:25:06.000 I'll tell you on weekends, Charlie, when you want to eat and shop, you go down to the city and you're fearful there.

00:25:12.000 They got better restaurants, but you're worried about whether or not something is going to happen to you when you're in your car.

00:25:17.000 If something's going to break into your car, that shouldn't be the case in this country.

00:25:20.000 We should have a higher standard than that.

00:25:22.000 And for Republicans, we can't just opt out.

00:25:24.000 We have to be part of the solution.

00:25:26.000 And part of that is the concern of the major cities.

00:25:30.000 Can you speak to those some people would say, Alex, in our audience, forget it.

00:25:34.000 Let New York be New York.

00:25:36.000 Let LA be LA.

00:25:37.000 Not our problem.

00:25:39.000 Why is it our problem?

00:25:40.000 Why is if we articulate, if we are articulating the domestic MAGA doctrine, this nationalist populist project that you and I have been under, you know, working on 10 years, why do the cities matter?

00:25:53.000 And why should, how do you respond to a skeptic, they're blue, they're Democrats, let it burn.

00:25:59.000 How do you respond?

00:26:00.000 Yeah, so first of all, I think the premise of the city, even though I don't like some of the walkable cities, some of the green stuff, and some of the hideous architecture in a lot of our modern cities, so there's a lot of negative stuff I can say.

00:26:10.000 But overall, when a lot of us think nostalgically at our favorite era of America, we weren't just, it wasn't just because we had a great government.

00:26:16.000 It's because we had great culture.

00:26:18.000 And a lot of that culture does take place in the cities and that's exported around the world.

00:26:22.000 And I think that that's generally a good thing in a vacuum.

00:26:26.000 And so to abandon the cities is to abandon the opportunity for us to be the cultural leaders on the earth.

00:26:31.000 So I think that that's a major premise.

00:26:34.000 But another thing is more of a practical human populist level, which is that a lot of jobs, you need to either be in a city or be in proximity to a city.

00:26:42.000 Not every job, but a lot of them do.

00:26:44.000 And so to act as though we don't care is to abandon parts of our coalition, abandon a lot of MAGA voters.

00:26:49.000 If you look at California, you know, we got a lot of horrible cities, but we've got the highest volume of MAGA voters of any state.

00:26:57.000 It's not enough to win elections yet.

00:26:59.000 Maybe one day, But there's so many of us here who have the same values as you who are living a peaceful suburban or rural life.

00:27:06.000 So I don't think you should abandon your fellow man because a thriving American city provides economic opportunity, provides cultural opportunity.

00:27:13.000 And I just like the idea that we want to be excellent.

00:27:16.000 We want to raise the bar.

00:27:17.000 That should be the standard for America.

00:27:19.000 We should try to be excellent in every possible way.

00:27:21.000 Yeah, and that's part of the entire federalization of Washington, D.C. Because it's also the nation's capital.

00:27:32.000 And it's gotten so much worse throughout the years.

00:27:36.000 And then the good people like you leave.

00:27:38.000 The good people like Benny Johnson leave.

00:27:40.000 And what are you left with?

00:27:42.000 You're left with criminals and wokeys. 1.00

00:27:44.000 And criminals and wokeys, they don't make a good city. 1.00

00:27:47.000 They do not.

00:27:48.000 It is a symbol of national decline.

00:27:52.000 We need to go back to the 1990s where we had tough on crime type policy.

00:27:58.000 The Democrats like Karen Bass and Brandon Johnson, they're going to respond just by weaponized name-calling, obvious subversion of this.

00:28:07.000 But I hope it is a contrast for anybody listening.

00:28:10.000 It should be unacceptable if you cannot walk your great cities at night.

00:28:15.000 Unacceptable.

00:28:16.000 Period.

00:28:17.000 You can walk the streets of Tokyo at night.

00:28:19.000 You can walk the streets of Seoul, South Korea.

00:28:21.000 You can walk the streets of Singapore.

00:28:23.000 You can walk the streets of Kuala Lumpur.

00:28:25.000 But why can you not walk the streets of Washington, D.C.?

00:28:28.000 Because our leaders chose it.

00:28:30.000 Yeah, I love your point that it's a symbol of national decline.

00:28:33.000 Are we a society with high standards who believes in excellence or are we not?

00:28:37.000 And it is obviously a symbol that things are going the wrong direction.

00:28:40.000 One of my favorite refrains is: how's it going?

00:28:43.000 Or how are we doing?

00:28:44.000 When we experiment with things, are we feeling better about things after we've done them for a few years?

00:28:48.000 And if the answer is no, then why not run in the other direction?

00:28:52.000 You had to be a highly motivated person to try to solve these problems.

00:28:54.000 They're hard problems.

00:28:55.000 And a lot of the people there don't want them to solve them, fortunately.

00:28:58.000 But that's no reason to stop.

00:29:00.000 We got to keep trying.

00:29:01.000 We got to make our cities excellent again.

00:29:05.000 America's small businesses rely on TikTok to succeed.

00:29:08.000 We go viral on TikTok, reaching billions of young people every year.

00:29:11.000 It's one of the reasons why we were able to win the youth vote.

00:29:14.000 Well, TikTok helps businesses attract more customers and drive growth from small batch sellers to fast-growing brands.

00:29:20.000 74% of businesses on TikTok say it's helped them scale by hiring more employees, boosting sales, and expanding to new locations.

00:29:28.000 Like Arizona Taco King, who grew from a mom-and-pop taco cart to two thriving restaurants in just a year.

00:29:34.000 Or Coco Asante, who upgraded to a larger facility and brought on more staff, letting their handcrafted chocolates reach more customers.

00:29:40.000 Or Dan O'Seasoning, who went from a one-man show to a team of 45, now supporting dozens of hardworking families.

00:29:46.000 With TikTok, small businesses are thriving, finding their customers, and expanding.

00:29:50.000 Learn more about TikTok's contribution to the U.S. economy at tick tockeconomic impact.com, tick tockeconomicimpact.com.

00:30:00.000 Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart.com.

00:30:02.000 Breitbart News is with us.

00:30:03.000 Let's play this.

00:30:04.000 This is George Will on Bill Maher talking about blue cities and how he hopes that Mom Donnie wins in New York.

00:30:14.000 You see, this is an old, archaic relic way of thinking about politics.

00:30:20.000 Oh, once we hit rock bottom, people will realize it.

00:30:24.000 There's some truth to that on the national scale, like Biden gave us Trump.

00:30:28.000 There's actually the opposite data to show that in cities.

00:30:32.000 They just get bluer and more dysfunctional because the decent people leave.

00:30:36.000 Play cut 313.

00:30:37.000 And on the other side, you have the guy running in New York, Mendami, right?

00:30:43.000 Okay, who's like a straight-up communist?

00:30:45.000 I mean, he is.

00:30:46.000 He talks about, you know, the things that communists say.

00:30:49.000 I mean, he wants free grocery stores, free buses.

00:30:53.000 I want him to win.

00:30:54.000 You want him to win.

00:30:55.000 Yeah.

00:30:57.000 I think every 20 years or so.

00:30:59.000 Wait.

00:31:02.000 Every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again.

00:31:12.000 This is a failed way of thinking.

00:31:14.000 If that's the case, people would have learned their lesson in Chicago.

00:31:18.000 Nope, the sellers of Chicago became bluer.

00:31:20.000 They would have learned their lessons in Philadelphia.

00:31:22.000 They would have learned their lessons in LA.

00:31:24.000 They would have learned their lessons in San Francisco or Portland or Seattle or LA.

00:31:27.000 None of that is true.

00:31:29.000 Some people, like George Will, he just loves losing.

00:31:32.000 It's a cope.

00:31:33.000 It's always tempting, but then you get good people who flee.

00:31:36.000 Alex Marlowe My first take is, what's George Will doing?

00:31:39.000 Like, why is he out there?

00:31:42.000 I had enough of George Will when I came into this business 17 years ago.

00:31:46.000 Markets, all these great guests.

00:31:47.000 Like, why, why George Will?

00:31:48.000 I guess, I don't know, maybe got what he wanted for because everyone's playing this clip.

00:31:51.000 I will say one thing about George Will, though, before we go.

00:31:54.000 He hasn't age today.

00:31:55.000 I got to tell you, like, it's actually pretty remarkable.

00:31:58.000 Keep it up.

00:31:59.000 He looks like he's in his late 70s now.

00:32:00.000 He looked like he was in his late 70s 40 years ago also.

00:32:03.000 So he does have that strange look.

00:32:06.000 No, it's the, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

00:32:08.000 And I don't know why.

00:32:09.000 I don't think anyone's listening to him, but it's an interesting thought exercise with Mamdani in particular because the nature of the rest of the field is that it feels like Andrew Cuomo is just such a uniquely horrible candidate.

00:32:22.000 And this is what disturbs me about this whole race is that Curtis Lewis seems like a nice guy. 1.00

00:32:27.000 He runs every time he doesn't win.

00:32:28.000 And then Eric Adams seemed like he actually was amenable to coming around to a lot of what Trump is doing.

00:32:34.000 And he's polling it literally nothing.

00:32:35.000 He's getting almost nothing in the polls, which is very disturbing to me.

00:32:38.000 So, Charlie, do you have this mapped out in your head?

00:32:41.000 Because this is one that gets confusing to me by the day.

00:32:44.000 We all know Mamdani is a, he's a charlatan.

00:32:47.000 He is a fake.

00:32:49.000 He's not who he says he is.

00:32:52.000 He's a avowed communist.

00:32:53.000 I mean, these are, he's the means of production.

00:32:55.000 This is true communism.

00:32:56.000 He's got those strange toilet bowl white teeth, which you never get that in a communist society.

00:33:00.000 You can only get that in a capitalist society.

00:33:01.000 So he's a very strange person overall.

00:33:03.000 But Cuomo, you see what he's going to do?

00:33:05.000 He wants to now kick the rich people out of their rent-controlled houses.

00:33:08.000 But the problem is everyone's broke in New York anyway because it's too expensive.

00:33:12.000 That's not a good idea.

00:33:13.000 He's got all these terrible ideas.

00:33:14.000 So who's going to run the place?

00:33:16.000 Well, a bunch of bureaucrats will end up running the city. 1.00

00:33:20.000 And look, the point is this.

00:33:22.000 There was a guy named Coleman Hughes.

00:33:23.000 Is that right, Blake?

00:33:24.000 Yeah.

00:33:24.000 Coleman Hughes from Detroit.

00:33:26.000 His stated political idea, his mission was to drive the good people out of Detroit so that he hung on to power.

00:33:34.000 This is what George Will doesn't understand, is that there are some people that will govern.

00:33:40.000 They will govern in a way.

00:33:41.000 Coleman Young, not Coleman Hughes.

00:33:43.000 Thank you, Blake.

00:33:43.000 Coleman Young.

00:33:44.000 I was close.

00:33:45.000 Coleman Hughes is a writer.

00:33:46.000 Coleman Young.

00:33:46.000 That's why I got it confused.

00:33:47.000 Coleman Young was the mayor of Detroit.

00:33:50.000 And his stated goal, well, not stated, but his whole idea that we get revealed later was that kick every basically make it so unpleasant, but I hold on to power.

00:34:00.000 I will rule over the ashes.

00:34:02.000 I will be the mayor over a destroyed city.

00:34:06.000 I will be a mayor over Dresden after the bombing.

00:34:09.000 It will be a terrible place to live, but I'm in charge.

00:34:11.000 I'm the mayor.

00:34:12.000 And that's what Mom Donnie will do. 1.00

00:34:14.000 He'll make it so unpleasant.

00:34:15.000 He will make it so awful of a place to live.

00:34:18.000 And then he'll end up being the king.

00:34:21.000 Some people want to be the king of the ashes.

00:34:23.000 And that is Mom Donnie. 0.99

00:34:24.000 Alex, we have to go.

00:34:25.000 Great job.

00:34:25.000 See you later.

00:34:26.000 Bright Bart News, Alex Marlowe.

00:34:28.000 Thanks, Charlie.

00:34:29.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:30.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:33.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - August 12, 2025

Why We Can't Abandon America's Cities

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