The Megyn Kelly Show - Charlie Kirk on Tucker Carlson's True Brand Value, AOC's Funeral Selfies, DeSantis' Mistakes, and Why RNC Leaders Should Go

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.900 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.

00:00:16.220 Let's make it as happy as a Monday can be.

00:00:18.460 It's going to be a big week in GOP 2024 politics. We're getting into it now.

00:00:23.440 Senator Tim Scott will formally enter the race today, armed with some big endorsements.

00:00:28.260 And Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to make it official later this week, too, at last.

00:00:34.520 He's running. Well, we kind of knew that, but he's said to be making it official, as I say.

00:00:40.560 Finally. Plus, new details are emerging over the weekend about the forces behind Tucker Carlson's firing at Fox News,

00:00:47.060 and more specifically, more details on those leaks.

00:00:50.320 The drip, drip, drip of leaks that miraculously dried right up after his lawyer, Brian Friedman,

00:00:57.900 sent them a nasty gram saying,

00:01:00.280 I will be seeking in discovery every single correspondence you've had on your leaking.

00:01:05.160 Oh, it's a miracle how that then stopped the whole leaking problem.

00:01:08.700 We're going to get to it all with a first-time guest here on The Megyn Kelly Show,

00:01:12.360 a huge force in the conservative movement and media.

00:01:16.180 Yeah. Charlie Kirk is the founder of Turning Point USA and the host of The Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:22.900 Charlie, welcome to the show.

00:01:24.920 Megan, honored to be here. Thanks so much.

00:01:27.200 It's great to have you.

00:01:28.320 You know, it's fun preparing for these things when I have somebody on for the first time

00:01:31.420 because I learned so much about the guest that I didn't know.

00:01:34.320 I did not realize you are not even 30 years old.

00:01:37.880 My God.

00:01:39.220 You started this when you were 18?

00:01:42.020 That's right. I feel as if I'm getting too old for this stuff, though.

00:01:45.300 I'll tell you, a decade in politics.

00:01:47.580 You age considerably.

00:01:49.300 I can't believe I'm not 30 either.

00:01:51.420 Yeah, I started when I was 18 in the suburbs of Chicago.

00:01:55.280 I had plans to go to college, and instead I took a gap year.

00:01:59.680 And it's been a gap decade and a year on top of about 11 years.

00:02:03.480 And it's been the most amazing journey, just full of blessings beyond my wildest imagination.

00:02:09.540 So, yeah, 29 years old, soon to be 30, but experienced a lot in the last decade.

00:02:15.400 Very thankful, very blessed.

00:02:17.440 You guys are everywhere.

00:02:19.380 Turning Points USA, it's everywhere.

00:02:20.900 You see, like, the Riley Gaines confrontation out in San Francisco.

00:02:24.420 It's, like, there via Turning Point.

00:02:26.020 We had on Ian Hayworth, I think it was, for the confrontation at SUNY Albany, where he got shouted down, Turning Points.

00:02:33.500 It's, like, you've had such an impact in ways our audience probably doesn't even realize how much of the content in today's news has effectively been brought to them because of you guys making sure these voices are heard.

00:02:47.040 And is it exclusively on college campuses, Charlie?

00:02:49.720 Well, it's grown beyond that.

00:02:52.360 Yeah, I mean, it's been an amazing kind of thing to see the last couple years.

00:02:56.360 I mean, for example, we've, you know, a couple years ago, we started with Candace Owens on campuses, and now she's a huge force to be reckoned with.

00:03:03.580 And Brandon Tatum and Ana Paulina, who's now a member of Congress, actually started with us.

00:03:08.840 She got her start in kind of conservative world, visiting college campuses.

00:03:13.540 And now she's an incredibly dynamic congresswoman, the youngest ever Hispanic Latina to be elected.

00:03:21.020 And, yes, of course, the Riley Gaines situation.

00:03:23.140 And so, yeah, it all started with high school and college campuses.

00:03:25.420 And now it's grown to churches and parents groups and homeschool associations and influencers.

00:03:31.360 And, I mean, our big mission statement at Turning Point USA is pretty simple.

00:03:35.160 We want to make sure that our grandkids live in America that we can recognize.

00:03:39.860 We want our grandkids to love America.

00:03:41.760 We believe in a free society.

00:03:44.480 We believe in the Constitution, rule of law, pretty standard stuff, stuff that shouldn't really be that controversial.

00:03:50.880 I mean, I have personal views that sometimes can get people rather excited.

00:03:54.920 But as an organization, our views are center right.

00:03:56.920 It's about the American founding, the declaration, free markets, private property rights.

00:04:01.320 And it's really kind of grown into this force beyond my, you know, wildest imaginations that have empowered hundreds of thousands of young people and certain people you've mentioned, such as Riley Gaines and Anna Paulina.

00:04:13.620 And really, the vision over the last couple of years has turned into this movement to try and recapture a generation that is increasingly going in a troubling and negative direction of anti-Americanism, of anti-capitalism.

00:04:33.060 We call it wokeism, we call it wokeism, we can explore that, which really is just repurposed left wing nonsense of the 60s and 70s and put through a different lens.

00:04:42.580 And our vision is much more optimistic, much more positive, you know, talking about how you can live a flourishing and fulfilling life in this nation and going to these campuses has been illuminating, especially for the last couple of years.

00:04:56.340 I've personally spoken over 120 college campuses from all across the country, from Brown to Stanford.

00:05:02.800 And you learn a lot about the issues and the challenges facing a generation when you do that.

00:05:08.060 But Turning Point USA is now really the premier organization for all ages fighting for the ideas of freedom, liberty and American exceptionalism.

00:05:16.480 Yeah, you guys. And you're in the belly of the beast because you're going where the indoctrination is at its peak.

00:05:22.680 You know, these college campuses, that's that's where they're getting them.

00:05:25.460 And a lot of these kids don't even realize there's an alternative.

00:05:28.800 There are a lot of young people who don't feel this way.

00:05:31.600 There's a conservative alternative point of view.

00:05:34.280 Yes.

00:05:34.480 It's available to you.

00:05:35.700 I was thinking about you last week when that study came out showing that some huge amount of young liberals are depressed and, you know, in therapy and need help.

00:05:45.000 And and I was like, you know what?

00:05:47.760 That's because that's what they're leaning into right now.

00:05:50.180 That's what their messengers are telling them to lean into victimhood, upset, sadness.

00:05:54.980 And the conservative vision is so much more optimistic, hopeful, empowering.

00:06:00.740 It didn't always used to be this way.

00:06:02.640 You know, I had RFK Jr. on the show a few times now, but in his first long interview that we did back in March of twenty one, he was saying how grown up Kennedy, you know, the son of RFK.

00:06:12.160 The grandfather, Joseph Kennedy, in that family was like, yes, no whining in this house.

00:06:18.080 Get out.

00:06:18.620 Winers, get out.

00:06:20.080 Right.

00:06:20.320 Like that was a tough family that raised.

00:06:22.220 Yeah, that's right.

00:06:23.280 You're not allowed to say that anymore.

00:06:24.640 But now it's like this is sort of getting divided along party lines.

00:06:27.880 No, that's right.

00:06:30.380 And to kind of piggyback on what you say on the depression, I mean, it makes sense in a certain extent.

00:06:34.900 So you have an entire political movement that says your history sucks and it's awful.

00:06:39.160 So you have nothing to be thankful for that came before you.

00:06:41.880 Your actions really won't improve your life.

00:06:44.040 Right.

00:06:44.460 So that if you try to lose weight or save money, none of it matters because meritocracy doesn't actually exist.

00:06:50.420 And by the way, the world's going to end in 10 years because of climate change.

00:06:52.800 Yeah, I mean, I'd be depressed, too.

00:06:55.100 And to substitute for all that, just do as many substances as you want.

00:06:59.040 Like there no matter what, you could do as much marijuana, as much psychedelic drugs and have as much free sex as possible.

00:07:04.620 Do not restrain any of your impulses.

00:07:07.020 Well, just from the simplest reading of psychology, that's really dumb to tell a 19 year old to do, because then they all of a sudden ask the question of what is true?

00:07:15.840 What is meaningful?

00:07:16.960 Maybe I should engage self-control more than self-esteem.

00:07:19.960 And so then, yes, you do create the most depressed, suicidal, alcohol-addicted, and drug-addicted generation in history.

00:07:25.800 And there is a political component to it, which people don't always want to pinpoint, which is conservatives are just happier.

00:07:31.760 And not every conservative is happy and not every liberal is mad or angry or depressed.

00:07:36.660 But over time, people that tend to not argue with reality, people that tend to not wage war on the natural law, you're going to fit probably neater into the harmony of the cosmos than someone that is committed with evangelistic zeal and fervor that men can give birth.

00:07:55.140 Like, that would drive me mad, too, to try to make that work.

00:07:58.760 You're never going to make that work.

00:08:00.300 No matter how many pharmacological agents, no matter how many textbooks, no matter how much propaganda, you're going to end up in a state of madness.

00:08:07.660 St. Augustine had a great quote where he said, if you argue with reality, welcome to hell.

00:08:12.340 And a lot of young people are in hell.

00:08:14.220 And I feel for them.

00:08:15.020 And so when we go to these campuses, Megan, the biggest problem that we have is we can't find rooms big enough to fit all the students that want to attend our speeches.

00:08:22.700 And they don't all agree with what I have to say.

00:08:24.620 I mean, I have very strong opinions, and they're considered to be triggering thought crimes.

00:08:28.640 But what's amazing is, OK, a couple dozen will walk out because they're so triggered.

00:08:32.660 But there's a lot of kids that stay there that might disagree.

00:08:35.000 They think they disagree with what I'm saying.

00:08:36.820 And they'll listen.

00:08:37.700 And they'll listen.

00:08:38.500 And very similar to Ben Shapiro, who deserves a lot of credit for being kind of a pioneer with this.

00:08:42.620 And same with Steven Crowder, we'll invite anybody who disagrees to the front of the line.

00:08:47.660 And they can say whatever they want to me.

00:08:49.540 And we have question and answer for 40, 45 minutes.

00:08:52.580 And what is positive, what is heartwarming to me and what gives me encouragement is that over a period of time, just an hour and a half, we can make serious inroads to all of a sudden put forward a pro-reality, pro-American, rather moderate viewpoint,

00:09:11.240 which is I'm not going to condemn you if we disagree.

00:09:14.540 I think disagreement is what makes life fun.

00:09:16.620 I mean, you mentioned RFK Jr.

00:09:19.040 He's a Democrat that I hope does very well because I agree with him on some things.

00:09:23.060 I certainly disagree with him on others.

00:09:24.420 But he's interesting.

00:09:25.420 He's provocative.

00:09:26.540 He's willing to challenge the power structures.

00:09:29.280 He's not just the same regime talking points repurposed by chat GPT to try to win over some sort of swing voter.

00:09:37.280 He's an independent thinker.

00:09:38.420 He's a free spirit.

00:09:39.640 And so I think that the conservative side has not just become the rebellious side, but it's honestly the more interesting side.

00:09:46.780 And I think you see that in the ascendance of independent media and the collapse of corporate media.

00:09:52.080 And that is the ethos we bring to our work every single day at Turning Point USA.

00:09:56.280 So you mentioned your background from Illinois.

00:09:59.140 Were you born and raised there?

00:10:00.340 Because how did you, you know, yes, it's the heartland.

00:10:02.820 But when we think of Illinois, we think of Chicago, which is very, very blue, very, very left.

00:10:06.900 It's got some more right-leaning suburbs.

00:10:09.140 What were you in a suburb of Chicago?

00:10:10.760 Where were you in Illinois?

00:10:11.600 And how did you get this way?

00:10:12.680 Yeah, Wheeling High School.

00:10:13.960 So there's been a lot of, let's just say, mixed exports from Illinois.

00:10:18.860 Ronald Reagan is from Illinois.

00:10:20.780 Obviously, Barack Obama calls Chicago home.

00:10:23.020 Hillary Clinton went to high school right down the street from where I went, Maine East High School.

00:10:27.620 So we just ignored that growing up.

00:10:29.620 Bill Ayers.

00:10:30.080 Yeah, Bill Ayers.

00:10:32.420 That's right.

00:10:32.880 Valerie Jarrett.

00:10:33.640 David Axelrod.

00:10:34.680 I could keep going.

00:10:36.240 There's been a lot that has come from Chicago.

00:10:38.820 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:10:40.800 Illinois and Chicago produce its fair share of mixed bag of political figures.

00:10:45.980 A couple of things, though.

00:10:46.880 First of all, I grew up huge fan of your show.

00:10:49.060 Always.

00:10:49.860 You always did a fabulous job.

00:10:51.640 I was a Rush guy at 16 years old.

00:10:53.940 I was told by my local friends in the community, adults, don't listen to Rush Limbaugh.

00:10:59.280 Don't listen to him on WLS.

00:11:01.060 And so it was considered to be provocative and rebellious.

00:11:04.980 And I remember turning on 890 WLS.

00:11:07.000 I was like, wow, this guy is speaking to me.

00:11:09.680 And I was always patriotic.

00:11:10.960 I was always more political than not.

00:11:12.760 And Rush just totally radicalized me.

00:11:15.160 I was like, this guy is everything.

00:11:16.940 So I remember being in my lunch break, just kind of leaving my friends to go do whatever

00:11:22.260 they were doing at lunch break.

00:11:23.520 I would just sit in my car and listen to Rush Limbaugh for 20 minutes.

00:11:26.620 He's bashing on Obama.

00:11:28.080 I mean, he was the best, right?

00:11:29.080 I mean, he was the gold standard.

00:11:30.240 And then I got into Glenn Beck and Mark Levin and all these huge voices that I now call

00:11:34.120 friends, which is just amazing to me.

00:11:36.140 But yeah, Heartland guy.

00:11:37.800 My parents, center right.

00:11:39.240 Amazing parents.

00:11:41.220 And I had every anticipation to go to college.

00:11:44.020 As I mentioned, that didn't work out.

00:11:46.080 And the one thing I'll say about my upbringing is I was always told you got to work harder

00:11:51.140 than the other guy.

00:11:51.800 You have to put in more hours.

00:11:53.520 And I can honestly say after a decade, that's kind of what I'm known for is more speeches,

00:11:58.600 more podcasts, you know, more tour stops, more cities traveled.

00:12:03.540 You know, I traveled for 330 days a year for a decade.

00:12:06.100 I'm a million mile flyer in United and American almost there in Delta.

00:12:11.300 And I can honestly say that I've traveled the country.

00:12:14.560 Not every port, not every geographic area of America has that as a core value.

00:12:20.820 And there's something about that Midwestern work ethic that I think is special and has

00:12:25.780 definitely been has definitely been a competitive edge for me.

00:12:28.980 And, you know, I, I have, I lived in Chicago for five years and I have some dear friends

00:12:34.000 from the Midwest from the time when I lived there.

00:12:35.980 And, and some of them are left for sure.

00:12:38.820 They are, they are leftist Democrats, but they're not woke.

00:12:42.360 They're reasonable.

00:12:43.260 They're cool.

00:12:43.800 Their middle America is just, they have a sense of reason.

00:12:46.860 And what's what that those who are living on the Upper West side of New York do not have.

00:12:51.700 And it's, it's a delight because you're, it's like, oh, okay.

00:12:54.740 So we're going to have a debate on abortion.

00:12:56.380 Great.

00:12:56.560 Let's do that.

00:12:57.000 That's fine.

00:12:57.460 I know this debate.

00:12:58.540 This is a debate we've been having, you know, since, well, time immemorial, but talking about

00:13:03.340 whether as Dan Bongino put it on my show on Friday, you can, you should cut off the nuts

00:13:08.200 of a nine-year-old boy.

00:13:09.200 No.

00:13:09.820 Hey, whoa, we're in a different territory now.

00:13:13.220 Yeah.

00:13:13.640 But my friends out there would not debate me on that.

00:13:15.780 They'd be with you and me and Dan on that.

00:13:17.940 That's correct.

00:13:19.560 Yeah.

00:13:19.840 I mean, except some of the kind of really, um, let's just say radicalized people in Highland

00:13:25.740 Park.

00:13:26.140 I mean, they're in their own world, but yeah, I, I, I'll say this and people laugh.

00:13:30.500 I still think that the, the, the DNA, the fiber of the suburbs of Chicago, the collar

00:13:35.780 counties in particular, right?

00:13:37.440 DuPage Lake will and parts of cook and McHenry are center.

00:13:41.900 Right.

00:13:42.380 I mean, the upbringing I had was a center right upbringing, even though that people might

00:13:45.760 have been Democrats or Republicans, there was a insistence that you're going to work

00:13:50.420 harder than the other guy.

00:13:51.300 Stop blaming other people.

00:13:52.800 Right.

00:13:53.140 There was an insistence that you need a robust middle-class.

00:13:56.360 And I look back that all these silly Republican Democrat labels mean nothing.

00:14:00.620 And there needs to be a, well, a, a properly articulated mass movement against this woke

00:14:08.680 parasitic ideology.

00:14:09.760 I believe it can unite 70 to 80% of the country.

00:14:12.980 I don't care if it's from the Republican side or from RFK.

00:14:16.340 I think it is the existential threat to our Republic.

00:14:18.660 It is so against everything that is our core values of delayed gratification and working

00:14:24.860 hard and being generous to others and not blaming the society for your circumstances.

00:14:30.320 And I totally agree.

00:14:31.660 I mean, I look at most people I know in Chicago that I grew up to that are quote, that grew

00:14:35.780 up with that are quote unquote Democrats.

00:14:36.960 And I'd say, well, do you think men can give birth?

00:14:39.240 And they'd be like, what are you, what are you insulting me?

00:14:41.180 Right.

00:14:41.320 And these are plumbers and welders and electricians and police officers.

00:14:44.600 And they, they might just be multi-decade Democrats.

00:14:47.560 And then they, they're, they have some built-in presumptions and prejudices against what they

00:14:52.080 think Republicans are.

00:14:53.780 But what needs to be continually articulated, you do a wonderful job of this, Megan, is that

00:14:59.120 this woke stuff is not a game.

00:15:00.780 This is not some, this is not patty cake.

00:15:02.480 This is not time for happy talk.

00:15:03.940 This stuff is capturing our major institutions.

00:15:06.400 If not just capturing has captured most of our major institutions and it is inherently

00:15:11.360 totalitarian.

00:15:12.160 It is at odds, the free society and everything that we believe America is and should be.

00:15:18.460 This is a weird place to kick off the substantive discussion, but I've got to raise it here because

00:15:23.540 everything you just said had these two blurring in my head.

00:15:27.240 Harry and Megan, let's just start there because I think this, all the things you just said are

00:15:31.800 the reasons people hate them.

00:15:33.160 They hate them in the UK and they're, they hate them here too.

00:15:35.560 Now they have a below water approval rating in America too.

00:15:40.260 Working hard.

00:15:41.720 That's an American value.

00:15:43.280 No sense of entitlement.

00:15:44.480 That used to be one of our values.

00:15:46.780 Blame yourself, not others.

00:15:48.140 That used to be one of our values.

00:15:49.720 And they're the opposite of all of that.

00:15:51.800 There was a report.

00:15:52.640 Everybody heard about the fake paparazzi dusty dust up last week.

00:15:56.520 They were followed by a handful of paparazzi and they blew it up into Diana gate that she wants

00:16:00.800 to be Diana.

00:16:01.460 He wants her to be Diana.

00:16:02.560 She's no Diana.

00:16:04.000 And, um, they decided to release some statement.

00:16:07.000 I mean, it's incredible.

00:16:08.000 They released the statement through their PR person saying it was a near catastrophic two

00:16:11.980 hour car chase through Manhattan, which is a lie.

00:16:14.760 You cannot have that.

00:16:15.700 It's impossible.

00:16:16.840 Lived in Manhattan for 17 years.

00:16:18.500 Not possible.

00:16:19.060 Um, and I said at the time, if there was anything close to two hours between these two and the

00:16:22.960 paparazzi, it was by choice because you can pull over anywhere in Manhattan and get away

00:16:27.300 from the paparazzi.

00:16:28.080 And they didn't.

00:16:28.960 Um, and now we know that's true because what we are told by page six of the New York post

00:16:32.660 is they were too cheap to pay for a hotel room at the Carlisle, which is where Diana

00:16:37.020 used to stay and where he wanted to stay.

00:16:39.120 And I guess these two have stayed there in the past, but it's $8,000 a night if you want

00:16:43.040 to stay in the Royal suite and they didn't want to do it.

00:16:45.080 And the Carlisle wouldn't give them a discounted rate.

00:16:47.060 So they stayed at a friend's house and the NYPD told the New York post, if they had just

00:16:51.140 paid for some reasonable room at the Carlisle, this could have been avoided.

00:16:54.340 They would have gone into the hotel.

00:16:55.300 It would have been done.

00:16:55.980 They didn't want to do it.

00:16:57.260 And now in the wake of all this, we have them actually firing off a legal threat, Charlie

00:17:03.180 to the paparazzi on Friday, this hit demanding that the paparazzi, the handful of them that

00:17:10.540 were trying to get a picture of these two turn over their photographs to Megan and Harry.

00:17:15.620 We demand that you give us copies of all photos, videos, and or films taken last night by freelance

00:17:23.340 photographers after we left our event.

00:17:25.800 And they sent this to the Backgrid Photo Agency via their legal team.

00:17:31.440 So it's absolutely insane as she, he may be a Brit, but she well knows as an American,

00:17:38.200 we have freedom of the press here.

00:17:39.660 You have no freaking right to the press's photographs of you.

00:17:44.880 And in some brilliant, brilliant response here, the Backgrid legal representative, the

00:17:51.260 lawyer, I'll just read it in part because it's so good, Charlie, writes back, in America,

00:17:55.920 as I'm sure you know, property belongs to the owner of it.

00:17:59.220 Third parties cannot just demand that it be given to them as perhaps kings do.

00:18:03.080 Perhaps you should sit down with your client and advise them that his English rules of royal

00:18:07.580 prerogative to demand that the citizenry hand over their property to the crown were rejected

00:18:12.180 by this country long ago.

00:18:14.200 We stand by our founding fathers.

00:18:17.980 Yes.

00:18:19.240 It's so that the reason people can't stand them and are still somewhat interested in them

00:18:24.260 are, yes, royals.

00:18:25.160 But also, they represent everything most of us in this country stand against.

00:18:33.220 They want all the privileges of being royal, but none of the responsibilities.

00:18:38.060 And there are responsibilities.

00:18:39.800 I mean, Queen Elizabeth was beyond regal.

00:18:41.880 She was a hero.

00:18:44.200 And she took it very, very seriously, never complaining, never saying a crossword.

00:18:49.020 They want to live a life of luxury, but they also, simultaneously, they want to be able

00:18:54.120 to deconstruct the institution around them.

00:18:57.340 You see, and that's a great point, Megan, which is they represent everything that is a

00:19:03.200 threat to the West in some manner because do they have some – I got in a lot of trouble

00:19:08.360 about a year and a half ago.

00:19:09.880 You'll get a kick out of this.

00:19:11.420 I don't comment on the royal stuff a lot.

00:19:13.760 But when Meghan Markle came out, and you'll know the details better than I do.

00:19:16.780 I'm grasping at some of the memory.

00:19:18.420 She said that people said something racist to me or something in Buckingham Palace.

00:19:23.200 And they said, oh, we don't like you because of a skin color.

00:19:25.500 Not in that essence, right?

00:19:27.160 Or that she was accusing.

00:19:29.040 And I said, I think she's a liar.

00:19:30.700 I think she's Jussie Smollett.

00:19:32.140 I think she's making it up.

00:19:33.860 I said, you're misrepresenting in a way to try to get clicks and headlines to try to

00:19:39.220 deconstruct the integrity and the trust of one of the last institutions of the West

00:19:44.680 that people actually enjoy, whether for the weddings, coronation, and it has some semblance

00:19:52.460 of a tradition that came before you.

00:19:54.580 And they are focused on trying to deconstruct that.

00:19:57.780 And part of what – why I'm a conservative is instead of trying to tear down everything

00:20:03.240 that has come before us, maybe we should take pause and ask ourselves the question of

00:20:08.500 what are we going to replace it with?

00:20:10.500 And maybe it's been there for a while for a reason.

00:20:12.940 You see, as conservatives, we want to pass down the best, the best art, the best music,

00:20:18.260 the best traditions, the proper manners, proper language, proper literature.

00:20:23.620 And what Harry and Meghan do – and again, I don't talk about it very openly a lot because

00:20:28.160 I consider them to be kind of a petulant sideshow.

00:20:31.340 At the same time, it's incredibly important because they are mascots for a woke movement

00:20:37.100 that is philosophically determined to deconstruct the West.

00:20:42.160 And they want the high life.

00:20:43.820 And if they can't afford an $8,000 a night room, well, look, maybe Harry's book didn't

00:20:49.620 do as well as he thought it would.

00:20:51.280 And I think that they're seeing the popularity reservoir dry up.

00:20:55.240 I think they anticipated tens of millions of dollars and huge Netflix deals.

00:21:00.760 And I'm sure they're doing OK.

00:21:02.960 But if I were to make a guess between, you know, what they thought they were making and

00:21:08.440 the popularity I think they thought they would receive, I think they are falling far, far

00:21:12.500 short.

00:21:12.980 Therefore, they have to try to make up scandals where they do not exist and do the one thing

00:21:18.640 that low talent hacks always resort to in American public life, become a victim and stage your

00:21:26.180 own hoax to what Jesse Smollett did.

00:21:28.860 And that's what they've done.

00:21:30.680 Yes, my God, that's exactly right.

00:21:33.060 It's so annoying.

00:21:34.400 And New Yorkers know better.

00:21:35.960 You can't pull that shit here.

00:21:37.080 Like we know we know our city.

00:21:38.680 This is not possible.

00:21:39.680 And by the way, so many more famous people than you have come through New York without incident.

00:21:45.340 They may have been chased by a couple of paparazzi.

00:21:47.420 You know what they don't do?

00:21:48.200 They don't turn it into a fake two hour ordeal and then have their PR person contact all

00:21:52.840 the papers to say, I was victimized.

00:21:55.220 Poor me.

00:21:56.300 Near catastrophic.

00:21:57.360 Not catastrophic, but near, near.

00:21:59.060 Trust me.

00:21:59.740 So, yes, I agree with you on everything you just said.

00:22:02.260 Now, elsewhere in New York City, there was an incident, a real one that has made news now

00:22:07.080 for two weeks.

00:22:07.980 And that is the subway chokehold, or I don't know if it was technically a chokehold, but

00:22:11.660 the subway incident between Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny.

00:22:15.500 Daniel Penny's the former Marine who got this crazed homeless guy in a headlock and subdued

00:22:23.120 him after threatening a train full of passengers over and over in a very aggressive way, say,

00:22:27.680 third parties on board that subway car who don't even know the defendant in this case.

00:22:32.320 Nonetheless, D.A. Alvin Bragg has charged Mr. Neely, sorry, Mr. Penny, Daniel Penny with

00:22:38.960 second degree manslaughter.

00:22:40.560 And in the in the buildup to all of this, he's been dismissed as a white supremacist because

00:22:46.040 the Marine is white.

00:22:47.980 The man who he subdued and ultimately inadvertently killed was black.

00:22:53.140 And the left wants to tell us that this that the that the guy who was killed was a Michael

00:22:57.340 Jackson impersonator.

00:22:58.320 He's just a sweet guy without referencing his long criminal history and threatening history

00:23:01.880 and what the other passengers are saying about what he was doing on board.

00:23:04.860 Well, now Daniel Penny comes out.

00:23:06.220 This is, again, via The New York Post and says this had nothing to do with race.

00:23:09.720 I am not a white supremacist.

00:23:11.440 They're going right to their standard playbook.

00:23:13.200 Right.

00:23:13.380 He can't just be a guy even in their version.

00:23:15.980 Their version could be he overreacted.

00:23:17.840 He took it too far.

00:23:18.960 Right.

00:23:19.180 He he used extreme force.

00:23:20.400 No, they've got to bring race into it for zero reason.

00:23:23.580 There's not even an allegation of a word of racial animus, nothing.

00:23:27.700 They just made it up because of the skin colors.

00:23:29.820 He was asked if he has anything to be ashamed of.

00:23:32.120 He said, I don't.

00:23:33.140 I mean, I always do what I think is right.

00:23:36.000 And then you've got this, Charlie, Al Sharpton, who inserts himself on every single one of these

00:23:44.580 who somehow gets to speak.

00:23:47.200 He eulogizes Jordan Neely.

00:23:49.420 Like, he didn't know Jordan Neely.

00:23:51.000 Al Sharpton makes everything about himself, gets up there and consistent with your theme

00:23:56.220 of the left.

00:23:56.940 They lie.

00:23:57.900 They don't they don't stick to the facts.

00:23:59.880 They don't admit reality when it's staring them in the face, tries to tell us there was

00:24:04.620 zero provocation, zero provocation for what Daniel Penny did in getting Neely under control

00:24:13.040 on that subway train.

00:24:14.320 Listen to Al Sharpton at the funeral on Friday.

00:24:16.240 It's seven.

00:24:16.680 We can't live in a city where you can choke me to death with no provocation, no weapon,

00:24:25.480 no threat.

00:24:26.900 And you go home and sleep in your bed while my family got to put me in a cemetery.

00:24:32.500 There must be equal justice under the law.

00:24:35.840 What do you make of it?

00:24:39.900 Oh, Al Sharpton.

00:24:41.540 There is not a race hoax that he tries to insert himself into.

00:24:46.020 I for the people.

00:24:48.060 First of all, I know this sounds bad.

00:24:49.720 People that lose like 100 pounds immediately.

00:24:52.300 I inherently I'm kind of like a little just I miss fat Al Sharpton.

00:24:55.520 I actually trust him.

00:24:56.500 He was jollier.

00:24:57.440 He was jollier.

00:24:58.600 He's just become an angry, bitter, failed television cable TV host.

00:25:02.620 Anyway, that's mean.

00:25:03.440 I don't know if that's mean or not.

00:25:04.500 It's just true.

00:25:05.100 I don't know.

00:25:05.800 Like mean is when you say it with the intention of hurting someone.

00:25:09.400 Then there's just truth.

00:25:10.360 I'm just being factual.

00:25:11.280 Then there's just truth.

00:25:12.900 Yeah.

00:25:13.140 So look, the Al Sharpton thing aside, let me let me focus on the penny because I think

00:25:17.620 it's the penny story because I think it's really important.

00:25:20.560 Megan, you would remember this.

00:25:21.980 Do you remember all the uproar over the Kitty Genovese story where the young lady was was

00:25:27.420 raped and there was this idea of where's the good Samaritan right now?

00:25:30.900 It turned out that some of it was misrepresented for the younger listeners that don't know the

00:25:34.320 story.

00:25:35.260 It was allegedly a woman that was raped in an alleyway and that like 30 or 40 onlookers heard

00:25:40.340 it from their apartments and they decided to do nothing.

00:25:42.100 That was over exaggerated, but turned out to be like four or five people.

00:25:44.500 Right.

00:25:45.020 And the question was, it was this moral outcry of who are we as a city?

00:25:48.980 Who are we as a place where we allow a bad thing to happen and nobody intervenes?

00:25:54.440 And so now fast forward to this situation.

00:25:56.500 First of all, Al Sharpton is a liar.

00:25:58.160 Of course he is.

00:25:58.740 He's made an entire career in the Tawana Brawley.

00:26:01.640 I think that was the name of the situation where he just complete.

00:26:04.060 He made up the entire.

00:26:05.380 It was a total race hoax.

00:26:06.960 Right.

00:26:07.340 It was a complete fabrication and lie and no provocation.

00:26:11.540 That man who died, the homeless individual.

00:26:14.540 Jordan Neely was said, quote, I'm ready to go back to jail.

00:26:21.180 Megan, I don't know about you, but if I was on a subway with my daughter and some lunatic

00:26:25.420 said, I'm ready to go back to jail.

00:26:27.100 Yeah.

00:26:27.220 My fight or flight instincts would all of a sudden start to get heightened.

00:26:30.000 Any rational person would when a guy street someone who says, I'm ready to go back to

00:26:34.300 jail.

00:26:34.520 What are they saying?

00:26:35.040 He's saying, I'm ready to commit another crime.

00:26:37.600 And how is the media representing it?

00:26:39.320 How's AOC that he's some sort of Michael Jackson impersonator?

00:26:42.100 This guy had dozens of priors.

00:26:45.120 And so he's on a subway saying, I'm ready to go back to jail.

00:26:47.740 And Daniel Penny, who's a good Samaritan and a hero, restrains him.

00:26:52.320 His intent was not to kill him.

00:26:54.180 OK, it's a tragedy.

00:26:55.520 Any anytime anybody dies at the same time, we can simultaneously say, you know what?

00:27:00.580 Daniel Penny should walk free because this is what ends up happening.

00:27:04.360 Aristotle said justice is the messiest of all the virtues.

00:27:07.200 Therefore, you must have clear lines and laws of what is justice and who enforces justice.

00:27:13.300 Citizen enforced justice is not the ideal, Megan.

00:27:16.620 You and I both agree this is not how we want to live society.

00:27:19.620 But when you allow anarcho tyranny in the streets, which is a philosophical and political,

00:27:25.140 let's say, mentality that is setting into our cities where we're willing to send prosecutorial

00:27:31.660 power against Donald Trump.

00:27:32.940 But the subways, you're on your own.

00:27:34.720 And if you dare to stand up, then we're going to lock you in prison.

00:27:37.160 Then you're going to get messy outcomes.

00:27:39.500 It is unfortunate what happened.

00:27:41.540 But Daniel Penny did what was necessary to protect the other passengers.

00:27:46.420 And they have even come to support him.

00:27:49.820 And so it really is an indictment of where New York is and where it's headed, where we're

00:27:54.560 not going to touch you if you're a schizophrenic, crazy person on the subway, where you're

00:27:58.800 allowed to do whatever you want.

00:27:59.540 You're allowed to hurl threats, obscenities, regardless of your priors.

00:28:02.600 And possibly, by the way, Megan, you know this.

00:28:04.560 There is kind of a growing concern that one of these people might throw you onto the actual

00:28:10.320 subway track in the way of a subway train.

00:28:13.340 That is not an unfounded concern.

00:28:15.360 And Daniel Penny decides to be a courageous, good Samaritan and might face jail time for

00:28:18.900 it.

00:28:19.220 It is reprehensible.

00:28:20.060 But yet another example of where urban America currently is.

00:28:24.740 This is another story, kind of like the Harry and Megan one, which is about more than just

00:28:28.480 this specific story.

00:28:29.720 That's right.

00:28:30.120 Where it represents so much that's wrong with the left today.

00:28:33.280 You've got a city that won't take care of a homeless, deranged man like this Jordan

00:28:39.400 Neely, who's been in and out of institutions, mental health institutions over and over and

00:28:43.080 over, but refuses to actually institutionalize somebody against their will.

00:28:47.160 They refuse to do it.

00:28:48.000 They think that that's a violation of civil liberties.

00:28:49.980 They don't give a shit about the civil liberties of the 67 year old woman whose orbital bone he

00:28:54.260 broke or the seven year old kid who he tried to kidnap.

00:28:57.700 They're not concerned about their civil liberties.

00:28:59.720 So the city won't take care of its own by locking up the deranged.

00:29:04.060 Then they sick him on the subway with insufficient law enforcement when they know that this is

00:29:08.620 a massive issue down on the subways right now.

00:29:11.040 Then you have a courageous former law enforcement.

00:29:13.920 I mean, a former Marine down there who decides to do the right thing to protect his fellow citizens.

00:29:19.260 Race has absolutely nothing to do with it.

00:29:20.740 But the left swoops in, tries to make it all about race, doesn't acknowledge its own failures

00:29:26.080 as as a governing force in the city of New York.

00:29:29.140 The left, the city was not like this under Bloomberg, under Giuliani, independents and

00:29:34.760 Republicans, respectively.

00:29:36.100 So refuses to acknowledge its ineptitude in running cities or what they've done to cops

00:29:40.600 or demoralizing them and so on, increasing crime in the subway and elsewhere in New York.

00:29:45.020 And then, I mean, like the cherry on top of the sundae, Charlie, you got the Sharpton thing

00:29:49.800 swooping in, denying fact, no threat, no provocation.

00:29:52.860 That's exactly the opposite of what everyone who has testified to the papers thus far has

00:29:57.980 said, including third party witnesses with no dog in the hunt.

00:30:00.980 And then the final piece de resistance, and that's AOC coming to the funeral, which has

00:30:09.040 nothing to do with her coming to the funeral and actually posing for photos with the public,

00:30:16.240 because what better time for a photo op than at the at the side of a dead man?

00:30:21.700 That's that's really where you want to put on the pearly whites and nail your selfie.

00:30:26.620 You know, get the right lighting.

00:30:27.920 My left side's my best.

00:30:29.740 Do you have the casket in the background?

00:30:31.300 I want it to look perfect.

00:30:32.300 I want everybody to know that's what she did.

00:30:35.800 That's correct.

00:30:36.700 I think of that meme that is always circulated on Twitter.

00:30:40.420 You've probably seen it, Megan, where the one guy is like posing in front of the casket.

00:30:43.580 Like that's AOC live at the funeral, like getting a selfie right in front of the casket.

00:30:48.060 I mean, she doesn't care about him at all.

00:30:51.080 AOC is viva la revolution.

00:30:53.760 And racializing this situation, in her opinion, makes the revolution more likely.

00:31:00.440 What is the revolution?

00:31:01.580 The complete transformation and destruction of Western society.

00:31:06.460 Western society, the country you and I grew up in, Megan, would prioritize merit over race.

00:31:12.460 It would prioritize rule of law over tribalism.

00:31:15.820 It would prioritize individual sovereignty and rights over sectarianism and tribalism.

00:31:21.520 She wants all that gone.

00:31:22.960 And what she wants to replace it with, she hasn't really thought that deeply.

00:31:26.220 Most of them haven't, by the way.

00:31:27.340 I get that question all the time.

00:31:28.260 Well, Charlie, it's all about deconstruction, tearing down.

00:31:31.460 It's an arsenic, parasitic movement that is first about destroying because they're full of resentment.

00:31:36.140 Resentment, I think, is one of the most undiagnosed mental issues that really pervades elite society and the left.

00:31:43.840 But she couldn't care less about him.

00:31:45.600 And it's so narcissistic.

00:31:46.940 Can we just say that, that she is a flat out narcissist?

00:31:50.560 To go to somebody's funeral where you should say, you know what?

00:31:53.580 I'm perfectly comfortable by saying, you know what?

00:31:56.260 His life is worthy of honoring.

00:31:58.340 He didn't deserve to die, but it wasn't the intent.

00:32:01.120 He shouldn't have been acting like a maniac.

00:32:02.540 I think you could take pause.

00:32:05.320 You could say, you know what?

00:32:06.160 This is too bad.

00:32:07.520 And that's fine.

00:32:08.360 I think that's perfectly appropriate.

00:32:10.160 At the same time, that's not why she's there.

00:32:12.140 She's there to try to get clicks, to try to get media attention, because this is the key.

00:32:17.500 AOC and Al Sharpton and all these people are trying so hard to create another George Floyd.

00:32:24.580 Because the George Floyd situation made them temporarily more powerful.

00:32:28.520 And they miss it.

00:32:29.360 They were allowed to have big protests, make themselves seem like they're Martin Luther King.

00:32:33.840 These are narcissists that are constantly searching for another piece of outrage.

00:32:39.200 And guess what?

00:32:40.180 There's just a supply and demand problem with racism in this country.

00:32:43.440 We're actually way, we're far more decent than AOC would ever have to believe that most

00:32:48.200 situations actually don't have a racial element.

00:32:51.460 That you have to create your own race hoaxes.

00:32:53.940 That you have to try to, you have to try to import race where it doesn't exist.

00:32:57.320 Where this was not about race.

00:32:58.860 This was about what Viktor Frankl said.

00:33:00.960 There are two different types of people.

00:33:02.600 There are the decent and the indecent.

00:33:05.640 And Jordan Neely was acting indecently.

00:33:08.780 And Daniel Penny was acting decently.

00:33:11.760 That's the divide here.

00:33:12.940 Not white and black or rich or poor or homeless and housed.

00:33:16.720 No, no, no.

00:33:17.280 It's decent and indecent.

00:33:19.700 And then something unfortunate happened because of it.

00:33:22.160 AOC doesn't view the world through that lens.

00:33:23.880 She views it through sectarian tribalism that will only make her more powerful and popular.

00:33:28.940 Yes.

00:33:29.220 What you said made me want to stand up and cheer.

00:33:31.320 You put it so beautifully.

00:33:32.640 You're exactly right.

00:33:33.640 And two points.

00:33:35.000 Number one, the irony of that woman sitting in her SUV or her black car protected by guards,

00:33:41.800 not even like, you know, getting out of the way.

00:33:43.700 So she's got her security.

00:33:45.540 She's got armed guards protecting her.

00:33:47.360 But she wants to take away our guns in the city of New York, as do her fellow Democrats.

00:33:52.400 We're not supposed to be having them anywhere because she says so.

00:33:55.500 They want to take away our law enforcement.

00:33:57.540 They want to allow turnstile jumping down in the subway, which leads to additional crimes down there.

00:34:01.760 They don't want crime enforcement down there.

00:34:03.140 Mayor Adams just started pushing back against that when the crime rate went up double digits.

00:34:08.560 And yet she's going to be behind her security with armed, you know, with with guns in her car.

00:34:14.200 OK, we get it.

00:34:15.000 We perfectly.

00:34:15.580 But, you know, Daniel Neely.

00:34:17.200 Sorry, I keep screwing it up.

00:34:18.440 It's Jordan Neely and Daniel Penny.

00:34:20.520 Daniel Penny.

00:34:21.040 He can't protect anybody.

00:34:22.020 You're on your own.

00:34:23.060 So that's one point.

00:34:23.940 Number two, to your point of like her selfie and her injecting herself because she wants clicks.

00:34:28.780 And you said the same about Sharpton after the funeral.

00:34:32.220 Look what he put out on his social media.

00:34:35.460 Look at this clip.

00:34:41.660 It's him arriving in a black car.

00:34:43.540 Michael Jackson theme song.

00:34:46.940 It's him getting out and somebody opens the door for him.

00:34:52.500 You've got to be kidding me.

00:34:54.260 I mean, this happened.

00:34:56.640 It's him at the funeral.

00:34:58.240 Glad handing.

00:34:59.180 And it ends in a still of him.

00:35:00.640 Charlie.

00:35:02.920 I'm just surprised he didn't use thriller.

00:35:04.860 I mean, could you just make it more obvious or beat it?

00:35:07.680 I mean, look, this is important.

00:35:10.280 We actually live in a decent country.

00:35:14.160 There are a lot of great people.

00:35:15.500 I hear all the time from people.

00:35:16.460 Charlie, the country's falling apart.

00:35:17.500 It's collapsing.

00:35:18.220 Boy, is that true when it comes to the dollar, inflation, the border.

00:35:20.920 My goodness.

00:35:21.740 But there's so many good people left in this country, Megan.

00:35:24.320 And it just it makes me emotional.

00:35:26.540 I want to fight harder.

00:35:27.380 And to see an act of heroism get deemed an act of cruelty, it infuriates me.

00:35:34.800 And it should your entire audience, because the American spirit is to step up and storm

00:35:39.940 the beach and restrain the belligerent when other people might be cruel.

00:35:45.300 That is an American value.

00:35:46.700 I've said time and time again, you can judge a society based on what you do with strength.

00:35:52.820 Are you indifferent?

00:35:53.980 Are you a spectator?

00:35:55.060 Do you subsidize widespread criminality or do you use strength to protect the weak?

00:36:00.400 A Western value is that you do not act as a spectator when you see injustice unfold around

00:36:07.880 you.

00:36:08.120 The American creed, the American ethos that is written in our documents, but more importantly,

00:36:13.300 it's passed down around dinner tables all across the country, is that you have a moral

00:36:17.740 obligation to do something when you see somebody that can't defend themselves be treated poorly.

00:36:23.720 And not only is that being put in jeopardy, the opposite is we are criminalizing that ethos

00:36:29.040 in New York City currently.

00:36:30.540 You're so right.

00:36:31.520 I pray to God every night, of course, for my children, for my country, for those suffering.

00:36:37.040 And one of the things I pray for my children is that he helped make them strong and help

00:36:41.300 make them able to protect the weak.

00:36:43.020 That's it's not just make them strong.

00:36:44.680 It's please make them strong enough to protect the weak when they see somebody in danger or

00:36:48.260 hurting.

00:36:49.120 Please give them the courage and the ability to step in.

00:36:52.100 And that that's what Penny did.

00:36:54.000 That's what he did.

00:36:54.880 And he's being criminalized for it.

00:36:56.100 He's been calling being called a white supremacist by these guys who are looking for photo app

00:37:01.200 ops and to increase their own brand recognition off the back of a dead man.

00:37:05.640 It's absolutely disgusting.

00:37:07.740 It is.

00:37:08.520 It's violent.

00:37:08.900 I want to talk to you next about because what you were saying is like dovetails perfectly

00:37:12.360 on what Senator Tim Scott said to us when he came on the show not long ago.

00:37:17.380 And he's announcing today.

00:37:18.840 I'd love to get your take on him and where we are in 2024.

00:37:22.140 More with Charlie Kirk right after this.

00:37:24.680 So young and so much wisdom.

00:37:26.380 So it was last August, Charlie, in episode 370 that we had Senator Tim Scott join us as

00:37:37.260 he was promoting a book that he was clearly writing to soften the field for his presidential

00:37:42.100 run, which now we expect will be announced today.

00:37:45.980 Here's just a little bit of where his messaging was back then.

00:37:49.400 The fact that we've had an African-American president, we've had an African-American vice

00:37:54.620 president, we've had an African-American head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we have an African-American

00:37:59.660 who's the head of all the military today.

00:38:01.460 We have had an African-American running American Express.

00:38:04.980 Supreme Court justices.

00:38:06.020 Supreme Court justices.

00:38:07.060 I mean, when you take a look at the progress made and you don't look at both sides of the

00:38:13.080 ledger, how do you come to the conclusion that America is a racist country?

00:38:17.600 We may struggle with the issue of race, but the truth is that I said it and Kamala Harris

00:38:23.460 has said it, Joe Biden has said it as well, that America is not a racist country.

00:38:27.340 Now, here's what I'm going to challenge all leaders to do.

00:38:29.080 Let's act like it.

00:38:30.300 Let's not sell to people this division that is easy to conquer so that you win an elected

00:38:35.800 office.

00:38:36.380 If you have to win through anger and win through division, you might win, but the country loses.

00:38:42.480 And ultimately, if the country loses, the world loses.

00:38:45.280 I'm not willing to let America think that we're divided when we are the greatest force

00:38:51.480 on earth for good.

00:38:53.020 Nothing close.

00:38:54.140 No second place.

00:38:55.380 We are the city on the hill.

00:38:57.060 We are the beacon in the midst of the storm.

00:39:00.900 Tim Scott is a force for good as well.

00:39:03.260 But is he the man for the job at this point in our country's history this time around?

00:39:08.880 What do you make of it?

00:39:09.700 Yeah, I'm a Trump guy.

00:39:10.860 100% I've endorsed Trump and he's a good friend and I'm sure we'll chat about that.

00:39:14.240 But let me talk about Tim Scott.

00:39:15.960 I'm so glad he's running.

00:39:17.420 First of all, he's a first class guy.

00:39:18.780 When I met him, he's like one of the sweetest, warmest, kindest.

00:39:22.420 I'm like, you're way too kind to be a politician.

00:39:24.740 That was my first.

00:39:26.160 When I met him, I said, Tim Scott's the type of guy that would stay extra hours to make

00:39:32.720 sure the church bake sale is all cleaned up.

00:39:37.920 He'd volunteer extra hours to park cars.

00:39:40.480 He lives out his faith.

00:39:42.160 He's a great, great guy.

00:39:43.060 I'm glad he's running because we need more voices.

00:39:46.180 That's why I love the fact that Vivek is running and Tim Scott to crusade against this woke

00:39:51.220 ideology for no other reason for Tim Scott to go hard against the bitter lie from hell

00:39:56.560 that America's a racist country to put the 1619 project on trial, to put the Nicole Hannah

00:40:01.420 Jones nonsense on trial.

00:40:04.280 God bless Tim Scott for that.

00:40:06.260 I'll be honest.

00:40:07.200 He doesn't have much of a shot in the Republican primary.

00:40:09.960 I know the Republican base pretty well.

00:40:12.000 It's going to be Trump.

00:40:12.960 And if not Trump, maybe DeSantis.

00:40:14.740 But even that is a very, very low percentage chance.

00:40:17.120 The Republican base is just not going to be on board for Tim Scott at the time, my personal

00:40:23.300 opinion.

00:40:23.780 At the same time, I don't think it has to be one way or the other in the sense of, oh,

00:40:28.340 I hate every candidate running.

00:40:29.600 I have great respect for him.

00:40:31.660 And for Tim Scott, for example, to get public praise from Elon Musk, to have Tim Scott's

00:40:36.780 video about we're a nation of work, we're not a nation of victims, we're a nation of

00:40:41.880 flourishing and not trying to lower expectations.

00:40:45.080 That's awesome that the world's richest man and the owner of Twitter is favorably tweeting

00:40:49.520 out about someone that talks about center right values.

00:40:52.420 And so I'm thrilled he's running for the presidency.

00:40:55.660 I wish him very well.

00:40:56.560 I also want to make sure he knows don't run against Trump because that is a chainsaw that

00:41:00.700 I don't think anybody is going to want to go go towards.

00:41:03.460 At the same time, the more people that can go on mainstream media and put this woke ideology

00:41:08.560 on trial, God bless him in his efforts.

00:41:11.140 I like the way you put that.

00:41:13.600 There is a piece in Politico as of yesterday saying, look, the entry of Tim Scott, you got

00:41:21.420 New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu saying there's a 61 percent chance he's going to

00:41:26.540 run for president and could announce soon.

00:41:28.540 You got the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum.

00:41:31.860 Hello?

00:41:32.440 Who?

00:41:34.140 I had to Google him.

00:41:35.740 He's I don't think he's got a lot of name ID.

00:41:38.300 So, yeah.

00:41:39.360 Hello.

00:41:39.720 I'm all about South Dakota anyway.

00:41:41.480 Whatever.

00:41:41.920 To the north.

00:41:42.600 No, just kidding.

00:41:43.180 It's fine.

00:41:43.500 Um, so Politico's takeaway was that what this tells you is that DeSantis tells you something

00:41:51.500 about DeSantis because he was supposed to be the main non-Trump candidate.

00:41:55.260 And they say DeSantis is a paper tiger.

00:41:57.320 As more prospective candidates surface, it's becoming clearer what's at the heart of those

00:42:01.560 plans.

00:42:02.020 A growing belief within the party that DeSantis is a paper tiger.

00:42:06.040 His Disney jihad, his Ukraine is a territorial dispute stumble have undermined his aura of

00:42:11.440 competence among donors in the business community.

00:42:14.900 He suddenly appears to be a candidate who who has thrived in a protective cocoon, isolated

00:42:20.680 from media scrutiny.

00:42:21.680 I don't know if that's true.

00:42:22.960 Certainly not.

00:42:23.680 I'm not sure that's true.

00:42:24.880 But yeah.

00:42:25.360 OK, I see what they're trying to say.

00:42:26.760 Uh, and he's now confronting the perception that he is a porcelain candidate, glazed and

00:42:32.580 decorative, durable enough, but not really built to withstand the blunt impact of Trump's

00:42:38.220 hammer or the full fury of a united democratic party.

00:42:41.600 It's an interesting theory that the entrance of all these people tells us something about

00:42:45.200 the other leading possibility after Trump.

00:42:48.400 What do you think?

00:42:49.660 Yeah.

00:42:50.160 Look, in politics, if you're not growing, you're dying.

00:42:52.140 Right.

00:42:52.440 And if you're not advancing, you're decaying.

00:42:54.520 And I'm a huge fan and friend of Governor DeSantis.

00:42:58.060 And my advice to him publicly and privately would be first looking back, you're you should

00:43:03.700 have you should have announced 120 days ago.

00:43:05.560 Right.

00:43:05.800 Your stock was high.

00:43:06.880 You should have got into the race.

00:43:08.080 I know you had a legislative session to get stuff done.

00:43:10.440 I know you had governing stuff.

00:43:11.660 This has been way too slow of a roll up.

00:43:15.000 And Trump's team, to their credit, they saw kind of a target floating and they just said,

00:43:20.160 we are going to relentlessly pound Governor DeSantis and we're going to get our favorables

00:43:23.620 up.

00:43:23.820 And Trump's team deserves credit.

00:43:25.560 That worked.

00:43:26.220 Now, whether or not that will stay or not remains to be seen.

00:43:29.320 But Governor DeSantis was within striking distance back in January based on all public

00:43:33.020 reporting polls.

00:43:33.960 And he just kind of decided to slow walk it, decided to kind of say, oh, I'll do something

00:43:37.840 around May or June.

00:43:39.000 And that strategy might end up being right.

00:43:41.480 I'm skeptical.

00:43:42.400 I think that if he would have entered the race in January, February, he would be in a much

00:43:46.920 better spot than he is right now.

00:43:48.400 With this kind of criticism, though, I just kind of laugh.

00:43:50.580 It sounds like a GOP consultant said that the one reason that DeSantis is attractive to

00:43:55.180 the Republican base is jihad against Disney.

00:43:57.920 No, we actually want to see people use political power to go after multibillion dollar corporations

00:44:02.820 that produce content to groom our kids.

00:44:04.720 I think that actually increases his appeal.

00:44:06.960 It might jeopardize your standing ovation at the Chamber of Commerce, but it will certainly

00:44:11.540 actually increase DeSantis's likelihood to challenge Trump in states like Ohio, South

00:44:16.500 Carolina and New Hampshire.

00:44:17.780 The Ukraine thing.

00:44:18.720 You know what?

00:44:19.580 Newsflash to the neoliberal neocons that largely run Washington, D.C.

00:44:23.780 The vast majority of Republican primary voters care more about the United States southern

00:44:27.900 border than what's happening in Ukraine and Russia.

00:44:29.860 So I think the further that DeSantis, and I don't think he will, will lean into that.

00:44:34.100 Actually, I think he would benefit politically.

00:44:36.160 The final thing I'll say, though, is that you're seeing some some not leaking, but you're

00:44:40.880 seeing some early language workshopping from DeSantis and kind of this the longest roll

00:44:46.900 up of a presidential candidate I have ever candidacy I've ever seen, Megan.

00:44:50.280 I mean, it's like, come on, just get it over with, man.

00:44:52.140 Can you run for the presidency?

00:44:53.660 I mean, it's the book tour in this.

00:44:55.180 And I say this as someone who's very pro Ron DeSantis and what he's done in Florida,

00:44:58.080 who I believe is America's greatest governor right now, is that the most effective line

00:45:03.040 of attack against Trump will be the covid and the Fauci stuff.

00:45:06.660 As I travel the country, you know, we have a very pro Trump audience on our podcast and

00:45:10.540 our radio show.

00:45:11.280 The thing that the audience agrees more than anything else, and even the great Rush

00:45:14.960 Lombaugh said about Trump, it Rush said President Trump's picking up personnel is

00:45:21.400 puzzling.

00:45:23.060 That was the most that was the most critical of Trump.

00:45:26.160 Russia ever was, is that Ron DeSantis saying, hey, why'd you put Fauci in there?

00:45:30.780 Why'd you put Burks in there?

00:45:32.140 Why'd you do Operation Warp Speed?

00:45:34.040 Why'd you recommend this stuff?

00:45:35.700 That is going to be a line of attack that Trump is going to have to navigate.

00:45:39.360 I think he'll be able to do that.

00:45:40.720 But, you know, all these kind of third or fourth tier candidates like Sununu or Burgum or

00:45:45.800 Yunkin, I think it's all just a sideshow.

00:45:49.340 It's not going to resonate.

00:45:50.840 Trump has 50 to 60 percent of the Republican base.

00:45:54.160 I think that could only increase in certain states.

00:45:56.900 He's been on message lately.

00:45:58.640 The indictments are actually only more of a life force to his campaign.

00:46:02.720 DeSantis still has a path, but it's ever decreasing.

00:46:05.500 And if he would have announced a couple of months ago, I think you'd be in a much better

00:46:08.280 spot.

00:46:09.240 Oh, and he could have scared some of these other people out.

00:46:11.260 I mean, that's the main way for DeSantis to get the nomination is to have it be a head

00:46:15.760 to head race.

00:46:16.840 DeSantis v.

00:46:17.640 Trump.

00:46:18.740 And with all these people throwing their hat in the ring, they don't divide the Trump

00:46:22.880 vote.

00:46:23.260 Those people are not Burgum's not going to get any of the Trump voters.

00:46:27.200 You know, the only person left to take from is really DeSantis.

00:46:29.460 Serious threat.

00:46:30.720 Right.

00:46:30.920 Yeah.

00:46:31.380 I mean, but in a weird way, Mar-a-Lago is actually celebrating that Tim Scott is running.

00:46:37.320 Yeah, sure.

00:46:37.980 Mar-a-Lago is celebrating that all the Vivek and all this, Nikki Haley, they said, go and

00:46:43.320 dilute the not Trump vote.

00:46:45.920 Right.

00:46:46.360 And let's just call it what it is.

00:46:49.000 Running for the presidency in a social media era, it's basically become a cottage industry

00:46:53.640 to go get either a Fox News contributorship, live kind of an elevated lifestyle based on

00:46:59.420 donor funds and be treated really well in Palo Alto and Beverly Hills and to kind of act

00:47:05.020 like you're really important, like you get, you know, black cars and private jets.

00:47:09.300 And it really isn't about communicating to voters, at least for most of these people,

00:47:12.740 or they're able to talk about an issue that they care about.

00:47:16.120 And whether that's a good thing or not, I'm not sure.

00:47:19.620 I think it is a good thing that people that are probably not going to be president, like

00:47:23.720 Tim Scott and Vivek, are able to get a nationwide platform.

00:47:26.900 And they're taken more seriously because they say I'm running for the presidency, especially

00:47:30.320 against really important, you know, with really important ideas.

00:47:32.880 But let's be serious.

00:47:33.880 Who's actually going to win the nomination?

00:47:35.380 Who's actually going to be in the driver's seat to govern the country?

00:47:38.640 It's almost a certainly Trump thing.

00:47:40.700 If not that, then DeSantis.

00:47:42.740 These other candidates are just a unnecessary and largely distraction, distracting sideshow

00:47:47.940 absent some of the candidates that I think are talking about issues that can actually

00:47:51.340 move the dial and the Overton window for moderates and independents.

00:47:54.440 Now, stand by, because DeSantis is under attack by the NAACP in a really unfair smear of what

00:48:01.500 he's doing in Florida.

00:48:02.180 We'll pick it up there right after this quick, quick break.

00:48:04.240 Charlie Kirk stays with us for the full show.

00:48:09.260 So on the subject of presidential politics, Ron DeSantis is now under attack by the NAACP,

00:48:15.100 which has issued a travel warning for Florida.

00:48:19.620 This is like what you get with like, hey, Americans shouldn't go to Syria.

00:48:22.420 You know, they're having a bad civil war.

00:48:24.440 Now, the NAACP is issuing these warnings, but for American states, in particular, red

00:48:30.740 ones run by possible future presidential candidates, the formal travel advisory says that reads that

00:48:38.060 Florida is openly hostile toward African-Americans, people of color and LGBTQ plus individuals.

00:48:46.500 Before traveling to Florida, please understand the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes

00:48:50.080 the contributions of and the challenges faced by African-Americans and other communities

00:48:54.560 of color.

00:48:55.880 They went on to say that this advisory is in direct response to DeSantis's, quote, aggressive

00:49:00.760 attempts to erase black history, Charlie, and to restrict diversity, equity and inclusion

00:49:06.560 programs in Florida schools.

00:49:09.540 So you think that's an honestly held belief or is that a political tactic?

00:49:16.460 Well, we know it's a political tactic tactic because I was curious.

00:49:20.260 I went on their website.

00:49:21.100 I said, OK, who's in charge of the NAACP?

00:49:22.640 Is this guy Leon Russell?

00:49:23.980 And where does he live, Megan?

00:49:25.460 Tampa, Florida.

00:49:26.660 Oh, really?

00:49:27.560 So you're going to send out a trap?

00:49:29.180 Leon Russell living in the state that he's telling people not to travel to.

00:49:34.420 I mean, it's just, of course, they don't believe it.

00:49:36.600 I mean, 99 percent of left wing ideology is inconsistent with their behavior and they're

00:49:42.480 environmentalists unless it comes to their own emissions.

00:49:45.080 They hate borders and walls unless it's their gated community.

00:49:47.900 They don't want school choice for your kids, but they're still going to send them to 50 to

00:49:52.340 $60,000 a year prep schools.

00:49:54.160 Right.

00:49:54.340 So that's the one thing that I always say about conservatives is that, yeah, there are some

00:49:58.160 inconsistencies here and there, but largely I'm a big Second Amendment guy.

00:50:02.080 I own guns.

00:50:02.740 I'm not going to stop you from owning them.

00:50:04.120 I believe in borders and walls.

00:50:05.260 I don't care if you're a gated community.

00:50:06.840 And so, I mean, they don't believe this.

00:50:09.000 Obviously, they don't.

00:50:09.880 And if not, I mean, we should be calling for Leon Russell to move out of Tampa, Florida,

00:50:13.380 man.

00:50:13.860 It's so dangerous.

00:50:14.700 It's the neo-segregated South.

00:50:16.720 And by the way, while we're at it, you know, we have Blexit at Turning Point USA, which

00:50:20.660 is founded by Candace Owens.

00:50:22.120 Blexit is going to be sending out a travel advisory responding to this saying, you know, black should

00:50:26.140 be very careful going to Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, considering the amount of gang

00:50:30.280 crime that happens over the summer.

00:50:31.700 That's a fact.

00:50:32.600 You want to talk about cities that are dangerous for blacks?

00:50:35.800 Urban America in the summer is very, very dangerous.

00:50:39.100 We're talking about in Chicago, anywhere between three to 400 gang-related black-on-black crimes

00:50:44.320 that occur every single summer.

00:50:47.320 So I don't think they believe it for a second.

00:50:49.180 The NAACP has not been very relevant for quite some time, largely because, it goes back to an

00:50:54.640 earlier theme that I said, is there really isn't that much racism from them to protest,

00:50:59.920 certainly not systemically.

00:51:01.140 Of course, there are races in this country.

00:51:02.780 There's people that are cruel and evil and awful.

00:51:04.340 But the biggest amount of racism in the country is against white people and Asian people.

00:51:09.460 It's not against blacks, and it certainly is not in our laws or our customs, our traditions.

00:51:15.060 No, we are a decent country where our laws, thankfully, got to a place that prioritized

00:51:20.440 merit over race.

00:51:21.920 But the NAACP, trying to stay relevant, issues this advisory.

00:51:24.840 You know who this travel advisory is really for?

00:51:26.660 It's not for black America.

00:51:28.160 99% of blacks would laugh when they see this.

00:51:30.380 It's for white liberals.

00:51:32.140 This is written for white liberals in Boca Raton and in the Upper East Side that hate

00:51:37.720 Ron DeSantis so much that they want to try to get some sort of headlines against them

00:51:42.580 because he decided that we shouldn't have the 1619 Project in Florida schools.

00:51:46.640 Yeah, it's interesting what you say about the inner cities, Chicago, Baltimore, and so on.

00:51:52.380 If you're a black man who gets killed in the state of Florida, the left will make a huge

00:51:55.480 deal out of it.

00:51:56.040 The NAACP is sure to say something.

00:51:58.100 But if you're a black man who gets killed in Chicago, they won't give two shits.

00:52:01.000 They will not say a word.

00:52:02.380 They will ignore it like it's absolutely no news.

00:52:05.440 So yeah, there is cause for concern.

00:52:08.980 On the subject of presidential politics, actually, let me just spend one second on DeSantis because

00:52:13.400 I did look up like I hate to let the lie pass without.

00:52:17.100 Setting the record straight on DeSantis and what he's actually done in the Florida schools.

00:52:21.180 When I read this and just remind myself, it's like we have great schools now here that we're

00:52:25.840 at in Connecticut, and that's by design.

00:52:27.500 You know, we left these woke New York City private schools for exactly this reason.

00:52:31.960 You know, critical race theory.

00:52:33.340 I always say I don't care what you call it.

00:52:34.540 Critical race theory.

00:52:34.920 I don't give a shit what you call it.

00:52:35.820 You can call it critical race theory.

00:52:36.720 You can just call it, you know, weird race essentialism.

00:52:39.000 But it was happening to my kids and it's not happening in my current schools.

00:52:42.620 But here's what he did in Florida.

00:52:43.820 He banned, quote, critical race theory, saying state the educational topics have to be factual

00:52:48.360 and objective.

00:52:49.200 It prohibits the teaching of critical race theory, meaning, as they define it, the theory

00:52:52.880 that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that it's embedded in American society

00:52:57.380 and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of whites.

00:53:01.540 He banned 1619 teaching materials.

00:53:04.480 That's good because all honest historians on the left and right have said that's made

00:53:08.580 up.

00:53:08.820 It's lies by Hannah-Nicole Jones.

00:53:10.600 That's correct.

00:53:11.200 Nicole Hannah-Jones.

00:53:12.280 He signed legislation against woke indoctrination, which prevents discriminatory instruction in the

00:53:16.780 workplace and in public schools that defines individual freedoms based on the fundamental

00:53:21.280 truth that all individuals are equal before the law and have inalienable rights.

00:53:27.380 And then finally, he blocked a preliminary version of a new AP course in the college and

00:53:34.200 not in the high schools that is based on African-American studies.

00:53:37.180 Why?

00:53:37.400 Because he doesn't like African-American studies?

00:53:39.240 No, because it was based on Kimberly Crenshaw's teachings on Ta-Nehisi Coates, on all these

00:53:45.100 far left black scholars who are trying to teach critical race theory.

00:53:50.360 So you can teach American history all day long, you can teach about slavery, Jim Crow, all

00:53:55.220 of it.

00:53:56.160 And the NAACP is just being dishonest in its characterizations of what he's done.

00:54:00.860 So that just shows you as well.

00:54:02.320 In addition to the fact that Leon lives in Tampa, that they're lying.

00:54:06.080 You go through that list, it's like, oh, wait, you mean Ron DeSantis wants education the

00:54:09.640 way it was like 15 years ago?

00:54:11.340 And they act as if he's some sort of neo-Confederate, right?

00:54:14.180 That's the country I grew up in.

00:54:15.920 OK, the country I grew up in, it was we don't care about your race.

00:54:19.500 We care about your character.

00:54:21.220 You could be bigger than the circumstances around you, really basic stuff.

00:54:25.500 And if you go into just the deceit, the treachery, the dishonesty of the 1619 Project from any

00:54:34.020 sort of objective historical analytical lens, it will make you stunned that this is allowed

00:54:40.660 in any sort of academic environment.

00:54:42.680 They do not use original source documents.

00:54:44.780 It's a lot of hearsay.

00:54:46.140 It has a massive preference on emotionalism.

00:54:48.720 The best work has really been done by Hillsdale College, just tearing the 1619 Project apart.

00:54:54.300 And of course, we want all aspects of American history to be taught accurately and fairly

00:54:58.620 with proper context.

00:55:00.260 The problem of the 1619 Project and race essentialism is that they prioritize slavery, Jim Crow South.

00:55:08.940 And you know what argument they make?

00:55:10.160 They say, it really hasn't changed very much.

00:55:12.400 It just takes a different form.

00:55:13.680 That is a lie.

00:55:14.280 It's a lie from the pit of hell.

00:55:15.500 We have made racial progress.

00:55:16.700 We have changed our laws.

00:55:18.500 And they need to keep this going because they're more powerful the more they're able to convince

00:55:23.260 people that America is still a racist country, which we are not.

00:55:26.600 Yeah.

00:55:26.800 So on the subject of presidential politics on a bigger scale, you've been saying some interesting

00:55:31.880 things that I'd love to talk to you about.

00:55:33.860 And you've been critical of the RNC as playing Frisbee when you say the Democrats are what?

00:55:39.820 What are the Democrats doing in versus versus the RNC?

00:55:43.700 Oh, boy.

00:55:44.560 How much time you got?

00:55:45.700 So, look, I want to win and I hate losing.

00:55:48.540 And I I've been very critical of RNC leadership.

00:55:51.760 I try to get her meet Dylan in there.

00:55:53.760 Look, I think Ron is a very sweet person.

00:55:55.540 I think she should go run for Congress.

00:55:57.280 She's always been very good to me, but she's a loser.

00:55:59.060 She's she has she has overseen losing election after losing election.

00:56:02.720 And there's always an excuse.

00:56:03.760 Right.

00:56:04.240 Whether it be 2018, 2020, 2022, there's always an excuse.

00:56:08.640 I think that in business, in anything, after six years of failure, you've got to make a

00:56:13.580 change.

00:56:13.800 You have to say you're done.

00:56:15.280 We're going to find somebody new.

00:56:16.360 Let's get some fresh thinking.

00:56:17.440 The Democrats have they've gone all in and they did this post covid and they were very

00:56:22.360 smart.

00:56:22.820 They were very treacherous, but they were very strategic.

00:56:24.720 And parts of this little crumbs of this were articulated in Molly Ball's article, the Time

00:56:29.560 magazine article, the secret campaign or the shadow campaign that saved the 2020 election,

00:56:34.040 where they talk about this party infrastructure through nonprofit groups and activist groups

00:56:39.200 and legal groups, lawfare that not just manipulated, but they they've really taken the sexiness

00:56:45.780 out of politics where it's not about candidate selection.

00:56:48.780 It's not even always about debate or messaging or popularity.

00:56:52.540 It's about the boring stuff of politics, the clipboard and tennis shoes type of work, the

00:56:57.440 voter registration, the ballot chasing and the machinery.

00:57:00.200 And my evidence that I submit is that they are able to get somebody who should not be a

00:57:05.600 U.S.

00:57:05.880 Senator John Fetterman to be a very qualified candidate and incredibly smart man.

00:57:11.300 Mehmet Oz should be the U.S.

00:57:12.880 Senator from Pennsylvania.

00:57:13.700 How is that possible?

00:57:15.080 Well, some people say it's because of abortion.

00:57:16.520 That might be partially true, but it's mostly true because the Democrats have built an incredibly

00:57:22.160 well-funded and bulletproof type machine that registers their low prop voters and gets people

00:57:29.500 to vote early and gets their mail-in ballots in.

00:57:32.680 And we as Republicans have done none of that infrastructure.

00:57:35.100 And I can say that as someone who lives in Arizona, it's basically a major hope campaign.

00:57:39.800 Well, I hope we're going to win.

00:57:41.300 I hope we just have an ability to get our voters out.

00:57:44.120 And the RNC does not have the sophistication, does not have the commitment to this kind of

00:57:49.280 grassroots work.

00:57:50.100 They're headquartered in Washington, D.C.

00:57:52.560 They're consultant heavy, 40 to 50 percent of all the money they raise goes towards raising

00:57:58.280 more money, actually.

00:57:59.960 And so my argument is this.

00:58:01.360 We have to downsize the RNC and we have to get back to a culture of winning.

00:58:05.380 And the most important thing that can happen on the American right, in my personal opinion,

00:58:09.600 is less emphasis on candidate selection and more emphasis on the boring stuff.

00:58:15.220 And I don't I do not think the current RNC leadership has earned the trust of the American

00:58:19.440 grassroots or donors to say, keep on giving us money.

00:58:22.860 It's time for us to start to create it ourselves.

00:58:25.880 How how can we do an end around that RNC?

00:58:29.120 How do people who want to see sane people elected and not these leftists who want to change the

00:58:33.900 country do an end around?

00:58:35.440 You know, you get to the point where it's like they're no good to us.

00:58:37.500 We're going to have to forge on without them.

00:58:39.020 Yeah, we're going to try to do part of it at Turning Point Action, but we're open and

00:58:43.280 we have a political arm that we've really built and we're trying to build to do the

00:58:47.040 ballot chasing in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

00:58:50.040 But part of it is trying to learn from the left.

00:58:52.360 What does that mean, ballot chasing?

00:58:53.120 Can you just define what you mean by that?

00:58:54.940 Sure.

00:58:55.740 Yeah, it's super important.

00:58:56.880 So traditionally, and I was guilty of this in the midterms.

00:59:00.760 I told everyone to go vote on Election Day.

00:59:02.720 I said, hey, just hold your ballot back and go vote on Election Day.

00:59:06.980 Meanwhile, Democrats say, OK, well, we have 30 days to go collect ballots, to go get our

00:59:12.840 low propensity voters to turn in their ballots, and we are going to maximize our turnout over

00:59:18.200 a 30 day window where Republicans and conservatives are going to just try to bum rush the polls

00:59:23.380 on one day.

00:59:24.640 I think that's a failed strategy on our part.

00:59:26.980 So ballot chasing, specifically in Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona, is changing our philosophy,

00:59:32.800 admitting that we were engaging in an outdated model and realizing reluctantly, but realizing

00:59:39.140 and recognizing we are in the era of mass mail-in voting.

00:59:43.340 Therefore, we're going to try to increase the window where we get our low propensity voters

00:59:48.820 to turn in their mail-in ballots or to vote in person and early to try to get that extra

00:59:54.760 five or 10 percent that have not been showing up to the polls to try to compete with the Democrat

00:59:59.220 turnout operation. So ballot chasing is the legal way that you're able to do this in Arizona,

01:00:05.260 Wisconsin and Georgia, which are the three states that the inevitable Republican nominee

01:00:09.260 or Donald Trump, who I think will be the nominee, needs to win, where you deploy hundreds

01:00:14.460 and probably over a thousand paid workers that knock on door after door and they'll say,

01:00:20.920 hey, Miss Sally Sue or Mrs. Smith, I see you have a ballot on your kitchen table

01:00:25.540 and you know she has a ballot because all that data is public. I'd like to recommend that you

01:00:30.040 turn it in and you'll be met with resistance. Oh, I don't want to vote or all this.

01:00:34.100 But you are, quote unquote, chasing the ballot until completion, until it has gone actually in the

01:00:40.060 mailbox or into the secretary of state's office or the local recorder's office, more specifically.

01:00:45.340 You're not allowed to touch the ballot. That is illegal in those states. We believe Democrats

01:00:49.740 do engage in illegal activity. We're not going to do any of that. But this is the type of

01:00:54.200 clipboard and tennis shoes, gritty type of hustle work that can get you 15, 20, 30, 40,000 low

01:01:01.260 propensity voters that otherwise are not voting at all. And the way that it were, for example,

01:01:07.320 Carrie Lake, who I adore, should be governor of Arizona, did not engage in a robust early voting

01:01:13.660 strategy. It was all about showing up on election day. And what we saw were machines failing,

01:01:18.780 two hour waiting lines, three hour waiting lines. So part of what I'm trying to communicate,

01:01:23.000 and I think the RNC is not capable of doing this at all, is we have to have an admission

01:01:28.980 that the old way of doing elections is failing, where we focus nothing on candidates, just on

01:01:34.900 candidates. We focus on messaging strategies. Oh, that's fine. Or TV ads, there's a place for that.

01:01:41.420 I think what's more important is whether or not we have a durable machine that can compete with the

01:01:47.380 George Soros, Arabella Advisors, multi-billion dollar Leviathan that is currently eking out

01:01:54.120 victories in Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona. If you were to ask the average Arizonan, do you want

01:01:59.120 an open border? Do you want pornography taught to your kids in the local school district? Do you want

01:02:03.600 hyperinflation? No, I think we live in a center right country, Megan. I really do. The reason that

01:02:08.360 does not always manifest politically is we're not playing the game and the Democrats currently are.

01:02:13.120 You're so right. And the money advantage on the Dem side, it's not the end all be all, because

01:02:19.680 I saw a headline just the other day saying Jeffrey Katzenberg, a very famous movie producer in

01:02:24.500 Hollywood, said, I'll spend any amount, any amount to get Joe Biden reelected. Well, let me tell you

01:02:29.500 something. Back in 2015, 16, I saw Jeffrey Katzenberg in person, and he said the exact same thing to me

01:02:38.900 back then about Hillary Clinton. Guess how that worked out. So it's not all about the money that

01:02:45.220 is going to be spent on behalf of the candidate. It's about how it gets used. Is it used wisely or

01:02:49.820 not? And I see your point. The GOP, the RNC is not using the money wisely. We need some whippersnapper

01:02:55.640 in there who understands how to actually play the game. Yeah. And so what the Democrats have done is

01:03:02.040 they decentralize. It's kind of hilarious when you think about it. Ironic is a better word,

01:03:05.960 where the Democrats that want government bureaucracy and one size fits all, they actually

01:03:11.080 run their political infrastructure through a network of entrepreneurs, of political entrepreneurs

01:03:15.820 that get $3 million, $4 million, $5 million in micro communities, in the black community in Atlanta,

01:03:22.160 or in the white working class community in Wisconsin. Whereas we as Republicans, we actually

01:03:28.220 run our elections incredibly monolithically, right? A couple of organizations, very centralized,

01:03:33.720 where we should embrace a much more decentralized entrepreneurial model. Now there is risk to that.

01:03:39.160 The risk to that is that you can't control everything and that you need more accountability

01:03:43.720 and you're going to have to try to see who succeeds. And guess what, Megan? The old guard might not get

01:03:50.520 all the credit. I know that sounds to be super scary, right? Oh, you're trying to tell me that we

01:03:54.440 can't take, who cares about the credit? I want to win. I don't need the credit. I don't care if the RNC

01:03:59.360 gets the credit. We need to defeat these people. And what has changed more than anything else

01:04:04.660 is that we are still engaging in a model where the vast majority of the margin voters, as we call

01:04:11.020 them, used to vote in a ballot box. Now the vast majority of the margin voters are filling out their

01:04:17.940 ballot at the kitchen table. It's changed post-COVID and it's not going back. And of course, Trump was

01:04:23.400 very discouraging of people using the mail-in ballot system too. And now they have it in their heads

01:04:28.120 that that's not trustworthy. But I guarantee you, most Republican voters saw Charlie Kirk showing

01:04:33.480 up at their door saying, trust me, you should fill out the ballot now. They would. They don't know.

01:04:38.500 They're worried who's at their door and can I trust this person and I feel better about doing it. But

01:04:43.020 that's what leads to lost elections. Let me ask you this. I know you've been speculating about what's

01:04:48.220 going to be, what are they going to do this time? What are the Democrats going to do? Is it going to be

01:04:51.340 a new COVID variant that they're going to try to use to scare people? Is it going to be

01:04:55.280 more lockdowns? Another pandemic of some sort? What do you think? Like what you sort of look at

01:05:02.200 these guys for a living? What do you expect them to do this time around? We had George Floyd last

01:05:06.880 time, right? Like, what do you think it's going to be? It's a great question. So, you know, we had

01:05:12.460 the Durham report, which just really created a lot of bitterness inside of me because a lot of it's

01:05:16.420 stuff I've been talking about for years. And I was even censored on social media as being

01:05:19.980 spreading misinformation because of what is now in the Durham report. Just wait a couple of years,

01:05:24.380 the conspiracy theory will be proved right. It's kind of the joke we have around here. And we saw

01:05:29.060 what Elon Musk did, who I think is a hero, and he declassified the Twitter documents. I was

01:05:32.800 blacklisted. But also we saw that the FBI had regular standing meetings with Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg

01:05:39.860 admitted on Joe Rogan's program that the FBI was going to worry about Russian disinformation and that

01:05:45.000 they clamped down on center-right content that got mislabeled as Russian disinformation. We saw that

01:05:50.560 they had tabletop exercises at the Aspen Institute war gaming this whole thing out. We saw, of course,

01:05:55.840 Tony Blinken come out with a fraudulent letter of 50 intel agency officials that said the Hunter

01:06:01.080 Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. So going back in 2020, it seemed as if there was a plan.

01:06:06.740 Now, did they know COVID was going to come or was it as, I believe it was Jane Fonda said it was a

01:06:11.480 gift from the heavens. I think it was Jane Fonda was one of those left-wing activists.

01:06:15.620 And so we, yeah, we don't know exactly, but they certainly capitalized it and they used COVID and

01:06:22.780 the lockdowns and the hysteria and the body count on CNN. Remember that where they used to have the

01:06:27.820 death count? I mean, it was just nonstop propaganda, what I call pressure release valve

01:06:33.020 political tactics, where it's like, I have enough. I'm going to vote against the guy. Just make it

01:06:36.660 stop. You're waterboarding all of society. And in some ways it worked. And then of course they had

01:06:41.020 Floydapalooza during 2020. Now, all of that was put into jeopardy when the laptop stuff that could

01:06:46.880 have swung the election. Every poll shows that even with all their nonsense and the Zuckerbucks and the

01:06:51.640 mass mail-in ballots and the signature verifications, the laptop could have actually been a deciding

01:06:56.460 factor that Tucker Carlson interviewing Tony Bobulinski, which got no coverage in the mainstream

01:07:01.860 networks that still could have actually given Donald Trump a second term. And so a lot of that was

01:07:06.680 planned and plotted. And it started with them on a whiteboard kind of wargaming it, you know,

01:07:12.060 point A, then point B. And so I'm saying on my program, and I think this needs to have,

01:07:16.600 we need to have a robust discussion is they're going to try to do something again in this election.

01:07:20.960 In 2016, they tried Crossfire Hurricane. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, they had the famous text

01:07:26.200 messages. We're never going to let this happen. Smelly Walmart people. We're going to talk about this

01:07:30.360 in Andy's office. We have a plan. Their plan was to try to, you know, frame Donald Trump as a

01:07:36.640 Russian agent. They failed in that plan, but it shows that the intel agencies and the social media

01:07:41.280 companies and this network of dark money on the left is actively plotting and planning in

01:07:46.080 undemocratic ways, right? Their favorite word to try to prevent somebody from becoming president.

01:07:52.000 And if you think for a second that if Donald Trump's going to be the nominee and the intel

01:07:55.920 agencies and the CIA and the FBI and the DHS and the Department of Justice and the tech companies

01:08:00.520 absent Twitter are just going to sit idly by and let Donald Trump do the 2016 thing again,

01:08:05.320 no way. So what do I think the active measures are? I think it's going to be indictments. Megan,

01:08:10.840 I think that their plan and I'm just speculating is they're going to try to weigh Donald Trump down

01:08:15.440 in three or four different jurisdictions and three or four different indictments simultaneously to try

01:08:21.420 to give him the label of a felon to make him seem so toxic, so radioactive, so kind of weighed down

01:08:28.500 such a heavy candidate that people are just going to say, fine, I guess I'll vote for Joe Biden.

01:08:33.860 We also might see more suppression. There might be there's going to be a lot of nonsense on the

01:08:38.340 mass mail and balloting side. But the way I'm trying to get Republicans and conservatives to

01:08:42.940 think is, oh, not just Durham, you know, revealed something bad in 16. OK, we read Molly Hemingway's

01:08:48.360 book rigged in 2020. What are they going to do this time? Because we now have seen a pattern

01:08:53.340 of multiple elections where the American Democrat regime is willing to use government and corporate

01:09:01.100 power to try to interfere with our elections. And I'm confident they're going to try to do it again.

01:09:05.700 Wow. That's scary, but they do it every time. And so I can't say you're wrong. I mean,

01:09:09.900 there's always a George Floyd type situation. We have situations like that every day. I mean,

01:09:14.300 every week in America where somebody dies at the hands of police and, you know, you could make it

01:09:18.660 into a big thing if you wanted to. They go very, very quiet until it's an election cycle. And then

01:09:23.100 they pick one and they spin it up and they try to divide us by race and so on. So who knows what it'll be,

01:09:28.020 but you're certainly right on the indictments. We've seen that already. Let me shift gears and

01:09:31.880 talk. You mentioned Fox, Tucker. There was news on Tucker over the weekend via the Daily Caller,

01:09:38.720 which is an outlet that he founded, reporting as follows, that we're learning more about who is

01:09:44.720 behind at least some of the leaks in this case. And I will start with this. Sources say Viet Dinh,

01:09:53.260 the general counsel of Fox News, um, relayed that the head of Fox News PR, Irina Briganti

01:10:01.920 had been warned that she would be fired if she were caught leaking. So this is revealing that

01:10:09.160 the woman at the head of the comm shop, Irina Briganti was warned she was going to be fired

01:10:14.080 if she was caught leaking. I can now add to that. She was specifically warned that the, uh,

01:10:20.100 executives went to her, including Viet Dinh is my understanding after this article by the New York

01:10:27.080 Times on the eve of trial, discovery of Carlson texts set off crisis atop Fox. Um, this is the

01:10:34.380 New York times article that I've been talking about for some time now. It, it hit two days after

01:10:39.020 Tucker was fired. It said that there were highly offensive and crude remarks revealed in the

01:10:45.420 Dominion filings that went beyond the inflammatory quote, often racist comments of Tucker's primetime

01:10:51.840 show and blah, blah, blah, and said it was these comments that led to his termination. And then

01:10:57.900 the, I believe it sounds like Fox suspects Irina Briganti of leaking this whole thing. And I think

01:11:04.020 she made a critical mistake in this leak to the New York times. Certainly it was leaked by somebody at

01:11:08.400 Fox from the way this piece reads. And that is, uh, way down at the bottom of the piece,

01:11:13.380 it reveals that, and I'm quoting here in video obtained by the times, for instance,

01:11:19.400 Mr. Carlson is shown off camera discussing his post-menopausal fans and whether they will approve

01:11:24.360 of how he looks on the air. In another video, he's overheard describing a woman he finds quote,

01:11:28.500 yummy. So whoever gave the times this leak about his inflammatory and highly offensive and crude

01:11:36.740 remarks in the Dominion filings, which were under seal, they were redacted. Nobody knew about them

01:11:41.780 except for Fox people and Dominion executives. So whoever had access to those also had access

01:11:47.980 to those Tucker videos that were leaked to media matters. And that is a very small circle of people.

01:11:52.960 And what I can add to the daily callers reporting is after this piece hit the times, the executives

01:11:58.640 went right to Irina Briganti and said, if you leak, you're fired. And they suspected that she was the

01:12:05.820 one behind this. Okay. So that's one, the daily caller adding that there's another culprit, um,

01:12:12.380 believed to have been involved in the leaking. And that is, uh, a woman who's on the Fox news

01:12:17.820 board. This is per the daily wall or Viet Dan again, uh, reportedly called a close associate of

01:12:23.720 Tucker's on May 3rd, asking to have a message relayed to him. Dan expressed regret at how the previous week

01:12:28.680 had played out in the media. According to two sources, reassuring Carlson's camp,

01:12:32.020 that Fox news had not authorized the leaks that led to several negative headlines. Uh, he confessed

01:12:37.820 according to the sources, not only the Irina thing, um, but that the network's leaders suspected

01:12:43.280 a member of the board of directors had been speaking to the press about Tucker without authorization.

01:12:47.360 Carlson's inner circle has since ruled out Paul Ryan. A lot of people thought it might be him.

01:12:50.960 They now believe that it was and Diaz who talked to the press. Um, then they say, by the way,

01:12:57.900 Briganti is denying all of this saying that it's categorically false, but this woman and Diaz,

01:13:04.400 um, is on the, she's the founder of Aragon global management LP and investment fund focused on

01:13:11.540 global media founding member of Viking global investors, which is a portfolio manager at Soros

01:13:17.520 fund management. And she's a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs. So this person, she went to Georgetown,

01:13:23.980 she went to Harvard. She's the ex-wife of the guy who founded Sydney. Yeah. The suggestion is that

01:13:29.780 this is a, this is a lefty on the Fox news board who has every interest in the world in hurting Tucker.

01:13:35.200 And so we get a little closer to understanding who's behind the smear campaign, whether it's Irina,

01:13:40.440 whether it's and Diaz, and it sounds according to the daily caller and my own information,

01:13:44.120 like both of them may have had a hand in this. Um, it's Fox, it's Fox. And the problem for Fox is,

01:13:51.380 uh, that's not okay. That is, as I've said before, as a lawyer, a breach of the covenant of good

01:13:56.500 faith and fair dealing, it's a prior material breach of Tucker's contract, and he should be

01:14:00.260 freed up to do whatever the hell he wants right now. And he should get his full payment. He should

01:14:03.600 get his full money. That's right. And under this absolutely right. Um, because they're dropping hit

01:14:09.360 pieces on their own current employee. He's still employed by the company. This is their ratings and

01:14:14.800 the 8 p.m. hour remain in a free fall. The latest last Thursday, um, the 8 p.m. hour lost to MSNBC.

01:14:24.800 Uh, they continue getting absolutely no one, no one to watch that hour, Charlie. So what do you make

01:14:29.980 of all that? So a couple of thoughts, I think it's helpful to kind of go back. Where did all of this

01:14:34.780 start? And here's my theory. And I love your thoughts on this, Megan. I believe it all started.

01:14:38.600 I remember seeing it live. I was in the white house watching the election returns, November of

01:14:42.880 2020. And as soon as Fox news called Arizona, now I'm from Arizona. And when Fox news called

01:14:48.860 Arizona, I, I, my phone lit up in a way I've never seen before the anger, the fury. Remember Megan,

01:14:54.420 they were ahead of CNN. They were ahead of NBC Fox just decided, Oh yeah, Arizona's called because of

01:15:00.280 one ballot drop, one ballot drop. Now there were 22 million people watching Fox news at the time.

01:15:06.420 And the, and the ferocity that Fox received after that, because they were the only network

01:15:13.100 could be one thing if, you know, every other one was calling it and every other, you know,

01:15:16.100 decision desk and Nate silver Fox days ahead of every other network calls Arizona for Joe Biden,

01:15:22.480 almost as an insult to your viewers, a massive middle finger. And people were going to CNN and

01:15:27.240 CNN were saying, well, you know, Arizona is still really early and other networks have called it.

01:15:31.340 It's like, what world are we living in? And then the days that followed Fox realized they made a

01:15:35.480 massive error and they, they, they had to compensate for that. Right. So as a way to compensate for

01:15:41.220 that, they realized you might remember Newsmax's numbers were going up. Other alternative media was

01:15:45.740 going up. Fox was really worried. Yeah, I know. And Fox was worried in November and December of 2020,

01:15:51.440 they might've permanently messed up the network. So then they go to Tucker who they realized was the

01:15:56.000 only one that was really rating and had a lot of brand trust. And they gave him everything

01:16:00.080 today's show more money, right? Tucker Carlson today podcast, more money, Tucker Carlson documentaries,

01:16:05.900 you know, kind of studios built in his home, like the whole, the whole shebang.

01:16:10.560 And so he signed a deal and they kind of went all in on Tucker and Tucker really was the one that

01:16:16.380 stopped the bleeding because Fox was in free fall post that Arizona call with Chris Steyer,

01:16:22.220 Walt and the whole thing. And Tucker kept the network competitive and then grew. And then they

01:16:26.600 finally got over that. Now, part of one of the reason why they were so kind of okay with airing

01:16:32.280 some of the dominion stuff is they were worried that they were going to lose viewers, but that's

01:16:35.200 a separate, that's a little bit of a separate issue, but they went all in on Tucker. And I think Fox

01:16:39.420 executives, they did not understand their audience at all. And they did not realize that the network was

01:16:45.100 largely dependent on the brand trust that Tucker was delivering at 8 PM every night, that the other

01:16:51.040 shows were largely succeeding because of him. And I'd put like second or third place, Laura Ingram and

01:16:56.200 Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Waters, great people, terrific talent, but it really was built on

01:17:01.360 Tucker. And so a corporate media model was largely built on a single personality. And you know it,

01:17:09.700 you know, Megan, and you've said it many times that the kind of Murdoch mantra is no one is bigger

01:17:13.540 than the network, right? We could take out anybody, we can rebuild it around anyone. And that might've

01:17:18.340 been true 10 years ago, 15 years ago, but media has changed a lot. You now have podcasts,

01:17:23.140 you have more video delivery, you have more competitors. And so with this, you know,

01:17:28.480 ousting of Tucker, I think there might've been, again, time will tell in arrogance, like, oh,

01:17:33.040 we'll recover. We've been through this before. And my personal opinion, that New York times article,

01:17:38.620 Megan, I think that it was leaked by Fox as a way to try to justify to the world why they got rid of

01:17:43.940 them. And they couldn't understand why the, the population they were trying to serve said,

01:17:48.820 are you kidding me? Like, I think in some ways, I think that New York times article was them trying

01:17:54.280 to be like, oh, now you can see it from our side. And we were like, are you serious? This is why you

01:18:00.440 got rid of our guy. This is why you got rid of our 8 PM guy, because he said something that that's

01:18:05.560 not how white people fight. Who cares? Get over yourself. That's a private text message where he was

01:18:10.700 even lamenting how he was feeling and was almost atoning for his sins in a very honest private text

01:18:17.440 message. That's why you got rid of them. And I think it created this massive backpedaling from

01:18:22.200 one to one, one Avenue, the Americas, where they're like, why are we still losing market share? Why are

01:18:27.420 people not watching us again? It's because you have not understood your audience since November of 2020.

01:18:33.740 You guys went all in on Tucker. That was a good move. And you think, you think that the entire

01:18:39.200 audience wants MSNBC light when in reality, the person that is paying the bills at Fox is more

01:18:45.280 conservative. They want more honest takes. And finally, I'll say this. Tucker was an outlier

01:18:50.180 on the network. Jesse waters also does this in Laura, but Tucker more forcefully, he critiques

01:18:54.320 neoliberalism. He talks about issues that no one else talked about adverse events to the vaccine,

01:18:58.600 critical critics of Ukraine, right? Talking about corporate power. He had segments on UFOs. You're not

01:19:03.700 allowed to do that. And so I think it all culminated with that. And the leadership of Fox right now is

01:19:08.500 confused. I think right now they are astounded. They say, who is our viewer? You guys have not

01:19:13.820 dared to even get to know your audience the last couple of years. And I think they're going to

01:19:18.960 continue to suffer because of it. It's amazing to me because if you look back,

01:19:23.500 they went for a week or so with the leak, leak, leaks on Tucker trying to smear him and the audience

01:19:29.560 disappeared. The audience was not persuaded. And then and the audience was angry at Fox. And then

01:19:34.880 they had this milquetoast letter sent to Dominion lawyer saying, hey, you must be behind these leaks

01:19:41.060 of the Tucker texts. You better stop that. Dominion is like, please, who are you kidding?

01:19:45.580 And then they sent the similar letter to Media Matters, which laughed in their face

01:19:48.720 and the leaks continued for another week plus. And then guess what happened? Then Brian Friedman,

01:19:54.480 Tucker's lawyer, happens to be my own lawyer, too, sent a very powerful nasty gram saying,

01:20:00.620 we're going to sue your ass. We're definitely suing Irina Berganti. We're suing everybody who's

01:20:05.640 been smearing him. And you better hold all of your records. This is a records preservation

01:20:09.660 notice because we're going to get them all. We're going to take Irina's deposition and the

01:20:12.780 board's deposition. And we're going to find out exactly who was doing this to him. And guess

01:20:16.220 what happened, Charlie? The leak stopped. They stopped entirely. There was one leftover video

01:20:22.720 that Media Matters aired since then. And besides that, bub kiss zero. They're stupid leakers.

01:20:31.420 Well, because they really thought there was a belief. And this is my theory that that new again,

01:20:37.680 leaking to the New York Times, you think you're going to win over Fox viewers? Like, really?

01:20:41.200 I mean, first of all, that in itself is insane. But that most of the people would see it and be

01:20:47.060 like, oh, I get it now. OK, now I see why you got like as if they were going to win over

01:20:51.840 the sympathy of the disaffected Tucker viewer where they're going to win them back.

01:20:57.240 He said the opposite happened.

01:20:58.800 He's out. He's out. Yeah, no, it's absurd. So the other interesting thing here that I mentioned

01:21:03.180 just in passing is Eric Bolling is now beating CNN. So he's on at eight. He's on a Newsmax at

01:21:09.000 eight. And it appears that a healthy portion of Tucker's viewers at APM have moved over

01:21:14.160 to Bolling at Newsmax, who is definitely an acceptable substitute, I think, to the Tucker fans.

01:21:20.300 He's very talented.

01:21:21.400 And he's beating Anderson Cooper. This is unheard of. It's worth spending a minute on just because

01:21:27.220 it is an earthquake in television. If Newsmax takes a week or a month off of CNN in the 8

01:21:35.900 p.m. time slot, Charlie, that's we're in a whole new land now, which is great. I think

01:21:41.740 it's exciting, by the way. I think it's exciting that corporate media, the monopoly they've had

01:21:47.180 is finally being disrupted. I mean, this earthquake is being felt across the board. And Megan, I'm

01:21:51.740 sure you've seen it in your podcast downloads. We're seeing it in our podcast downloads. I mean,

01:21:55.800 they've gone up significantly and the viewing habits and the information consumption habits

01:22:01.220 are changing in real time, which which is for years. We were always like, well, the brand

01:22:08.300 is everything. And do you work for Fox? You don't need that as much anymore. Now it's who

01:22:13.020 are you? What do you have to say? The trusting of brands is at an all time low and trusting

01:22:17.980 of people is ascendant. And you kind of see Joe Rogan was the trailblazer for this, right?

01:22:24.400 Especially for a younger demographic and a younger population of I'm going to speak my mind. I'm

01:22:28.400 going to have big names. We're going to have long form interviews. And so to see it happening on

01:22:32.860 television where Newsmax, which has limited distribution, I think they're only in 50 or

01:22:37.160 60 million homes, not only, but Fox is in, yeah, Fox is in 110 to 115 million homes, right? Through

01:22:43.080 every cable package, DirecTV, Spectrum, Cox, like the whole gamut, Comcast, NBCUniversal,

01:22:48.640 where Newsmax, they have 50 or 60 million, which is significant. So they have half the potential

01:22:53.580 distribution potential and they're beating CNN. And so, but CNN has the most distribution potential.

01:22:59.240 They're everywhere, right? They're on YouTube TV. They're on, they're on every possible distribution

01:23:04.160 vertical. And you have Eric Bolling beating them that, that, that right there, not only should

01:23:09.060 send shockwaves to CNN, but also if you're Fox, you should be saying what, you know, what is really

01:23:14.720 going on here? And the answer is absent Jesse, Laura, and Greg Gutfeld, and a couple others,

01:23:20.280 Judge Jeanine, there's some great people there that I've never seen the anger towards a network like it

01:23:26.920 is right now. People are coming up to me, Charlie, I canceled Fox nation. I'm done. I'm not going to watch

01:23:31.300 them anymore. You know, I, I, I think they've totally mistreated Tucker and they have, and

01:23:36.280 yep. The, they think they're untouchable and continue to, he's still not out from under the

01:23:41.880 contract. They're still trying to enforce the non-compete and the non-disparagement. They

01:23:47.300 don't care. Like they're going to, they're still trying to stop him from reconnecting with his

01:23:50.800 audience. It's not going to work. Um, just as an addendum here, there's an interesting piece in the

01:23:55.180 Daily Signal today talking about Fox and they have some quotes from Tucker's team and from,

01:24:00.100 from some others on how Fox has gone left on the gender ideology subject and revealing as follows

01:24:08.140 quote, a source who still works at Fox news told the Daily Signal that after Carlson show was canceled

01:24:13.220 in April, producers for the new APM were told not to bash Dylan Mulvaney. The source says that directive

01:24:21.740 came from high level executives and it ends by interviewing Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire who says

01:24:29.420 there is no daylight at all between Fox news and MSNBC when it comes to gender and that reporting.

01:24:35.220 And he says, that's something that the Fox's viewers need to know. Um, he says, if it were up

01:24:39.080 to me, Fox would get the Bud Light treatment and they are getting that treatment, but it is interesting.

01:24:43.400 The whole piece is worth reading. It talks about how Fox requires you to say the pronouns of people

01:24:48.280 as required. Now there's some of that is due to New York city law, which is as far left on this stuff

01:24:52.400 as you can get, but there's nothing in New York city law that says you can't bash Dylan Mulvaney

01:24:57.520 when he's making a mockery of womanhood. So if that actually happened, that's a Fox directive

01:25:03.240 and it does sort of events why people are having trouble with the new Fox news channel.

01:25:10.540 Yeah. I mean, there's, yeah, I guess criticizing central, you know, criticizing Dylan Mulvaney is the

01:25:16.200 central piety you can't do, I guess now at any major media network. It's, it's remarkable. He,

01:25:21.140 he is the holy, right? You're everything else is touchable. It's interesting. I still go on Fox

01:25:27.180 and I have good friends. Laura has been great to me. And I'll be honest without Fox. I don't know

01:25:31.280 if I would have, you know, would have had the kind of career I've had. And obviously they've changed,

01:25:35.980 but I'm thankful to them. And, but at the same time, I'm very critical of where they're going.

01:25:39.720 I'll say this, Megan, I got an email asking me to go on a program a couple of weeks ago.

01:25:43.760 And the producer had his pronouns in his email signature.

01:25:47.140 Really? Uh-huh. And I'm not going to say what show. Yeah. At Fox. And they're asking me to come

01:25:54.600 on the show. And I sent it to my team. I said, we are not going on the show. Let me be. No,

01:25:57.720 the answer is no. Yeah. It's like he, him, whatever. I said, look, this, at some point,

01:26:03.500 you got to just say no. Okay. I am not going to put up with this. And I don't know if it's mandated.

01:26:07.780 I don't know if it's selective, but here you are, you're trying to book Charlie Kirk. And you think

01:26:12.960 that, you know, me seeing pronouns in the bio is going to make me see, you know what? I'm going

01:26:16.920 to make time on a weekend that, you know, that I could be spending with my precious daughter

01:26:21.800 because of your, you know, your pronoun signaling to me, like, no, you'll go find somebody else.

01:26:26.680 Okay. So that's a legit thing, Megan. And people forget last May, June, you guys could find the

01:26:33.180 exact tape. This got buried because they got embarrassed. Do you remember that six or seven

01:26:36.300 minute infomercial they did on that trans kid? I don't know if you remember that about last year.

01:26:41.320 It was incredible. It had all the tropes. Your child's going to kill themselves unless you affirm

01:26:45.360 gender affirming care. It had all the buzzwords on the network. This was viewed as kind of an

01:26:51.240 infomercial, like, okay, everybody, we're very proud. Let's watch this, you know, very well edited

01:26:55.700 propaganda piece brought to you by the chemical castration company, Pfizer, basically. Right.

01:27:00.960 And it was all about my kids going to kill himself and all this. And it was pure operation,

01:27:05.680 mockingbird, transgender propaganda on Fox. Now they memory hold that because they got such a

01:27:10.540 huge backlash for it. But that trans ideology is absolutely prevalent in one, two, one,

01:27:16.360 one Avenue, the Americas. All right. Stand by. Cause there's breaking news on that. Yet another

01:27:21.100 biological boy takes the spot of a biological girl in the state championships. Now there are two of them

01:27:28.200 in California and these girls, I feel so sorry for them. They've had it. You can see their frustration.

01:27:33.820 We'll show you the tape and talk about it as we continue with Charlie straight ahead. Don't go

01:27:37.520 away. Before I get to what happened in California, Charlie, let me tell you, cause we're on the

01:27:43.260 subject of pronouns, something absurd from the state department. They had begun testing a new feature

01:27:49.040 that would provide users with the option to include their preferred pronouns in their global address

01:27:55.120 list profile. But during the test, the feature inadvertently went live and a large number of

01:28:00.260 employees had randomly assigned pronouns to their profiles. So they were like all wrong. And, you

01:28:06.620 know, even for people who have no gender confusion, they were being called a he when they were she and

01:28:11.120 so on, whatever. It's a bug, I guess the whole project's ridiculous. But the Washington free beacon

01:28:17.280 reports that, um, that somebody from inside the state department said a lot of people here have been

01:28:24.820 triggered. They've been triggered by this. And so on Friday we get this from Kelly Fletcher, the state

01:28:30.800 department's chief information officer. The state department is now offering, this is on our dime,

01:28:35.900 free therapy to quote any employee who feels hurt or upset as a result of this unfortunate mistake.

01:28:45.120 Those upset by the misgendering are encouraged to contact the state department's employee consultation

01:28:50.820 service to quote, speak to a professional counselor. Who are these weak people who need therapy from one

01:29:00.520 person in a memo, some computer misgendering you? They sound like college graduates. Yeah. I mean,

01:29:08.040 I, uh, I wrote the book, the college scam. And one of the things I write in the book is answering the

01:29:14.180 question that people say, Charlie, how did Goldman Sachs and Citibank and Coca-Cola and American express

01:29:18.960 be just come so fragile and so woke. I say, well, you get what you educate. And what happens on

01:29:25.340 college campuses doesn't stay on college campuses. You'll see it in the halls of Congress in corporate

01:29:29.520 boardrooms or in the state department. I mean, so for a decade, we staff people from the state

01:29:34.320 department that have the exact same viewpoint of what I experienced. When I go to these college

01:29:38.600 campuses, we know it really well, Stanford, Brown, Yale, or even the state schools, Ohio state

01:29:43.780 university of Virginia. They are taught that if you do not get exactly what you want from pronoun

01:29:49.300 preference to language, the totalitarian control of others, then you're triggered and you deserve

01:29:54.400 special rights and privileges. You see part of being in a free society, which is something we should

01:29:59.520 fight for is that you do not get special needs, wants, or privileges just because you think you're

01:30:04.260 important. It's basically creating this mass competition for victimhood, narcissism of, well,

01:30:10.200 I'm, I'm trans and I'm disabled and I'm this and I'm that where in reality, in a free society,

01:30:15.300 you're saying, okay, you might have an issue, you might have a problem, fight through it,

01:30:18.460 figure it out. Or if you want to be called something, persuade me to tell you that you

01:30:22.340 don't have to force me. You don't have to, you don't have to use cruelty. You don't have to use

01:30:25.960 intimidation or bullying. And that's why I say the T and LGBT largely is tyranny, not trans is that

01:30:32.740 it's one thing to live and let live Megan. That's my temperament. I think that's your temperament,

01:30:36.060 right? I don't go out of my way trying to police the imaginations of others or trying to say,

01:30:40.200 oh, you are this thing, or you're not that thing. If somebody asked me, I'm going to tell them the

01:30:42.900 truth. And that's the America that I want to live in. I want to live in a live and let live country.

01:30:47.620 I think it's a better country that way. That's not at all what we're living through. It's mandatory

01:30:51.780 celebration, mandatory participation. If you have a different belief point, we're going to crush you.

01:30:56.620 We're going to cancel you. We're going to ostracize you. And you look around, you say,

01:30:59.900 I thought the whole thing was about living and let live. It was about having each other's

01:31:03.500 viewpoints equally respected. That's a bunch of nonsense. They haven't believed that for quite some time.

01:31:07.400 It is forced conformity around ever radical viewpoint on gender and sex.

01:31:13.220 It's so infuriating. And when you see it actually practiced and the effects of it on a real life

01:31:18.120 person, even more so, that brings me to California. There is yet another biological boy, two of them,

01:31:24.480 actually, who are taking girl spots in the state championships in track and field out there right

01:31:29.640 now. I take you to Dublin, California, where over the weekend in the 1600 meter race,

01:31:37.400 a woman, a girl, an actual girl named Adeline Johnson came in fourth. She's an actual girl.

01:31:44.400 If she had not had to run against a trans girl, meaning a biological boy, she would have been in

01:31:50.220 third place and she would have made it to the next round, which is the state championships.

01:31:54.280 Unfortunately, they made her run against a biological boy who's a junior in high school.

01:31:59.360 So that means 15 or 16 years old. So that is definitely in the midst of potentially past

01:32:05.920 boy puberty, but probably in the midst of judging from the pictures I've seen of this person

01:32:10.400 and all sorts of biological advantages are kicking in. And so not surprisingly, that biological boy

01:32:17.820 who goes by the name of Athena Ryan won. That person came in second and stole the place of

01:32:24.900 Adeline Johnson, who deserved to go to the state championships. You can see it here. Number two is

01:32:31.300 the biological boy, trans girl. Number four is the girl who will not be going to the state

01:32:36.260 championship. And you can see she gave a thumbs down to somebody off camera. Not sure what that

01:32:41.340 indicates. Could mean I didn't make it. Could mean I disapprove of number two, racing against a

01:32:46.840 biological boy. We have no idea. She wasn't interviewed and here they are standing next

01:32:51.340 to each other. The one on the right, the taller one with the muscular arms is the biological boy.

01:32:57.900 Here's the, here's the rub to, um, this person, the biological boy, Athena has been running in the

01:33:04.500 girls events for the past two seasons. Didn't seem bothered at all by the fact that he took a girl's

01:33:11.420 spot. Um, talked about how proud he was of himself, whatever. Um, and then we get this,

01:33:18.340 I think it was, um, uh, it was outkick sports reported that he would have finished last.

01:33:25.080 Had he run in the male category? The slowest male time there was four 46 54. This person running as a

01:33:31.080 girl got a four 55 91. I mean, not even close. And, and he's not the only one. There's another boy who

01:33:38.400 ran as a girl who's also in the state championships. California law requires it. Uh, although no one's,

01:33:43.420 no one, no one's apologetic for it. They're, they're celebrating it out there. Of course they

01:33:47.460 are. You're, you're using the right word, Megan stole. And this person's a cheat. And that is the

01:33:54.300 language I've used that we need to use. So this is a question in front of us as a society. What do you

01:33:58.940 do with someone who has a mental problem? Do you reconfigure all of society to try to accommodate

01:34:05.500 their problem? Or do you try to get them treatment and health help and healing and say,

01:34:10.080 we still have standards. We're not going to accommodate your personal imagination about

01:34:15.560 your existence. And the reason Megan, this ties into some stuff we talked earlier, right?

01:34:20.720 What are the strong people going to do when the weak are exploited? And right now we are answering

01:34:25.940 that question that if the strong stand up, you go to jail like Daniel penny. If the strong stand up,

01:34:32.640 you're going to get ridiculed. You're going to get tormented. So most, most people know this is

01:34:36.560 wrong. 99% of people in Dublin, California know this is wrong. They are definitely afraid to do

01:34:42.460 anything about it. They don't want to be called names. They don't want to be ostracized. They don't

01:34:45.880 want to be labeled. So they would rather have a mass injustice happen where a young lady is

01:34:50.240 disenfranchised by a narcissistic cheat rather than stand up for biological standards and say

01:34:56.380 to this young man, look, dude, you got to get some help. You're not allowed to cheat your

01:35:01.240 way to self-importance. You're not allowed to cut corners. You're not competing at somebody your

01:35:05.200 own size, literally competing at somebody with the same testosterone levels, bone density,

01:35:10.320 muscle mass that has the same sort of hormone balances that you do. But this is one of the

01:35:14.780 problems with believing that tolerance is an end in and of itself. It is not. You should not

01:35:20.600 tolerate injustice. You should not tolerate evil. And sometimes you have to be intolerant of such

01:35:26.240 behavior. And I'm proudly intolerant of cheating. I will not tolerate the cutting of corners and the

01:35:33.260 validating of injustice because somebody's feelings might get hurt. I don't care.

01:35:39.620 I care about the fourth place finisher and her feelings. I do, too.

01:35:44.160 Yeah. And by the way, Charlie, there's no requirement in California that they lower their

01:35:47.740 testosterone in order to compete. And that doesn't work anyway. Let's be honest. But yes,

01:35:52.380 no, it doesn't. But I mean, nothing. He can just be a full blown boy in every single way and crush

01:35:58.140 these girls and their dreams and their scholarship chances. And no one says anything. When the women

01:36:03.340 went there to protest this outside of the event, they were removed. People were shouting, you're

01:36:09.100 offensive, you're bigots. And they were kicked out. The protesters, the same people who were saying,

01:36:14.320 this is wrong. We'll go back again. I'll go with you. We'll protest from our anchor desks,

01:36:19.600 from our podcasts. The whole nation needs to stand up against this. This is absolutely immoral.

01:36:26.320 Yes, it is. It's immoral. And it is a question that we are failing. It is an open question of

01:36:32.760 what will a society do to protect those that are taken advantage of that have more strength?

01:36:38.960 Look, there are three types of people, right? There are infants. There are the protectors of infants,

01:36:44.240 and there are predators. Infants are incredibly important. We must protect their innocence,

01:36:49.180 allow them to develop, and make sure that they're in the proper biological categories.

01:36:53.900 There are always going to be predators. Predators are people that use their strength and their power

01:36:57.740 to go after infants. From biblical times, you're going to have predators. For whatever reason,

01:37:03.920 it's just part of our natural existence. What is the question is, what do the protectors of the

01:37:10.220 infants do? Do the protectors of the infants sit idly by? Do they say, well, you're being

01:37:14.560 transphobic? And Megan, the cultural parasite is that you're not allowed to offend somebody. But

01:37:22.740 that's such a silly rule, because then you're offending the fourth place finisher.

01:37:26.940 I'm offended. I'm offended. They're not allowed to enforce me. If that's the way we're going to

01:37:30.700 play it, you're not allowed to offend me by cheating in these girls' races. We can both play

01:37:36.080 that game. The vast majority of the American public are with us. These state laws are a travesty,

01:37:42.200 a disgusting injustice. And the only way to undo them is to use our voices. Charlie Kirk,

01:37:49.240 so glad that you are one of them out there right now. Such a powerful force in our culture. Thank

01:37:54.780 you for coming on and thank you for all you do. Love the show. It was an honor. Thanks so much.

01:37:58.860 Oh, all the best. So great. I really enjoyed that discussion. Hope you did too. Tomorrow,

01:38:03.760 two of our favorites are here. The EJs join us and there is much to discuss. We'll speak again then.

01:38:12.200 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - May 22, 2023

Charlie Kirk on Tucker Carlson's True Brand Value, AOC's Funeral Selfies, DeSantis' Mistakes, and Why RNC Leaders Should Go ｜ Ep. 555

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